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.
“Come on,” said Angus and moved off.
Catrine’s eyes went back to the deserted cottage and out to sea. She stood very still for a time, and then for a little while longer, though her sight was blurred, until she had conquered her emotion. Isebeal saw the white teeth bite on the trembling lip as the head turned away, and she followed her sister quietly as her shadow. As if he knew what was happening, Angus never looked back but kept straight on though at a slackened pace.
Nor did he glance at Catrine when he allowed them to overtake him.
“It’s going to be a fine day,” said Catrine in a clear, light voice.
The tone heartened him and he said it had every appearance of being a fine day, “We can go back home now!” and he glanced sharply at Isebeal.
“Ach, never mind her,” said Catrine. “She can come a little way and then you can both go back.”
“There was no need for her to come,” he remarked. “She won’t be able to walk it.”
“Don’t be foolish, Angus. There’s no need for either of you to come far with me.”
“And what would mother say when I went back?”
“How far are you coming?” she asked.
“Most of the way,” he answered.
She stopped. “You’ll do no such thing,” she said firmly. “You’ll come one mile, and then you’ll both go back.”
This was more like the Catrine who had ordered him about many a time. “We’ll see,” he said, but in an easier tone.
He left the road, taking the short cut that went down into a wide gully. Catrine smiled to Isebeal, took her hand, and followed him.
It was steep going up the opposite slopes and more than once Catrine had to stop for a minute to ease the hammering of her heart. She felt weak and a little light-headed, with a small trembling in her flesh at the unaccustomed exercise; but her heart felt lighter than it had done for many a day, as if the sun were brighter here and the air cooler and more friendly. Sometimes Angus was well ahead of them.
When they were going down into the great ravine Catrine asked Angus if they hadn’t come far enough.
“I’m going to see you over the Ord at the very least,” he said, and went plunging down. The Ord had a reputation as a place for robbers in the old days.
They all rested by the little burn at the foot of the ravine, and Angus, with a vague smile, asked them how they were getting on. “Fine. Aren’t we, Isebeal?” “Yes,” answered Isebeal, glancing at her brother.
“You’re a little monkey,” he said.
At-that she smiled shyly to Catrine. Angus got down and took a long drink out of the burn. His hair was much darker than the girls’, and his eyes, in marked contrast to Catrine’s brown ones, were a greeny blue with a sharp light in them under strong but finely-cut eyebrows. “When you’re ready we’ll go,” he said.
After a long climb they came out on top of that world of ravines near the edge of a high precipice. The sea was below them, its great floor rising slowly. Far as the eye could stretch northward the coast line was a wall of rock, ending hazily in a remote headland.
“This is the Ord of Caithness,” said Angus, “and that’s the Caithness coast.”
A coast of precipices and wings and perilous depths. A coast of hard rock and sea. She turned her head to the heather moors that rose slowly inland, with the mountains behind. The mountains and the moors and the warm sun on them, brown and soft and playful. She kept towards the inside of the road, the cliffs and the sea like down-rushing dizzying wings in her breast.
When the road had left the cliffs and was wandering inland a little, she stopped. “Now you have come far enough,” she said. “I’ll manage fine.”
Angus began to protest, but she paid no attention to him and, taking Isebeal in her arms, kissed her. Isebeal did not cling to her, for she knew the moment had come, and so kept her face as stiff as she could.
“Good-bye, Angus.”
“This is nonsense,” he said in an impatient voice.
But she took the bundle from him, though he was not for giving it up, and shook his dead hand. This seemed to annoy him still more, and saying he would see her as far as Langwell, anyway, he strode on. She caught him at once and held him. For all her strong effort at restraint, Isebeal began to cry. “You’ll go back now,” said Catrine firmly. “I will not,” replied Angus, looking past her, his brows drawn. “Don’t be foolish, Angus,” said Catrine sensibly. “Good-bye. Good-bye, Isebeal. Good-bye.” And Catrine, holding the cloth bundle by its knot, backed from them a yard or two and then turned and walked away At a little distance she swung half round, and waved to them cheerfully. Angus was still standing and looked as if he might come striding after her, so she hurried on.
When she looked back again, they had turned and were going homeward. A little time afterwards, when she looked back, she saw them against the sky, and though they were now much smaller in size, she could see that Angus had Isabeal by the hand. She remained quite still, staring at the two clear-cut figures. As if her thought had overtaken them, they stopped. She felt Angus’s keen hill eyes searching for her. She could not wave or make any sign. His arm went up and then little Isebeal’s. She answered and turned away and went stumbling on stupidly, her sight dimmed.
All her body felt stupid, and her mind, and the only feeling she had was a dumb bitterness.
In the course of time, wearied, she came to a well near the roadside. In these great primeval moors, there was no human habitation, and as she stood for a moment looking around, the desolation touched her with a strange feeling that was not quite fear, as if the brown were the brown of some fox-beast that would not harm her but still was invisibly there. Yet, like the fox, she was a little hidden away herself from all she had been before, and in this lonely weariness she lay down in the heather. From being wide awake she passed in a moment into a sound sleep.
The sky was now a milky blue and the sun warm. The tiny buds on the heather were pink-tipped. The water trickled from the well through a tongue of green grass, and a wild flower here and there drooped suddenly under the weight of a noisy bumble-bee excited by the honey scent that was already stealing over the heath. As she slept, her lips came slightly apart, showing the tips of her teeth. Though her mouth lost its shape a little, it remained generous, the lips rich, delicate and blood-suffused. Near her ear, the skin was pale and fragile as from a long illness, but even here sleep brought a breath-soft warmth. Her hair was fair, of that even fairness that would not draw a second glance. Her nose was not cut finely like her mother’s, neither were her eyebrows, yet now in rest they smoothed down the family chiselling to a simple mould, and in the clearness of her brow was a quality like light. As she slept, her features, fine in the bone, recalled an innocence and smallness of early girlhood.
Her sleep was troubled by a dream in which hundreds of horses’ hooves came thundering down upon her, wild black horses of the Apocalypse, and, opening suddenly, her eyes blazed and the innocence was consumed.
When she saw the stage-coach come rolling down the slight incline, with its four horses crunching the gravel under their galloping hooves, she flattened again like a wild thing, fearful of being seen, and only when it was well past did she lift her head and gaze after it until it disappeared. The carriage road and the stage-coach, newly introduced to these northern wilds, signified to such as Catrine the traffic and pomp of the great world, its ruthless power and speed, its cities and its wealth.
As she sat up and gazed around, the desolate moor came about her in a friendly way. She looked at her right foot and picked a piece of heather from between two toes. Then lifting her bundle, she continued on her way, keeping to the grassy verge of the road that was soft to her feet. Her jacket and skirt were a homespun tweed, crotal-brown in colour, and the cloth she put round her head was green, but now she carried this cloth on top of her brown bundle, for she liked her hair to be free under the sun.
In time she came to a small burn, and feeling somewhat weak from hunger and the exhaustion of many days, she sat down and from her bundle drew out two round bere bannocks stuck solidly together with butter. As she ate, a lightness of happiness blew in upon her mind. Living in Dale had become like a nightmare. And here, at least, was a sunny new world in which she was free, in which she was alone, in which she was glad to be alone—until the thought of her solitude actually touched her. Then, for a little time, she wept freely, even turning over into the heather and gripping it.
But the tears were doing her good, and deep in her mind she knew it, for they were a weakness she would have to get over, but meantime they were an indulgence—and—anyway, life had been hard to her.
Self-pity, however, had not got very far when she felt that the world outside had grown ominously still. Slowly she lifted her head and saw the legs of a man standing beside her. Without raising her eyes farther, her heart in her mouth, she reached for her bundle and, knotting its corners, got up.
As she did so a pleasant voice asked her if there was anything wrong. He was a lusty shepherd of over thirty, with a weathered face, blue eyes, dark brown hair, a crook in his hand and two dogs at his heel.
She did not understand his English, for he spoke in a southern dialect, but she could see that his intention was to be companionable.
A paralysing shyness came over her. After a first glance she looked away and, saying the only words of English she could remember, “No, thank you,” moved on.
He walked by her side, offering to carry her bundle, his voice laughing and adventurous. But when he put a hand on her bundle, she started away and, as he followed, swung round and faced him.
“Ye needna be feared o’ me,” he suggested, with searching merry eyes, inviting eyes.
“Leave me alone,” she said precisely and walked on again.
He laughed, not at all deterred. “Ah, come on,” he said, “be friendly. Ye’re a lang way frae nowhere an’ I’ll see ye there.” He talked on in a wheedling chuckling voice, close by her side. She paid no attention to him. He asked her where she was going, where she had come from, and other questions, but she did not reply. “Ye’re a dour ane,” he said, “and ye sae bonnie. I’m no’ gaen to eat ye.”
She stopped again and faced him. Her quickened expression and blazing eyes made her very attractive. Behind his laughing face she saw excitement concentrate in a green glint, a seeking light. He swallowed and chuckled.
Her terror heightened her angry expression. “Please to leave me,” she said sharply.
“Please to leave me!” His mimicry was meant to compliment her, teasingly. “Now, be sensible——”
“Leave me!” The words were a scream and a lash, and they steadied him. She would fight madly.
“Wha’s touchin’ ye?” His smile grew sardonic. “I was only offering to help.”
She turned abruptly and walked on, head up. He followed, and for a moment she felt blind physical forces balancing behind her. Then he stopped, cried some words she did not understand, and gave vent to his laughter. Something wet touched her bare calf and she leapt, squawking with such terror that the sniffing collie sprang back.
The shepherd whistled his dog and gave her a wave and a last laugh.
She strode on, forcing her knees to their work, trying not to be sick.
There was a long slow slope she had to climb before she could get out of his sight, and she called to her spirit. Half-turning her head at a little distance she saw him out of the corner of her eye coming slowly on. Her fear and horror of him increased. Her breath went in and out in short panting gasps. If she had had the energy she would have lost her head and broken into a wild run; but now it was as much as she could do to keep going, and once or twice as in nightmare she felt her body falling down and screaming like a trapped hare. There was a piercing whistle, and a wild “No! no!” answered in her mind. Into view on her left shot one of the collies and a long way out began rounding up some sheep. He was still coming. Her breath now was sobbing, but her brows were still strong and her eyes had a trace of the intolerance that so often characterized Angus’s. By this last remnant of primeval anger her legs were kept going, and when at last she mounted the low crest and saw on the slopes, rising to the horizon beyond a deep glen, the outlines of cottages, she was so heartened that, out of sight of the shepherd now, she broke into a run. Almost at once she pitched by the shoulder, but she was soon up again, walking and running, caring no more what wild sobbing noises she made.
She was a long way on before she saw the shepherd on the crest behind, against the sky. At once, she walked with decorum. Like an ominous watchman, he remained there darkly on the crest, so that she hardly saw the deep-wooded valley below her.
But when it was clear to her that he was not pursuing her any more, and a dip in the ground hid him finally from her sight, she paused and, her weakness drowning her in a warm flush, fell backward against the heather. Her eyes closed and she breathed open-mouthed, as in a stertorous sleep.
It was a lovely deep glen, with two valleys, each containing its river, coming to a point far below her at a short distance from the sea. The other river was hidden by high rising ground, broad-browed, that lay between the valleys, but this one wound its way by cultivated fields and green pastures up into the hills. When, haunted still by the fear of the man behind her, she sat up and her eyes rested on a large house it suddenly came to her that this must be Langwell.
How often she had heard of it, how often Kirsty Mackay had told her the history of each member of that family from which Mr. Sage, the grand old minister of Kildonan, had taken his second wife. This, then, was the house. If she would go there, mentioning Kildonan and Kirsty’s name, she would surely be welcomed by someone. And how avid Kirsty herself would be for news! She should go, she told herself. But somehow she could not go. She felt shy; and then—they would ask all about her, and … The afternoon was wearing on and she had a long way to go yet.
So she passed Langwell House, crossed both rivers, and climbed the steep mile-long hill with a slow weary mind. But when she came to the cottages of the folk, each on its little croft, and a man or woman by the road called a greeting, she grew heartened, and presently asked an elderly woman if it was far to Dunster.
“It’s far enough and you walking,” answered the woman, looking at her shrewdly. “But the road will take you there. Have you come far?”
“I have come from Helmsdale,” answered Catrine.
“Have you indeed?” said the woman, with proper astonishment. So she took Catrine into her cottage and made her sit by the fire, though it was a warm day, and gave her a bowl of milk and a scone thick with butter and new cream cheese. Then she proceeded to question her politely but firmly.
Catrine gave her parents’ names, the part of Kildonan they had been cleared out of, the number of her brothers and sisters, the size of their new home in Dale, and other and more particular information, and received in return as much as she gave, complete with commentary and judgement and an eye to see that the guest was eating properly. But Catrine did not tell her of Tormad and what had happened to him. “I am on a visit,” she said, “to a friend of my mother who lives in Dunster, and it’s time I was on my way.” “A friend of your mother? Well, now! And she’s living in Dunster? How many have come from the terrible evictions in the glens of Sutherland to this coast and it bare enough. Let me see now: she’ll be Widow Sutherland likely?” “No,” said Catrine, “she’s Kirsty Mackay and she’s a far-out relation of her who was housekeeper to Mr. Sage in the manse of Kildonan before he married again.” “Kirsty Mackay, you’re telling me? Kirsty Mackay?” and raising her eyes to a corner of the ceiling she drummed her knee as if it were her memory. A few more questions left her still baffled, however, muttering, “Kirsty Mackay? Kirsty Mackay?—no, it beats me. But,” and she brought her eyes down, “if you step up with me the length of my good-sister’s, she’ll know surely, for her man, who is my own brother, is at the sea and is in Dunster often enough.” Catrine politely declined this invitation on the plea that she was late as it was and would no doubt readily find out where Kirsty lived when she reached Dunster itself. The woman at last told her how she would know Dunster, and blessed her, and hoped she would find her friends in good health when she arrived.
As Catrine walked away, a smile came into her eyes, for the inquisitive elderly woman is always a source of amusement to the young. This intimate knowledge warmed her pleasantly and she now felt in better heart than at any time during that day.
From the road the ground sloped gently down to the top of the cliff wall, and as she wandered on past the cottages, each of them standing back a little from the road, she wondered if they had always been here and decided that very likely they had not, for folk of her kindred liked living in sheltered glens, on inland slopes, not on the windy tops of cliffs. Probably more than one of them had come from her own country, for it was years now since the first clearance.
Thus occupied with odd thoughts, and accepting and giving occasional greeting, she came in time to the brow of a broad valley, with a river running through it and little birch woods on the slopes of grassy braes. It was a gentler valley than any she knew in her own country and everywhere she looked it seemed a different shade of green. Nowhere did the slopes tower into mountains, and only when she turned her face inland did she see the familiar eternal dark brown of the moors heaving to long smooth lines against a remote sky. There were croft houses behind her and on the wide slopes beyond the valley that rose so slowly to a distant horizon, but her eye followed the river, whose course was a mass of boulders, for the stream was small, until it ran into the sea where the cliffs had vanished, leaving a stony beach curving round a fairly wide bay. But on each side of that bay the cliffs started again, though she could only see the cliff to her left hand, and it had the abrupt shape of a headland with feet always in deep water.
The shoulder of a green brae shut out the greater part of the foreshore in front of the curving beach, but Catrine saw boats in the river mouth, the coming and going of men, dark patches of nets spread to dry, a great pile of light-coloured barrels and, in a quickening of fear, she began to wonder where Kirsty stayed, hoping with a sudden passionate hope that it was not near that busy cold-green drowning sea.
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 his 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.”
“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.
“We’ll be taking the Books at once,” said Kirsty before he could speak. “The bairn is tired after the long journey.” The peats that stood on edge she shoved closer together, and at once bright flames sprang up, lighting the dying day in the kitchen. The old man took the Gaelic bible and, stooping a little towards the fire said, “We will read in the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Psalms.” He knew it by heart.
At once Catrine lowered her head and in her lap her small hands clenched.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketb me to lie down in green pastures: be leadetb me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: be leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil….
Catrine could listen no more. It was a cruel irony that had made the old man choose this chapter to read, for it was the last that Tormad and herself had read together, the night before he had gone to sea.
There had been something very intimate in this reading of a chapter of the Bible after they had got married. They had been shy about it at first, smiling like embarrassed children who were playing at the game of being responsible and grown-up, Tormad clearing his throat and being solemn, while she sat upright and still, like the mother of a family of sons. Tormad hadn’t read very loud, as if folk outside might hear, yet had kept his voice steady and had even raised it a bit towards the end. What a lovely experience it had been, warm with the very breath of their love, bringing them together in the ways and traditions of their folk, shyly establishing them in manhood and womanhood, encircling them about with strength and assurance. They thought of the words he read with a certain wonder, as belonging to remote places and remote times, and they hardly dared think of God at all, putting between them and Him the dark veil, with a little fear, a natural humility, thus reserving for themselves the brightness of their human lives, its moments of love and mirth and rapture, this side the veil.
But there was one chapter that all the children knew, and, in its metrical form, a verse or two of it were often recited by them as their private prayer before jumping into bed; for it was familiar in its cadence and full of pleasantness, A curious thing about it, too, was that the words were always drowned in memory except those picturing the green pastures and the still waters. But they remained, shining and green-cool, like a memory of a summer day, spent perhaps up the glen, where no houses are, at a distance from home.
And on that last night, with the childhood cadence in his voice, Tormad had read of the green pastures and the still waters.
Old David and Kirsty got to their knees, and Catrine, following them, buried her face in her palms. She did not hear one word of his prayer, her mind and body blinded, and when they were shuffling to their feet, she had to keep to her knees. They looked at her and turned away, saying no word, and in a few seconds she got up.
At once Kirsty spoke loudly to her father. “Now you’ll away to bed. It’s late it is.”
“Very good,” he said mildly, and turned to Catrine. There was that steady look for a moment, his eyes clear open and yet faintly veiled, almost as if he were looking at her from a distance with the unearthly calm and consideration there might be in the eyes of God.
“Good night, Catrine,” he said. “I hope you will sleep well.”
“Good night,” she answered him.
“Good night, my poor girl.” His voice, gentle and full of profound pity, went with him as he walked away.
In a little while they had done all they had to do before preparing for bed. Kirsty lifted the big peats off the fire and smothered their burning edges in the ash-hole beneath.
Deep gloom invaded the room with the smooring of the fire, and in its partial covering Catrine sat very still.
“Aren’t you getting ready?” Kirsty asked.
“Yes,” Catrine answered, and with slow movements of her limbs, as if her clothes were very heavy, she began to undress.