by Neil M. Gunn
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not he! It’s a nasty toss. He decides to lie. There are boulders and tufts of long heather, as you know. Well, he lies. Time passes. He gets very cold. Right to the marrow. He gets afraid—afraid, let us say, of pneumonia. Have you ever listened to a burn in the darkness? The queer sudden belches of sound. Moans and groans.”
“Often! Lord, yes! I thought no one had heard it but myself.”
“But surely you have heard old hill men talk of the ‘hill voices’, the voices that no one has ever been able to explain. You hear them coming up, passing you, and going away, quite distinctly—especially in mist.”
“Yes,” said Angus. “I have heard them myself.”
“Well, supposing he heard them? The burn beside him goes tumbling past boulders, and then—sheer over—far below him. He decides to climb up again. Madness, of course. Madness for anyone to move in a darkness like that, except perhaps ourselves, who know that the lay-out of our forest is very simple. Except for some corries and all the west side of Benuain, we have no sheer rocks or precipices much. However, there are some nasty corries, and one of them is just there. He climbs up. He comes on and on. Very slowly. Hands and knees, like an animal, cursing occasionally to drown the noises—until at last he comes round the shoulder of Coirecheathaich, under the impression of course that he is giving a wide berth to the falls of the burn, for he has a confused picture of the main glen in his mind. But he has been keeping too far up. He’s afraid of another fall. And he’s in pain. Well, in time he hits the small stream in the foot of the corrie. Now as you know, if he had gone up the stream, he would have come right out over the top, quite smooth and clean, then downhill anyway he liked until at last he would fetch the path by the Corr. Nothing but soft bog holes and muck to trouble him. He could have rolled down half the way. But he’s not going to do that. Why? Because he has found a stream and a stream now must flow homewards. Sound reasoning—which the short-cut that the stream takes over the cliff wall at the foot of the corrie does not affect, of course.”
Angus laughed.
“So I decided,” said Alick, his unhurried voice quiet and dry as when he began, “to head him off. I took the long shepherd’s crook and had to fumble often enough. But there’s no danger on the Corr route. The only difficulty was in getting into the corrie. I was lost once completely, I thought. However, it turned out I wasn’t. I took up my position some little way back from the cliff and beside the burn.”
“And he came?”
“In time, yes. If I hadn’t been expecting him, God knows I would have been frightened enough. I don’t blame him for the sounds that came from him now and then. And to have come so far, he had real guts. He had to keep going, to fight things back, keep them off. The thought of death rode him.”
Harry and Helen glanced at each other.
“You mean—he was——”
“He was frightened, anyway, and all jumpy, and angry—regular bad mix-up. When he was so near that I heard the gasps of his breath, I thought it was time to say something. So I addressed him quietly by name.”
“Lord almighty!” said Angus.
“He let out a squawk. Perhaps I should have shouted to him earlier. I don’t know. If I had, he might have turned and made off. If it had been your voice, it would not have been so bad. Any voice but mine. I had to touch him—to show him I was real. He gave a yell and let out. He hit me there—in the neck—and all but knocked me out. I sagged, like a shot stag. But I gripped him before he got much farther. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool!’ I yelled at him. I was very angry and had him on his back before it dawned on him that I was there in the flesh. So he came round to common sense. But it was not pleasant for a little while after that.”
A wild chuckle came out of Angus.
“I knew it couldn’t be far from the dawn. So I made him lie down. He did not speak for a long time. Then he asked if you were home. Then he cursed you—and was silent. Out of him I felt an awful hatred coming towards me. To tell the truth, I did not care for him much myself. I began to feel I could throw him over the cliff. So I went a little bit from him and lay on my back. The dawn came in and I made no move. Neither did he. After that, both of us may have dozed off a bit—or got into that state, you know, where you’re cold and miserable and think you’re awake all the time, but maybe you’re not. Anyway, the time came when we started. We hardly spoke. He was very stiff and could hardly walk. We got over the off side of the corrie. I saw it would be easier for him to slide on his bottom down the very steep slope beyond the rocks into the main glen, than tackle the climb and the soft ground down to the Corr. And once he was on the track, I could leave him to get on with it. He was in no hurry, I tell you! We never spoke—not even when the mist rolled away and you whistled.”
“He must know you saved him from certain death?”
“I doubt it.”
“But if you hadn’t been there and he had gone on, he would have gone over the lip with the long heather, head first, and could never have saved himself. Never, absolutely.”
“And you would have been to blame!”
“Ay,” said Angus, soberly. “You saved me that, I know.”
“Hmf! I don’t know what it is. In many ways he’s a decent fellow. Not caring for your feelings and jealous and all that—but still, more decent than most of them. I’ve had army bullies and slave-drivers and bastards of one kind or another who treat you like dirt. Oh I don’t know. That fellow will never like me now.”
“I wouldn’t say that. When things are going his own way, he’ll crow; and when he’s sure that you see he’s right and you’re wrong, he’s all right again. Then he laughs. It’s a great joke!”
“He’ll carry a joke too far—one day.”
There was silence for quite a time. Helen and Harry felt this silence coming out of Alick’s quiet voice, like some moody conviction of fatality.
“Ah well, to hell,” said Angus, “it’s all over. I was talking to Lachie from Screesval. They’re going over to dinner there to-morrow night. So Lachie was saying what about the lads from Screesval and Corbreac and anywhere else meeting at the inn for an evening of it. What about it?”
“I’ll see,” said Alick, in a moody tone.
“Oh, come on! Why not? Take your fiddle, too. Damn it, we need something now and then.…”
But Alick did not answer and their footsteps and Angus’s eager voice died away.
Harry and Helen glanced at each other.
“They have him taped,” said Harry.
“What an awful scene that must have been in the corrie!”
“Bit gruesome, what!” Harry’s lips twisted. There was a strange light in his eyes as they roved between the treetrunks.
Helen’s whole body gave a spasmodic shudder.
“When you think that Alick must have remembered—his own vision!” said Harry. “Talk of the possibilities of automatic, hypnotic action! The deadly hatred. And he saved his life!”
“You still believe in that vision?”
“Looks to me as if we’re going to be forced to believe in it. It’s an extraordinary thing that’s taking place. It’s something in Geoffrey’s spirit—I don’t know what it is—something that disintegrates. I saw its effect last season on Alick once. His may be the advanced sort of analytic mind that we’re not ready for. He disintegrates—without integrating. But ordinary human nature—cannot stand much of it. Oh, that may be all rot, but I’ll tell you a thing I was reading in that deer-forest book the other night. I had heard of it before. But the other night I saw something in it, saw it suddenly illuminated—in a way the writer never thought of, I bet!”
“You know the old stuff about how the people were cleared out of their homes all over the Highlands, to make way for sheep that paid the landlords better? Then Scrope and Landseer and Charles St. John and these boys got going and advertised deer-stalking to such an extent that deerforest rentals rose to three times the sheep rentals. So exit sheep—which wa
s a good thing for landlords, as the sheep-racket had begun to go bankrupt. In course of time the deer forests began to deteriorate, too. Nouveaux riches, annual rentals, shooting of best heads, of young stags not mature, leaving the wasters and the rubbish and so on—which is the position to this day. However, some time ago there was great concern about this and a few landlords thought, why not bring back virility to these poor Highland red deer, bring back heavy bodies and good heads—particularly, good heads, by introducing some English park deer. So they tried, and it was a ghastly failure.”
Helen looked at him. “Why?”
“In the first place, the whole idea was wrong. The Highland red deer has a noble history direct from palaeolithic times. He has fended for himself in the wilds, without artificial feeding or help of any kind from man. He has indeed lived through ages of being hunted by man, adapting himself to every change. Deer are naturally woodland animals. So were the old red deer. They love woods yet. But when the woods that covered all this land were destroyed by man, the red deer took to the open, to the hills. That’s the type of the beast. Sensitive, quick, swift like the wind, living by the wind—he’ll smell you a mile off; in and out the mist, like an apparition, proud and game to the last gasp when he’s cornered. Oh I saw him this morning on the top of Benbeg. He was beautiful, Helen. O God he was! I’m talking too much. Let us sit down.”
They sat down on the bare trunk near the upended root. “Am I talking too much?” he asked, without looking at her, an awkwardness in his voice.
“Please go on,” she said quietly.
“We had come up out of the mist—all that horror of the night’s mist—right into the sunlight, pure sunlight under a blue sky. It was the most beautiful emergence into light—that I have ever known. And I have this strange sort of feeling about it, too, that I’ll yet see it still better—I somehow even feel it more at this minute than I did.… I’m getting muddled. Forgive me. We lay down to rest there. Angus touched me with his hand. I turned my head and there was King Brude—standing just clear of the mist, in the sun. Stags on each side of him on the edge of the mist, and heads—heads—back into the mist, staring out of it like ghosts. An extraordinary sight. I’ll never forget it.”
“This morning?”
“Yes. But it was King Brude that—that gave the whole thing—I don’t know what. Distinction, nobility—in the wild native state. Impossible to explain. It’s not so much his size or weight. He’s certainly not twenty stone. But the throw forward of his power from his haunches to his breast and neck and head; the magnificent poise of his head, and—crowning all—the antlers. I have seen, I should think, pretty nearly all sorts of heads—royals and imperials of every formation. But I have never before seen a head that gave me so direct a thrill. In my royal, one of the second or bay tines is missing. Authorities say that the loss of the bay tines shows decline from perfect form. Perhaps they’re right. And bay tines are far more often missing than not, in the Highlands nowadays. I’m coming to that. But King Brude has both bay tines. The balance of the head is superb, the black colour, the sheer arching loveliness of the span—the most thrilling example I have ever seen, in any collection or book, of what is called “wind-blown”. For when you come to the last fork in each antler, and the last two tines reach over to the other two and yet up—long delicate points ‘blown’, as it were, by the wind—Lord, it puts the heart across you. It’s pure creation of the mountains and the hill winds—or am I talking balderdash or what?”
“You make me see it,” she said softly. “Please go on.”
“Where was I?” He smiled. “I was going to make a point or something—but the antlers seem to have knocked it out of my head. What was I talking about?”
“You were talking about deer forests and their deterioration and——”
“Yes. I remember. Only—I don’t know that I want to make it now. It seems so damned priggish.”
“Please do. I think I’ll understand.”
“Well, it was this deterioration. Introduction of English park deer. Had to be hand-fed in the winter. Then hand-feeding of native stock to keep the numbers of rubbish up. Stalking and shooting hand-fed beasts. And so the rot went on—and goes on. And suddenly my mind switched over and applied all this to the native human stock—to a fellow like Alick who is, spiritually, the king of his kind. Now I know we English are capable of the most appalling complacency. For heaven’s sake, don’t misunderstand me. There is a social life in London that you and I know is rotten beyond all redemption. Some of its elements come here and spread the plague about. And there are always the well-entrenched slave-drivers, the pukka bullies, for whom killing as a sport is everything all the time. I’m not referring to all that, nor to degenerate Cockneys or Highlanders. It’s to something far less obvious than that, something infinitely more subtle. It’s awful when a thought is biting you and you can’t grip it. I’m talking an awful lot. But what I’m trying to say is that—that in a fellow like Alick—oh, I know he’s moody and could be brutal and dangerous—but still there is in him, in his spirit, a quality, a delicacy, a vision, that is the counterpart of the wind-blown antlers on King Brude. Not many of them have it, let us say. There are not many King Brudes. Dying out. The bay tines are going. And in the end—King Brude will go into the mist for ever, and Alick will be driven forth.”
Harry shut his mouth, for the last words had come from him in a way that stopped any self-excusing addition of talking “awful rot”. His face was serious, with something of sadness and irony and intolerance, as Helen glanced at it—and glanced away at once. Out of the silence she said simply:
“I’m glad you spoke like that, Harry. I’m very glad.”
“Oh, well—perhaps it’s this place. I don’t know. But sometimes—I feel it sort of getting me. Dashed if I can understand it. Do you think it’s the place?”
“I think so,” she said slowly. “I think it must be.”
“Sort of puts one on edge somehow. I’m not given to analysis and that, normally. I mean I detest the morbid. Heaven save me from anything of the kind. I should loathe——”
“Naturally. But you’re not fair there.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you know quite well it’s not morbid. You know it’s the very opposite of morbid. You said, for example, that your mind was illumined. You talked about emerging into the light. It’s light. Light—in which you see things.”
“I say, that’s pretty clever, Helen! Really—pretty clever. Uhm.” Eyes in front, he nodded, a trifle excited. “You know, when you’re stalking, this business of light is quite remarkable. You’re spying out a corrie that’s in shadow—glassing the whole place with the greatest care—not a living thing. Then the shadow passes, and the light comes, and there are stags and hinds, amongst the boulders, the clumps of heather, with the light on their brown coats turning them reddish, all alive. You would hardly credit it unless you had actually done it.”
“I wonder,” she said, after a moment.
“What?”
“Is it my turn for getting light? I suddenly have the idea that perhaps all this Celtic business—you know—the Celtic mind—is an affair of the atmosphere over this land: light and shadow, swift transitions, mist and rain, tones, such soft lovely tones, and flowing lines.”
“Not Gaelic or Celtic so much, you mean, as a property of the atmosphere over this land? Like the atmosphere over the peat-bogs of Ireland or the Connemara hills? It’s so like the thing, that I doubt it. But—it’s exciting! There’s something there!”
“I do feel excited,” said Helen.
“Do you? So do I.”
“It’s this seeing…”
“Uhm. Sort of second sight all on its own!”
“Yes.”
He turned his head and looked at her. But she did not meet his look. Her eyes were so brilliant that the points of her lashes seemed dark and wet. Her skin was very vivid.
A surge came into his throat that stopped him speaking. The so
und of his swallow was quite audible. She jumped to her feet, “Come along,” and walked away.
He could not move. From a little distance, she turned half-round. He got up, but she did not wait for him till she was out of the wood.
Chapter Eight
“Mr. Smith has just rung, ma’m. He begs to be excused for not coming down to dinner.”
“Oh. All right, Mairi. You will see that his dinner is properly served in his room.”
As Mairi withdrew, Lady Marway turned to her husband. “I think you had better go up and see him. Ask if there is anything in particular he needs.”
In a very short time, Sir John was back.
“Says he is feeling very tired. Didn’t sound as if he wanted to talk much.”
“Anything really wrong with him?”
“He assured me there is not. Said he fell on his right side and hurt it a bit. Purely muscular.”
“A bit moody, is he?”
“Well—I don’t know. He’s just in the mood not to be bothered. Natural enough.”
Lady Marway sat thoughtfully silent.
Sir John gave her a side glance, and then looked at the old cannibal trout in its glass case.
“Nothing worrying you, is there?” he asked.
“No, not exactly. What makes you think so?”
“Nothing. Only I suppose it is natural enough that we should have been worried over Geoffrey. He’s all right now, however. Feeling a trifle sorry for himself, perhaps.”
