Far Horizons (6 page)

“What shall we read, then?” she asked Eleanor as she sat on the edge of her bed. Eleanor smiled and held out the already worn copy of
The History of Little Henry and His Bearer
, an adventure story set in India written by the ever-popular Mary Martha Sherwood. “Again?” Harriet asked, amused. “You’ve read it a dozen times at least. She must write something new for you to read.”

“New books hardly ever come this way,” Eleanor said, and Harriet nodded her agreement. Any book besides the Bible was a precious thing indeed on the island, or even in all of Western Scotland.

“Well, it’s a good story, at least,” she said with a smile. “I suppose we could read it a few more times.” She opened the book and began to read. “Henry L-- was born at Dinapore, in the East Indies...”

After half an hour or so Harriet saw Eleanor’s eyelids start to flutter and she closed the book. “Sleep, I think.”

“Very well.” Eleanor rested her chin on top of her knees, gazing at her sister with sleepy yet thoughtful eyes. “Are you very sad, now that Allan is gone?”

Harriet traced the embroidered design on the counterpane with one finger. She couldn’t quite meet her little sister’s eyes, for she did not want Eleanor to see the sorrow shadowed there. “A bit.”

“Is that all?” Eleanor wrinkled her nose. “I thought you loved him.”

“I do.” Harriet took a breath and managed a smile. “I hope to marry him one day.”

“I heard you at dinner as well as anybody!” Eleanor smiled in knowing delight before a frown wrinkled her brow and shadowed her eyes. “But then where will you live? Not in the New Scotland, surely?”

“Would that be so terrible?” Harriet asked lightly. “I know the Indians can be frightening, but--”

“Indians!” Eleanor waved one hand in contemptuous dismissal. “I’m not scared of them. But it’s so far away.” She paused, her hazel eyes as clear as a rain puddle. “I don’t suppose you would take me with you?”

“Oh, Eleanor.” Harriet’s heart ached at the seriousness of her sister’s question. She realized she couldn’t envision leaving for the new world--a new life--without either Eleanor or Ian. Yet if she married Allan, she surely would, unless her father agreed to emigrate as well and she could hardly see that happening. The only way he would leave Achlic Farm was in a coffin. “You’d miss Father too much,” she finally said with a smile, but Eleanor was not swayed.

“I’d miss you far more! Why won’t take me with you?” Eleanor’s lip trembled, even though her clear hazel eyes still gazed at Harriet directly, making it impossible for her to dissemble

“Ah, Ellie.” Harriet gathered her sister in her arms and kissed the top of her head. “Allan may not even return, you know.”

“He only left yesterday. You can’t be doubting him already!” Eleanor sounded so indignant, Harriet had to chuckle even though there was some painful truth to her words.

“I don’t think we should worry about something so far away,” she said softly. Her heart felt heavy as she released Eleanor, smoothing her hair back from her brow. “It will be years yet before he returns.”

“I’ll keep you company,” Eleanor promised, “till then.”

“I know you will.” As Harriet left the room, she felt a pang of something akin to fear. How could she ever leave her sister, her family? They needed her more than anyone... perhaps more than Allan did. She’d been thinking so much of losing Allan, she had not considered what she might lose here. Troubled, she frowned as she left the warmth and comfort of her sister’s bedroom for the dishes and darning downstairs.

It was only later, when Eleanor, Ian and Rupert were settled for the night, that Harriet once again allowed herself the luxury of private thought, and dreams. She reached for her shawl as Margaret looked up from her embroidery, her eyebrows raised in question. “You’re not going out at this hour?”

“It’s still light.” Harriet shrugged. “I like to walk on an evening.”

Margaret smiled. “I prefer the morning. Go on, then. I’ll keep the peace here.”

Although it was ten o’clock, the sun had not yet set. A soft purple twilight was falling, and the air was cool and still.

Harriet found herself following the path she and Allan had taken yesterday, to Duart. Her mind roamed restlessly over the words in Allan’s letter, as well as the words they’d spoken between them in this very place.

She thought of her father, yet her resentment was dulled by a sudden thought. If David Campbell had not stood in the way, would she have gone? Could she have left all she’d known--Eleanor and Ian--for a life apart and strange?

Not yet, she realised painfully, not yet. She was not ready. Not with Eleanor still so young and tender, and her father seeming more grim and dour with each passing day. They needed her... all of them, even her father.

Harriet shivered in the gathering dusk. Would she be able to leave when the moment came? Could she go so far away to make a life apart? Even as her heart thrilled to the thought of being Allan’s bride, she felt herself quail with fear. Perhaps this was a choice she would never be asked to make.

She knew Allan might never come back. The new world was full of both opportunity and danger. She had heard tales of the harsh winters, the native people, and all manners of wild beasts. Then there was illness... anyone could be taken at a moment’s notice, a life demanded this very day.

And even if he lives
, a sly voice whispered inside her, the voice of fear and doubt,
what if he forgets you? There will be girls in this new land. Unmarried girls in need of husbands. And he doesn’t even have your letters to remind him of your love and promise
.

The bundle of her own letters lay heavy in her pocket. It would have given her such comfort to imagine him reading them, far away in this new land. She’d wanted to imagine him lying in bed, the snow drifting up the windows of their little cabin, smiling as he read them and remembered their lively debates and laughter. What comfort were they to her here, her own lines?

He was setting her free, Harriet reminded herself, because he loved her. She’d never resented freedom so much, or thought it so useless. Tears stung her eyes as she gazed out at the bay, the point of Lady Rock visible in the low tide.

Legend had it that three hundred years ago Lachlan Maclean abandoned his wife Catherine on the rock, to be submerged at the high tide. Harriet had often imagined how the poor woman must have felt, left to die by the man who’d promised to protect her. Fortunately her brother had rescued her, and Lachlan had later come to an untimely end.

Harriet shivered. She was
not
abandoned. Allan was trying to help her, not hurt her. A treacherous doubt whispered in her mind that he was only letting her down gently, escaping while he had the chance, but she pushed it away. How could she be so faithless, doubting Allan’s love only hours after he’d sailed?

“He will come back,” she whispered, and the growing wind whipped her words away. The sea had turned choppy, and Harriet knew
The Economy of Aberdeen
would be well on its way now. “He will return for me.” She had to cling to that hope, for it was surely the only hope she had.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Land ahoy!”

Crowds surged to the decks of the ship. It had been nearly four weeks since
The Economy
had left Tobermory, and the last few days had been spent in an anxious fever, waiting for the first sighting of the New Scotland.

The salty wind stung his cheeks as Allan made his way to the deck with his family. In their comfortable private quarters, they'd experienced little of the harsh sufferings of the third class passengers who had had to bring their own food and cooking utensils, and sleep four to a bunk that was no more than a rough wood plank. They were only allowed out of the hold for an hour everyday, to walk the decks and enjoy the sea air. In contrast Allan and his family had two cabins to themselves and could come and go as they pleased. They dined with the captain and the other few private passengers every night, and all in all it had been a remarkably comfortable crossing... yet one that left Allan uneasy. Although Allan had not experienced those deprivations himself, he felt a keen discomfort at knowing that most of his fellow passengers--and future neighbours--had, and he wondered if such distinctions would exist in this harsh new land they were all traveling to.

“There it is.” Sandy leaned on the ship railing, one stubby finger pointed west. “Land.”

A faint grey green smudge was all they could see of the new world, yet this time tomorrow they would be docked in the small town of Pictou, ready to make their way to Prince Edward Island, where the MacDougall holding lay.

Allan put his arm around Betty. “Land, Mother. Land that doesn't move!”

Betty smiled weakly. Her face was pale and drawn, her shoulders hunched. Despite the comfort of their quarters, she had suffered from the seasickness, and had been confined to her bed for most of the journey. “It's been a long time coming,” she said quietly. “But I expect there will be hardships of a different kind once there.”

“Nothing we won't be able to tackle with our own hands!” Sandy protested robustly, and Allan grinned in return. The doubts Archie had planted in his mind seemed to blow away on the sea breeze as he saw his father’s determined smile, felt their shared camaraderie and excitement.

The sight of the land, fertile, wild, simply
there
, made Allan clench the rail of the ship, his blood surging with anticipation at the challenges and possibilities ahead.

He offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving for their safe passage, and prayed that Harriet and her family were safe as well. Perhaps a letter would arrive on the next packet ship, and he would have news of her within a week or two. The thought filled him with as much joy as that faint green smudge of land on the horizon.

The earth seemed to heave under Allan's feet as he disembarked from the ship the next day. All around him sailors shoved and shouted, hurrying to unload their cargo. Passengers streamed out, some hesitant at the sight of the wild, untamed land that seemed to stretched endlessly in every direction, others eager to meet their new homeland and embrace all of its opportunities.

Allan stood with his mother, his arm around her protectively as they stepped across the rough wooden boards that served as a landing dock, to the muddy road. Sandy had gone to secure their trunks, and Archie loitered behind them, taking in the sights.

Archie had kept to himself for most of the voyage, taking his amusements with the sailors on deck. Allan had seen his father’s narrow-eyed glance follow Archie on the ship, yet he remained tight-lipped, saying nothing, allowing his younger son to go his way.

Archie had always inspired that leniency, Allan knew, with his dancing eyes and rouguish charm, and it made his own burden so much harder to shoulder.

“Allan...” Betty's voice was little more than a whisper. “It's so... dark.”

Ar first he didn't know what she meant. The sun was high in a brilliant blue sky, burning with a fiercer heat than any he'd known back in Scotland.

The docks were lined with wooden buildings, some mere shanties and others two or even three stories high. The people he saw exhibited a wide assortment of clothes and colors--Indians in beads and feathers, their faces expressionless and unfathomable, settlers in homespun, hats jammed low on their heads, and the newest arrivals, the greenhorns, clutching bundles and gaping at this large, new world with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

Yet, he realized, everything was covered in mud and dirt, and looked as if it might last a season, perhaps two. There was no stone, at least not by the dock, although he’d heard talk on ship that in the fifty years since the first settlers had arrived in Pictou, a church had been built, and a grammar school and courthouse as well. The harbor now boasted a battery to prevent attacks from Fenians.

As he raised his gaze, Allan saw that beyond the buildings there was only forest, thick, green, towering and impenetrable. Dark. The trees seemed to go on forever, unyielding and unforgiving, rising high above the small settlement.

It was a world more likely to conquer than to be conquered. It amazed him that settlers had come here at all, thinking to tame this land. It looked merciless, and he could imagine the settlers being absorbed by the woods, the winter, so that the next shipload never even knew they’d been here.

Allan quickly suppressed the thought. Fear would help no one.

“There's a packet ship to Charlottetown in three days,” Sandy announced when he'd returned from his first foray into Pictou. “We can stay at a boarding house in town till it arrives.”

“Three days.” Betty stared at him in dismay.

“Never mind,” Archie said cheerfully. “It could've been three weeks! Besides, we can get outfitted here. From what I've heard, supplies are scarce on the island. Even nails have to be shipped over.”

The boarding house was on the main street, a respectable clapboard building across from the courthouse. Betty cheered a bit at the sight of the main road lined with buildings, half of them made of stone. The boarding house itself was crowded with recent arrivals, and they all had to squeezed into one small room. Betty stood at the window, watching as the fur traders swaggered down the street towards the tap room, their faces covered in bushy beards, a sack of smelly pelts across their backs.

“I’ve never seen such things,” she murmured, dropping the thin muslin curtain back in place, and Allan saw the fear plainly on her face. He knew this journey had been Sandy’s dream, not hers, and he placed his hand on her elbow.

“Never mind, Mother. In a few days we shall be in Charlottetown. There are no fur traders there.”

Betty shook off his elbow with a wan smile, but when she spoke her voice was strong. “I was the mistress of Mingarry Farm, Allan,” she said quietly. “A few crude fur traders will not defeat me.”

Sandy returned to their little room, a thunderous look on his face. “I asked for another room, but the mistress of this place refused me,” he said, as if still could not believe such audacity. “It is unconscionable that we should be stuck in here like a haul of herrings.”