BULLER.
Nor man.
NORTH.
This is your true total Eclipse of the Sun. Day, not night, is the time for thunder and lightning. Night can be dark of itself – nay, cannot help it; but when Day grows black, then is the blackness of darkness in the Bright One terrible; – and terror – Burke said well – is at the heart of the sublime. The Light, such as it is, sets off the power of the lightning – it pales to that flashing – and is forgotten in Fire. It smells of hell.
SEWARD.
It is constitutional in the Sewards. North, I am sick.
NORTH.
Give way to gasping – and lie down – nothing can be done for you. The danger is not —
SEWARD.
I am not afraid – I am faint.
NORTH.
You must speak louder, if you expect to be heard by ears of clay. Peals is not the word. "Peals on peals redoubled" is worse. There never was – and never will be a word in any language – for all that.
BULLER.
Unreasonable to expect it. Try twenty – in twenty languages.
NORTH.
Buller, you may count ten individual deluges – besides the descent of three at hand – conspicuous in the general Rain, which without them would be Rain sufficient for a Flood. Now the Camp has it – and let us enter the Pavilion. I don't think there is much wind here – yet far down the black Loch is silently whitening with waves like breakers; for here the Rain alone rules, and its rushing deadens the retiring thunder. The ebbing thunder! Still louder than any sea on any shore – but a diminishing loudness, though really vast, seems quelled; and, losing its power over the present, imagination follows it not into the distant region where it may be raging as bad as ever. Buller?
BULLER.
What?
NORTH.
How's Seward?
SEWARD.
Much better. It was very, very kind of you, my dear sir, to carry me in your arms, and place me in your own Swing-chair. The change of atmosphere has revived me – but the Boys!
NORTH.
The Boys – why, they went to the Black Mount to shoot an eagle, and see a thunder-storm, and long before this they have had their heart's desire. There are caves, Seward, in Buachail-Mor; and one recess I know – not a cave – but grander far than any cave – near the Fall of Eas-a-Bhrogich – far down below the bottom of the Fall, which in its long descent whitens the sable cliffs. Thither leads a winding access no storm can shake. In that recess you sit rock-surrounded – but with elbow-room for five hundred men – and all the light you have – and you would not wish for more – comes down upon you from a cupola far nearer heaven than that hung by Michael Angelo.
SEWARD.
The Boys are safe.
NORTH.
Or the lone House of Dalness has received them – hospitable now as of yore – or the Huntsman's hut – or the Shepherd's shieling – that word I love, and shall use it now – though shieling it is not, but a comfortable cottage – and the dwellers there fear not the thunder and the lightning – for they know they are in His hands – and talk cheerfully in the storm.
SEWARD.
Over and gone. How breathable the atmosphere!
NORTH.
In the Forests of the Marquis and of Monzie, the horns of the Red-deer are again in motion. In my mind's eye – Harry – I see one – an enormous fellow – bigger than the big stag of Benmore himself – and not to be so easily brought to perform, by particular desire, the part of Moriens – giving himself a shake of his whole huge bulk, and a caive of his whole wide antlery – and then leading down from the Corrie, with Platonic affection, a herd of Hinds to the greensward islanded among brackens and heather – a spot equally adapted for feed, play, rumination, and sleep. And the Roes are glinting through the glades – and the Fleece are nibbling on the mountains' glittering breast – and the Cattle are grazing, and galloping, and lowing on the hills – and the furred folk, who are always dry, come out from crevices for a mouthful of the fresh air; and the whole four-footed creation are jocund – are happy!
BULLER.
What a picture!
NORTH.
And the Fowls of the Air – think ye not the Eagle, storm-driven not unalarmed along that league-long face of cliff, is now glad at heart, pruning the wing that shall carry him again, like a meteor, into the subsided skies?
BULLER.
What it is to have an imagination! Worth all my Estate.
NORTH.
Let us exchange.
BULLER.
Not possible. Strictly entailed.
NORTH.
Dock.
BULLER.
Mno.
NORTH.
And the little wren flits out from the back door of her nest – too happy she to sing – and in a minute is back again, with a worm in her mouth, to her half-score gaping babies – the sole family in all the dell. And the seamews, sore against their will driven seawards, are returning by ones and twos, and thirties, and thousands, up Loch-Etive, and, dallying with what wind is still alive above the green transparency, drop down in successive parties of pleasure on the silver sands of Ardmatty, or lured onwards into the still leas of Glenliver, or the profounder quietude of the low mounds of Dalness.
SEWARD.
My fancy is contented to feed on what is before my eyes.
BULLER.
Doff, then, the Flying Dutchman.
NORTH.
And thousands of Rills, on the first day of their apparent existence, are all happy too, and make me happy to look on them leaping and dancing down the rocks – and the River Etive rejoicing in his strength, from far Kingshouse all along to the end of his journey, is happiest of them all; for the storm that has swollen has not discoloured him, and with a pomp of clouds on his breast, he is flowing in his expanded beauty into his own desired Loch.
SEWARD.
Gaze with me, my dear sir, on what lies before our eyes.
NORTH.
The Rainbow!
BULLER.
Four miles wide, and half a mile broad.
NORTH.
Thy own Rainbow, Cruachan – from end to end.
SEWARD.
Is it fading – or is it brightening? – no, it is not fading – and to brighten is impossible. It is the beautiful at perfection – it is dissolving – it is gone.
BULLER.
I asked you, sir, have the Poets well handled Thunder?
NORTH.
I was waiting for the Rainbow. Many eyes besides ours are now regarding it – many hearts gladdened – but have you not often felt, Seward, as if such Apparitions came at a silent call in our souls – that we might behold them – and that the hour – or the moment – was given to us alone! So have I felt when walking alone among the great solitudes of Nature.
SEWARD.
Lochawe is the name now for a dozen little lovely lakes! For, lo! as the vapours are rising, they disclose, here a bay that does not seem to be a bay, but complete in its own encircled stillness, – there a bare grass island – yes, it is Inishail – with a shore of mists, – and there, with its Pines and Castle, Freoch, as if it were Loch Freoch, and not itself an Isle. Beautiful bewilderment! but of our own creating! –