The Silver Darlings (5 page)

When she had finished, Catrine sat silent. Her mother, whose brown hair was greying and whose features were regular, looked at her sideways with the concentrated
assessing
look one woman can give another.

“I was thinking,” said Catrine, “if it was a fine day I would go the day after to-morrow.”

“You couldn’t walk it alone, for it’s a long, long way, and the coach is dear.”

“Oh, I would walk it easily enough. I’ll have a talk with Angus to-morrow. The cow is giving a good drop of milk and that would be something for you.”

“And when would you come back?”

“I could see. There would be no special hurry, if it was convenient to Kirsty.”

“Well, we’ll see. But you won’t say any of the
foolishness
to Angus or to Norman that you said to me. How you could have had it even in your mind to give away your
husband’s
croft and boat and them so bitterly come by! It vexes me that you could have thought of it. But I know—I know. It’s been hard on you. Very hard. And maybe the little change will do you good. Things can be very bitter, my dear, and I can see how you have suffered. But—you must keep your heart up. More than ever now, and you as you are. One day Tormad will come back——”

“He will never come back,” said Catrine quietly.

“Catrine!” cried her mother sharply. “What words are these?”

Catrine said nothing, looking into the fire.

“Catrine, what do you mean? Aren’t you afraid of a judgement? Take back these words. Take them back!”

“He will never come back to me in this world,” said Catrine, her features calm and pale.

Her mother’s voice broke into a cry of fear, of dread, for her daughter’s words were a temptation, a mortal sin.

“Don’t weaken me, Mother.”

“My white one, you are overwrought, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“He came to me,” said Catrine, “when he died.”

There was a stark moment, and her mother’s whisper. Catrine turned to her, drawing a loud breath through her nostrils, and buried her face between her mother’s breasts.

Her mother held her wildly sobbing body, rocking her gently, crooning, “Catrine, my little daughter, my own love, hush, my darling …”, the tears running slowly down her face.

CHAPTER III

CATRINE GOES INTO A STRANGE COUNTRY

T
he 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.