Kitabı oku: «The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories», sayfa 6

SHUDDERMAN SOLDIER

BEYOND the Beannan is the Bog of the Fairy-Maid, and a stone-put farther is the knowe where Shudderman Soldier died in the snow. He was a half-wit who was wise enough in one thing, for he knew the heart of a maid, and the proof of it came in the poor year, when the glen gathered its com in boats, and the potato-shaws were black when they burst the ground, and the catechist’s horse came home by Dhuloch-side to a widow that reckoned on no empty saddle. And this is the story.

“Ho, ho, suas e!” said the nor’ wind, and the snow, and the black frost, as they galloped down Glenaora like a leash of strong dogs. It was there was the pretty business! The Salachary hills lost their sink and swell in the great drifts that swirled on them in the night; the dumb white swathes made a cold harvest on the flats of Kilmune; the frost gripped tight at the throats of the burns, and turned the Salmon-Leap to a stack of silver lances. A cold world it was, sure enough, at the mouth of day! The bloodshot sun looked over Ben Ime for a little, and that was the last of him. The sheep lay in the shoulder of the hill with the drift many a crook’s-length above them, and the cock-of-the-mountain and the white grouse, driven on the blast, met death with a blind shock against the edge of the larch-wood.

Up from Lochow, where Kames looks over to Cruachan, and Cruachan cocks his grey cap against Lorn, a foolish lad came that day for a tryst that was made by a wanton maid unthinking. Half-way over the hill he slipped on the edge of a drift, and a sore wound in the side he got against a splinter of the blue stone of the Quey’s Rock; but he pushed on, with the blood oozing through his cut vest. Yet, in spite of himself, he slept beyond the Bog of the Fairy-Maid. Mo-thruaigh! mo-thruaigh!

The Fairy-Maid came and covered him up close and warm with a white blanket that needs no posting, and sang the soft tune a man hears but once, and kissed him on the beard as he slept in the drift – and his name had been Ellar Ban.

Round by the king’s good highroad came Solomon the carrier with his cart, and many a time he thought of turning between Carnus and Kilmune. But he was of the stuff of Clan Coll, and his mare was Proud Maisie. He had a boll of meal from Portinsherrich, from the son of a widow woman who was hungry in Inneraora and waiting for that same.

“No Ellar here yet!” he said at Kilmune when he asked, and they told him. “Then there’s a story to tell, for if he’s not here, he’s not at Karnes, and his grave’s on the grey mountain.”

Later came Luath, the collie of Ellar, slinking through the snow wet and weary, and without wind enough for barking. ‘Twas as good as the man’s ghost.

The shepherds came in from the fanks, and over from the curling at Carlonan, to go on a search.

Long Duncan of Drimfem, the slim swarthy champion, was there before them. He was a pretty man – the like never tied a shoe in Glenaora – and he was the real one who had Mairi’s eye, which the dead fellow thought had the laugh only for him. But, lord! a young man with a good name with the shinty and the clachneart has other things to think of than the whims of women, and Donacha never noticed.

“We’ll go up and see about it – about him at once, Main,” he said, sick-sorry for the girl. All the rest stood round pitying, because her kists were said to be full of her own spinning for the day that was not to be.

Mairi took him to the other side of the peat-stack, and spoke with a red face.

“Is it any use your going till the snow’s off the hill, Drimfem?” she said, biting at the corner of her brattie, and not looking the man in the face.

“Dhia gleiih sinn! it’s who knows when the white’ll be off the snouts of these hills, and we can’t wait till – I thought it would ease your mind.” And Donacha looked at the maid stupid enough. For a woman with her heart on the hill, cold, she was mighty queer on it.

“Yes, yes; but it’s dangerous for you to go up, and the showers so heavy yet. It’s not twenty finger-lengths you can see in front of you, and you might go into the bog.”

“Is’t the bog I would be thinking of, Main? It’s little fear there is of that, for here is the man that has been on Salachary when the mist was like smoke, as well as when the spittle froze in my mouth. Oh, I’m not the one to talk; but where’s the other like me?”

Mairi choked. “But, Dona – but, Drimfem, it’s dead Ellar must be; and – and – you have a widow mother to mind.” Donacha looked blank at the maid. She had the sweet face, yon curve of the lip, and the soft turn of the neck of all Arthur’s children, ripe of the cheek, with tossed hair like a fairy of the lake, and the quirk of the eye that never left a plain man at ease if he was under the threescore. There were knives out in the glen for many a worse one.

It was the lee of the peat-stack they stood in, and the falling flakes left for a while without a shroud a drop of crimson at the girl’s feet. She was gripping tight at her left wrist under the cover of her apron till the nails cut the flesh. There was the stress of a dumb bard’s sorrow in her face; her heart was in her eyes, if there had been a woman to see it; but Drimfern missed it, for he had no mind of the dance at the last Old New Year, or the ploy at the sheep-dipping, or the nuts they cracked on the hot peats at Hallowe’en.

The girl saw he was bound to go. He was as restless as if the snow was a swarm of seangans. She had not two drops of blood in her lips, but she tried to laugh as she took something out from a pocket and half held it out to him. He did not understand at first, for if he was smart on the caman ball, ‘twas slow in the ways of women he was.

“It’s daft I am. I don’t know what it is, Donacha, but I had a dream that wasn’t canny last night, and I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” said the poor girl. “I was going to give you – ”

Drimfern could not get the meaning of the laugh, strained as it was. He thought the maid’s reason was wandering.

She had, whatever it was – a square piece of cloth of a woman’s sewing – into the man’s hand before he knew what she would be after; and when his fingers closed on it, she would have given a king’s gold to get it back. But the Tullich lads, and the Paymaster’s shepherd from Lecknamban, with Dol’ Splendid and Francie Ro, in their plaids, and with their crooks, came round the gable-end. Luath, who knew Glenaora as well as he knew Creag Cranda, was with them, and away they went for the hill. All that Donacha the blind one said, as he put the sewing in his pocket to look at again, was, “Blessing with thee!” for all the world like a man for the fair.

Still the nor’ wind, and the snow, and the dark frost said “Suas e!” running down the glen like the strong dogs on the peching deer; and the men were not a hundred yards away from the potato-pit when they were ghosts that went out altogether, without a sound, like Drimendorran’s Grey Dame in the Red Forester’s story.

A white face on a plump neck stood the sting of the storm dourly, though the goodwife said it would kill her out there, and the father cried “Shame!” on her sorrow, and her a maiden. “Where’s the decency of you?” says he, fierce-like; “if it was a widow you were this day you couldn’t show your heart more.” And into the house he went and supped two cogies of brose, and swore at the sgalag for noticing that his cheeks were wet.

When the searchers would be high on the hill Shudderman came on the maid. He was a wizened, daft old one, always in a tinker Fencible’s tartan trews and scarlet doublet. He would pucker his bare brown face like a foreign Italian, and whistle continually. The whistle was on his face when he came on the girl standing behind the byre, looking up with a corpse’s whiteness where the Beannan should be.

“Te-he! Lord! but we’re cunning,” said the soldier. “It’s a pity about Ellar, is it not, white darling?”

Mairi saw nothing, but swallowed a sob. Was this thing to know her secret, when the wise old women of the glen never guessed it? There was something that troubled her in his look.

The wee creature put his shoulder against the peats, and shoved each hand up the other sleeve of his doublet, while he whistled soft, and cunningly looked at the maid. The cords of her neck were working, and her breast heaved sore, but she kept her teeth tight together.

“Ay, ay, it’s an awful thing, and him so fond, too,” he went on; and his face was nothing but a handful of wrinkles and peat-smoke. It was a bigger ploy for the fool than a good dinner.

“What – who – who are you talking about, you poor amadan?” cried Mairi, desperately.

“Och, it’s yourself that’ll know. They’re saying over at Tullich and upbye at Miss Jean’s, Accurach, that it’s a bonny pair you would make, you and Ellar. Yonnat Yalla says he was the first Lochow man ever she saw that would go a mile out of his way for a lass, and I saw him once come the roundabout road by Cladich because it was too easy to meet you coming the short cut over the hill. Oh! there’s no doubt he was fond, fond, and-”

“Amadan!” cried the maid, with no canny light in her eyes.

“Hoots! You’re not angry with me, darling. I ken, I ken. Of course Drimfern’s the swanky lad too, but it’s not very safe this night on yon same hill. There’s the Bog of the Fairy-Maid that never was frozen yet, and there’s the Quey’s Rock, and – te-he! I wouldn’t give much for some of them not coming back any more than poor Ellar. It’s namely that Drimfem got the bad eye from the Glenurchy woman come Martinmas next because of his taking up with her cousin-german’s girl, Morag Callum.”

“Yon spàgachd doll, indeed!”

“God, I do not know about that! but they’re telling me he had her up at all the reels at Baldy Geepie’s wedding, whatever, and it’s a Maclean tartan frock she got for the same – I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Lies, lies, lies,” said the girl to herself her lips dry, her hands and feet restless to do some crazy thing to kill the pain in her heart.

She was a little helpless bird in the hands of the silly one.

He was bursting himself inside with laughing, that couldn’t be seen for the snow and the cracks on his face.

“But it’s not marriages nor tartan you’ll be thinking on, Mairi, with your own lad up there stiff. Let Morag have Drimfem – ”

“You and your Morag! Shudderman, if it was not the crazy one you were, you would see that a man like Donacha Drimfern would have no dealings with the breed of MacCallum, tinker children of the sixty fools.”

“Fools here or fools there, look at them in the castle at Duntroon! And Drimfern is – ”

“Drimfern again! Who’s thinking of Drimfern, the mother’s big pet, the soft, soft creature, the poor thing that’s daft about the shinty and the games – and – and – Go inbye, haverer, and – oh, my heart, my heart!”

“Cripple Callum,” whistled the daft wee one; and faith it was the great sport he was having! The flame sparkled in the lass’s eyes; she stamped furiously in the snow. She could have gone into the house, but the Shudderman would follow, and the devil was in him, and she might just as well tell her story at the cross-roads as risk. So she stayed.

“Come in this minute, O foolish one!” her mother came to the door and craved; but no.

The wee bodach took a wee pipe from his big poke and started at the smoking. When his match went out the dark was almost flat on the glen, and a night-hag complained with a wean’s cry in the planting beyond the burn. At each draw of the pipe the eyes of the soldier glinted like a ferret’s, and like any ferret’s they were watching. He put in a word between-while that stabbed the poor thing’s heart, about the shame of love in maids uncourted, and the cruelty of maids that cast love-looks for mischief. There were some old havers about himself here and there among the words: of a woman who changed her mind and went to another man’s bed and board; of sport up the glen, and burials beyond; and Ellar Ban’s widow mother, and the carry-on of Drimfem and the Glenurchy woman’s cousin-german’s girl. And it was all ravelled, like the old story Loch Finne comes up on the shore to tell when the moon’s on Sithean Sluaidhe.

The girl was sobbing sore. “Man!” she said at last, “give me the peace of a night till we know what is.” The amadan laughed at her, and went shauchling down to the cotter’s, and Mairi went in out of the darkness.

The hours passed and passed, and the same leash of strong dogs were scouring like fury down Glenaora, and the moon looked a little through a hole, and was sickly at the sight, and went by in a hurry. A collie’s bark in the night came to the house where the people waited round the peats, and “Oh, my heart!” said poor Mairi.

The father took the tin lantern with the holes in it, and they all went out to the house-end. The lantern-light stuck long needles in the night as it swung on the goodman’s finger, and the byre and the shed and the peat-stack danced into the world and out of it, and the clouds were only an arm’s-length overhead.

The men were coming down the brae in the smother of snow, carrying something in a plaid. The dog was done with its barking, and there was no more sound from the coming ones than if they were ghosts. Like enough to ghosts they looked. No one said a word till the goodman spoke.

“You have him there?” he said.

“Ay, beatmachi leis! all that there is of him,” said the Paymaster’s man; and they took it but an’ ben, where Mairi’s mother had the white dambrod cloth she had meant for herself, when her own time came, on the table.

“It’s poor Ellar, indeed,” said the goodman, noticing the fair beard.

“Where’s Donacha? where’s Drimfern?” cried Mairi, who had pulled herself together and come in from the byre-end, where she had waited to see if there was none of the watchers behind.

The Paymaster’s man was leaning against the press-door, with a face like the clay; Dol’ Splendid was putting a story in the sgalag’s ear; the Tullich men were very busy on it taking the snow off their boots. Outside the wind had the sorry song of the curlew.

“Me-the-day! it’s the story of this there is to tell,” at last said Francie Ro, with a shake of the head. “Poor Drimfern – ”

“Drimfem – ay, where’s Drimfem in all the world?” said the goodman, with a start. He was standing before his girl to keep her from seeing the thing on the table till the wife had the boots covered. It was the face of a cailleach of threescore Mairi had.

“It’s God knows! We were taking Ellar there down, turn about resting. It was a cruel business, for the drifts. There’s blood on his side where he fell somewhere, and Drimfern had to put a clout on it to keep the blood off his plaid. That’s Drimfern’s plaid. When Donacha’s second turn was over up at the bog, we couldn’t get a bit of him. He’s as lost as the deer the Duke shot, and we looked and whistled for hours.” The maid gave a wee turn to the door, shivered, and fell like a clod at her mother’s feet.

“Look at yon, now! Am not I the poor father altogether?” said the old man with a soft lip to his friends. “Who would think, and her so healthy, and not married to Ellar, that she would be so much put about? You’ll excuse it in her, lads, I know, for she’s not twenty till the dipping-time, and the mother maybe spoiled her.”

“Och, well,” said the Splendid one, twisting his bonnet uneasy in his hands, “I’ve seen them daft enough over a living lad, and it’s no great wonder when this one’s dead.” They took the maid beyond to the big room by the kitchen, and a good mother’s morning for Drimfern was set by the men. They had a glass before going home, and when they were gone the bochdans came in the deep hollow of the night and rattled the windows and shook the door-sneck; but what cared yon long white thing on the goodwife’s dambrod tablecloth?

At the mouth of day there was one woman with a gnawing breast looking about the glen-foot among the snow for the Shudder-man soldier. She found him snedding the shaft of a shinny-stick at the Stronmagachan Gate, and whistling as if it was six weeks south of Whitsunday and the woods piping in the heat.

“I ken all about it, my white little lamb,” he said with a soft speech. “All about them finding Ellar, and losing a better man, redding put her to rights. A search in the maybe, but any way one that some will miss more.”

“God’s heavy, heavy on a woman!” said the poor child. “I gave Donacha a sampler with something sewn on it yesterday, and the men, when they go up the hill to look for him to-day, will get it on him – and – it would – ”

“Ay, ay, ay! I ken, my dear. We’ll put that right, or I’m no soldier.” And the little man cocked his bonnet on his head like a piper. Then he was sorry for the pride of it, and he pulled it down on his face, and whistled to stop his nose from jagging.

“My heart! my bruised heart! they’re saying sorry things of Ellar, and Donacha dead. The cotter’s wife was talking this morning, and it’ll send me daft!”

“Blind, blind,” quo’ the soldier; “but you’ll not be shamed, if the amadan can help it.”

“But what can you do, my poor Shudderman? And yet – and yet – there’s no one between Carnus and Croit-bhile I can speak to of it.”

“Go home, white love, and I’ll make it right,” said the daft one, and faith he looked like meaning it.

“Who knows?” thought the girl. Shudderman was chief enough with the Glenurchy woman, and the Glenurchy woman sometimes gave her spells to her friends. So Mairi went home half comforted.

A cogie of brose and a bit braxy in his belly, and a farl of cake in his poke, and out stepped the Shudderman with never a word to any one about the end of his journey. Dol’ Splendid had told him the story of the night before, and whereabout Drimfern was lost, close beyond the Beannan. He would find the body and the sampler, he promised himself as he plunged up the brae at Taravh-dubh. The dogs were nearly as furious as the night before, and the day’s eye was blear. Hours passed, and the flats of Kilmune were far below.

There was nothing in all the world but whiteness, and a silly old bodach with a red coat trailing across it. Shudderman Soldier sank his head between his shoulders as he pushed himself up with his hazel crook, his tartan trews in rags about his ankles, his doublet letting in the teeth of the wind here and there, and at the best grudging sore its too tight shelter for his shrunk body. He had not the wind to whistle, but he gasped bits of “Faill-il-o,” and between he swore terribly at the white hares that jerked across in front of him with the ill-luck of a lifetime on their backs.

If it was the earth that was white, the sky was not far behind it; if they were paper, it would take schooling to write on them straight, for there wasn’t a line between them. The long sweep of Balantyre itself was lost, and the Beannan stone was buried. The creature’s brogues were clods of snow, ugly, big, without a shape: his feet were lumps of ice; his knees shook under his frail skinful of bones; but, by the black stones, ‘twas the man’s heart he had!

When the snow made a paste on his win’ard cheek, he had it off with a jerk of the head, and one of the jerks put off his bonnet. Its frozen ribbons had been whipping his eyes, and he left it where it fell, with never a glance over his shoulder. His hair clogged with flakes that kept the frost even after they fell. It was a peching effort for the foot of the Beannan brae.

“Poor lamb, poor Mairi, calf of my heart!” gasped the soldier to himself. He was staggering half blind through the smother of snow, now and then with a leg failing below him, and plunging him right or left. Once his knees shut like a gardener’s gully, and he made a crazy heap in the drift. His tired wrists could hardly bring him up, and the corpse of the world swung in his eyes when he was on his feet again and trying to steady himself.

There’s a green knoll beside the Bog of the Fairy-Maid, where the wee folks dance reels when the moon’s on it, and there the old fellow struggled to. He thought if he was up there he would see some sign of what he wanted. Up he pushed, with the hazel cromag bending behind him, and his brogues slipping on the round snow-soles. Up he went, with the pluck of a whole man, let alone a poor silly object; up he went till he got his foot on the top, and then his heart failed, for he saw nothing of what he sought.

“I’ll look again when I’m out of this foolish sleep, – I’ll see better when I waken,” said the poor amadan; and behold the dogs were on him! and he was a man who was.

For all that, the story tells, Drimfern was no ghost. When he was lost he found Kames, where the Callum girl was that came to his fire-end later and suckled his clan. And Ellar’s mother, dressing her son’s corpse in the house at Kilmune, found on his wound a sampler that went with him to his long home in green Inishail. Its letters, sewn in the folly of a woman, told her story: —

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.”