A Statue of charity with helpless childhood gathered to the ample bosom, and helpless age sheltered by the ample veil behind it, a crimson curtain concealing an angle in the stairway. In front a crowd streaming slackly, yet steadily, up the steps; a crowd which broke into little eddies of greeting, little backwaters of gossip, whilst the waves from the rear, taking advantage of the pause, rippled higher and higher. A crowd complaining indifferently of the crush, the heat, the impossibility of being in two places at once--not with reference to the hay-sweet meadows and copses where the nightingales were singing to the moon that summer's night, but in regard to some other hot staircase, where society was due some time ere the sun rose.
To the man who, in a comfortable niche behind the statue, sate removed from the pressure of the current, the scene was framed by Charity's mantle. Perhaps it needed the setting; a crowd generally does whether it be in the old Kent Road or Grosvenor Square.
"The Big Bear! I beg your pardon, Mr. Lockhart. Why aren't you in Rome, and is there room for me on that peaceful seat?"
"There is always room for Golden Locks beside the Big Bear--and now, Lady Maud, why should I be in Rome at this season of the year?"
"Because, being an artist, you should not mind malaria. Besides, what is malaria to this insufferable heat and crush? Doesn't it strike you that our hostess thinks getting into society, and getting society into her rooms, are synonymous terms? Did you ever see such a--"
"Charity, Lady Maud, Charity!" interrupted her companion, pointing to the protecting arm stretched between them and the crowd. "Let it cover the multitude--"
"Of sins? Thank you. I suppose I am wicked. But you--why are you here in the swim? When you profess to despise us--to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil--"
"Because I came to see one who should have nothing to do with that Trinity of Evil either. I came to see you, Lady Maud. I couldn't pass through Babylon without giving you my congratulations. So you are going to be married--"
He paused, looking her in the face curiously.
"Well! Why don't you say 'at last'? It is what every lady thinks, I'm sure. People have been coming perilously near calling me 'poor Lady Maud' these last two seasons, and now--yes! I am to marry Mr. Wilson--you know him, I think."
"Yes, I do know that fortunate man, and, pardon me, Lady Maud, but you and I have been confidential, haven't we? ever since in a tourbillon of white frills and blue sashes you chose to prefer my walnuts to other folks' sweeties at dessert. Now about Eustace. What is to become of him?"
The pretty face winced just a little.
"Haven't you heard? Eustace is to be married also; indeed, we think of choosing the same day."
"Out of bravado?"
"Nothing of the kind. Eustace and I have put away--childish things. We have decided to be sensible, and he is marrying Louisa Capper, the American heiress. I like Louisa."
"I trust that feeling is shared by Eustace."
"How hopelessly old-fashioned you are, Big Bear! I don't believe you will ever learn to shave yourself in tufts, and become a civilized poodle. Of course he likes her. She is really a very nice girl, and then she only has a father. Don't you think the American 'par-par' is less objectionable as a rule than the 'mar-mar'? To be serious,--which I should not trouble to be with ninety-nine people out of a hundred,--Eustace and I have seen the error of our ways, and we intend--in fact, I personally expect to be very happy. As I said, Louisa is very--"
"Where do you spend the honeymoon?" he interrupted, not being in the least interested in Louisa's part in the business.
"Again hopelessly old-fashioned! There is but one place, nowadays, in which to spend a honeymoon,--Paris. It is so full of distractions. Then Mr. Wilson has taken a grouse moor near the North Pole; Eustace is to come there in his new yacht, and we are to have a real good time; as Louisa--"
"Near the North Pole? Didn't know grouse grew there."
"Well, it is not very far from it. I forget the name,--but see! there is Eustace behind old Lady Brecknock's feathers. He will remember."
A very handsome dark man in the stream saw her signal and drifted sideways to shelter.
"Charity cometh," he began.
"Please not. Mr. Lockhart has patented it already; besides, I want you to tell me the name of that place in the Hebrides. Roederay! Yes, of course! I remember now that it put me in mind of dry champagne. By the way, you used to paint that coast once, Mr. Lockhart; do you by chance know Roederay?"
What is called a flicker of expression crossed her hearer's face. It is a poor description for the absolute blank which a chance word brings to some imaginative people by summoning them from the present into the past.
"I know it well," he replied. "And if you will excuse me, Lady Maud, I don't think it has much in common with dry champagne."
Her clear, rather scornful eyes were on him critically.
"Association belongs to Hope as well as Memory, Mr. Lockhart. You may have had a mauvais quart d'heure at Roederay. We intend to have a good time; don't we, Eustace?"
"Rather!"
"I doubt it," retorted the elder man; "civilized people, like you, Eustace, for instance, shouldn't go to those places. To begin with, there is always a difficulty about dinner."
Lady Maud laughed. "Not in these days of ice and telegraphs. Besides, some of us like high teas--don't we, Eustace?"
His face did not change, though the appeal took him back many years in his turn; but then, the speaker was in that past as she was in the present. To say sooth, she occupied them both fully.
"Yes, we can endure them. Do you remember those holidays at Lynmouth, Maud, and the feeds we had on the cliffs? I wonder if any boy ate more strawberries and cream at a sitting than I could do in those days?"
"Have you changed much since then?" she asked, smiling up at him mischievously. "I don't see it, do you, Mr. Lockhart?"
"Not a bit," replied the elder, laying his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. "Eustace is just what he was as a boy--not to be stinted in his enjoyment of good things. To return, however, to Roederay. You won't like its simplicity, its habit of taking one right down to first principles."
"It couldn't! we are too complex--aren't we, Eustace?"
"And then it is grim. There is an island full of dead people, who appear--"
"Ah! I know all about the stone coffins and the bones; Professor Endorwick told me, and he is coming north on purpose to explore all the antiquities. There he is in the crush with Cynthia Strong. I wonder when that will come off? Call them here, Eustace, and wisdom shall confound this Evil Prophet. Why, the professor, Mr. Lockhart, thinks Eilean-a-varai alone is sufficient inducement for a visit to Roederay."
"Eilean-a-varai--Isle of the Dead, you call it? We used to prefer another name: Eilean-a-fa-ash--Island of Rest. It lies right out in the sunset, like Avilion."
Lady Maud gave a little shiver.
"Oh no! that is ever so much more grim than the other. I hate things which--which appeal to the imagination."
"I am quite aware of it," he replied quietly; "hence my prophecy that Roederay will not suit you."
She sate playing with her fan idly. "Island of Rest indeed! There never was such a place--there never will be. Ah, professor, come like a good soul and do battle for civilization and culture. Are we not far better than the primitives of the North Pole? Are we not stronger, wiser, more original--"
The learned professor, being a little deaf, did not quite catch her words. He was, in addition, much given to the jocular style when addressing the weaker sex, which he held to have been created for the sole purpose of exercising the social qualities of man. So, an appropriate remark having occurred to him, he came forward primed with it.
"Charity, Lady Maud, is, as a rule said to cover a multitude of sins; in this case it conceals the virtues."
And he was greatly pleased with himself when everybody laughed.
"On the whole, I retract 'original,'" continued Lady Maud gravely; "so you needn't defend that proposition, professor. How can we be original? There is nothing new under the sun; even one's jokes have been appropriated by past generations. Everything has been used up."
"Not everything," said Will Lockhart. "To return to Roederay, for instance. You will be next-door neighbours to the Gulf Stream. It is not used up; far from it. That, Lady Maud, will be another of the horrid things which appeal to the imagination. Night and day--day and night--"
She shrugged her pretty bare shoulders.
"There is the Gulf Stream I like," she replied, pointing to the crowd still surging onwards. "Why should you abuse it? We go on day and night, night and day. Upwards and onwards--to heaven, for all you know. I defy you and your old-world ideas and romances. We are going down to Roederay to paddle about where we choose, catalogue your dead people and their beliefs as we choose, and we are going to eat our dinner and kill everything we see. There is one of the slayers in the stream, Arthur Weeks, the best shot in England, so people say. Ah! Captain Weeks, Mr. Wilson tells me you are coming to Roederay. I am glad."
"Charity, Lady Maud," began the gallant warrior.
"That is not your bird, Captain Weeks! Mr. Lockhart, my cousin Eustace, and the professor have all blazed away at that poor joke already. Of course, your gun would bring it down, but please be merciful. Let it go for another day."
"That reminds me, Gordon," said the captain confidentially to Lady Maud's cousin, when the laugh had ceased, "I was speaking to old Snapshot about Roederay, and he assures me that the birds lie like stones in that part. Something, he said, to do with the Gulf Stream--but I don't know much of these scientific things, Lady Maud. Only I assure you he declares you can kick 'em up and shoot 'em like chickens on the last day of the season."
There was a solemn pause. The advantages of Roederay seemed exhausted on all sides.
"If some one will give me his arm," said Lady Maud, rising, "I will go upstairs--to Paradise, perhaps, Mr. Lockhart. I really must say how do you do to our hostess before going on to the next."
"Any luck, Rick?" called a lady sitting on the doorstep of Eval House to a young man coming up the ferry-path. His rod was balanced level in his hand, his head bent forward against half a gale of wind, which, after sweeping the grass slopes into silvery waves, raced with white horses over the greener sea beyond. Yet on the doorstep, with the stone house betwixt you and the nor'west, the day was warm and still as any autumn day can be when a bright sun shines clear out of a brilliant blue sky.
She was a very small lady, looking all the smaller because the energy expressed in every line of face and figure suggested its adequacy for the direction of a far larger mass of matter. Looking still smaller at that particular moment by reason of her being overwhelmed by a fleecy lamb she was endeavouring to feed with a teapot. For the rest, a lady long past youth, yet with sufficient traces of it left to show that it had been pre-eminently attractive.
"Luck, Aunt Will? Why, yes, the best of luck. I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world."
Miss Willina smiled.
"Who will that be now? And is it twenty or twenty-one you are next month? Twenty-one, is it--yes: time passes. Then as you are so near man's estate it won't be Maclead's niece from Glasgow; she is too red in the face. Nor Katie Macqueen; you've seen her too often. Nor me, either, Rick, though I used to be called that sometimes."
The transparent vanity in her tone made her nephew smile in his turn.
"It's no home-grown beauty, Aunt Will. It's a London belle,--Lady Maud Wilson. You should just--"
The sudden upset of a lamb, whose four pointed toes strove for foothold against his legs, checked further speech. His aunt, however, waving the teapot in her excitement, filled up the pause, aided by a sick gosling which had fluttered down from her lap as she rose.
"The Wilsons! Why didn't you tell me at once? Have they come at last? And why didn't they come before? And where are their servants? Why didn't they send word to the factor? And goody gracious me, Rick! what are they going to do?"
"If you'll put that teapot at a safer distance and prevent Baalam from making me curse utterly, I'll try and explain."
A minute of frantic shoving, joined by a chorus of hounds from within, and Miss Will Macdonald returned breathless to her seat on the steps, while the sick gosling fluttered to her lap once more.
"This is what I could gather. They have been deer-stalking with friends, because the grouse here were reported late. So they are, Aunt Will, I saw a covey yesterday--"
"Skip, please."
"Ahem! Well, their servants came by last Clansman; or rather they didn't, because--"
"Skip again. I know--too rough for her to put in--won't come till return trip. Go on, dear."
"How you do bustle a fellow! They expected cooks and scullions. All the show, in fact, including a but--"
"Oh! do skip!"
"My dear aunt! you should have been a telegraph clerk. Well. Wrote for a machine to Carbost. Came along. Place shut up. Rick Halmar fishing sea pool. Saw signals of distress. Piloted 'em to harbour. Found Kirsty stacking peats. Lit the fire. Put on the kettle. Came home to tell his aunt. That is all, except that the factor is away to the Alan market and Kirsty has no English to speak of."
"They have servants with them of course?"