Grandmother and the Priests (9 page)

But it was a sturdy and fairly prosperous place, the Bishop said. The MacDougall was a man for order and thrift and industry, and was no fool. He was also pious — in his way. The kirk was small, but in good order. Things could be much worse, said the Bishop, trying to brighten as Robert sank deeper into gloom. And very healthful. The last priest, who had died two months ago, had lived to be one hundred and ten years old, no remarkable age for Douglass’ isle. In fact, to die before one was ninety-five was considered to be dying in early middle age. Robert, unfeelingly, declared that the race was still evidently to the swift and the battle to the strong. More gentle souls perished practically at birth, doubtless. By the way, those Dominican Sisters — The Bishop hastily changed the subject.

Robert had missed meeting the MacDougall in Edinburgh by two days. The MacDougall had come to the Bishop in search of a pastor, knowing his lordship was to be there to ordain a bevy of young Seminarians. “And how did he know?” asked Robert. “It’s nae possible his isle sends up smoke in signals, like the American Indians, and the other isles reply?”

The Bishop laughed merrily. But Robert’s relentless eye still burned on his uncle like a black coal. “Aye,” said the Bishop, depressed at this. He went on with obviously false enthusiasm about the MacDougall.

“A braw laddie.” The MacDougall was several inches over six feet tall, all muscle and extraordinary strength, and remarkably handsome, with eyes as gray as the Atlantic, hair black and curling and lively, a strong heavy nose and a gay but resolute mouth. There was nothing he could not do, or at least there was nothing he would not attempt. “A difference there,” Robert remarked forebodingly. The Bishop should have liked to detain him to meet his — er — new pastor, but the MacDougall had been suddenly recalled to his island because of a crisis in lambs and sheep-killing dogs and what not. A telegram from another island had been sent to him. Robert was not interested.

The next day he was on his way to the Outer Hebrides, all the clothes and other objects he possessed in one small bag. The Bishop’s ancient housekeeper had put him up a large packet — larger than his own bag by far — containing the remnants of the leg of lamb, some buttered bread and marmalade, a half bottle of whiskey, oat cakes and honeyed scones, not to mention a jar of her best strawberry jam, and the rest of the lemon tartlets, which would serve him well on the cold and draughty third-class carriage on the train ‘to the end of the world’. The Bishop had given his nephew a heavy plaid shawl, which Robert attempted to refuse, knowing how much the old man needed it himself. But the Bishop insisted, stroking the thick folds lovingly. He also gave Robert another treasure: a rosary whose beads were real Oriental pearls, all iridescence, and the crucifix was heavy solid gold, the Corpus carved of mother-of-pearl, exquisitely. These were the only treasures the Bishop had ever possessed, and he insisted that Robert must have them, as he had been saving them for this very day. The shawl smelled overwhelmingly of camphor, but it was a blessing on the train, on his shoulders when he sat up, and covering him almost head to foot like a warm blanket when he lay on die hard bench to sleep, and protecting him completely when he ran out in the bitter rain at lonely stations for a cup of hot tea, carrying his bag of edible supplies.

He had the carriage to himself, for the countryside was busy at this time of the year. Used to solitude, and a solitary by nature as were all Scotsmen, he was not lonely. He prayed, read a sound religious book, ate, slept a little, then surreptitiously took out a reprehensible yellow-backed paper novel in which he steeped and horrified his innocent soul. The racier passages were in French, and it was purely in the interests of relating French to Latin that Robert pored over them carefully, shaking his head the while and deploring modern tastes and the corruption of youth. Despite the shawl, his feet, in their big black boots, were getting numb with cold as the train scuttled north. Houses of dark gray stone lumbered by the carriage windows, and high clipped hedges showing faint green, and brown turbulent burns, and here and there patches of snow just beginning to melt at the edges. This was a wilder, more virile country than England, gloomily lowering under a lowering gray sky, and desolate and forbidding. A dark rain began to fall, mixed with sleet, and trees with lichen-covered trunks pressed close to the carriage, thrashing in a freezing wind. How barren it is, thought Robert dismally, he who was used to dismalness but though on a less outright scale.

Firs, beeches, larches. Did they ever turn green and warm in this wide and brawling countryside? Chunky gray sheep appeared on the meadows, with lambs with black faces, and among them stood the lonely shepherds, wrapped in their plaid shawls from head to foot, and sheep dogs raced about, barking sharply in the icy silence. The shepherds were big men, much bigger than their city cousins, and Robert could see their rugged profiles, as rugged as their hard brown hills. Fierce lines of these hills appeared now in the distance, russet-brown, yellowish or tinged with purple, and once or twice Robert glimpsed the terrible Atlantic, the color of stone but tumultuous, breaking on monstrous black rocks and roaring in the inlets in a rage of white foam. May God forgive him for sending me yon, thought Robert, referring in his thoughts to his uncle, but it was not in a spirit of absolute charity and sincerity.

The train groaned to a jolting stop at an anonymous hamlet and a dozen men and women, thickly clad, bonneted or capped, climbed clumsily into Robert’s carriage. A few women curtseyed on seeing him, a man or two lifted his woolen cap, the others stared as bleakly and fiercely as their native Highlands. Robert had spread himself over his bench; he gathered together remnants of lunches and teas, and hid his yellow-backed novel and dutifully opened his breviary. The older ladies remarked to themselves on his very obvious youth and their cold eyes softened a little. One of them said to him in a maternal fashion, “And a fine shawl that be, Faether, made by your mither, no doot?”

The Protestants scowled, but the priest was so obviously boyish in spite of his height and his severe expression that they maintained the scowls with some difficulty.

“Nay, Mistress,” said Robert, warming to some human contact and shifting his aching buttocks on the bench. “It was given to me by ma uncle, the Bishop, himself, in Edinburgh.”

“I mark him well!” said an elderly gentleman. “He confirmed my youngest!”

“A good mon with his tongue against the Sassenach!” said one of the Protestants, his cragged face flushing with approval.

Robert’s thoughts became kinder towards his uncle. He let the ladies examine his shawl, and they approved of the texture but disagreed as to what clan it represented. The gentlemen gave their own opinions. A Royal Stuart; a mon with half an een could see that plain. “Nay, look at that blue thread!” said an old lady with spirit. “Hae I not be weavin’ the Tartan, and there’s nae blue thread in it!”

“A Presbyterian shawl,” said a middle-aged man with the sour wit of his countrymen.

“Aye, nae doot,” said another. “It’s always the blue, like their noses.”

As glares now appeared, and there was some feeling around for stout sticks, Robert changed the subject quickly after a guard came in to light the paraffin lantern that swung from the smoky ceiling, He offered his pouch of tobacco, and the men lit up. Then Robert asked about MacDougall’s isle. They stared at him. Weel, there was no sich isle, not even in the Outer, Outer Hebrides. He was mistaken.

“Born in Skye, mesel’,” said one man. “Niver heard of MacDougall’s isle. They cleared out the MacDougalls many’s the year ago.”

Robert was at first depressed, then he began to hope. If there was no such isle, then there was no MacDougall and there was no frightful parish with Dominican Sisters in it. But his hopes crashed when a very old gentleman lifted a horny hand.

“Wrong ye are,” he said, triumphantly. “It be north by north, and I seen it mesel’ when a lad.” He stared with pity at Robert. “Ye’ll not be goin’ there, Faether?”

“That I be,” said Robert with wretchedness. “The auld pastor died.”

They commiserated with him. The old gentleman enlarged on the subject of MacDougall’s isle, and the ladies, even the Protestant ones, said it was a shame and all that for a lad like this to be going yon. “Not so,” said the old gentleman, the authority on the MacDougalls. “It aye a Paradise, I heard, but a despotism with the young MacDougall.”

“More like the lake of ice in Dante’s Inferno,” observed Robert. The allusion passed over their heads. They were curious about the MacDougall and his isle. Then they remembered remarks from their childhood. No one could do the MacDougalls in! Robert the Bruce and the rest, not to mention the Sassenach, had tried it, but one could not do the MacDougalls in. If many of them were still alive, then one day we’d hear of them and no doot about it! They had the spirit. Sae sad there was not more of it aboot these decadent days. If the Stone of Scone was ever recovered from the Sassenach’s throne in Westminster Abbey it would be taken by a MacDougall! Then Scotia would be free, with her ain king once more.

Robert’s new friends left at the next hamlet with the warmest hopes for the end of his journey. The end of his journey, he understood, was also the end of the railroad. His heart was in his boots. He prayed awhile, then found a newspaper from Dundee with decorous headlines relating that two English spinsters had disappeared in Edinburgh three days ago and Scotland Yard was being called in. Miss Mary Joyce and her cousin, Miss Pamela Stone, were ladies of substance in London, and they had been visiting friends in Edinburgh and had gone for a carriage ride alone through the city. The coachman and the carriage had reported back to the friends. The ladies had taken a walk on Princes Street and had vanished into thin air and had never returned. Robert turned the pages listlessly, and then read the Agony Column with deep interest, being a young and imaginative man. This served to divert him until it was time for his breviary again. All was blackness outside his window. The cold grew more intense. Robert took off his boots and rubbed his numbed feet. He wrapped the shawl about them, suddenly blessing his uncle. He ate the last of the cold roast lamb and the remaining tart. There were no more stops for hot tea. He was as chill as death. And the train still screeched and lumbered along. The lantern swayed smokily.

A great bright white moon rose over the hills, flooding the stark countryside with a brilliant illumination. Must be familiar with the same scene on its own, thought the young priest miserably, remarking the silent desolation with only a distant light here and there visible. The train was running closer to the sea now; its pungent odor penetrated the compartment. Once or twice Robert saw crests radiant with icy silver, and heard the booming of the surf. Its boom and thunder became louder moment by moment, until the very walls of the carriage rumbled in answer. He saw lighthouses far out on the sea, flickering. The moon became brighter, almost fierce in its arctic splendor. And the snow patches, though this was May, were larger and whiter. There was a scent of pine and fir, too, poignant, overwhelming.

Then the train, gasping, spent, came abruptly to a halt, and there was a hissing of steam. Robert sat up. A guard came in, lifted his eyebrows politely. “It will be the end,” he said.

“Aye, and that it is,” said Robert, rising stiffly and staggering a little because his legs were so cold and numb. He flung the shawl about his shoulders, put on his hat, tucked up the last remnants of his journey into his bag, and murmured a prayer. He glanced through the window. The train had stopped at a mere cluster of stony little buildings like huts. One lantern blew against the moon. There was not a soul in sight.

Stumbling to the corridor, Robert halted as if shot. A loud and ear-crushing wail had assaulted him, like all the fiends in hell. A crimson flare lit up the windows of the corridor, and Robert knew they were torches. Now war drums joined the wailing and the sound of tramping feet, and Robert understood that a detachment of very large Highlanders, fully equipped with bagpipes (and doubtless with dirks and maces), were impatiently waiting outside and were serenading an arrival. He wondered who it could be. A laird, perhaps, or a great landowner. It did not occur to him in his boyish humility that this wild music and wilder scarlet light and all these drums were for himself.

The corridor remained empty. The train appeared entirely empty. There was no hail. But the torches flared into a deep crimson and fluttered like flags; the music became more triumphant, more excited. The Highlanders had caught sight of his pale boyish face peering through the corridor window. Now the drums went mad until they rumbled like thunder, and a hoarse and mighty shout went up. By the light of the torches, Robert could now see the Highlanders in full dress, their kilts swirling about the biggest knees he had ever seen in his life; each monolithic face opened in a bellow of greeting; the major-domo tossed his baton, recovered it with a yell. Scotsmen, Robert knew, came in all sizes, but these sizes were immense. Not a man was under six feet tall, and most were much taller, so that their enormous bearskin hats towered to a giant height.

“No, no, it canna be for me,” Robert prayed, as the men marched up and down before, not below, the corridor window and the guard beamed at him and ducked his head, and then pulled the bag from his hand, seized his elbow with deference and led him to the door. “Ah, and it’s the MacDougall himsel’ who’s come for you, sir,” said the guard, himself amazed that all this savage greeting and uproar could be for one so thin and black and shabby and hardly more than a lad.

“Oh, no,” murmured Robert. Then he uttered a cry himself, for he was literally seized by a pair of tremendous hands and lifted down from the steps as though he were a child, and a feeble, frail one at that. The hands set him down, and not short himself, he had to peer up into a handsome face all gray dancing eyes, big nose and laughing mouth filled with enormous white teeth. “Aye, and it’s a welcome to you this braw nicht, Faether!” said a booming voice, and Robert knew that it was the MacDougall in full regalia who had handled him as an infant.

The bagpipes screamed, the drums roared, the torches danced, and the men marched about their laird and their priest, their knees pumping high and hard, their heels coming down like earthquakes on the hard and stony soil. The MacDougall put his Titan’s hands on his hips and surveyed his priest critically, smiling from ear to ear. “And they wouldna send me a graybeard!” he shouted. “They sent me a puling laddie with a face like milk! Niver ye mind, Faether! We’ll be fattenin’ ye up!” And with this he smote Robert heartily on the back and then caught him deftly in midflight and set him gingerly on his feet again.

Robert coughed and strangled and blinked, then when he could catch his breath he remembered that he was a priest ‘for a’ that’, and entitled to respect even though this was the MacDougall in person. “Ye’ll keep your hands to yoursel’,” he said, with feeble severity, swallowing his last cough.

The small parade marched about him. The bitterest of winds tore at his shawl and his hat and trousers; his knees trembled with cold, his eyes moistened at the flare and glare of the torches, his ears rang. Never had he seen such a plaid as was now displayed to him as in acres. His own plaid, allegedly Royal Stuart, paled like the moon before the sun. It was the most gorgeous plaid he had ever gazed upon, and he winced. If the MacDougalls did nothing else, they believed in the wildest colors. Tassels swung from side to side; boots pounded, shawls danced in the wind like sails. And there was a rifle slung from every mighty shoulder.

The MacDougall, reproved by his young priest, bowed deeply from the waist, but not before Robert had seen the glint of deviltry in those fine eyes. “It’s but a welcome for you, Faether,” he said. “And glad we are to see you. Lads!” he cried, and the lads, any of whom could have posed for a statue of Atlas, stopped abruptly, and raised a shout that lifted the hair on Robert’s skull. Hills roared it back; it even drowned out the yelling sea.

His bag disappeared. Now he dimly saw that he stood very close to the ocean. Black rocks, like miniature mountains, poured with water and foam. Robert’s nose and hands promptly lost all sensation. There were boats drawn up in the tiniest of coves, and there, near the boats, Robert saw six Dominican Sisters, tall and grim, their hands folded primly in their sleeves, their coifs glittering in mingled moonlight and torchlight. All, he thought vaguely, well booted for this weather.

He suddenly wanted to lie down somewhere and go to sleep and wake to his little room in the Seminary or in his uncle’s manse. He was exhausted. He did not remember climbing into a boat which rocked under him. His head was whirling and aching and he was shuddering and certain he was about to expire of cold. Then the great waves were tossing under him and there were other boats following, and he groaned. The men were singing now, some barbaric ballad concerning the freedom of Scotia and particularly of the MacDougalls.

Though a Scotsman, Robert was no sailor. The smallest lake on a summer day could make his stomach heave. He said to himself, wildly, that it wouldna do for a new priest and his calling if that priest leaned over the side of the boat and expelled remnants of cold lamb and oat cakes and jam. He particularly regretted the last two lemon tarts he had eaten a couple of hours ago. He clung to the side of the boat, praying urgently that he would not be sick. And the MacDougall sat like a giant beside him and smiled at him in the moonlight, and the men sang. The MacDougall, all by himself, sang the choruses.