A Princess of Thule

“Wass there anything the matter, sir?” he said, with much evidence of concern.

“My head is a little bad, Donald,” Lavender said, still pressing his hands to his temples, as if to get rid of some strange feeling. “I wish you would pull in to the shore and get me some whisky.”

“Oh, ay,” said the old man, hastily scrambling into the little black boat lying beside the smack; “and it is no wonder to me that this will come to you, sir, for I hef never seen any of the gentlemen so long at the pentin as you – from the morning till the night; and it is no wonder to me that this will come to you. But I will get you the whushky; it is a grand thing, the whushky.”

The old fisherman was not long in getting ashore and running up to the cottage where Lavender lived, and getting a bottle of whisky and a glass. Then he got down to the boat again, and was surprised that he could nowhere see Mr. Lavender on board the smack. Perhaps he had lain down on the nets in the bottom of the boat.

When Donald got out to the smack he found the young man lying insensible, his face white and his teeth clenched. With something of a cry the old fisherman jumped into the boat, knelt down, and proceeded in a rough-and-ready fashion to force some whisky into Lavender’s mouth. “Oh, ay, oh, yes, it is a grand thing, the whushky,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, yes, sir, you must hef some more; it is no matter if you will choke. It is ferry good whushky and will do you no harm whatever; and oh, yes, sir, that is ferry well, and you are all right again, and you will sit quite quiet now, and you will hef a little more whushky.”

The young man looked around him. “Have you been ashore, Donald? Oh, yes – I suppose so. Did I tumble? Well, I’m all right, now; it was the glare of the sea that made me giddy. Take a dram for yourself, Donald.”

“There is but the one glass, sir,” said Donald, who had picked up something of the notions of gentlefolks, “but I will just tek the bottle;” and so, to avoid drinking out of the same glass (which was rather a small one), he was good enough to take a pull, and a strong pull, at the black bottle. Then he heaved a sigh, and wiped the top of the bottle with his sleeve. “Yes, as I was saying, sir, there was none of the gentlemen I hef effer seen in Tarbert will keep at the pentin so long ass you; and many of them will be stronger ass you, and will be more accustomed to it whatever. But when a man is making money – ” and Donald shook his head: he knew it was useless to argue.

“But I am not making money, Donald,” Lavender said, still looking a trifle pale. “I doubt whether I have made as much as you have since I came to Tarbert.”

“Oh, yes,” said Donald contentedly, “all the gentlemen will say that. They never hef any money. But wass you ever with them when they could not get a dram because they had no money to pay for it?”

Donald’s test of impecuniosity could not be gainsaid. Lavender laughed, and bade him get back into the other boat.

“ ‘Deed I will not,” said Donald, sturdily.

Lavender stared at him.

“Oh, no; you wass doing quite enough the day already, or you would not hef tumbled into the boat whatever. And supposing that you was to hef tumbled into the water, you would have been trooned as sure as you wass alive.”

“And a good job, too, Donald,” said the younger man idly looking at the lapping green water.

Donald shook his head gravely: “You would not say that if you had friends of yours that was trooned, and if you had seen them when they went down in the water.”

“They say it is an easy death, Donald.”

“They neffer tried it that said that,” said the old fisherman gloomily. “It wass one day the son of my sister wass coming over from Saltcoats – but I hef no wish to speak of it; and that wass but one among ferry many that I have known.”

“How long is it since you were in the Lewis, did you say?” Lavender asked, changing the subject. Donald was accustomed to have the talk suddenly diverted into this channel. He could not tell why the young English gentleman wanted him continually to be talking about the Lewis.

“Oh, it is many and many a year ago, as I hef said; and you will know far more about the Lewis than I will. But Stornoway, that is a fine big town; and I hef a cousin there that keeps a shop, and is a very rich man whatever, and many’s the time he will ask me to come and see him. And if the Lord be spared, maybe I will some day.”

“You mean if you be spared, Donald.”

“Oh, ay; it is all wan,” said Donald.

Lavender had brought with him some bread and cheese in a piece of paper for luncheon; and this store of frugal provisions having been opened out, the old fisherman was invited to join in – an invitation he gravely but not eagerly accepted. He took off his blue bonnet and said grace; then he took the bread and cheese in his hand and looked around inquiringly. There was a stone jar of water in the bottom of the boat; that was not what Donald was looking after. Lavender handed him the black bottle he had brought out from the cottage, which was more to his mind. And then, this humble meal dispatched, the old man was persuaded to go back to his post, and Lavender continued his work.

The short afternoon was drawing to a close when young Johnny Eyre came sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. “Are you at work yet, Lavender?” he said. “I never saw such a beggar. It’s getting quite dark.”

“What sort of luncheon did Newstead give you, Johnny?”

“Oh, something worth going for, I can tell you. You want to live in Tarbert for a month or two to find out the value of decent cooking and good wine. He was awfully surprised when I described this place to him. He wouldn’t believe you were living here in a cottage: I said a garret, for I pitched it hot and strong, mind you. I said you were living in a garret, that you never saw a razor, and lived on oatmeal-porridge and whisky, and that your only amusement was going out at night and risking your neck in this delightful boat of mine. You should have seen him examining this remarkable vessel. And there were two ladies on board, and they were asking after you, too.”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t catch their names when I was introduced; but the noble skipper called one of them Polly.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Ain’t you coming ashore, Lavender? You can’t see to work now.”

“All right! I shall put my traps ashore, and then I’ll have a run with you down Loch Fyne if you like, Johnny.”

“Well, I don’t like,” said the handsome lad, frankly, “for it’s looking rather squally about. It seems to me you’re bent on drowning yourself. Before those other fellows went, they came to the conclusion that you had committed a murder.”

“Did they, really?” Lavender said, with little interest.

“And if you go away and live in that wild place you were talking of during the Winter, they will be quite sure of it. Why, man, you’d come back with your hair turned white. You might as well think of living by yourself at the Arctic Pole.”

Neither Johnny Eyre nor any of the men who had just left Tarbert knew anything of Frank Lavender’s recent history, and Lavender himself was not disposed to be communicative. They would know soon enough when they went up to London. In the meantime they were surprised to find that Lavender’s habits were very singularly altered. He had grown miserly. They laughed when he told them he had no money, and he did not seek to persuade them of the fact; but it was clear, at all events, that none of them lived so frugally or worked so anxiously as he. Then, when his work was done in the evening, and when they met alternately at each other’s rooms to dine off mutton and potatoes, with a glass of whisky and a pipe and a game of cards to follow, what was the meaning of those sudden fits of silence that would strike in when the general hilarity was at its pitch? And what was the meaning of the utter recklessness he displayed when they would go out of an evening in their open sailing boats to shoot sea-fowl, or make a voyage along the rocky coast in the dead of night to wait for the dawn to show them the haunts of the seals? The Lavender they had met occasionally in London was a fastidious dilettante, self-possessed, and yet not disagreeable fellow; this man was almost pathetically anxious about his work, oftentimes he was morose and silent, and then again there was no sort of danger or difficulty he was not ready to plunge into when they were sailing about the iron-bound coast. They could not make it out, but the joke among themselves was that he had committed a murder, and therefore he was reckless.

This Johnny Eyre was not much of an artist, but he liked the society of artists; he had a little money of his own, plenty of time, and a love of boating and shooting, and so he had pitched his tent at Tarbert, and was proud to cherish the delusion that he was working hard and earning fame and wealth. As a matter of fact, he never earned anything, but he had very good spirits, and living in Tarbert is cheap.

From the moment that Lavender had come to the place, Johnny Eyre had made him his special companion. He had a great respect for a man who could shoot anything anywhere; and when he and Lavender came back together from a cruise, there was no use saying which had actually done the brilliant deeds the evidence of which was carried ashore. But Lavender, oddly enough, knew little about sailing, and Johnny was pleased to assume the airs of an instructor on this point; his only difficulty being that his pupil had more than the ordinary hardihood of an ignoramus, and was rather inclined to do reckless things even after he had sufficient skill to know that they were dangerous.

Lavender got into the small boat, taking his canvas with him, but leaving his easel in the fishing-smack. He pulled himself and Johnny Eyre ashore; they scrambled up the rocks and into the road, and then they went into the small white cottage in which Lavender lived. The picture was, for greater safety, left in Lavender’s bed-room, which already contained about a dozen canvases with sketches in various stages on them. Then he went out to his friend again.

“I’ve had a long day to-day, Johnny. I wish you’d go out with me; the excitement of a squall would clear one’s brain, I fancy.”

“Oh, I’ll go out if you like,” Eyre said, “but I shall take very good care to run in before the squall comes, if there’s any about. I don’t think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the South, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You don’t seem to care about shooting guillemots, Lavender?”

“Well, you see, potting a bird that is sitting on the water – ” said Lavender, with a shrug.

“Oh, it isn’t as easy as you might imagine. Of course you could kill them if you liked, but everybody ain’t such a swell as you are with a gun; and mind you, it’s uncommonly awkward to catch the-right moment for firing, when the bird goes bobbing up and down on the waves, disappearing altogether every second. I think it’s very good fun myself. It’s very exciting when you don’t know the moment the bird will dive, and whether you can afford to go any nearer. And as for shooting them on the water, you have to do that, for when do you get a chance of shooting them flying?”

“I don’t see much necessity for shooting them at any time,” said Lavender, as he and Eyre went down to the shore again; “but I am glad to see you get some amusement out of it. Have you got cartridges with you? Is your gun in the boat?”

“Yes. Come along. We’ll have a run out anyhow.”

When they had pulled out again to that cockle-shell craft with its stone ballast and big brown mainsail, the boy was sent ashore and the two companions set out by themselves. By this time, the sun had gone down, and a strange green twilight was shining over the sea. As they got farther out the dusky shores seemed to have a pale mist hanging around them, but there were no clouds on the hills, for a clear sky shone overhead, awaiting the coming of the stars. Strange indeed was the silence out here, broken only by the lapping of the water on the sides of the boat and the calling of birds in the distance. Far away the orange ray of a lighthouse began to quiver in the lambent dusk. The pale green light on the waves did not die out, but the shadows grew darker, so that Eyre, with his gun close at hand, could not make out his groups of guillemots, although he heard them calling all around. They had come out too late, indeed, for any such purpose.

Thither on those beautiful evenings, after his day’s work was over, Lavender was accustomed to come, either by himself or with his present companion. Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his solitude: he was invariably too eager to get a shot, his chief delight being to get to the bow, to let the boat drift for a while silently through the waves, so that she might come unawares on some flock of sea-birds. Lavender, sitting in the stern with the tiller in his hand, was really alone in this world of water and sky, with all the majesty of the night and the stars around him.

And on these occasions he used to sit and dream of the beautiful time long ago in Loch Roag, when nights such as these used to come over the Atlantic, and find Sheila and himself sailing on the peaceful waters, or seated high up on the rocks listening to the murmur of the tide. Here was the same strange silence, the same solemn and pale light in the sky, the same mystery of the moving plain all around them that seemed somehow to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad. Many a time his heart became so full of recollections that he had almost called aloud “Sheila! Sheila!” and waited for the sea and the sky to answer him with the sound of her voice. In these by-gone days he had pleased himself with the fancy that the girl was somehow the product of all the beautiful aspects of Nature around her. It was the sea that was in her eyes, it was the fair sunlight that shone in her face, the breath of her life was the breath of the moorland winds. He had written verses about this fancy of his; and he had conveyed them secretly to her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them. And many a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music, the music of irreparable loss. What did they say to him, now that he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out of the strange past?

For she and the clouds and the breezes were one,And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sunTo charm and bewilder all men with the graceThey combined and conferred on her wonderful face.

The sea lapped around the boat, the green light on the waves grew somehow less intense, in the silence the first of the stars came out, and somehow the time in which he had seen Sheila in these rare and magical colors seemed to become more and more remote:

An angel in passing looked downward and smiled,And carried to heaven the fame of the child;And then what the waves and the sky and the sunAnd the tremulous breath of the hills had begunRequired but one touch. To finish the whole,God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul.

And what had he done with this rare treasure intrusted to him? His companions, jesting among themselves, had said that he had committed a murder; in his own heart there was something at this moment of a murderer’s remorse.

Johnny Eyre uttered a short cry. Lavender looked ahead, and saw that some black object was disappearing among the waves.

“What a fright I got!” Eyre said, with a laugh. “I never saw the fellow come near, and he came up just below the bowsprit. He came keeling over as quiet as a mouse. I say, Lavender, I think we might as well cut it now; my eyes are quite bewildered with the light on the water. I couldn’t make out a kraken if it was coming across our bows.”

“Don’t be in a hurry, Johnny. We’ll put her out a bit, and then let her drift back. I want to tell you a story.”

“Oh, all right,” he said; and so they put her head around and soon she was lying over before the breeze, and slowly drawing away from those outlines of the coast which showed them where Tarbert harbor cut into the land. And then once more they let her drift, and young Eyre took a nip of whisky and settled himself so as to hear Lavender’s story, whatever it might be.

“You knew I was married?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why my wife did not come here?”

“Why should I wonder? Plenty of fellows have to spend half the year apart from their wives; the only thing in your case I couldn’t understand was the necessity for your doing it. For you know that’s all nonsense about your want of funds.”

“It isn’t nonsense, Johnny. But now, if you like, I will tell you why my wife has never come here.”

Then he told the story, out there under the stars, with no thought of interruption, for there was a world of moving water around them. It was the first time he had let any one into his confidence, and perhaps the darkness aided his revelations; but at any rate he went over all the old time, until it seemed to his companion that he was talking to himself, so aimless and desultory were his pathetic reminiscences. He called her Sheila, though Eyre had never heard her name. He spoke of her father as though Eyre must have known him. And yet this rambling series of confessions and self-reproaches and tender memories did form a certain sort of narrative, so that the young fellow sitting quietly in the boat there got a pretty fair notion of what had happened.

“You are an unlucky fellow,” he said to Lavender. “I never heard anything like that. But you know you must have exaggerated a good deal about it. I should like to hear her story. I am sure you could not have treated her like that.”

“God knows how I did, but the truth is just as I have told you; and although I was blind enough at the time, I can read the whole story now in letters of fire. I hope you will never have such a thing constantly before your eyes, Johnny.”

The lad was silent for some time, and then he said, rather timidly, “Do you think, Lavender, she knows how sorry you are?”

“If she did, what good would that do?” said the other.

“Women are awfully forgiving, you know,” Johnny said, in a hesitating fashion. “I – I don’t think it is quite fair not to give her a chance – a chance of – of being generous, you know. You know, I think the better a woman is, the more inclined she is to be charitable to other folks who mayn’t be quite up to the mark, you know; and you see, it ain’t every one who can claim to be always doing the right thing; and the next best thing to that is to be sorry for what you’ve done and try to do better. It’s rather cheeky, you know, my advising you, or trying to make you pluck up your spirits; but I’ll tell you what it is, Lavender, if I knew her well enough, I’d go straight to her to-morrow, and I’d put in a good word for you, and tell her some things she doesn’t know; and you’d see if she wouldn’t write you a letter, or even come and see you.”

“That is all nonsense, Johnny, though its very good of you to think of it. The mischief I have done isn’t to be put aside by the mere writing of a letter.”

“But it seems to me,” Johnny said, with some warmth, “that you are as unfair to her as to yourself in not giving her a chance. You don’t know how willing she may be to overlook everything that is past.”

“If she were, I am not fit to go near her. I couldn’t have the cheek to try, Johnny.”

“But what more can you be than sorry for what is past,” said the younger fellow, persistently. “And you don’t know how pleased it makes a good woman to give her the chance of forgiving anybody. And if we were all to set up for being archangels, and if there was to be no sort of getting back for us after we had made a slip, where should we be? And in place of going to her and making it all right, you start away for the Sound of Islay; and, by Jove! won’t you find out what spending a winter under these Jura mountains means! I have tried it and I know.”

A flash of lightning, somewhere down among the Arran hills, interrupted the speaker, and drew the attention of the two young men to the fact that in the East and Southeast the stars were no longer visible, while something of a brisk breeze had sprung up.

“This breeze will take us back splendidly,” Johnny said, getting ready again for the run to Tarbert.

He had scarcely spoken when Lavender called attention to a fishing-smack that was apparently making for the harbor. With all sails set she was sweeping by them like some black phantom across the dark plain of the sea. They could not make out the figures on board of her, but as she passed some one called out to them.

“What did he say?” Lavender asked.

“I don’t know,” his companion said; “but it was some sort of warning, I suppose. By Jove, Lavender, what is that?”

Behind them there was a strange hissing noise that the wind brought along to them, but nothing could be seen.

“Rain, isn’t it?” Lavender said.

“There never was rain like that,” his companion said. “That is a squall, and it will be here presently. We must haul down the sails. For God’s sake, look sharp, Lavender!”

There was certainly no time to lose, for the noise behind them was increasing and deepening into a roar, and the heavens had grown black overhead, so that the spars and ropes of the crank little boat could scarcely be made out. They had just got the sails down when the first gust of the squall struck the boat as with a blow of iron, and sent her staggering forward into the trough of the sea. Then all around them came the fury of the storm, and the cause of the sound they heard was apparent in the foaming water that was torn and scattered abroad by the gale. Up from the black Southeast came the fierce hurricane, sweeping everything before it, and hurling this creaking and straining boat about as if it were a cork. They could see little of the sea around them, but they could hear the awful noise of it, and they knew they were being swept along on those hurrying waves toward a coast which was invisible in the blackness of the night.

“Johnny, we’ll never make the harbor. I can’t see a light,” Lavender cried. “Hadn’t we better try to keep her up the loch?”

“We must make the harbor,” his companion said; “she can’t stand this much longer.”

Blinding torrents of rain were now being driven down by the force of the wind, so that all around them nothing was visible but a wild boiling and seething of clouds and waves. Eyre was up at the bow trying to catch some glimpse of the outlines of the coast, or to make out some light that would show them where the entrance to Tarbert harbor lay. If only some lurid shaft of lightning would pierce the gloom! for they knew that they were being driven headlong on an iron-bound coast; and, amid all the noise of the wind and the sea, they listened with a fear that had no words for the first roar of the waves along the rocks.

Suddenly Lavender heard a shrill scream, almost like the cry a hare gives when it finds the dog’s fangs in its neck; and at the same moment, amid all the darkness of the night, a still blacker object seemed to start out of the gloom right ahead of them. The boy had no time to shout any warning beyond that cry of despair, for with a wild crash the boat struck on the rocks, rose and struck again, and was then dashed over by a heavy sea, both of its occupants being thrown into the fierce swirls of foam that were dashing in and through the rocky channels. Strangely enough, they were thrown together; and Lavender, clinging to the sea-weed, instinctively laid hold of his companion just as the latter appeared to be slipping into the gulf beneath.

“Johnny,” he cried, “hold on! – hold on to me – or we shall both go in a minute.”

But the lad had no life left in him, and lay like a log there, while each wave that struck and rolled hissing and gurgling through the channels between the rocks seemed to drag at him and seek to suck him down into the darkness. With one despairing effort, Lavender struggled to get him farther up on the slippery sea-weed, and succeeded. But his success had lost him his own vantage ground, and he knew that he was going down into the whirling waters beneath, close by the broken boat that was still being dashed about by the waves.

CHAPTER XXIV.

“HAME FAIN WOULD I BE.”