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

"She cares for you more than you can think: I saw it to-night in everything she said and did."

"I thought she was just a trifle saucy, do you know. She shunted me out of the conversation altogether."

Sheila shook her head and smiled: "She was embarrassed. She suspects that you like her, and that I know it, and that I came to see her. If you ask her to marry you, she will do it gladly."

"Sheila," Ingram said with a severity that was not in his heart, "you must not say such things. You might make fearful mischief by putting these wild notions into people's heads."

"They are not wild notions," she said quietly. "A woman can tell what another woman is thinking about better than a man."

"And am I to go to the Tyrol and ask her to marry me?" he said with the air of a meek scholar.

"I should like to see you married—very, very much indeed," Sheila said.

"And to her?"

"Yes to her," the girl said frankly. "For I am sure she has great regard for you, and she is clever enough to put value on—on—But I cannot flatter you, Mr. Ingram."

"Shall I send you word about what happens in the Tyrol?" he said, still with the humble air of one receiving instructions.

"Yes."

"And if she rejects me, what shall I do?"

"She will not reject you."

"Shall I come to you for consolation, and ask you what you meant by driving me on such a blunder?"

"If she rejects you," Sheila said with a smile, "it will be your own fault, and you will deserve it. For you are a little too harsh with her, and you have too much authority, and I am surprised that she will be so amiable under it. Because, you know, a woman expects to be treated with much gentleness and deference before she has said she will marry. She likes to be entreated, and coaxed, and made much of, but instead of that you are very overbearing with Mrs. Lorraine."

"I did not mean to be, Sheila," he said, honestly enough. "If anything of the kind happened it must have been in a joke."

"Oh no, not a joke," Sheila said; "and I have noticed it before—the very first evening you came to their house. And perhaps you did not know of it yourself; and then Mrs. Lorraine, she is clever enough to see that you did not mean to be disrespectful. But she will expect you to alter that a great deal if you ask her to marry you; that is, until you are married."

"Have I ever been overbearing to you, Sheila?" he asked.

"To me? Oh no. You have always been very gentle to me; but I know how that is. When you first knew me I was almost a child, and you treated me like a child; and ever since then it has always been the same. But to others—yes, you are too unceremonious; and Mrs. Lorraine will expect you to be much more mild and amiable, and you must let her have opinions of her own."

"Sheila, you give me to understand that I am a bear," he said in tones of injured protest.

Sheila laughed: "Have I told you the truth at last? It was no matter so long as you had ordinary acquaintances to deal with. But now, if you wish to marry that pretty lady, you must be much more gentle if you are discussing anything with her; and if she says anything that is not very wise, you must not say bluntly that it is foolish, but you must smooth it away, and put her right gently, and then she will be grateful to you. But if you say to her, 'Oh, that is nonsense!' as you might say to a man, you will hurt her very much. The man would not care—he would think you were stupid to have a different opinion from him; but a woman fears she is not as clever as the man she is talking to, and likes his good opinion; and if he says something careless like that, she is sensitive to it, and it wounds her. To-night you contradicted Mrs. Lorraine about the h in those Italian words, and I am quite sure you were wrong. She knows Italian much better than you do, and yet she yielded to you very prettily."

"Go on, Sheila, go on," he said with a resigned air. "What else did I do?"

"Oh, a great many rude things. You should not have contradicted Mrs. Kavanagh about the color of an amethyst."

"But why? You know she was wrong; and she said herself a minute afterward that she was thinking of a sapphire."

"But you ought not to contradict a person older than yourself," said Sheila sententiously.

"Goodness gracious me! Because one person is born in one year, and one in another, is that any reason why you should say that an amethyst is blue? Mr. Mackenzie, come and talk to this girl. She is trying to pervert my principles. She says that in talking to a woman you have to abandon all hope of being accurate, and that respect for the truth is not to be thought of. Because a woman has a pretty face she is to be allowed to say that black is white, and white pea-green. And if you say anything to the contrary, you are a brute, and had better go and bellow by yourself in a wilderness."

"Sheila is quite right," said old Mackenzie at a venture.

"Oh, do you think so?" Ingram asked coolly. "Then I can understand how her moral sentiment has been destroyed, and it is easy to see where she has got a set of opinions that strike at the very roots of a respectable and decent society."

"Do you know," said Sheila seriously, "that it is very rude of you to say so, even in jest? If you treat Mrs. Lorraine in this way—"

She suddenly stopped. Her father had not heard, being busy among his pipes. So the subject was discreetly dropped, Ingram reluctantly promising to pay some attention to Sheila's precepts of politeness.

Altogether, it was a pleasant evening they had, but when Ingram had left, Mr. Mackenzie said to his daughter, "Now, look at this, Sheila. When Mr. Ingram goes away from London, you hef no friend at all then in the place, and you are quite alone. Why will you not come to the Lewis, Sheila? It is no one there will know anything of what has happened here; and Mairi she is a good girl, and she will hold her tongue."

"They will ask me why I come back without my husband," Sheila said, looking down.

"Oh, you will leave that all to me," said her father, who knew he had surely sufficient skill to thwart the curiosity of a few simple creatures in Borva. "There is many a girl hass to go home for a time while her husband he is away on his business; and there will no one hef the right to ask you any more than I will tell them; and I will tell them what they should know—oh yes, I will tell them ferry well—and you will hef no trouble about it. And, Sheila, you are a good lass, and you know that I hef many things to attend to that is not easy to write about—"

"I do know that, papa," the girl said, "and many a time have I wished you would go back to the Lewis."

"And leave you here by yourself? Why, you are talking foolishly, Sheila. But now, Sheila, you will see how you could go back with me; and it would be a ferry different thing for you running about in the fresh air than shut up in a room in the middle of a town. And you are not looking ferry well, my lass, and Scarlett she will hef to take the charge of you."

"I will go to the Lewis with you, papa, when you please," she said, and he was glad and proud to hear her decision; but there was no happy light of anticipation in her eyes, such as ought to have been awakened by this projected journey to the far island which she had known as her home.

And so it was that one rough and blustering afternoon the Clansman steamed into Stornoway harbor, and Sheila, casting timid and furtive glances toward the quay, saw Duncan standing there, with the wagonette some little distance back under charge of a boy. Duncan was a proud man that day. He was the first to shove the gangway on to the vessel, and he was the first to get on board; and in another minute Sheila found the tall, keen-eyed, brown-faced keeper before her, and he was talking in a rapid and eager fashion, throwing in an occasional scrap of Gaelic in the mere hurry of his words.

"Oh yes, Miss Sheila, Scarlett she is ferry well whatever, but there is nothing will make her so well as your coming back to sa Lewis; and we wass saying yesterday that it looked as if it wass more as three or four years, or six years, since you went away from sa Lewis, but now it iss no time at all, for you are just the same Miss Sheila as we knew before; and there is not one in all Borva but will think it iss a good day this day that you will come back."

"Duncan," said Mackenzie with an impatient stamp of his foot, "why will you talk like a foolish man? Get the luggage to the shore, instead of keeping us all the day in the boat."

"Oh, ferry well, Mr. Mackenzie," said Duncan, departing with an injured air, and grumbling as he went, "it iss no new thing to you to see Miss Sheila, and you will have no thocht for any one but yourself. But I will get out the luggage—oh yes, I will get out the luggage."

Sheila, in truth, had but little luggage with her, but she remained on board the boat until Duncan was quite ready to start, for she did not wish just then to meet any of her friends in Stornoway. Then she stepped ashore and crossed the quay, and got into the wagonette; and the two horses, whom she had caressed for a moment, seemed to know that they were carrying Sheila back to her own country, from the speed with which they rattled out of the town and away into the lonely moorland.

Mackenzie let them have their way. Past the solitary lakes they went, past the long stretches of undulating morass, past the lonely sheilings perched far up on the hills; and the rough and blustering wind blew about them, and the gray clouds hurried by, and the old, strong-bearded man who shook the reins and gave the horses their heads could have laughed aloud in his joy that he was driving his daughter home. But Sheila—she sat there as one dead; and Mairi, timidly regarding her, wondered what the impassable face and the bewildered, sad eyes meant. Did she not smell the sweet strong smell of the heather? Had she no interest in the great birds that were circling in the air over by the Barbhas mountains? Where was the pleasure she used to exhibit in remembering the curious names of the small lakes they passed?

And lo! the rough gray day broke asunder, and a great blaze of fire appeared in the west, shining across the moors and touching the blue slopes of the distant hills. Sheila was getting near to the region of beautiful sunsets and lambent twilights and the constant movement and mystery of the sea. Overhead the heavy clouds were still hurried on by the wind; and in the south the eastern slopes of the hills and the moors were getting to be of a soft purple; but all along the west, where her home was, lay a great flush of gold, and she knew that Loch Roag was shining there, and the gable of the house at Borvabost getting warm in the beautiful light.

"It is a good afternoon you will be getting to see Borva again," her father said to her; but all the answer she made was to ask her father not to stop at Garrana-hina, but to drive straight on to Callernish. She would visit the people at Garra-na-hina some other day.

The boat was waiting for them at Callernish, and the boat was the Maighdean-mhara.

"How pretty she is! How have you kept her so well, Duncan?" said Sheila, her face lighting up for the first time as she went down the path to the bright-painted little vessel that scarcely rocked in the water below.

"Bekaas we neffer knew but that it was this week, or the week before, or the next week you would come back, Miss Sheila, and you would want your boat; but it wass Mr. Mackenzie himself, it wass he that did all the pentin of the boat; and it iss as well done as Mr. McNicol could have done it, and a great deal better than that mirover."

"Won't you steer her yourself, Sheila?" her father suggested, glad to see that she was at last being interested and pleased.

"Oh yes, I will steer her, if I have not forgotten all the points that Duncan taught me."

"And I am sure you hef not done that, Miss Sheila," Duncan said, "for there wass no one knew Loch Roag better as you, not one, and you hef not been so long away; and when you tek the tiller in your hand it will all come back to you, just as if you wass going away from Borva the day before yesterday."