THE MESSAGE
For days thereafter Alan haunted that rocky, cavernous wilderness where
he had seen the Herdsman.
It was in vain he had everywhere sought to find word of this mysterious
dweller in those upland solitudes. At times he believed that there was
indeed some one upon the island of whom, for inexplicable reasons, none
there would speak; but at last he came to the conviction that what he
had seen was an apparition, projected by the fantasy of overwrought
nerves. Even from the woman, Morag MacNeill, to whom he had gone with
a frank appeal that won its way to her heart, he learned no more than
that an old legend, of which she did not care to speak, was in some way
associated with his own coming to Rona.
Ynys, too, never once alluded to the mysterious incident of the green
arcades which had so deeply impressed them both; never, that is,
after the ensuing day which followed, when, simply and spontaneously,
she told Alan that she believed that she had seen a vision. When he
reminded her that she had been convinced of its reality, Ynys answered
that for days past she had been dreaming a strange dream, and that
doubtless this had possessed her so that her nerves played her false,
in that remote and shadowy place. What this dream was she would not
confide, nor did he press her.
But as the days went by and as no word came to either of any unknown
person who was on the island, and as Alan, for all his patient
wandering and furtive quest, both among the upland caves and in the
green arcades, found absolutely no traces of him whom he sought, the
belief that he had been duped by his imagination deepened almost to
conviction.
As for Ynys, day after day, soft veils of dream obscured the bare
realities of life. But she, unlike Alan, became more and more convinced
that what she had seen was indeed no apparition. Whatever lingering
doubt she had was dissipated on the eve of the night when old Marsail
Macrae died. It was dusk when word came to Caisteal-Rhona that Marsail
felt the cold wind on the soles of her feet. Ynys went to her at once,
and it was in the dark hour which followed that she heard once more and
more fully the strange story which, like a poisonous weed, had taken
root in the minds of the islanders. Already from Marsail she had heard
of the Prophet, though, strangely enough, she had never breathed word
of this to Alan, not even when, after the startling episode of the
apparition in the Teampull-Mhara, she had, as she believed, seen the
Prophet himself. But there in the darkness of the low, turfed cottage,
with no light in the room save the dull red gloom from the heart of the
smoored peats, Marsail, in the attenuated, remote voice of those who
have already entered into the vale of the shadow, told her this thing.
* * * * *
"Yes, Ynys, wife of Alan MacAlasdair, I will be telling you this
thing before I change. You are for knowing, sure, that long ago
Uilleam, brother of him who was father to your man, had a son? Yes,
you know that, you say, and also that he was called Donnacha Bàn?
No, mo-run-geal, that is not a true thing that you have heard, that
Donnacha Bàn went under the wave years ago. He was the seventh son,
and was born under the full moon; 'tis Himself will be knowing whether
that was for or against him. Of these seven none lived beyond childhood
except the two youngest, Kenneth and Donnacha. Kenneth was always frail
as a February flower, but he lived to be a man. He and his brother
never spoke, for a feud was between them, not only because that each
was unlike the other and that the younger hated the older because thus
he was the penniless one--but most because both loved the same woman.
I will not be telling you the whole story now, for the breath in my
body will soon blow out in the draught that is coming upon me; but
this I will say to you: darker and darker grew the gloom between these
brothers. When Kirsteen Macdonald gave her love to Kenneth, Donnacha
disappeared for a time. Then, one day, he came back to Borosay, and
smiled quietly with his cold eyes when they wondered at his coming
again. Now, too, it was noticed that he no longer had an ill-will
upon his brother, but spoke smoothly with him and loved to be in his
company. But, to this day, no one knows for sure what happened. For
there was a gloaming when Donnacha Bàn came back alone, in his sailing
boat. He and Kenneth had sailed forth, he said, to shoot seals in the
sea arcades to the west of Rona; but in these dark and lonely passages,
they had missed each other. At last he had heard Kenneth's voice
calling for help, but when he had got to the place, it was too late,
for his brother had been seized with the cramps, and had sunk deep into
the fathomless water. There is no getting a body again that sinks in
these sea galleries. The crabs know that.
"Well, this and much more was what Donnacha Bàn told to his people.
None believed him; but what could any do? There was no proof; none had
ever seen them enter the sea caves together. Not that Donnacha Bàn
sought in any way to keep back those who would fain know more. Not
so; he strove to help to find the body. Nevertheless, none believed;
and Kirsteen nic Dugall Mòr least of all. The blight of that sorrow
went to her heart. She had death soon, poor thing! but before the cold
grayness was upon her, she told her father, and the minister that was
there, that she knew Donnacha Bàn had murdered his brother. One might
be saying these were the wild words of a woman; but, for sure, no one
said that thing upon Borosay or Rona, or any of these isles. When all
was done, the minister told what he knew, and what he thought, to the
Lord of the South Isles, and asked what was to be put upon Donnacha
Bàn. 'Exile forever,' said the Chief, 'or if he stays here, the doom of
silence. Let no man or woman speak to him or give him food or drink; or
give him shelter, or let his shadow cross his or hers.'
"When this thing was told to Donnacha Bàn Carmichael, he laughed at
first; but as day slid over the rocks where all days fall, he laughed
no more. Soon he saw that the Chief's word was no empty word; and
yet he would not go away from his own place. He could not stay upon
Borosay, for his father cursed him; and no man can stay upon the
island where a father's curse moves this way and that, forever seeking
him. Then, some say a madness came upon him, and others that he took
wildness to be his way, and others that God put upon him the shadow of
loneliness, so that he might meet sorrow there and repent. Howsoever
that may be, Donnacha Bàn came to Rona, and, by the same token, it
was the year of the great blight, when the potatoes and the corn came
to naught, and when the fish in the sea swam away from the isles.
In the autumn of that year there was not a soul left on Rona except
Kirsten Macdonald and the old man Ian, her father, who had guard of
Caisteal-Rhona for him who was absent. When, once more, smoke rose
from the crofts, the rumor spread that Donnacha Bàn, the murderer, had
made his home among the caves of the upper part of the isle. None knew
how this rumor rose, for he was seen of none. The last man who saw
him--and that was a year later--was old Padruic McVurich, the shepherd.
Padruic said that, as he was driving his ewes across the north slope of
Ben Einaval in the gloaming, he came upon a silent figure seated upon a
rock, with his chin in his hands, and his elbows on his knees--with the
great, sad eyes of him staring at the moon that was lifting itself out
of the sea. Padruic did not know who the man was. The shepherd had few
wits, poor man! and he had known, or remembered, little about the story
of Donnacha Bàn Carmichael, so, when he spoke to the man, it was as to
a stranger. The man looked at him and said:
"'You are Padruic McVurich, the shepherd.'
"At that a trembling was upon old Padruic, who had the wonder that this
stranger should know who and what he was.
"'And who will you be, and forgive the saying?' he asked.
"'_Am Faidh_--the Prophet,' the man said.
"'And what prophet will you be, and what is your prophecy?' asked
Padruic.
"'I am here because I wait for what is to be, and that will be for the
birth of a child that is to be a king.'
"And with that the man said no more, and the old shepherd went silently
down through the hillside gloaming, and, heavy with the thoughts that
troubled him, followed his ewes down into Aonaig. But after that
neither he nor any other saw or heard aught of the shadowy stranger;
so that all upon Rona felt sure that Padruic had beheld no more than a
vision. There were some who thought that he had seen the ghost of the
outlaw Donnacha Bàn; and mayhap one or two who wondered if the stranger
that had said he was a prophet was not Donnacha Bàn himself, with a
madness come upon him; but at last these rumors went out to sea upon
the wind, and men forgot. But, and it was months and months afterward,
and three days before his own death, old Padruic McVurich was sitting
in the sunset on the rocky ledge in front of his brother's croft,
where then he was staying, when he heard a strange crying of seals. He
thought little of that; only, when he looked closer, he saw, in the
hollow of the wave hard by that ledge, a drifting body.
"_Am Faidh--Am Faidh!_" he cried; "the Prophet, the Prophet!"
At that his brother and his brother's wife ran to see; but it was
nothing that they saw. "It would be a seal," said Pol McVurich; but at
that Padruic had shook his head, and said no, for sure, he had seen
the face of the dead man, and it was of him whom he had met on the
hillside, and that had said he was the Prophet who was waiting there
for the birth of a king.
"And that is how there came about the echo of the thought, that
Donnacha Bàn had at last, after his madness, gone under the green wave
and was dead. For all that, in the months which followed, more than one
man said he had caught a glimpse of a figure high up on the hill. The
old wisdom says that when Christ comes again, or the Prophet who will
herald Christ, it will be as a herdsman on a lonely isle. More than
one of the old people on Rona and Borosay remembered that _sgeul_ out
of the _seanachas_ that the tale-tellers knew. There were some who
said that Donnacha Bàn had never been drowned at all, and that he was
this Prophet, this Herdsman. Others would not have that saying at all,
but believed that the mysterious herdsman was indeed Am Buchaille Bàn,
the Fair-haired Shepherd, who had come again to redeem the people out
of their sorrow. There were even those who said that the Herdsman who
haunted Rona was no other than Kenneth Carmichael himself, who had not
died, but had had the mind-dark there in the sea caves where he had
been lost, and there had come to the knowledge of secret things, and so
was at last _Am Faidh Chriosd_."
* * * * *
A great weakness came upon the old woman when she had spoken thus
far. Ynys feared that she would have breath for no further word, but
after a thin gasping, and a listless fluttering of weak hands upon
the coverlet, whereon her trembling fingers plucked aimlessly at the
invisible blossoms of death, she opened her eyes once more and stared
in a dim questioning at her who sat by her bedside.
"Tell me," whispered Ynys, "tell me, Marsail, what thought it is that
is in your own mind?"
But already the old woman had begun to wander, though Ynys did not know
this.
"For sure, for sure," she muttered, "_Am Faidh_ ... _Am Faidh_ ... an'
a child will be born ... an' a king he will be, an' ... that will be
the voice of Domhuill, my husband, I am hearing ... an' dark it is, an'
the tide comin' in ... an'----"
Then, sure, the tide came in, and if in that darkness old Marsail
Macrae heard any voice at all, it was that of Domhuill who years agone
had sunk into the wild seas off the head of Barra.
An hour later, with tears still in her eyes, Ynys walked slowly home
through the cloudy night. All she had heard came back to her with a
strange familiarity. Something of this, at least, she had known before.
Some hints of this mysterious Herdsman had reached her ears. In some
inexplicable way his real or imaginary presence there upon Rona seemed
a preordained thing for her. All that dreaming mysticism, which had
wrought so much of beauty and wonder into her girlhood in Brittany,
had expanded into a strange flower of the imagination--a flower whose
subtle fragrance affected her inward life. Sometimes she had wondered
if all the tragic vicissitudes which happened at Kerival, with the
strange and dreamlike life which she and Alan had led since, had so
wrought upon her that the unreal became real, and the actual merely
phantasmal; for now she felt more than ever assured that some hidden
destiny had controlled all this disastrous mischance, had led her and
Alan there to that lonely island.
She knew that the wild imaginings of the islanders had woven the legend
of the Prophet, or at any rate of his message, out of the loom of the
longing and the deep nostalgia whereon is woven that larger tapestry,
the shadow-thridden life of the island Gael. Laughter and tears,
ordinary hopes and pleasures, and even joy itself, and bright gayety,
and the swift, spontaneous imagination of susceptible natures--all
this, of course, is to be found with the island Gael as with his
fellows elsewhere. But every here and there are some who have in
their minds the inheritance from the dim past of their race, and are
oppressed as no other people are oppressed by the gloom of a strife
between spiritual emotion and material facts. It is the brains of
dreamers such as these which clear the mental life of the community;
and it is in these brains are the mysterious looms which weave the
tragic and sorrowful tapestries of Celtic thought. It were a madness
to suppose that life in the isles consists of nothing but sadness or
melancholy. It is not so, or need not be so, for the Gael is a creature
of shadow and shine. But whatever the people is, the brain of the Gael
hears a music that is sadder than any music there is, and has for its
cloudy sky a gloom that shall not go, for the end is near, and upon the
westernmost shores of these remote isles, the Voice--as has been truly
said by one who has beautifully interpreted his own people--the Voice
of Celtic Sorrow may be heard crying, "_Cha till, cha till, cha till mi
tuille_"--I will return, I will return, I will return no more.
Ynys knew all this well; and yet she too dreamed her Celtic
dream--that, even yet, there might be redemption for the people. She
did not share the wild hope which some of the older islanders held,
that Christ himself shall come again to redeem an oppressed race; but
might not another saviour arise, another redeeming spirit come into the
world? And if so, might not that child of joy be born out of suffering
and sorrow and crime; and if so, might not that child be born of her?
With startled eyes she crossed the thyme-set ledge whereon stood
Caisteal-Rhona. Was it, after all, a message she had received from him
who appeared to her in that lonely cavern of the sea; was he indeed _Am
Faidh_, the mysterious Prophet of the isles?