The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  The butterfly arose and, drifting on in its careless, aggravating way, drew Finn after it. When it had passed from view over a bank, he ran his hardest to surprise it on the other side.

  And he so very nearly did that both his excitement and his anger increased.

  It was at that moment that death entered into his heart. He would kill the butterfly.

  His hair was dark and his eyes brown—if not so brown as his mother’s, and on his child’s skin—he was four and a half years of age—there was a faint flush of blood and guilt. So he had to keep going after the butterfly and away from home.

  He went on and on, round little bushes and under big boulders, and sometimes the grassy bank was so steep that he slid on his bottom and then his kilt came away up and he was all bare from the waist down. His kilt was crotal-brown for his mother had made it out of her old skirt, and his jersey, which Granny Kirsty had knitted, was brown, too. His feet and his legs were a delicate tan, and his head was bare. He had lost the butterfly altogether and here he was at the stream clawing his thigh where a flat prickly plant had stung him. He would have waited to attack the plant for stinging him if it hadn’t been for the butterfly and the guilt in his mind. He looked back up the slope to make sure that his mother wasn’t after him. She would be very angry. She said last time that she wouldn’t spank him that time, but that she would next time. This was next time.

  The butterfly wouldn’t wait when he cried “Wait” to it, and then it had made him fall, though he had meant no harm to it, and then it had run away. His expression became all the more sober for a queer self-conscious smile in it, and, standing still, picking at a bush, he looked up the brae again. When the wordless inner argument was concluded, he felt anger against his mother as well as against the butterfly. Whereupon he moved along the bank looking, with moody right, into the little pools.

  He saw a brown trout. He saw two, he saw three, and as he couldn’t count beyond three the next number he saw was eighteen. One big fellow went under a flat stone quite close to the edge on the other side, and where he went in the water was dirtied with brown stuff that rose up in a tiny cloud, so that you knew exactly where he was.

  It was a difficult business, crossing the burn, because of the jumps between the boulders, but by wading through the stream where it ran out of the pool, and hanging on to a boulder at the same time, he needn’t jump at all and the only real difficulty was keeping his feet on the slimy stones, they were so slippery. The water didn’t come right up his legs and he could lift his kilt with one hand. In the middle, however, when he let go the boulder behind him, he found he could neither go forward nor back, and stood swaying and slightly stooped. The small round stones under his feet wanted to slip away. If he moved, he would fall. The only thing left in the world to do was to cry for his mother, to cry loud, loud. But even while he was beginning to cry he took the step forward. The water came to his knees, he let go his kilt, and with a mighty effort lunged for the next boulder a whole foot away. His courage was rewarded and, hardly having cried to his mother at all, he drew himself out of that desperate spot, with its treacherous footing, and very soon was wading across the last shallow, with such carefree ease that he slipped and fell as neat as a penny on his bottom.

  At this, having run the gamut of the emotions in so short a time, he had full right to weep bitterly and angrily, but the flop had been so sudden and complete that its astonishment also made him want to laugh, and by the time he climbed on to the bank and found that no irreparable damage had been done, the uncertain sounds faded out altogether and he glanced around not displeased to find that his misadventure had passed unobserved.

  Now for that trout!

  He discovered, however, when he carefully surveyed the position, several natural obstacles of considerable, if not unsurmountable, difficulty. From the other side, the water above the stone had looked little more than up to the ankle, whereas now it was up to the knee. The ground sloped down into the centre of the pool, and though it was a little pool, it was deep as a bowl. Accordingly, if he slipped, he would surely be drowned. So he proceeded into the water with the utmost care, leaning sideways towards the bank as he tested each foothold. His kilt, which was sopping wet, became a great embarrassment, because he wanted to keep it from getting wet again. Holding the front part of it high up, he lowered himself slowly into a sitting-down posture. He began to wobble, and thus compelled to let the front of his kilt join the rest of it in the water, he was at once denied all further view of the stone.

  On the bank he stood squeezing the water from his kilt but looking at the stone. To tell the truth, he was also just a little afraid of the trout, for it was a monster of four inches and darted with a yellow gleam like lightning. Roddie had told him that a trout did not bite anything except worms, but that an eel would bite your finger as fast as look at you. Besides, to get his hand right down to the stone, he would wet all his jersey, and it was perhaps a little wet as it was.

  He would like to do something to that trout for wetting all his kilt on him. He would like to hit it a good hard wallop whatever. Casting around him (with a first glance in the direction of home), he saw a bunch of hazel trees growing nearby, with the young shoots, twice as long as himself, coming straight up out of the ground. If he got a stick and gave it one sharp prog under the stone! What a fright the trout would get, and maybe it would kill him! And then he would catch the trout and take it home and his mother … He glanced up, not too sure that his mother would forgive him even then, though he was taking food to the house.

  As he rounded the hazel trees a butterfly rose from his feet. He knew at once it was the same butterfly, by the way it flew, side to side and up and down, laughing at him. It was like a fool, the way it went. It settled; and slowly, without looking at it (except out of the very corner of his eye), he moved towards it, but not directly. He got within a few feet, but then could not restrain himself from rushing. The butterfly rose and danced on through the air, down the burnside.

  He followed it at once, without thought, because he had had by the pool for a moment a queer dread that his mother’s head and shoulders would rise large and menacing over the edge of the brae. If he went farther on then he would be hidden from that near horizon.

  The burn wound its way down between the steep braes, and sometimes he had to climb and sometimes to slide, but soon he came to a part he had never seen before, and then he knew he was safe from his mother’s eye.

  The uneasy, half-smiling expression on his face, he stopped to pick a grass and to chew it, looking cautiously around him at the same time. He had lost the butterfly and was not thinking about it. He was thinking of his mother and what she might do to him. She had no right to do that to him. She had not.

  He began to go on, away from home, away, away from that place where his mother was, in a strange mood that was near to tears and yet far from them.

  But the world itself was strange, too. There were grey rocks and great, green ferns, and in time he came to another little burn, and these two joined into one. He crossed it at a very shallow place because beyond it was the biggest wood he had ever seen, on a steep hillside, and no one would ever find him in that wood, though he himself could lie and watch and see who was coming. Perhaps his mother would come and she would be crying and crying, thinking he was drowned.

  The thought of her crying made him feel sorry for her, but it also did him a lot of good. He would be greatly missed.

  At that moment his eye landed on a tiny blue object poised on a primrose leaf. He was bending down to touch it when it took to the air. It was a small blue butterfly, the bonniest thing he had ever seen, and his eyes grew round in brightness and wonder. He ran after it in a rapture, but when he got up from his second fall it had vanished. Where did you go? Where? Where? He followed into the wood.

  Though the trees and bushes were not high, still they seemed high to him, and being in full foliage, he found that they shut out a view of the ground down by the stream. It was a bit
frightening in the wood, too, because the trees were still and had queer twisted shapes often. When he listened and tried to see past the trees, he could hear little birds singing, and once a rabbit gave him a fright.

  He could hardly have climbed up through the wood were it not for a narrow, slanting path used by sheep and cattle. This invited him on, and every step he took made it more difficult for him to go back; and though the going on terrified him under his heart, yet it also gave him the feeling of one fated to go away. Not that he was going away, away, yet, but—but near it; so near it that anyone else would think he was.

  Every few yards he stopped and nibbled and gazed about him, and occasionally his expression grew so self-conscious that someone might have been watching him; and once his face for a moment grew shyly merry in the most engaging way. Then he came back to thought of the blue butterfly, and craned round trunks, and stared at unusual shapes for a long time. Sometimes when he stared like that his round, shining-clear eyes would lift to a disturbed leaf without movement of his head, and when he went on a few paces he would slowly turn his head and look back as if he weren’t looking at the thing he had been staring at.

  There was something in this wood a little bit like what there was in the butterfly, only it was very much stronger than he was, just as he was stronger than the butterfly. Now and then the wood was like a thing whose heart had stopped, watching.

  This faint panic might in an instant turn to wild fear; but the instant never came, not quite. And the chequered sunlight was everywhere, full of an aromatic warmth, through which the notes of the little birds fell unafraid.

  All the same, when at last he saw he was getting near the top, he went on without stopping once, and would have been very tired had he not emerged and gazed down and around upon the whole world.

  He saw more houses than ever he had seen before, and one house—one house—seemed familiar and yet strangely small, and he could never have been certain it was his own home if he hadn’t seen black Jean and red Bel, the two milch cows, tethered beyond the house in the rough grass towards the burn. They were small also. Like a discoverer, he was proud and excited, and then had a great longing for the home he could see.

  But no one was about the house, neither his mother nor Granny Kirsty, and it looked indeed a dead and deserted house. It terrified him the way it lay. His breast became a conflict of many emotions.

  But whatever it was deep down that had possession of him now, he turned and walked away. And he went a little blindly, in great sadness, in pity for himself, and with a terrible longing for his mother that yet had in it something alien and withdrawn.

  At that moment he saw the white butterfly, the lovely thing that had lured him from his home.

  Like the gay fool it was, it flitted and poised, with the airiest inconsequence, until it settled on a green leaf and flattened its wings. When little Finn sat down, the up-curled edge of the leaf hid the butterfly from his view. On hands and knees he went slowly towards the leaf through the coarse old grass. He did not raise his head or rush the last yard. He had had his lesson more than once. From the grass he slowly lifted his right hand to the neàr edge of the leaf and then pounced, bringing the leaf and himself headlong into the grass, but with a wild fluttering under his palm, a mad flickering and tickling. He did not let go. He crushed, he crushed, and felt the butterfly break. Instantly he drew back his hand. His palm was covered with silvery dust. On the broken leaf the butterfly lay dead.

  He wiped his palm against his breast and looked around. Guilt was glittering in his eyes and congested in his face. He got up and went away, slowly at first, but then with steps that broke into a run. When he fell he gave a squawk, got up at once, and with a backward glance ran on. When he was out of sight of the spot he stopped. He had killed the butterfly. A smile struggled to come into his face; his eyes kept glancing brilliantly. He performed small acts of bravado, stamping down a bracken, kicking the grass. His mind was in a mounting tumult. He trod on his familiar prickly leaf and the tumult broke. Curled up in the grass, he wept and sobbed wildly, drenchingly, until he was completely exhausted.

  No-one came to him. He was all alone in the world. As he went slowly on, he saw a house up the slope to his left. He bore away, and when the collie dog barked from the gable-end he crouched under an overhanging bank peering round now and then at the dog. A woman came out and asked the collie what it was barking at, as if she were expecting someone. “You old fool,” she said to the collie, and went away. The dog sniffed the corner of the low wall in front of the house, scraped the ground, and growled; then turned after the woman.

  Some time after that he found himself on a small green field, with a hill in front and immense ruined walls running down from it. For the first time his loneliness came upon him in a great fear. He was so little that he could not run away and stood exposed in the centre of all the light in the world. As he tried to walk out of that field he felt great weights on his knees, but he got out of it, away from the walls, and round the corner of the hill. Here were high rocks with massive boulders at their feet shutting off the upland on his left hand. In front, a rolling field was cultivated. He thought first of going down one of the rigs, but he held to the base of the hill on his right, for there were no walls on this side, until he saw the river. His tiredness was now so heavy upon him that he began to whimper at sight of the river and could not go any farther. The whimpering filled all his mind so that he had not to think any more of what was going to happen to him. He lay down on his right side, pulled his knees up, and hid his face with his arms and hands, whimpering as into his mother’s bosom in the moment before sleep overtakes. The earth’s bosom was warm with the sun and soon little Finn was sound asleep.

  The sun woke him in its own time, and after a first bodily stirring his eyes opened and he remained dead still. Then his eyes roamed in slow wonder, widened with fear. For one terrible moment he was lost in the abyss of Nowhere, in a nightmare of sunlight and strange appearances. Vividly intense, it yet passed in an instant, and the world of memory stood in its place.

  He got to his feet and saw a man down by the river. For several seconds he could not move because he knew it was Roddie, and Roddie had stopped.

  Finn turned to go back along the base of the hill. Roddie called, “Is that you, Finn?”

  Finn did not answer, but kept on steadily. “Here, Finn!” Finn did not turn round, and when he knew that Roddie was coming after him he began to run.

  Roddie very soon overtook him, but whenever he caught him Firm began to struggle violently, saying, “Let me go! Let me go!”

  “But Finn, Finn, my little hero, where is it you’re going?”

  “Let me be!” and he twisted so fiercely that Roddie had to let him down lest he rupture himself.

  Crouched at Roddie’s feet, face to the grass, he refused to answer any questions.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s a nice way to treat a fellow,” said Roddie, sitting down beside him. “Anyway, aren’t you coming back home?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” said Roddie, “I didn’t know you were going away. But you haven’t got anything with you. You can’t go away without taking your packet of bread and milk, A man must do that or he can’t go at all. I’m going off to Helmsdale to-morrow morning and I’m going home now for my packet of bread and milk. You wouldn’t like to go to Helmsdale, would you? That’s a long way off, if you like; over the sea, beyond the mountains, across the Ord. I have been getting my boat ready. You can see the spots of tar on my hands, if you look. Look!”

  Finn turned his face just far enough to see the splotches of tar on Roddie’s fingers and palms.

  Shortly after that Finn was walking with his hand in Roddie’s. Roddie had promised to take him in his boat, saying Finn would be a great help to him, especially if he was a little older.

  But when they came to the place where the two burns met and Finn realized he was drawing near home, he hung back upon Roddie’s hand. Roddie talked persuas
ively, but Finn tugged strongly.

  “Look!” said Roddie. “Look! there’s ‘God’s fool’ watching you.”

  Finn saw the butterfly and stared. His body went all stiff.

  “Did you never see one before?” asked Roddie. “There’s often one or two of them about here. If you come with me——”

  “No!” screamed Finn. “No!”

  Roddie, squatting, put his hands round him, but Finn, losing his head in his violence, beat Roddie in the face, screaming wildly.

  “Tut, tut, tut,” said Roddie, throwing back his face, “what a fighter you are! Surely you are not frightened of a little thing like God’s fool. God’s fool would never hurt anyone.”

  “No,” screamed Finn, “not God’s fool, it’s—it’s grey fool.” And he stamped the ground and again blindly attacked Roddie.

  Roddie wondered for a moment, for though the real name of the butterfly was God’s fool (amadan-De), and though it was also called grey fool (amadan-leitb), still the distinction should merely have interested little Finn, and certainly not have produced this frenzy. Then his eyes were arrested, and he said to Finn, “Hsh, here’s someone coming.”

  But the thought of anyone’s coming only made Finn worse, and he screamed louder than ever, refusing even to look, for an intimacy in the hush of Roddie’s voice communicated the awful fear that the person coming was his mother.

  Catrine stopped, her hand to her heart in the characteristic gesture, then she came running. She never looked at Roddie, her deep-brown eyes round and wild, her face pale, as if she had been a long time with ghosts. She snatched up little Finn, one arm under his damp kilt and one round his shoulders, pressing him against her breast. He struggled, but his struggles had no meaning, no outlet. “My darling, my own one,” she murmured passionately, and put about him in no time such a smothering atmosphere of love and endearment, that his struggles grew tired, and even his weeping fell away into snorts and hiccoughs. But he could hardly afford to give up this tremulous weeping even if he had been able (which indeed he wasn’t), because all else was lost to him except the knowledge that his mother should have been angry and spanked him, and instead here she was loving him. But at any moment she might remember and change. To be spanked before Roddie was now a terror beyond all others. Thus his position was very complicated and pitiful, and its sad desperation broke in his throat.