Free The Silver Darlings by Neil M. Gunn Page A

exclaimed, and shook her by the hand, and said that she couldn’t believe her eyes. They were grey, keen, and searching, for Kirsty was a practical woman, given indeed at times to a precision of manner that many thought hard and unsympathetic. Catrine felt the penetration and knew Kirsty was wondering what trouble had brought a young wife, barely four months married, on so long a journey from her husband, and was suddenly disconcerted and touched with dismay. But she smiled and said simply, “I had a longing to come and see you.”
    “Indeed, and why wouldn’t you? Come you away in now. And did you walk all the way?”
    “Yes.”
    Kirsty exclaimed again, and looked more shrewdly than ever at Catrine’s face, then paused near the door to say “There’s the old man himself taking the peats home.”
    Catrine saw Kirsty’s father, walking beside a small horse that was dragging a sledge of peats from the moor.
    “He’s failing on me,” said Kirsty. “But that’s the way of things. He’s never got used to this place. Sometimes I tell him I think he’s going dottled. Come in. It’s tired you must be. Sit there. And how did you fall in with Roddie Sinclair?”
    Catrine explained, and conveyed at the same time Granny Gordon’s greetings.
    “You’re making friends early. And there’s nothing wrong with that young man until he takes drink. Well! well! so here you are. And how’s Tormad himself?”
    Catrine did not answer.
    Kirsty came to a standstill.
    “He’s been taken from me,” said Catrine, not looking up.
    “From you? Do you mean he’s dead?”
    “He was out fishing in a boat and a ship of war caught them and took them away.”
    “A ship of war?”
    “The press-gang.”
    “The press-gang!” Kirsty sat down abruptly. She stared at Catrine piercingly. Then she said with great force, “The dirty brutes, the coarse, dirty brutes. How long ago?”
    Catrine told her. There was something tonic in Kirsty’s wrath. “The place was getting the better of me, so I remembered how you’d asked me to come, and so I thought I’d come for a change.”
    “You were right, and I’m glad to see you. We may not have much here, but you’re welcome to what there is. My poor girl, you have had a hard time.” She got up. “It’s terrible news indeed. I wondered when I saw you coming what it was. I thought maybe it was no more than some small trouble that we could put right. You would think poor folk hadn’t enough misery and worry already. If only we could have the law on them! Wait now, till I bring you a little of this night’s milking,” and she left the kitchen.
    Catrine got up and looked out of the small window. Dismay came back and quietened her to the stillness of the evening outside. Had she made a mistake in coming, been wrong in thinking there was anywhere in the world she could go or anyone in whom she could find solace? Kirsty seemed harder than she had been, was not so tidy in her person, and somehow there was a faint gloom or misery of poor living in the air.
    As she looked out the small window, she had a quite vivid memory of herself as a little girl, being taken by her mother to call on Kirsty or of Kirsty’s coming to their home, and of the invariable question, “Now, are you wondering what it is I have got for you?” Kirsty always had something for her, some little present or maybe just a round hard white sweet from her hidden hoard. But the memory of it was bright and young.
    Suddenly Catrine knew that an end had come to the vision of her running childhood that she now saw in her mind as if it were far outside.
    Was this the vision she had been hunting, without knowing it, when she had left Dale? The question hardly formed, for the vision passed like a glimmer of light and, turning, she looked about the kitchen with cold, alien eyes. Age touched her features with a drawn fear and, in the gloom of the interior, her pale face seemed straining upward for flight. Her eardrums became intensely