Green Fire: A Romance

"I have heard that said."

"And that the Marquis de Kerival wishes that union to take place?"

"The Marquis Tristran's opinion, on any matter, does not in any way concern me."

"That may be, Alan; but it concerns Ynys. Do you know that I also wish her to marry Andrik; that his parents wish it; and that every one regards the union as all but an accomplished fact?"

"Yes, dear Aunt Lois, I have known or presumed all you tell me. But nothing of it can alter what is a vital part of my existence."

"Do you know that Ynys herself gave her pledge to Andrik de Morvan?"

"It was a conditional pledge. But, in any case, she will formally renounce it."

For a time there was silence.

Alan had risen, and now stood by the side of the couch, with folded arms. The Marquise Lois looked up at him, with her steadfast, shadowy eyes. When she spoke again she averted them, and her voice was so low as almost to be a whisper.

"Finally, Alan, let me ask you one question. It is not about you and Ynys. I infer that both of you are at one in your determination to take every thing into your own hands. Presumably you can maintain her and yourself. Tristran – the Marquis de Kerival – will not contribute a franc toward her support. If he knew, he would turn her out of doors this very day."

"Well, Aunt Lois, I wait for your final question?"

"It is this. What about Annaik?"

Startled by her tone and sudden lifted glance, Alan stared in silence; then recollecting himself, he repeated dully:

"'What about Annaik?' … Annaik, Aunt Lois, why do you ask me about Annaik?"

"She loves you."

"As a brother; as the betrothed of Ynys; as a dear comrade and friend."

"Do not be a hypocrite, Alan. You know that she loves you. What of your feeling toward her?"

"I love her … as a brother loves a sister … as any old playmate and friend … as … as the sister of Ynys."

A faint, scornful smile came upon the white lips of the Marquise.

"Will you be good enough, then, to explain about last night?"

"About last night?"

"Come, be done with evasion. Yes, about last night. Alan, I know that you and Annaik were out together in the cypress avenue, and again, on the dunes, after midnight; that you were seen walking hand in hand; and that, stealthily, you entered the house together."

"Well?"

"Well! The inference is obvious. But I will let you see that I know more. Annaik went out of the house late. Old Matieu let her out. Shortly after that you went out of the château. Later, you and she came upon Judik Kerbastiou prowling about in the woods. It was more than an hour after he left you that you returned to the château. Where were you during that hour or more?"

Alan flushed. He unfolded his arms; hesitated; then refolded them.

"How do you know this?" he asked simply.

"I know it, because…"

But before she finished what she was about to say, the door opened and Yann entered.

"What is it, Ian?"

"I would be speaking to you alone for a minute, Bantighearna."

"Alan, go to the alcove yonder, please. I must hear in private what Yann has to say to me."

As soon as the young man was out of hearing, Yann stooped and spoke in low tones. The Marquise Lois grew whiter and whiter, till not a vestige of color remained in her face, and the only sign of life was in the eyes. Suddenly she made an exclamation.

Alan turned and looked at her. He caught her agonized whisper: "Oh, my God!"

"What is it – oh, what is it, dear Aunt Lois?" he cried, as he advanced to her side.

He expected to be waved back, but to his surprise the Marquise made no sign to him to withdraw. Instead, she whispered some instructions to Yann and then bade him go.

When they were alone once more, she took a small silver flagon from beneath her coverlet and poured a few drops upon some sugar.

Having taken this, she seemed to breathe more easily. It was evident, at the same time, that she had received some terrible shock.

"Alan, come closer. I cannot speak loud. I have no time to say more to you about Annaik. I must leave that to you and to her. But lest I die, let me say at once that I forbid you to marry Ynys, and that I enjoin you to marry Annaik, and that without delay."

A spasm of pain crossed the speaker's face. She stopped, and gasped for breath. When at last she resumed, it was clear she considered as settled the matter on which she had spoken.

"Alan, I am so unwell that I must be very brief. And now listen. You are twenty-five to-day. Such small fortune as is yours comes now into your possession. It has been administered for you by a firm of lawyers in Edinburgh. See, here is the address. Can you read it? Yes?.. Well, keep the slip. This fortune is not much. To many, possibly to you, it may not seem enough to provide more than the bare necessities of life, not enough for its needs. Nevertheless, it is your own, and you will be glad. It will, at least, suffice to keep you free from need if ever you fulfil your great wish to go back to the land of your fathers, to your own place."

"That is still my wish and my hope."

"So be it! You will have also an old sea castle, not much more than a keep, on a remote island. It will at any rate be your own. It is on an island where few people are; a wild and precipitous isle far out in the Atlantic at the extreme of the Southern Hebrides."

"Is it called Rona?" Alan interrupted eagerly.

Without noticing, or heeding, his eagerness, she assented.

"Yes, it is called Rona. Near it are the isles of Mingulay and Borosay. These three islands were once populous, and it was there that for hundreds of years your father's clan, of which he was hereditary chief, lived and prospered. After the evil days, the days when the young King was hunted in the west as though a royal head were the world's desire, and when our brave kinswoman, Flora Macdonald, proved that women as well as men could dare all for a good cause – after those evil days the people melted away. Soon the last remaining handful were upon Borosay; and there, too, till the great fire that swept the island a score of years ago, stood the castle of my ancestors, the Macdonalds of Borosay.

"My father was a man well known in his day. The name of Sir Kenneth Macdonald was as familiar in London as in Edinburgh; and in Paris he was known to all the military and diplomatic world, for in his youth he had served in the French army with distinction, and held the honorary rank of general.

"Not long before my mother's death he came back to our lonely home in Borosay, bringing with him a kinsman of another surname, who owned the old castle of Rona on the Isle of the Sea-caves, as Rona is often called by the people of the Hebrides. Also there came with him a young French officer of high rank. After a time I was asked to marry this man. I did not love him, did not even care for him, and I refused. In truth … already, though unknowingly, I loved your father – he that was our kinsman and owned Rona and its old castle. But Alasdair did not speak; and, because of that, we each came to sorrow.

"My father told me he was ruined. If I did not marry Tristran de Kerival, he would lose all. Moreover, my dying mother begged me to save the man she had loved so well and truly, though he had left her so much alone.

"Well, to be brief, I agreed. My kinsman Alasdair was away at the time. He returned on the eve of the very day on which I was suddenly married by Father Somerled Macdonald. We were to remain a few weeks in Borosay because of my mother's health.

"When Alasdair learned what had happened he was furious. I believe he even drew a riding whip across the face of Tristran de Kerival. Fierce words passed between them, and a cruel taunt that rankled. Nor would Alasdair have any word with me at all. He sent me a bitter message, but the bitterest word he could send was that which came to me: that he and my sister Silis had gone away together.

"From that day I never saw Silis again, till the time of her death. Soon afterward our mother died, and while the island-funeral was being arranged our father had a stroke, and himself died, in time to be buried along with his wife. It was only then that I realized how more than true had been his statements as to his ruin. He died penniless. I was reminded of this unpleasant fact at the time, by the Marquis de Kerival; and I have had ample opportunity since for bearing it in vivid remembrance.

"As soon as possible we settled all that could be settled, and left for Brittany. I have sometimes thought my husband's love was killed when he discovered that Alasdair had loved me. He forbade me even to mention his name, unless he introduced it; and he was wont to swear that a day would come when he would repay in full what he believed to be the damning insult he had received.

"We took with us only one person from Borosay, an islander of Rona. He is, in fact, a clansman both of you and me. It is of Ian I speak, of course; him that soon came to be called here Yann the Dumb. My husband and I had at least this to unite us: that we were both Celtic, and had all our racial sympathies in common.

"I heard from Silis that she was married and was happy. I am afraid this did not add to my happiness. She wrote to me, too, when she was about to bear her child. Strangely enough, Alasdair, who, like his father before him, was an officer in the French army, was then stationed not far from Kerival, though my husband knew nothing of this at first. My own boy and Silis's were born about the same time. My child died; that of Silis and Alasdair lived. You are that child. No … wait, Alan … I will tell you his name shortly… You, I say, are that child. Soon afterward, Silis had a dangerous relapse. In her delirium she said some wild things; among them, words to the effect that the child which had died was hers, and that the survivor was mine – that, somehow or other, they had been changed. Then, too, she cried out in her waywardness – and, poor girl, she must have known then that Alasdair had loved me before he loved her – that the child who lived, he who had been christened Alan, was the child of Alasdair and myself.

"All this poor delirium at the gate of death meant nothing. But in some way it came to Tristran's ears, and he believed. After Silis's death I had brought you home, Alan, and had announced that I would adopt you. I promised Silis this, in her last hour, when she was in her right mind again; also that the child, you, should be brought up to speak and think in our own ancient language, and that in all ways you should grow up a true Gael. I have done my best, Alan?"

"Indeed, indeed you have. I shall never, never forget that you have been my mother to me."

"Well, my husband never forgave that. He acquiesced, but he never forgave. For long, and I fear to this day, he persists in his belief that you are really my illegitimate child, and that Silis was right in thinking that I had succeeded in having my own new-born babe transferred to her arms, while her dead offspring was brought to me, and, as my own, interred. It has created a bitter feud, and that is why he hates the sight of you. That, too, Alan, is why he would never consent to your marriage with either Ynys or Annaik."

"But you yourself urged me a little ago to … to … marry Annaik."

"I had a special reason. Besides, I of course know the truth. In his heart, God knows, my husband cannot doubt it."

"Then tell me this: is my father dead also, as I have long surmised?"

"No … yes, yes, Alan, he is dead."

Alan noticed his aunt's confusion, and regarded her steadily.

"Why do you first say 'no' and then 'yes'?"

"Because…"

But here again an interruption occurred. The portière moved back, and then the wide doors disparted. Into the salon was wheeled a chair, in which sat the Marquis de Kerival. Behind him was his attendant; at his side, Kermorvan the steward. The face of the seigneur was still deathly pale, and the features were curiously drawn. The silky hair, too, seemed whiter than ever, and white as foam-drift on a dark wave were the long thin hands which lay on the lap of the black velvet shooting jacket he wore.

"Ah, Lois, is this a prepared scene?" he exclaimed in a cold and sneering voice, "or, has the young man known all along?"

"Tristan, I have not yet told him what I now know. Be merciful."

"Alan MacAlasdair, as the Marquise here calls you, – and she ought to know, – have you learned yet the name and rank of your father?"

"No."

"Tell him, Lois."

"Tristran, listen. All is over now. Soon I, too, shall be gone. In the name of God I pray you to relent from this long cruelty, this remorseless infamy. You know as well as I do that our first-born is dead twenty-five years ago, and that this man here is truly the son of Silis, my sister. And here is one overwhelming proof for you: I have just been urging him to marry Annaik."

At that Tristran the Silent was no longer silent. With a fierce laugh he turned to the steward.

"I call you to witness, Raif Kermorvan, that I would kill Annaik, or Ynys either for that matter, before I would allow such an unnatural union. Once and for all I absolutely ban it. Besides… Listen, you there with your father's eyes! You are sufficiently a Gael to feel that you would not marry the daughter of a man who killed your father?"

"God forbid!"

"Well, then, God does forbid. Lois, tell this man what you know."

"Alan," began the Marquise quaveringly, her voice fluttering like a dying bird, "the name of your father is … is … Alasdair … Alasdair Carmichael!"

"Carmichael!"

For a moment he was dazed, bewildered. When, recently, had he heard that name?

Then it flashed upon him. He turned with flaming eyes to where the Marquis sat, quietly watching him.

"Oh, my God!" That was all. He could say no more. His heart was in his throat.

Then, hoarse and trembling, he put out his hands.

"Tell me it is not true! Tell me it is not true!"

"What is not true, Alan Carmichael?"

"That that was he who died in the wood yonder."

"That was General Alasdair Carmichael."

"My father?"

"Your father!"

"But, you devil, you murdered him! I saw you do it! You knew it was he – and you killed him. You knew he would not try to kill you, and you waited; then, when he had fired, you took careful aim and killed him!"

"You reiterate, my friend. These are facts with which I am familiar."

The cool, sneering tone stung Alan to madness. He advanced menacingly.

"Murderer, you shall not escape!"

"A fitting sentiment, truly, from a man who wants to marry my daughter!"

"Marry your daughter! Marry the daughter of my father's murderer! I would sooner never see the face of woman again than do this thing."

"Good! I am well content. And now, young man, you are of age; you have come into your patrimony, including your ruined keep on the island of Rona; and I will trouble you to go – to leave Kerival for good and all."

Suddenly, without a word, Alan moved rapidly forward. With a light touch he laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the motionless man in the wheeled chair.

"There! I lay upon you, Tristran de Kerival, the curse of the newly dead and of the living! May the evil that you have done corrode your brain, and may your life silt away as sand, and may your soul know the second death!"

As he turned to leave the room he saw Kerbastiou standing in the doorway.

"Who are you, to be standing there, Judik Kerbastiou?" demanded the steward angrily.

"I am Rohan de Kerival. Ask this man here if I am not his son. Three days ago the woman who was my mother died. She died a vagrant, in the forest. But, nigh upon thirty years ago, she was legally married to the young Marquis Tristran de Kerival. I am their child."

Alan glanced at the man he had cursed. A strange look had come into his ashy face.

"Her name?" was all Tristran the Silent said.

"Annora Brizeux."

"You have proofs?"

"I have all the proofs."

"You are only a peasant, I disown you. I know nothing of you or of the wanton that was your mother."

Without a word Judik strode forward and struck him full in the face. At that moment the miraculous happened. The Marquise, who had not stood erect for years, rose to her full height.

She, too, crossed the room.

"Alan," she cried, "see! He has killed me as well as your father," and with that she swayed, and fell dead, at the feet of the man who had trampled her soul in the dust and made of her blossoming life a drear and sterile wilderness.

BOOK SECOND

THE HERDSMAN

CHAPTER IX

RETROSPECTIVE: FROM THE HEBRID ISLES

At the end of the third month after that disastrous day when Alan Carmichael knew that his father had been slain, and before his unknowing eyes, by Tristran de Kerival, a great terror came upon him.

On that day itself he had left the Manor of Kerival. With all that blood between him and his enemy he could not stay a moment longer in the house. To have done so would have been to show himself callous indeed to the memory of his father.

Nor could he see Ynys. He could not look at her, innocent as she was. She was her father's child, and her father had murdered his father. Surely a union would be against nature; he must fly while he had the strength.

When, however, he had gained the yew close he turned, hesitated, and then slowly walked northward to where the long brown dunes lay in a golden glow over against the pale blue of the sea. There, bewildered, wrought almost to madness, he moved to and fro, unable to realize all that had happened, and with bitter words cursing the malign fate which had overtaken him.

The afternoon waned, and he was still there, uncertain as ever, still confused, baffled, mentally blind.

Then suddenly he saw the figure of Yann the Dumb, his friend and clansman, Ian Macdonald. The old man seemed to understand at once that, after what had happened, Alan Carmichael would never go back to Kerival.

"Why do you come to see me here, Ian?" Alan had asked wearily.

When Ian began, "Thiginn gu d'choimhead … I would come to see you, though your home were a rock-cave," the familiar sound of the Gaelic did more than any thing else to clear his mind of the shadows which overlay it.

"Yes, Alan MacAlasdair," Ian answered, in response to an eager question, "whatever I know is yours now, since Lois nic Choinneach is dead, poor lady; though, sure, it is the best thing she could be having now, that death."

As swiftly as possible Alan elicited all he could from the old man; all that there had not been time to hear from the Marquise. He learned what a distinguished soldier, what a fine man, what a true Gael, Alasdair Carmichael had been. When his wife had died he had been involved in some disastrous lawsuit, and his deep sorrow and absolute financial ruin came to him at one and the same moment. It was at this juncture, though there were other good reasons also, that Lois de Kerival had undertaken to adopt and bring up Silis's child. When her husband Tristran had given his consent, it was with the stipulation that Lois and Alasdair Carmichael should never meet, and that the child was not to learn his surname till he came into the small fortune due to him through his mother.

This and much else Alan learned from Ian. Out of all the pain grew a feeling of bitter hatred for the cold, hard man who had wrought so much unhappiness, and were it not for Ynys and Annaik he would, for the moment, have rejoiced that, in Judik Kerbastiou, Nemesis had appeared. At his first mention of the daughters, Ian had looked at him closely.

"Will you be for going back to that house, Alan MacAlasdair?" he asked, and in a tone so marked that, even in his distress, Alan noticed it.

"Do you wish me to go back, Ian?"

"God forbid! I hear the dust on the threshold rising at the thought."

"We are both in an alien land, Ian."

"Och is diombuan gach cas air tìr gun eòlas– Fleeting is the foot in a strange land," said the islander, using a phrase familiar to Gaels away from the isles.

"But what can I do?"

"Sure you can go to your own place, Alan MacAlasdair. There you can think of what you will do. And before you go I must tell you that your father's brother Uilleam is dead, so that you have no near kin now except the son of the brother of your father, Donnacha Bàn as he is called – or was called, for I will be hearing a year or more ago that he, too, went under the wave. He would be your own age, and that close as a month or week, I am thinking."

"Nevertheless, Ian, I cannot go without seeing my cousin Ynys once more."

"You will never be for marrying the daughter of the man that murdered your father?" Ian spoke in horrified amaze, adding, "Sure, if that were so, it would indeed mean that they may talk as they like of this southland as akin to Gaeldom, though that is not a thought that will bring honey to the hive of my brain; – for no man of the isles would ever forget there that the blood of a father cries up to the stars themselves."

"Have you no message for me, from … from … her?"

"Ay," answered the old islesman reluctantly. "Here it is. I did not give it to you before, for fear you should be weak."

Without a word, Alan snatched the pencilled note. It had no beginning or signature, and ran simply: "My mother is dead, too. After all that has happened to-day I know we cannot meet. I know, too, that I love you with all my heart and soul; that I have given you my deathless devotion. But, unless you say 'Come,' it is best that you go away at once, and that we never see each other again."

At that, Alan had torn off the half sheet, and written a single word upon it.

It was "Come."

This he gave to Ian, telling him to go straightway with it, and hand the note to Ynys in person. "Also," he added, "fulfil unquestioningly every thing she may tell you to do or not to do."

An hour or more after Ian had gone, and when a dark, still gloaming had begun, he came again, but this time with Ynys. He and she walked together; behind them came four horses, led by Ian. When the lovers met, they had stood silent for some moments. Then Ynys, knowing what was in Alan's mind, asked if she were come for life or death.

"I love you, dear," was his answer; "I cannot live without you. If you be in truth the daughter of the man who slew my father, why should his evil blood be our undoing also? God knows but that even thus may his punishment be begun. All his thoughts were upon you and Annaik."

"Annaik is gone."

"Gone! Annaik gone! Where has she gone?"

"I know nothing. She sent me a line to say that she would never sleep in Kerival again; that something had changed her whole life; that she would return three days hence for our mother's funeral; and that thereafter she and I would never meet."

In a flash Alan saw many things; but deepest of all he saw the working of doom. On the very day of his triumph Tristran de Kerival had lost all, and found only that which made life more bitter than death. Stammeringly now, Alan sought to say something about Annaik; that there was a secret, an unhappiness, a sorrow, which he must explain.

But at that Ynys had pointed to the dim gray-brown sea.

"There, Alan, let us bury it all there; every thing, every thing! Either you and I must find our forgetfulness there, or we must drown therein all this terrible past which has an inexplicable, a menacing present. Dear, I am ready. Shall it be life or death?"

"Life."

That was all that was said. Alan leaned forward, and tenderly kissing her, took her in his arms. Then he turned to Ian.

"Ian mac Iain, I call you to witness that I take Ynys de Kerival as my wife; that in this taking all the blood-feud that lies betwixt us is become as nought; and that the past is past. Henceforth I am Alan Carmichael, and she here is Ynys Carmichael."

At that, Ian had bowed his head. It was against the tradition of his people; but he loved Ynys as well as Alan, and secretly he was glad.

Thereafter, Alan and Ynys had mounted, and ridden slowly southward through the dusk; while Ian followed on the third horse, with, in rein, its companion, on which were the apparel and other belongings which Ynys had hurriedly put together.