A Princess of Thule

“Oh, ay, fine. Many’s the time I hiv been in to Borvapost.”

“But,” said Lavender, “do you know the loch itself? Do you know the bay on which Mackenzie’s house stands?”

“Weel, I’m no’ sae sure aboot that, sir. But if ye want to gang there, we can pick up some bit body at Borvapost that will tak’ us around.”

“Well,” Lavender said, “I think I can tell you how to go. I know the channel is quite simple – there are no rocks about – and once you are round the point you will see your anchorage.”

“It’s twa or three years since I was there, sir,” Pate remarked, as he put the glass back on the table. “I mind there was a daft auld man there that played the pipes.”

“That was old John the Piper,” Lavender said. “Don’t you remember Mr. Mackenzie, whom they call the King of Borva?”

“Weel, sir, I never saw him, but I was aware he was in the place. I have never been up here afore wi’ a party of gentlemen, and he wasna coming down to see the like o’ us.”

With what a strange feeling Lavender beheld, the following afternoon, the opening to the great loch that he knew so well! He recognized the various rocky promontories, the Gaelic names of which Sheila had translated for him. Down there in the South were the great heights of Suainabhal and Cracabahl and Mealasabhal. Right in front was the sweep of Borvapost Bay, and its huts and its small garden patches; and up beyond it was the hill on which Sheila used to sit in the evening to watch the sun go down behind the Atlantic. It was like entering again a world with which he had once been familiar, and in which he had left behind a peaceful happiness he had sought in vain elsewhere. Somehow, as the yacht dipped to the waves and slowly made her way into the loch, it seemed to him that he was coming home – that he was returning to the old and quiet joys he had experienced there – that all the past time that had darkened his life was now to be removed. But when, at last, he saw Mackenzie’s house high up there over the tiny bay, a strange thrill of excitement passed through him, and that was followed by a cold feeling of despair, which he did not seek to remove.

He stood on the companion, his head only being visible, and directed Pate until the Phœbe had arrived at her moorings, and then he went below. He had looked wistfully for a time up to the square, dark house, with its scarlet copings, in the vague hope of seeing some figure he knew; but now sick at heart, and fearing that Mackenzie might make him out with a glass, he sat down in the state-room, alone and silent and miserable.

He was startled by the sound of oars, and got up and listened. Mosenberg came down and said, “Mr. Mackenzie has sent a tall, thin man – do you know him? – to see who we are, and whether we will go up to his house.”

“What did Eyre say?”

“I don’t know. I suppose he is going.”

Then Johnny himself came below. He was a sensitive young fellow, and at this moment he was very confused, excited and nervous. “Lavender,” he said, stammering somewhat, “I am going up now to Mackenzie’s house. You know whom I shall see; shall I take any message – if I see a chance – if your name is mentioned – a hint, you know – ”

“Tell her,” Lavender said, with a sudden pallor of determination in his face; but he stopped, and said abruptly, “Never mind, Johnny; don’t say anything about me.”

“Not to-night, anyway,” Johnny said to himself as he drew on his best jacket, with its shining brass buttons, and went up the companion to see if the small boat was ready.

Johnny had had a good deal of knocking about the Western Highlands, and was familiar with the frank and ready hospitality which the local lairds – more particularly in the remote islands; where a stranger brought recent newspapers and a breath of the outer world with him – granted to all comers who bore with them the credentials of owning a yacht. But never before had he gone up to a strange house with such perturbation of spirit. He had been so anxious, too, that he had left no time for preparation. When he started up the hill he could see, in the gathering dusk, that the tall keeper had just entered the house, and when he arrived there he found absolutely nobody about the place.

In ordinary circumstances he would simply have walked in and called some one from the kitchen. But he now felt himself somewhat of a spy, and was not a little afraid of meeting the handsome Mrs. Lavender, of whom he had heard so much. There was no light in the passage, but there was a bright red gloom in one of the windows, and almost inadvertently he glanced in there. What was this strange picture he saw? The red flame of the fire showed him the grand, figures on the walls of Sheila’s dining-room, and lit up the white table-cover and the crystal in the middle of the apartment. A beautiful young girl, clad in a tight blue dress, had just arisen from beside the fire to light two candles that were on the table; and then she went back to her seat and took up her sewing, but not to sew, for Johnny saw her gently kneel down beside a little bassinet that was a mass of wonderful pink and white, and he supposed the door in the passage was open, for he could hear a low voice humming some lullaby-song sung by the young mother to her child. He went back a step bewildered by what he had seen. Could he fly down to the shore, and bring Lavender up to look at this picture through the window, and beg of him to go in and throw himself on her forgiveness and mercy? He had not time to think twice. At this moment Mairi appeared in the dusky passage, looking a little scared, although she did not drop the plates she carried: “Oh, sir, and are you the gentleman that has come in the yacht? And Mr. Mackenzie, he is upstairs just now, but he will be down ferry soon; and will you come in and speak to Miss Sheila?”

“Miss Sheila!” he repeated to himself with amazement; and the next moment he found himself before this beautiful young girl, apologizing to her, stammering, and wishing that he had never undertaken such a task, while he knew that all the time she was calmly regarding him with her large, calm and gentle eyes, and that there was no trace of embarrassment in her manner.

“Will you take a seat by the fire until papa comes down?” she said. “We are very glad to have any one come to see us; we do not have many visitors in the winter.”

“But I am afraid,” he stammered, “I am putting you to trouble;” and he glanced at the swinging pink and white couch.

“Oh, no,” Sheila said with a smile; “I was just about to send my little boy to bed.”

She lifted the sleeping child and rolled it in some enormous covering of white and silken-haired fur, and gave the small bundle to Mairi to carry to Scarlett.

“Stop a bit!” Johnny called out to Mairi; and the girl started and looked around, whereupon he said to Sheila, with much blushing, “Isn’t there a superstition about an infant waking to find silver in its hands? I am sure you wouldn’t mind my – ”

“He cannot hold anything yet,” Sheila said, with a smile.

“Then, Mairi, you must put this below his pillow. Is not that the same thing for luck?” he said, addressing the young Highland girl as if he had known her all his life; and Mairi went away proud and pleased to have this precious bundle to carry, and talking to it with a thousand soft and endearing phrases in her native tongue.

Mackenzie came in and found the two talking together. “How do you do, sir?” he said, with a grave courtesy. “You are ferry welcome to the island, and if there is anything you want for the boat you will hef it from us. She is a little thing to hef come so far.”

“She’s not very big,” Johnny said, “but she’s a thorough good sailer; and then we watch our time, you know. But I don’t think we shall go farther North than Lewis.”

“Hef you no friends on board with you?” Mackenzie asked.

“Oh, yes,” Johnny answered, “two. But we did not wish to invade your house in a body. To-morrow – ”

“To-morrow!” said Mackenzie, impatiently; “no, but to-night! Duncan, come here! Duncan, go down to the boat that has just come in and tell the gentlemen – ”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Johnny cried, “but my two friends are regularly done up – tired; they were just going to turn in when I left the yacht. To-morrow, now, you will see them.”

“Oh, ferry well, ferry well,” said Mackenzie, who had hoped to have a big dinner party for Sheila’s amusement. “In any way, you will stop and hef some dinner? It is just ready – oh, yes – and it is not a ferry fine dinner, but it will be different from your cabin for you to sit ashore.”

“Well, if you will excuse me – ” Johnny was about to say, for he was so full of the news he had to tell that he would have sacrificed twenty dinners to get off at this moment. But Mr. Mackenzie would take no denial. An additional cover was laid, for the stranger, and Johnny sat down to stare at Sheila in a furtive way, and to talk to her father about everything that was happening in the great world.

“And what now is this,” said Mackenzie, with a lofty and careless air – “what is this I see in the papers about pictures painted by a gentleman called Lavender? I hef a great interest in these exhibitions. Perhaps you hef seen the pictures?”

Johnny blushed very red, but he hid his face over his plate, and presently he answered, without daring to look at Sheila: “I should think I have seen them! Why, if you care for coast landscapes, I can tell you you never saw such thorough good work in all your life! Why, everybody’s talking of them. You never heard of a man making such a name for himself in so short a time.”

He ventured to look up. There was a strange, proud light in the girl’s face, and the effect of it on this bearer of good tidings was to make him launch into such praises of these pictures as considerably astonished old Mackenzie. As for Sheila, she was proud and happy, but not surprised. She had known it all along. She had waited for it patiently, and it had come at last, although she was not to share in his triumph.

“I know some people who know him,” said Johnny, who had taken two or three glasses of Mackenzie’s sherry, and felt bold; “and what a shame it is he should go away from all his friends, and almost cease to have any communication with them! And then, of all the places in the world to spend the Winter in, Jura is about the – ”

“Jura!” said Sheila, quickly, and he fancied that her face paled somewhat.

“I believe so,” he said; “somewhere on the Western coast, you know, over the Sound of Islay.”

Sheila was obviously very much agitated, but her father said, in a careless way, “Oh, yes, Jura is not a ferry good place in the Winter. And the West side, you said? Ay, there are not many houses on the West side; it is not a ferry good place to live in. But it will be ferry cheap, whatever.”

“I don’t think that is the reason of his living there,” said Johnny, with a laugh.

“But,” Mackenzie urged, rather anxiously, “you wass not saying he would get much for these pictures? Oh, no, who will give much money for pictures of rocks and sea-weed? Oh, no!”

“Oh, won’t they, though?” Johnny cried. “They give a deal more for that sort of picture now than for the old-fashioned cottage-scenes, with a young lady dressed in a drugget petticoat and a pink jacket, sitting peeling potatoes. Don’t you make any mistake about that. The public are beginning to learn what real good work is, and, by Jove! don’t they pay for it, too? Lavender got eight hundred pounds for the smaller of the two pictures I told you about.”

Johnny Eyre was beginning to forget that the knowledge he was showing of Frank Lavender’s affairs was suspiciously minute.

“Oh, no, sir,” Mackenzie said, with a frown. “It is all nonsense the stories that you hear. I hef had great experience of these exhibitions. I hef been to London several times, and every time I wass in the exhibitions.”

“But I should know something of it, too, for I am an artist myself.”

“And do you get eight hundred pounds for a small picture?” Mackenzie asked severely.

“Well, no,” said Johnny, with a laugh. “But then I am a duffer.”

After dinner Sheila left the room: Johnny fancied he knew where she was going. He pulled in a chair to the fire, lit his pipe, and said he would have but one glass of toddy, which Mackenzie proceeded to make for him. And then he said to the old King of Borva, “I beg your pardon, sir, but will you allow me to suggest that that young girl who was in here before dinner should not call your daughter Miss Sheila before strangers!”

“Oh, it is very foolish,” said Mackenzie, “but it is an old habit, and they will not stop it. And Duncan, he is worse than any one.”

“Duncan, I suppose, is the tall fellow who waited at dinner?”

“Oh, ay, that is Duncan.”

Johnny’s ingenious bit of stratagem had failed. He wanted to have old Mackenzie call his daughter Mrs. Lavender, so that he might have had occasion to open the question and plead for his friend. But the old man resolutely ignored the relationship between Lavender and his daughter so far as this stranger was concerned, and so Johnny had to go away partly disappointed.

But another opportunity might occur, and in the meantime was not he carrying rare news down to the Phœbe? He had lingered too long in the house, but now he made up for lost time, and once or twice nearly missed his footing in running down the steep path. He had to find the small boat for himself, and go out on the slippery stones and seaweed to get into her. Then he pulled away from the shore, his oars striking white fire into the dark water, the water gurgling at the bow. Then he got into the shadow of the black hull of the yacht, and Pate was there to lower the little gangway.

When Johnny stepped on deck, he paused, in considerable doubt as to what he should do. He wished to have a word with Lavender alone; how could he go down with such a message as he had to deliver to a couple of fellows probably smoking and playing chess?

“Pate,” he said, “tell Mr. Lavender I want him to come on deck for a minute.”

“He’s by himsel’, sir,” Pate said. “He’s been sitting by himsel’ for the last hour. The young gentleman’s lain doon.”

Johnny went down into the little cabin. Lavender, who had neither book nor cigar, nor any other sign of occupation near him, seemed in his painful anxiety almost incapable of asking the question that rose to his lips.

“Have you seen her, Johnny?” he said, at length, with his face looking strangely careworn.

Johnny was an impressionable young fellow. There were tears running freely down his cheeks as he said, “Yes, I have, Lavender, and she was rocking a child in a cradle.”