Читать книгу Morag the Seal - J W Brodie Innes - Страница 4

Table of Contents

BY this time I found I had not very much more than time to dress by seven o'clock. In fact, it was just ten minutes to seven when I joined my host in the great drawing-room that occupied most of the first floor of the modern centre of the house. Sir John came forward with his usual old-fashioned, if somewhat overdone, courtesy. My mind was full of the pastel, and I asked him at once what he could tell me about it.

'Ah, yes!' he said. 'I know—a beautiful face, isn't it? But I'm sorry I can tell you nothing more whatsoever about it. One of the old Camerons, or rather, I should say, one of the younger branch who held the property for a time, but I don't really know which; I have tried to find out, too, for that pastel has interested me as much as you. I suppose she must have been a sort of cousin of mine; you know, we Highlanders count kinship a long way, and that girl, whoever she was, must have been a credit to the old stock in looks, at any rate. A handsome race we always were, Mr. Kingsburgh. Don't think me conceited; I am an old man now, and looks matter very little to me, but I'm proud of the old stock, and I don't mind confessing it. By the way, I want to ask you, among other things, if I can't change my name, or rather resume the old name of my family, now the old place has come back to us.'

I had no time to reply then, for there came a ring at the front-door bell.

'Ah, there's Dr. MacCulloch, punctual to the moment, as usual; an old-fashioned virtue, out of vogue now, they tell me, but a great virtue in my eyes.'

The doctor came in as he spoke—a little thin, loosely hung man, with a keen lean face and smooth black hair, and a pair of the kindliest brown eyes I ever saw in any human head, a man you would go to instinctively in any trouble, sure of help and sympathy to the very fullest measure of his capacity. A shrewd face, too, betokening, if physiognomy were to be trusted, a man of rare qualities in his profession, and a man to whom one might entrust one's life with confidence that all that skill could do would be done.

Sir John made us acquainted. 'Dr. MacCulloch is our greatest authority on everything about this district,' he said. 'He has all the local history at his fingers' ends. He has been of the utmost service to me in getting up the history of this old place and of my family. I trust, Mr. Kingsburgh, you will find his deep knowledge of use to you also in the tangled investigations that you have undertaken.'

The dinner-gong cut him short. I had discovered by this time that my host was an inveterate talker. So much the better, I thought; I shall be able to manage him easily. A silent man is always the most troublesome. Only we three sat down to an excellent though very plain dinner. The doctor was a perfect fount of stories of the place, and, indeed, of the whole country-side. Ancient history of the coming of Columba and his monks, comparatively modern stories of the romantic wanderings of Prince Charles and the devotion of the Highland lasses, stories of raids and wild fights and smuggling and cattle-lifting, with quaint touches about the manners and customs of many bygone ages. He told us of the old Camerons, of the sieges the mouldering old castle had been through, of the gradual fall into poverty consequent on their wild and reckless hospitality mainly, of how they came to live at last, poor but proud, in the humble farm-building, cultivating a couple of hundred acres or so for sheer maintenance, while all their broad lands were in the hands of creditors, and held by trustees; how at last, a large proportion of the debts being paid off, they had gone to live in the Dower House, with a small but sufficient income; how investments failed and they were again in trouble.

'Very sad, very pathetic,' said Sir John. 'I can hardly bear to think of it now, though I was very bitter against them once for having the lands I thought should be ours; that was when I was quite a boy, before my father acquired the lands. I am so glad now that he did what he did, and gave a fair, even a large, price for them, which I trust has made the last Camerons comfortable and comparatively prosperous. Doctor, do you know even yet Mr. Kingsburgh can't quite understand my title. Can't you put the gist of it in a nut-shell? We shall want your help often, I expect, for I know I am intolerably verbose, and I think my solicitors must be more so. They seem to have raised so many points that the real issue has got lost among them.'

'The main point is simple enough,' said the doctor. 'The property, like many of our Highland estates, is entailed on females as well as males. Well, there were two brothers, and the eldest had only a daughter, the other had sons. Of course, the property should have gone to the daughter, but it never had gone to a girl, and somehow the deed of entail wasn't forthcoming, and it was quietly assumed that it was a tail male, and the nephew succeeded without opposition, and his descendants were the old Cameron family. The daughter married, and she, again, had a daughter, and their descendants are the Bradleys.'

'Yes! yes!' I said, a trifle nettled, though I would not admit it, at my peculiar province being thus invaded by an outsider who presumed to tell me how a title was made up—'Yes! I know all that. But where's the deed of entail or any proof of its terms? and where are all the records of that time? Where are the registers of the births of these people—the daughter and the nephews—and their marriages, and all the rest of it? The whole thing has vanished into thin air, and there are all sorts of strange legends of Scotch marriages and holograph wills, and such like, but not an ounce of evidence of any part of the story.'

'As to the deed,' he said, 'curiously enough, the original has, as you say, mysteriously disappeared. Of course, it should have been recorded, but the lawyers tell me it wasn't, and I suppose they know. But I have a copy. It turned up only a day or two ago when a local solicitor was clearing out a lot of old rubbish from his office. I'll bring it round for you to see. As to the registers, they were in that old ruined kirk that you passed on your way here.'

I was getting rather bored by this talk, wherein it seemed to me that the doctor was discoursing much on what he knew very little about, and I seized the chance of changing the conversation.

'Oh! that old kirk,' I said. 'Isn't that where they bury Morag the Seal? Doctor, I wish you'd tell me that story. I want to know all about these queer West Highland legends.'

I saw the doctor's face change, and he seemed to flash a warning note to me, which, however, I failed to catch or interpret; but the effect on Sir John was little short of startling. His face grew pale for a moment, then almost purple, and his eyes gleamed with anger or some other strong emotion.

'Confound it all!' he said. 'Are we never to get free from that degrading superstition? Oh! what a fraud all your Christianity, and your intellect, and all the rest of the sickening humbug is in the face of such rot as this! It's worse than the African savages—at least, they don't pretend to be Christians. Hang it, sir! the naked cannibal is a scholar and a gentleman beside your vaunted West Highlander.'

'Oh, it's all right, Sir John,' said the doctor calmly, looking steadily at our host as he spoke—'all right; there's hardly a breath of superstition left in the country now. Your liberality to the schools and the Free Kirk has brought a flood of light over the district.'

He was speaking slowly, deliberately, with a measured intonation, keeping his eyes fixed on the old gentleman's face. The purple hue gradually faded, but the eyes still gleamed wrathfully.

'Then why the devil does a comparative stranger, a man who knows nothing about the country, like Mr. Kingsburgh, bring up this loathsome, degrading story? We crush it down in one quarter, and it rises in another.'

'It's just because Mr. Kingsburgh is a stranger. I expect he has come across that wretched little book on Highland superstitions. There are a few copies still left in the country bookstalls.'

He looked at me with a meaning glance, which I immediately interpreted, and nodded, saying, 'Yes; I picked it up in a little book somewhere.'

'There you are,' said the doctor. 'Of course, Mr. Kingsburgh could not know how education and culture have progressed, especially since you, Sir John, have been here, and your late honoured father.'

I thought the doctor's tone was somewhat unctuous and unnatural. A moment later I realized that he was exercising some hypnotic influence over Sir John, which seemed to calm him without much effort. He lay back in his chair, drawing his breath in long gasps, as though breathing with greater difficulty, but otherwise quiet, with no trace of the recent violent explosion.

'Let me get you a drop of whisky, Sir John,' he said. 'You have been rather overtired to-day.'

So saying, he went to the sideboard to pour out the whisky. I watched him in a long mirror, and saw him slip a small silver case out of his pocket and adroitly pour a few drops from a tiny phial and fill a hypodermic syringe.

'Here you are,' he said, coming back quickly with the tumbler of spirit. Sir John's hand lay on the arm of his chair. The doctor took it, as if to feel the pulse, and dexterously inserted the needle. The patient seemed to take no notice, not even to be conscious of what he was doing. Withdrawing the needle, he laid his hand lightly on the old man's forehead with a stroking, upward motion. 'You are still a shade feverish,' he said. 'Go and lie down for a bit. Here, let me ring for James.' He touched the bell as he spoke. 'I'll take care of Mr. Kingsburgh. You can join us in an hour or so in the smoking-room if you feel up to it; if not—well, sleep, and you'll be as fit as a fiddle in the morning.'

Sir John's man appeared, and, leaning on his arm, the old man rose, saying with some evident effort: 'I have to crave your pardon, Mr. Kingsburgh. The doctor is right—I was overtired. I fear I am growing old—I leave you in good hands—I hope to rejoin you later—you will excuse me, I know—a little sleep, and I shall be myself again.'

He left the room, leaning rather heavily on the man's arm, and leaving me considerably astonished at the sudden outburst of causeless anger, the equally sudden collapse, the doctor's control over him, and, in fact, the whole bizarre scene.

'I'm afraid I made a somewhat unfortunate remark,' I said.

'You couldn't know—anyone might have said just the same—only it happens to be just a hobby of Sir John's—a hobby without much sense in it, as I think.'

'But do tell me, doctor. What on earth is the meaning of it all? I'm a simple London barrister, and all this sort of thing is new and strange to me. I have only been about six hours in this country, and it seems to me I have heard little else but Morag the Seal. Who and what is it?'

'Well,' he replied, 'in the present case you must allow it was yourself that introduced the topic. Neither Sir John nor I would wantonly have broached it. But have a cigar. I must play the host for a bit, till he comes back, if he does so. I'll have one, too, to keep you company, though it isn't often that I indulge. Well, where were we? Oh yes, Morag the Seal. Well, I fear I can't tell you much. You know, of course, that the Highlanders have strange ideas about seals. They regard them as semi-human. Sometimes a seal will take human shape and come up among the villagers; sometimes it's a man, sometimes it's a woman, but in any case woe betide those who are intimate with it, for they fall hopelessly in love with the thing, and it's not human, and it's as cruel as a beast and beautiful as a god. And sometimes, again, a man or a girl will go away to the sea and will become a seal, and you can see it swimming about near in to shore on moonlight nights, with a painful wail that cuts one's heart to hear.'

'I see. But what about Morag?'

'Oh! well, that's a local story. The old folk say that there was a seal-woman long ago among the old Camerons, and she is a sort of guardian spirit, or something, to the race. She comes to avenge any wrong done to them, and warns them of death or danger. She comes singing round the house when an heir is to be born to the family—a crooning old cradle-song of Skye she sings, and they call it "Morag's Song;" and she wails a coronach before the death of any of the old race. I'm just telling you what the people about here believe as firmly as they do in the Free Kirk.'

'But you yourself, doctor—what do you think about it? and what on earth makes Sir John so wild at the mere mention of a harmless bit of local folk-lore?'

'I think I can answer the last question in a way,' replied the doctor. 'Sir John a great deal more than half believes the old legend—maybe he has reason to; I can't say—but so it is, and consequently he dreads Morag—indeed, all the ordinary man's instinctive fear of a ghost is multiplied a hundredfold in him, and his instinct is to protect himself or crush down his fears by violent denials. It chances, too, unluckily, that he has very irritable nerves and rather a weak heart, hence such an outbreak and collapse as you have seen, for which I do not hold him any more responsible than I would for a sudden attack of lumbago; it is wholly physical. Fortunately, I have a certain hypnotic control over him, and a tiny hypodermic injection hardly ever fails to put him right in an hour or two.'

'Morphia?' I queried.

'No; a special Indian drug little known. I found it when I was a ship's doctor in my youth. The faculty won't recognize it, but I've used it with great benefit. You will see, too, the reason now why Sir John is so anxious to make out his claim to be true representative of the old Cameron race, though he would never admit this to you or to any other person—probably not even to me, who am more in his confidence than any other human being.'

'No, doctor, I'm hanged if I do see that part of it.'

'Why—don't you see?—Morag is a sort of tutelary spirit of the old Camerons. If Sir John is an interloper, she will persecute him, even, as he thinks, will ultimately kill him; but if he is the true representative and rightfully in possession of the property, she would guard and protect him.'

'But, surely, assuming that the story is true—really, Dr. MacCulloch, your Highland air must have infected me; I am talking as if these weird fairy-tales were actual—but surely, assuming this, Morag would know—a tutelary spirit can't require lawyers' evidence to know who is to be protected.'

'So any sane man would think, but, you see, on this point our poor friend isn't sane. We must allow there's a kink in his brain.'

'But tell me now your own opinion, doctor,' I said. 'Do you seriously think there's anything in it all?'

'You have asked me a hard question,' he answered, 'and one I would shirk answering if I could. Of course as a doctor I am necessarily somewhat of a materialist, and of course I must allow fully for delusions, and fancies, and hysteria, and all the other causes that drive men into seeing what is not there; but in sober truth, after making all these deductions and allowances on the most liberal scale, there is a residuum that is absolutely not to be so accounted for. There are without doubt strange things seen and heard that appear to have no assignable material cause. Persons of undoubted veracity and the most unimaginative of mortals have seen a strange woman wandering about the hills and woods and by the seashore on moonlit nights where certainly no living woman was or could be. I would put this also aside as delusion or imagination, but that coincident therewith things have been predicted to myself which have come absolutely true to date, and things happening in a distant part have been seen and described. Only three days ago my man came to me and told me I was wanted at a lonely farm ten miles away across the hills. I knew no messenger had, or could have, come, so I just asked, "What for?" The man said, "There's a child very bad—an accident. Take your surgical case; they think the child is dead now, but you'll save it." "Who told you?" I asked. "Morag," was the reply. Well, I had had experience of the sort of thing before, and I didn't feel justified in refusing to go. I took my surgical case as he said, and was just in time; a poor little boy had been badly hurt in a threshing-mill. I thought he was dead when I got there, but I pulled him through, and he'll do well now.'

'This Morag seems a beneficent fairy then,' I said.

'On this occasion it seems so, but her appearances often presage disaster.'

'Who sees her, and how does she appear?' I queried, greatly interested in the weird story.

'That again I can hardly tell you with any accuracy—the instances are so various as hardly to come within any rule. Sometimes it will be an old shepherd or boatman; sometimes a young lad or a girl. Sometimes they see only a strange woman walking slowly along the cliffs, or by the sea-shore, or in the depths of the woods. Sometimes she comes and talks to them—gives them a message, perhaps; as she did to my man the other day; sometimes, again, she will become intimate—will behave, in fact, like a living woman of flesh and blood, only no one knows where she lives, or who she belongs to, or whence she comes. This is the time when they fall in love with her, as that poor boy did who was drowned the other day.'

'Was there really any truth in that story?' I asked.

'Hard to say. I knew the boy and all his people; a strange, dreamy lad, not quite "all there," as our people say. Fond of wandering by himself in the woods and by the shore. He used to rave about a beautiful woman who came and walked beside him, and told him things; but none of his family ever met her, nor would he tell anyone anything about her. Certainly, once or twice, I myself saw him some distance off walking with a tall graceful woman, who clearly did not belong hereabouts. I only saw the back of her. She was dressed in some dark brown sort of material, pretty close-fitting. I described it to my wife, and she said, "That's a Princess robe you are talking of; no one wears that now, and no one ever saw one here." I don't know much about that sort of thing, but that's what she told me. Well, later on the boy got morbid and miserable—said his lady had left him, and laughed at him. And then he was found drowned.'

'His uncle shot the seal, didn't he?'

'So they told me, and I was called to go down to the beach to see a dead body washed ashore, but when I got there (I was a little late in going) the body had been taken away.'

'Did no one see it, then?'

'No one, so far as I know. The Fiscal heard of it and came down yesterday, and, if you'll believe me, the very men who had sent for me—old Sandy Macpherson and his son—swore they had never seen or heard of such a thing. Sandy had shot a seal and it had drifted out again to sea, that's all they would admit. By Jove! how time goes! It's past ten. Sir John will not be coming down again to-night. With your permission, Mr. Kingsburgh, I'll just run up and see that he is comfortable for the night. I suspect he has fallen fast asleep—I hope so—and he'll be quite fit again to-morrow; and as soon as I've seen him I'll get away home to bed.'

So saying the cheery doctor bustled out of the room, and I betook myself upstairs, feeling, sooth to say, as if I had suddenly waked up in a new world. London and my friends there, my profession, all the old familiar landmarks, seemed to be almost on another planet. My very beliefs were changing: I was living in a fairy-tale, and seriously asking myself about the reality of apparitions of seal-women and kindred strange and uncanny legends.

For half an hour or so I turned over a magazine in a dreamy fashion to try and compose my thoughts; then I got into bed, still trying to adjust my mind to my surroundings.

The window I have mentioned that looked up the glen was on the wall to the right hand; the other window, that looked on the little square court, was at the foot of the bed. The night had turned hot and sultry after the rain. I pulled up the blind and flung the window wide open to let in some air, then back to bed, and in a short time I was dozing.

It must have been about twelve o'clock that I suddenly started broad awake, and heard sounds as of muffled feet outside the window at the foot of the bed. I thought it was some domestic movement of servants, and wondered dreamily at their being so late astir. Lazily I opened my eyes and looked out of the window. The whitewashed wall opposite gleamed strangely white, and at first I fancied the moonlight must be full upon it. Then I wondered vaguely why the moon should shine there, where naturally the shadow of the house would fall; and as the sleep cleared from my eyes and I saw plainly, it was evident that some strong light was on the wall, though from whence it came I could not conjecture. All my faculties were now fully alive, and I became certain that something unusual was going on. I sat up in bed and looked intently at the wall opposite, when what was my surprise to see a silhouetted figure of a man with a crisp beard and a Highland bonnet pass across, clear and distinct as the shadow on a magic-lantern, then two men side by side, one clear and sharply defined, the other blurred as though out of focus. They carried something between them, as it seemed, shoulder high; slowly they passed along, followed by two more, the long dark shadow of something between them. All at once a light seemed to flash on my mind: it was a coffin they carried, these weird shadowy men, but where to? or from whence? and whence came that strange light? I listened intently for the sound of footsteps, but there were none, only from far up the glen came a long wailing cry—perhaps a gull, or some night bird, perhaps; but it was useless to try to conjecture—then through the stillness the faint sounds of tapping as I had heard them on the drive from the station, the tapping of a hammer on a coffin. The light on the wall was beginning to fail—I know not by what queer trick of illumination it chanced, but for a moment it seemed to gleam full on the pastel—and at the same time I thought I heard voices, and among them, soft and low as they whispered, I fancied I detected Sir John's tones.

I sprang out of bed and ran to the window and looked out. Not a sign of anything moving, the little flagged court was still and silent as the grave. Had I dreamed? I could hardly think so.

Mystified and ill at ease I went back to bed, and it was perhaps small wonder that my sleep was troubled that night.