The Key of the Chest (3 page)

Outside it was now quite dark. A gust of wind steadied Dougald and then fled past, leaving the sting of rain on his face. The children had gone from the window and there was no one about.

When he had gone up the road a little way, he paused. The moon would not rise for another hour. Time meant nothing at all, and the habit of calling at Smeorach's exerted its pull. It was the only house at which he ever did call.

He stood quite still, until his head turned and lifted slightly in the direction of his home across the moor. Whereupon he left the road and followed the short path to Smeorach's cottage. There was the groping scratch of his hand for the iron sneck, the thump of his bag against the door as he entered, and in a moment old Smeorach's voice rising high and thin in welcome:

‘Is it yourself, Dougald? And what a night you have brought with you! Come away in, man, come away in. I'm glad to see you.'

The only light in the cottage came from the peat fire. It was soft and warm on the living faces until they turned from it and created their own shadows. Then the bodies stood up to make room for the stranger whom Smeorach approached in welcome, approached a few steps and then turned back, offering the best chair and talking all the time.

Smeorach was about eighty, spare and almost quite straight, for he was not very tall, with a white beard and brown living twinkling eyes. His voice was thin and high-pitched but with a clear quality in it like a bird's. Even when it went husky or ragged, this quality persisted, and no doubt accounted for his nickname, Smeorach, which meant Thrush, though it was old enough now for its origin to
be forgotten. It never even occurred to children to wonder what his real name was. He lived all alone and was so full of lore and stories and brightness that men and boys of a night drifted into his house more naturally than into their own.

When Dougald had dropped the bag by his chair and sat heavily down, Smeorach, whose voice had never stopped, said he must get the lamp lit,

‘Don't light the lamp for me,' said Dougald in a voice that was like a gruff order.

‘Och,' said Smeorach hospitably, ‘it will brighten the room a bit.'

‘It's bright enough,' said Dougald.

‘Very well, then,' agreed Smeorach, ‘very well. Perhaps, like myself, you find the peat fire more friendly. For it's a strange thing, and indeed it's a strange thing, and I've noticed it often, that the steady light of the lamp will empty the mind and hide away from a man what he had been wanting to find. But you'll have a cup of tea, for it's a long road—'

‘I had my tea before I left,' said Dougald. ‘You'll put no water in the kettle for me.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I am.'

‘Are you quite sure now, because it will be no bother at all but only a pleasure?'

‘I am. I'll be going with the moon.'

Smeorach withdrew his hand from the kettle. ‘I'm thinking you'll be lucky if you find the moon this night.'

‘There'll be enough,' said Dougald.

‘Very well,' said Smeorach. ‘And how did you leave your brother Charlie?'

‘He's all right,' answered Dougald flatly.

‘That's fine,' said Smeorach. ‘That's good.'

As he sat down, the storm broke over the roof. There were three other men in the house and two of the boys who had followed Dougald to the shop. One of the three said, ‘It's as well we got the boats up, I'm thinking.'

‘It is,' agreed Murdo, a quiet man.

The storm blew two other men into the house. They came in dark and tall, shedding the storm from them.

‘Phew! that's going to be a night,' said one, smiling and jovial. ‘Is it yourself, Dougald?' he cried. ‘By the lord, you'll catch it to-night, boy!'

Dougald did not answer.

‘Eh?' continued William, making a joke of it. ‘What brought you east to-night?'

‘The same,' answered Smeorach, ‘as would bring yourself: food.'

‘There's something in that,' agreed William, aware that Dougald had not answered.

There was a shifting of bare wooden chairs and stools. The two boys were chaffed by William for keeping so far back from the fire, but they did not speak.

When they were all seated, one or two took out their pipes, and Smeorach courteously accepted a roll of black twist tobacco from which he cut a few flakes before handing it back.

They began discussing the storm. They had known all day it was ‘outside' and spoke of the signs.

‘It would have been pretty bad off the Point to-day?' said Murdo to Dougald.

‘It was,' answered Dougald. ‘It was restless yesterday.'

His tones, being almost easy, brought every eye upon him and faces lightened. He sat hunched on his chair, his eyes on the fire. The momentary silence pulled his head round and Smeorach at once started talking about the worst storm he had ever known.

They all knew the story and its dread marvels, but, as the wind howled round the house, it might have been quite new to them. Indeed the far years gave to its moving parts a dark and legendary body.

Their mood soon became fully attuned to the storm, and as the rising whine carried beyond the house, they were stirred as by the sea itself, the thresh of it on the black rocks, and the scream of the harrying spinning wind. Deeds of the past were like flotsam tossed, and the dark flotsam had faces and bodies, which fate overtook. All this had happened to them or to their kindred, and pressed in upon the gable-end and the roof.

The more their spirits swung with the elements the more
they became aware of that solid hunched figure by the fire, dumb as an outcrop of rock on his own moor. In a strange almost perverse way his presence excited them, urging them to tell more tales, so that they could ignore him, forget him.

Storms and wrecks and dead bodies washed up by the ocean, lonely old women living in cottages by the tide, foreign sailors, theft, and voices in the night.

Smeorach produced the curious fantastic incident of the black man. A stormy night in the dead of winter and a voice shouting outside his father's window in a strange tongue. They were in bed, the fire smoored. He himself was only a lad of six. Then came the thundering of bare fists on the door. His father got up and cried, ‘Who's there?' The wild voice outside jabbered in a way that sounded full of threats and terror. His father took the iron tongs from the fire and approached the door. ‘What do you want?' he called through the door in a fighting voice. At that there was silence. He slid the bar and pulled the door open. Outside a whole moon was driving against a rushing sky and there, standing back from the door, was a big man with a face black as hell's soot. The white cloth tied about the black neck made no doubt of the blackness. No doubt in this world or any other. It staggered his father for one terrible moment, then he gripped the tongs hard and with a yell advanced. The figure let out a queer screech enough – God between us and all harm – and took to his black heels. ‘For nearly a mile my father pursued him, and he was a good runner as any in the place, but he was not so good as the black fellow. And at last my father stopped, and he came home. Well do I remember that night in the kitchen. But the black man was never seen again. No one saw him. And that night, so far as we ever knew, no ship foundered.'

As Smeorach finished, Dougald gave a grunt. Smeorach swung round on him with a high sharp animosity. ‘But I tell you it's the God's truth. Wasn't I there? Don't I know? Didn't I hear what I heard and see with my own eyes?'

All the others looked at Dougald with the same gleam.

Dougald's mouth opened a little, saying ‘Uh?' as he glanced back at them. ‘I was just thinking it's time I was going home.'

‘Home!' echoed Smeorach, taken aback, for now he knew that Dougald's grunt had been no ironic comment. ‘Home? On a night like this?'

‘Yes, home,' said Dougald. ‘It's about time.' He bent over and caught the neck of his sack.

‘Home?' cried Smeorach. ‘Is it leave of your senses you've taken? Do you think you'll find your track on the moor and it black as the Earl of Hell's riding boots? Eh?'

‘I'll manage,' said Dougald, getting up.

‘You'll find no moon this night, if that's what you're thinking of,' said William.

‘I'm no woman – to need the moon,' said Dougald.

So unexpected was the stroke that even the jovial William forgot to laugh.

But Smeorach laughed. ‘And if you feel tired you can sit down and put your head under the sack, for the rain will have masked the tea and melted the sugar and turned the bread to brochan. You should fare well.'

A terrific blast of wind tried to flatten the house, failed, and fled inland to the mountains carrying Smeorach's high mirth in its hound's throat.

Dougald, who had got to his feet, looked down at the brown jute sack. So accustomed were they to the sounds of the sea that they rarely consciously heard them, but now into that moment of silence came the muffled thunder of waves breaking on the strand. A swirl of rain beat on the small window like a shower of gun pellets.

Dougald turned his head slightly towards the blind wall as if better to see the night and his path. Then he looked down again at the bag.

‘It would be difficult to keep it dry,' he admitted slowly. Then he sat down. ‘It may take off.'

‘Do you think so?' asked William, in the innocent voice of polite irony.

‘It may be no more than the tail-end of the storm outside,' said Dougald.

‘I have heard of the tail wagging the dog,' said William.

Faces brightened and smiled, with a quick glance at Dougald, but none laughed.

Dougald looked at him.‘I have never seen a tail wagging a dog.'

Everyone burst into laughter.

Dougald's eyes narrowed and his colour seemed to darken. But no one could say whether he was amused or angry, though they felt the presence of the state that lay between.

Murdo said calmly that possibly Dougald was right. The centre of the storm lay to the nor'-ard in his opinion and was maybe passing them by as it drove on its course.

Then they heard it coming, heard the earth being flattened. Their muscles grew taut and held on. Their faces turned to the blind window. The floor rumbled under their feet. But the house held and the pressure eased.

Murdo lifted his eyes to the window again. ‘God help all those at sea this night,' he said quietly with a seaman's reverence. Then he got up.

They all got up, for byre and barn roofs might suffer and women would be anxious. Smeorach got the door open. William called the two boys by name, Hamish and Norrie, and caught a grip of them. He was passing their homes. Smeorach got the door shut and shoved home the wooden bar.

‘What a night!' he said, returning to the fire which he began banking up with peat. ‘It's a good thing for you, Dougald, that you're not on that moor this night.'

‘It may be as well,' said Dougald.

But Smeorach did not mock him now. Nor did he ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. Water he put in the kettle, lifting it with a tin jug from a zinc bucket in the dark passage, and swung the kettle on the crook.

Smeorach did nearly all the talking, but he liked talking, and if Dougald had had easier manners, it would not have been difficult to entertain him. There was a time, indeed, when the core of the man must have gone soft and responsive; but as, suddenly realizing this, Smeorach looked at his guest, he felt that he had merely forgotten the man and been talking to himself. He grew suddenly tired, feeling
his age. They sat in silence for a long time, gazing at the fire. The thunder of the sea-storm came about them and they were isolated.

As Smeorach's head drooped, the storm sounds went through it… flung bodies without shape or face, hunting the void of this world and the void beyond. A cry issued amid them and above the cry a gleam of two red eyes. The two red-streaming eyes shook his substance together and his head jerked up.

There was a queer smile on Dougald's face. ‘I'm keeping you from your bed,' he repeated.

Smeorach stared at him. ‘What's that?' he stuttered, like one lost. ‘Eh?… Dear me, was I nearly asleep?'

‘You were,' said Dougald, and a simple humour stirred on his face.

But Smeorach said, ‘Is it laughing at an old man you are?'

Dougald looked at him and then settled back in his chair. ‘I wasn't laughing,' he muttered. ‘I don't want to keep you out of your bed.'

‘Bed, is it? Well, well. You will excuse me for wandering. And it's high time indeed that we were in bed. Come, and I'll show you to the room. I'll light the lamp.'

‘Not for me,' said Dougald. ‘I'll just sit where I am.'

Smeorach gaped at him.

‘The storm will take off,' said Dougald. ‘When it does, I'll go.'

And in the end Smeorach had to accept the position and get to his bed, which was a boxed wooden structure set against the wall opposite the fire. His legs were lean and he slept in his shirt. But he had been a seaman and everything in the house was tidy and shipshape. A niece did his washing and occasionally brought him soup and meat. The two short print curtains were fresh and the pillows white. He spoke for a little while, but wearily, and soon he fell asleep.

When he awoke the storm was still raging. From the fire he knew he had been asleep less than two hours. Dougald was still sitting in his chair, but his head had fallen forward and plainly he was fast asleep. The flame had all but died
from the peat, and the body was solid as a boulder in the reddish glow. Smeorach looked at it for a long time. It wakened him fully.

Then his head fell back on the pillow and he sighed, staring unseeingly at that mystery of life of which a man could make so little, however long he lived.

He awoke once or twice again, though in the following daylight hours he half-wondered if he really had awaked, so lost were the occasions in the hollow of the night.