The Silver Darlings (22 page)

Down through the dimness beyond the burn Finn saw a tall, dark figure come silently. His flesh ran together and his knees trembled. A curlew’s cry pierced the air, and fell away forlornly towards the House of Peace. Finn’s skin went cold as rime. The figure came to the edge of the burn, crossed it, disappeared, and through æons of time Finn waited—until it reappeared, first the dark head against the
bright water, then the dark body, coming towards him. He sank down through his knees. The figure came on, and just before the great cry of terror got past his throat, he saw it was Roddie. And suddenly he could not speak, could not move, and when Roddie had passed, he lay for a little in the trance of his own horror.

Crossing the stepping-stones, he slipped and the shock of the cold water helped to steady his trembling muscles. When he got to the low end of the house, he leaned against the wall until he began to shiver from genuine coldness. He knew Kirsty would be in bed, because she had had a fevered chill a month or so ago and had never quite thrown off its effects.

Catrine looked up at him as he entered, the firelight on her face. Her look steadied; her eyes widened. She got up. “What’s wrong, Finn?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re white as a sheet.”

“Nothing,” he said with a touch of impatience. Why did she
have
to notice anything? He did not want to feel angry with her.

And now she was silent! “I slipped,” he explained casually, without looking at her, “crossing the burn, and wet my feet.”

“Sit here.” She went and put some milk in a pan and began to warm it, and handed him a towel so that he could rub his legs.

“Were you over at Meg’s?” she asked in a
conversational
voice.

“Yes,” he answered, rubbing his feet and his toes slowly with concentration.

“Were there many there?”

“A good few.”

She poured him a bowl of milk, then sat down and went on with her knitting. He drank it slowly, to fill in the long, silent minutes. There was a vague heavy mood upon him that he could not break. More and more this sort of
mood seemed to be deepening between his mother and himself.

He would have liked to ask if there had been anybody in, but he could not. His mother seemed calm and a little sad, as if nobody had been near her.

He had thought Roddie would have been at Meg’s.

It would be more comfortable in bed. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he said in an easy voice. At once she stirred, as if she might break in on him because his voice had been natural, but he gave her his shoulder as he went across to his bed.

Once in between the blankets, he turned his face to the wall. He did not want to see her sit by the fire or smoor the peats.

When the room was in darkness and his mother in bed, he felt more at ease. To-morrow he would spend all day at the flail in the barn, threshing oats. It was heavy work. He liked winnowing in a fine wind.

He would not quite let the question as to where Roddie had been touch his mind.

The last vision he had was of Una’s eyes. Eyebrows and eyes and face formed in the dark, out of the dark.

Strange the difference between Meg’s house with George’s “Money, money”, and old Lachlan’s house with the singing voices….

His mother did not sound restless. He fell asleep.

CHAPTER X

THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE

B
efore Finn was two years older he was at sea. It came about in a tragic manner, for his land was visited by what people called the plague, but which was, in reality, a form of cholera. Never had such a disease been amongst them before, and when the first rumours of it reached Dunster folk spoke of it in low voices. Their dread of it went beyond reason. They apprehended it in the imagination, and feared the evil of it more than they feared death, as though its uncleanness, its taint, its
corruption
, would not only destroy and rot the body but
pursue
the living quick beyond the grave itself. Their instinct of recoil was an instinct of pure horror.

Sandy Ware said it was God’s judgement upon them for their sins, for the carnal pleasure that turned its worldly face from the Almighty to make merry with Mammon. “When the silver herring were swimming into your nets God was forgotten. With money in your hands, you danced. The great ships came and took your barrels away. Away to the ends of the earth. The ends of the earth are very far away. But all ends are under God’s hand. The ships came back. The ships brought more money for
merry-making
. Yes! But what have the ships brought now? The flapping of the wings of the black bird of corruption and death! I cry unto you to repent while yet there is time….”

But a fisherman who had been visiting his wife’s
relations
in the country near Wick came home and, three days after, fell sick and started retching. When his bowels ran
nothing but a watery fluid like whey, the folk knew the plague had come to Dunster.

Finn had been friendly with this young seaman, for his older brother, Don, had until last year been one of Roddie’s crew. In fact, this seaman was the David who, with
Duncan
, had sprinted behind Mr. Hendry’s gig when it had brought Roddie home from the storm he had survived off Helmsdale.

He was now a man of twenty-four, six months married, and his young wife, hearing that her mother was ill and touched a little by homesickness, had prepared to make the journey on foot, for it was the beginning of the herring season. But as her husband judged she was not in a fit
condition
to do so, he had gone himself.

When he walked into the house and found the mother alone, in bed, her face incredibly emaciated and her sunken eyes half-closed, he was struck dumb. The atmosphere was sour and bitter and got him in the throat. He had called a greeting on entering, and now he saw the eyes slowly focusing upon him. He went to the bedside and asked, “What’s wrong?” There was a movement of the hands, repelling him, shoving him away. Her voice was low, a whispered hoarseness he could not understand. Then, after a gasping sob, she lay exhausted. He listened for someone in the house. There was no sound. Into the appalled
emptiness
of his mind, a high-pitched voice cried his name from outside.

He went out and there was Nan, his wife’s elder sister, wringing her hands, her face pale as chalk, some twenty yards from him up the slight slope. Beyond, were one or two others he knew. He walked towards her. She backed away, crying, “David, go home! Go home at once!”

He realized now that he had been in the presence of a woman dying of the plague. He stood quite still, but
perhaps
because he had already been in the presence, there moved in his mind a deep revulsion against thus leaving a helpless woman to die alone.

“Is no one looking after her?”
he shouted.

“We can do no more. She drove us out.” Nan wrung her apron. She was in terrible distress. “I am frightened for the bairns.” She had three young children, the youngest not yet weaned.

“But someone must look after her.”

“No more can be done.” Her voice rose to a scream. Her body writhed in a demented way.

“It’s all right,” said David, nodding and half-turning his back. She ran away, crying loudly and pitifully, as if she could not bear to stand still any longer.

David was in a desperate position. He could not just walk home straight away, arriving in the dark early hours with this dreadful news, all the more dreadful because
indecisive
. He would just have to tramp back here again for the final news.

The sour, diarrhœtic smell was still in his throat. He took out his snuff-box and dosed himself so heavily that, seasoned as he was, he sneezed. He rasped and spat. Those behind heard him.

He was fond of his wife’s mother. She had always had such good sense, and been so cheerful, and helped him when he was tongue-tied. Her husband had died when the third child had been born, and she had kept everything going herself. All three were married, and now she would die alone—to save them. That was the kind she was, by God, thought David. He wished Rob, her son, were here. Nan had always been of the teasing kind, and often enough had angered him.

Suddenly, not wanting anyone to come and speak to him again, he walked down into the byre. The cattle were gone. They, too, had been removed! He felt the loneliness as he had felt it in the house, seeping about himself and the dying woman, cutting them off. A dumb anger began to smoulder in him. He knew that eyes were watching the house, wary, frightened eyes, inimical to him, herding him in with the dying woman in the doomed house.

He went out and saw a boy of about fourteen standing at a little distance with a pitcher and something wrapped in a white cloth. The boy laid the pitcher and the white cloth on the ground, and cried, “This is food for you.” Then he turned and ran up the slope towards the house to which Nan had retreated.

David walked slowly to the food, and when he came to it a great rage seized him and he had all he could do to stop his right foot from kicking pitcher and parcel over the green. He saw the furtive heads without looking at them. When the blood-flush had passed from his eyes, he stooped, lifted the pitcher of milk with one hand and the oaten
bannocks
that slithered inside the cloth with the other, and strode down to the cottage. He would make food for his mother-in-law.

As he entered at the door, the smell got him again. She was lying on her back perfectly still, her face livid, her
half-closed
eyes showing only the whites. The words died in his throat. Without knowing quite what he was doing he laid pitcher and bread on the table by the head of the bed and took a step towards her. “Mrs. Keith,” he said. She did not move. “Mrs. Keith!”

He had never seen a dead person with open eyes. He wanted to touch her brow to see if she was cold, but could not. His eyes glanced about for something with which to poke the body. There was the long black tongs. God, he did not know what to do. “Mrs. Keith!” Then in an
instant
, his vision heightened by his tense emotion, he saw the body stiff as dark clay, with no breath, no last vestige of movement, left in it. Before him lay the stillness of death.

From big, gulping breaths his mouth stuck in a dry slime that had the taste of the evil smell in the house. His hand shook as he lifted the pitcher from the table, and from his lips the milk dribbled on to his breast. As he placed the pitcher back on the table he saw there were two pitchers. The other was the one he had brought in. He wiped the milk from his breast. He was trembling all over.

At the door he pulled himself up, and breathed the sweet air that was blowing upon it, for he had already noticed that folk were keeping to windward. He went out and walked deliberately towards the house where Nan was. Twenty yards from it he paused and shouted loudly, “She’s dead!” Then he turned on his heel and headed for home.

A lot of his anger and rage had been put into that last shout, and the thought of this was some satisfaction to him for quite a long way. In the gloaming he came to a pool in a little stream on a lonely part of the moor, and swiftly threw off all his clothes, scattering them around him on the heather. The water had an icy chill and he turned over and twisted in it, twice keeping his head under for as long as he could. From the bottom, he clawed fistfuls of sand and fine gravel and rubbed chest and arms and head, liking it the better the more it hurt. Naked, he jumped about on the moor until in a wild moment his feet fell into the steps of the Highland fling and he gave a throaty roaring laugh of challenge. His clothes he shook and flailed against the heather, like a madman knocking dust out of them. Dressed and shivering, he set off at a rapid pace, often running long stretches at a time.

Just after midnight, he came down on his own home in the heavy dark. The window was up on the edge of the thatch, above his head, for the house was an old one with extremely thick walls. Because of the shaft of light, he knew Ina was not in bed. All was silence. There was no one in but herself. He cleared his throat and passed on to the door, which he pushed open, at the same time crying her name. “Ina. Come here.”

He saw her changing face, as she stood motionless. Her closed hands came up against her cheeks.

“Don’t get excited,” he said. “Take it calmly.”

“David!” She stumbled a step or two towards him.

“I can’t come in just now. I have something to do——”

“David! Is mother——”

There was a long moment. “Yes,” he said simply. He
seemed to see her face, though the light was now behind her. Then she staggered away and flopped down on the floor.

He entered a step and stood watching her. He knew she had not fainted completely because there was a slight squirming motion in her body. Then, however, she lay quite still, her face to the clay. He sent his mind to help her so strongly that his own body went death cold.

Presently she stirred, whimpering; then all at once sat up and stared at him with a wild open face. She had brown sand-coloured hair with pleasant features and blue eyes that now glittered darkly.

“I can’t come in, Ina. For God’s sake try and take this calmly. Think of the child in you.”

She waited.

“Your mother died when I was there. I was in time.” He took a deep breath. He looked away. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Ina. Absolutely nothing, I’m all right
myself
, but—but they told me not to go near anyone for a day. It’s nothing. It’s just to make sure. I happened to go near a—a sick house.”

Her voice came small and hoarse: “She died of the plague?”

“Yes. Listen to me, Ina——”

She did not listen. Her face went blank. “Mother,” said her mouth in an appalled whisper.

He turned away and stood with his back to the outside wall by the door. When he heard her crying on her mother he became restless and irritated. She should think of herself, and as his irritation increased the tears came streaming down his face. She should think of the child anyway. What was the sense in weeping and carrying on like that? He grew angry, because her desperate, heart-broken voice brought the tears streaming down upon him readily. He felt the push of her empty fists on the floor, the burden of her awful grief, and turned away down to the corner of the little barn.

The truth was he no longer cared about the death of the mother. All interest in her had passed from him. He could only think of the taint. And he felt he had defeated it, expelled it from the outside of his body. If only—if only he had left that second accursed pitcher alone. Perhaps her mouth had been to the very spot where his own lips? … Yet it had been pretty full. There was every chance he was all right because the all-important thing he had not done—he had not touched the body.

After a time Ina grew sensible, and became
extraordinarily
calm as she realized the nature of the danger he was in. Not that he told her all he had been through. “Nan sent me home at once,” he said. “It’s just having been near the wind of the trouble. So I thought, for one night, I might curl up in the barn. You can always cry to me if you want me.” Her mother had been properly attended, doctor and all, right to the end. Nan had kept away because of the children. He spoke on, giving her time, though he was not a talkative man.

That night he slept heavily. On the second day he was back in the house as usual. On the third, he went down to the inn and bought a bottle of “special”. Two men were ordering a drink and called for an extra one for him. They were talking about the fishing and he was glad of their company. He left, carrying the bottle with him. The alcohol was going to his head, and this annoyed him, for though he drank very little, still a small whisky should hardly trouble his feet as it was doing. In times of illness, folk were always anxious to have a drop of whisky in the house as a restorative medicine. Suddenly he felt the liquor in a swirl in his stomach, and before he had gone three paces up it came. At a little distance a woman, bringing water from a well, saw him and stopped. He was bitterly ashamed for though men might take an extra drop at special
gatherings
, such as markets and rent-day, it was a deep
disgrace
to be seen the worse of drink in the broad light of a working day. However, he felt much better now and
said nothing about the incident to his wife when he got home.