IF Edmund Airey had a good deal to think about in Norway, Harold Wynne
was certainly not without a subject for thought in Scotland.
It was with a feeling of exultation that he had sat in the bows of the
cutter _Acushla_ on her return to her moorings after that seal-hunt
which everyone agreed had been an extraordinary success. Had this
expression of exultation been noticed by Lady Innisfail, it would,
naturally, have been attributed by her to the fact that he had been
in the boat that had made the largest catch of seals. To be sure, Miss
Craven, who had observed at least a change in the expression upon his
face, did not attribute it to his gratification on having slaughtered
some seals, but then Miss Craven was more acute than an ordinary
observer.
He felt that he did well to be exultant, as he looked at Beatrice Avon
standing by the side of Lord Innisfail at the tiller. The wind that
filled the mainsail came upon her face and held her garments against her
body, revealing every gracious curve of her shape, and suggesting to his
eyes a fine piece of sculpture with flying drapery.
And she was his.
It seemed to him when he had begun to speak to her in the solemn
darkness of the seal-cave, that it was impossible that he could receive
any answer from her that would satisfy him. How was it possible that she
could love him, he had asked himself at some agonizing moments during
the week. He thought that she might possibly have come to love him in
time, if she had not been with him in the boat during that night of
mist, when the voice of Helen Craven had wailed round the cliffs. Her
arrival at the Castle could not but have revealed to her the fact that
she might obtain an offer of marriage from someone who was socially far
above him; and thus he had almost lost all hope of her.
And yet she was his.
The course adopted by his friend Edmund Airey had astonished him. He
could not believe that Airey had fallen in love with her. It was not
consistent with Airey’s nature to fall in love with anyone, he believed.
But he knew that in the matter of falling in love, people do not always
act consistently with their character; so that, after all, Airey might
be only waiting an opportunity to tell her that he had fallen in love
with her.
The words that he had overheard Airey speak to her upon the night of the
_tableaux_ in the hall--words that had driven him out into the night of
rain and storm to walk madly along the cliffs, and to wonder if he were
to throw himself into the waves beneath, would he be strong enough to
let himself sink into their depths or weak enough to make a struggle for
life--those words had cleared away whatever doubts he had entertained as
to Edmund’s intentions.
And yet she was his.
She had answered his question so simply and clearly--with such
earnestness and tenderness as startled him. It seemed that they had
come to love each other, as he had read of lovers doing, from the first
moment that they had met. It seemed that her love had, like his, only
increased through their being kept apart from each other--mainly by
the clever device of Miss Craven and the co-operation of Edmund Airey,
though, of course, Harold did not know this.
His reflections upon this marvel--the increase of their love, though
they had few opportunities of being together and alone--would have been
instructive even to persons so astute and so ready to undertake the
general control of events as Mr. Airey and Miss Craven. Unfortunately,
however, they were as ignorant of what had taken place to induce these
reflections as he was of the conspiracy between them to keep him apart
from Beatrice to secure his happiness and the happiness of Beatrice.
The fact that Beatrice loved him and had confessed her love for him,
though they had had so few opportunities of being together, seemed to
him the greatest of all the marvels that he had recently experienced.
As he gave a farewell glance at the lough and recollected how, a
fortnight before, he had walked along the cliffs and had cast to the
winds all his cherished ideas of love, he could not help feeling that
he had been surrounded with marvels. He had had a narrow escape--he
actually regarded a goodlooking young woman with several thousands of
pounds of an income, as a narrow escape.
This was the last of the reflections that came to him with the sound of
the green seas choked in the narrows of the lough.
The necessity of preserving himself from sudden death--the Irish
outside car on which he was driving was the worst specimen he had yet
seen--absorbed all his thoughts when he had passed through the village
of Ballycruiskeen; and by the time he had got out of the train that
carried him to the East Coast--a matter of six hours travelling--and
aboard the steamer that bore him to Glasgow, the exultation that he
had felt on leaving Castle Innisfail, and on reflecting upon the great
happiness that had come to him, was considerably chastened.
He was due at two houses in Scotland. At the first he meant to do
a little shooting. The place was not inaccessible. After a day’s
travelling he found himself at a railway station fifteen miles from his
destination. He eventually reached the place, however, and he had some
shooting, which, though indifferent, was far better than it was possible
to obtain on Lord Innisfail’s mountains--at least for Lord Innisfail’s
guests to obtain.
The second place was still further north--it was now and again alluded
to as the North Pole by some visitors who had succeeded in finding
their way to it, in spite of the directions given to them by the various
authorities on the topography of the Highlands. Several theories
existed as to the best way of reaching this place, and Harold, who
knew sufficient Scotch to be able to take in the general meaning of the
inhabitants without the aid of an interpreter, was made aware while
at the shooting lodge, of these theories. Hearing, however, that some
persons had actually been known to find the place, he felt certain
that they had struck out an independent course for themselves. It was
incredible to him that any of them had reached it by following the
directions they had received on the subject. He determined to follow
their example; and he had reached the place--eventually.
It was when he had been for three days following a stag, that he began
to think of his own matters in a dispassioned way. Crawling on one’s
stomach along a mile or two of boggy land and then wriggling through
narrow spaces among the rocks--sitting for five or six hours on
gigantic sponges (damp) of heather, with one’s chin on one’s knees for
strategical purposes, which the gillies pretend they understand, but
which they keep a dead secret--shivering as the Scotch mist clothes one
as with a wet blanket, then being told suddenly that there is a stag
thirty yards to windward--getting a glimpse of it, missing it, and
then hearing the gillies exchanging remarks in a perfectly intelligible
Gaelic regarding one’s capacity--these incidents constitute an
environment that tends to make one look dispassionately upon such
marvels as Harold had been considering in a very different spirit while
the Irish lough was yet within hearing.
On the third day that he had been trying to circumvent the stag, Harold
felt despondent--not about the stag, for he had long ago ceased to take
any interest in the brute--but about his own future.
It is to be regretted (sometimes) that an exchange of sentiments on
the subject of love between lovers does not bring with it a change of
circumstances, making possible the realization of a scheme of life in
which those sentiments shall play an active part--or at least as active
a part as sentiments can play. This was Harold’s great regret. Since he
had found that he loved Beatrice and that Beatrice loved him, the world
naturally appeared lovelier also. But it was with the loveliness of a
picture that hangs in a public gallery, not as an individual possession.
His material circumstances, so far from having improved since he had
confessed to Edmund Airey that it was necessary for him to marry a woman
with money, had become worse; and yet he had given no thought to the
young woman with the money, but a great many thoughts to the young woman
who had, practically, none. He felt that no more unsatisfactory state of
matters could be imagined. And yet he felt that it would be impossible
to take any steps with a view of bringing about a change.
He had received several letters from Beatrice, and he had written
several to her; but though in more than one he had told her in that
plain strain which one adopts when one does not desire to be in any way
convincing, that it was a most unfortunate day for her when she met him,
still he did not suggest that their correspondence should cease.
What was to be the end of their love?
It was the constant attempt to answer this question that gave the stag
his chance of life when, on the afternoon of the third day, Harold was
commanded by his masters the gillies to fire into that thickening in the
mist which he was given to understand by an unmistakable pantomime, was
the stag.
While the gillies were exchanging their remarks in Gaelic, flavouring
them with very smoky whiskey, he was thinking, not of the escape of the
stag, but of what possible end there could be to the love that existed
between Beatrice and himself.
It was the renewed thinking upon this question that brought about the
death of that particular stag and two others before the next evening,
for he had arrived at a point when he felt that he must shoot either
a stag or himself. He had arrived at a condition of despair that made
pretty severe demands upon him.
The slaughter of the stags saved him. When he saw their bodies stretched
before him he felt exultant once more. He felt that he had overcome his
fate; and it was the next morning before he realized the fact that he
had done nothing of the sort--that the possibility of his ever being
able to marry Beatrice Avon was as remote as it had been when he had
fired blindly into the mist, and his masters, who had carried the guns,
exhausted (he believed) the resources, of Gaelic sarcasm in comment.