Mackenzie smiled shrewdly: “I had something to go on. It was Sheila herself was in Stornoway three weeks ago, and she was wanting to buy a brooch for a young girl who had come down to us from Suainabost, and is very useful in the kitchen, and it wass a brooch, just like this one, she gave to her.”
“Yes, to a kitchen-maid,” said the young man, meekly.
“But Mairi is Sheila’s cousin,” said Mackenzie, with continued surprise.
“Lavender does not understand Highland ways yet, Mr. Mackenzie,” said Ingram, from behind. “You know we, in the South, have different fashions. Our servants are nearly always strangers to us – not relations and companions.”
“Oh, I hef peen in London myself,” said Mackenzie, in somewhat of an injured tone; and then he added, with a touch of satisfaction: “and I hef been in Paris, too.”
“And Miss Sheila, has she been in London?” asked Lavender, feigning ignorance.
“She has never been out of the Lewis.”
“But don’t you think the education of a young lady should include some little experience of traveling?”
“Sheila, she will be educated quite enough; and is she going to London or Paris without me?”
“You might take her.”
“I have too much to do on the island now, and Sheila has much to do. I do not think she will ever see any of those places, and she will not be much the worse.”
Two young men off for their holidays, a brilliant day shining all around them, the sweet air of the sea and the moorland blowing about them – this little party that now drove away from Stornoway ought to have been in the best of spirits. And indeed the young fellow who sat beside Mackenzie was bent on pleasing his host by praising everything he saw. He praised the gallant little horses that whirled them past the plantations and into the open country. He praised the rich black peat that was visible in long lines and heaps, where the townspeople were slowly eating into the moorland. Then all these traces of occupation were left behind, and the travelers were alone in the untenanted heart of the island, where the only sounds audible were the humming of insects in the sunlight and the falling of the streams. Away in the south the mountains were of a silvery and transparent blue. Nearer at hand the rich reds and browns of the moorland softened into a tender and beautiful green on nearing the margins of the lakes; and these stretches of water were now as fair and bright as the sky above them, and were scarcely ruffled by the moorfowl moving out from the green rushes. Still nearer at hand great masses of white rock lay embedded in the soft soil; and what could have harmonized better with the rough and silver-gray surface than the patches of rose-red bell-heather that grew up in the clefts or hung over their summits. The various and beautiful colors around seemed to tingle with light and warmth as the clear sun shone on them and the keen mountain air blew over them; and the King of Borva was so far thawed by the enthusiasm of his companions that he regarded the fair country with a pleased smile, as if the enchanted land belonged to him, and as if the wonderful colors and the exhilarating air and the sweet perfumes were of his own creation.
Mr. Mackenzie did not know much about tints and hues, but he believed what he heard; and it was perhaps, after all, not very surprising that a gentleman from London, who had skill of pictures and other delicate matters, should find strange marvels in a common stretch of moor, with a few lakes here and there, and some lines of mountains only good for sheilings. It was not for him to check the raptures of his guest. He began to be friendly with the young man, and could not help regarding him as a more cheerful companion than his neighbor Ingram, who would sit by your side for an hour at a time without breaking the monotony of the horses’ tramp with a single remark. He had formed a poor opinion of Lavender’s physique from the first glimpse he had of his white fingers and girl-like complexion; but surely a man who had such a vast amount of good spirits and such a rapidity of utterance must have something corresponding to these qualities in substantial bone and muscle. There was something pleasing and ingenuous too about this flow of talk. Men who had arrived at years of wisdom, and knew how to study and use their fellows, were not to be led into these betrayals of their secret opinions; but for a young man – what could be more pleasing than to see him lay open his soul to the observant eye of a master of men? Mackenzie began to take a great fancy to young Lavender.
“Why,” said Lavender, with a fine color mantling in his cheeks as the wind caught them on a higher portion of the road, “I had heard of Lewis as a most bleak and desolate island, flat moorland and lake, without a hill to be seen. And everywhere I see hills, and yonder are great mountains which I hope to get nearer before we leave.”
“We have mountains in this island,” remarked Mackenzie slowly as he kept his eye on his companion, “we have mountains in this island sixteen thousand feet high.”
Lavender looked sufficiently astonished, and the old man was pleased. He paused for a moment or two and said. “But this iss the way of it: you will see that the middle of the mountains it has all been washed away by the weather, and you will only have the sides now dipping one way and the other at each side o’ the island. But it iss a very clever man in Stornoway will tell me that you can make out what wass the height o’ the mountain, by watching the dipping of the rocks on each side; and it iss an older country, this island, than any you will know of; and there were the mountains sixteen thousand feet high long before all this country and all Scotland and England wass covered with ice.”
The young man was very desirous to show his interest in this matter, but did not know very well how. At last he ventured to ask whether there were any fossils in the blocks of gneiss that were scattered over the moorland.
“Fossils?” said Mackenzie. “Oh, I will not care much about such small things. If you will ask Sheila, she will tell you all about it, and about the small things she finds growing on the hills. That is not of much consequence to me; but I will tell you what is the best thing the island grows; it is good girls and strong men – men that can go to the fishing and come back to plough the fields and cut the peat and build the houses, and leave the women to look after the fields and the gardens when they go back again to the fisheries. But it is the old people – they are ferry cunning, and they will not put their money in the bank at Stornoway, but will hide it away about the house, and then they will come to Sheila and ask for money to put a pane of glass in their house. And she has promised that to every one who will make a window in the wall of their house; and she is very simple with them and does not understand the old people that tell lies. But when I hear of it I say nothing to Sheila – she will know nothing about it – but I have a watch put upon the people; and it was only yesterday I will take back two shillings she gave to an old woman of Borvabost that told many lies. What does a young thing know of these old people? She will know nothing at all, and it is better for some one else to look after them, but not to speak one word of it to her.”
“It must require great astuteness to manage a primitive people like that,” said young Lavender, with an air of conviction; and the old man eagerly and proudly assented, and went on to tell of the manifold diplomatic arts he used in reigning over his small kingdom, and how his subjects lived in blissful ignorance that this controlling power was being exercised.
They were startled by an exclamation from Ingram, who called to Mackenzie to pull up the horses just as they were passing over a small bridge.
“Look there, Lavender, did you ever see salmon jumping like that? Look at the size of them!”
“Oh, it iss nothing,” said Mackenzie, driving on again. “Where you will see the salmon, it is in the narrows of Loch Roag, where they come into the rivers, and the tide is low. Then you will see them jumping; and if the water wass too low for a long time, they will die in hundreds and hundreds.”
“But what makes them jump before they get into the rivers?”
Old Mackenzie smiled a crafty smile, as if he had found out all the ways and the secrets of the salmon. “They will jump to look about them – that iss all.”
“Do you think a salmon can see where he is going?”
“And maybe you will explain this to me, then,” said