I think that in the trees, the dryads, the leaf-haunters invisible, so
sad in childlessness, ceased their swinging to look upon the boy and
girl so enviable in their innocence and happiness. Gilian knelt and
gathered up the flowers. It was, perhaps, more to hide his vexation than
from courtesy that he did so, but the act was so unboylike, so deferring
in its manner, that it restored to Nan as much of her good humour as her
laughter had not brought back with it. As he lifted the flowers and put
them together, there seemed to come from the fresh lush stalks of them
some essence of the girl whose hands had culled and grasped them, a
feeling of her warm palm. And when handing her the re-gathered flowers
he felt the actual touch of her fingers, his head for a second swam. He
wondered. For in the touch there had been something even more potent
and pleasing than in the mother-touch of Miss Mary’s hand that day when
first he came to the town, the mother-touch that revealed a world not
of kindness alone--for that was not new, he had it from the little old
woman whose face was like a nut--but of understanding and sympathy.
“Have you any more wonders to show?” said Nan, now all in the humour of
adventure.
“Nothing you would care for,” he said. “There are lots of places just
for thinking at, but----”
“I would rather them to be places to be seeing at,” said Nan.
Gilian reflected, and “You know the Lady’s Linn?” he said.
She nodded.
“Well,” said he. “Do you know the story of it, and why it is called the
Lady’s Linn?”
Nan confessed her ignorance; but a story--oh, that was good enough!
“Come to the Linn and I’ll show you the place, then,” said Gilian, and
he led her among the grasses, among the tall commanding brackens, upon
the old moss that gave no whisper to the footfall, so that, for
the nymphs among the trees, the pair of them might be comrades too,
immortal. A few moments brought them to the Linn, a deep pool in the
river bend, lying so calm that the blue field of heaven and its wisps
of cloud astray like lambs were painted on its surface. Round about, the
banks rose steep, magnificent with flowers.
“See,” said Gilian, pointing to the reflection at their feet. “Does it
not look like a piece of the sky tumbled among the grasses? I sometimes
think, to see it like that, that to fall into it would be to tangle with
the stars.”
Nan only laughed and stooped to lift a stone.
She threw it into the very midst of the pool, and the mirror of the
heavens was shattered.
“I never thought I could throw into the sky so far,” she said
mischievously, pleased as it seemed to spoil the illusion in so sudden
and sufficient a manner.
“Oh!” he cried, pained to the quick, “you should not have done that, it
will spoil the story.”
“What is the story?” she said, sitting and looking down upon the
troubled pool.
“You must wait till the water is calm again,” said he, seating himself a
little below her on the bank, and watching the water-rings subside.
Then when the pool had regained its old placidity, with the flecked sky
pictured on it, he began his Gaelic story.
“Once upon a time,” said he, in the manner of the shealing tales, “there
was a lady with eyes like the sea, and hair blowing like the tassel of
the fir, and she was a daughter of the King in Knapdale, and she looked
upon the world and she was weary. There came a little man to her from
the wood and he said, ‘Go seven days, three upon water and four upon
land, and you will come to a place where the moon’s sister swims, and
there will be the earl’s son and the husband.’ The lady travelled seven
days, three upon water and four upon land, and she came to the Linn
where the sister of the moon was swimming. ‘Where is my earl’s son
that is to be-my husband?’ she asked: and the moon’s sister said he was
hunting in the two roads that lie below the river bed. The lady, who was
the daughter of the King of Knapdale, shut her eyes that were like the
sea, and tied in a cushion above her head her hair that was like the
tassel of the fir, and broke the crystal door of dream and reached the
two hunting roads in the bed of the river. ‘We are two brothers,’ said
the watchers, standing at the end of the roads, ‘and we are the sons of
earls.’ She thought and thought ‘I am Sir Sleep,’ said the younger. ‘And
will you be true?’ said she. ‘Almost half the time, he answered. She
thought and thought. ‘I am very weary,’ she said. ‘Then come with
me,’ said the other, ‘I am the Older Brother.’ She heard above her the
clanging at the door of dream as she went with the Older Brother. And
she was happy for evermore.”
“Oh, that is a stupid story,” said Nan. “It’s not a true story at all.
You could tell it to me anywhere, and why should we be troubled walking
to the Linn?”
“Because this is the Lady’s Linn,” said Gilian, “and to be telling a
story you must be putting a place in it or it will not sound true. And
Gillesbeg Aotram who told me the story--”
“Gillesbeg Aotram!” she said in amaze. “He’s daft. If I thought it was a
daft man’s story I had to hear I----”
“He’s not daft at all,” protested Gilian. “He’s only different from his
neighbours.”
“That is being daft,” said she. “But it is a very clever tale and you
tell it very well. You must tell me more stories. Do you know any more
stories? I like soldier stories. My father tells me a great many.”
“The Cornal tells me a great many too,” said Gilian, “but they are all
true, and they do not sound true, and I have to make them all up again
in my own mind. But this is not the place for soldier stories; every
place has its own kind of story, and this is the place for fairy stories
if you care for them.”
“I like them well enough,” she answered dubiously, “though I like better
the stories where people are doing things.”
They rose from their seat of illusion beside the Linn where the King of
Knapdale’s daughter broke the gate of sleep and dream. They walked into
the Duke’s flower garden. And now the day was done, the sun had gone
behind Creag Dubh while they were sitting by the river; a grey-brown
dusk wrapped up the country-side. The tall trees that were so numerous
outside changed here to shorter darker foreign trees, and yews that
never waved in winds, but seemed the ghosts of trees, to thickets
profound, with secrets in their recesses. In and out among these
unfamiliar growths walked Nan and her companion, their pathway crooking
in a maze of newer wonders on either hand. One star peered from the sky,
the faint wind of the afternoon had sunk to a hint of mingled and moving
odours.
Gilian took the girl’s hand, and thus together they went deeper into the
garden among the flowers that perfumed the air till it seemed drugged
and heavy. They walked and walked in the maze of intersecting roads
whose pebbles grated to the foot, and, so magic the place, there seemed
no end to their journey.
Nan became alarmed. “I wish I had never come,” said she. “I want home.”
And the tears were very close upon her eyes.
“Yes, yes,” said Gilian, leading her on through paths he had never seen
before. “We will get out in a moment. I know--I think I know, the road.
It is this way--no, it is this way--no, I am wrong.”
But he did not cease to lead her through the garden. The long unending
rows of gay flowers stretching in the haze of evening, the parterres
spread in gaudy patches, the rich revelation of moss and grass between
the trees and shrubs were wholly new to him; they stirred to thrills of
wonder and delight.
“Isn’t it fine, fine?” he asked her in a whisper lest the charm should
fly.
She answered with a sob he did not hear, so keen his thrall to the
enchantment. No sign of human habitation lay around except the gravelled
walks; the castle towers were hid, the boat-strewn sea was on their
left no more. Only the clumps of trees were there, the mossy grass, the
flowers whose beauty and plenteousness mocked the posie in the girl’s
hands. They walked now silent, expectant every moment of the exit that
somehow baffled, and at last they came upon the noble lawn. It stretched
from their feet into a remote encroaching eve, no trees beyond visible,
no break in all its grey-green flatness edged on either hand by wood.
And now the sky had many stars.
Their gravelled path had ceased abruptly; before them the lawn spread
like a lake, and they were shy to venture on its surface.
“Let us go on; I must go home, I am far from home,” said Nan, in a
trepidation, her flowers shed, her eyes moist with tears. And into
her voice had come a strain of dependence on the boy, an accent more
pleasing than any he had heard in her before.
“We must walk across there,” he said, looking at the far-off vague edge;
but yet he made no move to meet the wishes of the girl now clinging to
his arm.
“Come, come,” said she, and pressed him gently at the arm; but yet he
stood dubious in the dusk.
“Are you afraid?” she asked, herself whispering, she could not tell why.
He felt his face burn at the reflection; he shook her hand off
almost angrily. “Afraid!” said he. “Not I; what makes you think that?
Only--only----” His eyes were staring at the lawn.
“Only what?” she whispered again, seeking his side for the comfort of
his presence.
“It is stupid,” he confessed, shame in his accent, “but they say the
fairies dance there, and I think we might be looking for another way.”
At the confession, Nan’s mood of fear that Gilian had conferred on her
was gone. She drew back and laughed with as much heartiness as at his
story of the heron’s nest. The dusk was all around and they were all
alone, lost in a magic garden, but she forgot all in this new revelation
of her companion’s strange belief. She turned and ran across the lawn,
crying as she went, “Follow me, follow me!” and Gilian, all the ecstasy
of that lingering moment on the edge of fancy gone, ran after her,
feeling himself a child of dream, and her the woman made for action.
A sadden opening in the thicket revealed the shore, the highway, the
quay with its bobbing lamps, the town with its upper windows lighted. At
the gateway of the garden the Cornal met them, He was close on them in
the dusk before he knew them, and seeing Gilian he peered closely in
the girl face.
“Who’s this?” said he abruptly.
Gilian hesitated, vaguely fearing to reveal her identity, and Nan shrank
back, all her memories of conversation in Maam telling her that here was
an enemy.
Again the Cornal bent and looked more closely, lifting her chin up that
he might see the better. She flashed a glance of defiance in his scarred
old parchment face, and he drew his hand back as if he had been stung.
“Nan! Nan!” cried he, with a curious voice. “What witchery is this?” He
was in a tremble, Then he started and laughed bitterly. “Oh no, not
Nan!” said he. “Oh no, not Nan!” with the most rueful accent, almost
chanting it as if it were a dirge.
“‘It _is_ Nan,” said Gilian.
“It is her breathing image,” said the old man. “It is Nan, no doubt, but
not the Nan I knew.”
She turned and sped home by the seaside, without farewell, alarmed at
this oddity, and Gilian and the Cornal stood alone, the Cornal looking
after her with a wistfulness in his very attitude.
“The same, the same, the very same!” said he to himself, in words the
boy could plainly hear. “Her mother to the very defiance of her eye.”
He clutched Gilian rudely by the shoulder. “What,” said he; “were you
wandering about with that girl for? Answer me that. They told me you
were off after the soldiers, and I came up here hoping it true. It would
have been the daft but likeable cantrip I should have forgiven in any
boy of mine; it would have shown some sign of a sogerly emprise. And
here you are, with a lass wandering! Where were you?”
Gilian explained.
“In the flower garden? Ay! ay! A lassie on the roadside met your fancy
more than Geordie’s men of war. Thank God, I was never like that! And
Turner’s daughter above all! If she’s like her mother in her heart
as she’s like her in the face, it might be a bitter notion for your
future.”
He led the way home, muttering to himself. “Nan! Nan! It gave me the
start! It was nearly a stroke for me! The same look about her! She is
dead, dead and buried, and in her daughter she defies us still!”