by Neil M. Gunn
“Have you no Gaelic?” inquired the old man in that tongue.
“Yes,” said Finn, flushing slightly.
“I’ll show you where it is, for I’m going that way,” and as they went along he questioned Finn.
But Finn was now very unwilling to tell anything about himself or his message, as if by so doing he might let the enemy in on him. The old man did not seem in the least scared of his company. Perhaps in a town, thought Finn, folk were given to asking questions in order to get from one place to another.
“No, it’s not for ourselves,” replied Finn, “it’s for another woman, and I’m just on a message.”
“Did you say it was Lybster you came from?” The small dark eyes were quick and curious.
“No, it’s farther back a bit. Will the doctor be in, do you think?”
“It’ll be Dunster, then. I know the turn of your speech, I was in it once myself, but that was long ago. Well, well. And you have come all that way! Have you many cases of the trouble there?”
“No, not many,” said Finn. “Do you think the doctor will be in?”
“If he’s not, he will be some time. You look a fine, healthy lad yourself, and long may you be that way.”
They came upon houses all stuck together on both sides of the road, with such a press of hurrying people that Finn became confused and self-conscious. The little old man stopped at last. “There’s your door. Only two or three cases in Dunster, you say?”
“Yes, thank you very much,” said Finn. After all, he was a friendly little man, with his bright, curious eyes, and perhaps so old that he had nothing to do but wonder about death.
As Finn knocked on the door with his knuckles, after a glance at the brass knocker, everything went from his mind but a quivering half-fearful intensity. No-one came to the door. People passed, seeing him standing there. He did not know what to do and felt his body going stiff and queer. The door suddenly opened and a young woman, dressed in dark clothes, with a very white cap on her head, white cuffs, and a small white apron, did not come forward but stood aloofly regarding him. Fortunately, he had his words ready: “Is the doctor in?”
“No.”
The rest of his words got scattered.
“Div ye want t’ see him?”
“Yes, please.”
“He’s expeckit back in an ’oor’s time.”
“When will he be home?” asked Finn, realizing that his English was fabulous.
Her eyes narrowed upon him slightly but with humour. He had such a soft, pleasant voice, and his dark eyes were shy and frightened of her. “I said in aboot an ’oor’s time.”
Finn now felt desperate. “I want to see him, about my mother.”
“Fat’s ’e name?”
“Finn,” he answered.
She smiled now.
“Far d’ye come fae?”
“Yes, it is a long way,” replied Finn.
She gave a little laugh. Finn reddened, body and mind in an agony. An elderly woman’s voice called within.
“Come back in wan ’oor,” said the girl.
Suddenly he understood. “Thank you. I am much obliged to you, M’am.”
She was barely seventeen, and he was tall enough to be as old himself. As she closed the door, her eyes threw him a mischievous glance.
When he had separated his head from his heels, he found himself approaching the harbour and soon got so lost in the immense concourse of folk who paid no attention to him that his self-assurance slowly filtered back. He tried not to gape, but his astonishment was very great, particularly at the number of shops and business premises, with their names in big lettering. Once he was caught in a crush of folk in a narrow street and had his bare toes trampled by a seaman’s boots. The high tumult of voices speaking and shouting and laughing all at once frightened him, but fascinated him, too. Such a scene his imagination had never pictured. But the harbour itself stopped his breath.
Great stone walls, endless yards and cooperages, immense stacks of barrels, the smell of brine, long wooden jetties, the clanking of hammers, the loud rattling of wheels, warning yells and the cracking of whips, herring-guts, clouds of screaming gulls, women in stiff, rustling skirts, and everywhere men and boats. This was Wick, easy mistress of all the herring fisheries. Her population at the moment was increased by thousands of strangers, not only from Moray Firth ports like Buckie but from faraway townships of the Hebrides.
By nature Finn would have wished to escape from that tumultuous and even terrifying place—a solitary life could easily get crushed and lost without slackening the onset—were it not for his love of the sea. The harbour basin drew him, and for a time he wandered by the boats, doing his best to note and memorize any peculiarities of construction or colour so that he might have something to discuss with Roddie.
But all this time at the back of his mind was the tremulous fear of going again to the doctor’s door. Suddenly he felt he would be too late and hurried away from the harbour. Now, however, he could not find the door. He had lost his way. But the first man he asked told him where to go and—there was the door.
He never told what an heroic effort it cost him to go to that door. From lack of sleep and food and a journey of well over thirty miles on his bare feet, a dragging came to his legs and a prickly heat of weakness to his forehead. But his real terror was lack of English. It was so clear now that Mr. Gordon did not speak in the right way. Sick at heart, but with that frail determination that would not have given in to death, he lifted his hand and knocked.
She smiled, raising her eyebrows in recognition. “He hesna come in yet, but if ye’d care to wait?” She stood aside, and more in answer to her action than her words, he entered.
After an hour in a small waiting-room, with several men and women, all anxious and ill at ease, Finn experienced an increasing light-headedness, and grew afraid he would fall off the chair. Sometimes they spoke to one another, but mostly they sat looking at the door, waiting for the girl to come and call one of them. If only he could have had a long drink of cold water! He grew restless, and an elderly woman asked him if he had come far. “Oh, a little bit,” said Finn, smiling but not looking at her. He tried to shut the dumb anxiety of the room, its veiled talk of suffering and sickness, out of mind. He had never conceived life as an imprisoned illness, a closed room. The fear that he might choke and fall off the chair and make a fool of himself started small internal tremors. He sent his thought over the moor, into the wandering wind. The door opened and the girl looked at him.
“Mister Finn,” she said, smiling only in her eyes.
He got up too quickly and staggered a step, but gained the door. As she closed it behind her, she looked at him critically. His hands were twisting his round bonnet. She took the bonnet from him. “We’ll leave it here,” she said, and gave him a smile as if she were one of the girls at home. It was the sensible smile of an ally. As she turned the knob, she kept her face sideways towards him. “Mister Finn,” she announced, and then in the friendliest whisper, “in ye go.” If she had given him a push behind, it would not have surprised him.
The smell of the surgery cleared Finn’s lungs sharply. When he had completed his note, the doctor looked up into Finn’s face. “Well?”
“Sir, I have come from Dunster. My mother is in a house with the plague. I thought you might tell me what to do to keep the plague from her.”
“Have you walked the whole way?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor got up. “Sit down there.” He went over to a white basin near the window and came back with a glass of cold water. “Drink that. You’ll be feeling thirsty after such a long walk. Drink it slowly.”
He turned away and did not appear to hear the clink of Finn’s teeth on the glass, nor did he see how the glass shook in Finn’s hand as he set it down on the edge of the desk. All of which comforted Finn, while the water went down into his stomach like a cool, strengthening rod.
“Now, let me see,” said the doctor, looking
up from the note he had written, in so natural a way that Finn did not feel frightened of him. “Why did you think of coming to see me?”
“We heard you were the special doctor for the trouble.”
“You did?” The doctor touched his top lip with the tip of his tongue thoughtfully. “I see. Well, I will try to help you if I can.”
Finn felt a great inrush of confidence, not only because the doctor said he would help him but, more immediately, because the doctor spoke the same kind of English as Mr. Gordon, and spoke it slowly and distinctly.
When Finn was stuck for a word, the doctor found it for him, but casually. Finn, however, could not tell him in what stage of the cholera his Granny was.
“And your mother is still with your Granny, nursing her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Is she doing anything to try to keep the trouble away from herself?”
“She will be washing her hands and her face and she has saltwater for the feet from a man.”
“Has she?” The doctor’s face brightened. “Who is this man?”
“He’s a shoemaker, but he also does the doctoring.”
The doctor smiled. “Tell me——” But he was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Come in!” The door opened and a man’s head appeared.
“I’m sorry if I——”
“Come in. Here’s a young man who has walked thirty miles to see you. Your fame has spread!”
The new-comer looked quickly at Finn, and the doctor, getting to his feet, began explaining. They drifted to the window.
“I wanted to see you before going to Thurso. I’m off in an hour,” said the new-comer, speaking quickly. “Whisky, whisky, and if it’s not whisky it’s smuggled brandy! Is this the universal specific up here? We’ll have to wean them off that. I am more than ever satisfied that in the treatment of the preliminary diarrhoea—they will call it ‘the dysentery’!—the combination of calomel and Dover’s powders is the thing. I have now tested the calomel and opium separately and combined—definitely not so good. And if you want to keep your fishing going, we must get the people to understand that diarrhoea is not cholera—though it may become cholera if not treated properly and at once. This is very important and we must get it noised abroad. Give the powders and stop the number of stools, then a damn’ good sweat and they’ll be all right. Let your anxious fish-curers put that around if they want to go on making money! And if only at the same time they could tell them about ventilation—at any and every stage. But the marquee should be an object lesson there. The whole thing arises out of uncleanliness and lack of proper sanitary arrangements. I am convinced——”
“I wonder!” interrupted the doctor. “I admit that in a place like Wick the thousands of incomers have congested living conditions beyond all reason, but in the country, where they’re dying in scores, living conditions are as they’ve always been. And the people are over all a strong, healthy crowd——”
“Yes, yes, but I mean once you introduce the infection. However, we’ll argue that again! But I’m particularly optimistic at the moment because the Cormack case is reacting favourably. He was blue, cold, no pulse, and senseless, and now he’s pulling round under the compound decoction sarsaparilla. You’re taking notes? Grand! I’m going to do the pamphlet along the lines of the four stages: premonitory, cold stage, collapse, typhoid stage….”
While this talk was going on, Finn kept his attention to the table beside him so that it might not appear he was rudely listening. There was a white slip of paper on this table, under his eyes, containing the following writing:
Calomel, grs. 20;
Pulv. Doveri, grs. 15 to 20;
——Gum Kino, dim. ½;
——Catechu, scr. 1;
——Cretæ Comp. drm. 1;
Powders, 12.
As Finn could make no sense of this “English”, he was again being troubled by the greatness of his ignorance, when the specialist suddenly exclaimed: “But Lord, I must run and you’re busy! Give this boy the powders and keep a record of what happens. Results in country cases may be interesting.” He paused and looked at Finn on his way to the door. “Have you seen your mother treating the case?”
The doctor was about to intervene, when Finn said hesitatingly, “I saw her burying something in a hole.”
“Did you? What was it?”
“I thought it was stuff from—from my Granny.”
“Was it? By God, she seems an intelligent woman!”
Finn thought none the less of the specialist because he took God’s name in vain. The doctor said, “I’m going to hand him over to my wife. They can tear the tartan between them.” And, after taking leave of the specialist who had come into the county to study the disease, this he did.
She was about the age of Finn’s mother, graceful in her movements, with a slow, pleasant smile, and at the sound of her voice, he felt shy to respond, his own Gaelic, before he spoke, being harsh in his mind. But she led him to describe his home, and what had happened, and how he had walked through the night at his own impulse. In a short time she had him almost at his ease.
She left the room and returned with two packets of powders and began explaining to him how they were to be taken, how often, and when. “This packet here is for your Granny—because her case is advanced. I’ll write ‘Granny’ on it. And this is for your mother—and, remember, she must take the powders at the very first signs of the dysentery. If it is not very bad, she’ll take one about every two hours. But if it’s very bad, she’ll take one every half-hour. Now let me hear if you have got that right?”
Finn repeated her instructions correctly.
She then told him about bathing the feet in warm saltwater, the importance of raising a good sweat, the need for fresh air inside the house, and other simple precautions.
“When the trouble is gone from the house, your mother must burn all the dirtied clothes. If the clothes are too good to burn, she must boil them in the big iron pot for at least two hours. You understand? Then you’ll take all the furniture outside, everything, and leave it for two or three days to air. Then you’ll scrub out every corner and whitewash the walls. Only in that way can you be sure of getting rid of the trouble, so that anyone coming into the house will not catch it. Have you got that?”
But Finn could not answer. A brightness was in his eyes. “Do you mean,” he asked, with a slight gulp, “do you mean—we won’t have to burn down the house?”
“You won’t,” she said, and the slow, lovely smile came to her face.
“Mother will be glad of that.” He flushed and began repeating her instructions.
She complimented him. “And now, won’t you need a rest before you start back?”
“Oh, no, M’am. I’ll be going now.”
“You’ll have something to eat, and then we’ll see.”
“I’ll be going now, if you would not mind.” He wanted to be off, running. But he did not wish to appear rude. He felt awkward, standing and smiling, the precious packets gripped in his hands. As she remained silent, looking at him, his awkwardness increased, for his eyes were anywhere but on her face. “I’ll take the coast road back, and that’s much shorter. I won’t be long.”
“What road did you come?”
He explained how he had taken the roundabout way through the moors to Watten. From there he could have gone either to Thurso or Wick. In this way he was letting her see how sensible he was. He had heard in Watten that the doctor was more likely to be in Wick.
She got up abruptly and left the room, and his heart sank. He must have been rude. Perhaps it was even a greater rudeness here than at home not to accept hospitality, particularly when on a journey. Distress got hold of him. He would do anything for this woman or the doctor, the most desperate thing. Why was she not coming back? What would he do? Perhaps she was telling the doctor! As he began to stow away the two packets, he suddenly paused and regarded them with dismay. It might not have occurred to him that he would have to pay for the docto
r’s advice, but these real powders …!
The door opened and she entered with a smile.
“Here is a packet of sandwiches for the road, seeing you cannot stay for a meal. I quite understand your hurry to be home.”
He accepted the sandwiches but remained in an intense awkwardness, making no effort to move. “I forgot,” he said in a low voice, “that—that—I forgot—I have no money.” Then he raised his face and looked past her. She saw that his teeth were shut against the movement of his features. “We have money,” he said, “at home. I—I’ll come back to-morrow.”
She looked as if she might walk out abruptly again, but the doctor appeared in the doorway and glanced at his wife’s eyes. Her mouth gave a humoured twist that he knew, and she remarked, “He forgot all about money. He says he will walk back to-morrow with it.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Good God,” he said. “Haven’t I told you the soft disease your folk will die of? Tell him,” he added, with a wry humour, “that we usually send a bill.” He turned to Finn and stretched out his hand. “Good-bye. If you save your mother, it’ll cost you nothing.” And away he went.
Then she ctretched out her hand. Finn called on his last resources, looked at her eyes, and thanked her. After that he did not see anything very distinctly, until Wick was behind him.
CHAPTER XIII
ORDEAL BY PLAGUE
When Catrine heard the ghost-voice calling “Mother”, she turned her head and saw her son’s face, ghostly enough, in the dim night-light. He came to within a few yards of her and stopped.
