LOIN DE FRANCE.
A dull grey day lay over Loch Scavaig. A cold wind came in from the
sea, and moaned about the steep rocks, the desolate hills, and the
dark water. The wildfowl were more than usually active, circling
about in flocks, restless and noisy. There were signs of a change in
the weather, and it was a change for the worse.
Mr. Cassilis was the first on deck.
"Please, sir," said the skipper, coming forward to him, "his lordship
bade me say to ye that he had to leave early this morning to catch
the steamer, and didna want to disturb ye. His lordship hoped, sir,
you and my lady would consider the yacht your own while ye stayed in
it, and I will take your orders for anywhere ye please."
"What a strange young man!" said the Minister to himself, as he
turned away.
He met Lady Drum, and told her what he had heard.
"He is fair daft," said the elderly lady, with some impatience. "To
think of bringing us up here to this outlandish place, and leaving us
without a word o' apology; but he was never to be reckoned on. I
have seen him get into a frightful temper, and walk out o' my house,
just because a young leddy friend o' mine would maintain that he
looked like a married man."
"How is my niece?" said the Minister.
"I was about to tell ye, sir," returned Lady Drum, in a cautious and
observant way, "that she is still a little feverish and excited. I
can see it in her restlessness and her look. It must have been
coming on; and last night--wi' the darkness, and the wildness o' this
fearsome place, and the red Northern Lights in the sky--it is no
wonder she gave way."
"But I hope it is not serious," said the Minister, hastily. "I know
so little of these ailments that I must ask ye to be mindful o' her,
as if she were your own child, and do with her what ye think proper.
Is she coming on deck?"
"No," said Lady Drum, carefully watching the effect of her speech as
she proceeded. "She will be better to lie quiet for the day. But we
must guard against her having another shock. We must get away from
here, sir, directly."
"To be sure, to be sure," said the Minister, almost mechanically.
"Where shall we go?"
"Let us go straight back to Oban, and from there perhaps Miss
Cassilis would prefer to go to Greenock by the steamer."
The skipper received his orders. Fortunately, although the day was
lowering and dismal, the wind did not rise, and they had a
comparatively smooth voyage southwards. The Minister remained on
deck, anxious and disturbed; Lady Drum was in attendance on Coquette.
The Minister grew impatient and a trifle alarmed when no news came
from his niece. At last he went below and knocked at the door of her
state-room. Lady Drum came out, shut the door behind her, and went
with the Minister along into the saloon.
"But how is she?" said he. "Why does she keep to her room if she can
come out?"
Lady Drum was evidently annoyed and embarrassed by these questions,
and answered them in a hesitating and shuffling way. At length she
said, somewhat insidiously--
"Ye do not understand French, Mr. Cassilis?"
"No," said the Minister; "I have never studied the language of a
nation whose history is not pleasant to me."
"I once knew plenty of French," said Lady Drum, "and oven now manage
to get through a letter to my friends in Paris; but her rapid
talk----"
"Whose rapid talk?" said the Minister.
"Why, your niece----"
"Is it French she is talking?" said he.
Lady Drum bit her lip and was silent; she had blurted out too much.
"You do not mean to say that Catherine is delirious?" said the
Minister, suddenly standing up with a pale face, as if to meet and
defy the worst news that could reach him.
Lady Drum hurriedly endeavoured to pacify him. It was nothing. It
was but a temporary excitement. She would recover with a little
rest. But this tall, sad-faced man would hear none of these
explanations; he passed Lady Drum, walked along and entered the
state-room, and stood by the little bed where his niece lay.
She saw him enter, and there was a smile of welcome on her pale face.
Perhaps it was the dim light, or the exceeding darkness and lustre of
the eyes which were fixed upon him, which made her look so pale; but
her appearance there, with her wild dark hair lying loosely on the
white pillow, struck him acutely with a sense of vague foreboding and
pain.
"Is it you, papa?" she said, quietly, and yet with a strange look on
her face. "Since I have been ill I have been learning English to
speak to you, and I can speak it very well. Only Nannette does not
seem to understand--she tires me--you must send her away----"
With a weary look she let her face sink into the pillow.
"Catherine," said the Minister, with a great fear at his heart,
"don't you know me?"
She did not answer or pay any attention for a few seconds, and then
she said:
"Yes, of course, I know. But you must teach me how to sleep, papa,
for there is a noise all round me, and I cannot sleep. It is like
waves, and my head is giddy and rocks with it and with the music.
You must keep Nannette from singing, papa--it vexes me--and it is
always the same--_trois ans d'absence--loin de France--ah, quel beau
jour!_--and I hear it far away--always Nannette singing----"
Lady Drum stole in behind the Minister, and laid her hand on his arm.
"You must not be alarmed," she whispered; "this is nothing but the
excitement of yesterday, and she may have caught a cold and made
herself subject to a slight fever."
The Minister said nothing, but stood in a dazed way, looking at the
girl with his sad grey eyes, and apparently scarcely able to realise
the scene before him.
"When shall we reach Tobermory?" he asked, at length.
"In about two hours," said Lady Drum.
The girl had overheard; for she continued to murmur, almost to
herself--
"Shall we be home again, papa, in two hours, and go up past St.
Nazaire? It is a long time since we were there--so long ago it seems
a mist, and we have been in the darkness. Ah! the darkness of last
night out on the sea, with the wild things in the air--the wild
things in the air--and the waves crying along the shore. It is three
years of absence, and we have been away in dreadful places, but now
there is home again, papa--home, and Nannette is singing merrily in
the garden, and my mamma does come to the gate. But why does she not
speak? Why does she turn from me? Does she not know me any
more--not know Coquette? And see! sue! papa, it is all going away:
the garden is going back and back--my mamma has turned her face away,
and I can scarcely see her for the darkness--have we not got home,
not yet, after all?--for it is away now in a mist, and I can see
nothing, and not even hear Nannette singing."
The Minister took the girl's hand in his; great tears were running
down his cheeks, and his voice was broken with sobs.
"My girl, we shall be home presently. Do not distress yourself about
it; lie still, the boat is carrying you safely home."
He went on deck; he could not bear to look any more on the beautiful,
wistful eyes that seemed to him full of entreaty. They carried a
cruel message to him--like the dumb look of pain that is in an
animal's eyes, when it seeks relief, and none can be given.
Impatiently he watched the yacht go down through the desolate waste
of grey sea, the successive headlands and bays slowly opening out as
she sped on. He paced up and down the narrow strip of deck, wearying
for the vessel to get round Ardnamurchan. It was clearly impossible
for them to reach Oban that night; but surely there would be a doctor
in Tobermory, who could give Lady Drum sufficient directions.
The evening was deepening into dusk as they got into the Sound of
Mull. Coquette had fallen into a deep sleep, and her constant nurse
and attendant was rejoiced. The Minister, however, was not a whit
less anxious; and it was with eager eyes that he scanned the
narrowing distance between the prow of the yacht and Tobermory Bay.
At length the _Caroline_ reached her berth for the night, and the
anchor was scarcely let go when the Minister got into the gig and was
rapidly rowed ashore. A short time thereafter he had returned to the
yacht, bringing with him the doctor; while Lady Drum had gone on deck
to see that the sailors postponed the more noisy of their operations
until Coquette should have awakened from her slumbers.
The Minister's first notion had been that his niece should be taken
ashore so soon as they got near a habitable house. But, apart from
the danger of the removal, could she be better situated in a
Tobermory inn than in this little cabin, where she could have the
constant care of Lady Drum? The present consultation afforded him
some relief. It was probably only a slight fever, the result of
powerful nervous excitement and temporary weakness of the system.
She was to remain where she was, subject to the assiduous attentions
of her nurse; a physician was to be consulted when they reached Oban;
and, if circumstances then warranted it, she might be gently taken
south in the yacht to her own home.
Next day, however, the fever had somewhat increased; and the wild
imaginings--the pathetic appeals--and the incoherent ramblings of the
girl's delirium grew in intensity. The bizarre combinations of all
her recent experiences were so foreign to all probability that her
nurse paid but little attention to them, although she was sometimes
deeply affected by the pathetic reminiscences of her charge, or by
the lurid descriptions of dark sea scenes which were apparently
present to the girl's imagination with a ghastly distinctness. Yet
through all these fantastic groupings of mental phenomena there ran a
series of references to Lord Earlshope, which Lady Drum was startled
to find had some consistency. They occurred in impossible
combinations with other persons and things; but they repeated, with a
strange persistency, the same impressions. On the afternoon of the
day on which hey arrived at Oban--the physician having come and
gone--Coquette beckoned her companion to sit down by her. She
addressed her as Nannette, as she generally did, mistaking her
elderly friend for her old nurse.
"Listen, Nannette. Yesterday I did see something terrible. I cannot
forget it," she said, in a low voice, with her dark eyes apparently
watching something in the air before her. "It was Lord Earlshope
coming over the sea to me--walking on the water--and there was a
glare of light around him; and he seemed an angel that had come with
a message, for he held something in his hand to me, and there was a
smile on his face. You do not know him, Nannette--it is no matter.
All this happened long ago--in another country--and now that I am
home again it is forgotten, except when I dream. Are you listening,
poor old Nannette? As he came near the boat, I held out my hand to
save him from the waves. Ah! the strange light there was. It seemed
to grow day, although we were up in the north, under the black
mountains, and in the shadow of the night-clouds. I held out my hand
to him, Nannette; and he had almost come to me--and then--and
then--there was a change--and all the light vanished, and he dropped
down into the sea, and in place of Lord Earlshope there was a fearful
thing--a devil--that laughed in the water, and swam round, and I ran
back for fear. There was a red light around him in the sea, and he
laughed, and stretched up his hands. Oh, it was
dreadful--dreadful--Nannette!" the girl continued, moaning and
shuddering. "I cannot close my eyes but I see it--and yet, where is
the letter I got before he sank into the water?"
She searched underneath her pillow for the note which Earlshope had
left for her on the night before he went. She insisted on Lady Drum
reading it. The old lady opened the folded bit of paper, and read
the following words--"_I was mad last night. I do not know what I
said. Forgive me; for I cannot forgive myself._"
What should she do with this fragment of correspondence winch now
confirmed her suspicions? If she were to hand it back to the girl it
was probable she might in her delirium give it to Mr. Cassilis, who
had enough to suffer without it. After all, Lady Drum reflected,
this message criminated no one; it only suggested a reason for Lord
Earlshope's sudden departure. She resolved to retain that note in
her possession for the meantime, and give it back to Coquette when
the girl should have recovered.
"May I keep this message for a little while?" she asked, gently.
Coquette looked at it, and turned away her head and murmured to
herself--
"Yes, yes, let it go--it is the last bit of what is now all past and
gone. Why did I ever go away from France--up to that wild place in
the north, where the night has red fire in it, and the sea is full of
strange faces? It is all past and gone. Nannette, Nannette, have I
told you of all that I saw in Scotland--of the woman who did take my
mother's crucifix from me, and the old man I used to fear, and the
Highlander, and my brave cousin Tom, and my uncle, and--and another
who has got no name now! I should not have gone there--away from
you, my poor old Nannette--but now it is all over, and I am come home
again. How pleasant it is to be in the warm south again, Nannette!
I shall never leave France any more--I will stay here, under the
bright skies, and we will go down to the river, as we used to do, and
you will sing to me. Nannette, Nannette, it is a pretty song--but so
very sad--do you not know that this is the day of our return to
France--that we are at home now--at home?"