by Neil M. Gunn
She went back into the house, drew the red-embered peats from the ash and, nestling them together, red edges down, blew them into a little flame. Then she leaned back on her knees, lifted her eyes to the small window, and for a long moment, her lips parted, remained still. In the faint gloom of the soundless cottage her face, hearkening for the message of her spirit that had gone beyond her, caught the nameless quality beyond beauty.
Hurrying from herself, she made the bed, tidied the room, put new peats to dry around the fire, then lifting two wooden buckets, set out for the well. It was on the way to the well that she saw the heads and bodies of men moving on the top of the mountain above her. She stared at them with wide-open frightened eyes, slowly turned and looked around her. Over the brow of the ground below and to the right she saw a man coming. He went to the house of Tormad’s father and disappeared inside. She forgot the well and began walking slowly back to her own home, her eyes never leaving the house where the man had entered. She set the buckets down quietly and stood at the door. Her ears caught a woman’s smothered cry, the sharp keening cry, and such a weakness went over her body that she felt her knees give way.
So it had come.
Her breathing grew rapid and a buzzing went into her head. She started to run. Tormad’s mother caught her white face in the doorway and cried. “They’ve taken him! They’ve taken our Tormad!” They were all in the room and the Helmsdale man said once more, “It’s the press-gang. They took the four lads this morning at sea.”
Catrine could not understand, and stared at the Helmsdale man and then at the others. “Of course, they’ll be all right,” said the Helmsdale man gloomily, “They’ll be quite well.”
“They’re gone! We’ll never hear of them!” Tormad’s mother was stout and kind-hearted and warmly emotional. In her grief she was crying out. Her husband was hitching up his trousers. The two girls, in age between Norman and Tormad, stood weeping. Norman’s lips were quivering, but there was anger in his brows against the way his mother was carrying on.
Catrine turned back to her own cottage without saying a word. Her brain had grasped at last what had happened. Of all the many fears she had had, the press-gang had not been one. Men had said that the end of Napoleon was the end of the press-gang.
Something had happened which she had never expected; and what might have happened—Tormad’s death—had not happened. Tormad was taken from her; but he was alive. She sat on the small stool staring into the fire. Then she got up, and looked around, and listened. She did not know what to do. There was nothing to do for anyone. She made to go to the door, but turned back. She walked round the room, stopped and touched things blindly. She kept going. She began to move quickly. She had better go and tell her mother. But she wanted no-one, no-one except Tormad. Dry convulsive sobs caught her breath. She got to the floor and buried her face and bit her wrist. She did not know where she was or what had happened to her, for her mind was not her own. Grief would not properly come. She felt dry and hot as in a fever.
This dry, barren state of the spirit remained with her. If she made weeping, whimpering sounds, they were on the surface. She could not stay long with anyone, and soon folk saw that she was avoiding them. In the evening her mother came to her house, sat down, asked about the cow, and talked quietly of small things—until Catrine saw that she intended to stay the night, to sleep with her in Tormad’s place. At that a feeling of horror went over her in a deadly hush. Out of this hush came fear and cunning. She waited, until at last her mother said it was time they went to bed. “You needn’t stay with me,” said Catrine quietly; “I’m all right.” “No, I’ll stay,” answered her mother. “You should have someone with you.” “I’ll manage fine,” said Catrine, “I would rather be alone.” “That’s not natural,” answered her mother. “It wouldn’t be right.” “I don’t want anyone,” said Catrine. “Either I’ll stay with you here”, answered her mother, “or you’ll come over and stay in your own home.” “This is my home,” said Catrine. The quiet fatal fight between the two women went on until the mother saw she could not break down her daughter’s spirit, and at that point Catrine said, “I would be all right if I had Isebeal with me.” “Very well,” answered her mother. “So long as you have someone.”
Catrine went home with her mother and brought Isebeal back. Isebeal was twelve and came quietly, feeling grown up, though frightened, too. But when Catrine took her hand and pressed it as they walked hurriedly, something of relief and conspiracy came to her from her elder sister and brightened her. Once inside, Catrine shut the door and said in a friendly voice, “Now we’re fine!” She put the peats closer together and made the flames dance up. Then she skimmed a basin of milk and put the cream in two bowls. Over the cream she sprinkled a little dry oatmeal and, sitting by the fire, they supped their bowls.
“Good?” asked Catrine.
“Yes,” answered Isebeal, shyly.
“Will you like staying here with me? I didn’t want mother to stay or anyone big and grown-up. Big people are very sad sometimes.”
“Yes.”
“There’s black marks all round your eyes. You’ve been weeping, too. Are you tired?”
“No,” said Isebeal. Her lips began to tremble. Her eyes grew bright.
Catrine looked away. A few small sobs started. Catrine laid down her bowl. “I shouldn’t have said that. Never mind, Isebeal.” She put her arm round her.
“I don’t—want—to cry,” sobbed Isebeal.
“I know. I know,” said Catrine, taking the bowl from her thin shaking hands. “It comes over you. You can’t help it. Isebeal, my dear, my own little sister, my little darling sister.” Her arms round the trembling body, her chin touching the top of a head as fair as her own, Catrine made soothing sounds, as she stared into the fire.
When Isebeal was quiet, Catrine, still holding her in her arms, said confidingly, “Now I’m going to make a little bed all for yourself on the floor. Won’t that be fine? I would have taken you into my bed, but we might then both be restless, and that would be bad for us, because if a girl doesn’t get sleep she pines away. This will be a little game all to ourselves, you in your bed and me in mine, and we’ll never tell a soul. Will we?”
“No,” said Isebeal. She smiled happily when she was bedded down. In a little while the clicking of Catrine’s needles sent her into a deep sleep.
On the following day, Catrine met Norman, Tormad’s brother, at the well. Norman was embarrassed because he was fond of Catrine and did not know what to say.
“Is your mother feeling better?”
“Yes,” replied Norman.
“There’s no more word of anything?”
“No.”
“What are the men saying in Helmsdale?”
“They’re saying that they put up a good fight anyway,” said Norman, with awkward pride.
“Did they?”
Norman was gratified by the catch in her voice, but did not look at her.
“Yes. Tormad wouldn’t be the one to give in easily, they’re saying.”
“How—do they know?”
“Because of the signs in the boat. The herring were smashed to porridge. You can see the red marks on the gunnel.”
“Red marks?”
Norman nodded. “The press-gang didn’t get it all their own way.”
“Blood?”
Norman looked at her. She was white as a sheet, her eyes staring at him.
“It was just a fight,” he muttered awkwardly.
She kept staring, and then began to sway.
“What’s wrong? Catrine!”
Her lips drew back from her clenched teeth, and he saw the shudder go over her body as she sucked in her breath. Against the weight of his arm, she sat down. After a few seconds, she pointed to the buckets. He began to fill them. When they were full, he looked around. No one had seen them. Her left hand was pressing into her breast.
“Is there anything the matter?” He spoke in a low, frightened voice.
; “No, Norman. Just give me a minute.”
He waited, and then carried her pails home. She thanked him at the door, giving him a strange drawn smile. “Don’t tell anyone. It was only a stitch.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes.”
When she had left him he turned and walked away, tears in his eyes and gnashing his teeth, because of the great fool he was.
That night Isebeal, asleep in her shake-down, was a help to her, for as the dawn came in she was caught by a clear, disembodied feeling, which was rather a lack of any feeling at all. It was like death, with a dull urge in it to get up and go away. Just to get up and go away, away beyond life altogether and never come back. She felt herself walking away, light and cool, over the ground and over precipices.
She got up and began to dress, slowly, like one asleep. Isebeal gave a small whimper, like a puppy in a dream. Catrine looked down at her little sister’s face. In the half-light, it had all the tender purity, the unearthly frailty, of a young angel’s face. Catrine got down on her knees and stared at it until she no longer saw it. Her head drooped; her eyes closed; and for a little while she half slept. But when she got back into bed she was as wide awake as ever.
She hadn’t slept a wink last night. Two or three times she had heard Tormad’s footsteps coming to the door. And more than once his body had formed in the dim room. But to-night he did not come. To-night nothing could come to her because her spirit was dry and arid. Heart and feeling were gone out of her body. She simulated her friendliness to Isebeal. She wanted to be left alone. Her body itself felt like a shell, a husk in its grave-clothes.
This pallor of living began somewhere at the back of her mind to be bloodstained in the next two days. It was as though in dream, in another life, she heard the words: Blood: rowan-red. The words were soundless, a haunted rhythm, but their colour was bright as rowan berries or arterial blood.
She returned now and then to the ordinariness of life with a clutch of fear, followed instantly by the cunning which helped her back to the detached state of being fey. She did her work, attended to the cow, and spoke to people normally, though with reserve.
It was the fifth night after his capture that she saw Tormad again. She lay between sleep and waking, in the bodiless clarity beyond fever, when, without any warning, any dream-scene, he appeared before her. He stood upright, but with his head slightly lowered, looking at her. His features were not clear as in daylight, but shadowed as in sorrow. He did not speak, he could not speak, but stood there mute, asking her forgiveness. And she knew why he asked her forgiveness: not for anything that had happened between them, not for anything in the past, but because he was dead. The power of the emotion in him, its desire to help her without being able to help, its essence of the inmost man, the soft generous man she knew so well, its appeal to her, with the glimmer in the eyes searching for her understanding, so wrought upon her that her own love mounted through her in a warm flood and she cried to him in a broken cry, and awoke fully, and in the wakened moment saw him fade backward into the far wall.
*
Going about the crofts after that night, Catrine was grave and calm, though sometimes she would smile to Isebeal and talk to a neighbour sensibly and even lightly. But in bed now she would often weep to herself. One night her weeping wakened Isebeal, who started up in fear, crying out aloud. Catrine caught her, took her into bed beside her and put her arms round her, hushing her in a broken voice. “I am just missing Tormad,” she explained, and little Isebeal clung to her in understanding and they wept together. From that night Isebeal slept beside her in Tormad’s place and Catrine never woke her again.
Just as the detached fey feeling had grown into the fatal urge to go away over horizons and precipices, so now this saner mood worked upon her to leave Dale and go away to live in a new place. She began to hate this place into which they had been driven; felt its dumb misery everywhere; but especially she feared and hated the sea. When the sunny weather broke into wet cold days, and the sea grew leaden and angry, the misery crawled along her bones in a way which sometimes, when she was sitting beside the fire, produced involuntary shudders that more than once startled Isebeal.
Then one day, quite suddenly, she decided definitely that she would go, and the following evening she spoke of what was in her mind to her mother, the two of them being alone. Before her marriage, she would often order her mother about with a cheerful affection, and there was indeed between them a strong bond of sympathy. At first her mother was startled, but Catrine had always been a good worker, with clever hands and sound sense behind her high spirits. “I feel I must go away for a time, anyway, and I was thinking I would go to Dunster and stay with Kirsty Mackay. Many a time she asked me. I would like to go.”
“And what will happen to the croft?”
“I thought of giving it over to Angus.” Angus was her elder brother. “He is wanting a place of his own, as you know, because he would like to get married. What else is there for him, with the others growing up? Otherwise you will lose him. Besides, I am hardly fit to break in the ground. Then about Tormad’s share in the boat—nothing is being said about that just now, but it will have to be settled. I would like to give it to Norman, his brother. I can see they would like to get another crew going. You will never stop them, because they must get money and there’s money in it. I have been turning it all over in my mind.”
Her mother was appalled, yet began quietly enough, “But what about yourself and Tormad? It may be some years before he will come back, but, who knows? he may come back soon, any time. And where would you be then? Besides, you could hardly ask Angus to come in here and him perhaps to get married and then one day ask him to go. I know how you feel, and you could go away on a short visit well enough, but you must be sensible. No, no. Even yourself—in the condition you are in—no, no, you must keep your home, for it’s your man’s home, and hold it for him you must. You cannot give away his croft and his boat like that. That’s the one thing a woman can never do on her man—give away what he owns in this world….”
When she had finished, Catrine sat silent. Her mother, whose brown hair was greying and whose features were regular, looked at her sideways with the concentrated assessing look one woman can give another.
“I was thinking,” said Catrine, “if it was a fine day I would go the day after to-morrow.”
“You couldn’t walk it alone, for it’s a long, long way, and the coach is dear.”
“Oh, I would walk it easily enough. I’ll have a talk with Angus to-morrow. The cow is giving a good drop of milk and that would be something for you.”
“And when would you come back?”
“I could see. There would be no special hurry, if it was convenient to Kirsty.”
“Well, we’ll see. But you won’t say any of the foolishness to Angus or to Norman that you said to me. How you could have had it even in your mind to give away your husband’s croft and boat and them so bitterly come by! It vexes me that you could have thought of it. But I know—I know. It’s been hard on you. Very hard. And maybe the little change will do you good. Things can be very bitter, my dear, and I can see how you have suffered. But—you must keep your heart up. More than ever now, and you as you are. One day Tormad will come back——”
“He will never come back,” said Catrine quietly.
“Catrine!” cried her mother sharply. “What words are these?”
Catrine said nothing, looking into the fire.
“Catrine, what do you mean? Aren’t you afraid of a judgement? Take back these words. Take them back!”
“He will never come back to me in this world,” said Catrine, her features calm and pale.
Her mother’s voice broke into a cry of fear, of dread, for her daughter’s words were a temptation, a mortal sin.
“Don’t weaken me, Mother.”
“My white one, you are overwrought, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“He came to me,” said Catrine,
“when he died.”
There was a stark moment, and her mother’s whisper. Catrine turned to her, drawing a loud breath through her nostrils, and buried her face between her mother’s breasts.
Her mother held her wildly sobbing body, rocking her gently, crooning, “Catrine, my little daughter, my own love, hush, my darling …”, the tears running slowly down her face.
CHAPTER III
CATRINE GOES INTO A STRANGE COUNTRY
The morning was fair and the sky clearing into wide blue fields, when Catrine turned her back on her home.
“Come on,” said Angus, for the members of the family were still smiling and he was afraid they would break down and make a scene. Faces were watching them all over the place. “Where are you going?” he asked Isebeal with a frown. Isebeal paused, looking at him from under her brows as if she would cry any moment. Then she backed in behind Catrine and grabbed her skirt. “Go away home this minute,” said Angus to her angrily, and walked on.
Catrine turned and smiled to Isebeal. “You’d better go,” she whispered. But Isebeal merely held hard, trying her best to keep back her sobs.
“Go home, will you!” said Angus in a low furious voice.
“Never mind her,” said Catrine. “She’ll just come a little way.”
It was not the time for argument, and Angus stalked along and up the brae, carrying Catrine’s small bundle.
When they got to the new road, Catrine turned and looked back. The family were waving to her from their home. She saw her mother’s still figure. From every home folk were waving to her, from every little house, except one. The narrow strips of ground were green with grain and with potatoes, and at the top of these strips, where they were trying to tear new soil from the heather and boulders, men rested on their picks and spades, and here and there an arm went up in greeting and farewell. Above them, on the mountain-side, the children who were herding the cattle looked down on the scene.