Part 4

IT is ill enough to have to die in Glenaora at any season, but to get the word for travelling from it on yon trip in the spring of the year is hard indeed. The gug-gug will halloo in your ears to bid you bide a wee and see the red of the heather creep on Tom-an-dearc; the soft and sap-scented winds will come in at the open door, and you will mind, maybe, of a day long-off and lost when you pulled the copper leaves of the bursting oak and tossed them among a girl's hair. Oh! the long days and the strong days! They will come back to you like the curious bit in a tune that is vexatious and sweet, and not for words or a set thought. You will think of the lambs on the slopes, of the birds tearing through the thousand ways in the woods, of the magic hollows in below the thick-sown pines, of the burns, deep at the bottom of _eas_ and corri, spilling like gold on a stair. And then, it may be, Solomon Carrier's cart goes by to the town, the first time since the drifts went off the high road; you hear the clatter of the iron shoes, and your mind will go with him to the throng street where the folks are so kind and so free.

But to turn your back for the last at that time on Lecknamban must come sorest of all. For Lecknamban has seven sheilings hidden in its hills, where the grass is long and juicy, and five burns that are aye on the giggle like girls at a wedding, and the Aora daunders down in front of the knowe, full of fish for the Duke alone, but bonny for earl or caird.

It was in this same glen, in this same Lecknamban, in the spring of a year, a woman was at her end. She was a woman up in years but not old, a black Bana-Mhuileach who had seen pleasant things and trials like all who come to this queer market-place; but now when the time was come to take the long road with no convoy, only the good times were in her recollection. And though Glenaora was not her calf-country (for she came but a year ago to bide with a friend), she was swear't to turn heel on a place so cosy.

She sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open door, and the friendly airs of the country-side came in to stir her hair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree and myrtle, from the moor. But more than all they brought her who was at her end a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world. Strong in her make and dour at the giving-in, she kept talking of the world's affairs and foolishness to the folk about her who were waiting the Almighty's will and the coming of the stretching-board. Her fingers picked without a stop at the woolly bits of the blankets, and her eyes were on as much of the knowe below the house as she could see out at the open door. It was yellow at the foot with flowers, and here and there was a spot of blue from the cuckoo-brogue.

“Women, women,” she said with short breaths, “I'm thinking aye, when I see the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang 'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he once brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.”

Said the goodwife, “Aoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient old _sgeuls_; be thinking of a canny going.”

“Going! it was aye going with me,” said the woman in the bed. “And it was aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for them.”

“It's the way of God, my dear, _ochanie!_” said one of the two Tullich sisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.

“O God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or three clippings.”

“Peace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much as most of us have claim to.”

“Merry times! merry times!” said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her mind wandering.

Curls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among the _cabars_ or through the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its mother, and the whistling of an _uiseag_ high over the grass where his nest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the dying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again Maisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from her face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for sheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.

“It's a pity,” said she, “you brought no grave-clothes with you from Mull, my dear.”

“Are you grudging me yours?” asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.

“No, nor grudging; fine ye ken it, cousin. But I know ye have them, and it's a pity you should be dressed in another's spinning than your own.”

“Ay, they're yonder sure enough: clean and ready. And there's more than that beside them. The linen I should have brought to a man's home.”

“You and your man's home! Is it Duart, my dear, among your own folk, or down to Inishail, you would have us take you?” Aoirig coughed till the red froth was at her lips.

“Duart is homely and Inishail is holy, sure enough, but I would have it Kilmalieu. They tell me it's a fine kirkyard; but I never had the luck to see it.”

“It's well enough, I'll not deny, and it would not be so far to take you. Our folk have a space of their own among the MacVicars, below the parson.”

The woman in the bed signed for a sip of water, and they had it fast at her lips.

“Could you be putting me near the Macnicols?” she asked in a weakening voice. “The one I speak of was a Macnicol.”

“Ay, ay,” said the goodwife; “they were aye gallant among the girls.”

“Gallant he was,” said the one among the blankets. “I see him now. The best man ever I saw. It was at a wedding----”

The woman's breast racked and the spume spattered over the home-spun blankets.

Maisie was heating a death-shift at the peat-fire, turning it over in her hands, letting the dry airs into every seam and corner.

Looking at her preparation, the dying woman caught back her breath to ask why such trouble with a dead-shift.

“Ye would not have it on damp and cold,” said Maisie, settling the business. “I doubt it'll be long in the sleeves, woman, for the goodwife has a lengthy reach.”

“It was at a marriage in Glenurchy,” said Aoirig in a haver, the pillows slipping down behind her back. “Yonder he is. A slim straight lad. Ronnal, O Ronnal my hero! What a dancer! not his match in Mull. Aye so----”

A foot could be heard on the road, and one of the two sisters ran out, for she knew whom it would be. They had sent word to the town by Solomon in the morning for Macnicol the wright to come up with the stretching-board, thinking there was but an hour more for poor Macnicol's were the footsteps, and there he was with the stretching-board under his arm--a good piece of larch rubbed smooth by sheet and shroud, and a little hollow worn at the head. He was a fat man, rolling a bit to one side on a short leg, gross and flabby at the jowl, and thick-lipped; but he might have been a swanky lad in his day, and there was a bit of good-humour in the corner of his eye, where you will never see it when one has been born with the uneasy mind. He was humming to himself as he came up the brae a Badenoch ditty they have in these parts on the winter nights, gossiping round the fire. Whom he was going to stretch he had no notion, except that it was a woman and a stranger to the glen.

The sister took him round to the corner of the house and in at the byre door, and told him to wait. “It'll not be long now,” she said.

“Then she's still to the fore,” said the wright. “I might have waited on the paymaster's dram at Three Bridges if I had ken't. Women are aye thrawn about dying. They'll put it off to the last, when a man would be glad to be taking the road. Who is she, poor woman?”

“A cousin-german of Nanny's,” said the sister, putting a bottle before him, and whipping out for some bannock and cheese. He sat down on a shearing-stool, facing the door, half open, between the byre he was in and the kitchen where Aoirig was at the dying. The stretching-board leaned against the wall outside.

“Aye so gentle, so kind,” the woman in the bed was saying in her last dover. “He kissed me first on a day like this. And the blue flowers from Aora?”

In the byre the wright was preeing the drink and paying little heed to food. It was the good warm stuff they brew on the side of Lochow, the heart of the very heart of the barley-fields, with the taste of gall and peat, and he mellowed with every quaich, and took to the soft lilting of Niall Ban's song:--

“'I am the Sergeant fell but kind (Ho! ho! heroes, agus ho-e-ro! ); I only lift but the deaf and blind, The wearied-out and the rest-inclined. Many a booty I drive before, Through the glens, through the glens.' said the Sergeant Mor.”

Ben the house the goodwife was saying the prayers for the dying woman the woman should have said for herself while she had the wind for it, but Aoirig harped on her love-tale. She was going fast, and the sisters, putting their hands to her feet, could feel that they were cold as the rocks. Maisie's arms were round her, and she seemed to have the notion that here was the grip of death, for she pushed her back.

“I am not so old--so old. There is Seana, my neighbour at Duart--long past the fourscore and still spinning--I am not so old--God of grace--so old--and the flowers----”

A grey shiver went over her face; her breast heaved and fell in; her voice stopped with a gluck in the throat.

The women stirred round fast in the kitchen. Out on the clay floor the two sisters pushed the table and laid a sheet on it, the goodwife put aside the pillows and let Aoirig's head fall back on the bed. Maisie put her hand to the clock and stopped it.

“Open the door, open the door!” cried the goodwife, turning round in a hurry and seeing the door still shut.

One of the sisters put a finger below the sneck and did as she was told, to let out the dead one's ghost.

Outside, taking the air, to get the stir of the strong waters out of his head, was the wright.

He knew what the opening of the door meant, and he lifted his board and went in with it under his arm. A wafting of the spring smells came in at his back, and he stood with his bonnet in his hand.

“So this is the end o't?” he said in a soft way, stamping out the fire on the floor.

He had but said it when Eurig sat up with a start in the bed, and the women cried out. She opened her eyes and looked at the man, with his fat face, his round back, and ill-made clothes, and the death-deal under his oxter, and then she fell back on the bed with her face stiffening.

“Here's the board for ye,” said the wright, his face spotted white and his eyes staring. “I'll go out a bit and take a look about me. I once knew a woman who was terribly like you, and she came from Mull.”

BLACK MURDO

“Mas breug uam e is breug thugam e.”

--Gaelic Proverb.

I.

BLACK MURDO'S wife was heavy, and 'twas the time the little brown nats were pattering in Stronbuie wood. Stronbuie spreads out its greenness to the sun from the slope of Cladich. It is, in its season, full of the piping of birds and the hurry of wings, and the winds of it have the smell of a fat soil. The Diarmaids were the cunning folk to steal it; for if Stronshira is good, Stronbuie is better; and though the loops of Aora tangle themselves in the gardens of the Red Duke, Lochow has enchantment for the galley of a king. Fraoch Eilean, Innis Chonell, and Innis Chonain--they cluster on the bend of it like the gems on a brooch, Inishail of the Monks makes it holy, and Cruachan-ben, who lords it over Lorn, keeps the cold north wind from the shore. They may talk of Glenaora, but Stronbuie comes close, close to the heart!

For all that, 'twas on a time a poor enough place for a woman in yon plight; for the rest of the clan crowded down on Innistiynich, all fighters and coarse men of the sword, and a skilly woman or a stretching-board was no nearer than a day's tramp over the hill and down Aora glen to the walls of Inneraora. If one died on Cladich-side then--and 'twas a dying time, for the Athol dogs were for ever at the harrying--it was but a rough burying, with no corranach and no mort-cloth; if a child came, it found but cold water and a cold world, whatever hearts might be. But for seven years no child came for Black Murdo.

They say, in the Gaelic old-word, that a stolen bitch will never throw clean pups nor a home-sick woman giants. Murdo recked nothing of that when he went wooing in a time of truce to Croit-bhile, the honey-croft that makes a red patch on the edge of Creag Dubh. He brought Silis home to the dull place at Stronbuie, and she baked his bannocks and ploughed his bit of soil, but her heart never left salt Finne-side. In the morning she would go to the hill to look through the blurred glen, and she would have made bargains with the ugliest crow that could flap on feathers for a day's use of his wings. She could have walked it right often and gaily to her people's place, but Black Murdo was of Clan Artair, and Artairich had not yet come under the _bratach_ of Diarmaid, and bloody knives made a march-dyke between the two tartans.

Seven years and seven days went by, and Black Murdo, coming in on an evening after a hard day at the deer, found Silis making the curious wee clothes. He looked at her keen, questioning, and she bleached to the lips.

“So!” said he.

“Just so,” said she, breaking a thread with her teeth, and bending till the peat-flame dyed her neck like wine.

“God, and I'm the stout fellow!” said he, and out he went, down all the way to Portinsherrich, and lusty he was with the ale among the pretty men there.

Weeks chased each other like sheep in a fank, and Silis grew sick at the heart. There's a time for a woman when the word of a woman is sweeter than a harp; but there were only foolish girls at Innistrynich, and coarse men of the sword. So Murdo stayed in from the roes when the time crept close. To see him do the heavy work of the house and carrying in the peats was a sorry sight.

Silis kept dreaming of Finne-side, where she had heard the long wave in the spring of the year when she had gone home on a password to a woman's wedding with Long Coll. The same Long Coll had brothers, and one had put a man's foolish sayings in her ears before ever she met Murdo, she a thin girl like a saugh-wand and not eighteen till Beltane. They called him--no matter--and he had the way with the women. Faith, it's the strange art! It is not looks, nor dancing, nor the good heart, nor wit, but some soft fire of the eye and maybe a song to the bargain. Whatever it was, it had Silis, for all that her goodman Murdo had a man's qualities and honesty extra.

They say, “_Cnuic is sluic is Alpeinich, ach cuin a thàinig Artharaich?_“(1) in the by-word; but Artharaich had age enough for a _taibhsear_ whatever, for Black Murdo had the Sight.

1 The hills and hollows and Clan Alpine came together, but when arose Clan Artair?

It's the curious thing to say of a man with all his parts that he should be _taibhsear_ and see visions; for a _taibhsear_, by all the laws, should be an old fellow with little use for swords or shinny-sticks. But Murdo missed being a full taibhsear by an ell, so the fit had him seldom. He was the seventh son of a mother who died with the brand of a cross on her brow, and she was kin to the Glenurchy Woman. And something crept over him with the days, that put a mist in his eyes when he looked at Silis; but “I'm no real _taibhsear_,” he said to himself, “and I swear by the black stones it is no cloth. A man with all the Gift might call it a shroud high on her breast, but----”

“Silis, _a bhean!_ shall it be the Skilly Dame of Inneraora?”

A light leaped to the woman's eyes, for the very thing was in her mind.

“If it could be,” she said, slowly; “but it's not easy to get her, for black's your name on Aoraside.”

“Black or white, Murdo stands in his own shoes. He has been at the gate of Inneraora when Strong Colin the warder had little thought of it.”

“Then, oh heart! it must be soon--tomorrow--but----”

The mouth of day found Silis worse, and Murdo on his way to Inneraora.

He stepped it down Glenaora like Coll Mor in the story, or the man with the fairy shoes. A cloud was over Tullich and a wet wind whistled on Kennachregan. The man's target played dunt on his back, so hasty was he, for all that the outposts of Big Colin had hawk's eyes on the pass. He had got the length of Alt Shelechan when a Diarmaid came out on him from the bracken with a curse on his mouth. He was a big Diarmaid, high-breasted and stark, for there's no denying there was breed in the pigs.

“Ho, ho, lad!” said he, crousely, “it's risking it you are this day!”

Black Murdo's hands went to his sides, where a ready man's should ready be; but he had sight of Silis. He could see her in Stronbuie in the bothy, on the wee creepy-stool beside the peats, and he knew she was saying the Wise Woman's Wish that Diarmaid mothers have so often need of. Length is length, and it's a far cry to Lochow sure enough; but even half a _taibhsear_ takes no count of miles and time.

He spoke softly. “I go to Inneraora for the Skilly Woman. My wife is a daughter of your folks, and she'll have none but the dame who brought herself home.”

“Death or life?” asked the Diarmaid, a freckled hand still on the basket-hilt. He put the question roughly, for nobody likes to lose a ploy.

“Life it is, my lad. It's not to dress corpses but to wash weans she's wanted.”

“Ho-chutt!” went the blade back against the brass of the scabbard (for he was _duin-uasal_ who carried it), and the man's face changed.

“Pass!” he said. “I would not stand in a bairn's way to life. Had it been shrouds instead of sweelers, we could have had it out, for a corpse is in no great hurry. But troth it's yourself is the tight one, and I would have liked a bit of the old game.”

“No more than Murdo, red fellow!”

“Murdo! So be't; yet Murdo will give me his dirk for gate-pay, or they'll be saying farther down that Calum, as good a man, kept out of his way.”

The _biodag_ went flying into the grass at Calum's feet, and Murdo went leaping down the glen. It was like stalking deer for the Diarmaids. Here and there he had to go into the river or among the hazel-switches, or crawl on his stomach among the gall.

From Kilmune to Uchdan-barracaldine the red fellows were passing, or playing with the _clachneart_ or the _cabar,_ or watching their women toiling in the little fields.

“Thorns in their sides!” he said to himself, furious at last, when another keen-eyed Diarmaid caught sight of his tartan and his black beard among some whins. It was a stripling with only a dirk, but he could gather fifty men on the crook of his finger.

“Stand!” cried the Diarmaid, flashing the dirk out. “What want ye so far over this way?”

Murdo, even in the rage, saw Silis, a limp creature, sweating in her pains, her black eyes (like the sloe) keen on the door. So close, so sure, so sorrowful! He could have touched her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear.

“I am Black Murdo,” he told the lad. “I am for Inneraora for the Skilly Woman for my wife, child of your own clan.”

“Death or life?”

“Life.”

“'Tis a bonny targe ye have, man; it might be doing for toll.”

The lad got it, and Murdo went on his way. He found the Skilly Woman, who put before him sour milk and brose. But he would not have drink or sup, so back through the Diarmaids they went without question (for the woman's trade was as good as the chief's convoy), till they came to Tom-an-dearc. Out upon them there a fellow red and pretty.

“Hold!” he said, as if it had been dogs. “What's the name of ye, black fellow?” Murdo cursed in his beard. “My name's honest man, but I have not time to prove it.”

“Troth that's a pity. But seeing there's the _caüleach_ with you, you must e'en go your way. There's aye some of you folk on the stretching-board. Ye want heart, and ye die with a flaff of wind. Lend me your sword, _'ille!_''

“Squint-mouth!” cried Murdo, “your greedy clan took too much off me this day already for me to part with the sweetest blade Gow-an-aora ever beat on iron. I took it from one of your cowards at Carnus, and if it's back it goes, it's not with my will.”

“Then it's the better man must have it,” said the red fellow, and, Lord, he was the neat-built one! They took off their coats, and for lack of bucklers rolled them round their arms, both calm and canny. The Diarmaid was first ready with his brand out, and Murdo put to his point. For a little the two men stood, spread out, hard-drawn behind the knees, with the cords of the neck like thongs, then at it with a clatter of steel.

The Skilly Woman, with the plaid pulled tight over her grey hair, sat with sunk eyes on a stone and waited without wonder. She had sons who had died in brawls at Kilmichael market, or in the long foray far in Kintail; and her man, foster-brother to a chief, got death in the strange foreign wars, where the pay was not hide and horn but round gold.

A smoky soft smirr of rain filled all the gap between the hills, though Sithean Sluaidhe and Dunchuach had tips of brass from a sun dropping behind the Salachary hills. The grass and the gall lost their glitter and became grey and dull; the hill of Lecknamban, where five burns are born, coaxed the mist down on its breast like a lover. It was wet, wet, but never a drop made a rush bend or a leaf fall. Below the foot the ground was greasy, as it is in a fold at the dippingtime; but the two men pulled themselves up with a leap on it as if it might be dry sand, and the brogues made no error on the soil.

First the Diarmaid pressed, for he had it over the other man in youth, and youth is but tame when it's slow or slack. Murdo waited, all eyes that never blinked, with the basket well up, and kept on his toes. “Splank, sp-ll-ank, sp-ll-ank--_siod e_!” said the blades, and the Diarmaid's for a time made the most of the music, but he never got inside the black fellow's guard. Then Murdo took up the story with a snap of the teeth, skelping hard at the red one till the hands dirled in the basket like a bag of pins. The smirr gathered thicker, and went to rain that fell solid, the brogues grew like steeped bladders on the feet, a scatter of crows made a noisy homing to the trees at Tullich, and Aora gobbled like swine in a baron's trough.

“Haste ye, heroes,” said the old woman, cowering on the wet stone; “haste ye, dears; it's mighty long ye are about it.”

The Diarmaid turned the edge twice on the coated arm, and Murdo wasted his wind to curse. Then he gave the stroke that's worth fifty head of kyloes (fine they know that same all below Cladichl), and a red seam jumped to the Diarmaid's face. All his heart went to stiffen his slacking heavy arm, and he poured on Murdo till Murdo felt it like a rain of spears. One hot wandering stroke he got on the bonnet, and for want of the bowl of brose at Inneraora, the wind that should go to help him went inside, and turned his stomach. Sweat, hot and salt, stung his eyes, his ears filled with a great booming, he fell in a weary dream of a far-off fight on a witched shore, with the waves rolling, and some one else at the fencing, and caring nought, but holding guard with the best blade Gow-an-aora ever took from flame. Back stepped the Diarmaid, sudden, and sweep went his steel at the shaking knees.

A bairn's cry struck Murdo's ear through the booming and sent him full awake. He drew back the stretched foot fast, and round the red one's sword hissed through air. “Foil! foil!” said Murdo, and he slashed him on the groin.

“That'll do, man; no more,” said the Skilly Woman, quickly,

“I may as well finish him; it's lame he'll be all his days any way, and little use is a man with a halt in a healthy clan.”

“Halt or no halt, let him be; he's my second cousin's son.”