The Silver Darlings (12 page)

Hendry’s reliance on him to lead his new Helmsdale
venture
to success had touched his spirit and perhaps his pride. He had consented at once and, with reasonable weather, they were to set off to-morrow morning.

In the deep twilight of the summer night Catrine’s home looked quiet and still; indeed everything looked quiet and still, the grey stones and the bushes, the rising ground, the slow lines of the horizon against the remote clear sky. As Roddie involuntarily stood, he heard the sound of the
running
burn, not consciously but as the sound of waters at a great distance, for his eyes were held by the cottage.

The land, the quiet land, which for ever endures, threaded by women and children, in the bright patterns of their lives. Remote from the sea, from the turbulence of oncoming waves, from the quick movement, the
excitement
, from the mind of a man like Special, with his flow of silver herring that changed into a flow of silver crowns. There’s money in it, men, money, money.

Money. The power, the wizardry of it, set a man
walking
on his own feet. But Roddie was careful at the same time to keep low down towards the burn, because there would be little sense in letting a belated neighbour see him going towards Catrine’s at such an hour. Irked at having to do this, when at last he climbed the slope and went towards the cottage, he walked lightly, strung up against any sound even in himself. At the low end of the house, he paused till his breathing moderated, then went past the byre door to the kitchen window on noiseless feet, careful not to disturb the collie.

Slowly he brought his head past the side of the window. Catrine was sitting beyond the fire, one hand, with elbow resting on knee, stretched towards the peat, arrested by thought or reverie in the very act of smothering the live embers. He saw her features against the red glow, warm and soft, not only with her own beauty, but with all
women’s beauty. It was a picture a man might glimpse once in a lifetime, and have a vision of women afterwards in his mind that time or chance, good or evil, would never change. Like the still landscape that had troubled him a moment, when he first looked up at the cottage.

A profound sorrow moved in him and a desire to lift her lightly in his arms and gently.

This emotion must have touched her for she suddenly raised her eyes. He saw her hand grip her chest, heard the strangled intake of breath, and he moved his open hand back and fore quickly to quieten her. She could not know him; he had to tell who he was; something of fear and horror touched him. “Catrine, it’s me, Roddie. Roddie.”

The collie growled and barked.

Her chest began to heave from the deep breaths that went in through her quivering mouth. She got to her feet and came slowly to the window, her fallen hand quietening the dog. The fire now behind her, she was more pale than a ghost against the dim night-light. She withdrew from his words, and in a second or two they faced each other across the threshold.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he said. “We’re off in the morning, and I was wondering if I could take any messages for you to your people.”

“You gave me a fright,” she answered. “Won’t you come in?”

“It’s very late.”

“Who’s there?” called Kirsty, from the middle room.

“It’s Roddie Sinclair,” Catrine answered. “He’s off to Helmsdale in the morning and he’s wondering if we have any messages.”

“What hour is this to come round?” demanded Kirsty, “and decent folk in their beds.”

“We’ve been working late, getting the boat ready,” called Roddie, the relief of humour in his voice. “But if that’s all you have to say to me, I’ll be going.”

“Ah, you, Roddie! But when you go to Helmsdale you’ll
come amongst decent people, and if anyone asks for me, you’ll remember me to them.”

“I will that,” cried Roddie. “And I’ll tell them you wouldn’t go back to the Cattach country though you were paid for it.”

“You rascal,” she said. “It’s the good stick you need. And don’t keep that bairn out of her bed.”

“Won’t you wish me luck?”

“No.”

“Why that?”

“Because it’s not lucky,” declared Kirsty. “Don’t forget to say your prayers, and may Himself look after you.”

“Thankyou,” responded Roddie.

“Will you come in?” Catrine asked, smiling now.

“It’s late,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come at all, only I didn’t——”

“Come in for a minute. I was just thinking of bed.”

Roddie followed her. “No, no, don’t touch the fire. I’m going.”

She pressed the peats together and they broke into a bright flame.

“So there he is, quiet enough now.” Roddie looked at Finn’s sleeping face over which the shadows flickered. “He had a day and a half.”

“Yes,” she murmured. Their eyes rested for a little on the child, “It was kind of you to come.”

As his head turned round she smelt the whisky in his breath. He smiled now in his detached pleasant way. “I would have asked you earlier but you were in such a hurry to be off with him to-day that you hardly saw me.”

“That worried me, too. I should have thanked you, but I was all upset. I was sure he was drowned. I was sick with fear. I cannot tell you the awful—awful experience it was. I must have seemed demented.” Her hands and arms started writhing a little as she smiled. Otherwise the
horrible
memory had left a quietness in her manner.

“Was he away long?”

“Hours and hours. We searched everywhere, the hill, the burn, crying on him…. What was he doing when you found him?”

“He had been asleep.”

Silence fell between them.

“You’ll remember me to those at home if you see any of them. Tell them we’re very well.”

“I’ll make a point of seeing them. Surely. If there’s
anything
I could do, you know I’d do it.”

“I know.”

Silence came about them again.

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked.

“No. I’ll be going.” He stood quite still. “Well, I’ll be going.”

“Thank you for coming.”

He turned his head and looked into her face. Her smile was open and friendly and her dark eyes glimmered with light. He removed his eyes as if he were doing it
thoughtfully
. The characteristic smile came to his face, tilting one corner of his mouth a trifle in a light humour. “So long,” he said pleasantly.

She followed him to the door.

“Good-bye,” she said, not offering her hand. “Take care of the sea.”

“The sea!” She saw his face in profile steady against the night. Then he turned upon her a long searching look, drawing something out of her. But before she could feel the discomfort of this he nodded “Good-bye” and walked off.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAND AND THE SEA

W
ith an expert jab of the elbow, Williamson
released
the brake and the four horses thundered across the bridge, the stage coach swaying as it swung round on the right-hand turn and took the incline on the east side of the river. Some three hundred yards and he drew them to a standstill at the change-house of Tighdubh, on the left of the road. While the strappers got busy, Williamson sat like an emperor looking down over two naturally terraced fields at the sweep of the bay between its cliffs. There was the usual small crowd to watch the great event of the day, and when a respectful interval had
supervened
an elderly voice asked if there was any news of the fishing in Helmsdale.

“Good fishing to-day,” said Williamson to the bay.

“Any word of Roddie Sinclair?”

“Dunster boat had twenty-one crans.” Without looking at anyone, Williamson climbed stiffly down in the great coat that he wore winter and summer, with the difference that in winter the lapels framed his ruddy face with its clipped, pointed, ginger beard and in summer lay flat. He moved up to the stables to comfort himself, while the horses were being changed.

Kirsty, who had been paying one or two visits—she dearly loved a talk with Granny Gordon about families in the fine old days before the clearances—came home in the first of the evening and told Catrine the news.

“I’m so glad,” said Catrine, standing still and looking away. She saw Dale and Helmsdale, the boats on the sea.
Suddenly she ran after Finn, crying, “Where are you going?” He sped on, shouting with laughter and, looking back over his shoulder, stumbled and fell. But he did not cry as she gathered him up. She spoke rapidly to him, laughing and leaning back, and then ran away from his
pursuit
right round the house. When she felt quite herself again, she came back to find Kirsty already out of her visiting blacks.

“You’re coddling that boy too much,” said Kirsty, who felt that Catrine should not have run off at such a moment but should have hung about her welcoming her back, and asking for all the news she. was bursting to tell. Finn gazed at the drawn visage of Granny, with its straight furrows going down under the chin in a way that made you feel she was going to bark the next word at you—which she
sometimes
did—and hesitated. Often when she looked harshest she was near to the point of yielding something. Now her right hand went into a deep pocket in her skirt and there was a rustling of paper. “You’re wondering, aren’t you?” she said to Finn, making a face at him. He was not
intimidated
. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed. And presently the hand emerged with a round hard white sweet which Finn accepted in concentrated silence. “Where’s your manners?” “Thank you,” murmured Finn. “See you don’t choke on it,” added Kirsty. Still without removing the paper-bag from her pocket, she handed one to Catrine.

Catrine asked for Mrs. Gordon. “She’s very well,”
replied
Kirsty. Catrine asked one question after another, until, mollified, Kirsty at last got down to her news.

Kirsty dealt in facts about living or dead people, and though Catrine might not have known them, still they came out of the background she knew and gave it a
movement
of colour and life like the lines in a tartan. It was an extraordinary background, too, even tumultuous at times in its far-flung riot of adventurous living. Kirsty’s father had been a leaseholder or tacksman, not on a very large scale, it is true, but yet in the material realm on a more
secure and affluent basis than was the ordinary clansman or cottar who had made up the bulk of the population. Often these tacksmen traced kinship to a ruling chief or landlord through a mathematical system of cousinhood, linking up younger sons and daughters in an intricate yet clearly defined pattern. Because of the restricted economic outlet, however (for an acre of land is constant), the large families of these tacksmen had themselves to become cottars or crofters and in this way over untold centuries a feeling of blood-relationship had come to pervade a group or clan, and not only to one another but to the heads or rulers of the clan themselves. For the most part this relationship was so tenuous as to be completely indefinite, and in practical living was forgotten, yet it lived on in the blood, and if, say, a man’s name was Mackay, he instinctively felt, to the point of fighting for it, that he held the honour of all the Mackays in his keeping.

In the bloody aftermath to the Jacobite Rising of 1745 the clan system was smashed; and what was left of it was swept away by the chiefs themselves in the notorious treachery and brutality of the clearances that began at the end of that same century and continued sporadically for two generations. Yet, though political and economic revolution might come overnight, the pulse of the blood does not change so readily nor the secret paths in tradition’s
hinterland
get blotted out at a stroke, not generally, anyway.

Again, however, because of the restricted economic
outlet
, all the members of the tacksmen’s families could not find reasonable holdings amongst the crofters, even if they had wanted to, which they didn’t—so long as any more alluring outlet presented itself. Soldiers of fortune they
became
rather than traders, and their names, thinly disguised, linger over northern Europe and, at odd times, still come into prominence. As with the tacksmen’s families, so with the crofters’; and in that outer world, where merit and courage had the staying power, many an odd twist was given to fortune’s wheel.

With the clearances came enforced mass emigration, and in Catrine’s short lifetime, boatloads of her own desperate people had been shipped to Canada, where, working through terrors and distress and death, they were
building
up new generations in a new land. They were emigrating, too, to Australia. Men she could all but
remember
had fought and been killed in South Africa, and men she could remember had been slaughtered in the
terrible
battle before New Orleans. Colonizers, explorers, fighters, traders, from Hudson to India, from the plain of Waterloo to the Blue Mountains of the Cape. Such
geographic
names were familiar on Kirsty’s lips, not in any vague way but connected with someone she knew or knew about.

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.