Hark, hark! the horn
On mountain-breezes borne,
Awake, it is morn,
Awake, Monaltrie!
all sorts of reminiscences came rushing in upon him. How often had he heard that wild story of Monaltrie’s flight sung out in the small chamber over the sea, with a sound of the waves outside and a scent of sea-weed coming in at the door and the window! It was from the shores of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have been in Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the burden of all her singing being, “Return, Monaltrie!” And then, as Sheila sang now, making the monotonous and plaintive air wild and strange—
What cries of wild despair
Awake the sultry air?
Frenzied with anxious care,
She seeks Monaltrie—
he heard no more of the song. He was thinking of by-gone days in Borva, and of old Mackenzie living in his lonely house there. When Sheila had finished singing he looked at her, and it seemed to him that she was still that beautiful princess whom he had wooed on the shores of the Atlantic. And if those people did not see her as he saw her, ought he to be disappointed because of their blindness?
But if they saw nothing mystic or wonderful about Sheila, they, at all events, were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room. The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room “piece.” Here, at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was a heap of people around the piano, expressing their admiration, asking questions, and begging her to continue. But she rose. She would rather not sing just then. Whereupon Lavender came to her and said, “Sheila, won’t you sing that wild one about the farewell—that has the sound of the pipes in it, you know?”
“Oh, yes,” she said directly.
Lavender went back to his companion.
“She is very obedient to you,” said Mrs. Lorraine, with a smile.
“Yes, at present,” he said; and he thought meanly of himself for saying it, the moment the words were uttered:
Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh na-linne’s waters;
Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid’s fair daughters;
But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping,
Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou’rt sleeping.