THE UNFOLDING OF THE SCROLL
When Alan reached the château he was at once accosted by old Matieu.
"Mme. la Marquise wishes to see you in her private room, M'sieu Alan, and without a moment's delay."
In a few seconds he was on the upper landing. At the door of the room known as the Blue Salon he met Yann the Dumb.
"What is it, Ian? Is there any thing wrong?"
In his haste he spoke in French. The old islander looked at him, but did not answer.
Alan repeated his question in Gaelic.
"Yes, Alan MacAlasdair, I fear there is gloom and darkness upon us all."
"Why?"
"By this an' by that. But I have seen the death-cloth about Lois nic Alasdair bronnachfor weeks past. I saw it about her feet, and then about her knees, and then about her breast. Last night, when I looked at her, I saw it at her neck. And to-day, the shadow-shroud is risen to her eyes."
"But your second-sight is not always true, you know, Ian. Why, you told me when I was here last that I would soon be seeing my long dead father again, and, more than that, that I should see him, but he never see me. But of this and your other dark sayings, no more now. Can I go in at once and see my aunt?"
"I will be asking that, Alan-mo-caraid. But what you say is not true. I have never yet 'seen' any thing that has not come to pass; though I have had the sight but seldom, to Himself be the praise." With that Ian entered, exchanged a word or two, and ushered Alan into the room.
On a couch beside a great fireplace, across the iron brazier of which were flaming pine-logs, an elderly woman lay almost supine. That she had been a woman of great beauty was unmistakable, for all her gray hair andthe ravages that time and suffering had wrought upon her face. Even now her face was beautiful; mainly from the expression of the passionate dusky eyes which were so like those of Annaik. Her long, inert body was covered with a fantastic Italian silk-cloth whose gay pattern emphasized her own helpless condition. Alan had not seen her for some months, and he was shocked at the change. Below the eyes, as flamelike as ever, were purplish shadows, and everywhere, through the habitual ivory of the delicate features, a gray ashiness had diffused. When she held out her hand to him, he saw it as transparent as a fan, and perceived within it the red gleam of the fire.
"Ah, Alan, it is you at last! How glad I am to see you!" The voice was one of singular sweetness, in tone and accent much like that of Ynys.
"Dear Aunt Lois, not more glad than I am to see you"—and, as he spoke, Alan kneeled at the couch and kissed the frail hand that had been held out to him.
"I would have so eagerly seen you at onceon my arrival," he resumed, "but I was given your message—that you had one of your seasons of suffering, and could not see me. You have been in pain, Aunt Lois?"
"Yes, dear, I am dying."
"Dying! Oh, no, no, no! You don't meanthat. And besides——"
"Why should I not mean it? Why should I fear it, Alan? Has life meant so much to me of late years that I should wish to prolong it?"
"But you have endured so long!"
"A bitter reason truly!... and one too apt to a woman! Well, enough of this. Alan, I want to speak to you about yourself. But first tell me one thing. Do you love any woman?"
"Yes, with all my heart, with all my life, I love a woman."
"Have you told her so? Has she betrothed herself to you?"
"Yes."
"Is it Annaik?"
"Annaik ... Annaik?"
"Why are you so surprised, Alan? Annaikis beautiful; she has long loved you, I am certain; and you, too, if I mistake not, care for her?"
"Of course, I do; of course I care for her, Aunt Lois. I love her. But I do not love her as you mean."
The Marquise looked at him steadily.
"I do not quite understand," she said gravely. "I must speak to you about Annaik, later. But now, will you tell me who the woman is?"
"Yes. It is Ynys."
"Ynys!But, Alan, do you not know that she is betrothed to Andrik de Morvan?"
"I know."
"And that such a betrothal is, in Brittany, almost as binding as a marriage?"
"I have heard that said."
"And that the Marquis de Kerival wishes that union to take place?"
"The Marquis Tristran's opinion, on any matter, does not in any way concern me."
"That may be, Alan; but it concerns Ynys. Do you know that I also wish her to marry Andrik; that his parents wish it; and thatevery one regards the union as all but an accomplished fact?"
"Yes, dear Aunt Lois, I have known or presumed all you tell me. But nothing of it can alter what is a vital part of my existence."
"Do you know that Ynys herself gave her pledge to Andrik de Morvan?"
"It was a conditional pledge. But, in any case, she will formally renounce it."
For a time there was silence.
Alan had risen, and now stood by the side of the couch, with folded arms. The Marquise Lois looked up at him, with her steadfast, shadowy eyes. When she spoke again she averted them, and her voice was so low as almost to be a whisper.
"Finally, Alan, let me ask you one question. It is not about you and Ynys. I infer that both of you are at one in your determination to take every thing into your own hands. Presumably you can maintain her and yourself. Tristran—the Marquis de Kerival—will not contribute a franc toward her support. If he knew, he would turn her out of doors this very day."
"Well, Aunt Lois, I wait for your final question?"
"It is this.What about Annaik?"
Startled by her tone and sudden lifted glance, Alan stared in silence; then recollecting himself, he repeated dully:
"'What about Annaik?' ... Annaik, Aunt Lois, why do you ask me about Annaik?"
"She loves you."
"As a brother; as the betrothed of Ynys; as a dear comrade and friend."
"Do not be a hypocrite, Alan. You know that she loves you. What of your feeling towardher?"
"I love her ... as a brother loves a sister ... as any old playmate and friend ... as ... as the sister of Ynys."
A faint, scornful smile came upon the white lips of the Marquise.
"Will you be good enough, then, to explain about last night?"
"About last night?"
"Come, be done with evasion. Yes, about last night. Alan, I know that you and Annaik were out together in the cypressavenue, and again, on the dunes, after midnight; that you were seen walking hand in hand; and that, stealthily, you entered the house together."
"Well?"
"Well! The inference is obvious. But I will let you see that I know more. Annaik went out of the house late. Old Matieu let her out. Shortly after that you went out of the château. Later, you and she came upon Judik Kerbastiou prowling about in the woods. It was more than an hour after he left you that you returned to the château. Where were you during that hour or more?"
Alan flushed. He unfolded his arms; hesitated; then refolded them.
"How do you know this?" he asked simply.
"I know it, because...."
But before she finished what she was about to say, the door opened and Yann entered.
"What is it, Ian?"
"I would be speaking to you alone for a minute, Bantighearna."
"Alan, go to the alcove yonder, please.I must hear in private what Yann has to say to me."
As soon as the young man was out of hearing, Yann stooped and spoke in low tones. The Marquise Lois grew whiter and whiter, till not a vestige of color remained in her face, and the only sign of life was in the eyes. Suddenly she made an exclamation.
Alan turned and looked at her. He caught her agonized whisper: "Oh, my God!"
"What is it—oh, what is it, dear Aunt Lois?" he cried, as he advanced to her side.
He expected to be waved back, but to his surprise the Marquise made no sign to him to withdraw. Instead, she whispered some instructions to Yann and then bade him go.
When they were alone once more, she took a small silver flagon from beneath her coverlet and poured a few drops upon some sugar.
Having taken this, she seemed to breathe more easily. It was evident, at the same time, that she had received some terrible shock.
"Alan, come closer. I cannot speak loud. I have no time to say more to you about Annaik. I must leave that to you and to her. But lest I die, let me say at once that I forbid you to marry Ynys, and that I enjoin you to marry Annaik, and that without delay."
A spasm of pain crossed the speaker's face. She stopped, and gasped for breath. When at last she resumed, it was clear she considered as settled the matter on which she had spoken.
"Alan, I am so unwell that I must be very brief. And now listen. You are twenty-five to-day. Such small fortune as is yours comes now into your possession. It has been administered for you by a firm of lawyers in Edinburgh. See, here is the address. Can you read it? Yes?... Well, keep the slip. This fortune is not much. To many, possibly to you, it may not seem enough to provide more than the bare necessities of life, not enough for its needs. Nevertheless, it is your own, and you will be glad. It will, at least, suffice to keep you free from need ifever you fulfil your great wish to go back to the land of your fathers, to your own place."
"That is still my wish and my hope."
"So be it! You will have also an old sea castle, not much more than a keep, on a remote island. It will at any rate be your own. It is on an island where few people are; a wild and precipitous isle far out in the Atlantic at the extreme of the Southern Hebrides."
"Is it called Rona?" Alan interrupted eagerly.
Without noticing, or heeding, his eagerness, she assented.
"Yes, it is called Rona. Near it are the isles of Mingulay and Borosay. These three islands were once populous, and it was there that for hundreds of years your father's clan, of which he was hereditary chief, lived and prospered. After the evil days, the days when the young King was hunted in the west as though a royal head were the world's desire, and when our brave kinswoman, Flora Macdonald, proved that women as well as men could dare all for a good cause—afterthose evil days the people melted away. Soon the last remaining handful were upon Borosay; and there, too, till the great fire that swept the island a score of years ago, stood the castle of my ancestors, the Macdonalds of Borosay.
"My father was a man well known in his day. The name of Sir Kenneth Macdonald was as familiar in London as in Edinburgh; and in Paris he was known to all the military and diplomatic world, for in his youth he had served in the French army with distinction, and held the honorary rank of general.
"Not long before my mother's death he came back to our lonely home in Borosay, bringing with him a kinsman of another surname, who owned the old castle of Rona on the Isle of the Sea-caves, as Rona is often called by the people of the Hebrides. Also there came with him a young French officer of high rank. After a time I was asked to marry this man. I did not love him, did not even care for him, and I refused. In truth ... already, though unknowingly, I loved your father—he that was our kinsman and owned Rona and its old castle.But Alasdair did not speak; and, because of that, we each came to sorrow.
"My father told me he was ruined. If I did not marry Tristran de Kerival, he would lose all. Moreover, my dying mother begged me to save the man she had loved so well and truly, though he had left her so much alone.
"Well, to be brief, I agreed. My kinsman Alasdair was away at the time. He returned on the eve of the very day on which I was suddenly married by Father Somerled Macdonald. We were to remain a few weeks in Borosay because of my mother's health.
"When Alasdair learned what had happened he was furious. I believe he even drew a riding whip across the face of Tristran de Kerival. Fierce words passed between them, and a cruel taunt that rankled. Nor would Alasdair have any word with me at all. He sent me a bitter message, but the bitterest word he could send was that which came to me: that he and my sister Silis had gone away together.
"From that day I never saw Silis again, till the time of her death. Soon afterward ourmother died, and while the island-funeral was being arranged our father had a stroke, and himself died, in time to be buried along with his wife. It was only then that I realized how more than true had been his statements as to his ruin. He died penniless. I was reminded of this unpleasant fact at the time, by the Marquis de Kerival; and I have had ample opportunity since for bearing it in vivid remembrance.
"As soon as possible we settled all that could be settled, and left for Brittany. I have sometimes thought my husband's love was killed when he discovered that Alasdair had loved me. He forbade me even to mention his name, unless he introduced it; and he was wont to swear that a day would come when he would repay in full what he believed to be the damning insult he had received.
"We took with us only one person from Borosay, an islander of Rona. He is, in fact, a clansman both of you and me. It is of Ian I speak, of course; him that soon came to be called here Yann the Dumb. My husband andI had at least this to unite us: that we were both Celtic, and had all our racial sympathies in common.
"I heard from Silis that she was married and was happy. I am afraid this did not add to my happiness. She wrote to me, too, when she was about to bear her child. Strangely enough, Alasdair, who, like his father before him, was an officer in the French army, was then stationed not far from Kerival, though my husband knew nothing of this at first. My own boy and Silis's were born about the same time. My child died; that of Silis and Alasdair lived. You are that child. No ... wait, Alan ... I will tell you his name shortly.... You, I say, are that child. Soon afterward, Silis had a dangerous relapse. In her delirium she said some wild things; among them, words to the effect that the child which had died was hers, and that the survivor was mine—that, somehow or other, they had been changed. Then, too, she cried out in her waywardness—and, poor girl, she must have known then that Alasdair had loved me before he loved her—that the child who lived,he who had been christened Alan, was the child of Alasdair and myself.
"All this poor delirium at the gate of death meant nothing. But in some way it came to Tristran's ears, and he believed. After Silis's death I had brought you home, Alan, and had announced that I would adopt you. I promised Silis this, in her last hour, when she was in her right mind again; also that the child, you, should be brought up to speak and think in our own ancient language, and that in all ways you should grow up a true Gael. I have done my best, Alan?"
"Indeed, indeed you have. I shall never, never forget that you have been my mother to me."
"Well, my husband never forgave that. He acquiesced, but he never forgave. For long, and I fear to this day, he persists in his belief that you are really my illegitimate child, and that Silis was right in thinking that I had succeeded in having my own new-born babe transferred to her arms, while her dead offspring was brought to me, and, as my own, interred. It has created a bitter feud,and that is why he hates the sight of you. That, too, Alan, is why he would never consent to your marriage with either Ynys or Annaik."
"But you yourself urged me a little ago to ... to ... marry Annaik."
"I had a special reason. Besides, I of course know the truth. In his heart, God knows, my husband cannot doubt it."
"Then tell me this: is my father dead also, as I have long surmised?"
"No ... yes, yes, Alan, he is dead."
Alan noticed his aunt's confusion, and regarded her steadily.
"Why do you first say 'no' and then 'yes'?"
"Because...."
But here again an interruption occurred. The portière moved back, and then the wide doors disparted. Into the salon was wheeled a chair, in which sat the Marquis de Kerival. Behind him was his attendant; at his side, Kermorvan the steward. The face of the seigneur was still deathly pale, and the features were curiously drawn. The silkyhair, too, seemed whiter than ever, and white as foam-drift on a dark wave were the long thin hands which lay on the lap of the black velvet shooting jacket he wore.
"Ah, Lois, is this a prepared scene?" he exclaimed in a cold and sneering voice, "or, has the young man known all along?"
"Tristan, I have not yet told him what I now know. Be merciful."
"Alan MacAlasdair, as the Marquise here calls you,—and she ought to know,—have you learned yet the name and rank of your father?"
"No."
"Tell him, Lois."
"Tristran, listen. All is over now. Soon I, too, shall be gone. In the name of God I pray you to relent from this long cruelty, this remorseless infamy. You know as well as I do that our first-born is dead twenty-five years ago, and that this man here is truly the son of Silis, my sister. And here is one overwhelming proof for you:I have just been urging him to marry Annaik."
At that Tristran the Silent was no longersilent. With a fierce laugh he turned to the steward.
"I call you to witness, Raif Kermorvan, that I would kill Annaik, or Ynys either for that matter, before I would allow such an unnatural union. Once and for all I absolutely ban it. Besides.... Listen, you there with your father's eyes! You are sufficiently a Gael to feel that you would not marry the daughter of a man who killed your father?"
"God forbid!"
"Well, then, God does forbid. Lois, tell this man what you know."
"Alan," began the Marquise quaveringly, her voice fluttering like a dying bird, "the name of your father is ... is ... Alasdair ... Alasdair Carmichael!"
"Carmichael!"
For a moment he was dazed, bewildered. When, recently, had he heard that name?
Then it flashed upon him. He turned with flaming eyes to where the Marquis sat, quietly watching him.
"Oh, my God!" That was all. He could say no more. His heart was in his throat.
Then, hoarse and trembling, he put out his hands.
"Tell me it is not true! Tell me it is not true!"
"Whatis not true, Alan Carmichael?"
"That that was he who died in the wood yonder."
"That was General Alasdair Carmichael."
"My father?"
"Your father!"
"But, you devil, you murdered him! I saw you do it! You knew it was he—and you killed him. You knew he would not try to kill you, and you waited; then, when he had fired, you took careful aim and killed him!"
"You reiterate, my friend. These are facts with which I am familiar."
The cool, sneering tone stung Alan to madness. He advanced menacingly.
"Murderer, you shall not escape!"
"A fitting sentiment, truly, from a man who wants to marry my daughter!"
"Marry your daughter! Marry the daughter of my father's murderer! I would soonernever see the face of woman again than do this thing."
"Good! I am well content. And now, young man, you are of age; you have come into your patrimony, including your ruined keep on the island of Rona; and I will trouble you to go—to leave Kerival for good and all."
Suddenly, without a word, Alan moved rapidly forward. With a light touch he laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the motionless man in the wheeled chair.
"There! I lay upon you, Tristran de Kerival, the curse of the newly dead and of the living! May the evil that you have done corrode your brain, and may your life silt away as sand, and may your soul know the second death!"
As he turned to leave the room he saw Kerbastiou standing in the doorway.
"Who are you, to be standing there, Judik Kerbastiou?" demanded the steward angrily.
"I am Rohan de Kerival. Ask this man here if I am not his son. Three days ago the woman who was my mother died. She died a vagrant, in the forest. But, nigh upon thirtyyears ago, she was legally married to the young Marquis Tristran de Kerival. I am their child."
Alan glanced at the man he had cursed. A strange look had come into his ashy face.
"Her name?" was all Tristran the Silent said.
"Annora Brizeux."
"You have proofs?"
"I have all the proofs."
"You are only a peasant, I disown you. I know nothing of you or of the wanton that was your mother."
Without a word Judik strode forward and struck him full in the face. At that moment the miraculous happened. The Marquise, who had not stood erect for years, rose to her full height.
She, too, crossed the room.
"Alan," she cried, "see! He has killed me as well as your father," and with that she swayed, and fell dead, at the feet of the man who had trampled her soul in the dust and made of her blossoming life a drear and sterile wilderness.
THE HERDSMAN
RETROSPECTIVE: FROM THE HEBRID ISLES
At the end of the third month after that disastrous day when Alan Carmichael knew that his father had been slain, and before his unknowing eyes, by Tristran de Kerival, a great terror came upon him.
On that day itself he had left the Manor of Kerival. With all that blood between him and his enemy he could not stay a moment longer in the house. To have done so would have been to show himself callous indeed to the memory of his father.
Nor could he see Ynys. He could not look at her, innocent as she was. She was her father's child, and her father had murdered his father. Surely a union would be against nature; he must fly while he had the strength.
When, however, he had gained the yew closehe turned, hesitated, and then slowly walked northward to where the long brown dunes lay in a golden glow over against the pale blue of the sea. There, bewildered, wrought almost to madness, he moved to and fro, unable to realize all that had happened, and with bitter words cursing the malign fate which had overtaken him.
The afternoon waned, and he was still there, uncertain as ever, still confused, baffled, mentally blind.
Then suddenly he saw the figure of Yann the Dumb, his friend and clansman, Ian Macdonald. The old man seemed to understand at once that, after what had happened, Alan Carmichael would never go back to Kerival.
"Why do you come to see me here, Ian?" Alan had asked wearily.
When Ian began, "Thiginn gu d'choimhead... I would come to see you, though your home were a rock-cave," the familiar sound of the Gaelic did more than any thing else to clear his mind of the shadows which overlay it.
"Yes, Alan MacAlasdair," Ian answered, in response to an eager question, "whatever Iknow is yours now, since Lois nic Choinneach is dead, poor lady; though, sure, it is the best thing she could be having now, that death."
As swiftly as possible Alan elicited all he could from the old man; all that there had not been time to hear from the Marquise. He learned what a distinguished soldier, what a fine man, what a true Gael, Alasdair Carmichael had been. When his wife had died he had been involved in some disastrous lawsuit, and his deep sorrow and absolute financial ruin came to him at one and the same moment. It was at this juncture, though there were other good reasons also, that Lois de Kerival had undertaken to adopt and bring up Silis's child. When her husband Tristran had given his consent, it was with the stipulation that Lois and Alasdair Carmichael should never meet, and that the child was not to learn his surname till he came into the small fortune due to him through his mother.
This and much else Alan learned from Ian. Out of all the pain grew a feeling of bitter hatred for the cold, hard man who had wrought so much unhappiness, and were it not for Ynysand Annaik he would, for the moment, have rejoiced that, in Judik Kerbastiou, Nemesis had appeared. At his first mention of the daughters, Ian had looked at him closely.
"Will you be for going back to that house, Alan MacAlasdair?" he asked, and in a tone so marked that, even in his distress, Alan noticed it.
"Do you wish me to go back, Ian?"
"God forbid! I hear the dust on the threshold rising at the thought."
"We are both in an alien land, Ian."
"Och is diombuan gach cas air tìr gun eòlas—Fleeting is the foot in a strange land," said the islander, using a phrase familiar to Gaels away from the isles.
"But what can I do?"
"Sure you can go to your own place, Alan MacAlasdair. There you can think of what you will do. And before you go I must tell you that your father's brother Uilleam is dead, so that you have no near kin now except the son of the brother of your father, Donnacha Bàn as he is called—or was called, for I will be hearing a year or more ago that he,too, went under the wave. He would be your own age, and that close as a month or week, I am thinking."
"Nevertheless, Ian, I cannot go without seeing my cousin Ynys once more."
"You will never be for marrying the daughter of the man that murdered your father?" Ian spoke in horrified amaze, adding, "Sure, if that were so, it would indeed mean that they may talk as they like of this southland as akin to Gaeldom, though that is not a thought that will bring honey to the hive of my brain;—for no man of the isles would ever forgettherethat the blood of a father cries up to the stars themselves."
"Have you no message for me, from ... from ... her?"
"Ay," answered the old islesman reluctantly. "Here it is. I did not give it to you before, for fear you should be weak."
Without a word, Alan snatched the pencilled note. It had no beginning or signature, and ran simply: "My mother is dead, too. After all that has happened to-day I know we cannot meet. I know, too, that I love you with allmy heart and soul; that I have given you my deathless devotion. But, unless you say 'Come,' it is best that you go away at once, and that we never see each other again."
At that, Alan had torn off the half sheet, and written a single word upon it.
It was "Come."
This he gave to Ian, telling him to go straightway with it, and hand the note to Ynys in person. "Also," he added, "fulfil unquestioningly every thing she may tell you to do or not to do."
An hour or more after Ian had gone, and when a dark, still gloaming had begun, he came again, but this time with Ynys. He and she walked together; behind them came four horses, led by Ian. When the lovers met, they had stood silent for some moments. Then Ynys, knowing what was in Alan's mind, asked if she were come for life or death.
"I love you, dear," was his answer; "I cannot live without you. If you be in truth the daughter of the man who slew my father, why should his evil blood be our undoing also? God knows but that even thus may his punishmentbe begun. All his thoughts were upon you and Annaik."
"Annaik is gone."
"Gone! Annaik gone! Where has she gone?"
"I know nothing. She sent me a line to say that she would never sleep in Kerival again; that something had changed her whole life; that she would return three days hence for our mother's funeral; and that thereafter she and I would never meet."
In a flash Alan saw many things; but deepest of all he saw the working of doom. On the very day of his triumph Tristran de Kerival had lost all, and found only that which made life more bitter than death. Stammeringly now, Alan sought to say something about Annaik; that there was a secret, an unhappiness, a sorrow, which he must explain.
But at that Ynys had pointed to the dim gray-brown sea.
"There, Alan, let us bury it all there; every thing, every thing! Either you and I must find our forgetfulness there, or we must drown therein all this terrible past which hasan inexplicable, a menacing present. Dear, I am ready. Shall it be life or death?"
"Life."
That was all that was said. Alan leaned forward, and tenderly kissing her, took her in his arms. Then he turned to Ian.
"Ian mac Iain, I call you to witness that I take Ynys de Kerival as my wife; that in this taking all the blood-feud that lies betwixt us is become as nought; and that the past is past. Henceforth I am Alan Carmichael, and she here is Ynys Carmichael."
At that, Ian had bowed his head. It was against the tradition of his people; but he loved Ynys as well as Alan, and secretly he was glad.
Thereafter, Alan and Ynys had mounted, and ridden slowly southward through the dusk; while Ian followed on the third horse, with, in rein, its companion, on which were the apparel and other belongings which Ynys had hurriedly put together.
They were unmolested in their flight. Indeed, they met no one, till, at the end ofthe Forest of Kerival, they emerged near the junction with the high-road at a place called Trois Chênes. Then a woman, a gypsy vagrant, insisted disaster would ensue if they went over her tracks that night without first doing something to avert evil. They must cross her hand with silver, she said.
Impatient as he was, Alan stopped, and allowed the gypsy to have her will.
She looked at the hand Ynys held out through the obscurity, and almost immediately dropped it.
"Beware of crossing the sea," she said. "I see your death floating on a green wave."
Ynys shuddered, but said nothing. When Alan put out his hand the woman held it in hers for a few seconds, and then pondered it intently.
"Be quick, my good woman," he urged, "we are in a hurry."
"It will be behind the shadow when we meet again," was all her reply: enigmatical words, which yet in his ears had a sombre significance. But he was even more perturbed by the fact that, before she relinquishedhis hand, she stooped abruptly and kissed it.
As the fugitives rode onward along the dusky high-road, Alan whispered to Ynys that he could not forget the gypsy; that in some strange way she haunted him; and even seemed to him to be linked to that disastrous day.
"That may well be," Ynys had answered, "for the woman was Annaik."
Onward they rode till they came to Haut-Kerloek, the ancient village on the slope of the hill above the little town. There, at the Gloire de Kerival they stopped for the night. Next morning they resumed their journey, and the same afternoon reached St. Blaise-sur-Loise, where they knew they would find the body of General Alasdair Carmichael.
And it was thus that, by the strange irony of fate, Alasdair Carmichael, who had never seen his son, who in turn had unknowingly witnessed his father's tragic death, was followed to the grave-side by that dear child for whom he had so often longed, and that by Alan's side was the daughter of the man who haddone so much to ruin his life and had at the last slain him. At the same hour, on the same day, Lois de Kerival was laid to her rest, with none of her kith and kin to lament her; for Tristran the Silent was alone in his austere grief. Two others were there, at whom the Curé looked askance: the rude woodlander, Judik Kerbastiou, and another forest estray, a gypsy woman with a shawl over her head. The latter must have known the Marquise's charity, for the good woman wept quietly throughout the service of committal, and, when she turned to go, the Curé heard a sob in her throat.
It took but a brief while for Alan to settle his father's few affairs. Among the papers he found one addressed to himself: a long letter wherein was set forth not only all necessary details concerning Alan's mother and father, but also particulars about the small fortune that was in keeping for him in Edinburgh, and the lonely house on the lonely Isle of Rona among the lonely Hebrides.
In St. Blaise Alan and Ynys went before the civil authorities, and were registered asman and wife. The next day they resumed their journey toward that exile which they had in view.
Thereafter, slowly, and by devious ways, they fared far north. At Edinburgh Alan had learned all that was still unexplained. He found that there would be enough money to enable Ynys and himself to live quietly, particularly at so remote a place as Rona. The castle or "keep" there was unoccupied, and had, indeed, long been untenanted save by the widow-woman Kirsten Macdonald, Ian's sister. In return for this home, she had kept the solitary place in order. All the furniture that had been there, when Alasdair Carmichael was last in Rona, remained. In going thither, Alan and Ynys would be going home.
The westward journey was a revelation to them. Never had there been so beautiful a May, they were told. They had lingered long at the first place where they heard the sweet familiar sound of the Gaelic. Hand in hand, they wandered over the hill-sides of which the very names had a poignant home-sweetness;and long, hot hours they spent together on lochs of which Lois de Kerival had often spoken with deep longing in her voice.
As they neared the extreme of the mainland, Alan's excitement deepened. He spoke hardly a word on the day the steamer left the Argyle coast behind, and headed for the dim isles of the sea, Coll and Tiree; and again on the following day Ynys saw how distraught he was, for, about noon, the coast-line of Uist loomed, faintly blue, upon the dark Atlantic horizon.
At Loch Boisdale, where they disembarked, and whence they had to sail the remainder of their journey in a fishing schooner, which by good fortune was then there and disengaged, Ian was for the first time recognized. All that evening Alan and Ynys talked with the islesmen; Alan finding, to his delight, his Gaelic was so good that none for a moment suspected he had not lived in the isles all his life. That of Ynys, however, though fluent, had a foreign sound in it which puzzled the admiring fishermen.
It was an hour after sunrise when theBlueHerringsailed out of Loch Boisdale, and it was an hour before sunset when the anchor dropped in Borosay Haven.
On this night Alan perceived the first sign of aloofness among his fellow Gaels. Hitherto every one had been cordial, and he and Ynys had rejoiced in the courtesy and genial friendliness which they had everywhere encountered.
But in Balnaree ("Baille'-na-Righ"), the little village wherein was focussed all that Borosay had to boast of in the way of civic life, he could not disguise from himself that again and again he was looked at askance.
Rightly or wrongly he took this to be resentment because of his having wed Ynys, the daughter of the man who had murdered Alasdair Carmichael. So possessed was he by this idea that he did not remember how little likely the islanders were to know aught concerning Ynys, or indeed any thing beyond the fact that Alasdair MacAlasdair Rhona had died abroad.
The trouble became more than an imaginary one when, on the morrow, he tried to find a boat for the passage to Rona. But for theFrozen Hand, as the triple-peaked hill to the south of Balnaree was called, Rona would have been visible; nor was it, with a fair wind, more than an hour's sail distant.
Nevertheless, every one to whom he spoke showed a strange reluctance. At last, in despair, he asked an old man of his own surname why there was so much difficulty.
In the island way, Sheumas Carmichael replied that the people on Elleray, the island adjacent to Rona, were incensed.
"But incensed at what?"
"Well, at this and at that. But for one thing they are not having any dealings with the Carmichaels. They are all Macdonalds, there, Macdonalds of Barra. There is a feud, I am thinking; though I know nothing of it; no, not I."
"But Seumas mac Eachainn, you know well yourself that there are almost no Carmichaels to have a feud with! There are you and your brother, and there is your cousin over at Sgòrr-Bhan on the other side of Borosay. Who else is there?"
To this the man could say nothing. Distressed,Alan sought Ian and bade him find out what he could. He, also, however, was puzzled and even seriously perturbed. That some evil was at work could not be doubted; and that it was secret boded ill.
Ian was practically a stranger in Borosay because of his long absence. But though this, for a time, shut him off from his fellow islanders, and retarded his discovery of what strange reason accounted for the apparently inexplicable apathy shown by the fishermen of Balnaree,—an apathy, too, so much to their own disadvantage,—it enabled him, on the other hand, to make a strong appeal to the clan-side of the islanders' natures. After all, Ian mac Iain mhic Dhonuill was one of them, and though he came there with a man in a shadow (though this phrase was not used in Ian's hearing), that was not his fault.
Suddenly Ian remembered a fact that he should have thought of at once. There was the old woman, his sister Kirsten. He would speak of her, and of their long separation, and of his desire to see her again before he died.
This made a difficult thing easy. Within an hour a boat was ready to take the travellers to the Isle of the Caves—as Rona was called locally. Before the hour was gone, they, with the stores of food and other things they had been advised to take with them, were slipping seaward out of Borosay Haven.
The moment the headland was rounded the heights of Rona came into view. Great gaunt cliffs they are, precipices of black basalt; though on the south side they fall away in grassy declivities which hang a greenness over the wandering wave forever sobbing round that desolate shore. But it was not till the Sgòrr-Dhu, a conical black rock at the southeast end of the island, was reached that the stone keep, known as Caisteal-Rhona, came in sight.
It stands at the landward extreme of a rocky ledge, on the margin of a greenairidh. Westward is a small dark-blue sea loch, no more than a narrow haven. To the northwest rise sheer the ocean-fronting precipitous cliffs; northward, above the green pasture and a stretch of heather, is a woodland-belt ofsome three or four hundred pine-trees. It might well be called I-monair, as Aodh the Islander sang of it; for it is ever echoing with murmurous noises. If the waves dash against it from the south or east, a loud crying is upon the faces of the rocks; if from the north or north-east, there is a dull iteration, and amid the pines a continual soughing sea voice. But when the wind blows from the south-west, or the huge Atlantic billows surge out of the west, Rona is a place filled with an indescribable tumult. Through the whole island goes the myriad echo of a hollow booming, with an incessant sound as though waters were pouring through vast hidden conduits in the heart of every precipice, every rock, every bowlder. This is because of the arcades of which it consists, for from the westward the island has been honeycombed by the sea. No living man has ever traversed all those mysterious, winding sea galleries. Many have perished in the attempt. In the olden days the Uisteans and Barrovians sought refuge there from the marauding Danes and other pirates out of Lochlin; and in the time when the last Scottish kingtook shelter in the west many of his island followers found safety among these perilous arcades.
Some of them reach to an immense height. These are filled with a pale green gloom which in fine weather, and at noon or toward sundown, becomes almost radiant. But most have only a dusky green obscurity, and some are at all times dark with a darkness that has seen neither sun nor moon nor star for unknown ages. Sometimes, there, a phosphorescent wave will spill a livid or a cold blue flame, and for a moment a vast gulf of dripping basalt be revealed; but day and night, night and day, from year to year, from age to age, that awful wave-clamant darkness prevails unbroken.
To the few who know some of the secrets of the Passages, it is possible, except when a gale blows from any quarter but the north, to thrid these dim arcades in a narrow boat, and so to pass from the Hebrid Seas to the outer Atlantic. But to one unaware of the clews there might well be no return to the light of the open day; for in that maze of winding galleriesand dim, sea-washed, and forever unlitten arcades, there is only a hopeless bewilderment. Once bewildered, there is no hope; and the lost adventurer will remain there idly drifting from barren corridor to corridor, till he perish of hunger and thirst, or, maddened by the strange and appalling gloom and the unbroken silence,—for there the muffled voice of the sea is no more than a whisper,—he leap into the green waters which forever slide stealthily from ledge to ledge.
From Ian mac Iain Alan had heard of such an isle, though he had not known it to be Rona. Now, as he approached his wild, remote home he thought of these death-haunted corridors, avenues of the grave as they are called in the "Cumha Fhir-Mearanach Aonghas mhic Dhonuill—the Lament of mad Angus Macdonald."
When, at last, the unwieldy brown coble sailed into the little haven it was to create unwonted excitement among the few fishermen who put in there frequently for bait. A group of eight or ten was upon the rocky ledge beyond Caisteal-Rhona, among them theelderly woman who was sister to Ian mac Iain.
At Alan's request, Ian went ashore in advance, in a small punt. He was to wave his hand if all were well, for Alan could not but feel apprehensive on account of the strange ill-will that had shown itself at Borosay.
It was with relief that he saw the signal when, after Ian had embraced his sister, and shaken hands with all the fishermen, he had explained that the son of Alasdair Carmichael was come out of the south, and with a beautiful young wife, too, and was henceforth to live at Caisteal-Rhona.
All there uncovered and waved their hats. Then a shout of welcome went up, and Alan's heart was glad, and that of Ynys. But the moment he had set foot on land he saw a startled look come into the eyes of the fishermen—a look that deepened swiftly into one of aversion, almost of fear.
One by one the men moved away, awkward in their embarrassment. Not one came forward with outstretched hand, nor said a word of welcome.
At first amazed, then indignant, Ian reproached them. They received his words in ashamed silence. Even when with a bitter tongue he taunted them, they answered nothing.
"Giorsal," said Ian, turning in despair to his sister, "what is the meaning of this folly?"
But even she was no longer the same. Her eyes were fixed upon Alan with a look of dread and indeed of horror. It was unmistakable, and Alan himself was conscious of it, with a strange sinking of the heart. "Speak, woman!" he demanded. "What is the meaning of this thing? Why do you and these men look at me askance?"
"God forbid!" answered Giorsal Macdonald with white lips; "God forbid that we look at the son of Alasdair Carmichael askance. But...."
"But what?"
With that the woman put her apron over her head and moved away, muttering strange words.
"Ian, what is this mystery?"
It was Ynys who spoke now, for on Alan's face was a shadow, and in his eyes a deepgloom. She, too, was white, and had fear in her eyes.
"How am I for knowing, Ynys-nighean-Lhois? It is all a darkness to me also. But I will find out."
That, however, was easier for Ian to say than to do. Meanwhile, the brown cobble tacked back to Borosay, and the fishermen sailed away to the Barra coasts, and Alan and Ynys were left solitary in their wild and remote home.
But in that very solitude they found healing. From what Giorsal hinted, they came to believe that the fishermen had experienced one of those strange dream-waves which, in remote isles, occur at times, when whole communities will be wrought by the selfsame fantasy. When day by day went past, and no one came nigh them, at first they were puzzled and even resentful, but this passed and soon they were glad to be alone. Only, Ian knew that there was another cause for the inexplicable aversion that had been shown. But he was silent, and he kept a patient watch for the hour that the future held in its dim shroud. As for Giorsal, shewas dumb; but no more looked at Alan askance.
And so the weeks went. Occasionally, a fishing smack came with the provisions for the weekly despatch of which Alan had arranged at Loch Boisdale, and sometimes the Barra men put in at the haven, though they would never stay long, and always avoided Alan as much as was possible.
In that time Alan and Ynys came to know and love their strangely beautiful island home. Hours and hours at a time they spent exploring the dim, green winding sea galleries, till at last they knew the main corridors thoroughly. They had even ventured into some of the narrow snake-like passages, but never for long, because of the awe and dread these held, silent estuaries of the grave.
There, too, they forgot all the sorrow that had been theirs, forgot the shadow of death which lay between them. They buried all in the deep sea of love that was about the rock of their passion. For, as of another Alan and another woman, themirdheiwas upon them: the dream-spell of love.
Day by day, with them as with that Alan and Sorcha of whom they had often heard, their joy had grown, like a flower moving ever to the sun; and as it grew the roots deepened, and the tendrils met and intertwined round the two hearts, till at last they were drawn together and became one, as two moving rays of light will converge into one beam, or the song of two singers blend and become as the song of one.
As the weeks passed the wonder of the dream became at times a brooding passion, at times almost an ecstasy. Ossian and the poets of old speak of a strange frenzy that came upon the brave; and, sure, there is amircathof another kind now and again in the world, in the green, remote places at least. Aodh the islander, and Ian-Ban of the hills, and other dreamer-poets know of it—themirdhei, the passion that is deeper than passion, the dream that is beyond the dream. This that was once the fair doom of another Alan and Sorcha, of whom Ian had often told him with hushed voice and dreaming eyes, was now upon himself and Ynys.
They were Love to each other. In each the other saw the beauty of the world. Hand in hand they wandered among the wind-haunted pines, or along the thyme and grass of the summits of the precipices; or they sailed for hours upon the summer seas, blue lawns of moving azure, glorious with the sun-dazzle and lovely with purple cloud-shadows and amethystine straits of floating weed; or, by noontide, or at the full of the moon, they penetrated far into the dim, green arcades, and were as shadows in a strange and fantastic but ineffably sweet and beautiful dream.
Day was lovely and desirable to each, for day dreamed to night; and night was sweet as life because it held the new day against its dark, beating heart. Week after week passed, and to Ynys as to Alan it was as the going of the gray owl's wing, swift and silent.
Then it was that, on a day of the days, Alan was suddenly stricken with a new and startling dread.
AT THE EDGE OF THE SHADOW
In the hour that this terror came upon him Alan was alone upon the high slopes of Rona, where the grass fails and the moor purples at an elevation of close on a thousand feet above the sea.
The day had been cloudless since sunrise. The immeasurable range of ocean expanded like the single petal of an azure flower; all of one unbroken blue save for the shadows of the scattered isles and for the fugitive amethyst where floating weed suspended. An immense number of birds congregated from every quarter. Guillemots and skuas and puffins, cormorants and northern divers, everywhere darted, swam, or slept upon the listless sea, whose deep suspiration no more than lifted a league-long calm here and there, to lapse insensibly, even as it rose.Through the not less silent quietudes of air the sea-gulls swept with curving flight, and the narrow-winged terns made a constant shimmer. At remote altitudes the gannet motionlessly drifted. Oceanward the great widths of calm were rent now and again by the shoulders of the porpoises which followed the herring trail, their huge, black revolving bodies looming large above the silent wave. Not a boat was visible anywhere; not even upon the most distant horizons did a brown sail fleck itself duskily against the skyward wall of steely blue.
In the great stillness which prevailed, the noise of the surf beating around the promontory of Aonaig was audible as a whisper; though even in that windless hour the indescribable rumor of the sea, moving through the arcades of the island, filled the hollow of the air overhead. Ever since the early morning Alan had moved under a strange gloom. Out of that golden glory of midsummer a breath of joyous life should have reached his heart, but it was not so. For sure, there is sometimes in the quiet beauty of summer anair of menace, a breath, a suspicion, a dream-premonition, of suspended force—a force antagonistic and terrible. All who have lived in these lonely isles know the peculiar intensity of this summer melancholy. No clamor of tempestuous wind, no prolonged sojourn of untimely rains, and no long baffling of mists in all the drear inclemencies of that remote region, can produce the same ominous and even paralyzing gloom which sometimes can be born of ineffable peace and beauty. Is it that in the human soul there is mysterious kinship with the outer soul which we call Nature; and that in these few supreme hours which come at the full of the year we are, sometimes, suddenly aware of the tremendous forces beneath and behind us, momently quiescent?
Standing with Ynys upon a grassy headland, Alan had looked long at the dream-blue perspectives to the southward, seeing there at first no more than innumerable hidden pathways of the sun, with blue-green and silver radiance immeasurable, and the very breath and wonder and mystery of ocean life suspended as in a dream. In the hearts of eachdeep happiness brooded. Perhaps it was out of these depths that rose the dark flower of this sudden apprehension that came upon him. It was no fear for Ynys, nor for himself, not for the general weal: but a profound disquietude, a sense of inevitable ill. Ynys felt the tightening of his hand; and saw the sudden change in his face. It was often so with him. The sun-dazzle, at which he would look with endless delight, finding in it a tangible embodiment of the fugitive rhythms of cosmic music which floated everywhere, would sometimes be a dazzle also in his brain. In a moment a strange bewilderment would render unstable those perilous sands of the human brain which are forever laved by the strange waters of the unseen life. When this mood or fantasy, or uncalculable accident occurred, he was often wrought either by vivid dreams, or creative work, or else would lapse into a melancholy from which not even the calling love of Ynys would arouse him. When she saw in his face and in his eyes this sudden bewildered look, and knew that in some mysterious way the madnessof the beauty of the sea had enthralled him, she took his hand and moved with him inland. In a brief while the poignant fragrance from the trodden thyme and short hill-grass, warmed by the sun, rose as an intoxication. For that hour the gloom went. But when, later, he wandered away from Caisteal-Rhona, once more the sense of foreboding was heavy upon him. Determined to shake it off, he wandered high among the upland solitudes. There a cool air forever moved even in the noons of August; and there, indeed, at last, there came upon him a deep peace. With joy his mind dwelled over and over again upon all that Ynys had been and was to him; upon the depth and passion of their love; upon the mystery and wonder of that coming life which was theirs and yet was not of them, itself already no more than an unrisen wave or an unbloomed flower, but yet as inevitable as they, but dowered with the light which is beyond where the mortal shadows end. Strange, this passion of love for what is not; strange, this deep longing of the woman—the longing of the womb, the longing of theheart, the longing of the brain, the longing of the soul—for the perpetuation of the life she shares in common with one whom she loves; strange, this longing of the man, a longing deep-based in his nature as the love of life or the fear of death, for the gaining from the woman he loves this personal hostage against oblivion. For indeed something of this so commonplace, and yet so divine and mysterious tide of birth, which is forever at the flow upon this green world, is due to an instinctive fear of cessation. The perpetuation of life is the unconscious protest of humanity against the destiny of mortality. Thoughts such as these were often with Alan now; often, too, with Ynys, in whom, indeed, all the latent mysticism which had ever been a bond between them had latterly been continually evoked. Possibly it was the mere shadow of his great love; possibly it was some fear of the dark way wherein the sunrise of each new birth is involved; possibly it was no more than the melancholy of the isles, that so wrought him on this perfect day. Whatsoever the reason, a deeper despondencyprevailed as noon waned into afternoon. An incident, deeply significant to him, in that mood, at that time, happened then. A few hundred yards away from where he stood, half hidden in a little glen where a fall of water made a continual spray among the shadows of the rowan and birch, was the bothie of a woman, the wife of Neil MacNeill, a fisherman of Aonaig. She was there, he knew, for the summer pasturing, and even as he recollected this, he heard the sound of her voice as she sang down somewhere by the burnside. Moving slowly toward the corrie, he stopped at a mountain ash which overhung a deep pool. Looking down, he saw the woman, Morag MacNeill, washing and peeling potatoes in the clear brown water. And as she washed and peeled, she sang an old-time shealing hymn of the Virgin-Shepherdess, of Michael the White, and of Coluaman the Dove. It was a song that, far away in Brittany, he had heard Lois, the mother of Ynys, sing in one of those rare hours when her youth came back to her with something of youth's passionate intensity. He listenednow to every word of the doubly familiar Gaelic, and when Morag finished the tears were in his eyes, and he stood for a while as one entranced.[A]