IT is ill enough to have to die in Glenaora at any season, but to get
the word for travelling from it on yon trip in the spring of the year is
hard indeed. The gug-gug will halloo in your ears to bid you bide a
wee and see the red of the heather creep on Tom-an-dearc; the soft and
sap-scented winds will come in at the open door, and you will mind,
maybe, of a day long-off and lost when you pulled the copper leaves of
the bursting oak and tossed them among a girl's hair. Oh! the long days
and the strong days! They will come back to you like the curious bit in
a tune that is vexatious and sweet, and not for words or a set thought.
You will think of the lambs on the slopes, of the birds tearing through
the thousand ways in the woods, of the magic hollows in below the
thick-sown pines, of the burns, deep at the bottom of _eas_ and corri,
spilling like gold on a stair. And then, it may be, Solomon Carrier's
cart goes by to the town, the first time since the drifts went off the
high road; you hear the clatter of the iron shoes, and your mind will go
with him to the throng street where the folks are so kind and so free.
But to turn your back for the last at that time on Lecknamban must come
sorest of all. For Lecknamban has seven sheilings hidden in its hills,
where the grass is long and juicy, and five burns that are aye on the
giggle like girls at a wedding, and the Aora daunders down in front of
the knowe, full of fish for the Duke alone, but bonny for earl or caird.
It was in this same glen, in this same Lecknamban, in the spring of a
year, a woman was at her end. She was a woman up in years but not old,
a black Bana-Mhuileach who had seen pleasant things and trials like all
who come to this queer market-place; but now when the time was come
to take the long road with no convoy, only the good times were in her
recollection. And though Glenaora was not her calf-country (for she came
but a year ago to bide with a friend), she was swear't to turn heel on a
place so cosy.
She sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open
door, and the friendly airs of the country-side came in to stir her
hair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree
and myrtle, from the moor. But more than all they brought her who was at
her end a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world. Strong
in her make and dour at the giving-in, she kept talking of the world's
affairs and foolishness to the folk about her who were waiting the
Almighty's will and the coming of the stretching-board. Her fingers
picked without a stop at the woolly bits of the blankets, and her eyes
were on as much of the knowe below the house as she could see out at the
open door. It was yellow at the foot with flowers, and here and there
was a spot of blue from the cuckoo-brogue.
“Women, women,” she said with short breaths, “I'm thinking aye, when I
see the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang
'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he
once brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.”
Said the goodwife, “Aoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient
old _sgeuls_; be thinking of a canny going.”
“Going! it was aye going with me,” said the woman in the bed. “And it
was aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for
them.”
“It's the way of God, my dear, _ochanie!_” said one of the two Tullich
sisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.
“O God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or
three clippings.”
“Peace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much
as most of us have claim to.”
“Merry times! merry times!” said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her
mind wandering.
Curls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among the _cabars_ or
through the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its
mother, and the whistling of an _uiseag_ high over the grass where his
nest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the
dying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again
Maisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from
her face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for
sheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.
“It's a pity,” said she, “you brought no grave-clothes with you from
Mull, my dear.”
“Are you grudging me yours?” asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.
“No, nor grudging; fine ye ken it, cousin. But I know ye have them, and
it's a pity you should be dressed in another's spinning than your own.”
“Ay, they're yonder sure enough: clean and ready. And there's more than
that beside them. The linen I should have brought to a man's home.”
“You and your man's home! Is it Duart, my dear, among your own folk, or
down to Inishail, you would have us take you?” Aoirig coughed till the
red froth was at her lips.
“Duart is homely and Inishail is holy, sure enough, but I would have it
Kilmalieu. They tell me it's a fine kirkyard; but I never had the luck
to see it.”
“It's well enough, I'll not deny, and it would not be so far to take
you. Our folk have a space of their own among the MacVicars, below the
parson.”
The woman in the bed signed for a sip of water, and they had it fast at
her lips.
“Could you be putting me near the Macnicols?” she asked in a weakening
voice. “The one I speak of was a Macnicol.”
“Ay, ay,” said the goodwife; “they were aye gallant among the girls.”
“Gallant he was,” said the one among the blankets. “I see him now. The
best man ever I saw. It was at a wedding----”
The woman's breast racked and the spume spattered over the home-spun
blankets.
Maisie was heating a death-shift at the peat-fire, turning it over in
her hands, letting the dry airs into every seam and corner.
Looking at her preparation, the dying woman caught back her breath to
ask why such trouble with a dead-shift.
“Ye would not have it on damp and cold,” said Maisie, settling the
business. “I doubt it'll be long in the sleeves, woman, for the goodwife
has a lengthy reach.”
“It was at a marriage in Glenurchy,” said Aoirig in a haver, the pillows
slipping down behind her back. “Yonder he is. A slim straight lad.
Ronnal, O Ronnal my hero! What a dancer! not his match in Mull. Aye
so----”
A foot could be heard on the road, and one of the two sisters ran out,
for she knew whom it would be. They had sent word to the town by
Solomon in the morning for Macnicol the wright to come up with
the stretching-board, thinking there was but an hour more for
poor Macnicol's were the footsteps, and there he was with the
stretching-board under his arm--a good piece of larch rubbed smooth
by sheet and shroud, and a little hollow worn at the head. He was a fat
man, rolling a bit to one side on a short leg, gross and flabby at the
jowl, and thick-lipped; but he might have been a swanky lad in his day,
and there was a bit of good-humour in the corner of his eye, where you
will never see it when one has been born with the uneasy mind. He was
humming to himself as he came up the brae a Badenoch ditty they have in
these parts on the winter nights, gossiping round the fire. Whom he
was going to stretch he had no notion, except that it was a woman and a
stranger to the glen.
The sister took him round to the corner of the house and in at the byre
door, and told him to wait. “It'll not be long now,” she said.
“Then she's still to the fore,” said the wright. “I might have waited
on the paymaster's dram at Three Bridges if I had ken't. Women are aye
thrawn about dying. They'll put it off to the last, when a man would be
glad to be taking the road. Who is she, poor woman?”
“A cousin-german of Nanny's,” said the sister, putting a bottle before
him, and whipping out for some bannock and cheese. He sat down on a
shearing-stool, facing the door, half open, between the byre he was
in and the kitchen where Aoirig was at the dying. The stretching-board
leaned against the wall outside.
“Aye so gentle, so kind,” the woman in the bed was saying in her last
dover. “He kissed me first on a day like this. And the blue flowers from
Aora?”
In the byre the wright was preeing the drink and paying little heed to
food. It was the good warm stuff they brew on the side of Lochow, the
heart of the very heart of the barley-fields, with the taste of gall and
peat, and he mellowed with every quaich, and took to the soft lilting of
Niall Ban's song:--
“'I am the Sergeant fell but kind
(Ho! ho! heroes, agus ho-e-ro! );
I only lift but the deaf and blind,
The wearied-out and the rest-inclined.
Many a booty I drive before,
Through the glens, through the glens.'
said the Sergeant Mor.”
Ben the house the goodwife was saying the prayers for the dying woman
the woman should have said for herself while she had the wind for it,
but Aoirig harped on her love-tale. She was going fast, and the sisters,
putting their hands to her feet, could feel that they were cold as the
rocks. Maisie's arms were round her, and she seemed to have the notion
that here was the grip of death, for she pushed her back.
“I am not so old--so old. There is Seana, my neighbour at Duart--long
past the fourscore and still spinning--I am not so old--God of grace--so
old--and the flowers----”
A grey shiver went over her face; her breast heaved and fell in; her
voice stopped with a gluck in the throat.
The women stirred round fast in the kitchen. Out on the clay floor the
two sisters pushed the table and laid a sheet on it, the goodwife put
aside the pillows and let Aoirig's head fall back on the bed. Maisie put
her hand to the clock and stopped it.
“Open the door, open the door!” cried the goodwife, turning round in a
hurry and seeing the door still shut.
One of the sisters put a finger below the sneck and did as she was told,
to let out the dead one's ghost.
Outside, taking the air, to get the stir of the strong waters out of his
head, was the wright.
He knew what the opening of the door meant, and he lifted his board and
went in with it under his arm. A wafting of the spring smells came in at
his back, and he stood with his bonnet in his hand.
“So this is the end o't?” he said in a soft way, stamping out the fire
on the floor.
He had but said it when Eurig sat up with a start in the bed, and the
women cried out. She opened her eyes and looked at the man, with his fat
face, his round back, and ill-made clothes, and the death-deal under his
oxter, and then she fell back on the bed with her face stiffening.
“Here's the board for ye,” said the wright, his face spotted white and
his eyes staring. “I'll go out a bit and take a look about me. I once
knew a woman who was terribly like you, and she came from Mull.”