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 close he 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 I know 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 Ynys and 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 forget _there_ that 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 all my 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
punishment be 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 has an 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 of the 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 relinquished
his 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 had done 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 as man 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 the _Blue Herring_ sailed 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 the Frozen 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 green _airidh_. 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 of some 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 king took 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 galleries and 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 the elderly 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 deep gloom. 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, she was 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, the _mirdhei_ was 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 a
_mircath_ of 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--the _mirdhei_, 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.