Pharais; and, The Mountain Lovers

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

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

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!"

And with that the brute turned from the man who had cursed him, and with slow steps and bent head made his way across the hillside, till he entered the forest, whence he came not for three days, and where none, not even Oona, saw him.

It may be that he had heard at last the song of the white merle.

V

So the weeks went till the coming of the season that, because of the heats and of the drought, is called the month of the hanging of the dog's mouth.12

Great heat, with many thunders, had prevailed. For nine days at the beginning of July the rain poured: or ceased, only to let rainbows come and go upon the gleaming hills. During this time Oona and the blind man at Màm-Gorm were much together. A change had come upon the child. She looked at her foster-father often, with a wistful gaze. Something puzzled her. In the air, some vague trouble moved like a vanishing shadow. Of Nial she saw little. Now and again she heard his signal in the forest, and answered it: sometimes, at dawn or dusk, coming upon him on the hillside, sitting solitary on some isolated boulder, or crouching by a pool, and staring intently into its depths. But he would not come across the airidh. No one knew how he lived. Once or twice Murdo the shepherd gave him to eat: and, every morning and night, Oona put a small crock of porridge and oatcakes, or other food, in a place where the vagrant could have it if he willed – and thrice, at least, she found it empty. On the few moonlit nights she fancied she saw a pale, misty column of thin smoke rise above the pines.

Still more was she troubled about Sorcha. Her beautiful sister had grown even lovelier to look upon, but there was a new look in her eyes, a new hush in her voice. She shepherded on the mountain as one in a trance: as one in a dream she moved about the house. At night, in her sleep, she sighed often, and moaned gently: and once, turning and finding Oona by her, she put her arms round the child, and, sleeping still, whispered, "Ah, heart of my heart, joy of my joy!"

Oona knew that Sorcha and Alan Gilchrist loved each other. She knew, also, that this was why Alan could never come to Màm-Gorm, for her foster-father had laid his ban upon their love. But what did this love mean? What, she pondered vaguely, did this tragic silence, this tragic yet happy silence hide? "I know now," she said one day to Sorcha at the coming home of the kye, "I know now why it is that Alan, when he meets you in the gloaming by the byre or in the hay-shed, or down in the strath by the Mairg Water, calls you 'Dream.'"

Sorcha was startled, and the beautiful face flushed at the knowledge that she had been seen at these secret meetings with Alan. Oona's unconsciousness of any cause of embarrassment, however, reassured her.

"So you have seen us, Oona my flower? Well, see to it that you say nothing of this to father, or to any one. And, Oona, my bonnie, how do you know he – Alan – calls me 'Dream': and what do you mean by saying you know now what that means?"

"I heard him call you so, that moonlight night last week, when you came hand in hand through the wood. He called you Sunshine, Joy, and then Dream – and you said that 'Dream' was best, for it was the name he gave you 'that day.' … Sorcha!"

"Yes, birdeen?"

"What was 'that day'?"

The girl turned her face aside, because of the flame in it; but the flush was in the white neck as well, and the child laughed.

"Ah, it was when he first kissed you!"

"Yes, dear," Sorcha answered, flushing again; "yes, it must have been then."

"Sorcha, tell me, do you love him very much?"

"Yes. More than I can tell you, my sunbeam. When you are a woman you will understand."

"When I am a woman I am going to marry Nial."

"Nial!"

"Yes. No one will love him, because he has no soul; but I love him, and will marry him. Half of my soul will then be his."

"Is that so, then? Sure 'tis a south wind for Nial! And where will you live, Oona-my-heart?"

"The White Merle will show us the way."

"Ah, I see, it is a fairy tale. Well … Oona, I will tell you a secret. I have heard the song of the White Merle!"

The child's eyes grew big with wonder and excitement.

"When? Where? Was it where the old yews are in the Upper Strath?"

"It was now here and now there."

"But when, when?"

"Whenever Alan called me 'Dream,' and the other names, I heard the song of the White Merle."

"Ah, it is you that I envy! Sorcha, do you think that if Nial called me beautiful names I should hear it, too?"

"I fear not, dearie … not yet. Perhaps – perhaps if you called Nial those beautiful names he would hear the song."

"Then I will."

"No, not yet, Bonnikin. You will only harm Nial. But now run away. Father will be seeking you."

"Ah, and who will be seeking you?" cried Oona, as she danced away, laughing. "Ah, 'tis a good name, Dream; for you are always dreaming in your eyes now, Sorcha!"

Yet day by day thereafter the child laughed less blithely. There was a shadow about her foster-father. It held her spellbound. Never had she been so long away from the woods before, never before had she been so long indoors. She was glad to be with the blind man, and to take his hand when he went out to stride sometimes for miles along the rough ways of the hills. She talked much to him about the White Merle, and the "guid-folk," and the quiet people; sometimes of Nial, and of the strange things he saw and heard, and how the birds and beasts would come to him, and how he harmed none, nor they him. Sometimes she asked about the Cailliach, or about the wind-spirits; or strange questions about the people of the Strath, glimpses of whom she had occasionally, and for whom, particularly for the black-garbed minister, she did not conceal her contempt and dislike. Sometimes she sang; and that was what the blind man liked best. Once only she spoke of Alan: how she thought that Christ must be like him, so fair to see was he; how she loved his low voice, and soft touch, and grave, sweet eyes.

But she saw at once that no good would come out of any mention of that name. Her foster-father grew moodily taciturn; and when, after a long silence, he spoke, it was to ask her in a harsh voice if she had ever broken his command, and climbed the opposite slopes of Tornideon.

"Never, father."

"And have you ever sought the woman Anabal, that is mother of Alan?"

"No."

He seemed satisfied, and asked nothing further. But as for Oona, she brooded over this more and more, and wondered more and more because of the ban upon Alan, and because of the feud between Torcall Cameron in his loneliness on Iolair and Anabal Gilchrist in her loneliness on Tornideon.

The first day of August came with settled weather, and almost tropic heat.

All that day Torcall Cameron had been strangely restless. If Oona left him for more than a few moments, he grew impatient, and then angry. Again and again she begged him to come into the green shadowy woods, or even to climb to the Ridge of the Stags on Iolair; but he would not. At last, weary with the heat and the long blank hours, weary too with Oona's importunities, and not wholly unwilling to humour her for his own sake, he let her take his hand and lead him forth at her will.

Sorcha alone knew that, for some reason which she never fathomed, her father's "black day" was this first day of August. Year after year, his "dubhachas," his gloom, came upon him with that dawn, so that he would have word with none. She knew, too, that when the dark day was gone, her father was better for weeks thereafter, and sometimes smiled and laughed like other men.

The night before had been an ill passing of July. Murdo, the shepherd, had come in, his face white. As he had come down the mountain he had heard a wild and beautiful singing, and had descried a herd of deer being driven with the wind, keeping close together. He had not seen the demon-woman, for he had turned his head away, and muttered a sian to keep the evil of her from coming about him like a snake. But he thought the wind brought some of the words of her song to him, and they were of death and the grave. Then, muttering "Glacar iad's na innleachdan a dhealbh iad" – "Let them be taken in the devices they have imagined" – he had fled. Later, Oona came with a strange story from Nial. He had been crossing the highland behind Màm-Gorm, and had seen two men and two women walking silently with bowed heads. One man was tall and dripping wet, as though he had come out of water, and his lank hair hung adown his face. The other man was Màm-Gorm himself. The faces of the others he could not see, but one woman was tall and gaunt, with wild, straggling grey hair – a woman like Anabal Gilchrist on Tornideon. He heard only one word spoken, and that was when Màm-Gorm stopped, looked at the house, and said, "C'aite am bheil an eilidriom?"13

"What is an eilidriom, Sorcha?" Oona had added. To which her sister had replied that she did not know, and that she was to say nothing of this in the house.

"And what then, Oona?"

Nial, the child resumed, had heard no more. But when he turned and looked toward the strath he saw nine men moving away from Màm-Gorm, carrying in their midst a long black box. When he glanced back, the four wayfarers he had seen had disappeared.

Yet, as Sorcha knew, her father had not stirred from the house that day. Nothing of what Murdo or Nial had seen came to his ears – of that she was heedful. But suddenly, while they were eating the porridge, Oona asked her foster-father what an "eilidriom" was.

Cameron sprang to his feet, pale as death, and shaking, with the milk that he had spilt from the mug in his hand running down his breast as though his life-blood were pouring from him, white, too, with fear.

"What is that you say, Oona?" he cried, hoarsely; "what is that you say? Do you see a carbad-mhàrbh – at the door – coming here?"

"No – no – " murmured the child, terrified.

"Then how do you know that word for it? Who told it to you? I have not heard it said for years. No man uses it in this country. I have not heard it since – since Marsail died – and then it was from – from the people yonder on Tornideon, for Anabal Gilchrist was of the isles."

But here Sorcha had interposed, and said that Oona had picked it up in some way – in one of the old runes told her by Murdo, no doubt.

For the rest of that night Torcall Cameron only once opened his lips, and that not at the covering of the peats, or when Sorcha sang one of the sweet orain spioradail he loved so well, after she had read a while in the Book of Peace. It was when she came to him after he had lain down in his bed, and kissed him, and let her flooding tears fall warm upon his blind, upstaring eyes: then he pulled her head closer, and whispered, "Sorcha, Sorcha, my soul swims in mist!"

It was a night of beauty, and still. All slept. But toward dawn a voice arose in the corries. From height to height it went, and the long wail of it swept past the green airidh of Màm-Gorm and wandered sobbing through the forest. Then all was still again. The dawn that came soon after was of pale gold and faintest wild-rose. Peace was in the heaven.

But with that sudden passing wail, so often heard on the mountains when there is not a cloud in the sky, and when far and near not a branch sways, and the gnats dance in long columns perpendicularly without drifting this way or that – with that voice out of the hills, Torcall awoke.

When Sorcha arose she heard him moaning. Wearily she wondered what this fateful date meant, this dreaded first day of the eighth month. When she went to him, he said no other word than this: "I have heard the lamentable cry of death."

"The cry of death?" she repeated, questioningly.

"Ay, truly, the lamentation of the demon-women mourning for the dead."

So it was that all that day Torcall Cameron had been as a man in an ill-dream, weary of the long hours, yet dreading the passing of them into the shadow. So, too, it was that, at the last, he went forth with Oona.

At first they wandered into the forest, but here Torcall was never at ease, and so after a time they strolled hand in hand from glade to glade, till the sound of Mairg Water came soothing-cool through the heat.

The peace and utter quietude lay as balm upon the weary man. He grew drowsy at last, as his trouble seemed to lift from him. More than once he would have stopped, and thrown himself on the ground, content to stir no further, but Oona urged him to come on to where the river ran through shelving ledges with a singing sound, and nothing else was to be heard but the whisper of the silver birches and the thin, green reeds.

The crooning of the cushats was in his ears. Sweet it was to have that soft touch of sound after the lamentable cry of the hills, that morning cry now dulled, so that it was there only as a shadow in a darkened room.

He was glad when the breath of the water came upon his face, and he could sit down among the bracken and fragrant gale, and do no more than listen idly to the passage of the water. The whispering water, the scarce audible susurrus of faintly stirred leaves overhead, the singing of the gnats, the low incessant croon of the cushats, these were all the sounds to hear. Not a breath of wind moved in the pinewood, so that it gave not even that vast, slow suspiration which may be heard in forests once or twice between sunrise and sundown even on stillest days. All the birds were still, though few sang even at daybreak in that season of the young brood. Over the reaches of the water the swallows skimmed, hawking silently.