A Princess of Thule

CHAPTER XVIII.

SHEILA’S STRATAGEM

“WE met Mr. Ingram to-day,” said young Mosenberg, ingeniously.

He was dining with Lavender, not at home, but at a club in St. James’ street; and either his curiosity was too great, or he had forgotten altogether Ingram’s warnings to him that he should hold his tongue.

“Oh, did you?” said Lavender, showing no great interest. “Waiter, some French mustard. What did Ingram say to you?”

The question was asked with much apparent indifference, and the boy stared. “Well,” he said at length, “I suppose there is some misunderstanding between Mrs. Lavender and Mr. Ingram, for they both saw each other, and they both passed on without speaking. I was very sorry – yes. I thought they were friends – I thought Mr. Ingram knew Mrs. Lavender even before you did; but they did not speak to each other, not one word.”

Lavender was in one sense pleased to hear this. He liked to hear that his wife was obedient to him. But, he said to himself with a sharp twinge of conscience, she was carrying her obedience too far. He had never meant that she should not even speak to her old friend. He would talk to her about it as soon as he got home, and in as kindly a way as was possible.

Mosenberg did not play billiards, but they remained late in the billiard-room, Lavender playing pool and getting out of it rather successfully. He could not speak to Sheila that night, but next morning, before going out, he did.

“Sheila,” he said, “Mosenberg told me last night that you met Mr. Ingram and did not speak to him. Now, I didn’t mean anything like that. You must not think me unreasonable. All I want is that he shall not interfere with our affairs and try to raise some unpleasantness between you and me, such as might arise from the interference of even the kindest of friends. When you meet him outside or at any one’s house, I hope you will treat him just as usual.”

Sheila replied calmly, “If I am not allowed to receive Mr. Ingram here, I cannot treat him as a friend elsewhere. I would rather not have friends whom I can only speak to in the streets.”

“Very well,” said Lavender, wincing under the rebuke, but fancying that she would soon repent her of this resolve. In the meantime, if she would have it so, she would have it so.

So that was an end of this question of Mr. Ingram’s interference for the present. But very soon – in a couple of days, indeed – Lavender perceived the change that had been wrought in the house in Holland Park to which he had been accustomed to resort.

“Cecelia,” Mrs. Kavanagh had said on Ingram’s leaving, “you must not be rude to Mr. Lavender.” She knew the perfect independence of that gentle young lady, and was rather afraid it might carry her too far.

“Of course I shall not be, mamma,” Mrs. Lorraine had said. “Did you ever hear of such a courageous act as that man coming up to two strangers and challenging them, all on account of a girl married to some one else? You know that was the object of his visit. He thought I was flirting with Mr. Lavender and keeping him from his wife. I wonder how many men there are in London who would have walked twenty yards to help in such a matter?”

“My dear, he may have been in love with that pretty young lady before she was married.”

“Oh, no,” said the clear-eyed daughter, quietly but quite confidently. “He would not be so ready to show his interest in her if that were so. Either he would be modest, and ashamed of his rejection, or vain, and attempt to make a mystery about it.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said the mother. She seldom found her daughter wrong on such points.

“I am sure I am right, mamma. He talks about her as fondly and frequently and openly as a man might talk about his own daughter. Besides, you can see that he is talking honestly. The man couldn’t deceive a child if he were to try. You see everything in his face.”

“You seem to have been much interested in him,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, with no appearance of sarcasm.

“Well, I don’t think I meet such men often, and that is the truth. Do you?” This was carrying the war into the enemy’s country.

“I like him very well,” raid Mrs. Kavanagh. “I think he is honest. I do not think he dresses very carefully; and he is perhaps too intent on convincing you that his opinions are right.”

“Well, for my part,” said her daughter, with just the least tinge of warmth in her manner, “I confess I like a man who has opinions, and is not afraid to say so. I don’t find many who have. And for his dressing, one gets rather tired of men who come to you every evening to impress you with the excellence of their tailor. As if women were to be captured by millinery! Don’t we know the value of linen and woolen fabrics?”

“My dear child, you are throwing away your vexation on some one whom I don’t know. It isn’t Mr. Lavender?”

“Oh, dear, no! He is not so silly as that; he dresses well, but there is perfect freedom about his dress. He is too much of an artist to sacrifice himself to his clothes.”

“I am glad you have a good word for him at last. I think you have been rather hard on him since Mr. Ingram called; and that is the reason I asked you to be careful.”

She was quite careful, but as explicit as good manners would allow. Mrs. Lorraine was most particular in asking about Mrs. Lavender, and in expressing her regret that they so seldom saw her.

“She has been brought up in the country, you know,” said Lavender with a smile; “and there the daughters of a house are taught a number of domestic duties that they would consider it a sin to neglect. She would be unhappy if you caused her to neglect them; she would take her pleasure with a bad conscience.”

“But she cannot be occupied with them all day.”

“My dear Mrs. Lorraine, how often have we discussed the question! And you know you have me at a disadvantage, for how can I describe to you what those mysterious duties are? I only know that she is pretty nearly always busy with something or other; and in the evening, of course, she is generally too tired to think of going out anywhere.”

“Oh, but you must try to get her out. Next Tuesday, now, Judge – is going to dine with us, and you know how amusing he is. If you have no other engagement, couldn’t you bring Mrs. Lavender to dine with us on that evening?”

Now, on former occasions something of the same sort of invitation had frequently been given, and it was generally answered by Lavender giving an excuse for his wife, and promising to come himself. What was his astonishment to find Mrs. Lorraine plainly and most courteously intimating that the invitation was addressed distinctly to Mr. and Mrs. Lavender as a couple! When he regretted that Mrs. Lavender could not come, she said quietly, “Oh, I am so sorry! You would have met an old friend of yours here, as well as the judge – Mr. Ingram.”

Lavender made no further sign of surprise or curiosity than to lift his eyebrows and say, “Indeed!”

But when he left the house certain dark suspicions were troubling his mind. Nothing had been said as to the manner in which Ingram had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, but there was that in Mrs. Lorraine’s manner which convinced Lavender that something had happened. Had Ingram carried his interference to the extent of complaining to them? Had he overcome a repugnance which he had repeatedly admitted, and thrust himself upon these two people for this very purpose of making him, Lavender, odious and contemptible? Lavender’s cheeks burned as he thought of this possibility. Mrs. Lorraine had been most courteous to him, but the longer he dwelt on these vague surmises the deeper grew his consciousness that he had been turned out of the place, morally if not physically. What was that excess of courtesy but a cloak? If she had meant less, she would have been more careless; and all through the interview he had remarked that, instead of the free warfare of talk that generally went on between them, Mrs. Lorraine was most formally polite and apparently watchful of her words.

He went home in a passion, which was all the more consuming that it could not be vented on any one. As Sheila had not spoken to Ingram – as she had even nerved herself to wound him by passing him without notice in the street – she could not be held responsible; and yet he wished that he could have upbraided some one for this mischief that had been done. Should he go straight down to Ingram’s lodgings and have it out with him? At first he was strongly inclined to do so, but wiser counsels prevailed. Ingram had a keen and ready tongue, and a way of saying things that made them rankle afterward in the memory. Besides, he would go into court with a defective case. He could say nothing unless Ingram admitted that he had tried to poison the mind of Mrs. Lorraine against him; and, of course, if there was a quarrel, who would be so foolish as to make such an admission? Ingram would laugh at him, would refuse to admit or deny, would increase his anger without affording him an opportunity of revenging himself.

Sheila could see that her husband was troubled, but could not divine the cause, and had long ago given up any habit of inquiry. He ate his dinner almost in silence, and then said he had to make a call on a friend, and that he would perhaps drop in to the club on his way home, so that she was not to sit up for him. She was not surprised or hurt at the announcement. She was accustomed to spend her evenings alone. She fetched down his cigar-case, put it in his top-coat pocket, and brought him the coat. Then he kissed her and went out.

But this evening, at least, she had abundant occupation, and that of a sufficiently pleasant kind. For some little time she had been harboring in her mind a dark and mysterious plot, and she was glad of an opportunity to think it out and arrange its details. Mairi was coming to London, and she had carefully concealed the fact from her husband. A little surprise of a dramatic sort was to be prepared for him – with what result who could tell? All of a sudden Lavender was to be precipitated into the island of Lewis as nearly as that could be imitated in a house at Notting Hill.

This was Sheila’s scheme, and on these lonely evenings she could sit by herself with much satisfaction and ponder over the little points of it and its possible success. Mairi was coming to London under the escort of a worthy Glasgow fishmonger whom Mr. Mackenzie knew. She would arrive after Lavender had left for his studio. Then she and Sheila would set to work to transform the smoking-room, that was sometimes called a library, into something resembling the quaint little drawing-room in Sheila’s home. Mairi was bringing up a quantity of heather gathered fresh from the rocks beside the White Water; she was bringing up some peacocks’ feathers, too, for the mantle-piece, and two or three big shells; and, best of all, she was to put in her trunk a real and veritable lump of peat, well dried and easy to light. Then you must know that Sheila had already sketched out the meal that was to be placed on the table so soon as the room had been done up in Highland fashion and this peat lit so as to send its fragrant smoke abroad. A large salmon was to make its appearance first of all. There would be bottles of beer on the table; also one of those odd bottles of Norwegian make filled with whisky. And when Lavender went with wonder into the small room, when he smelt the fragrant peat smoke – and every one knows how powerful the sense of smell is in recalling by-gone associations – when he saw the smoking salmon and the bottled beer and the whisky, and when he suddenly found Mairi coming into the room and saying to him in her sweet Highland fashion, “And are you ferry well, sir?” – would not his heart warm to the old ways and kindly homeliness of the house in Borva, and would not some glimpse of the happy and half-forgotten time that was now so sadly and strangely remote, cause him to break down that barrier between himself and Sheila that this artificial life in the South had placed there?

So the child dreamed, and was happy in dreaming of it. Sometimes she grew afraid of her project: she had not had much experience in deception, and the mere concealment of Mairi’s coming was a hard thing to bear. But surely her husband would take this trick in good part. It was only, after all, a joke. To put a little barbaric splendor of decoration into the little smoking-room, to have a scent of peat-smoke in the air, and to have a timid, sweet-voiced, pretty Highland girl suddenly make her appearance, with an odor of the sea about her, as it were, and a look of fresh breezes in the color of her cheeks – what mortal man could find fault with this innocent jest? Sheila’s moments of doubt were succeeded by long hours of joyous confidence, in which a happy light shone on her face. She went through the house with a brisk step; she sang to herself as she went; she was kinder than ever to the small children who came into the square every forenoon, and whose acquaintance she had very speedily made; she gave each of her crossing-sweepers threepence instead of twopence in passing. The servants had never seen her in such good spirits; she was exceptionally generous in presenting them with articles of attire; they might have had half the week in holidays, if Mr. Lavender had not to be attended to. A small gentleman of three years of age lived next door, and his acquaintance also she had made, by means of his nurse. At this time his stock of toys, which Sheila had kept carefully renewed, became so big that he might, with proper management, have set up a stall in the Lowther Arcade.

Just before she left Lewis her father had called her to him and said: “Sheila, I wass wanting to tell you about something. It is not every one that will care to hef his money given away to poor folk, and it wass many a time I said to myself that when you were married maybe your husband would think you were giving too much money to the poor folk, as you wass doing in Borva. And it iss this fifty pounds I hef got for you, Sheila, in ten bank notes, and you will take them with you for your own money, that you will not hef any trouble about giving things to people. And when the fifty pounds will be gone, I will send you another fifty pounds; and it will be no difference to me whatever. And if there is any one in Borva you would be for sending money to, there is your own money; for there is many a one would take the money from Sheila Mackenzie that would not be for taking it from an English stranger in London. And when you will send it to them, you will send it to me; and I will tek it to them, and will tell them that this money is from my Sheila, and from no one else whatever.”

This was all the dowry that Sheila carried with her to the South. Mackenzie would willingly have given her half his money, if she would have taken it, or if her husband had desired it; but the old King of Borva had profound and far-reaching schemes in his head about the small fortune he might otherwise have accorded to his daughter. This wealth, such as it was, was to be a magnet to draw this young English gentleman back to the Hebrides. It was all very well for Mr. Lavender to have plenty of money at present: he might not always have it. Then the time would come for Mackenzie to say, “Look here, young man: I can support myself easily and comfortably by farming and fishing. The money I have is at your disposal so long as you consent to remain in Lewis – in Stornoway, if you please; elsewhere, if you please – only in Lewis. And while you are painting pictures, and making as much money as you can that way, you can have plenty of fishing and shooting and amusement; and my guns and boats and rods are all at your service.” Mr. Mackenzie considered that no man could resist such an offer.

Sheila, of course, told her husband of the sum of money she owned, and for a long time it was a standing joke between them. He addressed her with much respect, and was careful to inform her of the fluctuations of the money-market. Sometimes he borrowed a sovereign of her, and never without giving her an I O U, which was faithfully reclaimed. But by and by she perceived that he grew less and less to like the mention of this money. Perhaps it resembled too closely the savings which the over-cautious folks about Borvapost would not entrust to a bank, but kept hid about their huts in the heel of a stocking. At all events, Sheila saw that her husband did not like her to go to this fund for her charities; and so the fifty pounds that her father had given her had lasted a long time. During this period of jubilation, in which she looked forward to touching her husband’s heart by an innocent little strategem, more frequent appeals were made to the drawer in which the treasure was locked up, so that, in the end, her private dowry was reduced to thirty pounds.

If Ingram could have but taken part in this plan of hers! The only regret that was mingled with her anticipations of a happier future concerned this faithful friend of hers, who seemed to have been cut off from them forever. And it soon became apparent to her that her husband, so far from inclining to forget the misunderstanding that had arisen between Ingram and himself, seemed to feel increased resentment, insomuch that she was most careful to avoid mentioning his name.

She was soon to meet him, however. Lavender was resolved that he would not appear to have retired from the field merely because Ingram had entered it. He would go to this dinner on the Tuesday evening, and Sheila would accompany him. First, he asked her. Much as she would have preferred not visiting these particular people, she cheerfully acquiesced; she was not going to be churlish or inconsiderate on the very eve of her dramatic coup. Then he went to Mrs. Lorraine, and said he had persuaded Sheila to come with him; and the young American lady and her mamma were good enough to say how glad they were she had come to this decision. They appeared to take it for granted that it was Sheila alone who had declined former invitations.

“Mr. Ingram will be there on Tuesday evening,” said Lavender to his wife.

“I was not aware he knew them,” said Sheila, remembering, indeed, how scrupulously Ingram had refused to know them.

“He has made their acquaintance for his own purposes, doubtless,” said Lavender. “I suppose he will appear in a frock-coat, with a bright blue tie, and he will say ‘Sir’ to the waiters when he does not understand them.”

“I thought you said Mr. Ingram belonged to a very good family,” said Sheila, quietly.

“That is so. But each man is responsible for his own manners; and as all the society he sees consists of a cat and some wooden pipes in a couple of dingy rooms in Sloane Street, you can’t expect him not to make an ass of himself.”

“I have never seen him make himself ridiculous; I do not think it possible,” said Sheila, with a certain precision of speech which Lavender had got to know meant much. “But that is a matter for himself. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do when I meet him at Mrs. Kavanagh’s house.”

“Of course you must meet him as you would any one else, you know. If you don’t wish to speak to him, you need not do so. Saying ‘Good evening’ costs nothing.”

“If he takes me into dinner?” she asked, calmly.

“Then you must talk to him as you would to any stranger,” he said, impatiently. “Ask him if he has been to the opera, and he won’t know there is no opera going on. Tell him that the town is very full, and he won’t know that everybody has left. Say you may meet him again at Mrs. Kavanagh’s, and you’ll see that he doesn’t know they mean to start for the Tyrol in a fortnight. I think you and I must also be settling soon where we mean to go. I don’t think we can do better than go to the Tyrol.”

She did not answer. It was clear that he had given up all intention of going up to Lewis, for that year at least. But she would not beg him to alter his decision just yet. Mairi was coming, and that experiment of the enchanted room has still to be tried.

As they drove around to Mrs. Kavanagh’s house on that Tuesday evening, she thought, with much bitterness of heart, of the possibility of her having to meet Mr. Ingram in the fashion her husband had suggested. Would it not be better, if he did take her in to dinner, to throw herself entirely on his mercy, and ask him not to talk to her at all. She would address herself, when there was a chance, to her neighbor on the other side; if she remained silent altogether, no great harm would be done.