Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 6, 1898

12
THE CELTIC MONTHLY.
shooting he was thinking, although he persuaded
himself that the presence of Maisrie Macleod
had nothing to do with his wish to return to
Eilean Longa.
However, here he was one day at the
beginning of August lying all alone on the hot
heather, and gazing across the blue seas to where
the mountains of >Skye rose out of a summer
haze in the far distance. He had evidently
been writing. For a little blue note-book lay
at his side, and a pencil was stuck carelessly
into the pocket of his shooting coat. And
perhaps it was at what he had written that he
was smiiing as he lay and looked across tlie
flashing sea. At anyrate this is what appeared
on the open page before him : —
If all tile world were gold, lass,
And all the gold were mine ;
I'd gladly lose it all, lass,
For that golden head of thine.
If all the skies were blue, lass.
With pure and cloudless blue ;
They could not be so clear, lass.
As the eyes that you look through.
If all the love in life, lass,
Were mine this very day ;
I'd bring it straight to thee, lass,
And I'd give it all away.
Now, strange to say, Maisrie Macleod had a
wealth of golden hair that was coiled in thick
plaits round her head like the aureole of a
saint. And by a remarkable coincidence she
had a pair of clear blue-grey eyes. But perhaps
Bethune had not been thinking specially of her
when he penned these careless lines. He wrote
a good deal of poetry in Edinburgh, and might
quite well have met some other girl with blue
eyes and gold hair. It would be wrong to judge
him hastily.
After some time a breeze began to blow across
the heather, and the pages of the note-book
fluttered over one after another — each one
shewing a little poem scribbled down with a
date at the bottom. Here is one that was
written in ink and must have been done in
Edinburgh, for it was dated 13th May : —
The daylight dies in the summer skies
And the restless winds are laid.
And across the waves in a golden haze
Lies the land where all dreams are made.
The star of night with her silver light
Shines clear in the saffron sky,
And afar o'er the sea, the silent sea.
Comes the sound of a maiden's cry.
She comes to me on the golden sea
My love, in her dreamland sleep.
Her spirit is brave on the soundless wave
As she glides o'er the vasty deep.
The lambent air round her gold-coiled hair
Weaves a sacred aureole,
And the sea grows bright with a mystic light
That shines from her pure white soul.
We meet on the strand of the sleepful land
In the hush of the dreamland night,
And we sit thro' the hours, the ageless hours,
Till the dawn in the east grows white.
And my love has fled ! with a cry she sped
At the light of the first sunbeam.
To the marge of the strand of the sleepful land •
And back to the hills of dream.
Now here was something about a golden head
again. And Bethune's housekeeper in Edin-
burgh could have told you, if her memory had
been good enough, that on the morning of the
14th May he had come down to breakfast
looking very much like a man who had not .slept
well. Indeed he said to her when she remarked
his tired look, that the noise of the traffic had
kept him awake for a long time. This was, to
say the least of it, rather bare-faced, as everyone
of Bethune's friends will tell you that Middleby
Street is anything but a busy thoroughfare in
the small hours. Indeed, there is even grass
growing between the stones in Middleby Street.
And perhaps it was because the housekeeper
knew this that she smiled at Bethune when she
]eft the room.
No, if Bethune would not admit it, the note-
book had known it long ago. He was in love
with Maisrie Macleod. The dream-maiden
whom he had imagined coming across the sea to
him, like a spirit on that particular night in
Edinburgh when he could not sleep, was
Maisrie The golden head about which he had
just written belonged to Maisrie. And at this
moment when he lay with his note-book un-
noticed at his side and his pipe unlit in his
hand, his thoughts were all about Maisrie.
"Mr. Bethune," said a pleasant voice behipd
him, "will you come down for lunch now?
Father would like to take you across to Shieldaig
in the afternoon if the wind holds. But I am
afraid I startled you 1 " For the man had
snatched up the note-book in an instant and
sprung to his feet at the sound of her voice.
" Oh no. Miss Maisrie," he replied. " At
least it is very pleasant to be startled by the
sound of your voice. I was just lying there
and wondering how many miles it is exactly to
the nearest jioint of Skye from Eilean Longa ! "
So the two went down the heather side by
side discussing the mileage of sea as if it were
the most momentous question in the world.
Bethune had hitlierto been in some things a
stupid man. He was becoming now an untruth
ful one.