Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sandra Brown and the DP Team
THE PORTENT AND OTHER STORIES
By George MacDonald
THE PORTENT
A STORY OF THE INNER VISION OF THE HIGHLANDERS,
COMMONLY CALLED _THE SECOND SIGHT_
DEDICATION.
MY DEAR SIR, KENSINGTON, _May, 1864._
Allow me, with the honour due to my father’s friend, to inscribe this
little volume with your name. The name of one friend is better than
those of all the Muses.
And permit me to say a few words about the story.--It is a Romance. I am
well aware that, with many readers, this epithet will be enough to
ensure condemnation. But there ought to be a place for any story, which,
although founded in the marvellous, is true to human nature and to
itself. Truth to Humanity, and harmony within itself, are almost the
sole unvarying essentials of a work of art. Even _The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner_--than which what more marvellous?--is true in these
respects. And Shakespere himself will allow any amount of the
marvellous, provided this truth is observed. I hope my story is thus
true; and therefore, while it claims some place, undeserving of being
classed with what are commonly called _sensational novels._
I am well aware that such tales are not of much account, at present; and
greatly would I regret that they should ever become the fashion; of
which, however, there is no danger. But, seeing so much of our life must
be spent in dreaming, may there not be a still nook, shadowy, but not
miasmatic, in some lowly region of literature, where, in the pauses of
labour, a man may sit down, and dream such a day-dream as I now offer to
your acceptance, and that of those who will judge the work, in part at
least, by its purely literary claims? If I confined my pen to such
results, you, at least, would have a right to blame me. But you, for
one, will, I am sure, justify an author in dreaming _sometimes_.
In offering you a story, however, founded on _The Second Sight_, the
belief in which was common to our ancestors, I owe you, at the same
time, an apology. For the tone and colour of the story are so different
from those naturally belonging to a Celtic tale, that you might well be
inclined to refuse my request, simply on the ground that your pure
Highland blood revolted from the degenerate embodiment given to the
ancient belief. I can only say that my early education was not Celtic
enough to enable me to do better in this respect. I beg that you will
accept the offering with forgiveness, if you cannot with approbation.
Yours affectionately,
GEORGE MACDONALD.
_To_ DUNCAN MCCOLL, Esq., R.N., _Huntly._
CONTENTS
THE PORTENT
THE CRUEL PAINTER
THE CASTLE
THE WOW O’ RIVVEN
THE BROKEN SWORDS
THE GRAY WOLF
UNCLE CORNELIUS HIS STORY
Chapter I
_My Boyhood._
My father belonged to the widespread family of the Campbells, and
possessed a small landed property in the north of Argyll. But although
of long descent and high connection, he was no richer than many a farmer
of a few hundred acres. For, with the exception of a narrow belt of
arable land at its foot, a bare hill formed almost the whole of his
possessions. The sheep ate over it, and no doubt found it good; I
bounded and climbed all over it, and thought it a kingdom. From my very
childhood, I had rejoiced in being alone. The sense of room about me had
been one of my greatest delights. Hence, when my thoughts go back to
those old years, it is not the house, nor the family room, nor that in
which I slept, that first of all rises before my inward vision, but that
desolate hill, the top of which was only a wide expanse of moorland,
rugged with height and hollow, and dangerous with deep, dark pools, but
in many portions purple with large-belled heather, and crowded with
cranberry and blaeberry plants. Most of all, I loved it in the still
autumn morning, outstretched in stillness, high uplifted towards the
heaven. On every stalk hung the dew in tiny drops, which, while the
rising sun was low, sparkled and burned with the hues of all the gems.
Here and there a bird gave a cry; no other sound awoke the silence. I
never see the statue of the Roman youth, praying with outstretched arms,
and open, empty, level palms, as waiting to receive and hold the
blessing of the gods, but that outstretched barren heath rises before
me, as if it meant the same thing as the statue--or were, at least, the
fit room in the middle space of which to set the praying and expectant
youth.
There was one spot upon the hill, half-way between the valley and the
moorland, which was my favourite haunt. This part of the hill was
covered with great blocks of stone, of all shapes and sizes--here
crowded together, like the slain where the battle had been fiercest;
there parting asunder from spaces of delicate green--of softest grass.
In the centre of one of these green spots, on a steep part of the hill,
were three huge rocks--two projecting out of the hill, rather than
standing up from it, and one, likewise projecting from the hill, but
lying across the tops of the two, so as to form a little cave, the back
of which was the side of the hill. This was my refuge, my home within a
home, my study--and, in the hot noons, often my sleeping chamber, and my
house of dreams. If the wind blew cold on the hillside, a hollow of
lulling warmth was there, scooped as it were out of the body of the
blast, which, sweeping around, whistled keen and thin through the cracks
and crannies of the rocky chaos that lay all about; in which confusion
of rocks the wind plunged, and flowed, and eddied, and withdrew, as the
sea-waves on the cliffy shores or the unknown rugged bottoms. Here I
would often lie, as the sun went down, and watch the silent growth of
another sea, which the stormy ocean of the wind could not disturb--the
sea of the darkness. First it would begin to gather in the bottom of
hollow places. Deep valleys, and all little pits on the hill-sides, were
well-springs where it gathered, and whence it seemed to overflow, till
it had buried the earth beneath its mass, and, rising high into the
heavens, swept over the faces of the stars, washed the blinding day from
them, and let them shine, down through the waters of the dark, to the
eyes of men below. I would lie till nothing but the stars and the dim
outlines of hills against the sky was to be seen, and then rise and go
home, as sure of my path as if I had been descending a dark staircase in
my father’s house.
On the opposite side the valley, another hill lay parallel to mine; and
behind it, at some miles’ distance, a great mountain. As often as, in my
hermit’s cave, I lifted my eyes from the volume I was reading, I saw
this mountain before me. Very different was its character from that of
the hill on which I was seated. It was a mighty thing, a chieftain of
the race, seamed and scarred, featured with chasms and precipices and
over-leaning rocks, themselves huge as hills; here blackened with shade,
there overspread with glory; interlaced with the silvery lines of
falling streams, which, hurrying from heaven to earth, cared not how
they went, so it were downwards. Fearful stories were told of the gulfs,
sullen waters, and dizzy heights upon that terror-haunted mountain. In
storms the wind roared like thunder in its caverns and along the jagged
sides of its cliffs, but at other times that uplifted land-uplifted, yet
secret and full of dismay--lay silent as a cloud on the horizon.
I had a certain peculiarity of constitution, which I have some reason to
believe I inherit. It seems to have its root in an unusual delicacy of
hearing, which often conveys to me sounds inaudible to those about me.
This I have had many opportunities of proving. It has likewise, however,
brought me sounds which I could never trace back to their origin; though
they may have arisen from some natural operation which I had not
perseverance or mental acuteness sufficient to discover. From this, or,
it may be, from some deeper cause with which this is connected, arose a
certain kind of fearfulness associated with the sense of hearing, of
which I have never heard a corresponding instance. Full as my mind was
of the wild and sometimes fearful tales of a Highland nursery, fear
never entered my mind by the eyes, nor, when I brooded over tales of
terror, and fancied new and yet more frightful embodiments of horror,
did I shudder at any imaginable spectacle, or tremble lest the fancy
should become fact, and from behind the whin-bush or the elder-hedge
should glide forth the tall swaying form of the Boneless. When alone in
bed, I used to lie awake, and look out into the room, peopling it with
the forms of all the persons who had died within the scope of my memory
and acquaintance. These fancied forms were vividly present to my
imagination. I pictured them pale, with dark circles around their hollow
eyes, visible by a light which glimmered within them; not the light of
life, but a pale, greenish phosphorescence, generated by the decay of
the brain inside. Their garments were white and trailing, but torn and
soiled, as by trying often in vain to get up out of the buried coffin.
But so far from being terrified by these imaginings, I used to delight
in them; and in the long winter evenings, when I did not happen to have
any book that interested me sufficiently, I used even to look forward
with expectation to the hour when, laying myself straight upon my back,
as if my bed were my coffin, I could call up from underground all who
had passed away, and see how they fared, yea, what progress they had
made towards final dissolution of form--but all the time, with my
fingers pushed hard into my ears, lest the faintest sound should invade
the silent citadel of my soul. If inadvertently I removed one of my
fingers, the agony of terror I instantly experienced is indescribable. I
can compare it to nothing but the rushing in upon my brain of a whole
churchyard of spectres. The very possibility of hearing a sound, in such
a mood, and at such a time, was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could
scare myself in broad daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining
unintelligible sounds; and my imagination was both original and fertile
in the invention of such. But my mind was too active to be often
subjected to such influences. Indeed life would have been hardly
endurable had these moods been of more than occasional occurrence. As I
grew older, I almost outgrew them. Yet sometimes one awful dread would
seize me--that, perhaps, the prophetic power manifest in the gift of
second sight, which, according to the testimony of my old nurse, had
belonged to several of my ancestors, had been in my case transformed in
kind without losing its nature, transferring its abode from the sight to
the hearing, whence resulted its keenness, and my fear and suffering.