SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3314, 19 September 1917, Page 58

SHORT STORIES.

AN HEIR FROM THE SEA. By Ethel F. Heddle. (All Rights Reserved.) "I'll be sending up the luggage, mem, and Dugal Graeme is here with the carriage. It's Torkle I am, from the castle, with my leddy's compliments to the young leddy." The soft. Highland voice ceased then, and I looked 1 crver Torkle's white head to the pier, where I could see a handsome old barouche with a big crest on the panels. Up above the island, on a cliff, towering on its pile of jagged grey rock, which fell sheer to the sea, I could see Castle MacQueen. The rest of-the island seemed all green and purple and! gold—heather, and whin, and grey rocks, and little thatched crofts—all that I could see, except to the west, where the Machair (I had learned the name from the Skye Captain) (bordered the sea, and was now all soft pinks, and golds, and blues, and greys, from the wonderful flowers and sea lavender which crept up through the sand. The most beautiful place. An enchanted island. And- yet it was only last Thursday that Peter M'Nab, the great Scottish artist, had telegraphed to me, and I had set off hot-foot for Cnock Island "east of Skye." "Go to the C'nock Gorm, Lady MacQueen's Island, east of Skye." (It might have been east 'of Piccadilly.) "Restore old pictures burnt. She will' explain. Off to the Rockies. —M'Nab."

He always left the best part of everything unsaid. It was a favourite aphorism of his that people should exereise their intelligence, however small, and he knew that I, Pamela Prideaux, portrait painter, was longing for work. And being single and unattached (I am twenty-two, and a "bachelor woman"), I had nothing to do but close the Chelsea studio, give Mrs Tebbut her instructions, and set off for "east of Skye." The "winged island" had been behind us as we cleft our way through the tossing waves—a steamer called at Cnock Gorm only once a week, and I had slept all night at Portree, and seen the CiichiHans, with wild splintered crests, violet grey in my dreams. It was all dreamlike as I went up to the carriage, and a grim old Scot touched his cap. I saw that Torkle had followed me, and now took his seat in front, turning to speak, with the curious mixture of friendliness and respect one finds in some old servants. Yet he looked at me with rather sad eyes, friendly though they were. "And yoti will be coming to make a picture all right? But I suppose you have not got the Gaelic?" He said this quite suddenly and eagerly. I lelt so anxious to please him that 1 shook my head almost sadly. I could hear him murmur then, as if to himself. "Me the day!" and then he nodded slowly. "As if she could—and she will be clever, for all that. The English has not the Gaelic; not at all. And Mr M'Nab said it would be all right." Ho talked, then, of many things as we climbed the hill, the horses going very slowly, but I felt as if he had retreated to a little distance. Of course I knew Peter M'Nab had been bred in the Hebrides; doubtless Torkle had supposed anyone recommended by him would be expert in "the Gaelic" also. I only hoped my lady would not expect the same, and look at me with the same disappointed eyes. Then Torkle Avas explaining that her' ladyship would not see me till dinner. She was not well, had not been well since the fright of the fire, which had burned and destroyed more than half of the family portraits. - But I was to do great things, and have the portrait of the Mac Queen ready for the exhibition.

"It is the exhibition of portraits of the Highland families, and is to be in Oban," Torkle explained. "Her leddyship was like to go mad when she saw the picture after the fire. And she telegraphed to Mr M'Nab. It was the last of the MacQueens. God pity us ! And he lies asleep in the foot of the sea—God rest his soul! —and never a child to follow him. And the portrait was all we had—all !" His voice fell then, and he shook his head sorrowfully as he helped me to alight. I looked up at the beautiful old pile, at the grey scarred stone, and small windows. I could hear the dull swish of the waves far below, and the breeze, sweet and heather-scented, and yet punged of the sea, came with a tang to my face, and I do not know what made me say idly, "What a pity he did not marry!"

To* which Torkle, with a strange look in his lined face, said nothing at all, only rancr the heavy-hanging iron bell-, and presently I was passing over the white and black lozenges of the old hall, and going up wide, shallow oak steps which led from the hall, and the claymores, and the big, open fireplace, and the great carved chairs. It was like a castle in a fairy tale. I felt, somehow, as if I had come right into a half-written romance.

" All lifo is a fairy tale/' Han 3 Andersen has said, only sometimes the mise en scene is so badly chosen. Here it was beautiful.

I «.had dined by myself, served by Torkle, who seemed the general factotum, though 1 could see a large staff of servants, and he told me, after, that her leddyship was in the picture gallery, and would seo me there after coffee. 1 had a curious sense of nervousness as I mounted the stairs later, Torkle leading the way with a candle in a big silver candlestick, with a host of dead Mac Queens looking down at us from the stairs. Between lunch and dinner I had ready a history of the family; I found it in my room. Somehow it vaguely oppressed me. They had been such a wild, revengeful, vindictive race. A family tree w r as at the end of the book, and the "Red Mac Queens" closed with the name of the lady's son: " Angus Mac Queen, fiftieth of Cnock Gorm." Her only son. It was his portrait —poor, forlorn mother! —that I was to restore. I felt, somehow, afraid of Lady Mac Queen. Torkle's tone while speaking of her gave me a kind of nervous emotion, his very way of pronouncing her name.

But now we were at the door of the gallery, and I heard him say " Miss Prideaux, my leddyj" and then the door closed behind me.

It was rather dark in the gallery, and Lady Mac Queen was seated in a heavy velvet chair before a portrait. Stacks of canvases were against the wall, many quite burnt, all old and dusty, and badly in need of repair. One small, leaded window was wide open, for it was June, and I could hear the splash of the waves below. They had a dull, lonely sound in the summer dusk. The pale, clear light from the sea fell on her face—pale and ivory-tinted—on the deep lines, and the tragic mother-eyes. She looked round at me severely, and I dropped her a little curtsey. She nodded sharply, and yet I think a little flash of pleasure was in the great dark eyes. They seemed to take me all in. I found afterwards that she had an odd habit of speaking her thoughts aloud —she lived so much alone, —and she spoke aloud now. " A nice girl—a lady—knows how to dress. I w r as right to trust Peter." Then she spoke, as if only then aware of my presence. " You are Miss Prideaux? I am pleased to see you. This is the portrait of the MacQueen —the last Mac Queen. You can restore it? See, the flames only touched it here and there."

I took the candle and placed it on the side table, and I moved the portrait into th'e best light of the summer sky. And then I exclaimed suddenly, I was so surprised" " Why, he was only a little boy!" She seemed to draw back in her -chair. She looked at me' coldlv and haughtily. Something in the words offended her. Why, I did not know. " He —did not like to be painted—as the Mac Queen," she said, and her voice had something of the cold remoteness of the sea. It js a tone I have heard in the greatly bereaved—in those islanded in grief. "He died—was drowned—at twenty-two. The Mac Queens Avere all painted in the zenith of their powers. But I had him painted as a boy. ]STo matter, girl! Boy or man, he is the last of the Mac Queens. Can you restore it? Can you do the work?"

There was a subdued impatience and almost feverishness in her voice. I felt as if I had struck a, wrong chord. " I shall do my best. I think I can," I said. . '

"Look at it well." She rose slowly. " Good-night." She struck a bell at her side sharply, and an old maid appeared from the shadows, and gave Lady Mac Queen her arm. I was left alone in the strange, shadowy old place, with the half-burnt portrait of a little red-haired lad in Highland dress, and the requiem, as it seemed to me, of the last of the Mac Queens coming dully through the window to my ear.

But there was no doubt of it, the work was not going to be easy. The fire had burnt and warped the canvas ; the features were scorched;. the colour of the hair was gone, and it was the colour of the hair that my lady was mad about. She came day after day to the gallery; I could not keep her out, and it was hard work to be patient with her. Sometimes she would rave at me from her chair—at me, at fate, at the whole world, it seemed. Red? Did I call that red? Her boy had not brick-red, sandy, copper, flame-coloured hair. It was copper and beaten gold, with a hint of russet leaves —it was hair that -looked like cold and burnished copper, and the thick rifts of dead beech leaves fuom last October in a Highland ditch. All in one! It must have light and shade and glory! Did I not know there was no hair in the world like the Red Mac Queens? Was I doited, blind, foolish? I said never a word. In a strange way I so loved the poor, bereaved lady, the lonely castle, the dead Mac Queen, last of his race, that I was willing to bear anything, do anything to please her, satisfy her. And Torkle—a mark of great favour and goodwill—had whispered a secret, the key to all her dry-eyed misery. "Because it is sin that gives the sting of death, as the Bible says, and not" only death itself—the Reaper with his keen, cruel sickle.

My lady had quarrelled with her son, had sent him out with curses from her presence, and vowed to disinherit him, never to look on his face again, and only because he had married a " play-acting leddy," an English girl, who had been staying with the Mac Neils of Castle Neil for the shooting. "And they were, both drowned in the Atlantic—run into by another boat, on their way across," Torkle said, "and she has never raised her head since. Sho never asked any details, nor the day—-

never! never! And the Black Mac Queen, all the way from' the mainland, will be the heir—a man she has never seen, nor will see. Me the day! 'As well let him have it as the Crown, Torkle,' she will say. ' The last 01 the lied MacQueens is dead and cold —cold as my heart.' "

So that was the story. Poor lady! I found myself repeating Torkle's favourite expression, "Mo the day!" as I heard; and he shook his head, mournfully saying something in Gaelic I could not follow. Torkle said there were things to be said in Gaelic that you could not say in any other language—words you could not translate from any dictionary. I was down on the Machair to-day, watching the calm stretches of sea lavender, and the cream of the breaking waves on the silvery strand, and my hands were clenched in my lap. That dreadful hair! I, Pamela Prideaux, waa baffled, defeated, brow-beaten. I could not get the colour. How could- IV If she had a lock—a curl —could find a child as a model

And then I turned round suddenly, startled by the patter of feet behind me, and I stared wildly before me. Was it magic? Surely there was magic in this beautiful, lonely Hebridean isle. For my model—that hair—surely the veiy hair that baffled me—was there!

"Why don't you come and play?" He looked up at me confidingly, a little bare-legged boy in a red kilt. He had hazel eyes and a white skin, and the hair that curled upon his forehead was trie hair of my lady's dream. Neither gold, nor red, nor copper, but the epitome, the glorious cpjintessence of all three. "Play?" I gasped, and stood up and took him firmly by the arm. " Yes, I will play—do anything; but, first of all, will you let me paint your hair, little man—paint your hair for a poor, sad old lady?" The boy gazed at me and laughed, and in a very little while we were seated side by side, and I was talking to him, and we were building sand castles. The first thing to do was to win his friendship. I am glad that with me that is usually easy. I love boys of all ages. He was laughing merrily, and I was burying his rosy toes, and then he my hands, when a step sounded behind me, and I looked sharply round. A tall, pale girl, with " eyes of gold and bramble-dew ' (I cannot better Stevenson's description), and masses of dark hair. Very sad and gentle she looked, and very plainly dressed, in a kind of loose, filmy black. I explained the position to her, and she listened with a kind of startled eagerness. Might I borrow the boy? What was his name? Paint the beautiful curls for poor Lady Mac Queen?

"Why do you call her 'poor'?" She stood looking down- on us both, while " Sonnie" buried my hands. She had a grjsat posy of the grey-blue lavender in her slim hands. " She is one of the richest landowners in the West, and proxid as Lucifer, hard and cold as ice, remorseless, vindictive. These old Highland men and women wear the veneer of civilisation, but they are the embodied spirits, all the same, of the old feuds, and the old foes who fought and harried and plundered, and forgave—never, never!" I listened, rather annoyed and startled by this outburst. I shook my head. I tossed the shell and sand away from my fingers, and " Sonnie," running away, pattered gaily in the green and silver-laced waves.

"I call her 'poor,'" I said, "because all the wealth in the world cannot mend a broken heart, and because remorse is a fox that gnaws at the vitals " " A broken heart?"

"Torkle has told me, and old Marid," I said. " She hides it from all the world, and goes nowhere; but they know. Ana I, who am trying to give her back the portrait of the dead boy—l know. Even death promises no balm. Even in heaven she feels she will not find her boy. She cast him off. He belongs, to his wife. They are happy in Elysian fields, while she is alone in the dark. Poor, poor woman!" And then I looked up in great amazement, for the tears were streaming down my listener's pale cheeks. " You will let me take him up? The light will last for a good time," I said rising. "If you like, I will bring him back to you here. She generally comes in about dusk to see how I am getting on. May I have him? Oh, I think the hair will be right at last —at last." " Yes, you may take him, and I—l will come for him myself—and ask for you."

I took " Sonnie's " hand, and we put on his sand-shoes, and, laughing and calling out, he and I ran towards the castle, and one of the maids let us in. Torkle was out driving with my lady. We went up to the picture gallery unseen.

I worked hard —oh, very hard—at those dear russet curls of my bonnie boy. He was the dearest, bonniest boy—a boy with race written all over him, and the joy of life and fun and frolic—ll 3 was like a young sun-god, and yet he was a very human child. Everything went well. I told him " Peter Rabbit " to keep him amused —fairy tales; we asked each other riddles. He was only five, he said : but being so much with his mother had made him old for his years. The opening of the door at dusk startled us both. "Sonnie", turned round from his stool, and he called out gladly when his mother came up and rested her hand on his curls. A great spear of sunset falling redly through the window should have warned me before, and I stood up and took off my holland apron, and put down my palette beside the bottle of turpentine and the tin of brushes. "I can't thank you enough—yes, this is my picture—and this is the burnt one. You see I have painted it twice. I could not get the right colour—could not; but to-night, yes, I really think my lady will be -pleased." "She should bo. How clever you are!

It ii—wonderful. And how like—how like " She sat down suddenly, her elbows ou her knees, her chin in her hand, gazing from my canvas to the half-burnt, destroyed one, which I had propped up opposite. All around us were the dead and gone Mac Queens. "Yes, he has a great look of the boy," I said. "'Fortunately the features were left nearly untouched. But did you know him—like this? Did you know'the MacQueen?" She turned her head and looked at me. "I am his widow," she said. "1 am Ferolith Mac Queen, the play-acting girl." I was so bereft of speech that I stood staring at her, and the little lad wandered to the open window and stood looking out. _ Grey gulls were swimming on tho dancing waves—a long line of golden pathway seemed to come straight from the setting sun to the castle, frowning onits height. The room was full of sunset, an unearthly light, in which I could see her face, pale and mournful.

"We were married, and he told her —■ and she cursed us both," the girl said. "She said he should have only the empty shell of the title—she could beggar him, and she would. She had great plans for him—a duke's daughter, at least—perhaps the MacCullum Mohr's. And he chose me! So we sailed away—he and the empty shell of the title ; but he was to make our fortune. The ship was cut in two, and Angus went down—only I was saved—the waves tore me from his arms— I, that had no wish to be saved, and they picked me up with the rest and took me to America. I lived, and the child was born, and he looked at me with his father's eyes, and one day, five years after we sailed, I thought I 'would bring him here to look on his home, the home that should be his."

The voice trailed away, and she started suddenly, crouched down on the floor, and said in an unsteady voice, "Angussonnie—come here."

But the old lady was at the door, and as I turned the boy turned too, all the light of the sunset on his fair face and on his hair.

The old lady gave a choking cry. We stood in a dreadful silence.

"Who is it?" she cried, with a face of death. "Who is it? Girl, you are—playing a trick on me I Who is it ? The dead come back—Angus—Angus ! My lad I" I went up and took the little lad from, his mother, and led him up to her. Somehow I told her what the kneeling woman, had told me, and then I waited.

She took him in her arms, and great tears rolled down her face. She smoothed back the ruddy curls. "My God!" she whispered again and again, "my God !" And then she looked up and saw the mother, pale and cold, and she ro?e, and leading the child, went up to Ferolith, leaning on her stick. All the fierceness was out of her face —■ all the misery. She spoke low and pitifully.

"His dead face lies between us. It broke my heart. Forgive me—for his sake 1"

"Mother!" the other cried suddenly, "Mother! His poor mother!"

I went out and closed the door, I went and told Torkle. I had to tell some one. And Torkle listened and nodded his white head. Nothing seems to surprise the old. He said, "Me the day"' once or twice, and then suddenly led the way up the castle stairs, up the turret, and out on to the tower.

"What are you going to do, Torkle?" I added, looking- from him to the redstained sea. For answer, he pulled at a cord, and a flag floated out on the wild sea breeze, that caught and tossed it exultantly. / "It has never flown free since the MacQueen died," he said. "They said he was the last of the Red Mac Queens. But now, thank God, that is a lie, and the Black Mac Queens will not reign in Cnock Gorm. The little heir is here. Me the day! A Bed Mac Queen again!" I went down and met them on the stairs, two women, pale but happy, hand in hand with the new Bed Mac Queen.

And that is how I painted his portrait too, and how I got the colour of the red curls, which two women had loved so well, but which the sea had hidden from

sight. To the old woman, I know, it was as if the sea had given up its dead.