by Neil M. Gunn
After that Dunster struck him as being a delightful place, everywhere full of things he knew, of houses and fields and small woods, of slopes and hollows and the river going down to the sea. He paused on the edge of the brae and saw a man coming up the shore road and knew at once it was Roddie. They would meet at the bridge. A laugh of pleasure surged inside him. It was good to be home!
“Ha!” cried Roddie, smiling. “The wanderer has returned!” Roddie shook hands with him. “And how are the Cattachs?”
Finn felt grown-up and so free from awkwardness that when Roddie told him of two more cases of the plague he felt grave and responsible.
At the House of Peace, Roddie paused. “I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, “but I’m just wondering if you should go home. The truth is your Granny is not very well.” He spoke on quietly, in a reflective manner. “You know how that chill sat on her? Well, two or three days ago, she thought she would pay a visit to one or two of her old friends. It was a nice day and she probably overtaxed herself, but she hasn’t been too fit since. I wonder if we——? I don’t think your mother was expecting you back so soon.” Roddie’s brows gathered. “Do you think you should go home or come up with me first—till we see?”
“I—I think I would like to go home,” said Finn.
“I know.” Roddie nodded. “All the same, in these times we have to go a bit canny and think of others. The only point is that your Granny called innocently enough at Seumas Maclean’s, and she’s not the one to run away at a sneeze. The thing comes on a healthy person so quickly, that you never know … In fact, it was only after she left that Seumas Maclean properly went down. He’s being buried to-morrow.”
Finn did not speak. Roddie glanced at him.
“There’s just the one thing,” said Roddie, “and it’s simple enough. If your Granny doesn’t show any sign by the end of the next two days she’s all right. But we cannot be quite certain until then. I am sure your mother would not like you to go home for the next two days. You can understand that?”
“Yes,” said Finn.
“Anyway, there’s no hurry on you. Come up with me and we can talk it over. There’s a nasty swell and we’re not going to sea to-night. So we’ve been barking the nets.”
As they went up by the edge of the wood Finn looked back across the burn and over the slope to his home. There was no-one about the house. The beasts were on tether. A curious desolation in the scene caught at his heart, followed by a swift stab of physical pain at the realization that, if his mother took it, he would never see her again. The ground wavered before his eyes and he had to lift exhausted legs against the brae. An overpowering desire to go home to his mother came upon him. He had to stop. He couldn’t go on.
Roddie glanced back at the quivering pale face, then glanced away.
“Come up and have something to eat; we’ll get in touch with your mother in the evening. That’s arranged.”
Roddie went on slowly and did not once turn round again. Finn had his eyes clear and his face composed by the time they came to Roddie’s door.
“My mother fell and hurt her leg yesterday, so she’s keeping to her bed,” Roddie said in his casual voice. “Come in.”
As Finn entered, he saw Roddie’s father sitting by the fire. The face turned to him and, with the native welcoming instinct, the old man got up and stretched out his hand. “Well, Finn, you have got back from your travels?” He was taller than his son Roddie, with a fresh complexion and a beard that still had a shade of brown in its silky grey. His manner of natural hospitality, slow in movement, but expressive in the eyes, gave him an air of dignity that now attracted and warmed Finn, gathering his elements into that need for social behaviour which in itself is a pleasant form of courage. Finn answered the old man’s questions about Dale and Helmsdale, not in an awkward word or two, but with a care for language and, where necessary, even at some length, and always with the polite you in place of the colloquial tbou.
In the midst of the conversation, Shiela blew in with a swirl of air, crying his name in welcome. “I saw you coming,” she said. “And how are you and how are they all in Dale?” She bustled about. “Cut up the fish, Roddie. Haven’t I to look after two households now?”
Finn said he was sorry to hear of the accident,
“Ach, it’s nothing. She’ll be on her feet in a day or two.” Shiela was full of life. Finn heard her voice talking to her mother in the next room, for manifestly the old lady had elected to leave the kitchen bed meantime. Soon the two pots were on, one with potatoes in their skins and the other with salt cod.
“Two such handless men in a house I never knew,” declared Shiela, as she now settled down to get Finn’s news.
“And what’s the talk in Helmsdale?”
“They were talking about the Reform Bill,” answered Finn.
“Were they?” cried Shiela, and she roared with laughter. She was very fond of laughing. “Haven’t I heard them at it? We’ll soon have the burns running with milk and honey.” She looked at him almost gravely behind her dancing eyes as if she were thinking two sets of thoughts at once. “Wouldn’t that be fine, Finn? Eh? Your Granny is not very well, but she’ll soon be all right, my hero.” She put her hand on his knee, for she was kneeling by the fire coaxing the peat. “The Reform Bill!” She laughed again. “When you grow up to be a man, Finn—and you’re almost that already—I hope you’ll have more sense than men often have.”
“And what were they saying about the Reform Bill?” asked her father.
Shiela at once became silent, deference and laughter in her eyes as she looked into the fire.
“Uncle Angus was saying that he didn’t think it went far enough,” replied Finn.
Shiela squeezed his knee, delighted with him.
The old man nodded. “And was that the general opinion?”
“I think it was,” Finn answered.
When the old man had said the Grace Before Meat, Shiela put a lump of butter on Finn’s large piece of cod and told him to eat, whatever else he did. Finn now found himself very hungry. Roddie seemed subdued in his father’s presence, and though this was a new aspect of Dunster’s leading skipper, Finn understood it, and somehow it brought Roddie nearer to him.
The constraint at being in a new house did not irk Finn; it gave him a feeling of being whole and collected; and when Roddie, in due course, suggested that they might have a stroll down to the burn, Finn walked by his side, talking in a normal voice.
Presently they saw Catrine leave the corner of her house and Roddie stopped. “You’d better have your talk together,” he remarked. “Your bed is ready for you with us.” There was a pause, while they both kept looking across the burn. “All right, then, Finn,” and Roddie turned back.
But his cool, responsible tone remained with Finn as he went down by the wood.
Catrine held up her hand against him when he was going to cross the burn to join her. “No, don’t come near me just now.” Her smiling face made a joke of it. And then she asked, as no one but his mother could ask, “How are you, Finn?”
“Fine,” he answered freely.
When she had got answers to many questions, she told him to sit down; so they both sat, talking across the murmur of the water. “She’ll be missing me soon,” Catrine at length said, with a backward nod of her head. “She’s not in great form these days!” Her voice made it the old conspiracy between them.
“Is she short in the temper?”
“Och, she’s really not bad. And she’s been good to us, Finn. Was anyone asking for her? She would like to hear that.”
“Yes, they nearly all asked for her. And there’s a man home from the Indies. His name is Captain Mackay. I didn’t meet him, but I was told he was asking for her.” He smiled with slight embarrassment.
“No?” cried Catrine. “Isn’t that grand! What a story I’ll make of it!” She laughed. “And is he still a bachelor?”
“I don’t know.”
“You would probably have he
ard if he wasn’t. So it’s a bachelor he is. Good! And were you missing your old mother at all?”
“Och, a little, maybe.”
“You’re just saying that! I’m sorry, Finn, you can’t come home, but——”
“Why not? I can come all right.”
“No, Finn.” She shook her head, smiling at his concentrated brows. “You see——”
“I don’t see why, if you’re at home, I couldn’t be there too. I could sleep in the barn easily enough.”
“Don’t make it hard on me. Wait for two days, and then everything will be as before.” It was the old intimate voice, warm and light, and more penetrating than anything else on earth he knew. His face grew as sullen as it could look.
“I’ll go now, Finn. And if you happen to be down about in the morning, we might have a word. I’m glad you enjoyed your holiday. It’s fine to see you again. Good-bye just now.”
“Good-bye,” said Finn, and he got up and walked away. When he climbed a short distance he turned and found her waiting. She waved and then hurried off home.
He went blindly into the wood, and presently found himself weeping as he walked. He stood beside a tree for a long time, then moved on again. Her hurrying figure going back to that house affected him deeply. He kept to the trees so that no-one would see him, his mind desolate. He had no desire for Roddie’s company now, no desire for any company. The only thing that was near him in all the world was his mother’s voice; and not only because it was her voice, but because it was the voice of courage in her warm, kind body.
In these moments there was no resentment against her, only a far understanding, beyond which there was nothing.
Crossing the broken ground beyond the wood, he passed the cairn out of which Donnie and himself had taken the rabbit and approached the ruined walls that had protected the House of Peace.
What little wind there was grew still over the small field enclosed by the walls and the long-backed knoll. It was always sheltered here and bright, as if the light itself slept or, rather, lay awake in the dreaming pleasantness that sometimes comes on the body when, bare-legged, it curls in the sun. Perhaps the brightness came, too, from the grey stone; brightness and silence. Finn’s mind always quickened as he looked around, and hearing and sight became acute.
By all the superstitions, he should be frightened of this place. And he was—a little, as if a tiny pulse of panic might beat at any time. But he liked this feeling, too. It lay beyond the need to show courage, to have his mind emptied and his body taut, as though there was also a friendliness, and intimacy, withdrawn and evasive.
And, in fact, there was one thing of which he could involuntarily catch a queer glimpse. It was the vision he had had in form and colour (especially in green, a brightness of soft green) when, after hunting the butterfly, he had fallen asleep, and then, in that “lost” moment of awakening, did not recognize this place but saw it as another world.
On his journey to Dale, he had gone out of his way to walk through this field on an impulse as unreasoning as the amused expression that accompanied it.
He climbed the knoll, keeping to the shelter of the birch trees and, on its long back, found the two small circles of stones, all that was left of the ancient cells. The sun had gone down and the faint shadow of evening lay lightly everywhere. He stretched himself out and, staring into the grass, began slowly plucking a blade. Sometimes his head lifted and his eyes turned, but presently his forehead fell on his arms, for he was tired after his long day on the road. It was a great relief to feel himself floating and sinking and the burden of his misery releasing its hooked fingers from his shoulders. All that he wanted on earth was that his mother should escape the plague, that she should live. That was all. He wanted nothing else. He did not tell the knoll this, not specially. He was just letting it be known to and from his mind. And when this had gone from him into the knoll, he followed it, so tired he was.
Now, as he fell asleep, he dreamed, though never in after life could he quite satisfy himself that it was really sleep and a dream, for everything about him was exactly the same, the trees, the situation and the evening light; it was the same moment; and yet like that instant which had preceeded the coming of the known world when he was a little boy, so now he seemed to be awake when he saw standing by the near cell the tall figure of an old man in a white cape with the front part of his head quite bald. The face was extremely distinct, and though it had the dignity of Roddie’s father in its expression, the face itself was one he had never seen before. The face did not speak to him or move: it just looked, the body standing still in a natural way.
But the look was extraordinarily full of understanding, and somewhere in it there was a faint humour, the humour that knows and appreciates and yet would not smile to hurt, yet the smile was there. It knew all about Finn, and told him nothing—not out of compassion, but out of needlessness.
As Finn’s eyes opened wider, the figure faded, and here he was on his elbows staring at the ring of stones and then all around him. He did not think to himself: I was dreaming; nor—and this surprised him afterwards—was he at the moment beset by any fear. Yet he got up at once to leave the place, and as the ruins fell behind him and he climbed to the top of the wood, a feeling of ease and comfort came about his body and into his mind.
Roddie was at the corner of the house and Finn knew, by the way he turned his head and kept looking, that he was wondering what had gone wrong. But his voice was quite normal when he asked, “Well, how’s your mother?”
“She’s fine,” said Finn cheerfully.
“Good boy!” said Roddie.
“She wouldn’t hear of me staying at home.”
“Didn’t I tell you!”
They both smiled. Roddie neither looked at Finn closely nor asked him where he had gone.
“Can I do anything?” asked Finn.
“Yes,” said Roddie. “You can come in for the Books. The old man is waiting. And then you’ll go right away to your bed. I want you to be fresh to come down and give me a hand at the shore in the morning.”
“That’s grand!” said Finn.
After some talk in the gloom of the kitchen, Roddie lit the rush wick and opened the door of the middle room so that his mother could hear the Bible being read and her husband’s prayer. He prayed for all those in illness and affliction and asked God in His gracious forbearance to lighten the darkness of the heart’s evil and of the plague that had come upon the land. Surely, if God would listen to anyone, he would listen to a grave man like Roddie’s father, thought Finn, quietened by the evening’s devotions.
In the kitchen there was the same kind of boxed-in bed, with scalloped valance along the edges and short curtains in front, as was in Finn’s own house, and when he learned that Roddie and he were to sleep there together, Finn had the feeling that at last he had entered the company of men.
After a time Roddie said, “I think you may as well turn in. You must be pretty tired. I’ll wait for a bit because some of the crew are coming over to discuss a little business.”
“All right,” agreed Finn at once, adding, “the fresh air does make you a bit sleepy.”
“That’s right. You go to sleep,” said Roddie.
But Finn was not in the least sleepy, and he had referred to the fresh air merely to relieve Roddie who, he felt, would naturally rather have him out of the way when discussing private business affairs. He turned his back to the kitchen and tried genuinely to go to sleep, but his mind was clear and active as an overflowing well. There was, too, a fine sensation of clarity in all he saw from his mother’s face to the white-caped figure on the top of the knoll. Somewhere between dreaming and waking there was a world that came or went by the flick of an eyelid. Nothing at all to be afraid of, any more than of a real dream in the daylight. And one laughed at the most horrid dream in the daylight. But this in-between dream was clear as light…. His mind wandered back to Dale. How frightened they had been of the plague!—far more frightened than people like R
oddie and himself who were on the spot. If he told Donnie of the figure he had seen on the top of the knoll, Donnie wouldn’t go near the place alone for ten pounds! Things were like that. Odd, when one came to think of it. The great thing was not to be afraid. Whatever took place, folk must think of him like that—as he had always thought of Roddie. The only thing he had ever seen in the daylight that had given him a queer, terrible feeling was the flames going up from David’s house. Angry, blood-red tongues of flame shooting up above the black rolling smoke. You almost had the awful feeling that the bodies of David and Ina were being burned there, though they were both in their graves….
All at once he felt Roddie standing by the bedside, but went on breathing as evenly as he could. Softly Roddie drew the curtains and retired to the fire, leaving Finn so acutely awake that it was an effort to go on breathing. The flickering firelight began to die down and Finn heard soft strokings in the ash. Why on earth was Roddie smooring the fire if he was expecting company? His curiosity quickened beyond control, turned his head and shoulders and slowly his whole body without the least sound. Through the narrow slit where the curtains did not quite meet, he saw Roddie on his knees before the fire, not smooring it, but putting it out, extinguishing it, slowly, methodically, ember by red ember. Finn could only stare in astonishment, beyond thought, for no fire was ever put out from one year’s end to the other. And with good reason, for the only way to light it again would be by first getting a spark from steel and flint to smoulder in burnt cotton and then … but Finn knew this would be so long and laborious a process … Roddie, his body getting darker and darker as the fire disappeared, looked like one performing some dreadful, unimaginable rite … like one slowly and deliberately murdering fire.
Fear now touched Finn, and when the last red ember was smothered and Roddie was taken up into the darkness itself, he heard the beating of his own heart and was held in panic lest it betray his wakefulness.
After a long time Roddie moved towards the door, paused twice as if listening to the sleeping house, and then very quietly went outside.