and then ascend by a sheep-path that wound through the hazel copses at
the base of the hill. Fully half-an-hour was thus saved, because of the
steepness of the precipitous corries to right and left. A boat was kept
for this purpose, but it was fastened to a shore-boulder by a padlocked
iron chain, the key of which was kept by Donald Macarthur. Latterly he
had refused to let this key out of his possession. For one thing, no
doubt, he believed he could thus restrain Achanna from visiting his
daughter. The young man could not approach the shealing from either side
without being seen.
But that night, soon after the moon was whitening slow in the dark,
Katreen stole down to the hazel copse and awaited the coming of her
lover. The lochan was visible from almost any point on Cnoc-an-Fhraoch,
as well as from the south side. To cross it in a boat unseen, if any
watcher were near, would be impossible, nor could even a swimmer hope
to escape notice unless in the gloom of night, or, mayhap, in the dusk.
When, however, she saw, half way across the water, a spray of green
branches slowly moving athwart the surface, she knew that Sheumais was
keeping his tryst. If, perchance, any one else saw, he or she would never
guess that those derelict rowan-branches shrouded Sheumais Achanna.
It was not till the estray had drifted close to the ledge, where, hid
among the bracken and the hazel undergrowth, she awaited him, that
Katreen descried the face of her lover, as with one hand he parted the
green sprays and stared longingly and lovingly at the figure he could
just discern in the dim fragrant obscurity.
And as it was this night, so was it on many of the nights that followed.
Katreen spent the days as in a dream. Not even the news of her cousin
Ian’s return disturbed her much.
One day the inevitable meeting came. She was at Ranza-Mòr, and when a
shadow came into the dairy where she was standing she looked up, and saw
Ian before her. She thought he appeared taller and stronger than ever,
though still not so tall as Sheumais, who would appear slim beside the
Herculean Skye man. But as she looked at his close curling black hair,
and thick bull neck, and the sullen eyes in his dark wind-red face, she
wondered that she had ever tolerated him at all.
He broke the ice at once.
“Tell me, Katreen, are you glad to see me back again?”
“I am glad that you are home once more safe and sound.”
“And will you make it my home for me by coming to live with me, as I’ve
asked you again and again.”
“No, as I’ve told you again and again.”
He gloomed at her angrily for a few moments before he resumed.
“I will be asking you this one thing, Katreen, daughter of my father’s
brother: do you love that man Achanna who lives at Ranza-beag?”
“You may ask the wind why it is from the east or the west, but it won’t
tell you. You’re not the wind’s master.”
“If you think I will let this man take you away from me, you are thinking
a foolish thing.”
“And you saying a foolisher.”
“Ay?”
“Ay, sure. What could you do, Ian-mhic-Ian? At the worst, you could do
no more than kill James Achanna. What then? I too would die. You cannot
separate us. I would not marry you, now, though you were the last man on
the world and I the last woman.”
“You’re a fool, Katreen Macarthur. Your father has promised you to me,
and I tell you this: if you love Achanna you’ll save his life only by
letting him go away from here. I promise you he will not be here long.”
“Ay, you promise _me_; but you will not say that thing to James Achanna’s
face. You are a coward.”
With a muttered oath the man turned on his heel.
“Let him beware o’ me, and you, too, Katreen-mo-nighean-donn. I swear it
by my mother’s grave and by St Martin’s Cross that you will be mine by
hook or by crook.”
The girl smiled scornfully. Slowly she lifted a milk-pail.
“It would be a pity to waste the good milk, Ian-gòrach; but if you don’t
go it is I that will be emptying the pail on you, and then you’ll be as
white without as your heart is within.”
“So, you call me witless, do you? _Ian-gòrach!_ Well, we shall be seeing
as to that; and as for the milk, there will be more than milk spilt
because of _you_, Katreen-donn.”
From that day, though neither Sheumais nor Katreen knew of it, a watch
was set upon Achanna.
It could not be long before their secret was discovered; and it was
with a savage joy overmastering his sullen rage that Ian Macarthur knew
himself the discoverer, and conceived his double vengeance. He dreamed,
gloatingly, on both the black thoughts that roamed like ravenous beasts
through the solitudes of his heart. But he did not dream that another
man was filled with hate because of Katreen’s lover--another man who had
sworn to make her his own; the man who, disguised, was known in Armadale
as Donald McLean, and in the north isles would have been hailed as Gloom
Achanna.
There had been steady rain for three days, with a cold raw wind. On
the fourth the sun shone, and set in peace. An evening of quiet beauty
followed, warm, fragrant, dusky from the absence of moon or star, though
the thin veils of mist promised to disperse as the night grew.
There were two men that eve in the undergrowth on the south side of
the lochlet. Sheumais had come earlier than his wont. Impatient for
the dusk, he could scarce await the waning of the afterglow. Surely,
he thought, he might venture. Suddenly his ears caught the sound of
cautious footsteps. Could it be old Donald, perhaps, with some inkling
of the way in which his daughter saw her lover, in despite of all; or,
mayhap, might it be Ian Macarthur tracking him, as a hunter stalking a
stag by the water-pools? He crouched, and waited. In a few minutes he saw
Ian carefully picking his way. The man stooped as he descried the green
branches; smiled as, with a low rustling, he raised them from the ground.
Meanwhile, yet another man watched and waited, though on the farther
side of the lochan, where the hazel copses were. Gloom Achanna half
hoped, half feared the approach of Katreen. It would be sweet to see her
again, sweet to slay her lover before her eyes, brother to him though he
was. But, there was the chance that she might descry him, and, whether
recognisingly or not, warn the swimmer. So it was that he had come there
before sundown, and now lay crouched among the bracken underneath a
projecting mossy ledge close upon the water, where it could scarce be
that she or any should see him.
As the gloaming deepened, a great stillness reigned. There was no breath
of wind. A scarce audible sigh prevailed among the spires of the heather.
The churring of a nightjar throbbed through the darkness. Somewhere
a corncrake called its monotonous _crék-craik_--the dull harsh sound
emphasising the utter stillness. The pinging of the gnats hovering over
and among the sedges made an incessant rumour through the warm sultry air.
There was a splash once as of a fish; then silence. Then a lower but
more continuous splash, or rather wash of water. A slow susurrus rustled
through the dark.
Where he lay among the fern Gloom Achanna slowly raised his head, stared
through the shadows, and listened intently. If Katreen were waiting there
she was not near.
Noiselessly he slid into the water. When he rose it was under a clump of
green branches. These he had cut and secured three hours before. With his
left hand he swam slowly, or kept his equipoise in the water; with his
right he guided the heavy rowan bough. In his mouth were two objects, one
long and thin and dark, the other with an occasional glitter as of a dead
fish.
His motion was scarce perceptible. None the less he was nigh the
middle of the loch almost as soon the other clump of green branches.
Doubtless the swimmer beneath it was confident that he was now safe from
observation.
The two clumps of green branches drew nearer. The smaller seemed a mere
estray--a spray blown down by the recent gale. But all at once the larger
clump jerked awkwardly and stopped. Simultaneously a strange low strain
of music came from the other.
The strain ceased. The two clumps of green branches remained motionless.
Slowly at last the larger moved forward. It was too dark for the swimmer
to see if any one lay hid behind the smaller. When he reached it he
thrust aside the leaves.
It was as though a great salmon leaped. There was a splash, and a narrow
dark body shot through the gloom. At the end of it something gleamed.
Then suddenly there was a savage struggle. The inanimate green branches
tore this way and that, and surged and swirled. Gasping cries came from
the leaves. Again and again the gleaming thing leaped. At the third leap
an awful scream shrilled through the silence. The echo of it wailed
thrice with horrible distinctness in the corrie beyond Cnoc-an-Fhraoch.
Then, after a faint splashing, there was silence once more. One clump of
green branches drifted loosely up the lochlet. The other moved steadily
towards the place whence, a brief while before, it had stirred.
Only one thing lived in the heart of Gloom Achanna--the joy of his
exultation. He had killed his brother Sheumais. He had always hated him
because of his beauty; of late he had hated him because he had stood
between him, Gloom, and Katreen Macarthur, because he had become her
lover. They were all dead now except himself--all the Achannas. He was
“Achanna.” When the day came that he would go back to Galloway there
would be a magpie on the first birk, and a screaming jay on the first
rowan, and a croaking raven on the first fir. Ay, he would be their
suffering, though they knew nothing of him meanwhile! He would be Achanna
of Achanna again. Let those who would stand in his way beware. As for
Katreen: perhaps he would take her there, perhaps not. He smiled.
These thoughts were the wandering fires in his brain while he slowly swam
shoreward under the floating green branches, and as he disengaged himself
from them, and crawled upward through the bracken. It was at this moment
that a third man entered the water from the farther shore.
Prepared as he was to come suddenly upon Katreen, Gloom was startled
when, in a place of dense shadow, a hand touched his shoulder, and her
voice whispered, “_Sheumais, Sheumais!_”
The next moment she was in his arms. He could feel her heart beating
against his side.
“What was it, Sheumais? What was that awful cry?” she whispered.
For answer he put his lips to hers, and kissed her again and again.
The girl drew back. Some vague instinct warned her.
“What is it, Sheumais? Why don’t you speak?”
He drew her close again.
“Pulse of my heart, it is I who love you--I who love you best of all. It
is I, Gloom Achanna!”
With a cry, she struck him full in the face. He staggered, and in that
moment she freed herself.
“You _coward_!”
“Katreen, I …”
“Come no nearer. If you do, it will be the death of you!”
“The death o’ me! Ah, bonnie fool that you are, and is it you that will
be the death o’ me?”
“Ay, Gloom Achanna, for I have but to scream and Sheumais will be here,
an’ he would kill you like a dog if he knew you did me harm.”
“Ah, but if there were no James, or any man, to come between me an’ my
will!”
“Then there would be a woman! Ay, if you overbore me I would strangle you
with my hair, or fix my teeth in your false throat!”
“I was not for knowing you were such a wild-cat! But I’ll tame you yet,
my lass! Aha, wild-cat!” and, as he spoke, he laughed low.
“It is a true word, Gloom of the black heart. I _am_ a wild-cat, and like
a wild-cat I am not to be seized by a fox, and that you will be finding
to your cost, by the holy St Bridget! But now, off with you, brother of
my man!”
“Your man … ha! ha!…”
“Why do you laugh?”
“Sure, I am laughing at a warm white lass like yourself having a dead man
as your lover!”
“A … dead … man?”
No answer came. The girl shook with a new fear. Slowly she drew closer
till her breath fell warm against the face of the other. He spoke at last.
“Ay, a dead man.”
“It is a lie.”
“Where would you be that you were not hearing his goodbye? I’m thinking
it was loud enough!”
“It is a lie … it is a lie!”
“No, it is no lie. Sheumais is cold enough now. He’s low among the weeds
by now. Ay, by now; down there in the lochan.”
“_What_ … you, _you devil_! Is it for killing your own brother you would
be!”
“I killed no one. He died his own way. Maybe the cramp took him. Maybe
… maybe a kelpie gripped him. I watched. I saw him beneath the green
branches. He was dead before he died, I saw it in the white face o’ him.
Then he sank. He’s dead--James is dead. Look here, girl, I’ve always
loved you. I swore the oath upon you--you’re mine. Sure, you’re mine now,
Katreen! It is loving you I am! It will be a south wind for you from this
day, _muirnean mochree_! See here, I’ll show you how I …”
“Back … back … _murderer_!”
“Be stopping that foolishness now, Katreen Macarthur! By the Book, I am
tired of it! I am loving you, and it’s having you for mine I am! And if
you won’t come to me like the dove to its mate, I’ll come to you like
the hawk to the dove!”
With a spring he was upon her. In vain she strove to beat him back. His
arms held her as a stoat grips a rabbit.
He pulled her head back, and kissed her throat till the strangulating
breath sobbed against his ear. With a last despairing effort she screamed
the name of the dead man--“_Sheumais! Sheumais! Sheumais!_” The man who
struggled with her laughed.
“Ay, call away! The herrin’ will be coming through the bracken as soon as
Sheumais comes to your call! Ah, it is mine you are now, Katreen! He’s
dead an’ cold, … an’ you’d best have a living man … an’ …”
She fell back, her balance lost in the sudden releasing. What did it
mean? Gloom still stood there, but as one frozen. Through the darkness
she saw at last that a hand gripped his shoulder--behind him a black mass
vaguely obtruded.
For some moments there was absolute silence. Then a hoarse voice came out
of the dark.
“You will be knowing now who it is, Gloom Achanna!”
The voice was that of Sheumais, who lay dead in the lochan. The murderer
shook as in a palsy. With a great effort, slowly he turned his head. He
saw a white splatch--the face of the corpse. In this white splatch flamed
two burning eyes, the eyes of the soul of the brother whom he had slain.
He reeled, staggered as a blind man, and, free now of that awful clasp,
swayed to and fro as one drunken.
Slowly Sheumais raised an arm, and pointed downward through the wood
towards the lochan. Still pointing, he moved swiftly forward. With a cry
like a beast, Gloom Achanna swung to one side, stumbled, rose, and leaped
into the darkness.
For some minutes Sheumais and Katreen stood, silent, apart, listening to
the crashing sound of his flight--the race of the murderer against the
pursuing shadow of the Grave.
_THE ARCHER_
THE ARCHER
The man who told me this thing was Coll McColl, an islander of Barra, in
the Southern Hebrides. He spoke in the Gaelic, and it was while he was
mending his net; and by the same token I thought at the time that his
words were like herring-fry in that net, some going clean through, and
others sticking fast by the gills. So I do not give it exactly as I heard
it, but in substance as Coll gave it.
He is dead now, and has perhaps seen the Archer. Coll was a poet, and the
island-folk said he was mad: but this was only because he loved beyond
the reach of his fate.
* * * * *
There were two men who loved one woman. It is of no mere girl with the
fair looks upon her I am speaking, but of a woman, that can put the spell
over two men. The name of the woman was Silis: the names of the men were
Sheumas and Isla.
Silis was the wife of Sheumas. So Sheumas had his home, for her breast
was his pillow when he willed it: and he had her voice for daily music:
and his eyes had never any thirst, for they could drink of her beauty by
day and by night. But Isla had no home. He saw his home afar off, and his
joy and his strength failed, because the shining lights of it were not
for him.
One night the two men were upon the water. It was a dead calm, and the
nets had been laid. There was no moon at all, and only a star or two up
in the black corner of the sky. The sea had the wandering flames in it:
and when the big jellyfish floated by, they were like the tide-lamps that
some are for saying the dead bear on their drowned faces.
“Some day I may be telling you a strange thing, Sheumas,” said Isla,
after the long silence there had been since the last net had sent a
little cloud of sparkles up from the gulfs.
“Ay?” said Sheumas, taking his pipe from his mouth, and looking at the
spire of smoke rising just forward o’ the mast. The water slipped by,
soft and slow. It was only the tide feeling its way up the sea-loch, for
there was not a breath of wind. Here and there were dusky shadows: the
boats of the fishermen of Inchghunnais. Each carried a red light, and in
some were green lanterns slung midway up the mast.
No other word was said for a long time.
“And I’m wondering,” said Isla at last: “I’m wondering what you’ll think
of that story.”
Sheumas made no answer to that. He smoked, and stared down into the dark
water.
After a time he rose, and leaned against the mast. Though there was no
light of either moon or lamp, he put his hand above his eyes, as his wont
was.
“I’m thinking the mackerel will be coming this way to-night. This is the
third time I’ve heard the snoring of the pollack … away yonder, beyond
Peter Macallum’s boat.”
“Well, Sheumas, I’ll sleep a bit. I had only the outside of a sleep last
night.”
With that Isla knocked the ash out of his pipe, and lay over against a
pile of rope, and shut his eyes, and did not sleep at all because of the
sick dull pain of the homeless man he was--home, home, home, and Silis
the name of it.
When, an hour or more later, he grew stiff he moved, and opened his eyes.
His mate was sitting at the helm, but the light in his pipe was out,
though he held the pipe in his mouth, and his eyes were wide staring open.
“I would not be telling me that story, Isla,” he said.
Isla answered nothing, but shifted back to where he was before, for all
his cramped leg. He closed his eyes again.
At the full of the tide, in the deep dark hour before the false dawn, as
the first glimmer is called, the glimmer that comes and goes, both men
got up, and moved about, stamping their feet. Each lit his pipe, and the
smoke hung long in little greyish puffs, so dead-still was it.
On the _Brudhearg_, John Macalpine’s boat, young Neil Macalpine sang. The
two men on the _Luath_ could hear his singing. It was one of the strange
songs of Ian Mòr.
O, she will have the deep dark heart, for all her face is fair,
As deep and dark as though beneath the shadow of her hair:
For in her hair a spirit dwells that no white spirit is,
And hell is in the hopeless heaven of that lost spirit’s kiss.
She has two men within the palm, the hollow of her hand:
She takes their souls and blows them forth as idle drifted sand:
And one falls back upon her breast that is his quiet home,
And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam.
And when she sees the sleep of one, ofttimes she rises there
And looks into the outer dark and calleth soft and fair:
And then the lost soul that afar within the dark doth roam
Comes laughing, laughing, laughing, and crying _Home! Home!_
And is there any home for him, whose portion is the night?
And is there any peace for him whose doom is endless flight?
O wild sad bird, O wind-spent bird, O bird upon the wave,
There is no home for thee, wild bird, but in the cold sea-grave!
Sheumas leaned against the tiller of the _Luath_, and looked at Isla. He
saw a shadow on his face. With his right foot the man tapped against a
loose spar that was on the starboard deck.
When the singer ceased, Isla raised his arm and shook menacingly his
clenched fist, over across the water to where the _Brudhearg_ lay.
There were words on his lips, but they died away when Neil Macalpine
broke into a love song, “Mo nighean donn.”
“Can you be telling me, Isla,” said Sheumas, “who was the man that made
that song about the homeless man?”
“Ian Mòr.”
“Ian Mòr of the Hills?”
“Ay.”
“They say he had the shadow upon him?”
“Well, what then?”
“Was it because of love?”
“It was because of love.”
“Did the woman love him?”
“Ay.”
“Did she go to him?”
“No.”
“Was that why he had the mind-dark?”
“Ay.”
“But he loved her, and she loved him?”
“He loved her, and she loved him.”
For a time Sheumas kept silence. Then he spoke again.
“She was the wife of another man?”
“Ay; she was the wife of another man.”
“Did _he_ love her?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“Did _she_ love _him_?”
“Yes … yes.”
“Whom, then, did she love? For a woman can love one man only.”
“She loved both.”
“That is not a possible thing: not the one deep love. It is a lie, Isla
Macleod.”
“Yes, it is a lie, Sheumas Maclean.”
“Which man did she love?”
Isla slowly shook the ash from his pipe, and looked for a second or two
at a momentary quiver in the sky in the north-east.
“The dawn will be here soon now, Sheumas.”
“Ay. I was asking you, Isla, which man did she love?”
“Sure she loved the man who gave her the ring.”
“Which man did she love?”
“O for sure, man, you’re asking me just like the lawyer who has the
trials away at Balliemore on the mainland yonder.”
“Well, I’ll tell you that thing myself, Isla Macleod, if you’ll tell me
the name of the woman.”
“I am not for knowing the name.”
“Was it Mary … or Jessie … or mayhap was it Silis, now?”
“I am not for knowing the name.”
“Well, well, it might be Silis, then?”
“Ay, for sure it might be Silis. As well Silis as any other.”
“And what would the name of the other man be?”
“What man?”
“The man whose ring she wore?”
“I am not remembering that name.”
“Well, now, would it be Padruic, or mayhap Ivor, or … or … perhaps, now,
Sheumas?”
“Ay, it might be that.”
“Sheumas?”
“Ay, as well that as any other.”
“And what was the end?”
“The end o’ what?”
“The end of that loving?”
Isla Macleod gave a low laugh. Then he stooped to pick up the pipe he had
dropped. Suddenly he rose without touching it. He put his heel on the
warm clay, and crushed it.
“That is the end of that kind of loving,” he said. He laughed low again
as he said that.
Sheumas leaned and picked up the trodden fragments.
“They’re warm still, Macleod.”
“Are they?” Isla cried at that, his eyes with a red light coming into
the blue: “then they will go where the man in the song went, the man who
sought his home for ever and ever and never came any nearer than into the
shine of the window-lamps.”
With that he threw the pieces into the dark water that was already
growing ashy-grey.
“’Tis a sure cure, that, Sheumas Maclean.”
“Ay, so they say, … and so, so: ay, as you were saying, Ian Mòr went into
the shadow because of that home he could not win?”
“So they say. And now we’ll take the nets. ’Tis a heavy net that comes
out black, as the sayin’ is. They’re heavy for sure, after this still
night, an’ the wind southerly, an’ the pollack this way an’ that.”
“Well, now, that’s strange.”
“What is strange, Sheumas Maclean?”
“That you should say that thing.”
“And for why that?”
“Oh, just this. Silis had a dream the other night, she had. She dreamed
she saw you standing alone on the _Luath_: and you were hauling hard
a heavy net, so that the sweat ran down your face. And your face was
dead-white pale, she said. An’ you hauled an’ you hauled. An’ someone
beside you that she couldn’t see laughed an’ laughed: an’ …”
With a stifled oath, Isla broke in upon the speaker’s words:
“Why, man alive, you said he, the man, myself it is, was alone on the
_Luath_.”
“Well, Silis saw no one but yourself, Isla Macleod.”
“But she heard some one beside me laughing an’ laughing.”
“So she said. And you were dead-white, she said: with the sweat pouring
down you. An’ you pulled an’ you pulled. Then you looked up at her and
said: ‘_It’s a heavy net that comes up black, as the sayin’ is._’”
Isla Macleod made no answer to that, but slowly began to haul at the
nets. A swift moving light slid hither and thither well away to the
north-east. The sea greyed. A new, poignant, salt smell came up from the
waves. Sail after sail of the smacks ceased to be a blur in the dark:
each lifted a brown shadowy wing against a dusk through which a flood of
myriad drops of light steadily oozed.
Now from this boat, now from that, hoarse cries resounded.
The _Mairi Ban_ swung slowly round before the faint dawn-wind, and
lifted her bow homeward with a little slapping splash. The _Maggie_, the
_Trilleachan_, the _Eilid_, the _Jessie_, and the _Mairi Donn_ followed
one by one.
In silence the two men on the _Luath_ hauled in their nets. The herring
made a sheet of shifting silver as they lay in the hold. As the dawn
lightened, the quivering silver mass sparkled. The decks were mailed with
glittering scales: these, too, gleamed upon the legs, arms, and hands of
the two fishermen.
“Well, that’s done!” exclaimed Sheumas at last. “Up with the helm, Isla,
and let us make for home.”