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 will not blame anyone; 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 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 speak 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 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 your 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 Borvapost 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 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 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.
“A hansom, papa?” said Sheila. “Mairi must go with us, you know.”
This was precisely what he had angled for, and he said, with a show of impatience, “Mairi! How can we take about Mairi to every place? Mairi is a ferry good lass – oh, yes – but she is a servant-lass.”
The words nearly stuck in his throat; and indeed had any other addressed such a phrase to one of his kith and kin there would have been an explosion of rage; but now he was determined to show to Sheila that her husband had some cause for objecting to this girl sitting down with his friends.
But neither husband nor father could make Sheila forswear allegiance to what her own heart told her was just and honorable and generous; and indeed her father was not displeased to see her turn around on himself with just a touch of indignation in her voice. “Mairi is my guest, papa,” she said. “It is not like you to think of leaving her at home.”
“Oh, it wass of no consequence,” said old Mackenzie, carelessly; indeed he was not sorry to have met with this rebuff. “Mairi is a ferry good girl – oh, yes – but there are many who would not forget she is a servant-lass, and would not like to be always taking her with them. And you hef lived a long time in London?”
“I have not lived long enough in London to make me forget my friends, or insult them,” Sheila said, with proud lips, and yet turning to the window to hide her face.
“My lass, I did not mean any harm whatever,” her father said, gently. “I wass saying nothing against Mairi. Go away and bring her into the room, Sheila, and we will see what we can do now, and if there is a theater we can go to this evening. And I must go out, too, to buy some things; for you are a ferry fine lady now, Sheila, and I was coming away in such a hurry.”
“Where is your luggage, papa?” she said, suddenly.
“Oh, luggage!” said Mackenzie, looking around in great embarrassment. “It was luggage you said, Sheila? Ay, well, it wass a hurry I wass in when I came away – for this man will have to pay me at once whatever – and there wass no time for any luggage – oh, no, there wass no time, because Duncan he wass late with the boat, and the mare she had a shoe to put on – and – and – oh, no, there was no time for any luggage.”
“But what was Scarlett about to let you come away like that?” said Sheila.
“Scarlett? Well, Scarlett did not know; it was all in such a hurry. Now go and bring in Mairi, Sheila, and we will speak about the theatre.”
But there was to be no theatre for any of them that evening. Sheila was just about to leave the room to summon Mairi, when the small girl who had let Mackenzie into the house appeared and said, “Please, m’m, there is a young woman below who wishes to see you. She has a message to you from Mrs. Paterson.”
“Mrs. Paterson?” Sheila said, wondering how Mrs. Lavender’s hench-woman should have been entrusted with any such commission. “Will you please ask her to come up?”
The girl came up-stairs, looking rather frightened and much out of breath.
“Please, m’m, Mrs. Paterson has sent me to tell you, and would you please come as soon as it is convenient? Mrs. Lavender has died. It was quite sudden – only she recovered a little after the fit, and then sank; the doctor is there now, but he wasn’t in time, it was all so sudden. Will you please come around, m’m?”
“Yes – I shall be there directly,” said Sheila, too bewildered and stunned to think of the possibility of meeting her husband there.
The girl left, and Sheila still stood in the middle of the room apparently stupefied. That old woman had got into such a habit of talking about her approaching death that Sheila had ceased to believe her, and had grown to fancy that these morbid speculations were indulged in chiefly for the sake of shocking bystanders. But a dead man or a dead woman is suddenly invested with a great solemnity; and Sheila, with a pang of remorse, thought of the fashion in which she had suspected this old woman of a godless hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender – that she had feared to go near her, and blamed her unfairly for many things that had happened. In her own way that old woman in Kensington Gore had been kind to her; perhaps the girl was a little ashamed of herself at this moment that she did not cry.
Her father went out with her, and up to the house with the dusty ivy and the red curtains. How strangely like was the aspect of the house inside to the very picture that Mrs. Lavender had herself drawn of her death! Sheila could remember all the ghastly details that the old woman seemed to have a malicious delight in describing; and here they were – the shutters drawn down, the servants walking about on tip-toe, the strange silence in one particular room. The little shriveled old body lay quite still and calm now; and yet as Sheila went to the bedside, she could hardly believe that within that forehead there was not some consciousness of the scene around. Lying almost in the same position, the old woman, with a sardonic smile on her face, had spoken of the time when she should be speechless, sightless and deaf, while Paterson would go about stealthily as if she was afraid the corpse would hear. Was it possible to believe that the dead body was not conscious at this moment that Paterson was really going about in that fashion – that the blinds were down, friends standing some little distance from the bed, a couple of doctors talking to each other in the passage outside?
They went into another room, and then Sheila, with a sudden shiver, remembered that soon her husband would be coming, and might meet her and her father there.
“You have sent for Mr. Lavender?” she said calmly to Mrs. Paterson.
“No, ma’am,” Paterson said with more than her ordinary gravity and formality; “I did not know where to send for him. He left London some days ago. Perhaps you would read the letter, ma’am?”
She offered Sheila an open letter. The girl saw that it was in her husband’s handwriting, but she shrank from it as though she were violating the secrets of the grave.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot do that.”
“Mrs. Lavender, ma’am, meant you to read it, after she had had her will altered. She told me so. It is a very sad thing, ma’am, that she did not live to carry out her intentions; for she has been inquiring, ma’am, these last few days, as to how she could leave everything to you, ma’am, which she intended; and now the other will – ”
“Oh, don’t talk about that!” said Sheila. It seemed to her that the dead body in the other room would be laughing hideously, if only it could, at this fulfillment of all the sardonic prophecies that Mrs. Lavender used to make.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Paterson said, in the same formal way, as if she was a machine set to work in a particular direction. “I only mentioned the will to explain why Mrs. Lavender wished you to read this letter.”
“Read the letter, Sheila,” said her father.
The girl took it and carried it to the window. While she was there, old Mackenzie, who had fewer scruples about such matters, and who had the curiosity natural to a man of the world, said to Mrs. Paterson – not loud enough for Sheila to overhear – “I suppose, then, the poor old lady has left her property to her nephew?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, somewhat sadly, for she fancied she was the bearer of bad news. “She had a will drawn out only a short time ago, and nearly everything is left to Mr. Ingram.”
“To Mr. Ingram?”
“Yes,” said the woman, amazed to see that Mackenzie’s face, so far from evincing displeasure, seemed to be as delighted as it was surprised.
“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, “I was one of the witnesses. But Mrs. Lavender changed her mind, and was very anxious that everything should go to your daughter, if it could be done; and Mr. Appleyard, sir, was to come here to-morrow forenoon.”
“And has Mr. Lavender got no money whatever?” said Sheila’s father, with an air that convinced Mrs. Paterson that he was a revengeful man, and was glad his son-in-law should be so severely punished.
“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, careful not to go beyond her own sphere.
Sheila came back from the window. She had taken a long time to read and ponder over that letter, though it was not a lengthy one. This was what Frank Lavender had written to his aunt:
“My Dear Aunt Lavender – I suppose when you read this you will think I am in a bad temper because of what you said to me. It is not so. But I am leaving London, and I wish to hand over to you, before I go, the charge of my house, and to ask you take possession of everything in it that does not belong to Sheila. These things are yours, as you know, and I have to thank you very much for the loan of them. I have to thank you for the far too liberal allowance you have made me for many years back. Will you think I have gone mad if I ask you to stop that now? The fact is, I am going to have a try at earning something, for the fun of the thing; and to make the experiment satisfactory, I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where the most ingenious fellow I know couldn’t get a penny loaf on credit. You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come back to London again, I shall call on you and thank you in person.
“I am your affectionate nephew,“Frank Lavender.”
So far the letter was almost business-like. There was no reference to the causes which were sending him away from London, and which had already driven him to this extraordinary resolution about the money he had got from his aunt. But at the end of the letter there was a brief postscript, apparently written at the last moment, the words of which were these: “Be kind to Sheila. Be as kind to her as I have been cruel to her. In going away from her I feel as though I were exiled by man and forsaken by God.”
She came back from the window, the letter in her hand.
“I think you may read it, too, papa,” she said, for she was anxious that her father should know that Lavender had voluntarily surrendered this money before he was deprived of it. Then she went back to the window.
The slow rain fell from the dismal skies on the pavement, and the railings and the now almost leafless trees. The atmosphere was filled with a thin, white mist, and the people going by were hidden under umbrellas. It was a dreary picture enough; and yet Sheila was thinking of how much drearier such a day would be on some lonely coast in the North, with the hills obscured behind the rain, and the sea beating hopelessly on the sand. She thought of some small and damp Highland cottage, with narrow windows, a smell of wet wood about, and the monotonous drip from over the door. And it seemed to her that a stranger there would be very lonely, not knowing the ways or the speech of the simple folk, careless, perhaps, of his own comfort, and only listening to the plashing of the sea and the incessant rain on the bushes and on the pebbles of the beach. Was there any picture of desolation, she thought, like that of a sea under rain, with a slight fog obscuring the air, and with no wind to stir the pulse with the noise of waves? And if Frank Lavender had only gone as far as the Western Highlands, and was living in some house on the coast, how sad and still the Atlantic must have been all this wet forenoon, with the islands of Colonsay and Oronsay lying remote and gray and misty in the far and desolate plain of the sea!
“It will take a great deal of responsibility from me, sir,” Mrs. Patterson said to old Mackenzie, who was absently thinking of all the strange possibilities now opening out before him, “if you will tell me what is to be done. Mrs. Lavender had no relatives in London except her nephew.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mackenzie, waking up – “oh, yes, we will see what is to be done. There will be the boat wanted for the funeral – .” He recalled himself with an impatient gesture. “Bless me!” he said, “what was I saying? You must ask some one else – you must ask Mr. Ingram. Hef you not sent for Mr. Ingram?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I have sent to him; and he will most likely come in the afternoon.”
“Then there are the executors mentioned in the will – that wass something you should know about – and they will tell you what to do. As for me, it is ferry little I will know about such things.”
“Perhaps your daughter, sir,” suggested Mrs. Paterson, “will tell me what she thinks should be done with the rooms. And as for luncheon, sir, if you would wait – ”
“Oh, my daughter?” said Mr. Mackenzie, as if struck by a new idea, but determined, all the same, that Sheila should not have this new responsibility thrust on her – “My daughter? – well, you was saying, mem, that my daughter would help you? Oh, yes, but she is a ferry young thing, and you was saying we must hef luncheon! Oh, yes, but we will not give you so much trouble, and we hef luncheon ordered at the other house whatever, and there is the young girl there that we cannot leave all by herself. And you hef a great experience, mem, and whatever you do, that will be right; do not have any fear of that. And I will come around when you want me – oh, yes, I will come around at any time – but my daughter, she is a ferry young thing, and she would be of no use to you whatever – none whatever. And when Mr. Ingram comes you will send him around to the place where my daughter is, for we will want to see him, if he hass the time to come. Where is Shei – where is my daughter?”
Sheila had quietly left the room and stolen into the silent chamber in which the dead woman lay. They found her standing close by the bedside, almost in a trance.
“Sheila,” said her father, taking her hand, “come away now, like a good girl. It is no use your waiting here; and Mairi; what will Mairi be doing?”
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 will 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 for 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 the 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 is 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 have the money from you, you would have 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’ll tell you now whom she meant to give it to,” said Ingram, still somewhat hotly.
“Oh, yes – oh, yes, that iss 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 has a lot of money given to him. And it is no wrong to my Sheila at all, for she will have 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 around his neck.