Of the seven Achannas—sons of Robert Achanna of Achanna in Galloway,
self-exiled in the far north because of a bitter feud with his
kindred—who lived upon Eilanmore in the Summer Isles, there was not one
who was not, in more or less degree, or at some time or other, fëy.
Doubtless I shall have occasion to allude to one and all again, and
certainly to the eldest and youngest: for they were the strangest folk I
have known or met anywhere in the Celtic lands, from the sea-pastures of
the Solway to the kelp-strewn beaches of Lewis. Upon James, the seventh
son, the doom of his people fell last and most heavily. Some day I may
tell the full story of his strange life and tragic undoing, and of his
piteous end. As it happened, I knew best the eldest and youngest of the
brothers, Alison and James. Of the others, Robert, Allan, William,
Marcus, and Gloom, none save the last-named survives, if peradventure
_he_ does, or has been seen of man for many years past. Of Gloom
(strange and unaccountable name, which used to terrify me—the more so
as, by the savagery of fate, it was the name of all names suitable for
Robert Achanna’s sixth son) I know nothing beyond the fact that, ten
years or more ago, he was a Jesuit priest in Rome, a bird of passage,
whence come and whither bound no inquiries of mine could discover. Two
years ago a relative told me that Gloom was dead; that he had been slain
by some Mexican noble in an old city of Hispaniola, beyond the seas.
Doubtless the news was founded on truth, though I have ever a vague
unrest when I think of Gloom; as though he were travelling hitherward,
as though his feet, on some urgent errand, were already white with the
dust of the road that leads to my house.
But now I wish to speak only of Alison Achanna. He was a friend whom I
loved, though he was a man of close on forty and I a girl less than half
his years. We had much in common, and I never knew anyone more
companionable, for all that he was called “Silent Ally.” He was tall,
gaunt, loosely-built. His eyes were of that misty blue which smoke takes
when it rises in the woods. I used to think them like the tarns that lay
amid the canna and gale-surrounded swamps in Uist, where I was wont to
dream as a child.
I had often noticed the light on his face when he smiled—a light of such
serene joy as young mothers have sometimes over the cradles of their
firstborn. But for some reason I had never wondered about it, not even
when I heard and dimly understood the half-contemptuous, half-reverent
mockery with which, not only Alison’s brothers, but even his father, at
times used towards him. Once, I remember, I was puzzled when, on a bleak
day in a stormy August, I overheard Gloom say, angrily and scoffingly,
“There goes the Anointed Man!” I looked, but all I could see was that,
despite the dreary cold, despite the ruined harvest, despite the rotting
potato-crop, Alison walked slowly onward, smiling, and with glad eyes
brooding upon the grey lands around and beyond him.
It was nearly a year thereafter—I remember the date, because it was that
of my last visit to Eilanmore—that I understood more fully. I was
walking westward with Alison towards sundown. The light was upon his
face as though it came from within; and when I looked again, half in
awe, I saw that there was no glamour out of the west, for the evening
was dull and threatening rain. He was in sorrow. Three months before,
his brothers Allan and William had been drowned; a month later, his
brother Robert had sickened, and now sat in the ingle from morning till
the covering of the peats, a skeleton almost, shivering, and morosely
silent, with large staring eyes. On the large bed in the room above the
kitchen old Robert Achanna lay, stricken with paralysis. It would have
been unendurable for me but for Alison and James, and, above all, for my
loved girl-friend, Anne Gillespie, Achanna’s niece, and the sunshine of
his gloomy household.
As I walked with Alison I was conscious of a well-nigh intolerable
depression. The house we had left was so mournful; the bleak sodden
pastures were so mournful; so mournful was the stony place we were
crossing, silent but for the thin crying of the curlews; and, above all,
so mournful was the sound of the ocean as, unseen, it moved sobbingly
round the isle: so beyond words distressing was all this to me, that I
stopped abruptly, meaning to go no farther, but to return to the house,
where at least there was warmth, and where Anne would sing for me as she
spun.
But when I looked up into my companion’s face I saw in truth the light
that shone from within. His eyes were upon a forbidding stretch of
ground, where the blighted potatoes rotted among a wilderness of round
skull-white stones. I remember them still, these strange far-blue eyes,
lamps of quiet joy, lamps of peace they seemed to me.
“Are you looking at Achnacarn?” (as the tract was called), I asked, in
what I am sure was a whisper.
“Yes,” replied Alison slowly; “I am looking. It is beautiful—beautiful.
O God, how beautiful is this lovely world!”
I know not what made me act so, but I threw myself on a heathery ridge
close by, and broke out into convulsive sobbings.
Alison stooped, lifted me in his strong arms, and soothed me with soft,
caressing touches and quieting words.
“Tell me, my fawn, what is it? What is the trouble?” he asked again and
again.
“It is _you_—it is _you_, Alison,” I managed to say coherently at last.
“It terrifies me to hear you speak as you did a little ago. You must be
fëy. Why—why do you call that hateful, hideous field beautiful on this
dreary day—and—and after all that has happened,—O Alison?”
At this, I remember, he took his plaid and put it upon the wet heather,
and then drew me thither, and seated himself and me beside him.
“Is it not beautiful, my fawn?” he asked, with tears in his eyes. Then,
without waiting for my answer, he said quietly, “Listen, dear, and I
will tell you.”
He was strangely still—breathless, he seemed to me—for a minute or more.
Then he spoke.
“I was little more than a child—a boy just in my teens—when something
happened, something that came down the Rainbow-Arches of Cathair-Sìth.”
He paused here, perhaps to see if I followed, which I did, familiar as I
was with all fairy-lore. “I was out upon the heather, in the time when
the honey oozes in the bells and cups. I had always loved the island and
the sea. Perhaps I was foolish, but I was so glad with my joy that
golden day that I threw myself on the ground and kissed the hot, sweet
ling, and put my hands and arms into it, sobbing the while with my
vague, strange yearning. At last I lay still, nerveless, with my eyes
closed. Suddenly I was aware that two tiny hands had come up through the
spires of the heather, and were pressing something soft and fragrant
upon my eyelids. When I opened them, I could see nothing unfamiliar. No
one was visible. But I heard a whisper: ‘Arise and go away from this
place at once; and this night do not venture out, lest evil befall you.’
So I rose, trembling, and went home. Thereafter I was the same, and yet
not the same. Never could I see as they saw, what my father and brothers
or the isle-folk looked upon as ugly or dreary. My father was wroth me
many times, and called me a fool. Whenever my eyes fell upon those waste
and desolated spots, they seemed to me passing fair, radiant with lovely
light. At last my father grew so bitter that, mocking me the while, he
bade me go to the towns and see there the squalor and sordid hideousness
wherein men dwelled. But thus it was with me: in the places they call
slums, and among the smoke of factories and the grime of destitution, I
could see all that other men saw, only as vanishing shadows. What I saw
was lovely, beautiful with strange glory, and the faces of men and women
were sweet and pure, and their souls were white. So, weary and
bewildered with my unwilling quest, I came back to Eilanmore. And on the
day of my home-coming, Morag was there—Morag of the Falls. She turned to
my father and called him blind and foolish. ‘He has the white light upon
his brows,’ she said of me; ‘I can see it, like the flicker-light in a
wave when the wind’s from the south in thunder-weather. He has been
touched with the Fairy Ointment. The Guid Folk know him. It will be thus
with him till the day of his death, if a _duinshee_ can die, being
already a man dead yet born anew. He upon whom the Fairy Ointment has
been laid must see all that is ugly and hideous and dreary and bitter
through a glamour of beauty. Thus it hath been since the Mhic-Alpine
ruled from sea to sea, and thus is it with the man Alison your son.’
“That is all, my fawn; and that is why my brothers, when they are angry,
sometimes call me the Anointed Man.”
“That is all.” Yes, perhaps. But oh, Alison Achanna, how often have I
thought of that most precious treasure you found in the heather, when
the bells were sweet with honey-ooze! Did the wild bees know of it?
Would that I could hear the soft hum of their gauzy wings.
Who of us would not barter the best of all our possessions—and some
there are who would surrender all—to have one touch laid upon the
eyelids—one touch of the Fairy Ointment? But the place is far, and the
hour is hidden. No man may seek that for which there can be no quest.
Only the wild bees know of it; but I think they must be the bees of
Magh-Mell. And there no man that liveth may wayfare—_yet_.
_THE HILLS OF RUEL_