The Green Ray Read Online

If by chance Miss Campbell should wish that it might take place very quietly, and insisted on her uncles listening to her, they would know how to be firm with her for the first time in their lives; they would not yield on this point, nor any other. The guests at the bridal feast should quaff wine to their hearts’ content, but with all due ceremony; and Sam’s hand was held out simultaneously with Sib’s, as though they were already exchanging the famous Scotch toast.

At this moment the hall-door was opened, and a young girl, with cheeks glowing with health after her rapid walk, appeared. In her hand she held a newspaper, and going up to the brothers, she honoured them with two kisses each.

“Good-morning Uncle Sam,” said she.

“Good-morning, dear child.”

“And how is Uncle Sib?”

“Wonderfully well, thank you, my dear.”

“Helena,” said Sam, “we have a little arrangement to make with you.”

“An arrangement! what arrangement? What have you two uncles been plotting together?” asked Miss Campbell, as she looked roguishly from one to the other.

“You know that young gentleman, Mr. Aristobulus Ursiclos?”

“Yes, I know him.”

“Do you like him?”

“Why should I not like him, uncle?”

“Well, after mature consideration, brother and I think of proposing him to you as a husband.”

“I marry? I!” exclaimed Miss Campbell, and her pretty lips parted with the most musical laughter that had ever resounded through the great hall.

“Do you not want to be married?” asked her Uncle Sam.

“Why should I?”

“Never?” inquired Sib.

“Never!” replied Miss Campbell, assuming a serious air, which her smiling lips quite contradicted. “Never, uncles—at least, not till I have seen—”

“Seen what?” cried the brothers.

“Until I have seen the Green Ray.”

CHAPTER II
HELENA CAMPBELL

The house occupied by the uncles and their niece was situated three miles from the little hamlet of Helensburgh, on the banks of Gare Loch, one of the most picturesque lakes which capriciously indent the right bank of the Clyde.

During the winter they lived in Glasgow, at an old mansion in West George Street, in the most aristocratic part of the new town, not far from Blythswood Square. There they stayed for six months in the year, unless some whim of Helena’s, to which they yielded without a murmur, took them off for a visit to Italy, Spain, or France. In the course of these travels they saw everything from their niece’s point of view, going where she liked, stopping where it pleased her to stop, and admiring nothing but what she admired. Then, when Miss Campbell closed the book in which she jotted down her impressions of the journey, they quietly returned to Scotland, and very willingly resumed their comfortable quarters in West George Street.

About the third week in May the brothers generally experienced a great desire to be back in the country, and this happened just as Helena showed the same inclination to leave the noise of Glasgow, and fly from the hubbub of business, which sometimes inundated even the neighbourhood of Blythswood Square, to breathe a purer atmosphere than that of the commercial city.

Thus the whole household, masters and servants, set out for the country house about twenty miles distant.

The village of Helensburgh is a pretty little place, and has become a much frequented bathing-resort by those who are at leisure to vary excursions up the Clyde with tours to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond.

The brothers had chosen the best place possible for their house, about a mile from the shores of Gare Loch, surrounded by magnificent trees, near a stream, and standing on undulating ground which had all the appearance of a private park. Cool, shady retreats, grassy slopes, clumps of trees, flower-beds, pastures kept especially for sheep, silvery lakes adorned with swans, those graceful birds of whom Wordsworth writes,—

“The swan floats double—swan and shadow.”

Finally, everything that nature could unite to gladden the eyes without betraying the handiwork of man. Such was the summer residence of this wealthy family.

It may be added that from one part of the park, lying above Gare Loch, the view is charming. Beyond the narrow gulf on the right the eye rests on the peninsula of Roseneath, on which stands a pretty Italian villa, belonging to the Duke of Argyll; to the left lies the little hamlet of Helensburgh, with its undulating line of houses along the coast, and here and there the spire of a church; its elegant pier running out into the waters of the lake for the service of steamers, and its background of hills enlivened with picturesque villas. Facing you on the left bank of the Clyde, Port Glasgow, the ruins of Newark Castle, Greenock and its forest of masts, decorated with many-coloured flags, form a very varied panorama, from which it is difficult to turn away.

From the top of the principal tower of the house, the view was more beautiful still, with a glimpse of two horizons.

The square tower, with pepper-boxes standing out airily from three angles of its summit, ornamented with battlements, and its parapet girt with stone lace-work, rose still higher at its fourth angle in an octagonal turret, with an inevitable flag-staff. This keep of modern construction thus overlooked the whole of the building proper with its irregular roofing, its windows capriciously placed here and there, and its numerous gables and chimneys.

Now it was on this highest platform of the turret, beneath the national colours floating in the breeze, that Miss Campbell loved to sit and dream for whole hours together. She had made it a cosy little place of refuge, where she could read, write, or sleep at any time, sheltered from the sun, wind, and rain. Here she was most often to be found; and if not here, she was wandering through the park, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Dame Bess, unless she were riding her favourite little horse over the neighbouring country, followed by the faithful Partridge, who had to urge on his steed in order to keep up with his young mistress.

Among the numerous domestics, we must single out these two honest servants, who, from their childhood, had been attached to the Campbell family.

Elizabeth, the “Luckie,” as they call a housekeeper in the Highlands, could count as many years as she had keys on her bunch, and they were no less than forty-seven. She was a thorough manager: serious, orderly, skilful, superintending the whole household. Perhaps she imagined that she had reared the two brothers, although they were older than herself, but most certainly she had bestowed maternal care on Miss Campbell.

Next to this valuable stewardess figured Partridge, a servant entirely devoted to his masters, always faithful to the time-honoured customs of his clan, and invariably dressed in Highland costume.

With an Elizabeth to manage the household and a Partridge to look after it, what more could be wanted to ensure domestic felicity?

It has doubtless been remarked that when Partridge answered the brothers’ call he had spoken of their niece as Miss Campbell.

Had the Scotchman given her her baptismal name, and called her Miss Helena, he would have committed an infraction of Highland etiquette; never indeed is the eldest or the only daughter of good family called by her Christian name. If Miss Campbell had been the daughter of a peer, she would have been called Lady Helena. Now this branch of the Campbells to which she belonged was only collateral and but distantly connected with the direct branch of the Campbells whose origin goes back to the Crusades. For many centuries branches from the old tree had been separated from the direct line of the glorious ancestor now represented by the clans of Argyll and Breadalbane; but however distant the connexion might be, Helena, on her father’s side, had some of the blood of this illustrious family in her veins.

Still, though she was but Miss Campbell, she was a true Scotchwoman, one of those noble daughters of Thulé, with blue eyes and fair hair, whose portrait, engraved by Finden or Edwards, and placed among the Minnas, Brendas, Amy Robsarts, Flora Maclvors, Diana Vernons, would have held its own in those “keepsakes” in which the English used to gather the feminine beauty of this great novelist.

Miss Campbell was indeed very charming, with her pretty face, blue eyes, blue as her native lakes, her elegant figure, and somewhat haughty demeanour, her dreamy expression, except when a gleam of humour animated her features, her whole person, in fact, so graceful and distingué.

Helena was good as well as beautiful. Heiress to her uncles’ wealth, she was not vain of riches, but by her charity endeavoured to verify the old Gaelic proverb, “May the hand which opens freely be always full!”

Attached above everything to her country, her clan, and her family, she was a true Scotchwoman, heart and soul, and would have given the preference to the most consummate Sawney over the most imposing of John Bulls. Her patriotic being thrilled like the strings of a harp when the voice of a mountaineer, singing some Highland pibroch, reached her across the country.

De Maistre has said, “There are in me two beings: myself and another.”

The “myself” of Miss Campbell was a serious, reflecting being, looking upon life from the point of view of its duties rather than its rights.

The “other” was a romantic being, somewhat prone to superstition, fond of the marvellous tales which spring up so naturally in the land of Fingal; following the example of the Lindamiras, those adorable heroines of chivalrous romance, she would visit the neighbouring glens to listen to the “bagpipes of Strathearne,” as the Highlanders call the wind when it whistles through the lonely alleys.

The brothers loved Miss Campbell’s two personalities equally well, but it must be confessed that if the first charmed them by her good sense, the second occasionally embarrassed them with her unexpected remarks, her capricious flights of imagination, and her sudden excursions into dream-land.

Had she not just now given them a most singular answer?

“I marry?” had said the one being. “Marry Mr. Ursiclos? We shall see about that; we will talk about it another time.”

“Never! until I have seen the Green Ray!” the other had replied.

The brothers looked at each other, without being able to understand, whilst Miss Campbell installed herself in a large Gothic armchair in the recess of the window.

“What does she mean by the Green Ray?” asked Sam.

“And why does she want to see this ray?” said Sib.

Why? We are about to hear.

CHAPTER III
THE ARTICLE IN THE “MORNING POST.”

Lovers of physical curiosities might have read in that day’s Morning Post:—

“Have you sometimes observed the sun set over the sea? Have you watched it till the upper rim of its disk, skimming the surface of the water, is just about to disappear? Very likely you have; but did you notice the phenomenon which occurs at the very instant the heavenly body sends forth its last ray, which, if the sky be cloudless, is of unparalleled purity? No, perhaps not. Well, the first time you have the opportunity, and it happens but rarely, of making this observation, it will not be, as one might think, a crimson ray which falls upon the retina of the eye, it will be ‘green,’ but a most wonderful green, a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there be green in Paradise, it cannot but be of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope!”

So ran the article in the Morning Post, the newspaper which Miss Campbell held in her hand when she entered the hall. This paragraph had simply bewitched her, and with great excitement she read to her uncles these few hurried lines, which sang the praises of the Green Ray in a somewhat lyric form.

But what Miss Campbell did not tell them was that this Green Ray tallied with an ancient legend, which till now she had never been able to understand. It was one among the numerous inexplicable legends of the Highlands, which avers that this ray has the virtue of making him who has seen it impossible to be deceived in matters of sentiment; at its apparition all deceit and falsehood are done away, and he who has been fortunate enough once to behold it is enabled to see closely into his own heart and read the thoughts of others.

A young Scotchwoman of the Highlands must be pardoned for a romantic credulity which this article in the Morning Post had just revived.

Sam and Sib looked at each other with blank astonishment, as Miss Campbell read. They had lived till now without seeing the Green Ray, and imagined it was quite possible to exist without ever doing so. However, it seemed that this was not Helena’s opinion, who intended to make the most important action of her life subordinate to the observation of this unique phenomenon.

“Ah! and is that what is meant by the Green Ray?” said her uncle Sam, gently nodding his head.

“Yes,” replied Miss Campbell.

“And do you really want to see it?” said Sib.

“I will see it with your permission, uncles, and as soon as possible, with all due deference to you.”

“And then when you have seen it—?”

“When I have seen it, we can talk of Mr. Aristobulus Ursiclos.”

The brothers exchanged a knowing glance.

“Then let us go and see this Green Ray,” said one.

“Without losing a moment!” added the other.

Miss Campbell stopped them just as they were about to open the hall window.

“We must wait till the sun sets,” said she.

“This evening then—” said Sam.

“Should the sun set on a clear horizon,” added Miss Campbell.

“Very well, after dinner we will all three go to Roseneath Point—” said Sib.

“Or else we might simply go on to the tower,” added Sam.

“We can only see the coast of the Clyde from Roseneath Point, or from the tower,” replied Miss Campbell; “and, remember, we must see the sun set on the sea-line, so take my advice, uncles, and let me see that horizon as quickly as possible.”

Miss Campbell spoke so seriously, and smiled at them so prettily, that the brothers could not refuse a proposition made in such terms.

“Perhaps there is no immediate hurry—?” Sam, however, thought fit to observe.

And Sib came to his assistance, adding,—

“We have plenty of time—”

Miss Campbell shook her head prettily.

“There is not plenty of time,” she replied, “and this, on the contrary, is most urgent.”

“On account of Mr.