Chapter IX: "farewell, Mackrimmon!" (1)

A night journey from Greenock to London is a sufficiently prosaic affair in ordinary circumstances, but it need not be always so. What if a young man, apparently occupied in making himself comfortable and in talking nonsense to his friend and companion, should be secretly calculating how the journey could be made most pleasant to a bride, and that bride his bride? Lavender made experiments with regard to the ways and tempers of guards; he borrowed planks of wood with which to make sleeping-couches of an ordinary first-class carriage; he bribed a certain official to have the compartment secured; he took note of the time when, and the place where, refreshments could be procured: all these things he did, thinking of Sheila. And when Ingram, sometimes surprised by his good-nature, and occasionally remonstrating against his extravagance, at last fell asleep on the more or less comfortable cushions stretched across the planks, Lavender would have him wake up again, that he might be induced to talk once more about Sheila. Ingram would make use of some wicked words, rub his eyes, ask what was the last station they had passed, and then begin to preach to Lavender about the great obligations he was under to Sheila, and what would be expected of him in after times.

"You are coming away just now," he would say, while Lavender, who could not sleep at all, was only anxious that Sheila's name should be mentioned, "enriched with a greater treasure than falls to the lot of most men. If you know how to value that treasure, there is not a king or emperor in Europe who should not envy you."

"But don't you think I value it?" the other would say anxiously.

"We'll see about that afterward, by what you do. But in the mean time you don't know what you have won. You don't know the magnificent single-heartedness of that girl, her keen sense of honor, nor the strength of character, of judgment and decision that lies beneath her apparent simplicity. Why, I have known Sheila, now--But what's the use of talking?"

"I wish you would talk, though, Ingram," said his companion quite submissively. "You have known her longer than I. I am willing to believe all you say of her, and anxious, indeed, to know as much about her as possible. You don't suppose I fancy she is anything less than you say?"

"Well," said Ingram doubtfully, "perhaps not. The worst of it is, that you take such odd readings of people. However, when you marry her, as I now hope you may, you will soon find out; and then, if you are not grateful, if you don't understand and appreciate _then_ the fine qualities of this girl, the sooner you put a millstone round your neck and drop over Chelsea Bridge the better."

"She will always have in you a good friend to look after her when she comes to London."

"Oh, don't imagine I mean to thrust myself in at your breakfast-table to give you advice. If a husband and wife cannot manage their own affairs satisfactorily, no third person can; and I am getting to be an elderly man, who likes peace and comfort and his own quiet."

"I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense!" said Lavender impetuously. "You know you are bound to marry; and the woman you ask to marry you will be a precious fool if she refuses. I don't know, indeed, how you and Sheila ever escaped--"

"Look here, Lavender," said his companion, speaking in a somewhat more earnest fashion, "if you marry Sheila Mackenzie I suppose I may see something of both of you from time to time. But you are naturally jealous and exacting, as is the way with many good fellows who have had too much of their own will in the world; and if you start off with the notion now that Sheila and I might ever have married, or that such a thing was ever thought of by either of us, the certain consequence will be that you will become jealous of me, and that in time I shall have to stop seeing either of you if you happen to be living in London."

"And if ever the time comes," said Lavender lightly, "when I prove myself such a fool, I hope I shall remember that a millstone can be bought in Victoria road and that Chelsea Bridge is handy."

"All right: I'm going to sleep."

For some time after Ingram was permitted to rest in peace, and it was not until they had reached some big station or other toward morning that he woke. Lavender had never closed his eyes.

"Haven't you been asleep?"

"No."

"What's the matter now?"

"My aunt."

"You seem to have acquired a trick recently of looking at all the difficulties of your position at once. Why don't you take them singly? You've just got rid of Mackenzie's opposition: that might have contented you for a while."

"I think the best plan will be to say nothing of this to my aunt at present. I think we ought to get married first, and when I take Sheila to see her as my wife, what can she say then?"

"But what is Sheila likely to say before then? And Sheila's father? You must be out of your mind!"

"There will be a pretty scene, then, when I tell her."

"Scenes don't hurt anybody, unless when they end in brickbats or decanters. Your aunt must know you would marry some day."

"Yes, but you know whom she wished me to marry."

"That is nothing. Every old lady has a fancy for imagining possible marriages; but your aunt is a reasonable woman, and could not possibly object to your marrying a girl like Sheila?"

"Oh, couldn't she? Then you don't know her: 'Frank, my dear, what are the arms borne by your wife's family?' 'My dear aunt, I will describe them to you as becomes a dutiful nephew. The arms are quarterly: first and fourth, vert, a herring, argent; second and third, azure, a solan-goose, volant, or. The crest, out of a crown vallery, argent, a cask of whisky, gules. Supporters, dexter, a gillie; sinister, a fisherman.'"

"And a very good coat-of-arms, too. You might add the motto _Ultimus regum_. Or _Atavis editus regibus_. Or _Tyrrhena regum progenies_. To think that your aunt would forbid your wedding a king's daughter!"

"I should wed the king's daughter, aunt or no aunt, in any case; but, you see, it would be uncommonly awkward, just as old Mackenzie would want to know something more particular about my circumstances; and he might ask for references to the old lady herself, just as if I were a tenant about to take a house."

"I have given him enough references. Go to sleep, and don't bother yourself."

But now Ingram felt himself just as unable as his companion to escape into unconsciousness, and so he roused himself thoroughly, and began to talk about Lewis and Borva and the Mackenzies, and the duties and responsibilities Lavender would undertake in marrying Sheila.

"Mackenzie," he said, "will expect you to live in Stornoway at least half the year, and it will be very hard on him if you don't."

"Oh, as to that," said the other, "I should have no objection; but, you see, if I am to get married I really think I ought to try to get into some position of earning my own living or helping toward it, you know. I begin to see how galling this sort of dependence on my aunt might be if I wished to act for myself. Now, if I were to begin to do anything, I could not go and bury myself in Lewis for half the year--just at first: by and by, you know, it might be different. But don't you think I ought to begin and do something?"

"Most certainly. I have often wished you had been born a carpenter or painter or glazier."

"People are not born carpenters or glaziers, but sometimes they are born painters. I think I have been born nothing; but I am willing to try, more especially as I think Sheila would like it."

"I know she would."

"I will write and tell her the moment I get to London."

"I would fix first what your occupation was to be, if I were you. There is no hurry about telling Sheila, although she will be very glad to get as much news of you as possible, and I hope you will spare no time or trouble in pleasing her in that line. By the way, what an infamous shame it was of you to go and gammon old Mackenzie into the belief that he can read poetry! Why, he will make that girl's life a burden to her. I heard him propose to read _Paradise Lost_ to her as soon as the rain set in."

"I didn't gammon him," said Lavender with a laugh. "Every man thinks he can read poetry better than every other man, even as every man fancies that no one gets cigars as good and as cheap as he does, and that no one can drive a horse safely but himself. My talking about his reading was not as bad as Sheila's persuading him that he can play whist. Did you ever know a man who did not believe that everybody else's reading of poetry was affected, stilted and unbearable? I know Mackenzie must have been reading poetry to Sheila long before I mentioned it to him."

"But that suggestion about his resonant voice and the Crystal Palace?"

"That was a joke."

"He did not take it as a joke, and neither did Sheila."

"Well, Sheila would believe that her father could command the Channel fleet, or turn out the present ministry, or build a bridge to America, if only anybody hinted it to her. Touching that Crystal Palace: did you observe how little notion of size she could have got from pictures when she asked me if the Crystal Palace was much bigger than the hot-houses at Lewis Castle?"

"What a world of wonder the girl is coming into!" said the other meditatively. "But it will be all lit up by one sun if only you take care of her and justify her belief in you."

"I have not much doubt," said Lavender with a certain modest confidence in his manner which had repeatedly of late pleased his friend.

Even Sheila herself could scarcely have found London more strange than did the two men who had just returned from a month's sojourn in the northern Hebrides. The dingy trees in Euston Square, the pale sunlight that shone down on the gray pavements, the noise of the omnibuses and carts, the multitude of strangers, the blue and mist-like smoke that hung about Tottenham Court road,--all were as strange to them as the sensation of sitting in a hansom and being driven along by an unseen driver. Lavender confessed afterward that he was pervaded by an odd sort of desire to know whether there was anybody in London at all like Sheila. Now and again a smartly-dressed girl passed along the pavement: what was it that made the difference between her and that other girl whom he had just left? Yet he wished to have the difference as decided as possible. When some bright, fresh-colored, pleasant-looking girl passed, he was anxious to prove to himself that she was not to be compared with Sheila. Where in all London could you find eyes that told so much? He forgot to place the specialty of Sheila's eyes in the fact of their being a dark gray-blue under black eyelashes. What he did remember was that no eyes could possibly say the same things to him as they had said. And where in all London was the same sweet aspect to be found, or the same unconsciously proud and gentle demeanor, or the same tender friendliness expressed in a beautiful face? He would not say anything against London women, for all that. It was no fault of theirs that they could not be sea-kings' daughters, with the courage and frankness and sweetness of the sea gone into their blood. He was only too pleased to have proved to himself, by looking at some half dozen pretty shop-girls, that not in London was there any one to compare with Princess Sheila.

For many a day thereafter Ingram had to suffer a good deal of this sort of lover's logic, and bore it with great fortitude. Indeed, nothing pleased him more than to observe that Lavender's affection, so far from waning, engrossed more and more of his thought and his time; and he listened with unfailing good-nature and patience to the perpetual talk of his friend about Sheila and her home, and the future that might be in store for both of them. If he had accepted half the invitations to dinner sent down to him at the Board of Trade by his friend, he would scarcely ever have been out of Lavender's club. Many a long evening they passed in this way--either in Lavender's rooms in King street or in Ingram's lodgings in Sloane street. Ingram quite consented to lie in a chair and smoke, sometimes putting in a word of caution to bring Lavender back from the romantic Sheila to the real Sheila, sometimes smiling at some wild proposal or statement on the part of his friend, but always glad to see that the pretty idealisms planted during their stay in the far North were in no danger of dying out down here in the South. Those were great days, too, when a letter arrived from Sheila. Nothing had been said about their corresponding, but Lavender had written shortly after his arrival in London, and Sheila had answered for her father and herself. It wanted but a very little amount of ingenuity to continue the interchange of letters thus begun; and when the well-known envelope arrived high holiday was immediately proclaimed by the recipient of it. He did not show Ingram these letters, of course, but the contents of them were soon bit by bit revealed. He was also permitted to see the envelope, as if Sheila's handwriting had some magical charm about it. Sometimes, indeed, Ingram had himself a letter from Sheila, and that was immediately shown to Lavender. Was he pleased to find that these communications were excessively business-like--describing how the fishing was going on, what was doing in the schools, and how John the Piper was conducting himself, with talk about the projected telegraphic cable, the shooting in Harris, the health of Bras, and other esoteric matters?

Lavender's communications with the King of Borva were of a different nature. Wonderful volumes on building, agriculture and what not, tobacco hailing from certain royal sources in the neighborhood of the Pyramids, and now and again a new sort of rifle or some fresh invention in fishing-tackle,--these were the sort of things that found their way to Lewis. And then in reply came haunches of venison, and kegs of rare whisky, and skins of wild animals, which, all very admirable in their way, were a trifle cumbersome in a couple of moderate rooms in King street, St. James's. But here Lavender hit upon a happy device. He had long ago talked to his aunt of the mysterious potentate in the far North, who was the ruler of man, beast and fish, and who had an only daughter. When these presents arrived, Mrs. Lavender was informed that they were meant for her, and was given to understand that they were the propitiatory gifts of a half-savage monarch who wished to seek her friendship. In vain did Ingram warn Lavender of the possible danger of this foolish joke. The young man laughed, and would come down to Sloane street with another story of his success as an envoy of the distant king.

And so the months went slowly by, and Lavender raved about Sheila, and dreamed about Sheila, and was always going to begin some splendid achievement for Sheila's sake, but never just managed to begin. After all, the future did not look very terrible, and the present was satisfactory enough. Mrs. Lavender had no objection whatever to listening to his praises of Sheila, and had even gone the length of approving of the girl's photograph when it was shown her. But at the end of six months Lavender suddenly went down to Sloane street, found Ingram in his lodgings, and said, "Ingram, I start for Lewis to-morrow."

"The more fool you!" was the complacent reply.

"I can't bear this any longer: I must go and see her."

"You'll have to bear worse if you go. You don't know what getting to Lewis is in the winter. You'll be killed with cold before you see the Minch."

"I can stand a good bit of cold when there's a reason for it," said the young man; "and I have written to Sheila to say I should start to-morrow."

"In that case I had better make use of you. I suppose you won't mind taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket that I have bought for her."

"That you have bought for her!" said the other.

How could he have spared fifteen pounds out of his narrow income for such a present? And yet he laughed at the idea of his ever having been in love with Sheila.

Lavender took the sealskin jacket with him, and started on his journey to the North. It was certainly all that Ingram had prophesied in the way of discomfort, hardship and delay. But one forenoon, Lavender, coming up from the cabin of the steamer into which he had descended to escape from the bitter wind and the sleet, saw before him a strange thing. In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay a long wonder-land of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could see the successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean, until in the south they faded into a gray mist and became invisible. And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters of the little bay and the hulls of the boats and the windows of the houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!

"Yes," said Lavender to the captain, "it will be a cold drive across to Loch Roag. I shall give Mackenzie's man a good dram before we start."

But it was not Mackenzie's notion of hospitality to send Duncan to meet an honored guest, and ere the vessel was fast moored Lavender had caught sight of the well-known pair of horses and the brown wagonette, and Mackenzie stamping up and down in the trampled snow. And this figure close down to the edge of the quay? Surely, there was something about the thick gray shawl, the white feather, the set of the head, that he knew!

"Why, Sheila!" he cried, jumping ashore before the gangway was shoved across, "whatever made you come to Stornoway on such a day?"

"And it is not much my coming to Stornoway if you will come all the way from England to the Lewis," said Sheila, looking up with her bright and glad eyes.

For six months he had been trying to recall the tones of her voice in looking at her picture, and had failed: now he fancied that she spoke more sweetly and musically than ever.

"Ay, ay," said Mackenzie when he had shaken hands with the young man, "it wass a piece of foolishness, her coming over to meet you in Styornoway; but the girl will be neither to hold nor to bind when she teks a foolishness into her head."

"Is this the character I hear of you, Sheila?" he said; and Mackenzie laughed at his daughter's embarrassment, and said she was a good lass for all that, and bundled both the young folks into the inn, where luncheon had been provided, with a blazing fire in the room, and a kettle of hot water steaming beside it.

When they got to Borva, Lavender began to see that Mackenzie had laid the most subtle plans for reconciling him to the hard weather of these northern winters; and the young man, nothing loath, fell into his ways, and was astonished at the amusement and interest that could be got out of a residence in this bleak island at such a season. Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble protections against cold and wet which his guest had brought with him. He gave him a pair of his own knickerbockers and enormous boots; he made him wear a frieze coat borrowed from Duncan; he insisted on his turning down the flap of a sealskin cap and tying the ends under his chin; and thus equipped they started on many a rare expedition round the coast. But on their first going out, Mackenzie, looking at him, said with some chagrin, "Will they wear gloves when they go shooting in your country?"

"Oh," said Lavender, "these are only a pair of old dogskins I use chiefly to keep my hands clean. You see I have cut out the trigger-finger. And they keep your hands from being numbed, you know, with the cold or the rain."

"There will be not much need of that after a little while," said Mackenzie; and indeed, after half an hour's tramping over snow and climbing over rocks, Lavender was well inclined to please the old man by tossing the gloves into the sea, for his hands were burning with heat.

Then the pleasant evenings after all the fatigues of the day were over, clothes changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila at the open piano in that warm little drawing-room, with its strange shells and fish and birds!

Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
He in thy snowy bosom strays,

they sang, just as in the bygone times of summer; and now old Mackenzie had got on a bit farther in his musical studies, and could hum with the best of them,

He makes thy rosy lips his care,
And walks the mazes of thy hair.

There was no winter at all in the snug little room, with its crimson fire and closed shutters and songs of happier times. "When the rosy morn appearing" had nothing inappropriate in it; and if they particularly studied the words of "Oh wert thou in the cauld blast," it was only that Sheila might teach her companion the Scotch pronunciation, as far as she knew it. And once, half in joke, Lavender said he could believe it was summer again if Sheila had only on her slate-gray silk dress, with the red ribbon round her neck; and sure enough, after dinner she came down in that dress, and Lavender took her hand and kissed it in gratitude. Just at that moment, too, Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for not having brought him his pipe, and not only went out of the room to look for it, but was a full half hour in finding it. When he came in again he was singing carelessly,

Love in thine eyes for ever plays,

just as if he had got his pipe round the corner.

For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father had given his consent. More than that he would have done for the girl, if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her eyes--when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually affectionate toward himself--he grew reconciled to the ways of Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him. If there was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila's husband refusing to live in Stornoway, even for half the year or a portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the sports and scenery and climate of the island? If Mackenzie could have bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing better than Lewis in summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow and frost.

The blow fell. One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night the wind went round to the south-west, and in the morning, lo! the very desolation of desolation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy pasture-land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the house. Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks. All signs of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky. Bird and beast had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of the rain.

"Well, it can't be fine weather always," said Lavender cheerfully when Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing as rain in the island of Lewis.

"No, that iss quite true," said the old man. "It wass ferry good weather we were having since you hef come here. And what iss a little rain?--oh, nothing at all. You will see it will go away whenever the wind goes round."

With that Mackenzie would again go out to the front of the house, take a turn up and down the wet gravel, and pretend to be scanning the horizon for signs of a change. Sheila, a good deal more honest, went about her household duties, saying merely to Lavender, "I am very sorry the weather has broken, but it may clear before you go away from Borva."

"Before I go? Do you expect it to rain for a week?"

"Perhaps it will not, but it is looking very bad to-day," said Sheila.

"Well, I don't care," said the young man, "though it should rain the skies down, if only you would keep in-doors, Sheila. But you do go out in such a reckless fashion. You don't seem to reflect that it is raining."

"I do not get wet," she said.

"Why, when you came up from the shore half an hour ago your hair was as wet as possible, and your face all red and gleaming with the rain."

"But I am none the worse. And I am not wet now. It is impossible that you will always keep in a room if you have things to do; and a little rain does not hurt any one."

"It occurs to me, Sheila," he observed slowly, "that you are an exceedingly obstinate and self-willed young person, and that no one has ever exercised any proper control over you."

She looked up for a moment with a sudden glance of surprise and pain: then she saw in his eyes that he meant nothing, and she went forward to him, putting her hand in his hand, and saying with a smile, "I am very willing to be controlled."

"Are you really?"

"Yes."

"Then hear my commands. You shall _not_ go out in time of rain without putting something over your head or taking an umbrella. You shall _not_ go out in the Maighdean-mhara without taking some one with you besides Mairi. You shall never, if you are away from home, go within fifty yards of the sea, so long as there is snow on the rocks."

"But that is so very many things already: is it not enough?" said Sheila.

"You will faithfully remember and observe these rules?"

"I will."

"Then you are a more obedient girl than I imagined or expected; and you may now, if you are good, have the satisfaction of offering me a glass of sherry and a biscuit, for, rain or no rain, Lewis is a dreadful place for making people hungry."

Mackenzie need not have been afraid. Strange as it may appear, Lavender was well content with the wet weather. No depression or impatience or remonstrance was visible on his face when he went to the blurred windows, day after day, to see only the same desolate picture--the dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists over the moorland and the shining of the red gravel before the house. He would stand with his hands in his pocket and whistle "Love in thine eyes for ever plays," just as if he were looking out on a cheerful summer sunrise. When he and Sheila went to the door, and were received by a cold blast of wet wind and a driving shower of rain, he would slam the door to again with a laugh, and pull the girl back into the house. Sometimes she would not be controlled; and then he would accompany her about the garden as she attended to her duties, or would go down to the shore with her to give Bras a run. From these excursions he returned in the best of spirits, with a fine color in his face; until, having got accustomed to heavy boots, impervious frieze and the discomfort of wet hands, he grew to be about as indifferent to the rain as Sheila herself, and went fishing or shooting or boating with much content, whether it was wet or dry.

"It has been the happiest month of my life--I know that," he said to Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.

"And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis," said the old man cheerfully.

"I think I should soon learn to become a Highlander up here," said Lavender, "if Sheila would only teach me the Gaelic."

"The Gaelic!" cried Mackenzie impatiently. "The Gaelic! It is none of the gentlemen who will come here in the autumn will want the Gaelic; and what for would you want the Gaelic--ay, if you was staying here the whole year round?"

"But Sheila will teach me all the same--won't you, Sheila?" he said, turning to his companion, who was gazing somewhat blankly at the rough steamer and at the rough gray sea beyond the harbor.

"Yes," said the girl: she seemed in no mood for joking.

Lavender returned to town more in love than ever; and soon the news of his engagement was spread abroad, he nothing loath. Most of his club-friends laughed, and prophesied it would come to nothing. How could a man in Lavender's position marry anybody but an heiress? He could not afford to go and marry a fisherman's daughter. Others came to the conclusion that artists and writers and all that sort of people were incomprehensible, and said "Poor beggar!" when they thought of the fashion in which Lavender had ruined his chances in life. His lady friends, however, were much more sympathetic. There was a dash of romance in the story; and would not the Highland girl be a curiosity for a little while after she came to town? Was she like any of the pictures Mr. Lavender had hanging up in his rooms? Had he not even a sketch of her? An artist, and yet not have a portrait of the girl he had chosen to marry? Lavender had no portrait of Sheila to show. Some little photographs he had he kept for his own pocket-book, while in vain had he tried to get some sketch or picture that would convey to the little world of his friends and acquaintances some notion of his future bride. They were left to draw on their imagination for some presentiment of the coming princess.

He told Mrs. Lavender, of course. She said little, but sent for Edward Ingram. Him she questioned in a cautious, close and yet apparently indifferent way, and then merely said that Frank was very impetuous, that it was a pity he had resolved on marrying out of his own sphere of life, but that she hoped the young lady from the Highlands would prove a good wife to him.

"I hope he will prove a good husband to her," said Ingram with unusual sharpness.

"Frank is very impetuous." That was all Mrs. Lavender would say.

By and by, as the spring drew on and the time of the marriage was coming nearer, the important business of taking and furnishing a house for Sheila's reception occupied the attention of the young man from morning till night. He had been somewhat disappointed at the cold fashion in which his aunt looked upon his choice, admitting everything he had to say in praise of Sheila, but never expressing any approval of his conduct or hope about the future; but now she showed herself most amiably and generously disposed. She supplied the young man with abundant funds wherewith to furnish the house according to his own fancy. It was a small place, fronting a somewhat commonplace square in Notting Hill, but it was to be a miracle of artistic adornment inside. He tortured himself for days over rival shades and hues; he drew designs for the chairs; he himself painted a good deal of paneling;, and, in short, gave up his whole time to making Sheila's future home beautiful. His aunt regarded these preparations with little interest, but she certainly gave her nephew ample means to indulge the eccentricities of his fancy.

"Isn't she a dear old lady?" said Lavender one night to Ingram. "Look here! A cheque, received this morning, for two hundred pounds, for plate and glass."

Ingram looked at the bit of pale green paper: "I wish you had earned the money yourself, or done without the plate until you could buy it with your own money."

"Oh, confound it, Ingram! you carry your puritanical theories too far. Doubtless I shall earn my own living by and by. Give me time."

"It is now nearly a year since you thought of marrying Sheila Mackenzie, and you have not done a stroke of work yet."

"I beg your pardon. I have worked a good deal of late, as you will see when you come up to my rooms."

"Have you sold a single picture since last summer?"

"I cannot make people buy my pictures if they don't choose to do so."

"Have you made any effort to get them sold, or to come to any arrangement with any of the dealers?"

"I have been too busy of late--looking after this house, you know," said Lavender with an air of apology.

"You were not too busy to paint a fan for Mrs. Lorraine, that people say must have occupied you for months."

Lavender laughed: "Do you know, Ingram, I think you are jealous of Mrs. Lorraine, on account of Sheila? Come, you shall go and see her."

"No, thank you."

"Are you afraid of your Puritan principles giving way?"

"I am afraid that you are a very foolish boy," said the other with a good-humored shrug of resignation, "but I hope to see you mend when you marry."

"Ah, then you _will_ see a difference!" said Lavender seriously; and so the dispute ended.

It had been arranged that Ingram should go up to Lewis to the marriage, and after the ceremony in Stornoway return to Borva with Mr. Mackenzie, to remain with him a few days. But at the last moment Ingram was summoned down to Devonshire on account of the serious illness of some near relative, and accordingly Frank Lavender started by himself to bring back with him his Highland bride. His stay in Borva was short enough on this occasion. At the end of it there came a certain wet and boisterous day, the occurrences in which he afterward remembered as if they had taken place in a dream. There were many faces about, a confusion of tongues, a good deal of dram-drinking, a skirl of pipes, and a hurry through the rain; but all these things gave place to the occasional glance that he got from a pair of timid and trusting and beautiful eyes. Yet Sheila was not Sheila in that dress of white, with her face a trifle pale. She was more his own Sheila when she had donned her rough garments of blue, and when she stood on the wet deck of the vessel, with a great gray shawl around her, talking to her father with a brave effort at cheerfulness, although her lip would occasionally quiver as one or other, of her friends from Borva--many of them barefooted children--came up to bid her good-bye. Her father talked rapidly, with a grand affectation of indifference. He swore at the weather. He bade her see that Bras was properly fed, and if the sea broke over his box in the night, he was to be rubbed dry, and let out in the morning for a run up and down the deck. She was not to forget the parcel directed to an innkeeper at Oban. They would find Oban a very nice place at which to break the journey to London, but as for Greenock, Mackenzie could find no words with which to describe Greenock.

And then, in the midst of all this, Sheila suddenly said, "Papa, when does the steamer leave?"

"In a few minutes. They have got nearly all the cargo on board."

"Will you do me a great favor, papa?"

"Ay, but what is it, Sheila?"

"I want you not to stay here till the boat sails, and then you will have all the people on the quay vexing you when you are going away. I want you to bid good-bye to us now, and drive away round to the point, and we shall see you the last of all when the steamer has got out of the harbor."

"Ferry well, Sheila, I will do that," he said, knowing well why the girl wished it.

So father and daughter bade good-bye to each other; and Mackenzie went on shore with his face down, and said not a word to any of his friends on the quay, but got into the wagonette, and, lashing the horses, drove rapidly away. As he had shaken hands with Lavender, Lavender had said to him, "Well, we shall soon be back in Borva again to see you;" and the old man had merely tightened the grip of his hand as he left.

The roar of the steam-pipes ceased, the throb of the engines struck the water, and the great steamer steamed away from the quay and out of the plain of the harbor into a wide world of gray waves and wind and rain. There stood Mackenzie as they passed, the dark figure clearly seen against the pallid colors of the dismal day; and Sheila waved a handkerchief to him until Stornoway and its lighthouse and all the promontories and bays of the great island had faded into the white mists that lay along the horizon. And then her arm fell to her side, and for a moment she stood bewildered, with a strange look in her eyes of grief, and almost of despair.

"Sheila, my darling, you must go below now," said her companion: "you are almost dead with cold."

She looked at him for a moment, as though she had scarcely heard what he said. But his eyes were full of pity for her: he drew her closer to him, and put his arms round her, and then she hid her head in his bosom and sobbed there like a child.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE EMERALD.

Dutens and several others who have written upon gems and precious stones during the last two centuries have asserted that the ancients were unacquainted with the true emerald, and that Heliodorus, when speaking nearly two thousand years ago of "gems green as a meadow in the spring," or Pliny, when describing stone of a "soft green lustre," referred to the peridot, the plasma, the malachite, or the far rarer gem, the green sapphire. But the antiquary has come to the rescue with the treasures of the despoiled mounds of Tuscany, the exposed ashes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and now exhibits emeralds which were mounted in gold two thousand years before Columbus dreamed of the New World, or Pizarro and his remorseless band gathered the precious stones by the hundred-weight from the spoils of Peru. Although these specimens of antique jewelry set with emeralds may be numbered by the score or more in the museums and "reliquaries" of Europe, but very few engraved emeralds have descended to us from ancient times: This rarity is not due to the hardness of the stone, for the ancient lapidaries cut the difficult and still harder sapphire: therefore we must believe the statement of the early gem-writers that the emerald was exempted from the glyptic art by common consent on account of its beauty and costliness.

The emerald is now one of the rarest of gems, and its scarcity gives rise to the inquiry as to what has become of the abundant shower of emeralds which fairly rained upon Spain during the early days of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, bringing down the value of fine stones to a trifling price. As with all commercial articles, there is a waste and loss to be accounted for during the wear of three centuries, but this alone will not explain their present rarity in civilized countries. Even in the times of Charles II., when the destitution of the country was extreme, the dukes of Infantado and Albuquerque had millions in diamonds, rubies and precious stones, yet hardly possessed a single sou. So impoverished was the land, and so slender were the purses of all, that the duke of Albuquerque dined on an egg and a pigeon, yet it required six weeks to make an inventory of his plate. At this period, when the nobles gave fêtes the lamps were often decorated with emeralds and the ceilings garlanded with precious stones. The women fairly blazed with sparkling gems of fabulous value, while the country was starving. Most, if not all, of this missing treasure was transferred to Asia, and with the silver current which flowed steadily from the Spanish coffers into India went many of the emeralds also; for in those regions this gem is regarded as foreign stone, and the natives, investing it with the possession of certain talismanic properties, prize it above all earthly treasures.

When the Spaniards commenced their march toward the capital of Mexico, they were astonished at the magnificence of the costumes of the chiefs who came to meet them as envoys or join them as allies, and among the splendid gems which adorned their persons they recognized emeralds and turquoises of such rare perfection and beauty that their cupidity was excited to the highest degree. During the after years of conquest and occupation the avaricious spoilers sought in vain for the parent ledge where these precious stones were found. Recent times have, however, revealed the home of the Mexican turquoise, which has proved to be in the northern part of Mexico, as the Totonacs informed the inquiring Spaniards. The first of these mines, which is of great antiquity, is situated in the Cerrillos Mountains, eighteen miles from Santa Fé. The deposit occurs in soft trachyte, and an immense cavity of several hundred feet in extent has been excavated by the Indians while searching for this gem in past times. Probably some of the fine turquoises worn by the Aztec nobles at the time of the Spanish Conquest came from this mine. Another mine is located in the Sierra Blanca Mountains in New Mexico, but the Navajos will not allow strangers to visit it. Stones of transcendent beauty have been taken from it, and handed down in the tribe from generation to generation as heirlooms. Nothing tempts the cupidity of the Indians to dispose of these gems, and gratitude alone causes them to part with any of these treasures, which, like the mountaineers of Thibet, they regard with mystical reverence. The Navajos wear them as ear-drops, by boring them and attaching them to the ear by means of a deer sinew. Lesser stones are pierced, then strung on sinews and worn as neck-laces. Even the nobler Ute Indians, when stripping the ornaments of turquoise from the ears of the conquered Navajos, value them as sacred treasures, and refuse to part with them even for gold or silver.

All the Spanish accounts of the invasion of Mexico agree in the great abundance of emeralds, both in the adornment of the chiefs and nobles and also in the decoration of the gods, the thrones and the paraphernalia. The Mexican historian Ixtlilxochitl says the throne of gold in the palace of Tezcuco was inlaid with turquoises and other precious stones--that a human skull in front of it was crowned with an immense emerald of a pyramidal form.

The great standard of the republic of Tlascala was richly ornamented with emeralds and silver-work. The fantastic helmets of the chiefs glittered with gold and precious stones, and their plumes were set with emeralds. The mantle of Montezuma was held together by a clasp of the green chalchivitl (jade), and the same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, ornamented other parts of his dress.

The Mexicans carved the obdurate jade and emerald with wonderful skill, using, like the Peruvians, nothing but silicious powder and copper instruments alloyed with tin. They also worked with exquisite taste in gold and silver, and they represented Nature so faithfully and so beautifully that the great naturalist Hernandez took many of these objects thus portrayed for his models when describing the natural history of the country.

When Cortés returned home he displayed five emeralds of extraordinary size and beauty, and presented them to his bride, the niece of the duke de Bejar. On his famous expedition along the Pacific coast and up the Gulf of California he was reduced to such want as to be obliged to pawn these jewels for a time. One of them was as precious as Shylock's turquoise, and Gomara states that some Genoese merchants who examined it in Seville offered forty thousand golden ducats for it. One of the emeralds was in the form of a rose; the second in that of a horn; the third like a fish with eyes of gold; the fourth was like a little bell, with a fine pearl for a tongue, and it bore on its rim the following inscription in Spanish: "Blessed is he who created thee!" The fifth, which was the most valuable of all, was in the form of a small cup with a foot of gold, and with four little chains of the same metal attached to a large pearl as a button: the edge of the cup was of gold, on which was engraved in Latin words, "Inter natos mulierum non surrexit major." These splendid gems are now buried deep in the sand on the coast of Barbary, where they were lost in 1529, when Cortés was shipwrecked with the admiral of Castile whilst on their way to assist Charles V. at the siege of Algiers.

The quantity of emeralds obtained by the Spaniards in their pillage of Mexico was large, but it was trifling when compared with that collected by Pizarro and his remorseless followers in the sack of Peru. Many large and magnificent stones were obtained by the Spaniards, but the transcendent gem of all, called by the Peruvians the Great Mother, and nearly as large as an ostrich egg, was concealed by the natives, and all the efforts of Pizarro and his successors to discover it proved unavailing.

The immense uncut Peruvian emerald given by Rudolph II. to the elector of Saxony is still preserved in the Green Vaults at Dresden. This collection is the finest in the world, and is of the value of many millions of dollars. The treasures are arranged in eight apartments, each surpassing the previous one in the splendor and richness of its contents. This museum dates from the early period when the Freyburg silver-mines yielded vast revenues, and made the Saxon princes among the richest sovereigns in Europe. With lavish hand these potentates purchased jewels and works of art, and the treasures they have thus accumulated are of immense value, and remind the traveler of the gorgeous descriptions of Oriental magnificence.

The finest emerald in Europe is said to belong to the emperor of Russia. It weighs but thirty carats, but it is of the most perfect transparency and of the most beautiful color. There are many other fine emeralds among the imperial jewels of the czar, some of which are of great size and rare beauty. The ancient crown of Vladimir glitters with four great stones of unusual brilliancy. The grand state sceptre is surmounted by another emerald of great size. The sceptre of Poland, which is now treasured in the Kremlin, has a long green stone, fractured in the middle. It is not described, and may be one of the Siberian tourmalines, some of which closely approach the emerald in hue. The imperial _orb_ of Russia, which is of Byzantine workmanship of the tenth century, has fifty emeralds. This fact alone would seem to prove that emeralds were known in Europe or Asia Minor long before the discovery of America; but, on the other hand, the ancient crown which was taken when Kasan was subjugated in 1553 is destitute of emeralds. And hence we are inclined to believe the imperial orb to be of modern workmanship, especially as some of the ancient state chairs do not exhibit emeralds among their decorations of gems and precious stones.

Nowhere in North America do the true emeralds occur. Professor Cleaveland, who was one of the best authorities of his day, maintained nearly half a century ago that emeralds which exhibited a lively and beautiful green hue were found in blasting a canal through a ledge of graphic granite in the town of Topsham in Maine. Several of the crystals presented so pure, uniform and rich a green that he ventured to pronounce them precious emeralds. But to-day we are unable to verify the assertion, or point to a single specimen similar in hue to the emerald from the above-mentioned locality.

The nearest approach to the emerald in color, with the exception of the incomparable green tourmalines from Maine, are the beryls of North and South Royalston in the State of Massachusetts. These beautiful stones exhibit the physical, characteristics of emeralds with the exception of the color, in which they differ very perceptibly. But to appreciate fully the difference in hue we must compare the two gems. Then the lively green of the beryl fades away before the overpowering hue of the emerald, whose rich prismatic green may be taken as the purest type of that color known to the chemist or the painter.

Two summers ago we visited the localities in Massachusetts which were famous in the days of Hitchcock and Webster. We found that the beryls occurred in a very coarse granite, where the quartz appeared in masses and the felspar in huge crystals. These also occur in finer granite, and exhibit no indications of veins or connection with each other. They are few in number, and are soon exhausted by blasting, being generally very superficial. After removing several tons of the rock at the locality at North Royalston, where the beryls appear on the summit of the loftiest hill, our labors were at length rewarded with two beautiful crystals. One of them was a fine prism an inch in diameter, of perfect transparency and of a deep sea-green color, which, however is far from being similar to the transcendent hue of the Granada emeralds, which exhibit an excess of neither blue nor yellow. The other was yellowish-green, resembling the chrysoberyls of Brazil.

Other but imperfect crystals were brought to light, some fragments of which exhibited the deepest golden tints of the topaz, and others the tints of the sherry-wine colored topazes of Siberia. Magnificent crystals have been found in these localities in times long past, and from the fragments and sections of crystals found in the débris of early explorations we observed the wide range of color and the deep longitudinal striae which characterize the renowned beryls from the Altai Mountains, in Siberia. Lively sea- and grass-green, light and deep yellow, also blue crystals of various shades, have been found here.

At the quarries on Rollestone Mountain in Fitchburg beryls of a rich golden color have been blasted out. Some of these approach the chrysoberyl and topaz in hardness and hue. Others so closely resemble the yellow diamond that they may readily be taken for that superior gem. The refractive power of these yellow stones is remarkable, and the goniometer will probably reveal a higher index than is accorded to all the varieties of beryl by the learned Abbé Haüy.