DEEPER AND DEEPER.
Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure when
she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step
out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run round
and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him.
How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this
monstrous fashion!
"Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?" she said,
with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded him of many
a pleasant morning in Borva.
"I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought you some
flowers," he said; but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face,
and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had
brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right,
and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his universal
kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.
"Frank is up stairs," she said, "getting ready some things to go
to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had
breakfast?"
"Oh, you were going to Brighton?"
"Yes," she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, "but
not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you
will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot
understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great
surprise to me, I am sure of that."
"Ay, Sheila," he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally,
"you will find it different from Borvabost. You will have no
scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair flying
about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even;
and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will go."
"Oh no," she said with a quick look of disappointment, "you will not
go yet. If I had known you were coming--But it was very late when we
will get home this morning: two o'clock it was."
"Another ball?"
"Yes," said the girl, but not very joyfully.
"Why, Sheila," he said with a grave smile on his face, "you are
becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can't keep up an
acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all these grand places and
knows all sorts of swell people; so you'll have to cut me, Sheila."
"I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes," said the girl
with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened:
"But it is not kind of you to laugh at me."
"Of course I did not laugh at you," he said taking both her hands in
his, "although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and
talked very wild English. Don't you remember how vexed you used to be,
and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by
getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about 'A young calf ate a
raw egg'?"
"Can you say it now?" said Sheila, with her face getting bright and
pleased again. "Try it after me. Now listen."
She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any
language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her.
She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
Highlander.
"But what are _you_ now?" he asked. "You are no longer that wild girl
who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was
the excitement of a storm coming on."
"Many times," she said slowly and wistfully, "I will wish that I could
be that again for a little while."
"Don't you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?"
"I try to like them."
"And you don't succeed?"
He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her
head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and
entered the room.
"Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It's a
pity we can't take them to Brighton with us."
"But I intend to take them," said Sheila firmly.
"Oh, very well, if you don't mind the bother," said her husband. "I
should have thought your hands would have been full: you know you'll
have to take everything with you you would want in London. You will
find that Brighton isn't a dirty little fishing-village in which
you've only to tuck up your dress and run about anyhow."
"I never saw a dirty little fishing-village," said Sheila quietly.
Her husband laughed: "I meant no offence. I was not thinking of
Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can't you run down and see us while we
are at Brighton?"
"Oh do, Mr. Ingram!" said Sheila with quite a new interest in her
face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her
knees and begged this great favor of him. "Do, Mr. Ingram! We should
try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall
we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till the
Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you
come down."
Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
Lavender added, "And we shall introduce you to that young American
lady whom you are so anxious to meet."
"Oh, is she to be there?" he said, looking rather curiously at
Lavender.
"Yes, she and her mother. We are going down together."
"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
associate.
However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from
that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and
a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure
and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that
might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days
gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.
"You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?"
said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired,
grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright
gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong
and in such good spirits."
"How happy you must be always!" said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger
lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.
"I am very well, thank you," said Sheila, blushing somewhat and
not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had
not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have
occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.
On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each
other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small
pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best
of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she
said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large
gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very
nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not
understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume
an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless
talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a
kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite
her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the
girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She
wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers
away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out
what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and
for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward
the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were
upon her. At last she so persistently stared out of the window that
she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the
farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her
as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs.
Kavanagh's chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear
as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side
of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was
greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood
of London--the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so
forth--and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about
Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed
by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight: then they
pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of
granite) and rumbled through the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse
of a great mass of gray houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up
the bare green downs beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.
"Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?" her husband said to
her with a laugh as they were driving down the Queen's road.
She did not answer.
"It is not like Borvabost, is it?"
She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her with a
vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray city
was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not disappear
somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks and the
boats?
They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was another
thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great interest. But
the next moment there was a quick catching of her breath, which almost
resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang into her eyes. Here
at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare she could
catch a glimpse of a great green plain--yellow-green it was in the
sunlight--that the wind was whitening here and there with tumbling
waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind in-land--there
everything seemed asleep--but here there was a fresh breeze from the
south, and the sea had been rough the day before, and now it was of
this strange olive color, streaked with the white curls of foam that
shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold scent of sea-weed, too,
blown up this narrow passage between the houses? And now the carriage
cut round the corner and whirled out into the glare of the Parade,
and before her the great sea stretched out its leagues of tumbling and
shining waves, and she heard the water roaring along the beach, and
far away at the horizon she saw a phantom ship. She did not even look
at the row of splendid hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed
folks on the pavement, at the brilliant flags that were flapping and
fluttering on the New Pier and about the beach. It was the great
world of shining water beyond that fascinated her, and awoke in her a
strange yearning and longing, so that she did not know whether it was
grief or joy that burned in her heart and blinded her eyes with tears.
Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were going up the steps of the
hotel, and said in a friendly way, "I suppose you have some sad
memories of the sea?"
"No," said Sheila bravely, "it is always pleasant to me to think of
the sea; but it is a long time since--since--"
"Sheila," said her husband abruptly, "do tell me if all your things
are here;" and then the girl turned, calm and self-collected, to look
after rugs and boxes.
When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats that
were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which she
knew there was no use placing before her two companions.
"Brighton seems to surprise you very much," said Mrs. Lorraine.
"Yes," said Sheila, "I have been told all about it, but you will
forget all that; and this is very different from the sea at home--at
my home."
"Your home is in London now," said the elder lady with a smile.
"Oh no!" said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly. "London, that
is not our home at all. We live there for a time--that will be quite
necessary--but we shall go back to the Lewis some day soon--not to
stay altogether, but enough to make it as much our home as London."
"How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the Hebrides?"
said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and friendly inquiry in her
eyes.
"It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place so
much," said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she added with
growing courage, "for you must not think he is always like what he
is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no day that is
nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he is up very
early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a salmon-rod.
He can catch the salmon very well--oh, very well for one that is
not accustomed--and he will shoot as well as any one that is in the
island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there will be in the
island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much chance--not
any whatever--of his being lonely or tired when we go to live in the
Lewis."
Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as
to whether she said _like-a-ness_ or _likeness_, or whether she said
_gyarden_ or _garden_. Indeed, she forgot more than that. She was
somewhat excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered
sound of the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the
North, and about her husband's stay there, and how they should
pass the time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
Lavender's injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household
at Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
father's shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they were
very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a far
from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite charmed
with Sheila's descriptions of her island-life, and wished she could
go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when she spoke of
visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were staying there,
Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome as the daughter
of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have been.
"And will you go out in a boat now?" said Sheila, looking down to the
beach.
"In a boat! What sort of boat?" said Mrs. Kavanagh.
"Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats they
are, as far as I can see."
"No, thank you," said the elder lady with a smile. "I am not fond of
small boats, and the company of the men who go with you might be a
little objectionable, I should fancy."
"But you need not take any men," said Sheila: "the sailing of one of
those little boats, it is very simple."
"Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by yourself?"
"Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help me."
"And what would you do if you went out?"
"We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are, but we
would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the lines. You
would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the morning."
"My dear child," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "you don't know what you propose
to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in these waves--we should
be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you don't know what sea-sickness
is?"
"No," said Sheila, "but I will hear my husband speak of it often. And
it is only in crossing the Channel that people will get sick."
"Why, this is the Channel."
Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of course
this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the South
became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble creatures.
Her speculations on this point were cut short by the entrance of her
husband, who came to announce that he had not only secured a carriage
for a month, but that it would be round at the hotel door in half an
hour; whereupon the two American ladies said they would be ready, and
left the room.
"Now go off and get dressed, Sheila," said Lavender.
She stood for a moment irresolute.
"If you wouldn't mind," she said after a moment's hesitation--"if you
would allow me to go by myself--if you would go to the driving, and
let me go down to the shore!"
"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "You will have people fancying you are only
a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all
those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pocket or throw stones at
you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian: now do, like a good
girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It
won't hurt you much."
So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress, and
he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.
Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up
and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of
carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet
of this still summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a
distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of
her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while
driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds
were drawn and candles lit, and still their conversation murmured
around her unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
beach.
"Mayn't we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?" said
Sheila.
"You couldn't go out walking at this time of night," said Mrs.
Kavanagh in a kindly way: "you would meet the most unpleasant persons.
Besides, going out into the night air would be most dangerous."
"It is a beautiful night," said Sheila with a sigh. She was still
standing at the window.
"Come," said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and putting her hand in
her arm, "we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to
be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we
can do to amuse you."
"Oh, but I don't want to be amused!" cried Sheila almost in terror,
for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. "I would
much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it
is very kind of you," she hastily added, fancying that her speech had
been somewhat ungracious--"it is very kind of you indeed."
"Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn't I?"
"Yes," said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked to the table
and sat down.
Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with
some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in
which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were
soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had
been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the
room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened
to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He
went over to her and sat down by the piano.
"Here," she said, "I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I
am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a
second to me: how can one learn without practicing? And there are some
of those duets I really should like to learn after what you said of
them."
"Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?" he said.
"And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must have
left you in a very amiable mood."
"Well, suppose we try," he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll
of music which she had brought down.
"Which shall we take first?" he asked.
"It does not much matter," she answered indifferently, and indeed she
took up one of the duets by haphazard.
What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh's companion suddenly lift her eyes
from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the
room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets,
and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine
who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no
great power--
Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
and it was she to whom the answer was given--
He in thy snowy bosom strays;
and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
them sing together--
He makes thy rosy lips his care,
And walks the mazes of thy hair.
She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practicing
these duets--her duets--with some one else. For presently they sang
"When the rosy morn appearing," and "I would that my love could
silently," and others, all of them in Sheila's eyes, sacred to the
time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room at Borva.
It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect
acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back
over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being
striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these
things. It was not as a music-master that he sang with her. He put as
much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old
days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that
this woman should have taken Sheila's own duets from her to sing
before her with her own husband.
Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could
not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and
even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very
tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and
Lavender had just discovered another duet which they felt bound to try
together as the last.
This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained
by her husband's attentions to this young American lady; and yet she
would not admit to herself that he was any way in the wrong. She
would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her
heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she
had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and
resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the
injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural
than that Frank should recommend to any friend the duets of which he
was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady
should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them?
and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion
of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very
friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.
But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all
her resolves.
"Sheila," said her husband, I don't think I ever asked you whether you
rode."
"I used to ride many times at home," she said.
"But I suppose you'd rather not ride here," he said. "Mrs. Lorraine
and I propose to go out presently: you'll be able to amuse yourself
somehow till we come back."
Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her mother
was with her.
"I suppose I may go out," said Sheila. "It is so very dull in-doors,
and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and she is not going
out."
"Well, there's no harm in your going out," answered Lavender, "but
I should have thought you'd have liked the comfort of watching the
people pass, from the window."
She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out.
Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her husband
and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down stairs
without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great
hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.
It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle
chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and
motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy
sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used
to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air
and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face
wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of
the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves
hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along
the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men
putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long
after the boat was launched. She would not confess to herself that
she felt lonely and miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was
melancholy. It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had
always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging
and rushing before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and
calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as
was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a
blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade,
and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull
blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.
She returned to the King's road a trifle tired, and sat down on one of
the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse her; and now
the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed folks, and the
centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant going and coming of
riders. She saw strange old women, painted, powdered and bewigged in
hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and down the level street, and
she wondered what wild hallucinations possessed the brains of these
poor creatures. She saw troops of beautiful young girls, with flowing
hair, clear eyes and bright complexions, riding by, a goodly company,
under charge of a riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow
sweeter when they came into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and
wondering and speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders
whose appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well,
so did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them saw
Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in the
other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been there
for many a day.
What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing round
a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin, and
playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that attracted
Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about the timid,
pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded her of little
Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her heart seemed to
be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no thought of the
people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the pavement, and
found that the small girl and her companion were about to go away.
Sheila stopped the man.
"Will you let your little girl come with me into this shop?"
It was a confectioner's shop.
"We were going home to dinner," said the man, while the small girl
looked up with wondering eyes.
"Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back in half
an hour?"
The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of her,
and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand and led
her into the confectioner's shop, putting her violin on one of the
small marble tables while they sat down at another. She was probably
not aware that two or three idlers had followed them, and were staring
with might and main in at the door of the shop.
What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed
lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things with her
own hands, and asked her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and
sweet voice? There was not much in Sheila's appearance to provoke fear
or awe. The little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank,
and told her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced,
the number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the
small incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too,
and her photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well
content: she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did
not often get tired.
"Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?" said Sheila.
"We go out every day when it does not rain very hard."
Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have some
tea with me: would you like that?"
"Yes, very much," said the small musician, looking up frankly.
Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
appeared at the door.
"Don't hurry," said Sheila to the little girl: "sit still and drink
out the lemonade; then I will give you some little parcels which you
must put in your pocket."
She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met the
eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come out,
after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and down the
pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops, caught sight
of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom she had picked
up in the streets.
"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said to Mrs. Lorraine. "In
open day, with people staring in, and she has not even taken the
trouble to put the violin out of sight!"
"The poor child means no harm," said his companion.
"Well, we must get her out of this somehow," he said; and so they
entered the shop.
Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband's look,
though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed, acted
quite thoughtlessly--perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to speak to
some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.
"Hadn't you better let this little girl go?" said Lavender to Sheila
somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice for his companion.
"When she has finished her lemonade she will go," said Sheila meekly.
"But I have to buy some things for her first."
"You have got a whole lot of people round the door," he said.
"It is very kind of the people to wait for her," answered Sheila with
the same composure. "We have been here half an hour. I suppose they
will like her music very much."
The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
little thing.
They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in
a humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal (during
the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course, for she had
already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and was bent on
making himself as agreeable as possible to his two companions. Their
talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two ladies on the
Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in Munich; from
that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy transition, to the
ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one of his most impulsive
and brilliant moods--gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic by turns,
and so obviously sincere in all that his listeners were delighted
with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed them as
implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance, saw and
heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the far North
when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the infection
of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked, too--telling
the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in his own
rough--and--ready translations--while there was no self-consciousness
in his face, but a thorough warmth of earnestness; and sometimes, too,
she would notice a quiver of the under lip that she knew of old,
when some pathetic point or phrase had to be indicated rather than
described. He was drawing pictures for them as well as telling
stories--of the three students entering the room in which the
landlady's daughter lay dead--of Barbarossa in his cave--of the
child who used to look up at Heine as he passed her in the street,
awestricken by his pale and strange face--of the last of the band of
companions who sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and
drank to their memory--of the king of Thule, and the deserter from
Strasburg, and a thousand others.
"But is there any of them--is there anything in the world--more
pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?" he said. "You know it, of
course. No? Oh, you must, surely. Don't you remember the mother who
stood by the bedside of her sick son, and asked him whether he would
not rise to see the great procession go by the window; and he tells
her that he cannot, he is so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking
of his dead Gretchen? _You_ know the story, Sheila. The mother begs
him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims
going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of
God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame
people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they
make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
out of it, and says to her son, 'Take that to the Mother of God, and
she will heal your pain.' Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand,
and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running
down his face, he says, 'O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to
tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near us lived
Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart:
heal the wound in my heart.' And then--and then--"
Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
"What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no
idea of it--of its simplicity and tenderness--"
"But pray let us hear the rest of it," said Mrs. Lorraine gently.
"Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother
and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber
and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart.
Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this
in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly.
The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the
morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her
hands, and says--"
He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the
window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to his:
he took it.
"The next time I try to translate Heine," he said, making it appear
that he had broken off through vexation, "something strange will
happen."
"It is a beautiful story," said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been
crying a little bit in a covert way: "I wonder I have not seen a
translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be
after four."
So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out
her heart to him, and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings.
He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so
roughly: surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and
begging for sympathy and compassion.
"Frank," she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head
to hide the color in her face.
"Well?" he answered a trifle coldly.
"You won't be vexed with me," she said in a low voice, and with her
heart beginning to beat rapidly.
"Vexed with you about what?" he said abruptly.
Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said, "Are we
to go to Lady Leveret's?"
"Of course we are," he said, "unless you would rather go and see some
blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so
forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop?
It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people
you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the
wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you
are a woman, and not a child--that people will talk about what you
do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her
daughter do any of these things?"
Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.
"I will try to do better, and please you," she said; and then she went
away.