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 an air 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
each deep 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 madness of 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 the heart, 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 despondency prevailed
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
listened now 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]
[Footnote A: This hymn is taken down in the Gaelic and translated by
Mr. Alexander Carmichael of South Uist.]
"A Mhicheil mhin! nan steud geala,
A choisin cios air Dragon fala,
Air ghaol Dia' us Mhic Muire,
Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile,
Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile.
"A Mhoire ghradhach! Mathair Uain-ghil,
Cohhair oirnne, Oigh na h-uaisle;
A rioghainn uai'reach! a bhuachaille nan treud!
Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil,
Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil.
"A Chalum-Chille! chairdeil, chaoimh,
An ainm Athar, Mic, 'us Spioraid Naoimh,
Trid na Trithinn! trid na Triath!
Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial,
Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial.
"Athair! A Mhic! A Spioraid Naoimh!
Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la 's a dh-oidhche!
'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann,
Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith A lamh fo'r ceann,
Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith A lamh fo'r ceann."
[Thou gentle Michael of the white steed,
Who subdued the Dragon of blood,
For love of God and the Son of Mary,
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Mary Beloved! Mother of the White Lamb,
Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness,
Queen of beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks!
Keep our cattle, surround us together,
Keep our cattle, surround us together.
Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind,
In name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit Holy,
Through the Three-in-One, through the Three,
Encompass us, guard our procession,
Encompass us, guard our procession.
Thou Father! thou Son! thou Spirit Holy!
Be the Three-One with us day and night.
And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side,
Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head,
Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head.]
After she had ceased Alan found himself repeating whisperingly, and
again and again:
"Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la 's a dh-oidhche!
'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann."
Suddenly the woman glanced upward, perhaps because of the shadow that
moved against the green bracken below. With a startled gesture she
sprang to her feet. Alan looked at her kindly, saying with a smile,
"Sure, Morag nic Tormaid, it is not fear you need be having of one who
is your friend." Then, seeing that the woman stared at him with an
intent gaze, wherein was terror as well as surprise, he spoke to her
again.
"Sure, Morag, I am no stranger that you should be looking at me with
those foreign eyes." He laughed as he spoke, and made as though he were
about to descend to the burnside. Unmistakably, however, the woman did
not desire his company. He saw that with the pain and bewilderment
which had come upon him whenever the like happened, as so often it had
happened since he had come to Rona.
"Tell me, Bean Neil MacNeill, what is the meaning of this strangeness
that is upon you? Why do you not speak? Why do you turn away your
head?"
Suddenly the woman flashed her black eyes upon him.
"Have you ever heard of _am Buchaille Bàn--am Buchaille Buidhe_?"
He looked at her in amaze. _Am Buchaille Bàn!_ ... The fair-haired
Herdsman, the yellow-haired Herdsman! What could she mean? In days gone
by, he knew, the islanders had, in the evil time after Culloden, so
named the fugitive Prince who had sought shelter in the Hebrides; and
in some of the runes of an older day still the Saviour of the World
was sometimes so called, just as Mary was called _Bhuachaille nan
treud_--Shepherdess of the Flocks. But as Alan knew well, no allusion
to either of these was intended.
"Who is the Herdsman of whom you speak, Morag?"
"Is it no knowledge you have of him at all, Alan MacAlasdair?"
"None. I know nothing of the man, nothing of what is in your mind. Who
is the Herdsman?"
"You will not be putting evil upon me because that you saw me here by
the pool before I saw you?"
"Why should I, woman? Why do you think that I have the power of the
evil eye? Sure, I have done no harm to you or yours, and wish none. But
if it is for peace to you to know it, it is no evil I wish you, but
only good. The Blessing of Himself be upon you and yours and upon your
house."
The woman looked relieved, but still cast her furtive gaze upon Alan,
who no longer attempted to join her.
"I cannot be speaking the thing that is in my mind, Alan MacAlasdair.
It is not for me to be saying that thing. But if you have no knowledge
of the Herdsman, sure it is only another wonder of the wonders, and God
has the sun on that shadow, to the Stones be it said."
"But tell me, Morag, who is the Herdsman of whom you speak?"
For a minute or more the woman stood regarding him intently. Then
slowly, and as with difficulty, she spoke:
"Why have you appeared to the people upon the isle, sometimes by
moonlight, sometimes by day or in the dusk? and have foretold upon one
and all who dwell here black gloom and the red flame of sorrow?--Why
have you, who are an outcast because of what lies between you and
another, pretended to be an emissary of the Son--ay, for sure, even,
God forgive you, to be the Son himself?"
Alan stared at the woman in blank amaze. For a time he could utter no
word. Had some extraordinary delusion spread among the islanders, and
was there in the insane accusation of this woman the secret of that
inexplicable aversion which had so troubled him?
"This is all an empty darkness to me, Morag. Speak more plainly, woman.
What is all this madness that you say? When have I uttered aught of
having any mission, or of being other than I am? When have I foretold
evil upon you or yours, or upon the isles beyond? What man has ever
dared to say that Alan MacAlasdair of Rona is an outcast? and what sin
is it that lies between me and another of which you know?"
It was impossible for Morag MacNeill to doubt the sincerity of the man
who spoke to her. She crossed herself, and muttered the words of a
_sian_ for the protection of the soul against the demon powers. Still,
even while she believed in Alan's sincerity, she could not reconcile it
with that terrible and strange mystery with which rumor had filled her
ears. So, having nothing to say in reply to his eager questions, she
cast down her eyes and kept silence.
"Speak, Morag, for Heaven's sake! Speak if you are a true woman; you
that see a man in sore pain, in pain, too, for that of which he knows
nothing, and of the ill of which he is guiltless!"
But, keeping her face averted, the woman muttered simply: "I have no
more to say." With that she turned and moved slowly along the pathway
which led from the pool to her hillside bothie.
With a sigh, Alan turned and moved across the moor. What wonder, he
thought, that deep gloom had been upon him that day? Here, in the
woman's mysterious words, was the shadow of that shadow.
Slowly, brooding deep over what he had heard, he traversed the
Mona-nan-Con, as the hill-tract there was called, till he came to the
rocky wilderness known as the Slope of the Caverns.
There for a time he leaned against a high bowlder, idly watching a few
sheep nibbling the short grass which grew about the apertures of some
of the many caves which disclosed themselves in all directions. Below
and beyond, he saw the illimitable calm beauty of the scene; southward
with no break anywhere; eastward, a sun-blaze void; south-westward,
the faint, blue film of the coast of Ulster; westward, the same
immeasurable windless expanse. From where he stood he could just hear
the murmur of the surge whispering all round the isle; the surge that,
even on days of profoundest calm, makes a murmurous rumor among the
rocks and shingle of the island shores. Not upon the moor side, but
in the blank hollows of the caves around him he heard, as in gigantic
shells, the moving of a strange and solemn rhythm: wave haunted-shells
indeed, for the echo that was bruited from one to the other came from
beneath, from out of those labyrinthine corridors and dim, shadowy
arcades, where through the intense green glooms the Atlantic waters
lose themselves in a vain wandering.
For long he leaned there, revolving in his mind the mystery of Morag
MacNeill's words. Then, abruptly, the stillness was broken by the sound
of a dislodged stone. So little did he expect the foot of a fellow that
he did not turn at what he thought to be the slip of a sheep. But when
upon the slope of the grass, just beyond where he stood, a dusky blue
shadow wavered fantastically, he swung round with a sudden instinct of
dread.
And this was the dread which, at the end of the third month after he
and Ynys had come to Rona, was upon Alan Carmichael.
For there, standing quietly by another bowlder, at the mouth of another
cave, stood a man who was in all appearance identical with himself.
Looking at this apparition, he beheld one of the same height as
himself, with hair of the same hue, with eyes the same, and features
the same, with the same carriage, the same smile, even the same
expression. No, it was there, and there alone, that a difference was.
Sick at heart, Alan wondered if he looked upon his own wraith. Familiar
as he was with the legends of his people, it would be no strange thing
to him that there, upon the hillside, should appear the phantasm of
himself. Had not old Ian MacIain--and that, too, though far away in a
strange land--seen the death of Lois Macdonald moving upward from her
feet to her knees, from her knees to her waist, from her waist to her
neck and, just before the end, how the shroud darkened along the face
until it hid the eyes? Had he not often heard from her, from Ian, of
the second self which so often appears beside the living when already
the shadow of doom is upon him whose hours are numbered? Was this,
then, the reason of what had been his inexplicable gloom? Was he indeed
at the extreme of life; was his soul amid shallows, already a rock upon
a blank, inhospitable shore? If not, who or what was this second self
which leaned there negligently; looking at him with scornfully smiling
lips, but with intent, unsmiling eyes.
Then, slowly, there came into his mind this thought: How could a
phantom, that was itself intangible, throw a shadow upon the grass,
as though it were a living corporeal being? Sure, a shadow there was
indeed. It lay between the apparition and himself. A story heard in
boyhood came back to him; instinctively he stooped and lifted a stone
and flung it midway into the shadow.
"Go back into the darkness," he cried, "if out of the darkness you
came; but, if you be a living thing, put out your hands!"
The shadow remained motionless; though when Alan looked again at his
second self, he saw that the scorn which had been upon the lips was now
in the eyes also. Ay, for sure, that was scornful laughter that lay
in those cold wells of light. No phantom that; a man he, even as Alan
himself. His heart pulsed like that of a trapped bird, but, even in the
speaking, his courage came back to him.
"Who are you?" he asked in a low voice that was strange even in his own
ears.
"Am Buchaille", replied the man in a voice as low and strange. "I am
the Herdsman."
A new tide of fear surged in upon Alan. That voice, was it not his
own; that tone, was it not familiar in his ears? When the man spoke,
he heard himself speak; sure, if he were am Buchaille Bàn, Alan, too,
was the Herdsman--though what fantastic destiny might be his was all
unknown to him.
"Come near," said the man, and now the mocking light in his eyes was
lambent as cloud-fire--"come near, oh, Buchaille Bàn!"
With a swift movement Alan leapt forward, but as he leaped his foot
caught in a spray of heather and he stumbled and nigh fell. When he
recovered himself, he looked in vain for the man who had called him.
There was not a sign, not a trace of any living being. For the first
few moments he believed it had all been a delusion. Mortal being did
not appear and vanish in that ghostly way. Still, surely he could not
have mistaken the blank of that place for a speaking voice, nor out
of nothingness have fashioned the living phantom of himself? Or could
he? With that, he strode forward and peered into the wide arch of
the cavern by which the man had stood. He could not see far into it,
but so far as it was possible to see, he discerned neither man nor
shadow of man, nor any thing that stirred; no, not even the dust of a
bearnan-Bride, that grew on a patch of grass a yard or two within the
darkness, had lost one of its aërial pinions. He drew back, dismayed.
Then, suddenly, his heart leapt again, for, beyond all question, all
possible doubt, there, in the bent thyme, just where the man had stood,
was the imprint of his feet. Even now the green sprays were moving
forward.