“Not me!” he said. “I kent ye had Grand Security.”
ISLE OF ILLUSION.
I.
MacDonnell of Morar, on the summer of his marriage, and when the gladness of it was still in every vein, sailed his sloop among the Isles. He went from sound to sound, from loch to loch, anchoring wherever the fancy took his lady, and the two of them were seeking what no one ever found nor shall find—that last and swooning pang of pleasure the Isles in summer weather, either at dawn or dusk, seem always to promise to youth and love. At night they lay in bays in the dim light of the cool north stars, or in the flush of the sunken sun that made wine of the sea-waves, and the island cliffs or the sandy shores seemed populous with birds or singing fisher-people.
It was very well then with Morar.
His wife was still a girl. In the mornings, when she came on deck with her hair streaming and the breeze making a banner of her gown, her gaiety surging to her breast in song, she seemed to him and to his men like one of the olden sea princesses told about in Gaelic stories, born from foam for the happiness and hurt of the hearts of men. She was lovely, tender, and good, and he himself, with those that knew him best, was notable for every manly part. One thing only he had a fear of in his bride—that, as had happened with others before, and perhaps with himself, a day might come to him when the riddle of her would be read, her maidenly sweet mystery revealed; when he could guess with certainty what was in the deep dark wells of her eyes, and understand, without a word, the cause for every throb of her bosom. To have her for ever with a part to baffle and allure, as does the sea in its outer caves, and as do the dawns in Highland glens—that was the wish of Morar.
The captain of the yacht, who, having no passion for her, knew her, some ways, better than her husband, perhaps, said she had what, westward in the Barra Isle he hailed from, they call the Seven Gifts for Women—content and gentleness, looks and liking, truth, simplicity, and the fear of God. To him and to his men—gallant fellows from Skye, and somewhat jealous of her that she was not of the isles herself, but a stranger—she was at least without a flaw. One time they thought it might be temper was her weakness, for she walked the deck with pride and had a noble carriage of the head, but the tiniest cloud of temper never crossed her honeymoon. Indeed, it was well with Morar.
And it seemed that summer as if the very clime befriended him, for there never blew but the finest breezes, and the sun was almost constant in the sky. Round all the remoter isles they sailed—even Harris and the Uists, and the countless lesser isles that lie to the west of Scotland,—an archipelago where still are dwelling the ancient Gaelic gods, whereto at least they come at sunset and sit upon the sands communing, so that sailors knowing the language, and having the happy ear, can sometimes catch far off at sea deep murmurs of the olden world that others take for the plash of waters.
Morar’s wife put the yacht into every creek. She loved the little creeks, she doted on the burns going mourning through the darkness, and on the sound of tides on shallow shores; it was her great delight sometimes to sleep on land below a canvas shelter, bathe at morning in the inner pools, walk barefooted on the sand, or stand on rocky promontories facing the rising sun, with her hair tumultuous. Her first breakfast then was the wild berry, her morning drink the water from island wells.
“I could live on the berries,” she would say to her husband. “Oh, I love them!”