A Princess of Thule

by William Black

“Oh, yes, it is delightful,” said Lord Arthur. “But I was speaking of the theatre.”

“Is there a theatre in there?”

He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not mad.

“Not in among the shops, no. But don’t you know Covent Garden Theatre?”

“I have never been in any theatre, not yet,” said Sheila.

And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to Frank Lavender’s wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl having come from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a bold stroke: “You have not been long enough in London to see the theatres, I suppose?”

And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband very well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances of the case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this Highland girl, of whom he heard vaguely, was not at all shy. He began to feel interested. By and by he actually made efforts to assist her frankness, by becoming equally frank, and by telling her all he knew of the things with which they were mutually acquainted. Of course, by this time they had got up into the Highlands. The young man had himself been in the Highlands—frequently, indeed. He had never crossed to Lewis, but he had seen the island from the Sutherlandshire coast. There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire, were there not? Yes, he had been out a great many times, and had had his share of adventures. Had he not gone out there before daylight, and waited on the top of a hill, hidden by some rocks, to watch the mist clear along the hillsides and in the valley below? Did he not tremble when he fired his first shot, and had not something passed before his eyes, so that he could not see for a moment whether the stag had fallen, or was away like lightning down the bed of the stream? Somehow or other, Lord Arthur found himself relating all his experiences, as if he were a novice begging for the good opinion of a master. She knew all about it, obviously, and he would tell her his small adventures, if only that she might laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to have this talk about the hills, and the deer, and the wet mornings. She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off successive plates without her seeing anything of them; they received random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing by her untouched! She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself there were some men who, more than others, inspired confidence in women. He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination, as well as good nature, in talking so to him. There was, after all, no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the meantime, he was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look of her eyes, or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or amused her.

But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive a sudden check. The juvenile M. P. began to remark that a shade occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr. Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule; while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.

The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M. P., was severely wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat’s paw of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl’s exceeding friendliness; he had given her credit for genuine impulsiveness, which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with the moderation expected of a man in politics, who hoped some day to assist in the government of the nation, by accepting a junior lordship, admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of red deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for having been duped. He ought to have known. Women were as much women in a Hebridean Island as in Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a little more coolness, while she became more and more pre-occupied with the couple across the table, and sometimes was innocently rude in answering his questions somewhat at random.

When the ladies were going into the drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine put her hand within Sheila’s arm and led her to the entrance to the conservatory. “I hope we shall be friends,” she said.