The Silver Darlings (6 page)

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?”