The Highland Gathering is a sort of northern durbar, and of an
antiquity equaling those of India.
The custom of the Scottish clans to meet for a day of games, piping and
parade, had its origin anterior to the running of the Gaelic memory. A
durbar it may be called, and yet a contrast in that word cannot be
laid here alongside the gorgeous pageant of Delhi. The word may stand,
albeit, in either case equally descriptive. Both are Gatherings. The
distinction lies not in the essential and moving motive of the function,
but in the diametric differences of the races. The Orient contrasted
against the North. The rajah in his cape of diamonds, attended by his
retinue, stripped of: his Eastern splendor, is but a chief accompanied
by his "tail." The roll of skin drums is a music of no greater mystery
to the stranger than the whine of pipes. The fakirs, the jugglers of
India, disclose the effeminate nature of the East, while the games of
the Highland disclose equally the hardy nature of the North.
Here under this cis-Arctic sun can be displayed no vestige of that
dazzling splendor, making the oriental gathering a saturnalia of gems
and color. But one will find in lieu of it hardy exhibitions of the
strength, the courage, the endurance, the indomitable unflagging spirit
that came finally to set an English Resident in every state of India.
The games of the Oban Gathering are in a way those to be seen at Fort
William, Inverness, and elsewhere in the North; the simple sturdy
contests of the first men, observed by Homer, and to be found in a
varying degree among all peoples not fallen to decadence. Wrestling as
it was done, doubtless, before Agamemnon; the long jump; the putting of
the stone; the tossing of the caber, a section of a fir tree, and to be
cast so mightily that it turns end over in the air, a feat of strength
possible only to fingers thick as the coupling pins of a cart and sinews
of iron; the high vault, not that theatrical feat of a college class
day, but a thing of tremendous daring, learned among the ice ledges of
Buachaill-Etive, when the man's life depended on the strength lying in
his tendons. Contests, also, of agility, unknown to any south country
of the world; the famous sword dance, demanding incredible swiftness
and precision; the Sean Triubhais; the Highland fling, a Gaelic
dance requiring limbs oiled with rangoon and strung with silk, a dance
resembling in no heavy detail its almost universal imitation; a thing,
light, fantastic, airy, learned from the elfin daughters dancing in the
haunted glens of the Garry, from the kelpie women shaking their white
limbs in the boiling pools of the Coe.
But it is not for these field sports that butterflies swarm into the bay
of Oban. A certain etiquette requires, however, that one should go for
half an hour to these games; an etiquette, doubtless, after that taking
the indolent noble, once upon a time, to the Circus Maximus; having its
origin in the custom of the feudal chiefs, to lend the splendor of
their presence to these animal contests. One finds, then, on such a day,
streams of fashionable persons strolling out to the field in which these
games are held, and returning leisurely along the road to Oban. Adequate
carriages cannot be had, and one goes afoot. The sun, the bright heaven,
the gala air of the bedecked city, the color and distinctive dresses of
the North, lend to the scene the fantastic charm of a masquerade.
At noon, on the second day of the Gathering, the Duke of Dorset came
through the turnstile of the field into this road, following, at some
paces, two persons everywhere conspicuously noticed. The two were of so
strikingly a relation that few eyes failed to notice that fitness. The
observers' interest arose at it wondering. In the fantastic gala mood
of such a day, one came easily to see, passing here, in life, under his
eye, that perfect sample of youth and age--that king and that king's
daughter--of which the legend has descended to us through the medium of
stories told in the corner by the fire. Those two running through every
tale of mystery, coming now, unknown, as if by some enchantment. The
girl, dark eyed, dark haired, smiling. Her white cloth gown fitting to
her figure; her drooping hat loaded with flowers of a delicate blossom.
The man, old, but unbent and unwithered, and walking beside her with a
step that remained firm and elastic. He was three inches less in
stature than the Duke of Dorset, but he looked quite as tall. He was
old--eighty! But his hair was only streaked with white, and his body was
unshrunken, save for the rising veins showing in his hands and throat.
He might have appeared obedient to some legend; his face fitted to the
requirements of such a fancy. Here was the bony, crooked nose of
the tyrant, the eyes of the dreamer--of one who imagines largely and
vastly--and under that face, like an iron plowshare, sat the jaw that
carries out the dream. And from the whole body of the man, moving here
in the twilight of his life, vitality radiated.
The two, mated thus picturesquely, caught and stimulated the fancy
of the crowds of natives thronging the road to Oban. Little children,
holding wisps of purple heather tied with bits of tartan ribbon, ran
beside them, and forgot, in their admiration, to offer the bouquets for
a sixpence; a dowager duchess, old and important, looked after the pair
through the jeweled rims of her lorgnette; she was gouty and stout now,
but once upon a time, slim like that girl, she had held a ribbon dancing
with the exquisite prince sitting now splendidly above the land, and
the picture recalled by this youth, this beauty, was a memory priceless.
Once a soldier of some northern regiment saluted, moved by a deference
which he gave himself no trouble to define; and once a Fort William
piper, touched somewhere in the region of his fancies, struck up one of
those haunting airs inspired by the Pretender--
"Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
'Onward!' the sailors cry.
Carry the lad that was born to be King
Over the sea to Skye---"
preserving forever in the memory the weird cry of gulls, the long
rhythmic wash of the sea, and the loneliness of Scotland.
But the impression that seized and dominated the Duke of Dorset was that
he knew these two persons. Not as living people--never in his life had
he seen either of them as living people. But in some other way, as, for
example, pictures out of some nursery story book come to life. And
yet, not quite that. The knowledge of them seemed to emerge from that
mysterious period of childhood, existing anterior to the running of the
human memory. And he tried to recall them as a child tries to recall
the language of the birds which he seems once to have understood, or
the meaning of the pictures which the frost etches on the window
pane--things he had once known, but had somehow forgotten.
The idea was bizarre and fantastic, but it was strangely compelling, and
he followed along the road, obsessed by the mood of it.
Presently, as the old man now and then looked about him, his bearing,
the contrasts in his face, the strange blend of big dominating
qualities, suggested something to the Duke of Dorset which he seemed
recently to have known--a relation--an illusive parallel, which, for a
time, he was unable definitely to fix. Then, as though the hidden idea
stepped abruptly from behind a curtain, he got it.
On certain ruins in Asia, one finds again and again, cut in stone, a
figure with a lion body, eagle wings, and a human face--that mysterious
symbol formulated by the ancients to represent the authority that
dominates the energies of the world.
But it was the other, this girl with the dark eyes, the dark hair, the
slender, supple body, that particularly disturbed him. He could not
analyze this feeling. But he knew that if he were a child, without
knowing why, without trying to know why, he would have gone to her and
said, "I am so glad you have come." And he would have been filled
with the wonder of it. So it would have been with him before the years
stripped him of that first wisdom; and yet, now at maturity, stripped of
it, the impulse and the wonder remained.
The Duke of Dorset continued to walk slowly, at a dozen paces,
behind these two persons. He wore the dress usual to a north-country
gentleman--a knickerbocker suit of homespun tweed, with woolen stockings
and the low Norwegian shoes, with thin double seam running around the
top of the foot. This costume set in relief the man's sinewy figure.
Among those contesting in the field, which they were now leaving, there
was hardly to be found, in physique, one the equal of this Duke. Thicker
shoulders and bigger muscles were to be seen there, but they belonged
to men slow and heavy like the Clydesdale draft horse. The height, the
symmetry, the even proportions of the Duke of Dorset were not to be
equaled. Moreover, the man was lean, compact and hard, like a hunter put
by grooms, with unending care, into condition.
This he had got from following the spoor of beasts into the desolation
of wood and desert; from the clean air of forests, drawn into lungs
sobbing with fatigue; from the sun hardening fiber into iron, leaching
out fat, binding muscles with sheathings of copper; from bread, often
black and dry; meat roasted over embers, and the crystal water of
springs. It was that gain above rubies, with which Nature rewards those
walking with her in the waste places of the earth.
Ordinarily, such a person would have claimed the attention of the crowds
along the road to Oban, but here, behind this old man and this girl, he
was unnoticed.
The day was perfect. From the sea came the thin, weird cry of gulls,
from the field behind him, the wail of pipes. Presently the two persons
whom he followed stopped to speak with some one in a shop, and he
overtook them on the road.
At this moment the Marchesa Soderrelli came through the shop door.