Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 3 of 3)

She furtively wiped away the tears from her lashes: Käthchen did not notice. They were passing through the hall now.

"I cannot understand what you mean, Mamie. What is it? What has happened? Did you see Mr. Ross when you were at Heimra? I heard that the Sirène had left the morning you went out – and I took it for granted that Mr. Ross had gone with her – "

"Käthchen, to please me," she said, beseechingly, "will you never mention Heimra again? Mr. Ross is away – and – and I have been to the island for the last time; that is all."

When they went into the room, she threw herself down on a couch, and put her clasped hands on the arm of it, and hid her face. She was not crying; she merely seemed overcome with fatigue and lassitude. Kate Glendinning knelt down beside her, and with gentle fingers caressingly stroked and smoothed the beautiful golden-brown hair that had been all dishevelled by the wind.

"What is it, Mamie?"

"Tell me about the farms, Käthchen," was the answer, uttered in a hopeless kind of way. "I don't know anything about farm work, except what I have been told since I came here. Are the crops so completely destroyed? Would not fine weather give them another chance? Surely entire ruin cannot have been caused by one gale – gales are frequent on this coast – "

"This one came at a bad time, Mamie," said her companion; "and a great part of the corn will have to be cut and given to the cows. But why should you distress yourself unnecessarily? It was none of your fault. You have done everything for these poor people that could be devised. And, as I tell you, they seem used to misfortunes of this kind; there is no bewailing; their despondency has become a sort of habit with them – "

"Send for Mr. Purdie: I wish to see him" – this was what came from those closed hands. But the next moment she had thrown herself upright. "No!" she said, fiercely. "No, I will not see Mr. Purdie. With my consent, Mr. Purdie shall never enter this house again."

"Mr. Purdie left on the very day you went out to Heimra," said Käthchen, gently; and then she went on: "You are hiding something from me, Mamie. Well, I will not ask any further. I will wait. But I am afraid you are very much fatigued, and upset, and I can see you are not well. Now will you be persuaded, Mamie! If you will only go to bed you will have a far more thorough rest; and I will bring you something that will make you sleep. Why, your forehead is burning hot, and your hands quite cold! – and if you were to get seriously ill, that would be a good deal worse for the crofters than the flattening down of their corn!"

She was amenable enough; she consented to be led away; she was ready to do anything asked of her – except to touch food or drink.

And yet the next morning she was up and out of the house before anyone was awake, and she was making away for the solitude of the hills. She wished to be alone – and to look at the wide sea. She walked slowly, but yet her sick heart was resolute; the arduous toil of getting up the lower slopes and corries, filled with bracken, and rocks, and heather, did not hinder her; she turned from time to time to look, absently enough, at the ever-broadening plain of the Atlantic, rising up to the pale greenish-turquoise of the sky. And in time she had got over this rough ground, and had reached the lofty and sterile plateaus of peat-bog and grass, where, if it was loneliness she sought, she found it. No sign of life: no sound, except the plaintive call of a greenshank from a melancholy tarn: no movement, save that of the silver-grey masses of cloud that came over from the west. But away out yonder was the deserted island of Heimra; and far in the south were the long black promontories – Ru-Minard, Ru-Gobhar, and the rest – behind which a boat would disappear when it left for other lands. And had she heard of the Fhir-a-Bhata? Did Kate Glendinning know of the song that is the most familiar, the greatest favourite of all the West Highland songs; and had she told her friend of the maiden who used to go up the cliffs, day by day, to watch for the coming of her lover? —

'I climb the mountain and scan the ocean,
For thee, my boatman, with fond devotion:
When shall I see thee? – to-day? – to-morrow?
Oh, do not leave me in lonely sorrow!

Broken-hearted I droop and languish,
And frequent tears show my bosom's anguish:
Shall I expect thee to-night to cheer me?
Or close the door, sighing and weary.'

This, at least, Kate Glendinning soon began to learn – that nearly every morning now Mary left the house, entirely by herself, and was away by herself, in these desolate altitudes. It was clear she wished for no companionship; and Käthchen did not offer her services. Nor was any reference made to these solitary expeditions. The rest of the day Mary devoted herself to her usual work – increased, at this time, by her investigations into the extent of the injury done by the gale: as to the rest there was silence.

And thus it was that Käthchen remained ignorant of this curious fact – that day by day these excursions were gradually being shortened. Day by day Mary Stanley found that her strength would not carry her quite so far: she had to be content with a lesser height. And at last she had altogether to abandon that laborious task of breasting the hill; she merely, and wearily enough, walked away up the Minard road – whence you can see a portion of the southern and western horizon; and there she would sit down on the heather or a boulder of rock – with a strange look in her eyes.

"Mamie!" said Käthchen, one evening – and there was grief in her voice. "Won't you tell me what has happened! I cannot bear to see you like that! You are ill. I tell you, you are seriously ill; and yet you will not say a word. And there is no one here but myself; I am in charge of you; I am responsible for you; and how can I bear to see you killing yourself before my eyes?"

Mary was lying on the couch, her face averted from the light.

"You are right in one way, Käthchen," she said, rather sadly. "Something has happened. But no good would come of speaking about it; because it cannot be undone now. And as for being ill, I know what will make me well. It is only sleep I want. It is the sleep that knows no waking that I wish for."

Käthchen burst out crying, and flung herself down on her knees, and put her arms round her friend.

"Mamie, I declare to you I will not rest until you tell me what this is!" she exclaimed passionately.

Nor did she. And that very evening, after an unheard-of pleading and coaxing on the one side and despairing protest on the other, all those recent occurrences were confided to the faithful Käthchen. She was a little bewildered at first; but she had a nimble brain.

"Mamie," she said, with a firm air, "I don't know what doubts, or if any, may still be lingering in your mind; but I am absolutely convinced that that story of Purdie's is a lie – a wicked and abominable lie. And I can guess what drove him to it: it was a bold stroke, and it was nearly proving successful; but it shall not prove successful. I will make it my business to get Donald Ross back to Lochgarra – and then we shall have an explanation."

"Do you think he will come back to Lochgarra? Then you do not know him," Mary made answer, and almost listlessly. "Do you imagine I have not considered everything, night after night, ay, and every hour of the night all the way through? He will never come back to Lochgarra – if it is to speak to me that you mean. I have told you before: it seems a fatality that he and his should receive nothing but injury and insult at our hands, from one member of our family after another; and never has there been a word in reply – never a single syllable of reproach – but only kindnesses innumerable, and thoughtfulness, and respect. Well, there is an end of respect now. How can he have anything but scorn of me? If I were to confess to him that I had believed that story – even for one frightened moment – what could he think of me? Why, what he thinks of me now – as a base creature, ignoble, ungrateful, unworthy – oh! do you imagine I cannot read what is in that man's heart at this moment?"

"Do you imagine I cannot?" said Käthchen, boldly. "I have not been blind all these months. What is in that man's heart, Mamie, is a passionate love and devotion towards you; and there is no injury, and no insult, he would not forgive you if he thought that you – that you – well, that you cared for him a little. Oh, I know both you and him. I know that you are wilful and impulsive; and I know that he is proud, and sensitive, and reserved; but I think – I think – well, Mamie, no more words; but I am going to have my own way in this matter, and you must let me do precisely what I please."

And that was all she would say meanwhile. But next day was a busy day for Kate Glendinning. First of all she went straight to the Minister and demanded point-blank whether there were, or could be, any foundation for that story about Anna Chlannach; and the Minister – not directly, of course, but with many lamentations, in his high falsetto, over the wickedness of the human mind in harbouring and uttering slanders and calumnies – answered that he had known Anna Chlannach all her life, and that she had been half-witted from her infancy, and that the tale now told him was an entire and deplorable fabrication. Indeed, he would have liked to enlarge on the theme, but Kate was in a hurry. For she had heard in passing through the village that the Gillie Ciotach was about to go over to Heimra, with the parcels and letters that had come by the previous day's mail; and it occurred to her that here was a happy chance for herself.

"Now, Andrew," she said, when she was seated comfortably in the stern of the lugger, "keep everything smooth for me. I haven't once been sea-sick since I came to Lochgarra, and I don't want to begin now."

"Aw, is it the sea-seeckness?" said the Gillie Ciotach. "Well, mem, when you feel the seeckness coming on, just you tell me, and I will give you something to mek you all right. Ay, I will give you a good strong glass of whiskey; and in a moment it will make the seeckness jump out of your body."

"Whiskey?" said Käthchen. "Do you mean to say you take a bottle of whiskey with you every time you put out in a boat?"

"Aw, as for that," said the Gillie Ciotach – and he was clearly casting about for some portentous lie or another – "I was saying to Peter Grant that mebbe the young leddy might have the sea-seeckness; and Peter he was saying to me, 'Tek a smahl bottle of whiskey with you, Andrew, and then she will hef no fear of the sea-seeckness.' And it was just for yourself, mem, I was bringing the whiskey."

"And a pretty character you seem to have given me at the inn!" said Käthchen, as she contentedly wrapped herself up in her rugs.

Martha had seen the boat on its way into the harbour; she had come out to the door of the cottage; a visitor was welcome in this solitary island.

"Martha," she said, as soon as she had got within, "have you heard any news of late? – can you tell me where the Sirène is now?"

"Yes, indeed, mem," said the old Highland dame, with wondering eyes. "But do you not know that the Sirène is at the bottom of the sea? Was the master not writing to Miss Stanley about it?"

"We have not heard a word," Käthchen exclaimed.

"Dear, dear me now!" said Martha. "That is a stranche thing."

"But tell me – tell me about it," said Käthchen anxiously. "There was no one drowned?"

"No, no," said Martha, with much complacency. "There was plenty of time for them to get into the boat. And the master not writing to Miss Stanley at the same time he was writing to me – that is a stranche thing. But this was the weh of it, as he says; that it was an ahfu' dark night, the night of the first day of the gale; and they were mekkin for shelter between Scalpa and Skye, and they had got through the Caol-Mòr, and were coming near to an anchorage, when they ran into a trading schooner that was lying there without a single light up. Without a single light, and the night fearful dark: I'm sure the men should be hanged that would do such a thing, to save a little oil."

"And where is Mr. Ross now?" asked Käthchen.

"Just in Greenock. He says he will try to get a place for Coinneach and for Calum, and will not trouble with a yat any more for the present. Ay, indeed," Martha went on, with a bit of a sigh, "and I'm thinking he will not be coming back soon to Heimra, when he says he will not trouble with a yat, and when he could have a yat easy enough with the insurance money – "

"Is he at a hotel in Greenock?"

"Ay, the Tontine Hotel," the old woman said. "And I am not liking what he says – that he is waiting for a friend, and they are going away from Greenock together. I am not liking that at ahl. There's many a one sailed away from the Tail of the Bank that never came back again. And he says, if it is too lonely here for me and the young lass Maggie, we are to go over to Lochgarra and get lodgings; but how could I be leaving the house to the rain and the damp? Ay, lonely it is, except when Gillie Ciotach comes out to look after the lobster traps —

"Well, Martha," said her visitor, "this time the Gillie Ciotach is going straight back again; for I'm rather in a hurry. And don't you move over to the mainland until you hear further. I will come and see you sometimes if you are so lonely." And therewithal the industrious Kate hied her back to the lobster boat, and set out for Lochgarra again.

Mary was lying on a sofa, her head half hidden by the cushion. She had been attempting to read; but her arm had fallen supinely by her side, and the book was half closed.

"Mamie," said Kate Glendinning, entering the room noiselessly, and approaching the sofa, "I have a favour to beg of you; but please to remember this: that I have waited on you – and worried you – all this long time; and I have never asked you for an hour's holiday. Now I am going to ask you for two or three days; and if you give me permission I mean to be off by the mail car to-morrow morning. May I go?"

The pale cheek flushed – and the fingers that held the book trembled a little. But she affected not to understand.

"Do as you wish, Käthchen," said she, in a low voice.

Well, this was an onerous, and difficult, and delicate task that Kate had undertaken; but she had plenty of courage. And her setting-forth was auspicious: when the mail-car started away from Lochgarra the dawn was giving every promise of a pleasant and cheerful day for the long drive. It is true that as they passed the Cruagan crofts her face fell a little on noticing here and there traces of the devastation that had been wrought by the gale; but she had heard that things were mending a little in consequence of the continued fine weather; and she was greatly cheered to hear the driver maintain that the people about this neighbourhood had little cause to grumble; matters had been made very easy for them, he declared, since Miss Stanley came to Lochgarra. And so on they drove, hour after hour, by Ledmore, and Oykel Bridge, and Invercassley, and Rosehall, until the afternoon saw her safely arrived at Lairg. Then the more tedious railway journey – away down to Inverness; on through the night to Perth; breakfast there, and on again to Glasgow; from Glasgow down to Greenock. It was about noon, or something thereafter, that she entered the dismal and rainy town.