Читать книгу Morag the Seal - J W Brodie Innes - Страница 3

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A FIRST-CLASS railway-carriage on the North-western line seems hardly an appropriate place for the study of legal problems as to the rights of property, still less for the starting-point of a weird romance, interwoven with some of the most uncanny and gruesome experiences that have probably chanced to any ordinary Englishman in our modern and usually prosaic age and country. Yet so, in fact, it chanced to me as I sped northwards on a certain day in early July, bound for an unknown country, to visit an unknown man, with the details of the object of my visit spread out on the seat before me in various bundles tied up with red tape, and sundry parchments propped open and large sheets of manuscript written in a clerkly copy-book hand, and thickly scored with blue and red pencil marks. The errand was to outward seeming prosaic enough. I was by profession a conveyancing barrister, whose hobby was pedigree cases and international complications of property law, and with sufficient private means to indulge my fancy and wait till recognition came in the line I preferred, rather than take any chance that turned up.

A good case had presented itself, and I had worked at it con amore. A certain Sir John Bradley had acquired a property formerly belonging to a family of the name of Cameron, and his eldest son and heir, the present Sir John, was anxious to have a formal and exhaustive opinion upon his title. This appeared simple enough. Considerable sums of money had been advanced on the security of the property, neither principal nor interest had been paid, and the lands had eventually by ordinary processes of law passed to the lender. A few slight hitches, such as always occur when English solicitors have to deal with questions of Scotch property, and fail to comprehend the language or ideas of their colleagues across the Border, were all there was to be noticed in this part of the case. What was really perplexing was the evident anxiety of both the elder Sir John and his son to make out, so far as I could judge on the very slenderest foundations, that they were of kin to the original proprietors, if not indeed, as was sometimes hinted, the true owners by right of birth. This certainly puzzled me not a little. Their right to the lands was perfectly unchallengeable, and what could be the purpose of raking up a complicated title which, if it existed at all, could only be made out by an ingenious dovetailing of English and Scotch law, and which, even if correct, was long ago barred by prescription, seemed the height of folly.

However, it was to this very folly that I owed my connexion with the case, so I was not disposed to be over-critical.

It was a raw, unpleasant day outside, a chill rain and driving mist swept up from the western sea, and blotted out the face of the landscape. It was comfortable enough in the carriage which a friendly guard had locked up for me, but I looked forward with some apprehension to the long drive which I knew to be in store for me at the end of my journey.

Once more I settled myself down to grasp the whole facts of the case before I should meet my host and client. The evidence of his assertions was, he said, there; he could not understand my opinions, and he was convinced I could not understand his points. Altogether, a talk would be more satisfactory—in fact, several talks. In short, he could not or would not come to London, and he wanted me to go down and study his case on the spot. He was prepared to pay handsomely. I had nothing of great importance to keep me in London, and wanted a holiday. A week in the West Highlands looked tempting. My solicitors urged me to go as the only means of ever arriving at any sort of settlement of the difficulties, and so here I found myself now nearing the station of Ard na Righ, which was my destination.

Hastily I bundled my papers together and thrust them into my bag, and jumped out on to the long wet platform—the sole passenger alighting there—saw my modest trunk and portmanteau and my bicycle put out, the train glided away, and in this simple and prosaic way I passed from the ordinary world of men and women and commonplace events into an atmosphere wholly unfamiliar, a strange dream becoming at times a gruesome nightmare. A small spring cart with a rough Highland pony and a rougher-looking Highland driver was waiting to convey me through the glens and corries to Airton House, and I shivered as I drew my mackintosh closer round me and prepared to face the elements, thinking to myself that my host might as well have sent a closed carriage for me on such a beast of a day, and feeling generally out of tune and out of temper with all my surroundings.

Soon, however, I found that Donald was a most excellent companion, good-humoured and loquacious. He knew every mountain and glen and stream, and had interesting stories to tell about them all. Moreover—and this was a special grace to his English-bred listener—his speech was not the Lowland Scots which I confess I should have followed with difficulty, but the perfect English, as it is spoken in the West Highlands, with the slow musical intonation that falls almost like a caress. We drove at a merry pace along the single long street of the village facing the still oily-looking waters of Loch Righ, and by the ruined kirk where Donald told me it was said that the ghosts of all those who had died at the herring-fishing walked in procession on Hallowe'en, carrying with them, shoulder high, the latest arrivals among them, the men and boys whom the sea had taken in the last year.

An old sexton was busily delving in the kirk-yard, and as we drove past a lonely shieling a little further on I heard the measured taps of a hammer beating on hollow wood. I know not why, but the commonplace sound was eerie and creepy to me. I did not like to hear it. It was a coffin he was making, that invisible carpenter. Why I should have thought so I can't say, but I felt convinced that so it was.

We had come to a steep ascent, and Donald and I were both walking to ease the sturdy little Highland beast. The taps still sounded with a regular, monotonous beat, though the cottage was now some distance behind.

'That's a lonely place for a carpenter's shop,' I said, more for the sake of saying something than for any other reason. Those monotonous taps were getting on my nerves, and I wanted to hear the sound of a human voice.

'It's empty,' said Donald. 'No man has lived there for these twenty years now, since Niell Cameron died. He was the last wright we had in these parts. They have to get their coffins from fifteen miles away now.'

Were the tappings in my brain, then? Strange as it must seem, I could not at that moment ask Donald about them. I merely said: 'There seems to be a funeral on hand now. I suppose some one has lately died?'

'Oh aye!' he replied. 'I think they will be burying Morag the Seal.'

'Oh! But I mean in the churchyard. I thought I saw a grave being dug. They wouldn't bury a seal there.'

'Aye! that's just it; but not exactly a seal, you understand, as you might see a seal on the shore. Morag looked like a woman—and the most beautiful woman ever was seen about here—and all our boys were in love with her; but woe to the one she favours. It's body and soul he will lose, for she will never rest till she draws the soul out of him by her deviltry, and he follows her till they find him down on the sea-shore, and they hear Morag laughing away in the wash of the waves. Oh, it's many's the time they have buried Morag, but I doubt the stone that will keep her down has not been hewn yet.'

'Then you mean that this strange seal woman you speak of is dead?'

'Aye! so they think. I was hearing last night that old Sandy Macpherson—he is uncle to the poor lad that was drowned for Morag—went down to the shore on the night of the full moon—that would be four days ago—and he crammed a silver button off his kilt into his gun and shot at a seal swimming near in to shore, and there came a long pitiful cry like a woman in deadly pain, and in the morning there lay a corpse on the sands, just out of the wash of the waves, a beautiful woman, quite naked, with her long, dark chestnut hair streaming over her white body, and her great brown eyes wide open, and looking with that long gaze that tugs a man's heart, just as if she was alive.'

'Who saw this body?' I queried, for I was getting greatly interested in Donald's story. These old legends always had a peculiar fascination for me, and here I was, so to say, in the very heart of one.

'Oh, just Sandy and his son. They carried her up, and the wright came that night with the stretching-board and laid her out.'

'Who was the wright then?'

'Oh, just Niell Cameron.'

'But, Donald, you told me Niell Cameron was dead. How was that?'

'Oh aye! Well, maybe Niell was; but he might be laying out Morag for all that.'

Donald's story was getting too mixed for me, and we had got to the top of the hill, so I made a mental note that, among other things during my stay at Airton House, I would find out all there was to be known about seal women, and especially about this wonderful Morag.

We rattled merrily down a steep road, through a dark, awful-looking glen, that seemed to hold many tragic histories and many weird and gruesome possibilities; and Donald's talk, so far as he could spare attention from his pony to talk at all, was tuned to the scene. It ran mainly on murders and massacres of clans, on the haunting wraiths that flitted by moonlight across the heather, and the spots where the deer fled wildly if they came inadvertently upon them, and which dogs would not pass. All through the glen his speech was of horrors. At last we emerged into the open country again. The sea lay before us, and to our left the clouds were breaking, gleams of light shone waterily on distant islets, and a faint sparkle was on the tiny waves that danced on the pebbles.

The whole of that drive from the little roadside station to the old house of Airton has remained on my memory with photographic exactness of every detail. It was the first introduction of a Londoner accustomed to an almost level country and the quiet charm of English rural scenery to the wildest hills and glens of the West Highlands, and therewith the first introduction of a man whose training had made him somewhat matter-of-fact and materialistic to the dreamy imaginative atmosphere of the Celtic people. Yet I suspect there must have been a hidden and unsuspected vein of that same imaginative quality lurking somewhere within me, for I felt an immediate attraction, a sort of strange understanding of and sympathy with Donald's weird stories to which I could hardly in London have fancied myself listening with patience. In short, I was a new creature, beginning a new and very strange life, and I would fain give my readers a mental picture, as vivid as it was and ever will be to me, of the scene wherein the events were crowded which were to change my whole life.

It was just as we emerged from the dark glen that I saw how the hill on our right hand formed a sort of promontory, behind which an arm of the sea extended almost at right angles into another range of hills and moors, the great deer-forest of the estate, so Donald told me. Immediately opposite to us and across the water was a broad valley filled with dense woods, but all the rest of the country was bare and ragged.

The road turning round between the hill and the water now brought us in full view of Airton House standing on a little eminence and towering over the thick woods round it. It seemed from this first glimpse to be largely in ruins, but at the distance of nearly two miles it was not easy to tell.

'Is that the old Cameron Castle?' I asked Donald.

'Aye, is it,' he replied. 'That's the old house, but not where they lived; no, the last Cameron lived at the Dower House, yonder among the woods. I've never been there; you see it's on Mr. William's land; he's Sir John's brother you know; they are not speaking now you understand, and Sir John is not pleased if any of his people go on to Mr. William's land.'

This was the first I had heard of Sir John's brother, beyond the mere fact of his name occurring in the pedigree.

'How can two brothers live side by side and not speak, Donald?' I said; 'it seems unnatural.'

'Sorrow o' me knows, sir!' he replied; 'they've both got tempers, and I believe they quarrelled over the property, but indeed it's no business of mine, and I should not be talking.'

The trap rattled over a little bridge, where a brawling burn ran down to the sea. On the right hand was a deep gully through which the stream rushed between precipitous banks, clothed on either side with dense thickets, and here and there on its course were tall trees that met in feathery arches over the water. It was a very beautiful spot, but seemingly absolutely inaccessible. No man or boy, scarcely even a monkey, I thought, could have climbed up those steep banks, or forded the rapid stream. Yet over the bridge were leaning and lounging a few wild-looking men and women of an unmistakably gipsy type who stretched out begging hands as we passed.

Donald gave an exclamation of disgust.

'The laird should not allow those trash there,' he said; 'they are just a curse to the country—they steal and beg and poach, and we get the credit of it as often as not.'

'But where do they live, Donald?' I asked—for there seemed no trace even of a gipsy camp anywhere within reach.

'Oh! just up the burn,' was the unexpected reply. 'Dear knows how they get there, but they do. I'm thinking nothing else in life, unless mayhap a wild-cat, could get up there; but those tinker trash do it, and they disappear up there, and no man can follow them.'

So we rattled on till we reached a tumble-down lodge and ruinous entrance gates; sorely squalid and neglected, I thought, for the home of a man of the acknowledged wealth of my eccentric client.

A short drive brought us to the house; a very singular-looking edifice in sooth it was. The right wing seemed to be just an ordinary farmhouse—a door in the middle, two small windows with little square panes on each side, and a row of small windows of similar type above, a greyish roof of heavy slates with three attic windows, the walls harled, and a sickly Ayrshire rose rather perfunctorily nailed over one window—this was all. The centre was a new mansion of red sandstone and rather pretentious, the windows had plate-glass and heavy stone mullions, the first story coming near to the eaves of the right wing; a large porch jutted out from the centre. This part was considerably loftier than the right wing. Beyond this, again, on the left was apparently a very old castle half in ruins, the upper portions showing great rents in the masonry and eyeless window-holes, but there was glass in many of the ground-floor and first-floor windows, little diamond panes with leaded medallions, and occasionally shields with armorial bearings. Evidently this part of the house was of great age, and it was heavily mantled with ivy. At the extreme left hand was a large tower half projecting from the front as if it were no part of the original design, and to the right of this a low arched doorway, the third door in the front.

I had no time for further observations, for my host was standing at the porch in the centre of the house ready to welcome me. A tall thin man with a keen face, perfectly white hair, an aquiline nose, a light grey homespun coat and knickerbockers, an expression on his face of perfect courtesy and kindliness—a man, I said to myself, that I should take to. This was my first impression, succeeded by a slight transitory feeling of distrust, for which I instantly reproved myself.

A footman took my modest belongings from the cart, while Sir John apologized with perfect manners for not sending the brougham to meet me. The horse had gone lame, or cast a shoe, or something—I forget what, nor does it matter. The apology was graceful and gracious, and my momentary feeling of soreness vanished.

'Come in! Come in!' he said; 'welcome indeed to this queer old house. It was so good of you to come and help me. I am really most deeply indebted to you. I fear it must have been a great inconvenience to you.'

'Not at all!' I said, rather anxious to stop the profusion of his thanks, which seemed rather over-done, as I had simply come on business and for a substantial fee. 'It seems, indeed, a quaint and delightful old house you have.'

'An epitome of its history,' he replied, as he led the way into a large, comfortable hall panelled in red pine. 'The old castle was the home of my forbears, many centuries ago. Then it passed to another branch of the family, and they fell on evil days, and could not keep up their old state; in fact, they became little more than farmers, and lived in a house which is really just a farmhouse on the other side; there are some connecting buildings that join it with the old castle behind this part where we are now. Then the old place came back to the old family, as you know, and my father built this centre where we are standing now. You shall see it all to-morrow; it is rather late now, and you must be tired—so good of you to come.'

My memories of the papers had given me rather a different impression, and even now as I stood in the comfortable and well-designed hall, with its parquet floor, pitch pine, and deerskin rugs, I could not help thinking of the old Camerons who lived there, holding great state in the old feudal castle, or dwelling proud and noble in their poverty, in the little farmhouse, beside the crumbling monuments of their former greatness, and doubtless dreaming of the day when some lucky turn of the wheel should give it all back to them. And now, by contrast, the Bradleys, and their bran-new centre to the old house, their pitch-pine hall, and all the rest of it seemed nothing but hideously vulgar.

It was a passing phase—Sir John was speaking again.

'I dare say you are wondering why we should take all the trouble that your study of our papers must have indicated to you to get back the old place, even to spend more than it was worth to get back our own, for that was what it really came to. Well, Mr. Kingsburgh, you know we Highlanders are a sentimental race, and we love the land of our forbears. I suppose you Southerners—pardon me! I use the phrase in no disparaging way, believe me—but you can hardly understand our feelings. And so it chanced when my father found that there was a chance of getting back the old place from the branch that we hold had no right there, he would have sacrificed all his fortune, if necessary, and I would do the same. Now I have kept you standing here all this time, listening to an old man's maunderings; let me show you your room. Up this stair, you see, to the first landing, then through this swing door, and right through to the back; now a little to the left, the end of this passage, and there you are in the connecting buildings I told you of behind my father's addition; this room abuts on the old castle, but it's all right; there are no ghosts, so far as I know, and if there are, they are the ghosts of my own people, and have far too much courtesy to annoy my guest, especially one who has done so much for me as you have.'

It was a comfortable room into which he ushered me, an old-fashioned paper on the wall, well-padded easy-chairs covered with old chintz, and a bed inviting repose, with curtains of similar material.

'Come down when you are ready, or not until you like,' said my host; 'we dine at seven. The doctor will be here to dinner, no one else; I trust you to make yourself quite at home.'

He left me, and I sank into an arm-chair to think the position out. Somehow my distrust of the old man revived. Why had he so strongly insisted on his Highland blood? I had had all the pedigree before me, and, so far as I could remember, the Bradleys were as distinctly a sound English, middle-class, commercial stock as ever I had come across; there were a few female ancestors here and there with Scottish names, but nothing to show whence they came. A baronetcy given in return for some commercial aid given in time of need to the Government of the day—that was all.

There seemed no solution of this problem without further evidence, so I relegated it to the list of other questions connected with the case, to wait for more light, and proceeded to examine my room carefully. Evidently it occupied a projecting angle; in the wall to the right on entering was a window looking up the glen towards the deer forest, and commanding a lovely view of hills and corries rising one behind another in the most subtle gradations of blues and greys, touched here and there with rose, as the rainy afternoon had cleared to a beautiful Highland sunset. This window looked right along the back of the house—a strange irregular line of buildings. The wall opposite the door had also a window looking apparently into a small courtyard; immediately opposite was a blank whitewashed wall about seven or eight yards distant. I opened the window and peered out. A small yard paved with flagstones lay below—not much used, I guessed, for the flags were dark and mossed with age, and looked slimy with damp. To the right it was open, and I could see the same view up the glen as from the other window; to the left there was a wall, I conjectured, of the old ruined castle and a low arched opening, but whether it were a door or only an archway I could not make out.

Having so far satisfied my curiosity, I turned to the room itself. This seemed ordinary enough, just a comfortable old-fashioned room, substantial mahogany furniture, a few prints and water-colours on the wall of fair but not striking merit. I glanced at one after another with a somewhat languid interest, more to pass the time than anything else, till over the mantelpiece on the left hand wall on entering I saw a dainty pastel drawing, probably a century old, at least, but exquisitely preserved, and evidently most lovingly cared for in the past, though now the frame was tarnished, the gilding worn away in many places, and the glass dusty and stained; yet the picture was as fresh as ever. It was the face of a lovely woman with great masses of dark chestnut hair coiled loosely over the sweet pale brow; dark brown eyes, with that long yearning gaze in them that a man never forgets when once it has tugged at his heart—eyes slightly raised as if in prayer or deep meditation; a gentle oval face with the rosy lips lightly parted. That was all, but beneath was written in an old-fashioned, sloping Italian hand the single word 'Morag,' and a date just a century ago. ch2