A Princess of Thule

It was an innocent bit of flattery, and Ingram smiled good-naturedly at the boy’s ingenuousness. After all, was he not more loveable and more sincere in this little bit of simple craft, used in the piteousness of his appeal, than when he was giving himself the airs of a man-about-town, and talking of women in a fashion which, to do him justice, expressed nothing of his real sentiments?

Ingram walked on, and said in his slow and deliberate way, “You know I opposed this project of yours from the first. I don’t think you have acted fairly by Sheila or her father, or myself who brought you out here. But if Sheila has been drawn into it, why, then, the whole affair is altered, and we’ve got to make the best of a bad business.”

“I was sure you would say that,” exclaimed the younger man with a brighter light appearing on his face. “You may call me all the hard names you like; I deserve them all, and more. But then, as you say, since Sheila is in it, you’ll do your best, won’t you?”

Frank Lavender could not make out why the taciturn and sallow-faced man walking beside him seemed to be greatly amused by this speech, but he was in no humor to take offence. He knew that once Ingram had promised him his help he would not lack all the advocacy, the advice, and even the money – should that become necessary – that a warm-hearted and disinterested friend could offer. Many and many a time Ingram had helped him, and now he was to come to his assistance in the most serious crisis of his life. Ingram would remove Sheila’s doubts. Ingram would persuade old Mackenzie that girls had to get married some time or other, and that Sheila ought to live in London. Ingram would be commissioned to break the news to Mrs. Lavender. But here, when the young man thought of the interview with his aunt which he would have to encounter, a cold shiver passed through his frame. He would not think of it. He would enjoy the present hour. Difficulties only grew the bigger the more they were looked at; when they were left to themselves they frequently disappeared. It was another proof of Ingram’s kindness that he had not even mentioned the old lady down in Kensington who was likely to have something to say about this marriage.

“There are a great many difficulties in the way,” said Ingram, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said Lavender, with much eagerness, “but then, look! You may be sure that if we get over these, Sheila will know well who managed it, and she will not be ungrateful to you, I think. If we ever should be married I am certain she will always look on you as her greatest friend.”

“It is a big bribe,” said the elder man, perhaps a trifle sadly; and Lavender looked at him with some vague return of a suspicion that some time or other Ingram must himself have been in love with Sheila.

They returned to the inn, where they found Mackenzie busy with a heap of letters and newspapers that had been sent across to him from Stornoway. The whole of the breakfast-table was littered with wrappers and big blue envelopes; where was Sheila, who usually waited on her father at such times to keep his affairs in order?

Sheila was outside, and Lavender saw her through the open window. Was she not waiting for him, that she should pace up and down by herself, with her face turned away from the house? He immediately went out and went over to her, and she turned to him as he approached. He fancied she looked a trifle pale, and far less bright and joyous than the ordinary Sheila.

“Mr. Lavender,” she said, walking away from the house, “I wish very much to speak to you for a moment. Last night it was all a misfortune that I did not understand; and I wish you to forget that a word was ever spoken about that.”

Her head was bent down and her speech was low and broken; what she failed to explain in words her manner explained for her. But her companion said to her, with alarm and surprise in his tone: “Why, Sheila! You cannot be so cruel! Surely you need not feel any embarrassment through so slight a promise. It pledges you to nothing – it leaves you quite free; and some day, if I come and ask you then a question I have not asked you yet, then will be time enough to give me an answer.”

“Oh, no, no!” said the girl, obviously in great distress, “I cannot do that. It is unjust to you to let you think of it and hope about it. It was last night everything was strange to me – I did not understand then – but I have thought about it all the night through, and now I know.”

“Sheila!” called her father from the inside of the inn, and she turned to go.

“But you do not ask that, do you?” he said. “You are only frightened a little bit just now, but that will go away. There is nothing to be frightened about. You have been thinking over it, and imagining impossible things; you have been thinking of leaving Borva altogether – ”

“Oh, that I can never do!” she said, with a pathetic earnestness.

“But why think of such a thing?” he said. “You need not look at all the possible troubles of life when you take such a simple step as this. Sheila, don’t be hasty in any such resolve; you may be sure all the gloomy things you have been thinking of will disappear when we get close to them. And this is such a simple thing. I don’t ask you to say you will be my wife – I have no right to ask you yet – but I have only asked permission of you to let me think of it; and even Mr. Ingram sees no great harm in that.”

“Does he know?” she said, with a start of surprise and fear.

“Yes,” said Lavender, wishing he had bitten his tongue in two before he had uttered the word. “You know we have no secrets from each other; and to whom could I go for advice but to your oldest friend?”

“And what did he say?” she asked, with a strange look in her eyes.

“Well, he sees a great many difficulties, but he thinks they will easily be got over.”

“Then,” she said, with her eyes again cast down and a certain sadness in her tone, “I must explain to him, too, and tell him I had no understanding of what I said last night.”

“Sheila, you won’t do that!” urged the young man. “It means nothing – it pledges you to nothing.”

“Sheila! Sheila!” cried her father, cheerily, from the window, “come in and let us hef our breakfast.”

“Yes, papa,” said the girl, and she went into the house, followed by her companion.

But how could she find an opportunity of making this explanation? Shortly after breakfast the wagonette was at the door of the little Barvas inn, and Sheila came out of the house and took her place in it with an unusual quietness of manner and hopelessness of look. Ingram, sitting opposite to her, and knowing nothing of what had taken place, fancied that this was but an expression of girlish timidity, and that it was his business to interest her and amuse her until she should forget the strangeness and newness of her position. Nay, as he had resolved to make the best of matters as they stood, and as he believed that Sheila had half confessed to a special liking for his friend from the South, what more fitting thing could he do than endeavor to place Lavender in the most favorable light in her eyes? He began to talk of all the brilliant and successful things the young man had done as fully as he could before himself. He contrived to introduce pretty anecdotes of Lavender’s generosity; and there were plenty of these, for the young fellow had never a thought of consequences if he was touched by a tale of distress, and if he could help the sufferer either with his own or any one else’s money. Ingram talked of all their excursions together, in Devonshire, in Brittany and elsewhere, to impress on Sheila how well he knew his friend and how long their intimacy had lasted. At first the girl was singularly reserved and silent, but somehow, as pleasant recollections were multiplied, and as Lavender seemed to have been always the associate and companion of this old friend of hers, some brighter expression came into her face and she grew more interested. Lavender, not knowing whether or not to take her decision of that morning as final, and not wholly perceiving the aim of this kindly chat on the part of his friend, began to see, at least, that Sheila was pleased to hear the two men help out each other’s stories about their pedestrian excursions, and that she at last grew bold enough to look up and meet his eyes in a timid fashion when she asked him a question.

So they drove along by the side of the sea, the level and well-made road leading them through miles and miles of rough moorland, with here and there a few huts or a sheep-fold to break the monotony of the undulating sky-line. Here and there, too, there were great cuttings of the peat-moss, with a thin line of water in the foot of the deep, black trenches. Sometimes, again, they would escape altogether from any traces of human habitation, and Duncan would grow excited in pointing out to Miss Sheila the young grouse that had run off the road into the heather, where they stood and eyed the passing carriage with anything but a frightened air. And while Mackenzie hummed something resembling, but very vaguely resembling, “Love in thine eyes sits beaming,” and while Ingram, in his quiet, desultory, and often sardonic fashion, amused the young girl with stories of her lover’s bravery and kindness and dare-devil escapades, the merry trot of the horses beat time to the bells on their necks, the fresh West wind blew a cloud of white dust away over the moorland behind them, there was a blue sky shining all around them, and the blue Atlantic basking in the light.

They stopped a few moments at both the hamlets of Suainabost and Tabost to allow Sheila to pay a hurried visit to one or two of the huts, while Mackenzie, laying hold of some of the fishermen he knew, got them to show Lavender the curing-house, in which the young gentleman professed himself profoundly interested. They also visited the school-house, and Lavender found himself beginning to look upon a two-storied building with windows as something imposing, and a decided triumph of human skill and enterprise. But what was the school-house of Tabost to the grand building at the Butt? They had driven away from the high-road by a path leading through long and sweet-smelling pastures of Dutch clover; they had got up from these sandy swathes to a table-land of rock; and here and there they got glimpses of fearful precipices leading sheer down to the boiling and dashing sea. The curious contortions of the rocks, the sharp needles of them springing in isolated pillars from out of the water, the roar of the eddying currents that swept through the chasms and dashed against the iron-bound shore, the wild sea-birds that flew about and screamed over the rushing waves and the surge, naturally enough drew the attention of the strangers altogether away from the land; and it was with a start of surprise they found themselves before an immense mass of yellow stone-work – walls, house, and tower – that shone in the sunlight. And here were the lighthouse-keeper and his wife, delighted to see strange faces and most hospitably inclined; insomuch that Lavender, who cared little for luncheon at any time, was constrained to take as much bread and cheese and butter and whisky as would have made a ploughman’s dinner. It was a strange sort of a meal this, away out at the end of the world, as it were. The snug little room might have been in the Marylebone road; there were photographs about, a gay label on the whisky bottle, and other signs of an advanced civilization; but outside nothing but the wild precipices of the coast, a surging sea that seemed almost to surround the place, the wild screaming of the sea-birds, and a single ship appearing like a mere speck on the Northern horizon.

They had not noticed the wind much as they drove along; but now, when they went out on the high table-land of rock, it seemed to be blowing half a gale across the sea. The sunlight sparkled on the glass of the lighthouse, and the great yellow shaft of stone stretched away upward into a perfect blue. As clear a blue lay far beneath them when the sea came rushing in among the lofty crags and sharp pinnacles of rock, bursting into foam at their feet and sending long jets of white spray up into the air. In front of the great wall of rock the sea-birds wheeled and screamed, and on the points of some of the islands stood several scarts, motionless figures of jet black on the soft brown and green of the rock. And what was this island they looked down upon from over one of the bays? Surely a mighty reproduction by Nature herself of the Sphynx of the Egyptian plains. Could anything have been more striking and unexpected and impressive than the sudden discovery of this great mass of rock resting in the wild sea, its hooded head turned away toward the North and hidden from the spectator on land, its gigantic bulk surrounded by a foam of breakers? Lavender, with his teeth set hard against the wind, must needs take down the outlines of this strange scene upon paper, while Sheila crouched at her father’s side for shelter, and Ingram was chiefly engaged in holding on to his cap.

“It blows here a bit,” said Lavender amid the roar of the waves. “I suppose in the Winter-time the sea will sometimes break across this place?”

“Ay, and over the top of the light-house, too,” said Mackenzie with a laugh, as though he was rather proud of the way his native seas behaved.

“Sheila,” said Ingram, “I never saw you take refuge from the wind before.”

“It is because we will be standing still,” said the girl, with a smile which was scarcely visible, because she had half hidden her face in her father’s great gray beard. “But when Mr. Lavender is finished we will go down to the great hole in the rocks that you will have seen before, and perhaps he will make a picture of that, too.”

“You don’t mean to say you would go down there, Sheila?” said Ingram, “and in this wind!”

“I have been down many times before.”

“Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind, Sheila,” said her father; “you will go back to the light-house if you like – yes, you may do that – and I will go down the rocks with Mr. Lavender; but it iss not for a young lady to go about among the rocks, like a fisherman’s lad that wants the birds’ eggs or such nonsense.”

It was quite evident that Mackenzie had very little fear of his daughter not being able to accomplish the descent of the rocks safely enough; it was a matter of dignity. And so Sheila was at length persuaded to go across the plain to a sheltered place, to await there until the others should clamber down to the great and naturally-formed tunnel through the rocks that the artist was to sketch.

Lavender was ill at ease. He followed his guide mechanically as they made their way, in zigzag fashion, down the precipitous slopes and over slippery plateaus; and when at last he came in sight of the mighty arch, the long cavern, and the glimmer of sea and shore that could be seen through it, he began to put down the outlines of the picture as rapidly as possible, but with little interest in the matter. Ingram was sitting on the bare rocks beside him, Mackenzie was some distance off – should he tell his friend of what Sheila had said in the morning? Strict honesty, perhaps, demanded as much, but the temptation to say nothing was great. For it was evident that Ingram was now well inclined to the project, and would do his best to help it on; whereas, if once he knew that Sheila had resolved against it, he, too, might take some sudden step – such as insisting on their immediate return to the midland – which would settle the matter forever. Sheila had said she would herself make the necessary explanation to Ingram, but she had not done so: perhaps she might lack the courage or an opportunity to do so, and in the meantime was not the interval altogether favorable to his chances? Doubtless she was a little frightened at first. She would soon get less timid, and would relent and revoke her decision of the morning. He would not, at present at any rate, say anything to Ingram.

But when they had got up again to the summit of the rocks, an incident occurred that considerably startled him out of these vague and anxious speculations. He walked straight over to the sheltered spot in which Sheila was waiting. The rushing of the wind doubtless drowned the sound of his footsteps, so that he came on her unawares; and on seeing him she rose suddenly from the rock on which she had been sitting, with some effort to hide her face away from him. But he had caught a glimpse of something in her eyes that filled him with remorse.

“Sheila,” he said, going forward to her, “what is the matter? What are you unhappy about?”

She could not answer; she held her face turned from him and cast down; and then, seeing her father and Ingram in the distance, she set out to follow them to the lighthouse. Lavender walking by her side, and wondering how he could deal with the distress that was only too clearly written on her face.

“I know it is I who have grieved you,” he said in a low voice, “and I am very sorry. But if you will tell me what I can do to remove this unhappiness I will do it now. Shall I consider our talking together of last night as if it had not taken place at all?”

“Yes,” she said in as low a voice, but clear and sad, and determined in its tone.

“And I shall speak no more to you about this affair until I go away altogether?”

And again she signified her assent, gravely and firmly.

“And then,” he said, “you will soon forget all about it, for, of course, I shall never come back to Lewis again.”

“Never?”

The word had escaped her unwillingly, and it was accompanied by a quick upturning of the face and a frightened look in the beautiful eyes.

“Do you wish me to come back?” he said.

“I should not wish you to go way from the Lewis through any fault of mine, and say that we should never see you again,” said the girl in measured tones, as if she were nerving herself to make the admission, and yet fearful of saying too much.

By this time Mackenzie and Ingram had gone around the big wall of the light-house; there were no human beings on this lonely bit of heath but themselves. Lavender stopped her and took her hand, and said, “Don’t you see, Sheila, how I must never come back to Lewis if all this is to be forgotten? And all I want you to say is, that I may come some day to see if you can make up your mind to be my wife. I don’t ask that yet; it is out of the question, seeing how short a time you have known anything about me, and I cannot wish you to trust me as I can trust you. It is a very little thing I ask – only to give me a chance at some future time, and then, if you don’t care for me sufficiently to marry me, or if anything stands in the way, all you need do is to send me a single word, and that will suffice. This is no terrible thing that I beg from you, Sheila. You needn’t be afraid of it.”

But she was afraid; there was nothing but fear and doubt and grief in her eyes, as she gazed in the unknown world laid open before her.

“Can’t you ask someone to tell you that it is nothing dreadful – Mr. Ingram, for example?”

“I could not.”

“Your papa, then,” he said, driven to this desperate resource by his anxiety to save her from pain.

“Not yet – not just yet,” she said, almost wildly; “for how could I explain to him? He would ask me what my wishes were; what could I say? I do not know; I cannot tell myself; and – and – I have no mother to ask.” And here all the strain of self-control gave way, and the girl burst into tears.

“Sheila, dear Sheila,” he said, “why don’t you trust your own heart, and let that be your guide? Won’t you say this one word, Yes, and tell me that I am to come back to Lewis some day, and ask to see you, and get a message from one look of your eyes? Sheila, may not I come back?”

If there was a reply it was so low that he scarcely heard it; but somehow – whether from the small hand that lay in his, or from the eyes that sent one brief message of trust and hope through their tears – his question was answered; and from that moment he felt no more misgivings, but let his love for Sheila shine out and blossom in whatever light of fancy and imagination he could bring to bear on it, without any doubts as to the future.

How the young fellow laughed and joked as the party drove away again from the Butt, down the long coast-road to Barvas! He was tenderly respectful and a little moderate in tone when he addressed Sheila, but with the others he gave way to a wild exuberance of spirits that delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. He told stories of the odd old gentlemen of his club, of their opinions, their ways, their dress. He sang the song of the Arethusa and the wilds of Lewis echoed with a chorus which was not just as harmonious as it might have been. He sang the “Jug of Punch,” and Mackenzie said that was a teffle of a good song. He gave imitations of some of Ingram’s companions at the Board of Trade, and showed Sheila what the inside of a government office was like. He paid Mackenzie the compliment of asking him for a drop of something out of his flask, and in return he insisted on the King smoking a cigar which, in point of age and sweetness and fragrance, was really the sort of a cigar you would naturally give to the man whose only daughter you wanted to marry.

Ingram understood all this, and was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments that Sheila could overhear.

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1

“My black-haired girl, my pretty girl, my black-haired girl, don’t leave me.” “Nighean dubh” is pronounced “Nyean du.”

2

Literally, “Gearaidh-na’k-Aimhne,” the cutting of the river.

3

Another name given by the islanders to these stones, is “Fir-bhreige,” false men. Both names, False Men and the Mourners, should be of some interest to antiquarians, for they will suit pretty nearly any theory.

4

Pronounced Argyud-chark; literally, “hen money.”