It was Alan who first proposed the scheme of going out to the island. For it was a fine day, and—— But I see that some explanation is wanted before I begin my story.
This was, then, some few years after those interesting events which I have narrated elsewhere, and which ended in the restoration of a part of my rightful inheritance. Since then I had gained the rest of it, and was now installed in the congenial station of the laird of Shaws; while Alan was back away in France. Or, at least, most of the time he was in France; he still returned to Scotland now and then despite the danger, recruiting for his French regiment and collecting Ardshiel’s second rent and doing I knew not what else in the Highlands; and once or twice, when these duties had brought him to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, where I was then staying, I had met him there. And now he had taken a detour to come and visit me at Cramond, in the character of my friend Mr Thomson.
He arrived in the latter half of April, in the midst of a time of fine spring weather; and on the third day of the visit Alan took it into his mind that we should make some excursion together out into the country. Fishing was his plan; but we neither of us had a great taste to go out in a boat (for ships and boats always savoured to me a little too much of the brig Covenant and my old sufferings there; and as for Alan, he said he had made a long voyage from France and would gladly keep his feet on land until he went back); and so we talked it over and decided to walk out to the island.
And here I must make some further explanation of that curious expression. Cramond Island lies perhaps a mile out into the Firth of Forth, and is separated from the shore by a vast extent of sandy and muddy flats which are uncovered at every low tide; thus, though at high tide it is an island in truth, when the tide is out it is possible, if you are careful about your footing, to walk across the sands to the island without setting foot in a boat at all. This was our plan.
We set off about the middle of the day—a fine warm day, as I have said, towards the end of April. The birches and hazels were just in leaf, so that a fresh green lay over all the woods about my house when we stopped at the top of the valley and turned to look at them. The house, at this early date, was only a little improved from what my uncle had left it; and yet the broken windows and dilapidated roofs which still marred a great part of it were a kinder sight now, when the first swallows of the year flitted and dived through the breaches to make their nests in the abandoned rooms. They made a busy crowd of activity about the house; and though I would have liked better to see them shut out of it, and nesting instead in the fine new barns and byres which I meant to build, I smiled to see them now. I said so to Alan.
‘Ay,’ he said, his mouth curving upwards at one side, ‘it’s certain it is already a finer place than when I saw it last.’
There was a kind of light in his eyes as he spoke, but the brows above were frowning, so that I was perplexed to know what he really thought. And so it had been these three days; for the situation we found ourselves in now, I a landed gentleman and Alan visiting as it were furtively under the protection of a false name, was very different from where and how we had once known each other; and I had thought already that Alan did not behave towards me quite as the friend he had been then, and I guessed that perhaps this was why. It grieved me sorely to see it, and it grieved me more that I could not seem to find the way to set things right with him.
But I nudged his arm now, and he looked away from the house and back at me; and we turned and walked on together.
We went through Cramond village, past the attractive little black-and-white stone cottages that line the street leading down to the shore, and thence out onto the sands. Here the birds come down at every low tide to seek their food, and they were busy about it now. The redshank were very numerous, and they flew up before us as we went so that the white stripes in their wings flickered rapidly away; in the deep channel made in the sand to our left by the River Almond, which enters the Forth at Cramond, the merganser and the shelduck were swimming busily. It was warm in the calm sunshine, and Alan took off his great-coat and slung it over his arm as he walked.
We crossed the sand in twenty minutes or so, and stepped onto the island at its southwestern side, where there is a low beach of sand and gravel surrounded by dark rocks. Below the tideline the rocks were covered in what I thought, from a distance, were small pebbles, but which proved really to be a sort of whelk or periwinkle, left lying there by the sea. They were remarkably strong, for I walked right over a great many of them—you could not help doing so—without ever breaking their shells. I picked one up and examined the thick shell and the subtle dark patterns on its surface.
‘We’ll find ye a better supper than that, Davie,’ said Alan, taking it from my hand with a gleam of amusement.
‘Oh, I just hope so,’ said I, smiling. He was, as I was too, remembering the shellfish of Earraid.
But this remark reminded us of our purpose in coming here, and now we walked across towards the northern side of the island, where the sands give way to open sea. The farmers along the coast of Cramond put their sheep to graze out on the island in the summer, and the low hill over which we walked was covered only by bare cropped grass, save for some patches of broom and whin bushes near its summit; here a flock of linnets followed us along for a while, twittering merrily all the time.
In a short time, for it is not a large place, we reached the far side; and it was on a little rocky promontory, which fell into the water in a low cliff washed by the waves, that we sat down and prepared our fishing gear. It was a lonelier scene than was made by the wide sands and Cramond shore on the other side. The wind blew colder, so that you remembered it was only April after all. The birds were those of the sea: a fulmar swept past us on its stiff grey wings, and bobbing on the swell a little way out were a pair of eiders, the male brilliant in his black and white and green and pink, and his drabber lady following after. Out beyond them the little rock of Inchmickery rose out of the water, and further out to the west was the larger shape of Inchcolm, more distant and thus more mysterious.
I had never been fishing out here before, having confined my expeditions hitherto to the streams that watered the park of Shaws, and so I was not sure what luck to expect. But as it turned out our luck was exceedingly good. We sat there side by side with Alan’s great-coat to cover us (for the wind was cold to sit still in, he said as he lifted it over my shoulders) and plied our lines; and within an hour or two we had the materials to make a handsome supper, and some besides to carry back home. And it was a happy time. Alan was excessively pleased both with his own success and with mine, and we were very cheerful together for all that the wind was cold.
The sun was beginning its descent towards the sea when we packed up our gear and went to seek a sheltered spot, in amongst the few trees that grew on the low ground in the north of the island; here we made a fire and sat down to our supper, which consisted of the fish we had caught and some wheaten bread brought with us. The early flowers of the wood—the celandine and ground ivy and red dead-nettles—were all bright and fragrant about our little camp, and countless other plants with only their fresh green leaves yet above the ground, and the sun coming in between the trees caught all their colours and brightened them yet further.
‘Here, Davie—try this for a garnish,’ said Alan, reaching behind him; and he picked a few leaves of the sand leek—long, narrow leaves with edges rough to the touch, which grew up in tall clusters beneath the trees—cut them with his penknife, sprinkled them over a piece of fish which he had just taken off the coals and handed it, on a slice of bread, to me.
The sand leek made a fine seasoning, and I said so.
‘There’s plenty grows about here that does,’ said Alan, pleased. And looking about us where we sat under the low oak trees, he found and brought me some more such interesting herbs: some fresh leaves of a hawthorn sapling, and some of the curiously coloured and shaped trefoils of the wood sorrel, which has a goodly sharp taste to it, though perhaps it did not go so well with the fish.
‘Ye’re a man of great resource, Alan,’ I said, laughing, after I had sampled these last.
‘Indeed I am,’ said he with his usual modesty. ‘It’s a good thing to know how to liven what bread ye can get out among the heather, at any season of the year.’
Altogether we both continued very merry all through our meal. I was glad of it, for it seemed to me that whatever something had not been quite right for the last few days was forgotten now, and we were good friends again. Only I wished that I could say so—or rather that I could say more than I did, in my smiles and friendly replies and joking compliments, of how fond and somehow warm I felt at Alan paying me the little attentions of his salad-gathering, or at the particular way he laid his hat upon the ground with such care that the feathers were kept just so, or only at his smile at me across the fire. No, something was yet wanting; but I knew not what.
When we had finished our fish we sat chewing on some roots of a fern which Alan dug up and washed, by way of a sweet; he told me the fern was clach-raineach chaol in his own language. Presently, in the middle of an anecdote about the ship’s captain who had carried him over from France (a highly singular man, from this account), Alan suddenly paused and looked up at the sky, which was beginning to darken.
‘David,’ he said, ‘how long did ye say we might stay here?’
‘About four hours between the tides,’ said I, but with a sudden dread at my stomach.
‘And what is the time now?’
‘I thought you would——’ But so saying I took out my watch and examined it. And then, without another word of explanation, for none was necessary, I leapt to my feet and set off running back over the hill for the shoreward side of the island. But I knew already what I would find.
I came out on top of the hill, and there before me was all the wide water, lit to gold by the sunset and running in swift over the flats, swirling all round the island in its deep and changing currents. The open sands were gone. We were cut hopelessly off from the shore.
‘That’s too deep to walk through, I’m thinking,’ remarked Alan, coming up behind me. He had not made the haste I had, for he must have known there was no use.
‘Ah, no; you would only be washed away by the currents,’ said I, miserably enough. ‘It might be swum, but I cannae swim, and nor can you. Oh, what are we to do?’
‘Bide here until the next low tide, I must suppose,’ said Alan, still speaking in the same mild tone.
I made a noise of frustration and impatience and turned from him. It was true; there was nothing else to be done; I could see that, and yet somehow I could not bear to face it. I was angry with myself for making such a foolish mistake, and in a way failing Alan when he was here as my guest; I was angry with Alan for not noticing the time himself; I was angrier still with him, and unreasonably enough, for taking it so easily and not raging at me and blaming me as he might have done, as if he thought he could have expected no better from me. All the doubt and unclearness of the last few days seemed suddenly to rear up again, like a many-headed monster, in this little calamity—so small a thing when set against the greater hardships and dangers which Alan and I had once faced together—and I could see no better relief for my confused feelings than in picking a quarrel. And so I reproached him for having missed the time, when the trip to the island had been his idea in the first place.
He looked at me. ‘I’ll no say it was a very clever thing to do, David,’ he said, ‘but nor do I go casting the blame about at my own mistake, and ye would do better not to do so either.’
‘I do better!’ I cried, more incensed than ever. ‘I’m sure I would do better to follow the example of a—a reckless Jacobite.’
With this I succeeded in disturbing Alan’s calm demeanour. A dangerous light flashed into his eyes. ‘And that,’ said he, ‘is no the speech of a gentleman, so I might say! But I see there are different notions of these things among the grand Whig society ye keep, Mr Balfour of Shaws.’
‘So that’s the trouble, is it?’ I demanded. ‘Your ridiculous pride about a landed estate—oh, ay, I always thought it absurd!—cannot bear staying as a guest at my house?’
‘Perhaps it is,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that is how it is with ye. Perhaps I am no a fit guest for the laird of Shaws—although he himself is so careless of these tides, and so ungracious about the wyte of it.’
I turned away again, for angry as I was I could hardly bear to hear this. All had gone wrong, and I did not know how. Getting my wish for a quarrel had only made it worse; and I had no wish for things to come to an actual fight, and so I only turned away, and walked across the top of the hill, to stare over at the western water that was turned to deep and varied colours above where the sun was vanished away.
‘Well, then,’ said Alan from behind me, speaking in his most sulking tone and apparently addressing the sea, ‘I neednae come back to your house the morn, but in the meantime we must just bide here.’
Then came the sound of footsteps, and I turned round to see him setting off back over the hill towards our camp, quite heedless of what I might do. After a moment I followed him—for somehow I could not bring myself really to keep away from him, and the island was in any case so small as would have made any such efforts a trifle absurd; but I followed at a distance, and in silence.
And it was still in silence, or near to it, that we lay down to sleep—under Alan’s great-coat, just as we had done in the old days in the Highlands; for he said merely enough to make plain that he did not intend I should freeze, and then turned away from me and resumed ignoring me. With the sun gone it was growing rapidly colder, so that I was glad of the warmth a little.
But I did not sleep. The night grew colder; the sky turned from dark blue to true black, and the stars grew in strength and brightness; the moon rose; the sea, out of sight but still within hearing, sent the mysterious quiet noises of its rising and falling up to my ears; and I lay there and could not sleep for pure misery. Sometimes I looked at Alan’s back where he lay turned away from me, and sometimes I looked at the moon and stars above us, but always I was thinking of him. All the foolish pride in which I had sought the quarrel was gone now. I thought of how happy we had been that day... so happy that I had forgotten to think of the time... and of the joy of Alan’s first arrival at Shaws a few days ago. I had known two or three springs at the house of Shaws by now; it was aye a glad time of year, full of hope and promise, but I had never known such gladness in the bright leaves and the birds and the sunlight as I had done to-day. And our time was so short, for Alan must soon return to France, and I could not bear the thought that we might lose any of that precious time through senseless quarrelling.
And here he lay beside me, close to me and yet far away from me, parted by—what? I did not know, but I could no more let whatever it was, stubbornness or pride or confusion, keep him from me. They were nothing to my love for him.
Sighing, I sat up and settled my arms about my knees, and looked at the moon high up over the sea, and thought upon what I could do to seek to mend things. I thought in its quiet silver light the moon was trying to show me something; but I could not tell what.
But the movement or the sound woke Alan—or perhaps he had not been asleep. I heard him move, and turned back to find him looking at me.
‘Ye cannae sleep, David?’ he said quietly.
‘No,’ said I, bending my head to rest upon my knees.
He pushed the great-coat away from him and sat up, still looking at me, but saying nothing.
‘I was a fool!’ I burst out, keeping my head on my knees. ‘I was a fool to miss the tide like I did, and a far greater one to blame you for it, and to say all I said to you.’
Another moment passed; I raised my head a little to look at the moonlight again. Then, ‘For that matter,’ said Alan, ‘I believe I wasnae so very gracious in the things I said to you. Na, that’s no the thing! I made it worse—I made you out far worse than ye were. ’Deed, I dinnae ken why I did so!’
‘But ye know it wasn’t true, Alan, don’t ye?’ said I, turning back to him. ‘All you said about my house.... I think all the time I’ve been there, for all the good things I’ve done and mean to do, I missed ye there. It’s far too empty without you. I want you there. You know that?’
I think perhaps he had not known it. Certainly it was a while before he spoke; and then he said, ‘Ay.... Well, Davie, it’s in my mind there is little reason for us to pick quarrels, after all. For my part I regret it sorely.’
‘No more than I do, I’m sure! And indeed I was much more to blame. But I’ll gladly forget it all,’ said I, ‘if you will.’ And I offered him my hand.
He took it in both of his, and held it. Then he smiled. ‘It was unfortunate to miss the tide,’ he said, looking up at the bright dark sky, ‘and I cannae say it was the cleverest thing either of us ever did in forgetting it; but it’s many a worse peril than this I’ve been in, and so have you, so I mind.’
In the gladness of my heart at these words I ceased to feel the cold of the night; and I laughed, but it was a deep sort of laughter, not so very far from tears.
I do not know just how it was then. I believe I saw something in his light eyes shining in the moonlight; I saw what I had not seen before, and I understood the thing that had caused so much grief and confusion in eluding me. However it was, I kept my hand in his, and moved closer to him, watching him the while; and he leaned up to meet me, and our lips met in a kiss.
I was no very practised hand at kissing in those days, and I dare say Alan found me a trifle inexpert at first. But I got my arms round him and felt him move closer in towards me, and I held him and kissed him again; and I knew that I had found what I had been missing. Here was the way I had wanted to tell him what was in my heart whenever he was near me and whenever I was thinking of him; here was the right expression of all my fondness and affection and love, which had been so unhappy earlier that day with nowhere to go. He twisted his fingers in my hair and kissed my cheeks and the side of my neck, and my heart fairly turned over to know that he had all the same things to say to me.
‘Ah, ye were right,’ I said. ‘There was no reason to quarrel, after all. I like this far better.’
Alan laughed then, and pulled me towards him again.
It was a while later when he lay back down upon the ground—looking, thought I, beautiful and almost otherworldly in the moonlight, and yet belonging entirely to warm and sure reality in the touch of his body against mine. He reached up his hand to ask me to follow, and I did so, happily... and I will say no more of the night after that. Suffice it that all was right between us.
Alan woke me very early in the morning, when the hidden sun was just filling the sky with pale light, and the linnets and goldfinches and the other birds of the island were calling it out of its hiding with all the strength in their twittering little voices. I looked around at them, thinking that I had a happiness dearer even than theirs; and then I looked back at Alan, and knew it.
‘We must catch the tide this time,’ he explained gravely. ‘Ye see I am very careful of it this morning, Davie.’
‘Indeed we must,’ I agreed, getting to my feet. ‘We’ve the rest of these fish to bring back home; and I do wish to be back in my own bed to-night, for’—and I put my arm round him, and said with a smile, ‘it’s far more comfortable than this hard ground.’
And a short time afterwards we came back over the hill and saw the level sands, silver and pale gold in the early light, stretching out between us and Cramond shore once again; and then we descended to the beach and set out over towards the land.
The birds of the sand and sea are as much early risers as those of the woods and howes, or at least they are when the tide is out and there is food to be had out on the sands. The redshank and the big flapping gulls and the tiny dunlin were all round us, busy at their work, as we walked arm in arm towards the shore; and neither were they silent, for as we left the island behind us the weird wavering cry of the curlew rose up from somewhere away to the east, out towards the open sea and the brightness where the sun was just rising. It was an eerie sound in its way, but not an unhappy one. I stopped to listen to it.
Alan was listening too. ‘That brings to me,’ he said, ‘the sound of the whaups that fly up over the mountain bogs in Appin in the summer.’
‘I mind hearing them there,’ said I. I kept looking towards the sound for a few moments, and so I saw the bird rise up from the sand where it sang, and the shape of its long pointed wings and curved bill standing out dark against the bright sky. ‘See,’ I said, ‘perhaps it’s on its way back there now.’
It was not so strange to hear it here also, I thought; for that song is a sound of all wild places, sea or mountain, high or low.
We turned and went on walking; and soon we were stepping once more onto dry land at Cramond, and the new sun lit us on our way up through the woods back towards the house of Shaws.