A Statue of charity with helpless childhood gathered to the ample
bosom, and helpless age sheltered by the ample veil behind it, a
crimson curtain concealing an angle in the stairway. In front a crowd
streaming slackly, yet steadily, up the steps; a crowd which broke
into little eddies of greeting, little backwaters of gossip, whilst
the waves from the rear, taking advantage of the pause, rippled higher
and higher. A crowd complaining indifferently of the crush, the heat,
the impossibility of being in two places at once--not with reference
to the hay-sweet meadows and copses where the nightingales were
singing to the moon that summer's night, but in regard to some other
hot staircase, where society was due some time ere the sun rose.
To the man who, in a comfortable niche behind the statue, sate removed
from the pressure of the current, the scene was framed by Charity's
mantle. Perhaps it needed the setting; a crowd generally does whether
it be in the old Kent Road or Grosvenor Square.
"The Big Bear! I beg your pardon, Mr. Lockhart. Why aren't you in
Rome, and is there room for me on that peaceful seat?"
"There is always room for Golden Locks beside the Big Bear--and now,
Lady Maud, why should I be in Rome at this season of the year?"
"Because, being an artist, you should not mind malaria. Besides, what
is malaria to this insufferable heat and crush? Doesn't it strike you
that our hostess thinks getting into society, and getting society into
her rooms, are synonymous terms? Did you ever see such a--"
"Charity, Lady Maud, Charity!" interrupted her companion, pointing to
the protecting arm stretched between them and the crowd. "Let it cover
the multitude--"
"Of sins? Thank you. I suppose I am wicked. But you--why are you here
in the swim? When you profess to despise us--to renounce the world,
the flesh, and the devil--"
"Because I came to see one who should have nothing to do with that
Trinity of Evil either. I came to see you, Lady Maud. I couldn't pass
through Babylon without giving you my congratulations. So you are
going to be married--"
He paused, looking her in the face curiously.
"Well! Why don't you say 'at last'? It is what every lady thinks, I'm
sure. People have been coming perilously near calling me 'poor Lady
Maud' these last two seasons, and now--yes! I am to marry Mr.
Wilson--you know him, I think."
"Yes, I do know that fortunate man, and, pardon me, Lady Maud, but you
and I have been confidential, haven't we? ever since in a _tourbillon_
of white frills and blue sashes you chose to prefer my walnuts to
other folks' sweeties at dessert. Now about Eustace. What is to become
of him?"
The pretty face winced just a little.
"Haven't you heard? Eustace is to be married also; indeed, we think of
choosing the same day."
"Out of bravado?"
"Nothing of the kind. Eustace and I have put away--childish things. We
have decided to be sensible, and he is marrying Louisa Capper, the
American heiress. I like Louisa."
"I trust that feeling is shared by Eustace."
"How hopelessly old-fashioned you are, Big Bear! I don't believe you
will ever learn to shave yourself in tufts, and become a civilized
poodle. Of course he likes her. She is really a very nice girl, and
then she only has a father. Don't you think the American '_par-par_'
is less objectionable as a rule than the '_mar-mar_'? To be
serious,--which I should not trouble to be with ninety-nine people out
of a hundred,--Eustace and I have seen the error of our ways, and we
intend--in fact, I personally expect to be very happy. As I said,
Louisa is very--"
"Where do you spend the honeymoon?" he interrupted, not being in the
least interested in Louisa's part in the business.
"Again hopelessly old-fashioned! There is but one place, nowadays, in
which to spend a honeymoon,--Paris. It is so full of distractions.
Then Mr. Wilson has taken a grouse moor near the North Pole; Eustace
is to come there in his new yacht, and we are to have a real good
time; as Louisa--"
"Near the North Pole? Didn't know grouse grew there."
"Well, it is not very far from it. I forget the name,--but see! there
is Eustace behind old Lady Brecknock's feathers. He will remember."
A very handsome dark man in the stream saw her signal and drifted
sideways to shelter.
"Charity cometh," he began.
"Please not. Mr. Lockhart has patented it already; besides, I want you
to tell me the name of that place in the Hebrides. Roederay! Yes, of
course! I remember now that it put me in mind of dry champagne. By the
way, you used to paint that coast once, Mr. Lockhart; do you by chance
know Roederay?"
What is called a flicker of expression crossed her hearer's face. It
is a poor description for the absolute blank which a chance word
brings to some imaginative people by summoning them from the present
into the past.
"I know it well," he replied. "And if you will excuse me, Lady Maud, I
don't think it has much in common with dry champagne."
Her clear, rather scornful eyes were on him critically.
"Association belongs to Hope as well as Memory, Mr. Lockhart. You may
have had a _mauvais quart d'heure_ at Roederay. We intend to have a
good time; don't we, Eustace?"
"Rather!"
"I doubt it," retorted the elder man; "civilized people, like you,
Eustace, for instance, shouldn't go to those places. To begin with,
there is always a difficulty about dinner."
Lady Maud laughed. "Not in these days of ice and telegraphs. Besides,
some of us like high teas--don't we, Eustace?"
His face did not change, though the appeal took him back many years in
his turn; but then, the speaker was in that past as she was in the
present. To say sooth, she occupied them both fully.
"Yes, we can endure them. Do you remember those holidays at Lynmouth,
Maud, and the feeds we had on the cliffs? I wonder if any boy ate more
strawberries and cream at a sitting than I could do in those days?"
"Have you changed much since then?" she asked, smiling up at him
mischievously. "I don't see it, do you, Mr. Lockhart?"
"Not a bit," replied the elder, laying his hand affectionately on the
other's shoulder. "Eustace is just what he was as a boy--not to be
stinted in his enjoyment of good things. To return, however, to
Roederay. You won't like its simplicity, its habit of taking one right
down to first principles."
"It couldn't! we are too complex--aren't we, Eustace?"
"And then it is grim. There is an island full of dead people, who
appear--"
"Ah! I know all about the stone coffins and the bones; Professor
Endorwick told me, and he is coming north on purpose to explore all
the antiquities. There he is in the crush with Cynthia Strong. I
wonder when that will come off? Call them here, Eustace, and wisdom
shall confound this Evil Prophet. Why, the professor, Mr. Lockhart,
thinks _Eilean-a-varai_ alone is sufficient inducement for a visit to
Roederay."
"_Eilean-a-varai_--Isle of the Dead, you call it? We used to prefer
another name: _Eilean-a-fa-ash_--Island of Rest. It lies right out in
the sunset, like Avilion."
Lady Maud gave a little shiver.
"Oh no! that is ever so much more grim than the other. I hate things
which--which appeal to the imagination."
"I am quite aware of it," he replied quietly; "hence my prophecy that
Roederay will not suit you."
She sate playing with her fan idly. "Island of Rest indeed! There
never was such a place--there never will be. Ah, professor, come like
a good soul and do battle for civilization and culture. Are we not far
better than the primitives of the North Pole? Are we not stronger,
wiser, more original--"
The learned professor, being a little deaf, did not quite catch her
words. He was, in addition, much given to the jocular style when
addressing the weaker sex, which he held to have been created for the
sole purpose of exercising the social qualities of man. So, an
appropriate remark having occurred to him, he came forward primed with
it.
"Charity, Lady Maud, is, as a rule said to cover a multitude of sins;
in this case it conceals the virtues."
And he was greatly pleased with himself when everybody laughed.
"On the whole, I retract 'original,'" continued Lady Maud gravely; "so
you needn't defend that proposition, professor. How can we be
original? There is nothing new under the sun; even one's jokes have
been appropriated by past generations. Everything has been used up."
"Not everything," said Will Lockhart. "To return to Roederay, for
instance. You will be next-door neighbours to the Gulf Stream. It is
not used up; far from it. _That_, Lady Maud, will be another of the
horrid things which appeal to the imagination. Night and day--day and
night--"
She shrugged her pretty bare shoulders.
"There is the Gulf Stream I like," she replied, pointing to the crowd
still surging onwards. "Why should you abuse it? We go on day and
night, night and day. Upwards and onwards--to heaven, for all you
know. I defy you and your old-world ideas and romances. We are going
down to Roederay to paddle about where we choose, catalogue your dead
people and their beliefs as we choose, and we are going to eat our
dinner and kill everything we see. There is one of the slayers in the
stream, Arthur Weeks, the best shot in England, so people say. Ah!
Captain Weeks, Mr. Wilson tells me you are coming to Roederay. I am
glad."
"Charity, Lady Maud," began the gallant warrior.
"That is not your bird, Captain Weeks! Mr. Lockhart, my cousin
Eustace, and the professor have all blazed away at that poor joke
already. Of course, your gun would bring it down, but please be
merciful. Let it go for another day."
"That reminds me, Gordon," said the captain confidentially to Lady
Maud's cousin, when the laugh had ceased, "I was speaking to old
Snapshot about Roederay, and he assures me that the birds lie like
stones in that part. Something, he said, to do with the Gulf
Stream--but I don't know much of these scientific things, Lady Maud.
Only I assure you he declares you can kick 'em up and shoot 'em like
chickens on the last day of the season."
There was a solemn pause. The advantages of Roederay seemed exhausted
on all sides.
"If some one will give me his arm," said Lady Maud, rising, "I will go
upstairs--to Paradise, perhaps, Mr. Lockhart. I really must say how do
you do to our hostess before going on to the next."
I
"Any luck, Rick?" called a lady sitting on the doorstep of Eval House
to a young man coming up the ferry-path. His rod was balanced level in
his hand, his head bent forward against half a gale of wind, which,
after sweeping the grass slopes into silvery waves, raced with white
horses over the greener sea beyond. Yet on the doorstep, with the
stone house betwixt you and the nor'west, the day was warm and still
as any autumn day can be when a bright sun shines clear out of a
brilliant blue sky.
She was a very small lady, looking all the smaller because the energy
expressed in every line of face and figure suggested its adequacy for
the direction of a far larger mass of matter. Looking still smaller at
that particular moment by reason of her being overwhelmed by a fleecy
lamb she was endeavouring to feed with a teapot. For the rest, a lady
long past youth, yet with sufficient traces of it left to show that it
had been pre-eminently attractive.
"Luck, Aunt Will? Why, yes, the best of luck. I've seen the most
beautiful woman in the world."
Miss Willina smiled.
"Who will that be now? And is it twenty or twenty-one you are next
month? Twenty-one, is it--yes: time passes. Then as you are so near
man's estate it won't be Maclead's niece from Glasgow; she is too red
in the face. Nor Katie Macqueen; you've seen her too often. Nor me,
either, Rick, though I used to be called that sometimes."
The transparent vanity in her tone made her nephew smile in his turn.
"It's no home-grown beauty, Aunt Will. It's a London belle,--Lady Maud
Wilson. You should just--"
The sudden upset of a lamb, whose four pointed toes strove for
foothold against his legs, checked further speech. His aunt, however,
waving the teapot in her excitement, filled up the pause, aided by a
sick gosling which had fluttered down from her lap as she rose.
"The Wilsons! Why didn't you tell me at once? Have they come at last?
And why didn't they come before? And where are their servants? Why
didn't they send word to the factor? And goody gracious me, Rick! what
are they going to do?"
"If you'll put that teapot at a safer distance and prevent Baalam from
making me curse utterly, I'll try and explain."
A minute of frantic shoving, joined by a chorus of hounds from within,
and Miss Will Macdonald returned breathless to her seat on the steps,
while the sick gosling fluttered to her lap once more.
"This is what I could gather. They have been deer-stalking with
friends, because the grouse here were reported late. So they are, Aunt
Will, I saw a covey yesterday--"
"Skip, please."
"Ahem! Well, their servants came by last _Clansman_; or rather they
didn't, because--"
"Skip again. I know--too rough for her to put in--won't come till
return trip. Go on, dear."
"How you do bustle a fellow! They expected cooks and scullions. All
the show, in fact, including a but--"
"Oh! do skip!"
"My dear aunt! you should have been a telegraph clerk. Well. Wrote for
a machine to Carbost. Came along. Place shut up. Rick Halmar fishing
sea pool. Saw signals of distress. Piloted 'em to harbour. Found
Kirsty stacking peats. Lit the fire. Put on the kettle. Came home to
tell his aunt. That is all, except that the factor is away to the Alan
market and Kirsty has no English to speak of."
"They have servants with them of course?"
"A French maid. She is more solid than she looks. You see I had to
help her out of the machine. She hadn't recovered the boat. They have
been visiting about, and Mr. Wilson's man got left behind at
Inverness, looking for lost luggage. Wired to say he would come on by
the afternoon boat. Ha! ha! good joke, isn't it? Afternoon boat to
Roederay. Now then, jump aboard! a penny all the way."
Miss Willina's sympathetic soul saw no cause for mirth in the
vision conjured up by her housewifely imagination. She put on the
deer-stalker cap lying on the step beside her. It was a signal for
action, since, within the home precincts, she dispensed with any head
covering save the thick masses of dark hair, which were still her
greatest pride.
"I'll go over. Kirsty is an idiot, at best. She was six whole months
learning the 'Happy Land' at Sunday-school.
"Besides it's not far--then your uncle's official position."
"Skip, please!" interrupted Rick, laughing. "You don't want excuses
for being a trump. Come along."
His aunt's blue eyes flashed and sparkled. "Oh! my dear! was she so
pretty as all that? You won't be wanted! her husband is there, of
course."
"Aye! and her cousin, I think. At least, she called him Eustace."
"Two of them! Then preserve us from a third man. Go you and fish like
a Christian."
"Leaving you to roam the moors alone, when I may be appointed to a
ship tomorrow and not see you again for--don't laugh in that rude way,
Aunt Will! Look here! Let's compromise. I'll go so far and fish
Loch-na-buie till you return."
They passed the slight hollow where Eval House sought a faint shelter,
and the farm-yard whence, after depositing the sick gosling, Miss
Willina had to escape at a run from a motley following of birds and
beasts. So to the level stretches of moor and the full force of the
blustering wind. A strange landscape to southern eyes. Earth, air, and
water blent in a triple alliance so close as to destroy individuality.
The sea lay landwards, the land seawards, and over both the nor'wester
swept unrestrained, cresting green waves of heather as water with an
edging of white foam or purple blossom. Were those hills, eastward
across the Minch, or clouds? Was that level streak of light westwards
the Atlantic or a glint of sky? Was the water showing at your feet
between miniature cliffs of sphagnum moss salt or fresh? And did the
land really sway before the wind? or was it only your footstep making
the spongy soil rise and fall? This, however, was in the low ground
eastward. Westward the rocks began to pile themselves gregariously in
cairns, and the moorland rose gradually, so gradually that when its
edge was reached you were surprised to find yourself so far above the
shining plain of sea.
Here on a promontory commanding a magnificent view, and also a perfect
exposure to all the winds of heaven, stood the modern shooting-box of
Roederay Lodge.
Substantial enough for the nineteenth century, yet reminding one
irresistibly of those Swiss chalets in boxes which are to be bought
for a sixpence in the Lowther Arcade. The fault, no doubt, of its
surroundings; above all, of a sound which seemed to monopolize the
whole landscape,--the sound of the Atlantic rolling in upon two miles
of shelving sand a little to the southward. A sound that went on night
and day, day and night, without a pause. Rhythmically true to a
second, not to be shut out by any device of man. The strongest must
put up with it or go away. On this particular September day, with the
keen bright nor'wester sending a cross sea round the point, its voice
had a querulous ring in it very different from the roar which echoed
for fifteen miles across the island when the Atlantic was in a
southwesterly mood.
Rick Halmar, however, being a sailor accustomed to the sea in all
tempers, took little heed of its tone. He sat to leeward of a cairn
which tradition said marked the grave of a Viking, and whittled away
at a piece of wood he had found close by, the pretence of fishing
having been set aside when Miss Willina's decided little figure
disappeared from sight. He whittled with more than the sailor's
ordinary dexterity; for his father had been a Norwegian sprung from a
long line of ancestors who had whiled away the winter days when their
ships were in dock with wood-carving. Not much else save that trick of
the knife, a straight Norse nose, and a passion for the sea had Eric
Halmar inherited from the father he had never seen. For within a year
of that hasty marriage between the shipwrecked sailor and Miss
Willina's younger sister, pretty little Mrs. Halmar was in Eval House
once more, weeping and waiting. Weeping for her handsome husband;
waiting for her child to be born. She wept even after the waiting was
over, till consolation came in the shape of another husband; for she
was not a person of great steadfastness, and even her land prejudice
against the sea as a profession had given way before Miss Willina's
stern common sense.
"The laddie thinks of nothing else," said his aunt; "indeed, why
should he, seeing he comes of pure Viking blood on the one side, and
something of it on the other, if old tales be true? Send him to the
navy; then if he is drowned, it will be decently in the Queen's
uniform."
So into the navy he went, and, having passed through Greenwich, was
now awaiting orders at Eval; where he found a most congenial playmate
in his aunt.
His still beardless face dimpled with smiles as he worked. To begin
with, the wood, which had evidently been used as a cow peg, was
mahogany. In other words, it must have been stolen from the drift pile
on which his uncle, by virtue of his official position, was supposed
to keep an eye, since the logs which the Gulf Stream leaves in its
course are Government property. This amused Rick, seeing that the mere
suggestion of such nefarious possibilities was a sure bait to his
uncle's anger. Then the subject he had elected to carve seemed to him
amusing. It was a replica of a Numbo Jumbo he had seen amongst the
Caribbees, and which had tickled his fancy by its lavish ugliness. So
his knife being a perfect tool-chest of implements, he gouged and
punched, chiselled and filed, until, as he stuck the pointed end of
the peg into the ground again, a very creditable copy of a malignant
god stood before him.
"It's the best I've done yet," he said to himself; "that dodge of the
bread-pellet eyes with the shot in the middle of them gives the old
devil quite a live look."
He was not yet twenty-one, and boy enough to be proud of the ingenuity
which had converted some sandwich crumbs and the lead off a cast into
a pair of evil eyes. Man enough, however, to whistle "Who is Sylvia?"
as he leant back against the cairn, smiling at Numbo Jumbo and
thinking of Lady Maud.
"Rick! you bad boy!" cried his aunt's eager voice just as he was
beginning to forget everything in drowsiness. "You promised you
wouldn't when I threw the last into the Minch, and this is worse, ever
so much worse!"
"Better, you mean. It's the best I've done. Look at its eyes!" Miss
Willina pretended to shudder as her hand, instinct with righteous
vengeance, went out towards the idol.
"You might leave it there till we go," pleaded Rick. "It really is the
best I've done by a long way. Then you could take it home Aunt Will,
and have a real _auto-da-fe_. It's more orthodox than drowning;
besides, it will help the peats to a blaze when we go in."
She burst out suddenly into an amused laugh. "Peats!" she echoed. "Ah,
Rick! if you had only seen them at Roederay. The room full of smoke,
that lovely girl--she is beautiful, my dear--full of apologies. They
took so long to kindle, she said. 'Excuse me,' said I, 'but you
mustn't miscall a peat fire. It is the most hospitable one in the
world.' They were all lying crisscross like a crow's nest, and you
should have seen her relief when I had them standing shoulder to
shoulder and they flared up like a Highland regiment at the skirl of
the pipes. A little thing that, Rick, but so it was in all. I laughed
till I cried. That house full of telephones, electric bells, hot-water
pipes--all the modern whims--the factor says people won't take a
shooting unless there is a fixed bath nowadays. Well! downstairs
Kirsty and Janet the herd; four willing hands and no knowledge. I tell
you, Kirst is just terrified of the dampers. 'Will it be blowing down
the house, Miss Willina?' she says."
"Skip, please."
The remark met with a scornful neglect.
"Then upstairs those three with the knowledge but never a hand.
Brains--at least two of them had, for the husband seemed fickless and
no action. There they couldn't understand each other, and Mr. Wilson
went about with his hand in his pocket, asking if a five-pound note
would do any good.
"My dear sir," said I, "neither five, nor ten, nor fifteen will help
us if the _Clansman_ can't put in to-morrow. So let us pray for fine
weather. Then I promised to lend them our cook, and we became great
friends. Only, I don't know why, I felt all along as if something was
going to happen; a sort of conviction things were going wrong; a kind
of doubt whether we were in our right places; a description of--"
Miss Macdonald's presentiments were apt to embrace all things visible
and invisible, so Rick made haste with a remark.
"And what did you think of the other man,--Eustace?"
The shot was lucky. She paused and sat looking out over moor and sea
with a mysterious expression of self-complacent sagacity.
"Well, auntie? you think--"
"Nothing, my dear. Gracious goody! past four o'clock! the chickens not
fed, the cows out in the wind, the ducklings still at the stream, the
whole blessed Noah's Ark."
She had risen with the first word, and started off like a lapwing, so
that, ere she finished, distance deadened her voice.
"Wait! please wait," shouted Rick; "the animals went in two by two,
remember!"
It was of no avail; so he caught up his rod and ran after her, leaving
the idol to fulfil Miss Willina's role of sphinx.
It had been dark some hours before she dropped her knitting with a
purposely dramatic start.
"Oh, Rick! didn't I say I had a presentiment? Now I've gone and left
that wicked idol on the _harp_--on the Alt na heac _harp_ of all
places in the world, and you a descendant of the Vikings!"
Rick, at work on an infant Samuel for his aunt's room, looked up
cheerfully.
"Well, what has that to do with it?"
"What? why, everything. Don't you know the legend? Everything left on
that _harp_ disappears. The dead take it as a tribute, and if they
don't like it, they send it back to work evil to the living for a
month and a day."
"Willina!"
Mr. John Macdonald was a silent man, but when he did speak, his
meaning was clear. "Where the devil you get all that rubbish passes
me. I've lived longer in this island than you, I've seen more of the
people than you, yet I never heard such trash."
He dived back into his book as suddenly as he had emerged from it, and
there was a dead silence.
"Never mind, auntie," whispered Rick sympathetically; for these
outbreaks were almost the only things which upset Miss Willina's
majesty. "I'll go first thing and bring Numbo Jumbo back to be burnt."
"Pray do not trouble," she replied with an audible sniff. "If I am
foolish, I am foolish. If it is rubbish, I suppose it is rubbish. Only
if anything happens, perhaps you will be considerate enough to admit
that I foretold it."
Her hurt dignity, however, vanished before Rick Halmar's face, when he
came in to breakfast next morning minus the idol.
"Gone! Oh, Rick! you don't mean it isn't there?" she cried, in not
displeased excitement. "John! _do_ you hear? It's gone, and you said
it was rubbish. What do you say now?" Mr. Macdonald affected not to
hear.
"Yes, it's gone," said Rick. "Numbo Jumbo's on the loose. I expect,
really, that some of the crofter's children have taken it for a doll."
"It is all very well for your uncle to scoff, Eric, but the young
should have more reverence for the wisdom of their elders," retorted
his aunt severely.
"But Aunt Will!--you don't really believe--"
"I am not responsible for my beliefs to _you_, Eric, whatever you may
be to _me_, and perhaps if you have no respect for me as your aunt,
you will please to recollect that I am also your godmother. It all
comes of disobedience. 'Thou shalt not make to thyself--'"
Rick leant back in his chair and roared.
"And if you can't even remember that," she went on, bristling with
dignity, "you might recollect the punishment meted out to the children
who mocked at the bald heads."
She paused, her hand went up suddenly to her coils of hair, she tried
hard to keep her countenance, failed, and Mr. Macdonald's deep-toned
laughter made a bass to her treble and Rick's tenor. That, nine times
out of ten, was the end of Miss Willina's wrath.