The Green Ray Read Online

Miss Campbell delighted to have got away from the inquisitive, noisy world one meets at sea-side towns, walked out as she would have done in the park at Helensburgh, with her “rokelay” wrapped around her like a mantilla, and her hair tied up with the ribbon or “snood” so becoming to young Scotch girls. Oliver Sinclair was never tired of admiring her grace, her charming person, and fascinating ways. They often wandered along together, talking, looking around, and searching among the sea-wrack left by the last tide, till they had reached the farther end of the island. Whole flocks of divers would fly up before them, scared by their approach, herons in search of small fish thrown up by the tide, and solan geese, with their white-tipped wings and yellow heads, which especially represent the class of palmipeds found in the Hebrides.

Then, as evening came on, after the sunset which was invariably veiled in mist, nothing pleased Miss Campbell and her friends, more than to wander down to the solitary shore, and spend the evening there! The stars shone out, and with them came memories of the poems of Ossian. In the stillness of the twilight, Miss Campbell and Oliver Sinclair heard the brothers reciting alternate lines from their favourite poet, the unfortunate son of Fingal.

Star of descending night!
fair is thy light in the west!
thou liftest thy unshorn head from thy cloud:
thy steps are stately on thy hill.
What dost thou behold in the plain?

The stormy winds are laid.
The murmur of the torrent comes from afar.
Roaring waves climb the distant rock.
The flies of evening are on their feeble wings;
the hum of their course is on the field.

What dost thou behold, fair light?
But thou dost smile and depart.
The waves come with joy around thee;
they bathe thy lovely hair.
Farewell, thou silent beam!
Let the light of Ossian’s soul arise!”

Then silence followed, and they all went back to the little room at the inn.

Meanwhile, however short-sighted the brothers might be, they could well see that Oliver Sinclair gained exactly as Aristobulus lost in Miss Campbell’s estimation. The two young men avoided each other as much as possible, the uncles did their utmost, and not without some difficulty preserved harmony among the little family.

Yes, they would have been glad to see Ursiclos and Sinclair seeking, instead of avoiding each other’s society, and maintaining as they did a contemptuous silence in each other’s presence.

Did they think that all men regarded each other as brothers, and as such brothers as they themselves were?

At last they managed so cleverly that on the 30th of August, it was agreed that they should all go together to visit the ruins of the Cathedral and monastery, and the cemetery, situated to the north-east and south of the cathedral hill.

This excursion, which tourists make in less than two hours, had not yet been taken by the new-comers on the island. It was a sad want of deference towards the legendary shades of those hermit monks who dwelt in the huts along the coast, a want of respect towards the illustrious dead of the royal houses from Fergus II. to Macbeth.

CHAPTER XV
THE RUINS OF IONA

That same day, Miss Campbell, her uncles, and the two young men, set out on their excursion directly after breakfast. It was fine autumn weather, and every now and then bright sunbeams darted through rifts in the clouds. In these intermittent gleams of sunshine, the ruins crowning that part of the island, the rocks picturesquely grouped along the coast, the houses scattered upon the undulating slopes of Iona, and the sea rippling under a light breeze, seemed to lose their somewhat sombre aspect, and grew bright in the cheering light.

It was not a visitors’ day; the steamer had brought over about fifty of them the day before, and would doubtless bring as many on the morrow, but at present Iona belonged entirely to its new inhabitants, and the ruins were quite deserted when our excursionists reached them.

They had a very lively walk. The brothers’ good-humour seemed to infect the rest of the party, and they chatted away as they followed each other along the little shingly paths between the low walls of bare rock.

All went on pleasantly till they reached MacLean’s Calvary. This fine red, granite monument, fourteen feet high, which overlooks the high road to Main Street, is the only one left of the three hundred and sixty crosses with which the island was covered at the time of the Reformation, about the middle of the sixteenth century.

Oliver Sinclair was anxious to make a sketch of this monument, which is a fine work, and stands out well in the midst of a bare, desolate plain.

Miss Campbell and her uncles stood round the young artist, about fifty feet from the Calvary, where they could get a full view of it, and Oliver Sinclair, sitting on a corner of a low wall, began to draw the outline of the ground on which the cross stood.

They had only been there a few moments, when it seemed to them all that a human form was trying to climb the steps of the Calvary.

“Well!” exclaimed Sinclair, “what can that intruder want there? If he were but dressed like a monk, he would not be in the way, and I could depict him prostrate at the foot of the old cross!”

“It is only some inquisitive body who is just in your way, Mr. Sinclair,” replied Miss Campbell.

“Stay, is it not Mr. Ursiclos, who has got ahead of us?” said Sam.

“’Tis he, to be sure!” added Sib.

It was indeed Aristobulus, mounted on the base of the monument, which he was vigorously attacking with his hammer.

Incensed at the mineralogist’s want of respect, Miss Campbell immediately, ran towards him.

“What are you doing there, sir?” she asked.

“You can see, Miss Campbell,” replied Aristobulus; “I am trying to chip off a piece of the granite.”

“But what is the use of such folly? I thought that the time of iconoclasts had long since passed.”

“I am by no means an iconoclast,” replied Aristobulus, “but a geologist, and as such I am anxious to know the nature of this stone.”

A violent blow with the hammer finished the work of defacement, and a piece of the stone basement rolled on the ground.

Aristobulus picked it up, and increasing the power of his spectacles by a large magnifying-glass, which he drew from its case, he put it close to the end of his nose.

“It is just as I expected,” said he. “This is a red granite of a very close, hard grain, which must have been brought from the Island of Nuns, and is, in every respect, similar to that used by the architects of the cathedral in the twelfth century.”

And Aristobulus could not resist this capital opportunity of launching into an archaeological discourse, to which the brothers, who had now come up, thought it their duty to listen.

Without further ceremony, Miss Campbell went back to Oliver Sinclair, and when the sketch was finished, they all met again in the enclosure of the cathedral.

This edifice is a complex structure, composed of two churches joined together, the walls of which, thick as curtains, and the pillars solid as rock, have braved the rought tests of this northern climate for thirteen hundred years.

For some minutes the visitors walked about in the first church, which, from the shape of its vaults and arches, is of Roman architecture; then they went into the second, which is purely Gothic of the twelfth century, and forms the nave and transepts of the first. They wandered through these ruins from one epoch to another, peering down at the great square flags, through the cracks of which the grass had forced its way. Here and there were tombstones and effigies standing in corners, with their sculptured figures, seeming to ask alms of the passer-by.

The gloomy silence of the whole place seemed redolent with the romance of the past.

Miss Campbell, her uncles, and Oliver Sinclair, not noticing that their too learned companion had remained behind, then went under the dark archway of the square tower, an archway which formerly stood at the entrance of the first church, and, later on, at the point of intersection of the two edifices.

A few minutes later, measured footsteps were heard on the sonorous pavement; one might have imagined that one of the stone statues, animated by the breath of some spirit, was pacing slowly to and fro, like the Commander in Don Juan’s drawing-room.

It was Aristobulus, who, with measured strides, was reckoning the dimensions of the cathedral.

“A hundred and sixty feet from east to west,” he was saying, making a note of this in his pocket-book, as he entered the second church.

“Ah! it is you, Mr. Ursiclos,” said Miss Campbell, sarcastically; “after the mineralogist comes the geometrician.”

“And only seventy feet across the transepts,” continued Aristobulus.

“And how many inches?” asked Oliver Sinclair.

Aristobulus looked at Oliver as though he did not know whether he ought to feel insulted or not, but the uncles came to the rescue, and carried off Miss Campbell and the two young men to see the monastery.

There is nothing left of this building but insignificant ruins, although it survived its defacement at the time of the Reformation. After that time it was even used by a community of canonesses of the order of St. Augustine, who were allowed to take refuge there by the state. There are now nothing but the dreary ruins of a convent, devastated by tempests, with neither an arch nor a pillar standing to resist the inclemency of the climate.

After exploring the ruins of the monastery, formerly so flourishing, the visitors were able to admire the chapel, which was in a much better state of preservation, and the dimensions of which Aristobulus hardly thought necessary to take. In this chapel, which is less ancient, or more solidly built, than the refectories or cloisters of the convent, only the roof is wanting; the chancel, which is almost intact, is a piece of architecture much admired by antiquaries.

In the western transept is the tomb of the last abbess of the community; on its black marble slab is a woman’s face, sculptured between two angels, and above it a Madonna holding the child Jesus in her arms.

“This is just like the Virgin at Pere la Chaise and the Madonna of St. Sextus, the only Virgins of Raphael’s who have not their eyelids lowered; this one looks right at you, and the eyes seem to smile!”

This remark was very appropriately made by Miss Campbell, but it brought an ironical sneer on Aristobulus’ lips.

“Where have you ever learnt, Miss Campbell, that eyes can smile?”

Perhaps Miss Campbell would have liked to have answered him, that, at any rate, her eyes would never have that expression when looking at him, but she contented herself by saying nothing.

“It is a very common error,” continued Aristobulus, as though he were speaking ex cathedra, “to talk of the eyes smiling. These organs of sight are, in fact, devoid of all expression, as oculists teach us: for example, place a mask on a face, look at the eyes through this mask, and I defy you to know whether the face is sad, smiling, or angry.”

“Ah! indeed?” exclaimed Sam, who seemed to be interested in this little lecture.

“I was not aware of that,” added Sib.

“Nevertheless it is a fact,” continued Aristobulus, “and if I had a mask—”

But the wonderful young man did not happen to have a mask, so the experiment could not be made to prove his assertion.

Moreover, Miss Campbell and Oliver Sinclair had already left the cloister, and were going towards the cemetery.

This place bears the name of the “Shrine of Oban,” in memory of the companion of St. Columba, who erected the chapel, the ruins of which stand in the midst of this field of the dead.

This is a curious piece of ground, covered with tombstones, where lie forty-eight Scotch kings, eight viceroys of the Hebrides, four viceroys of Ireland, and a king of France, whose name is entirely lost, like that of some chieftain of prehistoric times. Surrounded with its long iron railing, and paved with flags, it might be a kind of burying-ground of Karnac, whose stones are tombs, and not druidical rocks. Between them, on the grassy sward, lay the granite effigy of Duncan, King of Scotland, rendered illustrious by the tragedy of Macbeth. Of these stones some are simply ornamented with geometrical designs, others, sculptured in bas-relief, represent some fierce Celtic kings, lying there with the rigidity of corpses.

What memories hover over this necropolis of Iona! What scope for the imagination to wander into the past, in this St. Denis of the Hebrides!

And how can one forget those lines of Ossian, which seem to have been inspired on this very spot?

“Son of the distant land! Thou dwellest in the field of fame! O, let thy song arise, at times, in praise of those who fell. Let their thin ghosts rejoice around thee.”

Miss Campbell and her companions were able to gaze in silence, without being bored by a guide positively asserting very uncertain historical facts, for the benefit of tourists.