Volumes of grey-black cloud swept up the flanks of Iolair. The breath of
the southwest wind fell moist upon the land. All the wonderful colour
of the highland seemed absorbed, as though a sponge had been passed over
it. The after-gloom was enhanced by the silence which prevailed, for the
thunderous weight in the air hushed the birds. Even the corbies sat
sullenly on stone dyke or solitary quicken.
Up at the farm of Màm-Gorm the cloud-skirts went trailing by, sometimes
enveloping the whole airidh in a clinging obscurity, and ever and again
lifting high above it as though with a spasmodic leap.
A few yards from the door of the low whitewashed house Torcall Cameron
stood, his gaunt figure, with its mass of tangled iron-grey hair, thrown
into strong relief. Though he grasped a heavy oaken staff, his head was
uncovered. From this, Nial inferred that "Màm-Gorm" was not going far:
of which he was glad, for there was no one in the house, wild weather
was nigh, and it was not a time for a blind man to wander among the
hills, with the sheep-paths damp and slippery and often obliterated in
the moist peat.
For, though Màm-Gorm thought he was alone, Nial had been his silent
companion for an hour past. Sorcha, he knew, was up at the high sheiling
on Iolair, with the cows: Oona, he imagined, was either wandering after
the sheep with Murdo the shepherd, or was in the forest with Nial, or
might be flitting here and there on the slopes like the wild fawn she
was. As for Nial, Torcall Cameron rarely gave him a thought. The dwarf
was like a faithful collie: to be fed, and given a kindly clap now and
then, while his gratitude and devotion were taken for granted.
This rough, stern, blind, and stricken giant was a divine being to the
poor child of the woods. In a vague way Nial thought of Màm-Gorm as God:
like Màm-Gorm, God could provide, could at rare times be tender and
pitiful, could be stern, morose, forbidding, terrible in wrath, of a
swift avenging spirit, could strike, bruise, drive forth, kill.
When Sorcha had left at sunrise she knew that her father had the gloom
upon him. In vain she looked here and there for Oona. The child had
vanished. The platter in which she had her porridge was found under a
bench near the rowan at the side of the house--where, indeed, Sorcha had
looked for it, as she knew Oona's frequent way of carrying her food
out-of-door, and eating it in a hollow below a rock, or under a tree, or
even beneath the bench, like a little wild thing.
She had turned, after she had called Fionn and Donn, the dogs, and gone
back to the house, and kissed her father. His blind eyes were upon her,
though it was not through them that he knew she was troubled. He felt
the sweet breath of her upon his brow. It was like the first day of
spring when she kissed him, but he did not smile. Before she went away
with the cows she found Nial, and bade him keep watch and ward, though
without letting himself be seen.
But all morning and noon Torcall Cameron had sat brooding by the peats.
At the turn of the day he rose, ate some of the bread and cold porridge
which, with a jug of milk, Sorcha had set on the table beside him; then
resumed his listless attitude by the fire, into the heart of which he
stared with his blank, unwavering eyes.
* * * * *
Nial had grown tired, as a collie will tire if the kye drowse, chewing
the cud.
He had wandered far from the airidh, and passed idly through the pines.
No more of him might have been seen that day had he not heard Oona
singing in the woods. It was in vain that he tried to come upon her.
Either she had caught sight of him, and wilfully evaded his quest of
her; or she was like a birdeen lured by the dancing sunrays. At the
last, he thought of a song she was wont to sing. Across the midst of the
high glade where he was, lay the bole of a half-fallen pine. Along this
he clambered, till he reached the end boughs, and so out upon a feathery
branch which swayed up and down with his weight, as a fir-spray when a
cushat alights on it:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The merles are singing,
The ferns are springing,
The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn--
_Green Lady! Green Lady!_
The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn--
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
It was a harsh and wild music, that song of Oona on the lips of Nial.
Brokenly, too, it came, between gasps of breath, for, as the branch
swayed, so the dwarf's excitement grew, and he seized the pine-needles
as though they were the mane of a horse, and he were riding from death
for life:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The bird in the nest,
And the child at the breast,
They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn--
The bonnie Green Lady,
Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn--
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
Suddenly he ceased his fierce ride of the branches. Surely that clear
call was from the throat of Oona? Yes, near she was, though invisible.
Her song bubbled from her as sunlit water down a brae:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Dost thou flee the Green Lady?
Her wild flowers will race thee,
Her sunbeams will chase thee,
Her laughter is singing aloud in the dawn--
O the Green Lady
With yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn,
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
Even the hawk-keen eye of Nial failed to discover Oona. Her voice came
from a covert of bracken, amid which rose craggy mossed boulders.
Doubtless, the girl sheltered behind one of these.
"_Oona!_"
He lay still now, save for the quivering of his eagerness. The branch
was bent by his weight, but did not sway.
"_Oona!_"
The rapid skiff-skiff of a hind leaping through the fern, through the
green-glooms to his right, caught his attention; otherwise he must have
seen the bending of the bracken in the hollow beyond him, and have
heard the faint rustle as a little cat-like figure swung herself up into
a low-branched rowan.
"_Oona! Oona!_"
Again he sang in his strange, half-screaming, falsetto voice, first one,
then another of the snatches of Gaelic song which he had learned from
Oona, but without response. One of his sudden fits of anger seized him,
and he bit savagely at the supporting branch. Then, with a peal of
mirthless laughter, he began to sway wildly to and fro again, so that it
was a wonder the bough did not break. He was swung this way and that, as
an apple on an outspread branch. With short, incoherent cries he rode
onward through the air, for the moment persuaded by his fantasy that he
was one of those wind-demons of whom he had heard Murdo the shepherd
speak--pale elves of the air who race across forest and moor on flying
leaves and broken branches, or are swept screaming in the wake of the
wind as, with outblown mane and fierce snorting and neighing, "the gray
stallion" speeds with mile-long leaps.
A frenzy of insensate wrath shook him, so that he nearly lost his grip.
Screaming, he hurled toward Oona the curses that seemed to him most
dreadful and mysterious, dark anathemas of old-time learned here and
there during his far-wanderings.
"_Droch cheann ort, Oona! Droch bhàs ort! Och, ochan, bas dunach ort! Gu
ma h-olc dhuit!--Gu ma h-olc dhuit!_"[5]
[5] "Bad end to you! Bad death to you! Ay, and may a death of woe
be on you! Evil to you, evil to you!"
A faint shuddering cry came from somewhere close at hand. In a moment
his madness went from him. The dumb animal soul felt the finger of God
touch it. All wrath ceased, and a great pity came, and longing, and
sorrow. The tears sprang to his eyes, and he lay on the branch sobbing
convulsively, so that he was like to fall.