The Silver Darlings (17 page)

When Mr. Ware had addressed them on the state of their knowledge and had exhorted them to be ever more diligent in cultivating the one and only way of salvation, he got to his knees. They all followed him. Finn got down, too, though his mother paid no attention to him. Mr. Ware prayed in a deepened, humbled voice, with every now and then a husky rising urgency as he wrestled in travail with the Holy Spirit. The fervency of supplication became a rich
tapestry of text and biblical figure and Eastern scene, with Christ amid the money-changers in the temple, walking by the golden grain in challenge to the orthodox, lifted on high at Calvary, Christ the Redeemer. “O Lord, lead us not unto temptation but deliver us from evil; take us, we beseech Thee, in Thy gracious hand and lead us by the green pastures and by the quiet waters that flow from Thy holy spirit.”

When they were on their feet, Sandy Ware was quiet and smiling and shook hands with each one. Then the folk scattered to their homes in little groups. Roddie took Finn’s hand as he walked with two men behind Kirsty and Catrine and Shiela. At the door of Kirsty’s house they all paused. Kirsty invited them in, but Roddie’s father, who was a good-living man, said it was time they were home.

“I hope,” remarked Kirsty to Roddie, as they were moving off, “that you feel a better man now?”

“Well, I know it could not have made you better
anyway
,” replied Roddie.

“Hmff!” snorted Kirsty, giving him a sharp, humoured look.

Roddie laughed, saluted Finn, and said, “Good-bye, Catrine.”

“Good-bye,” said Catrine.

“Hmff!” repeated Kirsty as the three came inside; “Sandy setting up to be a preacher! Him criticizing his betters! Sandy Ware, who learned the A B C in his father’s byre, talking about
beavenly
wisdom being more than
college
learning. It would be far better for him if he helped his poor wife and daughter to work their big croft than stravaiging about the country, all dressed up, teaching those, who know better, how to behave themselves.”

Finn gazed at her, his mouth fallen open.

And when Catrine had put him to bed (he went without a murmur) he lay gazing up at the rounded soot-blackened ceiling but pursuing images of his own, wondering what a leper was and what sort of trumpet he had and what the
horn looked like that tumbled the walls of Jericho. For Finn knew a little about trumpets, and it was news to him that they could knock down walls. But whenever he wanted to ask his Mama a question, there was Kirsty’s endless voice: “… And that was Donald Sage, the greatest
Christian
minister and man that ever spoke with college learning from any pulpit. She was a strange woman, his second wife. I was there when he brought her home to the manse at Kildonan. And what a home coming it was! He came
himself
riding on a grey horse, and she beside him sitting
sideways
on a garron. Eppy Mackay, the housekeeper, went forward to meet them, bowing at every third step. Oh, Eppy knew her manners! We could do with more of her manners here, and less of this evangelical style, with its plaguing the Lord, who knows too much about us already for our comfort. And there waiting were Mr. Sage’s four children. The two lassies were in tartan gowns, their hair nicely braided on the forehead and smoothed with
pomatum
. But Eppy had kept her skill for the two boys. With ordinary white flour, she had powdered and combed their heads. There were brogues on their feet and white worsted stockings on their legs, tied below the knee with red garters. The kilt and jacket—it was all the same tartan—were seamed together into the one piece and opened down the front with yellow buttons…. And the dance afterwards when Eppy put the flour on the elder’s bald head …”

Finn fell asleep.

As Catrine sat alone by the fire, in a habit that had grown upon her at this hour, she heard her son dreaming.

She began to dream herself.

Running in and out her mind was a little girl in the strath of Kildonan, all bright and full of life and sometimes of half-dreaming reveries that went along the slow ridges of the hills against the sky. But the mind shut itself in a quick snap against anything so slow that it grew frightening, and the body ran off in a shout, an ecstasy of life, with hardly even a look behind. Tormad in the woods. Tormad—with
mind and body thrilled to an unbearable stillness, until she felt she would dissolve, fly into bits, unless … ah, the crush of his arms, crushing all the bits back into shape, and the relief of it, the unutterable, divine relief, and the sudden exquisite lack of care, of caring no more, of letting go…. Tormad—and the red berries…. Blood-red magic.

The letter had been written by a man for Ronnie in the West Indies last year. Ronnie had been ill but was getting better. The letter also said that Ian and Torquil, when last seen, were well. There had been no mention of Tormad. It almost seemed as if a previous letter never received had been written wherein some final word may have been said about Tormad. Either that or Tormad had been separated from them in the beginning…. Tormad, standing before her, in sorrow, as if blaming himself for leaving her … and fading away into the wall….

Little Finn breathed quickly in his dream.

The birth of Finn in the awful quiet of the gloaming, among the straw in the byre. She had gone in to see Kirsty’s father, who was now committed to his bed and who, they both knew, was dying. Perhaps it was because she had known him in this final stage of his life that she had grown to love the old man, he was so gentle, with that strange, far-away look that pulled the strings of the heart. Gaunt his face had grown, too, and his patience was beyond belief, beyond what was natural in human being, and now and then expressed itself in gentleness, in a faint smile of regret at having to trouble anyone. He was like a man out of whom long ago the heart had been taken but who now had received back the essence of the lost heart’s kindness.

“I want to speak to you, Catrine,” he said, and at that, as at an irrevocable summons, her own heart stood still. “Are you happy here?”

“Oh yes,” she answered.

“It may be difficult for you at times.” His voice was weak and he paused, as if unaware of the passage of time. “I have been talking to Kirsty. This will be a home for you
as long as you like, and should it so happen in the order of things that Kirsty will be taken before you, and you will still have no home of your own, then it is my wish that you would have this home, for yourself and the child.”

Catrine shut her teeth hard against her uprising emotion. Never had she shown any complaint to this man, never
anything
but what little brightness was in her.

“My family are gone from me—all except Kirsty, but she has been a good daughter to me and will honour my wish.”

Her head drooped. She could not speak.

“At first I thought that a new young life like yours would have tired me. But you brought lightness with you, and kind, willing hands. You have been a great help to us, and somehow you have brought peace to my last days. I want to thank you, Catrine; for my time has come upon me.”

The tears were now streaming down her face and her body was trembling.

“You have had a hard life for one so young,” said the voice, quiet now as if disembodied. “But His ways are
inscrutable
. I had hoped to live long enough to see your child born, and so have made it easier for you, but it is not to be.”

Catrine lost control of herself, and fell on her knees by the bedside, and buried her face, crying, “No! No!”

His long, worn hand came gently upon her head. “May God bless you, my child, now and through all your days.”

Her face was such a mess of emotion and blinding tears that she could not look at him, but got up and hurriedly left the room, without thanking him or saying one word.

By the door she brushed past Kirsty, who merely
remarked
in a matter-of-fact voice, “Have a look at Bel. I hear her mooing.”

Blindly she went into the byre. Bel threw her head round, showing the whites beyond her great liquid eyes. Her
calving
time was upon her.

Catrine stared at her and Suddenly felt sick. Her knees weakened, sweat broke out ori her brow, and she staggered towards the new straw, got to her knees and rolled over. With the pains came terror, but she bit the scream into her

All the flesh of her body gathered itself together,
terrified
but fighting-wild, gathered and strained, blood
running
from her lip, her hands knotted in the straw.

Outside, Kirsty’s voice called, “Catrine! Catrine!” It was the high death-cry, and in the midst of her own
torment
, Catrine knew it, and it did not weaken her but on the contrary increased her fighting urgency.

To the byre door came Kirsty, still crying “Catrine!”—and saw Catrine in the straw and little Finn being born.

That matter-of-fact astringency in Kirsty, which she had instinctively turned to from the emotional dissolution of Dale, as a dog will turn in its sickness to green grass, had been all firm hands and confidence, death put aside in the urgent needs of life. “You’re all right, my lassie. Bel
herself
couldn’t do it better.” And the firm hands worked deftly.

Finn gave a little whimper in his sleep.

Catrine got up and soothed the dream from him, then returned to the fire, and began lifting the peats back and smooring those with red embers in the ash-pit.

What lovely days, too, she had had in her life! How lovely life could be, how bright and beautiful! And, in a way, loveliest of all had been these last few years with Finn.

Down on the braes below the house, with the small birch bushes, the grey boulders with cool ferns in the shadows, primroses and violets, smooth bare-cropped green hillocks, the sunlight on narrow alleyways winding and hidden amid the golden gorse, daisies and buttercups and dandelions, the burn singing its low, unending song from the throats of the little shining pools, and Finn’s restless body and Finn’s voice. The herding days of summer. For beasts could not
always be on tether, and whenever possible Catrine had to herd them, so that they could visit all the rich pockets of grass on the steep, broken ground, and yet, in their
freedom
, not be allowed either to stray from their own ground or on to the cultivated land.

What happy hours, what moments of delight—sheer
delight
that sometimes frightened her and brought a
momentary
shadow across the sun; from the feel of Finn’s body, the sound of his merry laugh. There was that moment in the hiding game when, half-terrified at last lest she had disappeared altogether from the world, he would suddenly come on her behind a bush—followed by the swift meeting, her arms round him, her face burrowing with bubbling sounds into his breast, and laughter shaking from him like notes from a tumbled musio-box.

The tired hour when she took him on her lap and sang the old lullaby, so old that it must have made itself out of the heart of a mother in the beginning of time, and so new that it was Catrine’s own heart in its deepest fondness—carrying them both away, together, close together, until she had to stop singing and bring them to a warm huddle in the lap of the living moment.

Occasionally she would look around, near and far, to make sure that sensible folk were not watching. For often she felt as young as Finn himself and would suddenly clap her hand over her mouth to smother the yelp of laughter. If she possessed nothing in the world but Finn, she had enough, enough, for ah! Finn was her own, her very own.

And all that lovely time was ending. For next summer Finn would be old enough to do the herding himself, old enough to have his own ploys, to sail little boats and logs, to dam tiny shallows and guddle yellow trout, too old for a daisy-chain, too restless and grown-up for her lap. But—she would understand. With the point of the poker she slowly drew the ashes over the small, scattered embers that glowed like red jewels. She would try——

Finn screamed. She dropped the poker and dashed to
him. He kept on screaming as he clung to her wildly. “My legs!” She bared his legs, soothing him: “My little calf! My sweetheart! It’s only a dream.” He muttered
something
about a wall; but already the dream had gone, and gulping and half-sobbing, he was sinking down into sleep. In a minute he was quiet again.

On what dangerous journey had he been all alone? She stood still in the darkness for a moment, but the night was more silent than her wondering mind.

In the morning, however, Finn suddenly remembered his dream. It was the first dream he ever had remembered and its clearness so astonished him that he looked around to make sure he could escape unseen. This was fairly easy if one moved away, bit by bit, interested in this or that, as if one weren’t going anywhere. Once round the corner of the house, he ran. Down where the burns joined, there was a drystone dyke taller than himself. He had climbed it once, but the stones on the top were shaky and he had got a fright. If one of the stones fell on you it would kill you! Well, he had seen this wall in his dream, but it was a much bigger wall, though it was the same wall, too. Now there was something about this wall that had always seemed to threaten him, to dare him and yet to threaten him, with a queer sort of expression on its face formed by the curious shapes of the holes between the stones. The wall had to be tumbled down for it was a bad wall. “Go forward and sound the trumpet!” cried a great man behind him, who was Moses, though he looked like Sandy Ware. There were many people behind, as Finn went forward. The trumpet hung from the branch of a tree, as Finn had
sometimes
hung his own trumpet, but this was a much bigger trumpet than Finn’s, and not straight but curved like one of the great horns on a Highland cow. Both the wall and the trumpet grew bigger as he drew near. But he took the mouthpiece in his lips and blew all the breath that was in him. The trumpet roared like a bull, and at that one or two
of the stones on top started to shake; then the wall began to sway; he turned and ran as the wall fell, but the stones came after him, leaping over the grass, and he stumbled, and the stones leaped on to his legs….