Chapter II (4)

“Ay, so they say, … and so, so: ay, as you were saying, Ian Mòr went into the shadow because of that home he could not win?”

“So they say. And now we’ll take the nets. ’Tis a heavy net that comes out black, as the sayin’ is. They’re heavy for sure, after this still night, an’ the wind southerly, an’ the pollack this way an’ that.”

“Well, now, that’s strange.”

“What is strange, Sheumas Maclean?”

“That you should say that thing.”

“And for why that?”

“Oh, just this. Silis had a dream the other night, she had. She dreamed she saw you standing alone on the _Luath_: and you were hauling hard a heavy net, so that the sweat ran down your face. And your face was dead-white pale, she said. An’ you hauled an’ you hauled. An’ someone beside you that she couldn’t see laughed an’ laughed: an’ …”

With a stifled oath, Isla broke in upon the speaker’s words:

“Why, man alive, you said he, the man, myself it is, was alone on the _Luath_.”

“Well, Silis saw no one but yourself, Isla Macleod.”

“But she heard some one beside me laughing an’ laughing.”

“So she said. And you were dead-white, she said: with the sweat pouring down you. An’ you pulled an’ you pulled. Then you looked up at her and said: ‘_It’s a heavy net that comes up black, as the sayin’ is._’”

Isla Macleod made no answer to that, but slowly began to haul at the nets. A swift moving light slid hither and thither well away to the north-east. The sea greyed. A new, poignant, salt smell came up from the waves. Sail after sail of the smacks ceased to be a blur in the dark: each lifted a brown shadowy wing against a dusk through which a flood of myriad drops of light steadily oozed.

Now from this boat, now from that, hoarse cries resounded.

The _Mairi Ban_ swung slowly round before the faint dawn-wind, and lifted her bow homeward with a little slapping splash. The _Maggie_, the _Trilleachan_, the _Eilid_, the _Jessie_, and the _Mairi Donn_ followed one by one.

In silence the two men on the _Luath_ hauled in their nets. The herring made a sheet of shifting silver as they lay in the hold. As the dawn lightened, the quivering silver mass sparkled. The decks were mailed with glittering scales: these, too, gleamed upon the legs, arms, and hands of the two fishermen.

“Well, that’s done!” exclaimed Sheumas at last. “Up with the helm, Isla, and let us make for home.”

The _Luath_ forged ahead rapidly when once the sail had its bellyful of wind. She passed the _Tern_, then the _Jessie Macalpine_, caught up the big, lumbering _Maggie_, and went rippling and rushing along the wake of the _Eilid_, the lightest of the Inchghunnais boats.

Off shore, the steamer _Osprey_ met the smacks, and took the herring away, cran by cran. Long before her screw made a yeast of foam athwart the black-green inshore water, the _Luath_ was in the little haven and had her nose in the shingle at Craigard point.

In silence Sheumas and Isla walked by the rock-path to the isolated cottage where the Macleans lived. The swallows were flitting hither and thither in front of its low, whitewashed wall, like flying shuttles against a silent loom. The pale gold of a rainy dawn lit the whiteness with a vivid gleam. Suddenly Isla stopped.

“Will you be telling me now, Sheumas, which man it was that she loved?”

Maclean did not look at the speaker, though he stopped too. He stared at the white cottage, and at the little square window with the geranium-pot on the lintel.

But while he hesitated, Isla Macleod turned away, and walked swiftly across the wet bracken and bog-myrtle till he disappeared over Cnoc-na-Hurich, on the hidden slope of which his own cottage stood amid a wilderness of whins.

Sheumas watched him till he was out of sight. It was then only that he answered the question.

“I’m thinking,” he muttered slowly, “I’m thinking she loved Ian Mòr.”

“Yes,” he muttered again later, as he took off his sea-soaked clothes, and lay down on the bed in the kitchen, whence he could see into the little room where Silis was in a profound sleep: “Yes, I’m thinking she loved Ian Mòr.”

He did not sleep at all, for all his weariness.

When the sunlight streamed in across the red sandstone floor, and crept towards his wife’s bed, he rose softly and looked at her. He did not need to stoop when he entered the room, as Isla Macleod would have had to do.

He looked at Silis a long time. Her shadowy hair was all about her face. She had never seemed to him more beautiful. Well was she called “Silis the Fawn” in the poem that some one had made about her.

The poem that some one had made about her? … yes, for sure, how could he be forgetting who it was. Was it not Isla, and he a poet too, another Ian Mòr they said.

“Another Ian Mòr.” As he repeated the words below his breath, he bent over his wife. Her white breast rose and fell, the way a moonbeam does in moving water.

Then he knelt. When he took the slim white hand in his she did not wake. It closed lovingly upon his own.

A smile slowly came and went upon the dreaming face--ah, lovely, white, dreaming face, with the hidden starry eyes. There was a soft flush, and a parting of the lips. The half-covered bosom rose and fell as with some groundswell from the beating heart.

“_Silis_,” he whispered. “_Silis_ … _Silis_ …”

She smiled. He leaned close above her lips.

“Ah, heart o’ me,” she whispered, “O Isla, Isla, mo rùn, moghray, Isla, Isla, Isla!”

Sheumas drew back. He too was like the man in her dream, for it was dead-white he was, with the sweat in great beads upon his face.

He made no noise as he went back to the hearthside, and took his wet clothes from where he had hung them before the smoored peats, and put them on again.

Then he went out.

It was a long walk to Isla Macleod’s cottage that few-score yards: a long, long walk.

When Sheumas stood on the wet grass round the flagstones he saw that the door was ajar. Isla had not lain down. He had taken his ash-lute, and was alternately playing and singing low to himself.

Maclean went close up to the wall, and listened. At first he could hear no more than snatches of songs.

And is there any home for him whose portion is the night?…

And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam …

O heart that is breaking,
Breaking, breaking,
O for the home that I canna, canna win:
O the weary aching,
The weary, weary aching
To be in the home that I canna, canna win!

Then suddenly the man within put down his ash-lute, and stirred. In a loud vibrant voice he sang:

O far away upon the hills at the lighting of the dawn
I saw a stirring in the fern and out there leapt a fawn:
And O my heart was up at that and like a wind it blew
Till its shadow hovered o’er the fawn as ’mid the fern it flew.
And _Silis! Silis! Silis!_ was the wind-song on the hill,
And _Silis! Silis! Silis!_ did the echoing corries fill:
My hunting heart was glad indeed, at the lighting of the dawn,
For O it was the hunting then of my bonnie, bonnie Fawn!

For some moments there was dead silence. Then a heavy sigh came from within the cottage.

Sheumas Maclean at last made a step forward. But before his shadow fell across the doorway Isla had breathed a few melancholy notes from his _feadan_, and then began a slow wailing song.

O heart that is breaking,
Breaking, breaking,
O for the home that I canna, canna win:
O the weary aching,
The weary, weary aching
To be in the home that I canna, canna win!

For O the long home-sickness,
The long, long home-sickness!
’Tis slow, slow death for me who long for home, for home!
And a heart is breaking,
I know a heart that’s breaking,
All to be at home at last, to be at home, at home,
O Silis, Silis,
Home, Home, Home!

Sheumas’ face was white and tired. It is weary work with the herring, no doubt.

He lifted a white stone and rapped loudly on the door. Isla came out, and looked at him. The singer smiled, though that smiling had no light in it. It was dark as a dark wave it was.

“Well?” he said.

“May I come in?”

“Come in, and welcome. And what will you be wanting, Sheumas Maclean?”

“Sure, it’s too late to sleep, an’ I’m thinking I would like to hear now that story you were to tell me.”

The man gave no answer to that. Each looked at the other with luminous unwinking eyes.

“It will not be a fair thing,” said Isla slowly, at last. “It will not be a fair thing: for I am bigger and stronger.”

“There is another way, Isla Macleod.”

“Ay?”

“That you or I go to her, and tell her all, and then at the last say: ‘Come with me, or stay with him.’”

“So be it.”

So there and then they drew for chance. The gaining of that hazard was with Sheumas Maclean.

Without a word Isla turned and went into the house. There he took his _feadan_, and played low to himself, staring into the red heart of the smouldering peats. He neither smiled nor frowned; but only once he smiled, and that was when Sheumas came back, and said _Come_.

So the two walked in silence across the dewy grass. There was a loud calling of skuas and terns, and the raucous laughing cry of the great herring-gull, upon the weedy shore of Craigard. The tide bubbled and oozed through the wilderness of wrack. Farther off there were the cackling of hens, the lowing of restless kye, and the bleating of the sheep on the slopes of Melmonach. A shrewd salt air tingled in the nostrils of the two men.

At the closed door Sheumas made a sign of silence. Then he unfastened the latch, and entered.

“Silis,” he said in a low voice, but clear.

“Silis, I’ve come back again. Dry your tears, my lass, and tell me once again--for I’m dying to hear the blessed truth once again--tell me once again if it’s me you love best, or Isla Macleod.”

“I have told you, Sheumas.”

Without, Isla heard her words and drew closer.

“And it is a true thing that you love me best, and that since the choice between him and me has come, you choose me?”

“It is a true thing.”

A shadow fell across the room. Isla Macleod stood in the doorway.

Silis turned the white beautiful face of her, and looked at the man she loved with all her heart and all her soul. He smiled. She was no coward, his Silis, though he called her his fawn.

“Is--it--a--true--thing, Silis?” he asked slowly.

She looked at Sheumas, then at Isla, then back at her husband.

“It might kill Sheumas,” she muttered below her breath, so that neither heard her: “it might kill him,” she repeated.

Then, with a swift turn of her eyes, she spoke.

“Yes, it is a true thing, Isla. I abide by Sheumas.”

That was all.

She was conscious of the wave of relief that went into Sheumas’ face. She saw the rising of a dark, strange tide in the eyes of Isla.

He stared at her. Perhaps he did not hear? Perhaps he was dreaming still? He was a dreamer, a poet: perhaps he could not understand.

It was a little while wherein to kill a man.

“My Fawn,” he whispered hoarsely, “my wee Fawn!”

But Silis was frozen.

The deadly frost in her eyes slew the dream that the brain of the poet dreamed.

Then it slew the poet.

Isla, the man, stood awhile, strangely tremulous. She could see his nerves quivering below his clothes. He was a big, strong giant of a lover: but he trembled now just like a bit fawn, she thought. His blue eyes were suddenly grown cloudy and dim. Then the deadly frost slew the brain that was the altar where the poet offered up his dreams of beauty.

And that is how Isla the dreamer ceased to dream.

He was quite white and still when they found him three days later. He seemed a giant of a man as he lay, face upward, among the green flags by the water-edge. The chill starlight of three nights had got into the quiet of his face.

* * * * *

That night, resumed Coll McColl, after a long pause--that night he, Coll, was walking in the moonlight across the hither slope of Melmonach.

He stood under a rowan-tree, and watched a fawn leaping wildly through the fern. While he watched, amazed, he saw a tall shadowy woman pass by. She stopped, and drew a great bow she carried, and shot an arrow. It went through the air with a sharp whistling sound--just like _Silis--Silis--Silis_, Coll said, to give me an idea of it.

The arrow went right through the fawn.

But here was a strange thing. The fawn leapt away sobbing into the night: while its heart suspended, arrow-pierced, from the white stem of a silver birch.

“And to this day,” said Coll at the last, “I am not for knowing who that archer was, or who that fawn. You think it was these two who loved? Well, ’tis Himself knows. But I have this thought of my thinking: that it was only a vision I saw, and that the fawn was the poor suffering heart of Love, and that the Archer was the great Shadowy Archer that hunts among the stars. For in the dark of the morrow after that night I was on Cnoc-na-Hurich, and I saw a woman there shooting arrow after arrow against the stars. At dawn she rose and passed away, like smoke, beyond those pale wandering fires.”

RE-ISSUE OF

Miss Fiona Macleod’s Stories

Rearranged, and with Additional Tales

VOL. I.

_SPIRITUAL TALES_

Contents

ST BRIDE OF THE ISLES.
THE THREE MARVELS OF IONA.
THE MELANCHOLY OF ULAD.
ULA AND URLA.
THE DARK NAMELESS ONE.
THE SMOOTHING OF THE HAND.
THE ANOINTED MAN.
THE HILLS OF RUEL.
THE FISHER OF MEN.
THE LAST SUPPER.
THE AWAKENING OF ANGUS OGUE.

VOL II.

_BARBARIC TALES_

Contents

THE SONG OF THE SWORD.
THE FLIGHT OF THE CULDEES.
MIRCATH.
THE LAUGHTER OF THE QUEEN.
THE HARPING OF CRAVETHEEN.
AHEZ THE PALE.
SILK O’ THE KINE.
CATHAL OF THE WOODS.
THE WASHER OF THE FORD.

VOL III.

_TRAGIC ROMANCES_

Contents

MORAG OF THE GLEN.
THE DÀN-NAN-RÒN.
THE SIN-EATER.
THE NINTH WAVE.
THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD.
GREEN BRANCHES.
THE ARCHER.

BY FIONA MACLEOD.

PHARAIS: A Romance of the Isles.
THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS.
THE SIN-EATER: and other Tales.
THE WASHER OF THE FORD.
GREEN FIRE: A Romance.
FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM: Mountain Songs and Island Runes.

“_Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty which Mr Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of romantic art--it is this which gives to Miss Macleod’s work its peculiar æsthetic charm. But apart from and beyond all those qualities which one calls artistic, there is a poignant human cry, as of a voice with tears in it, speaking from out a gloaming which never lightens to day, which will compel and hold the hearing of many who to the claims of art as such are wholly or largely unresponsive._” (JAMES ASHCROFT NOBLE, in THE NEW AGE.)

“_Of the products of what has been called the Celtic Renascence_, ‘The Sin-Eater’ _and its companion Stories seem to us the most remarkable. They are of imagination and a certain terrible beauty all compact._” (From an article in THE DAILY CHRONICLE on “The Gaelic Glamour.”)

“_For sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales are as remarkable, perhaps, as anything we have had of the kind since Mr Kipling appeared … Their local colour, their idiom, their whole method, combine to produce an effect which may be unaccustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. They provide as original an entertainment as we are likely to find in this lingering century, and they suggest a new romance among the potential things of the century to come._” (THE ACADEMY.)

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