Pharais; and, The Mountain Lovers. Sharp William
slowly back by the way she had come. Over and over, as she went, she sang, crooningly, lines from a sweet song of the Gael, O, Till, a Leannain!
As she passed a place of birchen undergrowth and tall bracken, she did not see an old man, seated, grey and motionless as a heron. He looked at her with the dull eyes of age, though there was pity in them and something of a bewildered awe.
"Ay," he muttered below his breath, "though ye sing for your dear one to return, ye know not what I know. Have I not had the vision of him with the mist growin' up an' up, an' seen the green grass turn to black mools at his feet?"
Lora, unwitting, passed; and he heard her voice wax and wane, as falling water in a glen where the baffled wind among the trees soughs now this way and now that:—
"Mo chridhe-sa! 's tusa 'bhios truagh, 'bhios truagh, Mur pill is' 'thog oirre gu cluaidh, gu cluaidh!"
She went past the boulder on the path that hid the clachan from view, and within a net-throw of which was the byre of Mrs. Maclean's cottage, where, since her father's death, she had dwelt.
A tall, gaunt, elderly woman, with hair of the ivory white of the snowberry, was about to pass from behind the byre with a burthen of fresh bracken for Ian Maclean's bed—for the old islesman abode by the way of his fathers, and was content to sleep on a deerskin spread upon fresh-gathered fern—when she caught sight of Lora. She stopped, and with an eager glance looked at the girl: then beyond, and finally seaward, with her long, thin, brown arm at an angle, and her hand curved over her eyes against the glare of the water.
Silence was about her as a garment. Every motion of her, even, suggested a deep calm. Mrs. Maclean spoke seldom, and when she said aught it was in a low voice, sweet and serene, but as though it came from a distance and in the twilight. She was of the shadow, as the islesmen say; and strangers thought her to be austere in look and manner, though that was only because she gazed long before she replied to one foreign to her and her life: having the Gaelic, too, so much more natively than the English, that oftentimes she had to translate the one speech into the other nearer to her: that, and also because the quiet of the sea was upon her, as often with hill-folk there is a hushed voice and mien.
Lora knew what was in her mind when she saw her gaze go seaward and then sweep hither and thither like a hawk ere it settles.
"The boat is not yet in sight, Mary; she is late," she said simply: adding immediately, "I have come back to go up Cnoc-an-Iolair; from there I'll see the smoke of the Clansman sooner. She is often as late as this."
Mrs. Maclean looked compassionately at the girl.
"Mayhap the Clansman will not be coming this way at all to-night, Lora. She may be going by Kyle-na-Sith."
A flush came into Lora's face. Her eyes darkened, as a tarn under rain.
"And for why should she not be sailing this way to-night, when Alastair is coming home, and is to be here before sundown?"
"He may have been unable to leave. If he does not come to-day, he will doubtless be here to-morrow."
"To-morrow! O Mary, Mary, have you ever loved, that you can speak like that? Think what Alastair went away for! Surely you do not know how the pain is at my heart?"
"Truly, mùirnean. But it is not well to be sure of that which may easily happen otherwise."
"To-morrow, indeed! Why, Mary, if the Clansman does not come by this evening, and has gone as you say by Kyle-na-Sith, she will not be here again till the day after to-morrow!"
"Alastair could come by the other way, by the Inverary boat, and thence by the herring-steamer from Dunmore, after he had reached it from Uan Point or by way of Craig-Sionnach."
"That may be, of course; but I think not. I cannot believe the boat will not be here to-night."
Both stood motionless, with their hands shading their eyes, and looking across the wide Sound, where the tide bubbled and foamed against the slight easterly wind-drift. The late sunlight fell full upon them, working its miracle of gold here and there, and making the skin like a flower. The outline of each figure stood out darkly clear as against a screen of amber.
For a time neither spoke. At last, with a faint sigh, Mrs. Maclean turned.
"Did you see Ian on your way, Lora-mo-ghràidh?"
"No."
"Do not have speech with the old man to-night, dear one. He is not himself."
"Has he had the sight again?"
"Ay, Lora."
Again a silence fell. The girl stood moodily, with her eyes on the ground: the elder watched her with a steadfast, questioning look.
"Mary!"
Mrs. Maclean made no reply, but her eyes brought Lora's there with the answer that was in them.
"Ian has never had the sight again upon … upon Alastair, has he?"
"How can I say?"
"But do you know if he has? If you do not tell me, I will ask him."
"I asked him that only yester-morning. He shook his head."
"Do you believe he can foresee all that is to happen?"
"No. Those who have the vision do not read all that is in the future. Only God knows. They can see the thing of peril, ay, and the evil of accident, and even Death—and what is more, the nearness and sometimes the way of it. But no man sees more than this—unless, indeed, he has been to Tir-na-h'Oigh."
Mrs. 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?"
"It is said."
"Has Ian been beyond the West?"
"No."
"Then what he sees when he has the sight upon him is not beannaichte: is not a thing out of heaven?"
"I cannot say. I think not."
"Mary, is it the truth you are now telling me?"
A troubled expression came into the woman's face, but she did not answer.
"And is it the truth, Mary, that Ian has not had the sight upon Alastair since he went away—that he did not have it last night or this morning?"
Lora leaned forward in her anxiety. She saw that in her companion's eyes which gave her the fear. But the next moment Mrs. Maclean smiled.
"I too have the sight, Lora-mo-ghràidh; and shall I be telling you that which it will be giving you joy to hear?"
"Ay, surely, Mary!"
"Then I think you will soon be in the arms of him you love"—and, with a low laugh, she pointed across the sea to where a film of blue-grey smoke rose over the ridge of Dunmore headland.
"Ah, the Clansman!" cried Lora, with a gasp of joy: and the next moment she was moving down the path again toward the little promontory.
The wind had risen slightly. The splash, splash, of the sunny green waves against each other, the lapping of the blue water upon the ledges to the east, the stealthy whisper where the emerald-green tide-flow slipped under the hollowed sandstone, the spurtle of the sea-wrack, the flashing fall and foam-send of the gannets, the cries of the gulls, the slap of wind as it came over the forehead of the isle and struck