IN THE GREEN ARCADES
"In the shadow of pain, one may hear the footsteps of joy." So runs a
proverb of old.
It was a true saying for Alan and Ynys. That night they lay down in
pain, their hearts heavy with the weight of some burden which they
felt and did not know. On the morrow they woke to the rapture of a
new day--a day of absolute beauty, when the stars grew pale in the
cloudless blue sky before the uprising of the sun, while the last vapor
lifted a white wing from the sea, and a dim spiral mist carried skyward
the memory of inland dews. The whole wide wilderness of ocean was of
living azure, aflame with gold and silver. Around the promontories of
the isles the brown-sailed fish-boats of Barra and Berneray, of Borosay
and Seila, moved blithely hither and thither. Everywhere the rhythm of
life pulsed swift and strong. The first sound which had awakened the
sleepers was of a loud singing of fishermen who were putting out from
Aonaig. The coming of a great shoal of mackerel had been signalled, and
every man and woman of the near isles was alert for the take. The first
sign had been the swift congregation of birds, particularly the gannets
and skuas. And as the men pulled at the oars, or hoisted the brown
sails, they sang a snatch of an old-world tune, wont to be chanted at
the first coming of the birds when spring-tide is on the flow again.
"Bui' cheas dha 'n Ti thaine na Gugachan
Thaine 's na h-Eoin-Mhora cuideriu,
Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro!
Bo dhonn! bo dhonn! bo dhonn bheadarrach!
Bo dhonn a ruin a bhlitheadh am baine dhuit
Ho ro! mo gheallag! ni gu rodagach!
Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro--
Na h-eoin air tighinn! cluinneam an ceol!"
[Thanks to the Being, the Gannets have come.
Yes! and the Great Auks along with them.
Dark-haired girl!--a cow in the fold!
Brown cow! brown cow! brown cow, beloved ho!
Brown cow! my love! the milker of milk to thee!
Ho ro! my fair-skinned girl--a cow in the fold,
And the birds have come!--glad sight, I see!]
Eager to be of help, Alan put off in his boat and was soon among the
fishermen, who in their new excitement were forgetful of all else than
that the mackerel were come, and that every moment was precious. For
the first time Alan found himself no unwelcome comrade. Was it, he
wondered, because that, there upon the sea, whatever of shadow dwelled
about him on the land was no longer visible?
All through that golden noon, he and the others worked hard. From isle
to isle went the chorus of the splashing oars and splashing nets; of
the splashing of the fish and the splashing of gannets and gulls; of
the splashing of the tide leaping blithely against the sun-dazzle, and
the innumerous rippling wash moving out of the west--all this blent
with the loud, joyous cries, the laughter, and the hoarse shouts of the
men of Barra and the adjacent islands. It was close upon dusk before
the Rona boats put into the haven of Aonaig again; and by that time
none was blither than Alan Carmichael, who in that day of happy toil
had lost all the gloom and apprehension of the day before, and now made
haste to Caisteal-Rhona to add to his joy by a sight of Ynys in their
home.
When, however, he got there, there was no Ynys to see. "She had gone,"
said Kirsten Macdonald, "she had gone out in the smaller boat midway in
the afternoon, and had sailed around to Aoidhu, the great scaur which
ran out beyond the precipices at the south-west of Rona."
This Ynys often did; and, of late, more and more often. Ever since she
had come to the Hebrid Isles, her love of the sea had deepened, and
had grown into a passion for its mystery and beauty. Of late, too,
something impelled to a more frequent isolation; a deep longing to
be where no eye could see, and no ear hearken. Those strange dreams
which, in a confused way, had haunted her mind in her far Breton home,
came oftener now and more clear. Sometimes, when she had sat in the
twilight at Kerival, holding her mother's hand and listening to tales
of that remote North to which her heart had ever yearned, she had
suddenly lost all consciousness of the speaker, or of the things said,
and had let her mind be taken captive by her uncontrolled imagination,
till in spirit she was far away, and sojourned in strange places,
hearing a language that she did not know, and yet which she understood,
and dwelt in a past or a present which she had never seen and which yet
was familiar.
Since Ynys had known she was with child, this visionariness had been
intensified, this longing had become more and more a deep need. Even
with Alan she felt at times the intrusion of an alien influence. If
in her body was a mystery, a mystery also was in her brain and in her
heart.
Alan knew this, and knowing, understood. It was for gladness to him
that Ynys should do as she would; that in these long hours of solitude
she drank deep of the elixir of peace; and that this way of happiness
was open to her as to him. Never did these isolations come between
them; indeed they were sometimes more at one then than when they were
together, for all the deep happiness which sustained both upon the
strong waters of their love.
So, when Alan heard from Kirsten that Ynys had sailed westward, he
was in no way alarmed. But when the sun had set, and over the faint
blue film of the Isle of Tiree the moon had risen, and still no sign
of Ynys, he became restless and uneasy. Kirsten begged him in vain to
eat of the supper she had prepared. Idly he moved to and fro along the
rocky ledge, or down by the pebbly shore, or across the green _airidh_;
eager for a glimpse of her whom he loved so passing well.
At last, unable longer to endure a growing anxiety, he put out in his
boat, and sailed swiftly before the slight easterly breeze which had
prevailed since moonrise. So far as Aoidhu, all the way from Aonaig,
there was not a haven anywhere, nor even one of the sea caverns which
honeycombed the isle beyond the headland. A glance, therefore, showed
him that Ynys had not yet come back that way. It was possible, though
unlikely, that she had sailed right round Rona; unlikely because in
the narrow straits to the north, between Rona and the scattered islets
known as the Innse-mhara, strong currents prevailed, and particularly
at the full of the tide, when they swept north-eastward, dark and swift
as a mill-race.
Once the headland was passed and the sheer precipitous westward cliffs
loomed black out of the sea, he became more and more uneasy. As yet,
there was no danger; but he saw that a swell was moving out of the
west, and whenever the wind blew that way the sea arcades were filled
with a lifting, perilous wave, and escape from them was difficult
and often impossible. Out of the score or more great corridors which
opened between Aoidhu and Ardgorm, it was difficult to know into which
to hazard entry in quest of Ynys. Together they had examined all of
them. Some twisted but slightly; others wound sinuously till the green,
serpentine alleys, flanked by basalt walls hundreds of feet high, lost
themselves in an indistinguishable maze.
But that which was safest, and wherein a boat could most easily make
its way against wind or tide, was the huge, cavernous corridor known
locally as the Uamh-nan-roin, the Cave of the Seals.
For this opening Alan steered his boat. Soon he was within the wide
corridor. Like the great cave at Staffa, it was wrought as an aisle
in some natural cathedral; the rocks, too, were fluted columnarly and
rose in flawless symmetry as though graven by the hand of man. At the
far end of this gigantic aisle, there diverges a long, narrow arcade,
filled by day with the green shine of the water, and by night, when
the moon is up, with a pale froth of light. It is one of the few where
there are open gateways for the sea and the wandering light, and, by
its spherical shape, almost the only safe passage in a season of heavy
wind. Half-way along this arched arcade a corridor leads to a round
cup-like cavern, midway in which stands a huge mass of black basalt, in
shape suggestive of a titanic altar. Thus it must have impressed the
imagination of the islanders of old, for by them, even in a remote day,
it was called Teampull-nan-Mhara, the Temple of the Sea. Owing to the
narrowness of the corridor, and to the smooth, unbroken walls which
rise sheer from the green depths into an invisible darkness, the Strait
of the Temple is not one wherein to linger long, save in a time of calm.
Instinctively, however, Alan quietly headed his boat along this narrow
way. When, silently, he emerged from the arcade, he could just discern
the mass of basalt at the far end of the cavern. But there, seated in
her boat, was Ynys; apparently idly adrift, for one oar floated in the
water alongside, and the other suspended listlessly from the tholes.
His heart had a suffocating grip as he saw her whom he had come to
seek. Why that absolute stillness, that strange, listless indifference?
For a dreadful moment he feared that death had indeed come to her in
that lonely place where, as an ancient legend had it, a woman of old
time had perished, and ever since had wrought death upon any who came
thither solitary and unhappy.
But at the striking of the shaft of his oar against a ledge, Ynys gave
a low cry and looked at him with startled eyes. Half rising from where
she crouched in the stern, she called to him in a voice that had in it
something strangely unfamiliar.
"I will not hear!" she cried. "I will not hear! Leave me! Leave me!"
Fearing that the desolation of the place had wrought upon her mind,
Alan swiftly moved toward her. The very next moment his boat glided
along hers. Stepping from the one to the other, he kneeled beside her.
"_Ynys-ghaolaiche_, Ynys, my darling, what is it? what gives you dread?
There is no harm here. All is well. Look! See, it is I, Alan; Alan,
whom you love! Listen, dear; do you not know me; do you not know who I
am? It is I, Alan; Alan who loves you!"
Even in that obscure light he could clearly discern her pale face, and
his heart smote him as he saw her eyes turn upon him with a glance wild
and mournful. Had she indeed succumbed to the sea madness which ever
and again strikes into a terrible melancholy one here and there among
those who dwell in the remote isles? But even as he looked, he noted
another expression come into the beautiful eyes, and almost before he
realized what had happened, Ynys's head was on his breast, and she
sobbing with a sudden gladness and passion of relief.
The dusk deepened swiftly. In those serpentine arcades darkness grows
from hour to hour, even on nights when the moon makes the outer sea a
blaze of silver fire. But sweet it was to lie there in that solitary
place, where no sound penetrated save the low, soughing sigh of ocean,
audible there only as the breath of a sleeper: to lie there in each
other's arms, and to feel the beating of heart against heart, knowing
that whether in the hazard of life or death, all was well, since they
two were there and together.
For long Ynys could say no word. And as for Alan--too glad was he to
have her again, to know that she lived indeed, and that his fear of the
sea madness was an idle fantasy; too glad was he to urge her to speak,
when her recovered joy was still sweet in her heart. But at last she
whispered to him how that she had sailed westward from Caisteal-Rhona,
having been overcome by the beauty of the day, and longing to be among
those mysterious green arcades where thought rose out of the mind
like a white bird and flew among shadows in strange places, bringing
back with it upon its silent wings the rumor of strange voices, and
oftentimes singing a song of what ears hear not. Deeply upon the two
had lain the thought of what was to be; the thought of the life she
bore within her, that was the tangible love of her and of Alan, and yet
was so strangely and remotely dissociate from either. Happy in happy
thoughts, and strangely wrought by vague imaginings, she had sailed
past precipice after precipice, and so at last into the Strait of the
Temple. Just before the last light of day had begun to glide out of
the pale green water, she had let her boat drift idly alongside the
Teampull-Mhara. There, for a while, she had lain, drowsily content,
dreaming her dream. Then, suddenly her heart had given a leap like a
doe in the bracken, and the pulses in her veins swung like stars on a
night of storm.
For there, in that nigh unreachable and forever unvisited solitude was
the figure of a man. He stood on the summit of the huge basalt altar,
and appeared to have sprung from out the rock, or, himself a shadowy
presence, to have grown out of the obscure unrealities of the darkness.
She had stared at him, fascinated, speechless.
When she had said this Ynys stopped abruptly, for she felt the
trembling of Alan's hand.
"Go on," he said hoarsely, "go on. Tell me all!"
To his amaze, she did not seem perturbed in the way he had dreaded when
she began to tell what she had seen.
"But did you notice nothing about him, Ynys ... about his face, his
features?"
"Yes. His eyes filled me with strange joy."
"With joy? Oh, Ynys! Ynys! do you know whom--_what_--it was you saw? It
was a vision, a nothingness, a mere phantom; and that phantom was ...
was ... myself!"
"You, Alan! Oh, no, Alan-aghray! dear, you do not know whom I saw--nor
do I, though I know it was not you!"
"We will talk of this later, my fawn," Alan muttered. "Meanwhile, hold
on to this ledge, for I wish to examine this mass of rock that they
call the Altar."
With a spring he was on the ledge. Then, swift and sure as a wild-cat,
he scaled the huge bowlder.
Nothing; no one! There was not a trace of any human being. Not a bird,
not a bat; nothing. Moreover, even in that slowly blackening darkness
he could see that there was no direct connection between the summit or
side with the blank, precipitous wall of basalt beyond. Overhead there
was, so far as he could discern, a vault. No human being could have
descended through that perilous gulf.
Was the island haunted? he wondered, as slowly he made his way back to
the boat. Or had he been startled into some wild fantasy, and imagined
a likeness where none had been? Perhaps, even, he had not really seen
any one. He had read of similar strange delusions. The nerves can soon
chase the mind into the dark zone wherein it loses itself.
Or was Ynys the vain dreamer? That, indeed, might well be, and she
with child, and ever a visionary. Mayhap she had heard some fantastic
tale from Morag MacNeill or from old Marsail Macrae; the islanders had
_sgeul_ after _sgeul_ of a wild strangeness.
In silence he guided the boats back into the outer arcade, where a
faint sheen of moonlight glistered on the water. Thence, in a few
minutes, he oared that wherein he and Ynys sat, with the other fastened
astern, into the open.
When the moonshine lay full on her face, he saw that she was thinking
neither of him nor of where she was. Her eyes were heavy with dream.
What wind there was blew against their course, so Alan rowed
unceasingly. In silence they passed once again the headland of Aoidhu;
in silence they drifted past a single light gleaming in a croft near
Aonaig--a red eye staring out into the shadow of the sea, from the
room where the woman Marsail lay dying; and in silence their keels
grided on the patch of shingle in Caisteal-Rhona haven.
But when, once more, Alan found himself with Ynys in the safe quietudes
of the haven, he pressed her eagerly to give him some clear description
of the figure she had seen.
Ynys, however, had become strangely reticent. All he could elicit from
her was that the man whom she had seen bore no resemblance to him,
except in so far as he was fair. He was taller, slimmer, and seemed
older.
He thought it wiser not to speak to her on what he himself had seen, or
concerning his conviction that it was the same mysterious stranger who
had appeared to both.