“Pate,” he said, “tell Mr. Lavender I want him to come on deck for a minute.”
“He’s by himsel’, sir,” Pate said. “He’s been sitting by himsel’ for the last hour. The young gentleman’s lain doon.”
Johnny went down into the little cabin. Lavender, who had neither book nor cigar, nor any other sign of occupation near him, seemed in his painful anxiety almost incapable of asking the question that rose to his lips.
“Have you seen her, Johnny?” he said, at length, with his face looking strangely careworn.
Johnny was an impressionable young fellow. There were tears running freely down his cheeks as he said, “Yes, I have, Lavender, and she was rocking a child in a cradle.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
REDINTEGRATIO AMORIS.
THAT same night Sheila dreamed a strange dream, and it seemed to her that an angel of God came to her and stood before her, and looked at her with his shining face and his sad eyes. And he said, “Are you a woman, and yet slow to forgive? Are you a mother, and have you no love for the father of your child?” It seemed to her that she could not answer. She fell on her knees before him, and covered her face with her hands and wept. And when she raised her eyes again the angel was gone, and in his place Ingram was there, stretching out his hand to her and bidding her rise and be comforted. Yet he, too, spoke in the same reproachful tones, and said, “What would become of us all, Sheila, if none of our actions were to be condoned by time and repentance? What would become of us if we could not say, at some particular point of our lives, to the by-gone time, that we had left it, with all its errors and blunders and follies, behind us, and would, with the help of God, start clear on a new sort of life? What would it be if there were no forgetfulness for any of us—no kindly vail to come down and shut out the memory of what we have done—if the staring record were to be kept forever before our eyes? And you are a woman, Sheila; it should be easy for you to forgive and to encourage, and to hope for better things of the man you love? Has he not suffered enough? Have you no word for him?”
The sound of her sobbing in the night-time brought her father to the door. He tapped at the door, and said, “What is the matter, Sheila?”
She awoke with a slight cry, and he went into the room and found her in a strangely troubled state, her hands outstretched to him, her eyes wet and wild. “Papa, I have been very cruel. I am not fit to live any more. There is no woman in the world would have done what I have done.”
“Sheila,” he said, “you hef been dreaming again about all that folly and nonsense. Lie down, like a good lass. You will wake the boy if you do not lie down and go to sleep; and to-morrow we will pay a visit to the yacht that hass come in, and you will ask the gentlemen to look at the Maighdean-mhara.”