by Neil M. Gunn
There was a long house over to her right, and as she went towards it a young man and a grey-haired woman came out. They stopped at sight of her and waited. Catrine addressed her inquiry to the woman.
“Kirsty Mackay? yes, surely,” answered the woman with a pleasant smile. “She lives away up there, towards the moor, though you can’t see her house from here. Are you going there?”
“Yes,” replied Catrine, gladdened that Kirsty’s house was inland.
“By your tongue I can tell you have come from Sutherland. Am I right?”
“Yes. I walked over from Helmsdale to-day.”
“You what?”
But Catrine refused the command to accept hospitality, saying she had been entertained so recently that she could not eat again.
Catrine liked this old woman, who was so gracious in manner that she did not press her invitation. “Well, you tell Kirsty from me that if you refused to cross my doorstep it was not for want of the asking.” Catrine smiled and promised to do so.
“But how can you tell her if you don’t know my name?” asked the old lady as Catrine turned away.
“That will be easy,” replied Catrine, a faint colour coming to her cheeks and a glance of compliment to her eyes.
“Well now, indeed,” remarked the old lady, whose smile brightened her face with intelligence and humour as she turned to the young man beside her, “and sometimes we have criticized the Cattach!” (meaning, the native of Sutherland).
The man gave a small easy laugh. He was twenty-five, fair, with blue eyes and tiny reddish freckles on the backs of his hands and here and there on his face. His expression was pleasant, slightly aloof perhaps and critical, but friendly. He did not speak.
“Wait!” called the old lady. “How do you expect to get there until we tell you the way?”
When Catrine saw that an answer was awaited, she replied simply, “You said that she lives towards the moor in a house that can’t be seen. I’ll ask when I get there.”
The old woman nodded, satisfied. “I doubt,” she said, “if I am conferring any favour on you by telling Skipper Roddie Sinclair here that, as he is going your way, he may go so far in your company as to point you the very house. And though you needn’t be afraid of him, still a pleasant-looking girl might always be advised not to let any man readily inside her reach.”
“No, no,” said Catrine too quickly. “I’ll manage fine. Thank you very much.” She obviously did not wish company.
The old lady laughed and turned back into the house.
“That’s Granny Gordon,” said Roddie, with complete ease. “She is clever and likes playing with words. I’m going your way, and when we get up the glen a bit I’ll show you your house.” He looked at her bundle and, with a word, took it from her. “You must be pretty tired as it is,” he explained, “after coming all that way.”
“I did feel it once or twice, but I rested, and it’s been a lovely day. You needn’t trouble, please——”
“It’s no trouble. I’m going home in any case. You have never been here before?”
“No.”
“Are they doing well at the fishing in Helmsdale?”
“Yes, I think so,” she said.
But when he began to ask her how many boats were fishing, what was the biggest individual shot, the number of boats from the south side, and similar questions, she was a little sorry to confess that she could not answer him with more precision, because his voice had the simple earnestness it would have talking to a man. Within a minute she was at ease in his company and explained the situation in Dale.
He nodded. “The folk in Dale don’t go to sea, then?”
“Not yet,” she answered.
“They will,” he said simply. “We have made a beginning here. It’s the coming thing. By the way, wasn’t it from Dale that the lads were press-ganged?”
She did not reply and he turned his head frankly and glanced down at her, for he was six feet in height. She was looking in front, a quickening in her face. At once he decided that perhaps some of her own relations had been lifted, and asked lightly, as if he had seen nothing, “But perhaps you don’t care for the sea?”
“Not much,” she murmured.
To ease the moment, he began pointing out where, on the slopes beyond the river, the stage-coach changed horses and indicating other local points of interest, such as the inn, the market hill, a shop, the small thatched cottage that was a school. When they had crossed the bridge they turned sharp left and began following the bank of the river inland.
She liked the scene now very much, with its flat, well-cultivated fields standing back from the stream towards green braes and, on their right hand, a long ridge of grey rock, with low birch woods growing down over its brow. If not so wild and romantic as places she knew in Kildonan strath, still it had a beauty of its own, a quietness and ease like this man’s manners.
“You have good ground here,” she said.
“Yes, this is old fertile ground, but higher up, where you are going, it’s not so good. Did you have to dig it out of the moor at Dale?”
“Yes. They are still digging it out, and sometimes there are boulders as big as rocks. The whin roots themselves can often be tough enough.”
“They can indeed,” he agreed, and went on to tell her of local difficulties encountered in clearing the soil, all in a friendly, informative way. Presently they came to a high stone wall, very thick at the base, and running back from the river to a large knoll on their right. There were other evidences of similar walls about this knoll, as though in times long past it had been a fortress or strongly protected place of some kind now fallen upon ruin. The tumbled stones were a grey-blue softened with lichen. She asked him what it was.
“The old folk call it Chapelhill,” he answered. “It seems there was a church here at one time, though I have heard it said that long, long ago it was a monastery and the name it had was the House of Peace.”
“The House of Peace,” she murmured in a tone of soft wonder.
He gave her a side glance and smiled. “You like that name?”
“Yes,” she answered, confused slightly, for the name had been like a benediction sounded softly in her mind. All in the moment her eyes had brightened and a quickening come to her skin as if the far, soundless echo of peace hadentranced her. They were both aware of what had happened, and if it made Catrine slightly self-conscious, it otherwise did no harm; for Roddie pointed to a round tower, still of some height though in ruins, too, on a tongue of ground that rose between the main stream and its principal tributary which had their confluence in a pool on their left hand. “That’s an old fort, or dun,” he said, “though the professor—that’s the name we give the schoolmaster—calls it a broch. Anyway, it’s so old that no-one knows much about it, for he says it goes back to long before the coming of the Vikings. It has two little rooms, round rooms, built into the wall inside. They could build in any case; I’ll say that.” Then he did a little thing that she was ever after to remember. For a short distance the path was built up with great boulders to protect it from the river floods. “That fellow,” he said, “has been slipping for some time, and if he’s not stopped now he may go.” Thereupon, straddling his legs, he stooped and, getting his hands under the edges of a great thick flagstone, slowly heaved it back into position. She saw his neck and upper arms swell and his face redden in the sustained effort. Then he stood up lightly and dusted his hands, not as any ordinary person might, carelessly palm to palm, but with quick explosive flicks of finger-tips against finger-tips from the distance of an inch or so; and in the couple of steps it took him to regain his balance properly he seemed to walk on the outer edges of his feet, jauntily. “This path is useful,” he explained, “for bringing things up from the shore. Here, when we break in ground, we like to manure it well with seaweed and fish guts. No manure like it for giving ground heart. You wouldn’t do that away up in the strath of Kildonan?”
“No,” she answered, still conscious of hi
s explosive strength, for he was not heavily built.
They crossed the tributary by stepping-stones and proceeded up its right bank through a wide display of wild roses, from snow-white to deep crimson. She exclaimed at the unexpectedness of the pretty sight. There were two long pools beyond, and then the land narrowed upon the small stream in an intimate way that touched her fancy. The banks rose steeply, with faces of rock, grey salleys, small vivid green birches, the drooping fronds of large ferns, foxgloves and other wild flowers, all in a tangle, while the water dropped from little pool to little pool or slid in cool glissades down sloping rocks, slippery with clean green summer slime.
“That’s your place now,” he said, coming to a stop and pointing to a long low house, thatched with rushes, its head much higher than its tail as it lay into the slope of the ground. “And if I’m not mistaken,” he added, “that’s Kirsty herself wondering who in all the world I have with me now.”
His quiet assessing humour brought from Catrine a quick glance and smile. She thanked him and took her bundle. “I go this way,” he said, “and I have to hurry, as I’m late for the sea. Good-bye.” Giving her an easy, friendly smile, he turned and crossed the burn, having asked in all their talk neither her name nor her business. This complete and natural lack of interest in her affairs was so refreshing an experience that she went up the slope towards Kirsty with a deepening smile of expectancy and the stranger’s turmoil in her breast.
And then Kirsty saw her, and exclaimed, and shook her by the hand, and said that she couldn’t believe her eyes. They were grey, keen, and searching, for Kirsty was a practical woman, given indeed at times to a precision of manner that many thought hard and unsympathetic. Catrine felt the penetration and knew Kirsty was wondering what trouble had brought a young wife, barely four months married, on so long a journey from her husband, and was suddenly disconcerted and touched with dismay. But she smiled and said simply, “I had a longing to come and see you.”
“Indeed, and why wouldn’t you? Come you away in now. And did you walk all the way?”
“Yes.”
Kirsty exclaimed again, and looked more shrewdly than ever at Catrine’s face, then paused near the door to say “There’s the old man himself taking the peats home.”
Catrine saw Kirsty’s father, walking beside a small horse that was dragging a sledge of peats from the moor.
“He’s failing on me,” said Kirsty. “But that’s the way of things. He’s never got used to this place. Sometimes I tell him I think he’s going dottled. Come in. It’s tired you must be. Sit there. And how did you fall in with Roddie Sinclair?”
Catrine explained, and conveyed at the same time Granny Gordon’s greetings.
“You’re making friends early. And there’s nothing wrong with that young man until he takes drink. Well! well! so here you are. And how’s Tormad himself?”
Catrine did not answer.
Kirsty came to a standstill.
“He’s been taken from me,” said Catrine, not looking up.
“From you? Do you mean he’s dead?”
“He was out fishing in a boat and a ship of war caught them and took them away.”
“A ship of war?”
“The press-gang.”
“The press-gang!” Kirsty sat down abruptly. She stared at Catrine piercingly. Then she said with great force, “The dirty brutes, the coarse, dirty brutes. How long ago?”
Catrine told her. There was something tonic in Kirsty’s wrath. “The place was getting the better of me, so I remembered how you’d asked me to come, and so I thought I’d come for a change.”
“You were right, and I’m glad to see you. We may not have much here, but you’re welcome to what there is. My poor girl, you have had a hard time.” She got up. “It’s terrible news indeed. I wondered when I saw you coming what it was. I thought maybe it was no more than some small trouble that we could put right. You would think poor folk hadn’t enough misery and worry already. If only we could have the law on them! Wait now, till I bring you a little of this night’s milking,” and she left the kitchen.
Catrine got up and looked out of the small window. Dismay came back and quietened her to the stillness of the evening outside. Had she made a mistake in coming, been wrong in thinking there was anywhere in the world she could go or anyone in whom she could find solace? Kirsty seemed harder than she had been, was not so tidy in her person, and somehow there was a faint gloom or misery of poor living in the air.
As she looked out the small window, she had a quite vivid memory of herself as a little girl, being taken by her mother to call on Kirsty or of Kirsty’s coming to their home, and of the invariable question, “Now, are you wondering what it is I have got for you?” Kirsty always had something for her, some little present or maybe just a round hard white sweet from her hidden hoard. But the memory of it was bright and young.
Suddenly Catrine knew that an end had come to the vision of her running childhood that she now saw in her mind as if it were far outside.
Was this the vision she had been hunting, without knowing it, when she had left Dale? The question hardly formed, for the vision passed like a glimmer of light and, turning, she looked about the kitchen with cold, alien eyes. Age touched her features with a drawn fear and, in the gloom of the interior, her pale face seemed straining upward for flight. Her eardrums became intensely acute and all in a moment she had a wild terror of hearing Kirsty’s footsteps return. Then she heard them coming; footsteps, blind footsteps. Her heart stopped and she all but cried aloud.
She was sitting on a three-legged stool as Kirsty came in. The porridge-pot was bubbling over the fire, suspended from the roof-tree by a heather rope coated round with soot to the thickness of a man’s wrist, and here and there glistening like ebony. The fire stood in the middle of the floor, hedged about with flat stone. The chimney was a hole in the roof, square-boxed with wood. But in the dim light, with the yellow tongues of flame idly flapping over the black peat, the fine display of blue-patterned plates and dishes on Kirsty’s large dresser glimmered cosily enough. Kirsty had many and special household gods, for her father had had a comfortable holding in Sutherland, which he had rented, not like the numerous cottars from year to year, but on lease. When the lease had fallen in, the landlord had refused to renew it. And that was the beginning of the evictions.
The news of what had happened to Catrine had now had time to take complete possession of Kirsty’s mind and gave her an added energy. She spoke continuously, as she moved about getting the simple supper ready, and the drive of her voice and her questions brought Catrine to herself.
Presently Kirsty’s father came in. He was a tall man of seventy with a slight stoop and grey steady eyes. “Look whom I’ve here for you!” called Kirsty. He paused and looked for some time, and then in a voice quietened by surprise, said, “Is it yourself, Catrine?”
“Yes,” she answered, smiling and shaking hands.
He kept looking at her in wonder as if she were herself and something more. “You have grown a big girl,” he said and becoming fully conscious of her hand, gave it a firm shake.
Catrine felt embarrassed and a small lump rose into her throat as she kept glancing from side to side, smiling.
“And have you come on a visit to see us?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Very good, very good. And how is your father and mother and all of you?”
“They’re all fine, thank you.”
“They’re not all fine,” said Kirsty, putting swirls of air through the peat smoke. “A terrible thing has happened to her. They have taken her man.” Her voice rose, as if her father were dull of hearing. “Tormad, her man. You’ll have forgotten she was married. The press-gang came and took him away. She has no man now. They have taken him away, the coarse, dirty brutes.” She laid a horn spoon on the small deal table with a bang that rattled the four knives in its little drawer. She went on talking while her father regarded Catrine.
“I forgot for
the moment you were married,” he said. “Forgive me; you look so young. I’m sorry to hear this.”
“Sit in,” interrupted Kirsty, “and take your porridge. Folk have to eat though the heavens fall. Sit in, I say. This is your place, Catrine. And this table, drat it, if you move it off the one spot you’ll never get it steady.” The floor was of clay and Kirsty had upset the under-pinning of the table’s unsteady leg. But she soon had it fixed firmly again.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
“Be saying the grace,” interrupted Kirsty. “There’s plenty of time for talk. The child is starving.”
He raised his hand to his forehead and reverently repeated the “Grace before Meat” that is to be found in the Shorter Catechism.
When they had eaten and he had got all the news, he fell into an abstraction by the fire. Kirsty gave a sideways, knowing nod to Catrine. “He’s getting like that,” she said, in a private voice with a nonchalant humour. “Never mind him. You must be feeling tired, and it’s your bed you need. We’ll get him to take the Books, and then we’ll pack him off to his own bed. He sleeps next door. The bed here is big enough for both of us and it’s cosy—if you don’t mind sleeping with me, eh?”
“No,” said Catrine.
“You are tired, lassie,” said Kirsty with one of her shrewd looks.
“Yes,” said Catrine, turning away, a strangling in her throat. She did her utmost to fight it down, afraid the terror of the bed would overcome her. She knew that she was unreasonable, that this was her inevitable destiny. She fought hard. “I am—this is—foolish——” The sob came.
“My poor bairn,” said Kirsty, patting her firmly on the back. “There now—don’t give in. You must get used to it.”
From his abstraction, Kirsty’s father roused himself and looked at Catrine.