CHAPTER XI

MYSTERY

An hour passed, and Alan Carmichael still stood by the entrance to the cave. So immovable was he that a ewe, listlessly wandering there in search of cooler grass, lay down after a while, drowsily regarding him with her amber-colored eyes. All his thought was intent upon the mystery of what he had seen. No delusion this, he was sure. That was a man whom he had seen. It might well have been some one whom he did not know, though that were unlikely, of course, for on so small an island, inhabited by less than a score of crofters, it was scarcely possible for one to live there for many weeks and not know the name and face of every soul upon the isle. Still, a stranger might have come. Only, if this were so, why should he call himself the Herdsman? There was but one herdsman on Rona, and he Angus MacCormic, who lived at Einaval on the north side. In these outer isles, the shepherd and the herdsman are appointed by the community, and no man is allowed to be one or the other at will, any more than to be _maor_ or _constabal_. Then, too, if this man were indeed herdsman, where was his _imir ionailt_, his browsing tract? Looking round him, Alan could perceive nowhere any fitting pasture. Surely no herdsman would be content with such an _imir a bhuchaille_--rig of the herdsman--as that rocky wilderness where the soft green grass grew in patches under this or that bowlder, on the sun side of this or that mountain ash. Again, he had given no name, but called himself simply _Am Buchaille_. This was how the woman Morag had spoken; did she indeed mean this very man, and if so what import lay in her words? But far beyond all other bewilderment for him was that strange, that indeed terrifying likeness to himself; a likeness so absolute, so convincing, that he knew he might himself easily have been deceived, had he beheld the apparition in any place where it was possible that a reflection could have misled him.

Brooding thus, eye and ear were both intent for the faintest sight or sound. But, from the interior of the cavern, not a breath came. Once, from among the jagged rocks high on the west slope of Ben Einaval he fancied he heard an unwonted sound: that of human laughter, but laughter so wild, so remote, so unmirthful, that fear was in his heart. It could not be other than imagination, he said to himself; for in that lonely place there was none to wander idly at that season, and none who, wandering, would laugh there, solitary.

It was with an effort that Alan at last determined to probe the mystery. Stooping, he moved cautiously into the cavern, and groped his way along a narrow ledge which led, as he thought, into another larger cave. But this proved to be one of the innumerable hollow corridors which intersect the honeycombed slopes of this Isle of Caves. To wander far in these lightless passages would be to court inevitable death. Long ago, the piper whom the Prionnsa-Ban, the Fair Prince, loved to hear in his exile,--he that was called Rory McVurich,--penetrated one of the larger hollows to seek there for a child that had idly wandered into the dark. Some of the clansmen, with the father and mother of the little one, waited at the entrance to the cave. For a time there was silence; then, as agreed upon, the sound of the pipes was heard, to which a man named Lachlan McLachlan replied from the outer air. The skirl of the pipes within grew fainter and fainter. Louder and louder Lachlan played upon his _chantar_; shriller and shriller grew the wild cry of the _feadan_; but for all that, fainter and fainter waned the sound of the pipes of Rory McVurich. Generations have come and gone upon the isle, and still no man has heard the returning air which Rory was to play. He may have found the little child, but he never found his backward path, and in the gloom of that honeycombed hill he and the child and the music of the pipes lapsed into the same stillness. Remembering this legend, familiar to him since his boyhood, Alan did not dare to venture farther. At any moment, too, he knew he might fall into one of the innumerable crevices which opened into the sea-corridors hundreds of feet below. Ancient rumor had it that there were mysterious passages from the upper heights of Ben Einaval, which led into the intricate heart mazes of these perilous arcades. But for a time he lay still, straining every sense. Convinced at last that the man whom he sought had evaded all possible quest, he turned to regain the light. Brief way as he had gone, this was no easy thing to do. For a few moments, indeed, Alan lost his self-possession, when he found a uniform dusk about him, and could scarce discern which of the several branching narrow corridors was that by which he had come. But following the greener light, he reached the cave, and soon, with a sigh of relief, was upon the sun-sweet warm earth again.

How more than ever beautiful the world seemed to him; how sweet upon the eyes were cliff and precipice, the wide stretch of ocean, the flying birds, the sheep grazing on the scanty pastures, and, above all, the homely blue smoke curling faintly upward from the fisher crofts on the headland east of Aonaig!

Purposely he retraced his steps by the way of the glen. He would see the woman, Morag MacNeill again, and insist on some more explicit word; but when he reached the burnside once more, the woman was not there. Possibly she had seen him coming, and guessed his purpose; half he surmised this, for the peats in the hearth were brightly aglow, and on the hob beside them the boiling water hissed in a great iron pot wherein were potatoes. In vain he sought, in vain called. Impatient at last he walked around the bothie and into the little byre beyond. The place seemed deserted. The matter, small as it was, added to his profound disquietude. Resolved to sift the mystery, he began to walk swiftly down the slope. By the old shealing of Cnoc-na-Monie, now forsaken, his heart leaped at sight of Ynys coming to meet him. At first he thought he would say nothing of what had happened. But with Ynys his was ever an impossible silence, for she knew every change in his mind as a seaman knows the look of the sky and sea. Moreover, she had herself been all day oppressed by something of the same inexplicable apprehension.

When they met, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him lovingly with questioning eyes. Ah! he found rest and hope in those deep pools of quiet light whence the dreaming love rose comfortingly to meet his own yearning gaze.

"What is it, Alan, mo-ghray; what is the trouble that is upon you?"

"It is a trouble, Ynys, but one of which I can speak little, for it is little I know."

"Have you heard or seen aught that gives you fear?"

"I have seen a man here upon Rona whom I have not seen or met before, and it is one whose face is known to me, and whose voice too, and one whom I would not meet again."

"Did he give you no name, Alan?"

"None."

"Whence did he come? Whither did he go?"

"He came out of the shadow, and into the shadow he went."

Ynys looked steadfastly at her husband; her wistful gaze searching deep into his unquiet eyes, and thence from feature to feature of the face which had become strangely worn, for all the joy that lay between them.

But she said no more upon what he had told her.

"I, too, Alan mo rùn, have heard a strange thing to-day. You know old Marsail Macrae? She is ill now with a slow fever, and she thinks that the shadow which she saw lying upon her hearth last Sabbath, when nothing was there to cause any shadow, was her own death, come for her, and now waiting there. I spoke to the old woman comfortingly, but she would not have peace, and her eyes looked at me strangely.

"'What is it, Marsail?' I asked at last. To which she replied mysteriously:

"'Ay, ay, for sure, it was I who saw you first.'

"'Saw me first, Marsail?'

"'Ay, you and Alan MacAlasdair.'

"'When and where was this sight upon you that you speak of?'

"'It was one month before you and he came to Rona.'

"This startled me, and I asked her to tell me her meaning. At first, I could make little of what was said, for she muttered low, and moved her head idly this way and that; moaning in her pain. But on my taking her hand, she looked at me again; and then, apparently without an effort, told me this thing:

* * * * *

"'On the seventh day of the month before you came--and by the same token it was on the seventh day of the month following that you and Alan MacAlasdair came to Caisteal-Rhona--I was upon the shore at Aonaig, listening to the crying of the wind against the great precipice of Biolacreag. With me were Roderick Macrea and Neil MacNeill, Morag MacNeill, and her sister Elsa; and we were singing the hymn for those who were out on the wild sea that was roaring white against the cliffs of Berneray; for some of our people were there, and we feared for them. Sometimes one sang, and sometimes another. And sure, it is remembering I am, how, when I had called out with my old wailing voice:

"'Boidh an Tri-aon leinn, a la 's a dh-oidche; 'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann.

[Be the Three-in-One with us day and night; On the crested wave, when waves run high.]

"'I had just sung this, and we were all listening to the sound of it caught by the wind and whirled up against the black face of Biolacreag, when suddenly I saw a boat come sailing quite into the haven. I called out to those about me, but they looked at me with white faces, for no boat was there, and it was a rough, wild sea it was in that haven.

"'And in that boat I saw three people sitting, and one was you, Ynys nighean Lhois, and one was Alan MacAlasdair, and one was a man who had his face in shadow, and his eyes looked into the shadow at his feet. I knew not who you were, nor whence you came, nor whether it was for Rona you were, nor any thing at all; but I saw you clear, and I told those about me what I saw. And Seumas MacNeill, him that is dead now, and brother to Neil here at Aonaig, he said to me, "Who was that whom you saw walking in the dusk the night before last?" "Alasdair MacAlasdair Carmichael," answered one at that. Seumas muttered, looking at those about him, "Mark what I say, for it is a true thing; that Alasdair Carmichael of Rona is dead now, because Marsail here saw him walking in the dusk when he was not upon the island; and now, you Neil, and you Roderick, and all of you will be for thinking with me that the man and the woman in the boat whom Marsail sees now will be the son and the daughter of him who has changed."

"'Well, well, it is a true thing that we each of us thought that thought, but when the days went and nothing more came of it, the memory of the seeing went too. Then there came the day when the cobble of Aulay MacAulay came out of Borosay into Caisteal-Rhona haven. Glad we were to see the face of Ian mac Iain again, and to hear the sob of joy coming out of the heart of Kirsten, his sister: but when you and Alan MacAlasdair came on shore, it was my voice that then went from mouth to mouth, for I whispered to Morag MacNeill who was next me, that you were the twain that I had seen in the boat.'

* * * * *

"Well, Alan," Ynys added, with a grave smile, "I spoke gently to old Marsail, and told her that after all there was no evil in that seeing, and that for sure it was nothing at all, at all, to see two people in a boat, and nothing coming of that, save happiness for those two, and glad content to be here, with hope like a white swallow nesting for aye under the eaves of our house.

"Marsail looked at me with big eyes.

"'It is no white swallow that builds there, Ynys Bean Alan,' she said.

"But when I asked her what she meant by that, she would say no more. No asking of mine would bring the word to her lips; only she shook her head and averted her gaze from my face. Then, seeing that it was useless, I said to her:

"'Marsail, tell me this: was that sight of yours the sole thing that made the people here on Rona look askance at Alan MacAlasdair?'

"For a time she stared at me with the dim, unrecognizing eyes of those who are ill and in the shadow of death; then, suddenly they brightened, and she spoke:

"'It is not all.'

"'Then what more is there, Marsail Macrae?'

"'That is not for the saying. I have no more to say. Let you, or your man, go elsewhere; that which is to be, will be. To each his own end.'

"'Then tell me this at least,' I asked; 'is there peril for Alan or for me in this island?'

"But from that moment Marsail would say no more, and indeed I saw that a swoon was upon the old woman, and that she heard not or saw not."

After this, Ynys and Alan walked slowly home together, hand in hand, both silent and revolving in their mind as in a dim dusk, that mystery which, vague and unreal at first, had now become a living presence, and haunted them by day and night.