The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  It was her mention of Langwell that first arrested Catrine’s attention; and for a little while thereafter she hardly heard what Kirsty was saying. She could see Langwell House on the other side of the deep-wooded glen, but what she felt was the dark sensation of the shepherd over the ridge behind. For in recent months this shepherd had visited her more than once in her dreams. The memory of each of these dreams or nightmares was a horror. He came at her slowly, with his full intention hot and blood-dark in his face. She retreated backward until her legs could no longer move and her throat drew so taut that it cramped and would let no sound pass. Only when she felt his hot breath on her face and the grip of his hands about her was she released to a struggle that, however, could not push off his overpowering, smothering weight, and only when she felt herself growing weak did the last remnant of her strength in a desperate thrust succeed in awakening her. She was naturally afraid lest her very fear of having this dream would only help its recurrence and, growing accustomed to it, she might lose the strength to fight successfully. Deeper than that, too, was the awful suggestion she had got of the body’s possible treachery and, far below that, of the horrible dark ultimate compliance of a mind that was hardly hers.

  “The Langwell connection was through the father, Major George Sutherland, who was the second son of the then Laird of Langwell. The Sutherlands of Langwell were an important family with a pedigree going far back into the ancient line itself. As well as Berriedale, they also had Swiney, down Latheron way, and again from a second son you get the Sutherlands of Swiney. However, this Major George Sutherland had been in the army, and when he retired on half-pay he leased the farm of Midgarty, in Loth, from the Countess, or I suppose I should say from the Earl of Sutherland, for though it was her land, he was her husband, if there’s not much else to say about him. Well, this Major George was twice married. To the first wife he had eight daughters and two sons, and to the second a son and a daughter. The second wife, whose maiden name was Robinson, had an unfortunate end, poor woman. She had fallen sick and the doctor recommended medicine for her—a dose of Epsom salts, in truth, it was. But by a terrible mistake, for people were not much used to Epsom salts, and that for the good enough reason that they did not need them, was she not given a dose of saltpetre instead. Saltpetre is the stuff they made their gunpowder out of. So she died. Ay, it was a terrible tragedy. All the daughters married, except one who died young, and good matches they made. Janet was the oldest and she was married on one of the Grays of Skibo, who was a West India planter. He had a great fortune, but seemingly they were not happy together—many a dreadful story there is about him—so they separated, but without taking a divorce. I’ll tell you what happened to her again. Next came Esther. This, too, was a hard case, because didn’t she make a secret match of it with a son of Sheriff Sutherland of Shibercross. Her husband, who was a lieutenant, died the year after they were secretly married and then to get her widow’s pension she had to produce her marriage-lines. There was great talk about it at the time. But perhaps I told you her story before?”

  “Yes,” said Catrine.

  “Now it was the third daughter, Jean, that Mr. Sage, the beloved minister of Kildonan, married as his second wife, and so we get the Kildonan connection, through Midgarty, to the Sutherlands of Langwell. Well do I remember the day Jean was brought to Kildonan manse. It was coming on for the middle of December in the year 1794….”

  “Were all the daughters of Major Sutherland of Midgarty equally unfortunate?” asked Catrine presently when she got a chance.

  “I was coming to that,” said Kirsty, “because it’s through Kildonan again that we link up with Tarboll, where Robert’s bastard son, also a Robert, was brought up, about whom I heard news to-day from Mrs. Gordon. Not that the other daughters come into it, though when you come to think of it, it was a strange enough family, for all that did happen, to happen to them. But it’s only like what happened to many and many. Take my own family. Where are they but scattered to the four winds. Two brothers in the Americas, one in Australia, one dead through howking the stones out of this ground we live on, a sister in London whose husband is half the time sailing the seas, and the youngest, Ruth, married to that runaway shepherd in the Borders, God help her, poor lassie, for of us all, she was my favourite.”

  “But she loved him?”

  “Faugh! Him! What she saw in him beat me, as I told her many a time. But she made her bed and she’ll lie on it, lumps and all. My father died the winter you came, howking out the same old stones. And I am all that’s left, like the kail runt. However, I’m going through my story, and I’ve no patience for anyone who does that. Where was I? Yes. Well, as I say, Mr. Sage was married on Jean, the third daughter. The next was Williamina, and she became wife to Robert Baigrie, a retired captain of a merchantman in the West India trade….”

  Catrine’s attention began to wander back into the old days at Kildonan, and though she heard Kirsty’s voice and half-followed the intricate genealogical patterns it wove, more and more the bright days of her girlhood ran in her mind, and presently the voice fell away into the distant monotony of water plunging into a pool … the haunted pool … Tormad and herself … the red berries of the dream…. She drew back and listened to the voice.

  “… It was a strange wild story and difficult to follow all the ins and outs of it. But back to the West Indies Robert went. That was in the year 1810—the year after my father was told there would be no renewal of his lease. Well, he became the chief counsellor to the king of an island there—Haiti, it was called. The king’s name was Christoph, or Christopher, after Christopher Columbus, it was said. However that may be, poor Robert died shortly afterwards. And it was his bastard son who was brought up at Torboll. So now we come——”

  “Mama! Bel’s in the corn!”

  At once the two women arose and went rushing out, followed by Roy, already barking and in such intemperate haste that he took the two feet clean from Kirsty on the threshold and left her sitting and looking after him in helpless, if not silent, wrath. On he sped, followed by Catrine and Finn, the hens that had been gathering with an idea of going to roost flying out of the way in the noisiest excitement, and even the old rooster kok-koking and running with less than his usual dignity. The two calves had heels and tails in the air; the five tethered ewes bleated warningly to the five lambs that broke off a headlong race to suck with the fiercest proddings, while the stirk and the heifer in the little dry-stone enclosure, between an impulse to dance and the curiosity to watch, succeeded in making abrupt movements and choked sounds. Alone amid them all black Jean regarded the scene with quiet irony and, perhaps, more than a little satisfaction, as it had not been too pleasant contemplating Bel devouring the good corn Corn, full grown but still green, has a soft, mashy, memorable taste in the hour of cud-chewing, but it does no beast any good to remember the wild, tickling thrust that debauches the palate at the first mouthful.

  Like the arrow sped Roy, with Catrine on the wind behind. Bel made a valiant endeavour to get her tongue round as much of the cornfield as it could encompass even with Roy leaping at her throat. Roots and all came tearing out, drenching Roy with the good earth as she swung her head to give him a toss. Whereupon, angered, he nipped her flank; and at that down went her head and up went her heels, and with the great mouthful swinging from her jaws she, too, began to run, kicking and dancing, like a two-year-old in spring, with her full and aged udder walloping from side to side and spilling its treasure on the air.

  “Come in, ye fool!” roared Kirsty at the dog. She was now on the trot, with a stick in her hand.

  “Roy!” yelled Catrine. Finn followed his mother with a bliss that was near to terror. Down went the stick across the slap in the stone enclosure and out came the stirk and heifer to join the two calves in the chase after Bel. In his stall, the garron whinnied, while, evening though it was, the old cock crew and clearly felt the better for it, if a little self-conscious.

  Breathless, Catrine at last man
aged to grab the tether and hang on while Bel pulled and Roy yapped. “Roy!” she called in desperation, for Bel swept her careering along. “Roy!” croaked Kirsty. “Roy!” yelled Finn. And Roy, feeling the consensus of opinion against him, drew off. Kirsty addressed him with the lather on her lips and then added, “Come here!” He came near enough to tempt his mistress to hit him a blow, but permitted the earth to take the actual impact and Kirsty’s arm the jarring discord. With a harsh imprecation (which was the only thing Finn properly heard), she hurled the stick at the brute. But long experience had taught Roy that anything thrown by a woman would hit him only if he tried to dodge it. So he created a diversion by rounding up the stirk and heifer in expert fashion, while Catrine hammered home the stake of Bel’s tether.

  “Ye old fool, you!” said Kirsty, approaching Bel with the stick behind her back, while Jean, a few yards off, looked on with profound impassivity. “Take that!” she cried. “And that! And that!” Bel took them, sinking her quarters to the impact and glancing round with the white of a guilty eye. “And that—ye ill-faured wicked old bitch! At your time of life you ought to have more sense.”

  It had been a very exciting ten minutes, enjoyed by all, and not least by Bel, who swung her barrel-shaped belly, as she licked a haunch, with some of the abandon more natural, perhaps, to youth. But she had grace still and her heart was young. To Jean she directed her hind quarters and when that canny beast could no longer restrain a muffled deep-throated “Hoo!” Bel responded in a natural way with nonchalance.

  Meantime, Kirsty was inspecting the damage done, her whole body glowing with righteous wrath. Cultivation of the soil in all these parts was in long narrow strips or lazy beds, with hollows or rigs between. Three women cutting with the small hand-hook could take the broadest strip before them and leave nothing standing. The men came in behind to gather and bind and stook. Though, for that matter, folk worked according to the labour available, and to a great degree communally or by mutual assistance.

  Bel had cropped the ears from about a couple of square yards. “You couldn’t have driven that stake in hard enough,” Kirsty accused Catrine, who now had a wooden bucket in one hand and the smallest three-legged stool in the other.

  “It was yourself who did it,” said Catrine. “You shifted her just before you went out.”

  “Did I? In that case, she’s been up to her tricks again,” and she nodded grimly. “We’ll put her to the market, that’s what we’ll do with her.” Nodding even more grimly, she entered the house.

  “How does Bel pull the stake out, Mama?”

  “We don’t know. But perhaps she pulls first from one side and then from the other and in that way loosens it.”

  “Perhaps she kicks it with her foot, the way Granny does with her heel when the stone is over at Jean?”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “If I lay in wait for a long, long time watching, and Bel couldn’t see me, then I might find out. Mightn’t I, Mama?”

  “You might, indeed.”

  “Yes, and I’ll see, and then I’ll tell you, and then everyone will know. I’ll get up early in the morning and watch and watch …”

  Catrine starting humming her milking song, and black Jean stood quietly. With the pitcher half full, they went towards Bel.

  “Why don’t you take the cows in at night, Mama?”

  “Because it’s healthy for them to be outside when the weather is good.”

  “And the byre doesn’t need cleaning then?”

  “That’s so. And they start eating in the early morning.”

  “Yes. And they’ll have more milk. Tell me, Mama …”

  Bel acknowledged their arrival with a sulky “Moo”.

  “What way was that to carry on?” Catrine demanded, clapping her flank gently.

  Bel knew all about such blandishments and was not disposed to give in easily. When Catrine had to move her stool after the restless beast, Finn said in a commanding tone, “Stand still, you wicked old bitch.”

  Catrine’s face opened. In a hushed voice she asked, “What words are these?”

  After a glance at her wide eyes, Finn turned away, pivoting on one heel, growing ever more embarrassed and beginning to laugh.

  “Finn, come here.”

  His laughter gurgled out of him in the merriest way, his face flushed. He was very embarrassed, and when she called him again, he hopped away one step, two, and then ran, his laughter strung behind him in bubbles.

  Catrine was very shocked, and pressed her forehead against the cow’s side. She tried to hum, but a wild inward mirth surged up. She closed her eyes and softly shook.

  For what she had really heard was the sound of his laughter, that infectious gurgling sound, so innocent, so natural, gone all self-conscious and merry and entrancing.

  There were passages of communion between them when she felt the very texture and essence of this little boy, who was her son, in moments of indescribable ecstasy. Sometimes, of course, he was wicked and bad-tempered, and more than once had so far forgotten himself as to assault Granny. But to anyone who really understood him (felt Catrine) that was—that was … After all, he was only four and a half and you couldn’t expect him to be a little saint, even if you wanted him to be. And those times when he wept, feeling he had been unjustly wronged, and his eyes … that brightness in his eyes, and the poor little fellow crying as if his heart would break. Yet if you sympathized with him then, he would hit you a wallop and get angrier than ever. But when he was really good, gold wasn’t in it. Though, for the most part, he was just happy and companionable and full of endless questions…. The running of his living body ran through her blood, and she got up and patted Bel with a gentle hand, murmuring, “Poor old lass!” with bright gleams of suppressed humour. “Did you get your whackings?” she asked. “Was it sore then?” “Moo,” said Bel, who knew all about these soft tactics, yet swinging her head in a half-mollified way. Jean tore up a mouthful of grass and looked across at this touching scene with no more than an exaggerated out-thrust of neck.

  Then Catrine smoothed her features to an innocent solemnity and returned to the house.

  It was longer than the average croft house, with two doors. Through the bottom door one entered to the animals’ stalls; through the top door to the kitchen. Above the kitchen were two rooms; the first, little more than a closet, was where Kirsty now slept, and the second or farthest-up room was the guest chamber, where Kirsty had all her special furniture and ornaments.

  From the surplus of summer milk were made the butter and cheese, of which they sold or traded some, retaining enough to last them through most of the dry period before calving-time. While the various evening duties were being performed, Catrine ignored Finn or regarded him with a cool, remote look. On his part, Finn ignored her, being busy about invisible affairs of his own, though pausing occasionally to look round his shoulder with a solemn but knowing countenance. His worst moment was when sleep overcame him and he was put to bed while Kirsty, in the calm that had come upon the house with the summer twilight, took up the thread of her story. He was defeated the moment she began, because he knew her voice would go on and on for ever, and so he hated her and grew petulant and, finally, to the shattering of his dignity (not to mention the hope of re-establishing relations with his mother), he had to be forcibly undressed. But he held out against saying his prayer, and Catrine had to threaten him with God’s displeasure.

  “You’re running on a thrashing, my young man,” declared Kirsty. “No, I’m not!” he shouted, weeping. “You’d better give him one or two, Catrine,” said Kirsty. “No! no!” he screamed. “Now, Finn,” said Catrine quietly but raising her eyebrows in conspiracy, and soundlessly forming “hush!” on her lips. For an instant he looked into her great brown eyes with their solemn appeal, then waggled his head in rebellion. But, in the end, he stuttered the words after her, and sleep did not take long to defeat him. Catrine had known quite well what he had passionately wished. He had wished Kirsty to go
away to her bed so that he could say his prayer to Catrine alone. Not that he always wanted to do this: but he wanted to do it then to save his dignity.

  And perhaps, for less obvious reasons, too, because one night, a week later, with Kirsty gone earlier than usual to her bed—it had been a heavy, sultry day—he said to his mother, with the firelight still playing on the walls as he lay on his back in the hushed hour, the queer hour of stories and strange things:

  “Mama?”

  “Well? … What is it?”

  “Why is a word bad?”

  To save her face she did not look at him, but regarded the problem thoughtfully, and out of her wisdom answered, “Just because it’s a bad word.”

  Though he recognized the logic of this as irrefutable, yet he was not quite satisfied.

  “But what makes it bad?”

  “What,” responded Catrine, “makes you bad sometimes?”

  The question was personal and hardly fair, but he strove to be objective and simply asked, “What?”

  What, indeed?

  “I don’t know,” said Catrine. “All I know is that we mustn’t be bad and that we mustn’t use bad words.”

  “Who made them bad?”

  “The Bad Man,” answered Catrine.

  His eyes opened. “Mama,” he whispered, “where does the Bad Man live?”

  “You know where he lives.”

  “In the Bad Place?”

  “Yes.”

  At that moment something fell outside with a clatter and the door shook. Little Finn cried in fear to his mother.

  “It’s only the wind getting up,” said Catrine.

  The gust caught the house and shook it with a snarl. A small eddy ran along the floor and met another one over the fire in a spiral of smoke and ash. Then the gust passed away to the moor in a high-pitched whine. As they listened, another one came. Catrine went to the door and swung the wooden bar into its slot and this stopped the door from rattling. Very rarely was a door barred at night, for only a suspicious or frightened nature would shut out anyone who had need to call.