The Heir of the McHulishes/Part 2

journey to Kelpie Island consisted of a series of consecutive episodes by rail, by coach, and by steamboat. The consul was already familiar with them, as indeed were most of the civilized world, for it seemed that all roads at certain seasons led out of and returned to St. Kentigern as a point in a vast circle wherein travelers were sure to meet one another again, coming or going, at certain depots and caravansaries with more or less superiority or envy. Tourists on the road to the historic crags of Wateffa came sharply upon other tourists returning from them, and glared suspiciously at them, as if to wrest the dread secret from their souls—a scrutiny which the others returned with half-humorous pity or superior calm.

The consul knew, also, that the service by boat and rail was admirable and skillful; for were not the righteous St. Kentigerners of the tribe of Tubal Cain, great artificers in steel and iron, and a mighty race of engineers before the Lord, who had carried their calling and accent beyond the seas? He knew, too, that the land of these delightful caravansaries overflowed with marmalade and honey, and that the manna of delicious scones and cakes fell even upon deserted waters of crag and heather. He knew that their way would lie through much scenery whose rude barrenness, and grim economy of vegetation, had been usually accepted by cockney tourists for sublimity and grandeur; but he knew, also, that its severity was mitigated by lowland glimpses of sylvan luxuriance and tangled delicacy utterly unlike the complacent snugness of an English pastoral landscape, with which it was often confounded and misunderstood, as being tame and civilized.

It rained the day they left St. Kentigern, and the next, and the day after that, spasmodically, as regarded local effort, sporadically, as seen through the filmed windows of railway carriages or from the shining decks of steamboats. There was always a shower being sown somewhere along the valley, or reluctantly tearing itself from a mountain-top, or being pulled into long threads from the leaden bosom of a lake; the coach swept in and out of them to the folding and unfolding of umbrellas and mackintoshes, accompanied by flying beams of sunlight that raced with the vehicle on long hillsides, and vanished at the turn of the road. There were hat-lifting scurries of wind down the mountain-side, small tumults in little lakes below, hysteric ebullitions on mild, melancholy inland seas, boisterous passages of nearly half an hour with landings on tempestuous miniature quays. All this seen through wonderful aqueous vapor, against a background of sky darkened at times to the depths of an india-ink-washed sketch, but more usually blurred and confused on the surface like the gray silhouette of a child’s slate-pencil drawing, half rubbed from the slate by soft palms. Occasionally a rare glinting of real sunshine on a distant fringe of dripping larches made some frowning crest appear to smile as through wet lashes.

Miss Elsie tucked her little feet under the mackintosh. “I know,” she said sadly, “I should get web-footed if I stayed here long, Why, it’s like coming down from Ararat just after the deluge cleared up.”

Mrs. Kirkby suggested that if the sun would only shine squarely and decently, like a Christian, for a few moments, they could see the prospect better.

The consul here pointed out that the admirers of Scotch scenery thought that this was its greatest charm. It was this misty effect which made it so superior to what they called the vulgar chromos and sun-pictures of less favored lands.

“You mean because it prevents folks from seeing how poor the view really is.”

The consul remarked that perhaps distance was lacking. As to the sun shining in a Christian way, this might depend upon the local idea of Christianity.

“Well, I don’t call the scenery giddy or frivolous, certainly. And I reckon I begin to understand the kind of sermons Malcolm’s folks brought over to MacCorkleville. I guess they did n’t know much of the heaven they only saw once a year. Why, even the highest hills—which they call mountains here—ain’t big enough to get above the fogs of their own creating.”

Feminine wit is not apt to be abstract. It struck the consul that in Miss Elsie’s sprightliness there was the usual ulterior and personal object, and he glanced around at his fellow-passengers. The object evidently was sitting at the end of the opposite seat, an amused but well-behaved listener. For the rest, he was still young and reserved, but in face, figure, and dress utterly unlike his companions,—an Englishman of a pronounced and distinct type, the man of society and clubs. While there was more or less hinting of local influence in the apparel of the others,—there was a kilt, and bare, unweather-beaten knees from Birmingham, and even the American Elsie wore a bewitching tam-o’-shanter,—the stranger carried easy distinction, from his tweed traveling-cap to his well-made shoes and gaiters, as an unmistakable Southerner. His deep and pleasantly level voice had been heard only once or twice, and then only in answering questions, and his quiet, composed eyes alone had responded to the young girl’s provocation.

They were passing a brown glen, in the cheerless depths of which a brown watercourse, a shade lighter, was running, and occasionally foaming like brown beer. Beyond it heaved an arid bulk of hillside, the scant vegetation of which, scattered like patches of hair, made it look like the decaying hide of some huge antediluvian ruminant. On the dreariest part of the dreary slope rose the ruins of a tower, and crumbling walls and battlements.

“Whatever possessed folks to build there?” said Miss Elsie. “If they were poor, it might be some excuse; but that those old swells, or chiefs, should put up a castle in such a God-forsaken place gets me.”

“But don’t you know, they were poor, according to our modern ideas, and I fancy they built these things more for defense than show, and really more to gather in cattle—like one of your Texan ranches—after a raid. That is, I have heard so; I rather fancy that was the idea, was n’t it?” It was the Englishman who had spoken, and was now looking around at the other passengers as if in easy deference to local opinion.

“What raid?” said Miss Elsie, animatedly. “Oh, yes; I see—one of their old border raids—moss-troopers. I used to like to read about them.”

“I fancy, don’t you know,” said the Englishman slowly, “that it was n’t exactly that sort of thing, you know, for it’s a good way from the border; but it was one of their raids upon their neighbors, to lift their cattle—steal ’em, in fact. That’s the way those chaps had. But of course you’ve read all about that. You Americans, don’t you know, are all up in these historical matters.”

“Eh, but they were often reprisals,” said a Scotch passenger.

“I don’t suppose they took much trouble to inquire if the beasts belonged to an enemy,” said the Englishman.

But here Miss Elsie spoke of castles generally, and averred that the dearest wish of her life was to see Macbeth’s castle at Glamis, where Duncan was murdered. At which the Englishman, still deferentially, mistrusted the fact that the murder had been committed there, and thought that the castle to which Shakespeare probably referred, if he had n’t invented the murder, too, was farther north, at Cawdor. “You know,” he added playfully, “over there in America you ’ve discovered that Shakespeare himself was an invention.”

This led to some retaliating brilliancy from the young lady, and when the coach stopped at the next station their conversation had presumably become interesting enough to justify him in securing a seat nearer to her. The talk returning to ruins, Miss Elsie informed him that they were going to see some on Kelpie Island. The consul, from some instinctive impulse,—perhaps a recollection of Custer’s peculiar methods,—gave her a sign of warning. But the Englishman only lifted his eyebrows in a kind of half-humorous concern.

“I don’t think you’d like it, you know. It’s a beastly place,—rocks and sea,—worse than this, and half the time you can’t see the mainland, only a mile away. Really, you know, they ought n’t to have induced you to take tickets there—those excursion—ticket chaps. They ’re jolly frauds. It’s no place for a stranger to go to.”

“But there are the ruins of an old castle, the old seat of—” began the astonished Miss Elsie; but she was again stopped by a significant glance from the consul.

“I believe there was something of the kind there once—something like your friends the cattle-stealers’ castle over on that hillside,” returned the Englishman; “but the stones were taken by the fishermen for their cabins, and the walls were quite pulled down.”

“How dared they do that?” said the young lady indignantly. “I call it not only sacrilege, but stealing.”

“It was defrauding the owner of the property; they might as well take his money,” said Mrs. Kirkby, in languid protest.

The smile which this outburst of proprietorial indignation brought to the face of the consul lingered with the Englishman’s reply.

“But it was only robbing the old robbers, don’t you know, and they put their spoils to better use than their old masters did; certainly to more practical use than the owners do now, for the ruins are good for nothing.”

“But the hallowed associations—the picturesqueness!” continued Mrs. Kirkby, with languid interest.

“The associations would n’t be anything except to the family, you know; and I should fancy they would n’t be either hallowed or pleasant. As for picturesqueness, the ruins are beastly ugly; weather-beaten instead of being mellowed by time, you know, and bare where they ought to be hidden by vines and moss. I can’t make out why anybody sent you there, for you Americans are rather particular about your sight-seeing.”

“We heard of them through a friend,” said the consul, with assumed carelessness. “Perhaps it’s as good an excuse as any for a pleasant journey.”

“And very likely your friend mistook it for something else, or was himself imposed upon,” said the Englishman politely. “But you might not think it so, and, after all,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s years since I ’ve seen it. I only meant that I could show you something better a few miles from my place in Gloucestershire, and not quite so far from a railway as this. If,” he added with a pleasant deliberation which was the real courtesy of his conventionally worded speech, “you ever happened at any time to be anywhere near Audrey Edge, and would look me up, I should be glad to show it to you and your friends.” An hour later, when he left them at a railway station where their paths diverged, Miss Elsie recovered a fluency that she had lately checked. “Well, I like that! He never told us his name, or offered a card. I wonder if they call that an invitation over here. Does he suppose anybody’s going to look up his old Audrey Edge—perhaps it’s named after his wife—to find out who he is? He might have been civil enough to have left his name, if he—meant anything.”

“But I assure you he was perfectly sincere, and meant an invitation,” returned the consul smilingly. “Audrey Edge is evidently a well-known place, and he a man of some position. That is why he did n’t specify either.”

“Well, you won’t catch me going there,” said Miss Elsie.

“You would be quite right in either going or staying away,” said the consul simply.

Miss Elsie tossed her head slightly. Nevertheless, before they left the station, she informed him that she had been told that the station-master had addressed the stranger as “my lord,” and that another passenger had said he was “Lord Duncaster.”

“And that proves—”

“That I’m right,” said the young lady, decisively, “and that his invitation was a mere form.”

It was after sundown when they reached the picturesque and well-appointed hotel that lifted itself above the little fishing-village which fronted Kelpie Island. The hotel was in as strong contrast to the narrow, curving street of dull, comfortless-looking stone cottages below it, as were the smart tourists who had just landed from the steamer to the hard-visaged, roughly clad villagers who watched them with a certain mingling of critical independence and superior self-righteousness. As the new arrivals walked down the main street, half beach, half thoroughfare, their baggage following them in low trolleys drawn by porters at their heels, like a decorous funeral, the joyless faces of the lookers-on added to the resemblance. Beyond them, in the prolonged northern twilight, the waters of the bay took on a peculiar pewtery brightness, but with the usual mourning-edged border of Scotch seacoast scenery. Low banks of cloud lay on the chill sea; the outlines of Kelpie Island were hidden.

But the interior of the hotel, bright with the latest fastidiousness in modern decoration and art-furniture, and gay with pictured canvases and color, seemed to mock the sullen landscape, and the sterile crags amid which the building was set. An attempt to make a pleasance in this barren waste had resulted only in empty vases, bleak statuary, and iron settees, as cold and slippery to the touch as the sides of their steamer.

“It ’ll be a fine morning to-morra, and ther ’ll be a boat going away to Kelpie for a peekneek in the ruins,” said the porter, as the consul and his fair companions looked doubtfully from the windows of the cheerful hall.

A picnic in the sacred ruins of Kelpie! The consul saw the ladies stiffening with indignation at this trespass upon their possible rights and probable privileges, and glanced at them warningly.

“Do you mean to say that it is common property, and anybody can go there?” demanded Miss Elsie scornfully.

“No; it’s only the hotel that owns the boat and gives the tickets—a half-crown the passage.”

“And do the owners, the McHulishes, permit this?”

The porter looked at them with a puzzled, half-pitying politeness. He was a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a certain naïve and gentle courtesy of manner that relieved his strong accent, “Oh, aye,” he said, with a reassuring smile; “ye ’ll no be troubled by them. I ’ll just gang away noo, and see if I can secure the teekets.”

An elderly guest, who was examining a time-table on the wall, turned to them as the porter disappeared.

“Ye ’ll be strangers noo, and not knowing that Tonalt the porter is a McHulish hissel’?” he said deliberately.

“A what?” said the astonished Miss Elsie.

“A McHulish. Ay, one of the family. The McHulishes of Kelpie were his own forebears. Eh, but he’s a fine lad, and doin’ well for the hotel.”

Miss Elsie extinguished a sudden smile with her handkerchief as her mother anxiously inquired, “And are the family as poor as that?”

“But I am not saying he’s poor, ma’am, no,” replied the stranger, with native caution. “What wi’ tips and gratooities and percentages on the teekets, it’s a bit of money he ’ll be having in the bank noo.”

The prophecy of Donald McHulish as to the weather came true. The next morning was bright and sunny, and the boat to Kelpie Island—a large yawl—duly received its complement of passengers and provision-hampers. The ladies had apparently become more tolerant of their fellow pleasure-seekers, and it appeared that Miss Elsie had even overcome her hilarity at the discovery of what “might have been” a relative in the person of the porter Donald. “I had a long talk with him before breakfast this morning,” she said gayly, “and I know all about him. It appears that there are hundreds of him—all McHulishes—all along the coast and elsewhere—only none of them ever lived on the island, and don’t want to. But he looks more like a ‘laird’ and a chief than Malcolm, and if it comes to choosing a head of the family, remember, maw, I shall vote solid for him.”

“How can you go on so, Elsie?” said Mrs. Kirkby, with languid protest. “Only I trust you did n’t say anything to him of the syndicate. And, thank Heaven! the property is n’t here.”

“No; the waiter tells me all the lovely things we had for breakfast came from miles away. And they don’t seem to have ever raised anything on the island, from its looks. Think of having to row three miles for the morning’s milk!”

There was certainly very little appearance of vegetation on the sterile crags that soon began to lift themselves above the steely waves ahead. A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and writhed like vines around the square tower and crumbling walls of an irregular but angular building, looked in their brown shadows like part of the debris.

“It’s just like a burnt-down bone-boiling factory,” said Miss Elsie critically; “and I should n’t wonder if that really was old McHulish’s business. They could n’t have it on the mainland for its being a nuisance.”

Nevertheless, she was one of the first to leap ashore when the yawl’s bow grated in a pebbly cove, and carried her pretty but incongruous little slippers through the seaweed, wet sand, and slimy cobbles with a heroism that redeemed her vanity. A scrambling ascent of a few moments brought them to a wall with a gap in it, which gave easy ingress to the interior of the ruins. This was merely a little curving hollow from which the outlines of the plan had long since faded. It was kept green by the brown walls, which, like the crags of the mainland valleys, sheltered it from the incessant strife of the Atlantic gales. A few pale flowers that might have grown in a damp cellar shivered against the stones. Scraps of newspapers, soda-water and beer-bottles, highly decorated old provision-tins, and spent cartridge-cases,—the remains of chilly picnics and damp shooting-luncheons,—had at first sight lent color to the foreground by mere contrast, but the corrosion of time and weather had blackened rather than mellowed the walls in a way which forcibly reminded the consul of Miss Elsie’s simile of the “burnt-down factory.” The view from the square tower—a mere roost for unclean sea-fowl, from the sides of which rags of peeling moss and vine hung like tattered clothing—was equally depressing. The few fishermen’s huts along the shore were built of stones taken from the ruin, and roofed in with sodden beams and timbers in the last stages of deliquescence. The thick smoke of smouldering peat-fires came from the low chimneys, and drifted across the ruins with the odors of drying fish.

“I ’ve just seen a sort of ground-plan of the castle,” said Miss Elsie cheerfully. “It never had a room in it as big as our bedroom in the hotel, and there were n’t windows enough to go round. A slit in the wall, about two inches wide by two feet long, was considered dazzling extravagance to Malcolm’s ancestors. I don’t wonder some of ’em broke out and swam over to America. That reminds me. Who do you suppose is here—came over from the hotel in a boat of his own, just to see maw!”

“Not Malcolm, surely.”

“Not much,” replied Miss Elsie, setting her small lips together. “It’s Mr. Custer. He’s talking business with her now down on the beach. They ’ll be here when lunch is ready.”

The consul remembered the romantic plan which the enthusiastic Custer had imparted to him in the foggy consulate at St. Kentigern, and then thought of the matter-of-fact tourists, the few stolid fishermen, and the prosaic ruins around them, and smiled. He looked up, and saw that Miss Elsie was watching him.

“You know Mr. Custer, don’t you?”

“We are old Californian friends.”

“I thought so; but I think he looked a little upset when he heard you were here, too.”

He certainly was a little awkward, as if struggling with some half-humorous embarrassment, as he came forward a few moments later with Mrs. Kirkby. But the stimulation of the keen sea air triumphed over the infelicities of the situation and surroundings, and the little party were presently enjoying their well-selected luncheon with the wholesome appetite of travel and change. The chill damp made limp the napkins and tablecloth, and invaded the victuals; the wind, which was rising, whistled round the walls, and made miniature cyclones of the torn paper and dried twigs around them: but they ate, drank, and were merry. At the end of the repast the two gentlemen rose to light their cigars in the lee of the wall.

“I suppose you know all about Malcolm?” said Custer, after an awkward pause.

“My dear fellow,” said the consul, somewhat impatiently, “I know nothing about him, and you ought to know that by this time.”

“I thought your friend, Sir James, might have told you,” continued Custer, with significant emphasis.

“I have not seen Sir James for two months.”

“Well, Malcolm’s a crank—always was one, I reckon, and is reg’larly off his head now. Yes, sir; Scotch whiskey and your friend Sir James finished him. After that dinner at MacFen’s he was done for—went wild. Danced a sword-dance, or a strathspey, or some other blamed thing, on the table, and yelled louder than the pipes. So they all did. Jack, I ’ve painted the town red once myself; I thought I knew what a first-class jamboree was: but they were prayer-meetings to that show. Everybody was blind drunk—but they all got over it except ''him. They were a different lot of men the next day, as cool and cautious as you please, but he'' was shut up for a week, and came out crazy.”

“But what’s that to do with his claim?”

“Well, there ain’t much use ‘whooping up the boys’ when only the whooper gets wild.”

“Still, that does not affect any right he may have in the property.”

“But it affects the syndicate,” said Custer gloomily; “and when we found that he was whooping up some shopkeepers and factory hands who claimed to belong to the clan,—and you can’t heave a stone at a dog around here without hitting a McHulish,—we concluded we had n’t much use for him ornamentally. So we shipped him home last steamer.”

“And the property?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Custer, still gloomily. “We ’ve effected an amicable compromise, as Sir James calls it. That means we’ve taken a lot of land somewhere north, that you can shoot over—that is, you need n’t be afraid of hitting a house, or a tree, or a man anywhere; and we ’ve got a strip more of the same sort on the sea-shore somewhere off here, occupied only by some gay galoots called crofters, and you can raise a lawsuit and an imprecation on every acre. Then there’s this soul-subduing, sequestered spot, and what’s left of the old bone-boiling establishment, and the rights of fishing and peat-burning, and otherwise creating a nuisance off the mainland. It cost the syndicate only a hundred thousand dollars, half cash and half in Texan and Kentucky grass lands. But we ’ve carried the thing through.”

“I congratulate you,” said the consul.

“Thanks.” Custer puffed at his cigar for a few moments. “That Sir James MacFen is a fine man.”

“He is.”

“A large, broad, all-round man. Knows everything and everybody, don’t he?”

“I think so.”

“Big man in the church, I should say? No slouch at a party canvass, or ward politics, eh? As a board director, or president, just takes the cake, don’t he?”

“I believe so.”

“Nothing mean about Jimmy as an advocate or an arbitrator, either, is there? Rings the bell every time, don’t he? Financiers take a back seat when he’s around? Owns half of Scotland by this time, I reckon.”

The consul believed that Sir James had the reputation of being exceedingly sagacious in financial and mercantile matters, and that he was a man of some wealth.

“Naturally. I wonder what he’d take to come over to America, and give the boys points,” continued Custer, in meditative admiration. “There were two or three men on Scott’s River, and one Chinaman, that we used to think smart, but they were doddering ijuts to him. And as for me—I say, Jack, you did n’t see any hayseed in my hair that day I walked inter your consulate, did you?”

The consul smilingly admitted that he had not noticed these signs of rustic innocence in his friend.

“Nor any flies? Well, for all that, when I get home I’m going to resign. No more foreign investments for me. When anybody calls at the consulate and asks for H. J. Custer, say you don’t know me. And you don’t. And I say, Jack, try to smooth things over for me with her.”

“With Miss Elsie?”

Custer cast a glance of profound pity upon the consul. “No; with Mrs. Kirkby, of course. See?”

The consul thought he did see, and that he had at last found a clue to Custer’s extraordinary speculation. But, like most theorists who argue from a single fact, a few months later he might have doubted his deduction.

He was staying at a large country-house many miles distant from the scene of his late experiences. Already they had faded from his memory with the departure of his compatriots from St. Kentigern. He was smoking by the fire in the billiard-room late one night when a fellow-guest approached him.

“Saw you did n’t remember me at dinner.”

The voice was hesitating, pleasant, and not quite unfamiliar. The consul looked up, and identified the figure before him as one of the new arrivals that day, whom, in the informal and easy courtesy of the house, he had met with no further introduction than a vague smile. He remembered, too, that the stranger had glanced at him once or twice at dinner, with shy but engaging reserve.

“You must see such a lot of people, and the way things are arranged and settled here everybody expects to look and act like everybody else, don’t you know, so you can’t tell one chap from another. Deuced annoying, eh? That’s where you Americans are different, and that’s why those countrywomen of yours were so charming, don’t you know, so original. We were all together on the top of a coach in Scotland, don’t you remember? Had such a jolly time in the beastly rain. You did n’t catch my name. It’s Duncaster.”

The consul at once recalled his former fellow-traveler. The two men shook hands. The Englishman took a pipe from his smoking-jacket, and drew a chair beside the consul.

“Yes,” he continued, comfortably filling his pipe, “the daughter, Miss Kirkby, was awfully good fun; so fresh, so perfectly natural and innocent, don’t you know, and yet so extraordinarily sharp and clever. She had some awfully good chaff over that Scotch scenery before those Scotch tourists, do you remember? And it was all so beastly true, too. Perhaps she’s with you here?”

There was so much unexpected and unaffected interest in the young Englishman’s eyes that the consul was quite serious in his regrets that the ladies had gone back to Paris.

“I’d like to have taken them over to Audrey Edge from here. It’s no distance by train. I did ask them in Scotland, but I suppose they had something better to do. But you might tell them I ’ve got some sisters there, and that it is an old place and not half bad, don’t you know, when you write to them. You might give me their address.”

The consul did so, and added a few pleasant words regarding their position,—barring the syndicate,—which he had gathered from Custer. Lord Duncaster’s look of interest, far from abating, became gently confidential.

“I suppose you must see a good deal of your countrymen in your business, and I suppose, just like Englishmen, they differ, by Jove! Some of them, don’t you know, are rather pushing and anxious for position, and all that sort of thing; and some of ’em, like your friends, are quite independent and natural.”

He stopped, and puffed slowly at his pipe. Presently he took it from his mouth, with a little laugh. “I ’ve a mind to tell you a rather queer experience of mine. It’s nothing against your people generally, you know, nor do I fancy it’s even an American type; so you won’t mind my speaking of it. I ’ve got some property in Scotland,—rather poor stuff you’d call it,—but, by Jove! some Americans have been laying claim to it under some obscure plea of relationship. There might have been something in it, although not all they claim, but my business man, a clever chap up in your place,—perhaps you may have heard of him, Sir James MacFen,—wrote to me that what they really wanted were some ancestral lands with the right to use the family name and privileges. The oddest part of the affair was that the claimant was an impossible sort of lunatic, and the whole thing was run by a syndicate of shrewd Western men. As I don’t care for the property, which has only been dropping a lot of money every year for upkeep and litigation, Sir James, who is an awfully far-sighted chap at managing, thought he could effect a compromise, and get rid of the property at a fair valuation. And, by Jove! he did. But what your countrymen can get out of it,—for the shooting is n’t half as good as what they can get in their own country,—or what use the privileges are to them, I can’t fancy.”

“I think I know the story,” said the consul, eying his fellow-guest attentively; “but if I remember rightly, the young man claimed to be the rightful and only surviving heir.”

The Englishman rose, and, bending over the hearth, slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe. “That’s quite impossible, don’t you know. For,” he added, as he stood up in front of the fire in face, figure, and careless repose more decidedly English than ever, “you see my title of Duncaster only came to me through an uncle, but I am the direct and sole heir of the old family, and the Scotch property. I don’t perhaps look like a Scot,—we’ve been settled in England some time,—but,” he continued with an invincible English drawling deliberation, “I—am—really—you—know—what they call The McHulish.”