The Grey Man

'Tut, man,' said I, 'you are losing your nerve with this playing of hide-and-seek. It was but a billy-goat's foot that spurned it, and so naturally it came bumming down the hill side.'

'Then,' he replied grimly, 'it was a billy-goat as big as an elephant, and it will ding over this castle into the sea, for no ordinary goat could have stirred the stone I saw; I tell you it popped over the heuch like a cannon-ball.'

But we were soon to have other company besides that of the stone.

For presently there came in sight a man walking daintily and carefully along the path which led to the door of the tower. Now he would pull wantonly at a flower, and anon he would skip a stone over the cliff – for all the world as if it were a Sabbath afternoon, and he was waiting for his lass. But I knew better, for I heard his harness clattering under his loose coat of blue.

'Where gang ye so blythe, my bonny man?' cried the Dominie suddenly from my elbow. The man started back, and set his hand beneath his cloak, but the Dominie cried, —

'Keep awa' your hand frae your hip, young man – ye may need it to preserve your balance on the footpath – and give me your attention for a wee.'

The man did as he was bid, and cast his eye aloft, where the black mouth of a hackbutt looked discouragingly down upon him.

'Your name, friend?' said the Dominie.

'I am James Carrick from the parish of Barr,' said the man at last.

'Ay, ay, slee Jamie – Drummurchie's man,' said the Dominie, with meaning. 'When the man is pooin' gowans and skytin' slate stanes, the maister is no that far awa'. Noo, James, e'en turn you aboot and gang your ways, and tell your maister that his black murder is found out, and that there are those on their way to this isle that will put the irons on his heels.'

So the man who had called himself James Carrick turned obediently about, and marched away the road he had come. Probably he had been sent for nothing more than to know if we had stolen a march upon them, and taken possession of the strength of the castle. They had our boat – there was no question of that. We were, therefore, set here with only two backloads of powder and provisions to stand a siege in a small and ruinous tower upon a barren cliff.

Nor was it long before we had news of the enemy, for as we strolled up and down the battlement walk, which as is common in such little fortalices, went round three sides of the tower – that is, round every side except that which looks inward to the cliff-edge – a number of scattering shots came from all about, but chiefly from above.

We could hear them whistling over us as we ducked our heads. We got ready our guns to fire in return so soon as a man showed; but the many bowders and rocky humps about gave the enemy great shelter, so that it was no easy thing to take aim at them. However, I did get a steady shot at an incautious leg, and on the back of the crack of the hackbutt came a great torrent of swearing, and this I took for a good sign.

All we could do was to keep the little courtyard clear, and to shoot whenever we saw a bonnet rise up or a limb carelessly exposed. But we both yearned for something more lively to put an end to our suspense.

Nor had we long to wait.

From the east side of the tower which looks to the sea, there came the sound of a loud report, a tumble of stones, and then a loud, continual, and most pitiful crying, as of a man hurt unto death. I ran up into the battlements above and set my head through a loophole. Beneath me lay a fine-looking young man, with his red bonnet fallen aside, clad in a short white coat, with doublet and hose also of red. He was unarmed so far as I could see.

'Who are you, and what brought you there?' I cried to him from the turret loop.

A massy corner-stone fallen from the castle lay on his chest, and a pile of other rocks and stones was heaped about his legs. He turned his eyes upward at me and tried twice to speak.

At last he said, with many pants and piteous groans, 'I am Allan Crosby, from Auchneil. I brought you a letter from my Lord Cassillis. I landed below and came up by the path, but when I got near I heard firing and saw the door shut. So I tried to clamber up the castle wall to cry in at the window to you, because you were my friends. And even as I climbed, the stones of the castle fell upon me, and now they are crushing the life out of me.'

'Where is the letter from my Lord?' said I.

The man cast his eyes about him as if to look for it.

'I had it in my hand just now,' he said.

I saw a scrap of parchment a little way from him, and asked if that were the letter.

'Tie it to a cord for me,' said I, 'that I may see it.'

But, by reason of his wounds, he was not able to reach it, and the stones pressed so bitterly on his breast that he could do nothing but lie and groan most waesomely.

'Oh, help me, or else end my misery – for the love of God,' he cried earnestly, 'for I am at the point of death in this agony.'

I went all round the top of the tower and looked about every way. Our enemies had retired further up the cliff, and were contenting themselves with firing an occasional shot, which fell harmless against the walls, buzzed among the battlements, or else sang past us into the sea.

I called the Dominie.

'Come to the door,' said I. 'I cannot bide still and see that poor man suffer. He says that he has come with a letter from my Lord Cassillis. It may be so. I will at least go and see. Drummurchie's thieves have gone up the face of the rock, and the wounded man cannot hurt me much, even if he were willing.'

Then the Dominie pled with me to bide where I was 'because,' said he, 'you know not whether it be not an ambush.'

'I cannot let a fellow-creature be crushed to pieces before my eyes and abide to hear his death-cries,' I answered. 'Come down and hold you the door open.'

So with that I undid the bolts and put the Dominie behind it. I set my feet upon the jutting stones on which the wooden stair usually rested, and so scrambled perilously down, holding on to the wall with my right hand the while. When I came to him the lad was lying gasping on his back with the stones edgewise on his breast. I asked him how he did. He seemed past speech, but was able to motion me round to the further side. There I stooped gently in order to raise the great block that lay upon his bosom.

I stepped carefully about and turned my body to render him my aid as tenderly as I could. But I got a sudden and terrible surprise, and though I am not one much given to fear, I own that it shook my heart. Even as I stooped over him, the fellow flung oft the stones as if they had been featherweights, leaped upon his own feet with a bended pistol in his hand, and stood in front of me, striding across the path which led back again to the castle door.

At the same moment I heard a loud shout of warning from the Dominie, that the enemy were again coming down the brae. I had no time to draw my dagger, and for greater lightness I had left my sword behind. I saw the rascal make him ready to fire at me, aiming at my heart. So I remembered a French trick of high kicking which Robert Harburgh had once taught me, for he had been in France at the schools with his master the Earl, and had learned much there besides philosophy.

So I gave the fellow my foot, shod with toe-plates, full upon his wrist, which knocked the pistol up against his chin with a stunning crash. In the next moment I leaped at his throat and overbore him, spurning him with my heel as I passed. I can remember leaping upon him with all my weight from the top of one of the very stones the traitor had pulled down upon himself.

Then I ran fleet-foot for the entrance of the castle. Others of the enemy were just coming about the corner when I reached the projecting points of stone. With my heart in my mouth I sprang up the little juts of rock. I was almost within and in safety, but I had not counted upon the swiftness and resource of my gentleman of the fallen stone. He was hard upon my heels in spite of the thundering clout he had gotten on the jaw from the pistol. But luckily my brave little friend the Dominie stood ready behind the door, and as soon as my hindmost foot was over the threshold, he set his strength to the iron handle and sent the massy oak home to its fastenings with such force that it struck the pursuer fair on the face with a stunning crash. As a stone is driven from a sling, so he fell whirling over the stair head, and, unable to stop himself, he went, gripping vainly at the rock-weeds, headlong over the cliff.

This, however, being behind the door and fully employed in securing it, we did not know at the time. But when we hurried again to the top of the tower, we saw the enemy swarming down the cliff side to render him some assistance, or it might be to recover his body.

'Ask him, when you get him, if he has another letter from my lord the Earl,' cried the Dominie after them.

'And serve him right well, the treacherous hound,' muttered the little man to himself, 'if you find him in pound pieces!'

But I said nothing, for I thought the fellow would mind the kick that I gave him.

That night Thomas of Drummurchie and all his folk removed from the cave where till now they had dwelt. They went over in our boat and in that of James Bannatyne of Chapeldonnan to the mainland, being frightened (as I guess) by our declaration that there were those coming who would deliver them to justice. And also being dismayed, as I make no doubt, by our staunch and desperate defence.

Thus were we left alone on the muckle weary rock which men call Ailsa, and which thousands of free men and women look at every day without a thought of the poor prisoned folk upon it.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE VOICE OUT OF THE NIGHT

Now, so long as provisions last, Ailsa is none such a bad sanctuary, and we might have passed the time there very well, had we possessed minds sufficiently at ease for enjoying such a hermitage. The spring was but a few yards above the castle, and it ran crystal clear into a little basin which I cut in the rock. We had enough victual to serve us for a month with the provision we had bought in Girvan, and with what I shot of the puffins or Tammy Nories, which ran in and out of their holes all day like conies in a warren.

Sometimes we would climb to the top of the crag and look long at the sea, which from there seemed like a great sheet hung upon Cantyre and Arran on the one side and upon the hills of Galloway and Carrick on the other – with Ailsa itself, on which we were sitting, in the deepest trough of it.

A few boats crept timidly about the shore, and a little ship sometimes passed by. But otherwise we had for companions only the silly guillemots that couped their tails uppermost and dived under, the fishing-gulls that dropped splash into the water, and the solan or solemne geese which, when they fell, made a bigger plunge than any, even as on the cliffs of the island their keckling and crying are the loudest.

One day the Dominie and I were sitting on the roof of all things (as the summit of Ailsa seemed to be), picking at the grasses and knuckling little stones for the idlesse which comes with summer weather, when it came in my head to rally Robert Mure, because he had a cold hearthstone and a half empty bed.

'You, a burgess and a learned man, with an official rent and a yearly charge on the burgh, yet cannot get so much as a cotter's sonsy bit lass to keep you company, and to sit, canty like Jenny and Jock, on the far side of the chimbley lug. Think shame of yourself, Dominie. Any questing lout that can persuade a tow-headed Mall of the byre to set up house with him, deserves better of his country than you. Were all of your mind, Maybole school might have none to attend it but dotards and grandmothers! And where were your craft then, Socrates?' I asked him, for just before he had been speaking to me of a certain wise man, a Greek of that name.

And at first he made a jest of the matter, as indeed I meant it.

'Never fear,' he said, 'there will always be enough fools in Ayrshire to get more. Maybole shall have its share of these.'

And indeed that hath been the repute of our town and countryside ever since Ayr water first ran over its pebbles!

Yet when I pressed the Dominie further upon the matter, he waxed thoughtful. His face, which was not naturally merry, took on a still sterner expression. Presently he put his hand within his blouse and pulled out a little string of beads, such as Catholics wear to mind them of their prayers. It was suspended about his neck. This, I own, was a great marvel to me, for the Dominie was a strong Reformer, and showed little mercy in arguing with men still inclined to the ancient opinion.

He gave the brown rosary into my hand, and I turned it curiously about. It was made of the stones of some foreign fruit, most quaintly and fantastically carven and joined together with little links of gold. Between two of the beads there was a longer portion of the chain, and upon it two rings of gold were strung.

'Once,' said the Dominie, 'there was a maid who had promised to share my hearth. One ring of these two was mine, to wear upon my finger, and one was hers. Upon the night before our marriage day we met at our place of tryst. I tried the ring upon her finger ard wished her to wear it that night. 'To-morrow will serve – it is not so far away!' she said, and slipped from my arms. Under a new-risen moon she went homeward, singing by the heads of Benane. And that was the last that these eyes ever beheld of bonny Mary Torrance – save only this necklace of beads which she wore, and the stain of her blood upon the short grass of the seashore.'

The Dominie looked long to seaward at the flashing birds that circled and clanged about our rocky isle, each tribe of them following its own orbit and keeping to its own airy sphere.

'And what happened to her?' I began, but got no further.

'Murder, most foul,' he cried, rising to his feet in his agitation, 'horrible, unheard of in any kingdom! For all about the spot where these things were found, was the trampling of many naked feet. And some of these were small and some were great. But all were naked, and the print of every foot was plain upon the sand of the shore. Each footprint had the toes of the bare feet wide and distinct. Every toe was pointed with a claw, as though the steads were those of birds. And the fearsome beast-prints went down to the sea edge, and the blood marks followed them. And that was all.' Then the Dominie fell silent, and I also, for though Ayrshire was full of blood feuds and the quest of human life, this was a new kind of murder to me – though by all accounts it seemed not rare in the neighbourhood of Benane, for I minded the warning words of the Mistress of Chapeldonnan.

'And had she no enemies, this Mary Torrance?' I asked.

'She was but young, and of birth too lowly for feuds and fightings. Besides, who in Carrick would harm a maid going homeward from her love-tryst?'

The Dominie rose and walked away to the other side of the Rock of Ailsa, where for long he sat by himself and fingered the necklace of beads. His face was fixed, as if he were making of the rosary a very catena of hate, a receptacle of dark imaginings and vengeful vows. Scarcely could I recognise my quaint and friendly Dominie.

It was that night, as the blackness grew grey towards the morn, that I yielded my watch upon the roof of the little Castle of Ailsa to the Dominie. Too long I had paced the battlements, listening to the confused and belated yawping and crying of the sea-birds upon the ledges, and to the mysterious night sounds of the isle. For I began to hear and to see all manner of uncouth things, that have no existence except on the borderlands of sleep.

The Dominie said no word, good or bad, but drew his cloak about him and sat down on the rampart. I bade him good morning, but he never answered me a word; and so I left him, for I judged that his thought was bitter, and that the tale he had told me of Mary Torrance lay blackly upon him.

Yet, when I went below, it was not with me as on other mornings. I lay down upon the plaids and composed me to sleep. Yet I remained broad awake, which was an unaccountable thing for me, who have been all my life a great sleeper. I lay and thought of my friend, sitting gloomy and silent above in the greyness of morn, till my own meditations grew eerie and comfortless. Often and often I started upon my elbow with the intention of going to him. As often I lay down again, because I had no excuse, and also (as it seemed to me) he had not desired my company.

But once, as I lifted me up on my elbow, I seemed to hear a shrill crying as it had been out of the sea, 'Launcelot – Launcelot Kennedy!' it said. And the crying was most like a woman's voice. My very blood chilled within me, for the tale of the lass murdered upon the morn of her marriage day was yet in my mind. And I thought of naught less than that her uneasy spirit was now come to visit the man, aged and withered, who sat up there waiting and watching for her coming. Yet why it should cry my name passed my comprehension.

It was, therefore, small wonder that I listened long, lying there among the plaids upon the floor. But the night wind soughed and sobbed through the narrow wicket window, and there was no further noise. Thinking that I had dreamed, I laid my head upon the hard pillow and composed me to sleep, but even then I caught as it had been the regular beat of a boat's oars upon the rullocks. And anon I heard my name cried twice and thrice, 'Launcelot Kennedy! Launcelot Kennedy! Launcelot Kennedy!' Whereat, with a thrill of horror, I rose, cast the wrappings from me, and, with my naked sword in my hand, I went up to the roof of the castle.

The Dominie was sitting with his face turned seaward. He heard me come behind him. Without turning he put out his hand.

'Did you hear it too?' he said. 'Go below. That which shall come is not for your eyes to see!'

'But I heard a woman call my name!' I said. 'I heard it twice and thrice, plain as I hear you speak!'

'Nay,' he said, 'not your name – mine!'

And once more we listened together. As for me, I strained my eyes into the darkness so that they ached and were ready to behold anything. I gazed out directly towards the sea, from which the sounds had come; but the Dominie looked along the path which led precariously between the wall of the isle above and the precipice below.

Thus we watched as it seemed for hours and hours.

Suddenly I heard him draw in his breath with a gasping sound, like that which a man gives when he finds himself unexpectedly in ice-cold water. The twilight of the morning had come a little, and as I looked over his shoulder, lo! there seemed to me as it had been a maid in white coming along the path. I felt my heart stop beating, and I, too, gazed rigidly, for it seemed to me to be Nell Kennedy, coming towards us, robed like an angel.

'She is dead!' I thought. 'Mayhap the clawed things out of the sea have devoured her, even as they took Mary Torrance!'

But I heard the Dominie say under his breath, 'It is she! It is she!'

For in the moment of terror, when the soul is unmanned, everyone hears with his own ears and sees with his own eyes, according to his own heart's fantasy.

But the figure came ever closer to us, stepping daintily and surely in the dim light. Again I heard the voice which had spoken to me from the sea, and at the sound my very bones quaked within me.

'Launcelot – Launcelot Kennedy!' it said.

And for a long moment the figure stood still as if waiting for an answer. But my voice was shut dumbly within me. The Dominie stood up.

'Art thou the spirit of Mary Torrance, or a deceiving fiend of hell that has taken her shape? Answer me, or I fire!'

And the Dominie held out his pistol to the white-sheeted ghost, which even then appeared to me a mightily vain thing, for how can a spirit fear these things which are only deadly to flesh and bone?

'I have come to see Launcelot Kennedy,' answered the voice, and it appeared awful and terrible to me beyond the power of words. I could not so much as fix my mind on a prayer, though I knew several well enough. 'I have come to seek Launce Kennedy. Is he within?' said the voice.

'What would you with him? He is no concern of yours,' said the Dominie.

'I ken that,' said the voice. 'Nevertheless, I have come to seek him. I greet you well, Dominie Mure. Will you open and let Helen Kennedy within?'

And with that the light came clearer. The veil of the fantasies of that fearful night fell like a loosened bandage from my eyes. And lo! there at the tower's foot was my dear quipsome lass, Nell Kennedy, in her own proper body, and I knew her for good, sound flesh and blood. Nor could I now tell how I had so deceived myself. But one thing I resolved – that I should not reveal my terror to her, for very certainly she would laugh at me!

But the Dominie was too firmly fixed in his thought. I saw him grip his pistol and lean over the parapet. It seemed that he could not even believe the seeing of his eyes.

'Come not nearer,' he cried in a wild voice, 'for well do I know that you are a fiend of the breed of the sea demons, whatsoever you may pretend. I will try a bullet of holy silver upon you.'

But I threw myself upon him and held his arm.

'It is but our own Nell Kennedy,' I said. 'What frights you, Dominie?'

For I resolved to make a virtue of my courage. And, indeed, as I came to myself first, and had done no open foolishness, I thought I might as well take all the credit which was due to me. 'See you not that it is only Helen Kennedy of Culzean?' I repeated, reasoning with him.

'And what seeks she with you?' said he, still struggling in my grasp. 'I tell you it is a prodigy, and bodes us no good,' he persisted.

'That I cannot tell,' said I. 'I had thought her safe upon the moors with my mother. But I will go down and open the door to her.'

So when I had run down the stairs of the small keep and set the bolt wide, lo, there upon the step was Nell Kennedy, her face dimpled with smiles, albeit somewhat pale also with the morning light and the strangeness of her adventure.

I held out my hand to her. Never had I been so moved with any meeting.

'Nell!' I said, and could say no more.

'Ay, Launce – just Nell!' she said. And she came in without taking my hand. But for all that she was not abashed nor shame-faced. But she remained as direct and simple in her demeanour as she had been about Culzean, in the old days before sorrow fell upon the house, and, indeed, upon us all.

'Take me up the stairs to the Dominie,' she said. And I took her hand and kept it tightly as we went upwards. But I tried after no greater favours at that time, for I knew that her mood leaned not towards the desires of a lover.

'Ah, Dominie,' said Nell, when she reached the top, 'this Ailsa is a strange place to keep school in. Yet I warrant you that geese are not more numerous here than they were in Maybole!'

But the Dominie could only gaze at her, thus daffing with him, so fixed had he been in his fantasy. Then when he was somewhat come to himself, we waited expectantly for Nell to reveal her errand and to relate her adventure, and she did not keep us long waiting.

'You must instantly leave Ailsa and come back with me,' she said. 'My sister Marjorie is lost from Auchendrayne, and we three must find her. I fear that the Mures have done her a mischief, being afraid of the things that she might reveal.'

'How knew you of that, Nelly?' I asked, for, indeed, it was a thing I could make no guess at myself.

'It was one morning at Kirrieoch,' said Nell, 'as we were bringing in the kye out of the green pastures by the waterside, that a messenger rode up with a letter from Marjorie. She asked me to meet her at Culzean and to bring you and any other faithful men whom I could trust along with me. And thus the letter ended: '"For gin I once win clear out of Auchendrayne, we have them all in the hollow of our hand, I have found him that carried the letter."'

'She means the letter to John Mure that took your father to the tryst of death,' I said.

The Dominie seemed to awake at the words.

'That will be young William Dalrymple she has fallen on with,' he cried, in much excitement.

I rose, and hastened down to put our belongings together, which were scattered about the castle. As soon as I returned Nell went on with her tale.