Читать книгу Children of Tempest - Munro Neil - Страница 6

Table of Contents

For little Anna there were many by-names in the Isles. So rare indeed they thought her that, following the Gaelic custom, which makes us seldom speak directly of the thing we love, lest heaven or the jealous elves have their remembrance called to it and something happen, her just cognomen was scarcely breathed among her brother’s people. She was in the language “Herself,” or “Yon Little One,” or “The Lady of the White House.” But oftenest was she “MacNeil’s Treasure”—a play upon the island story of the fifty-years’ fortune.

When she went through the townships scattered among the hollows round the rock of Stella Maris, bringing the wind in her wonderful flowing garments, a dash of the sun in her hair for the blackest hut, the folk would for ever be wondering how Uist had got on without her while she was away in France. The households she could gladden in a little short winter afternoon—oh, ’twas a miracle entirely! and yet ’twould be by trivial acts as natural to her as smile or song—by no more than a word of merriment or a turned pillow for one bedridden, or a housewifely question for that other busy at her loom with the crucifix over it; by a sort of timid make-believe at manly pleasantry for burners of kelp, that made them laugh as she passed their kilns near the rocks of Torrisdale; or by a distant call to fishermen barking their nets along the shore.

“There’s Herself!” the young fellows would cry, seeing her gown flap in morning breezes as her airy figure ran down the hill from the White House, and she sped for a hut where possibly some poor creature could not believe it morning till Herself appeared, the true dawn, the best of sunshine, at the door. And they would stand—these bold admiring lads—among their nets or jump upon a thwart to look after her, but always with some other thing to do suddenly if she should happen to look round and see them. Her presence among the little clustered dwellings seemed to change the air, as was said; the busiest housewife at her fire knew the girl was there without, and would hasten to her door to see Little Anna, and to say “God be between her and harm!” When she entered a house the gravest smiled without knowing why; when she had gone, dulness seized on the blythest company, and there was an understanding that at any ceilidh she should be the last to leave for home. There was one, indeed, a tacksman, a gallant sentimental man, who, when gatherings were in his house, was used to seek the loft and go to bed before she had departed, having a happiness in hearing her voice below, yet trying to fall asleep before this blessing had gone from under his roof-tree, leaving behind the commonplace. Girls loved her garments, unlike any they had ever seen before, magnificent beyond words, made for her, as the bard of Hellisdale said in verse, “from the melody of the birds.” The boldest would venture to finger her cloak unnoticed, delicately, tenderly, as if it were a portion of her body. As for the bairns, dear hearts! Herself was another Mary: how often the wildest boys on their knees in Stella Maris were looking at her and making of that their true devotion? Outside they would stand in bands open-eyed, admiring, ready to join her laughter.

The best gifts we get are from those who have nothing but themselves to give us. The Lady of the White House gave herself in affection, in understanding, in the help of her wit and her hands. She had left the Isles when she was scarcely more than a child, and shy beyond expression; she came back a woman, at ease with herself and the world, to be the mistress of their hearts. In three months she had grown as needful to the happiness of Uist as the very chapel on the windy hill.

But from Michaelmas Day till All Saints’ Day the townships had to be doing without her presence, so that bleak season seemed more bleak than usual. The old man her uncle was dying, and they sat up with him—as they say—waiting on his end. For himself there were three things only to make him sorry to go travelling—he had a craving to see England again, that he had marched through when scarcely out of his teens on an escapade with Charles Edward; he had a common vanity of his race, to make up the tale of his years to a round four score and ten, and yet a twelvemonth was awanting; and he wished to see Little Anna the veritable mistress of the Loch Arkaig gold.

She valued the prospect of such a fortune no more than a handful of shells, except for the opportunity it might give of bringing happiness to others. To get a new tower for Stella Maris—an old project of the poor people, who had built the church with their own hands (the children carrying up the sand)—was one of the earliest notions that entered her head; the mention of it always found her brother Ludovick cold. For him the hidden fortune was trash unspeakable; that a priest should have gone to hell for the sake of it made him count it, from the days of his own frocking, a thing cursed. The folk of the island soon discovered how bitter the Lord of the Isles could be upon this topic—the only one that ever seemed to rouse his anger. Between his uncle and himself the mention of it was never breathed.

And now Dermosary was dying. There was no doubt about it. He had been anointed for the grave. He had been wild in youth, and fierce beyond mid age, a man of rock, and the sea waves salt and beating in his veins so deceiving him that he insisted every day he should sit up and keep death out of him by clenching his teeth; but each day he was a little more humped in his chair, his teeth more frequently fell apart.

That the end had come was, in the long-run, first discovered to the people by a boy. He had been playing with his fellows round the White House byre on an early evening and hid behind a door. Standing in the dark there, breathless with his running, and chuckling silently to himself, the boy put his hand upon a plank that shared his concealment. It was broader than a boat’s thwart, polished to the touch, higher than a man. For a little he held it in front of him and cried upon the others, and then his finger went inquiring along its edge. He felt the plank swell out above his head and then fall in again,—to any boy in Uist that shape of wood was eloquent—he had come upon a stretching-board! His horror would not have been greater had it been the body itself for which the stretcher was intended; he went out screaming and ran home, as we say, on the four oars.

Twenty minutes later old MacNeil of Dermosary was dead. The black house people, called to the lee of their dwellings by the boy’s alarm, knew it from the yellower glow of candles in the room where he had so long been prisoner.

“God sain him!” said the women. The men took off their bonnets. “May the Possessor keep him in His keeping!” said they, and thought just a moment upon some stuff concealed beyond their discovery between the Mingulay rocks and Ronay. Some went up to the White House and sat the night through with the candles round the body, silent and discreet for the sake of Herself and Father Ludovick, though in any other home in Uist they would have passed the evening differently. At morning, too, others came with funeral gifts—cakes, halibut, and fowls; and the day was silent, with no noise of looms or oars, as if it had been a day of Obligation; not that such was customary, for death is too frequent in the Isles, but that, loving their priest and Little Anna, the good folk felt that thus they must honour the clay below their roofs. Even the children were kept indoors, and the wind had it all its own way, without a challenge from laugh or song.

Born and bred among tempests, he went properly in tempest to his rest; for very high and shrill blew the north wind that day on Uist of the sheldrakes. When the people were at Mass the sea-pyet came on glancing wings and cried around Our Lady Star of the Sea, its call breaking the solemn silences.