Land of Heart's Desire (2 page)

“There’s so much mystery attached to the Islands,” Christine agreed. “It becomes part of you. One seeps it up right from one’s earliest childhood, I think.”

“Or is born with it,” he suggested. “Anyway, that’s another reason why I may feel that I am coming home.” The islands lying ahead of them were taking on detailed shape now, although he had not told her that he was heading for one of them. He might even be going on to Stornaway in the Outer Hebrides, far past her own destination, which had suddenly come near.

“I’m almost nervous about this,” he confessed presently. “You see, I’ve had an agent acting for me up here for the past six months and he’s been meeting with a whole packet of trouble. Fact is, he’s been having difficulty with the locals. They’ve not offered him any co-operation or friendliness, and I gather that they’ve been downright obstructive at times.”

His mouth tightened, giving him a harsher look of a sudden, so that he seemed older than she had taken him to be.

“And you mean to remedy that?” she suggested.

“I shall do my best.” His mouth was still grim. “I’ve got to make a success of this thing—for several reasons.”

She did not ask him what his reasons were, but she offered a warning.

“Don’t try to do it all at once. You can’t change the Highlands. My people resent nothing more strongly than a patronizing attitude where their country is concerned.”

“You forget that they are my people, too,” he reminded her. “Now more than ever.”

“This land you have bought,” she asked. “Will you farm it?”

“There’s cattle on it now, and I mean to expand, of course. My father made his money out of wheat in Alberta, but—six brothers were too much on one ranch.”

“You were the eldest, though,” she pointed out, remembering what he had said about being born in Scotland.

“That doesn’t matter quite so much in Canada,” he told her. “We’re a young country and there isn’t the same sense of passing on a heritage. It’s every man
for himself
, so to speak. What a man is, not what he has. I was the one who could leave Alberta with the least number of regrets. The others were all married—or about to be.”

Suddenly she knew that this was part of his reason for coming to Scotland. He had not left Canada without some regret, and a moment ago he had told her that the success of his present venture was essential to him. He had burned all his bridges behind him, emotionally, perhaps, as well as in the wider sense, and the future had to hold the promise he expected of it.

Looking up at him, she felt that he would see that it did. There was a steely determination about the set of his jaw that was unmistakable, a look in his eyes which reflected something which she might have detected in her own.

Some sort of spark had been kindled between them at the impact of their meeting, part of a consuming flame that had no right to die out in the commonplace of a swift parting such as theirs must inevitably be, but already they were within sight of Croma.

The island had taken shape before them, clearly silhouetted against the amethyst and flamingo of the western sky. A drift of rain had passed down the narrow defile of Glen Erradale, like a jewelled curtain lifting on a new scene, and suddenly the whole island stood revealed, as if it had been washed clean and bright for their coming. It was there, as it had always been, gentle and smiling in the south, scarred and black and triumphant where the perilous and savage crags scowled down in the north. Beaten by storm and the fury of waves, tunnelled by resounding caverns where the tumult of the wide Atlantic rushed in, and skirted by smiling beaches of pure white sand, it looked all that it was and ever had been—a land of heart’s desire.

Something caught in Christine’s throat. This was what she had sought to deny, and it was something like this that the man standing beside her had come three thousand miles to discover.

She could come back, though, as she was doing now. She could come back to Croma whenever she liked.

“None of your islands are the same.” Her companion was scanning the jagged peaks of Croma—Scuirival and Askaval, towering like twin giants against the western sky. “None of them are exactly alike.”

“My grandmother says that all mountains have their own distinct personality and all the islands, too—Coll and Tiree, so placid and green and smiling; and dark Scarba frowning at the sky. Treshnish is a mystery, and Stafta holds all the world’s music in a single cave. Skye is the romantic isle, with a rainbow trapped for ever across the face of the Cuillin, and Eriskay will always be the island of a song and a dream.”

She knew that he was looking at her more closely now, but it did not seem to matter if he thought her strange, expressing herself in such an intimate way to someone she barely knew. The spell of the Islands was upon them, stronger now than ever before, and she knew that she could not shake it off. Croma was there and she had come home.

“Will you stay in Scotland?” she asked. “Do you really mean to spend the rest of your life here?”

“I’m hoping so.” She thought him strangely noncommittal of a sudden. “I can’t imagine this spot of bother my agent is having at present to be anything really serious, and in any case I’m hoping to buy the adjacent estate, which I believe may be coming on to the market quite soon. That, of course, would solve my problem for me—to own all the land.”

The words were not exactly arrogant. He had made a statement of things as he found them and decided on his own solution.

Christine looked beyond him to where the green fields of Croma lay in the shadow of Askaval, the south land, the growing land where most of Croma’s wealth lay. To the north, where the rugged pinnacles of Scuirival stabbed the skyline, there was no such kindness, hardly room, in fact, for a few grazing sheep, but there was a fierce, untamed beauty among those northern hills and corries that stirred all her pride, for this was MacNeill land.

With a wild ringing of bells from the engine room and a churning of her twin screws, the S.S.
Morar
hove to, waiting outside the curve of a shallow bay for the tender that would come from the shore to meet them. Two young calves, tied in sacking, their large brown eyes full of apprehension, were lying on the deck ready to be lowered over the side, and there was the usual accumulation of stores and packages that went ashore each trip to sustain the life on Croma—a crate of fowls; fishing tackle; boxes of tinned goods and a bath to be installed in a cottage which had probably just recently had running water laid on. Newspapers and periodicals, tied in neat bundles, were stacked beside a small pile of hand luggage, and, and the tender came alongside, the mail bag was brought to the rail.

Soft Gaelic voices hailed each other in their native tongue and the sound was like the gentle cadences of a wind that skirts across a summer field. Christine, hearing it, was vaguely aware of all that Croma meant to her, yet, with the wilfulness of youth, she still believed that she could find her happiness elsewhere.

She turned from the rail to find her companion of the voyage collecting his luggage beside the other articles waiting to be put ashore. He was going with the tender.

But why to Croma? Why to
her
island?

Suddenly, her heart beating swiftly and close to her throat, she was remembering what he had said about buying land, remembering, too, that the Nicholsons who had owned the south of the island for nearly as long as the MacNeills had owned the rugged north had sold their land just over six months ago through an agent in Edinburgh.

In their day the Nicholsons had been as proud a family as the MacNeills, and now here was this stranger—this usurper—who had taken their place, coming to Croma and talking about buying the whole island. For that was what it amounted to. He had spoken about the adjacent estate, and the only other estate on Croma was Erradale. Not content with humbling the Nicholsons’ pride and taking their birthright, as if money alone had given him the right, he was preparing to make an offer for the MacNeill land too!

That could be the only explanation which would take him ashore at Scoraig.

She watched in stony silence as mail and cattle were lowered into the tender, and when the Canadian came to say good-bye she determined savagely not to tell him that she was a MacNeill.

“I hope we are going to meet again,” he said, holding out his hand.

“It isn’t likely.” The shock of knowledge had made her voice sound like ice. “I shall be kept fairly busy while I’m here.”

“We can’t live so very far apart,” he protested, scanning the island-dotted sea.

She remembered what he had told her about meeting with opposition from his neighbours, and for a fraction of a second she felt ashamed, yet she was forced to snub him.

“The islands are remote,” she said, “and we value our privacy.”

It was foolish, of course, because they were going to live on the same island. Their meeting would be inevitable no matter what sort of relationship might develop between them.

He saluted her and climbed down the ladder to the bobbing tender as a sailor came along the deck towards her.

“I have your luggage ready, Miss MacNeill,” the man said, and she wondered if her companion had heard.

What did it matter? What did it really matter, she thought as she turned from the rail. She would not look at the tender forging its way purposefully shorewards, she would not acknowledge the final salute of the man who had shared her journey and her dreams.

A feeling of loss for which she could not quite account numbed her mind so that she could only stare down at the water racing swiftly along, the steamer’s White hull and wonder what exactly she had told this stranger about herself.

They had reached Rhu Dearg, the point of land that ran down into the sea from the high shoulder of Askaval, before she allowed herself to look at the island again. Behind her lay the quiet fields and deep green valley that spelled prosperity to the south; behind her, too, lay the narrow neck of land that linked her more rugged home to what had once been Nicholson soil. Without that narrow link Croma would really have been two islands, divided by a fury of water rushing in from the Atlantic through a vicious bottleneck between the hills. The
ford saved
the north of the island from complete isolation, although sometimes at high tide it seemed that the water would never recede and leave the safe causeway high and dry between north and south.

The tide was high now and she watched the water boiling through the gap with a strange sense of premonition in her heart. Angry and violent waves rushed towards the shore, expending themselves in fury against the harsh rock surface until the whole atmosphere above her island home seemed to echo with the angry sound of conflict. Gulls cried and circled overhead, swerving and darting high above the leaping spray, and the shrill cry of a cormorant rose on a fierce note of warning, flung back and echoing against the jagged peaks of Scuirival.

There was a violence about it all that might have shocked her if she had not been bora to it, but there was a rough splendour about it, too, which she was already beginning to acknowledge, deep in her heart. Unthinking and impulsive she might have been in the past, but, somehow, to-day the spell of the islands had come very close. Their beauty and wistfulness had touched her as never before; their harshness and savagery made a challenge which she knew herself suddenly prepared to meet.

The steamer rounded the point, coming, at last, into calmer water and shouldering its way into the tiny harbour which was the only safe anchorage on the island. Almost girdled by the black crags of Scuirival, Port-na-Keal afforded a haven for the tiny fishing fleet which plied from Croma’s rock-girt fastness out into the broad waters of The Minch. It was too small to attract trade as a fishing port, but the smaller island steamers could tie up at its long stone quay and it had always seemed to Christine that it cradled all the peace of the romantic West. Storms never broke there, and there was a silence among the foothills that could almost be felt. Tiny, clustering cottages sat with their feet steeped in the tide, their placid white faces reflected in the dark mirror of the sea, the homes of happy people who asked little of life except that they might be able to keep body and soul together and go on living here in the shadow of their native hills.

It had been like that ever since she could remember, she mused as they drew nearer, and then she found herself looking more closely at the little houses, looking into vacant homes whose uncurtained windows stared back at her like empty eyes gazing sadly into space.

Shock, sudden and acute, smote her into the awareness of change. Croma had never been like this before. Something had happened, something vital to the well-being of the island had been swept away.

She could not deny the fact and a strange, unnamed fear rose in her heart, so that she could not reach Erradale House quickly enough, although she did not believe that she would find change there.

As soon as the gangway was down she was ashore. She was the only passenger and her luggage followed immediately, carried by the blond giant in the blue seaman’s jersey who had spoken to her at Scoraig.

“Put it down there, Neil,” she said. “And—thank you!”

She smiled, trying to press half a crown into the palm of his hard brown hand, but he recoiled as if she had offered him some kind of insult. She should have known, of course. Neil was of the island, a native of Croma, and he would not take money from her for services rendered to a MacNeill. He felt honoured to be able to help her, although there was a look at the back of his vividly blue eyes which might have suggested pity. Pity and regret mingled, perhaps.