He was about to open the door for her, but he kept his hand on the handle, and said, earnestly enough, "But that is such a small matter—an hour's work. If you only knew how gladly I would live all my life here if only I could do you some greater service—"
She looked a little surprised, and then for one brief second reflected. English was not wholly familiar to her: perhaps she had failed to catch what he really meant. But at all events she said gravely and simply, "You would soon tire of living here: it is not always a holiday." And then, without lifting her eyes to his face, she turned to the door, and he opened it for her and she was gone.
It was about ten o'clock when they went outside for their evening stroll, and all the world had grown enchanted since they had seen it in the colors of the sunset. There was no night, but a strange clearness over the sky and the earth, and down in the south the moon was rising over the Barvas hills. In the dark green meadows the cattle were still grazing. Voices of children could be heard in the far distance, with the rumble of a cart coming through the silence, and the murmur of the streams flowing down to the loch. The loch itself lay like a line of dusky yellow in a darkened hollow near the sea, having caught on its surface the pale glow of the northern heavens, where the sun had gone down hours before. The air was warm and yet fresh with the odors of the Atlantic, and there was a scent of Dutch clover coming across from the sandy pastures nearer the coast. The huts of the small hamlet could but faintly be made out beyond the dark and low-lying pastures, but a long, pale line of blue smoke lay in the motionless air, and the voices of the children told of open doors. Night after night this same picture, with slight variations of position, had been placed before the stranger who had come to view these solitudes, and night after night it seemed to him to grow more beautiful. He could put down on paper the outlines of an every-day landscape, and give them a dash of brilliant color to look well on a wall; but how to carry away, except in the memory, any impression of the strange lambent darkness, the tender hues, the loneliness and the pathos of those northern twilights?
They walked down by the side of one of the streams toward the sea. But Sheila was not his companion on this occasion. Her father had laid hold of him, and was expounding to him the rights of capitalists and various other matters. But by and by Lavender drew his companion on to talk of Sheila's mother; and here, at least, Mackenzie was neither tedious nor ridiculous nor unnecessarily garrulous. It was with a strange interest the young man heard the elderly man talk of his courtship, his marriage, the character of his wife, and her goodness and beauty. Was it not like looking at a former Sheila? and would not this Sheila now walking before him go through the same tender experiences, and be admired and loved and petted by everybody as this other girl had been, who brought with her the charm of winning ways and a gentle nature into these rude wilds? It was the first time he had heard Mackenzie speak of his wife, and it turned out to be the last; but from that moment the older man had something of dignity in the eyes of this younger man, who had merely judged of him by his little foibles and eccentricities, and would have been ready to dismiss him contemptuously as a buffoon. There was something, then, behind that powerful face, with its deep-cut lines, its heavy eyebrows and piercing and sometimes sad eyes, besides a mere liking for tricks of childish diplomacy. Lavender began to have some respect for Sheila's father, and made a resolution to guard against the impertinence of humoring him too ostentatiously.
Was it not hard, though, that Ingram, who was so cold and unimpressionable, who smiled at the notion of marrying, and who was probably enjoying his pipe quite as much as Sheila's familiar talk, should have the girl all to himself on this witching night? They reached the shores of the Atlantic. There was not a breath of wind coming in from the sea, but the air seemed even sweeter and cooler as they sat down on the great bank of shingle. Here and there birds were calling, and Sheila could distinguish each one of them. As the moon rose a faint golden light began to tremble here and there on the waves, as if some subterranean caverns were lit up and sending to the surface faint and fitful rays of their splendor. Farther along the coast the tall banks of white sand grew white in the twilight, and the outlines of the dark pasture-land behind grew more distinct.
But when they rose to go back to Barvas the moonlight had grown full and clear, and the long and narrow loch had a pathway of gold across, stretching from the reeds and sedges of the one side to the reeds and sedges of the other. And now Ingram had gone on to join Mackenzie, and Sheila walked behind with Lavender, and her face was pale and beautiful in the moonlight.
"I shall be very sorry when I have to leave Lewis," he said as they walked along the path leading through the sand and the clover; and there could be no doubt that he felt the regret expressed in the words.
"But it is no use to speak of leaving us yet," said Sheila cheerfully: "it is a long time before you will go away from the Lewis."
"And I fancy I shall always think of the island just as it is now—with the moonlight over there, and a loch near, and you walking through the stillness. We have had so many evening walks like this."
"You will make us very vain of our island," said the girl with a smile, "if you will speak like that always to us. Is there no moonlight in England? I have pictures of English scenery that will be far more beautiful than any we have here; and if there is the moon here, it will be there too. Think of the pictures of the river Thames that my papa showed you last night—"