Second Sight

by Neil M. Gunn

“Where’s Geoffrey?” he asked.

  “He hasn’t come back yet,” said Sir John.

  “I say!” said George, quickly glancing at their faces again. “I have been working up the horror!” He laughed with exaggerated exuberance.

  “And what happened then?” Helen asked.

  George described how he found stones in the ditch itself and jacked up both wheels and at the second attempt got free, but the exhilaration had noticeably declined, and quite frankly he asked, “So old Geoff is caught out in it?”

  “It looks like it,” said Sir John. “I’m afraid it’s going to mean a pretty cold wait for him.”

  “It sure will,” said George. “Won’t he be hugging himself at this moment! Sorry I stayed so long in the garage, but I bumped, and did want to make sure if I had bent something underneath. Sorry and all that.”

  “You go and wash your face,” said Lady Marway.

  “Righto!” and he swung away hurriedly.

  Marjory turned to Harry. “And what were you trying to do?”

  “It’s so thick,” he explained, “that you can only walk with your hands out in front of you. Joyce must have heard me and stood still. I heard absolutely nothing—until my hand caught a cold hand suspended in mid air. I had to hold on to it. Then she lost her head for a second. I thought she was all right, when I handed her over. I wondered if something had happened to George. Joyce drives as you know. And when I got to the garage, sure enough mysterious grunts came from under the car, as if George were bleeding to death. It was merely his difficulty with language.”

  This was more like the normal Harry and Lady Marway turned to her tapestry frame and Sir John to his Times. Helen and Marjory were too excited, however, to concentrate on anything, and, on an impulse, they both left the room.

  Harry tried to read, but after half an hour could hardly sit still. His mind, too, would not focus. He arose and went up to the bathroom and studied his cheek in the glass and wiped it clean of blood. Then, on a thought, he dabbed the scratches with Milton, for Joyce’s finger nails were long and varnished and dirty. She had struggled in his arms with quite amazing fury. A dissolving, ugly, fleshy, warm, terrifying performance. Had had to pin her arms and get his mouth in her ear: “Joyce, Joyce, it’s Harry!” And then the sag, and her forehead against his neck.

  Strange beast, the human animal. He corked the Milton and shut the cupboard and wondered what he would do next. Marjory and Helen would be talking away somewhere, that odd woman’s excitement on them, like the excitement on birds gathered together.

  One thing was quite clear: Helen was hurt right to the root over the kissing business. It was not the act itself, he agreed, sitting on the edge of the bath, but something damnable and shattering in the public way it was done. A silly little rotten act like that has often the effect of putting one dead off something that had loomed quite big or important; suddenly tires one of the thought of it, and there it is! Helen, he saw, just meant nothing to him really. Not a thing; and as his face lifted and stared at nothing, his mouth twisted into little ugly shapes. Amusing to think how among the high hills she had been behind his mind like beauty behind the world! And he had been half-conscious of this as a strength in himself, so wonderful that it was a secret mirth! Ye gods! he muttered, and rubbed finger-tips upward against his jawbone. What the hell was he sitting in here for? As he closed the door behind him, he stood and listened. There were two corridors of five or six bedrooms each. The girls’ corridor was on the other side of the stair-head. He heard nothing, and went into his own room, where it was pitch black. He groped his way to the bed and sat on it.

  Annoying experience, this, of not being able to get hold of your mind. Sort of diffused, disgruntled blank into which a picture comes entirely of its own volition—like the way he now saw the three girls in Joyce’s bedroom, their heads inclining to one another, Helen with her feet tucked under her on the edge of the bed. They did not interest him, and Helen’s veiled excitement was nearly an offence. Geoffrey’s face came up at him, like a drowned face up through water. Grey it was, and pallid, but by no means drowned when it looked at him. The eyebrows strained together, intolerant and angry. It’s going to take a lot of your mist to trap me! it said. Harry turned away from it. Served the blighter right!

  At first he had thought it rather fun having his mind sharpened in this penetrative unusual fashion. He was by no means so sure about it now.

  All through that damned fellow Alick, with his thick, solid, opaque body. He was built to be a chucker-out in a pub. That was the job for him. His eye would know at once the dangerous drunk, and his body would find relief in action. Here he wasn’t getting a real outlet. That was what was wrong with him. He was moving in a lost world.… George and Joyce, the babes in the wood, wandering hand in hand, terrified, through the Celtic mist—from ruin to ruin. Ruin to ruin! Lord, what a picture of historic significance! He began to chuckle, and the perverse humour easing his mind a little, he got up, with the queer, but not unpleasant, feeling that he did not know himself. He overtook the three girls going downstairs.

  “Am I forgiven?” he asked Joyce.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll never forgive you for making me make a fool of myself.”

  “Oh, if that’s all, I don’t mind.”

  “Clever boy!” said Marjory.

  George and Joyce went to eat, for they had had nothing since lunch and it was now nine o’clock. Joyce seemed even more than her old self, as if she had got wearied out of every humour. Nothing more was going to upset her. George was solicitous and attentive, capable of an exuberant gesture, when required. He could be relied on to play his part. When they had left the sitting-room, they were missed.

  For folk could not go on talking about Geoffrey, however his absence pervaded the room. And Harry knew by the way in which not the slightest reference had been made to the second-sight incident that it was in every mind.

  Lighting his pipe, he glanced across at Lady Marway. Coolly and quietly she worked, without a suggestion of unusual preoccupation. Just normal and cool—the wise woman. Then as she turned over the small tapestry frame, Harry saw her give a quick look at her husband, who seemed happily absorbed in the Editor’s letters, before going on with her task.

  The wise mother! Her chair and tapestry spread out like a hen’s wings. Then he glanced at Helen—and found her looking surreptitiously at Marjory, who was staring over the top of her book at nothing. This picture so arrested him that he contrived a steady look at it, for clearly here was a new hidden situation of which he had no understanding. Helen’s eyes came upon him so completely that for a moment he could not turn away. When he did he felt uncomfortable, as if he had been caught prying. In a moment or two he was even angry, and looked back again deliberately. She was still contemplating him, with the absent expression a woman directs towards a playing child or towards the thought of a person. Then she saw him, regarded him for a moment calmly, and got back to her book.

  As he tried to read he was painfully aware of the beating of his heart. He realised he had no control over that wayward muscle. He felt its flushes in his hands. For the awful, the terrifying, thing—it came upon him like revelation—about Helen was that she was alive.

  Presently Joyce and George came in, but very soon the room settled down upon them again, and all was quiet until the outside door to the gun-room rattled.

  The only one who stuck to a chair was Marjory. George had the inside door open in a moment.

  “I thought I would just look round,” said Maclean. At the sound of his voice, expectancy died.

  “Very good of you,” Sir John welcomed him. “No word of any kind, I suppose?”

  “No,” said Maclean. “They would surely have been in by this time, if they were coming to-night. So they’ll just be settled down somewhere. There’s no need to worry about them. They’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you. I hope so.”

  “There’s nothing we can do but wait for daybreak. Mist or no mist,
we’ll be off then to meet them. So we just can settle down for the night. I thought I would tell you so because there’s no need for worry.”

  “Will they find good shelter?” Lady Marway asked.

  “Oh yes, ma’m,” Maclean answered. “You search about until you find a heather bluff of some kind. It will be colder than being in your bed, maybe, but you can always get up and take a little dance to yourself. I’ve done it more than once.”

  “Have you?”

  “Och yes.” His grave smile was infectious. “The wife was saying to me how anxious you would be, so I just thought I would come over.”

  “That was very good of you.” She looked at Sir John.

  “Come and have a drink, Maclean,” said Sir John.

  “No no, indeed, sir—thank you very much. I’ll just be going to my bed. Good-night all.”

  Everyone called good-night and Sir John accompanied him to the outside door. “You took a risk, coming in this.”

  “Maybe I’ve come too often for that,” said Maclean. “Good-night, Sir John. I hope it will be a better morning.”

  “Isn’t he a dear?” cried Helen, as Sir John came in.

  “Don’t forget the wife,” Lady Marway said.

  They all laughed. Maclean had carried away the burden of the room on his back.

  George ventured upon “a No-play of Geoffrey taking his little dance to himself”. From a curled-up position on the floor, where things tickled his neck and bit his thighs, he pushed himself laboriously erect, and with a face of wild solemnity, puffing, shivering, and blowing, did a flat-footed war-dance to a No-tune of barbaric rhythm. There were exaggerated gestures in which could just be traced some of Geoffrey’s mannerisms. No one could help laughing. “You’re sure there’s not a drop left in that flask, Angus?” “No, sir, there eesn’t wan drop eetself.”

  Lady Marway smiled upon George.

  At eleven-thirty, she said, “Bed.”

  There was some protest. Obviously there would be no hill to-morrow, but Marjory, stooping, kissed her hostess goodnight. At once Joyce followed suit. Helen shrugged and, about to stoop, paused.

  “I thought I heard footsteps,” she said.

  “Helen, child, you mustn’t——”

  “There!” said Helen.

  “There’s something,” Harry murmured. The room became a listening ear on which the fumbling at the outside gun-room door struck loudly. Sir John opened the inside door and, staring before him, said:

  “Angus!”

  The muddied bedraggled figure stared back at Sir John. “Mr. Smith has come home, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Hasn’t he?” said Angus. “I thought I heard his voice—through the window.”

  “No,” said Sir John.

  “Hasn’t he?” said Angus. Harry saw the protective dazed look come down over his face.

  “Come in,” said Sir John. Angus followed him reluctantly and Sir John made him sit down, then went to pour out a tot of whisky. Angus blinked in the strong light and smiled awkwardly, not meeting any of the faces concentrated upon him. His face was smudged; his hair in wet disorder; his brow glistened from wiped sweat. His large loose mouth kept forming a foolish smile. He was intensely nervous.

  “Drink that,” said Sir John.

  He drank it at once. “I thought I heard his voice,” he said, “through the window.”

  “Where did you leave him?” Sir John asked.

  “On the hill—Benuain. I missed him. He didn’t wait for me. I asked him to be sure to wait. He didn’t wait. I thought maybe he was in front of me. I didn’t know what to do.” He smiled foolishly.

  “What happened exactly? Take your time,” said Sir John, in a quiet kindly voice.

  “The mist came down on us.”

  “Where?”

  “On the other side of Benuain, near the march.”

  “The march!” exclaimed Sir John.

  “Yes. We were following a beast. Mr. Smith was anxious to get him. I thought the mist…but he was very anxious to get him. So the mist came down, just before we got to the spot. So we started for home.”

  “Take your time,” said Sir John.

  “It was very thick, but I had seen how the wind was carrying the mist. The wind gave us a direction. And we would have been all right, but we came to a place where there was no wind. We kept going. It was a very thick mist. Then we got the wind again and we found we were off our way. So we altered our way, but we were never coming to the black-water burn.”

  “I see. Take your breath. Don’t hurry,” said Sir John, aware of the terrific internal effort that kept the simple expression on Angus’s face.

  “We came to a place I didn’t seem to know. Everything was strange in the mist. I did my best, but in the end I had to tell him we were lost, and the only thing we could do was to find the best shelter we could, till the mist lifted.”

  “Quite,” said Sir John. “That was right.”

  “Mr. Smith wasn’t pleased, and said we must keep going. It was very thick. I thought by the ground that we were still about Benuain, and it is not easy going there. Then I thought it was dangerous to be walking on, for I could feel the daylight going and—and—so I asked him if he would stay and—and—I would search out from him. And when I had quartered the ground, we could go on and try another place. At last he said all right. I had a feeling the wind had changed. The wind blows different ways in the hills. But I had a feeling it had changed round. I half-faced it and went three hundred and twenty three steps straight and came to a burn. I didn’t know it at first, so I decided to follow it to see if it was one I knew.”

  He was now getting better control of the way his breath tended to ball up in his chest.

  “I put three stones on the bank to mark the place. Then I followed it some way but could make nothing of it until suddenly I came to a place on the bank, and I knew it at once. It was a place that Alick had taken me to once when he was setting a trap. I knew it at once. I knew now where we were. The only thing was that the place seemed to be on the wrong side of the burn to my memory of it. I sat down to get hold of it, and then I saw I had come at the burn the opposite way to what I thought I had.” His brows gathered up and he glanced at Sir John.

  “I know that feeling,” said Sir John.

  Angus was relieved. “I turned the whole place about, and got it clear in my head. So I knew where I was. And I was very glad. And I went back up the bank until I came to the three stones, and then with the wind half in my back walked three hundred and twenty three steps. I called, but Mr. Smith did not answer me. I kept shouting and found the spot where I had left him. But he was gone.” His brown hands were still wringing his cap, twisting and wringing it.

  “How long were you away from him?”

  “I couldn’t say. It didn’t seem very long to me.”

  “Would it be half an hour?”

  “No, no,” said Angus positively.

  “Think,” said Sir John. “How far did you go down the bank? Another three or four hundred yards?”

  “Not more, I’m sure.”

  “Say eight hundred yards altogether—and back. The better part of a mile. Very bad ground and thick mist. You sat down. It couldn’t have been anything short of half an hour, could it?”

  “It didn’t seem anything like that to me.”

  “No. And even if it had been more, Mr. Smith should have waited. For you did your quartering very intelligently. He would have grown impatient. To him ten minutes would have seemed a very very long time. He probably thought you had got lost.”

  “Perhaps he did,” said Angus. “If only I had gone back when I found the burn! But I wanted to make sure of it. I kept calling and whistling as I came on.”

  “How did you possibly manage back here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Angus. “When I thought he might be in front, I kept going as fast as I could by the burnside. Then I climbed up the hill-face and got on to what I thought was the north shoulder of Benbeg. I w
as trying for the pony track but I couldn’t find it. I kept going. I kept going a long time. I came to a dry water-course. I came to a place of great stones. Then I came to the ruins of the Picts’ Houses and I knew where I was.”

  “The Picts’ Houses!” said Harry. “Right off your course.”

  “Yes,” said Angus. “I was lucky. I sat down and thought it out. Then I struck through the moor for the Corr. And at last I came to it.”

  “Could you see at all?” George asked him.

  “Oh no,” said Angus. “I couldn’t see a foot before me.”

  “Jehosaphat!” said George.

  “What do you think Mr. Smith did?” Sir John asked him.

  “He would go on for a bit maybe, but he was bound to know that he was lost, and in a short while he could not go on, for the light went. He will be in the best shelter he could find. There is no danger within miles of him.”

  “There’s nothing more we can do to-night?”

  “No, sir. But I’ll start back after a little while.”

  They looked at him. He got to his feet and visibly swayed, smiling; turning for the door, he staggered. Harry caught his arm. “The whisky has gone to my head!” he said in a thick voice.

  “Wait, Angus,” said Lady Marway.

  “No, I’ll be going,” and he made out, Harry hanging on to him. He wanted to get to the old loft over the garage. He wanted to lie down. He could not stand their faces any longer, could not stand any more. But Harry hung on to him, and, outside, was beginning to reason with him, when Alick’s voice said, “Is that you, Angus?”