Week after week, month after month, until nigh the end of the fourth,
passed by on Ithona: and they who dwelt there took no heed of the
passage of the days.
There are no hours for those who are beyonder the rumour of that "time
or chance" of which the Preacher speaks. Day grows out of night, and in
night fulfilleth itself again: the stars succeed the diurnal march of
the sun, and hardly are they lost in his glory ere they come again.
Scarce distinguishable are the twilight of the dawn and the twilight of
the eve: and even as the coming and going of these similar shadows are
the appearance and evanishing of the shadows whom we know for our
fellowmen, so little differing one from the other, individual from
individual, people from people, race from race.
And even as a shadow, to those who abode on Ithona, was that world they
had seen so little of, but of which they had yet known enough.
In that remote island, solitary even among the outer isles of which it
was one of the most far-set in ocean, there was little to break the
monotony of the hours. No steamer drew near, save at long intervals. The
coast-guard cutter arrived intermittently, but sometimes not for months,
coming like an alien seabird, and as a strange bird of the seas going
upon its unknown way again. Few even of the herring-trawlers sailed
nigh, except in the late summer, when the mackerel came eastward in vast
shoals.
Morning and noon, afternoon and evening, night and the passing of night,
dawn and sunrise: these were the veils that seemed to curtain off this
spot of earth. Storm followed calm; calm succeeded storm; the winds came
and went; the tides rose and fell. In summer, the rains from the south;
in autumn, the rains from the west; in winter, the rains from the north.
Change followed change, but orderly as in processional array. The
poppies reddened the scanty fields of rye; the swallows and martins
haunted the island-ways; the wild rose bloomed, as with white and pink
sea-shells made soft and fragrant. Then a little while, and the ling
grew purple at the passing of the roses; the hawks swung in the wind
when the swallows had vanished; the campions waved where the poppies
had fallen; the grey thistle ursurped the reaped grain. In summer, the
Weaver of Sunshine rested there; there, during the equinox, the Weaver
of the Winds abode; in winter, the Weaver of the Snow made a white
shroud for the isle and wove a shimmering veil for the dusking of the
sea. And as one spring was like another spring, and one autumn like
another autumn, so was one year like another year, in the coming and in
the going.
Save for the encroaching shadow of death, there was nothing to mark the
time for the dwellers on Ithona. Mary was aware that not Alastair only,
but Lora, was becoming frailer week by week. Lora, as well as Mary, knew
that the child's face grew more wan and thin almost day by day. Old
Seumas Macleod was weary at heart with the pity of all that he saw. Only
Alastair was happy, for he dreamed; and his dream was of the loveliness
of earth and sea and sky, of the pathway that came down from heaven at
sunrise and led back at nightfall through the avenue of the stars to the
very gates of Pharais. More happy, too, grew the others as the autumn
waned, and the golden peace of St. Martin's aftermath lay upon sea and
land; for their eyes saw more and more through the dreaming eyes of
Alastair, more and more clearly they heard strains of the music that
haunted his rapt ears.
Daily he went about clad with dream: a strange sweetness in his voice, a
mystery upon his face. His eyes no longer brooded darkly; there was in
them a bright light as of a cloudless morning.
If, months ago, God had filled with dusk the house of the brain, it was
now not the dusk of coming night, but of the advancing day. Fantasies
beset him often, as of yore, but never with terror or dismay. The
moorland tarn held no watching kelpie: instead, he heard the laughter of
the fairies as they swung in the bells of the foxglove; the singing of
an angel where the wind wandered among the high corries; whispers and
sighs of fair spirits in the murmur of leaves, or falling water, or
chime of the waves.
Sometimes Lora walked or lay beside him for hours, listening to his
strange speech about the things that he saw--things too lovely for
mortal vision, but ultimately as real to her as to him. Hope came back
to her; and then Peace; and, at the last, Joy.
When not with Lora, he loved well to be with Mary or with Seumas.
In the eyes of the former he would sometimes look for a long time,
seeing there the secret home of peace, and perhaps, deeper, the
unveiled beauty of the serene and lovely soul.
Seumas he had loved from childhood. The old islesman had never once been
on the mainland; though in his youth he had sailed along its endless
coasts. Tall and strong he was, despite his great age; and his eyes were
the eyes of a young man who hears his first-born laughing and crooning
against its mother's breast. Ignorant as he was of the foreign tongue of
the mainland, ignorant of books, and unable to read even a verse in the
Gaelic Scriptures of which he knew so many chapters by heart, he was yet
strong in knowledge and wise in the way of it beyond most men. For he
knew all that is to be known concerning the island and the surrounding
sea, and what moved thereon and lived therein; and, in his humbleness
and simplicity, he saw so deep into the human heart and into the mystery
of the soul, that he was not ashamed to know he was man, nor to pray to
God to guide him through the shadows.
It was from Seumas that Alastair, in boyhood and youth, had learned
much, not only of his store of legends and ancient runes and old Celtic
poetry, but also of that living poetry which makes the heart of the Gael
more tender than that of other men, and his brain more wrought with
vision. From him he had first heard how that for one to have died is to
have "gone into the silence"; that for an old man or woman to pass away
in extreme age is to "have the white sleep"; that for a fisherman to
drown is for him to have "the peace of the quiet wave."
Seumas had filled his brain with lovely words--lovely in themselves and
their meaning; but he had made his clansman a poet by one thing that he
did and said.
For once, after Alastair had returned to the West, from the University
in St. Andrew's, he went to Ithona to stay for some weeks. At sunrise on
the morrow of his arrival, on his coming out upon the grass which sloped
to the shore a few yards away, he saw Seumas standing, with his wide,
blue bonnet in his hand, and the sun shining full upon his mass of white
hair--not praying, as at first Alastair thought, but with a rapt look on
his face, and with glad, still-youthful eyes gazing lovingly upon the
sea.
"What is it, Seumas?" he had asked; and the old islesman, turning to him
with a grave smile, had answered:
"Morning after morning, fair weather or foul, after I have risen from my
prayers and ere I have broken my fast, I come here and remove my hat
and bow my head, with joy and thanksgiving, before the Beauty of the
World."
From that day, the world became a new world for Alastair.
* * * * *
In the quietude of dusk--and day by day the dusk came sooner and the
dawn later--Mary would sometimes sing, or Seumas repeat some favourite
Ossianic _duan_, or chant a fugitive song of the isles. But, toward the
close of November, a silence fell more and more upon all. Each had grown
a little weary with the burden of life: all knew Who it was that was
coming stealthily across the waters, and for whom first.
It was on the dawn of December that the child died. It seemed to lapse
from life as an ebbing wavelet from a pool.
The evening before, Alastair had carried the little one to the shore. He
had never understood that the child's eyes were sealed, and often
thought that it slept when it was really awake. When he came to a
favourite pool of his, that at low tide was wont to flush with any red
light spilled across the wave he held his tiny burden up laughing and
crooning to it.
"Look, my pretty one," he would murmur, "that red light is the blood of
your elder brother. Fair is He, the white Christ. He has put that there
to show that He loves you." Or, again, he would kneel, and with one hand
warily move aside the bladder-wrack and other sea-weeds; and then,
pointing into the translucent water, would tell the blind sleeper to
look into the heart of the pool and he would see, far down beyond a vast
vista of white columns, flight after flight of shining golden stairs,
which led at last to a great gate flashing like the sea in the
noon-dazzle. And at the gate was a little child like unto himself,
singing a sweet song; and just within the gate was a beautiful spirit,
whose face was that of Lora, and who could not sing as the little child
did, because, though she was clad with joy as with a robe, in her eyes
there was still a last lingering mist of human tears.
"And in Pharais, my bonnie," he would add whisperingly in the child's
unheeding ear, "in Pharais there are no tears shed, though in the
remotest part of it there is a grey pool, the weeping of all the world,
fed everlastingly by the myriad eyes that every moment are somewhere wet
with sorrow, or agony, or vain regret, or vain desire. And those who go
there stoop, and touch their eyelids with that grey water; and it is as
balm to them, and they go healed of their too great joy: and their
songs thereafter are the sweetest that are sung in the ways of
Pharais."
Often Lora or Mary would be with him when he was thus speaking; for each
was fearful lest some day he should discover that his little _uan_ was
blind, and could never even open the sealed lids.
But on that last twilight of November Alastair seemed to have been
impressed by the passive stillness of the child, and to be troubled when
he looked at it. He had kissed the eyes again and again, but they had
not opened; he had whispered loving words in the tiny ears, but they had
not hearkened.
All that night he was restless, and rose often to look at the two
sleepers in the bed opposite his own. Just before dawn, he looked for
the last time. He was satisfied now. The little one smiled ... but it
was because that in the soundless, breathless passage from one darkness
to another, it had heard a sweet voice at last, and at last had, with
suddenly illumined eyes, beheld a new glory.
So white and still was it that, when the cold of the tiny hands against
her bosom awoke Lora, she lay looking upon it for a while, rapt in a new
and strange awe. Then, having aroused Mary, she went to Seumas, and
brought him into the room. Mary had already waked Alastair, and he sat
holding the small white body on his knees, stroking it gently.
When Lora told him that their baby was dead, and asked him if he knew
what she said, he did not reply; but a tear rolled down his cheek, and
he put his hand to his heart as though to still the ache of his
inarticulate pain.
But after Mary had read from the Book of Psalms, and prayed in a low
voice, all rose and passed out into the sunshine; and Alastair, already
oblivious of his loss, went down by the shore, and smiled with pleasure
at the leap and fall, and chime and whisper, and sweet, low laughter of
the sunny waters.
About a hundred yards inland from the cottage, a gigantic pointed stone
rises from out of the heather. It is known among the isles as Fingal's
Bolt, though neither Fionn nor his son, Ossian, ever threw that huge,
flat-sided, fang-like rock. A few rude lines and even letters are still
discernible on the side next the sun; but there is probably none who
could decipher that old-world rune, carved in bygone ages by the hand of
a Druid.
Of all places in the island, except the rocky headlands whose flanks
were laved by the sea, this Stone of the Past, as Seumas called it, was
that most frequented by Alastair. At its base he had listened, as a boy,
to the tales of the old islander; beneath it, his fantasy now persuaded
him, was one of the hidden ways that led to that House of Paradise of
which he so often dreamed.
There the four silent mourners met that afternoon to fulfil the wish of
one among them, who loved to think that his little _uan_ would come back
some moonshine night or in a still dawn, and, taking their hands, lead
his father and mother by that secret pathway through _Domhan Tòir_ to
_Tir-na-h'Oigh_, whence, in good time, they would arise and go up into
Pharais.
Lora had already been on the spot with Seumas. While the latter had dug
the place of sleep, she, with white chalk picked from the shore, had
printed in large, heavy letters these words upon the seaward side of the
stone:
"Take unto Thy compassion this little one, and us who follow."
There were no words spoken as Mary, kneeling, took the child from Lora's
arms, and laid it, wrapped in a white sheet filled with fragrant gale,
in the wood-shored grave that had been reverently prepared.
The afternoon had grown chill. Seaward, a gray mass had risen as if out
of the waste of waters.
All were still kneeling--while Seumas laid turf and heather above the
small wooden lid covering the narrow house that would give the body
sanctuary for a time--when the snow began to come down.
There was no wind, so the flakes fell light as feathers, grey in the
gathering dusk as the down that falls from the wind-swept breasts of
wild swans in their flight to or from the Polar seas.
Denser and denser it came; soundless at first, but after a while with a
faint rustling and whirling, as though the flakes were wings of
invisible birds of silence.
The grey gloom thickened. Already the sea was obscured. Its voice was
audible the more loudly ... a calling voice; but dull, listless,
melancholy with ancient, unforgotten pain and all its burthen of
immemorial lore.
The four mourners rose. The two women, with bowed heads, murmured words
of prayer and farewell. Seumas, crossing himself, muttered: "Deireadh
gach comuinn, sgaoileadh; deireadh gach cogaidh, sith"--"the end of all
meetings, parting; the end of all striving, peace." Alastair looked
eagerly through the snow-dusk lest the child should come again at once
and go by them unseen.
By the time they reached home, there was a thick twilight all about
them. A little later, looking out into the night, they saw the flakes
drift over and past them like a myriad of winged things hurrying before
a wind that pursued, devouring. The island lay in a white shroud. At the
extreme margin, a black, pulsating line seemed to move sinuously from
left to right.
Suddenly a deeper sound boomed from the sea, though no wind ruffled the
drifts which already lay thick in the hollows. Till midnight, and for an
hour beyond, this voice of the sea was as the baying of a monstrous
hound.
None in the homestead slept. The silence, broken only by that strange,
menacing baying of the waves as they roamed through the solitudes
environing the isle, was so intense that sometimes the ears echoed as
with the noise of a rush of wings, or as with the sonorous suspensions
between the striking of bell and bell in monotonously swung chimes.
Then again, suddenly, and still without the coming of wind, the sea
ceased its hoarse, angry baying, and, after lapse within lapse till its
chime was almost inaudible, gave forth in a solemn dirge the majestic
music of its inmost heart.
At last, after long vigils, all slept, though none so deeply, so
unawakeningly as Lora.
Three hours before dawn the snow ceased to fall. An icy sparkle
glittered league after league oceanward, as the star-rays pierced the
heaving flanks and bowed heads of the sea-horses which had abruptly
sprung up before the advancing ground-swell.
The cold was the cold of the Black Frost--bitter, sharp as a sword, nigh
unendurable.
Shortly after dawn, Alastair awoke, shivering. He rose, threw some more
peats on the fire; and then, having dressed and wrapped his plaid about
him, and softly opened and closed the door, stepped out into the snow.
His breath caught with the cold, and a greater weakness even than that
customary of late made him reel, then lean against the wall for a few
minutes.
Soon his faintness passed. The exceeding beauty of sunrise over that
vast stretch of waters, over the isle in its stainless white shroud,
filled him with an exalted joy. Thereafter, for a time, he walked to and
fro; sometimes staring absently seaward, again glancing curiously at his
shadow--scarce more insubstantial than he himself had grown within the
last month, and particularly within the last few days--as it lay upon or
moved bluely athwart the snow.
After a brief space, a rapt look came into his face. He turned, and
gazed expectantly at the door.
No one coming forth, he entered, and, with a loving smile, crossed to
Lora's bed.
"Sweetheart ... my white flower ... come. It is so beautiful. Pharais
has opened to us at last. I can see the steps gleaming gold within the
yellow shine of the sun. Beyond, I saw a mist of waving wings. Come,
Lora.... Come!"
Cold and white was she as the snow. Alastair bent, kissed her lips, but
was so wrought by his vision that he did not notice the chill of them,
nor see the blue shadow in the pallor of the face.
"Ah, _mùirnean_, _mo mùirnean_, see, I will carry you," he murmured
suddenly.
He stooped, lifted the beautiful dead body he had loved so well, and,
staggering beneath the weight, half carried, half dragged it to the
snow-slope beyond the door. Gently he placed Lora down. Then, going for
and returning with a deer-skin, laid her upon it, and sat down beside
her.
For a brief while, he waited patiently for her awakening. Then his eyes
wandered again, now fixed upon the majesty of the sea, reaching
intolerably grand from endless horizons to horizons without end; now
upon the immense dome of the sky, where, amid the deepest blue, high in
the north-west the moon turned a disc of pale gold out of an almost
imperceptible flush, and confronted the flashing, blazing sunfire that,
in the south-east, moved swiftly upward.
Suddenly he leaned forward; his lips parted; his eyes agleam with the
inner flame that consumed him.
"Lora ... Lora, my fawn," he whispered. "Look! The gates are opening!
Dear, all is well at the last. God has given me back to you. My trouble
is healed. Speak to me, dear; too great is my happiness!"
No sound: no movement of the hands: no stir of the closed eyelids.
"Lora!"
It was strange. But he would be patient.
Idly he watched a small, grey snow-cloud passing low above the island.
A warm breath reached the heart of it, and set the myriad wings astir.
Down, straight down above the isle and for a few fathoms beyond it, they
fluttered waveringly.
The fall was like a veil suspended over Ithona: a veil so thin, so
transparent, that the sky was visible through it as an azure dusk; and
beneath it, the sea as a blue-flowing lawn whereover its skirts trailed;
while behind it, the rising sunfire was a shimmer of amber-yellow that
made every falling flake glisten like burnished gold. The wind was
utterly still; the sky cloudless, but for that thin, evanishing veil of
dropping gold.
The sea lay breathing in a deep calm all around the isle. But, from its
heart that never slumbers, rose as of yore, and for ever, a rumour as of
muffled prophesyings, a Voice of Awe, a Voice of Dread.