William Sharp

“ Hush! Come here: look! ... look!" he whispered.
Gently she stole beside him, leaned over the ledge, and stared down into the pool. A mere breath of the breeze ruffled the surface, and all she could see was a dark mass with a dusky white splatch, looming shadowily through the amber water, and strangely distorted by the silver shimmer caused by the wind-eddy, which came and went round the circuit of the pool like a baffled bird.
"What is it? Who is it? What is it, Nial?"
"Hush, do not speak so loud! It is my soul."
"Your soul, Nial?"
"Ay, true. Sure it is my soul. ”

“ You have been in the charmed West yourself; have seen the gloom and shine of the mountains that throw their shadow on the sea: have heard the wave whisper along that haunted shore which none loves save with passion, and none, loving, can bear to be long parted from. You, unlike so many who delight only in the magic of sunshine and cloud, love this dear land when the mists drive across the hillsides, and the brown torrents are in spate, and the rain and the black wind make a gloom upon every loch, and fill with the dusk of storm every strath, and glen, and corrie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alastair! Alastair!"
He gave a low laugh, as he turned on his side, and with wandering fingers played idly with the sand.
"Alastair!... my husband!... Beloved ... Alastair!... Oh, say farewell to me at the least.... Do not turn from me!"
"It called—called—called: and she cried to me, Come, my Belovèd: and then I knew Lora was dead. Why do you laugh at me? She is dead, I tell you: dead, dead, dead! She, my beautiful Lora—my dream—my joy—she who to me was Pharais itself: she is dead!"
In the grip of supreme woe, a woman has a heroism of abnegation beyond all words to tell of it. ”

“ Maclean spoke the last words almost in a whisper, and as though she said them in a dream.
"Unless he has been to Tir-na-h'Oigh, Mary?"
"So it is said. Our people believe that the Land of Eternal Youth lies far yonder across the sea; but Aodh, the poet, is right when he tells us that that land is lapped by no green waves such as we know here, and that those who go thither do so in sleep, or in vision, or when God has filled with dusk the house of the brain."
"And when a man has been to Tir-na-h'Oigh in sleep, or in dream, or in mind-dark, does he see there what shall soon happen here?" ”

“ And so it was that, at the last, Alastair and Lora Macleod, knowing his madness was at hand and could be cured of no man, and that their lives were spilled out as lees from a cup, and that they were witlessly dooming the unborn child to a heritage of grief, gave solemn troth to each other that on the morrow they would go forth hand in hand, and, together in death as in life, lay themselves beneath that ever-wandering yet ever-returning wave which beats day and night, and week by week, and year by year, and without end for ever, about the sea-gathered graveyard on the remote west of Innisròn. ”

“ The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn—
Wild fawn, wild fawn!"
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:
"Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The bird in the nest,
And the child at the breast,
They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn—
The bonnie Green Lady,
Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn—
Wild fawn, wild fawn!" ”

“ So elemental was she, then and there, that if she herself had passed into the rhythm of her rapt dance and so merged into the cadence of the wind among leaves and branches, or into the remoter murmuring of the mountain burns and of the white cataracts even then leaping into the sun-dazzle and seeming never to fall though for ever falling—if this change had been wrought, as the swift change from shadow-gloom to sun-gloom, nothing of it would have seemed unnatural. She was as absolutely one with nature as though she were a dancing sunbeam, or the brief embodiment of the joy of the wind. ”

“ A thin voice was in her ears that was not the lap of the tide or the cluck of water gurgling in and out of holes and crannies.
With a startled gesture she shrank back.
"What is it? What is it?" she cried; but the sound of her own awed voice broke the spell: and almost at the same moment an eddy of wind came circling over the rock-bastions of the isle, and, passing as a tremulous hand over the pool, ruffled it into a sudden silvery sheen.
With a blithe laugh, Lora rose to her feet. ”

“ VI It was not till many weeks later that the way of Alastair's escape from death became known.
On that dark night when he had lain down to die, the wave which fell across Lora and himself, and tore asunder the bonds she had woven, was followed by no other for a time: otherwise, the end of both would have been attained. But so great was the shock, that his apathy of mind and body was rudely broken. The tired blood stung in his veins; the instinct of life was as a flame of fire that consumed all the stupor due to the sea-fruit he had eaten—an instinct that wrought him to a passion of effort. ”

“ From that day, the world became a new world for Alastair.
In the quietude of dusk—and day by day the dusk came sooner and the dawn later—Mary would sometimes sing, or Seumas repeat some favourite Ossianic duan, or chant a fugitive song of the isles. But, toward the close of November, a silence fell more and more upon all. Each had grown a little weary with the burden of life: all knew Who it was that was coming stealthily across the waters, and for whom first.
It was on the dawn of December that the child died. It seemed to lapse from life as an ebbing wavelet from a pool. ”

“ It was from Seumas that Alastair, in boyhood and youth, had learned much, not only of his store of legends and ancient runes and old Celtic poetry, but also of that living poetry which makes the heart of the Gael more tender than that of other men, and his brain more wrought with vision. From him he had first heard how that for one to have died is to have "gone into the silence"; that for an old man or woman to pass away in extreme age is to "have the white sleep"; that for a fisherman to drown is for him to have "the peace of the quiet wave." ”

“ As October waned, the day of the mountain lovers became more and more a life of joy. Hand in hand they would sit on the bench in the sun, happily content: or dream, hand clasping hand, before the glowing peats. It was in vain that Murdo, fearing "the quiet madness," reproached Alan, urging upon him that he should go down into Inverglas and see to the sale of the cattle and the sheep. The young man shook his head, smiled gently at the shepherd, and once at least murmured these ominous words: "There is a time for all things, and it is my time to be still. I have peace." ”

“ Nial hoped he was right in believing that Màm-Gorm had come out merely to breathe the caller air: for the dwarf feared the reproach of Sorcha if he let the blind man wander along the perilous moorland, with wind and rain moving like ravenous hounds adown the heights.
When, however, he realised that Torcall Cameron was bent upon making his way to some distant spot, he had not the courage to check him, or even to make known his presence. There was a thundercloud on the man's face, one that to Nial was far more sombre and terrifying than any overhead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus may the hum of the wheeling world be heard of Keithoir, who dreams in the hollow of a green hill unknown of man: or of the ancient goddess Orchil, who, blind and dumb, works in silence at the heart of Earth at her loom Change, with the thridding shuttles Life and Death: or of Manannan, who sleeps under the green wave, hearing only the sigh of the past, the moan of the passing, the rune of what is to come.
Before Oona and Nial drew close to the hill farm, a shrill sustained cry, not unlike that of the bird called the oyster catcher, came along the slopes. ”

“ She lives at a mountain-farm, and all her heart is in a man's keeping, and all her beauty is his to love, and she is the tallest, and strongest, and sweetest lass in all the strath or in the big world beyond, and as beautiful as Roscrana that was wife to Fingal of old and mother of Ossian the blind bard—ay, good as Morna, which is the name of a woman that is beloved by all, and fair-to-see as Fiona, which is the name given of old to a bonnie maid, and lovely as Alona, than whom not woman could be lovelier. ”

“ Come; look at Sorcha and the child."
With a light, swift step Oona moved across the room. Silently she looked into Sorcha's face; silently she stood looking awhile at the child.
Alan had no word from her, to his sorrow. Steadfastly she stared; but breathed no whisper even. Then, with a faint sigh, she turned, moved like a ray of light across the room, and, before he knew what had happened, she was gone.
Bewildered at the child going thus quietly away, he went slowly to the door; but she had already vanished. So small a lass could soon be lost in that sunlit sea of green-gold bracken. ”

“ Ah, to be Alan, to have so tall and strong a body, so fair a face, to have Sorcha's love, to have a soul! The fairer soul the fairer body—that seemed to him a truth; for what had he to go by but the three he knew best and loved best: Oona and Sorcha and Alan, the fairest man, the most beautiful woman, the loveliest child he had ever seen or dreamed of there in Strath Iolair, or during those mysterious wanderings of his when he was far from the mountain-land with the gipsy-people? No beauty like theirs, no others like them in any way ”

“ Not vainly had they lived in dream. Sweet now was the waning of the dream into long sleep. Sweet is sleep that will never stir to any waking: sweeter that sleep which is but a balm of rest.
For they knew this: that they would awake in the fulness of time.
When, for the first time, the doom-word passed her lips, Alan shuddered slightly, but he did not quail.
"I am dying, dear heart!"
"Sorcha, this thing has been near to us many days. It is not for long."
"And thou wilt look to thine own dark hour with joy?" ”

“ What, she wondered, was that unfamiliar object lying in a ferny hollow of the rocks which formed the bridge of Mairg Water, whence the stream fell in a rushing cataract into the Linn? A human figure, clearly; a woman, too. Who could she be? Was she alive or dead? Was it Sorcha? No. Could it be one of the fairy-women of whom she had heard so often: the Cailliach, of whom she had been told so many tales; or that green-clad, yellow-scarfed, mysterious Bandruidh, the sorceress who won the souls out of grown men, and whose glance was fateful as a kelpie's? A kelpie's! ”

“ The soulless man and the child knelt side by side among the fern. The light lay all about them as a benediction. The rising wind, with a wet sough in it, came along the pines like an intoning anthem. Around them the bee hummed unwitting; in a tree beyond them a cushat crooned and crooned.
Oona's voice came low and sweet as the hidden dove's:
"O Father,
That is the Father of the father of Sorcha and me,
I pray that you will give Nial a soul."
Silence. Then a hoarse, sobbing voice:
"I pray that you will give Nial a soul!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Ah, do men know, do men know—many a woman cries in her heart—do men know that a woman with child dies daily: that she wakes up to die, and that she lies down to die: and that even as hourly she dies, so hourly does the child inherit life? Do they know that her body is the temple of a new soul? What men are they, in any land, who profane the sacred altars? Death was of old the just penalty of those who defiled the holy place where godhood stood revealed in stone or wood or living Bread: shall they go free who defile the temple of the human soul? ”

“ None, save the child Oona, ever saw again the elf-man that was called Nial the Soulless: none, though Murdo the shepherd averred that, once, as he passed through the forest in the darkness of a black dawn, he heard a wailing cry come from a great hollow oak that grew solitary among the endless avenues of the pines.
It was far within that first month of motherhood, presaged by the secret rune heard of Sorcha, the Rune of the Passion of Mary, that only women dying of birth may hear: it was within this time that an unspeakable weakness came upon Sorcha.
Day by day she grew frail and more frail. ”