White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume II

"But surely you won't ask him to come away from his duties again?" Mary Avon puts in hastily. "You know he ought to go back to London at once."

"I know I have written him a letter," says the other demurely. "You can read it if you like, Mary. It is in pencil, for I was afraid of the ink-bottle going waltzing over the table."

Miss Avon would not read the letter. She said we must be past Erisgeir by this time; and proposed we should go on deck. This we did; and the Youth was now so comfortable and assured in his mind that, by lying full length on the deck, close to the weather bulwarks, he managed to light a cigar. He smoked there in much content, almost safe from the spray.

Mary Avon was seated at the top of the companion, reading. Her hostess came and squeezed herself in beside her, and put her arm round her.

"Mary," said she, "why don't you want Angus Sutherland to come back to the yacht?"

"I!" said she, in great surprise – though she did not meet the look of the elder woman – "I – I – don't you see yourself that he ought to go back to London? How can he look after that magazine while he is away in the Highlands? And – and – he has so much to look forward to – so much to do – that you should not encourage him in making light of his work."

"Making light of his work!" said the other. "I am almost sure that you yourself told him that he deserved and required a long – a very long – holiday."

"You did, certainly."

"And didn't you?"

The young lady looked rather embarrassed.

"When you saw him," said she, with flushed cheeks, "so greatly enjoying the sailing – absorbed in it – and – and gaining health and strength, too – well, of course you naturally wished that he should come back and go away with you again. But it is different on reflection. You should not ask him."

"Why, what evil is likely to happen to him through taking another six weeks' holiday? Is he likely to fall out of the race of life because of a sail in the White Dove? And doesn't he know his own business? He is not a child."

"He would do a great deal to please you."

"I want him to please himself," said the other; and she added, with a deadly frown gathering on her forehead, "and I won't have you, Miss Dignity, interfering with the pleasures of my guests. And there is to be no snubbing, and no grim looks, and no hints about work, and London, and other nonsense, when Angus Sutherland comes back to us. You shall stand by the gangway – do you hear? – and receive him with a smiling face; and if you are not particularly kind, and civil, and attentive to him, I'll have you lashed to the yard-arm and painted blue – keel-haul me if I don't."

Fairer and fairer grew the scene around us as the brave White Dove went breasting the heavy Atlantic rollers. Blue and white overhead; the hot sunlight doing its best to dry the dripping decks; Iona shining there over the smoother waters of the Sound; the sea breaking white, and spouting up in columns, as it dashed against the pale red promontories of the Ross of Mull. But then this stiff breeze had backed to the west; and there was many a long tack to be got over before we left behind the Atlantic swell and ran clear into the Sound. The evening was drawing on apace as we slowly and cautiously steered into the little creek of Polterriv. No sooner had the anchor rattled out than we heard the clear tinkling of Master Fred's bell; how on earth had he managed to cook dinner amid all that diving and rolling and pitching?

And then, as we had hoped, it was a beautiful evening; and the long gig was got out, and shawls for the women-folk flung into the stern. The fishing did not claim our attention. Familiar as some of us were with the wonderful twilights of the north, which of us had ever seen anything more solemn, and still, and lovely than these colours of sea and shore? Half-past nine at night on the 8th of August; and still the west and north were flushed with a pale rose-red, behind the dark, rich, olive-green of the shadowed Iona. But what was that to the magic world that lay before us as we returned to the yacht? Now the moon had arisen, and it seemed to be of a clear, lambent gold; and the cloudless heavens and the still sea were of a violet hue – not imaginatively, or relatively, but positively and literally violet. Then between the violet-coloured sky and the violet-coloured sea, a long line of rock, jet black as it appeared to us. That was all the picture: the yellow moon, the violet sky, the violet sea, the line of black rock. No doubt it was the intensity of the shadows along this line of rock that gave that extraordinary luminousness to the still heavens and the still sea.

When we got back to the yacht a telegram awaited us. It had been sent to Bunessan, the nearest telegraph-station; but some kind friends there, recognising the White Dove as she came along by Erisgeir, and shrewdly concluding that we must pass the night at Polterriv, had been so kind as to forward it on to Fion-phort by a messenger.

"I thought so!" says Queen T. with a fine delight in her face as she reads the telegram. "It is from Angus. He is coming on Thursday. We must go back to meet him at Ballahulish or Corpach."

Then the discourtesy of this remark struck her.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Smith," said she, instantly. "Of course, I mean if it is quite agreeable to you. He does not expect us, you see; he would come on here – "

"I assure you I would as soon go to Ballahulish as anywhere else," says the Youth promptly. "It is quite the same to me – it is all new, you see, and all equally charming."

Mary Avon alone expressed no delight at this prospect of our going to Ballahulish to meet Angus Sutherland; she sate silent; her eyes were thoughtful and distant; it was not of anything around her that she was thinking.

The moon had got whiter now; the sea and the sky blue-black in place of that soft warm violet colour. We sate on deck till a late hour; the world was asleep around us; not a sound disturbed the absolute stillness of land and sea.

And where was the voice of our singing bird? Had the loss of a mere sum of money made her forget all about Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton, "and Mary Carmichael and me?" Or was the midnight silence too much for her; and the thought of the dusky cathedral over there; with the gravestones pale in the moonlight; and all around a whispering of the lonely sea? She had nothing to fear. She might have crossed over to Iona and might have walked all by herself through the ruins, and in calmness regarded the sculptured stones. The dead sleep sound.

CHAPTER VII.

SECRET SCHEMES

The delight with which John of Skye heard that his friend Dr. Sutherland was coming back to the yacht, and that we were now setting out for Ballahulish or Corpach to meet him, found instant and practical expression on this fine, breezy, sunlit morning.

"Hector," says he, "we will put the gaff topsail on her!"

What did he care though this squally breeze came blowing down the Sound in awkward gusts?

"It is a fine wind, mem," says he to the Admiral, as we slowly leave the green waters and the pink rocks of Polterriv, and get into the open and breezy channel. "Oh, we will mek a good run the day. And I beg your pardon, mem, but it is a great pleasure to me that Mr. Sutherland himself is coming back to the yat."

"He understands your clever sailing, John: is that it?"

"He knows more about a yat as any chentleman I will ever see, mem. And we will try to get a good breeze for him this time, mem – and not to have the calm weather."

This is not likely to be a day of calm weather, at all events. Tide and wind together take us away swiftly from the little harbour behind the granite rocks. And is Iona over there all asleep; or are there some friends in the small village watching the White Dove bearing away to the south? We wave our handkerchiefs on chance. We take a last look at the gabled ruins over the sea; at the green corn-fields; and the scattered houses; and the beaches of silver sand. Good-bye – good-bye! It is a last look for this summer at least; perhaps it is a last look for ever. But Iona too – as well as Ulva – remains in the memory a vision of sunlight, and smooth seas, and summer days.

Harder and harder blows this fresh breeze from the north; and we are racing down the Sound with the driven waves. But for the rope round the tiller, Miss Avon, who is steering, would find it difficult to keep her feet; and her hair is blown all about her face. The salt water comes swishing down the scuppers; the churned foam goes hissing and boiling away from the sides of the vessel; the broad Atlantic widens out. And that small grey thing at the horizon? Can that speck be a mass of masonry a hundred and fifty feet in height, wedged into the lonely rock?

"No, no," says our gentle Queen Titania with an involuntary shudder, "not for worlds would I climb up that iron ladder, with the sea and the rocks right below me. I should never get half-way up."

"They will put a rope round your waist, if you like," it is pointed out to her.

"When we go out, then," says this coward. "I will see how Mary gets on. If she does not die of fright, I may venture."

"Oh, but I don't think I shall be with you," remarks the young lady quite simply.

At this there is a general stare.

"I don't know what you mean," says her hostess, with an ominous curtness.

"Why, you know," says the girl, cheerfully – and disengaging one hand to get her hair out of her eyes – "I can't afford to go idling much longer. I must get back to London."

"Don't talk nonsense," says the other woman, angrily. "You may try to stop other people's holidays, if you like; but I am going to look after yours. Holidays! How are you to work, if you don't work now? Will you find many landscapes in Regent Street?"

"I have a great many sketches," says Mary Avon, "and I must try to make something out of them, where there is less distraction of amusement. And really, you know, you have so many friends – would you like me to become a fixture – like the mainmast – "

"I would like you to talk a little common sense," is the sharp reply. "You are not going back to London till the White Dove is laid up for the winter – that is what I know."

"I am afraid I must ask you to let me off," she says, quite simply and seriously. "Suppose I go up to London next week? Then, if I get on pretty well, I may come back – "

"You may come back!" says the other with a fine contempt. "Don't try to impose on me. I am an older woman than you. And I have enough provocations and worries from other quarters: I don't want you to begin and bother."

"Is your life so full of trouble?" says the girl, innocently. "What are these fearful provocations?"

"Never mind. You will find out in time. But when you get married, Mary, don't forget to buy a copy of Doddridge on Patience. That should be included in every bridal trousseau."

"Poor thing – is it so awfully ill-used?" replies the steersman, with much compassion.

Here John of Skye comes forward.

"If ye please, mem, I will tek the tiller until we get round the Ross. The rocks are very bad here."

"All right, John," says the young lady; and then, with much cautious clinging to various objects, she goes below, saying that she means to do a little more to a certain slight water-colour sketch of Polterriv. We know why she wants to put some further work on that hasty production. Yesterday the Laird expressed high approval of the sketch. She means him to take it with him to Denny-mains, when she leaves for London.

But this heavy sea: how is the artist getting on with her work amid such pitching and diving? Now that we are round the Ross, the White Dove has shifted her course; the wind is more on her beam; the mainsheet has been hauled in; and the noble ship goes ploughing along in splendid style; but how about water-colour drawing?

Suddenly, as the yacht gives a heavy lurch to leeward, an awful sound is heard below. Queen T. clambers down the companion, and holds on by the door of the saloon; the others following and looking over her shoulders. There a fearful scene appears. At the head of the table, in the regal recess usually occupied by the carver and chief president of our banquets, sits Mary Avon, in mute and blank despair. Everything has disappeared from before her. A tumbler rolls backwards and forwards on the floor, empty. A dishevelled bundle of paper, hanging on to the edge of a carpet-stool, represents what was once an orderly sketch-book. Tubes, pencils, saucers, sponges – all have gone with the table-cloth. And the artist sits quite hopeless and silent, staring before her like a maniac in a cell.

"Whatever have you been and done?" calls her hostess.

There is no answer: only that tragic despair.

"It was all bad steering," remarks the Youth. "I knew it would happen as soon as Miss Avon left the helm."

But the Laird, not confining his sympathy to words, presses by his hostess; and, holding hard by the bare table, staggers along to the scene of the wreck. The others timidly follow. One by one the various objects are rescued, and placed for safety on the couch on the leeward side of the saloon. Then the automaton in the presidential chair begins to move. She recovers her powers of speech. She says – awaking from her dream —

"Is my head on?"

"And if it is, it is not of much use to you," says her hostess, angrily. "Whatever made you have those things out in a sea like this? Come up on deck at once; and let Fred get luncheon ready."

The maniac only laughs.

"Luncheon!" she says. "Luncheon in the middle of earthquakes!"

But this sneer at the White Dove, because she has no swinging table, is ungenerous. Besides, is not our Friedrich d'or able to battle any pitching with his ingeniously bolstered couch – so that bottles, glasses, plates, and what not, are as safe as they would be in a case in the British Museum? A luncheon party on board the White Dove, when there is a heavy Atlantic swell running, is not an imposing ceremony. It would not look well as a coloured lithograph in the illustrated papers. The figures crouching on the low stools to leeward; the narrow cushion bolstered up so that the most enterprising of dishes cannot slide; the table-cover plaited so as to afford receptacles for knives and spoons; bottles and tumblers plunged into hollows and propped; Master Fred, balancing himself behind these stooping figures, bottle in hand, and ready to replenish any cautiously proffered wine-glass. But it serves. And Dr. Sutherland has assured us that, the heavier the sea, the more necessary is luncheon for the weaker vessels, who may be timid about the effect of so much rolling and pitching. When we get on deck again, who is afraid? It is all a question as to what signal may be visible to the white house of Carsaig – shining afar there in the sunlight, among the hanging woods, and under the soft purple of the hills. Behold! – behold! – the red flag run up to the top of the white pole! Is it a message to us, or only a summons to the Pioneer? For now, through the whirl of wind and spray, we can make out the steamer that daily encircles Mull, bringing with it white loaves, and newspapers, and other luxuries of the mainland.

She comes nearer and nearer; the throbbing of the paddles is heard among the rush of the waves; the people crowd to the side of the boat to have a look at the passing yacht; and one well-known figure, standing on the hurricane deck, raises his gilt-braided cap, – for we happen to have on board a gentle small creature who is a great friend of his. And she waves her white handkerchief, of course; and you should see what a fluttering of similar tokens there is all along the steamer's decks, and on the paddle boxes. Farewell! – farewell! – may you have a smooth landing at Staffa, and a pleasant sail down the Sound, in the quiet of the afternoon! The day wears on, with puffs and squalls coming tearing over from the high cliffs of southern Mull; and still the gallant White Dove meets and breasts those rolling waves, and sends the spray flying from her bows. We have passed Loch Buy; Garveloch and the Island of Saints are drawing nearer; soon we shall have to bend our course northward, when we have got by Eilean-straid-ean. And whether it is that Mary Avon is secretly comforting herself with the notion that she will soon see her friends in London again, or whether it is that she is proud of being again promoted to the tiller, she has quite recovered her spirits. We hear our singing-bird once more – though it is difficult, amid the rush and swirl of the waters, to do more than catch chance phrases and refrains. And then she is being very merry with the Laird, who is humorously decrying England and the English, and proving to her that it is the Scotch migration to the south that is the very saving of her native country.

"The Lord Chief Justice of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President of the Royal Academy – the heads and leading men everywhere – all Scotch – all Scotch," says he.

"But the weak point about the Scotch, sir," says this philosopher in the ulster, who is clinging on to the tiller rope, "is their modesty. They are so distrustful of their own merits. And they are always running down their own country."

"Ha, ha! – ho! ho! ho!" roars the Laird. "Verra good! verra good! I owe ye one for that. I owe ye one. Howard, have ye nothing to say in defence of your native country?"

"You are speaking of Scotland, sir?"

"Ay."

"That is not my native country, you know."

"It was your mother's, then."

Somehow, when by some accident – and it but rarely happened – the Laird mentioned Howard Smith's mother, a brief silence fell on him. It lasted but a second or two. Presently he was saying, with much cheerfulness —

"No, no, I am not one of those that would promote any rivalry between Scotland and England. We are one country now. If the Scotch preserve the best leeterary English – the most pithy and characteristic forms of the language – the English that is talked in the south is the most generally received throughout the world. I have even gone the length – I'm no ashamed to admit it – of hinting to Tom Galbraith that he should exheebit more in London: the influence of such work as his should not be confined to Edinburgh. And jealous as they may be in the south of the Scotch school, they could not refuse to recognise its excellence – eh? No, no; when Galbraith likes to exheebit in London, ye'll hear a stir, I'm thinking. The jealousy of English artists will have no effect on public opeenion. They may keep him out o' the Academy – there's many a good artist has never been within the walls – but the public is the judge. I am told that when his picture of Stonebyres Falls was exheebited in Edinburgh, a dealer came all the way from London to look at it."

"Did he buy it?" asked Miss Avon, gently.

"Buy it!" the Laird said, with a contemptuous laugh. "There are some of us about Glasgow who know better than to let a picture like that get to London. I bought it myself. Ye'll see it when ye come to Denny-mains. Ye have heard of it, no doubt?"

"N – no, I think not," she timidly answers.

"No matter – no matter. Ye'll see it when ye come to Denny-mains."

He seemed to take it for granted that she was going to pay a visit to Denny-mains: had he not heard, then, of her intention of at once returning to London?

Once well round into the Frith of Lorn, the wind that had borne us down the Sound of Iona was now right ahead; and our progress was but slow. As the evening wore on, it was proposed that we should run into Loch Speliv for the night. There was no dissentient voice.

The sudden change from the plunging seas without to the quiet waters of the solitary little loch was strange enough. And then, as we slowly beat up against the northerly wind to the head of the loch – a beautiful, quiet, sheltered little cup of a harbour among the hills – we found before us, or rather over us, the splendours of a stormy sunset among the mountains above Glen More. It was a striking spectacle – the vast and silent gloom of the valleys below, which were of a cold and intense green in the shadow; then above, among the great shoulders and peaks of the hills, flashing gleams of golden light, and long swathes of purple cloud touched with scarlet along their edges, and mists of rain that came along with the wind, blotting out here and there those splendid colours. There was an absolute silence in this overshadowed bay – but for the cry of the startled wild-fowl. There was no sign of any habitation, except perhaps a trace of pale blue smoke rising from behind a mass of trees. Away went the anchor with a short, sharp rattle; we were safe for the night.

We knew, however, what that trace of smoke indicated behind the dark trees. By and by, as soon as the gig had got to the land, there was a procession along the solitary shore – in the wan twilight – and up the rough path – and through the scattered patches of birch and fir. And were you startled, Madam, by the apparition of people who were so inconsiderate as to knock at your door in the middle of dinner, and whose eyes, grown accustomed to the shadows of the valleys of Mull, must have looked bewildered enough on meeting the glare of the lamps? And what did you think of a particular pair of eyes – very soft and gentle in their dark lustre – appealing, timid, friendly eyes, that had nevertheless a quiet happiness and humour in them? It was at all events most kind of you to tell the young lady that her notion of throwing up her holiday and setting out for London was mere midsummer madness. How could you – or any one else – guess at the origin of so strange a wish?

CHAPTER VIII.

BEFORE BREAKFAST

Who is this who slips through the saloon, while as yet all on board are asleep – who noiselessly ascends the companion-way, and then finds herself alone on deck? And all the world around her is asleep too, though the gold and rose of the new day is shining along the eastern heavens. There is not a sound in this silent little loch: the shores and the woods are as still as the far peaks of the mountains, where the mists are touched here and there with a dusky fire.

She is not afraid to be alone in this silent world. There is a bright and contented look on her face. Carefully and quietly, so as not to disturb the people below, she gets a couple of deck stools, and puts down the large sketch-book from under her arm, and opens out a certain leather case. But do not think she is going to attack that blaze of colour in the east, with the reflected glare on the water, and the bar of dark land between. She knows better. She has a wholesome fear of chromo-lithographs. She turns rather to those great mountain masses, with their mysteriously moving clouds, and their shoulders touched here and there with a sombre red, and their deep and silent glens a cold, intense green in shadow. There is more workable material.

And after all there is no ambitious effort to trouble her. It is only a rough jotting of form and colour, for future use. It is a pleasant occupation for this still, cool, beautiful morning; and perhaps she is fairly well satisfied with it, for one listening intently might catch snatches of songs and airs – of a somewhat incoherent and inappropriate character. For what have the praises of Bonny Black Bess to do with sunrise in Loch Speliv? Or the saucy Arethusa either? But all the same the work goes quietly and dexterously on – no wild dashes and searchings for theatrical effect, but a patient mosaic of touches precisely reaching their end. She does not want to bewilder the world. She wants to have trustworthy records for her own use. And she seems content with the progress she is making.

Here's a health to the girls that we loved long ago,

this is the last air into which she has wandered – half humming and half whistling —

Where the Shannon, and Liffey, and Blackwater flow.

– when she suddenly stops her work to listen. Can any one be up already? The noise is not repeated; and she proceeds with her work.

Here's a health to old Ireland: may she ne'er be dismayed;Then pale grew the cheeks of the Irish Brigade!

The clouds are assuming substance now: they are no mere flat washes but accurately drawn objects that have their fore-shortening like anything else. And if Miss Avon may be vaguely conscious that had our young Doctor been on board she would not have been left so long alone, that had nothing to with her work. The mornings on which he used to join her on deck, and chat to her while she painted, seem far away now. He and she together would see Dunvegan no more.