Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873

When I left the guard-house that night it was already long after dark: the last trains from Monte Carlo were due within half an hour of each other. I hastened to the station. Almost at its entrance I met an old friend whose face, I noticed, was deadly pale. He was a man of considerable influence, and I at once concluded that he had received bad news from the seat of war. I asked eagerly what was the matter. "Can you keep a secret?" "Of course I can," I answered. "If you divulge this one it may have serious consequences for yourself," he returned gravely. "I promise to keep silent." "Well, then, there has been a fight before Sedan. Napoleon III. has laid his sword at the feet of William of Prussia." "My God!" I cried, "is it possible?" "It is but too true. I have just seen a ciphered telegram which came viâ Cologne and Turin. It is not known in Nice, and will not be so for hours yet. Do not say a word about it: if you do it may cost you dear. No one will believe you, and they will take you for a spy, a Prussian or a pessimist." I understood at once the prudence of this advice. Presently the train came up, we parted, and I took my place. The third-class carriages were full of volunteers, recruits and conscripts from Mentone. They were singing à tue tête the Marsellaise. I shall never forget the terrible impression the song made on me. The triumphant words shouted out by the men seemed more sorrowful than those of the De profundis:

 
Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
 

"The day of glory" indeed had arrived. On we went as fast as the wind, and the singing continued uninterruptedly until we reached Nice. Here I found the station full of soldiers preparing to start by the 2 A.M. train. When we entered the station, hearing the shouts of "Le jour de gloire," they joined in enthusiastically. The next morning by daybreak the official despatch arrived. To describe the consternation it produced would be impossible, or the frantic glee with which the Republic was proclaimed. The next day the mob tore down all the imperial eagles and bees from the public buildings; M. Gavini, the Bonapartist prefect, had to escape the best way he could over the frontier, and madame his wife made her way to the station under a shower of potatoes, eggs and carrots, and a volley of insults and coarse epithets; Gambetta's father, a fine white-headed old gentleman, a grocer, was carried in triumph through the streets; the timid trembled for their lives; the wildest reports were circulated; the town was placed in a state of siege; but "le jour de gloire" did not arrive. It has not arrived yet, and may not do so for some time to come; but it must arrive sooner or later, or there will be no such thing as peace in Europe.

R. DAVEY.

A PRINCESS OF THULE

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."

CHAPTER XXII.
"LIKE HADRIANUS AND AUGUSTUS."

The island of Borva lay warm and green and bright under a blue sky; there were no white curls of foam on Loch Roag, but only the long Atlantic swell coming in to fall on the white beach; away over there in the south the fine grays and purples of the giant Suainabhal shone in the sunlight amid the clear air; and the beautiful sea-pyots flew about the rocks, their screaming being the only sound audible in the stillness. The King of Borva was down by the shore, seated on a stool, and engaged in the idyllic operation of painting a boat which had been hauled up on the sand. It was the Maighdean-mhara. He would let no one else on the island touch Sheila's boat. Duncan, it is true, was permitted to keep her masts and sails and seats sound and white, but as for the decorative painting of the small craft—including a little bit of amateur gilding—that was the exclusive right of Mr. Mackenzie himself. For of course, the old man said; to himself, Sheila was coming back to Borva one these days, and she would be proud to find her own boat bright and sound. If she and her husband should resolve to spend half the year in Stornoway, would not the small craft be of use to her there? and sure he was that a prettier little vessel never entered Stornoway Bay. Mr. Mackenzie was at this moment engaged in putting a thin line of green round the white bulwarks that might have been distinguished across Loch Roag, so keen and pure was the color.

A much heavier boat, broad-beamed, red-hulled and brown-sailed, was slowly coming round the point at this moment. Mr. Mackenzie raised his eyes from his work, and knew that Duncan was coming back from Callernish. Some few minutes thereafter the boat was run in to her moorings, and Duncan came along the beach with a parcel in his hand. "Here wass your letters, sir," he said. "And there iss one of them will be from Miss Sheila, if I wass make no mistake."

He remained there. Duncan generally knew pretty well when a letter from Sheila was among the documents he had to deliver, and on such an occasion he invariably lingered about to hear the news, which was immediately spread abroad throughout the island. The old King of Borva was not a garrulous man, but he was glad that the people about him should know that his Sheila had become a fine lady in the South, and saw fine things and went among fine people. Perhaps this notion of his was a sort of apology to them—perhaps it was an apology to himself—for his having let her go away from the island; but at all events the simple folks about Borva knew that Miss Sheila, as they still invariably called her, lived in the same town as the queen herself, and saw many lords and ladies, and was present at great festivities, as became Mr. Mackenzie's only daughter. And naturally these rumors and stories were exaggerated by the kindly interest and affection of the people into something far beyond what Sheila's father intended; insomuch that many an old crone would proudly and sagaciously wag her head, and say that when Miss Sheila came back to Borva strange things might be seen, and it would be a proud day for Mr. Mackenzie if he was to go down to the shore to meet Queen Victoria herself, and the princes and princesses, and many fine people, all come to stay at his house and have great rejoicings in Borva.

Thus it was that Duncan invariably lingered about when he brought a letter from Sheila; and if her father happened to forget or be preoccupied, Duncan would humbly but firmly remind him. On-this occasion Mr. Mackenzie put down his paint-brush and took the bundle of letters and newspapers Duncan had brought him. He selected that from Sheila, and threw the others on the beach beside him.

There was really no news in the letter. Sheila merely said that she could not as yet answer her father's question as to the time she might probably visit Lewis. She hoped he was well, and that, if she could not get up to Borva that autumn, he would come South to London for a time, when the hard weather set in in the North. And so forth. But there was something in the tone of the letter that struck the old man as being unusual and strange. It was very formal in its phraseology. He read it twice over very carefully, and forgot altogether that Duncan was waiting. Indeed, he was going to turn away, forgetting his work and the other letters that still lay on the beach, when he observed that there was a postscript on the other side of the last page. It merely said: "Will you please address your letters now to No. – Pembroke road, South Kensington, where I may be for some time?"

That was an imprudent postscript. If she had shown the letter to any one, she would have been warned of the blunder she was committing. But the child had not much cunning, and wrote and posted the letter in the belief that her father would simply do as she asked him, and suspect nothing and ask no questions.

When old Mackenzie read that postscript he could only stare at the paper before him.

"Will there be anything wrong, sir?" said the tall keeper, whose keen gray eyes had been fixed on his master's face.

The sound of Duncan's voice startled and recalled Mr. Mackenzie, who immediately turned, and said lightly, "Wrong? What wass you thinking would be wrong? Oh, there is nothing wrong whatever. But Mairi, she will be greatly surprised, and she is going to write no letters until she comes back to tell you what she has seen: that is the message there will be for Scarlett. Sheila—she is very well."

Duncan picked up the other letters and newspapers.

"You may tek them to the house, Duncan," said Mr. Mackenzie; and then he added carelessly, "Did you hear when the steamer was thinking of leaving Stornoway this night?"

"They were saying it would be seven o'clock or six, as there was a great deal of cargo to go on her."

"Six o'clock? I'm thinking, Duncan, I would like to go with her as far as Oban or Glasgow. Oh yes, I will go with her as far as Glasgow. Be sharp, Duncan, and bring in the boat."

The keeper stared, fearing his master had gone mad: "You wass going with her this ferry night?"

"Yes. Be sharp, Duncan!" said Mackenzie, doing his best to conceal his impatience and determination under a careless air.

"Bit, sir, you canna do it," said Duncan peevishly. "You hef no things looked out to go. And by the time we would get to Callernish it wass a ferry hard drive there will be to get to Stornoway by six o'clock; and there is the mare, sir, she will hef lost a shoe—"

Mr. Mackenzie's diplomacy gave way. He turned upon the keeper with a sudden fierceness and with a stamp of his foot: "– – you, Duncan MacDonald! is it you or me that is the master? I will go to Stornoway this ferry moment if I hef to buy twenty horses!" And there was a light under the shaggy eyebrows that warned Duncan to have done with his remonstrances.

"Oh. ferry well, sir—ferry well, sir," he said, going off to the boat, and grumbling as he went. "If Miss Sheila was here, it would be no going away to Glesca without any things wis you, as if you wass a poor traffelin tailor that hass nothing in the world but a needle and a thimble mirover. And what will the people in Styornoway hef to say, and sa captain of sa steamboat, and Scarlett? I will hef no peace from Scarlett if you wass going away like this. And as for sa sweerin, it is no use sa sweerin, for I will get sa boat ready—oh yes, I will get sa boat ready; but I do not understand why I will get sa boat ready."

By this time, indeed, he had got along to the larger boat, and his grumblings were inaudible to the object of them. Mr. Mackenzie went to the small landing-place and waited. When he got into the boat and sat down in the stern, taking the tiller in his right hand, he still held Sheila's letter in the other hand, although he did not need to reread it.

They sailed out into the blue waters of the loch and rounded the point of the island in absolute silence, Duncan meanwhile being both sulky and curious. He could not make out why his master should so suddenly leave the island, without informing any one, without even taking with him that tall and roughly-furred black hat which he sometimes wore on important occasions. Yet there was a letter in his hand, and it was a letter from Miss Sheila. Was the news about Mairi the only news in it?

Duncan kept looking ahead to see that the boat was steering her right course for the Narrows, and was anxious, now that he had started, to make the voyage in the least possible time, but all the same his eyes would come back to Mr. Mackenzie, who sat very much absorbed, steering almost mechanically, seldom looking ahead, but instinctively guessing his course by the outlines of the shore close by. "Was there any bad news, sir, from Miss Sheila?" he was compelled to say at last.

"Miss Sheila!" said Mr. Mackenzie impatiently. "Is it an infant you are, that you will call a married woman by such a name?"

Duncan had never been checked before for a habit which was common to the whole island of Borva.

"There iss no bad news," continued Mackenzie impatiently. "Is it a story you would like to tek back to the people of Borvabost?"

"It wass no thought of such a thing wass come into my head, sir," said Duncan. "There iss no one in sa island would like to carry bad news about Miss Sheila; and there iss no one in sa island would like to hear it—not any one whatever—and I can answer for that."

"Then hold your tongue about it. There is no bad news from Sheila," said Mackenzie; and Duncan relapsed into silence, not very well content.

By dint of very hard driving indeed Mr. Mackenzie just caught the boat as she was leaving Stornoway harbor, the hurry he was in fortunately saving him from the curiosity and inquiries of the people he knew on the pier. As for the frank and good-natured captain, he did not show that excessive interest in Mr. Mackenzie's affairs that Duncan had feared; but when the steamer was well away from the coast and bearing down on her route to Skye, he came and had a chat with the King of Borva about the condition of affairs on the west of the island; and he was good enough to ask, too, about the young lady that had married the English gentleman. Mr. Mackenzie said briefly that she was very well, and returned to the subject of the fishing.

It was on a wet and dreary morning that Mr. Mackenzie arrived in London; and as he was slowly driven through the long and dismal thoroughfares with their gray and melancholy houses, their passers-by under umbrellas, and their smoke and drizzle and dirt, he could not help saying to himself, "My poor Sheila!" It was not a pleasant place surely to live in always, although it might be all very well for a visit. Indeed, this cheerless day added to the gloomy fore-bodings in his mind, and it needed all his resolve and his pride in his own diplomacy to carry out his plan of approaching Sheila.

When he got down to Pembroke road he stopped the cab at the corner and paid the man. Then he walked along the thoroughfare, having a look at the houses. At length he came to the number mentioned in Sheila's letter, and he found that there was a brass plate on the door bearing an unfamiliar name. His suspicions were confirmed.

He went up the steps and knocked: a small girl answered the summons. "Is Mrs. Lavender living here?" he said.

She looked for a moment with some surprise at the short, thick-set man, with his sailor costume, his peaked cap, and his voluminous gray beard and shaggy eyebrows; and then she said that she would ask, and what was his name? But Mr. Mackenzie was too sharp not to know what that meant.

"I am her father. It will do ferry well if you will show me the room."

And he stepped inside. The small girl obediently shut the door, and then led the way up stairs. The next minute Mr. Mackenzie had entered the room, and there before him was Sheila bending over Mairi and teaching her how to do some fancy-work.

The girl looked up on hearing some one enter, and then, when she suddenly saw her father there, she uttered a slight cry of alarm and shrunk back. If he had been less intent on his own plans he would have been amazed and pained by this action on the part of his daughter, who used to run to him, on great occasions and small, whenever she saw him; but the girl had for the last few days been so habitually schooling herself into the notion that she was keeping a secret from him—she had become so deeply conscious of the concealment intended in that brief letter—that she instinctively shrank from him when he suddenly appeared. It was but for a moment.

Mr. Mackenzie came forward with a fine assumption of carelessness and shook hands with Sheila and with Mairi, and said, "How do you do, Mairi? And are you ferry well, Sheila? And you will not expect me this morning; but when a man will not pay you what he wass owing, it wass no good letting it go on in that way; and I hef come to London—".

He shook the rain-drops from his cap, and was a little embarrassed.

"Yes, I hef come to London to have the account settled up; for it wass no good letting him go on for effer and effer. Ay, and how are you, Sheila?"

He looked about the room: he would not look at her. She stood there unable to speak, and with her face grown wild and pale.

"Ay, it wass raining hard all the last night, and there wass a good deal of water came into the carriage; and it is a ferry hard bed you will make of a third-class carriage. Ay, it wass so. And this is a new house you will hef, Sheila?"

She had been coming nearer to him, with her face down and the speechless lips trembling. And then suddenly, with a strange sob, she threw herself into his arms and hid her head, and burst into a wild fit of crying.

"Sheila," he said, "what ails you? What iss all the matter?"

Mairi had covertly got out of the room.

"Oh, papa, I have left him," the girl cried.

"Ay," said her father quite cheerfully—"oh ay, I thought there was some little thing wrong when your letter wass come to us the other day. But it is no use making a great deal of trouble about it, Sheila, for it is easy to have all those things put right again—oh yes, ferry easy. And you have left your own home, Sheila? And where is Mr. Lavender?"

"Oh, papa," she cried, "you must not try to see him. You must promise not to go to see him. I should have told you everything when I wrote, but I thought you would come up and blame it all on him and I think it is I who am to blame."

"But I do not want to blame any one," said her father. "You must not make so much of these things, Sheila. It is a pity—yes, it is a ferry great pity—your husband and you will hef a quarrel; but it iss no uncommon thing for these troubles to happen; and I am coming to you this morning, not to make any more trouble, but to see if it cannot be put right again. And I do not want to know any more than that, and I will not blame any one; but if I wass to see Mr. Lavender—"

A bitter anger had filled his heart from the moment he had learned how matters stood, and yet he was talking in such a bland, matter-of-fact, almost cheerful fashion that his own daughter was imposed upon, and began to grow comforted. The mere fact that her father now knew of all her troubles, and was not disposed to take a very gloomy view of them, was of itself a great relief to her. And she was greatly pleased, too, to hear her father talk in the same light and even friendly fashion of her husband. She had dreaded the possible results of her writing home and relating what had occurred. She knew the powerful passion of which this lonely old man was capable, and if he had come suddenly down South with a wild desire to revenge the wrongs of his daughter, what might not have happened?

Sheila sat down, and with averted eyes told her father the whole story, ingenuously making all possible excuses for her husband, and intimating strongly that the more she looked over the history of the past time the more she was convinced that she was herself to blame. It was but natural that Mr. Lavender should like to live in the manner to which he had been accustomed. She had tried to live that way too, and the failure to do so was surely her fault. He had been very kind to her. He was always buying her new dresses, jewelry, and what not, and was always pleased to take her to be amused anywhere. All this she said, and a great deal more; and although Mr. Mackenzie did not believe the half of it, he did not say so. "Ay, ay, Sheila," he said, cheerfully; "but if everything was right like that, what for will you be here?"

"But everything was not right, papa," the girl said, still with her eyes cast down. "I could not live any longer like that, and I had to come away. That is my fault, and I could not help it. And there was a—a misunderstanding between us about Mairi's visit—for I had said nothing about it—and he was surprised—and he had some friends coming to see us that day—"

"Oh, well, there iss no great harm done—none at all," said her father lightly, and perhaps beginning to think that after all something was to be said for Lavender's side of the question. "And you will not suppose, Sheila, that I am coming to make any trouble by quarreling with any one. There are some men—oh yes, there are ferry many—that would have no judgment at such a time, and they would think only about their daughter, and hef no regard for any one else, and they would only make effery one angrier than before. But you will tell me, Sheila, where Mr. Lavender is."

"I do not know," she said. "And I am anxious, papa, you should not go to see him. I have asked you to promise that to please me."

He hesitated. There were not many things he could refuse his daughter, but he was not sure he ought to yield to her in this. For were not these two a couple of foolish young things, who wanted an experienced and cool and shrewd person to come with a little dexterous management and arrange their affairs for them?

"I do not think I have half explained the difference between us," said Sheila in the same low voice. "It is no passing quarrel, to be mended up and forgotten: it is nothing like that. You must leave it alone, papa."

"That is foolishness, Sheila," said the old man with a little impatience. "You are making big things out of ferry little, and you will only bring trouble to yourself. How do you know but that he wishes to hef all this misunderstanding removed, and hef you go back to him?"

"I know that he wishes that," she said calmly.

"And you speak as if you wass in great trouble here, and yet you will not go back?" he said in great surprise.

"Yes, that is so," she said. "There is no use in my going back to the same sort of life: it was not happiness for either of us, and to me it was misery. If I am to blame for it, that is only a misfortune."

"But if you will not go back to him, Sheila," her father said, "at least you will go back with me to Borva."

"I cannot do that, either," said the girl with the same quiet yet decisive manner.

Mr. Mackenzie rose with an impatient gesture and walked to the window. He did not know what to say. He was very well aware that when Sheila had resolved upon anything, she had thought it well over beforehand, and was not likely to change her mind. And yet the notion of his daughter living in lodgings in a strange town—her only companion a young girl who had never been in the place before—was vexatiously absurd.

"Sheila," he said, "you will come to a better understanding about that. I suppose you wass afraid the people would wonder at you coming back alone. But they will know nothing about it. Mairi she is a very good lass: she will do anything you will ask of her: you hef no need to think she will carry stories. And every one wass thinking you will be coming to the Lewis this year, and it is ferry glad they will be to see you; and if the house at Borvabost hass not enough amusement for you after you hef been in a big town like this, you will live in Stornoway with some of our friends there, and you will come over to Borva when you please."

"If I went up to the Lewis," said Sheila, "do you think I could live anywhere but in Borva? It is not any amusements I will be thinking about. But I cannot go back to the Lewis alone."

Her father saw how the pride of the girl had driven her to this decision, and saw, too, how useless it was for him to reason with her just at the present moment. Still, there was plenty of occasion here for the use of a little diplomacy merely to smooth the way for the reconciliation of husband and wife; and Mr. Mackenzie concluded in his own mind that it was far from being injudicious to allow Sheila to convince herself that she bore part of the blame of this separation. For example, he now proposed that the discussion of the whole question should be postponed for the present, and that Sheila should take him about London and show him all that she had learned; and he suggested that they should then and there get a hansom cab and drive to some exhibition or other.

"A hansom, papa?" said Sheila. "Mairi must go with us, you know."

This was precisely what he had angled for, and he said, with a show of impatience, "Mairi! How can we take about Mairi to every place? Mairi is a ferry good lass—oh yes—but she is a servant-lass."

The words nearly stuck in his throat; and indeed had any other addressed such a phrase to one of his kith and kin there would have been an explosion of rage; but now he was determined to show to Sheila that her husband had some cause for objecting to this girl sitting down with his friends.

But neither husband nor father could make Sheila forswear allegiance to what her own heart told her was just and honorable and generous; and indeed her father at this moment was not displeased to see her turn round on himself with just a touch of indignation in her voice. "Mairi is my guest, papa," she said. "It is not like you to think of leaving her at home."

"Oh. it wass of no consequence," said old Mackenzie carelessly: indeed he was not sorry to have met with this rebuff. "Mairi is a ferry good girl—oh yes—but there are many who would not forget she is a servant-lass, and would not like to be always taking her with them. And you hef lived a long time in London—"

"I have not lived long enough in London to make me forget my friends or insult them," Sheila said with proud lips, and yet turning to the window to hide her face.

"My lass, I did not mean any harm whatever," her father said gently: "I wass saying nothing against Mairi. Go away and bring her into the room, Sheila, and we will see what we can do now, and if there is a theatre we can go to this evening. And I must go out, too, to buy some things; for you are a ferry fine lady now, Sheila, and I was coming away in such a hurry—"

"Where is your luggage, papa?" she said suddenly.

"Oh, luggage!" said Mackenzie, looking round in great embarrassment. "It was luggage you said, Sheila? Ay, well, it wass a hurry I wass in when I came away—for this man he will have to pay me at once whatever—and there wass no time for any luggage—oh no, there wass no time, because Duncan he wass late with the boat, and the mare she had a shoe to put on—and—and—oh no, there was no time for any luggage."

"But what was Scarlett about, to let you come away like that?" Sheila said.

"Scarlett? Well, Scarlett did not know, it was all in such a hurry. Now go and bring in Mairi, Sheila, and we will speak about the theatre."

But there was to be no theatre for any of them that evening. Sheila was just about to leave the room to summon Mairi when the small girl who had let Mackenzie into the house appeared and said, "Please, m'm, there is a young woman below who wishes to see you. She has a message to you from Mrs. Paterson."

"Mrs. Paterson?" Sheila said, wondering how Mrs. Lavender's hench-woman should have been entrusted with any such commission. "Will you ask her to come up?"

The girl came up stairs, looking rather frightened and much out of breath.

"Please, m'm, Mrs. Paterson has sent me to tell you, and would you please come as soon as it is convenient? Mrs. Lavender has died. It was quite sudden—only she recovered a little after the fit, and then sank: the doctor is there now, but he wasn't in time, it was all so sudden. Will you please come round, m'm?"

"Yes—I shall be there directly," said Sheila, too bewildered and stunned to think of the possibility of meeting her husband there.

The girl left, and Sheila still stood in the middle of the room apparently stupefied. That old woman had got into such a habit of talking about her approaching death that Sheila had ceased to believe her, and had grown to fancy that these morbid speculations were indulged in chiefly for the sake of shocking bystanders. But a dead man or a dead woman is suddenly invested with a great solemnity; and Sheila with a pang of remorse thought of the fashion in which she had suspected this old woman of a godless hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender—that she had feared to go near her, and blamed her unfairly for many things that had happened. In her own way that old woman in Kensington Gore had been kind to her: perhaps the girl was a little ashamed of herself at this moment that she did not cry.

Her father went out with her, and up to the house with the dusty ivy and the red curtains. How strangely like was the aspect of the house inside to the very picture that Mrs. Lavender had herself drawn of her death! Sheila could remember all the ghastly details that the old woman seemed to have a malicious delight in describing; and here they were—the shutters drawn down, the servants walking about on tiptoe, the strange silence in one particular room. The little shriveled old body lay quite still and calm now; and yet as Sheila went to the bedside, she could hardly believe that within that forehead there was not some consciousness of the scene around. Lying almost in the same position, the old woman, with a sardonic smile on her face, had spoken of the time when she should be speechless, sightless and deaf, while Paterson would go about stealthily as if she was afraid the corpse would hear. Was it possible to believe that the dead body was not conscious at this moment that Paterson was really going about in that fashion—that the blinds were down, friends standing some little distance from the bed, a couple of doctors talking to each other in the passage outside?

They went into another room, and then Sheila, with a sudden shiver, remembered that soon her husband would be coming, and might meet her and her father there.

"You have sent for Mr. Lavender?" she said calmly to Mrs. Paterson.

"No, ma'am," Paterson said with more than her ordinary gravity and formality: "I did not know where to send for him. He left London some days ago. Perhaps you would read the letter, ma'am."

She offered Sheila an open letter. The girl saw that it was in her husband's handwriting, but she shrank from it as though she were violating the secrets of the grave.

"Oh no," she said, "I cannot do that."

"Mrs. Lavender, ma'am, meant you to read it, after she had had her will altered. She told me so. It is a very sad thing, ma'am, that she did not live to carry out her intentions; for she has been inquiring, ma'am, these last few days as to how she could leave everything to you, ma'am, which she intended; and now the other will—"