Chapter Six.
The Steadfast.
It was a serene evening when, the day after her landing, Lady Carse approached Widow Fleming’s abode. The sun was going down in a clear sky; and when, turning from the dazzling western sea, the eye wandered eastwards, the view was such as could not but transport a heart at ease. The tide was low, and long shadows from the rocks lay upon the yellow sands and darkened, near the shore, the translucent sea. At the entrance of the black caverns the spray leaped up on the advance of every wave,—not in threatening but as if at play. Far away over the lilac and green waters arose the craggy peaks of Skye, their projections and hollows in the softest light and shadow. As the sea-birds rose from their rest upon the billows, opposite the sun, diamond drops fell from their wings. Nearer at hand there was little beauty but what a brilliant sunset sheds over every scene. There were shadows from the cottage over the dull green sward, and from the two or three goats which moved about on the ledges and slopes of the upper rocks. The cottage itself was more lowly and much more odd than the lady had conceived from anything she had yet seen or heard of. Its walls were six feet thick, and roofed from the inside, leaving a sort of platform all round, which was overgrown with coarse herbage. The outer and inner surfaces of the wall were of stones, and the middle part was filled in with earth; so that grass might well grow on the top. The roof was of thatch—part straw, part sods, tied down to cross poles by ropes of twisted heather. The walls did not rise more than five feet from the ground; and nothing could be easier than for the goats to leap up, when tempted to graze there. A kid was now amusing itself on one corner. As Lady Carse walked round, she was startled at seeing a woman sitting on the opposite corner. Her back was to the sun—her gaze fixed on the sea, and her fingers were busy knitting. The lady had some doubts at first about its being the widow, as this woman wore a bright cotton handkerchief tied over her head: but a glance at the face when it was turned towards her assured her that it was Annie Fleming herself.
“No, do not come down,” said the lady. “Let me come up beside you. I see the way.”
And she stepped up by means of the projecting stones of the wall, and threw herself down beside the quiet knitter.
“What are you making? Mittens? And what of? What sort of wool is this?”
“It is goats’ hair.”
“Tiresome work!” the lady observed. “Wool is bad enough; but these short lengths of hair! I should never have patience.”
The widow replied that she had time in these summer
evenings; and she was glad to take the chance of selling a few pairs when Macdonald went to the main, once or twice a year.
“How do they sell? What do you get for them?”
“I get oil to last me for some time.”
“And what else?”
“Now and then I may want something else; but I get chiefly oil—as what I want most.”
The widow saw that Lady Carse was not attending to what she said, and was merely making an opening for what she herself wanted to utter: so Annie said no more of her work and its payment, but waited.
“This is a dreadful place,” the lady burst out. “Nobody can live here.”
“I have heard there are kindlier places to live in,” the widow replied. “This island must appear rather bare to people who come from the south,—as I partly remember myself.”
“Where did you come from? Do you know where I come from? Do you know who I am?” cried the lady.
“I came from Dumfries. I have not heard where you lived, my lady. I was told by Macdonald that you came by Sir Alexander Macdonald’s orders, to live here henceforward.”
“I will not live here henceforward. I would sooner die.”
The widow looked surprised. In answer to that look Lady Carse said, “Ah! you do not know who I am, nor what brought me here, or you would see that I cannot live here, and why I would rather die.—Why do not you speak? Why do you not ask me what I have suffered?”
“I should not think of it, my lady. Those who have suffered are slow to speak of their heart pain, and would be ashamed before God to say how much oftener they would rather have died.”
“I must speak, however, and I will,” declared Lady Carse. “You know I must; and you are the only person in the island that I can speak to.—I want to live with you. I must. I know you are a good woman. I know you are kind. If you are kind to mere strangers that come in boats, and keep a light to save them from shipwreck, you will not be cruel to me—the most ill used creature—the most wretched—the most—”
She hid her face on her knees, and wept bitterly.
“Take courage, my lady,” said Annie. “If you have not strength enough for your troubles to-day, it only shows that there is more to come.”
“I do not want strength,” said the lady. “You do not know me. I am not wanting in strength. What I want—what I must have—is justice.”
“Well—that is what we are all most sure of when God’s day comes,” said Annie. “That we are quite sure of. And we may surely hope for patience till then, if we really wish it. So I trust you will be comforted, my lady.”
“I cannot stay here, however. There are no people here. There is nobody that I can endure at Macdonald’s, and there are none others but labourers, and they speak only Gaelic. And it is a wretched place. They have not even bread.—Mrs Fleming, I must come and live with you.”
“I have no bread, my lady. I have nothing so good as they have at Macdonald’s.”
“You have a kind heart. Never mind the bread now. We will see about that. I don’t care how I live; but I want to stay with you. I want never to go back to Macdonald’s.”
The widow stepped down to the ground, and beckoned to the lady to follow her into the house. It was a poor place as could be seen:—one room with a glazed window looking towards the harbour, a fireplace and a bed opposite the window;—a rickety old bedstead, with an exhausted flock bed and a rug upon it; and from one end of the apartment, a small dim space partitioned off, in which was a still less comfortable bed, laid on trestles made of driftwood.
“Who sleeps here?”
“My son, when he is at home. He is absent now, my lady: and see, this is the only place;—no place for you, my lady.”
Lady Carse shrank back impatiently. She then turned and said, “I might have this larger room, and you the other. I shall find means of paying you—”
“Impossible, madam,” the widow replied. “I am obliged to occupy this room.”
“For to-night, at least, you will let me have it. I cannot go back to Macdonald’s to-night. I will not go back at all; and you cannot turn me out to-night. I have other reasons besides those I mentioned. I must be in sight of the harbour. It is my only hope.”
“You can stay here, if you will, madam: and you can have that bed. But I can never leave this room between dark and light. I have yonder lamp to attend to.”
“Oh! I will attend to the lamp.”
The widow smiled, and observed that she hoped the lady would have better sleep than she could enjoy if she had the lamp to watch; and that was a business which she could not commit to another hand. In the course of the argument, the lady discovered that it would be a serious matter to let out both the fire and lamp, as there was no tinder-box on the island, and no wood, except in the season of storms, when some was drifted up wet.
“I should like to live with you, and help you to keep up your lamp,” said the lady. “If you could only manage a room for me— Not that I mean to stay in this island! I will not submit to that. But while I am waiting to get away, I should like to spend my time with you. You have a heart. You would feel for me.”
“I do feel for you, madam. This must be a terrible place for you, just to-day,—and for many days to come. But oh! my lady, if you want peace of mind, this is the place! It is a blessing that may be had anywhere, I know. One would think it shone down from the sky or breathed out from the air,—it is so sure to be wherever the sky bends over, or the air wraps us round. But of all places, this is the one for peace of mind.”
“This!—this—dreary island!”
“This quiet island. Look out now, and see if you can call it dreary. Why, madam, there can hardly be a brighter glory, or a more cheerful glow among the sons of God about the throne, than there is at this moment over sea and shore, and near at home up to the very stone of my threshold. Madam, I could never think this island dreary.”
“It is not always sunset, nor always summer time,” said Lady Carse, who could not deny nor wholly resist the beauty of the scene.
“Other beauty comes by night and in the winter,” observed the widow, “and at times a grandeur which is better than the beauty. If the softness of this sunshine nourishes our peace of mind, yet more does the might of the storms. The beauty might be God’s messenger. The might is God Himself.”
“You speak as if you did not fear God,” said the lady, with the light inexperience of one to whom such subjects were not familiar.
“As a sinner, I fear Him, madam. But as His child— Why, madam, what else have we in all the universe? And having Him, what more do we want?”
“He has made us full of wants,” said the lady. “I, for one, am all bereaved, and very, very wretched.—But do not let us talk of that now. One who is alone in this place, and knows and needs nothing beyond, cannot enter into my sorrows at once. It will take long to make you conceive such misery as mine. But it will be a comfort to me to open my heart to you. And I must live within view of the harbour. I must see every boat that comes. They say you do.”
“I do. They are few; but I see them all.”
“And you save a good many by the spark in your window.”
“It has pleased God to save some, it is thought, who would have perished as some perished before them. He set me that task, in a solemn way, many years ago; and any mercy that has grown out of it is His.—Do you see any vessel on the sea, madam? I always look abroad the last thing before the sun goes down. My eyes can hardly be much older than yours: but they are much worn.”
“How have you so used your eyes? Is it that hair-knitting?”
“That is not good. But it is more the sharp winds, and the night watching, and the shine of the sea in the day.”
“I must live with you. I will watch for you, night and day. You think I cannot. You think I shall tire. Why, you are not weary of it.”
“Oh, no! I shall never be weary of it.”
“Much less should I. You want only to keep up your lamp. I want to get away. All the interests of my life lie beyond this sea; and do you think I shall tire of watching for the opportunity?—I will watch through this very night. You shall go to bed, and sleep securely, and I will keep your lamp. And to-morrow we will arrange something. Why should I not have a room,—a cottage built at the end of yours? I will.”
“If you could find anyone to build it,” suggested the widow.
“Somebody built Macdonald’s, I suppose. And yours.”
“Macdonald’s is very old;—built, it is thought, at the same time with the chapel, which has been in ruins these hundred years. My husband built ours,—with me to help him; and also his brother, who died before it was finished.”
“Where is your son?” inquired the lady. “If he will undertake to work for me, I will get it done. Where is your son? And what is his business?”
“I do not know exactly where he is.”
“Well, but is he on the island?”
“I believe so. He comes and goes according to his business. In the early summer he seeks eggs all over the island; and, somewhat later, the eider-down. When he can get nothing better he brings the birds themselves.”
“What do you do with them?”
“We keep the feathers, and also the skins. The skins are warm to cover the feet with, when made into socks. If the birds are not very old, we salt them for winter food: and at worst, I get some oil from them. But I get most oil from the young seals, and from the livers of the fish he catches at times.”
“Fish! then he has a boat! Does he go out in a boat to fish?”
“I can hardly say that he has a boat,” replied the mother, with an extraordinary calmness of manner that told of internal effort. “Our caverns run very deep into the rocks; and the ledges run out far into the sea. Rollo has made a kind of raft of the driftwood he found: and on this he crosses the water in the caverns, and passes from ledge to ledge, fishing as he goes. This is our only way of getting fish, except when a chance boat comes into the harbour.”
“Could that raft go out on a calm day,—on a very smooth sea,—to meet any boat at a distance?”
“Impossible! madam. I think it too dangerous in our smallest coves to be used without sin. It is against my judgment that Rollo ever goes round the end of a ledge, which he has been seen to do.”
“But it is impossible to get a boat? Have you never had a boat?”
“We once had a boat, madam: and it was lost.” Even the selfish Lady Carse reproached herself for her question. It struck her now that boat and husband had been lost together; for Macdonald had told her that Annie Fleming had seen her husband drown.
“I wish I knew where Rollo is,” she said to break the silence. “I think something might be done. I think I could find a way. Do not you wish you knew where he was?”
“No, madam.”
“Well! perhaps you might be uneasy about him if you did. But which way did he go?”
The widow pointed northwards, where huge masses of rock appeared tumbled one upon another, and into the sea, at the base of a precipice two hundred feet high. She further told, in reply to a question, that Rollo went forth yesterday, without saying where he was going; and there were caves among the rocks she had pointed out, where Rollo might possibly be fishing.
Lady Carse found it vexatious that darkness was coming on. She had a purpose; but the sun did not set the later, nor promise to rise the earlier, on that account. When the widow set before her some oaten bread and dried fish, she ate, without perceiving that none was left for her hostess. And when the widow lighted the iron lamp and set it in the window, the lady made only faint pretences of a wish to sit up and watch it. She also said nothing of occupying the meaner bed. She was persuaded that her first duty was to obtain some good rest, preparatory to going forth to seek Rollo, and induce him to take her on his raft to some place whence she might escape to the mainland. So she lay down on the widow’s bed, and slept soundly,—her hungry hostess sitting by the smouldering peats in the rude fireplace,—now and then smiling at the idea of her guest’s late zeal about watching the lamp for her, in order to give her a good night’s rest. When daylight came, she retired to her son’s bed, and had just dropped asleep when Lady Carse roused her to ask for some breakfast to take with her, as she did not know when she should be back from her expedition. Again the widow smiled as she said there was nothing in the house. At this time of the year there were no stores; and a good appetite at night left nothing for the morning.
“O dear!” said the lady. “Well: I daresay your sitting up made you hungry enough to finish everything while I was asleep. No doubt it must. But what to do I know not. I will not go back to Macdonald’s, if I starve for it. Perhaps I may meet some fishermen, or somebody. I will try.—Good morning. I shall come back: but I will not put you long out of your ways. I will get a cottage built at the end of yours as soon as possible.” The door closed behind her, and once more the widow smiled, as she composed herself to rest on her own bed. She had already returned thanks for the blessings with which the new day had opened; and especially that to one so lowly as herself was permitted the honour and privilege—so unlooked for and unthought of—of dispensing hospitality.