Part 24

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 oughtn'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 wouldn't be anything except to the family, you know; and I should fancy they wouldn'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 sightseeing.”

“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 didn'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 naive and gentle courtesy of manner that relieved his strong accent, “Oh, ay,” 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.