He saw a poignard glint momentarily in the morning sun that was turning Isle Faoineas’ sands to gold, and before he could prevent her she had plunged the weapon in her bosom. She fell with a cry at his feet, her hair in the ashes of the fire they had last night sat by. The blood came bubbling to her mouth and welled out on her bosom where the poignard rose and fell with her moaning.
For a moment, instead of pity and remorse, there was a feeling of release. Behind him sounded the plash of oars; he turned hastily and saw the men had left the sloop and were approaching land. “Oh Dhia!” he said to himself, “here’s a bonny business to explain!” and then ’twas very far from well with Morar, for he heard the woman moan her wish for water, and he knew she shared the agony of that inward fire that scorched his throat as if the berries he had swallowed had been beads of heated metal. At his feet was the glass they had drunk from on the last night of their happiness; he picked it up and ran to the well that tinkled on the hillock, then hurried to her side and raised her up to let her drink.
The draught, it seemed, revived her; she shuddered and sighed, and turned in his arms; then his own torment mastered him, and he drank too.
Through his whole flesh went a pleasant chill; a gladness danced in him, and he saw a thing miraculous in his bride—the flush come back to her cheek, and all her wild sweet beauty, and her smile, as she leaned against his shoulder like one new waked from sleep, so that he looked into her face and saw himself reflected in her eyes. The berry stains were on her lips, the bosom of her gown was reddened with their juices, and in between her breasts lay the blade of the shelister, sparkling with dew, and glinting in the sunshine as it rose and fell in time with her heart’s pulsations.
“Oh, love!” she said, and put her arms about his neck, “I dreamt—I dreamt a dreadful dream!”
“And I, sweetheart,” said Morar, looking aghast at the berry stains, and the mark of his fingers on her wrist, and on the iris blade that were evidence it had been no dream. “I dreamt, too, love—my God! such dreaming! I do not wonder now the world holds far aloof from this Island of Illusion. God bless the well, the holy well; but the curse of curses on the berries of Ealan Faoineas!”
Together, hand in hand, they fled to the shore and waded out on the sandy shallow to meet the boat; the sloop shook out her sails like some proud eager bird; from her deck, together waist-encircled, they saw the blue tide rise on the yellow sands, the trees nod, the birds flit among the thickets of the glen, and heard the tinkle of the well in Ealan Faoineas.
THE TUDOR CUP.
When the Tudor Cup was sold at Sotheby’s in the year 18– for the sum of £7000, the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer echoed round the world—at all events, round the world of men who gather bibelots. There were only three such treasures in existence—this one now destined for America, which was understood to have come from Holland; another in the national collection in Paris; and a third in Scotland, the property of Sir Gilbert Quair, whose ancestor had acquired it one hundred and fifty years before by winning a game of cards in a London coffee-house.
Among those people who were profoundly moved by this record price for a quite unimpressive-looking battered silver tankard was the firm of Harris and Hirsch, the Bond Street art-dealers; and two days after the sale in London, Mr Harris hastened up to Scotland, quartered himself at an inn in Peebles, and pushed some discreet inquiries. Sir Gilbert Quair, he discovered, was in a state approaching penury, living an almost hermit life in the House of Quair beside the Tweed, with a deaf old housekeeper, a half-daft maid who never came out of doors, and an equally recluse man whose duty it was to act as guide to the numerous tourists who flocked to the house for the sake of its place in Ballad Ministrelsy and its antiquarian collection. If the gossips of Peebles could be trusted, the baronet lived upon the shilling fees his guide exacted from the visitors, dodging, himself, from room to room of his mansion for fear of encountering Americans and English, whom he hated—resenting their intrusion on his privacy, but counting their numbers eagerly as from his window he watched them coming up the long yew avenue.