Then the pleasant evenings after all the fatigues of the day were over, clothes changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila at the open piano in that warm little drawing-room, with its strange shells and fishes and birds!
Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
He in thy snowy bosom strays,
they sang, just as in the by-gone times of Summer; and now old Mackenzie had got on a bit further in his musical studies, and could hum with the best of them,
He makes thy rosy lips his care,
And walks the mazes of thy hair.
There was no Winter at all in the snug little room, with its crimson fire and closed shutters and songs of happier times. “When the rosy morn appearing” had nothing inappropriate in it; and if they particularly studied the words of “Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,” it was only that Sheila might teach her companion the Scotch pronunciation, as far as she knew it. And once, half in joke, Lavender said he could believe it was Summer again if Sheila had only on her slate-gray silk dress, with the red ribbon around her neck; and sure enough, after dinner she came down in that dress, and Lavender took her hand and kissed it in gratitude. Just at that moment, too, Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for not having brought him his pipe, and not only went out of the room for it, but was a full half hour in finding it. When he came in again he was singing carelessly,
Love in thine eyes for ever plays.
just as if he had got his pipe around the corner.
For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father had given his consent. More than that he would have done for the girl, if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her eyes—when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually affectionate toward himself—he grew reconciled to the ways of Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him. If there was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila’s husband refusing to live in Stornoway even for half the year or a portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the sports and scenery and climate of the island? If Mackenzie could have bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing better than Lewis in Summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow and frost.
The blow fell. One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night the wind went around to Southwest, and in the morning, lo! the very desolation of desolation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy pasture land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the house. Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks. All signs of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky. Bird and beast had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of the rain.
“Well, it can’t be fine weather always,” said Lavender, cheerfully, when Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing as rain in the Island of Lewis.