The touch of the earth seemed strange to me after nearly a week spent
at sea, and as I sprang from the launch on to the rough rocks, aided by
Santoris, I was for a moment faint and giddy. The dark mountain summits
seemed to swirl round me,--and the glittering water, shining like
steel, had the weird effect of a great mirror in which a fluttering
vision of something undefined and undeclared rose and passed like a
breath. I recovered myself with an effort and stood still, trying to
control the foolish throbbing of my heart, while my companion gave a
few orders to his men in a language which I thought I knew, though I
could not follow it.
"Are you speaking Gaelic?" I asked him, with a smile.
"No!--only something very like it--Phoenician."
He looked straight at me as he said this, and his eyes, darkly blue and
brilliant, expressed a world of suggestion. He went on:--
"All this country was familiar ground to the Phoenician colonists of
ages ago. I am sure you know that! The Gaelic tongue is the genuine
dialect of the ancient Phoenician Celtic, and when I speak the original
language to a Highlander who only knows his native Gaelic he
understands me perfectly."
I was silent. We moved away from the shore, walking slowly side by
side. Presently I paused, looking back at the launch we had just left.
"Your men are not Highlanders?"
"No--they are from Egypt."
"But surely,"--I said, with some hesitation--"Phoenician is no longer
known or spoken?"
"Not by the world of ordinary men,"--he answered--"I know it and speak
it,--and so do most of those who serve me. You have heard it before,
only you do not quite remember." I looked at him, startled. He smiled,
adding gently:--"Nothing dies--not even a language!"
We were not yet out of sight of the men. They had pushed the launch off
shore again and were starting it back to the yacht, it being arranged
that they should return for us in a couple of hours. We were following
a path among slippery stones near a rushing torrent, but as we turned
round a sharp bend we lost the view of Loch Scavaig itself and were for
the first time truly alone. Huge mountains, crowned with jagged
pinnacles, surrounded us on all sides,--here and there tufts of heather
clinging to large masses of dark stone blazed rose-purple in the
declining sunshine,--the hollow sound of the falling stream made a
perpetual crooning music in our ears, and the warm, stirless air seemed
breathless, as though hung in suspense above us waiting for the echo of
some word or whisper that should betray a life's secret. Such a silence
held us that it was almost unbearable,--every nerve in my body seemed
like a strained harp-string ready to snap at a touch,--and yet I could
not speak. I tried to get the mastery over the rising tide of thought,
memory and emotion that surged in my soul like a tempest--swiftly and
peremptorily I argued with myself that the extraordinary chaos of my
mind was only due to my own imaginings,--nevertheless, despite my
struggles, I remained caught as it were in a web that imprisoned every
faculty and sense,--a web fine as gossamer, yet unbreakable as iron. In
a kind of desperation I raised my eyes, burning with the heat of
restrained tears, and saw Santoris watching me with patient, almost
appealing tenderness. I felt that he could read my unexpressed trouble,
and involuntarily I stretched out my hands to him.
"Tell me!" I half whispered-"What is it I must know? We are
strangers--and yet--"
He caught my hands in his own.
"Not strangers!" he said, his voice trembling a little--"You cannot say
that! Not strangers--but old friends!"
The strong gentleness of his clasp recalled the warm pressure of the
invisible hands that had guided me out of darkness in my dream of a few
nights past. I looked up into his face, and every line of it became
suddenly, startlingly familiar. The deep-set blue eyes,--the broad
brows and intellectual features were all as well known to me as might
be the portrait of a beloved one to the lover, and my heart almost
stood still with the wonder and terror of the recognition.
"Not strangers,"--he repeated, with quiet emphasis, as though to
reassure me--"Only since we last met we have travelled far asunder.
Have yet a little patience! You will presently remember me as well as I
remember you!"
With the rush of startled recollection I found my voice.
"I remember you now!"--I said, in low, unsteady tones--"I have seen you
often--often! But where? Tell me where? Oh, surely you know!"
He still held my hands with the tenderest force,--and seemed, like
myself, to find speech difficult. If two deeply attached friends,
parted for many years, were all unexpectedly to meet in some solitary
place where neither had thought to see a living soul, their emotion
could hardly be keener than ours,--and yet--there was an invisible
barrier between us--a barrier erected either by him or by
myself,--something that held us apart. The sudden and overpowering
demand made upon our strength by the swift and subtle attraction which
drew us together was held in check by ourselves,--and it was as if we
were each separately surrounded by a circle across which neither of us
dared to pass. I looked at him in mingled fear and questioning--his
eyes were gravely thoughtful and full of light.
"Yes, I know,"--he answered, at last, speaking very softly--while,
gently releasing one of my hands, he held the other--"I know,--but we
need not speak of that! As I have already said, you will remember all
by gradual degrees. We are never permitted to entirely forget. But it
is quite natural that now--at this immediate hour--we should find it
strange--you, perhaps, more than I--that something impels us one to the
other,--something that will not be gainsaid,--something that if all the
powers of earth and heaven could intervene, which by simplest law they
cannot, will take no denial!"
I trembled, not with fear, but with an exquisite delight I dared not
pause to analyse. He pressed my hand more closely.
"We had better walk on,"--he continued, averting his gaze from mine for
the moment--"If I say more just now I shall say too much--and you will
be frightened,--perhaps offended. I have been guilty of so many errors
in the past,--you must help me to avoid them in the future. Come!"--and
he turned his eyes again upon me with a smile--"Let us see the sunset!"
We moved on for a few moments in absolute silence, he still holding my
hand and guiding me up the rough path we followed. The noise of the
rushing torrent sounded louder in my ears, sometimes with a clattering
insistence as though it sought to match itself against the surging of
my own quick blood in an endeavour to drown my thoughts. On we went and
still onward,--the path seemed interminable, though it was in reality a
very short journey. But there was such a weight of unutterable things
pressing on my soul like a pent-up storm craving for outlet, that every
step measured itself as almost a mile.
At last we paused; we were in full view of Loch Coruisk and its weird
splendour. On all sides arose bare and lofty mountains, broken and
furrowed here and there by deep hollows and corries,--supremely grand
in their impressive desolation, uplifting their stony peaks around us
like the walls and turrets of a gigantic fortress, and rising so
abruptly and so impenetrably encompassing the black stretch of water
below, that it seemed impossible for a sunbeam to force its shining
entrance into such a circle of dense gloom. Yet there was a shower of
golden light pouring aslant down one of the highest of the hills,
brightening to vivid crimson stray clumps of heather, touching into
pale green some patches of moss and lichen, and giving the dazzling
flash of silver to the white wings of a sea-gull which soared above our
heads uttering wild cries like a creature in pain. Pale blue mists were
rising from the surface of the lake, and the fitful gusts of air that
rushed over the rocky summits played with these impalpable vapours
borne inland from the Atlantic, and tossed them to and fro into
fantastic shapes--some like flying forms with long hair streaming
behind them--some like armed warriors, hurtling their spears against
each other,--and some like veiled ghosts hurrying past as though driven
to their land of shadows by shuddering fear. We stood silently hand in
hand, watching the uneasy flitting of these cloud phantoms, and waiting
for the deepening glow, which, when it should spread upwards from the
rays of the sinking sun, would transform the wild, dark scene to one of
almost supernatural splendour. Suddenly Santoris spoke:
"Now shall I tell you where we last met?" he asked, very gently--"And
may I show you the reasons why we meet again?"
I lifted my eyes to his. My heart beat with suffocating quickness, and
thoughts were in my brain that threatened to overwhelm my small
remaining stock of self-control and make of me nothing but a creature
of tears and passion. I moved my lips in an effort to speak, but no
sound came from them.
"Do not be afraid,"--he continued, in the same quiet tone--"It is true
that we must be careful now as in the past we were careless,--but
perfect comprehension of each other rests with ourselves. May I go on?"
I gave a mute sign of assent. There was a rough craig near us,
curiously shaped like a sort of throne and canopy, the canopy being
formed by a thickly overhanging mass of rock and heather, and here he
made me sit down, placing himself beside me. From this point we
commanded a view of the head of the lake and the great mountain which
closes and dominates it,--and which now began to be illumined with a
strange witch-like glow of orange and purple, while a thin mist moved
slowly across it like the folds of a ghostly stage curtain preparing to
rise and display the first scene of some great drama.
"Sometimes," he then said,--"it happens, even in the world of cold and
artificial convention, that a man and woman are brought together who,
to their own immediate consciousness, have had no previous acquaintance
with each other, and yet with the lightest touch, the swiftest glance
of an eye, a million vibrations are set quivering in them like
harp-strings struck by the hand of a master and responding each to each
in throbbing harmony and perfect tune. They do not know how it
happens--they only feel it is. Then, nothing--I repeat this with
emphasis--nothing can keep them apart. Soul rushes to soul,--heart
leaps to heart,--and all form and ceremony, custom and usage crumble
into dust before the power that overwhelms them. These sudden storms of
etheric vibration occur every day among the most ordinary surroundings
and with the most unlikely persons, and Society as at present
constituted frowns and shakes its head, or jeers at what it cannot
understand, calling such impetuosity folly, or worse, while remaining
wilfully blind to the fact that in its strangest aspect it is nothing
but the assertion of an Eternal Law. Moreover, it is a law that cannot
be set aside or broken with impunity. Just as the one point of
vibration sympathetically strikes the other in the system of wireless
telegraphy, so, despite millions and millions of intervening currents
and lines of divergence, the immortal soul-spark strikes its kindred
fire across a waste of worlds until they meet in the compelling flash
of that God's Message called Love!"