A Princess of Thule

“It must require great astuteness to manage a primitive people like that,” said young Lavender, with an air of conviction; and the old man eagerly and proudly assented, and went on to tell of the manifold diplomatic arts he used in reigning over his small kingdom, and how his subjects lived in blissful ignorance that this controlling power was being exercised.

They were startled by an exclamation from Ingram, who called to Mackenzie to pull up the horses just as they were passing over a small bridge.

“Look there, Lavender, did you ever see salmon jumping like that? Look at the size of them!”

“Oh, it iss nothing,” said Mackenzie, driving on again. “Where you will see the salmon, it is in the narrows of Loch Roag, where they come into the rivers, and the tide is low. Then you will see them jumping; and if the water wass too low for a long time, they will die in hundreds and hundreds.”

“But what makes them jump before they get into the rivers?”

Old Mackenzie smiled a crafty smile, as if he had found out all the ways and the secrets of the salmon. “They will jump to look about them – that iss all.”

“Do you think a salmon can see where he is going?”

“And maybe you will explain this to me, then,” said the king, with a compassionate air, “how iss it the salmon will try to jump over some stones in the river, and he will see he can’t go over them; but does he fall straight down on the stones and kill himself? Neffer – no, neffer. He will get back to the pool he left by turning in the air; that is what I hef seen hundreds of times myself.”

“Then they must be able to fly as well as see in the air.”

“You may say about it what you will please, but that is what I know – that is what I know ferry well myself.”

“And I should think there were not many people in the country who knew more about salmon than you,” said Frank Lavender. “And I hear, too, that your daughter is a great fisher.”

But this was a blunder. The old man frowned; “Who will tell you such nonsense? Sheila has gone out many times with Duncan, and he will put a rod in her hand; yes, and she will have caught a fish or two, but it iss not a story to tell. My daughter she will have plenty to do about the house without any of such nonsense. You will expect to find us all savages, with such stories of nonsense.”

“I am sure not,” said Lavender, warmly. “I have been very much struck with the civilization of the island, so far as I have seen it; and I can assure you I have always heard of Miss Sheila as a singularly accomplished young lady.”

“Yes,” said Mackenzie, somewhat mollified, “Sheila has been well brought up; she is not a fisherman’s lass, running about wild and catching the salmon. I cannot listen to such nonsense, and it iss Duncan will tell it.”

“I can assure you, no. I have never spoken to Duncan. The fact is, Ingram mentioned that your daughter had caught a salmon or two – as a tribute to her skill, you know.”

“Oh, I know it wass Duncan,” said Mackenzie, with a deeper frown coming over his face. “I will hef some means taken to stop Duncan from talking such nonsense.”

The young man knowing nothing as yet of the childlike obedience paid to the King of Borva by his islanders, thought to himself, “Well, you are a strong and self-willed old gentleman, but if I were you I should not meddle much with that tall keeper with the eagle beak and the gray eyes. I should not like to be a stag, and know that fellow was watching me somewhere with a rifle in his hands.”

At length they came upon the brow of the hill overlooking Gara-na-hina2 and the panorama of the western lochs and mountains. Down there on the side of the hill was the small inn, with its little patch of garden; then a few moist meadows leading over to the estuary of the Black river; and beyond that an illimitable prospect of heathy undulations rising into the mighty peaks of Cracabhal, Mealasabhal and Suainabhal. Then on the right, leading away to the as yet invisible Atlantic, lay the blue plain of Loch Roag, with a margin of yellow seaweed along its shores, where the rocks revealed themselves at low water, and with a multitude of large, variegated and verdant islands which hid from sight the still greater Borva beyond.

They stopped to have a glass of whisky at Gara-na-hina, and Mackenzie got down from the wagonette and went into the inn.

“And this is a Highland loch!” said Lavender, turning to his companion from the South. “It is an enchanted sea; you could fancy yourself in the Pacific, if only there were some palm trees on the shores of the islands. No wonder you took for an Eve any sort of woman you met in such a paradise!”

“You seem to be thinking a good deal about that young lady.”

“Well, who would not wish to make the acquaintance of a pretty girl, especially when you have plenty of time on your hands, and nothing to do but pay her little attentions, you know, and so forth, as being the daughter of your host?”

There was no particular answer to such an incoherent question, but Ingram did not seem so well pleased as he had been with the prospect of introducing his friend to the young Highland girl whose praises he had been reciting for many a day.

However, they drank their whisky, drove on to Callernish, and here paused for a minute or two to show the stranger a series of large so-called Druidical stones which occupy a small station overlooking the loch. Could anything have been more impressive than the sight of these solitary gray pillars placed on this bit of table-land high over the sea, and telling of a race that vanished ages ago, and left the surrounding plains, and hills, and shores a wild and untenanted solitude? But, somehow Lavender did not care to remain among those voiceless monuments of a forgotten past. He said he would come and sketch them some other day. He praised the picture all around, and then came back to the stretch of ruffled blue water lying at the base of the hill. “Where was Mr. Mackenzie’s boat?” he asked.

They left the high plain, with its Tuirsachan,3 or Stones of Mourning, and descended to the side of the loch. In a few moments, Duncan, who had been disposing of the horses and the wagonette, overtook them, got ready the boat, and presently they were cutting asunder the bright blue plain of summer waves.

At last they were nearing the King of Borva’s home, and Ingram began to study the appearance of the neighboring shores, as if he would pick out some feature of the island he remembered. The white foam hissed down the side of the open boat. The sun burned hot on the brown sail. Far away over the shining plain the salmon were leaping into the air, catching a quick glint of silver on their scales before they splashed again into the water. Half a dozen sea-pyes, with their beautiful black and white plumage and scarlet beaks and feet, flew screaming out from the rocks and swept in rapid circles above the boat. A long flight of solan geese could just be seen slowly sailing along the westward horizon. As the small craft got out toward the sea the breeze freshened slightly, and she lay over somewhat as the brine-laden winds caught her and tingled on the cheeks of her passengers from the softer South. Finally, as the great channel widened out, and the various smaller islands disappeared behind, Ingram touched his companion on the shoulder, looked over to a long and low line of rock and hill, and said, “Borva!”

And this was Borva! – nothing visible but an indefinite extent of rocky shore, with here and there a bay of white sand, and over that a table-land of green pasture, apparently uninhabited.

“There are not many people on the island,” said Lavender, who seemed rather disappointed with the look of the place.

“There are three hundred,” said Mackenzie with the air of one who had experienced the difficulties of ruling over three hundred islanders.

He had scarcely spoken when his attention was called by Duncan to some object that the gillie had been regarding for some minutes back.

“Yes, it is Miss Sheila,” said Duncan.

A sort of flush of expectation passed over Lavender’s face, and he sprang to his feet. Ingram laughed. Did the foolish youth fancy he could see half as far as this gray-eyed, eagle-faced man, who had now sunk into his accustomed seat by the mast? There was nothing visible to ordinary eyes but a speck of a boat, with a single sail up, which was, apparently, in the distance, running in for Borva.

“Ay, ay, ay,” said Mackenzie in a vexed way, “it is Sheila, true enough; and what will she do out in the boat at this time, when she wass to be at home to receive the gentlemen that hef come all the way from London?”

“Well, Mr. Mackenzie,” said Lavender, “I should be sorry to think that our coming had interfered in any way whatever with your daughter’s amusements.”

“Amusements!” said the old man with a look of surprise. “It iss not amusements she will go for; that is no amusements for her. It is for some teffle of a purpose she will go, when it iss the house that is the proper place for her, with friends coming from so great a journey.”

Presently it became clear that a race between the two boats was inevitable, both of them making for the same point. Mackenzie would take no notice of such a thing, but there was a grave smile on Duncan’s face, and something like a look of pride in his keen eyes.

“There iss no one, not one,” he said, almost to himself, “will take her in better that Miss Sheila – not one in ta island. And it wass me tat learnt her every bit o’ ta steering about Borva.”

The strangers could now make out that in the other boat there were two girls – one seated in the stern, the other by the mast. Ingram took out his handkerchief and waved it: a similar token of recognition was floated out from the other vessel. But Mackenzie’s boat presently had the better of the wind, and slowly drew on ahead, until, when her passengers landed on the rude stone quay, they found the other and smaller craft still some little distance off.

Lavender paid little attention to his luggage. He let Duncan do with it what he liked. He was watching the small boat coming in, and getting a little impatient, and perhaps a little nervous, in waiting for a glimpse of the young lady in the stern. He could vaguely make out that she had an abundance of dark hair looped up; that she wore a small straw hat with a short white feather in it; and that, for the rest, she seemed to be habited entirely in some rough and close-fitting costume of dark blue. Or was there a glimmer of a band of rose-red around her neck?

The small boat was cleverly run alongside the jetty: Duncan caught her bow and held her fast, and Miss Sheila, with a heavy string of lythe in her right hand, stepped, laughing and blushing, on to the quay. Ingram was there. She dropped the fish on the stones and took his two hands in hers, and without uttering a word, looked a glad welcome into his face. It was a face capable of saying unwritten things – fine and delicate in form, and yet full of an abundance of health and good spirits that shone in deep gray-blue eyes. Lavender’s first emotion was one of surprise that he should have heard this handsome, well-knit and proud-featured girl called “little Sheila,” and spoken of in a pretty and caressing way. He thought there was something almost majestic in her figure, in the poising of her head and the outline of her face. But presently he began to perceive some singular suggestions of sensitiveness and meekness in the low, sweet brow, in the short and exquisitely curved upper lip, and in the look of the tender blue eyes, which had long, black eyelashes to give them a peculiar and indefinable charm. All this he noticed hastily and timidly as he heard Ingram, who still held the girl’s hands in his, saying, “Well, Sheila, and you haven’t quite forgotten me? And you are grown such a woman now: why, I musn’t call you Sheila any more, I think. But let me introduce you to my friend, who has come all the way from London to see all the wonderful things at Borva.”

If there was any embarrassment or blushing during that simple ceremony it was not on the side of the Highland girl, for she frankly shook hands with him and said, “Are you very well?”

The second impression which Lavender gathered from her was, that nowhere in the world was English pronounced so beautifully as in the Island of Lewis. The gentle intonation with which she spoke was so tender and touching – the slight dwelling on the e in “very” and “well” seemed to have such a sound of sincerity about it that he could have fancied he had been a friend of hers for a lifetime. And if she said “ferry” for “very,” what then? It was the most beautiful English he had ever heard.

The party now moved off toward the shore, above the long white curve of which Mackenzie’s house was visible. The old man himself led the way, and had, by his silence, apparently not quite forgiven his daughter for having been absent from home when his guests arrived.

“Now, Sheila,” said Ingram, “tell me all about yourself; what have you been doing?”

“This morning?” said the girl, walking beside him, with her hand laid on his arm, and with the happiest look on her face.

“This morning, to begin with. Did you catch those fish yourself?”

“Oh, no, there was no time for that. And it was Mairi and I saw a boat coming in, and it was going to Mevaig, but we overtook it, and got some of the fish, and we thought we should be back before you came. However, it is no matter since you are here. And you have been very well! And did you see any differences in Stornoway when you came over?”

Lavender began to think that Styornoway sounded ever so much more pleasant than mere Stornoway.

“We had not a minute to wait in Stornoway. But tell me, Sheila, all about Borva and yourself; that is better than Stornoway. How are your schools getting on? And have you bribed or frightened all the children into giving up Gaelic yet? How is John the Piper? and does the Free Church minister still complain of him? And have you caught any more wild ducks and tamed them? And are there any gray geese up at Lochan-Eilean?”

“Oh, that is too many at once,” said Sheila, laughing. “But I am afraid your friend will find Borva very lonely and dull. There is not much there at all, for all the lads are away at the Caithness fishing. And you should have shown him all about Stornoway, and taken him up to the castle and the beautiful gardens.”

“He has seen all sorts of castles, Sheila, and all sorts of gardens in every part of the world. He has seen everything to be seen in the great cities and countries that are only names to you. He has traveled in France, Italy, Russia, Germany, and seen all the big towns that you hear of in history.”

“That is what I should like to do if I were a man,” said Sheila; “and many and many a time I wished I had been a man, that I could go to the fishing and work in the fields, and, then, when I had enough money, go away and see other countries and strange people.”

“But if you were a man I should not have come all the way from London to see you,” said Ingram, patting the hand that lay on his arm.

“But if I were a man,” said the girl, quite frankly, “I should go up to London to see you.”

Mackenzie smiled grimly, and said, “Sheila, it is nonsense you will talk.”

At this moment Sheila turned around and said, “Oh, we have forgotten poor Mairi. Mairi, why did you not leave the fish for Duncan? They are too heavy for you. I will carry them to the house.”

But Lavender sprang forward, and insisted on taking possession of the thick cord with its considerable weight of lythe.

“This is my cousin, Mairi,” said Sheila; and forthwith the young, fair-faced, timid-eyed girl shook hands with the gentlemen, and said, just as if she had been watching Sheila, “And are you ferry well, sir?”

For the rest of the way up to the house Lavender walked by the side of Sheila; and as the string of lythe had formed the introduction to their talk, it ran pretty much upon natural history. In about five minutes she had told him more about sea-birds and fish than ever he knew in his life; and she wound up this information by offering to take him out on the following morning, that he might himself catch some lythe.

“But I am a wretchedly bad fisherman, Miss Mackenzie,” he said. “It is some years since I tried to throw a fly.”

“Oh, there is no need for good fishing when you catch lythe,” she said earnestly. “You will see Mr. Ingram catch them. It is only a big white fly you will need, and a long line, and when the fish takes the fly, down he goes – a great depth. Then when you have got him and he is killed, you must cut the sides, as you see that is done, and string him to a rope and trail him behind the boat all the way home. If you do not do that it is no use at all to eat. But if you like the salmon-fishing my papa will teach you that. There is no one,” she added proudly, “can catch salmon like my papa – not even Duncan – and the gentlemen who come in the autumn to Stornoway, they are quite surprised when my papa goes to fish with them.”

“I suppose he is a good shot, too,” said the young man, amused to notice the proud way in which the girl spoke of her father.

“Oh, he can shoot anything. He will shoot a seal if he comes up but for one moment above the water; and all the birds – he will get you all the birds if you will wish to take any away with you. We have no deer on the island – it is too small for that – but in the Lewis and in Harris there are many, many thousands of deer, and my papa has many invitations when the gentlemen come up in the autumn; and if you look in the game-book of the lodges you will see there is not any one who has shot so many deer as my papa – not any one whatever.”

At length they reached the building of dark and rude stone-work, with its red coping, its spacious porch, and its small enclosure of garden in front. Lavender praised the flowers in this enclosure; he guessed they were Sheila’s particular care; but in truth there was nothing rare or delicate among the plants growing in this exposed situation. There were a few clusters of large yellow pansies, a calceolaria or two, plenty of wallflower, some clove-pinks, and an abundance of sweet-william in all manner of colors. But the chief beauty of the small garden was a magnificent tree-fuchsia which grew in front of one of the windows, and was covered with deep rose-red flowers set amid its small and deep-green leaves. For the rest, a bit of honeysuckle was turned up one side of the porch, and at the small wooden gate there were two bushes of sweetbrier that filled the warm air with fragrance.

Just before entering the house the two strangers turned to have a look at the spacious landscape lying all around in the perfect calm of a Summer day. And lo! before them there was but a blinding mass of white that glared upon their eyes, and caused them to see the far sea and the shores and hills as but faint shadows appearing through a silvery haze. A thin fleece of cloud lay across the sun, but the light was nevertheless so intense that the objects near at hand – a disused boat lying bottom upward, an immense anchor of foreign make, and some such things – seemed to be as black as night as they lay on the warm road. But when the eye got beyond the house and the garden, and the rough hillside leading down to Loch Roag, all the world appeared to be a blaze of calm, silent and luminous heat. Suainabhal and its brother mountains were only as clouds in the south. Along the western horizon the portion of the Atlantic that could be seen lay like a silent lake under a white sky. To get any touch of color they had to turn eastward, and there the sunlight faintly fell on the green shores of Borva, on the narrows of Loch Roag, and the loose red sail of a solitary smack that was slowly coming round a headland. They could hear the sound of the long oars. A pale line of shadow lay in the wake of the boat, but otherwise the black hull and the red sail seemed to be coming through a plain of molten silver. When the young men turned to go into the house the hall seemed a cavern of impenetrable darkness, and there was a flush of crimson light dancing before their eyes.

When Ingram had his room pointed out Lavender followed him into it and shut the door.

“By Jove, Ingram,” he said, with a singular light of enthusiasm on his handsome face, “what a beautiful voice that girl has! I have never heard anything so soft and musical in all my life, and then when she smiles what perfect teeth she has! And then, you know, there is an appearance, a style, a grace about her figure – but, I say, do you seriously mean to tell me you are not in love with her?”

“Of course I am not,” said the other, impatiently, as he was busily engaged with his portmanteau.

“Then let me give you a word of information,” said the young man, with an air of profound shrewdness; “she is in love with you.”

Ingram rose with some little touch of vexation on his face; “Look here, Lavender, I am going to talk to you seriously. I wish you wouldn’t fancy that every one is in that condition of simmering love-making you delight in. You never were in love, I believe – I doubt whether you ever will be – but you are always fancying yourself in love, and writing very pretty verses about it and painting very pretty heads. I like the verses and the paintings well enough, however they are come by; but don’t mislead yourself into believing that you know anything whatever of a real or serious passion by having engaged in all sorts of imaginative and semi-poetical dreams. It is a much more serious thing than that, mind you, when it comes to a man. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t attribute any of that sort of sentimental make-believe to either Sheila Mackenzie or myself. We are not romantic folks. We have no imaginative gifts whatever, but we are very glad, you know, to be attentive and grateful to those who have. The fact is, I don’t think it quite fair – ”

“Let us suppose I am lectured enough,” said the other, somewhat stiffly. “I suppose I am as good a judge of the character of women as most other men, although I am no great student, and have no hard and dried rules of philosophy at my fingers’ ends. Perhaps, however, one may learn more by mixing with other people and going out into the world, than by sitting in a room with a dozen of books, and persuading one’s self that men and women are to be studied in that fashion.”

“Go away, you stupid boy, and unpack your portmanteau, and don’t quarrel with me,” said Ingram, putting out on the table some things he had brought for Sheila; “and if you are friendly with Sheila and treat her like a human being, instead of trying to put a lot of romance and sentiment about her, she will teach you more than you could learn in a hundred drawing-rooms in a thousand years.”