Part 13

The blind man stood erect, with arms upraised and hands outspread. His face was lit as though a fire burned in his brain. Nial imagined that the dead eyes gleamed, as he had seen toadstools gleam in a dark cave: a dull phosphorescent light, horrible to look upon.

Again a wuthering roar, followed by a scythelike whirlwind, with the sound of rain-torrents flooding the high corries and washing the windward precipices of Ben Iolair. Nial was about to speak, when he crouched back at the volley of words shouted savagely over his head:

"Oh, my Lord God, strike! Oh, let Death be upon me! Sorrow Thou hast given me, and I have not rebelled: grief Thou hast made my daily portion, and I have not rebuked Thee: but now that Thou hast made my day into a charnel-house and my bed into a grave, now that Thou hast brought before my blind eyes what no eyes may see and live, now that Thou hast set the Dead as a watch upon the living--I cry to Thee, Enough!"

Nial shivered with awe and terror. He saw that a frenzy was upon the man whom he both loved and feared.

There was silence for many seconds. A greenish streak of flame shot across the mountain, intolerably vivid. A sound as of mirthless laughter was drowned in an avalanche-roar overhead. Out of the tumult, later, came wild fragments of human shouting:

"Let there be a duel between us then ... ay, Marsail, you may weep; ay, Fergus, you may leap out of your shroud to be soul to soul with me ... what do I care for the hounds of the night?... Call off thy hounds, O Hunter!... Be the day between us, and the night, O God; and the two noons, and the darkness of the coming and the darkness of the going; and the blood of the living, and the corruption of the dead; and the earth and the sea; and the stars beneath the world, and the stars above the world; and the friend of man that is Time, and Thy friend that is Eternity ... for I _will_ not, I _will_ not, I _will_ not ... no, though I perish for ever and for ever" ... (_and at last, with a scream_) ... "Go Thy ways, O God.... Leave me, if Thou wilt not slay! ... I _will_ not! I _will_ not! I _will_ not!"

When the next flash and thunderblast had hurtled and gone, Nial thought that Death had indeed come. Then he heard a low whisper:

"What is it that I hear? Do the dead stir? Marsail ... Marsail ... or ... or ... is it _you_, Fergus, son of Fergus, son of Ian?"

Sick with fear, Nial sprang to his feet, seized one of the fallen hands in his own, and tried to lead Màm-Gorm away.

The blind man shook as a tuft of canna in a wind-eddy; white, too, as the canna, was his face.

His lips moved convulsively. At last, hoarse, choking, sobbing sounds came forth, and from these grew three or four words:

"Is--it--_you_, Marsail?"

Nial shrank appalled, but could not withdraw his hands.

"Is--it--_you_, Fergus Gilchrist?"

Struggling to escape, he merely added to the paralysing awe which held his captor.

"Who are you--what are you? Are you the thing of the grave, the black guide I have heard of?"

With a sudden jerk the dwarf freed himself. The next moment he bounded aside, then, without a glance behind him, fled.

Cameron sprang forward, but when he found that he had missed his grip he drew up again, and stood listening intently. If it was a spirit, it made a noise of running like a human: if it was a creature of the grave, it hurried back to no hollow near by: if it was Black Donald himself, Sir Diabhol had fled, affrighted!

Ah, the Cailliach! He had not thought of _her_! It might well be that the demon-woman had tried to snare him. If so, what, who, had saved him?

Dazed and sick he stood for a moment, because of a crash of a thunderbolt against a near height. The granite splintered like glass. In his mouth his palate shrank: his nerves strained, quivering.

Who, what, hurled that thunderbolt? Was it God? Was He answering his wild prayer?

If it were of God, why had it not stricken him? Hark! A scream far off! Had the leaping Cailliach been slain by the lightning, as a flying man by the spear of his pursuer? Had God given him these things as signs? These voices, that awful touch as of human hands?

He bowed his head. Tears scalded the burning lids of his blind eyes. Suddenly he sank to his knees, and with outstretched arms repeated an ancient rune of his fathers, the Cry to Age, the Rann-an-h' Aoise:

O thou that on the hills and wastes of Night art Shepherd, Whose folds are flameless moons and icy planets, Whose darkling way is gloomed with ancient sorrows: Whose breath lies white as snow upon the olden, Whose sigh it is that furrows breasts grown milkless, Whose weariness is in the loins of man And is the barren stillness of the woman: O thou whom all would 'scape and all must meet, Thou that the Shadow art of Youth-Eternal, The gloom that is the hush'd air of the Grave, The sigh that is between last parted love, The light for aye withdrawing from weary eyes, The tide from stricken hearts for ever ebbing! O thou, the Elder Brother whom none loveth, Whom all men hail with reverence or mocking, Who broodeth on the peaks of herbless summits, Yet dreamest in the eyes of babes and children: Thou, Shadow of the Heart, the Brain, the Life, Who art that dusk _What is_ that is already _Has been_, To thee this rune of the-fathers-to-the-sons, And of the sons to the sons, and mothers to new mothers-- To thee who art _Aois_, To thee who art _Age_!

Breathe thy frosty breath upon my hair, for I am weary; Lay thy frozen hand upon my bones that they support not, Put thy chill upon the blood that it sustain not, Place the crown of thy fulfilling on my forehead, Throw the silence of thy spirit on my spirit, Lay the balm and benediction of thy mercy On the brain-throb and the heart-pulse and the life-spring-- For thy child that bows his head is weary, For thy child that bows his head is weary. I the shadow am that seeks the Darkness. Age, that hath the face of Night unstarr'd and moonless, Age that doth extinguish star and planet, Moon and sun and all the fiery worlds, Give me now thy darkness and thy silence!

It was there, lying with his face in the wet heather, that Sorcha found her father. She had seen Nial flying as for his life, and, from behind the boulder where she was sheltering a lamb, had sprung forward to stop him. But all the elf-man saw was a woman's figure--perhaps the Cailliach who had already stolen his soul and now wanted his body in this night of storm! With a scream he turned aside and dashed onward in his wild, ungainly flight.

Sorcha's great eyes filled with amazement, then with dread. What did it mean? Her bosom heaved, the swell of the sudden tide at her heart. More beautiful than any Fairy-Woman that ever herded the deer or sang a fatal song, she stood with one hand at her breast, the colour ebbing from her face, her slim firm body poised as an intent stag.

Slowly her gaze travelled back the way Nial had come. In the gloom of storm she could descry nothing, no one. If the Cailliach were there, she was now invisible.

Again an almost intolerably vivid flash of blue-green light, out of a dazzling flame that seemed to burst from the hills. The hollow roar and crash that followed dazed her, but in that moment's illumination she had seen the cairn and the stannin' stane, and, beside them, the figure of her father, apparently stricken and fallen prone.

Without a thought of fear, either of the storm or the evil spirit that might be roaming the hillside, she half ran, half clambered upward till she came upon her father lying low. In a moment she was by his side, and had lifted his head, drying his face with her dress, and kissing him, with a crooning as of a mother over her child.

He was not dead. For that she was thankful. She could feel the throb of his heart, and in his throat there was a sound as of sobbing breath.

"Father, father," she cried; then, whispering in his ear, "Father of me, father of me, oh, dear to my heart, all is well! I am Sorcha! There is no evil thing here. Come home! Come home!"

She felt the shiver that went over him. Then he sought with his hand, and clasped that which went to meet it.

"What is it, Sorcha? Where am I?"

"Ah, father, dear father, you are well now: arise: I will lead you home!"

"Home?"

"Yes; do you not hear the wind and the rain? _Ah--h--!_"

Again a bursting roar overhead, and the whole of Iolair a beacon of flame whereon every boulder and crag stood out clear as in brilliant moonlight.

"I remember! I remember!" Cameron cried, as he staggered to his feet. "Was it _you_, Sorcha, who took my hands a little ago, when--when--I was speaking to--to--Marsail?..."

The girl recoiled in horror. Marsail ... her long-dead mother!

"What is this thing that you say, O Torcall MacDiarmid?" she whispered, awestruck.

"It is nothing. I was dreaming. Sorcha, I came here dreaming of past days. Your mother lies below the cairn there. I was talking to her to ease my pain. I thought she might hear. And while I spoke, I felt hands clasp mine, and try to pull me down--below the cairn, it may be! And then I fell into a horror, and the darkness came over my mind. And, suddenly, I knew that God spared me, though I had cursed Him, and I fell on my knees and cried the rune of Age, that is a rune of old, forgotten among our people, and therewith I was heard, and my strength knew the Breath, and I fell as you found me."

"But, father, father, you are not in the dark way--you are not old, for all the grey of your hair--you are not going to die, and leave your Sorcha and Oona?"

"Would you have me live, _nic-chridhe_?"

Seldom did he speak to her thus, though often he called Oona his heart's dearie and other loving names. The tears came to her eyes.

"Yes, yes, father! I would have you live. I love you."

"My age is come upon me. I am weary."

"Not yet: not yet!"

"Do you not know the wisdom of old--_s'mairg a dh'iarradh an aoise, Woe to him that desireth extreme old age!_"

"Come with me, dear! Come! The rain is leaping at us. Come! You are cold and wet and shivering!"

And so, at last, silent and weary, Torcall Cameron toiled back against the tempest, and neither he nor Sorcha saw, as they passed the byre, a squat, misshapen figure crouching beside Odhar, the calving cow.

* * * * *

It was a night for the peat-glow. Outside, the darkness was intense. The thunderstorm had rolled heavily away, though the far hills still held an echo. But a great wind had arisen, and blew across the heights with a sound like the trumpets of a mighty host. From the forest came a vast tumultuous sigh, as of the moaning sea.

In the low room, where there was no light save that of the peat-fire, upon which flamed some dry pine-logs, Torcall Cameron sat brooding in the ingle. Opposite to him was Sorcha on a milking-stool, now stirring the porridge in the pot at one side of the fire, now with clasped hands staring into the flames, dreaming of Alan, or of what she had that gloaming heard from her father and from Nial.

At dark she had gone to the byre, and, having found the dwarf, had soothed and entreated him, so that his dark mood passed, and he followed her, in furtive silence, into the room, where, unknowing of his advent, Màm-Gorm sat.

Only once had the blind man spoken since he had seated himself once again before the peats. It was to ask Sorcha if she thought that the person who took his hands by the cairn could have been Nial. An imploring glance from the outcast made her refrain from betrayal of his presence: of which she was glad when, having replied that she was certain it was he, for she had seen him running down the hillside as though terrified by the lightning, her father broke into a muttered savage curse.

At last Màm-Gorm slept. The fireglow calmed the wrought face. The tangled iron-grey hair fell over his forehead. He looked strangely old; could it be, thought Sorcha, that his prayer had been heard, and that already the Shepherd had found this weary sheep? And yet, so strong was he, so tall and strong; strong as an aged pine on a headland! Surely his ill was of the stricken heart only?

When his breathing came soft and even, she rose, lightly kissed his grey hair, with a tear for the pity of the old that is in the loving heart of the young, and then went out to the byre to see if Odhar was warm, and under no spell nor evil, though her calf was not yet due.

As she went out Oona slipped in. She was dry and flushed, for at the coming of the storm she had crept into the hayloft, and had there been lulled to sleep by the rush of the rain and the endless rising and falling sough of the wind. Nial made a sign of silence, so she came forward soundlessly. For a time she stared intently at the sleeper, then, seeing that Nial, who had crawled to her side, would not look at her but sat blinking at the flame, she began to croon a song.

The sweet Gaelic words fell from her lips like soft rain in a wood. The room was filled with a low chime of music. Old strange chants or fugitive songs, one after the other, came fragmentarily to her lips; and the plaintive air of them was sometimes her own, sometimes what she had heard others sing, and once or twice old-world melodies, more ancient than the oldest pine-trees, older even than the "fallen stones" in the place on the south slope of Iolair called Teampull-nan-Anait, where a thousand years ago none passed who could tell who Anait was, or where her altar had been or who were her worshippers.

Once the door opened. Sorcha glanced through the flame-lit dusk: a smile on her face, sweet as the dream in her beautiful eyes. The father asleep; Oona crooning before the peats; Nial, quiet hound of Oona, with dark eyes staring up at her from where he lay on the floor: she need not fear to leave, and go out to the roofed hay-room, where Alan's arms yearned for her, where his heart beat for her, where his lips were warm in the dark, where the dear whisper of his voice was the echo of the white song that clapped its hands rejoicing in the sunbower in the hollow of her heart.

IV

But, from that day, the gloom lay more heavily on Torcall Cameron even than of yore. Oona herself could hardly win speech from him. During the week of fine weather that followed the thunderstorm she was rarely at Màm-Gorm. The forest held her with its spell, though often she was on the heights with Murdo when he led the kye to the hill-pastures at sunrise, or with Sorcha at the milking of the cows at sundown.

During the noons, she sought--alone or with Nial--that white merle of which Sorcha had told her once, which had haunted her waking and sleeping dreams ever since. Whoever heard its song would be in fairyland for a thousand years, though the joy of that would be no more than a year and a day of mortal time. Whoever saw it might follow its flight, and for the seer of the white merle there would open wonder after wonder. The green spirits of the trees would come forth, chanting low their murmurous rhyme: the souls of the flowers would steal hand-in-hand, from leaf-covert to leaf-covert, or dance in the golden light of the sunbeams; the singing of the birds, the crooning of the cushats, the hum of the wild-bee and the wood-wasp, the voices of all living things from the low bleat of the fawn to the singing stir of the gnats by the pool or in the hollows--all would become clear as human speech, and would be sweet to hear.

Long, long ago, that white merle had flown out of Eden. Its song has been in the world ever since, though few there are who hear it, knowing it for what it is, and none who has seen the flash of its white wings through the green-gloom of the living wood--the sun-splashed, rain-drenched, mist-girt, storm-beat wood of human life.

But Oona watched for the white shimmer, for the magic song. She looked everywhere save where the white merle nested--in the fair soul of her; listened everywhere save where its secret song was--in the music of her young life in heart and brain. Ah, the sweet song of it!

As for Nial, he crouched for hours at a time, lest by noon or dusk he might hear or see the magic bird. If only he could catch but a glimpse of the white merle, sure he would see his lost soul somewhere among the green spirits who, Oona said, would be seen coming out of the trees which were their bodies. Neither did _he_ know that there was one place where it rested often on a spray in its singing flight, a fugitive Hope; or that notes of its unreachable song pierced the gloom of his bitter pain.

Sorcha alone, only Sorcha, started at times as though she heard it: and in her dreams, and in the dreams of Alan, it sang, a white wonder on a golden bough, in the moonlight.

But for Torcall Cameron in his sorrow there was no white merle. Oona asked him once what its first notes were like.

"_Bron! bron! mo bron!_" he answered; "mo bron, mo bron, ochone, arone! Doil-ghios orm'sa, tha mo chridhe briste!"[10]

[10] "Grief, my grief! O grief, my grief, ochone, arone! Sorrow upon me, my heart is broken!"

Almost every afternoon he went out alone upon the heights, though never again by the cairn where Marsail lay. Sometimes he would sit on a boulder, brooding dark; at times Sorcha or Oona would descry him kneeling in the heather, often with fierce gestures, as he prayed wild prayers--fragments of which the wind sometimes bore to the listener, who no more durst approach.

Ever since that day by the cairn Nial had kept out of his way. Not without reason; for once, as the dwarf lay sleeping in the noon-heat, under the shadow of a rock, he was suddenly seized in an iron grip.

It was in vain for him to struggle. What he saw in the face of his captor gave him the courage of desperation.

"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!" he muttered in a voice hoarse with passion. "Let me go. I am Nial of the woods."

"Ay, Nial of the woods! Spawn of the Evil One! Think you I don't know you to be the child of the Cailliach? You talk of your lost soul, poor fool! Your _lost_ soul, you that never had and never will have a soul!"

"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!"

"Let you go! and where will I be letting you go to, you that are no man, but only an elfish creature of the woods? Was it _you_ that came out of the grave that day--that day by the cairn?"

"And what will you do, Màm-Gorm?"

"What will I do? What will I do? By the blood on my soul, I will drive a stake through your body, so that no more shall you haunt the living!"

"Let me go, Torcall Cameron, in the name of God!"

The blind man relaxed his grip a little, which had become like a vice. The words brought a shock to his heart. He had never heard Nial call him by his name before: and if he were of demon birth, how could he say "an ainm an Athar"?

"Let me go, Torcall Cameron, or I will put a _rosad_ upon you, a spell that no _sian_ of Oona or Sorcha will save you from."

"_You_, you thing of the woods, _you_ put a spell upon _me_: you who had my bread, and had my fire, and who would have died but for me! Ay, and you would put a spell upon me! And what would that _rosad_ be like, now, from you that have never consorted with men, and have learned nothing save from the lassie Oona?"

"When I was with the children of the wind," Nial began, to be interrupted at once by his captor, who muttered, "Ah, the gypsies I forgot"--and grew grave, as with the shadow of a fear.

"When I was with the children of the wind, Màm-Gorm, I learned some things that even you may not know. And in the woods I have learned that which no man knows. And if I put the evil upon you, you will die slow, year by year, from the brain that is behind your eyes to the last bones of your feet!"

Cameron shuddered.

"It may be so. God forgive me, any way. You have done me no harm. But look you, Nial of the woods, keep out of my way when I wander abroad--and let me hear no more of your spells. There: you are free to go. Yet even now that my hand is off you, I long to make sure that you are not the thing that came out of the cairn."

With a dark, vengeful face the elf-man moved out of reach; then he whispered in a slow, meaning way:

"I am going, for I see Marsail coming down the hill from the cairn, and with her is a man----"

"A man! A man!" shouted Cameron, trembling as in an ague. "Who is the man? What is he like? Give me your hand, Nial, give me your hand, for the love of God!"

"He is tall and fair, and dripping wet, with his hair lank about his head, with the water in it."

Ah, he had his revenge now! Màm-Gorm gave a low moan, and sank to his knees. There he cowered, muttering incoherently.

"Nial," he whispered hoarsely at last, "Nial, Nial, do they come this way--Marsail and--and--the man who is dripping wet?"

The dwarf raised his head and stared about him. He was tempted to make his late tormentor suffer; but the brute heart of the soulless man was melted because of the agony of one of the lords of life.

"I see no one now, Màm-Gorm."

"No one--_no one_?"

"No."

"Are you sure, Nial?"

"I am sure."

"Give me your hand."

"You will do me no hurt?"

"On my soul!"

Nial slowly advanced, took the outstretched hand in his, and helped the trembling man to rise.

"Nial, tell me this thing. Have you seen these--these--these _two_ before this?"

"I have never seen the woman."

"Then how do you know it was Marsail, who is dead years and years and years agone?"

"Is it forgetting you are that when I was a child I saw her body, on the day of the snow?"

There was a pause, wherein the questioner brooded darkly. At last, in a low strained voice, he asked:

"Have you ever seen the man?"

"No."

"Do you know who he was?"

"No."

"Can you guess who he was?"

Silence.

"Speak, Nial!"

Silence.

"Speak, Nial, whom I have fathered."

"He was dripping wet, as though--as though----"

"Well?"

"_As though he had fallen into the Linn o' Mairg._"

A savage spasm came into Cameron's face. The nails of his fingers drew blood in the prisoned hand, which was snatched away as Nial again moved out of reach.

"I will lay my curse upon you, you evil beast!" Cameron shouted hoarsely--"Dhonas's a dholas ort!--Bas dunach ort!--Ay, ay, Nial the Soulless, son of the demon-woman, God against thee and in thy face, drowning on sea and burning on land, a stake of the whitethorn between thy heart and the pit of thy belly!"[11]

[11] "_Dhonas's a dholas ort_"--"_Bas dunach ort_": _i.e._ "Evil and sorrow to you.... A death of woe be yours! God against thee," etc.: this dreadful and dreaded anathema runs in the Gaelic--"Dia ad aghaidh 's ad aodann, bathadh air muir is losgadh air tir, crogan sgithhich eadar do chridhe 's t' airnean": from which it will be seen, by those who know Gaelic, that I have not translated literally either "crogan" or "airnean."

Of the few curses he knew, none seemed to Nial so terrible, so mysterious, so straight upon life out of Death, as that conveyed by the two words, "Marbh'asg ort!"

He waited till the fury of the man was spent. Then, frowning darkly, with his red, bloodshot eyes agleam, he muttered, "_Marbh'asg ort!_... Your death-wrappings be about you!" So low was his voice that it fell unheeded.

Cameron turned his sightless eyes upon him. Nial shivered. The blindness of his king hurt him as a searing pain.

"What was the thing you said, Nial of the brutes?"

With a great effort, the bitter word was slain ere it was spoken. The voice that came from that wild, fantastic, woodland thing, with its shaggy peaked head, its faun-like ears, its rude, misshapen body, was ever harsh as a branch grating in the wind; but now it was gentle. Tears that were unshed softened it. The grief of the pariah was its benediction.

"Màm-Gorm, my father, the thing I said was a bitter thing out of Nial the herd, but this thing that I say to you is by poor Nial of the brutes, and that is _God preserve you ... ay, gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu, Torcall-mo-maighstir_!"