A childish illness brought Colin to Kinlochuna when he had reached the
mature age of five, and delicate health kept him there for the greater
part of the next six years. During the winter he lived in London, but
from the late northern spring, through all the long bright summers, he
lived in the great tenantless place without company--for he was an only
child. A French nurse had the charge of his doings, and when he had
passed through the formality of lessons there were the long pinewoods at
his disposal, the rough moor, the wonderful black holes with the rich
black mud in them, and best of all the bay of Acharra, below the
headland, with Cuna lying in the waves a mile to the west. At such times
his father was busy elsewhere; his mother was dead; the family had few
near relatives; so he passed a solitary childhood in the company of
seagulls and the birds of the moor.
His time for the beach was the afternoon. On the left as you go down
through the woods from the house there runs out the great headland of
Acharra, red and grey with mosses, and with a nimbus always of screaming
seafowl. To the right runs a low beach of sand, passing into rough
limestone boulders and then into the heather of the wood. This in turn
is bounded by a reef of low rocks falling by gentle breaks to the
water's edge. It is crowned with a tangle of heath and fern, bright at
most seasons with flowers, and dwarf pine-trees straggle on its crest
till one sees the meaning of its Gaelic name, "The Ragged Cock's-Comb."
This place was Colin's playground in fine weather. When it blew rain or
snow from the north he dwelt indoors among dogs and books, puzzling his
way through great volumes from his father's shelves. But when the mild
west-wind weather fell on the sea, then he would lie on the hot
sand--Amèlie the nurse reading a novel on the nearest rock--and kick his
small heels as he followed his fancy. He built great sand castles to the
shape of Acharra old tower, and peopled them with preposterous knights
and ladies; he drew great moats and rivers for the tide to fill; he
fought battles innumerable with crackling seaweed, till Amèlie, with her
sharp cry of "Colín, Colín," would carry him houseward for tea.
Two fancies remained in his mind through those boyish years. One was
about the mysterious shining sea before him. In certain weathers it
seemed to him a solid pathway. Cuna, the little ragged isle, ceased to
block the horizon, and his own white road ran away down into the west,
till suddenly it stopped and he saw no farther. He knew he ought to see
more, but always at one place, just when his thoughts were pacing the
white road most gallantly, there came a baffling mist to his sight, and
he found himself looking at a commonplace sea with Cuna lying very real
and palpable in the offing. It was a vexatious limitation, for all his
dreams were about this pathway. One day in June, when the waters slept
in a deep heat, he came down the sands barefoot, and lo! there was his
pathway. For one moment things seemed clear, the mist had not gathered
on the road, and with a cry he ran down to the tide's edge and waded in.
The touch of water dispelled the illusion, and almost in tears he saw
the cruel back of Cuna blotting out his own magic way.
The other fancy was about the low ridge of rocks which bounded the bay
on the right. His walks had never extended beyond it, either on the
sands or inland, for that way lay a steep hillside and a perilous bog.
But often on the sands he had come to its foot and wondered what country
lay beyond. He made many efforts to explore it, difficult efforts, for
the vigilant Amèlie had first to be avoided. Once he was almost at the
top when some seaweed to which he clung gave way, and he rolled back
again to the soft warm sand. By-and-by he found that he knew what was
beyond. A clear picture had built itself up in his brain of a mile of
reefs, with sand in bars between them, and beyond all a sea-wood of
alders slipping from the hill's skirts to the water's edge. This was not
what he wanted in his explorations, so he stopped, till one day it
struck him that the westward view might reveal something beyond the
hogbacked Cuna. One day, pioneering alone, he scaled the steepest
heights of the sea-weed and pulled his chin over the crest of the ridge.
There, sure enough, was his picture--a mile of reefs and the tattered
sea-wood. He turned eagerly seawards. Cuna still lay humped on the
waters, but beyond it he seemed to see his shining pathway running far
to a speck which might be an island. Crazy with pleasure he stared at
the vision, till slowly it melted into the waves, and Cuna the
inexorable once more blocked the skyline. He climbed down, his heart in
a doubt between despondency and hope.
It was the last day of such fancies, for on the morrow he had to face
the new world of school.
* * * * * * *
At Cecil's Colin found a new life and a thousand new interests. His
early delicacy had been driven away by the sea-winds of Acharra, and he
was rapidly growing up a tall, strong child, straight of limb like all
his house, but sinewy and alert beyond his years. He learned new games
with astonishing facility, became a fast bowler with a genius for
twists, and a Rugby three-quarters full of pluck and cunning. He soon
attained to the modified popularity of a private school, and, being
essentially clean, strong, and healthy, found himself a mark for his
juniors' worship and a favourite with masters. The homage did not spoil
him, for no boy was ever less self-possessed. On the cricket-ground and
the football-field he was a leader, but in private he had the nervous,
sensitive manners of the would-be recluse. No one ever accused him of
"side"--his polite, halting address was the same to junior and senior;
and the result was that wild affection which simplicity in the great is
wont to inspire. He spoke with a pure accent, in which lurked no
northern trace; in a little he had forgotten all about his birthplace
and his origin. His name had at first acquired for him the sobriquet of
"Scottie," but the title was soon dropped from its manifest inaptness.
In his second year at Cecil's he caught a prevalent fever, and for days
lay very near the brink of death. At his worst he was wildly delirious,
crying ceaselessly for Acharra and the beach at Kinlochuna. But as he
grew convalescent the absorption remained, and for the moment he seemed
to have forgotten his southern life. He found himself playing on the
sands, always with the boundary ridge before him, and the hump of Cuna
rising in the sea. When dragged back to his environment by the inquiries
of Bellew, his special friend, who came to sit with him, he was so
abstracted and forgetful that the good Bellew was seriously grieved.
"The chap's a bit cracked, you know," he announced in hall. "Didn't know
me. Asked me what 'footer' meant when I told him about the Bayswick
match, and talked about nothing but a lot of heathen Scotch names."
One dream haunted Colin throughout the days of his recovery. He was
tormented with a furious thirst, poorly assuaged at long intervals by
watered milk. So when he crossed the borders of dreamland his first
search was always for a well. He tried the brushwood inland from the
beach, but it was dry as stone. Then he climbed with difficulty the
boundary ridge, and found little pools of salt water, while far on the
other side gleamed the dark black bog-holes. Here was not what he
sought, and he was in deep despair, till suddenly over the sea he caught
a glimpse of his old path running beyond Cuna to a bank of mist. He
rushed down to the tide's edge, and to his amazement found solid ground.
Now was the chance for which he had long looked, and he ran happily
westwards, till of a sudden the solid earth seemed to sink with him,
and he was in the waters struggling. But two curious things he noted.
One was that the far bank of mist seemed to open for a pin-point of
time, and he had a gleam of land. He saw nothing distinctly, only a line
which was not mist and was not water. The second was that the water was
fresh, and as he was drinking from this curious new fresh sea he awoke.
The dream was repeated three times before he left the sick-room. Always
he wakened at the same place, always he quenched his thirst in the fresh
sea, but never again did the mist open for him and show him the strange
country.
* * * * * * *
From Cecil's he went to the famous school which was the tradition in his
family. The Head spoke to his house-master of his coming. "We are to
have another Raden here," he said, "and I am glad of it, if the young
one turns out to be anything like the others. There's a good deal of
dry-rot among the boys just now. They are all too old for their years
and too wise in the wrong way. They haven't anything like the enthusiasm
in games they had twenty years ago when I first came here. I hope this
young Raden will stir them up." The house-master agreed, and when he
first caught sight of Colin's slim, well-knit figure, looked into the
handsome kindly eyes, and heard his curiously diffident speech, his
doubts vanished. "We have got the right stuff now," he told himself, and
the senior for whom the new boy fagged made the same comment.
From the anomalous insignificance of fagdom Colin climbed up the School,
leaving everywhere a record of honest good-nature. He was allowed to
forget his cricket and football, but in return he was initiated into the
mysteries of the river. Water had always been his delight, so he went
through the dreary preliminaries of being coached in a tub-pair till he
learned to swing steadily and get his arms quickly forward. Then came
the stages of scratch fours and scratch eights, till after a long
apprenticeship he was promoted to the dignity of a thwart in the Eight
itself. In his last year he was Captain of Boats, a position which joins
the responsibility of a Cabinet Minister to the rapturous popular
applause of a successful warrior. Nor was he the least distinguished of
a great band. With Colin at seven the School won the Ladies' after the
closest race on record.
The Head's prophecy fell true, for Colin was a born leader. For all his
good-humour and diffidence of speech, he had a trick of shutting his
teeth which all respected. As captain he was the idol of the school, and
he ruled it well and justly. For the rest, he was a curious boy with
none of the ordinary young enthusiasms, reserved for all his kindliness.
At house "shouters" his was not the voice which led the stirring strains
of "Stroke out all you know," though his position demanded it. He cared
little about work, and the School-house scholar, who fancied him from
his manner a devotee of things intellectual, found in Colin but an
affected interest. He read a certain amount of modern poetry with
considerable boredom; fiction he never opened. The truth was that he had
a romance in his own brain which, willy nilly, would play itself out,
and which left him small relish for the pale second-hand inanities of
art. Often, when with others he would lie in the deep meadows by the
river on some hot summer's day, his fancies would take a curious colour.
He adored the soft English landscape, the lush grasses, the slow
streams, the ancient secular trees. But as he looked into the hazy green
distance a colder air would blow on his cheek, a pungent smell of salt
and pines would be for a moment in his nostrils, and he would be gazing
at a line of waves on a beach, a ridge of low rocks, and a shining
sea-path running out to--ah, that he could not tell! The envious Cuna
would suddenly block all the vistas. He had constantly the vision before
his eyes, and he strove to strain into the distance before Cuna should
intervene. Once or twice he seemed almost to achieve it. He found that
by keeping on the top of the low rock-ridge he could cheat Cuna by a
second or two, and get a glimpse of a misty something out in the west.
The vision took odd times for recurring,--once or twice in lecture, once
on the cricket-ground, many times in the fields of a Sunday, and once
while he paddled down to the start in a Trials race. It gave him a keen
pleasure: it was his private domain, where at any moment he might make
some enchanting discovery.
At this time he began to spend his vacations at Kinlochuna. His father,
an elderly ex-diplomat, had permanently taken up his abode there, and
was rapidly settling into the easy life of the Scots laird. Colin
returned to his native place without enthusiasm. His childhood there had
been full of lonely hours, and he had come to like the warm south
country. He found the house full of people, for his father entertained
hugely, and the talk was of sport and sport alone. As a rule, your very
great athlete is bored by Scots shooting. Long hours of tramping and
crouching among heather cramp without fully exercising the body; and
unless he has the love of the thing ingrained in him, the odds are that
he will wish himself home. The father, in his new-found admiration for
his lot, was content to face all weathers; the son found it an effort to
keep pace with such vigour. He thought upon the sunlit fields and reedy
watercourses with regret, and saw little in the hills but a rough waste
scarred with rock and sour with mosses.
He read widely throughout these days, for his father had a taste for
modern letters, and new books lay littered about the rooms. He read
queer Celtic tales which he thought "sickening rot," and mild Celtic
poetry which he failed to understand. Among the guests was a noted
manufacturer of fiction, whom the elder Raden had met somewhere and
bidden to Kinlochuna. He had heard the tale of Colin's ancestors and the
sea headland of Acharra, and one day he asked the boy to show him the
place, as he wished to make a story of it. Colin assented unwillingly,
for he had been slow to visit this place of memories, and he did not
care to make his first experiment in such company. But the gentleman
would not be gainsaid, so the two scrambled through the sea-wood and
climbed the low ridge which looked over the bay. The weather was mist
and drizzle; Cuna had wholly hidden herself, and the bluff Acharra
loomed hazy and far. Colin was oddly disappointed: this reality was a
poor place compared with his fancies. His companion stroked his peaked
beard, talked nonsense about Colin the Red and rhetoric about "the
spirit of the misty grey weather having entered into the old tale."
"Think," he cried; "to those old warriors beyond that bank of mist was
the whole desire of life, the Golden City, the Far Islands, whatever you
care to call it." Colin shivered, as if his holy places had been
profaned, set down the man in his mind most unjustly as an "awful little
cad," and hurried him back to the house.
* * * * * * *
Oxford received the boy with open arms, for his reputation had long
preceded him. To the majority of men he was the one freshman of his
year, and gossip was busy with his prospects. Nor was gossip
disappointed. In his first year he rowed seven in the Eight. The next
year he was captain of his college boats, and a year later the O.U.B.C.
made him its president. For three years he rowed in the winning Eight,
and old coaches agreed that in him the perfect seven had been found. It
was he who in the famous race of 18-- caught up in the last three
hundred yards the quickened stroke which gave Oxford victory. As he grew
to his full strength he became a splendid figure of a man--tall, supple,
deep-chested for all his elegance. His quick dark eyes and his kindly
hesitating manners made people think his face extraordinarily handsome,
when really it was in no way above the common. But his whole figure, as
he stood in his shorts and sweater on the raft at Putney, was so full of
youth and strength that people involuntarily smiled when they saw him--a
smile of pleasure in so proper a piece of manhood.
Colin enjoyed life hugely at Oxford, for to one so frank and well
equipped the place gave of its best. He was the most distinguished
personage of his day there, but, save to school friends and the men he
met officially on the river, he was little known. His diffidence and his
very real exclusiveness kept him from being the centre of a host of
friends. His own countrymen in the place were utterly nonplussed by him.
They claimed him eagerly as a fellow, but he had none of the ordinary
characteristics of the race. There were Scots of every description
around him--pale-faced Scots who worked incessantly, metaphysical Scots
who talked in the Union, robustious Scots who played football. They were
all men of hearty manners and many enthusiasms,--who quoted Burns and
dined to the immortal bard's honour every 25th of January; who told
interminable Scotch stories, and fell into fervours over national
sports, dishes, drinks, and religions. To the poor Colin it was all
inexplicable. At the remote house of Kinlochuna he had never heard of a
Free Kirk or a haggis. He had never read a line of Burns, Scott bored
him exceedingly, and in all honesty he thought Scots games inferior to
southern sports. He had no great love for the bleak country, he cared
nothing for the traditions of his house, so he was promptly set down by
his compatriots as "denationalised and degenerate."
He was idle, too, during these years as far as his "schools" were
concerned, but he was always very intent upon his own private business.
Whenever he sat down to read, when he sprawled on the grass at river
picnics, in chapel, in lecture--in short, at any moment when his body
was at rest and his mind at leisure--his fancies were off on the same
old path. Things had changed, however, in that country. The boyish
device of a hard road running over the waters had gone, and now it was
invariably a boat which he saw beached on the shingle. It differed in
shape. At first it was an ugly salmon-coble, such as the fishermen used
for the nets at Kinlochuna. Then it passed, by rapid transitions,
through a canvas skiff which it took good watermanship to sit, a whiff,
an ordinary dinghey, till at last it settled itself into a long rough
boat, pointed at both ends, with oar-holes in the sides instead of
row-locks. It was the devil's own business to launch it, and launch it
anew he was compelled to for every journey; for though he left it bound
in a little rock hollow below the ridge after landing, yet when he
returned, lo! there was the clumsy thing high and dry upon the beach.
The odd point about the new venture was that Cuna had ceased to trouble
him. As soon as he had pulled his first stroke the island disappeared,
and nothing lay before him but the sea-fog. Yet, try as he might, he
could come little nearer. The shores behind him might sink and lessen,
but the impenetrable mist was still miles to the westward. Sometimes he
rowed so far that the shore was a thin line upon the horizon, but when
he turned the boat it seemed to ground in a second on the beach. The
long laboured journey out and the instantaneous return puzzled him at
first, but soon he became used to them. His one grief was the mist,
which seemed to grow denser as he neared it. The sudden glimpse of land
which he had got from the ridge of rock in the old boyish days was now
denied him, and with the denial came a keener exultation in the quest.
Somewhere in the west, he knew, must be land, and in this land a well of
sweet water--for so he had interpreted his feverish dream. Sometimes,
when the wind blew against him, he caught scents from it--generally the
scent of pines, as on the little ridge on the shore behind him.
One day on his college barge, while he was waiting for a picnic party to
start, he seemed to get nearer than before. Out on that western sea, as
he saw it, it was fresh, blowing weather, with a clear hot sky above. It
was hard work rowing, for the wind was against him, and the sun scorched
his forehead. The air seemed full of scents--and sounds, too, sounds of
far-away surf and wind in trees. He rested for a moment on his oars and
turned his head. His heart beat quickly, for there was a rift in the
mist, and far through a line of sand ringed with snow-white foam.
Somebody shook him roughly,--"Come on, Colin, old man. They're all
waiting for you. Do you know you've been half asleep?"
Colin rose and followed silently, with drowsy eyes. His mind was
curiously excited. He had looked inside the veil of mist. Now he knew
what was the land he sought.
* * * * * * *
He made the voyage often, now that the spell was broken. It was short
work to launch the boat, and, whereas it had been a long pull formerly,
now it needed only a few strokes to bring him to the Rim of the Mist.
There was no chance of getting farther, and he scarcely tried. He was
content to rest there, in a world of curious scents and sounds, till the
mist drew down and he was driven back to shore.
The change in his environment troubled him little. For a man who has
been an idol at the University to fall suddenly into the comparative
insignificance of Town is often a bitter experience; but Colin, whose
thoughts were not ambitious, scarcely noticed it. He found that he was
less his own master than before, but he humbled himself to his new
duties without complaint. Many of his old friends were about him; he had
plenty of acquaintances; and, being "sufficient unto himself," he was
unaccustomed to ennui. Invitations showered upon him thick and fast.
Match-making mothers, knowing his birth and his father's income, and
reflecting that he was the only child of his house, desired him as a
son-in-law. He was bidden welcome everywhere, and the young girls, for
whose sake he was thus courted, found in him an attractive mystery. The
tall good-looking athlete, with the kind eyes and the preposterously
nervous manner, wakened their maidenly sympathies. As they danced with
him or sat next to him at dinner, they talked fervently of Oxford, of
the north, of the army, of his friends. "Stupid, but nice, my dear," was
Lady Afflint's comment; and Miss Clara Etheridge, the beauty of the
year, declared to her friends that he was a "dear boy, but so awkward."
He was always forgetful, and ever apologetic; and when he forgot the
Shandwicks' theatre-party, the Herapaths' dance, and at least a dozen
minor matters, he began to acquire the reputation of a cynic and a
recluse.
"You're a queer chap, Col," Lieutenant Bellew said in expostulation.
Colin shrugged his shoulders; he was used to the description.
"Do you know that Clara Etheridge was trying all she knew to please you
this afternoon, and you looked as if you weren't listening? Most men
would have given their ears to be in your place."
"I'm awfully sorry, but I thought I was very polite to her."
"And why weren't you at the Marshams' show?"
"Oh, I went to polo with Collinson and another man. And, I say, old
chap, I'm not coming to the Logans to-morrow. I've got a fence on with
Adair at the school."
Little Bellew, who was a tremendous mirror of fashion and chevalier in
general, looked up curiously at his tall friend.
"Why don't you like the women, Col, when they're so fond of you?"
"They aren't," said Colin hotly, "and I don't dislike 'em. But, Lord!
they bore me. I might be doing twenty things when I talk nonsense to one
of 'em for an hour. I come back as stupid as an owl, and besides there's
heaps of things better sport."
The truth was that, while among men he was a leader and at his ease,
among women his psychic balance was so oddly upset that he grew nervous
and returned unhappy. The boat on the beach, ready in general to appear
at the slightest call, would delay long after such experiences, and its
place would be taken by some woman's face for which he cared not a
straw. For the boat, on the other hand, he cared a very great deal. In
all his frank wholesome existence there was this enchanting background,
this pleasure-garden which he cherished more than anything in life. He
had come of late to look at it with somewhat different eyes. The eager
desire to search behind the mist was ever with him, but now he had also
some curiosity about the details of the picture. As he pulled out to the
Rim of the Mist sounds seemed to shape themselves on his lips, which
by-and-by grew into actual words in his memory. He wrote them down in
scraps, and after some sorting they seemed to him a kind of Latin. He
remembered a college friend of his, one Medway, now reading for the Bar,
who had been the foremost scholar of his acquaintance; so with the scrap
of paper in his pocket he climbed one evening to Medway's rooms in the
Temple.
The man read the words curiously, and puzzled for a bit. "What's made
you take to Latin comps so late in life, Colin? It's baddish, you know,
even for you. I thought they'd have licked more into you at Eton."
Colin grinned with amusement. "I'll tell you about it later," he said.
"Can you make out what it means?"
"It seems to be a kind of dog-Latin or monkish Latin or something of the
sort," said Medway. "It reads like this: '_Soles occidere solent_'
(that's cribbed from Catullus, and besides it's the regular monkish pun)
... _qua_ ... then _blandula_ something. Then there's a lot of Choctaw,
and then _illæ insulæ dilectcæ in quas festinant somnia animulæ gaudia_.
That's pretty fair rot. Hullo, by George! here's something
better--_Insula pomorum insula vitæ_. That's Geoffrey of Monmouth."
He made a dive to a bookcase and pulled out a battered little calf-bound
duodecimo. "Here's all about your Isle of Apple-trees. Listen. 'Situate
far out in the Western ocean, beyond the Utmost Islands, beyond even the
little Isle of Sheep where the cairns of dead men are, lies the Island
of Apple-trees where the heroes and princes of the nations live their
second life.'" He closed the book and put it back. "It's the old
ancient story, the Greek Hesperides, the British Avilion, and this
Apple-tree Island is the northern equivalent."
Colin sat entranced, his memory busy with a problem. Could he
distinguish the scents of apple-trees among the perfumes of the Rim of
the Mist. For the moment he thought he could. He was roused by Medway's
voice asking the story of the writing.
"Oh, it's just some nonsense that was running in my head, so I wrote it
down to see what it was."
"But you must have been reading. A new exercise for you, Colin!"
"No, I wasn't reading. Look here. You know the sort of pictures you make
for yourself of places you like."
"Rather! Mine is a Yorkshire moor with a little red shooting-box in the
heart of it."
"Well, mine is different. Mine is a sort of beach with a sea and a lot
of islands somewhere far out. It is a jolly place, fresh, you know, and
blowing, and smells good. 'Pon my word, now I think of it, there's
always been a scent of apples."
"Sort of cider-press? Well, I must be off. You'd better come round to
the club and see the telegrams about the war. _You_ should be keen
about it."
One evening, a week later, Medway met a friend called Tillotson at the
club, and, being lonely, they dined together. Tillotson was a man of
some note in science, a dabbler in psychology, an amateur historian, a
ripe genealogist. They talked of politics and the war, of a new book, of
Mrs Runnymede, and finally of their hobbies.
"I am writing an article," said Tillotson. "Craikes asked me to do it
for the 'Monthly.' It's on a nice point in psychics. I call it 'The
Transmission of Fallacies,' but I do not mean the logical kind. The
question is, Can a particular form of hallucination run in a family for
generations? The proof must, of course, come from my genealogical
studies. I maintain it can. I instance the Douglas-Ernotts, not one of
whom can see straight with the left eye. That is one side. In another
class of examples I take the Drapiers, who hate salt water and never go
on board ship if they can help it. Then you remember the Durwards? Old
Lady Balcrynie used to tell me that no one of the lot could ever stand
the sight of a green frock. There's a chance for the romancer. The
Manor-waters have the same madness, only their colour is red."
A vague remembrance haunted Medway's brain.
"I know a man who might give you points from his own case. Did you ever
meet a chap Raden--Colin Raden?"
Tillotson nodded. "Long chap--in the Guards? 'Varsity oar, and used to
be a crack bowler? No, I don't know him. I know him well by sight, and I
should like to meet him tremendously--as a genealogist, of course."
"Why?" asked Medway.
"Why? Because the man's family is unique. You never hear much about them
nowadays, but away up in that north-west corner of Scotland they have
ruled since the days of Noah. Why, man, they were aristocrats when our
Howards and Nevilles were greengrocers. I wish you would get this Raden
to meet me some night."
"I am afraid there's no chance of it just at present," said Medway,
taking up an evening paper. "I see that his regiment has gone to the
front. But remind me when he comes back, and I'll be delighted."