Part 6

I had often noticed the light on his face when he smiled—a light of such serene joy as young mothers have sometimes over the cradles of their firstborn. But for some reason I had never wondered about it, not even when I heard and dimly understood the half-contemptuous, half-reverent mockery with which, not only Alison’s brothers, but even his father, at times used towards him. Once, I remember, I was puzzled when, on a bleak day in a stormy August, I overheard Gloom say, angrily and scoffingly, “There goes the Anointed Man!” I looked, but all I could see was that, despite the dreary cold, despite the ruined harvest, despite the rotting potato-crop, Alison walked slowly onward, smiling, and with glad eyes brooding upon the grey lands around and beyond him.

It was nearly a year thereafter—I remember the date, because it was that of my last visit to Eilanmore—that I understood more fully. I was walking westward with Alison towards sundown. The light was upon his face as though it came from within; and when I looked again, half in awe, I saw that there was no glamour out of the west, for the evening was dull and threatening rain. He was in sorrow. Three months before, his brothers Allan and William had been drowned; a month later, his brother Robert had sickened, and now sat in the ingle from morning till the covering of the peats, a skeleton almost, shivering, and morosely silent, with large staring eyes. On the large bed in the room above the kitchen old Robert Achanna lay, stricken with paralysis. It would have been unendurable for me but for Alison and James, and, above all, for my loved girl-friend, Anne Gillespie, Achanna’s niece, and the sunshine of his gloomy household.

As I walked with Alison I was conscious of a well-nigh intolerable depression. The house we had left was so mournful; the bleak sodden pastures were so mournful; so mournful was the stony place we were crossing, silent but for the thin crying of the curlews; and, above all, so mournful was the sound of the ocean as, unseen, it moved sobbingly round the isle: so beyond words distressing was all this to me, that I stopped abruptly, meaning to go no farther, but to return to the house, where at least there was warmth, and where Anne would sing for me as she spun.

But when I looked up into my companion’s face I saw in truth the light that shone from within. His eyes were upon a forbidding stretch of ground, where the blighted potatoes rotted among a wilderness of round skull-white stones. I remember them still, these strange far-blue eyes, lamps of quiet joy, lamps of peace they seemed to me.

“Are you looking at Achnacarn?” (as the tract was called), I asked, in what I am sure was a whisper.

“Yes,” replied Alison slowly; “I am looking. It is beautiful—beautiful. O God, how beautiful is this lovely world!”

I know not what made me act so, but I threw myself on a heathery ridge close by, and broke out into convulsive sobbings.

Alison stooped, lifted me in his strong arms, and soothed me with soft, caressing touches and quieting words.

“Tell me, my fawn, what is it? What is the trouble?” he asked again and again.

“It is _you_—it is _you_, Alison,” I managed to say coherently at last. “It terrifies me to hear you speak as you did a little ago. You must be fëy. Why—why do you call that hateful, hideous field beautiful on this dreary day—and—and after all that has happened,—O Alison?”

At this, I remember, he took his plaid and put it upon the wet heather, and then drew me thither, and seated himself and me beside him.

“Is it not beautiful, my fawn?” he asked, with tears in his eyes. Then, without waiting for my answer, he said quietly, “Listen, dear, and I will tell you.”

He was strangely still—breathless, he seemed to me—for a minute or more. Then he spoke.

“I was little more than a child—a boy just in my teens—when something happened, something that came down the Rainbow-Arches of Cathair-Sìth.” He paused here, perhaps to see if I followed, which I did, familiar as I was with all fairy-lore. “I was out upon the heather, in the time when the honey oozes in the bells and cups. I had always loved the island and the sea. Perhaps I was foolish, but I was so glad with my joy that golden day that I threw myself on the ground and kissed the hot, sweet ling, and put my hands and arms into it, sobbing the while with my vague, strange yearning. At last I lay still, nerveless, with my eyes closed. Suddenly I was aware that two tiny hands had come up through the spires of the heather, and were pressing something soft and fragrant upon my eyelids. When I opened them, I could see nothing unfamiliar. No one was visible. But I heard a whisper: ‘Arise and go away from this place at once; and this night do not venture out, lest evil befall you.’ So I rose, trembling, and went home. Thereafter I was the same, and yet not the same. Never could I see as they saw, what my father and brothers or the isle-folk looked upon as ugly or dreary. My father was wroth me many times, and called me a fool. Whenever my eyes fell upon those waste and desolated spots, they seemed to me passing fair, radiant with lovely light. At last my father grew so bitter that, mocking me the while, he bade me go to the towns and see there the squalor and sordid hideousness wherein men dwelled. But thus it was with me: in the places they call slums, and among the smoke of factories and the grime of destitution, I could see all that other men saw, only as vanishing shadows. What I saw was lovely, beautiful with strange glory, and the faces of men and women were sweet and pure, and their souls were white. So, weary and bewildered with my unwilling quest, I came back to Eilanmore. And on the day of my home-coming, Morag was there—Morag of the Falls. She turned to my father and called him blind and foolish. ‘He has the white light upon his brows,’ she said of me; ‘I can see it, like the flicker-light in a wave when the wind’s from the south in thunder-weather. He has been touched with the Fairy Ointment. The Guid Folk know him. It will be thus with him till the day of his death, if a _duinshee_ can die, being already a man dead yet born anew. He upon whom the Fairy Ointment has been laid must see all that is ugly and hideous and dreary and bitter through a glamour of beauty. Thus it hath been since the Mhic-Alpine ruled from sea to sea, and thus is it with the man Alison your son.’

“That is all, my fawn; and that is why my brothers, when they are angry, sometimes call me the Anointed Man.”

“That is all.” Yes, perhaps. But oh, Alison Achanna, how often have I thought of that most precious treasure you found in the heather, when the bells were sweet with honey-ooze! Did the wild bees know of it? Would that I could hear the soft hum of their gauzy wings.

Who of us would not barter the best of all our possessions—and some there are who would surrender all—to have one touch laid upon the eyelids—one touch of the Fairy Ointment? But the place is far, and the hour is hidden. No man may seek that for which there can be no quest.

Only the wild bees know of it; but I think they must be the bees of Magh-Mell. And there no man that liveth may wayfare—_yet_.

_THE HILLS OF RUEL_

THE HILLS OF RUEL

One night Eilidh and Isla and I were sitting before a fire, of pine logs blazing upon peats, and listening to the snow as it whispered against the walls of the house. The wind crying in the glen, and the tumult of the hill-stream in spate, were behind the white confused rumour of the snow.

Eilidh was singing low to herself, and Isla was watching her. I could not look long at him, because of the welling upward of the tears that were in my heart. I know not why they were there.

At last, after a pause wherein each sat intent listening to the disarray without, Eilidh’s sweet thrilling voice slid through the silence—

“Over the hills and far away,” That is the tune I heard one day. Oh that I too might hear the cruel Honey-sweet folk of the Hills of Ruel.

I saw a shadow go into Isla’s eyes. So I stirred and spoke to my cousin.

“You, Isla, who were born on the Hills of Ruel, should sure have seen something of the honey-sweet folk, as they are called in Eilidh’s song.”

He did not answer straightway, and I saw Eilidh furtively glance at him.

“I will tell you a story,” he said at last simply.

Long, long ago there was a beautiful woman, and her name was Etain, and she was loved by a man. I am not for remembering the name of that man, for it is a story of the far-off days: but he was a prince. I will call him Art, and mayhap he was a son of that Art the Solitary who was wont to hear the songs of the hidden people and to see the moonshine dancers.

This Art loved Etain, and she him. So one day he took her to his dûn, and she was his wife. But, and this was an ill thing for one like Art, who was a poet and dreamer, he loved this woman overmuch. She held his life in the hollow of her hand. Nevertheless, and in her own way, she loved him truly: and for him, blind with the Dream against his eyes, all might have been well, but for one thing. For Art, who was no coward, feared one hazard, and that was death: not his own death, and not even the death of Etain, but death. He loved Etain beyond the narrow frontiers of life: and at that indrawing shadow he stood appalled.

One day, when his longing was great upon him, he went out alone upon the Hills of Ruel. There a man met him, a stranger, comely beyond all men he had seen, with dark eyes of dream, and a shadowy smile.

“And so,” he said, “and so, Art the Dreamer, thou art eager to know what way thou mayest meet Etain, in that hour when the shadow of the Shadow is upon thee?”

“Even so; though I know neither thee nor the way by which my name is known unto thee.”

“Oh, for sure I am only a wandering singer. But, now that we are met, I will sing to you, Art my lord.”

Art looked at him frowningly. This man who called him lord spake with heedless sovereignty.

Then, of a sudden, song eddied off the lips of the man, the air of it marvellous light and of a haunting strangeness: and the words were those that Eilidh there sang by the fire.

Through the dusk of silence which that song made in his brain, Art saw the stranger draw from the fawnskin, slung round his shoulders and held by a gold torque, a reed. The man played upon it.

While he played, there was a stirring on the Hills of Ruel. All the green folk were there. They sang.

Art listened to their honey-sweet song, and grew drowsy with the joy and peace of it. And one there was who sang of deathless life; and Art, murmuring the name of Etain, fell asleep.

He was an old, old man when he awoke, and the grey hair that lay down the side of his face was damp with unremembered tears. But, not knowing this, he rose and cried “Etain,” “Etain!”

When he reached his dûn there was no Etain there. He sat down by old ashes, where the wind blew through a chink, and pondered. An old man entered at dusk.

“Where is Etain?” Art asked.

“Etain, the wife of Midir?”

“No; Etain, the wife of Art.”

The old man mumbled through his open jaws:

“All these years since I was young, Etain the wife of Art has been Etain the wife of Midir.”

“And who is Midir?”

“Midir is the King of the World; he, they say, who makes sand of women’s hearts and dust of men’s hopes.”

“And I have dreamed but an idle dream?” Art cried, with his heart breaking in a sob within him.

“Ay, for if Art you be, you have been dreaming a long dream upon the Hills of Ruel.”

But when Art, old now and weak, turned to go back to the honey-sweet folk upon the Hills of Ruel, so that he might dream his dream again, he heard Midir laughing, and he died.

“And that is all,” ended Isla abruptly, looking neither at Eilidh nor at me, and staring into the flame of the peats.

But Eilidh smiled no more to herself that night, and no more sang below her breath.

_THE FISHER OF MEN_

“But now I have grown nothing, being all, And the whole world weighs down upon my heart.” (_Fergus and the Druid._)

THE FISHER OF MEN

When old Sheen nic Lèoid came back to the croft, after she had been to the burn at the edge of the green airidh, where she had washed the _claar_ that was for the potatoes at the peeling, she sat down before the peats.

She was white with years. The mountain wind was chill, too, for all that the sun had shone throughout the midsummer day. It was well to sit before the peat-fire.

The croft was on the slope of a mountain and had the south upon it. North, south, east, and west, other great slopes reached upward like hollow green waves frozen into silence by the very wind that curved them so, and freaked their crests into peaks and jagged pinnacles. Stillness was in that place for ever and ever. What though the Gorromalt Water foamed down Ben Nair, where the croft was, and made a hoarse voice for aye surrendering sound to silence? What though at times the stones fell from the ridges of Ben Chaisteal and Maolmòr, and clattered down the barren declivities till they were slung in the tangled meshes of whin and juniper? What though on stormy dawns the eagle screamed as he fought against the wind that graved a thin line upon the aged front of Ben Mulad, where his eyrie was: or that the kestrel cried above the rabbit-burrows in the strath: or that the hill-fox barked, or that the curlew wailed, or that the scattered sheep made an endless mournful crying? What were these but the ministers of silence?

There was no blue smoke in the strath except from the one turf cot. In the hidden valley beyond Ben Nair there was a hamlet, and nigh upon three-score folk lived there; but that was over three miles away. Sheen Macleod was alone in that solitary place, save for her son Alasdair Mòr Og. “Young Alasdair” he was still, though the grey feet of fifty years had marked his hair. Alasdair Og he was while Alasdair Ruadh mac Chalum mhic Lèoid, that was his father, lived. But when Alasdair Ruadh changed, and Sheen was left a mourning woman, he that was their son was Alasdair Og still.

She had sore weariness that day. For all that, it was not the weight of the burden that made her go in and out of the afternoon sun, and sit by the red glow of the peats, brooding deep.

When, nigh upon an hour later, Alasdair came up the slope, and led the kye to the byre, she did not hear him: nor had she sight of him, when his shadow flickered in before him and lay along the floor.

“Poor old woman,” he said to himself, bending his head because of the big height that was his, and he there so heavy and strong, and tender, too, for all the tangled black beard and the wild hill-eyes that looked out under bristling grey-black eyebrows.

“Poor old woman, and she with the tired heart that she has. Ay, ay, for sure the weeks lap up her shadow, as the sayin’ is. She will be thinking of him that is gone. Ay, or maybe the old thoughts of her are goin’ back on their own steps, down this glen an’ over that hill an’ away beyont that strath, an’ this corrie an’ that moor. Well, well, it is a good love, that of the mother. Sure a bitter pain it will be to me when there’s no old grey hair there to stroke. It’s quiet here, terrible quiet, God knows, to Himself be the blessin’ for this an’ for that; but when she has the white sleep at last, then it’ll be a sore day for me, an’ one that I will not be able to bear to hear the sheep callin’, callin’, callin’ through the rain on the hills here, and Gorromalt Water an’ no other voice to be with me on that day of the days.”

She heard a faint sigh, and stirred a moment, but did not look round.

“Muim’-à-ghraidh, is it tired you are, an’ this so fine a time, too?”

With a quick gesture, the old woman glanced at him.

“Ah, child, is that you indeed? Well, I am glad of that, for I have the trouble again.”

“What trouble, Muim’ ghaolaiche?”

But the old woman did not answer. Wearily she turned her face to the peat-glow again.

Alasdair seated himself on the big wooden chair to her right. For a time he stayed silent thus, staring into the red heart of the peats. What was the gloom upon the old heart that he loved? What trouble was it?

At last he rose and put meal and water into the iron pot, and stirred the porridge while it seethed and sputtered. Then he poured boiling water upon the tea in the brown jenny, and put the new bread and the sweet-milk scones on the rude deal board that was the table.

“Come, dear tired old heart,” he said, “and let us give thanks to the Being.”

“Blessings and thanks,” she said, and turned round.

Alasdair poured out the porridge, and watched the steam rise. Then he sat down, with a knife in one hand and the brown-white loaf in the other.

“O God,” he said, in the low voice he had in the kirk when the Bread and Wine were given—“O God, be giving us now thy blessing, and have the thanks. And give us peace.”

Peace there was in the sorrowful old eyes of the mother. The two ate in silence. The big clock that was by the bed _tick-tacked, tick-tacked_. A faint sputtering came out of a peat that had bog-gas in it. Shadows moved in the silence, and met and whispered and moved into deep, warm darkness. There was peace.

There was still a red flush above the hills in the west when the mother and son sat in the ingle again.

“What is it, mother-my-heart?” Alasdair asked at last, putting his great red hand upon the woman’s knee.

She looked at him for a moment. When she spoke she turned away her gaze again.

“Foxes have holes, and the fowls of the air have their places of rest, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”

“And what then, dear? Sure, it is the deep meaning you have in that grey old head that I’m loving so.”

“Ay, lennav-aghray, there is meaning to my words. It is old I am, and the hour of my hours is near. I heard a voice outside the window last night. It is a voice I will not be hearing, no, not for seventy years. It was cradle-sweet, it was.”

She paused, and there was silence for a time.

“Well, dear,” she began again, wearily, and in a low, weak voice, “it is more tired and more tired I am every day now this last month. Two Sabbaths ago I woke, and there were bells in the air: and you are for knowing well, Alasdair, that no kirk-bells ever rang in Strath-Nair. At edge o’ dark on Friday, and by the same token the thirteenth day it was, I fell asleep, and dreamed the mools were on my breast, and that the roots of the white daisies were in the hollows where the eyes were that loved you, Alasdair, my son.”

The man looked at her with troubled gaze. No words would come. Of what avail to speak when there is nothing to be said? God sends the gloom upon the cloud, and there is rain: God sends the gloom upon the hill, and there is mist: God sends the gloom upon the sun, and there is winter. It is God, too, sends the gloom upon the soul, and there is change. The swallow knows when to lift up her wing overagainst the shadow that creeps out of the north: the wild swan knows when the smell of snow is behind the sun: the salmon, lone in the brown pool among the hills, hears the deep sea, and his tongue pants for salt, and his fins quiver, and he knows that his time is come, and that the sea calls. The doe knows when the fawn hath not yet quaked in her belly: is not the violet more deep in the shadowy dewy eyes? The woman knows when the babe hath not yet stirred a little hand: is not the wild-rose on her cheek more often seen, and are not the shy tears moist on quiet hands in the dusk? How, then, shall the soul not know when the change is nigh at last? Is it a less thing than a reed, which sees the yellow birch-gold adrift on the lake, and the gown of the heather grow russet when the purple has passed into the sky, and the white bog-down wave grey and tattered where the loneroid grows dark and pungent—which sees, and knows that the breath of the Death-Weaver at the Pole is fast faring along the frozen norland peaks. It is more than a reed, it is more than a wild doe on the hills, it is more than a swallow lifting her wing against the coming of the shadow, it is more than a swan drunken with the savour of the blue wine of the waves when the green Arctic lawns are white and still. It is more than these, which has the Son of God for brother, and is clothed with light. God doth not extinguish at the dark tomb what he hath litten in the dark womb.

Who shall say that the soul knows not when the bird is aweary of the nest, and the nest is aweary of the wind? Who shall say that all portents are vain imaginings? A whirling straw upon the road is but a whirling straw: yet the wind is upon the cheek almost ere it is gone.

It was not for Alasdair Òg, then, to put a word upon the saying of the woman that was his mother, and was age-white, and could see with the seeing of old wise eyes.

So all that was upon his lips was a sigh, and the poor prayer that is only a breath out of the heart.

“You will be telling me, grey sweetheart,” he said lovingly, at last—“you will be telling me what was behind the word that you said: that about the foxes that have holes for the hiding, poor beasts, and the birdeens wi’ their nests, though the Son o’ Man hath not where to lay his head?”

“Ay, Alasdair, my son that I bore long syne an’ that I’m leaving soon, I will be for telling you that thing, an’ now too, for I am knowing what is in the dark this night o’ the nights.”

Old Sheen put her head back wearily on the chair, and let her hands lie, long and white, palm-downward upon her knees. The peat-glow warmed the dull grey that lurked under her closed eyes and about her mouth, and in the furrowed cheeks. Alasdair moved nearer and took her right hand in his, where it lay like a tired sheep between two scarped rocks. Gently he smoothed her hand, and wondered why so frail and slight a creature as this small old wizened woman could have mothered a great swarthy man like himself—he a man now, with his two score and ten years, and yet but a boy there at the dear side of her.

“It was this way, Alasdair-mochree,” she went on in her low thin voice—like a wind-worn leaf, the man that was her son thought. “It was this way. I went down to the burn to wash the _claar_, and when I was there I saw a wounded fawn in the bracken. The big sad eyes of it were like those of Maisie, poor lass, when she had the birthing that was her going-call. I went through the bracken, and down by the Gorromalt, and into the Shadowy Glen.

“And when I was there, and standing by the running water, I saw a man by the stream-side. He was tall, but spare and weary: and the clothes upon him were poor and worn. He had sorrow. When he lifted his head at me, I saw the tears. Dark, wonderful, sweet eyes they were. His face was pale. It was not the face of a man of the hills. There was no red in it, and the eyes looked in upon themselves. He was a fair man, with the white hands that a woman has, a woman like the Bantighearna of Glenchaisteal over yonder. His voice, too, was a voice like that: in the softness, and the sweet, quiet sorrow, I am meaning.

“The word that I gave him was in the English: for I thought he was like a man out of _Sasunn_, or of the southlands somewhere. But he answered me in the Gaelic: sweet, good Gaelic like that of the Bioball over there, to Himself be the praise.

“‘And is it the way down the Strath you are seeking,’ I asked: ‘and will you not be coming up to the house yonder, poor cot though it is, and have a sup of milk, and a rest if it’s weary you are?’

“‘You are having my thanks for that,’ he said, ‘and it is as though I had both the good rest and the cool sweet drink. But I am following the flowing water here.’

“‘Is it for the fishing?’ I asked.

“‘I am a Fisher,’ he said, and the voice of him was low and sad.

“He had no hat on his head, and the light that streamed through a rowan-tree was in his long hair. He had the pity of the poor in his sorrowful grey eyes.