The fall of her voice through the silence was an echo of terror. She
clasped her hands across her breast. Her body swayed forward as a
bulrush before the wind.
"_Ah, Dia! Dia!_" broke from her lips; for, beyond all doubt, she saw
once again the moving of a darkness within the dark.
Yet what she saw was no shadow-man weary of last vigil, but something
that for a moment filled her with the blindness of dread. Was it
possible? Was she waylaid by one of those terrible dwellers in
twilight-water of which she had heard so often from the tellers of old
tales?
"_Toradh nu féudalach gun am faicinn_," she muttered with cold lips:
"the offspring of the cattle that have not been seen!"
"Ah, no, no!" she cried. The next moment, and with a sob of relief, she
saw a moonbeam steal upon the hollow and reveal its quietude of dusk.
She would have moved at once from boulder to boulder, eager for that
lost sanctuary whence she had come--when the very pulse of her heart
sprang to the burst of a human sob close by.
She stood still, as though frozen. A moment before, the breath from her
lips was visible: now not the faintest vapour melted into the night-air.
Was she dreaming, she wondered, when the stifling grip at her heart had
mercifully relaxed?
No: there was no mistake. Blent with the gurgle and cluck and whisper of
the water among the lifted bladder-wrack and in and out of the pools and
crannies in the rocks, there was the piteous sound of a human sob.
All at once, everything became clear to Lora. She knew that Alastair was
near: she did not even dread that he was present as a disembodied
spirit. He had reached the isle after all, but in some strange sorrow
had not sought her straightway.
"_Alastair!_" she cried yearningly.
No one answered; no one stirred; nothing moved. But the muffled sobbing
was hushed.
"Alastair! Alastair!"
Slowly from a sand-drift beside the ferry-rock a tall figure arose. For
a few moments it stood motionless, black against the yellow shine of the
moon. The face was pale; that of a man, young, with the thin lips, the
shadowy eyes that in sunlight would shine sea-blue, the high oval
features, the tangled, curly, yellow-tawny hair of the islesmen of the
ancient Suderöer, in whose veins the Celtic and the Scandinavian strains
commingle.
Alastair was as visible as though he were in the noon-light.
Lora looked at him, speechless. She saw that in his strained eyes, in
his wrought features, which told her he had drunken of sorrow. His
dishevelled hair, his whole mien and appearance showed that he was in
some dire extremity.
"_Alastair!_"
He heard the low, passionate appeal, but at first he did not stir. Then,
and yet as though constrainedly and in weariness, he raised and
stretched forth his arms.
Swift as a gliding shadow, Lora was beside him, and clasped to his
heart.
For a time, neither spoke. His heart beat loud and heavily: against his
breast her head lay, with her breath coming and going like a wounded
bird panting in the green-gloom of the thicket.
"O Alastair, Alastair, what is it?" she murmured at last, raising her
head and looking into his pale, distraught face.
"What made you come out in the dark, _Lora-mùirnean_?"
"I could not rest. I was too unhappy. I thought--I thought--no, I do not
think I dared to believe that you might come to-night after all; but
something made me long to go down to the sea. Did you see me only now,
dear heart?"
"No, Lora."
For a moment she was still, while she gazed fixedly at Alastair.
"Ah," she whispered at last, "then you have been here all this night,
and I not knowing it! Ah, Alùinn, it was _your_ heart crying to mine
that made me rise and leave the cottage and come out into the dark. But
why did you not come to me? When did you come to Innisròn? How did you
come?"
"Dear, I could not wait for the _Clansman_. I left Greenock three hours
earlier by the _Foam_, James Gilchrist's tug; for he undertook to put me
ashore at the haven below Craig-Sionnach. Thence I walked to Dunmore.
But I was not well, Lora; and I was so long on the way that I missed the
_Clansman_ as well as the Dunmore herring-steamer. Before nightfall,
however, I persuaded Archibald Macleod, of Tighnacraigh, to bring me
here on his smack. I landed at the Rock of the Seafold. It was already
dusk, and my heart was against yours in longing, my beautiful gloom: yet
over me came such a sorrow that I could not bear the homing, and so
moved restlessly from shadow to shadow. I felt as though it would be
better for me to deal with my sorrow alone and in the night, and that it
was more bearable since I was so near you, and that any moment I could
go to you."
"Why, why did you not come, Alastair? Oh, I longed, longed for you so!"
"Once I came close to the cottage, almost happy since I knew that you
were so near to me. The red glow that warmed the dark without comforted
me. I thought I would look in upon you for a moment; and if you and Mary
were awake and talking, that I should let you know I had come. But I saw
that you lay in sleep; and I had scarce time to withdraw ere, as I
feared, Mary saw me--though see me, indeed, perhaps she did, for in a
brief while she opened the door and came out, and would have discovered
me but that I moved swiftly to the shadow of the birk-shaws. Then, after
a little, I wandered down by the shore. There was a voice in the
sea--calling, calling. It was so cool and sweet: soft was the balm of
the air of it, as the look of your eyes, Lora, as the touch of your
hand. I was almost healed of my suffering, when suddenly the pain in my
head sprang upon me, and I crouched in the hollow yonder, chill with the
sweat of my agony."
"O Alastair, Alastair, then you are no better: that great doctor you
went so far to see has done you no good?"
"And in the midst of my pain, Lora my Rest, I saw you standing by the
sea upon the ferry-ledge. At first I took you for a vision, and my heart
sank. But when the moonlight reached the isle and enfolded you, I saw
that it was you indeed. And once more my pain and my sorrow overcame
me!"
"Alastair, I am terrified! It was not thus for you before you went away.
Great as was your pain, you had not this gloom of sorrow. Oh, what is
it, what is it, dear heart? Tell me, tell me!"
Slowly Alastair held Lora back from him, and looked long and searchingly
into her eyes.
She shrank, in an apprehension that, like a bird, flew bewildered from
the blinding light that flashed out of the darkness--a vain bewilderment
of foredoom.
Then, with a great effort, she bade him tell her what he had to say.
Too well he knew there was no time to lose: that any day, any moment,
his dark hour would come upon him, and that then it would be too late.
Yet he would fain have waited.
"Lora, have you heard aught said by any one concerning my illness?"
"Dear, Father Mantus told me, on the day you went away, that you feared
the trouble which came upon your father, and upon your father's father;
and oh, Alastair my beloved, he told me what that trouble was."
"Then you know: you can understand?"
"What?"
"That which now appals me ... now kills me."
"Alastair!"
"Yes, Lora?"
"Oh, Alastair, Alastair, you do not mean that ... that ... you too ...
_you_ are ... are ... that _you_ have the ... the ... mind-dark?"
"Dear heart of mine, this sorrow has come to us. I----"
With a sharp cry Lora held him to her, despairingly, wildly, as though
even at that moment he were to be snatched from her. Then, in a passion
of sobbing, she shook in his arms as a withered aspen-leaf ere it fall
to the wind.
The tears ran down his face; his mouth twitched; his long, thin fingers
moved restlessly in her hair and upon her quivering shoulder.
No other sound than her convulsive sobs, than his spasmodic breathing,
met in the quietude of whisper-music exhaled as an odour by the sea and
by the low wind among the corries and upon the grasses of the isle.
A white moth came fluttering slowly toward them, hovering vaguely awhile
overhead, and then drifting alow and almost to their feet. In the shadow
it loomed grey and formless--an obscure thing that might have come out
of the heart of the unguarded brain. Upward again it fluttered, idly
this way and that: then suddenly alit upon the hair of Alastair,
poising itself on spread wings, and now all agleam as with pale
phosphorescent fire, where the moonlight filled it with sheen as of
white water falling against the sun.
The gleam caught Lora's eyes as, with a weary sigh, she lifted her head.
A strange smile came into her face. Slowly she disengaged her right arm,
and half raised it. Alastair was about to speak, but her eyes brought
silence upon him.
"_Hush!_" she whispered at last.
He saw that her eyes looked beyond his, beyond him, as it seemed. What
did she see? The trouble in his brain moved anew at this touch of
mystery.
"What is it, Lora?"
"Hush, hush!... I see a sign from heaven upon your forehead ... the sign
of the white peace that Seumas says is upon them who are of the company
of the Belovëd."
"Lora, what are you saying? What is it? What do you see?"
His voice suddenly was harsh, fretful. Lora shrank for a moment; then,
as the white moth rose and fluttered away into the dark, faintly agleam
with moonfire till it reached the shadow, she pitifully raised her hand
to his brow.
"Come, dear, let us go in. All will be well with us, whatever happens."
"Never ... never ... never!"
"O Alastair, if it be God's will?"
"Ay, and if it be God's will?"
"I cannot lose you; you will always be mine; no sorrow can part us;
nothing can separate us; nothing but the Passing, and that ..."
"Lora!"
For answer she looked into his eyes.
"Lora, it is of that, of the Passing: ... are you ... are you brave
enough not only to endure ... but to ... if we thought it well ... if I
asked you...?"
A deep silence fell upon both. Hardly did either breathe. By some
strange vagary of the strained mind, Lora thought the throb of her heart
against her side was like the pulse of the engines of the _Clansman_ to
which she had listened with such intent expectation that very evening.
From the darkness to the north came the low monotone of the sea, as a
muffled voice prophesying through the gates of Sleep and Death. Far to
the east the tide-race tore through the Sound with a confused muttering
of haste and tumult. Upon the isle the wind moved as a thing in pain, or
idly weary: lifting now from cranny to corrie, and through glen and
hollow, and among the birk-shaws and the rowans, with long sighs and
whispers where by Uisghe-dhu the valley of moonflowers sloped to the sea
on the west, or among the reeds, and the gale, and the salt grasses
around the clachan that lay duskily still on the little brae above the
haven.
"Lora ... would you ... would...?"
Only her caught breath at intervals gave answer. The short lisp and
gurgle of the water in the sea-weed close by came nearer. The tide was
on the flood, and the sand about their feet was already damp.
The immense semicircle of the sky domed sea and land with infinity. In
the vast space the stars and planets fulfilled their ordered plan. Star
by star, planet by planet, sun by sun, universe by universe moved jocund
in the march of eternal death.
Beyond the two lonely figures, seaward, the moon swung, green-gold at
the heart with circumambient flame of pearl.
Beautiful the suspended lamp of her glory--a censer swung before the
Earth-Altar of the Unknown.
In their human pain the two drew closer still. The remote alien silences
of the larger life around vaguely appalled them. Yet Lora knew what was
in his thought; what he foreshadowed; what he wished.
"It shall be as you will, Alastair, heart of me, life of me," she
whispered. Then, with clasping arms, and dear entreaty, she urged him
homeward.
"Come, come home, Alastair, _Alùinn_. Enough of sorrow to-night. Speak
to me to-morrow of all that is in your mind; but to-night ... to-night,
no more! My heart will break. Come, dearest. Come, _mo mùirnean_! Hark!
the wind is crying in the corrie: it is rising again on the other side
of the isle: and we are already chill--oh, cold, so cold!"
Hand in hand, they moved slowly upward along the little pathway of
mingled grass and shingle which led to the clachan from the ferry: he
with bowed head, she with upward face.
A dog barked from a byre, another answered from a sheiling beyond.
Suddenly there was a rushing sound, and Ghaoth, Alastair's dog, came
leaping upon his master, whining and barking with joy. He stooped and
fondled it; but in vain tried to quell its ecstasy in seeing him again.
Whether aroused by the barking of Ghaoth, or having awoke and found Lora
absent from the cottage, Mrs. Maclean had risen, lit a candle, and now
stood upon the threshold, looking intently at the twain as they
approached.
Among the islefolk many words are not used. The over-arching majesty of
the sky, the surrounding majesty of the sea, the loneliness of these
little wind-swept spots of earth isled in remote waters, leave a hush
upon the brain, and foster eloquent silences rather than idle words.
Mrs. Maclean knew intuitively that something of disaster was in this
nocturnal return of Alastair: that he and Lora had met by chance, or
through a summons unknown to her: and that now they came--to her, in
their youth, so tragically piteous under the shadow of calamity--craving
only for that impossible boon of the young in sorrow: peace.
When they drew near to her, she turned and placed the candle on the
table. Then, facing them, she came forward, led them in by the hand, and
closed the door. She saw that Alastair was hatless, and his clothes damp
and travel-stained; so with quiet, home-sweet words, she persuaded him
to change his things while she laid some food for him to break his long
fast with.
But though wearily he did the one, he would have nothing of the other
save a draught of warm milk.
A heavy drowsiness was now upon him. He could scarce uplift the lids
from his eyes. His voice, when he spoke at all, was so low that it was
barely audible.
After a silence, during which he had looked long at the fire, and closed
his eyes at the last, with Lora's gaze hungrily set upon him, and the
dark, sweet gloom of Mrs. Maclean's, wet with the dew of unshed tears,
upon both of the twain, whom she loved so passing well, he murmured
huskily and confusedly:
"By green pastures ... I will lay me down to sleep.... It calleth,
calleth ..."
Suddenly Mrs. Maclean arose. Taking Lora's hand, she led her to the
fireside and motioned her to kneel beside Alastair. Then, blowing out
the candle-flame, she too knelt. Only the fireglow now lit the room,
filled with brooding shadows in the corners and with warm dusk where the
two women kneeled and the man slept.
With arms lifted as if in invocation, the elder woman--her face wan
under her grey hair, though touched with an unreal glow from the flaming
peats--in a low, crooning voice, repeated the ancient rest-words, the
ancient prayer of her people, said at the covering up of the fire
against the hours of sleep:
"_Smàlaidh mis'n nochd an teine;
Mar a smàlas Mac Moire.
Gu'm bu slan an tigh's an teine,
Gu'm bu slan a' chiudeachd uile.
Co bhios air an lar?
Peadair agus Pòl,
Co bhios air an phaire nochd?
Moire mhin-gheal's a Mac.
Bial De a labhras,
Aingeal geal a dh' innseas--
Ga'r comhnadh's ga'r gleidheadh
Gus an tig an solus geal a maireach._"
I will cover up the fire aright,
Even as directed by the Virgin's Son.
Safe be the house, and safe the fire,
And safe from harm be all the indwellers.
Who is that that I see on the floor?
Even Peter himself and Paul.
Upon whom shall this night's vigil rest?
Upon the blameless Virgin and her Son:
God's mouth has spoken it.
A white-robed angel shall be with us in the dark,
Till the coming of the sun at morn.
When she ceased, there was no sound save the low sobbing of Lora and the
quiet breathing of the sleeper in the high-backed chair.
Having made the sign of the cross upon her breast and over the fire, she
covered up the flame with ash and charred peat. Quietly, then, she
placed her strong arm around Alastair, and half guided, half lifted him
to the bed in the adjoining room where he and Lora were wont to sleep.
The girl-wife followed, and, with deft hands, unclad Alastair and laid
him gently in the bed. Swiftly disrobing herself, she lay down by his
side, her dark hair mingling on the pillow with his tangle of dull gold.
The gleam still emitted between the bars from beneath the covered peats
passed into the room through the open doorway and fell upon the bed.
Alastair stirred; opened his eyes; looked with wild, startled gaze at
Lora, then at Mrs. Maclean, who had again knelt, and with raised arms
had begun her "Blessing of Peace."
With a sigh he closed his eyes, and the terror passed from his face.
Once or twice he muttered parts of the lines of that ancient
sleep-prayer, familiar to him since his boyhood, and before it was ended
deep slumber had come upon him:
"_Laidhidh misc 'nochd
Le Moire 's le 'Mac,
Le mathair mo Righ,
'Ni mo dhion 'o dhroch-bheairt,
Cha laidh mise leis an olc,
'S cha laidh an t' olc leam;
Ach laidhidh mì le Dia,_
_'S laidhidh Dia Ma' rium.
Lamh dheas Dhe fo'm cheann,
Crois nan naoi aingeal leam.
'O mhullach mo chinn
Gu craican mo bhonn,
Guidheam Peadair, guidheam Pòl,
Guidheam Moir-Oigh' 'sa Mac.
Guidheam an da ostal deug,
Gun mise 'dhol eug le'n cead.
'Dhia 'sa Mhoire na gloire.
'S a Mhic na oighe cubhraidh
Cumabh mise o na piantan dorcha,
'S Micheal geal' an cò 'ail m'anama._"
This night I will lay me down to sleep
With Mary Virgin and her Son,
Even with the mother of my King,
Who protects me from all evil;
Nor shall evil lie down to sleep with me,
But I shall sleep with God:
And with me shall God lie down.
His right arm shall be under my head:
The cross of the Nine Angels be about me,
From the top of my head
To the soles of my feet.
I supplicate Peter, I supplicate Paul,
I supplicate Mary the Virgin and her Son,
I supplicate the twelve Apostles,
That evil befall us not this night.
Mary, in thy goodness and glory,
And Thou, Son of the sweet-savoured Virgin,
Protect us this night from all the pains of darkness.
And thou, Michael, guardian of souls, abide with us, watching.
When she looked down, at the end of her prayer, Mary saw that Lora's
eyes also were closed; though by the muttering of the lips she knew her
dear one was not asleep.
Softly she closed the door behind her; then, passing by the fire, went
into the third room of the cottage.
Soon she too was in bed, softly repeating, as the weariness of sleep
came over her:
_Cha laidh mise leis an olc,
'S cha laidh an t' olc leam._
Without, came the rising sound of the tide among the pebbles on the
shore, the incessant chime of wave lapsing over wave on flat rocks. The
sough of the wind fell from the corries of Craig-an-Iolair, and died in
whispers among the fern and dew-cold grasses.
So went the hours from silence into silence. And in time came the dawn,
and an ashen-grey upon the sea, and a grey gloom upon each leaf and
every dusky frond and blade. But when the black of the mainland became
gold, and a trouble of light moved, swiftly-throbbing, across the
eastern water, Michael the Watcher withdrew.
At the window of the room where Alastair and Lora slept, the beautiful
sunflood of the new day poured in rejoicingly.
One long streamer of light fell upon his yellow hair and kissed the
eyelids of a veiled, subsiding mind. Downward it moved, and filled with
its gleam the dark-brown hair which lay across the white breast of Lora.
Then, surely, it passed beneath the flower of her bosom and into her
heart, and warmed it with joy; for with a smile she awoke, murmuring,
"_Pharais, Pharais._"