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

"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 mean time 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 that 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 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 second. I think it's very good fun myself. It is 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, any how."

When they 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 bygone 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 hers; 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 sun
To charm and bewilder all men with the grace
They 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 sun
And the tremulous breath of the hills had begun,
Required 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 entrusted 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 heeling 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 round, 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 it's 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 south-east 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 in 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 had heard was apparent in the foaming water that was torn and scattered abroad by the gale. Up from the black south-east 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 that 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 swirling waters beneath, close by the broken boat that was still being dashed about by the waves.

CHAPTER XXIV.
"HAME FAIN WOULD I BE."

Unexpected circumstances had detained Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter in London long after everybody else had left, but at length they were ready to start for their projected trip into Switzerland. On the day before their departure Ingram dined with them—on his own invitation. He had got into a habit of letting them know when it would suit him to devote an evening to their instruction; and it was difficult indeed to say which of the two ladies submitted the more readily and meekly to the dictatorial enunciation of his opinions. Mrs. Kavanagh, it is true, sometimes dissented in so far as a smile indicated dissent, but her daughter scarcely reserved to herself so much liberty. Mr. Ingram had taken her in hand, and expected of her the obedience and respect due to his superior age.

And yet, somehow or other, he occasionally found himself indirectly soliciting the advice of this gentle, clear-eyed and clear-headed young person, more especially as regarded the difficulties surrounding Sheila; and sometimes a chance remark of hers, uttered in a timid or careless or even mocking fashion, would astonish him by the rapid light it threw on these dark troubles. On this evening—the last evening they were spending in London—it was his own affairs which he proposed to mention to Mrs. Lorraine, and he had no more hesitation in doing so than if she had been his oldest friend. He wanted to ask her what he should do about the money that Mrs. Lavender had left him; and he intended to be a good deal more frank with Mrs. Lorraine than with any of the others to whom he had spoken about the matter. For he was well aware that Mrs. Lavender had at first resolved that he should have at least a considerable portion of her wealth, or why should she have asked him how he would like to be a rich man?

"I do not think," said Mrs. Lorraine quietly, "that there is any use in your asking me what you should do, for I know what you will do, whether it accords with any one's opinion or no. And yet you would find a great advantage in having money."

"Oh, I know that," he said readily. "I should like to be rich beyond anything that ever happened in a drama; and I should take my chance of all the evil influences that money is supposed to exert. Do you know, I think you rich people are very unfairly treated."

"But we are not rich," said Mrs. Kavanagh, passing at the time. "Cecilia and I find ourselves very poor sometimes."

"But I quite agree with Mr. Ingram, mamma," said Cecilia—as if any one had had the courage to disagree with Mr. Ingram!—"rich people are shamefully ill-treated. If you go to a theatre, now, you find that all the virtues are on the side of the poor, and if there are a few vices, you get a thousand excuses for them. No one takes account of the temptations of the rich. You have people educated from their infancy to imagine that the whole world was made for them, every wish they have gratified, every day showing them people dependent on them and grateful for favors; and no allowance is made for such a temptation to become haughty, self-willed and overbearing. But of course it stands to reason that the rich never have justice done them in plays and stories, for the people who write are poor."

"Not all of them."

"But enough to strike an average of injustice. And it is very hard. For it is the rich who buy books and who take boxes at the theatres, and then they find themselves grossly abused; whereas the humble peasant who can scarcely read at all, and who never pays more than sixpence for a seat in the gallery, is flattered and coaxed and caressed until one wonders whether the source of virtue is the drinking of sour ale. Mr. Ingram, you do it yourself. You impress mamma and me with the belief that we are miserable sinners if we are not continually doing some act of charity. Well, that is all very pleasant and necessary, in moderation; but you don't find the poor folks so very anxious to live for other people. They don't care much what becomes of us. They take your port wine and flannels as if they were conferring a favor on you, but as for your condition and prospects in this world and the next, they don't trouble much about that. Now, mamma, just wait a moment."

"I will not. You are a bad girl," said Mrs. Kavanagh severely. "Here has Mr. Ingram been teaching you and making you better for ever so long back, and you pretend to accept his counsel and reform yourself; and then all at once you break out, and throw down the tablets of the law, and conduct yourself like a heathen."

"Because I want him to explain, mamma. I suppose he considers it wicked of us to start for Switzerland to-morrow. The money we shall spend in traveling might have despatched a cargo of muskets to some missionary station, so that—"

"Ceilia!"

"Oh no," Ingram said carelessly, and nursing his knee with both his hands as usual, "traveling is not wicked: it is only unreasonable. A traveler, you know, is a person who has a house in one town, and who goes to live in a house in another town, in order to have the pleasure of paying for both."

"Mr. Ingram," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "will you talk seriously for one minute, and tell me whether we are to expect to see you in the Tyrol?"

But Ingram was not in a mood for talking seriously, and he waited to hear Mrs. Lorraine strike in with some calmly audacious invitation. She did not, however, and he turned round from her mother to question her. He was surprised to find that her eyes were fixed on the ground and that something like a tinge of color was in her face. He turned rapidly away again. "Well, Mrs. Kavanagh," he said with a fine air of indifference, "the last time we spoke about that I was not in the difficulty I am in at present. How could I go traveling just now, without knowing how to regulate my daily expenses? Am I to travel with six white horses and silver bells, or trudge on foot with a wallet?"

"But you know quite well," said Mrs. Lorraine warmly—"you know you will not touch that money that Mrs. Lavender has left you."

"Oh, pardon me," he said: "I should rejoice to have it if it did not properly belong to some one else. And the difficulty is, that Mr. Mackenzie is obviously very anxious that neither Mr. Lavender nor Sheila should have it. If Sheila gets it, of course she will give it to her husband. Now, if it is not to be given to her, do you think I should regard the money with any particular horror and refuse to touch it? That would be very romantic, perhaps, but I should be sorry, you know, to give my friends the most disquieting doubts about my sanity. Romance goes out of a man's head when the hair gets gray."

"Until a man has gray hair," Mrs. Lorraine said, still with some unnecessary fervor, "he does not know that there are things much more valuable than money. You wouldn't touch that money just now, and all the thinking and reasoning in the world will never get you to touch it."

"What am I to do with it?" he said meekly.

"Give it to Mr. Mackenzie, in trust for his daughter," Mrs. Lorraine said promptly; and then, seeing that her mother had gone to the end of the drawing-room to fetch something or other, she added quickly, "I should be more sorry than I can tell you to find you accepting this money. You do not wish to have it. You do not need it. And if you did take it, it would prove a source of continual embarrassment and regret to you, and no assurances on the part of Mr. Mackenzie would be able to convince you that you had acted rightly by his daughter. Now, if you simply hand over your responsibilities to him, he cannot refuse them, for the sake of his own child, and you are left with the sense of having acted nobly and generously. I hope there are many men who would do what I ask you to do, but I have not met many to whom I could make such an appeal with any hope. But, after all, that is only advice. I have no right to ask you to do anything like that. You asked me for my opinion about it. Well, that is it. But I should not have asked you to act on it."

"But I will," he said in a low voice; and then he went to the other end of the room, for Mrs. Kavanagh was calling him to help her in finding something she had lost.

Before he left that evening Mrs. Lorraine said to him, "We go by the night-mail to Paris to-morrow night, and we shall dine here at five. Would you have the courage to come up and join us in that melancholy ceremony?"

"Oh yes," he said, "if I may go down to the station to see you away afterward."

"I think if we got you so far we should persuade you to go with us," Mrs. Kavanagh said with a smile.

He sat silent for a minute. Of course she could not seriously mean such a thing. But at all events she would not be displeased if he crossed their path while they were actually abroad.

"It is getting too late in the year to go to Scotland now," he said with some hesitation.

"Oh most certainly," Mrs. Lorraine said.

"I don't know where the man in whose yacht I was to have gone may be now. I might spend half my holiday in trying to catch him."

"And during that time you would be alone," Mrs. Lorraine said.

"I suppose the Tyrol is a very nice place," he suggested.

"Oh most delightful," she exclaimed. "You know, we should go round by Switzerland, and go up by Luzerne and Zurich to the end of the Lake of Constance. Bregenz, mamma, isn't that the place where we hired that good-natured man the year before last?"

"Yes, child."

"Now, you see, Mr. Ingram, if you had less time than we—if you could not start with us to-morrow—you might come straight down by Schaffhausen and the steamer, and catch us up there, and then mamma would become your guide. I am sure we should have some pleasant days together till you got tired of us, and then you could go off on a walking-tour if you pleased. And then, you know, there would be no difficulty about our meeting at Bregenz, for mamma and I have plenty of time, and we should wait there for a few days, so as to make sure."

"Cecilia," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "you must not persuade Mr. Ingram against his will. He may have other duties—other friends to see, perhaps."

"Who proposed it, mamma?" said the daughter calmly.

"I did, as a mere joke. But of course, if Mr. Ingram thinks of going to the Tyrol, we should be most pleased to see him there."

"Oh, I have no other friends whom I am bound to see," Ingram said with some hesitation, "and I should like to go to the Tyrol. But—the fact is—I am afraid—"

"May I interrupt you?" said Mrs. Lorraine. "You do not like to leave London so long as your friend Sheila is in trouble. Is not that the case? And yet she has her father to look after her. And it is clear you cannot do much for her when you do not even know where Mr. Lavender is. On the whole, I think you should consider yourself a little bit now, and not get cheated out of your holidays for the year."

"Very well," Ingram said, "I shall be able to tell you to-morrow."

To be so phlegmatic and matter-of-fact a person, Mr. Ingram was sorely disturbed on going home that evening, nor did he sleep much during the night. For the more that he speculated on all the possibilities that might arise from his meeting those people in the Tyrol, the more pertinaciously did this refrain follow these excursive fancies: "If I go to the Tyrol I shall fall in love with that girl, and ask her to marry me. And if I do so, what position should I hold, with regard to her, as a penniless man with a rich wife?"

He did not look at the question in such light as the opinion of the world might throw on it. The difficulty was what she herself might afterward come to think of their mutual relations. True it was, that no one could be more gentle and submissive to him than she appeared to be. In matters of opinion and discussion he already ruled with an autocratic authority which he fully perceived himself, and exercised, too, with some sort of notion that it was good for this clear-headed young woman to have to submit to control. But of what avail would this moral authority be as against the consciousness she would have that it was her fortune that was supplying both with the means of living?

He went down to his office in the morning with no plans formed. The forenoon passed, and he had decided on nothing. At mid-day he suddenly be-thought him that it would be very pleasant if Sheila would go and see Mrs. Lorraine; and forthwith he did that which would have driven Frank Lavender out of his senses—he telegraphed to Mrs. Lorraine for permission to bring Sheila and her father to dinner at five. He certainly knew that such a request was a trifle cool, but he had discovered that Mrs. Lorraine was not easily shocked by such audacious experiments on her good nature. When he received the telegram in reply he knew it granted what he had asked. The words were merely, "Certainly, by all means, but not later than five."