CHAPTER IX.

"FAREWELL, MACKRIMMON!"

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.

Beautiful transparent beryls have been found among the granite hills

of Oxford county in Maine, and the late Governor Lincoln nearly half a

century ago possessed a splendid crystal which would have rivaled the

superb prism found at Mouzzinskaia, and which the Russians value so

highly. The extended and unexplored ledges of granite which rise

from the shores of the ocean at Harpswell in Maine, and stretch

north-westward for nearly a hundred miles, quite to the base of the

White Mountain group, are not only rich in beryls, but they contain

many of the rarest minerals known to the mineralogist. And perhaps

there is no other field of equal extent in the country which offers to

the mineralogist such a harvest of the rare and curious productions of

the mineral kingdom.

At Haddam in Connecticut beautiful crystals of beryl have been

discovered, and one of these, of fine green color, an inch in diameter

and several inches in length, was preserved in the cabinet of Colonel

Gibbs. Professor Silliman possessed another fine one, seven inches in

length.

The mountains in Colorado have yielded some fine specimens. But the

finest of the beryl species come from Russia. In the Ural Mountains

the crystals are small, but of fine color; in the Altai Mountains they

are very large and of a greenish blue; but in the granitic ledges of

Odon Tchelon in Daouria, on the frontier of China, they are found in

the greatest perfection. They occur on the summit of the mountain

in irregular veins of micaceous and white indurated clay, and are

greenish-yellow, pure pale green, greenish-blue and sky-blue. The

chief matrix of the beryl all over the world is graphic granite, but

it may occur in other rocks. The light green stones of Limoges in

France appear in a vein of quartz traversing granite. At Royalston we

observed them to spring seemingly from the felspar and project into

smoky quartz, becoming more transparent as they advanced into the

harder stone.

The beryl possesses the same crystalline form and specific gravity as

the emerald, but its hardness (especially in the yellow varieties) is

sometimes greater. The only perceptible difference in the two stones

is in the color. Cleaveland thought that as the emerald and beryl had

the same essential characters, they might gradually pass into each

other; and Klaproth, finding the oxides of both chrome and iron in one

specimen, was led to take the same view. The crystals of true emerald

are almost always small (with the exception of those found in the Wald

district in Siberia), whilst those of the beryl vary from a few

grains to more than a ton in weight. The crystals of both are almost

invariably regular hexahedral prisms, sometimes slightly modified.

Those of the beryl we sometimes find quite flat, as though they

had been compressed by force: then again they are acicular and of

extraordinary length, considering their slender diameter. Sometimes

their lateral faces are longitudinally striated, and as deeply as the

tourmaline, so that the edges of the prism are rendered indistinct.

Other crystals are curved, and some perforated in the axis like

the tourmaline, so as to contain other minerals. Sometimes they are

articulated like the pillars of basalt, and separated at some distance

by the intervening quartz. These modified forms give rise to curious

speculations as to their formation and origin. If we admit the action

of fire (which is improbable), then the separation may be easily

explained; but if we insist that they were deposited in the wet way

and by slow process, how can we account for the dislocation? "By

electricity," whispers a friend--"by telluric magnetism, that

wonderful unexplained and mysterious force which has caused the grand

geological changes of the globe, and is still at work."

No other gem has been counterfeited with such perfection as the

emerald; and in fact it is utterly impossible to distinguish the

artificial from the real gems by the aid of the eye alone: even the

little flaws which lull the suspicions of the inexperienced are easily

produced by a dexterous blow from the mallet of the skilled artisan.

Not only emeralds, but most of the gems and precious stones, are now

imitated with such consummate skill as to deceive the eye, and none

but experts are aware of the extent to which these fictitious gems

are worn in fashionable society, for oftentimes the wearers themselves

imagine that they possess the real stones. There is not one in a

hundred jewelers who is acquainted with the physical properties of the

gems, and very few can distinguish the diamond from the white zircon

or the white topaz, the emerald from the tourmaline of similar hue,

the sapphire from iolite, or the topaz from the Bohemian yellow

quartz. Jewelers are governed generally by sight, which they believe

to be infallible, whilst hardness and specific gravity are the only

sure tests.

Artificial gems rivaling in beauty of color the most brilliant and

delicately tinted of the productions of Nature are now made at Paris

and in other European cities. The establishments at Septmoncel in the

Jura alone employ a thousand persons, and fabulous quantities of the

glittering pastes are made there and sent to all parts of the world.

A fine specimen of prase when cut affords a fair imitation of

the emerald. The green fluor-spar which Haüy called "emeraude de

Carthagène" may also be substituted, but the application of the file

detects the trick with ease. Some of the green tourmalines approach

the emeralds in hue very closely, and by artificial light it is

impossible to distinguish them from each other. Fragments of quartz

may be stained by being steeped in green-colored tinctures. The Greeks

stained quartz so like the real gem that Pliny exclaimed against the

fraud while declining to tell how it was done. The Ancona rubies at

the present day are made by plunging quartz into a hot tincture of

cochineal, which penetrates the minute fissures of the rock.

But notwithstanding the high art reached by modern glass-makers, they

are yet far behind the ancients in imitating the emerald in point of

hardness and lustre. Many emerald pastes of Roman times still extant

are with difficulty distinguished from the real gem, so much harder

and lustrous are they than modern glass. The ancient Phoenician

remains found in the island of Sardinia by Cavalier Cara in 1856 show

fine color in their enamels and glass-works. The green pigment brought

home from the ruins of Thebes by Mr. Wilkinson was shown by Dr. Ure

to consist of blue glass in powder, with yellow ochre and colorless

glass. From Greek inscriptions dating from the period of the

Peloponnesian war we learn that there were signets of colored glass

among the gems in the treasury of the Parthenon.

Of all the emerald imitations that have descended to us from

antiquity, none are more remarkable, none more interesting to the

antiquary and historian, than the famous Sacro Catino of the cathedral

of Genoa. This celebrated relic is a glass dish or patera fourteen

inches in width, five inches in depth and of the richest transparent

green color, though disfigured by several flaws. It was bestowed upon

the republic of Genoa by the Crusaders after the capture of Caesarea

in 1101, and was regarded as an equivalent for a large sum of money

due from the Christian army. It was traditionally believed to have

been presented to King Solomon by the queen of Sheba, and afterward

preserved in the Temple, and some accounts relate that it was used by

Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper. The Genoese received

it with so much veneration and faith that twelve nobles were appointed

to guard it, and it was exhibited but once a year, when a priest held

it up in his hand to the view of the passing throng. The state in

1319, in a time of pressing need, pawned the holy relic for twelve

hundred marks of gold (two hundred thousand dollars), and redeemed

it with a promptness which proved its belief in the reality of the

material as well as in its sanctity. And it is also related that the

Jews, during a period of fifty years, lent the republic four million

francs, holding the sacred relic as a pledge of security. Seven

hundred years passed away, when Napoleon came, and as he swept down

over Italy, gathering her art-treasures, he ordered the "Holy

Grail" to be conveyed to Paris. It was deposited in the Cabinet of

Antiquities in the Imperial Library, and the mineralogists quickly

discovered it to be glass. It is due to the memory of Condamine to

state that he was the first to doubt the material of the Sacro Catino,

for, when examining it by lamplight in 1757, in the presence of the

princes Corsini, he observed none of the cracks, clouds and specks

common to emeralds, but detected little bubbles of air. In 1815 the

Allies ordered its return to the cathedral of Genoa. During this

journey the beautiful relic was broken, but its fragments were

restored by a skillful artisan, and it is now supported upon a tripod,

the fragments being held together by a band of gold filigree. This

remarkable object of antiquity, which is of extraordinary beauty of

material and workmanship, furnishes a theme over which the antiquaries

love to muse and wrangle.

Another of the antique monster emeralds, weighing twenty-nine pounds,

was presented to the abbey of Reichenau near Constance by Charlemagne.

Beckman has also detected this precious relic to be glass. And

probably the great emerald of two pounds weight brought home from the

Holy Land by one of the dukes of Austria, and now deposited in the

collection at Vienna, is of the same material. The hardness of our

glass is yet far inferior to that of the ancients, and even the

ruby lustre of the potters of Umbria, which was so precious to the

dilettanti of the Cinque Cento period, has not been recovered.

The emerald has been a subject of controversy among the chemists

and mineralogists, and its character, especially the cause of its

beautiful color, is not clearly defined even at the present day. But

that distinguished chemist, Professor Lewy of Paris, seems to offer,

thus far, the most correct and plausible theory. Ten years ago he

boldly asserted that the hue is not due to the oxide of chromium,

and with this opinion he confronted such eminent men as Vauquelin,

Klaproth and others of high rank in the scientific world. Not content

with his researches in his laboratory in Paris, he resolutely crossed

the ocean and sought the emerald in its parent ledges in the lofty

table-lands of New Granada. Here he obtained new information of a

geological character which goes far to strengthen his position.

The experiments of M. Lewy indicate, if they do not prove, that the

coloring matter of the emerald is organic, and readily destroyed

by heat, which would not be the case if it was due to the oxide of

chromium. All my own fire-tests with the Granada emerald corroborate

the views of M. Lewy, for in every instance the gem lost its hue when

submitted to a red heat.

Nevertheless, the recent researches of Wöhler and Rose give negative

results. These experienced chemists kept an emerald at the temperature

of melted copper for an hour, and found that, although the stone had

become opaque, the color was not affected. They therefore considered

the oxide of chromium to be the coloring agent, without, however,

denying the presence of organic matter. The amount of the oxide of

chromium found by many chemists varies from one to two per cent.,

while Lewy and others found it in a quantity so small as to be

inappreciable, and too minute to be weighed.

Before the ordinary blowpipe the emerald passes rapidly into a whitish

vesicular glass, and with borax it forms a fine green glass, while its

sub-species, the beryl, changes into a colorless bead: with salt of

phosphorus it slowly dissolves, leaving a silicious skeleton.[A]

M. Lewy visited the mines at Muzo in Granada, and from the results

of his analyses, together with the fact of finding emeralds in

conjunction with the presence of fossil shells in the limestone in

which they occur, he arrived at the conclusion that they have been

formed in the wet way--deposited from a chemical solution. He also

found that when extracted they are so soft and fragile that the

largest and finest fragments can be reduced to powder by merely

rubbing them between the fingers, and the crystals often crack and

fall to pieces after being removed from the mine, apparently from loss

of water. Consequently, when the emeralds are first extracted they are

laid aside carefully for a few days until the water is evaporated.

This statement relative to the softness of the gem and its subsequent

hardening has been met with a shout of derision from some of the

gem-seekers--none louder than that of Barbot, the retired jeweler.

Barbot seems to forget that the rock of which his own house in Paris

is constructed undergoes the same change after being removed from

the deep quarries in the catacombs under the city. This phenomenon is

observed with many rocks. Flints acquire additional toughness by the

evaporation of water contained in them. The steatite of St. Anthony's

Falls grows harder on exposure, and other minerals when quarried from

considerable depths become firmer on exposure to the action of the

air. Observations of this kind led Kuhlman to investigate the cause,

and he believes that the hardening of rocks is not owing solely to

the evaporation of quarry-water, but that it depends upon the

tendency which all earthy matters possess to undergo a spontaneous

crystallization by slow dessication, which commences the moment the

rock is exposed to the air.

The coloring matter of the emerald seems to be derived from the

decomposition of the remains of animals who have lived in a bygone

age, and whose remains are now found fossilized in the rock which

forms the matrix of the gem. This rock in Granada is a black

limestone, with white veins containing ammonites. Specimens of these

rocks exhibiting fragments of emeralds _in situ_, and also ammonites,

are to be seen in the mineralogical gallery of the Jardin des Plantes

in Paris. Lewy believes that the beautiful tint of these gems is

produced by an organic substance, which he considers to be a carburet

of hydrogen, similar to that called chlorophyll, which constitutes

the coloring matter of the leaves of plants; and he has shown that

the emeralds of the darkest hue, which contain the greatest amount

of organic matter, lose their color completely at a low red heat,

and become opaque and white; while minerals and pastes which are

well known to be colored by chromium, like the green garnets (the

lime-chrome garnets) of Siberia, are unchanged in hue by the action of

heat.

Since the time of the Spanish Conquest, New Granada has furnished

the world with the most of its emeralds. The most famous mines are at

Muzo, in the valley of Tunca, between the mountains of New Granada and

Popayan, about seventy-five miles from Santa Fé de Bogota, where

every rock, it is said, contains an emerald. At present the supply of

emeralds is very limited, owing to restrictions on trade and want of

capital and energy in mining operations.

Blue as well as green emeralds are found in the Cordillera of the

Cubillari. The Esmeraldas mines in Equador are said to have been

worked successfully at one period by the Jesuits. The Peruvians

obtained many emeralds from the barren district of Atacama, and in

the times of the Conquest there were quarries on the River of Emeralds

near Barbacoas.

Emeralds are found in Siberia, and some of the localities may have

furnished to the ancients the Scythian gems which Pliny and others

mention. In the Wald district magnificent crystals have been found

embedded in mica-slate. One of these--a twin-crystal, now in the

Imperial Cabinet at St. Petersburg--is seven inches long, four inches

broad, and weighs four and a half pounds. There is another mass in the

same collection which measures fourteen inches long by twelve broad

and five thick, weighing sixteen and three-quarter pounds troy. This

group shows twenty crystals from a half inch to five inches long,

and from one to two inches broad. They were discovered by a peasant

cutting wood near the summit of the mountain. His eye was attracted

by the lustrous sparkling amongst the decomposed mica and where the

ground had been exposed by the uprooting of a tree by the violence of

the wind. He collected a number of the crystals, and brought them to

Katharineburg and showed them to M. Kokawin, who recognized them and

sent them to St. Petersburg, where they were critically examined by

Van Worth and pronounced to be emeralds. One of these crystals was

presented by the emperor to Humboldt when he visited St. Petersburg,

and it is now deposited in the Berlin collection. Quite a number

of emeralds are now brought from the Siberian localities, and it is

believed that enterprise and capital would produce a large supply of

the gem.[B]

The supply of emeralds from South America is very limited, and may

be ascribed to want of skillful mining, as well as to climate,

the political condition of the country and the indolence of its

inhabitants. The localities cannot be exhausted, for they are too

numerous and extensive. The elevated regions in Granada admit of

scientific exploration by Europeans, and at the present day the

only emerald-mining operations conducted in South America have been

prosecuted near Santa Fé de Bogota by a French company, which has

paid the government fourteen thousand dollars yearly for the right of

mining, all the emeralds obtained being sent to Paris to be cut by the

lapidaries of that city.

In the Atacama districts, and along the banks of the River of

Emeralds, the physical obstructions are difficult to overcome, and

pestilential diseases of malignant character forbid the long sojourn

of the European. Yet the introduction of Chinese labor may prove

successful and highly remunerative, since the coolie reared among

the jungles and rice-swamps of Southern China is quite as exempt from

malarial fevers as the negro.

The price of the emerald has no fixed and extended scale, like that of

the diamond, and the fluctuations of its value during the past three

centuries form an interesting chapter in the history of gems.

In the time of Dutens (1777) the price of small stones of the first

quality was one louis the carat; one and a half carats, five louis;

two carats, ten louis; and beyond this weight no rule of value could

be established. In De Boot's day (1600) emeralds were so plenty as

to be worth only a quarter as much as the diamond. The markets were

glutted with the frequent importations from Peru, and thirteen years

before the above-mentioned period one vessel brought from South

America two hundred and three pounds of fine emeralds, worth at

the present valuation more than seven millions of dollars. At the

beginning of this century, according to Caire, they were worth no more

than twenty-four francs (or about five dollars) the carat, and for a

long time antecedent to 1850 they were valued at only fifteen dollars

the carat. Since this period they have become very rare, and their

valuation has advanced enormously. In fact, the value of the emerald

now exceeds that of the diamond, and is rapidly approaching the ratio

fixed by Benevenuto Cellini in the middle of the sixteenth century,

which rated the emerald at four times, and the ruby at eight times,

the value of the diamond. Perfect stones (the emerald is exceedingly

liable to flaw, the beryl is more free, and the green sapphire is

rarely impaired by fissures or cracks) of one carat in weight are

worth at the present day two hundred dollars in gold. Perfect gems

of two carats weight will command five hundred dollars in gold, while

larger stones are sold at extravagant prices.

Most of our aqua-marinas come from Brazil and Siberia, and small

stones are sold at trifling prices. Some of them, however, when

perfect and of fine color, command fabulous sums. The superb little

beryl found at Mouzzinskaia is valued by the Russians at the enormous

sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, although the crystal

weighs but little more than one ounce. Another rough prism preserved

in the Museum at Paris, and weighing less than one hundred grains, has

received the tempting offer of fifteen thousand francs.

A.C. HAMLIN, M.D.

[Footnote A: A curious result happened to the elder Silliman when

experimenting with a Peruvian emerald before the compound blowpipe.

The reducing flame instantly melted it into a transparent green

globule. Perhaps the intense heat of this all-powerful flame, which

reduces even the diamond, recalled the colors which disappear at a

lower temperature. But this could not be done if the color was due

to organic matter, which is annihilated or modified beyond recall by

combustion.]

[Footnote B: Several of the natural crystals of the Siberian emeralds

of large size and beautiful color are now to be seen in the valuable

and choice collections of Messrs. Clay and William S. Vaux of

Philadelphia.]

BERRYTOWN.

CHAPTER VIII.

It rained during the night. The wind blew feebly in the morning,

and the sunlight glimmered dully from behind the flying gray clouds.

Catharine looked out of her window, anxiously pushing aside the boughs

full of wet white roses. The sense of desolation was not strong enough

upon her to make her forget that Peter had not yet cut the clover

in the lower meadow, and that such a rain was bad for the tomatoes.

Doctor McCall was at the gate, propping up an old Bourbon rose, an

especial favorite of her father's. Somebody tapped at her door, and

Miss Muller rustled in in a flounced white muslin and rose-colored

ribbons. She too hurried to the window and looked down.

"I asked him to meet me here, Kitty. I can't make you understand,

probably, but the Water-cure House is so bald and bare! There is

something in the shade here, and the old books, and this wilderness

of roses, that forms a fitting background for a friendship like ours,

aesthetically considered."

"I'm very glad. It's lucky I told Jane to have waffles--"

"I'll go down," interrupted Miss Muller, "and direct her about the

table. Coarse tablecloths and oily butter would jar against the finest

emotions. What very pretty shoulders you have, child! Such women as

you, like potatoes, are best _au naturel_. Now, with those corsets,

and this red shawl over the back of your chair, you would make a very

good Madonna of the Rubens school. Men's ideal of womanhood then was

to be plump, insipid and a mother."

"But about the oily butter?" said Kitty, glancing back over the

aforesaid shoulders as she stooped to lace her shoes, while Maria

hurried off to the kitchen. "Jane will jar against her finer emotions,

I fancy, when she begins to order her about."

But Kitty lost all relish for fun before she sat down to the

breakfast-table. Mr. Muller came in. The poor little man hurried to

her side: "I passed a sleepless night, Catharine. I feared that I had

been rough with you. I forget so often how gentle and tender you are,

my darling."

Catharine was puzzled: "Upon my word, I've forgotten what happened.

And I really never feel especially gentle or tender. You are mistaken

about that."

When she took her place behind the urn, Maria motioned her brother to

the foot of the table, and then nodded significantly. "Now you two can

imagine a month or two has passed," she said.

Even Doctor McCall smiled meaningly. Mr. Muller blushed, and glanced

shyly at Catharine. But she looked at him unmoved. "Our table will

not be like this," gravely. "You forget the three hundred blue-coats

between." Maria laughed, but Doctor McCall for the first time looked

steadily at the girl.

First of all, perhaps, Kitty was just then a housekeeper. She waited

anxiously to see if the steak was properly rare and the omelette

light, nodded brightly to Jane, who stood watchful behind her, and

then looked over at her betrothed, thinking how soon they would sit

down tête-à-tête for the rest of their lives, perhaps for eternity,

for, according to her orthodoxy, there could be no new loves in

heaven. How fat he was, and bald! The mild blue eyes behind their

glasses took possession of her and held her.

She listened to the talk between Doctor McCall and Miss Muller in a

language she had never learned. Maria's share of it was largely made

up of headlong dives into Spencer and Darwin, with reminiscences of

_The Dial_, while Doctor McCall's was anchored fast down to facts; but

it was all alive, suggestive, brilliant. They were young. They were

drinking life and love with full cups. She (looking over at the bald

head and spectacled eyes) had gone straight out of childhood into

middle age and respectability.

The breakfast was over at last. Miss Muller followed Doctor McCall

into the shop, where he fell to turning over the old books, and then

to the garden. What was the use of a stage properly set if the drama

would not begin?

"Pray do not worry any longer with that old bush," as he went back

to Peter's rose. "It is not a trait of yours to be persistent about

trifles. Or stay: give me a bud for my hair."

"Not these!" sharply, holding her hand. "I could not see one of these

roses on any woman's head."

She smiled, very well pleased: "You perceive some subtle connection

between me and the flower?"

"Nothing of the sort. There are some, planted, I suppose, by that

little girl, which will be more becoming to your face."

"You are repelled by 'the little girl,' I see, John. I always told you

your instincts were magnetic. That type of woman is antipathetic to

you."

He laughed: "I have no instincts, hardly ideas, about either roses

or types of women. If I avoided Miss Vogdes, it was because her name

recalled one of the old hard experiences of my boyhood. The girl

herself is harmless enough, no doubt."

"And the rose?"

"The rose? Why, we have no time to waste in such talk as this. You

have not yet told me how you managed to get your profession. When I

last saw you you had set all the old professors in the university at

defiance. Did you carry lectures and cliniques by strategy or assault?

You have good fighting qualities, Maria."

She would rather not have gone over her battle with the doctors just

then: she would rather he had talked of her "magnetic instincts," her

hair, her eyes--anything else than her fighting qualities. But she

told him. There was an inexplicable delight to her in telling him

anything--even the time of day. Was he not a pioneer, a captain among

men, a seer in the realms of thought, keeping step with her in all her

high imaginings? Ordinary people, it is true, set McCall down as an

ordinary fellow, genial and hearty--not a very skillful physician,

perhaps, but a shrewd farmer, and the best judge of mules or peaches

in Kent county. Maria, however, saw him with the soul's eye.

Kitty meanwhile sat by the window mending the clothes that had come

out of the wash. Mr. Muller was reading some letters relative to the

school to her. This was the day of the week on which she always mended

the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to

her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a

prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of

stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's

droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle

in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the

attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do?

Had the world nothing in it for her but this? Yesterday she had made

up her mind to go to Delaware to find Hugh Guinness, alive or dead,

and bring him to his father. That would be work worth doing. This

morning she remembered that Delaware was a wide hunting-ground--that

she had never been ten miles from home in her life. If there were

anybody to give her advice! This Doctor McCall had seemed to her

to-day as, in fact, he did to most people, practical, honest, full

of information. He would too, she somehow felt, understand her wild

fancy. But--

"Why should Doctor McCall dislike _me_?" she broke in at the close of

one of Mr. Muller's expositions.

"What an absurd fancy, child!" looking up in amazement. "The man was

civil enough to you for so slight an acquaintance."

"It was more than dislike," vehemently. "He watched me all through

breakfast as though he owed me a grudge. I could see it in his eyes."

"You oughtn't to see any eyes but mine, Cathie dear," with anxious

playfulness. "Why should you care for the opinion of any man?"

"Because he is different from any man I ever knew. He belongs to the

world outside. I always did wonder if people would like me out there,"

said Kitty, too doggedly in earnest to see how her words hurt her

listener. "If one could be like those two people yonder! They seem to

know everything--they can do everything!"

"Maria is well enough--for a woman," dryly. "But I never heard McCall

credited with exceptional ability of any sort."

Kitty glanced at him: "Of course you're right," quickly. "Men only can

judge of character: we women are apt to be silly about such things."

Her kind heart felt a wrench at having hurt this good soul. She put

her fingers on his fat hand with a touch that was almost a caress. He

turned red with surprise and pleasure. "But it is pleasant," she said,

glancing down again to the Bourbon rose, "to see such love as that.

They will be married soon, I suppose?"

"Very likely. I never knew of any love in the case before. But Maria

is such a manager! And you think of love, then, sometimes?" timidly

putting his arm about her.

"Oh to be sure! How can you doubt that? But it grows chilly. I must

bring a sacque," hurrying away; and in fact she looked cold, and

shivered.

CHAPTER IX.

"Doctor McCall recognizes the Book-house, just as I did, as the right

background for communion like ours," Miss Muller said complacently to

Kitty a week later. "He meets me here every day."

"Yes," said Catharine with a perplexed look. She had no special

instincts or intuitions, but her eyes were as keen and observant as a

lynx's. He came, she saw, to the Book-house every day. But had he no

other purpose than to meet Maria?

"I did not know that McCall affected scholarship," said Mr. Muller

tartly the next day. "He tells me that he has a peach-farm to manage.

August is no time to loiter away, poring over old books. Just the

peach season."

"No," Kitty replied demurely. But her face wore again the puzzled

look. She began to watch Doctor McCall. He really knew but little, she

saw, of rare books: his reading of them was a mere pretence. He

was neither a lazy nor a morbid man: what pleasure could he have in

neglecting his work day after day, sitting alone in the dusky old shop

as if held there by some enchantment? Kitty knew that she herself had

nothing to do with it: she appeared to be no more in his way than a

tame dog would be, and, after the first annoyance which she gave

him, was really little more noticed. But there is a certain sense of

home-snugness and comfort in the presence of tame dogs and of women

like Kitty: one cannot be long in the room with either without

throwing them a kind word or petting them in some way. Doctor McCall

was just the man to fall into such a habit. Down on the farm, his

cattle, his hands, even the neighbors with whom he argued on politics,

could all have testified to his easy, large good-humor.

"Oh, we are the best of friends," he said indifferently when Maria

found Kitty chattering to him once, very much as she did to old Peter.

But when Miss Muller, who had no petty jealousies, enlarged on the

singular beauty of her eyes and some good points in her shape, he did

not respond. "I never could talk of a woman as if she were a horse,"

he said. "And this little girl seems to me unusually human."

"There's really nothing in her, though. Poor William! He is marrying

eyes, I tell him. It's a pitiable marriage!"

"Yes, it is," said Doctor McCall gravely.

After that he neglected the old books sometimes to talk to Kitty. He

thought she was such an immature, thoughtless creature that she would

not notice that the subject he chose was always the same--her daily

life, with old Peter for her chum and confidant.

"Mr. Guinness, then, has had no companion but you?" he said one day,

after a searching inspection of her face.

"No, nobody but me," quite forgetful, as she and Peter were too apt to

be, that her mother was alive.

"And has had none for years?"

"Not since his son died. Hugh Guinness is dead, you know."

Doctor McCall was looking thoughtfully at the floor. He rose presently

and took up his hat: "The old man cannot have been unhappy with such

love as you could give him. No man could."

Kitty was sitting, as usual, on a low stool pasting labels on some

dog-eared books: as long as McCall stood looking at her round cheeks

and double chin she pasted on, apparently unconscious that he was

there, but when he turned away she watched him shrewdly as he went

uneasily up and down the shop, and finally, with a curt good-bye,

turned out of the door. As the stout figure passed through the low

branches of the walnuts her gray eyes began to shine. Her Mystery was

nearly solved.

Dropping paste and books in a heap, she ran after him, taking a short

cut through the currant bushes, so that when he passed on the outer

side of the garden fence there she was quietly waiting, her head and

face darkly framed by a thick creeper.

"Well?" smiling down, amused, as he might to a playful kitten.

"Doctor McCall," in the queer formal fashion that was Kitty's own, "I

should be glad if you would come back this evening. Without Maria.

I have some business--that is, a plan of mine. Well, it is a certain

thing that--"

"That you wish to consult me about?" after waiting for her to finish.

"Yes, that's it," nodding energetically.

"Very well." He stood looking at her arm on the fence, and the face

resting with its chin upon it. McCall, of all men, hated a scene, and

he had an uneasy consciousness that he had just betrayed unexplained

feeling in the house, and was therefore glad to slip back to

commonplaces. Besides, Kitty was exactly the kind of woman whom all

men feel an insane desire to help at first sight. "You have a plan,

eh? and you want advice, not knowing much about business?"

There was not the least necessity for him to say this, having asked

it before. But he did it, and waited to hear Kitty say yes again, and

waited still, before he lifted his hat and said good-bye, to see the

shadow of a waving branch creep over her white chin and lose itself in

her neck. Most men would have done the same, just as they would stop

to whistle a laugh from a fat, pretty baby on the street, and then go

on, leaving it behind. The last thing in the world to consult on their

business, or to ask for help or comfort when trouble met them, or

death.

* * * * *

Miss Muller spent the whole day at the Book-house, but Doctor McCall

did not come, as she expected. As evening approached she began to

shiver, and had premonitory symptoms of clairvoyance, and went home at

last, to Kitty's relief. A slow drizzling rain set in: the damp fogs

that belong to that river-bottom walled in the house and hung flat

over the walnuts like a roof. Catharine had made her own corner of the

Book-shop snug and cheerful. The space was wide, the light soft and

bright. She placed her own chair by the table, Peter's not far from

it. She meant to produce a great effect on this man to-night, to

change the whole current of his life, without having the help of

either love or even friendship. Unconsciously she planned to bring

him close to her, though very likely she had never heard of personal

magnetism, or any of the curious secrets political speakers or

actors or revivalists could have told her of the deadening effects of

distance and empty benches.

Then Kitty, in her room overhead, looked at herself in the glass,

arrayed in a soft cashmere, in color blue, still farther toned down,

by certain softer fringes and loops, into the very ideal garb for

a man's type of "yielding, lovely woman." It was one of the sacred

wedding-dresses.

"Maria could never look like this," tying a lace handkerchief about

her neck, pulling the soft rings of hair looser about her ears,

setting her head on one side, and half shutting her eyes to see the

thick and curly lashes.

There was no danger of interruption. Maria was safely lodged in the

Water-cure House, and the very idea of Mr. Muller's glossy black shoes

and dainty brown umbrella venturing out in the rain made Kitty laugh.

"The dear, good soul is finical as a cat," with the good-natured

indulgence of a mother for a child. Suddenly she stopped, stared at

herself in the glass. "Why, he is my husband!" she said, speaking to

the blushing, blue-robed figure as to another person. Then she hastily

unbuttoned, unlooped the pretty dress, threw it off, putting on her

usual gray wrapper and knotting her hair more tightly back than ever

in a comb. "He has been very good to me--very good to me," her chin

trembling a good deal.

Then she went down to meet Doctor McCall, who that moment came into

the Book-shop, stopping at the door to take off and shake his oilskin

coat.

"It is a wet night," she said, just as though he were a stranger. She

did not know what else to say or what he answered as she went about,

trimming the lamp, dragging out a chair for him, closing the window

curtains. Both McCall and Catharine were ordinary people, accustomed

to keep up a good flow of talk on ordinary subjects, the weather

or any joke or gossip that was nearest to them. There had been no

passages of love or hate between them to account for her forced

formality, her trembling and flushing, and urgent almost angry wish

to remind him that she was Mr. Muller's affianced wife. She felt this

with a new contempt for herself.

As for Doctor McCall, he leaned comfortably back in his arm-chair

and dried his legs at the grate filled with red-hot coals, while he

listened to the soft rustle of her skirts as she moved noiselessly

about him. It is the peculiarity of women like Kitty, to whom Nature

has denied the governing power of ideas or great personal beauty or

magnetism, such as she gave to Miss Muller, that there is a certain

impalpable force and attraction in their most petty actions and words,

to which men yield. Miss Muller could have watched Kitty all day

dragging chairs and trimming lamps, unmoved farther than to pronounce

her little better than an idiot. But Peter, Muller or John McCall

could not look at her for five minutes without classing her with

Cordelia and Desdemona and all the other sweet fools for whom men have

died, and whom the world yet keeps sacred in pathetic memory. Some

day too, when Catharine should be a mother--though giving to her older

children, little more than to the baby on her breast, soft touches and

gentle words--she would bind them to her as no other kind, of mother

could do--by such bonds that until they were gray-haired no power

should be like hers. Miss Muller neither saw nor foresaw such things.

But Doctor McCall did. "If I had had such a mother I should not have

been what I am," he thought. It was a curious fancy to have about a

young girl. But she seemed to embody all the womanliness that had been

lacking in his life. Of course she was nothing to him. She was to be

that prig Muller's wife, and he was quite satisfied that she should

be. If he married, Maria Muller would be his wife. Yet, oddly enough,

he felt to-night, for the first time, the necessity that Maria should

know how marriage was barred out from him, and felt, for the first

time, too, a maddening anger that it was so barred. However, Doctor

McCall was never meant by Nature for a solitary man housed alone with

morbid thoughts: he was the stuff out of which useful citizens are

made--John Andersons of husbands, doting, gullible fathers.

Remembering the bar in his life, his skeleton, ghost or whatever it

was, he was only moved to get up and stretch himself, saying, "I've

stayed in Berrytown too long. When you have told me your plan, I'll

say good-bye to you, Miss Vogdes, and this old house. I shall be off

to-morrow."

Kitty had just caught a moth in the flame of the candle. She carried

it to the window. "You will come back soon, of course?" her back still

toward him.

"No, I think not. I am neglecting my business. And I, of all men in

the world, have least right to loiter about this old house, to look in

on its home-life or on you."

Kitty gave him a sharp glance, as though some sudden emergency was

clear before her which her tact failed to meet. She was folding the

bits of muslin at which she had been sewing in a basket: she finished

slowly, put the basket away, and sat down at the table, with her elbow

on it and her chin on her hand, her gray eyes suggesting a deeper and

unspoken meaning to her words: "But for my plan?"

"Ah! to be sure! You want advice?" seating himself comfortably. Her

confusion was a pretty thing to watch, the red creeping up her neck

into her face, blotting out its delicate tints, the uncertain glances,

the full bitten lip. Doctor McCall quite forgot his own trouble in the

keen pleasure of the sight.

"Perhaps--You do not quite understand my position here? Mr. Guinness

is not my own father."

"No, I knew that."

"But you cannot know what he has been to me: _I_ never knew until the

last few days."

"Why within these few days, Miss Vogdes?"

"Because I saw you and Maria: I saw what love was. I began to think

about it. I never have loved anybody but him," she went on headlong,

utterly blind to all inferences. "There's a thing I can do for him,

Doctor McCall, before I marry Mr. Muller, and I must do it. It will

make his old age happier than any other part of his life has been."

McCall nodded, leaning forward. It was nothing but an imprudent girl

dragging out her secrets before a stranger; nothing but a heated face,

wet eyes, a sweet milky breath; but no tragedy he had ever seen on the

stage had moved him so uncontrollably--no, not any crisis in his own

life--with such delicious, inexplicable emotion.

"Well, what is it you can do?" after waiting for her to go on.

There was a moment's silence.

"My father," said Kitty, "had once a great trouble. It has made an old

man of him before his time. I find that I can take it from him."

She looked up at him with this. Now, there was a certain shrewd

penetration under the softness of Kitty's eyes. Noting it, McCall

instantly lost sight of her beauty and tears. He returned her look

coolly.

"What was his trouble?"

"Mr. Guinness had a son. He has believed him to be dead for years: I

know that he is not dead."

Doctor McCall waited, with her eyes still upon him. "Well?" he said,

attentive.

"And then," pushing back the table and rising, "when I heard that, I

meant to go and find Hugh Guinness, and bring him back to his father."

Whatever this matter might be to her hearer, it was the most real

thing in life to Catharine, and putting it into words gave it a sudden

new force. She felt that she ought to hold her tongue, but she could

not. She only knew that the lighted room, the beating of the rain

without, the watchful guarded face on the other side of the table,

shook and frightened and angered her unaccountably.

"You should not laugh at me," she said. "This is the first work I ever

set myself to do. It is better than nursing three hundred children."

"I am not laughing at you, God knows! But this Guinness, if he be

alive, remains away voluntarily. There must be a reason for that. You

do not consider."

"I do not care to consider. Is the man a log or a stone? If I found

him," crossing the room in her heat until she stood beside him--"if

I brought him to the old house and to his father? Why, look at this!"

dragging open the drawer and taking out the broken gun and rod. "See

what he has kept for years--all that was left him of his boy! Look,

at that single hair! If Hugh Guinness stood where you do, and touched

these things as you are touching them, could he turn his back on the

old man?"

Now, Doctor McCall did not touch gun nor cap nor hair, but he bent

over the table, looking at them as if he were looking at the dead. He

seemed to have forgotten that Kitty was there.

At last he stood upright: "Poor little chap!" with a laugh. "There

seemed to be no reason, when he went gunning and fishing like other

boys, why he should not stand here to-day with as fair a chance for

happiness as any other man. Did there? Just a trifling block laid in

his way, a push down hill, and no force could ever drag him up again."

Kitty, her eyes on his, stood silent. Do what he would, he could not

shake off her eyes: they wrenched the truth from him, "I knew this man

Guinness once," he said.

She nodded: "Yes, I know you did."

"Sit down beside me here, and I will tell you what kind of man he

was."

But she did not sit down. An unaccountable terror or timidity seemed

to have paralyzed her. She looked aside--everywhere but in his face:

"I wanted you to tell me how to reach him, how to touch him: I know

what manner of man he is."

"You have heard from your mother? A mixed Border Pike and

Mephistopheles, eh? The devil and his victim rolled into one?" He

shifted his heavy body uneasily, glancing toward the door. Chief

among the graver secret emotions which she had roused in him was

the momentary annoyance of not knowing how to deal with this

chicken-hearted little girl before him, scared, but on fire from head

to foot.

Kitty was quite confident. If it had been Maria Muller who had thus

set herself to tamper with a man's life, she would have done it

trembling, with fear and self-distrust. She had brains which could

feel and react against the passions she evoked, and were competent to

warn her of the peril of her work. But as for Kitty--

Here was Hugh Guinness before her, a Cain with the curse of God

upon him. It was clearly her business to bring him back again to his

father, and afterward convert him into a member of the church, if

possible. She went about the work with as little doubt as if it had

been the making of a pudding.

But she was shy, tender, womanly withal. Doctor McCall laughed as

he looked down at her, and spoke deliberately, as though giving his

opinion of a patient to another physician. "I'll tell you honestly my

opinion of Hugh Guinness. He was, first of all, a thoroughly ordinary,

commonplace man, with neither great virtues nor great vices, nor force

of any kind. If he had had that, he could have recovered himself when

he began to fall. But he did not recover himself."

"What drove him down in the first place?"

He hesitated: "I suppose that his home and religion became hateful to

him. Boys have unreasonable prejudices at times."

"And then, in despair--"

"Despair? Nonsense! Now don't figure to yourself a romantic Hotspur of

a fellow rushing into hell because heaven's gate was shut on him.

At nineteen Hugh Guinness drank and fought and gambled, as

other ill-managed boys do to work off the rank fever of blood.

Unfortunately--" he stopped, and then added in a lower voice,

quickly, "he made a mistake while the fever was on him which was

irretrievable."

"A mistake?" Kitty was always of an inquiring turn of mind, but now

she felt as if her curiosity was more than she could bear, while she

stood, her eyes passing over the burly figure in summer clothes and

the high-featured, pleasant face with its close-cut moustache. What

dreadful secret was hid behind this good-humored, every-day propriety

of linen duck, friendly eyes and reddish moustache over a mouth that

often smiled? You might meet their like any day upon the streets. Was

it a murder? At best some crime, perhaps, which had sent him to

the penitentiary. Or--and church taught Kitty shuddered as a vague

remembrance of the "unpardonable sin" rose before her like an actual

horror. Whatever it was, it stood between herself and him, keeping

them apart for ever.

"Irretrievable?" she said. It was only curiosity, she knew, but her

voice sounded oddly far off to herself, the room was hazy, her whole

body seemed to shrink together.

"What can it matter to you? You belong to another man, Miss Vogdes."

She lifted herself erect. Doctor McCall was speaking more loudly than

usual and looking keenly into her face.

"I know: I shall be Mr. Muller's wife. Of course, I recollect. But

you--this Hugh Guinness is my father's son," stammered Kitty, her face

very white. "I had some interest in him."

"Yes, that's true. He is, as you say, in some sort a brother of

yours." He took her hand for the first time, looking down at her face

with some meaning in his own, inexplicable, very likely, to himself,

though the thoughts in Kitty's shallow brain were clear enough to him.

"You are tired of standing," seating her gently in Peter's chair. A

thick lock of hair had fallen over her face: he put out his hand

to remove it, but drew back quickly. "We have talked too long, Miss

Vogdes," in a brisk, cheerful tone. "Some other time, perhaps, we can

return to this question of Hugh Guinness. That is," with a certain

significance of manner, "if it be one in which Mr. Muller wishes you

to take an interest." Nodding good-humoredly to her, he buttoned on

his oilskin cape and went out into the rain without another word. He

pulled off his cap outside to let the rain and wind reach his head,

drawing a long breath as if to get rid of some foul air and heat.

CHAPTER X.