Green Fire: A Romance

by William Sharp

An hour passed, and Alan Carmichael still stood by the entrance to the cave. So immovable was he that a ewe, listlessly wandering there in search of cooler grass, lay down after a while, drowsily regarding him with her amber-colored eyes. All his thought was intent upon the mystery of what he had seen. No delusion this, he was sure. That was a man whom he had seen. It might well have been some one whom he did not know, though that were unlikely, of course, for on so small an island, inhabited by less than a score of crofters, it was scarcely possible for one to live there for many weeks and not know the name and face of every soul upon the isle. Still, a stranger might have come. Only, if this were so, why should he call himself the Herdsman? There was but one herdsman on Rona, and he Angus MacCormic, who lived at Einaval on the north side. In these outer isles, the shepherd and the herdsman are appointed by the community, and no man is allowed to be one or the other at will, any more than to be maor or constabal. Then, too, if this man were indeed herdsman, where was his imir ionailt, his browsing tract? Looking round him, Alan could perceive nowhere any fitting pasture. Surely no herdsman would be content with such an imir a bhuchaille—rig of the herdsman—as that rocky wilderness where the soft green grass grew in patches under this or that bowlder, on the sun side of this or that mountain ash. Again, he had given no name, but called himself simply Am Buchaille. This was how the woman Morag had spoken; did she indeed mean this very man, and if so what import lay in her words? But far beyond all other bewilderment for him was that strange, that indeed terrifying likeness to himself; a likeness so absolute, so convincing, that he knew he might himself easily have been deceived, had he beheld the apparition in any place where it was possible that a reflection could have misled him.

Brooding thus, eye and ear were both intent for the faintest sight or sound. But, from the interior of the cavern, not a breath came. Once, from among the jagged rocks high on the west slope of Ben Einaval he fancied he heard an unwonted sound: that of human laughter, but laughter so wild, so remote, so unmirthful, that fear was in his heart. It could not be other than imagination, he said to himself; for in that lonely place there was none to wander idly at that season, and none who, wandering, would laugh there, solitary.

It was with an effort that Alan at last determined to probe the mystery. Stooping, he moved cautiously into the cavern, and groped his way along a narrow ledge which led, as he thought, into another larger cave. But this proved to be one of the innumerable hollow corridors which intersect the honeycombed slopes of this Isle of Caves. To wander far in these lightless passages would be to court inevitable death. Long ago, the piper whom the Prionnsa-Ban, the Fair Prince, loved to hear in his exile,—he that was called Rory McVurich,—penetrated one of the larger hollows to seek there for a child that had idly wandered into the dark. Some of the clansmen, with the father and mother of the little one, waited at the entrance to the cave. For a time there was silence; then, as agreed upon, the sound of the pipes was heard, to which a man named Lachlan McLachlan replied from the outer air. The skirl of the pipes within grew fainter and fainter. Louder and louder Lachlan played upon his chantar; shriller and shriller grew the wild cry of the feadan; but for all that, fainter and fainter waned the sound of the pipes of Rory McVurich. Generations have come and gone upon the isle, and still no man has heard the returning air which Rory was to play. He may have found the little child, but he never found his backward path, and in the gloom of that honeycombed hill he and the child and the music of the pipes lapsed into the same stillness. Remembering this legend, familiar to him since his boyhood, Alan did not dare to venture farther. At any moment, too, he knew he might fall into one of the innumerable crevices which opened into the sea-corridors hundreds of feet below. Ancient rumor had it that there were mysterious passages from the upper heights of Ben Einaval, which led into the intricate heart mazes of these perilous arcades. But for a time he lay still, straining every sense. Convinced at last that the man whom he sought had evaded all possible quest, he turned to regain the light. Brief way as he had gone, this was no easy thing to do. For a few moments, indeed, Alan lost his self-possession, when he found a uniform dusk about him, and could scarce discern which of the several branching narrow corridors was that by which he had come. But following the greener light, he reached the cave, and soon, with a sigh of relief, was upon the sun-sweet warm earth again.

How more than ever beautiful the world seemed to him; how sweet upon the eyes were cliff and precipice, the wide stretch of ocean, the flying birds, the sheep grazing on the scanty pastures, and, above all, the homely blue smoke curling faintly upward from the fisher crofts on the headland east of Aonaig!

Purposely he retraced his steps by the way of the glen. He would see the woman, Morag MacNeill again, and insist on some more explicit word; but when he reached the burnside once more, the woman was not there. Possibly she had seen him coming, and guessed his purpose; half he surmised this, for the peats in the hearth were brightly aglow, and on the hob beside them the boiling water hissed in a great iron pot wherein were potatoes. In vain he sought, in vain called. Impatient at last he walked around the bothie and into the little byre beyond. The place seemed deserted. The matter, small as it was, added to his profound disquietude. Resolved to sift the mystery, he began to walk swiftly down the slope. By the old shealing of Cnoc-na-Monie, now forsaken, his heart leaped at sight of Ynys coming to meet him. At first he thought he would say nothing of what had happened. But with Ynys his was ever an impossible silence, for she knew every change in his mind as a seaman knows the look of the sky and sea. Moreover, she had herself been all day oppressed by something of the same inexplicable apprehension.

When they met, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him lovingly with questioning eyes. Ah! he found rest and hope in those deep pools of quiet light whence the dreaming love rose comfortingly to meet his own yearning gaze.

"What is it, Alan, mo-ghray; what is the trouble that is upon you?"

"It is a trouble, Ynys, but one of which I can speak little, for it is little I know."

"Have you heard or seen aught that gives you fear?"

"I have seen a man here upon Rona whom I have not seen or met before, and it is one whose face is known to me, and whose voice too, and one whom I would not meet again."