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

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.