by Paul Gallico
Yet now that he was there he found himself experiencing a strange reluctance to tug upon the rope and set the echoes clanging with the ringing of the bell. The clearing was unusually quiet that morning, there seemed to be no animals about and the stillness weighed upon him. The bell, once rung, would start a chain of events beyond recall.
His great chest still heaving, MacDhui stood gazing at the stone cottage. The green door was shut. As always, the blinds were drawn at the windows fronting the clearing and the covin oak. There was no discernible change in the physical aspect of its mass and yet in some way the house seemed to have averted its sleeping face from him and sealed its lips. Was it only his imagination, heated by the urgency of his quest and his sleepless night, or was there no longer a welcome there?
To his surprise he heard the sweet, silvery tone of the Mercy Bell in gentle vibration, and looking up, startled, saw that he had brushed the rope with his shoulder and that the clapper had touched the side. The accident decided him. He seized the cord and rang it, setting the echoes afire, raising the wind of a hundred wings about the house. From the barn behind, that was Lori’s hospital, furious barking arose, but no dogs appeared. The echoes died away; the birds subsided. The dogs were stilled. Lori did not appear.
He rang again, crying, “Lori—Lori— It is I, Andrew MacDhui.”
The dogs barked again, but the birds this time refused to take wing . . .
MacDhui had a moment of panic. Supposing Lori had been seriously injured or burned in his defense the night before and was unable to answer the summons. It should have sent him shouldering through her door, yet the sleeping, evasive, unwelcoming house forbade this. And the picture of her returned to his mind, the clasp of her hands to his face when she had kissed him, the softness and passion of her mouth, and the sound of her flying footsteps as she fled from the scene.
He tugged at the bell rope hard and harshly to shatter the dreadful oppressive silence that clung to the place that day and shouted again. “Lori! Lori! Dinna ye hear me? ’Tis I, Andrew.” And he was growing angry.
He was growing angry because of the love he felt for her, to which he could not give expression, things he wished to say to her, the confessions, the promises, the pleas and the sweetnesses.
“Lori!” he bellowed then at the top of his lungs, “Come forth! I love you!”
The confession shouted to the winds, the trees, and the rushing burn in the background inflamed him further, and he tugged upon the clapper of the Mercy Bell as though to tear it from the tree. His rage and despair drove even his daughter’s need from his head. “Woman, can ye no’ take heed for a man who’s sick with love for ye?”
The clearing was a-quiver with the endless clangor of the bell as MacDhui, near the end of his senses, pulled it wildly and endlessly; the birds now rose again in panic; the dogs and other animals in the rear matched the hysteria with shrill cries and barks. His bellow arose over the shattering clangor. “Lori! Did ye no’ hear me tell I love you? Here I am. Will ye no’ have me? Will ye no’ listen to my offer of marriage?”
Later it was said that the clamor of his proposal was heard all the way to the edge of Inveranoch.
Within the cottage, kneeling by her bedroom window, peering through a crack in the lowered blinds, Lori looked down with panic upon the great, bristling, love-enraged man summoning her, and could not move a muscle or stir a limb.
Within her she was crying silently, “Oh, my dear dear man, my dear love, cannot ye wait? Och, it is too soon, too soon—”
His fury and his violence confused and frightened her. He had led her at first so gently out of the tranquil world in which she had lived for so long, that wonderful world of dreams and phantasies and the love of gentle creatures. She had discovered it when she was very young and had chosen to live in it until the Red MacDhui had come storming into her citadel as man, as healer, and a little, in a way, as God. It never dawned upon her that she had likewise led him part way from his world into hers—
He had taken her far, but the echoes of her lonely, dedicated life were still heard. She wanted more time—and gentleness.
His bellows and bell ringing rattled the shutters outside her window. “Aye, ye were no’ so proud last night. Ye cried ‘MacDhui!’ kissed me, and were my woman. Will ye then no’ have me now?”
The memory of the fight and the battle-passioned kiss she had bestowed returned to fill her with confusion and she no longer looked upon the man courting her in such strange fashion, but hid her face in her hands and wept hot tears of shame.
“As ye are—I want ye to wife, Lori!”
She cowered, remembering how fiercely she had clutched the great, bleeding head in her hands and pulled his mouth to hers.
He struck the bell a tremendous clang and shouted, “ ’Tis the last time. I’ll no’ be asking ye again, Lori.”
She shivered as she remembered her fierce pride in the victory they had won and yet was in vain, for the little bear had died. She lived over the fiery night when another Lori seemed to have come forth from the flames.
Then she became aware that the unruly clamor of the Mercy Bell was stilled and that the glen echoed no more to the untamed bellowings of MacDhui. Lori removed her hands from her face and peered through the crack. He was gone. A different kind of panic beset her now, and she ran down the stairs, unlocked her door and fled through it to the covin oak. “Andrew!” she called, “Och, Andrew—my Andrew.”
She waited a long time beneath the covin-tree, should he perhaps return. But he did not do so.
MacDhui was stumbling, a beaten, insensate man, his ears closed, his eyes half blinded, down the path, nor heeded where he went or where the way lay and so he came into the woods below the clearing, tripping over roots, falling upon rocks, cursing, thrusting his way bull-like through the shoulder-high bracken, tearing himself on brambles.
For he was at the end of all his high hopes, to the end of all hope. His temper and frenzy of rage mounted as he crashed his way through the undergrowth as though by charging blindly ahead he could come to grips with the fates that had tricked him and robbed him at every turn of everything he held dear.
Thus in the course of his descent through the woods he emerged into a small glade bare of trees but ringed round with beech and oak and dappled birch. The floor was carpeted with leaves and moss and small strands of fern and low shrubs that bore red berries. In the center of this glade was a small grave mound over which new grass had crept and weeds and broad-leaved plants had grown up around it. Sun and rain had faded the lettering upon the wooden marker headboard of the grave and the winds had somewhat shifted it so that it now stood not quite straight.
Astonishment at finding a burial place in this wild and deserted spot halted MacDhui in his flight and momentarily restored him to his senses, so that he paused to look about him.
It was such a grave as a small child might have occupied and MacDhui was swept by a new wave of bitterness as he reflected that the once gay and happy Mary Ruadh was to be confined beneath the sod in a crowded dour churchyard, less sweet and peaceful than this lonely forest retreat.
The reminder was all the more poignant and painful in that the child still lived, but must die. There was still a spark that glowed in the almost extinguished twin coals of her eyes and he thought how he had looked upon her all through the night, trembling lest the faint movement of her breathing should cease and the beginning of the days and nights must be faced when he would never see her again.
The grave in the glade held him as one caught in a spell. Before, he had been prey to fear and anxiety and kindred emotions as it became more and more apparent that his daughter’s life was hanging in the balance, but this sight filled him with a welling and inexpressible grief.
At last he went over to the mound and knelt at its side, half fearing in his heart that he would read, “HERE LIES MARY RUADH MACDHUI, AGED 7, BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANDREW MACDHUI—”
He tilted his big, burning, aggressive head to read the
legend inscribed on the board, bending low to make out the faded, washed-out lettering and, in this manner, came into possession of the knowledge as to who and what lay buried there, for he could make out, “H re lies T omasina born Jan. 18, 1952, FOUL Y MURDERED Jul 26 1957 Sleep Sweetly Sain ed Freind.”
The true horror of the place to which he had come grew upon him only gradually. Kneeling there, a massive, self-sufficient man, red beard as always outjutted in defiance of the world, he was not at first even aware that his head, twisted to read the accusing letters, was shaking from side to side in negation.
Foully murdered! Foully murdered! Foully murdered!
It was untrue! It was a lie! There had been no time. The cat was already half dead. It would have died anyway. Who had written those words that forced themselves like hard, cold stones into the pit of his stomach and turned his bowels to ice? Who had dared to pass this verdict upon his judgment and write it for anyone to read?
Now the picture of Hughie Stirling of the handsome head, the clear blue eyes, and the level gaze came into the mind of Andrew MacDhui, and with it the forms and faces of his two companions. And it was as though he heard three young voices speak and they cried out, “Mr. Veterinary Surgeon Andrew MacDhui to the Bar. You are to be judged by childhood. The verdict will be rendered out of our way of seeing things and the sentence will be the contempt you have earned in our eyes.”
He saw them again, his judges, lined up in his study; long-necked, long-faced Jamie Braid, Hughie Stirling of the open countenance, crop-headed tear-smudged Geordie McNabb, making their accusations against the gypsies for cruelty and inhumanity toward something helpless that had set off the spark of love in their breasts and touched their hearts.
“They beat the poor bear! They were awfu’ cruel! They struck a horse wi’ a loaded crop!”
And behind them the silent shadowy figure of Mary Ruadh. “He killed my cat!” How long had it been since he had heard the sound of her voice, or seen her eyes light in a smile at his presence? “Murder!” had been the verdict of the three stern unbiased judges. Here they had interred the victim, to the drone of the pipes of Jamie Braid; here had stood Mary Ruadh in her sham widow’s weeds and laid her living child’s heart alongside her dead.
“Foully murdered,” the judges had added, and Mary Ruadh had passed upon him the sentence of silent contempt.
The cold, congealing portent of the full circle he had come crept to his heart. Would they write “Foully murdered!” too, upon the gravestone of his child? A groan, “No! No!” burst from him, and he struck his forehead with the heels of his hands savagely to drive away the fearful thoughts storming in upon him. But it was too late . . . The breach in the dam of his arrogance and self-sufficiency had been made and through it overwhelmingly poured the floodwaters of his guilt and failure as a human being.
His arsenal had been the stony heart and stubborn will and monumental selfishness. Even in his wooing of Lori he had forgotten his child and had bawled like a madman for her to come to him. This fearful grave with its contents and inscription had in one blinding flash succeeded in showing him to himself and the enormity of shouldering through life without pity, compassion, and human sympathy. He had loved neither man nor beast, but only himself. He had failed on every count as father, husband, lover, doctor, and man. The mocking grave laid his daughter’s death at his door.
This then was the way that Andrew MacDhui, veterinary of Inveranoch, was brought to his knees, the shivering wreck of a once proud and self-sufficient man whose tears of revulsion burst the restraint of his manhood and coursed unheeded down his face as at last he brought himself to cry aloud words he never thought would pass his lips.
“God forgive me my sins! God help me!! Help me, God!”
Then he staggered to his feet and fled the glade, the grave, and its marker, leaving behind him, undiscovered, the sole spectator to these events, the small, ginger cat with pointed ears who lay above his head upon the branch of a giant beech growing at the edge of the glade that stretched almost to the little mound. She had been there from beginning to end, her paws tucked up under her and a smug, pleased, and interested expression on her long, narrow face as she gazed down through the leaves at the strange and disturbing spectacle below.
2 7
I AM the Pasht, the holy, the dedicated, the sacred!
Glory to Amen-Ra, creator of all!
I am truly Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, mistress of the skies, before whom man and beast tremble. The sun is my father, the stars are my playthings. When I stretch I span the universe; my growl is the thunder; the lightnings flash from my eyes; the earth shakes when my whiskers quiver; my tail is the ladder from earth to heaven.
I am God!
I have been worshiped once more. I have been acknowledged. I have been prayed to.
I said that if but one walked this earth who knew me for who and what I was in this incarnation of my sacred ka, my divine power would return to me and I would be as once I was before, all wise, all seeing, all knowing, all terrible, all merciful.
Such a one there has been and I am God again. Bow low ye foolish ones in the presence of all cats, persecute or slay them not, for Bast sits once more upon her throne and fearful is her vengeance.
It came about the day after the night of the fire in the valley and the change in Lori, when I had despaired of who I was, or what I was.
I had gone to a quiet glade in the forest where I liked to be when I wished to be peaceful and think upon things. There was a grave there of one of us who in her life had been known as Thomasina. The branch of a great beech tree stretched over it and I was accustomed to climbing out and lying upon it.
The quiet and my thoughts were disturbed when raving and cursing, mine enemy, the Man with the Red Beard came crashing from the forest and into the circle of the glade, where he paused, staring about him like a mad bull.
Then he went to the grave of the one who had been known as Thomasina and a great change came over him. For he wept for one of us. He groaned, and rolled his eyes, and tore at his flaming beard and hair. He knelt there crying great tears in an agony of remorse.
And then he looked aloft and worshiped me. He confessed his sin and begged my forgiveness. He prayed to me to help him in his need. I have granted him his prayer.
It matters not that he was mine enemy upon whom I had placed a doom and whom I had hated to this day.
I hate him no longer.
I am a merciful and forgiving god to those who acknowledge me.
“God help me! Help me God!” he cried to me.
By Isis and Osiris, Horus, Hathor and my father god, the sun, now you shall become acquainted with the power and mercy of Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, queen of the night and cat goddess of Bubastis on the Nile!
2 8
When at last Andrew MacDhui returned to the house in Argyll Lane he found a knot of the curious gathered outside the door, including Constable MacQuarrie and the three boys, Hughie, Jamie, and Geordie, and was prepared for the worst. It was midday.
But the constable touched his checker-band cap and said, “About whatever happened last night, sir—”
“Aye—”
“I only came to tell you, sor, there’ll be no trouble. The gypsies have move clean away.” he hesitated and then added, “And thank you, sir. We should have kept a better eye on them—”
MacDhui said, “Yes, I know—”
The constable then said, “Aboot the wee one—”
MacDhui was surprised to find how numb he was with resignation. “Aye—”
The constable looked embarrassed. “I’ll be prayin’ that she pulls through, sor.”
“Thank you, constable. Do.”
The boys were at his side, wishing to speak. MacDhui faced his judges. Hughie Stirling asked, “May we go inside, sir?”
“I think not right now—”
Geordie McNabb asked, “Is Mary Ruadh dying?”
Hughie Stirling lost his head and shook the boy roughly. “Shut up, you little beast!
”
MacDhui held Hughie’s arm. “Let him be,” he said and then added, “Yes. I am afraid Mary Ruadh is dying.” He faced them squarely.
Jamie Braid said, “Och, ’tis grieved we are. ’Tis I will play the Lament for her.”
MacDhui marveled. Could they then so young, like the wisest of the bench, judge, sentence, and hold no rancor?
The irrepressible Geordie asked, “What happened to the bear?”
MacDhui understood that the death of the bear would mean more to this boy than the death of his daughter, but it did not make him angry. He felt only the necessity to keep the news of the bear’s end from the child. He said gravely, “The bear has gone away, Geordie, and I promise you it will not be hurt or suffer again.” He was rewarded by the look of relief and gratitude in Hughie Stirling’s eyes.
Hughie said, “Sir! We heard about what you did last night. You were”—he groped for the word that would convey their admiration and finally found it—“super, sir. Thank you.”
MacDhui said absently, “Yes, yes—” and then to those gathered at his door, “Please go. When it happens, you shall know.” He went inside.
Dr. Strathsay, Mr. Peddie, Mrs. McKenzie, and Willie Bannock were there. The pendulous folds of the doctor’s face were deeper and sadder than ever. But he looked up from his attendance at the bedside and asked with some asperity, “Where the devil have you been?”
MacDhui replied curtly, “Seeking help.”
Mr. Peddie, the eyes in the round face behind their spectacles filled with concern, exhaled softly. He thought he knew where MacDhui sought it. “Did you find it?” he asked.
“No.” MacDhui went over to the bed, picked the child up and held her in his arms, her head tucked beneath the red bristles of his chin. He noted that she seemed to have almost no weight. Pressing her close to his heart, he faced them all with a trace of his old truculence. “I will not let her die,” he said.
“Man,” said Dr. Strathsay almost angrily, “Have you prayed?”
