TRAGIC ROMANCES
[Illustration]
RE-ISSUE OF THE SHORTER
STORIES OF FIONA MACLEOD
REARRANGED, WITH
ADDITIONAL
TALES
COPYRIGHTED IN THE UNITED
STATES: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
By the Same Author.
PHARAIS: A Romance of the Isles.
(FRANK MURRAY, Derby.)
(STONE & KIMBALL, New York.)
THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS: A Romance.
(JOHN LANE, London.)
(ROBERTS BROS., Boston.)
THE SIN-EATER: and other Tales.
(PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES, Edinburgh.)
(STONE & KIMBALL, New York.)
THE WASHER OF THE FORD: and other Legendary Moralities.
(PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES, Edinburgh.)
(STONE & KIMBALL, New York.)
GREEN FIRE: A Romance.
(ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO., London.)
(HARPERS, New York.)
FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM: Mountain Songs and Island Runes.
(PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES, Edinburgh.)
VOLUME
THREE
TRAGIC
ROMANCES
BY
Fiona Macleod
PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES
THE OUTLOOK TOWER·CASTLE HILL·EDINBURGH
TRAGIC ROMANCES
“It is Destiny, then, that is the Protagonist in the Celtic Drama … And
it is Destiny, that sombre Demogorgon of the Gael, whose boding breath,
whose menace, whose shadow glooms so much of the remote life I know, and
hence glooms also this book of interpretations: for pages of life must
either be interpretative or merely documentary, and these following pages
have for the most part been written as by one who repeats, with curious
insistence, a haunting, familiar, yet ever wild and remote air, whose
obscure meanings he would fain reiterate, interpret.”
(From the PROLOGUE to _The Sin-Eater_.)
CONTENTS
PAGE
MORAG OF THE GLEN 11
THE DÀN-NAN-RÒN 61
THE SIN-EATER 113
THE NINTH WAVE 167
THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD 185
GREEN BRANCHES 201
THE ARCHER 231
_NOTE_
In this volume all the tales, except the first and last, are re-issued
from _The Sin-Eater_. “Morag of the Glen” is reprinted from the November
issue of _The Savoy_; “The Archer” has not hitherto appeared in print. As
the other tales have not been reset, they are, except in the matter of
pagination and arrangement, necessarily unaltered.
_MORAG OF THE GLEN_
MORAG OF THE GLEN
I
It was a black hour for Archibald Campbell of Gorromalt in Strathglas,
and for his wife and for Morag their second daughter, when the word came
that Muireall had the sorrow of sorrows. What is pain, and is death a
thing to fear? But there is a sorrow that no man can have and yet go
free for evermore of a shadow upon his brow: and there is a sorrow that
no woman can have and keep the moonshine in her eyes. And when a woman
has this sorrow, it saves or mars her: though, for sure, none of us may
discern just what that saving may be, or from whom or what, or what may
be that bitter or sweet ruin. We are shaped as clay in the potter’s hand:
ancient wisdom, that we seldom learn till the hand is mercifully still,
and the vessel, finished for good or evil, is broken.
It is a true saying that memory is like the sea-weed when the tide is
in--but the tide ebbs. Each frond, each thick spray, each fillicaun
or pulpy globe, lives lightly in the wave: the green water is full of
strange rumour, of sea-magic and sea-music: the hither flow and thither
surge give continuity and connection to what is fluid and dissolute.
But when the ebb is far gone, and the wrack and the weed lie sickly in
the light, there is only one confused intertangled mass. For most of
us, memory is this tide-left strand: though for each there are pools,
or shallows which even the ebb does not lick up in its thirsty way
depthward,--narrow overshadowed channels to which we have the intangible
clues. But for me there will never be any ebb-tide of memory, of one
black hour, and one black day.
A wild lone place it was where we lived: among the wet hills, in a
country capped by slate-black mountains. To the stranger the whole
scene must have appeared grimly desolate. We, dwellers there, and those
of our clan, and the hill folk about and beyond, knew that there were
three fertile straths hidden among the wilderness of rock and bracken:
Strathmòr, Strathgorm, and Strathglas. It was in the last we lived. All
Strathglas was farmed by Archibald Campbell, and he had Strathgorm to
where the Gorromalt Water cuts it off from the head of Glen Annet. The
house we lived in was a long two-storeyed whitewashed building with
projecting flanks. There was no garden, but only a tangled potato-acre,
and a large unkempt space where the kail and the bracken flourished
side by side, with the kail perishing day by day under the spreading
strangling roots of the usurper. The rain in Strathglas fell when most
other spots were fair. It was because of the lie of the land, I have
heard. The grey or black cloud would slip over Ben-Bhreac or Melbèinn,
and would become blue-black while one was wondering if the wind would
lift it on to Maol-Dunn, whose gloomy ridge had two thin lines of
pine-trees which, from Strathglas, stood out like bristling eyebrows.
But, more likely than not, it would lean slowly earthward, then lurch
like a water-logged vessel, and spill, spill, through a rising misty
vapour, a dreary downfall. Oh! the rain--the rain--the rain! how weary
I grew of it, there; and of the melancholy _méh’ing_ of the sheep, that
used to fill the hills with a lamentation, terrible, at times, to endure.
And yet, I know, and that well, too, that I am thinking this vision of
Teenabrae, as the house was called, and of its dismal vicinage, in the
light of tragic memory. For there were seasons when the rains suspended,
or came and went like fugitive moist shadows: days when the sunlight and
the wind made the mountains wonderful, and wrought the wild barren hills
to take on a softness and a dear familiar beauty: hours, even, when, in
the hawthorn-time, the cuckoo called joyously across the pine-girt scaurs
and corries on Melbèinn, or, in summer, the swallows filled the straths
as with the thridding of a myriad shuttles.
Sure enough, I was too young to be there: though, indeed, Morag was no
more than a year older, being twenty; but when my mother died, and my
father went upon the seas upon one of his long whaling voyages, I was
glad to leave my lonely home in the Carse o’ Gowrie and go to Teenabrae
in Strathglas, and to be with my aunt, that was wife to Archibald mac
Alasdair Ruadh--Archibald Campbell, as he would be called in the lowland
way--or Gorromalt as he was named by courtesy, that being the name of his
sheep-farm that ran into the two straths where the Gorromalt Water surged
turbulently through a narrow wilderness of wave-scooped, eddy-hollowed
stones and ledges.
I suppose no place could be called lifeless which had always that sound
of Gorromalt Water, that ceaseless lamentation of the sheep crying among
the hills, that hoarse croaking of the corbies who swam black in the air
betwixt us and Maol-Dunn, that mournful plaining of the lapwings as they
wheeled querulously for ever and ever and ever. But, to a young girl, the
whole of this was an unspeakable weariness.
Beside the servant-folk--not one of whom was to me anything, save a girl
called Maisie, who had had a child and believed it had become a “pee-wit”
since its death, and that all the lapwings were the offspring of the
sorrow of joy--there were only Archibald Campbell, his wife, who was
my aunt, Muireall the elder daughter, and Morag. These were my folk:
but Morag I loved. In appearance she and I differed wholly. My cousin
Muireall and I were like each other; both tall, dark-haired, dark-browed,
with dusky dark eyes, though mine with no flame in them; and my face too,
though not uncomely, without that touch of wildness which made Muireall’s
so strangely attractive, and at times so beautiful. Morag, however,
was scarce over medium height. Her thick wavy hair always retained the
captive gold that the sunshine had spilled there; her soft, white,
delicate, wild-rose face was like none other that I have ever seen: her
eyes, of that heart-lifting blue which spring mornings have, held a
living light that was fair to see, and gave pain too, perhaps, because of
their plaintive hillside wildness. Ah, she was a fawn, Morag!… soft and
sweet, swift and dainty and exquisite as a fawn in the green fern.
Gorromalt himself was a gaunt stern man. He was two inches or more over
six feet, but looked less, because of a stoop. It always seemed to me
as if his eyes pulled him forward: brooding, sombre, obscure eyes, of a
murky gloom. His hair was iron-grey and matted; blacker, but matted and
tangled, his thick beard; and his face was furrowed like Ben Scorain of
the Corries. I never saw him in any other garb than a grey shepherd tweed
with a plaid, though no Campbell in Argyll was prouder than he, and he
allowed no plaid or _tunag_ anywhere on his land or in his house that was
not of the tartan of MacCailin Mòr. He was what, there, they called a
black protestant; for the people in that part held to the ancient faith.
True enough, for sure, all the same: for his pity was black, and the
milk of kindness in him must have been like Gorromalt Water in spate.
Poor Aunt Elspeth! my heart often bled for her. I do not think Archibald
Campbell was unkind to his wife, but he was harsh, and his sex was like
a blank wall to her, against which her shallow waters surged or crawled
alike vainly. There was to her something at once terrible and Biblical
in this wall of cruel strength, this steadfast independence of love
or the soft ways or the faltering speech of love. There are women who
hate men with an unknowing hatred, who lie by their husband night after
night, year after year; who fear and serve him; who tend him in life
and minister to him in death; who die, before or after, with a slaying
thirst, a consuming hunger. Of these unhappy housemates, of desolate
hearts and unfrequented lips, my aunt Elspeth was one.
It was on a dull Sunday afternoon that the dark hour came of which I have
spoken. The rain fell among the hills. There was none on the north side
of Strathglas, where Teenabrae stood solitary. The remembrance is on
me keen just now: how I sat there, on the bench in front of the house,
side by side with Morag, in the hot August damp, with the gnats pinging
overhead, and not a sound else save the loud raucous surge of Gorromalt
Water, thirty yards away. In a chair near us sat my aunt Elspeth. Beyond
her, on a milking-stool, with his chin in his hands, and his elbows on
his knees, was her husband.
There was a gloom upon all of us. The day before, as soon as Gorromalt
had returned from Castle Avale, high up in Strathmòr, we had seen the
black east wind in his eyes. But he had said nothing. We guessed that
his visit to the Englishman at Castle Avale, who had bought the Three
Straths from Sir Ewan Campbell of Drumdoon, had proved fruitless, or at
least unsatisfactory. It was at the porridge on the Sabbath morning that
he told us.
“And … and … must we go, Archibald?” asked his wife, her lips white and
the deep withered creases on her neck ashy grey.
He did not answer, but the tumbler cracked in his grip, and the
splintered glass fell into his plate. The spilt milk trickled off the
table on to the end of his plaid, and so to the floor. Luath, the collie,
slipped forward, with her tongue lolling greedily: but her eye caught
the stare of the silent man, and with a whine, and a sudden sweep of her
tail, she slunk back.
It must have been nigh an hour later, that he spoke.
“No, Elspeth,” he said. “There will be no going away from here, for you
and me, till we go feet foremost.”
Before the afternoon we had heard all: how he had gone to see this
English lord who had “usurped” Drumdoon: how he had not gained an
interview, and had seen no other than Mr Laing, the East Lothian factor.
He had had to accept bitter hard terms. Sir Ewan Campbell was in Madras,
with his regiment, a ruined man: he would never be home again, and, if
he were, would be a stranger in the Three Straths, where he and his
had lived, and where his kindred had been born and had died during six
centuries back. There was no hope. This Lord Greycourt wanted more rent,
and he also wanted Strathgorm for a deer-run.
We were sitting, brooding on these things: in our ears the fierce words
that Gorromalt had said, with bitter curses, upon the selling of the
ancient land and the betrayal of the people.
Morag was in one of her strange moods. I saw her, with her shining eyes,
looking at the birch that overhung the small foaming linn beyond us, just
as though she saw the soul of it, and the soul with strange speech to it.
“Where is Muireall?” she said to me suddenly, in a low voice.
“Muireall?” I repeated, “Muireall? I am not for knowing, Morag. Why do
you ask? Do you want her?”
She did not answer, but went on:
“Have you seen him again?”
“Him?… Whom?”
“Jasper Morgan, this English lord’s son.”
“No.”
A long silence followed. Suddenly Aunt Elspeth started. Pointing to a
figure coming from the peat-moss at the hither end of Strathmòr, she
asked who it was, as she could not see without her spectacles. Her
husband rose, staring eagerly. He gave a grunt of disappointment when he
recognised Mr Allan Stewart, the minister of Strathmòr parish.
As the old man drew near we watched him steadfastly. I have the thought
that each one of us knew he was coming to tell us evil news; though none
guessed why or what, unless Morag mayhap.
When he had shaken hands, and blessed the house and those within it,
Mr Stewart sat down on the bench beside Morag and me. I am thinking he
wanted not to see the eyes of Gorromalt, nor to see the white face of
Aunt Elspeth.
I heard him whisper to my dear that he wanted her to go into the house
for a little. But she would not. The birdeen knew that sorrow was upon us
all. He saw “no” in her eyes, and forbore.
“And what is the thing that is on your lips to tell, Mr Stewart?” said
Gorromalt at last, half-mockingly, half-sullenly.
“And how are you for knowing that I have anything to tell, Gorromalt?”
“Sure, man, if a kite can see the shadow of a mouse a mile away, it can
see a black cloud on a hill near by!”
“It’s a black cloud I bring, Archibald Campbell: alas, even so. Ay, sure,
it is a black cloud it is. God melt the pain of it!”
“Speak, man!”
“There is no good in wading in heather. Gorromalt, and you, Mrs Campbell,
and you, my poor Morag, and you too, my dear, must just be brave. It is
God’s will.”
“Speak, man, and don’t be winding the shroud all the time! Let us be
hearing and seeing the thing you have brought to tell us.”
It was at this moment that Aunt Elspeth half rose, and abruptly reseated
herself, raising the while a deprecatory feeble hand.
“Is it about Muireall?” she asked quaveringly. “She went away, to the
church at Kilbrennan, at sunrise: and the water’s in spate all down
Strathgorm. Has she been drowned? Is it death upon Muireall? Is it
Muireall? Is it Muireall?”
“She is not drowned, Mrs Campbell.”
At that she sat back, the staring dread subsiding from her eyes. But at
the minister’s words, Gorromalt slowly moved his face and body so that he
fronted the speaker. Looking at Morag, I saw her face white as the canna.
Her eyes swam in wet shadow.
“It is not death, Mrs Campbell,” the old man repeated, with a strange,
uneasy, furtive look, as he put his right hand to his stiff white necktie
and flutteringly fingered it.
“In the name o’ God, man, speak out!”
“Ay, ay, Campbell: ay, ay, I am speaking … I am for the telling … but …
but, see you, Gorromalt, be pitiful … be …”
Gorromalt rose. I never realised before how tall he was. There was
height to him, like unto that of a son of Anak.
“Well, well, well, it is just for telling you I’ll be. Sit down,
Gorromalt, sit down, Mr Campbell, sit down, man, sit down!… Ah, sure
now, that is better. Well, well, God save us all from the sin that is in
us: but … ah, mothering heart, it is saving you I would be if I could,
but … but …”
“But _what_!” thundered Gorromalt, with a voice that brought Maisie and
Kirsteen out of the byre, where they were milking the kye.
“He has the mercy: He only! And it is this, poor people: it is this.
Muireall has come to sorrow.”
“What sorrow is the sorrow that is on her?”
“The sorrow of woman.”
A terrible oath leapt from Gorromalt’s lips. His wife sat in a stony
silence, her staring eyes filming like those of a stricken bird. Morag
put her left hand to her heart.
Suddenly Archibald Campbell turned to his daughter.
“Morag, what is the name of that man whom Muireall came to know, when
she and you went to that Sodom, that Gomorrha, which men call London?”
“His name was Jasper Morgan.”
“Has she ever seen him since?”
“I think so.”
“You _think_? What will you be _thinking_ for, girl! _Think!_ There will
be time enough to think while the lichen grows grey on a new-fall’n rock!
Out with it! Out with it! Have they met?… Has he been here?… is _he_ the
man?”
There was silence then. A plover wheeled by, plaining aimlessly. Maisie
the milk-lass ran forward, laughing.
“Ah, ’tis my wee Seorsa,” she cried. “Seorsa! Seorsa! Seorsa!”
Gorromalt took a stride forward, his face shadowy with anger, his eyes
ablaze.
“Get back to the kye, you wanton wench!” he shouted savagely. “Get back,
or it is having my gun I’ll be and shooting that pee-wit of yours, that
lennavan-Seorsa!”
Then, shaking still, he turned to Morag.
“Out with it, girl! What do you know?”
“I know nothing.”
“It is a lie, and it is knowing it I am!”
“It is no lie. I _know_ nothing. I _fear_ much.”
“And what do _you_ know, old man?” And, with that, Archibald Campbell
turned like a baited bull upon Mr Stewart.
“She was misled, Gorromalt, she was misled, poor lass! The trouble began
last May, when she went away to the south, to that evil place. And then
he came after her. And it was here he came … and … and…”
“And who will that man be?”
“Morag has said it: Jasper Morgan.”
“And who will Jasper Morgan be?”
“Are you not for knowing _that_, Archibald Campbell, and you _Gorromalt_?”
“Why, what meaning are you at?” cried the man, bewildered.
“Who will Jasper Morgan be but the son of Stanley Morgan!”
“Stanley Morgan!… Stanley Morgan! I am no wiser. Do you wish to send me
mad, man! Speak out!… out with it!”
“Why, Gorromalt, what is Drumdoon’s name?”
“Drumdoon… Why, Sir Ewan… Ah no, for sure ’tis now that English
bread-taker, that southern land-snatcher, who calls himself Lord
Greycourt. And what then?… will it be for…”
“Aren’t you for knowing his name?… No?… Campbell, man, it is _Morgan_ …
_Morgan_.”
All this time Aunt Elspeth had sat silent. She now gave a low cry. Her
husband turned and looked at her. “Go into the house,” he said harshly;
“this will not be the time for whimpering; no, by God! it is not the time
for whimpering, woman.”
She rose, and walked feebly over to Mr Stewart.
“Tell me all,” she said. Ah, grief to see the pain in her old, old
eyes--and no tears there at all, at all.
“When this man Jasper Morgan, that is son to Lord Greycourt, came here,
it was to track a stricken doe. And now all is over. There is this note
only. It is for Morag.”
Gorromalt leaned forward to take it. But I had seen the wild look in
Morag’s eyes, and I snatched it from Mr Stewart, and gave it to my dear,
who slipped it beneath her kerchief.
Sullenly her father drew up, scowled, but said nothing.
“What else?” he asked, turning to the minister.
“She is dying.”
“Dying!”
“Ay, alas, alas--the mist is on the hill--the mist is on the hill--and
she so young, too, and so fair, ay, and so sweet and----”
“That will do, Allan Stewart! That will do!… It is dying she is, you are
for telling us! Well, well, now, and she the plaything o’ Jasper Morgan,
the son of the man there at Drumdoon, the man who wants to drive me away
from here … this _new_ man … this, this lord … he … to drive _me_ away,
who have the years and years to go upon, ay, for more than six hundred
weary long years----”
“Muireall is dying, Archibald Campbell. Will you be coming to see her,
who is your very own?”
“And for why is she dying?”
“She could not wait.”
“Wait! Wait! She could wait to shame me and mine! No, no, no, Allan
Stewart, you go back to Lord Greycourt’s son and his _leannan_, and say
that neither Gorromalt nor any o’ Gorromalt’s kith or kin will have aught
to do with that wastrel-lass. Let her death be on her! But it’s a soon
easy death it is!… she that slept here this very last night, and away
this morning across the moor like a louping doe, before sunburst and an
hour to that!”
“She is at the ‘Argyll Arms’ in Kilbrennan. She met the man there. An
hour after he had gone, they found her, lying on the deerskin on the
hearth, and she with the death-sickness on her, and grave-white, because
of the poison there beside her. And now, Archibald Campbell, it is not
refusing you will be to come to your own daughter, and she with death
upon her, and at the edge o’ the silence!”
But with that Gorromalt uttered wild, savage words, and thrust the old
man before him, and bade him begone, and cursed Muireall, and the child
she bore within her, and the man who had done this thing, and the father
that had brought him into the world, latest adder of an evil brood!
Scarce, however, was the minister gone, and he muttering sore, and
frowning darkly at that, than Gorromalt reeled and fell.
The blood had risen to his brain, and he had had a stroke. Sure, the
sudden hand of God is a terrifying thing. It was all we could do, with
the help of Maisie and Kirsteen, to lift and drag him to his bed.
But an hour after that, when the danger was over, I went to seek Morag. I
could find her nowhere. Maisie had seen her last. I thought that she had
taken one of the horses from the stable, and ridden towards Kilbrennan:
but there was no sign of this. On the long weary moor-road that led
across Strathglas to Strathgorm, she could not have walked without being
seen by some one at Teenabrae. And everyone there was now going to and
fro, with whispers and a dreadful awe.
So I turned and went down by the linn. From there I could see three
places where Morag loved to lie and dream: and at one of these I hoped to
descry her.
And, sure, so it was. A glimpse I caught of her, across the spray of the
linn. She was far up the brown Gorromalt Water, and crouched under a
rowan-tree.
When I reached her she looked up with a start. Ah, the pain of those
tear-wet May-blue eyes--deep tarns of grief to me they seemed.
In her hand she clasped the letter that I had snatched for her.
“Read it, dear,” she said simply.
It was in pencil, and, strangely, was in the Gaelic: strangely, for
though, when with Mr and Mrs Campbell, Morag and I spoke the language
we all loved, and that was our own, Muireall rarely did. The letter ran
somewhat thus:
“MORAG-À-GHRAIDH,
“When you get this I shall not be your living sister any more, but
only a memory. I take the little one with me. You know my trouble.
Forgive me. I have only one thing to ask. The man has not only
betrayed me, he has lied to me about his love. He loves another
woman. And that woman, Morag, is you: and you know it. He loved
you first. And now, Morag, I will tell you one thing only. Do you
remember the story that old Sheen McIan told us--that about the
twin sisters of the mother of our mother--one that was a Morag too?
“I am thinking you do: and here--where I shall soon be lying dead,
with that silence within me, where such a wild clamouring voice
has been, though inaudible to other ears than mine--_here, I am
thinking you will be remembering, and realising, that story_!
“If, Morag, _if_ you do not remember--but ah, no, we are of the old
race of Siol Dhiarmid, _and you will remember_!
“Tell no one of this, except F.--_at the end_.
“Morag, dear sister, till we meet----
“MUIREALL.”
“I do not understand, Morag-my-heart,” I said. Even now, my hand shook
because of these words: “_and that woman, Morag, is you: and you know
it_.”
“Not now,” she answered, wearily. “I will tell you to-night: but not now.”
And so we went back together; she, too tired and stricken for tears, and
I with so many in my heart that there were none for my hot eyes.
As we passed the byre we heard Kirsteen finishing a milking song, but
we stopped when Maisie suddenly broke in, with her strange, wild,
haunting-sweet voice.
I felt Morag’s fingers tighten in their grasp on my arm as we stood
silent, with averted eyes, listening to an old Gaelic ballad of “Morag of
the Glen.”
When Morag of the Glen was fëy
They took her where the Green Folk stray:
And there they left her, night and day,
A day and night they left her, fëy.
And when they brought her home again,
Aye of the Green Folk was she fain:
They brought her _leannan_, Roy McLean,
She looked at him with proud disdain.
“For I have killed a man,” she said,
“A better man than you to wed:
I slew him when he claspt my head,
And now he sleepeth with the dead.
“And did you see that little wren?
My sister dear it was, flew then!
That skull her home, that eye her den,
Her song is, _Morag o’ the Glen_!
“For when she went I did not go,
But washed my hands in blood-red woe:
O wren, trill out your sweet song’s flow,
_Morag is white as the driven snow_!”
II
That night the wind had a dreadful soughing in its voice--a lamentable
voice that came along the rain-wet face of the hills, with a prolonged
moaning and sobbing.
Down in the big room, that was kitchen and sitting-room in one, where
Gorromalt sat--for he had risen from his bed, for all that he was so weak
and giddy--there was darkness. His wife had pleaded for the oil-lamp,
because the shadows within and the wild wind without--though, I am
thinking, most the shadows within her brain--filled her with dread; but
he would not have it, no, not a candle even. The peats glowed, red-hot;
above them the small narrow pine-logs crackled in a scarlet and yellow
blaze.
Hour after hour went by in silence. There were but the three of us.
Morag? Ah, did Gorromalt think she would stay at Teenabrae, and Muireall
near by, and in the clutch of the death-frost, and she, her sister dear,
not go to her? He had put the ban upon us, soon as the blood was out of
his brain, and he could half rise from his pillow. No one was to go to
see her, no one was to send word to her, no one was to speak of her.
At that, Aunt Elspeth had fallen on her knees beside the bed, and prayed
to him to show pity. The tears rained upon the relentless heavy hand she
held and kissed. “At the least,” she moaned, “at the least, let some one
go to her, Archibald; at least a word, only one word!”
“Not a word, woman, not a word. She has sinned, but that’s the way o’
women o’ that kind. Let her be. The wind’ll blow her soul against God’s
heavy hand, this very night o’ the nights. It’s not for you nor for me.
But I’m saying this, I am: curse her, ay, curse her again and again, for
that she let the son of the stranger, the son of our enemy, who would
drive us out of the home we have, the home of our fathers, ay, back to
the time when no English foot ever trod the heather of Argyll, that she
would let him do her this shame and disgrace, her and me, an’ you too,
ay, and all of our blood, and the Strath too, for that--ay, by God, and
the clan, the whole clan!”
But though Gorromalt’s word was law there, there was one who had the tide
coming in at one ear and going out at the other. As soon as the rainy
gloom deepened into dark, she slipped from the house; I wanted to go with
her, but she whispered to me to stay. It was well I did. I was able to
keep back from him, all night, the story of Morag’s going. He thought
she was in her bed. So bitter on the man was his wrath, that, ill as he
was, he would have risen, and ridden or driven over to Kilbrennan, had he
known Morag was gone there.
Angus Macallum, Gorromalt’s chief man, was with the horses in the stable.
He tried to prevent Morag taking out Gealcas, the mare, she that went
faster and surer than any there. He even put hand upon the lass, and said
a rough word. But she laughed, I am told; and I am thinking that whoever
heard Morag laugh, when she was “strange,” for all that she was so white
and soft, she with her hair o’ sunlight, and the blue, blue eyes o’
her!--whoever heard _that_ would not be for standing in her way.
So Angus had stood back, sullenly giving no help, but no longer daring to
interfere. She mounted Gealcas, and rode away into the dark rainy night
where the wind went louping to and fro among the crags on the braes as
though it were mad with fear or pain, and complaining wild, wild--the
lamentable cry of the hills.
Hour after hour we sat there. We could hear the roaring sound of
Gorromalt Water as it whirled itself over the linn. The stream was in
spate, and would be boiling black, with livid clots of foam flung here
and there on the dripping heather overhanging the torrent. The wind’s
endless sough came into the house, and wailed in the keyholes and the
chinks. Rory, the blind collie, lay on a mat near the door, and the
long hair of his felt was blown upward, and this way and that, by the
ground-draught.
Once or twice Aunt Elspeth rose, and stirred the porridge that seethed
and bubbled in the pot. Her husband took no notice. He was in a daze,
and sat in his flanked leathern arm-chair, with his arms laid along the
sides, and his down-clasping hands catching the red gleam of the peats,
and his face, white and set, like that of a dead man looking out of a
grated prison.
Once or twice, an hour or so before, when she had begun to croon some
hymn, he had harshly checked her. But now when she hummed, and at last
openly sang the Gaelic version of “The Lord’s my Shepherd,” he paid no
heed. He was not hearing that, or anything she did. I could make nothing
of the cold bitterness that was on his face. He brooded, I doubt not,
upon doom for the man, and the son of the man, who had wrought him this
evil.
His wife saw this, and so had her will at last. She took down the great
Gaelic Bible, and read Christ’s words about little children. The rain
slashed against the window-panes. Beyond, the wind moaned, and soughed,
and moaned. From the kennel behind the byre a mournful howling rose and
fell; but Gorromalt did not stir.
Aunt Elspeth looked at me despairingly. Poor old woman; ah, the misery
and pain of it, the weariness and long pain of starved hearts and barren
hopes. Suddenly an idea came to her. She rose again, and went over to the
fire. Twice she passed in front of her husband. He made no sign.
“He hates those things,” she muttered to me, her eyes wet with pain,
and with something of shame, too, for admitting that she believed in
incantations. And why not, poor old woman? Sure there are stranger things
than _sian_ or _rosad_, charm or spell; and who can say that the secret
old wisdom is mere foam o’ thought. “He hates those things, but I am for
saving my poor lass if I can. I will be saying that old ancient _eolas_,
that is called the _Eolas an t-Snaithnean_.”
“What is that, Aunt Elspeth? What are the three threads?”
“That _eolas_ killed the mother of my mother, dearie; she that was a
woman out of the isle of Benbecula.”
“Killed her!” I repeated, awe-struck.
“Ay; ’tis a charm for the doing away of bewitchment, and sure it is my
poor Muireall who has been bewitched. But my mother’s mother used the
_eolas_ for the taking away of a curse upon a cow that would not give
milk. She was saying the incantation for the third time, and winding the
triple thread round the beast’s tail, when in a moment all the ill that
was in the cow came forth and settled upon her, so that she went back
to her house quaking and sick with the blight, and died of it next day,
because there was no one to take it from her in turn by that or any other
_eolas_.”
I listened in silence. The thing seemed terrible to me then; no, no, not
then only, but now, too, whenever I think of it.
“Say it then, Aunt Elspeth,” I whispered; “say it, in the name of the
Holy Three.”
With that she went on her knees, and leaned against her chair, though
with her face towards her husband, because of the fear that was ever in
her. Then in a low voice, choked with sobs, she said this old _eolas_,
after she had first uttered the holy words of the “Pater Noster”:
_“Chi suil thu,_
_Labhraidh bial thu;_
_Smuainichidh cridhe thu._
_Tha Fear an righthighe_
_Gad’ choisreagadh,_
_An t-Athair, am Mac, ’s an Spiorad Naomh._
_“Ceathrar a rinn do chron--_
_Fear agus bean,_
_Gille agus nighean._
_Co tha gu sin a thilleadh?_
_Tri Pearsannan na Trianaid ro-naomh,_
_An t-Athair, am Mac, ’s an Spioraid Naomh._
_“Tha mi ’cur fianuis gu Moire, agus gu Brighde,_
_Ma ’s e duine rinn do chron,_
_Le droch run,_
_No le droch shuil,_
_No le droch chridhe,_
_Gu’m bi thusa, Muireall gu math,_
_Ri linn so a chur mu’n cuairt ort._
_An ainm an Athar, a’ Mhic, ’s an Spioraid Naomh!”_
(“An eye will see you,
Tongue will speak of you,
Heart will think of you,
The Man of Heaven
Blesses you--
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
“Four caused your hurt--
Man and Wife,
Young man, and maiden.
Who is to frustrate that?
The three Persons of the most Holy Trinity,
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
“I call the Virgin Mary and St Bridget to witness
That if your hurt was caused by man,
Through ill-will,
Or the evil eye,
Or a wicked heart,
That you, Muireall, my daughter, may be whole--
And this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”)
Just as she finished, and as she was lingering on the line, “_Gu’m bi
thusa, Muireall gu math_” Rory, the blind collie, rose, whimpered, and
stood with snarling jaws.
Strangely enough, Gorromalt heard this, though his ears had been deaf to
all else, or so it seemed, at least.
“Down, Rory! down, beast!” he exclaimed, in a voice strangely shrill and
weak.
But the dog would not be still. His sullen fear grew worse. Suddenly he
sidled and lay on his belly, now snarling, now howling, his blind eyes
distended, his nostrils quivering, his flanks quaking. My uncle rose and
stared at the dog.
“What ails the beast?” he asked angrily, looking now at Rory, now at us.
“Has any one come in? Has any one been at the door?”
“No one, Archibald.”
“What have you been doing, Elspeth?”
“Nothing.”
“Woman, I heard your voice droning at your prayers. Ah, I see--you have
been at some of your _sians_ and _eolais_ again. Sure, now, one would be
thinking you would have less foolishness, and you with the greyness upon
your years. What _eolas_ did she say, lass?”
I told him. “Aw, silly woman that she is, the _eolas an t-Snaithnean_!
madness and folly!… Where is Morag?”
“In bed.” I said this with truth in my eyes. God’s forgiveness for that
good lie!
“And it’s time you were there also, and you too, Elspeth. Come now, no
more of this foolishness. We have nothing to wait for. Why are we waiting
here?”
At that moment Rory became worse than ever. I thought the poor blind
beast would take some dreadful fit. Foam was on his jaws; his hair
bristled. He had sidled forward, and crouched low. We saw him look again
and again towards the blank space to his right, as if, blind though he
was, he saw some one there, some one that gave him fear, but no longer a
fierce terror. Nay, more than once we saw him swish his tail, and sniff
as though recognisingly. But when he turned his head towards the door
his sullen fury grew, and terror shook upon every limb. It was now that
Gorromalt was speaking.
Suddenly the dog made a leap forward--a terrible bristling wolf he seemed
to me, though no wolf had I ever seen, or imagined any more fearsome,
than Rory, now.
He dashed himself against the door, snarling and mouthing, with his snout
nosing the narrow slip at the bottom.
Aunt Elspeth and I shook with fear. My uncle was death-white, but stood
strangely brooding. He had his right elbow upon his breast, and supported
it with his left arm, while with his right hand he plucked at his beard.
“For sure,” he said at last, with an effort to seem at ease; “for sure
the dog is fëy with his age and his blindness.” Then, more slowly still,
“And if that were not so, it might look as though he had the fear on him,
because of some one who strove to come in.”
“It is Muireall,” I whispered, scarce above my breath.
“No,” said Aunt Elspeth, and the voice of her now was as though it
had come out of the granite all about us, cold and hard as that. “No!
Muireall is already in the room.”
We both turned and looked at her. She sat quite still, on the chair
betwixt the fire and the table. Her face was rigid, ghastly, but her eyes
were large and wild.
A look first of fear, then almost of tenderness, came into her husband’s
face.
“Hush, Elspeth,” he said, “that is foolishness.”
“It is not foolishness, Archibald,” she resumed in the same hard,
unemotional voice, but with a terrible intensity. “Man, man, because ye
are blind, is there no sight for those who can see?”
“There is no one here but ourselves.”
But now Aunt Elspeth half rose, with supplicating arms:
“Muireall! Muireall! Muireall! O muirnean, muirnean!”
I saw Archibald Campbell shaking as though he were a child and no strong
man. “Will you be telling us this, Elspeth,” he began in a hoarse
voice--“will you be telling me this: if Muireall is in the room, beyond
Rory there, who will be at the door? Who is trying to come in at the
door?”
“It’s a man. I do not know the man. It is a man. It is Death, maybe. I do
not know the man. O muirnean, mo muirnean!”
But now the great gaunt black dog--terrible in his seeing blindness he
was to me--began again his savage snarling, his bristling insensate fury.
He had ceased a moment while our voices filled the room, and had sidled
a little way towards the place where Aunt Elspeth saw Muireall, whining
low as he did so, and swishing his tail furtively along the whitewashed
flagstones.
I know not what awful thing would have happened. It seemed to me that
Death was coming to all of us.
But at that moment we all heard the sound of a galloping horse. There
was a lull in the wind, and the rain lashed no more like a streaming
whistling whip. Even Rory crouched silent, his nostrils quivering, his
curled snout showing his fangs.
Gorromalt stood, listening intently.
“By the living God,” he exclaimed suddenly, his eyes like a goaded
bull’s--“I know that horse. Only one horse runs like that at the
gallop. ’Tis the grey stallion I sold three months ago to the man at
Drumdoon--ay, ay, for the son of the man at Drumdoon! A horse to ride
for the shooting--a good horse for the hills--that was what he wanted!
Ay, ay, by God, a horse for the son of the man at Drumdoon! It’s the
grey stallion: no other horse in the Straths runs like that--d’ye
hear? d’ye hear? Elspeth, woman, is there hearing upon you for _that_?
Hey, _tlot-a-tlot, tlot-a-tlot, tlot-tlot-tlot-tlot, tlot-a-tlot,
tlot-tlot-tlot_! I tell you, woman, it’s the grey stallion I sold to
Drumdoon: it’s that and no other! Ay, by the Sorrow, it’s Drumdoon’s son
that will be riding here!”
By this time the horse was close by. We heard his hoofs clang above the
flagstones round the well at the side of the house. Then there was a
noise as of scattered stones, and a long scraping sound: then silence.
Gorromalt turned and put his hand to the door. There was murder in his
eyes, for all the smile, a grim terrible smile, that had come to his lips.
Aunt Elspeth rose and ran to him, holding him back. The door shook. Rory
the hound tore at the splinters at the base of the door, his fell again
bristling, his snarling savagery horrible to hear. The pine-logs had
fallen into a smouldering ash. The room was full of gloom, though the red
sullen eye of the peat-glow stared through the obscurity.
“Don’t be opening the door! Don’t be opening the door!” she cried, in a
thin screaming voice.
“What for no, woman? Let me go! Hell upon this dog--out o’ the way,
Rory--get back! Down wi’ ye!”
“No, no, Archibald! Wait! Wait!”
Then a strange thing happened.
Rory ceased, sullenly listened, and then retreated, but no longer
snarling and bristling.
Gorromalt suddenly staggered.
“Who touched me just now?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
No one answered.
“Who touched me just now? Who passed? Who slid past me?” His voice rose
almost to a scream.
Then, shaking off his wife, he swung the door open.
There was no one there. Outside could be heard a strange sniffling and
whinnying. It was the grey stallion.
Gorromalt strode across the threshold. Scarcely had I time to prevent
Aunt Elspeth from falling against the lintel in a corner, yet in a
moment’s interval I saw that the stallion was riderless.
“Archibald!” wailed his wife faintly out of her weakness. “Archibald,
come back! Come back!”
But there was no need to call. Archibald Campbell was not the man to fly
in the face of God. He knew that no mortal rider rode that horse to its
death that night. Even before he closed the door we heard the rapid,
sliding, catching gallop. The horse had gone: rider or riderless I know
not.
He was ashy-grey. Suddenly he had grown quite still. He lifted his wife,
and helped her to her own big leathern arm-chair at the other side of the
ingle.
“Light the lamp, lass,” he said to me, in a hushed strange voice. Then
he stooped and threw some small pine-logs on the peats, and stirred the
blaze till it caught the dry splintered edges.
Rory, poor blind beast, came wearily and with a low whine to his side,
and then lay down before the warm blaze.
“Bring the Book,” he said to me.
I brought the great leather-bound Gaelic Bible, and laid it on his knees.
He placed his hand in it, and opened at random.
“With Himself be the word,” he said.
“Is it Peace?” asked Aunt Elspeth in a tremulous whisper.
“It is Peace,” he answered, his voice gentle, his face stern as a graven
rock. And what he read was this, where his eye chanced upon as he opened
at the place where is the Book of the Vision of Nahum the Elkoshite:
“_What do ye imagine against the Lord? He will make a full end._”
After that there was a silence. Then he rose, and told me to go and lie
down and sleep; for, on the morrow, after dawn, I was to go with him to
where Muireall was.
I saw Aunt Elspeth rise and put her arms about him. They had peace. I
went to my room, but after a brief while returned, and sat, in the
quietness there, by the glowing peats, till dawn.
* * * * *
The greyness came at last; with it, the rain ceased. The wind still
soughed and wailed among the corries and upon the rocky braes; with low
moans sighing along the flanks of the near hills, and above the stony
watercourse where the Gorromalt surged with swirling foam and loud and
louder tumult.
My eyes had closed in my weariness, when I heard Rory give a low growl,
followed by a contented whimper. Almost at the same moment the door
opened. I looked up, startled.
It was Morag.
She was so white, it is scarce to be wondered at that I took her at first
for a wraith. Then I saw how drenched she was, chilled to the bone too.
She did not speak as I led her in, and made her stand before the fire,
while I took off her soaked dress and shoes. In silence she made all the
necessary changes, and in silence drank the tea I brewed for her.
“Come to my room with me,” she whispered, as with quiet feet we crossed
the stone flags and went up the wooden stair that led to her room.
When she was in bed she bade me put out the light and lie down beside
her. Still silent, we lay there in the darkness, for at that side of the
house the hill-gloom prevailed, and moreover the blind was down-drawn. I
thought the weary moaning of the wind would make my very heart sob.
Then, suddenly, Morag put her arms about me, and the tears streamed warm
about my neck.
“Hush, Morag-aghray, hush, mo-rùn,” I whispered in her ear. “Tell me what
it is, dear! Tell me what it is!”
“Oh, and I loved him so! I loved him!”
“I know it, dear; I knew it all along.”
I thought her sobs would never cease till her heart was broken, so I
questioned her again.
“Yes,” she said, gaspingly, “yes, I loved him when Muireall and I were in
the South together. I met him a month or more before ever she saw him. He
loved me, and I promised to marry him: but I would not go away with him
as he wished: for he said his father would never agree. And then he was
angry, and we quarrelled. And I--Oh! I was glad too, for I did not wish
to marry an Englishman--or to live in a dreary city; but … but … and then
he and Muireall met, and he gave all his thought to her; and she her love
to him.”
“And now?”
“Now?… _Now_ Muireall is dead.”
“Dead? O Morag, _dead_? Oh, poor Muireall that we loved so! But did you
see her? was she alive when you reached her?”
“No; but she was alone. And now, listen. Here is a thing I have to tell
you. When Ealasaid Cameron, that was my mother’s mother, was a girl,
she had a cruel sorrow. She had two sisters whom she loved with all her
heart. They were twins, Silis and Morag. One day an English officer at
Fort William took Silis away with him as his wife; but when her child
was heavy within her she discovered that she was no wife, for the man
was already wedded to a woman in the South. She left him that night.
It was bitter weather, and midwinter. She reached home through a wild
snowdrift. It killed her; but before she died she said to Morag, ‘He has
killed me and the child.’ And Morag understood. So it was that before any
wind of spring blew upon that snow, the man was dead.”
When Morag stopped here, and said no more, I did not at first realise
what she meant to tell me. Then it flashed upon me.
“O Morag, Morag!” I exclaimed, terrified. “But, Morag, you do not … you
will not …”
“_Will_ not?” she repeated, with a catch in her voice.
“Listen,” she resumed suddenly after a long, strained silence. “While I
lay beside my darling Muireall, weeping and moaning over her, and she so
fair, with such silence where the laughter had always been, I heard the
door open. I looked up: it was Jasper Morgan.
“‘You are too late,’ I said. I stared at the man who had brought her, and
me, this sorrow. There was no light about him at all, as I had always
thought. He was only a man as other men are, but with a cold selfish
heart and loveless eyes.
“‘She sent for me to come back to her,’ he answered, though I saw his
face grow ashy-grey as he looked at Muireall and saw that she was dead.
“‘She is dead, Jasper Morgan.’
“‘_Dead … Dead?_’
“‘Ay, dead. It is upon you, her death. Her you have slain, as though with
your sword that you carry: her, and the child she bore within her, and
that was yours.’
“At that he bit his lip till the blood came.
“‘It is a lie,’ he cried. ‘It is a lie, Morag. If she said that thing,
she lied.’
“I laughed.
“‘Why do you laugh, Morag?’ he asked, in a swift anger.
“Once more I laughed.
“‘Why do you laugh like that, girl?’
“But I did not answer. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘come with me. I have something to
say to you. You can do no good here now. She has taken poison, because of
the shame and the sorrow.’
“‘Poison!’ he cried, in horror; and also, I could see in the poor
cowardly mind of him, in a sudden sick fear.
“But when I rose to leave the room he made ready to follow me. I kissed
Muireall for the last time. The man approached, as though to do likewise.
I lifted my riding-whip. He bowed his head, with a deep flush on his
face, and came out behind me.
“I told the inn-folk that my father would be over in the morning. Then I
rode slowly away. Jasper Morgan followed on his horse, a grey stallion
that Muireall and I had often ridden, for he was from Teenabrae farm.
“When we left the village it was into a deep darkness. The rain and the
wind made the way almost impassable at times. But at last we came to the
ford. The water was in spate, and the rushing sound terrified my horse. I
dismounted, and fastened Gealcas to a tree. The man did the same.
“‘What is it, Morag?’ he asked in a quiet steady voice--‘Death?’
“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Death.’
“Then he suddenly fell forward, and snatched my hand, and begged me to
forgive him, swearing that he had loved me and me only, and imploring me
to believe him, to love him, to … Ah, the _hound_!
“But all I said was this:
“‘Jasper Morgan, soon or late I would kill you, because of this cruel
wrong you did to her. But there is one way: best for _her_ … best for
_me_ … best for _you_.’
“‘What is that?’ he said hoarsely, though I think he knew now. The roar
of the Gorromalt Water filled the night.
“‘There is one way. It is the only way … Go!’
“He gave a deep quavering sigh. Then without word he turned, and walked
straight into the darkness.”
Morag paused here. Then, in answer to my frightened whisper, she added
simply:
“They will find his body in the shallows, down by Drumdoon. The spate
will carry it there.”
* * * * *
After that we lay in silence. The rain had begun to fall again, and
slid with a soft stealthy sound athwart the window. A dull light grew
indiscernibly into the room. Then we heard someone move downstairs. In
the yard, Angus, the stableman, began to pump water. A cow lowed, and
the cluttering of hens was audible.
I moved gently from Morag’s side. As I rose, Maisie passed beneath the
window on her way to the byre. As her wont was, poor wild wildered lass,
she was singing fitfully. It was the same ballad again. But we heard a
single verse only.
“For I have killed a man,” she said,
“A better man than you to wed:
I slew him when he clasped my head,
And now he sleepeth with the dead.”
Then the voice was lost in the byre, and in the sweet familiar lowing of
the kine. The new day was come.
_THE DAN-NAN-RON_
_NOTE_