A Princess of Thule

They went into another room, and then Sheila, with a sudden shiver, remembered that soon her husband would be coming, and might meet her and her father there.

“You have sent for Mr. Lavender?” she said calmly to Mrs. Paterson.

“No, ma’am,” Paterson said with more than her ordinary gravity and formality; “I did not know where to send for him. He left London some days ago. Perhaps you would read the letter, ma’am?”

She offered Sheila an open letter. The girl saw that it was in her husband’s handwriting, but she shrank from it as though she were violating the secrets of the grave.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot do that.”

“Mrs. Lavender, ma’am, meant you to read it, after she had had her will altered. She told me so. It is a very sad thing, ma’am, that she did not live to carry out her intentions; for she has been inquiring, ma’am, these last few days, as to how she could leave everything to you, ma’am, which she intended; and now the other will – ”

“Oh, don’t talk about that!” said Sheila. It seemed to her that the dead body in the other room would be laughing hideously, if only it could, at this fulfillment of all the sardonic prophecies that Mrs. Lavender used to make.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Paterson said, in the same formal way, as if she was a machine set to work in a particular direction. “I only mentioned the will to explain why Mrs. Lavender wished you to read this letter.”

“Read the letter, Sheila,” said her father.

The girl took it and carried it to the window. While she was there, old Mackenzie, who had fewer scruples about such matters, and who had the curiosity natural to a man of the world, said to Mrs. Paterson – not loud enough for Sheila to overhear – “I suppose, then, the poor old lady has left her property to her nephew?”

“Oh, no, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, somewhat sadly, for she fancied she was the bearer of bad news. “She had a will drawn out only a short time ago, and nearly everything is left to Mr. Ingram.”

“To Mr. Ingram?”

“Yes,” said the woman, amazed to see that Mackenzie’s face, so far from evincing displeasure, seemed to be as delighted as it was surprised.

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, “I was one of the witnesses. But Mrs. Lavender changed her mind, and was very anxious that everything should go to your daughter, if it could be done; and Mr. Appleyard, sir, was to come here to-morrow forenoon.”

“And has Mr. Lavender got no money whatever?” said Sheila’s father, with an air that convinced Mrs. Paterson that he was a revengeful man, and was glad his son-in-law should be so severely punished.

“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, careful not to go beyond her own sphere.

Sheila came back from the window. She had taken a long time to read and ponder over that letter, though it was not a lengthy one. This was what Frank Lavender had written to his aunt:

“My Dear Aunt Lavender – I suppose when you read this you will think I am in a bad temper because of what you said to me. It is not so. But I am leaving London, and I wish to hand over to you, before I go, the charge of my house, and to ask you take possession of everything in it that does not belong to Sheila. These things are yours, as you know, and I have to thank you very much for the loan of them. I have to thank you for the far too liberal allowance you have made me for many years back. Will you think I have gone mad if I ask you to stop that now? The fact is, I am going to have a try at earning something, for the fun of the thing; and to make the experiment satisfactory, I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where the most ingenious fellow I know couldn’t get a penny loaf on credit. You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come back to London again, I shall call on you and thank you in person.

“I am your affectionate nephew,“Frank Lavender.”

So far the letter was almost business-like. There was no reference to the causes which were sending him away from London, and which had already driven him to this extraordinary resolution about the money he had got from his aunt. But at the end of the letter there was a brief postscript, apparently written at the last moment, the words of which were these: “Be kind to Sheila. Be as kind to her as I have been cruel to her. In going away from her I feel as though I were exiled by man and forsaken by God.”

She came back from the window, the letter in her hand.

“I think you may read it, too, papa,” she said, for she was anxious that her father should know that Lavender had voluntarily surrendered this money before he was deprived of it. Then she went back to the window.

The slow rain fell from the dismal skies on the pavement, and the railings and the now almost leafless trees. The atmosphere was filled with a thin, white mist, and the people going by were hidden under umbrellas. It was a dreary picture enough; and yet Sheila was thinking of how much drearier such a day would be on some lonely coast in the North, with the hills obscured behind the rain, and the sea beating hopelessly on the sand. She thought of some small and damp Highland cottage, with narrow windows, a smell of wet wood about, and the monotonous drip from over the door. And it seemed to her that a stranger there would be very lonely, not knowing the ways or the speech of the simple folk, careless, perhaps, of his own comfort, and only listening to the plashing of the sea and the incessant rain on the bushes and on the pebbles of the beach. Was there any picture of desolation, she thought, like that of a sea under rain, with a slight fog obscuring the air, and with no wind to stir the pulse with the noise of waves? And if Frank Lavender had only gone as far as the Western Highlands, and was living in some house on the coast, how sad and still the Atlantic must have been all this wet forenoon, with the islands of Colonsay and Oronsay lying remote and gray and misty in the far and desolate plain of the sea!

“It will take a great deal of responsibility from me, sir,” Mrs. Patterson said to old Mackenzie, who was absently thinking of all the strange possibilities now opening out before him, “if you will tell me what is to be done. Mrs. Lavender had no relatives in London except her nephew.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mackenzie, waking up – “oh, yes, we will see what is to be done. There will be the boat wanted for the funeral – .” He recalled himself with an impatient gesture. “Bless me!” he said, “what was I saying? You must ask some one else – you must ask Mr. Ingram. Hef you not sent for Mr. Ingram?”

“Oh, yes, sir, I have sent to him; and he will most likely come in the afternoon.”

“Then there are the executors mentioned in the will – that wass something you should know about – and they will tell you what to do. As for me, it is ferry little I will know about such things.”

“Perhaps your daughter, sir,” suggested Mrs. Paterson, “will tell me what she thinks should be done with the rooms. And as for luncheon, sir, if you would wait – ”

“Oh, my daughter?” said Mr. Mackenzie, as if struck by a new idea, but determined, all the same, that Sheila should not have this new responsibility thrust on her – “My daughter? – well, you was saying, mem, that my daughter would help you? Oh, yes, but she is a ferry young thing, and you was saying we must hef luncheon! Oh, yes, but we will not give you so much trouble, and we hef luncheon ordered at the other house whatever, and there is the young girl there that we cannot leave all by herself. And you hef a great experience, mem, and whatever you do, that will be right; do not have any fear of that. And I will come around when you want me – oh, yes, I will come around at any time – but my daughter, she is a ferry young thing, and she would be of no use to you whatever – none whatever. And when Mr. Ingram comes you will send him around to the place where my daughter is, for we will want to see him, if he hass the time to come. Where is Shei – where is my daughter?”

Sheila had quietly left the room and stolen into the silent chamber in which the dead woman lay. They found her standing close by the bedside, almost in a trance.

“Sheila,” said her father, taking her hand, “come away now, like a good girl. It is no use your waiting here; and Mairi; what will Mairi be doing?”

She suffered herself to be led away, and they went home and had luncheon; but the girl could not eat for the notion that somewhere or other a pair of eyes were looking at her, and were hideously laughing at her, as if to remind her of the prophecy of that old woman, that her friends would sit down to a comfortable meal and begin to wonder what sort of mourning they would have.

It was not until the evening that Ingram called. He had been greatly surprised to hear from Mrs. Paterson that Mr. Mackenzie had been there, along with his daughter; and he now expected to find the old King of Borva in a towering passion. He found him, on the contrary, as bland and as pleased as decency would admit of, in view of the tragedy that had occurred in the morning; and, indeed, as Mackenzie had never seen Mrs. Lavender, there was less reason why he should wear the outward semblance of grief. Sheila’s father asked her to go out of the room for a little while; and when she and Mairi had gone, he said, cheerfully, “Well, Mr. Ingram, and it is a rich man you are at last.”

“Mrs. Paterson said she had told you,” Ingram said, with a shrug. “You never expected to find me rich, did you?”

“Never,” said Mackenzie, frankly. “But it is a ferry good thing – oh, yes, it is a ferry good thing – to hef money and be independent of people. And you will make a good use of it, I know.”

“You don’t seem disposed, sir, to regret that Lavender has been robbed of what should have belonged to him?”

“Oh, not at all,” said Mackenzie, gravely and cautiously, for he did not want his plans to be displayed prematurely. “But I hef no quarrel with him; so you will not think I am glad to hef the money taken away for that. Oh, no; I hef seen a great many men and women, and it was no strange thing that these two young ones, living all by themselves in London, should hef a quarrel. But it will come all right again if we do not make too much about it. If they like one another they will soon come together again, tek my word for it, Mr. Ingram; and I hef seen a great many men and women. And as for the money – well, as for the money, I hef plenty for my Sheila, and she will not starve when I die – no, nor before that, either; and as for the poor old woman that has died, I am ferry glad she left her money to one that will make a good use of it, and will not throw it away whatever.”

“Oh, but you know, Mr. Mackenzie, you are congratulating me without cause. I will tell you how the matter stands. The money does not belong to me at all; Mrs. Lavender never intended it should. It was meant to go to Sheila – ”

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mr. Mackenzie with a wave of his hand. “I wass hearing all that from the woman at the house. But how will you know what Mrs. Lavender intended? You hef only that woman’s story for it. And here is the will and you hef the money, and – and – ” Mackenzie hesitated for a moment, and then said with a sudden vehemence, “ – and, by Kott, you shall keep it!”

Ingram was a trifle startled. “But look here, sir,” he said, in a tone of expostulation, “you make a mistake. I myself know Mrs. Lavender’s intentions. I don’t go by any story of Mrs. Paterson’s. Mrs. Lavender made over the money to me with the express injunctions to place it at the disposal of Sheila whenever I should see fit. Oh, there’s no mistake about it, so you need not protest, sir. If the money belonged to me, I should be delighted to keep it. No man in the country more desires to be rich than I; so don’t fancy I am flinging away a fortune out of generosity. If any rich and kind-hearted old lady will send me five thousand or ten thousand pounds, you will see how I shall stick to it. But the simple truth is, this money is not mine at all. It was never intended to be mine. It belongs to Sheila.”

Ingram talked in a very matter-of-fact way; the old man feared what he said was true.

“Ay, it is a ferry good story,” said Mackenzie, cautiously, “and maybe it is all true. And you wass saying you would like to hef money?”

“I most decidedly should like to have money.”

“Well, then,” said the old man, watching his friend’s face, “there is no one to say that the story is true, and who will believe it? And if Sheila wass to come to you and say she did not believe it, and she would not have the money from you, you would have to keep it, eh?”

Ingram’s sallow face blushed crimson.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, stiffly. “Do you propose to pervert the girl’s mind and make me a party to a fraud?”

“Oh, there is no use getting into an anger,” said Mackenzie, suavely, “when common sense will do as well whatever. And there wass no perversion and there wass no fraud talked about. It wass just this, Mr. Ingram, that if the old lady’s will leaves you her property, who will you be getting to believe that she did not mean to give it to you?”

“I’ll tell you now whom she meant to give it to,” said Ingram, still somewhat hotly.

“Oh, yes – oh, yes, that iss ferry well. But who will believe it?”

“Good Heavens, sir! who will believe I could be such a fool as to fling away this property if it belonged to me?”

“They will think you a fool to do it now – yes, that is sure enough,” said Mackenzie.

“I don’t care what they think. And it seems rather odd, Mr. Mackenzie, that you should be trying to deprive your own daughter of what belongs to her.”

“Oh, my daughter is ferry well off whatever; she does not want any one’s money,” said Mackenzie. And then a new notion struck him; “Will you tell me this, Mr. Ingram? If Mrs. Lavender left you her property in this way, what for did she want to change her will, eh?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I refused to take the responsibility. She was anxious to have this money given to Sheila, so that Lavender should not touch it; and I don’t think it was a wise intention, for there is not a prouder man in the world than Lavender, and I know that Sheila would not consent to hold a penny that did not equally belong to him. However, that was her notion, and I was the first victim of it. I protested against it and I suppose that set her to inquiring whether the money could not be absolutely bequeathed to Sheila direct. I don’t know anything about it myself; but that’s how the matter stands, as far as I am concerned.”

“But you will think it over, Mr. Ingram,” said Mackenzie, quietly – “you will think it over, and be in no hurry. It is not every man that has a lot of money given to him. And it is no wrong to my Sheila at all, for she will have quite plenty; and she would be ferry sorry to take the money away from you, that is sure enough; and you will not be hasty, Mr. Ingram, but be cautious and reasonable, and you will see the money will do you far more good than it would do Sheila.”

Ingram began to think that he had tied a millstone around his neck.

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN EXILE

ONE evening in the olden time Lavender and Sheila and Ingram and old Mackenzie were all sitting high up on the rocks near Borvapost, chatting to each other, and watching the red light pale on the bosom of the Atlantic as the sun sank behind the edge of the world. Ingram was smoking a wooden pipe. Lavender sat with Sheila’s hand in his. The old King of Borva was discoursing of the fishing populations around the Western coasts, and their various ways and habits.

“I wish I could have seen Tarbert,” Lavender was saying, “but the Iona just passed the mouth of the little harbor as she comes up Loch Fine. I know two or three men who go there every year to paint the fishing-life of the place. It is an odd little place, isn’t it?”

“Tarbert?” said Mr. Mackenzie – “you was wanting to know about Tarbert? Ah, well, it is a better place now, but a year or two ago it was ferry like hell. Oh, yes, it was, Sheila, so you need not say anything. And this wass the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that the trawling was not made legal then, and the men they were just like devils, with the swearing and the drinking and the fighting that went on; and if you went into the harbor in the open day, you would find them drunk and fighting, and some of them with blood on their faces, for it wass a ferry wild time. It wass many a one will say that the Tarbert-men would run down the police boat some dark night. And what was the use of catching the trawlers now and again, and taking their boats and their nets to be sold at Greenock, when they went themselves over to Greenock to the auction and brought them back? Oh, it was a great deal of money they made then: I hef heard of a crew of eight men getting thirty pounds each man in the course of one night, and that not seldom, mirover.”

“But why didn’t the government put it down?” Lavender asked.

“Well, you see,” Mackenzie answered with the air of a man well acquainted with the difficulties of ruling – “you see it wass not quite sure that the trawling did much harm to the fishing. And the Jackal – that was the government steamer – she was not much good in getting the better of the Tarbert-men, who are ferry good with their boats in the rowing, and are very cunning whatever. You know, the buying boats went out to sea, and took the herring there, and then the trawlers they would sink their nets and come home in the morning as if they had not caught one fish, although the boat would be white with the scales of the herring. And what is more, sir, the government knew ferry well that if trawling was put down, then there would be a ferry good many murders; for the Tarbert-men, when they came home to drink whisky, and wash the whisky down with porter, they were ready to fight anybody.”

“It must be a delightful place to live in,” Lavender said.

“Oh, but it is ferry different now,” Mackenzie continued – “ferry different. The men they are nearly all Good Templars now, and there is no drinking whatever, and there is reading-rooms and such things, and the place is ferry quiet and respectable.”

“I hear,” Ingram remarked, “that good people attribute the change to moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down to want of money.”

“Papa, this boy will have to be put to bed,” Sheila said.

“Well,” Mackenzie answered, “there is not so much money in the place as there wass in the old times. The shopkeepers do not make so much money as before, when the men were wild and drunk in the daytime, and had plenty to spend when the police-boat did not catch them. But the fishermen, they are ferry much better without the money; and I can say for them, Mr. Lavender, that there is no better fishermen on the coast. They are very fine, tall men, and they are ferry well dressed in their blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, whether they are drunk or whether they are sober. Now look at this, sir, that in the worst of weather they will neffer tek whisky with them when they go out to the sea at night, for they think it is cowardly. And they are ferry fine fellows, and gentlemanly in their ways, and they are ferry good-natured to strangers.”

“I have heard that of them on all hands,” Lavender said, “and some day I hope to put their civility and good-fellowship to the proof.”

That was merely the idle conversation of a summer evening; no one paid any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert. Let us now shift the scene of this narrative to Tarbert itself.

When you pass from the broad and blue waters of Loch Fyne into the narrow and rocky channel leading into Tarbert harbor, you find before you an almost circular bay, around which stretches an irregular line of white houses. There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor, lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is green under the shadow of each boat. Along the shores stand the tall poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the daylight shining through the empty windows.

Beyond the houses, again, lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors of a late Autumn. The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge of other and varied hues. In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost under the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins stand, an artist has put a rough-and ready easel, and is apparently busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication of the rich colors of the craft – their ruddy sails, brown nets and bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls – already appears on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills in their soft Autumnal tints, and of the bold blue and white sky moving overhead. Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of the boats has been placed there on purpose. A boy seated on some nets occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to inquire when his penance will be over.

A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man is painting. A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out, “Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht? – about eighty tons, I should think.”

“Yes,” Lavender said, without turning around or taking his eyes off the canvas.

“Whose is she?”

“Lord Newstead’s.”

“Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now, and wanted to know whether you were here. I said you were. The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you – that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you would go out with them, and take a run up to Ardishaig.”

“I can’t, Johnny.”

“I’d take you out, you know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“But look here, Lavender,” said the young man, seizing hold of Lavender’s boat, and causing the easel to shake dangerously; “he asked me to luncheon, too.”

“Why don’t you go, then?” was the only reply, uttered rather absently.

“I can’t go without you.”

“Well, I don’t mean to go.”

The younger man looked vexed for a moment, and then said, in a tone of expostulation, “You know it is very absurd of you going on like this, Lavender. No fellow can paint decently if he gets out of bed in the middle of the night, and waits for daylight to rush up to his easel. How many hours have you been at work already to-day? If you don’t give your eyes a rest, they will get color-blind to a dead certainty. Do you think you will paint the whole place off the face of the earth, now that the other fellows have gone?”

“I can’t be bothered talking with you, Johnny. You’ll make me throw something at you. Go away.”

“I think it’s rather mean, you know,” continued the persistent Johnny, “for a fellow like you, who doesn’t need it, to come and fill the market all at once, while we unfortunate devils can scarcely get a crust. And there are two heron just around the point, and I have my breech-loader and a dozen cartridges here.”

“Go away, Johnny.” That was all the answer he got.

“I’ll go out and tell Lord Newstead that you are a cantankerous brute. I suppose he’ll have the decency to offer me luncheon, and I dare say I could get him a shot at these heron. You are a fool not to come, Lavender;” and so saying, the young man pushed out again, and he was heard to go away talking to himself about obstinate idiots and greed and the certainty of getting a shot at the heron.

When he had quite gone, Lavender who had scarcely raised his eyes from his work, suddenly put down his palette and brushes – he almost dropped them, indeed – and quickly pat up both his hands to his head, pressing them on the side of his temples. The old fisherman in the boat beyond noticed this strange movement, and forthwith caught a rope, hauled the boat across a stretch of water, and then came scrambling over bowsprit, lowered sails and nets, to where Lavender had just sat down.