“Oh, there’s no going yonder,” said the uncle. “Sierra Leone is not a healthy clime for men, let alone for women. That’s where the man comes in. He could hardly leave you alone to stravaige about the hills there with all sorts of people from Glen Aray.”
“The white man’s grave!” said she, appalled.
“Ay!” said he, “but he’s no ordinary white man; he’s of good stock.”
“And—and—he has found a man for me,” she said bitterly. “Could I not be left to find one for myself?”
Her uncle laughed his hoarse rude laugh again, and still combed his tangled beard.
“Not to his fancy,” he answered. “It’s not every one who would suit.” He smiled grimly—a wicked elder man. “It’s not every one would suit,” he repeated—as if he was anxious to let the full significance of what he meant sink to her understanding. And he combed his rough beard with large-jointed knotted fingers, and looked from under his heavy eyebrows.
“Seeing the business is so commercial,” said she, “I’m sure that between the two of you you will make a good bargain. I am not sure but I might be glad to be anywhere out of this if father’s gone and I not with him.” She said it with outer equanimity, and unable to face him a moment longer without betraying her shame and indignation, she left him and went to the corn-field where Black Duncan was working alone.
That dark mariner was to some extent a grieved sharer of her solitude in Maam. The loss of the Jean on Ealan Dubh had sundered him for ever from his life of voyaging. The distant ports in whose dusks wild beasts roared and spices filled the air were far back in another life for him; even the little trips to the Clyde were, in the regrets of memory, experiences most precious. Now he had to wear thick shoes on the hill of Maam or sweat like a common son of the shore in the harvest-fields. At night upon his pillow in the barn loft he would lie and mourn for unreturning days and loud and clamorous experience. Or at morning ere he started the work of the day he would ascend the little tulloch behind the house and look far off at a patch of blue—the inner arm of the ocean.
Nan found him in one of his cranky moods, fretful at circumstances, and at her father who kept him there on the shore, and had no word of another ship to take the place of the Jean. Of late he had been worse than usual, for he had learned that the master was bound for abroad, and though he was a sure pensioner so long as Maam held together, it meant his eternal severance from the sea and ships.
Nan threw herself upon the grass beside him as he twisted hay-bands for the stacks, and said no more than “Good afternoon” for a little.