'There is a distant isle
Around which sea horses glisten,
A fair course against the white swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.'
'Feet of white bronze under it.'
'White bronze, what's that, eh?' asked the practical Mr. Macrae.
'Glittering through beautiful ages!
Lovely land through the world's age,
On which the white blossoms drop.'
'Beautiful!' said Miss Macrae.
'There are twenty-six more quatrains,' said Merton.
The bard went on,
'A beautiful game, most delightful
They play--'
'Ping-pong?' murmured Merton.
'Hush!' said Lady Bude.
Miss Macrae turned to the poet.
'They play, sitting at the luxurious wine,
Men and gentle women under a bush,
Without sin, without crime.'
'They are playing still,' Blake added. 'Unbeheld, undisturbed! I verily
believe there is no Gael even now who would not in his heart of hearts
let drift by him the Elysiums of Virgil, Dante, and Milton, to grasp at
the Moy Mell, the Apple Isle, of the unknown Irish pagan! And then to
play sitting at the luxurious wine,
'Men and gentle women under a bush!'
'It really cannot have been ping-pong that they played at, _sitting_.
Bridge, more likely,' said Merton. 'And "good wine needs no bush!"'
The bard moved away, accompanied by his young hostess, who resented
Merton's cynicism
'Tell me more of that lovely poem, Mr. Blake,' she said.
'I am jangled and out of tune,' said Blake wildly. 'The Sassenach is my
torture! Let me take your hand, it is cool as the hands of the
foam-footed maidens of--of--what's the name of the place?'
'Was it Clonmell?' asked Miss Macrae, letting him take her hand.
He pressed it against his burning brow.
'Though you laugh at me,' said Blake, 'sometimes you are kind! I am
upset--I hardly know myself. What is yonder shape skirting the lawn? Is
it the Daoine Sidh?'
'Why do you call her "the downy she"? She is no more artful than other
people. She is my maid, Elspeth Mackay,' answered Miss Macrae, puzzled.
They were alone, separated from the others by the breadth of the roof.
'I said the _Daoine Sidh_,' replied the poet, spelling the words. 'It
means the People of Peace.'
'Quakers?'
'No, the fairies,' groaned the misunderstood bard. 'Do you know nothing
of your ancestral tongue? Do you call yourself a Gael?'
'Of course I call myself a girl,' answered Miss Macrae. 'Do you want me
to call myself a young lady?'
The poet sighed. 'I thought _you_ understood me,' he said. 'Ah, how to
escape, how to reach the undiscovered West!'
'But Columbus discovered it,' said Miss Macrae.
'The undiscovered West of the Celtic heart's desire,' explained the bard;
'the West below the waters! Thither could we twain sail in the magic
boat of Bran! Ah see, the sky opens like a flower!'
Indeed, there was a sudden glow of summer lightning.
'That looks more like rain,' said Merton, who was standing with the Budes
at an opposite corner of the roof.
'I say, Merton,' asked Bude, 'how can you be so uncivil to that man? He
took it very well.'
'A rotter,' said Merton. 'He has just got that stuff by heart, the verse
and a lot of the prose, out of a book that I brought down myself, and
left in the smoking-room. I can show you the place if you like.'
'Do, Mr. Merton. But how foolish you are! _do_ be civil to the man,'
whispered Lady Bude, who shared his disbelief in Blake; and at that
moment the tinkle of an electric bell in the smoking-room below reached
the expectant ears of Mr. Macrae.
'Come down, all of you,' he said. 'The wireless telegraphy is at work.'
He waited till they were all in the smoking-room, and feverishly examined
the tape.
'Escape of De Wet,' he read. 'Disasters to the Imperial Yeomanry. Strike
of Cigarette Makers. Great Fire at Hackney.'
'There!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'We might have gone to bed in
London, and not known all that till we got the morning papers to-morrow.
And here we are fifty miles from a railway station or a telegraph
office--no, we're nearer Inchnadampf.'
'Would that I were in the Isle of Apples, Mell Moy, far, far from
civilisation!' said Blake.
"There shall be no grief there or sorrow," so sings the minstrel of _The
Wooing of Etain_.
"Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with
me then, fair lady," Merton read out from the book he had been speaking
of to the Budes.
'Jolly place, the Celtic Paradise! Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of ale
and new milk. _Quel luxe_!'
'Is that the kind of entertainment you were offering me, Mr. Blake?'
asked Miss Macrae gaily. 'Mr. Blake,' she went on, 'has been inviting me
to fly to the undiscovered West beneath the waters, in the magic boat of
Bran.'
'Did Bran invent the submarine?' asked Mr. Macrae, and then the company
saw what they had never seen before, the bard blushing. He seemed so
discomposed that Miss Macrae took compassion on him.
'Never mind my father, Mr. Blake,' she said, 'he is a very good
Highlander, and believes in Eachain of the Hairy Arm as much as the
crofters do. Have you heard of Eachain, Mr. Blake? He is a spectre in
full Highland costume, attached to our clan. When we came here first, to
look round, we had only horses hired from Edinburgh, and a Lowlander--mark
you, a _Lowlander_--to drive. He was in the stable one afternoon--the
old stable, we have pulled it down--when suddenly the horses began to
kick and rear. He looked round to the open door, and there stood a huge
Highlander in our tartans, with musket, pistols, claymore, dirk, skian,
and all, and soft brogues of untanned leather on his feet. The coachman,
in a panic, made a blind rush at the figure, but behold, there was
nobody, and a boy outside had seen no man. The horses were trembling and
foaming. Now it was a Lowlander from Teviotdale that saw the man, and
the crofters were delighted. They said the figure was the chief that
fell at Culloden, come to welcome us back. So you must not despair of
us, Mr. Blake, and you, that have "the sight," may see Eachain yourself,
who knows?'
This happy turn of the conversation exactly suited Blake. He began to be
very amusing about magic, and brownies, and 'the downy she,' as Miss
Macrae called the People of Peace. The ladies presently declared that
they were afraid to go to bed; so they went, Miss Macrae indicating her
displeasure to Merton by the coldness of her demeanour.
The men, who were rather dashed by the pleasant intelligence which the
telegraph had communicated, sat up smoking for a while, and then retired
in a subdued state of mind.
Next morning, which was Sunday, Merton appeared rather late at breakfast,
late and pallid. After a snatch of disturbed slumber, he had wakened, or
seemed to waken, fretting a good deal over the rusticity of his bearing
towards Blake, and over his hopeless affair of the heart. He had vexed
his lady. 'If he is good enough for his hosts, he ought to be good
enough for their guests,' thought Merton. 'What a brute, what a fool I
am; I ought to go. I will go! I ought not to take coffee after dinner,
I know I ought not, and I smoke too much,' he added, and finally he went
to breathe the air on the roof.
The night was deadly soft and still, a slight mist hid the furthest
verges of the sea's horizon. Behind it, the summer lightning seemed like
portals that opened and shut in the heavens, revealing a glory without
form, and closing again.
'I don't wonder that these Irish poets dreamed of Isles of Paradise out
there:
'Lands undiscoverable in the unheard-of West,
Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea
Runs without wind for ever.'
thought Merton. 'Chicago is the realisation of their dream. Hullo,
there are the lights of a big steamer, and a very low one behind it!
Queer craft!'
Merton watched the lights that crossed the sea, when either the haze
deepened or the fainter light on the smaller vessel vanished, and the
larger ship steamed on in a southerly direction. 'Magic boat of Bran!'
thought Merton. He turned and entered the staircase to go back to his
room. There was a lift, of course, but, equally of course, there was
nobody to manage it. Merton, who had a lighted bedroom-candle in his
hand, descended the spiral staircase; at a turning he thought he saw,
'with the tail of his eye,' a plaid, draping a tall figure of a
Highlander, disappear round the corner. Nobody in the castle wore the
kilt except the piper, and he had not rooms in the observatory. Merton
ran down as fast as he could, but he did not catch another view of the
plaid and its wearer, or hear any footsteps. He went to the bottom of
the staircase, opened the outer door, and looked forth. Nobody! The
electric light from the open door of his own room blazed across the
landing on his return. All was perfectly still, and Merton remembered
that he had not heard the footsteps of the appearance. 'Was it Eachain?'
he asked himself. 'Do I sleep, do I dream?'
He went back to bed and slumbered uneasily. He seemed to be awake in his
room, in broad light, and to hear a slow drip, drip, on the floor. He
looked up; the roof was stained with a great dark splash of a crimson
hue. He got out of bed, and touched the wet spot on the floor under the
blotch on the ceiling.
His fingers were reddened with blood! He woke at the horror of it: found
himself in bed in the dark, pressed an electric knob, and looked at the
ceiling. It was dry and white. 'I certainly have been smoking too much
lately,' thought Merton, and, switching off the light, he slumbered
again, so soundly that he did not hear the piper playing round the house,
or the man who brought his clothes and hot water, or the gong for
breakfast.
When he did wake, he was surprised at the lateness of the hour, and
dressed as rapidly as possible. 'I wonder if I was dreaming when I
thought that I went out on the roof, and saw mountains and marvels,' said
Merton to himself. 'A queer thing, the human mind,' he reflected sagely.
It occurred to him to enter the smoking-room on his way downstairs. He
routed two maids who perhaps had slept too late, and were hurriedly
making the room tidy. The sun was beating in at the window, and Merton
noticed some tiny glittering points of white metallic light on the carpet
near the new telegraphic apparatus. 'I don't believe these lazy Highland
Maries have swept the room properly since the electric machine was put
up,' Merton thought. He hastily seized, and took to his chamber, his
book on old Irish literature, which was too clearly part of Blake's
Celtic inspiration. Merton wanted no more quatrains, but he did mean to
try to be civil. He then joined the party at breakfast; he admitted that
he had slept ill, but, when asked by Blake, disclaimed having seen
Eachain of the Hairy Arm, and did not bore or bewilder the company with
his dreams.
Miss Macrae, in sabbatical raiment, was fresher than a rose and gay as a
lark. Merton tried not to look at her; he failed in this endeavour.