Bret Harte

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”