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Updated: June 2, 2025
Marcella had to follow him on these excursions into philosophic doubt, sacrificing her pet calf of legend and poetry every day in the temple of Rimmon, handcuffed to him as she did it. But Andrew Lashcairn did everything with such thoroughness that he seemed to use up a certain set of cells in his brain exhaustively, and thus procure revulsion.
He paused, and moved impatiently. "It's hard to piece thoughts together when you're weak. Can you finish my thought for me, Marcella? It's getting muddled down under sand and stones like Castle Lashcairn under Lashnagar." Marcella hesitated. Then she told him Wullie's idea about the path. "He says other things beside God walk along our lives, but in the end God's footmarks burn out all the rest."
All the wooing had been done by the woman as was the way of the Lashcairn women ever afterwards in the dry heat of that unnatural summer when the sap dried in the trees and the marrow in men's bones, while the heated blood surged through their veins more quickly than ever before.
Marcella wished a little that she had some money to buy things for her house, but it was the sort of wish she found it easy to conquer and when, in a spirit of mischief she took the tar brush with which Louis had been caulking the sides of the hut, and tarred CASTLE LASHCAIRN on the corrugated roof, she saw Castle Lashcairn rising there.
Marcella waited for the line that almost sounded like a collection of bass "brrrrrs" and then she spoke. "If you can forget yourself, my dear get swallowed up," she said gently, and a silence fell between them. The days drew into weeks. Castle Lashcairn grew more and more beautiful; the books arrived from Sydney and kept sentry on the white shelf.
As she came across the room, walking softly, as she always did, to avoid the loose board that had so often jerked her mother back to wakefulness and pain, it seemed to her that all the loving kindness of the world had gone from her. From then until her mother was buried she never left her. After his wife's death Andrew Lashcairn was harder, colder.
It shone on gnarled hands gripping gnarled sticks, on rugged, ruddy faces, on white and sandy hair, on bright blue eyes, old and young. And then the door opened sharply and Andrew Lashcairn stood there, leaning on his stick. Everyone but Aunt Janet stared at him as the firelight flamed up to blue and purple flame, lighting his gaunt face.
But the soil was not deep enough for trees or bushes to take root. In Marcella's lifetime men had been lost on Lashnagar, and sheep and dogs, adventuring too far, had never come back. Legend had it that hundreds of years ago Lashnagar had been a quiet little village nestling round Castle Lashcairn, the home of Marcella's folks.
She did not expostulate; no one thought of expostulating with Andrew Lashcairn. It was dark when she wakened and dressed hurriedly. Running down to the kitchen to tell Jean the pleasant effects of her plaster she found it was half-past six. "Andrew Lashcairn's doon," said Jean, looking scared. "Who helped him?" asked Marcella, lifting the lid of the teapot that stood on the hearth.
Marcella still divided her time when she could between the book-room, Lashnagar and Wullie's smoking-hut; but every morning Andrew Lashcairn tore her out of bed at five o'clock and went with her through snows and frosts, and, later, through the fresh spring mornings to teach her to swim in the wild breakers of the North Sea.
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