THE ARCHER

The man who told me this thing was Coll McColl, an islander of Barra, in the Southern Hebrides. He spoke in the Gaelic, and it was while he was mending his net; and by the same token I thought at the time that his words were like herring-fry in that net, some going clean through, and others sticking fast by the gills. So I do not give it exactly as I heard it, but in substance as Coll gave it.

He is dead now, and has perhaps seen the Archer. Coll was a poet, and the island-folk said he was mad: but this was only because he loved beyond the reach of his fate.

There were two men who loved one woman. It is of no mere girl with the fair looks upon her I am speaking, but of a woman, that can put the spell over two men. The name of the woman was Silis: the names of the men were Sheumas and Isla.

Silis was the wife of Sheumas. So Sheumas had his home, for her breast was his pillow when he willed it: and he had her voice for daily music: and his eyes had never any thirst, for they could drink of her beauty by day and by night. But Isla had no home. He saw his home afar off, and his joy and his strength failed, because the shining lights of it were not for him.

One night the two men were upon the water. It was a dead calm, and the nets had been laid. There was no moon at all, and only a star or two up in the black corner of the sky. The sea had the wandering flames in it: and when the big jellyfish floated by, they were like the tide-lamps that some are for saying the dead bear on their drowned faces.

“Some day I may be telling you a strange thing, Sheumas,” said Isla, after the long silence there had been since the last net had sent a little cloud of sparkles up from the gulfs.

“Ay?” said Sheumas, taking his pipe from his mouth, and looking at the spire of smoke rising just forward o’ the mast. The water slipped by, soft and slow. It was only the tide feeling its way up the sea-loch, for there was not a breath of wind. Here and there were dusky shadows: the boats of the fishermen of Inchghunnais. Each carried a red light, and in some were green lanterns slung midway up the mast.

No other word was said for a long time.

“And I’m wondering,” said Isla at last: “I’m wondering what you’ll think of that story.”

Sheumas made no answer to that. He smoked, and stared down into the dark water.

After a time he rose, and leaned against the mast. Though there was no light of either moon or lamp, he put his hand above his eyes, as his wont was.

“I’m thinking the mackerel will be coming this way to-night. This is the third time I’ve heard the snoring of the pollack … away yonder, beyond Peter Macallum’s boat.”

“Well, Sheumas, I’ll sleep a bit. I had only the outside of a sleep last night.”

With that Isla knocked the ash out of his pipe, and lay over against a pile of rope, and shut his eyes, and did not sleep at all because of the sick dull pain of the homeless man he was—home, home, home, and Silis the name of it.

When, an hour or more later, he grew stiff he moved, and opened his eyes. His mate was sitting at the helm, but the light in his pipe was out, though he held the pipe in his mouth, and his eyes were wide staring open.

“I would not be telling me that story, Isla,” he said.

Isla answered nothing, but shifted back to where he was before, for all his cramped leg. He closed his eyes again.

At the full of the tide, in the deep dark hour before the false dawn, as the first glimmer is called, the glimmer that comes and goes, both men got up, and moved about, stamping their feet. Each lit his pipe, and the smoke hung long in little greyish puffs, so dead-still was it.

On the Brudhearg, John Macalpine’s boat, young Neil Macalpine sang. The two men on the Luath could hear his singing. It was one of the strange songs of Ian MÒr.

Sheumas leaned against the tiller of the Luath, and looked at Isla. He saw a shadow on his face. With his right foot the man tapped against a loose spar that was on the starboard deck.

When the singer ceased, Isla raised his arm and shook menacingly his clenched fist, over across the water to where the Brudhearg lay.

There were words on his lips, but they died away when Neil Macalpine broke into a love song, “Mo nighean donn.”

“Can you be telling me, Isla,” said Sheumas, “who was the man that made that song about the homeless man?”

“Ian MÒr.”

“Ian MÒr of the Hills?”

“Ay.”

“They say he had the shadow upon him?”

“Well, what then?”

“Was it because of love?”

“It was because of love.”

“Did the woman love him?”

“Ay.”

“Did she go to him?”

“No.”

“Was that why he had the mind-dark?”

“Ay.”

“But he loved her, and she loved him?”

“He loved her, and she loved him.”

For a time Sheumas kept silence. Then he spoke again.

“She was the wife of another man?”

“Ay; she was the wife of another man.”

“Did he love her?”

“Yes, for sure.”

“Did she love him?”

“Yes … yes.”

“Whom, then, did she love? For a woman can love one man only.”

“She loved both.”

“That is not a possible thing: not the one deep love. It is a lie, Isla Macleod.”

“Yes, it is a lie, Sheumas Maclean.”

“Which man did she love?”

Isla slowly shook the ash from his pipe, and looked for a second or two at a momentary quiver in the sky in the north-east.

“The dawn will be here soon now, Sheumas.”

“Ay. I was asking you, Isla, which man did she love?”

“Sure she loved the man who gave her the ring.”

“Which man did she love?”

“O for sure, man, you’re asking me just like the lawyer who has the trials away at Balliemore on the mainland yonder.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that thing myself, Isla Macleod, if you’ll tell me the name of the woman.”

“I am not for knowing the name.”

“Was it Mary … or Jessie … or mayhap was it Silis, now?”

“I am not for knowing the name.”

“Well, well, it might be Silis, then?”

“Ay, for sure it might be Silis. As well Silis as any other.”

“And what would the name of the other man be?”

“What man?”

“The man whose ring she wore?”

“I am not remembering that name.”

“Well, now, would it be Padruic, or mayhap Ivor, or … or … perhaps, now, Sheumas?”

“Ay, it might be that.”

“Sheumas?”

“Ay, as well that as any other.”

“And what was the end?”

“The end o’ what?”

“The end of that loving?”

Isla Macleod gave a low laugh. Then he stooped to pick up the pipe he had dropped. Suddenly he rose without touching it. He put his heel on the warm clay, and crushed it.

“That is the end of that kind of loving,” he said. He laughed low again as he said that.

Sheumas leaned and picked up the trodden fragments.

“They’re warm still, Macleod.”

“Are they?” Isla cried at that, his eyes with a red light coming into the blue: “then they will go where the man in the song went, the man who sought his home for ever and ever and never came any nearer than into the shine of the window-lamps.”

With that he threw the pieces into the dark water that was already growing ashy-grey.

“’Tis a sure cure, that, Sheumas Maclean.”

“Ay, so they say, … and so, so: ay, as you were saying, Ian MÒr went into the shadow because of that home he could not win?”

“So they say. And now we’ll take the nets. ’Tis a heavy net that comes out black, as the sayin’ is. They’re heavy for sure, after this still night, an’ the wind southerly, an’ the pollack this way an’ that.”

“Well, now, that’s strange.”

“What is strange, Sheumas Maclean?”

“That you should say that thing.”

“And for why that?”

“Oh, just this. Silis had a dream the other night, she had. She dreamed she saw you standing alone on the Luath: and you were hauling hard a heavy net, so that the sweat ran down your face. And your face was dead-white pale, she said. An’ you hauled an’ you hauled. An’ someone beside you that she couldn’t see laughed an’ laughed: an’ …”

With a stifled oath, Isla broke in upon the speaker’s words:

“Why, man alive, you said he, the man, myself it is, was alone on the Luath.”

“Well, Silis saw no one but yourself, Isla Macleod.”

“But she heard some one beside me laughing an’ laughing.”

“So she said. And you were dead-white, she said: with the sweat pouring down you. An’ you pulled an’ you pulled. Then you looked up at her and said: ‘It’s a heavy net that comes up black, as the sayin’ is.’”

Isla Macleod made no answer to that, but slowly began to haul at the nets. A swift moving light slid hither and thither well away to the north-east. The sea greyed. A new, poignant, salt smell came up from the waves. Sail after sail of the smacks ceased to be a blur in the dark: each lifted a brown shadowy wing against a dusk through which a flood of myriad drops of light steadily oozed.

Now from this boat, now from that, hoarse cries resounded.

The Mairi Ban swung slowly round before the faint dawn-wind, and lifted her bow homeward with a little slapping splash. The Maggie, the Trilleachan, the Eilid, the Jessie, and the Mairi Donn followed one by one.

In silence the two men on the Luath hauled in their nets. The herring made a sheet of shifting silver as they lay in the hold. As the dawn lightened, the quivering silver mass sparkled. The decks were mailed with glittering scales: these, too, gleamed upon the legs, arms, and hands of the two fishermen.

“Well, that’s done!” exclaimed Sheumas at last. “Up with the helm, Isla, and let us make for home.”

The Luath forged ahead rapidly when once the sail had its bellyful of wind. She passed the Tern, then the Jessie Macalpine, caught up the big, lumbering Maggie, and went rippling and rushing along the wake of the Eilid, the lightest of the Inchghunnais boats.

Off shore, the steamer Osprey met the smacks, and took the herring away, cran by cran. Long before her screw made a yeast of foam athwart the black-green inshore water, the Luath was in the little haven and had her nose in the shingle at Craigard point.

In silence Sheumas and Isla walked by the rock-path to the isolated cottage where the Macleans lived. The swallows were flitting hither and thither in front of its low, whitewashed wall, like flying shuttles against a silent loom. The pale gold of a rainy dawn lit the whiteness with a vivid gleam. Suddenly Isla stopped.

“Will you be telling me now, Sheumas, which man it was that she loved?”

Maclean did not look at the speaker, though he stopped too. He stared at the white cottage, and at the little square window with the geranium-pot on the lintel.

But while he hesitated, Isla Macleod turned away, and walked swiftly across the wet bracken and bog-myrtle till he disappeared over Cnoc-na-Hurich, on the hidden slope of which his own cottage stood amid a wilderness of whins.

Sheumas watched him till he was out of sight. It was then only that he answered the question.

“I’m thinking,” he muttered slowly, “I’m thinking she loved Ian MÒr.”

“Yes,” he muttered again later, as he took off his sea-soaked clothes, and lay down on the bed in the kitchen, whence he could see into the little room where Silis was in a profound sleep: “Yes, I’m thinking she loved Ian MÒr.”

He did not sleep at all, for all his weariness.

When the sunlight streamed in across the red sandstone floor, and crept towards his wife’s bed, he rose softly and looked at her. He did not need to stoop when he entered the room, as Isla Macleod would have had to do.

He looked at Silis a long time. Her shadowy hair was all about her face. She had never seemed to him more beautiful. Well was she called “Silis the Fawn” in the poem that some one had made about her.

The poem that some one had made about her? … yes, for sure, how could he be forgetting who it was. Was it not Isla, and he a poet too, another Ian MÒr they said.

“Another Ian MÒr.” As he repeated the words below his breath, he bent over his wife. Her white breast rose and fell, the way a moonbeam does in moving water.

Then he knelt. When he took the slim white hand in his she did not wake. It closed lovingly upon his own.

A smile slowly came and went upon the dreaming face—ah, lovely, white, dreaming face, with the hidden starry eyes. There was a soft flush, and a parting of the lips. The half-covered bosom rose and fell as with some groundswell from the beating heart.

“Silis,” he whispered. “Silis … Silis …”

She smiled. He leaned close above her lips.

“Ah, heart o’ me,” she whispered, “O Isla, Isla, mo rÙn, moghray, Isla, Isla, Isla!”

Sheumas drew back. He too was like the man in her dream, for it was dead-white he was, with the sweat in great beads upon his face.

He made no noise as he went back to the hearthside, and took his wet clothes from where he had hung them before the smoored peats, and put them on again.

Then he went out.

It was a long walk to Isla Macleod’s cottage that few-score yards: a long, long walk.

When Sheumas stood on the wet grass round the flagstones he saw that the door was ajar. Isla had not lain down. He had taken his ash-lute, and was alternately playing and singing low to himself.

Maclean went close up to the wall, and listened. At first he could hear no more than snatches of songs.

Then suddenly the man within put down his ash-lute, and stirred. In a loud vibrant voice he sang:

For some moments there was dead silence. Then a heavy sigh came from within the cottage.

Sheumas Maclean at last made a step forward. But before his shadow fell across the doorway Isla had breathed a few melancholy notes from his feadan, and then began a slow wailing song.

Sheumas’ face was white and tired. It is weary work with the herring, no doubt.

He lifted a white stone and rapped loudly on the door. Isla came out, and looked at him. The singer smiled, though that smiling had no light in it. It was dark as a dark wave it was.

“Well?” he said.

“May I come in?”

“Come in, and welcome. And what will you be wanting, Sheumas Maclean?”

“Sure, it’s too late to sleep, an’ I’m thinking I would like to hear now that story you were to tell me.”

The man gave no answer to that. Each looked at the other with luminous unwinking eyes.

“It will not be a fair thing,” said Isla slowly, at last. “It will not be a fair thing: for I am bigger and stronger.”

“There is another way, Isla Macleod.”

“Ay?”

“That you or I go to her, and tell her all, and then at the last say: ‘Come with me, or stay with him.’”

“So be it.”

So there and then they drew for chance. The gaining of that hazard was with Sheumas Maclean.

Without a word Isla turned and went into the house. There he took his feadan, and played low to himself, staring into the red heart of the smouldering peats. He neither smiled nor frowned; but only once he smiled, and that was when Sheumas came back, and said Come.

So the two walked in silence across the dewy grass. There was a loud calling of skuas and terns, and the raucous laughing cry of the great herring-gull, upon the weedy shore of Craigard. The tide bubbled and oozed through the wilderness of wrack. Farther off there were the cackling of hens, the lowing of restless kye, and the bleating of the sheep on the slopes of Melmonach. A shrewd salt air tingled in the nostrils of the two men.

At the closed door Sheumas made a sign of silence. Then he unfastened the latch, and entered.

“Silis,” he said in a low voice, but clear.

“Silis, I’ve come back again. Dry your tears, my lass, and tell me once again—for I’m dying to hear the blessed truth once again—tell me once again if it’s me you love best, or Isla Macleod.”

“I have told you, Sheumas.”

Without, Isla heard her words and drew closer.

“And it is a true thing that you love me best, and that since the choice between him and me has come, you choose me?”

“It is a true thing.”

A shadow fell across the room. Isla Macleod stood in the doorway.

Silis turned the white beautiful face of her, and looked at the man she loved with all her heart and all her soul. He smiled. She was no coward, his Silis, though he called her his fawn.

“Is—it—a—true—thing, Silis?” he asked slowly.

She looked at Sheumas, then at Isla, then back at her husband.

“It might kill Sheumas,” she muttered below her breath, so that neither heard her: “it might kill him,” she repeated.

Then, with a swift turn of her eyes, she spoke.

“Yes, it is a true thing, Isla. I abide by Sheumas.”

That was all.

She was conscious of the wave of relief that went into Sheumas’ face. She saw the rising of a dark, strange tide in the eyes of Isla.

He stared at her. Perhaps he did not hear? Perhaps he was dreaming still? He was a dreamer, a poet: perhaps he could not understand.

It was a little while wherein to kill a man.

“My Fawn,” he whispered hoarsely, “my wee Fawn!”

But Silis was frozen.

The deadly frost in her eyes slew the dream that the brain of the poet dreamed.

Then it slew the poet.

Isla, the man, stood awhile, strangely tremulous. She could see his nerves quivering below his clothes. He was a big, strong giant of a lover: but he trembled now just like a bit fawn, she thought. His blue eyes were suddenly grown cloudy and dim. Then the deadly frost slew the brain that was the altar where the poet offered up his dreams of beauty.

And that is how Isla the dreamer ceased to dream.

He was quite white and still when they found him three days later. He seemed a giant of a man as he lay, face upward, among the green flags by the water-edge. The chill starlight of three nights had got into the quiet of his face.

That night, resumed Coll McColl, after a long pause—that night he, Coll, was walking in the moonlight across the hither slope of Melmonach.

He stood under a rowan-tree, and watched a fawn leaping wildly through the fern. While he watched, amazed, he saw a tall shadowy woman pass by. She stopped, and drew a great bow she carried, and shot an arrow. It went through the air with a sharp whistling sound—just like Silis—Silis—Silis, Coll said, to give me an idea of it.

The arrow went right through the fawn.

But here was a strange thing. The fawn leapt away sobbing into the night: while its heart suspended, arrow-pierced, from the white stem of a silver birch.

“And to this day,” said Coll at the last, “I am not for knowing who that archer was, or who that fawn. You think it was these two who loved? Well, ’tis Himself knows. But I have this thought of my thinking: that it was only a vision I saw, and that the fawn was the poor suffering heart of Love, and that the Archer was the great Shadowy Archer that hunts among the stars. For in the dark of the morrow after that night I was on Cnoc-na-Hurich, and I saw a woman there shooting arrow after arrow against the stars. At dawn she rose and passed away, like smoke, beyond those pale wandering fires.”