a black man in the water, when his head comes up,” said Sheila – “when the water is smooth, so that you will see him look at you. But I have not told you yet about the Black Horse that Alister-nan-Each saw at Loch Suainabhal one night. Loch Suainabhal, that is inland and fresh water – so it was not a seal; but Alister was going along the shore, and he saw it lying up by the road, and he looked at it for a long time. It was quite black, and he thought it was a boat; but when he came near, he saw it begin to move, and then it went down across the shore, and splashed into the loch. And it had a head bigger than a horse, and quite black, and it made a noise as it went down the shore to the loch.”
“Don’t you think Alister must have been taking a little whisky, Miss Mackenzie?”
“No, not that, for he came to me just after he will see the beast.”
“And do you really believe he saw such an animal?” said Lavender, with a smile.
“I do not know,” said the girl, gravely. “Perhaps it was only a fright, and he imagined he saw it; but I do not know it is impossible there can be such an animal at Loch Suainabhal. But that is nothing; it is of no consequence. But I have seen stranger things than the Black Horse, that many people will not believe.”
“May I ask what they are?” he said, gently.
“Some other time, perhaps, I will tell you; but there is much explanation about it, and, you see, we are going in to Borvapost.”
Was this, then, the capital of the small empire over which the princess ruled? He saw before him but a long row of small huts or hovels, resembling beehives, which stood above the curve of a white bay, and at one portion of the bay was a small creek, near which a number of large boats, bottom upward, lay on the beach. What odd little dwellings those were! The walls, a few feet high, were built of rude blocks of stone or slices of turf, and from those low supports rose a rounded roof of straw, which was thatched over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all – not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men, who, standing on one of the turf walls, were busily engaged in digging into the rich brown and black thatch and heaving it into a cart? Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding against the egress of the peat smoke, it slowly saturated the thatch of the roof, which at certain periods of the year was then taken off to dress the fields, and a new roof of straw put on.
By this time they had run the Maighdean-mhara – the “Sea Maiden” into a creek, and were climbing up the steep beach of shingle that had been worn smooth by the unquiet waters of the Atlantic.
“And will you want to speak to me, Ailasa?” said Sheila, turning to a small girl who had approached her somewhat diffidently.
She was a pretty little thing, with a round, fair face, tanned by the sun, brown hair and soft, dark eyes. She was bare-headed, bare-footed and bare-armed, but she was otherwise smartly dressed, and she held in her hand an enormous flounder, apparently about half as heavy as herself.
“Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila,” said the small Ailasa, holding out the flounder, but looking down all the same.
“Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa?”
“Yes, it wass Donald and me; we wass out in a boat, and Donald had a line.”
“And it is a present for me?” said Sheila, patting the small head and its wild and soft hair. “Thank you, Ailasa. But you must ask Donald to carry it up to the house and give it to Mairi. I cannot take it with me just now, you know.”
There was a small boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister. Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned quite naturally in that direction, until she was suddenly stopped by Lavender, who called to her and put his hand in his pocket. But he was too late. Sheila had stepped in, and with a quick look, which was all the protest that was needed, shut her hand over the half crown he had in his fingers.
“Never mind, Ailasa,” she said. “Go away and get Donald, and bid him carry the fish up to Mairi.”
Lavender put up the half-crown in his pocket in a somewhat dazed fashion; what he chiefly knew was that Sheila had for a moment held his hand in hers, and that her eyes had met his.
Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather pleasant to him. It did not shock the romantic associations he had begun to weave around his fair companion. But when they had gone up to the cottages – Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived – and when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the fishermen’s lives, and to explain how such and such things were done in the fields and pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was a little disappointed. Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what not. Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the stone-wall. The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a London drawing-room was all very beautiful in its way, but here she was discussing as to the quality given to broth by the addition of a certain vegetable which she offered to send down from her own garden, if the cottager in question would try to grow it.
“I wonder, Miss Mackenzie,” he said, at length, when they got outside, his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke, “I wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters, that those people should find out for themselves.”
The girl looked up with some surprise: “That is the work I have to do. My papa cannot do everything in the island.”
“But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such things? Surely they ought to be able to look after their own gardens and houses. It is no degradation – certainly not; for anything you interested yourself in would become worthy of attention by the very fact – but, after all, it seems such a pity you should give up your time to these commonplace details.”
“But some one must do it,” said the girl, quite innocently, “and my papa has no time. And they will be very good in doing what I ask them – everyone in the island.”
Was this a willful affectation? he said to himself. Or was she really incapable of understanding that there was anything incongruous in a young lady of her position, education and refinement busying herself with the curing of fish and the cost of lime? He had himself marked the incongruity long ago, when Ingram had been telling him of the remote and beautiful maiden whose only notions of the world had been derived from literature – who was more familiar with the magic land in which Endymion wandered than with any other – and that at the same time she was about as good as her father at planning a wooden bridge over a stream. When Lavender had got outside again – when he found himself walking with her along the white beach in front of the blue Atlantic – she was again the princess of his dreams. He looked at her face, and he saw in her eyes that she must be familiar with all the romantic nooks and glades of English poetry. The plashing of the waves down there and the music of her voice recalled the sad legends of the fishermen he hoped to hear her sing. But ever and anon there occurred a jarring recollection – whether arising from a contradiction between his notion of Sheila and the actual Sheila, or whether from some incongruity in itself, he did not stop to consider. He only knew that a beautiful maiden who had lived by the sea all her life, and who had followed the wanderings of Endymion in the enchanted forest, need not have been so particular about a method of boiling potatoes, or have shown so much interest in a pattern for children’s
