CHAPTER IX
It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and
his mother came. It was even more
beautiful than I had thought it would be. They
arrived late in the afternoon, and when I took
them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening
the moor, and even the rough, gray towers
of the castle were stained rose-color. There
was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering
before they went to sleep in the ivy. The
glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses
of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there
was such stillness! When we drew our three
chairs in a little group together and looked out
on it all, I felt as if we were almost in heaven.
"Yes! yes!" Hector said, looking slowly--
round; "it is all here."
"Yes," his mother added, in her lovely, lovely
voice. "It is what made you Ysobel."
It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that
deep, quiet way, and to think that it was part
of me and I a part of it. The climbing moon
was trembling with beauty. Tender evening
airs quivered in the heather and fern, and the
late birds called like spirits.
Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn
had held me in her arms under the apple-tree
while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her
son as if he were an archangel walking on the
earth. Perhaps my thoughts were exaggerated,
but it seemed so marvelous that he should be
moving among us, doing his work, seeing and
talking to his friends, and yet that he should
know that at any moment the great change
might come and he might awaken somewhere
else, in quite another place. If he had been
like other men and I had been like other girls,
I suppose that after that night when I heard the
truth I should have been plunged into the
darkest woe and have almost sobbed myself to
death. Why did I not? I do not know except
--except that I felt that no darkness could come
between us because no darkness could touch
him. He could never be anything but alive
alive. If I could not see him it would only be
because my eyes were not clear and strong
enough. I seemed to be waiting for something.
I wanted to keep near him.
I was full of this feeling as we sat together
on the terrace and watched the moon. I could
scarcely look away from him. He was rather
pale that evening, but there seemed to be a
light behind his pallor, and his eyes seemed to
see so much more than the purple and yellow
of the heather and gorse as they rested on them.
After I had watched him silently for a little
while I leaned forward and pointed to a part
of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze
of gorse in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
"That is where I was sitting when Wee
Brown Elspeth was first brought to me," I said.
He sat upright and looked. "Is it?" he
answered. "Will you take me there to-morrow?
I have always wanted to see the place."
"Would you like to go early in the morning?
The mist is more likely to be there then, as it
was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful.
Would you like to do that?" I asked him.
"Better than anything else!" he said. "Yes,
let us go in the morning."
"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this
evening," I said. "I feel as if--" I broke off
and began again. "I have a puzzled feeling
about her. This afternoon I found some
manuscript pushed behind a book on a high shelf in
the library. Angus said he had hidden it there
because it was a savage story he did not wish
me to read. It was the history of the feud
between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm
of the Glen. Dark Malcolm's child was called
Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--
five hundred, I think. It makes me feel so
bewildered when I remember the one I played
with."
"It was a bloody story," he said. "I heard
it only a few days before we met at Sir Ian's
house in London."
That made me recall something.
"Was that why you started when I told you
about Elspeth?" I asked.
"Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was
a little descendant who had inherited her name,"
he answered, a trifle hurriedly. "I confess I
was startled for a moment."
I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed
it unconsciously. I could not help seeing a
woesome picture.
"Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from
her heart and her brown hair spread over her
dead father's breast!" I stopped, because a
faint memory came back to me. "Mine," I
stammered--"mine--how strange!--had a great
stain on the embroideries of her dress. She
looked at it--and looked. She looked as if she
didn't like it--as if she didn't understand how
it came there. She covered it with ferns and
bluebells."
I felt as if I were being drawn away into a
dream. I made a sudden effort to come back.
I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my
hand, sitting upright.
"I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about
her," I said. "Of course, they must have
known. I wonder why I never thought of
asking questions before."
It was a strange look I met when I
involuntarily turned toward him--such an absorbed,
strange, tender look!
I knew he sat quite late in the library that
night, talking to Angus after his mother and I
went to our rooms. Just as I was falling asleep
I remember there floated through my mind a
vague recollection of what Angus had said to
me of asking his advice about something; and
I wondered if he would reach the subject in their
talk, or if they would spend all their time in
poring over manuscripts and books together.
The moor wore its most mysterious look when
I got up in the early morning. It had hidden
itself in its softest snows of white, swathing
mist. Only here and there dark fir-trees showed
themselves above it, and now and then the
whiteness thinned or broke and drifted. It
was as I had wanted him to see it--just as I
had wanted to walk through it with him.
We had met in the hall as we had planned,
and, wrapped in our plaids because the early
morning air was cold, we tramped away together.
No one but myself could ever realize
what it was like. I had never known that there
could be such a feeling of companionship in the
world. It would not have been necessary for
us to talk at all if we had felt silent. We should
have been saying things to each other without
words. But we did talk as we walked--in quiet
voices which seemed made quieter by the mist,
and of quiet things which such voices seemed
to belong to.
We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where
a path led at once on to the moor. Part of the
park itself had once been moorland, and was
dark with slender firs and thick grown with
heather and broom. On the moor the mist grew
thicker, and if I had not so well known the path
we might have lost ourselves in it. Also I
knew by heart certain little streams that rushed
and made guiding sounds which were sometimes
loud whispers and sometimes singing babbles.
The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather was
in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its
freshness.
"There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it
all," Hector MacNairn said to me. His voice
was rather like his mother's. It always seemed
to say so much more than his words.
"We might be ghosts," I answered. "We
might be some of those the mist hides because
they like to be hidden."
"You would not be afraid if you met one of
them?" he said.
"No. I think I am sure of that. I should
feel that it was only like myself, and, if I could
hear, might tell me things I want to know."
"What do you want to know?" he asked me,
very low. "You!"
"Only what everybody wants to know--that
it is really AWAKENING free, ready for wonderful
new things, finding oneself in the midst of
wonders. I don't mean angels with harps and
crowns, but beauty such as we see now; only
seeing it without burdens of fears before and
behind us. And knowing there is no reason to
be afraid. We have all been so afraid. We
don't know how afraid we have been--of everything."
I stopped among the heather and threw my
arms out wide. I drew in a great, joyous
morning breath.
"Free like that! It is the freeness, the
light, splendid freeness, I think of most."
"The freeness!" he repeated. "Yes, the
freeness!"
"As for beauty," I almost whispered, in a sort
of reverence for visions I remembered, "I have
stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
loveliness which made me tremble. One's soul
could want no more in any life. But `Out on
the Hillside' I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
ecstasy. That was the freeness."
"Yes--it was the freeness," he answered.
We brushed through the heather and the
bracken, and flower-bells shook showers of
radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and
sometimes lifted before us, and opened up
mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
later. The sun tried to break through, and
sometimes we walked in a golden haze.
We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced
sidewise at my companion as we made our
soundless way over the thick moss. He looked
so strong and beautiful. His tall body was so
fine, his shoulders so broad and splendid! How
could it be! How could it be! As he tramped
beside me he was thinking deeply, and he
knew he need not talk to me. That made me
glad--that he should know me so well and
feel me so near. That was what he felt when
he was with his mother, that she understood
and that at times neither of them needed words.
Until we had reached the patch of gorse
where we intended to end our walk we did not
speak at all. He was thinking of things which
led him far. I knew that, though I did not
know what they were. When we reached the
golden blaze we had seen the evening before it
was a flame of gold again, because--it was only
for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
and the sun was shining on it.
As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh!
how strange and beautiful it was!--Mr. MacNairn
came back. That was what it seemed to
me--that he came back. He stood quite still
a moment and looked about him, and then he
stretched out his arms as I had stretched out
mine. But he did it slowly, and a light came
into his face.
"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you
said and found himself--the self he knew, but
light, free, splendid--remembering all the ages
of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some
black, aimless plunge, and suddenly seeing all
the childish uselessness of it--how he would
stand and smile! How he would stand and
SMILE!"
Never had I understood anything more
clearly than I understood then. Yes, yes!
That would be it. Remembering all the waste
of fear, how he would stand and SMILE!
He was smiling himself, the golden gorse
about him already losing its flame in the light
returning mist-wraiths closing again over it,
when I heard a sound far away and high up the
moor. It sounded like the playing of a piper.
He did not seem to notice it.
"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How
mysterious it is, this opening and closing! I like
it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
Ysobel."
He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on,
and laid on it the little strapped basket Jean
had made ready for us. He shook the mist
drops from our own plaids, and as I was about
to sit down I stopped a moment to listen.
"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes
before," I said. "What is a piper doing out on
the moor so early?"
He listened also. "It must be far away. I
don't hear it," he said. "Perhaps it is a bird
whistling."
"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not
a bird. It's the pipes, and playing such a
strange tune. There! It has stopped!"
But it was not silent long; I heard the tune
begin again much nearer, and the piper was
plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.
The mist was clearing, and floated about like
a thin veil through which one could see objects.
At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
something moving. It was a man who was
playing the pipes. It was the piper, and almost
at once I knew him, because it was actually my
own Feargus, stepping proudly through the
heather with his step like a stag on the hills.
His head was held high, and his face had a sort
of elated delight in it as if he were enjoying
himself and the morning and the music in a
new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my
feet and called to him.
"Feargus!" I cried. "What--"
I knew he heard me, because he turned and
looked at me with the most extraordinary
smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced
man, but this smile had a kind of startling
triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for he
whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as
triumphant as the smile. But he did not
answer, and actually passed in and out of sight
in the mist.
When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too.
When I turned to speak in my surprise, he had
fixed on me his watchful look.
"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I
exclaimed. "And why did he pass by in such
a hurry without answering? He must have
been to a wedding and have been up all night.
He looked--" I stopped a second and laughed.
"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.
"Pale! That won't do--though he certainly
didn't look ill." I laughed again. "I'm
laughing because he looked almost like one of the
White People."
"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.
"Quite sure. No one else is the least like
Feargus. Didn't you see him yourself?"
"I don't know him as well as you do; and
there was the mist," was his answer. "But he
certainly was not one of the White People when
I saw him last night."
I wondered why he looked as he did when
he took my hand and drew me down to my
place on the plaid again. He did not let it go
when he sat down by my side. He held it in
his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
a moment or so; and then he bent his head and
kissed it long and slowly two or three times.
"Dear little Ysobel!" he said. "Beloved,
strange little Ysobel."
"Am I strange!" I said, softly.
"Yes, thank God!" he answered.
I had known that some day when we were
at Muircarrie together he would tell me what
his mother had told me--about what we three
might have been to one another. I trembled
with happiness at the thought of hearing him
say it himself. I knew he was going to say it
now.
He held my hand and stroked it. "My
mother told you, Ysobel--what I am waiting
for?" he said.
"Yes."
"Do you know I love you?" he said, very low.
"Yes. I love you, too. My whole life
would have been heaven if we could always
have been together," was my answer.
He drew me up into his arms so that my
cheek lay against his breast as I went on,
holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket
and whispering: "I should have belonged to
you two, heart and body and soul. I should
never have been lonely again. I should have
known nothing, whatsoever happened, but
tender joy."
"Whatsoever happened?" he murmured.
"Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know
nothing but tender joy. I think you CAN. `Out on
the Hillside!' Let us remember."
"Yes, yes," I said; " `Out on the Hillside.' "
And our two faces, damp with the sweet mist,
were pressed together.
