Pharais; and, The Mountain Lovers

III

Volumes of grey-black cloud swept up the flanks of Iolair. The breath of the southwest wind fell moist upon the land. All the wonderful colour of the highland seemed absorbed, as though a sponge had been passed over it. The after-gloom was enhanced by the silence which prevailed, for the thunderous weight in the air hushed the birds. Even the corbies sat sullenly on stone dyke or solitary quicken.

Up at the farm of Màm-Gorm the cloud-skirts went trailing by, sometimes enveloping the whole airidh in a clinging obscurity, and ever and again lifting high above it as though with a spasmodic leap.

A few yards from the door of the low whitewashed house Torcall Cameron stood, his gaunt figure, with its mass of tangled iron-grey hair, thrown into strong relief. Though he grasped a heavy oaken staff, his head was uncovered. From this, Nial inferred that "Màm-Gorm" was not going far: of which he was glad, for there was no one in the house, wild weather was nigh, and it was not a time for a blind man to wander among the hills, with the sheep-paths damp and slippery and often obliterated in the moist peat.

For, though Màm-Gorm thought he was alone, Nial had been his silent companion for an hour past. Sorcha, he knew, was up at the high sheiling on Iolair, with the cows: Oona, he imagined, was either wandering after the sheep with Murdo the shepherd, or was in the forest with Nial, or might be flitting here and there on the slopes like the wild fawn she was. As for Nial, Torcall Cameron rarely gave him a thought. The dwarf was like a faithful collie: to be fed, and given a kindly clap now and then, while his gratitude and devotion were taken for granted.

This rough, stern, blind, and stricken giant was a divine being to the poor child of the woods. In a vague way Nial thought of Màm-Gorm as God: like Màm-Gorm, God could provide, could at rare times be tender and pitiful, could be stern, morose, forbidding, terrible in wrath, of a swift avenging spirit, could strike, bruise, drive forth, kill.

When Sorcha had left at sunrise she knew that her father had the gloom upon him. In vain she looked here and there for Oona. The child had vanished. The platter in which she had her porridge was found under a bench near the rowan at the side of the house – where, indeed, Sorcha had looked for it, as she knew Oona's frequent way of carrying her food out-of-door, and eating it in a hollow below a rock, or under a tree, or even beneath the bench, like a little wild thing.

She had turned, after she had called Fionn and Donn, the dogs, and gone back to the house, and kissed her father. His blind eyes were upon her, though it was not through them that he knew she was troubled. He felt the sweet breath of her upon his brow. It was like the first day of spring when she kissed him, but he did not smile. Before she went away with the cows she found Nial, and bade him keep watch and ward, though without letting himself be seen.

But all morning and noon Torcall Cameron had sat brooding by the peats. At the turn of the day he rose, ate some of the bread and cold porridge which, with a jug of milk, Sorcha had set on the table beside him; then resumed his listless attitude by the fire, into the heart of which he stared with his blank, unwavering eyes.

Nial had grown tired, as a collie will tire if the kye drowse, chewing the cud.

He had wandered far from the airidh, and passed idly through the pines. No more of him might have been seen that day had he not heard Oona singing in the woods. It was in vain that he tried to come upon her. Either she had caught sight of him, and wilfully evaded his quest of her; or she was like a birdeen lured by the dancing sunrays. At the last, he thought of a song she was wont to sing. Across the midst of the high glade where he was, lay the bole of a half-fallen pine. Along this he clambered, till he reached the end boughs, and so out upon a feathery branch which swayed up and down with his weight, as a fir-spray when a cushat alights on it:

It was a harsh and wild music, that song of Oona on the lips of Nial. Brokenly, too, it came, between gasps of breath, for, as the branch swayed, so the dwarf's excitement grew, and he seized the pine-needles as though they were the mane of a horse, and he were riding from death for life:

Suddenly he ceased his fierce ride of the branches. Surely that clear call was from the throat of Oona? Yes, near she was, though invisible. Her song bubbled from her as sunlit water down a brae:

Even the hawk-keen eye of Nial failed to discover Oona. Her voice came from a covert of bracken, amid which rose craggy mossed boulders. Doubtless, the girl sheltered behind one of these.

"Oona!"

He lay still now, save for the quivering of his eagerness. The branch was bent by his weight, but did not sway.

"Oona!"

The rapid skiff-skiff of a hind leaping through the fern, through the green-glooms to his right, caught his attention; otherwise he must have seen the bending of the bracken in the hollow beyond him, and have heard the faint rustle as a little cat-like figure swung herself up into a low-branched rowan.

"Oona! Oona!"

Again he sang in his strange, half-screaming, falsetto voice, first one, then another of the snatches of Gaelic song which he had learned from Oona, but without response. One of his sudden fits of anger seized him, and he bit savagely at the supporting branch. Then, with a peal of mirthless laughter, he began to sway wildly to and fro again, so that it was a wonder the bough did not break. He was swung this way and that, as an apple on an outspread branch. With short, incoherent cries he rode onward through the air, for the moment persuaded by his fantasy that he was one of those wind-demons of whom he had heard Murdo the shepherd speak – pale elves of the air who race across forest and moor on flying leaves and broken branches, or are swept screaming in the wake of the wind as, with outblown mane and fierce snorting and neighing, "the gray stallion" speeds with mile-long leaps.

A frenzy of insensate wrath shook him, so that he nearly lost his grip. Screaming, he hurled toward Oona the curses that seemed to him most dreadful and mysterious, dark anathemas of old-time learned here and there during his far-wanderings.

"Droch cheann ort, Oona! Droch bhàs ort! Och, ochan, bas dunach ort! Gu ma h-olc dhuit! – Gu ma h-olc dhuit!"5

A faint shuddering cry came from somewhere close at hand. In a moment his madness went from him. The dumb animal soul felt the finger of God touch it. All wrath ceased, and a great pity came, and longing, and sorrow. The tears sprang to his eyes, and he lay on the branch sobbing convulsively, so that he was like to fall.

He raised his head at last, and looked eagerly about him. "Oona!"

Still there was no response. His gaze lanced hither and thither like a swallow. If a bee crawled from a foxglove bell, he noted it: if a spider swung on a glistening thread, he saw her as, spinning, she sank. If a woodlark stirred, he saw the shadow of its wing flit from frond to frond. But of Oona, no trace.

"Oona, my fairy! Oona, my fawn! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! The words were in my throat. I couldn't help it. Not a word was true. Oh, my grief, my grief! Oona mùirnean, Oona mo mùirnean – Ochone, ochone, thràisg mo chridhe – darling, darling, oh, 'tis my heart that is parched!"

But the child was obdurate. She made no sign. Nial lay moaning on the branch. The silence was unbroken, save by the sea-like whisper of the wind among the leaves.

Suddenly a cushat crooned. Then the low croodling sound palpitated upon the warm sunlit air that flooded in among the pine-boughs.

The dwarf listened. The gloom in his eyes lifted. He knew how Oona loved his one utterance that was his own, which he had made in imitation of the crooning of a dove. Raising his head, he half mumbled, half sang:

Surely she would respond: ah, yes, that shrill mocking laugh, elfin sweet in his ears! His gaze leaped along the track of the sound, and then at last he espied her, crouching low in the fork of a rowan, with her bare legs hidden by the bole and only the sparkle of her eyes glinting from behind the screen of leaves.

"Ah," he cried joyously, "I see you, Oona, my dove! Ah, my little white dove, your little black dove sees you!"

Oona drew herself up, leaped to a lower branch, and sprang to the ground.

"Cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, ars an colman," she cried mockingly: "You are not of my flock, not of my flock, said the dove!"6

And with that she spread out her yellow hair with her hands, and went dancing and leaping through the bracken. Onward she flickered like a sunbeam, till she came to a rocky declivity, where she stopped abruptly, and stared intently into the hollow beyond her.

Turning, she looked to see if Nial were watching her, and when she saw that he was still on the swaying pine-branch, she cried eagerly:

"Look, Nial! Look!"

"What is it?" he cried, nearly toppling from the bough in his eagerness. "What is it, Oona? What is it?"

"It must be your soul, Nial! It's black and wriggling about, in case you catch it! Bi ealamh! Bi ealamh! Be quick, be quick!"

Then, with a spring, she leaped out of sight. Nial stared after her for a moment, caught his breath spasmodically, crawled swiftly back to the tree, half clambered, half fell to the ground, and then ran like a leaping goat toward the place where Oona had disappeared.

When he reached the ridge of rock which overhung the hollow he stopped, trembling like a reed in a wind-eddy. At last! At last! Was he to find his soul at last? Black or white, fair to see or uncouth as himself, what did it matter, if only his long quest were now to be rewarded?

Shaking as in an ague, he crawled forward on his belly, till his shaggy head projected over the ledge. At first he could not see, for the passion in his heart had filmed his eyes.

Then at last he stared down into the greenness. He could see nothing. Not a wild bee fumbled among the moss, not an ant crawled along a spray of grass.

What did it mean?

Was it possible that Oona could see what he could not? Here, perhaps, was his tragic sorrow: that his soul might often be nigh, but was invisible to him.

With a hoarse exclamation, half scream, half call, he cried to Oona to come to him. He had a name for her which he had adopted from Murdo the shepherd, and by this he called her now. "Bonnie-wee-lass, bonnie-wee-lass, come to me! Oona, mùirnean, Oona-mo-ghràidh, come to your poor Nial! Oh, my soul, my soul, it will be lost! Oona, it will be lost! Quick, quick, bonnie-wee-lass!"

But no answer came. There was no sign of the girl. She might be hiding near, or be already far away, perhaps croodlin' back to the doves in the middle of the forest, or chasing dragonflies by the tarn, or out upon the hillside flitting from rock to rock like a butterfly, or singing and springing from gale-tuft to heather-tussock, as a green lintie in the sunlight. "O lassie, lassie, where is my soul, where is my soul?" he cried, despairingly.

Suddenly his own curses came back to him, terrible on Oona's unwitting lips.

"Gu ma h-olc dhuit, Nial! Gu ma h-olc dhuit! A bad end to you too, Nial-without-a-soul, and I'll be telling my father, I will, that you laid your curse on me: ay, and I will also be telling Sorcha too, and Murdo, and Alan, and the dogs; and I'll whisper it to the wind, so that it'll tell the Green Lady of the Hills; and if I meet your soul I'll tell it, so that it may be ashamed of you, and go and drown itself in a peat-hole."

Nial listened, quivering. His eyes strained as a crouching hound's.

At last he spoke.

"I was mad, Oona. Forgive me. I see your voice coming from behind that rock. Will you not return and show me my soul?"

"Look in the hollow of the stone beneath you, silly Nial!" came the child's voice mockingly.

Nial stared; then, descrying nothing, leaped into the hollow. The next moment he recoiled with a look of horror.

An adder lay in a little ferny crevice at the base of the rock. Its writhing black body was trying to get out of sight, but could not. An adder was the one thing in nature that the outcast could not bear to look at. It gave him a horror, that at times moved him to frenzy, at times made him flee as a man accursed.

Now he stood as one fascinated. If the nàthair had wriggled toward him he would have stood motionless.

With a heavy swaying motion of his head he muttered:

"Anam nathrach, Anam nathrach!"7

But when the adder saw a crevice elsewhere, that promised better, and swiftly wriggled to it, Nial saw that it was only a crawling beast, this and nothing more.

With a dart like a hawk he seized it by the tail, swung it round his head while he shouted, "Droch spadadh ort! Droch spadadh ort! Bad death to you! Bad death to you!" and flung it against the face of the rock, so that when it fell across a bracken it lay as though stunned or dead.

A shout of elfish laughter came from Oona, who had sprung from her covert, and watched Nial's discomfiture with malicious glee. He turned slowly. His corrugated brows were knitted grotesquely, as with dull bewildered eyes he stared in the direction of the laughter. With a furtive motion he kept shifting his weight now to one foot, now to another, occasionally dragging one backward as though pawing the ground. His tormentor knew well these signs of perplexity, and her light tantalizing glee rippled afresh across the glade. She stood knee-deep in bracken, with her right hand clasping the black-and-silver bough of a birk: a golden-green hue upon her from beneath from the sunlit fern; upon her from above a flood of yellow sunshine, so that she stood out like a human flower, a new daffodil of the woods.

The wild, rude, misshapen creature who fronted her seemed less human now than his wont, with that bovine stare, that uncouth guise, his over-large and heavy head slowly swaying, his restless stamping and scraping. Suddenly it dawned upon him that Oona had not been in earnest: that she had played with, and now mocked him. His eyes grew red, as those of wild swine do of a sudden, or as those of an angry badger. A spray of froth blew from his hanging lip. His long horny fingers opened and closed like sheathing and unsheathing claws.

The next moment there stirred in his brain the thought that perhaps, after all, Oona was mocking him because he had lost, perhaps even because he, he himself, had destroyed his long-sought and moment-agone found soul.

With a cry he threw himself on the ground, sobbing convulsively. He lay there like a stricken beast, a quivering ungainly heap. It was no unknowing beast, though, that moaned, over and over, "My soul – my soul – my soul!" Great tears, like a stag's, ran down his furrowed cheeks. Oona stood amazed. Here was no frenzy of blind rage such as she had seen at times in her companion; but passionate grief: sobs, tears.

The child shivered. God surely has the tendrils of a child's heart close-clinging to his own. Perhaps the wind murmured to her, My grief! my grief! Perhaps the leaves whispered, Sorrow, O sorrow! Perhaps the blind earth breathed, My gloom!, my gloom! Perhaps the laughing sunlight sighed, or the wild bees crooned, or the doves moaned, Peace! peace! peace! Oona's eyes grew dim. A trembling was upon her, like that of a bird in the hollow of the hand. Like a bird, too, was her heart: sure, the flutter of it was an eddy of joy in heaven.

She came toward Nial with swift, noiseless step. He did not hear her approach; or if his wildwood ear caught a rustle, he did not look up. The first he knew of her was the stealing of a small arm round his neck: then the pressure of a warm body against his side: then a wisp of fragrant yellow hair tangled with his coarse, shaggy fell, a soft cheek laid against his, a hand like a little white hovering bird caressed his face. Sweetest of all, the whisper that stole into his dark brain as moonlight: "Nial, darling Nial!"