The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 30

"Speak, my children," said Graul. He knew that they loved him and might count on his sharing the last crust with them.

"We are come," said the spokesman, "not for ourselves, but for our wives and children. For us life is none too pleasant; but they need men's hands to find food for them, and at this rate there will soon be no men of our nation left."

"But how can I help you?" asked the King.

"That we know not; but it is your daughter Gwennolar who undoes us.

She lies out yonder beneath the waters, and through the night she calls to men, luring them down to their death. I myself--all of us here--have heard her; and the younger men it maddens. With singing and witch fires she lures our boats to the reefs and takes toll of us, lulling even the elders to dream, cheating them with the firelight and voices of their homes."

Now the thoughts of Graul and Niotte were with their daughter continually. That she should have been lost and they saved, who cared so little for life and nothing for life without her--that was their abiding sorrow and wonder and self-reproach. Why had Graul not turned Rubh's head perforce and ridden back to die with her, since help her he could not? Many times a day he asked himself this; and though Niotte's lips had never spoken it, her eyes asked it too. At night he would hear her breath pause at his side, and knew she was thinking of their child out yonder in the cold waters.

"She calls to us also," he answered, and checked himself.

"So it is plain her spirit is alive yet, and she must be a witch,"

said the spokesman, readily.

The King rent his clothes. "My daughter is no witch!" he cried. "But I left her to die, and she suffers."

"Our lads follow her. She calls to them and they perish."

"It is not Gwennolar who calls, but some evil thing which counterfeits her. She was innocent as the day. Nevertheless your sons shall not perish, nor you accuse her. From this day your boats shall have a lantern on this rock to guide them, and I and my wife will tend it with our own hands."

Thenceforward at sunset with their own hands Graul and Niotte lit and hung out a lantern from the niche which stands to this day and is known as St. Michael's Chair; and trimmed it, and tended it the night through, taking turns to watch. Niotte, doited with years and sorrow, believed that it shone to signal her lost child home. Her hands trembled every night as Graul lit the wick, and she arched her palms above to shield it from the wind. She was happier than her husband.

Gwennolar's spell defied the lantern and their tottering pains. Boats were lost, men perished as before. The people tried a new appeal.

It was the women's turn to lay their grief at the King's door. They crossed the sands by ones and twos---widows, childless mothers, maids betrothed and bereaved--and spread their dark skirts and sat before the gateway. Niotte brought them food with her own hands; they took it without thanks. All the day they sat silent, and Graul felt their silence to be heavier than curses--nay, that their eyes did indeed curse as they sat around and watched the lighting of the lantern, and Niotte, nodding innocently at her arched hands, told them, "See, I pray; cannot you pray too?"

But the King's prayer was spoken in the morning, when the flame and the stars grew pale together and the smoke of the extinguished lamp sickened his soul in the clean air. His G.o.ds were gone with the oaks under which he had worshipped; but he stood on a rock apart from the women and, lifting both hands, cried aloud: "If there be any G.o.ds above the tree-tops, or any in the far seas whither the old fame of King Graul has reached; if ever I did kindness to a stranger or wayfarer, and he, returning to his own altars, remembered to speak of Graul of Lyonnesse: may I, who ever sought to give help, receive help now! From my youth I have believed that around me, beyond sight as surely as within it, stretched goodness answering the goodness in my own heart; yea, though I should never travel and find it, I trusted it was there. O trust, betray me not! O kindness, how far soever dwelling, speak comfort and help! For I am afflicted because of my people."

Seven mornings he prayed thus on his rock: and on the seventh, his prayer ended, he stood watching while the sunrays, like dogs shepherding a flock, searched in the mists westward and gathered up the tale of boats one by one. While he counted them, the sh.o.r.eward breeze tw.a.n.ged once like a harp, and he heard a fresh young voice singing from the base of the cliff at his feet--

"_There lived a king in Argos,-- A merchantman in Tyre Would sell the King his cargoes, But took his heart's desire: Sing Io, Io, Io!--_"

Graul looked toward his wife. "That will be the boy Laian," said Motte; "he sits on the rock below and sings at his fishing."

"The song is a strange one," said Graul; "and never had Laian voice like that."

The singer mounted the cliff--

"_The father of that merry may A thousand towns he made to pay, And lapp'd the world in fire!_"

He stood before them--a handsome, smiling youth, with a crust of brine on his blue sea-cloak, and the light of the morning in his hair.

"Salutation, O Graul!" said he, and looked so cordial and well-willing that the King turned to him from the dead lamp and the hooded women as one turns to daylight from an evil dream.

"Salutation, O Stranger!" he answered. "You come to a poor man, but are welcome--you and your shipmates."

"I travel alone," said the youth; "and my business--"

But the King put up his hand. "We ask no man his business until he has feasted."

"I feast not in a house of mourning; and my business is better spoken soon than late, seeing that I heal griefs."

"If that be so," answered Graul, "you come to those who are fain of you." And then and there he told of Gwennolar. "The blessing of blessings rest on him who can still my child's voice and deliver her from my people's curse!"

The Stranger listened, and threw back his head. "I said I could heal griefs. But I cannot cure fate; nor will a wise man ask it. Pain you must suffer, but I can soothe it; sorrow, but I can help you to forget; death, but I can brace you for it."

"Can death be welcomed," asked Graul, "save by those who find life worse?"

"You shall see." He stepped to the mourning women, and took the eldest by the hand. At first he whispered to her--in a voice so low that Graul heard nothing, but saw her brow relax, and that she listened while the blood came slowly back to her cheeks.

"Of what are you telling her?" the King demanded.

"Hush!" said the Stranger, "Go, fetch me a harp."

Graul brought a harp. It was mute and dusty, with a tangle of strings; but the Stranger set it against his knee, and began to mend it deftly, talking the while in murmurs as a brook talks in a covert of cresses.

By and by as he fitted a string he would touch and make it hum on a word--softly at first, and with long intervals--as though all its music lay dark and tangled in chaos, and he were exploring and picking out a note here and a note there to fit his song. There was trouble in his voice, and restlessness, and a low, eager striving, and a hope which grew as the notes came oftener, and lingered and thrilled on them. Then his fingers caught the strings together, and pulled the first chord: it came out of the depths with a great sob--a soul set free. Other souls behind it rose to his fingers, and he plucked them forth, faster and faster--some wailing, some laughing fiercely, but each with the echo of a great pit, the clang of doors, and the mutter of an army pressing at its heels. And now the mourners leaned forward, and forgot all except to listen, for he was singing the Creation. He sang up the stars and set them in procession; he sang forth the sun from his chamber; he lifted the heads of the mountains and hitched on their mantles of green forest; he scattered the uplands with sheep, and the upper air with clouds; he called the west wind, and it came with a rustle of wings; he broke the rock into water and led it dancing down the cliffs, and spread it in marshes, and sent it spouting and hurrying in channels. Flowers trooped to the lip of it, wild beasts slunk down to drink; armies of corn spread in rank along it, and men followed with sickles, chanting the hymn of Linus; and after them, with children at the breast, women stooped to glean or strode upright bearing baskets of food. Over their heads days and nights hurried in short flashes, and the seasons overtook them while they rested, and drowned them in showers of bloom, and overtopped their bodies with fresh corn: but the children caught up the sickles and ran on. To some--shining figures in the host--he gave names; and they shone because they moved in the separate light of divine eyes watching them, rays breaking the thickets or hovering down from heights where the G.o.ds sat at their ease.

But before this the men had brought their boats to sh.o.r.e, and hurried to the Mount, drawn by his harping. They pressed around him in a ring; and at first they were sad, since of what he sang they remembered the like in Lyonnesse--plough and sickle and flail, nesting birds and harvest, flakes of ore in the river-beds, dinner in the shade, and the plain beyond winking in the noon-day heat. They had come too late for the throes of his music, when the freed spirit trembled for a little on the threshold, fronting the dawn, but with the fire of the pit behind it and red on its trailing skirt. The song rolled forward now like a river, sweeping them past sh.o.r.es where they desired to linger.

But the Stranger fastened his eyes on them, and sang them out to broad bars and sounding tumbling seas, where the wind piped, and the breeze came salt, and the spray slapped over the prow, hardening men to heroes. Then the days of their regret seemed to them good only for children, and the life they had loathed took a new face; their eyes opened upon it, and they saw it whole, and loved it for its largeness.

"Beyond! beyond! beyond!"--they stared down on the fingers plucking the chords, but the voice of the harp sounded far up and along the horizon.

And with that quite suddenly it came back, and was speaking close at hand, as a friend telling them a simple tale; a tale which all could understand, though of a country unknown to them. Thus it ran:

"_In h.e.l.las, in the kingdom of Argos, there lived two brothers, Cleobis and Biton--young men, well to do, and of great strength of body, so that each had won a crown in the public games. Now, once, when the Argives were keeping a festival of the G.o.ddess Hera, their mother had need to be driven to the temple in her chariot, but the oxen did not return from the field in time. The young men, therefore, seeing that the hour was late, put the yoke on their own necks, and drew the car in which their mother sat, and brought her to the temple, which was forty-five stades away. This they did in sight of the mult.i.tude a.s.sembled; and the men commended their strength, while the women called her blessed to be the mother of such sons. But she, overjoyed at the deed and its renown, entered the temple and, standing before the image of Hera, prayed the G.o.ddess to grant her two sons, Cleobis and Biton, the greatest boon which could fall to man. After she had prayed, and they had sacrificed and eaten of the feast, the young men sat down in the temple and fell asleep, and never awoke again, but so made an end with life. In this wise the blessing of Hera came to them; and the men of Argos caused statues to be made of them and set up at Delphi, for a memorial of their piety and its reward_."

Thus quietly the great song ended, and Graul, looking around on his people, saw on their faces a cheerfulness they had not known since the day of the flood.

"Sir," said he, "yours is the half of my poor kingdom and yours the inheritance, if you will abide with us and sing us more of these songs."

"For that service," answered the Stranger, "I am come; but not for the reward. Give me only a hide of land somewhere upon your cliffs, and there will I build a house and sing to all who have need of me."

So he did; and the fable goes on to say that never were known in the remnant of Lyonesse such seasons as followed, nor ever will be. The fish crowded to the nets, the cliffs waved with harvest. Heavy were the nets to haul and laborious was the reaping, but the people forgot their aches when the hour came to sit at the Stranger's feet and listen, and drink the wine which he taught them to plant. For his part he toiled not at all, but descended at daybreak and nightfall to bathe in the sea, and returned with the brine on his curls and his youth renewed upon him. He never slept; and they, too, felt little need of sleep, but drank and sang the night away, refreshed by the sacred dews, watching for the moon to rise over the rounded cornfields, or for her feet to touch the sea and shed silver about the boats in the offing. Out yonder Gwennolar sang and took her toll of life as before; but the people heeded less, and soon forgot even when their dearest perished. Other things than sorrow they began to unlearn. They had been a shamefaced race; the men shy and the women chaste. But the Stranger knew nothing of shame; nor was it possible to think harm where he, their leader, so plainly saw none. Naked he led them from the drinking-bout down the west stairway to the bathing-pool, and naked they plunged in and splashed around him and laughed as the cool shock scattered the night's languor and the wine-fumes. What mattered anything?--what they did, or what they suffered, or what news the home-coming boats might bring? They were blithe for the moment and l.u.s.ty for the day's work, and with night again would come drink and song of the amorous G.o.ds; or if by chance the Singer should choose another note and tell of Procris or of Philomela, they could weep softly for others' woes and, so weeping, quite forget their own.

And the fable goes on to say that for three years by these means the Stranger healed the griefs of the people of Lyonnesse, until one night when they sat around he told them the story of Ion; and if the Stranger were indeed Phoebus Apollo himself, shameless was the telling. But while they listened, wrapped in the story, a cry broke on the night above the murmur of the beaches--a voice from the cliff below them, calling "Repent! Repent!"

They leaped to their feet at once, and hurried down the stairway. But the beach was empty; and though they hunted for an hour, they found no one. Yet the next night and every night after the same voice called "Repent! Repent!" They hurled down stones upon it and threatened it with vengeance; but it was not to be scared. And by and by the Stranger missed a face from his circle, then another. At length came a night when he counted but half of his company.

He said no word of the missing ones; but early next morning, when the folk had set out to their labors in the fields, he took a staff and walked along the sh.o.r.e toward the Mount. A little beyond Parc-an-als, where a spring gushes from the face of the cliff, he came upon a man who stood under it catching the trickle in a stone basin, and halted a few paces off to watch him. The man's hair and beard were long and unkempt, his legs bare, and he wore a tattered tunic which reached below the knees and was caught about his waist with a thong girdle.

For some minutes he did not perceive the Singer; but turned at length, and the two eyed each other awhile.

Then the Singer advanced smiling, while the other frowned.

"Thou hast followed me," he said.

"I have followed and found thee," the other answered.

"Thy name?"

"Leven," said the man. "I come out of Ireland."