The Key of the Chest

by Neil M. Gunn

  This quiet, intuitive understanding anticipated the minister’s words. But there was a realm in their mind, too, where they wondered more curiously what the minister might say touching certain things, and as they stood there listening, their hats lifted and held a little above the head in the traditional manner, a pair of eyes would now and then, out of a far-away stare, as the body shifted its balance, suddenly focus on the face of Charlie or of Dougald for a moment, before going on into distance again.

  That the minister had command of the occasion, they also felt deep in their understanding. They were aware of the power of the man who knows and who will fashion his subject out of words with the inevitable assurance and proportion which the joiner, in his humbler craft, displays with a piece of wood.

  But the minister did not refer to Dougald or Charlie directly. What he did do, with vivid metaphor, was draw the picture of human life on its storm-tossed sea. We were all in that ship. Glimpses of the ship were caught, not on any sea, but on the sea they knew, and the ship was the ship that had foundered. The minister drew his picture with sure strokes, giving the void shape and the suggestion of more dreadful shape, so that though it was their sea it was at the same time that other sea. They saw the ship in the black night and in the roar of the storm. They heard the seamen cry, and the seamen were themselves. Valiantly the seamen fought the terrible dangers by which they were encompassed. As brothers they fought. For there is no other way to fight, no other way, when hell has let loose its hosts and destruction roars out of its brazen throat. Then is the last, the ultimate, moment, in which faith, faith in man and faith in God, is the only light left in the darkness. To that faith they cling, to that lighthouse. Here is a trust that cannot be betrayed. For that trust to be betrayed would make of life a vile treachery, and of death a hideous mockery. The minister’s eyes were shut, for this was the prayer to God in the presence of the dead, but as he spoke of the betrayal of trust he lifted his blind face to the sky and his words travelled into the regions of the air and far across the histories of mankind even unto the beginning of the world. And even in the beginning of the world there was a man who betrayed his brother, mocking the work of God, and God set a sign on his brow. And we remember that, and come as men who are brothers unto this seaman, and take him among us as one of ourselves, as one who strove greatly to bring his ship and his companions to land, as we, too, would hope to have striven, and we would commend him and all his brother seamen to God’s infinite mercy, as we ourselves hope to be commended, when, in a short time, our ship founders in the darkness, even as theirs.

  A great stillness had come upon the men.

  After the minister in his final words had asked for divine comfort upon the hearts of the women and children who would presently sorrow in distant lands, he opened his eyes and looked upon the world, and the men were delivered from their visions. As they observed the minister’s eyes steady, they turned their own and saw, near them, Mr. Sandeman and his guest standing with their hats by their sides.

  There was a little pause, then the coffin was lifted and borne into the cemetery.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Well, I’m only telling you what my wife said,’ replied Norman. ‘The nurse was up calling on the policeman’s wife and it’s from the nurse my wife got it. There will be no trial, no case.’

  Smeorach’s eyes broke their distant look. ‘Her news is good indeed. It’s me that’s glad to hear it. It’s a weight lifted off this place.’

  They were silent for a little.

  ‘It was an extraordinary business altogether,’ said William, the jovial one, solemnly. ‘And I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Who did?’ asked Smeorach, his bright eyes on the fire.

  ‘For myself,’ said Norman, ‘I never had any belief in it at all. And it’s the great pity it was ever spoken of.’

  ‘Have you seen Charlie lately?’ asked Murdo.

  ‘No,’ replied Norman. ‘Not since I walked beside him the day we took the remains from Sgeir.’

  ‘Has anyone seen any of the brothers?’ asked Smeorach.

  No one had seen them for a fortnight. But the boy Hamish stirred. ‘I saw Dougald one day,’ he said.

  They all looked at him.

  ‘When?’ asked William.

  ‘Last Saturday,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near Loch Geal.’

  ‘What were you doing out there?’ asked Norman, his uncle.

  Hamish looked self-conscious.

  ‘Never you mind what he was doing,’ said William. ‘Did you get any?’

  ‘One or two,’ admitted Hamish.

  ‘Och och,’ said Smeorach, who was fond of a trout, ‘and you never as much as asked an old man whether he had a mouth on him.’

  This was a relief to the dark tangle of their thoughts.

  ‘It’s you I was thinking of,’ admitted Hamish.

  William laughed. ‘I always had an excuse myself,’ he said.

  ‘What were you fishing with?’ asked Norman.

  Hamish remained silent.

  ‘Did it work?’ asked William.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hamish.

  ‘If you are trying to tell me that you were working an otter—’

  ‘Who’s trying to tell you?’ William interrupted Norman.

  ‘Go on, Hamish.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Norman. ‘But Mr. Sandeman has the fishing rights. It’s his land. We don’t want any trouble from him.’

  ‘Who’s talking of trouble?’ asked William largely. ‘Have you forgotten what it is to be a boy yourself?’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Norman.

  ‘When you’ve finished talking, maybe Hamish will tell me why he didn’t bring me a trout,’ said Smeorach.

  ‘They weren’t very good,’ said Hamish, in a low confused voice. He was clearly vexed he had spoken.

  ‘How that?’ asked Smeorach, in his bright friendly tones.

  ‘Because—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When I got hold of the first one, he was black and slimy and the milt squirted out of him.’

  ‘Did it now? It would, indeed. Of course. Of course.’ He nodded. ‘It was a bit late. What a pity!’

  They smiled at Smeorach’s genuine tone of regret.

  As the questioning began again Hamish flushed slightly. He was nearly twelve, with dark hair and intelligent eyes. The eyes glanced hither and thither and looked down. Clearly he had had a story to tell. Norrie sat closer to him, also looking down. They were inseparable companions.

  ‘If they ran into Dougald,’ said Smeorach, ‘it wasn’t because they didn’t keep a look-out. I’ll be bound for that. Am I not right, Hamish?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hamish. ‘We were watching. But he was there before us.’

  ‘And you never saw him?’

  ‘No.’ Hamish’s eyes lifted. ‘I nearly walked on him.’

  They all waited in complete silence.

  ‘You couldn’t tell him,’ muttered Hamish, excusing himself, ‘from the hillside.’

  Smeorach’s face exhibited fabulous appreciation. ‘His whiskers like the dead bracken, and his homespun like the rock.’ It sounded like a line of poetry in his mouth.

  William began to laugh. A bit of the dead moor rose astonishingly into life. The latch clicked and a man entered Smeorach’s cottage.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ he asked Smeorach, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Young Hamish here was telling us a little story. What’s your news? Sit down, Ian. Sit down.’

  ‘Not that much news,’ said Ian, the smile twisting the left side of his mouth.

  They all looked at the twist and waited.

  ‘It was Kenneth Grant,’ said Ian. ‘A few of us were having a talk about the October sheep sales. Kenneth said that Charlie went south to-day.’

  ‘You mean he’s left the place?’ asked William.

  ‘Well, as to that, who can say? for Kenneth did not see him himself. But he was i
n his best clothes and he was carrying a bag.’

  ‘I thought it would come to that,’ said Norman in a sudden downright voice. ‘I thought it would drive him out.’

  ‘Did you?’ challenged William. ‘That’s not what you said before.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Norman calmly. ‘I was hoping that his pride would hold him. But I feared it.’

  ‘A man must do what he feels he has to do,’ said Murdo.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Norman. ‘But he often does what he is driven to do – and not always by himself.’

  ‘Who drove him?’ asked William.

  ‘All of us,’ said Norman in his steady sea voice. ‘The doctor, then the Fiscal, then the minister putting the mark of Cain on his brow. Then the silence of ourselves.’ I

  ‘Would you dispute what the doctor found?’ asked Murdo.

  ‘Whatever the doctor found,’ said Norman, ‘and I’m saying nothing against him, for he’s a good doctor and a reasonable man, whatever he found it was not enough for the Fiscal to lay a case against Charlie. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You cannot blame yourself like that, Norman,’ said Smeorach thoughtfully. ‘No, no.’

  ‘No?’ said Norman, a sardonic note creeping into his voice.

  ‘No,’ said Smeorach. The old man shook his head. ‘You liked Charlie.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It is the highest reason.’ Smeorach’s old thin voice was gentle.

  ‘We should have done something,’ persisted Norman, but with a remoteness in his manner.

  ‘What?’ asked Murdo. Norman did not answer. William shifted his eyes from him. There was silence.

  ‘I did not like it,’ said Norman, speaking out of his mood and the remoteness. ‘When the funeral was over, no one spoke to the two brothers, and they walked away, and they did not walk together.’

  Smeorach raised his head, looked at Norman, and asked,

  ‘What could you have said?’

  ‘I could at least have spoken to Charlie.’

  ‘But you did not speak because you were shy of entering upon him. And the moment passed. That moment,’ added Smeorach, ‘always passes.’

  Fate stood quiet as an alien fisherman among them. Then Norman stirred.

  ‘He was a seaman,’ he said.‘And in all the traditions of the sea, no seaman behaved – in that way. On the land, a man will behave after his nature. But in the danger of the sea – it is different.’

  Silence added the words that were left unspoken, drawing the images that swelled into focus even as they passed away. Like images in the night, in the night of a storm. Or like those more intense images of the daylight, a daylight translated by the eyes of the mind. And they did not walk together.

  In that leave-taking, in that laborious parting from the grave, when the breath has grown stale in the breast and the Sunday clothes are stiff about the body, one or two drift slowly off together, and another one or two, and a quiet word is spoken, and all drift away up to the public road. But Dougald has turned to the moor, to the trackless way, and Charlie, after standing for a little alone, undecided and swaying in his bitter thought, a glitter in the switch of his eyes, turns and follows him.

  From the highway, as they return on foot to Cruime, with the joiner’s cart among them, and while they talk about everyday things, weather and labour and the prospects for the harvest, eyes now and then look over a shoulder at the moor and behold the two figures, ever growing smaller, but ever apart, Charlie following Dougald as in some strange but ominous compulsion. This picture haunts Norman.

  Even little Hamish, though he was not there, sees something of it, for every word that Norman had used came from him with its burden on its back. But his own haunting picture is more vivid, and he had perhaps tried to get rid of it by telling it to grown men who might laugh, for it had twice held him in the cramp of a nightmare. It was that moment when he had nearly stepped on Dougald, and Dougald, like a piece of the earth, had moved. Had he not been looking over his shoulder, looking into the distance – for how could danger be at his very feet? – he might have seen Dougald earlier. The homespun like the outcrop of rock; the beard like the dead bracken. That appalling moment when the thing moved, when the heart leapt and weakness went down the legs like a flush of warm water. That was the moment which nightmare chose.

  And under all their images, pervasive as an ancestral memory, the crime that had been committed.

  Crime.

  Norman could not come out of his mood.

  When they had all gone, Smeorach sat by his fire, warming his thin hands. The fire that had once shown the pink of blood between the fingers showed now but the grey skin.

  The fingers moved and shut themselves and opened and shut, in a dry hiss, trying to gather warmth.

  It was as well Charlie had gone.

  The two brothers, shut within four narrow walls, the two of them, and no word spoken upon the living air.

  There is a limit to what may be borne by mortal man. There is the other limit to what he may do – the final and fatal act.

  Smeorach lifted his eyes to the blind window, and it seemed to him that life was all shadows, and the movement of shadows, and blindness, and had no meaning, and when you hearkened for its sound, it had no sound.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As Flora came down the stairs, the cairn terrier started his dance in the hall. Usually she quietened his mad excitement, but to-day she said, ‘Going for a walk?’ At this, in one of his wild turns, he collided with the hat-stand. Walking-sticks and umbrellas rattled so fiercely that he lost his head altogether and barked with a rapid splitting sharpness.

  The study door opened behind her. ‘Be quiet, Fraoch!’ she commanded, turning the knob of the half-glass door, through which he shot as from a catapult. She closed the door carefully without looking round, and walked out.

  She was dressed in brown tweed, brown brogues, and a plain brown felt hat with its brim tilted slightly over her right temple. The colour in her smooth face shone flower-fresh in the westering sun. The flush, indeed, seemed to have invaded her eyes, filling them for the moment with too deep a light.

  She walked along the pathway that went through the trees directly to the west, and her body had the straightness and grace of a young tree. Her feet were long, like her hands, and she moved with a flowing healthy stride.

  A smile of innocent cunning touched her features, for Fraoch had disappeared in the other direction. She was in

  full sight now, as she knew, of the study window. Fraoch might rush on half a mile before discovering his mistake. This path that led on to the Ros had been avoided so long that his mistake was understandable. But she did not turn round. She would not turn round until she reached the stile and the manse was hidden.

  She knew her father would be standing in his dark clothes looking out of the window. Perhaps standing back a little from the window. Perhaps not. Just as this path to the west had never been expressly forbidden, yet had been forbidde

  She heard the rushing Fraoch behind her, saw him shoot past, whirl, come dashing up and whirl once more. She spoke to him and he barked. She kept speaking to him and he barked out of his delirious happiness. He tried the fence recklessly but could not manage it. Afraid he would hurt himself, she ran up. He could hardly wait to be caught. As she lifted him in her arms, he wildly licked her face though he was in a desperate hurry. His tongue was very wet.

  ‘Foo!’ she said, twisting her face away. The two steps on each side of the stile were narrow slats on simple uprights. To save herself she had to let his wriggling body go before she had quite got her leg over. She grabbed wildly at the hand-post, caught it, was swung round off her balance, and fell with a choked cry on the other side.

  Fraoch, who had landed on his feet, flattened his front legs, lowering his head over them, watchful for the next move in the game.

  Flora sat up and looked about her and back at the trees which screened the house. Pain twisted her face. Slowly she rubbed her haunch bone.
A fleck of blood was on her right wrist where it had grazed the fence. She knew there was nothing broken. As the stunning pain ebbed, she sat where she was, suddenly tired, not caring about getting up. Her eyes filled. She began to cry.

  Fraoch’s head, still on his paws, cocked sideways a little, then slowly lifted. His legs straightened. His tail wagged uncertainly and well down. Once more his head slewed, ears very erect, as he considered her out of his deep brown eyes. Then, nodding, lips curling back, needle-sharp teeth showing in a laugh, he advanced, his whole body twisting unnaturally, towards her knees.

  Her left hand lay dead. He licked it. The hand rose and went round him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she said, ‘whether we go this way or not.’

  She wept now heavily like a beaten and defeated child. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  Her words released the flood of tears and her sobs choked her. Fraoch tried for her face and she pushed him away. He began to whine in thin bat-like cries.

  ‘Nothing matters,’ she said, and her long full body writhed slowly, the convulsion moving upward in a wave. ‘Oh,’ she moaned, her mouth lifted at last. Her blinded face fell away from the sky. She stuck a knuckle in her mouth, began breathing heavily, choking the next uprush of feeling. Desperately resisting the impulse to throw herself face down on the grass, she staggered to her feet.

  For a moment she stared wildly, as at something invisible approaching her, then, gulping and sniffing still, she began methodically putting herself right. There was no one about. There was no need to hurry.

  Fraoch gave a small yelp, hardly a bark. She looked at him and a smile struggled into her face. She wiped her eyes and smoothed her cheeks; she wiped her nose and tucked her handkerchief away.

  For a little while, as they continued their walk, Fraoch restricted his circling movements, returning every now and then to make sure that all was well, but at last he got a real scent and life found its true purpose in a race with the invisible.