A Princess of Thule

“Yes,” he stammered, as he shook hands with her and her father, “I often wished to come here. What a wild place it is! And have you lived here, Mrs. Lavender, all the time since you left London?”

“Yes, I have.”

Mackenzie was getting very uneasy. Every moment he expected Lavender would enter this confined little cabin; and was this the place for these two to meet, before a lot of acquaintances?

“Sheila,” he said, “it is too close for you here, and I am going to have a pipe with the gentlemen. Now if you wass a good lass you would go ashore again, and go up to the house, and say to Mairi that we will all come for luncheon at one o’clock, and she must get some fish up from Borvapost. Mr. Eyre, he will send a man ashore with you in his own boat, that is bigger than mine, and you will show him the creek to put into. Now go away, like a good lass, and we will be up ferry soon – oh, yes, we will be up directly at the house.”

“I am sure,” Sheila said to Johnny Eyre, “we can make you more comfortable up at the house than you are here, although it is a nice little cabin.” And then she turned to Mosenberg and said, “And we have a great many things to talk about.”

“Could she suspect?” Johnny asked himself, as he escorted her to the boat and pulled her in himself to the shore. Her face was pale, and her manner a trifle formal, otherwise she showed no sign. He watched her go along the stones till she reaches the path, then he pulled out to the Phœbe again and went down below to entertain his host of the previous evening.

Sheila walked slowly up the rude little path, taking little heed of the blustering wind and the hurrying clouds. Her eyes were bent down, her face was pale. When she got to the top of the hill, she looked, in a blank sort of way, all around the bleak moorland, but probably she did not expect to see any one there. Then she walked, with rather an uncertain step, into the house. She looked into the room, the door of which stood open. Her husband sat there, with his arms outstretched on the table and his head buried in his hands. He did not hear her approach, her footfall was so light, and it was with the same silent step she went into the room and knelt down beside him and put her hands and face on his knee, and said simply, “I beg for your forgiveness.”

He started up and looked at her as though she were some spirit, and his own face was haggard and strange. “Sheila,” he said in a low voice, laying his hand gently on her head, “It is I who ought to be there, and you know it. But I cannot meet your eyes. I am not going to ask for your forgiveness just yet; I have no right to expect it. All I want is this; if you will let me come and see you just as before we were married, and if you will give me a chance of winning your consent ever again, we can at least be friends until then. But why do you cry, Sheila? You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”

She rose and regarded him for a moment with her streaming eyes, and then, moved by the passionate entreaty of her face, and forgetting altogether the separation and time of trial he had proposed, he caught her to his bosom and kissed her forehead, and talked soothingly and caressingly to her as if she were a child.

“I cry,” she said, “because I am happy – because I believe all that time is over – because I think you will be kind to me. And I will be a good wife to you, and you will forgive me all that I have done.”

“You are heaping coals of fire on my head, Sheila,” he said, humbly. “You know I have nothing to forgive. As for you, I tell you I have no right to expect your forgiveness yet. But I think you will find out by-and-by that my repentance is not a mere momentary thing. I have had a long time to think over what has happened, and what I lost when I lost you, Sheila.”

“But you have found me again,” the girl said, pale a little, and glad to sit down on the nighest couch, while she held his hand and drew him toward her. “And now I must ask you for one thing.”

He was sitting beside her; he feared no longer to meet the look of those earnest, meek, affectionate eyes.

“This is it,” she said. “If we are to be together – not what we were, but something quite different from that – will you promise me never to say one word about what is past – to shut it out altogether – to forget it!”

“I cannot, Sheila,” he said. “Am I to have no chance of telling you how well I know how cruel I was to you – how sorry I am for it?”

“No,” she said, firmly. “If you have some things to regret, so have I; and what is the use of competing with each other as to which has the most forgiveness to ask for? Frank, dear, you will do this for me? You will promise never to speak one word about that time?”

How earnest the beautiful, sad face was! He could not withstand the entreaty of the piteous eyes. He said to her, abashed by the great love that she showed, and hopeless of making other reparation than obedience to her generous wish, “Let it be so, Sheila. I will never speak a word about it. You will see otherwise than in words whether I forget what is passed, and your goodness in letting it go. But, Sheila,” he added, with downcast face, “Johnny Eyre was here last night. He told me – ” He had to say no more. She took his hand and led him gently and silently out of the room.

Meanwhile the old King of Borva had been spending a somewhat anxious time down in the cabin of the Phœbe. Many and many a day had he been planning a method by which he might secure a meeting between Sheila and her husband, and now it had all come about without his aid, and in a manner which rendered him unable to take any precautions. He did not know but that some awkward accident might destroy all the chances of the affair. He knew that Lavender was on the island. He had frankly asked young Mosenberg as soon as Sheila had left the yacht.

“Oh, yes,” the lad said, “he went away into the island early this morning. I begged of him to go to your house; he did not answer. But I am sure he will, I know he will.”

“My Kott!” Mackenzie said, “and he has been wandering about the island all the morning, and he will be very faint and hungry, and a man is neffer in a good temper then for making up a quarrel. If I had known the last night, I could hef had dinner with you all here, and we should hef given him a good glass of whisky, and then it wass a good time to tek him up to the house.”

“Oh, you may depend on it, Mr. Mackenzie,” Johnny Eyre said, “that Lavender needs no stimulus of that sort to make him desire a reconciliation. No, I should think not. He has done nothing but brood over this affair since ever he left London; and I should not be surprised if you scarcely knew him, he is so altered. You would fancy he had lived ten years in the time.”

“Ay, ay,” Mackenzie said, not listening very attentively, and evidently thinking more of what might be happening elsewhere; “but I was thinking, gentlemen, it wass time for us to go ashore and go up to the house, and hef something to eat.”

“I thought you said one o’clock for luncheon, sir,” young Mosenberg said.

“One o’clock!” Mackenzie repeated, impatiently. “Who the teffle can wait till one o’clock, if you hef been walking about an island since the daylight, with nothing to eat or drink.”

Mr. Mackenzie forgot that it was not Lavender he had asked to lunch.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “Sheila hass had plenty of time to send down to Borvapost for some fish; and by the time you get up to the house you will see that it is ready.”

“Very well,” Johnny said, “we can go up to the house, anyway.”

He went up the companion, and he had scarcely got his head above the level of the bulwarks when he called back, “I say Mr. Mackenzie, here is Lavender on the shore, and your daughter is with him. Do they want to come on board, do you think? Or do they want us to go ashore?”

Mackenzie uttered a few phrases in Gaelic, and got up on deck instantly. There, sure enough, was Sheila, with her hand on her husband’s arm, both looking toward the yacht. The wind was blowing too strong for them to call. Mackenzie wanted himself to pull in for them, but this was overruled, and Pate was despatched.

An awkward pause ensued. The three standing on deck were sorely perplexed as to the forthcoming interview, and as to what they should do. Were they to rejoice over a reconciliation, or ignore the fact altogether and simply treat Sheila as Mrs. Lavender? Her father, indeed, fearing that Sheila would be strangely excited, and would probably burst into tears, wondered what he could get to scold her about.

Fortunately, an incident partly ludicrous broke the awkwardness of their arrival. The getting on deck was a matter of some little difficulty; in the scuffle Sheila’s small hat, with its snow-white feather, got unloosed somehow, and the next minute it was whirled away by the wind into the sea. Pate could not be sent after it just at the moment, and it was rapidly drifting away to leeward, when Johnny Eyre, with a laugh and a “Here goes!” plunged in after the white feather that was dipping and rising in the waves like a sea-gull. Sheila uttered a slight cry, and caught her husband’s arm. But there was not much danger. Johnny was an expert swimmer, and in a few minutes he was seen to be making his way backward with one arm, while in the other hand he held Sheila’s hat. Then Pate had by this time got the small boat around to leeward, and very shortly after Johnny, dripping like a Newfoundland dog, came on deck and presented the hat to Sheila, amidst a vast deal of laughter.

“I am so sorry,” she said; “but you must change your clothes quickly. I hope you will have no harm from it.”

“Not I,” he said; “but my beautiful white decks have got rather into a mess. I am glad you saw them while they were dry, Mrs. Lavender. Now I am going below to make myself a swell, for we’re all going to have luncheon on shore, ain’t we?”

Johnny went below very well pleased with himself. He had called her Mrs. Lavender without wincing. He had got over all the awkwardness of a second introduction by the happy notion of plunging after the hat. He had to confess, however, that the temperature of the sea was not just what he would have preferred for a morning bath.

By and by he made his appearance in his best suit of blue and brass buttons, and asked Mrs. Lavender if she would now come down and see the cabin.

“I think you want a good glass of whisky,” old Mackenzie said, as they all went below; “the water it is ferry cold just now.”

“Yes,” Johnny said, blushing, “we shall all celebrate the capture of the hat.”

It was the capture of the hat, then, that was to be celebrated by this friendly ceremony. Perhaps it was, but there was no mirth now on Sheila’s face.

“And you will drink first, Sheila,” her father said, almost solemnly, “and you will drink to your husband’s health.”

Sheila took the glass of raw whisky in her hand, and looked around timidly. “I cannot drink this, papa,” she said. “If you will let me – ”

“You will drink that glass to your husband’s health, Sheila,” old Mackenzie said, with unusual severity.

“She shall do nothing of the sort if she doesn’t like it?” Johnny Eyre cried, suddenly, not caring whether it was the wrath of old Mackenzie or of the devil that he was braving; and forthwith he took the glass out of Sheila’s hand and threw the whisky on the floor. Then he pulled out a champagne bottle from a basket and said, “This is what Mrs. Lavender will drink.”

Mackenzie looked staggered for a moment; he had never been so braved before. But he was not in a quarrelsome mood on such an occasion; so he burst into a loud laugh and cried, “Well, did ever any man see the like o’ that? Good whisky – ferry good whisky – and flung on the floor as if it was water, and as if there wass no one in the boat that would hef drunk it! But no matter, Mr. Eyre, no matter; the lass will drink whatever you give her, for she’s a good lass; and if we have all to drink champagne, that is no matter, too, but there is a man or two up on deck that would not like to know the whisky was spoiled.”

“Oh,” Johnny said, “there is still a drop left for them. And this is what you must drink, Mrs. Lavender.”

Lavender had sat down in a corner of the cabin, his eyes averted. When he heard Sheila’s name mentioned he looked up, and she came forward to him. She said in her simple way, “I drink this to you, my dear husband;” and at the same moment the old King of Borva came forward and held out his hand, and said, “Yes, and by Kott, I drink to your health, too, with ferry good will!”

Lavender started to his feet. “Wait a bit, Mr. Mackenzie. I have got something to say to you before you ought to shake my hand.”

But Sheila interposed quickly. She put her hand on his arm and looked into his face. “You will keep your promise to me,” she said; and that was an end of the matter. The two men shook hands; there was nothing said between them, then or again, of what was over and gone.

They had a pleasant enough luncheon together, up in that quaint room with the Tyrolese pictures on the wall, and Duncan for once respected old Mackenzie’s threats as to what would happen if he called Sheila anything but Mrs. Lavender before these strangers. For some time Lavender sat almost silent, and answered Sheila, who continuously talked to him, in little else than monosyllables. But he looked at her a great deal, sometimes in a wistful sort of way, as if he were trying to recall the various fancies her face used to produce in his imagination.

“Why do you look at me so?” she said to him in an undertone.

“Because I have made a new friend,” he said.

But when Mackenzie began to talk of the wonders of the island and the seas around it and to beg the young yachtsmen to prolong their stay, Lavender joined with a will in that conversation, and added his entreaties.

“Then you are going to stay?” Johnny Eyre said, looking up.

“Oh, yes,” he answered, as if the alternative of going back with them had not presented itself to him. “For one thing, I have got to look out for a place where I can build a house. That is what I mean to do with my savings just at present; and if you would come with me, Johnny, and have a prowl around the island to find out some pretty little bay with a good anchorage in it – for you know I am going to steal that Maighdean-mhara from Mr. Mackenzie – then we can begin and make ourselves architects, and plan out the place that is to be. And then some day – ”

Mackenzie had been sitting in mute astonishment, but he suddenly broke in upon his son-in-law. “On this island? No, by Kott, you will not do that! On this island? And with all the people at Stornoway? Hoots, no! that will neffer do. Sheila she has no one to speak to on this island, as a young lass should hef; and you, what would you do yourself in the bad weather? But there is Stornoway. Oh, yes, that is a fine big place, and many people you will get to know there, and you will hef the newspapers and the letters at once: and there will be always boats there that you can go to Oban, to Greenock, to Glasgow – anywhere in the world – whenever you hef a mind to do that; and then when you go to London, as you will hef to go many times, there will be plenty there to look after your house when it is shut up, and keep the rain out, and the paint and the paper good, more as could be done on this island. On this island! – how would you live on this island?”

The old King of Borva spoke quite impatiently and contemptuously of the place. You would have thought his life on this island was a species of penal servitude, and that he dwelt in his solitary house only to think with a vain longing of the glories and delights of Stornoway. Lavender knew well what prompted these scornful comments on Borva. The old man was afraid that the island would really be too dull for Sheila and her husband, and that, whereas the easy compromise of Stornoway might be practicable, to set up house in Borva might lead them to abandon the North altogether.

“From what I have heard of it from Mr. Lavender,” Johnny said with a laugh, “I don’t think this island such a dreadful place; and I’m hanged if I have found it so, so far.”

“But you will know nothing about it – nothing whatever,” said Mackenzie petulantly. “You do not know the bad weather, when you cannot go down the loch to Callernish, and you might have to go to London just then.”

“Well, I suppose London could wait,” Johnny said.

Mackenzie began to get angry with this young man. “You hef not been to Stornoway,” he said, severely.

“No, I haven’t,” Johnny replied with much coolness, “and I don’t hanker after it. I get plenty of town life in London; and when I come up to the sea and the islands, I’d rather pitch my tent with you, sir, than live in Stornoway.”

“Oh, but you don’t know, Johnny, how fine a place Stornoway is,” Lavender said, hastily, for he saw the old man was beginning to get vexed. “Stornoway is a beautiful little town, and it is on the sea, too.”

“And it hass fine houses, and ferry many people, and ferry good society whatever,” Mackenzie added with some touch of indignation.

“But you see, this is how it stands, Mr. Mackenzie,” Lavender put in humbly. “We should have to go to London from time to time, and we should then get quite enough of city life, and you might find an occasional trip with us not a bad thing. But up here I should have to look on my house as a sort of workshop. Now, with all respect to Stornoway, you must admit that the coast about here is a little more picturesque. Besides, there’s another thing. It would be rather more difficult at Stornoway to take a rod or a gun out of a morning. Then there would be callers bothering you at your work. Then Sheila would have far less liberty in going about by herself.”

“Eighthly and tenthly, you’ve made up your mind to have a house here,” cried Johnny Eyre, with a loud laugh.

“Sheila says she would like to have a billiard-room,” her husband continued. “Where could you get that in Stornoway?”

“And you must have a large room for a piano, to sing in and play in,” the young Jew boy said, looking at Sheila.

“I should think a one-storied house, with a large verandah, would be the best sort of thing,” Lavender said, “both for the sun and the rain; and then one could have one’s easel outside, you know. Suppose we all go for a walk around the shore by-and-by. There is too much of a breeze to take the Phœbe down the loch.”

So the King of Borva was quietly overruled, and his dominions invaded in spite of himself. Sheila could not go out with the gentlemen just then; she was to follow in about an hour’s time. Meanwhile they buttoned their coats, pulled down their caps tight, and set out to face the grey skies and the Wintry wind. Just as they were passing away from the house, Mackenzie, who was walking in front with Lavender, said in a cautious sort of way, “You will want a deal of money to build this house you wass speaking about, for it will hef to be all stone and iron, and very strong whatever, or else it will be a plague to you from the one year to the next with the rain getting in.”

“Oh, yes,” Lavender said, “it will have to be done well once for all; and what with rooms big enough to paint in and play billiards in, and also a bedroom or two for friends who may come to stay with us, it will be an expensive business. But I have been very lucky, Mr. Mackenzie. It isn’t the money I have, but the commissions I am offered, that warrant my going in for this house. I’ll tell you about all these things afterward. In the meantime I shall have twenty-four hundred pounds, or thereabouts, in a couple of months.”

“But you hef more than that now,” Mackenzie said, gravely. “This is what I wass going to tell you. The money that your aunt left, that is yours, every penny of it – oh, yes, every penny and every farthing of it is yours, sure enough. For it wass Mr. Ingram hass told me all about it; and the old lady, she wanted him to take care of the money for Sheila; but what wass the good of the money to Sheila? My lass, she will hef plenty of money of her own; and I, wanted her to hef nothing to do with what Mr. Ingram said; but it wass all no use, and there iss the money now for you and for Sheila, every penny and every farthing of it.”

Mackenzie ended by talking in an injured way, as if this business had seriously increased his troubles.

“But you know,” Lavender said, with amazement – you know as well as I do that this money was definitely left to Ingram, and – you may believe me or not – I was precious glad of it when I heard it. Of course it would have been of more use to him if he had not been about to marry this American lady.”

“Oh, you hef heard that, then?” Mackenzie said.

“Mosenberg brought me the news. But are you quite sure about this affair? Don’t you think this is merely a trick of Ingram’s to enable him to give the money to Sheila? That would be very like him. I know him of old.”

“Well, I cannot help it if a man will tell lies,” said Mackenzie. “But that is what he says is true. And he will not touch the money – indeed, he will hef plenty, as you say. But there it is for Sheila and you, and you will be able to build whatever house you like. And if you was thinking of having a bigger boat than the Maighdean-mhara – ” the old man suggested.

Lavender jumped at that notion directly. “What if we could get a yacht big enough to cruise anywhere in the Summer months?” he said. “We might bring a party of people all the way from the Thames to Loch Roag, and cast anchor opposite Sheila’s house. Fancy Ingram and his wife coming up like that in the Autumn; and I know you could go over to Sir James, and get us some shooting.”

Mackenzie laughed grimly: “We will see – we will see about that. I think there will be no great difficulty about getting a deer or two for you, and as for the salmon, there will be one or two left in the White Water. Oh yes, we will have a little shooting and a little fishing for any of your friends. And as for the boat, it will be ferry difficult to get a good big boat for such a purpose without you was planning and building one yourself; and that will be better, I think, for the yachts nowadays they are all built for the racing, and you will have a beat fifty tons, sixty tons, seventy tons, that hass no room in her below, but is nothing but a big heap of canvas and spars. But if you was wanting a good, steady boat, with good cabins below for the leddies, and a good saloon that you could have your dinner in all at once, then you will maybe come down with me to a shipbuilder I know in Glasgow – oh, he is a ferry good man – and we will see what can be done. There is a gentleman now in Dunoon – and they say he is a ferry great artist, too – and he hass a schooner of sixty tons that I hef been in myself, and it wass just like a steamer below for the comfort of it. And when the boat is ready I will get you ferry good sailors for her, that will know every bit of the coast from Loch Indaal to the Butt of Lewis, and I will see that they are ferry cheap for you, for I hef plenty of work for them in the Winter. But I was no saying yet,” the old man added, “that you were right about coming to live in Borva. Stornoway is a good place to live in; and it is a fine harbor for repairs, if the boat was wanting repairs.”

“If she were, couldn’t we send her around to Stornoway?”

“But the people in Stornoway – it iss the people in Stornoway,” said Mackenzie, who was not going to give in without a grumble.

Well, they did not fix on a site for the house that afternoon. Sheila did not make her appearance. Lavender kept continually turning and looking over the long undulations of rock and moorland; and at length he said, “Look here, Johnny, would you mind going on by yourselves? I think I shall walk back to the house.”

“What is keeping that foolish girl?” her father said, impatiently. “It is something about the dinner now, as if any one was particular about a dinner in an island like this, where you can expect nothing. But at Stornoway – oh, yes, they hef many things there.”

“But I want you to come and dine with us on board the Phœbe to-night, sir,” Johnny said. “It will be rather a lark, mind you; we make up a tight fit in that cabin. I wonder if Mrs. Lavender would venture; do you think she would, sir?”

“Oh, no, not this evening, anyway,” said her father; “for I know she will expect you all to be up at the house this evening; and what would be the use of tumbling about in the bay when you can be in a house? But it is very kind of you. Oh, yes, to-morrow night, then, we will go down to the boat, but this night I know Sheila will be ferry sorry if you do not come to the house.”