“All I was going to say,” he said mildly, “was that you missed something by despising Burns in such a wholesale way.”
“It’s his face that I can’t bear.” Love confessed a rush. “Don’t laugh at me Peregrine, but it’s put me off him altogether. That dimpled chin, and the sort of smirk, and the poetical hair! If he’d looked like Sir Walter, now—”
“If you’re an admirer of Scott, then your education has not been totally neglected.”
“I get a bit tired of ‘the stag at eve’ and all the rest,” Love said honestly. “I really like the stories about him, and his Journal, much better than the ones he wrote.”
He nodded understandingly. “Yes, I know. It’s Scott, the ‘Shirra,’ riding about the country he loved, collecting legends and ballads, friend of everyone he met. But some of the novels are grand reading, and you have him to thank for the Border Minstrelsy.”
“Yes. I love those ballads. Sometimes I think that ballads and Shakespeare are the only poetry I care about,” said Love, deeply in earnest now, her cheeks delicately flushed, her lips the colour of the heather buds. “They can be true to life and still stay poetry, but Browning and Tennyson and Wordsworth all fall down just when you’re beginning to think there’s something in them, after all.”
“As, for example?” he encouraged her, interested by a side of her character which he had never even suspected of existence.
“Well, there’s Wordsworth’s old huntsman, with the weak ankles that swelled,” said Love, breathless with excitement. “And bits of Browning that no one can possibly understand, and I don’t believe he did himself—wait till I remember one.” She knit her brows, hesitated, finally burst out:
“Let the dazed hawk soar,
Claim the sun’s rights too!
Turf ’tis thy walk’s o’er,
Foliage thy flight’s too!”
“But that’s the piece always picked to prove that Browning wrote nonsense,” objected Peregrine.
“All right. What about all the Setehoses?” demanded Love absurdly. “And the woman that was like a dewdrop, and the fawnskin dappled hair of hers?”
“That seems to dispose of Browning. But surely Tennyson doesn’t sin in the direction of obscurity?”
“Not quite,” said Love. “But there are some pretty awful lines in Maud for instance. They may make sense, but to my mind they aren’t poetry, and they don’t even rhyme well—
“Look, a horse at the door,
And little King Charley snarling.
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling.”
“Yes. I’d forgotten that,” he admitted.
“And I’ve got a real grievance against old Alfred Lord Tennyson, apart from that,” pursued Love. “You know the poem about ‘Oh, rare pale Margaret?’ It’s a direct crib from the ballad of Clerk Saunders, if you can compare Tennyson’s milk-and-water with—with heather-ale!”
“Tell me the bit out of the ballad.”
Love said slowly:
“And fair Marg’ret, and rare Marg’ret,
And Marg’ret o’ veritie,
Gin e’er ye love another man,
Ne’er love him as ye did me.”
The haunting words died on the still air, as if the lark’s song was too gay for their sadness to linger there, and Love, half-ashamed of her vehemence, cried eagerly: “Oh, do let’s stop for a minute!”
“Are you tired?” he asked.
“No. But look—” She waved her hand at the patch of marshy ground which lay directly before them. “All those flowers—”
The sedge and rushes and sphagnum moss of the bog were almost hidden in a rich embroidery of wiki flowers. Purple spear-heads of the last late blooming wild orchids, rosy ragged Robin grew there, a drift of pale blue beside a tiny green-lined spring where forget-me-not flourished, varnished yellow spearwort, and shining like stars among the others, the translucent greenish-white cups, delicately veined, of the lovely grass of Parnassus. Where the ground was slightly drier, bell-heather hung its fine waxen pink bells, and a cluster of bog-asphodel filled the air with the scent of lilies.
“Oh, lovely!” cried Love, staring at them, naming them to Peregrine. “Haven’t they got beautiful names? Orchis, bog-asphodel, grass of Parnassus,” she repeated.
“And here’s a sun-dew.” He knelt to show her the circle of leaves armed with glistening hairs to entrap unwary insects, the insignificant white flower rising from the centre of the rosette on a hairy red stem.
“I don’t care for that so much. I’m glad I’m not a fly,” said Love, walking on.
“It has to live, you know. If it comes to that, look at the kestrel hovering up there.” He pointed towards the distant shape, dark in the pale sky, which presently flashed downward out of sight. “And we eat meat ourselves.”
“I know. I’m inconsistent,” said Love meekly.
“Have a piece of bog-myrtle?” he offered, breaking two sprigs from one of the low-growing grey-green bushes and handing it to her, spicy and fragrant, to put in her buttonhole. “Perhaps I’ll find you some early white heather too. I’m rather lucky like that.”
“Sharp-sighted, you mean,” said Love. “You notice things before other people. Like the old Highland keeper up north, who once told father, ‘I have fery smahl eyes, but they can see a long way.’”
Soon they were above the bogs and bracken, above bog-myrtle and orchis and asphodel, and still climbing steadily through the deep heather, murmurous with bees. The mist had disappeared as if rolled up by a giant hand, leaving clear the mighty, cloud-patterned hills which cupped so large an area of central Scotland in their dim blue circle, and made the Greenriggs seem mere mole-heaps in the middle of it. Their own valley was out of sight now, hidden by ridge upon ridge, but each time they stopped and turned, a new loch, another range of hills, a few more miles of patchwork holds and woods, seemed to have sprung into view. Up here the heather was old, and each step had to be taken with care, lest the cunningly twisted strong grey stems, the black woody roots, caught the feet and caused a stumble. Clouds of fine pollen rose from the tiny flowers as they brushed through them, and a dry, honied scent was released, hot and pleasant to smell. On all sides grouse flew whirring away on powerful brown wings, safe from guns and beaters for a week still, the cocks calling ‘Go-bak! Go-bak!’ A mountain hare in its blueish summer coat sprang up almost underfoot and raced off, making a hundred airy doublings, crossing and recrossing its own trail, before it sat up at a safe distance, turned its head with the long twitching ears, to one side, and watched then progress warily. High overhead, a tiny dot in the blue, a raven hung and uttered his hoarse cries, which sounded like a dog barking far away. The whole round world held no one but Peregrine and Love, and their feeling of ownership caused them to exclaim indignantly when they saw a solitary man’s figure seated beside the cairn which marked the Queen’ View, the Greenriggs’ highest point.
“A shepherd or a keeper, perhaps,” said Love, but Peregrine shook his head. His eyes were quicker than hers.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
They were several yards nearer when Love said in surprise: “Why, it’s Danny Buchanan! I wonder what he’s doing up here?”
“Come to see the view, no doubt, like us,” Peregrine answered, and the dryness of his tone silenced any further comment.
But if he imagined that he had quenched Love’s curiosity for long, he was greatly mistaken. No sooner had they said ‘Good afternoon’ to the younger man, who remained seated, as if defiantly, on the shorter heather below the cairn, than Love, companionably sitting down beside him, said: “I didn’t think you’d have been interested enough in the view to climb up all this way, Danny.”
“It’s a grand view,” he answered. “Did ye think that none but gentry like yourselves has eyes for it?” His voice was resentful, but Love apparently did not notice it.
“Well, you must admit that very few people in the village ever bother to c
ome up and look at it,” she said promptly.
“The keepers would turn them off if they did,” was his blunt reply.
“Nonsense. You’re always allowed to come up to see the view,” said she.
“We’re all trespassing together, if that’s the case, I suppose,” said Peregrine placidly, and Danny Buchanan’s deep-set, smouldering eyes turned to him.
“There’s no law of trespass in Scotland,” he said truculently.
“It’s a great pity that there isn’t, then,” said Love, gaily rushing in where the future politician Peregrine hesitated to set his foot. “You wouldn’t like to see this place all covered with papers and broken bottles and cigarette-packets, now would you? I hope, when you’re our member—either of you,” she added. “I don’t care which it is . . . that you’ll try to have one made at once.”
Over her head the eye of the two men met in a grim unwilling smile.
“That’s not my party’s policy,” Danny Buchanan said, and the words, which should have been a challenge, sounded almost apologetic, as if the speaker hated to seem disobliging.
“Then all were for the party. And none was for the State? You know,” murmured Love. “I often think that’s such a good description of present-day politics. Just Macaulay’s words about the brave days of old in Horatius turned upside down.”
“That isn’t quite fair, Love”—and:
“Miss Magdalen, ye’re unjust!” sprang from the men’s lips simultaneously.
“Perhaps I am. I don’t know much about it, yet, but I mean to learn before I have a vote,” said Love.
“I only said that’s how it sounds to me. Everyone talks party, and you never hear the poor country mentioned.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we think less about it,” argued Peregrine, impressed against his will by Love’s sudden gravity. It was something to find a girl like her with views on the subject at all, even if they happened to be wrong-headed ones which would make her parents shudder.
“There’s still far too much nationalism talked among you Tories,” burst out Buchanan. “The time for that sort o’ Empire and Homeland rant is by. It’s internationalism we’re needin’, but the Tories’ll not see it.”
“The lion and the lamb, eh?” said Peregrine very drily indeed. “Well, you see, the Tory idea is that even if you can persuade them to eat out of the same dish, you’ll still need a keeper to see that one doesn’t get more than his share and start a row. The British Empire, of course, playing the thankless part of keeper in chief.”
“And we all came up here to look at the view,” murmured Love, but her plaint was unheeded by the men who were arguing hotly under the far, uncaring sky, surrounded by the dreaming hills which had seen so many better men come and go.
“Keeper, did ye say? A fine job we’ve made o’ our keeperin! Look at Abyssinia!” cried Danny. “An’ what aboot Republican Spain? Answer me that, if ye can!”
“I can’t. It’s an impasse,” said Peregrine quietly.
“But I refuse to agree that your party’s plan of helping either Abyssinia or Spain, and so shoving us into war, is any better. Think a minute, man. Do you want another war? A war worse than the last, with the civilian population at the mercy of any raiding bombers?”
“I do not. You and me’s seen enough o’ war to last us,” said Danny drearily. “But it’s an awfu’ thought that we’re standin’ by letting these things ye speak o’ come aboot in Spain. It seems to me that we’re saving our selves an’ our property at the price o’ our souls.”
“I’m not at all sure you aren’t right there. But we really mustn’t start agreeing with each other, Buchanan,” said Peregrine, trying to lend a lighter tone to the discussion. “Or our constituents won’t know whom to vote for when they come to the poll.”
Danny opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again quickly, and finally said in a non-committal manner: “True for you. We’ll need to watch our step.”
“And, by Jove, we’ll need to watch the time!” exclaimed Peregrine. “Come on. Love, we’ll have to get back to Allander pretty quickly, or the others will be there before us.”
He nodded pleasantly to Danny, but Love held out her hand. “I don’t agree with you,” she told him frankly. “But I liked some of the things you said. Good-bye.”
This time Danny scrambled awkwardly to his feet, grasped the outstretched hand in his own roughened one, and to his great mortification, discovered that he was standing to attention as they walked away.
“Ach to hell!” he muttered savagely, and flung himself down on the heather again to brood over Spain.
He had not lain there for more than a couple of minutes, however, before his eye was caught by some movement among the rolling ground slightly downhill to the north. Lying very still he watched, and presently made out the forms of three burly men stealthily advancing towards the cairn. If they had seen him they gave no sign of it, but a quick backward glance showed him the retreating figures of Love and Peregrine, clearly outlined on the top of a ridge.
“Jings!” he muttered. “It’s those watchers o’ that old deevil Sir Theophilus Watts. I heard he’d put men on, and that they’re a tough lot. I’ll need tae warn the Major some way or other.”
Lithe as a weasel, he slithered back behind the cairn, assured himself that he had not yet been sighted, and ran in a stooping position, keeping below the ridge, as fast as he could towards the unconscious quarry. Behind and a little below them, he could see their every movement, and as Love suddenly stopped and bent down, he uttered a groan. ‘They’ll get caught!’ he thought. ‘And I daurna let a cry on them!’
There was only one advantage in Love’s pause meant that he would overtake them all the quicker, and the thought lent wings to his feet. In a very few minutes he was parallel with the pair, still below them still unseen by the pursuers. Breathless, he managed an imitation of a curlew’s whistle, and saw Peregrine’s head come round with a start.
‘The Major’s the lad!’ he thought with grim approval. ‘He kens that whistle was made by nae whaup,’ and he repeated his effort, this time raising his head and hand, and beckoning.
“I don’t know what’s up,” said Peregrine to Love in a puzzled voice. “But Buchanan’s down there behaving like a lunatic, and he seems to want us to join him.”
“Well, it’s all on our way,” said Love, tying the shoe-lace she had bent to tighten. “Let’s go and see.”
Danny wasted no time on ceremony. As soon as they were within earshot, he said: “Sirr, ye’ll need to run like a hare, an’ Miss Magdalen, an’ masel’. Dinna stop to argie or keek ahint ye, but follow me an’ rin as ye never ran afore.”
So urgent and compelling were his voice and look that Peregrine, who remembered his coolness in more than one tight corner, merely nodded, grabbed Love’s hand, and dragged her, protesting, after the flying figure of Danny in front. Far ahead of them was a level space in a hollow between two rises, where great peat-hags showed black, offering the only shelter in miles of open moor. Danny made for them, running like a partridge decoying an enemy from her nest, bent almost double, yet maintaining an extraordinary turn of speed. Peregrine, almost unconsciously, adopted the same position, and Love, from the pace at which she was being hauled along, was never upright. Danny found time to throw them an approving glance, and then he was on the heavy ground, black clods flying wetly from his boots, jets of peaty water spraying all round him.
“Ouch!” gasped Love, as the same brown drops spattered her face. “Is this—really—necessary—Perry?”
“Save your breath. We’ll know in a minute,” he answered, and at the same moment a roar of discovery rang out behind them.
“There they’re, lads! We’ve got them noo!”
“The devil you have!” muttered Peregrine, who, knowing nothing of the pursuit or its reason, had given himself up entirely to the primitive game of hunter and hunted.
“In here, sirr,” whispered a voice, and he dragged Love
down to crouch beside Danny under an overhanging peat-hag. The damp oozed through their garments unheeded, as Danny said: “We’ll get our breaths, an’ then jouk amang the hags, an’ we’ll jink them yet. It’s yon watchers frae the Hopes, a rough lot, an’ auld Watt’s promised them hauf-a-dollar apiece forbye their pay for every trespasser they bring in. It’ll never dae for us to be catched, an’ Miss Magdalen wi’ us. Come on noo, sirr.”
He was off again, and Peregrine, throwing away the civilized instinct which bade him stop and explain the situation to the men on their heels, followed with the bewildered, angry, but still obedient Love. In and out of pitch black holes they crawled, from one friendly hummock of peat to the next, and finally, a drain cut in the moss and leading downhill to a burn, lent them shelter, though it was hard work and wet creeping down it. Love was between them now, hauled bodily on by Danny, shoved without ceremony from behind by Peregrine. Baffled shouts from the peat told them that their pursuers had lost them, but it could only be a matter of moments before they were discovered again, for their footprints must show on the soft ground. Danny, however, gave no sign of despair, but went on down the drain, dropped into the tiny burn on hands and knees, and proceeded down it also.
“Now I know what it feels like to be the otter om otter-hunting!” said Love with a giggle that was half a sob. She was hot, dirty, scratched and stained, a stitch like a dagger seared her side, she was soaked to the skin, and still they would not stop. Far past noticing where they were going, she found herself on her feet, a kindly bank hiding them temporarily, with a roaring in her ears which she took to be her heart drumming, until quite suddenly, the bank dropped precipitously in front of them, and the water fell in a heavy white mane over high rocks. “Oh, not down here!” she gasped unheard, for she hated heights, but both men were scrambling down, and she, perforce, must scramble with them. At the bottom Danny paused, cast a quick look around, and disappeared, as it seemed, into the waterfall. Love, with a long, trembling sigh, followed his imperative tug at her hand. The water roared and boiled all round her, she was sure she would be swept downstream by it, but suddenly she was standing, safe enough, on damp stone, in a queer half-light that showed her the wet maiden-hair and spleenwort gleaming silvery in crevices of a large grotto, and in front of her, never ceasing, the tumbling white water.
Love Comes Home Page 20
