the past.
But why would this old man keep prating of his political prophecies? Lavender asked of himself. Sheila had spoken scarcely a word all the evening; and of what interest could it be to her to listen to theories of revolution and the dangers besetting our hot-headed youth? She merely stood by the side of her father, with her hand on his shoulder. He noticed, however, that she paid particular attention whenever Ingram spoke; and he wondered whether she perceived that Ingram was partly humoring the old man, at the same time that he was pleasing himself with a series of monologues, interrupted only by his cigar.
“That is true enough, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ingram would say, laying back with his two hands clasped around his knee, as usual; “you’ve got to be careful of the opinions that are spread abroad, even in Borva, where not much danger is to be expected. But I don’t suppose our young men are more destructive in their notions than young men always have been. You know every fellow starts in life by knocking down all the beliefs he finds before him, and then spends the rest of his life in setting them up again. It is only after some years he gets to know that all the wisdom of the world lies in the old commonplaces he once despised. He finds that the old familiar ways are the best, and he sinks into being a commonplace person, with much satisfaction to himself. My friend Lavender, now, is continually charging me with being commonplace. I admit the charge. I have drifted back into all the old ways and beliefs – about religion and marriage, and patriotism, and what not – that ten years ago I should have treated with ridicule.”
“Suppose the process continues?” suggested Lavender, with some evidence of pique.
“Suppose it does,” continues Ingram carelessly. “Ten years hence I may be proud to become a vestryman, and have the most anxious care about the administration of the rates. I shall be looking after the drainage of houses and the treatment of paupers, and the management of Sunday-schools – but all this is an invasion of your province, Sheila,” he suddenly added, looking up to her.
The girl laughed and said, “Then I have been commonplace from the beginning?”
Ingram was about to make all manner of protests and apologies, when Mackenzie said, “Sheila, it wass time you go in-doors, if you have nothing about your head. Go in and sing a song to us, and we will listen to you; and not a sad song, but a good merry song. These teffles of the fishermen, it iss always drownings they will sing about from the morning till the night.”
Was Sheila about to sing in this clear, strange twilight, while they sat there and watched the yellow moon come up behind the Southern hills? Lavender had heard so much of her singing of these fishermen’s ballads that he could think of nothing more to add to the enchantment of this wonderful night. But he was disappointed. The girl put her hand on her father’s head, and reminded him that she had had her big greyhound, Bras, imprisoned all the afternoon, that she had to go down to Borvapost, with a message for some people who were leaving by the boat in the morning, and would the gentleman therefore excuse her not singing to them for this one evening?
“But you cannot go away down to Borvapost by yourself, Sheila,” said Ingram. “It will be dark before you return.”
“It will not be darker than this all the night through,” said the girl.
“But I hope you will let us go with you,” said Lavender, rather anxiously; and she assented with a gracious smile, and went to fetch the great deerhound that was her constant companion.
And lo! he found himself walking with a princess in the wonderland through that magic twilight that prevails in Northern latitudes. Mackenzie and Ingram had gone on in front. The large deerhound, after regarding him attentively, had gone to his mistress’ side, and remained closely there. Lavender could scarcely believe his ears that the girl was talking to him lightly and frankly, as though she had known him for years, and was telling him of all her troubles with the folks at the Borvapost, and of those poor people whom she was now going to see. No sooner did he understand that they were emigrants, and that they were going to Glasgow before leaving finally for America, than in quite an honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge the Government of shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up suddenly. In the gentlest fashion she told him that she knew of these poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until he was ready to curse the hour in which he had blundered into taking a side on a question about which he cared nothing and knew less.
“But some other time,” continued Sheila, “I will tell you what we do here, and I will show you a great many letters I have from friends of mine who have gone to Greenock and to New York and Canada. Oh, yes, it is very bad for the old people; they never get reconciled to the change – never; but it is very good for the young people, and they are glad of it, and are much better off than they were here. You will see how proud they are of the better clothes they have, and of good food, and of money to put in the bank; and how could they get that in the Highlands, where the land is so poor that a small piece is no use, and they have not money to rent the large sheep farms? It is very bad to have people go away – it is very hard on many of them – but what can they do? The piece of ground that was very good for the one family, that is expected to keep the daughters when they marry, and the sons when they marry, and then there are five or six families to live on it. And hard work – that will not do much with very bad land and the bad weather we have here. The people get downhearted when they have their crops spoiled by the long rain, and they cannot get their peats dried; and very often the fishing turns out bad, and they have no money at all to carry on the farm. But now you will see Borvapost.”
Lavender had to confess that this wonderful princess would persist in talking in a very matter-of-fact way. All the afternoon, while he was weaving a luminous web of imagination around her, she was continually cutting it asunder, and stepping forth as an authority on the growing of some wretched plants or the means by which rain was to be excluded from window-sills. And now, in this strange twilight, when she ought to have been singing of the cruelties of the sea or listening to half-forgotten legends of mermaids, she was engaged with the petty fortunes of men and girls who were pleased to find themselves prospering in the Glasgow police force or educating themselves in a milliner’s shop in Edinburgh. She did not appear conscious that she was a princess. Indeed, she seemed to have no consciousness of herself at all, and was altogether occupied in giving him information about practical subjects in which he professed a profound interest he certainly did not feel.
But even Sheila, when they had reached the loftiest part of their route, and could see beneath them the island and the water surrounding it, was struck by the exceeding beauty of the twilight, and as for her companion, he remembered it many a time thereafter as if it were a dream of the sea. Before them lay the Atlantic – a pale line of blue, still, silent and remote. Overhead, the sky was of a clear, pale gold, with heavy masses of violet cloud stretched across from North to South, and thickening as they got near to the horizon. Down at their feet, near the shore, a dusky line of huts and houses was scarcely visible, and over these lay a pale blue film of peat-smoke that did not move in the still air. Then they saw the bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away, toward the East, lay the bulk of the island – dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming Westward like a star. But all this was as nothing to the glory that began to shine in the Southeast, where the sky was of a pale violet over the peaks of Melasabhal and Suainabhal. There, into the beautiful dome, rose the golden crescent of the moon, warm in color, as though it still retained the last rays of the sunset. A line of quivering gold fell across Loch Roag, and touched the black hull and spars of the boat in which Sheila had been sailing in the morning. That bay down there, with its white sands and massive rocks, its still expanse of water and its background of mountain peaks palely colored by the yellow moonlight, seemed really a home for a magic
