A Princess of Thule

“I have given him enough references. Go to sleep, and don’t bother yourself.”

But now Ingram found himself just as unable as his companion to escape into unconsciousness, and so he roused himself thoroughly, and began to talk about Lewis and Borva and the Mackenzies, and the duties and responsibilities Lavender would undertake in marrying Sheila.

“Mackenzie,” he said, “will expect you to live in Stornoway at least half the year, and it will be very hard on him if you don’t.”

“Oh, as to that,” said the other, “I should have no objection; but, you see, if I am to get married I really think I ought to try to get into some position of earning my own living or helping toward it, you know; I begin to see how galling this sort of dependence on my aunt might be if I wished to act for myself. Now, if I were to begin to do anything, I could not go and bury myself in Lewis for half the year – just at first; by and by, you know, it might be different. But don’t you think I ought to begin and do something?”

“Most certainly. I have often wished you had been born a carpenter or painter or glazier.”

“People are not born carpenters or glaziers, but sometimes they are born painters. I think I have been born nothing; but I am willing to try, more especially as I think Sheila would like it.”

“I know she would.”

“I will write and tell her the moment I get to London.”

“I would fix first what your occupation was to be, if I were you. There is no hurry about telling Sheila, although she will be very glad to get as much news of you as possible, and I hope you will spare no time or trouble in pleasing her in that line. By-the-way, what an infamous shame it was of you to go and gammon old Mackenzie into the belief that he can read poetry! Why, he will make that girl’s life a burden to her. I heard him propose to read Paradise Lost to her as soon as the rain set in.”

“I didn’t gammon him,” said Lavender, with a laugh, “Every man thinks he can read poetry better than every other man, even as every man fancies that no one gets cigars as good and as cheap as he does, and that no one can drive a horse safely but himself. My talking about his reading was not as bad as Sheila’s persuading him that he can play whist. Did you ever know a man who did not believe that everybody else’s reading of poetry was affected, stilted and unbearable? I know Mackenzie must have been reading poetry to Sheila long before I mentioned it to him.”

“But that suggestion about his resonant voice and the Crystal Palace!”

“That was a joke.”

“He did not take it as a joke, and neither did Sheila.”

“Well, Sheila would believe that her father could command the Channel fleet, or turn out the present ministry, or build a bridge to America, if only anybody hinted it to her. Touching that Crystal Palace; did you observe how little notion of size she could have got from pictures when she asked me if the Crystal Palace was much bigger than the hot-houses at Lewis Castle?”

“What a world of wonder the girl is coming into!” said the other, meditatively. “But it will be all lit up by one sun if only you take care of her and justify her belief in you.”

“I have not much doubt,” said Lavender, with a certain modest confidence in his manner, which had repeatedly of late pleased his friend.

Even Sheila herself could scarcely have found London more strange than did the two men who had just returned from a month’s sojourn in the Northern Hebrides. The dingy trees in Euston Square, the pale sunlight that shone down on the gray pavements, the noise of the omnibuses and carts, the multitude of strangers, the blue and mist-like smoke that hung about Tottenham Court Road – all were as strange to them as the sensation of sitting in a hansom and being driven along by an unseen driver. Lavender confessed afterward that he was pervaded by an odd sort of desire to know whether there was anybody in London at all like Sheila. Now and again a smartly-dressed girl passed along the pavement; what was it that made the difference between her and the other girl whom he had just left? yet he wished to have the difference as decided as possible, when some bright, fresh-colored, pleasant-looking girl passed, he was anxious to prove to himself that she was not to be compared with Sheila. Where in all London could you find eyes that told so much? He forgot to place the specialty of Sheila’s eyes in the fact of their being a dark gray-blue under black eyelashes. What he did remember was that no eyes could possibly say the same things to him as they had said. And where in all London was the same sweet aspect to be found, or the same unconsciously proud and gentle demeanor, or the same tender friendliness expressed in a beautiful face? He would not say anything against London women for all that. It was no fault of theirs that they could not be sea-kings’ daughters, with the courage and frankness and sweetness of the sea gone into their blood. He was only too pleased to have proved to himself, by looking at some half-dozen pretty shop-girls, that not in London was there any one to compare with Princess Sheila.

For many a day thereafter Ingram had to suffer a good deal of this sort of lover’s logic, and bore it with great fortitude. Indeed, nothing pleased him more than to observe that Lavender’s affection, so far from waning, engrossed more and more of his thought and his time; and he listened with unfailing good-nature and patience to the perpetual talk of his friend about Sheila and her home, and the future that might be in store for both of them. If he had accepted half the invitations to dinner sent down to him at the Board of Trade by his friend, he would scarcely ever have been out of Lavender’s club. Many a long evening they passed in this way – either in Lavender’s rooms in King street or in Ingram’s lodgings in Sloane street. Ingram quite consented to lie in a chair and smoke, sometimes putting in a word of caution to bring Lavender back from the romantic Sheila to the real Sheila, sometimes smiling at some wild proposal or statement on the part of his friend, but always glad to see that the pretty idealisms planted during their stay in the far North were in no danger of dying out down here in the South. Those were great days, too, when a letter arrived from Sheila. Nothing had been said about their corresponding, but Lavender had written shortly after his arrival in London and Sheila had answered for her father and herself. It wanted but a very little amount of ingenuity to continue the interchange of letters thus begun; and when the well-known envelope arrived high holiday was immediately proclaimed by the recipient of it. He did not show Ingram these letters, of course, but the contents of them were soon bit by bit revealed. He was also permitted to see the envelope, as if Sheila’s handwriting had some magical charm about it. Sometimes, indeed, Ingram had himself a letter from Sheila, and that was immediately shown to Lavender. Was he pleased to find that these communications were excessively business-like – describing how the fishing was going on, what was doing in the schools, and how John the Piper was conducting himself, with talk about the projected telegraphic cable, the shooting in Harris, the health of Bras, and other esoteric matters?

Lavender’s communications with the King of Borva were of a different nature. Wonderful volumes on building, agriculture, and what not, tobacco hailing from certain royal sources in the neighborhood of the Pyramids, and now and again a new sort of rifle or some fresh invention in fishing-tackle – these were the sort of things that found their way to Lewis. And then in reply came haunches of venison, and kegs of rare whisky and skins of wild animals, which, all very admirable in their way, were a trifle cumbersome in a couple of moderate rooms in King street, St. James’. But here Lavender hit upon a happy device. He had long ago talked to his aunt about the mysterious potentate in the far North, who was the ruler of man, beast and fish, and who had an only daughter. When these presents arrived, Mrs. Lavender was informed that they were meant for her, and was given to understand that they were the propitiatory gifts of a half-savage monarch who wished to seek her friendship. In vain did Ingram warn Lavender of the possible danger of this foolish joke. The young man laughed, and would come down to Sloane street with another story of his success as an envoy of the distant King.

And so the months went slowly by, and Lavender raved about Sheila, and dreamed about Sheila, and was always going to begin some splendid achievement for Sheila’s sake, but never just managed to begin. After all, the future did not look very terrible, and the present was satisfactory enough. Mrs. Lavender had no objection whatever to listening to his praises of Sheila, and had even gone the length of approving of the girl’s photograph when it was shown her. But at the end of six months Lavender suddenly went down to Sloane street, found Ingram in his lodgings, and said, “Ingram, I start for Lewis to-morrow.”

“The more fool you!” was the complacent reply.

“I can’t bear this any longer; I must go and see her.”

“You’ll have to bear worse if you go. You don’t know what getting to Lewis is in the Winter. You’ll be killed with cold before you see the Minch.”

“I can stand a good bit of cold when there’s a reason for it,” said the young man; “and I have written to Sheila to say I should start to-morrow.”

“In that case I had better make use of you. I suppose you won’t mind taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket that I have bought for her?”

“That you have bought for her!” said the other.

How could he have spared fifteen pounds out of his narrow income for such a present? And yet he laughed at the idea of his ever having been in love with Sheila.

Lavender took the sealskin jacket with him, and started on his journey to the North. It was certainly all that Ingram had prophesied in the way of discomfort, hardship and delay. But one forenoon, Lavender, coming up from the cabin of the steamer into which he had descended to escape from the bitter wind and the sleet, saw before him a strange thing. In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay a long wonder-land of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could see the successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean, until in the South they faded into a gray mist and became invisible. And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters of the little bay, and the hulls of the boats, and the windows of the houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!

“Yes,” said Lavender to the captain, “it will be a cold drive across to Loch Roag. I shall give Mackenzie’s man a good dram before we start.”

But it was not Mackenzie’s notion of hospitality to send Duncan to meet an honored guest, and ere the vessel was fast moored Lavender had caught sight of the well-known pair of horses and the brown wagonette, and Mackenzie stamping up and down in the trampled snow. And this figure close down to the edge of the quay? Surely, there was something about the thick gray shawl, the white feather, the set of the head, that he knew!

“Why, Sheila!” he cried, jumping ashore before the gangway was shoved across, “whatever made you come to Stornoway on such a day?

“And it is not much my coming to Stornoway, if you will come all the way from England to the Lewis,” said Sheila, looking up with her bright and glad eyes.

For six months he had been trying to recall the tones of her voice in looking at her picture, and had failed; now he fancied that she spoke more sweetly and musically than ever.

“Ay, ay,” said Mackenzie, when he had shaken hands with the young man, “it wass a piece of foolishness, her coming over to meet you in Styornoway; but the girl will be neither to hold nor to bind when she teks a foolishness into her head.”

“Is this the character I hear of you, Sheila?” he said; and Mackenzie laughed at his daughter’s embarrassment, and said she was a good lass for all that, and bundled both the young folks into the inn, where luncheon had been provided, with a blazing fire in the room, and a kettle of hot water steaming beside it.

When they got to Borva, Lavender began to see that Mackenzie had laid the most subtle plans for reconciling him to the hard weather of these Northern Winters; and the young man, nothing loth, fell into his ways, and was astonished at the amusement and interest that could be got out of a residence in this bleak island at such a season. Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble protection against cold and wet which his guest had brought with him. He gave him a pair of his own knickerbockers and enormous boots; he made him wear a frieze coat borrowed from Duncan; he insisted on his turning down the flap of a sealskin cap and tying the ends under his chin; and thus equipped they started on many a rare expedition around the coast. But on their first going out, Mackenzie, looking at him, said with some chagrin, “Will they wear gloves when they go shooting in your country?”

“Oh,” said Lavender, “these are only a pair of old dogskins I use chiefly to keep my hands clean. You see I have cut out the trigger finger. And they keep your hands from being numbed, you know, with the cold or the rain.”

“There will be not much need of that after a little while,” said Mackenzie; and indeed, after half an hour’s tramping over snow and climbing over rocks, Lavender was well inclined to please the old man by tossing the gloves into the sea, for his hands were burning with heat.

Then the pleasant evenings after all the fatigues of the day were over, clothes changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila at the open piano in that warm little drawing-room, with its strange shells and fishes and birds!

Love in thine eyes for ever plays;He in thy snowy bosom strays,

they sang, just as in the by-gone times of Summer; and now old Mackenzie had got on a bit further in his musical studies, and could hum with the best of them,

He makes thy rosy lips his care,And walks the mazes of thy hair.

There was no Winter at all in the snug little room, with its crimson fire and closed shutters and songs of happier times. “When the rosy morn appearing” had nothing inappropriate in it; and if they particularly studied the words of “Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,” it was only that Sheila might teach her companion the Scotch pronunciation, as far as she knew it. And once, half in joke, Lavender said he could believe it was Summer again if Sheila had only on her slate-gray silk dress, with the red ribbon around her neck; and sure enough, after dinner she came down in that dress, and Lavender took her hand and kissed it in gratitude. Just at that moment, too, Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for not having brought him his pipe, and not only went out of the room for it, but was a full half hour in finding it. When he came in again he was singing carelessly, just as if he had got his pipe around the corner.

Love in thine eyes for ever plays.

For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father had given his consent. More than that he would have done for the girl, if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her eyes – when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually affectionate toward himself – he grew reconciled to the ways of Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him. If there was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila’s husband refusing to live in Stornoway even for half the year or a portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the sports and scenery and climate of the island? If Mackenzie could have bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing better than Lewis in Summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow and frost.

The blow fell. One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night the wind went around to Southwest, and in the morning, lo! the very desolation of desolation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy pasture land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the house. Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks. All signs of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky. Bird and beast had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of the rain.

“Well, it can’t be fine weather always,” said Lavender, cheerfully, when Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing as rain in the Island of Lewis.

“No, that iss quite true,” said the old man. “It wass ferry good weather we were having since you hef come here. And what iss a little rain? – Oh, nothing at all. You will see it will go away whenever the wind goes around.”

With that Mackenzie would again go out to the front of the house, take a turn up and down the wet gravel, and pretend to be scanning the horizon for signs of a change. Sheila, a good deal more honest, went about her household duties, saying merely to Lavender, “I am very sorry the weather has broken, but it may clear before you go away from Borva.”

“Before I go? Do you expect it to rain for a week?”

“Perhaps it will not, but it is looking very bad to-day,” said Sheila.

“Well, I don’t care,” said the young man, “though it should rain the skies down, if only you would keep in doors, Sheila. But you do go out in such a reckless fashion. You don’t seem to reflect that it is raining.”

“I do not get wet,” she said.

“Why, when you came up from the shore half an hour ago your hair was as wet as possible, and your face all red and gleaming with the rain.”

“But I am none the worse. And I am not wet now. It is impossible that you will always keep in a room if you have things to do; and a little rain does not hurt any one.”

“It occurs to me, Sheila,” he observed slowly, “that you are an exceedingly obstinate and self-willed young person, and that no one has ever exercised any proper control over you.”

She looked up for a moment with a sudden glance of surprise and pain; but she saw in his eyes that he meant nothing, and she went forward to him, putting her hand in his hand, and saying with a smile, “I am very willing to be controlled.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes.”

“Then hear my commands. You shall not go out in time of rain without putting something over your head or taking an umbrella. You shall not go out in the Maighdean-mhara without taking some one with you besides Mairi. You shall never, if you are away from home, go within fifty yards of the sea, so long as there is snow on the rocks.”

“But that is so very many things already; is it not enough?” said Sheila.

“You will faithfully remember and observe these rules?”

“I will.”

“Then you are a more obedient girl then I imagined or expected; and you may now, if you are good, have the satisfaction of offering me a glass of sherry and a biscuit, for, rain or no rain, Lewis is a dreadful place for making people hungry.”

Mackenzie need not have been afraid. Strange as it may appear, Lavender was well content with the wet weather. No depression or impatience or remonstrance was visible on his face when he went to the blurred windows, day after day, to see only the same desolate picture – the dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists over the moorland and the shining of the red gravel before the house. He would stand with his hands in his pocket and whistle “Love in thine eyes forever plays,” just as if he were looking out on a cheerful Summer sunrise. When he and Sheila went to the door, and were received by a cold blast of wet wind and a driving shower of rain, he would slam the door to again, with a laugh, and pull the girl back into the house. Sometimes she would not be controlled; and then he would accompany her about the garden as she attended to her duties, or would go down to the shore with her to give Bras a run. From these excursions he returned in the best of spirits, with a fine color in his face; until, having got accustomed to heavy boots, impervious frieze and the discomfort of wet hands, he grew to be about as indifferent to the rain as Sheila herself, and went fishing or shooting or boating with much content, whether it was wet or dry.

“It has been the happiest month of my life – I know that,” he said to Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.

“And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis,” said the old man, cheerfully.

“I think I should soon learn to become a Highlander up here,” said Lavender, “if Sheila would only teach me the Gaelic.”

“The Gaelic!” cried Mackenzie impatiently. “The Gaelic! It is none of the gentlemen who will come here in the Autumn will want the Gaelic; and what for would you want the Gaelic – ay, if you was staying here all the year round?”

“But Sheila will teach me all the same, won’t you, Sheila?” he said, turning to his companion, who was gazing somewhat blankly at the rough steamer and at the rough gray sea beyond the harbor.

“Yes,” said the girl; she seemed in no mood for joking.

Lavender returned to town more in love than ever; and soon the news of his engagement was spread abroad, he nothing loath. Most of his club-friends laughed, and prophesied it would come to nothing. How could a man in Lavender’s position marry anybody but an heiress? He could not afford to go and marry a fisherman’s daughter. Others came to the conclusion that artists and writers and all that sort of people were incomprehensible, and said “Poor beggar!” when they thought of the fashion in which Lavender had ruined his chances in life. His lady friends, however, were much more sympathetic. There was a dash of romance in the story; and would not the Highland girl be a curiosity a little while after she came to town! Was she like any of the pictures Mr. Lavender had hanging up in his rooms? Had he not even a sketch of her? An artist, and yet not have a portrait of the girl he had chosen to marry? Lavender had no portrait of Sheila to show. Some little photographs he had he kept for his own pocket-book, while in vain had he tried to get some sketch or picture that would convey to the world of his friends and acquaintances some notion of his future bride. They were left to draw on their imagination for some presentment of the coming princess.

He told Mrs. Lavender, of course. She said little, but sent for Edward Ingram. Him she questioned in a cautious, close and yet apparently indifferent way, and then merely said that Frank was very impetuous, that it was a pity he had resolved on marrying out of his own sphere of life, but that she hoped the young lady from the Highlands would prove a good wife to him.

“I hope he will prove a good husband to her,” said Ingram, with unusual sharpness.

“Frank is very impetuous.” That was all Mrs. Lavender would say.

By and by, as the spring grew on, and the time of the marriage was coming nearer, the important business of taking and furnishing a house for Sheila’s reception occupied the attention of the young man from morning till night. He had been somewhat disappointed at the cold fashion in which his aunt looked upon his choice, admitting everything he had to say in praise of Sheila, but never expressing any approval of his conduct, or hope about the future; but now she showed herself most amiably and generously disposed. She supplied the young man with abundant funds wherewith to furnish the house according to his own fancy. It was a small place, fronting a somewhat commonplace square in Notting Hill, but it was to be a miracle of artistic adornment inside. He tortured himself for days over rival shades and hues; he drew designs for the chairs; he himself painted a good deal of paneling; and, in short, gave up his whole time to making Sheila’s future home beautiful. His aunt regarded these preparations with little interest, but she certainly gave her nephew ample means to indulge the eccentricities of his fancy.