"Mo rùn geal, dìleas,Dìleas, dìleas,Mo rùn geal, dìleasNach till thunall!"
"Mo rùn geal, dìleas,Dìleas, dìleas,Mo rùn geal, dìleasNach till thunall!"
"Mo rùn geal, dìleas,
Dìleas, dìleas,
Mo rùn geal, dìleas
Nach till thunall!"
Upon the spring of the last word came back from Iolair a voice as blithe and more sweet, the voice of a woman, with the lilt of a bird in it and all the joy of the sunshine:
"I go where the sheep go,With the sheep are my feet:I go where the kye go,Their breath is so sweet:O lover who loves me,Art thou half so fleet?Where the sheep climb, the kye go,There shall we meet!"
"I go where the sheep go,With the sheep are my feet:I go where the kye go,Their breath is so sweet:O lover who loves me,Art thou half so fleet?Where the sheep climb, the kye go,There shall we meet!"
"I go where the sheep go,
With the sheep are my feet:
I go where the kye go,
Their breath is so sweet:
O lover who loves me,
Art thou half so fleet?
Where the sheep climb, the kye go,
There shall we meet!"
There was something so penetratingly sweet and joyous in the song that it stirred every bird on the hillside. The larks rose through the mist till they swam into the sunflood; the linties and shilfas and yellow-yites sent thrilling notes from gorse-bush to gorse-bush and from rowan to rowan. In the birk-shaws, the cries of the merles sounded like shrill flutes.
To and fro went the sweet voices. Now the man's on Tornideon would ring blithely, now the woman's on Iolair respond.
At last, as the cattle moved up the slopes, with the spreading sheep in advance, the shepherding voices fell further apart. Instinct led the kye to the sunlight, for all living things have their joy through the eyes.
"Sorcha, Sorcha, Sorcha!" came ringing through the mist: "Sorcha-mo-ciatach-nio-nag!"
"Tha, Ailean-a-ghaolach!" came back, with a ripple of laughter, the laughter of joy.3
"Ah mo cailin geal, mo nighean donn, duit ciat mhor!"
"Duit cíat, no runach!"4
"The sheep and the kye don't know love, Sorcha, or they would stay here till the mists go, and then we would see each other."
"Let us crydeasiul, and turn thrice sunways!"
"Ay; and meanwhile the beasts won't stand still! That evil beast of a bull, Donncha-dhu, who ought to be called Domnuill-dhu, is leading the way over the shoulder of Maol-Gorm. I must go, Sorcha-mo-ghraidh, or never a sheep will I find again; and as for the kye, they'll go smelling the four winds.Sorcha!Sorcha!Can you hear?"
Hearcame back in a sweet falling echo, the more remote and aerial because of the mist.
"Come down to-night after the milking, and meet me at the Linn.... Sorcha! I'm going to see Mr. Morrison again!"
"'Tis no use, Alan. But I'll meet you at the Linn in the late gloaming."
"Sorcha!"
"Alan!"
Then, fainter and fainter,Sorcha!...Alan!And at last no response came when Alan Gilchrist cried, with a prolonged echoing call, the name of hisghaolaiche, his heart's joy.
Soon thereafter the mists began to disperse.
Alan Gilchrist was at the pool, below the Linn o' Mairg, long before Sorcha Cameron came down from Màm-Gorm, the hill-farm on Iolair, by the circuitous but secluded way through the pine-glades.
For an hour or more he had lain there, dreaming. The first green breath of May was sweet upon the land: already a warmth as of midsummer was in the air. Pleasant it was to lie and dream by the running water.
When he had first reached the Mairg Water, after his fruitless journey to Inverglas, the village of Strath Iolair, he had thrown himself down among the fern, in the shadow of a boulder overlooking the Kelpie's Pool. Angry thoughts were in his mind, because of the minister's refusal to marry Sorcha and himself. It was a bitter thing, he thought, and unjust.
For that noontide, after he had driven the sheep on to the upper pastures upon Tornideon, and had got little Davie Niven, of Clachan-nan-Creag, to herd the sheep for him till moonrise, he had gone down by his home at Ardoch-Beag, itself high on the mountain-side—though he was little there during the summer-pasturing on the hills—to the strath, and so by the road to Inverglas. As he went through the village, there were many who looked at him with glad eyes: for wherever he went Alan found a smile of welcome for him, partly because of the beauty of his tall person and curly yellow hair, which made the strath women call himAlan-aluinn, Alan-fair-to-see, but more perhaps of his own smile that was so sweet out of his blue eyes, and for the grave yet winning way of him. His rival, Duncan Robertson, spoke of him contemptuously as "the man for women and children"; but, as others besides Duncan Robertson knew well, the women's-man and the children's-man could also be the best man's-man in the strath when occasion required.
This early afternoon, however, he had no wish to speak with any, and so hurried on, with a visit only to old Morag Niven, Davie the herd-laddie's grandmother. The small, douce, wizened old woman blessed him for what he brought her, and insisted on telling his fortune again by the lines in his hands. Laughingly he assured her she had told it to him so often that he was beginning not to believe in her predictions at all.
"That may be," she exclaimed, half-pettishly: "but it's this I'm telling you, Alan Mac Fergus, and what's more, it's not only the 'vision' of the love that's coming to you, but I've had the 'sight' on the lover too!"
The young man flushed, but answered carelessly:
"Good for you, Mùimé: but sure 'tis a risky thing to be seeing too much."
The old woman stared keenly at him for a moment, and then smiled.
"Well, and will this, then, be like what you have seen in your dreams, if ever a greatoganachlike you dreams at all:
"First: She is beautiful as this May day.
"Second: She is tall and graceful as a young pine, and moves like a hind upon the hills, an' no flower sways in the wind more dainty-sweet than she.
"Third: She is fair of face, with all the soft skin of her like new milk. But her hair is dark, like the woods at dusk, and fragrant as they.
"Fourth: She lives at a mountain-farm, and all her heart is in a man's keeping, and all her beauty is his to love, and she is the tallest, and strongest, and sweetest lass in all the strath or in the big world beyond, and as beautiful as Roscrana that was wife to Fingal of old and mother of Ossian the blind bard—ay, good as Morna, which is the name of a woman that is beloved by all, and fair-to-see as Fiona, which is the name given of old to a bonnie maid, and lovely as Alona, than whom not woman could be lovelier.
"Fifth: And the man she loves is a poor misguidit wastrel who lives on a hill opposite to her, and I'm thinkin' his name will be Alan too, Alan this or Alan that.
"Sixth: 'Tis Himself only, praise be to Him, who knows who this Morna-Fiona-Alona may be: but in a dream I had, I'm thinkin' her name is Sorcha.
"And Seventh" (this in a relapse from Gaellic into the Lowland tongue): "I may be a silly auld wife, Alan my man, but I'm na sae blind as ta fail ta see through a split poke, for a' yer havers and blethers!"
With a shamefaced laugh Alan told her she was an old witch, and was sheer doited at that! Then, suddenly stooping and kissing her grey hair, he bade her good-bye, and went on his way.
But it was an ill-faring. Mr. Morrison, the tall, dark-faced minister, gray and lank as an old fox, though a godly man, would have nothing to say to the granting of his request.
"No, no, Alan Gilchrist," he added in parting, and in a not unkindly tone, "'tis no ill-will I am bearing you, my lad. But neither I nor any true minister of God will wed you and Sorcha Cameron, because of the feud between Torcall her father and Anabal your mother, and of the ban laid by him on her, and by her on you."
"So be it, Mr. Morrison; but as for me, I will be putting up with no banning from man or woman—no, not I, nor Sorcha either!"
"That is a wicked thing for you to say. But Sorcha is a good lass if you're not a good lad, and ... and ... the long and short of it is, I can't and won't wed you and her ... no, not though your mother and Sorcha's father were to die, and that I avow here solemnly, to the stones be it said."
And so it was that the young man went away wrathful and indignant. Yet, with every mile of his homeward journey he cared less and less. After all, what did it matter to him or Sorcha? Living remote upon the solitary hills, and rarely seeing the people of the strath, what did it avail whether or no he and she were "blessed" by Mr. Morrison? Well, he had done what he could.
He knew, of course, of the heavy weight of a parental ban; how, with some, it was a command as sacred and inviolable as those of God. But he did not know all that Mr. Morrison knew or surmised: wherein, indeed, was the deeper reason of the refusal.
"The child Oona, the child Oona," muttered the minister as he returned to his house; "why was she sent by Anabal, as soon as might be after birth, to Torcall Cameron? And why was he stricken blind, he there alone on Màm-Gorm, with Marsail, his wife, long dead, and only his daughter, Sorcha, sweet lass, beside him: stricken of God, blind and desolate for all his days thereafter? Alas, too, what of the doom of Fergus, her husband!"
But, lying by the running water of Mairg, Alan, at last oblivious of what had angered him and left in his mind a vague distress, pondered other and dearer things than these.
His heart was full of Sorcha. Already, as indeed for more than a month past, there was upon him that trance of love of which the old Celtic poets speak. Even now he went daily in a dream. Malveen, the widow-mother of Davie the herd-laddie, saw him often as he passed to and fro upon the hillside, as one in a vision, rapt, with shining eyes. At times, too, unknown of either, she caught a glimpse of Alan and Sorcha as they kept tryst in the gloamings. She mothered them with the longing woman's joy in love that had never been hers; they were her dear ones, though rare it was that she had word of either. The youth of youths, the maid of maids: to her at last something more than real and familiar, remote as they were in the glamour that was about them as the Mountain Lovers.
It was in the late gloaming, as she had promised, that Sorcha stole soundlessly from the forest, and was in Alan's arms almost before he knew that the tryst was kept.
Volumes of grey-black cloud swept up the flanks of Iolair. The breath of the southwest wind fell moist upon the land. All the wonderful colour of the highland seemed absorbed, as though a sponge had been passed over it. The after-gloom was enhanced by the silence which prevailed, for the thunderous weight in the air hushed the birds. Even the corbies sat sullenly on stone dyke or solitary quicken.
Up at the farm of Màm-Gorm the cloud-skirts went trailing by, sometimes enveloping the whole airidh in a clinging obscurity, and ever and again lifting high above it as though with a spasmodic leap.
A few yards from the door of the low whitewashed house Torcall Cameron stood, his gaunt figure, with its mass of tangled iron-grey hair, thrown into strong relief. Though he grasped a heavy oaken staff, his head was uncovered. From this, Nial inferred that "Màm-Gorm" was not going far: of which he was glad, for there was no one in the house, wild weather was nigh, and it was not a time for a blind man to wander among the hills, with the sheep-paths damp and slippery and often obliterated in the moist peat.
For, though Màm-Gorm thought he was alone, Nial had been his silent companion for an hour past. Sorcha, he knew, was up at the high sheiling on Iolair, with the cows: Oona, he imagined, was either wandering after the sheep with Murdo the shepherd, or was in the forest with Nial, or might be flitting here and there on the slopes like the wild fawn she was. As for Nial, Torcall Cameron rarely gave him a thought. The dwarf was like a faithful collie: to be fed, and given a kindly clap now and then, while his gratitude and devotion were taken for granted.
This rough, stern, blind, and stricken giant was a divine being to the poor child of the woods. In a vague way Nial thought ofMàm-Gorm as God: like Màm-Gorm, God could provide, could at rare times be tender and pitiful, could be stern, morose, forbidding, terrible in wrath, of a swift avenging spirit, could strike, bruise, drive forth, kill.
When Sorcha had left at sunrise she knew that her father had the gloom upon him. In vain she looked here and there for Oona. The child had vanished. The platter in which she had her porridge was found under a bench near the rowan at the side of the house—where, indeed, Sorcha had looked for it, as she knew Oona's frequent way of carrying her food out-of-door, and eating it in a hollow below a rock, or under a tree, or even beneath the bench, like a little wild thing.
She had turned, after she had called Fionn and Donn, the dogs, and gone back to the house, and kissed her father. His blind eyes were upon her, though it was not through them that he knew she was troubled. He felt the sweet breath of her upon his brow. It was like the first day of spring when she kissed him, but he did not smile. Before she went away with the cows she found Nial, and bade him keep watch and ward, though without letting himself be seen.
But all morning and noon Torcall Cameron had sat brooding by the peats. At the turn of the day he rose, ate some of the bread and cold porridge which, with a jug of milk, Sorcha had set on the table beside him; then resumed his listless attitude by the fire, into the heart of which he stared with his blank, unwavering eyes.
Nial had grown tired, as a collie will tire if the kye drowse, chewing the cud.
He had wandered far from the airidh, and passed idly through the pines. No more of him might have been seen that day had he not heard Oona singing in the woods. It was in vain that he tried to come upon her. Either she had caught sight of him, and wilfully evaded his quest of her; or she was like a birdeen lured by the dancing sunrays. At the last, he thought of a song she was wont to sing. Across the midst of the high glade where he was, lay the bole of a half-fallen pine. Along this he clambered, till he reached the end boughs, and so out upon a feathery branch which swayed up and down with his weight, as a fir-spray when a cushat alights on it:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Hast seen the Green Lady?The merles are singing,The ferns are springing,The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—Green Lady! Green Lady!The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Hast seen the Green Lady?The merles are singing,The ferns are springing,The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—Green Lady! Green Lady!The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The merles are singing,
The ferns are springing,
The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—
Green Lady! Green Lady!
The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
It was a harsh and wild music, that song of Oona on the lips of Nial. Brokenly, too, it came, between gasps of breath, for, as the branch swayed, so the dwarf's excitement grew, and he seized the pine-needles as though they were the mane of a horse, and he were riding from death for life:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Hast seen the Green Lady?The bird in the nest,And the child at the breast,They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn—The bonnie Green Lady,Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn—Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Hast seen the Green Lady?The bird in the nest,And the child at the breast,They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn—The bonnie Green Lady,Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn—Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The bird in the nest,
And the child at the breast,
They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn—
The bonnie Green Lady,
Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn—
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
Suddenly he ceased his fierce ride of the branches. Surely that clear call was from the throat of Oona? Yes, near she was, though invisible. Her song bubbled from her as sunlit water down a brae:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Dost thou flee the Green Lady?Her wild flowers will race thee,Her sunbeams will chase thee,Her laughter is singing aloud in the dawn—O the Green LadyWith yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn,Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,Dost thou flee the Green Lady?Her wild flowers will race thee,Her sunbeams will chase thee,Her laughter is singing aloud in the dawn—O the Green LadyWith yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn,Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Dost thou flee the Green Lady?
Her wild flowers will race thee,
Her sunbeams will chase thee,
Her laughter is singing aloud in the dawn—
O the Green Lady
With yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn,
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
Even the hawk-keen eye of Nial failed to discover Oona. Her voice came from a covert of bracken, amid which rose craggy mossed boulders. Doubtless, the girl sheltered behind one of these.
"Oona!"
He lay still now, save for the quivering of his eagerness. The branch was bent by his weight, but did not sway.
"Oona!"
The rapid skiff-skiff of a hind leaping through the fern, through the green-glooms to his right, caught his attention; otherwise he must have seen the bending of the bracken in the hollow beyond him, and have heard the faint rustle as a little cat-like figure swung herself up into a low-branched rowan.
"Oona! Oona!"
Again he sang in his strange, half-screaming, falsetto voice, first one, then another of the snatches of Gaelic song which he had learned from Oona, but without response. One of his sudden fits of anger seized him, and he bit savagely at the supporting branch. Then, with a peal of mirthless laughter, he began to sway wildly to and fro again, so that it was a wonder the bough did not break. He was swung this way and that, as an apple on an outspread branch. With short, incoherent cries he rode onward through the air, for the moment persuaded by his fantasy that he was one of those wind-demons of whom he had heard Murdo the shepherd speak—pale elves of the air who race across forest and moor on flying leaves and broken branches, or are swept screaming in the wake of the wind as, with outblown mane and fierce snorting and neighing, "the gray stallion" speeds with mile-long leaps.
A frenzy of insensate wrath shook him, so that he nearly lost his grip. Screaming, he hurled toward Oona the curses that seemed to him most dreadful and mysterious, dark anathemas of old-time learned here and there during his far-wanderings.
"Droch cheann ort, Oona! Droch bhàs ort! Och, ochan, bas dunach ort! Gu ma h-olc dhuit!—Gu ma h-olc dhuit!"5
A faint shuddering cry came from somewhere close at hand. In a moment his madness went from him. The dumb animal soul felt the finger of God touch it. All wrath ceased, and a great pity came, and longing, and sorrow. The tears sprang to his eyes, and he lay on the branch sobbing convulsively, so that he was like to fall.
He raised his head at last, and looked eagerly about him. "Oona!"
Still there was no response. His gaze lanced hither and thither like a swallow. If a bee crawled from a foxglove bell, he noted it: if a spider swung on a glistening thread, he saw her as, spinning, she sank. If a woodlark stirred, he saw the shadow of its wing flit from frond to frond. But of Oona, no trace.
"Oona, my fairy! Oona, my fawn! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! The words were in my throat. I couldn't help it. Not a word was true. Oh, my grief, my grief! Oona mùirnean, Oona mo mùirnean—Ochone, ochone, thràisg mo chridhe—darling, darling, oh, 'tis my heart that is parched!"
But the child was obdurate. She made no sign. Nial lay moaning on the branch. The silence was unbroken, save by the sea-like whisper of the wind among the leaves.
Suddenly a cushat crooned. Then the low croodling sound palpitated upon the warm sunlit air that flooded in among the pine-boughs.
The dwarf listened. The gloom in his eyes lifted. He knew how Oona loved his one utterance that was his own, which he had made in imitation of the crooning of a dove. Raising his head, he half mumbled, half sang:
"Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,Mùirnean, mùirnean, mùirnean,Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh!"
"Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,Mùirnean, mùirnean, mùirnean,Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh!"
"Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,
Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,
Mùirnean, mùirnean, mùirnean,
Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh!"
Surely she would respond: ah, yes, that shrill mocking laugh, elfin sweet in his ears! His gaze leaped along the track of the sound, and then at last he espied her, crouching low in the fork of a rowan, with her bare legs hidden by the bole and only the sparkle of her eyes glinting from behind the screen of leaves.
"Ah," he cried joyously, "I see you, Oona, my dove! Ah, my little white dove, your little black dove sees you!"
Oona drew herself up, leaped to a lower branch, and sprang to the ground.
"Cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, ars an colman," she cried mockingly: "You are not of my flock, not of my flock, said the dove!"6
And with that she spread out her yellow hair with her hands, and went dancing and leaping through the bracken. Onward she flickered like a sunbeam, till she came to a rocky declivity, where she stopped abruptly, and stared intently into the hollow beyond her.
Turning, she looked to see if Nial were watching her, and when she saw that he was still on the swaying pine-branch, she cried eagerly:
"Look, Nial! Look!"
"What is it?" he cried, nearly toppling from the bough in his eagerness. "What is it, Oona? What is it?"
"It must be your soul, Nial! It's black and wriggling about, in case you catch it!Bi ealamh! Bi ealamh!Be quick, be quick!"
Then, with a spring, she leaped out of sight. Nial stared after her for a moment, caught his breath spasmodically, crawled swiftly back to the tree, half clambered, half fell to the ground, and then ran like a leaping goat toward the place where Oona had disappeared.
When he reached the ridge of rock which overhung the hollow he stopped, trembling like a reed in a wind-eddy. At last! At last! Was he to find his soul at last? Black or white, fair to see or uncouth as himself, what did it matter, if only his long quest were now to be rewarded?
Shaking as in an ague, he crawled forward on his belly, till his shaggy head projected over the ledge. At first he could not see, for the passion in his heart had filmed his eyes.
Then at last he stared down into the greenness. He could see nothing. Not a wild bee fumbled among the moss, not an ant crawled along a spray of grass.
What did it mean?
Was it possible that Oona could see what he could not? Here, perhaps, was his tragic sorrow: that his soul might often be nigh, but was invisible to him.
With a hoarse exclamation, half scream, half call, he cried to Oona to come to him. He had a name for her which he had adopted from Murdo the shepherd, and by this he called her now. "Bonnie-wee-lass, bonnie-wee-lass, come to me! Oona, mùirnean, Oona-mo-ghràidh, come to your poor Nial! Oh, my soul, my soul, it will be lost! Oona, it will be lost! Quick, quick, bonnie-wee-lass!"
But no answer came. There was no sign of the girl. She might be hiding near, or be already far away, perhaps croodlin' back to the doves in the middle of the forest, or chasing dragonflies by the tarn, or out upon the hillside flitting from rock to rock like a butterfly, or singing and springing from gale-tuft to heather-tussock, as a green lintie in the sunlight. "O lassie, lassie, where is my soul, where is my soul?" he cried, despairingly.
Suddenly his own curses came back to him, terrible on Oona's unwitting lips.
"Gu ma h-olc dhuit, Nial! Gu ma h-olc dhuit!A bad end to you too, Nial-without-a-soul, and I'll be telling my father, I will, that you laid your curse on me: ay, and I will also be telling Sorcha too, and Murdo, and Alan, and the dogs; and I'll whisper it to the wind, so that it'll tell the Green Lady of the Hills; and if I meet your soul I'll tell it, so that it may be ashamed of you, and go and drown itself in a peat-hole."
Nial listened, quivering. His eyes strained as a crouching hound's.
At last he spoke.
"I was mad, Oona. Forgive me. I see your voice coming from behind that rock. Will you not return and show me my soul?"
"Look in the hollow of the stone beneath you, silly Nial!" came the child's voice mockingly.
Nial stared; then, descrying nothing, leaped into the hollow. The next moment he recoiled with a look of horror.
An adder lay in a little ferny crevice at the base of the rock. Its writhing black body was trying to get out of sight, but could not. An adder was the one thing in nature that the outcast could not bear to look at. It gave him a horror, that at times moved him to frenzy, at times made him flee as a man accursed.
Now he stood as one fascinated. If thenàthairhad wriggled toward him he would have stood motionless.
With a heavy swaying motion of his head he muttered:
"Anam nathrach, Anam nathrach!"7
But when the adder saw a crevice elsewhere, that promised better, and swiftly wriggled to it, Nial saw that it was only a crawling beast, this and nothing more.
With a dart like a hawk he seized it by the tail, swung it round his head while he shouted, "Droch spadadh ort! Droch spadadh ort! Bad death to you! Bad death to you!" and flung it against the face of the rock, so that when it fell across a bracken it lay as though stunned or dead.
A shout of elfish laughter came from Oona, who had sprung from her covert, and watched Nial's discomfiture with malicious glee. He turned slowly. His corrugated brows were knitted grotesquely, as with dull bewildered eyes he stared in the direction of the laughter. With a furtive motion he kept shifting his weight now to one foot, now to another, occasionally dragging one backward as though pawing the ground. His tormentor knew well these signs of perplexity, and her light tantalizing glee rippled afresh across the glade. She stood knee-deep in bracken, with her right hand clasping the black-and-silver bough of a birk: a golden-green hue upon her from beneath from the sunlit fern; upon her from above a flood of yellow sunshine, so that she stood out like a human flower, a new daffodil of the woods.
The wild, rude, misshapen creature who fronted her seemed less human now than his wont, with that bovine stare, that uncouth guise, his over-large and heavy head slowly swaying, his restless stamping and scraping. Suddenly it dawned upon him that Oona had not been in earnest: that she had played with, and now mocked him. His eyes grew red, as those of wild swine do of a sudden, or as those of an angry badger. A spray of froth blew from his hanging lip. His long horny fingers opened and closed like sheathing and unsheathing claws.
The next moment there stirred in his brain the thought that perhaps, after all, Oona was mocking him because he had lost, perhaps even because he, he himself, had destroyed his long-sought and moment-agone found soul.
With a cry he threw himself on the ground, sobbing convulsively. He lay there like a stricken beast, a quivering ungainly heap. It was no unknowing beast, though, that moaned, over and over, "My soul—my soul—my soul!" Great tears, like a stag's, ran down his furrowed cheeks. Oona stood amazed. Here was no frenzy of blind rage such as she had seen at times in her companion; but passionate grief: sobs, tears.
The child shivered. God surely has the tendrils of a child's heart close-clinging to his own. Perhaps the wind murmured to her,My grief! my grief!Perhaps the leaves whispered,Sorrow, O sorrow!Perhaps the blind earth breathed,My gloom!, my gloom!Perhaps the laughing sunlight sighed, or the wild bees crooned, or the doves moaned,Peace! peace! peace!Oona's eyes grew dim. A trembling was upon her, like that of a bird in the hollow of the hand. Like a bird, too, was her heart: sure, the flutter of it was an eddy of joy in heaven.
She came toward Nial with swift, noiseless step. He did not hear her approach; or if his wildwood ear caught a rustle, he did not look up. The first he knew of her was the stealing of a small arm round his neck: then the pressure of a warm body against his side: then a wisp of fragrant yellow hair tangled with his coarse, shaggy fell, a soft cheek laid against his, a hand like a little white hovering bird caressed his face. Sweetest of all, the whisper that stole into his dark brain as moonlight: "Nial, darling Nial!"
His sobs ceased. Only his breath came quick and hard. His whole body panted, quivered still.
"Forgive me, Nial! dear, good Nial! I did not mean to hurt you so. I was angry because of your words. But I—I—didn't really mean thatthatwas your soul. Nial, Nial, I didn't see your soul at all!"
Slowly he lifted his wet inflamed face: his eyes agleam through the tangled locks that fell over his brows.
"Have youeverseen it, Oona?"
He could just hear the whisperedNo. A deep sigh passed her ears, and she pressed closer to his sorrow.
"Oona, my fawn, do you think you'll ever see it? Do you think I'll find it some day?"
"Oh, yes, Nial! Yes—yes—yes!"
"And you will help your poor ugly Nial to—to—find it?"
"Sure, it is helping you I will be, with all my heart, Nial-a-ghràidh."
He stooped his head over hers, lightly shoved her back, and kissed her sunshine-hair. She raised an arm and pulled his face to hers, and kissed him gently.
A faint smile, a glimmer of sunlight on a wet, dishevelled road, came over his face.
Oona sat back, relieved, but with questioning eyes.
"Are yousureyou have no soul, Nial? Not even a small dark one that will grow some day, and be beautiful, just asyouwill, when—when—you die?"
"I am sure, birdeen. Ask Màm-Gorm, ask Sorcha, or Alan, or Murdo, or any of the people down yonder. They know. AndIknow, when I look in the tarn, or in the pool below the Linn o' Mairg, or in smooth water anywhere: ay, and when the deer come to me, or the sheep do not stir out of my way, or the kye come close and breathe on me kindly. No bee will sting me, and the dragonflies, that evenyoucan't catch, rest sometimes, as the moths do, on my head or arm."
Oona kneeled, and bade the dwarf do likewise. Then she told him that his evil might be because of arosadupon him, the spell of the Cailliach: and that she knew asianmight ease him. With closed eyes and clasped hands she repeated slowly:
"An ainm an Athar, a Mhic,'S an Spioraid Naoimh!Paidir a h'aon,Paidir a dha,Paidir a tri,Paidir a ceithir,Paidir a coig,Paidir a sea,Paidir a seachd;'S neart nan seachd padirean a' sgaoileadh doGholair air na clachan glas ud thall!""In the name of the Father,The Son,And the Holy Ghost:By one prayer,By two prayers,By three prayers,By four prayers,By five prayers,By six prayers,By seven prayers;And may the strength of the seven prayersCast out the ill that is in youUpon the grey stones over there!"8
"An ainm an Athar, a Mhic,'S an Spioraid Naoimh!Paidir a h'aon,Paidir a dha,Paidir a tri,Paidir a ceithir,Paidir a coig,Paidir a sea,Paidir a seachd;'S neart nan seachd padirean a' sgaoileadh doGholair air na clachan glas ud thall!"
"An ainm an Athar, a Mhic,
'S an Spioraid Naoimh!
Paidir a h'aon,
Paidir a dha,
Paidir a tri,
Paidir a ceithir,
Paidir a coig,
Paidir a sea,
Paidir a seachd;
'S neart nan seachd padirean a' sgaoileadh do
Gholair air na clachan glas ud thall!"
"In the name of the Father,The Son,And the Holy Ghost:By one prayer,By two prayers,By three prayers,By four prayers,By five prayers,By six prayers,By seven prayers;And may the strength of the seven prayersCast out the ill that is in youUpon the grey stones over there!"8
"In the name of the Father,
The Son,
And the Holy Ghost:
By one prayer,
By two prayers,
By three prayers,
By four prayers,
By five prayers,
By six prayers,
By seven prayers;
And may the strength of the seven prayers
Cast out the ill that is in you
Upon the grey stones over there!"8
Long and earnestly she watched to see if the incantation would effect the miracle. Nial trembled, with downcast eyes.
"Perhaps there is no evil in you, Nial," she whispered; "so now I will pray to Himself for you, and you repeat what I say, and shut your eyes and clasp your hands just as I do."
The soulless man and the child knelt side by side among the fern. The light lay all about them as a benediction. The rising wind, with a wet sough in it, came along the pines like an intoning anthem. Around them the bee hummed unwitting; in a tree beyond them a cushat crooned and crooned.
Oona's voice came low and sweet as the hidden dove's:
"O Father,That is the Father of the father of Sorcha and me,I pray that you will give Nial a soul."
"O Father,That is the Father of the father of Sorcha and me,I pray that you will give Nial a soul."
"O Father,
That is the Father of the father of Sorcha and me,
I pray that you will give Nial a soul."
Silence. Then a hoarse, sobbing voice:
"I pray that you will give Nial a soul!"
"I pray that you will give Nial a soul!"
"I pray that you will give Nial a soul!"
Then Oona again: and, again, Nial:
"I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!""I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!""I pray that it will be a good soul!""I pray that it will be a good soul!""I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!""I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!""I pray that father and Sorcha and Alan and Murdo,And that Donn and Fionn, the collies, and the kye,And the sheep, and—and—everything—Will love Nial!""That everything will love Nial!""And that Nial will go to Heaven too!""And that Nial will go to Heaven too!""And this is the prayer of Oona,The daughter of Torcall CameronWho lives at Màm-Gorm on Iolair,An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!""An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!"
"I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!""I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!""I pray that it will be a good soul!""I pray that it will be a good soul!""I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!""I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!"
"I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!"
"I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!"
"I pray that it will be a good soul!"
"I pray that it will be a good soul!"
"I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!"
"I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!"
"I pray that father and Sorcha and Alan and Murdo,And that Donn and Fionn, the collies, and the kye,And the sheep, and—and—everything—Will love Nial!""That everything will love Nial!"
"I pray that father and Sorcha and Alan and Murdo,
And that Donn and Fionn, the collies, and the kye,
And the sheep, and—and—everything—
Will love Nial!"
"That everything will love Nial!"
"And that Nial will go to Heaven too!""And that Nial will go to Heaven too!"
"And that Nial will go to Heaven too!"
"And that Nial will go to Heaven too!"
"And this is the prayer of Oona,The daughter of Torcall CameronWho lives at Màm-Gorm on Iolair,An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!""An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!"
"And this is the prayer of Oona,
The daughter of Torcall Cameron
Who lives at Màm-Gorm on Iolair,
An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!"
"An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!"
Oona opened her eyes, looked earnestly at Nial, leant forward and kissed him.
"Now, Nial, rise, and turn sunways, and cryDeasìul."
The dwarf did as she bade; then, with a happy laugh, she slipped her hand in his.
"Let us go back now. The rain is coming."
And so, as the glooms of storm came rapidly over the mountain, the two moved, silent and happy, through the sighing glades of the forest.
Lowering skies, with the floating odour of coming rain, already dulled the hill-land. A raven, flying athwart Iolair, looked larger than its wont. Its occasional croak fell heavily as though from ledge to ledge of weighty air. The wood-doves which flew back toward the forest winged their way at a lower level than usual, the clamour of their pinions beating the atmosphere as with oars: on the moorland the lapwings rose and fell incessantly with wailing cries. The scattered kye lowed uneasily, or stood below solitary rowans or wild-guins, easing their fly-tormented flanks with their swishing tails. On the farther slopes, the querulous lambs bleated: everywhere the incessant calling of the ewes made a mournful rumour. The wind moved with a heavy lift, here rising, here falling, anon whirling upon itself, so that all the fern and undergrowth in the corries bent one way, or, for a league, the spires of the heather whitened.
High and low, the innumerous hum of insects vibrated on the air. Thus may the hum of the wheeling world be heard of Keithoir, who dreams in the hollow of a green hill unknown of man: or of the ancient goddess Orchil, who, blind and dumb, works in silence at the heart of Earth at her loom Change, with the thridding shuttles Life and Death: or of Manannan, who sleeps under the green wave, hearing only the sigh of the past, the moan of the passing, the rune of what is to come.
Before Oona and Nial drew close to the hill farm, a shrill sustained cry, not unlike that of the bird called the oyster catcher, came along the slopes. Oona knew at once it was Sorcha's summons for her to help with the cows. With a whispered word to her comrade she sped away by a sheep-path that wound over against Maol-Gorm. Nial slowly advanced to the green hillock of Cnoc-na-shee. He had just flung himself wearily on the grassy slope, when he saw Torcall Cameron stoop and issue from his low doorway.
Màm-Gorm faced the way of the wind, sniffed the air with sensitive nostrils, and let his blind eyes feel the balm of the damp. Then he turned, and returned to his seat by the fire. Nial watched for an hour. The wind had a steady sough in it, and the clouds were lower, darker, more voluminously vast and swift when Cameron came forth again.
It was this time that he had his staff in his hand, though no cap covered his tangled iron-grey hair.
Nial hoped he was right in believing that Màm-Gorm had come out merely to breathe the caller air: for the dwarf feared the reproach of Sorcha if he let the blind man wander along the perilous moorland, with wind and rain moving like ravenous hounds adown the heights.
When, however, he realised that Torcall Cameron was bent upon making his way to some distant spot, he had not the courage to check him, or even to make known his presence. There was a thundercloud on the man's face, one that to Nial was far more sombre and terrifying than any overhead. When, with slow, hesitating steps, the blind man passed close to Cnoc-na-shee, he stopped for a few moments. Doubtless he was listening to the wind going through the pines, with a noise as of the flowing tide against shingly beaches: or, perhaps, to the scattered lowing and bleating of his sheep and cows. But Nial feared that, in some strange way, he had perceived him. He trembled, for he knew that "the father" was in one of his dark moods. Deep down in his heart he dreaded the gaze of those sightless eyes more than anything else in the world: in his heart of hearts he was convinced that they saw, more awfully and searchingly because through a veil.
In his anxiety not to betray his presence, he ground his foot firmer into a heathy hollow, for he had slightly slipped when Cameron stopped. A pebble was dislodged, and made a slight noise.
The blind man lifted his head, startled.
"Is any one there?"
No answer. The wind sighed along the grass.
"Oona, are you there? Nial, is that you?"
Silence, but for a faint wind-rustle in the bracken.
"Sst! Down, Luath, Fior!"
But no collie barked or whined in response.
"Well, peace to your soul, and go hence."
But at last Torcall was convinced he was alone, for he heard the note of a yellow-hammer, as it fed its mate, close by. With a sigh he moved on. As he passed within a few yards of Nial, the dwarf heard him muttering disconnected phrases: "Ochan-achone, tha m' anam brùite am chom!" ... "ma tha sin an dàn!" ... "ma shìneas Dia mo làithean!"9
He waited till Cameron was some way ahead. Then with light step, stealthy movement, and furtive sidelong glances, he followed.
The first thin rain slanted along the wind. The blind man paid no heed. Indeed, he now walked swiftly and firmly along a sheep-path, as though he were familiar with the way, or had altogether forgotten his infirmity.
Out upon a bleak stretch of moor on one of the higher slopes of Maol-Donn stood a cairn. It was here, so rumour went, though none knew for sure, that Torcall's wife, Marsail, lay buried. It was known that she had perished in a snowstorm, and that he had insisted on her burial where she was found: but when the minister and the people came for her body they were told that she was already in the mools, and that even now the stones of her cairn were upon her.
Beside it was a tall flat slab of rock. It may have been part of a Pictish or Druidic temple, or its resemblance to a sacred stone may have been accidental. It stood erect, one-third imbedded in the hillside.
To these Torcall Cameron now made his way. At the cairn he did not stop, neither did he drop a stone or even a pebble upon it. When he reached the great rock, he leaned against it, and with folded arms stared sightlessly across the strath to Tornideon, whose vast bulk rose sombre in the deepening gloom.
The wail of the wind momently increased. The rocks sweated, even where there was no rain falling.
Suddenly, over the high crest to the west, the Druim-nan-Damh or Ridge of the Stags, there came a heavy rolling sound as though a mass of boulders had fallen down the far side of Iolair.
This first muttering of the thunder aroused the dreamer. He started, checked some exclamation, and then, having stooped and groped till he found what he wanted, threw a small stone on Marsail's cairn.
Nial drew closer. A flash of lightning had frightened him. Thunder and lightning were to him as direct agents of a vengeful and irate Power as they were to the priests and prophets of old.
The first loud crash filled the air. Then ensued a splitting and rending as of a granite mountain, from whose depths vomited a prolonged howling and roaring as of monstrous beasts. The outcast crawled alongside the tall slab against which the man leaned, and gripped a corner with his hand.
When, his white face glimmering in the mirk, he looked up at Màm-Gorm, he shivered with a new dread.
The blind man stood erect, with arms upraised and hands outspread. His face was lit as though a fire burned in his brain. Nial imagined that the dead eyes gleamed, as he had seen toadstools gleam in a dark cave: a dull phosphorescent light, horrible to look upon.
Again a wuthering roar, followed by a scythelike whirlwind, with the sound of rain-torrents flooding the high corries and washing the windward precipices of Ben Iolair. Nial was about to speak, when he crouched back at the volley of words shouted savagely over his head:
"Oh, my Lord God, strike! Oh, let Death be upon me! Sorrow Thou hast given me, and I have not rebelled: grief Thou hast made my daily portion, and I have not rebuked Thee: but now that Thou hast made my day into a charnel-house and my bed into a grave, now that Thou hast brought before my blind eyes what no eyes may see and live, now that Thou hast set the Dead as a watch upon the living—I cry to Thee, Enough!"
Nial shivered with awe and terror. He saw that a frenzy was upon the man whom he both loved and feared.
There was silence for many seconds. A greenish streak of flame shot across the mountain, intolerably vivid. A sound as of mirthless laughter was drowned in an avalanche-roar overhead. Out of the tumult, later, came wild fragments of human shouting:
"Let there be a duel between us then ... ay, Marsail, you may weep; ay, Fergus, you may leap out of your shroud to be soul to soul with me ... what do I care for the hounds of the night?... Call off thy hounds, O Hunter!... Be the day between us, and the night, O God; and the two noons, and the darkness of the coming and the darkness of the going; and the blood of the living, and the corruption of the dead; and the earth and the sea; and the stars beneath the world, and the stars above the world; and the friend of man that is Time, and Thy friend that is Eternity ... for Iwillnot, Iwillnot, Iwillnot ... no, though I perish for ever and for ever" ... (and at last, with a scream) ... "Go Thy ways, O God.... Leave me, if Thou wilt not slay! ... Iwillnot! Iwillnot! Iwillnot!"
When the next flash and thunderblast had hurtled and gone, Nial thought that Death had indeed come. Then he heard a low whisper:
"What is it that I hear? Do the dead stir? Marsail ... Marsail ... or ... or ... is ityou, Fergus, son of Fergus, son of Ian?"
Sick with fear, Nial sprang to his feet, seized one of the fallen hands in his own, and tried to lead Màm-Gorm away.
The blind man shook as a tuft of canna in a wind-eddy; white, too, as the canna, was his face.
His lips moved convulsively. At last, hoarse, choking, sobbing sounds came forth, and from these grew three or four words:
"Is—it—you, Marsail?"
Nial shrank appalled, but could not withdraw his hands.
"Is—it—you, Fergus Gilchrist?"
Struggling to escape, he merely added to the paralysing awe which held his captor.
"Who are you—what are you? Are you the thing of the grave, the black guide I have heard of?"
With a sudden jerk the dwarf freed himself. The next moment he bounded aside, then, without a glance behind him, fled.
Cameron sprang forward, but when he found that he had missed his grip he drew up again, and stood listening intently. If it was a spirit, it made a noise of running like a human: if it was a creature of the grave, it hurried back to no hollow near by: if it was Black Donald himself, Sir Diabhol had fled, affrighted!
Ah, the Cailliach! He had not thought ofher! It might well be that the demon-woman had tried to snare him. If so, what, who, had saved him?
Dazed and sick he stood for a moment, because of a crash of a thunderbolt against a near height. The granite splintered like glass. In his mouth his palate shrank: his nerves strained, quivering.
Who, what, hurled that thunderbolt? Was it God? Was He answering his wild prayer?
If it were of God, why had it not stricken him? Hark! A scream far off! Had the leaping Cailliach been slain by the lightning, as a flying man by the spear of his pursuer? Had God given him these things as signs? These voices, that awful touch as of human hands?
He bowed his head. Tears scalded the burning lids of his blind eyes. Suddenly he sank to his knees, and with outstretched arms repeated an ancient rune of his fathers, the Cry to Age, the Rann-an-h' Aoise: