White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume I. Black William
said against my captain," says Mary Avon. "I am in love with him already. His English is perfectly correct."
This impertinent minx talking about correct English in the presence of the Laird of Denny-mains!
"Mrs. – herself is perfectly correct; it is only politeness; it is like saying 'Your Grace' to a Duke."
But who was denying it? Surely not the imperious little woman who was arranging her flowers on the saloon table; nor yet Denny-mains, who was examining a box of variegated and recondite fishing-tackle?
"It is all very well for fine ladies to laugh at the blunders of servant maids," continues this audacious girl. "'Miss Brown presents her compliments to Miss Smith; and would you be so kind,' and so on. But don't they often make the same blunder themselves?"
Well, this was a discovery!
"Doesn't Mrs. So-and-So request the honour of the company of Mr. So-and-So or Miss So-and-So for some purpose or other; and then you find at one corner of the card 'R.S.V.P.?' 'Answer if YOU please'!"
A painful silence prevailed. We began to reflect. Whom did she mean to charge with this deadly crime?
But her triumph makes her considerate. She will not harry us with scorn.
"It is becoming far less common now, however," she remarks. "'An answer is requested,' is much more sensible."
"It is English," says the Laird, with decision. "Surely it must be more sensible for an English person to write English. Ah never use a French word maself."
But what is the English that we hear now – called out on deck by the voice of John of Skye?
"Eachan, slack the lee topping-lift! Ay, and the tackle, too. That'll do, boys. Down with your main-tack, now!"
"Why," exclaims our sovereign mistress, who knows something of nautical matters, "we must have started!"
Then there is a tumbling up the companion-way; and lo! the land is slowly leaving us; and there is a lapping of the blue water along the side of the boat; and the white sails of the White Dove are filled with this gentle breeze. Deck-stools are arranged; books and field-glasses and what not scattered about; Mary Avon is helped on deck, and ensconced in a snug little camp-chair. The days of our summer idleness have begun.
And as yet these are but familiar scenes that steal slowly by – the long green island of Lismore —Lios-mor, the Great Garden; the dark ruins of Duart, sombre as if the shadow of nameless tragedies rested on the crumbling walls; Loch Don, with its sea-bird-haunted shallows, and Loch Speliv leading up to the awful solitudes of Glen More; then, stretching far into the wreathing clouds, the long rampart of precipices, rugged and barren and lonely, that form the eastern wall of Mull.
There is no monotony on this beautiful summer morning; the scene changes every moment, as the light breeze bears us away to the south. For there is the Sheep Island; and Garveloch – which is the rough island; and Eilean-na naomha – which is the island of the Saints. But what are these to the small transparent cloud resting on the horizon? – smaller than any man's hand. The day is still; and the seas are smooth: cannot we hear the mermaiden singing on the far shores of Colonsay?
"Colonsay!" exclaims the Laird, seizing a field-glass. "Dear me! Is that Colonsay? And they telled me that Tom Galbraith was going there this very year."
The piece of news fails to startle us altogether; though we have heard the Laird speak of Mr. Galbraith before.
"Ay," says he, "the world will know something o' Colonsay when Tom Galbraith gets there."
"Whom did you say?" Miss Avon asks.
"Why, Galbraith!" says he. "Tom Galbraith!"
The Laird stares in amazement. Is it possible she has not heard of Tom Galbraith? And she herself an artist; and coming direct from Edinburgh, where she has been living for two whole months!
"Gracious me!" says the Laird. "Ye do not say ye have never heard of Galbraith – he's an Academeecian! – a Scottish Academeecian!"
"Oh, yes; no doubt," she says, rather bewildered.
"There is no one living has had such an influence on our Scotch school of painters as Galbraith – a man of great abeelity – a man of great and uncommon abeelity – he is one of the most famous landscape painters of our day – "
"I scarcely met any one in Edinburgh," she pleads.
"But in London – in London!" exclaims the astonished Laird. "Do ye mean to say you never heard o' Tom Galbraith?"
"I – I think not," she confesses. "I – I don't remember his name in the Academy catalogue – "
"The Royal Academy!" cries the Laird, with scorn. "No, no! Ye need not expect that. The English Academy is afraid of the Scotchmen: their pictures are too strong: you do not put good honest whisky beside small beer. I say the English Academy is afraid of the Scotch school – "
But flesh and blood can stand this no longer: we shall not have Mary Avon trampled upon.
"Look here, Denny-mains: we always thought there was a Scotchman or two in the Royal Academy itself – and quite capable of holding their own there, too. Why, the President of the Academy is a Scotchman! And as for the Academy exhibition, the very walls are smothered with Scotch hills, Scotch spates, Scotch peasants, to say nothing of the thousand herring-smacks of Tarbert."
"I tell ye they are afraid of Tom Galbraith; they will not exhibit one of his pictures," says the Laird, stubbornly; and here the discussion is closed; for Master Fred tinkles his bell below, and we have to go down for luncheon.
It was most unfair of the wind to take advantage of our absence, and to sneak off, leaving us in a dead calm. It was all very well, when we came on deck again, to watch the terns darting about in their swallow-like fashion, and swooping down to seize a fish; and the strings of sea-pyots whirring by, with their scarlet beaks and legs; and the sudden shimmer and hissing of a part of the blue plain, where a shoal of mackerel had come to the surface; but where were we, now in the open Atlantic, to pass the night? We relinquished the doubling of the Ross of Mull; we should have been content – more than content, for the sake of auld lang syne – to have put into Carsaig; we were beginning even to have ignominious thoughts of Loch Buy. And yet we let the golden evening draw on with comparative resignation; and we watched the colour gathering in the west, and the Atlantic taking darker hues, and a ruddy tinge beginning to tell on the seamed ridges of Garveloch and the isle of Saints. When the wind sprung up again – it had backed to due west, and we had to beat against it with a series of long tacks, that took us down within sight of Islay and back to Mull apparently all for nothing – we were deeply engaged in prophesying all manner of things to be achieved by one Angus Sutherland, an old friend of ours, though yet a young man enough.
"Just fancy, sir!" says our hostess to the Laird – the Laird, by the way, does not seem so enthusiastic as the rest of us, when he hears that this hero of modern days is about to join our party. "What he has done beats all that I ever heard about Scotch University students; and you know what some of them have accomplished in the face of difficulties. His father is a minister in some small place in Banffshire; perhaps he has 200*l.* a year at the outside. This son of his has not cost him a farthing for either his maintenance or his education, since he was fourteen; he took bursaries, scholarships, I don't know what, when he was a mere lad; supported himself and travelled all over Europe – but I think it was at Leipsic and at Vienna he studied longest; and the papers he has written – the lectures – and the correspondence with all the great scientific people – when they made him a Fellow, all he said was, 'I wish my mother was alive.'"
This was rather an incoherent and jumbled account of a young man's career.
"A Fellow of what?" says the Laird.
"A Fellow of the Royal Society! They made him a Fellow of the Royal Society last year! And he is only seven-and-twenty! I do believe he was not over one-and-twenty when he took his degree at Edinburgh. And then – and then – there is really nothing that he doesn't know: is there, Mary?"
This sudden appeal causes Mary Avon to flush slightly; but she says demurely, looking down —
"Of