She paused, but still he did not speak.
"That was well enough, for later we were left alone. But your father was in you. Do I not know well enough where you got that settled melancholy of yours, that despondency, that somber grief--call it what you like--that marked him all his life, and even in his death? That came from him, your father. I thank God I did not give you that, knowing what life must hold for you in suffering! He suffered, yes, but not as you will. And you must--you must, my son. Beyond all other men, you will suffer!"
"You were better named Cassandra, mother!" Yet the young man scarce smiled even now.
"Yes, I am a prophetess, all too sooth a prophetess, my son. I see ahead as only a mother can see--perhaps as only one of the old Highland blood can see. I am soothseer and soothsayer, because you are blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and I cannot help but know. I cannot help but know what that melancholy and that resolution, all these combined, must spell for you. You know how his heart was racked at times?"
The boy nodded now.
"Then know how your own must be racked in turn!" said she. "My son, it is no ordinary fate that will be yours. You will go forward at all costs; you will keep your word bright as the knife in your belt--you will drive yourself. What that means to you in agony--what that means when your will is set against the unalterable and the inevitable--I wish--oh, I wish I could not see it! But I do see it, now, all laid out before me--all, all! Oh, Merne--may I not call you Merne once more before I let you go?"
She let her hands fall from his head to his shoulders as she gazed steadily out beyond him, as if looking into his future; but she herself sat, her strong face composed. She might, indeed, have been a prophetess of old.
"Tragedy is yours, my son," said she, slowly, "not happiness. No woman will ever come and lie in your arms happy and content."
"Mother!"
He half flung off her hands, but she laid them again more firmly on his shoulders, and went on speaking, as if half in reverie, half in trance, looking down the long slope of green and gold as if it showed the vista of the years.
"You will love, my boy, but with your nature how could love mean happiness to you? Love? No man could love more terribly. You will be intent, resolved, but the firmness of your will means that much more suffering for you. You will suffer, my boy--I see that for you, my first-born boy! You will love--why should you not, a man fit to love and be loved by any woman? But that love, the stronger it grows, will but burn you the deeper. You will struggle through on your own path; but happiness does not lie at the end of that path for you. You will succeed, yes--you could not fail; but always the load on your shoulders will grow heavier and heavier. You will carry it alone, until at last it will be too much for you. Your strong heart will break. You will lie down and die. Such a fate for you, Merne, my boy--such a man as you will be!"