A Princess of Thule

“That is true enough, Neil, and I fancy the clouds are beginning to lift. And there they come with the pony.”

Neil directed his glass toward a small group that appeared to be coming up the side of the valley below them, and that was still at some considerable distance.

“Cosh bless me!” he cried, “what is that? There iss two strangers – oh yes, indeed, and mirover – and there is one of them on the pony.”

Lavender’s heart leaped within him. If they were strangers they were coming to see him, and how long was it since he had seen the face of any of his old friends and companions? It seemed to him years.

“Is it a man or a woman on the pony, Neil?” he asked hurriedly, with some wild fancy flashing through his brain. “Give me the glass.”

“Oh, it is a man,” said Neil, handing over the glass, “What would a woman be doing up sa hills on a morning like this?”

The small party below came up out of the gray mist, and Lavender in the distance heard a long view-halloo.

“Cott tam them!” said Neil, at a venture. “There is not a deer on Benan Cabrach that will not hear them.”

“But if these strangers are coming to see me, I fear we must leave the deer alone, Neil.”

“Ferry well, sir, ferry well, sir; it is a bad day whatever, and it is not many strangers will come to Jura. I suppose they hef come to Port Ascaig, and taken the ferry across the sound.”

“I am going to meet them on chance,” Lavender said; and set off along the side of the deep valley, leaving Neil with the dogs and the rifles.

“Hillo, Johnny!” he cried, in amazement, when he came upon the advancing group. “And you too, Mosenberg! By Jove, how did you ever get here?”

There was an abundance of handshaking and incoherent questions when young Mosenberg jumped down on the wet heather, and the three friends had actually met. Lavender scarcely knew what to say, these two faces were so strange, and yet so familiar – their appearance there was so unexpected, his pleasure so great.

“I can’t believe my eyes yet, Johnny. Why did you bring him here? Don’t you know what you’ll have to put up with in this place? Well, this does do a fellow’s heart good! I am awfully pleased to see you, and it is very kind of you.”

“But I am very cold,” the handsome Jew boy said, swinging his arms and stamping his feet. “Wet boats, wet carts, wet roads, wet saddles, and everywhere cold, cold, cold.”

“And he won’t drink whisky; so what is he to expect?” Johnny Eyre said.

“Come along up to a little hut here,” Lavender said, “and we’ll try to get a fire lit. And I have some brandy there.”

“And you have plenty of water to mix with it,” said the boy, looking mournfully around. “Very good. Let us have the fire and the warm drink; and then – you know the story of the music that was frozen in the trumpet, and that all came out when it was thawed at a fire? When we get warm we have very great news to tell you – oh, very great news indeed.”

“I don’t want any news – I want your company. Come along, like good fellows, and leave the news for afterward. The men are going on with a pony to fetch a stag that has been shot; they won’t be back for an hour, I suppose, at the soonest. This is the sheiling up here where the brandy is secreted. Now, Neil, help us to get up a blaze. If any of you have newspapers, letters, or anything that will set a few sticks on fire – ”

“I have a box of wax matches,” Johnny said, “and I know how to light a peat-fire better than any man in the country.”

He was not very successful at first, for the peats were a trifle damp; but in the end he conquered, and a very fair blaze was produced, although the smoke that had filled the sheiling had nearly blinded Mosenberg’s eyes. Then Lavender produced a small tin pot and a solitary tumbler, and they boiled some water and lit their pipes, and made themselves seats of peat around the fire. All the while a brisk conversation was going on, some portions of which astonished Lavender considerably.

For months back, indeed, he had almost cut himself off from the civilized world. His address was known to one or two persons, and sometimes they sent him a letter; but he was a bad correspondent. The news of his aunt’s death did not reach him till a fortnight after the funeral, and then it was by a singular chance that he noticed it in the columns of an old newspaper. “That is the only thing I regret about coming away,” he was saying to those two friends of his. “I should like to have seen the old woman before she died; she was very kind to me.”

“Well,” said Johnny Eyre, with a shake of the head, “that is all very well; but a mere outsider like myself – you see, it looks to me a little unnatural that she should go and leave her money to a mere friend, and not to her own relations.”

“I am very glad she did,” Lavender said. “I had as good as asked her to do it long before. And Ted Ingram will make a better use of it than I ever did.”

“It is all very well for you to say so now, after all this fuss about those two pictures; but suppose she had left you to starve?”

“Never mind suppositions,” Lavender said, to get rid of the subject. “Tell me, Mosenberg, how is that overture of yours getting on?”

“It is nearly finished,” said the lad, with a flush of pleasure, “and I have shown it in rough to two or three good friends, and – shall I tell you? – it may be performed at the Crystal Palace. But that is a chance. And the fate of it, that is also a chance. But you – you have succeeded all at once, and brilliantly, and all the world is talking of you and yet you go away among mountains, and live in the cold and wet, and you might as well be dead.”

“What an ungrateful boy it is!” Lavender cried. “Here you have a comfortable fire, and hot brandy-and-water, and biscuits, and cigars if you wish; and you talk about people wishing to leave these things and die! Don’t you know that in half an hour’s time you will see that pony come back with a deer – a royal hart – slung across it; and won’t you be proud when MacDougall takes you out and gives you a chance of driving home such a prize? Then you will carry the horns back to London, and you will have them put up, and you will discourse to your friends of the span and the pearls of the antlers and the crockets. To-night after supper you will see the horns and the head brought into the room, and if you fancy that you yourself shot the stag, you will see that this life among the hills has its compensations.”

“It is a very cold life,” the lad said, passing his hands over the fire.

“That is because you won’t drink anything,” said Johnny Eyre, against whom no such charge could be wrought. “And don’t you know that the drinking of whisky is a provision invented by Nature to guard human beings like you and me from cold and wet? You are flying in the face of Providence if you don’t drink whisky among the Scotch hills.”

“And have you people to talk to?” said Mosenberg, looking at Lavender with a vague wonder, for he could not understand why any man could choose such a life.

“Not many.”

“What do you do on the long evenings when you are by yourself?”

“Well, it isn’t very cheerful, but it does a man good service sometimes to be alone for a time; it lets him find himself out.”

“You ought to be up in London, to hear all the praise of the people about your two pictures. Every one is talking of them; the newspapers, too. Have you seen the newspapers?”

“One or two. But all I know of these two pictures is derived from offers forwarded me by the secretary at the exhibition rooms. I was surprised when I got them at first. But never mind them. Tell me more about the people one used to know. What about Ingram now? Has he cut the Board of Trade? Does he drive in the Park? Is he still in his rooms in Sloane Street?”

“Then you have had no letters from him?” Mosenberg said, with some surprise.

“No. Probably he does not know where I am. In any case – ”

“But he is going to be married,” Mosenberg cried. “You did not know that. And to Mrs. Lorraine.”

“You don’t say so? Why, he used to hate her; but that was before he knew her. To Mrs. Lorraine?”

“Yes. And it is amusing. She is so proud of him. And if he speaks at the table she will turn away from you, as if you were not worth listening to, and have all her attention for him. And whatever is his opinion, she will defend that, and you must not disagree with her. Oh, it is very amusing!” and the lad laughed and shook back his curls.

“It is an odd thing,” Lavender said: “but many a time, long before Ingram ever saw Mrs. Lorraine, I used to imagine these two married. I knew she was just the sort of clever, independent, clear-headed woman to see Ingram’s strong points, and rate them at their proper value. But I never expected anything of the sort, of course; for I had always a notion that some day or other he would be led into marrying some pretty, gentle, soft-headed young thing, whom he would have to take through life in a protecting sort of way, and who would never be a real companion for him. So he is to marry Mrs. Lorraine, after all. Well, he won’t become a man of fashion, despite all his money. He is sure to start a yacht, for one thing. And they will travel a deal. I suppose I must write and congratulate him.”

“I met them on the day I went to see your picture,” Mosenberg said. “Mrs. Lorraine was looking at it a long time, and at last she came back and said, ‘The sea in that picture makes me feel cold.’ That was a compliment, was it not? Only you cannot get a good view very often, for the people will not stand back from the pictures. But every one asks why you do not keep these two over for the Academy.”

“I shall have other two for the Academy, I hope.”

“Commissions?” Johnny asked with a practical air.

“No. I have had some offers, but I prefer to leave the thing open. But you have not told me how you got here yet,” Lavender added, continually breaking away from the subject of the pictures.

“In the Phœbe,” Eyre said.

“Is she in the bay?”

“Oh, no. We had to leave her at Port Ellen to get a few small repairs done, and Mosenberg and I came on by road to Port Ascaig. Mind you, she was quite small enough to come round the Mull at this time of year.”

“I should think so. What’s your crew?”

“Two men and a lad, besides Mosenberg and myself; and I can tell you we had our hands full sometimes.”

“You’ve given up open boats with stone ballast, now,” Lavender said with a laugh.

“Rather. But it was no laughing matter,” Eyre added, with a sudden gravity coming over his face. “It was the narrowest squeak I ever had, and I don’t know now how I clung on to that place till the day broke. When I came to myself and called out for you, I never expected to hear you answer; and in the darkness, by Jove! your voice sounded like the voice of a ghost. How you managed to drag me so far up that sea-weed I can’t imagine; and then the dipping down and under the boat – ”

“It was that dip down that saved me,” Lavender said. “It brought me to, and made me scramble like a rat up the other side as soon as I felt my hands on the rock again. It was a narrow squeak, as you say, Johnny. Do you remember how black the place looked when the first light began to show in the sky? and how we kept each other awake by calling? and how you called ‘Hurrah!’ when we heard Donald? and how strange it was to find ourselves so near the mouth of the harbor, after all? During the night I fancied we must have been thrown on Battle Island, you know.”

“I do not like to hear about that,” young Mosenberg said. “And always, if the wind came on strong or if the skies grew black, Eyre would tell me all the story over again when we were in the boat coming down by Arran and Cantyre. Let us go out and see if they come with the deer. Has the rain stopped?”

At this moment, indeed, sounds of the approaching party were heard, and when Lavender and his friends went to the door the pony, with the deer slung on to him, was just coming up. It was a sufficiently picturesque sight – the rude little sheiling with its peat fire, the brown and wiry gillies, the slain deer roped on to the pony, and all around the wild magnificence of hill and valley clothed in moving mists. The rain had indeed cleared off, but these pale white fogs still clung around the mountains and rendered the valleys vague, and Lavender informed Neil that he would make no further effort that day; he gave the men a glass of whisky all round, and then, with his friends, he proceeded to make his way down to the small white cottage fronting the Sound of Islay, which had been his home for months back.

Just before setting off, however, he managed to take young Mosenberg aside for a moment. “I suppose,” he said, with his eyes cast down – “I suppose you heard something from Ingram of – of Sheila?”

“Yes,” said the lad, rather bashfully. “Ingram had heard from her. She was still in Lewis.”

“And well?”

“I think so – yes,” said Mosenberg; and then he added, with some hesitation, “I should like to speak to you about it when we have the opportunity. There were some things that Mr. Ingram said – I am sure he would like you to know them.”

“There was no message to me?” Lavender asked, in a low voice.

“From her? No. But it was the opinion of Mr. Ingram – ”

“Oh, never mind that, Mosenberg,” said the other, turning away wearily. “I suppose you won’t find it too fatiguing to walk from here back? It will warm you, you know, and the old woman down there will get you something to eat. You may make it luncheon or dinner, as you like, for it will be nearly two by the time you get down. Then you can go for a prowl around the coast: if it does not rain I shall be working as long as there is daylight. Then we can have a dinner and supper combined in the evening. You will get venison and whisky.”

“Don’t you ever have anything else?”

“Oh, yes, the venison will be in honor of you: I generally have mutton and whisky.”

“Look here, Lavender,” the lad said, with considerable confusion, “the fact is, Eyre and I – we brought you a few things in the Phœbe – a little wine, you know, and some such things. To-morrow, if you could get a passenger to go down to Port Ellen – but no. I suppose we must go and work the boat up the sound.”

“If you do that, I must go with you,” Lavender said, “for the chances are that your skipper doesn’t know the currents in the sound; and they are rather peculiar, I can tell you. So Johnny and you have brought me some wine? I wish we had it now, to celebrate your arrival, for I am afraid I can offer you nothing but whisky.”

The old Highland woman who had charge of the odd little cottage in which Lavender lived was put into a state of violent consternation by the arrival of these two strangers; but as Lavender said he would sleep on a couple of chairs and give his bed to Mosenberg and the sofa to Eyre, and as Mosenberg declared that the house was a marvel of neatness and comfort, and as Johnny assured her that he had frequently slept in a herring-barrel, she grew gradually pacified. There was a little difficulty about plates and knives and forks at luncheon, which consisted of cold mutton and two bottles of ale that had somehow been overlooked; but all these minor inconveniences were soon smoothed over, and then Lavender, carrying his canvas under his arm and a portable easel over his shoulder, went down to the shore, bade his companions good-bye for a couple of hours, and left them to explore the winding and rocky coast of Jura.

In the evening they had dinner in a small parlor, which was pretty well filled with a chest of drawers, a sofa and a series of large canvases. There was a peat-fire burning in the grate and two candles on the table, but the small room did not get oppressively hot, for each time the door was opened a draught of cold sea-air rushed in from the passage, sometimes blowing out one of the candles, but always sweetening the atmosphere. Then Johnny had some fine tobacco with him, and Mosenberg had brought Lavender a present of a meerschaum pipe, and presently a small kettle of hot water was put in requisition, and the friends drew round the fire.

“Well, it is good of you to come and see a fellow like this,” Lavender said, with a very apparent and hearty gratitude in his face. “I can scarcely believe my eyes that it is true. And can you make any stay, Johnny? Have you brought your colors with you?”

“Oh, no; I don’t mean to work,” Johnny said. “I have always had a fancy for a mid-winter cruise. It’s a hardening sort of thing, you know. You soon get used to it, don’t you, Mosenberg?” And Johnny grinned.

“Not yet – I may afterward,” said the lad. “But at present this is more comfortable than being on deck at night when it rains and you know not where you are going.”

“But that was only your own perversity. You might just as well have stopped in the cabin, and played that cornopean, and made yourself warm and comfortable. Really, Lavender, it’s very good fun, and if you only watch for decent weather you can go anywhere. Fancy our coming around the Mull with the Phœbe yesterday! And we had quite a pleasant trip across to Islay.”

“And where do you propose to go after leaving Jura?” Lavender asked.

“Well, you know the main object of our cruise was to come and see you. But if you care to come with us for a few days, we will go wherever you like.”

“If you are going farther North, I must go with you,” Lavender said, “for you are bound to drown yourself some day, Johnny, if some one doesn’t take care of you.”

There was no deep design in this project of Johnny’s, but he had had a vague impression that Lavender might like to go North, if only to have a passing glimpse at the island he used to know.

“One of my fellows is well acquainted with the Hebrides,” he said. “If you don’t think it too much of a risk, I should like it myself, for those Northern islands must look uncommonly wild and savage in Winter, and one likes to have new experiences. Fancy, Mosenberg, what material you will get for your next piece; it will be full of storms and seas and thunder. You know how the wind whistles through the overture to the Diamants de la Couronne.”

“It will whistle through us,” said the boy, with an anticipatory shiver, “but I do not mind the wind if it is not wet. It is the wet that makes a boat so disagreeable. Everything is so cold and clammy; you can touch nothing, and when you put your head up in the morning, pah! a dash of rain and mist and salt water altogether gives you a shock.”

“What made you come around the Mull, Johnny, instead of cutting through the Crinan?” Lavender asked of his friend.

“Well,” said the youth, modestly, “nothing, except that two or three men said we couldn’t do it.”

“I thought so,” Lavender said. “And I see I must go with you, Johnny. You must play no more of these tricks. You must watch your time, and run her quietly up the Sound of Jura to Crinan; and watch again, and get her up to Oban; and watch again, and get her up to Loch Sligachan. Then you may consider. It is quite possible you may have fine, clear weather if there is a moderate Northeast wind blowing – ”

“A Northeast wind!” Mosenberg cried.

“Yes,” Lavender replied, confidently, for he had not forgotten what Sheila used to teach him, “that is your only chance. If you have been living in fog and rain for a fortnight you will never forget your gratitude to a Northeaster when it suddenly sets in to lift the clouds and show you a bit of blue sky. But it may knock us about a bit in crossing the Minch.”

“We have come around the Mull, and we can go anywhere,” Johnny said. “I’d back the Phœbe to take you safely to the West Indies; wouldn’t you, Mosenberg?”

“Oh, no,” the boy said. “I would back her to take you, not to take me.”

Two or three days thereafter the Phœbe was brought up the sound from Port Ellen, and such things as were meant as a present to Lavender were landed. Then the three friends embarked, for the weather had cleared considerably, and there was indeed, when they set out, a pale wintry sunshine gleaming on the sea and on the white deck and spars of the handsome little cutter which Johnny commanded. The Phœbe was certainly a great improvement on the crank craft in which he used to adventure his life on Loch Fyne; she was big enough, indeed, to give plenty of work to everybody on board of her; and when she had once got into harbor and things put to rights, her chief stateroom proved a jolly and comfortable little place enough. They had some pleasant evenings in this way after the work of the day was over, when the swinging lamps shone down on the table that was furnished with glasses, bottles, cigars and cards. Johnny was very proud of being in command and of his exploit in doubling the Mull. He was continually consulting charts and compasses, and going on deck to communicate his last opinion to his skipper. Mosenberg, too, was getting better accustomed to the hardships of yachting, and learning how to secure a fair amount of comfort. Lavender never said that he wished to go near Lewis, but there was a tacit understanding that their voyage should tend in that direction.

They had a little rough weather on reaching Skye, and in consequence remained in harbor a couple of days. At the end of that time a happy opportunity presented itself of cutting across the Little Minch – the Great Minch was considered a trifle risky – to Loch Maddy in North Uist. They were now in the Western Islands, and strange indeed was the appearance which the bleak region presented at this time of the year – the lonely coast, the multitudes of wild fowl, the half-savage, wondering inhabitants, the treeless wastes and desolate rocks. What these remote and melancholy islands might have looked like in fog and misty rain could only be imagined, however, for, fortunately, the longed-for Northeaster had set in, and there were wan glimmerings of sunshine across the sea and the solitary shores. They remained in Loch Maddy but a single day, and then, still favored by a brisk Northeast breeze, made their way through the Sound of Harris and got to leeward of the conjoint island of Harris and Lewis. There, indeed, were the great mountains which Lavender had seen many a time from the North, and now they were close at hand, and dark and forbidding. The days were brief at this time, and they were glad to put into Loch Resort, which Lavender had once seen in company with old Mackenzie when they had come into the neighborhood on a salmon-fishing excursion.

The Phœbe was at her anchorage, the clatter on deck over, and Johnny came below to see what sort of repast could be got for the evening. It was not a very grand meal, but he said: “I propose that we have a bottle of champagne to celebrate our arrival at the island of Lewis. Did you ever see anything more successfully done? And now, if this wind continues, we can creep up to-morrow to Loch Roag, Lavender, if you would like to have a look at it.”

For a moment the color forsook Lavender’s face. “No, thank you, Johnny,” he was about to say, when his friend interrupted him: “Look here, Lavender; I know you would like to see the place, and you can do it easily without being seen. No one knows me. When we anchor in the bay, I suppose Mr. Mackenzie – as is the hospitable and praiseworthy custom in these parts – will send a message to the yacht and ask us to dine with him. I, at any rate, can go up and call on him, and make excuses for you; and then I could tell you, you know – ” Johnny hesitated.

“Would you do that for me, Johnny?” Lavender said. “Well, you are a good fellow!”

“Oh,” Johnny said lightly, “it’s a capital adventure for me; and perhaps I could ask Mackenzie – Mr. Mackenzie; I beg your pardon – to let me have two or three clay pipes, for this briar-root is rapidly going to the devil.”

“He will give you anything he has in the house; you never saw such a hospitable fellow, Johnny. But you must take great care what you do.”

“You must trust to me. In the meantime let’s see what Pate knows about Loch Roag.”

Johnny called down his skipper, a bluff, short, red-faced man, who presently appeared, his cap in his hand.

“Will you have a glass of champagne, Pate?”

“Oh, ay, sir,” he said, not very eagerly.

“Would you rather have a glass of whisky?”

“Well, sir,” Pate said, in accents that showed that his Highland pronunciation had been corrupted by many years’ residence in Greenock, “I was thinkin’ the whisky was a wee thing better for ye on a cauld nicht.”

“Here you are, then! Now, tell me, do you know Loch Roag?”