The McBrides Part 9

"Ou ay, Dan, mo leanabh, ou ay; but I cannot thole the thought o' his spirit fleeing among the cauld clear stars, for there's nae heaven for him if his ain piper is no there to cheer him, or mak' him wae. Och, ay, I'll tak' the dram, but I'll be sore afraid there's plenty o'

pipers in h.e.l.l wi' the devils dancing on hot coals tae their springs, and he'll maybe be well enough."

As Dan put round the drink the doleful mood lifted a wee, and the lads started to tell stories.

"I mind me," said Donald, the shepherd--"I mind o' a night I had on the hills at the time o' the lambing, and in the grey o' the morning, when the rocks are whispering one to another, and will be just back in their places when a man comes near them, and when ye hear voices speaking not plainly, because o' the scish o' the burn on the gravelly mounds, but if ye listen till the burn is quiet a wee, ye'll be hearing the laughing o' the Wee Folk at their games.

"Mora, in the grey o' the morning, I would be just among the sprits[2]

above the loch-side, when there came an eerie '_swish, swish_' at my side, slow and soft. I thought it would be a hare, and I stopped to let her get away, for I would not be crossing her path, but see her I could not, and I turned round to speak to 'Glen,' and there was no dog there at all.

"Ay, well, I whistled and I whistled in that dreary place till the noise of it put a fear on me, and I started on again, and there at my side was the swish, swish in the sprits, and I would be poking my crook among them, but when I would be stopping it would be stopping, and I felt my hair bristle on my neck for the fear on me; but I pushed on, looking at my feet and all round me, till something inside of myself made me be looking up, and there was something before me, wi' eyes glowering at me--oh, big, big it was, as a stack o' hay, and it was in my path, and I shut my eyes and stood, for it would kill me. And when nothing would be happening I opened my two eyes, and it was not there, and then I looked round with just my head, and aw!"--and a shudder went through the shepherd, and he gulped at his drink,--"it was just at my own very shoulder grinning at me. And I ran and ran, skirling like a hare, and it behind me--ran till I felt my heart beating in my throat, and ran through burn and briars and hedges till I ran into the barn and fell on the straw, and remembered no more."

"And why," says I, "did you not run into your ain house?"

"Are you not knowing that?" says Donald. "If I had run to my house and the door shut, I would just be fallin' dead on the doorstep."

"There's McGilp," says Dan. "He aye carries a sail needle in his kep lining, and he'll say it's just to be handy, but it's aye been in the same place. An' what will it be for, Neil Crubach?"

Neil looked up, his blue eyes hazy with dreaming things out of the past. His face was very beautiful, and his body ma.s.sive and strong, but he halted on his leg, and could walk but lamely.

"Oh," says Neil, with a kindly smile, "you will be knowing that surely, and you a McBride, and reared among the rocks and the bonnie heather.

"It will just be that when our forefathers would be among the hill sat night, many and many's the time the evil one would be coming to them and speaking, and sometimes he would be coming in the form of a black dog, like the Black Hound o' Nourn, wi' a red tongue lolling from his mouth, and sometimes he would be a wild cat louping among the rocks, hissing and spitting wi' his eyes lowin', and the old wise ones in the far glen found the power in the unknown places in the hills, and they said to the young hunters and warriors, 'Aye be carrying steel, for steel will sever all bargains,' but a skein-dubh is the best to be carrying in the hills, for a devil will not come near the black-hefted knife wi' a strong bright blade--no," and Neil Crubach smiled, and looked among the red embers for his dreams.

And then, still looking into the embers, he began to speak in his soft-voiced way--

"They're bonnie wee things, the Wee Folk, and merry as the lambs in June.

"When my leg would be troubling me sorely in my mind, and me a lad fit to break a man's back, and to fling the great stone from me like a chuckle--ay, in these long-ago days, there was a la.s.s, and, och, she was just to me in my mind like the sun rising from the sea on a summer morning, and I could have taken her away in my own arms, for I would be fierce like my folk, in their hate and their love, and whiles I would be feeling in me the wish to be killing her nearly just to watch her eyes opening like the sky when the white woolly clouds are drifting apart, and among the hills when I wandered I would be dreaming of holding her in my arms, for they would be great arms in these old days; and one day she came, and I told her all that was in my heart, and she said never a word, but just put her white round arms on my shoulder and her head on my breast."

For a long time he was silent, and I saw the servant la.s.sies look at one another, their terrors all forgot in the beauty of his picture, for there was colour in his very tone.

"I would be carrying her in my arms, for was she not but a mountain flower, but when I would have taken her up I saw her eyes with a great pity in them for my lameness, and I felt h.e.l.l rising in my heart, for were not my folk straight in their limbs, and nimble as goats among the rocks? and then she saw my face, and I think there would be black murder in it, but for myself, not for my white flower, for Neil Crubach I hated when my love looked on this poor limb (it was only a little shorter, but I knew the pride that was in his race).

"Then my love looked into my soul.

"'Neil,' she said, and drew my head down to her--'Neil, my hero, take me up,' and I took her up, and she lay curled in my arms, with her lips at my neck, and then she whispered, 'Neil, you will not be angry if I say it now.'

"'Never angry, mo ghaoil,' and my heart stopped to be listening.

"'I wish--I just wish, Neil, mo ghaoil, that you would be more lame, for my mother will be seeing us too soon, and I want aye to stay here.'"

Neil was just thinking aloud.

"A year, just a wee year, with her smiling at her spinning, and running to meet me in the far fields to be carried home--ay, she would be calling my arms 'home,'--and when we would be ceilidhing she would be saying, 'Neil, it will be time your la.s.s was "home," and her eyes would be laughing at me, and no one else would be knowing at all.'

"A year, a wee year, and she lay like a white flower, still and cold, and all my love could not make her hear.

"And I sat by her silent spinning-wheel and waited till she should come back night by night; I forgot the old kirkyard, for how would the earth be keeping my love from coming to me, and as I sat came my old mother, and she was wise and gentle to her lame son.

"'My son, if you would be lying behind the wee hill when the moon is young, maybe you would be forgiving your old mother'--for when she was sad she blamed herself for the fall that left me lame, even when I laughed and made nothing of it in her hearing.

"Behind the wee hill I lay when the moon was young and the gra.s.s was cool on my brow, and I would be hearing the breathings of the hills in the silence as they slept, and the moon sailed behind a black cloud and all the world was dark, and I heard a great laughing in the dark near me like diamonds and pearls sparkling, so wee was the sound and so bright the laughing, and then the moon sailed out clear silver in a blue sky, and there were all the Wee Folk at their games on the short turf. Bravely, bravely were they dressed in their green coats, and near me, sitting and looking with longing eyes I saw my own love, and she was looking down a wee, wee track in the gra.s.s, but it seemed to me hundreds of miles. And my love cried and waved as she looked down the path, and I heard her laughing, my own love, and then, 'Hurry fast, Neil, and take me home'; and again I heard her laughing joyously, and then in the track of gra.s.s, away and away, I saw a-coming one that halted on his foot, and he was away and away, but my love clapped her hands, and ran down the path with her arms stretched out to be carried home, and I saw all the Wee Folk run to welcome the one that halted on his foot, and I knew that the path that they were travelling so fast was just Time, and slowly, slowly only can Neil Crubach march, but she is running to meet me--my love."

By this time old Kate had forgotten her troubles, and was away back in her youth, when, if all accounts be true, there were few, few fit to hold a candle to her wild beauty or devilry.

"Och, the nights like this would not be hindering the ploys when my leg was the talk o' a parish, and my cheeks like the wild red rose. We had a' the lads to pick and choose among, Bell and me; and mora, it was not gear they cam' courting for.

"There was a time we slept in the bochan to be nearer the beasts, we would be telling the old ones, but maybe it was not for that at all, for your grandfather was raiking then, Dan McBride, it kinna runs in the breed o' ye. Ay, well, we were in bed, Bell and me, when the Laird o' Nourn whistled low outside. 'The devil take ye, Kate,' Bell would be crying, 'he'll be in,' for there was only divots in the window in the bochan. 'He will that,' says I, and I saw the divots tumbling, and in he came a.s.sourying wi' two o' us, and us feart when he gied his great nicker o' a laugh, for fear he would be awakening the old folks, or rouse the dogs, although they kent him well enough, a rake like themselves."

"Was he no' the auld devil?" says Dan with a laugh; "two o' ye, and the best-looking la.s.sies in the countryside."

"He wasna aul'," cried Kate--"aul'; he was as like you as two trout.

He got us two suits o' sailors' claes and he cam' tae see us dressed in them, and bonny sailors we made, Bell and me, and we went to the Glen and called on our uncles. It was dark inside, and they were sitting ower the fire talking slow and loud, and we went in.

"'What will you be wantin' here in G.o.d's name?' said Angus.

"'We've nae money and nae meat,' said I, 'and our s.h.i.+p has sailed without us, and we're starving.'

"'Starving, John, starving, will ye be hearin' the poor sailor lads.

We have not got any money, John, to be giving, but gie the lads an egg apiece, John, an egg apiece; and John brought us an egg, and then Bell winked at me, and 'Ye hard old scart,' says I in the Gaelic, and he got up on his feet, for he would be knowing my voice, and he could not be understanding it at all, and when we had finished our devilry I gave him the egg what I was fit and ran, and Angus would be crying--

"'Give me the graip, John; give me the graip. Angus will kill boas (both).'

"So an' on the night wore through; whiles we would be telling old stories, and there would be times when we sat silent except for auld Kate whimpering at the fireside.

"These were the days and these were the nights, ochone and ochone, for the like o' them we'll be seeing nevermore."

And in the morning the women made a meal, moving stealthily about the house and keeping together when the men went out to their beasts--for birth or death, wedding or christening, the beasts must be looked to, and that's good farming. The seas were breaking white in the bay and the s.h.i.+ps lay at the stretch of their cables, but although we searched long and ardently, we could not find the _Seagull_. We were downcast and silent, and no man looked at his neighbour, for the fear was on all of our hearts that McGilp and his crew were lost, and at last I voiced my dread to the innkeeper.

"Ye do not ken McGilp to be speaking that way," said he, and his voice was hoa.r.s.e as a raven's croak. "We could not have run a cargo last night wi' the sea like a boiling pot; and if the _Gull_ had anch.o.r.ed off the Rhu Ban Cove there would be plenty to be wondering why she was there. No, no, my lad; there's sailor men on the _Gull_, and a wee thing will not frighten them. She just ran before it, man, and she's standing off and on till the night."

And so it proved, for that night McGilp himself was rowed ash.o.r.e, and his eyes were red as a rabbit's wi' the las.h.i.+ng o' the sea, and the white salt was dried on his beard.

With him was McNeilage, his mate, his face red and s.h.i.+ning like a well-fed minister, and the drink to his thrapple.

"A great night last night," said he. "Och, a night like the old roaring times when every s.h.i.+p on G.o.d's seven seas was a fortune for the lifting."

We were on the sh.o.r.e at the Rhu Ban, working and toiling at the cargo with the oars m.u.f.fled, and no man speaking above his breath, and when we had the cargo in the coves, and the seaweed and trash from the sh.o.r.e concealing it, we made our way to the outhouse where McKelvie's la.s.s had waited, for there were friends of the dead Laird's in the house, and new men are hard to trust in the smuggling. And at the outhouse I spoke to fierce Ronny McKinnon as he stood among the crew.

"Ronny," said I, "there was a bonny la.s.s putting herself about for ye, or ye might have been listening to mice cheeping instead o' the waves out there."

"I've been in many's the ploy," says Ronny, "and the la.s.sies liked me well enough, except just one."

"Would her name be Mirren now?" said I.

"I'll no' say but it might just be that," says Ronny, with a thinking look in his eyes.

"There was a la.s.s o' that name, on a Hielan' pony, met Dan and me at Bothanairidh the day before the snow," says I. "She talked about ye for a while."