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

She suffered herself to be led away, and they went home and had luncheon; but the girl could not eat for the notion that somewhere or other a pair of eyes were looking at her, and were hideously laughing at her, as if to remind her of the prophecy of that old woman, that her friends would sit down to a comfortable meal and begin to wonder what sort of mourning they would have.

It was not until the evening that Ingram called. He had been greatly surprised to hear from Mrs. Paterson that Mr. Mackenzie had been there, along with his daughter; and he now expected to find the old King of Borva in a towering passion. He found him, on the contrary, as bland and as pleased as decency would admit of in view of the tragedy that had occurred in the morning; and indeed, as Mackenzie had never seen Mrs. Lavender, there was less reason why he should wear the outward semblance of grief. Sheila's father asked her to go out of the room for a little while; and when she and Mairi had gone, he said cheerfully, "Well, Mr. Ingram, and it is a rich man you are at last."

"Mrs. Paterson said she had told you," Ingram said with a shrug. "You never expected to find me rich, did you?"

"Never," said Mackenzie frankly. "But it is a ferry good thing—oh yes, it is a ferry good thing—to hef money and be independent of people. And you will make a good use of it, I know."

"You don't seem disposed, sir, to regret that Lavender has been robbed of what should have belonged to him?"

"Oh, not at all," said Mackenzie, gravely and cautiously, for he did not want his plans to be displayed prematurely. "But I hef no quarrel with him; so you will not think I am glad to hef the money taken away for that. Oh no: I hef seen a great many men and women, and it was no strange thing that these two young ones, living all by themselves in London, should hef a quarrel. But it will come all right again if we do not make too much about it. If they like one another, they will soon come together again, tek my word for it, Mr. Ingram; and I hef seen a great many men and women. And as for the money—well, as for the money, I hef plenty for my Sheila, and she will not starve when I die—no, nor before that, either; and as for the poor old woman that has died, I am ferry glad she left her money to one that will make a good use of it, and will not throw it away whatever."

"Oh, but you know, Mr. Mackenzie, you are congratulating me without cause. I must tell you how the matter stands. The money does not belong to me at all: Mrs. Lavender never intended it should. It was meant to go to Sheila—"

"Oh, I know, I know," said Mr. Mackenzie with a wave of his hand. "I wass hearing all that from the woman at the house. But how will you know what Mrs. Lavender intended? You hef only that woman's story of it. And here is the will, and you hef the money, and—and—" Mackenzie hesitated for a moment, and then said with a sudden vehemence, "—and, by Kott, you shall keep it!"

Ingram was a trifle startled. "But look here, sir," he said in a tone of expostulation, "you make a mistake. I myself know Mrs. Lavender's intentions. I don't go by any story of Mrs. Paterson's. Mrs. Lavender made over the money to me with express injunctions to place it at the disposal of Sheila whenever I should see fit. Oh, there's no mistake about it, so you need not protest, sir. If the money belonged to me, I should be delighted to keep it. No man in the country more desires to be rich than I; so don't fancy I am flinging away a fortune out of generosity. If any rich and kind-hearted old lady will send me five thousand or ten thousand pounds, you will see how I shall stick to it. But the simple truth is, this money is not mine at all. It was never intended to be mine. It belongs to Sheila."

Ingram talked in a very matter-of-fact way: the old man feared what he said was true.

"Ay, it is a ferry good story," said Mackenzie cautiously, "and maybe it is all true. And you wass saying you would like to hef money?"

"I most decidedly should like to have money."

"Well, then," said the old man, watching his friend's face, "there iss no one to say that the story is true, and who will believe it? And if Sheila wass to come to you and say she did not believe it, and she would not hef the money from you, you would hef to keep it, eh?"

Ingram's sallow face blushed crimson. "I don't know what you mean," he said stiffly. "Do you propose to pervert the girl's mind and make me a party to a fraud?"

"Oh, there is no use getting into an anger," said Mackenzie suavely, "when common sense will do as well whatever. And there wass no perversion and there wass no fraud talked about. It wass just this, Mr. Ingram, that if the old lady's will leaves you her property, who will you be getting to believe that she did not mean to give it to you?"

"I tell you now whom she meant to give it to," said Ingram, still somewhat hotly.

"Oh yes—oh yes, that is ferry well. But who will believe it?"

"Good Heavens, sir! who will believe I could be such a fool as to fling away this property if it belonged to me?"

"They will think you a fool to do it now—yes, that is sure enough," said Mackenzie.

"I don't care what they think. And it seems rather odd, Mr. Mackenzie, that you should be trying to deprive your own daughter of what belongs to her."

"Oh, my daughter is ferry well off whatever: she does not want any one's money," said Mackenzie. And then a new notion struck him: "Will you tell me this, Mr. Ingram? If Mrs. Lavender left you her property in this way, what for did she want to change her will, eh?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I refused to take the responsibility. She was anxious to have this money given to Sheila, so that Lavender should not touch it; and I don't think it was a wise intention, for there is not a prouder man in the world than Lavender, and I know that Sheila would not consent to hold a penny that did not equally belong to him. However, that was her notion, and I was the first victim of it. I protested against it, and I suppose that set her to inquiring whether the money could not be absolutely bequeathed to Sheila direct. I don't know anything about it myself; but that's how the matter stands, as far as I am concerned."

"But you will think it over, Mr. Ingram," said Mackenzie quietly—"you will think it over, and be in no hurry. It is not every man that hass a lot of money given to him. And it is no wrong to my Sheila at all, for she will hef quite plenty; and she would be ferry sorry to take the money away from you, that is sure enough; and you will not be hasty, Mr. Ingram, but be cautious and reasonable, and you will see the money will do you far more good than it would do Sheila."

Ingram began to think that he had tied a millstone round his neck.

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN EXILE

One evening in the olden time Lavender and Sheila and Ingram and old Mackenzie were all sitting high up on the rocks near Borvabost, chatting to each other, and watching the red light pale on the bosom of the Atlantic as the sun sank behind the edge of the world. Ingram was smoking a wooden pipe. Lavender sat with Sheila's hand in his. The old King of Borva was discoursing of the fishing populations round the western coasts, and of their various ways and habits.

"I wish I could have seen Tarbert," Lavender was saying, "but the Iona just passes the mouth of the little harbor as she comes up Loch Fyne. I know two or three men who go there every year to paint the fishing-life of the place. It is an odd little place, isn't it?"

"Tarbert?" said Mr. Mackenzie—"you wass wanting to know about Tarbert? Ah, well, it is getting to be a better place now, but a year or two ago it wass ferry like hell. Oh yes it wass, Sheila, so you need not say anything. And this wass the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that the trawling was not made legal then, and the men they were just like devils, with the swearing and the drinking and the fighting that went on; and if you went into the harbor in the open day, you would find them drunk and fighting, and some of them with blood on their faces, for it wass a ferry wild time. It wass many a one will say that the Tarbert-men would run down the police-boat some dark night. And what was the use of catching the trawlers now and again, and taking their boats and their nets to be sold at Greenock, when they went themselves over to Greenock to the auction and bought them back? Oh, it was a great deal of money they made then: I hef heard of a crew of eight men getting thirty pounds each man in the course of one night, and that not seldom mirover."

"But why didn't the government put it down?" Lavender asked.

"Well, you see," Mackenzie answered with the air of a man well acquainted with the difficulties of ruling—"you see that it wass not quite sure that the trawling did much harm to the fishing. And the Jackal—that was the government steamer—she was not much good in getting the better of the Tarbert-men, who are ferry good with their boats in the rowing, and are ferry cunning whatever. You know, the buying boats went out to sea, and took the herring there, and then the trawlers they would sink their nets and come home in the morning as if they had not caught one fish, although the boat would be white with the scales of the herring. And what is more, sir, the government knew ferry well that if trawling was put down, then there would be a ferry good many murders; for the Tarbert-men, when they came home to drink whisky, and wash the whisky down with porter, they were ready to fight anybody."

"It must be a delightful place to live in," Lavender said.

"Oh, but it is ferry different now," Mackenzie continued—"ferry different. The men they are nearly all Good Templars now, and there is no drinking whatever, and there is reading-rooms and such things, and the place is ferry quiet and respectable."

"I hear," Ingram remarked, "that good people attribute the change to moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down to want of money."

"Papa, this boy will have to be put to bed," Sheila said.

"Well," Mackenzie answered, "there is not so much money in the place as there wass in the old times. The shop-keepers do not make so much money as before, when the men were wild and drunk in the daytime, and had plenty to spend when the police-boat did not catch them. But the fishermen, they are ferry much better without the money; and I can say for them, Mr. Lavender, that there is no better fishermen on the coast. They are ferry fine, tall men, and they are ferry well dressed in their blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, whether they are drunk or whether they are sober. Now look at this, sir, that in the worst of weather they will neffer tek whisky with them when they go out to the sea at night, for they think it is cowardly. And they are ferry fine fellows, and gentlemanly in their ways, and they are ferry good-natured to strangers."

"I have heard that of them on all hands," Lavender said, "and some day I hope to put their civility and good-fellowship to the proof."

That was merely the idle conversation of a summer evening: no one paid any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert. Let us now shift the scene of this narrative to Tarbert itself.

When you pass from the broad and blue waters of Loch Fyne into the narrow and rocky channel leading to Tarbert harbor, you find before you an almost circular bay, round which stretches an irregular line of white houses. There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor, lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is green under the shadow of each boat. Along the shore stand the tall poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the daylight shining through the empty windows. Beyond the houses, again, lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors of a late autumn. The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge of other and varied hues. In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost underneath the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins stand, an artist has put a rough-and-ready easel, and is apparently busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication of the rich colors of the craft—their ruddy sails, brown nets and bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls—already appears on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills in their soft autumnal tints and of the bold blue and white sky moving overhead. Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of the boats has been placed there on purpose. A boy seated on some nets occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to inquire when his penance will be over.

A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man is painting. A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out, "Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht?—about eighty tons I should think."

"Yes," Lavender said, without turning round or taking his eyes off the canvas.

"Whose is she?"

"Lord Newstead's."

"Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know whether you were here, I said you were. The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you—that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you would go out to them and take a run up to Ardishaig."

"I can't, Johnny."

"I'd take you out, you know."

"I don't want to go."

"But look here, Lavender," said the younger man, seizing hold of Lavender's boat and causing the easel to shake dangerously: "he asked me to luncheon, too."

"Why don't you go, then?" was the only reply, uttered rather absently.

"I can't go without you."