The tall gillie patiently waited until his master had exhausted his passion, and then he said, as if nothing had occurred: “And it will not do much good, Mr. Mackenzie, to tek ta name o’ God in vain; and there will be much more of trinking in ta island, and it will be a great difference mirover. And she will be so far away that no one will see her no more – far away beyond ta sound of Sleat, and far away beyond Oban, as I hef heard people say. And what will she do in London, when she has no boat at all, and she will never go out to ta fishing? And I will hear people say that you will walk a whole day and never come to ta sea, and what will Miss Sheila do for that? And she will tame no more o’ ta wild ducks’ young things, and she will find out no more o’ ta nests in the rocks, and she will hef no more horns when the deer is killed, and she will go out no more to see ta cattle swim across Loch Roag when they go to ta sheilings. It will be all different, all different, now; and she will never see us no more. And it iss as bad as if you was a poor man, Mr. Mackenzie, and had to let your sons and your daughters go away to America, and never come back no more. And she ta only one in your house! And it wass the son of Mr. Macintyre, of Sutherland, he would have married her, and come to live on ta island, and not have Miss Sheila go away among strangers that doesna ken her family, and will put no store by her, no more than if she was a fisherman’s lass. It wass Miss Sheila herself had a sore heart tis morning when she went away; and she turned and she looked at Borva as the boat came away, and I said, ’Tis iss the last time Miss Sheila will be in her boat, and she will not come no more again to Borva.”
Mr. Mackenzie heard not one word or syllable of all this. The dead, passionless look had fallen over the powerful features, and the deep-set eyes were gazing, not on the actual Loch Roag before them, but on a stormy sea that lies between Lewis and Skye, and on a vessel disappearing in the midst of the rain. It was by a sort of instinct that he guided this open boat through the channels, which were now getting broader as they neared the sea, and the tall and grave-faced keeper might have kept up his garrulous talk for hours without attracting a look or a word.
It was now the dusk of the evening, and wild and strange indeed was the scene around the solitary boat as it slowly moved along. Large islands – so large that any one of them might have been mistaken for the mainland – lay over the dark waters of the sea, remote, untenanted and silent. There were no white cottages along these rocky shores; only a succession of rugged cliffs and sandy bays, but half mirrored in the sombre water below. Down in the South the mighty shoulders and peaks of Suainabhal and its sister mountains were still darker than the darkening sky; and when at length the boat had got well out from the network of islands and fronted the broad waters of the Atlantic, the great plain of the western sea seemed already to have drawn around it the solemn mantle of the night.
“Will you go to Borvapost, Mr. Mackenzie, or will we run her into your own house?” asked Duncan – Borvapost being the name of the chief village on the island.
“I will not go on to Borvapost,” said the old man, peevishly. “Will they not have plenty to talk about at Borvapost?”
“And it iss no harm tat ta folk will speak of Miss Sheila,” said the gillie with some show of resentment: “it iss no harm tey will be sorry she is gone away – no harm at all, for it was many things tey had to thank Miss Sheila for; and now it will be all ferry different – ”
“I tell you, Duncan Macdonald, to hold your peace!” said the old man, with a savage glare of the deep-set eyes; and then Duncan relapsed into a sulky silence, and the boat held on its way.
In the gathering twilight a long gray curve of sand became visible, and into the bay thus indicated Mackenzie turned his small craft. This indentation of the island seemed as blank of human occupation as the various points and bays they had passed, but as they neared the shore a house came into sight, about half way up the slope rising from the sea to the pasture land above. There was a small stone pier jutting out at one portion of the bay, where a mass of rocks was embedded in the white sand; and here at length the boat was run in, and Mackenzie helped the young girl ashore.
The two of them, leaving the gillie to moor the little vessel that had brought them from Callernish, went silently toward the shore, and up the narrow road leading to the house. It was a square, two-storied substantial building of stone, but the stone had been liberally oiled to keep out the wet, and the blackness thus produced had not a very cheerful look. Then, on this particular evening the scant bushes surrounding the house hung limp and dark in the rain, and amid the prevailing hues of purple, blue-green and blue, the bit of scarlet coping running around the black house was wholly ineffective in relieving the general impression of dreariness and desolation.
The King of Borva walked into a large room, which was but partially lit by two candles on the table and by the blaze of a mass of peats in the stone fire-place, and threw himself into a big easy-chair. Then he suddenly seemed to recollect his companion, who was timidly standing near the door, with her shawl still around her head.
“Mairi,” he said, “go and ask them to give you some dry clothes. Your box it will not be here for half an hour yet.” Then he turned to the fire.
“But you yourself, Mr. Mackenzie, you will be ferry wet – ”
“Never mind me, my lass; go and get yourself dried.”
“But it wass Miss Sheila,” began the girl diffidently – “it wass Miss Sheila asked me – she asked me to look after you, sir – ”
With that he rose abruptly, and advanced to her and caught her by the wrist. He spoke quite quietly to her, but the girl’s eyes, looking up at the stern face, were a trifle frightened.
“You are a ferry good little girl, Mairi,” he said slowly, “and you will mind what I say to you. You will do what you like in the house, you will take Sheila’s place as much as you like, but you will mind this – not to mention her name, not once. Now go away, Mairi, and find Scarlett Macdonald, and she will give you some dry clothes; and you will tell her to send Duncan down to Borvapost, and bring up John the Piper and Alisternan-Each, and the lads of the Nighean dubh, if they are not gone home to Habost yet. But it iss John the Piper must come directly.”
The girl went away to seek counsel of Scarlett Macdonald, Duncan’s wife, and Mr. Mackenzie proceeded to walk up and down the big and half-lit chamber. Then he went to the cupboard, and put out on the table a number of tumblers and glasses, with two or three odd-looking bottles of Norwegian make, consisting of four semicircular tubes of glass, meeting at top and bottom, leaving the center of the vessel thus formed open. He stirred up the blazing peats in the fire-place. He brought down from a shelf a box filled with coarse tobacco, and put it on the table. But he was evidently growing impatient, and at last he put on his cap again and went out into the night.
The air blew cold in from the sea, and whistled through the bushes that Sheila had trained about the porch. There was no rain now, but a great and heavy darkness brooded overhead, and in the silence he could hear the breaking of the waves along the hard coast. But what was this other sound he heard, wild and strange in the stillness of the night – a shrill and plaintive cry that the distance softened, until it almost seemed to be the calling of a human voice? Surely those were words he heard, or was it only that the old, sad air spoke to him?
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.
That was the message that came to him out of the darkness, and it seemed to him as if the sea and the night and the sky were wailing over the loss of his Sheila. He walked away from the house and up the hill behind. Led by the sound of the pipes, that grew louder and more unearthly as he approached, he found himself at length on a bit of high table-land overlooking the sea, where Sheila had had a rude bench of iron and wood fixed into the rock. On this bench sat a little old man, humpbacked and bent, and with long white hair falling down to his shoulders. He was playing the pipes – not wildly and fiercely, as if he were at a drinking-bout of the lads come home from the Caithness fishing, nor yet