Twelve Great Black Cats (13 page)

Their parents, though thrifty, were far from poor, so when Rab and Tam told them at the end of their grammar school days that they had it in mind to go to the high school at Aberdeen, there was no great objection made.

“Education never hurt any man who was willing to take it,” Rab's father said. “Even if it is Rab's lot to be a crofter like me, it will help him later if he learns to keep his brain exercising itself as well as his brawn.”

Tam's father was willing enough, for with six sons older than Tam to help him, his youngest could well be spared to take up any profession he chose.

So, still together, the lads went off to the high school where they spent the next four years, sharing the same classes, the same books, the same studies, and the same rooms, and in the course of time grew up to be well-behaved and reliable young men. When they had finished at the high school, they went back to their homes, and to the hills and moors and glens again.

But there was a difference in these holidays for, at the end of them, they would part. Rab being the only son of the family would stay behind to prepare himself to take over the croft when his father laid his work aside, while Tam, who was not needed at home with a raft of older brothers, would go to the university to study law.

It was the first parting the two lads had known since they were babes in their mothers' arms. In all the years they had never been away from each other longer than the space of a night's sleep. Being Highland men, they were not prone to make a show of their feelings, but their hearts were sore when the time came to say good-bye. Rab, who had come to the town to see Tam off, stood with him, waiting for the train.

“A-weel, Rab,” Tam said, “the train will be coming soon, now.”

“And so it will,” said Rab. “It's whistlin' up beyond the bend.”

“Och, well, I'll come home for the Hogmanay, and happen I'll write now and then,” said Tam, taking the hand his friend offered.

“So do,” said Rab.

Then as the train came down the line and Tam picked up his bag, Rab said, “Tam!”

“Aye?” said Tam.

“Look ye now,” Rab said. “If you're needin' me, dinna fash yourself. I'll be with you as soon as I can.”

“That I know well, Rab,” said Tam. “Och, aye! And if I'm needing you I'll send word.”

“Even without it,” Rab said, “I'll come.”

Then the train arrived, huffing and panting, and what with the hurry and flurry of finding a place in a carriage and getting himself aboard with his luggage, Tam had time for no more than a hurried farewell.

So Tam was whirled off on the first lap of his journey toward the university, and Rab walked back to the inn and got the wee pony and cart that had carried them to the town and drove back home alone. But both of the lads were thinking alike: “A-weel, we'll be meeting again at Hogmanay.”

Hogmanay, as the Scots call the New Year celebration, is the greatest festival of the Scotsman's year. All the other days in the whole twelve months are colorless beside the joys of Hogmanay with all its feasting and fun. King Charles II made an attempt to bring Christmas into favor again in the land of his forbears but met with no success. The Scots would have naught to do with Christmas and held fast to their Hogmanay.

So the thought of it was in the mind of each lad as miles lengthened between them, and it helped a bit. The parting was not forever. Only till Hogmanay.

Even at that it was cold comfort, because Tam left at the end of August and there were four months to get over before they would meet again. But the months would be busy for both of them and that would help to make them pass.

The work of a crofter begins at the first crack of dawn and ends with the gloaming, and when he has cleaned himself of the soil of the day and eaten his supper, he is ready for bed and sleep. Rab was often lonely but he was not one to slack his work and use the time for brooding. He pitched in and worked all the harder to drive his cares away.

“Look ye!” said his father one day to the plowman. “Our Rab is going to make the best master the croft has e'er had yet.”

Tam was busy enough. His studies filled much of his time and gave him little leisure. But, in a way, he had it worse than Rab. Tam was in a strange place, with strangers all about him, while Rab was at home amongst his own folk. But since there was no cure for homesickness but a large dose of home and that he could not get, Tam howked into his books with such a right good will that those wise men set over him to keep an eye on his progress, told each other: “That lad is not a dullard!”

“He is not, indeed. Mark my words, the world will hear of him one day.”

September passed at last, and then October, and November, too, and at the end of the first week in December, Tam wrote to his mother and to Rab to tell them that it would not be long before they'd see each other again for he would be coming home for Hogmanay, according to his promise.

“I'll be home a day or two before, maybe,” he wrote to Rab. “The weather is mischancy at this season of the year, so I'm leaving a few days early to give myself plenty of time in case bad roads hold me back on my way.”

He was not surprised to have no answer to his letters. After all, in little more than a fortnight he'd be starting home. But as the chill December days went by he had an urgent feeling that he should put everything else aside and go home at once. It was all he could do to keep himself from packing his bag and taking the first train he could get. He put it down to being homesick.

“Och, I'm daft,” he said to himself. “I've put up with it for four months, as it is. Can I not bear it for the ten days that are left?”

So for ten days he bore it, fighting against an instinct that urged him to go home. The day of his departure came at last. It was a dark and drizzly day, with clouds hanging low and the western sky showing a queer dull shade of yellow slashed with streaks of green.

Tam came home in the afternoon to pack his bag for his journey. As he walked up the hill to his lodgings he could hear the wind whistling high above his head. Now and then a gust of it would come down to earth, setting the dustbin lids a-rattling, buffeting folk who were hurrying toward the shelter of their homes and pulling their clothes about, then darting off high into the sky again.

Tam turned in to his own front door, and just as he stepped into the hall the rain came down on the trail of the wind, falling in sheets that seemed to stack against each other like panes of glass.

“Whew! What a night!” he said to his landlady, who had come into the hall to set a lamp upon the table by the wall.

“'Tis that,” she agreed. “Run along upstairs, now, and get your wet things off, and I'll bring you a good hot cup of tea.”

Tam went up to his room and, having got himself ready for his tea, he drew out his bag and began to pack it.

His landlady came into the room with the tea tray in her hands just as he finished packing. “Och, now,” said she. “I was just saying today to Mrs. McNeil next door that my lodger would soon be going to his hame for the Hogmanay.”

“That I am,” said Tam, smiling at her as he shut and strapped the bag. “I've been wanting to go so much for the past two weeks that it's been all I could do to keep myself from leaving any minute. But now that the time has come for me to go, I do not feel something at me, trying to force me to go the way I did. I'm just glad I'm going, of course. But that's all. Is that not strange?”

“You're young yet,” his landlady said, “and not used to being from home. I was brought up in the Islands and married a mainland man. I mind how I used to wish sometimes at first that I was a sea gull, to have wings to take me home again, but after a while I got used to the town here, and I did get home for a visit now and again. To tell the truth, when my husband died, I was so used to the mainland that I did not go home to stay, although there was naught to stop me. I go home to see my own folk now and then, but only to visit. I would not like to stay. Happen it will be the same for you.”

“Maybe it will,” said Tam, finishing his tea and laying his napkin on the tray.

His landlady picked up the tray to carry it downstairs again. “Have you coals enough for your fire?” she asked. “'Tis growing cold outside, and you'll need a good fire if you're minded to work late over your books.”

“Not tonight,” Tam told her happily. “I'll need no fire at all. I'm leaving tonight for home.”

“Mercy on me!” cried the landlady, nearly dropping her tray. “I did not think it was tonight you were going! Why, you'll never be going out in such weather, what with the wind and the rain and all!”

“I will,” said Tam. “I'm taking the Tay Bridge Train tonight. I dare not wait over until tomorrow because the roads will be bad at the other end of my journey, and if I leave myself short of time I might not get home for Hogmanay.”

The landlady shook her head. “I do not like it at all,” she said as she carried the tray away.

Tam put on his hat and his overcoat that had been drying before the fire. He came down the stairs, dressed to brave the weather, with his bag in his hand. His landlady was waiting in the hall.

“Are you well-wrapped?” she asked anxiously.

“Och, I'm fine,” Tam said.

“A-weel, turn up your collar against the rain's running down your neck,” she said, eyeing him with concern. “Och, now! Did I not know it! Bide you here a bit,” she said to him.

Tam, although fretting himself to be on his way, waited patiently, and soon she was back with a tartan scarf in her hands. “I said to myself you'd not be wearing a scarf, so I hunted this one out. Are ye daft to be going out on a night like this with your throat bare? Och, it's a mother you're needing, to keep an eye on you, lad.”

Tam stood meekly while she wrapped the scarf around his neck and with her own hands adjusted the folds.

“Thank you,” he said. “It's good of you.”

“'Tis naught,” said she. “Ye need not mind the plaid,” she told him. “My husband was a MacDonald, too, so the tartan's your own.”

She opened the door, and Tam picked up his bag and stepped out into the storm. “Haste ye back,” she said.

The rain had lessened slightly, but it came slantwise on gusts of wind, stinging the face. The sky was filled with scurrying masses of puffy black clouds, and the streaks of green in the west had merged and become one long wide band of pale yellowish green across the distant horizon. As Tam battled his way down the hill, fighting his way against the rain, he heard the bell of the clock in the church tower strike out the hour. He hastened his step. He wanted to reach the station in plenty of time before the guard called the train.

He was hurrying along with his head down, picking his way along the street as best he could, when he became aware of another wayfarer who seemed to have started up directly before him. The other appeared so suddenly that Tam had to stop dead in his tracks to avoid running into him.

There was a tavern by the way and Tam thought the fellow might have just come from there. But as he looked the stranger in the face someone inside the tavern pushed the curtains of the window aside and light shone out into the street. The man Tam had taken for a stranger was his friend Rab!

“Rab!” exclaimed Tam. “What brings you here?”

“I was looking for you, Tam,” said Rab.

“Well, you've found me then,” Tam told him. “But had you been a few minutes later you would not have done. I'm away to the station to take the train home, and I must make haste.”

“It was in my mind that you would be,” said Rab. “I feared you'd be gone, Tam. Do not take the train tonight.” Tam pulled his friend into the shelter of a doorway of an empty house beside the tavern, out of the wind and rain.

“Not take the train?” he asked. “Why, I'd be missing a whole day at home if I did not. Why do you not come with me now? We'll both take the train.”

“I cannot,” Rab said. “I must leave you soon. But hear me, Tam. Go back to your lodgings, now, and bide there until the morrow.”

Tam thought it over. Maybe the loss of a day of his holiday would not matter, after all, if he and Rab could be traveling home together the next day.

“Are you listening to me, Tam?” Rab asked impatiently. “Will ye not go back to your rooms and bide there till the morn?”

“Och, well—I will then,” Tam said, giving in. He turned to pick up his bag, which he had set down behind him in the entry when they came in. Tam thought he heard Rab give a great sigh of relief, but when he turned back to speak to him again, Rab had slipped off and was gone.

Tam looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Rab at all. He must have gone down the lane by the tavern, Tam thought, as he started up the hill again. The storm was growing wilder and the wind was blowing a terrible gale. Tam found it was all he could do to keep his footing as he climbed the hill. Branches broken from trees, chimney pots and bricks blown down by the wind filled the air and littered the street, and once a great flat piece of something that looked as if it might be the wall of a shed flew, too close for comfort, above his head. Tam was well-accustomed to the wild storms of the Highlands, but in all his life he'd never seen one to compare with this. As he slowly struggled on up the hill there were times that he was all but moving on hands and knees, and he was convinced that only the weight of the bag he carried kept him from flying away on the wind.

Tam was weary, rain-drenched, and chilled to the bone when he reached the house at last and went in. Shutting the door behind him, he seemed to be in a haven after the wild rioting of the storm outside. He leaned against the wall for a minute to get his breath. The house was dark and silent, with no sight nor sound of life other than himself. The landlady, no doubt, was sitting snugly by the fire in her tidy wee room at the end of the hall, with a nice cup of tea on the stand beside her and one of the pleasant romances she liked to read in her spare time in her hand.