Pharais; and, The Mountain Lovers. Sharp William
and yet as though constrainedly and in weariness, he raised and stretched forth his arms.
Swift as a gliding shadow, Lora was beside him, and clasped to his heart.
For a time, neither spoke. His heart beat loud and heavily: against his breast her head lay, with her breath coming and going like a wounded bird panting in the green-gloom of the thicket.
"O Alastair, Alastair, what is it?" she murmured at last, raising her head and looking into his pale, distraught face.
"What made you come out in the dark, Lora-mùirnean?"
"I could not rest. I was too unhappy. I thought – I thought – no, I do not think I dared to believe that you might come to-night after all; but something made me long to go down to the sea. Did you see me only now, dear heart?"
"No, Lora."
For a moment she was still, while she gazed fixedly at Alastair.
"Ah," she whispered at last, "then you have been here all this night, and I not knowing it! Ah, Alùinn, it was your heart crying to mine that made me rise and leave the cottage and come out into the dark. But why did you not come to me? When did you come to Innisròn? How did you come?"
"Dear, I could not wait for the Clansman. I left Greenock three hours earlier by the Foam, James Gilchrist's tug; for he undertook to put me ashore at the haven below Craig-Sionnach. Thence I walked to Dunmore. But I was not well, Lora; and I was so long on the way that I missed the Clansman as well as the Dunmore herring-steamer. Before nightfall, however, I persuaded Archibald Macleod, of Tighnacraigh, to bring me here on his smack. I landed at the Rock of the Seafold. It was already dusk, and my heart was against yours in longing, my beautiful gloom: yet over me came such a sorrow that I could not bear the homing, and so moved restlessly from shadow to shadow. I felt as though it would be better for me to deal with my sorrow alone and in the night, and that it was more bearable since I was so near you, and that any moment I could go to you."
"Why, why did you not come, Alastair? Oh, I longed, longed for you so!"
"Once I came close to the cottage, almost happy since I knew that you were so near to me. The red glow that warmed the dark without comforted me. I thought I would look in upon you for a moment; and if you and Mary were awake and talking, that I should let you know I had come. But I saw that you lay in sleep; and I had scarce time to withdraw ere, as I feared, Mary saw me – though see me, indeed, perhaps she did, for in a brief while she opened the door and came out, and would have discovered me but that I moved swiftly to the shadow of the birk-shaws. Then, after a little, I wandered down by the shore. There was a voice in the sea – calling, calling. It was so cool and sweet: soft was the balm of the air of it, as the look of your eyes, Lora, as the touch of your hand. I was almost healed of my suffering, when suddenly the pain in my head sprang upon me, and I crouched in the hollow yonder, chill with the sweat of my agony."
"O Alastair, Alastair, then you are no better: that great doctor you went so far to see has done you no good?"
"And in the midst of my pain, Lora my Rest, I saw you standing by the sea upon the ferry-ledge. At first I took you for a vision, and my heart sank. But when the moonlight reached the isle and enfolded you, I saw that it was you indeed. And once more my pain and my sorrow overcame me!"
"Alastair, I am terrified! It was not thus for you before you went away. Great as was your pain, you had not this gloom of sorrow. Oh, what is it, what is it, dear heart? Tell me, tell me!"
Slowly Alastair held Lora back from him, and looked long and searchingly into her eyes.
She shrank, in an apprehension that, like a bird, flew bewildered from the blinding light that flashed out of the darkness – a vain bewilderment of foredoom.
Then, with a great effort, she bade him tell her what he had to say.
Too well he knew there was no time to lose: that any day, any moment, his dark hour would come upon him, and that then it would be too late. Yet he would fain have waited.
"Lora, have you heard aught said by any one concerning my illness?"
"Dear, Father Mantus told me, on the day you went away, that you feared the trouble which came upon your father, and upon your father's father; and oh, Alastair my beloved, he told me what that trouble was."
"Then you know: you can understand?"
"What?"
"That which now appals me … now kills me."
"Alastair!"
"Yes, Lora?"
"Oh, Alastair, Alastair, you do not mean that … that … you too … you are … are … that you have the … the … mind-dark?"
"Dear heart of mine, this sorrow has come to us. I – "
With a sharp cry Lora held him to her, despairingly, wildly, as though even at that moment he were to be snatched from her. Then, in a passion of sobbing, she shook in his arms as a withered aspen-leaf ere it fall to the wind.
The tears ran down his face; his mouth twitched; his long, thin fingers moved restlessly in her hair and upon her quivering shoulder.
No other sound than her convulsive sobs, than his spasmodic breathing, met in the quietude of whisper-music exhaled as an odour by the sea and by the low wind among the corries and upon the grasses of the isle.
A white moth came fluttering slowly toward them, hovering vaguely awhile overhead, and then drifting alow and almost to their feet. In the shadow it loomed grey and formless – an obscure thing that might have come out of the heart of the unguarded brain. Upward again it fluttered, idly this way and that: then suddenly alit upon the hair of Alastair, poising itself on spread wings, and now all agleam as with pale phosphorescent fire, where the moonlight filled it with sheen as of white water falling against the sun.
The gleam caught Lora's eyes as, with a weary sigh, she lifted her head.
A strange smile came into her face. Slowly she disengaged her right arm, and half raised it. Alastair was about to speak, but her eyes brought silence upon him.
"Hush!" she whispered at last.
He saw that her eyes looked beyond his, beyond him, as it seemed. What did she see? The trouble in his brain moved anew at this touch of mystery.
"What is it, Lora?"
"Hush, hush!.. I see a sign from heaven upon your forehead … the sign of the white peace that Seumas says is upon them who are of the company of the Belovëd."
"Lora, what are you saying? What is it? What do you see?"
His voice suddenly was harsh, fretful. Lora shrank for a moment; then, as the white moth rose and fluttered away into the dark, faintly agleam with moonfire till it reached the shadow, she pitifully raised her hand to his brow.
"Come, dear, let us go in. All will be well with us, whatever happens."
"Never … never … never!"
"O Alastair, if it be God's will?"
"Ay, and if it be God's will?"
"I cannot lose you; you will always be mine; no sorrow can part us; nothing can separate us; nothing but the Passing, and that …"
"Lora!"
For answer she looked into his eyes.
"Lora, it is of that, of the Passing: … are you … are you brave enough not only to endure … but to … if we thought it well … if I asked you…?"
A deep silence fell upon both. Hardly did either breathe. By some strange vagary of the strained mind, Lora thought the throb of her heart against her side was like the pulse of the engines of the Clansman to which she had listened with such intent expectation that very evening.
From the darkness to the north came the low monotone of the sea, as a muffled voice prophesying through the gates of Sleep and Death. Far to the east the tide-race tore through the Sound with a confused muttering of haste and tumult. Upon the isle the wind moved as a thing in pain, or idly weary: lifting now from cranny to corrie, and through glen and hollow, and among