by Neil M. Gunn
“I know. Geoffrey is like the boy who must harry a thing to death—or at least break it up to prove to you that what is inside is not what you imagined. In that respect he has never quite grown up. What date is it?”
“It’s the nineteenth, I think. Yes.”
She sat quite still. “He goes at the end of the month. Then Ernest and Betty come up. I like Geoffrey, but this time I shall be rather relieved when he goes.”
“I hope you haven’t been really upset.”
“Not really. It’s—rather vague. But I just feel that way.”
“You are not”, he said in an expressionless voice, “getting tired of this place?”
“No.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Yes.” There was silence for a time. Then she said. “It was my idea as much as yours—more than yours, perhaps. All that happened to us happened in India. All that was exciting in our lives—in my life certainly. When we got back to London, I thought—now life at last can be secure. Then I began to miss India, especially the nights, and particularly—how strange human nature is!—the nights in which I had been terrified. Those nights up country are a very vivid memory. That night, with the cries in the forest and the servants prowling about outside. I was very frightened that night.”
“You were quite certain I was not coming back!”
“I was. And it was that night I realised.… I could never quite tell you. A young wife is naturally enough in love, I suppose. And we have our emotions for expression. But it was more than that. It was a rather terrifying experience, inside me. The terror gripped me—gripped my bones—and it gripped me with your fingers. I can give you no idea of it. I do not know yet how I managed to control myself. For what I wanted to do was to catch up a spear and go away and find you and—and kill anyone who.… In a way I was mad—quite beside myself.”
“Thank God, you didn’t do that, anyway. And I had begged you not to come up on that trip.”
“I suppose I was in love with you then. Or thought I was—until that night.”
“You were very lovely, Eve. And you can have no idea—what a responsibility!”
Then he turned quietly to her, stooped, caught her right hand and kissed it, and, without a word, resumed his original position.
“The awful thing about you, Jack, is—that you could always—do a thing like that.” She smiled, but her lips were pressed together and her eyes were bright.
“Fortunately for me, your fears were groundless.”
“That is not quite fair. You know perfectly well there was deadly danger that night. You got through it because of your character—the image of you in the native mind. You may not understand that. I do. However, all that only came into my mind because of what you said about being up here. Far from being tired of this place, I love it. London, I’m afraid, would drag without the autumn here—somehow it is the true autumn to our summer. And it has, in a way, the same sort of strange foreignness.”
“How well you do contrive to put a thing! You were always clever at that.”
“About Geoffrey—I do not want to be unfair—but I wish sometimes he could contrive to leave a slightly different image in the native mind. That’s all.”
“But—I say—that’s…” Sir John smiled. “I am just a little afraid that you are allowing your imagination, over a certain matter, to get the better of you—very slightly, of course.”
“Possibly. And imagination, as Geoffrey might say, isn’t a scientific entity.”
“That’s better!”
“You do me a lot of good, my dear, frequently—or at least, occasionally.”
“I’m glad to be of service at any time.”
“You can have no idea—no man ever has—the amount of good a little talk does a woman.” She picked up her tapestry frame and regarded it critically. “I think now I can risk a slightly brighter shade of red.”
“Don’t plunge too rashly.”
“Because you never plunged rashly, you mustn’t come to conclusions on the matter.”
“Agreed. My failing, but I never could plunge rashly.”
“No. You just calmly plunged.” She added quietly, “I like this break, too, for Helen.”
“She does seem to enjoy it.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I suppose you see what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned the frame over and pulled the thread through, “With Harry,” and tightened it.
“Oh—with Harry!” That was an old story. His concern eased, for he was very fond of his daughter.
“I would rather this background—if it’s got to be—than London. Young women nowadays—they’re very modern. Cocktails and midnight parties and so on. Quite different from our time. They are emancipated. Like Joyce.”
“I like Joyce,” he said. “I must say I do. I like her bright modern ways.”
“So do I like Joyce. The open frank manner is a healthy advance. That’s obvious enough. I still happen to think that too much drink and too many late nights aren’t good for anyone, particularly for young girls. But it’s not quite that that I mean. After all, no age ever has a monopoly of social looseness. There are decadent periods—always have been. Take India—away back nearly thirty years ago, when you and I knew it first—well, you know what went on. You knew one of the reasons why I wanted to be with you, if it was humanly possible. You knew all about it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Our experience of human nature has been too wide to leave us narrow-minded, at least I hope so. We had our own terrors and troubles—and tragedy—too.”
“That’s so.”
It was friendly, talking like this. Such talk always happened quite naturally and at unpredictable times. Sir John experienced a curious sensation of the suspension of time while it went on, and his wife’s speech flowed quietly and naturally, as if out of some wide, still lake of reminiscence. Woman’s talk, a form of remembering; and, listening to it, he felt lapped about.
“Well,” said Lady Marway, “I don’t know, but I should like to think that Helen—who must know far more about life than you imagine—I should like to think that Helen got some feeling about what matters, what really matters and what remains, when social fashions have come and gone, in the way I did. A little like that. Something she will be able to hang on to, when things begin sliding round about her, as they will, something that will keep her steady. Do you know a little thing that made an extraordinary impression on me? Remember your little pocket compass that you had fixed to the other end of your watch chain?”
“I remember how you laughed that first time—and how very even and white your teeth were.”
“It seemed so incredible a toy. No matter how you turned it, the pointer always remained true to the north. It seemed pure magic. And to tell the truth, I still don’t really understand how it does it, though you’ve explained more than once.”
“But, my dear, it is so simple. The earth, you see, is a magnet. Now if you——”
The door opened and Helen and Marjory came in, ready for dinner, and listened to Sir John finishing his elementary explanation of the working of a compass.
“Perhaps so. But I still find it difficult imagining the earth as a magnet.”
“But why bother imagining it?” asked Sir John. “It simply is so.”
“I suppose so,” said Lady Marway.
They all laughed. Harry came in, followed by George, and, a minute later, by Joyce.
The discussion on the compass became animated and exploded now and then in bursts of laughter.
Dinner was a pleasant affair, and afterwards the party were in such good spirits that, when the newspapers had been dealt with and comments on the international situation exchanged, Joyce suggested they should have a game.
Groans were immediately produced, but of such exaggerated a nature that Joyce took the floor. Lady Marway looked at her in slight apprehension, for Joyce, with her bodily exuberance and forthrightness,
could be almost alarmingly inept. She was quite capable without a thought of suggesting the latest fashionable form of the murder game.
But that night they did not learn the nature of the game, for as Joyce was about to explain, the door opened and Geoffrey appeared in a blue silk dressing-gown.
The hearty nature of the welcome he received clearly took him by surprise. His face, though newly shaved, looked pale and haggard. He smiled in that strained, slightly embarrassed way that goggled his eyes, and made his excuses to Lady Marway for his dressing-gown, as, with the aid of his stick, he came forward and let himself into a comfortable chair. “I thought I’d try this side of mine by coming downstairs,” he explained to Sir John. “But, I’m afraid, it’s no use for to-morrow.”
“That’s bad luck. You must have got rather a nastyone?”
“Yes, it wasn’t too good. I fell sheer—I don’t know how many feet. However, it’s nothing really. Merely bruised a bit.”
“You’re quite sure of that, Geoffrey?” Lady Marway asked, looking closely at him. “Now you’ll have a drink,” she said, and at once got up and poured him a stiff whisky.
“Thank you very much,” said Geoffrey. “Though it’s soon enough after food, what?”
“All the food you ate won’t make much difference.”
“I say!” Geoffrey protested.
“Merely an efficient staff. I was informed that you had eaten hardly anything.”
Geoffrey gave an echo of his old laugh.
The other faces sat around, with an unconscious smile, looking at Geoffrey, who would now tell his story.
And he started in an off-hand manner, as if it hadn’t much importance, apart from one or two idiotic things that were done. “What Angus wanted to stay away an hour for, I don’t know. I naturally thought he had fallen into a hole. I became concerned about him, and set off.”
“Didn’t he shout or anything?” George asked.
“I don’t know if he shouted. But I did hear a whistle. I shouted back. No answer. Then I set off in the direction of the whistle. He might have been in difficulties or anything. The staff was very helpful, for you could see just absolutely nothing when it got dark. Then I heard the whistle again—but farther away than ever. It really did annoy me. I struggled on. I struck a stream. I thought it might be the upper reach of that tributary of the Corr where it swings in round towards Benuain. The going was painfully slow, of course. But you develop a way of poking your staff in front of you. You hear the water trickling. I was getting very tired—and careless, I suppose. Anyway, my staff poked into nothing and I went after it before I could stop myself. The fall badly shook me, and I decided to stick where I was until morning. I got frightfully cold. I was sure I knew where I was now because of the falls below me. There are no falls on the Corr. The weird sounds of the water came swirling up. I got desperately cold, and I reasoned that it would be better to move anywhere than sit until I got pneumonia. So I climbed back—a very ticklish job.” Geoffrey paused and took a mouthful of whisky.
“Jove, you were plucky!” said George.
“In time I struck another burn. This troubled me. However, it was going in the right direction. But I had no staff now. I had lost it in the fall. You scramble about. The mind naturally gets strung up. My side was painful. And then, when I was feeling absolutely all in, a voice quite close spoke my name.” Geoffrey eased himself in his chair.
“Alick?” said Sir John.
Geoffrey nodded, and looked at Sir John with a hard glittering eye. “Would you have believed, in my position, that it could have been—that fellow, of all people? And if only the idiot had given me warning, anything! Instead, a hand came down on me! There was a bit of a struggle… However, it appears it was all right. So I decided to wait until the dawn came before going any farther. I was warm enough now.” He gave a wry smile and finished his drink.
“Did you question him?” asked Sir John.
“A bit,” said Geoffrey. “He said that if I had gone on another fifty yards I should have gone over a cliff or something like that. It was very kind of him, even if I had made up my mind not to go over any more cliffs.”
“Wait a bit,” said Sir John, and he went into the gun-room followed by all except Lady Marway and Geoffrey. Yes, the map made it clear. Geoffrey had gone round the slow slope and into Coirecheathaich. There was a cliff at the lower end of it, with boulders at its foot.
“But how could he possibly have known that Geoffrey would take that route?” Joyce asked as they left the map. “I mean—the thing is weird!”
“Beats Stanley in Africa hollow,” said George. “If only he had had the wit to remark out of the darkness, ‘Mr. Smith, I presume?’ the thing would have been complete.”
“I think he’s uncanny,” said Joyce. “Pfoo!”
“I don’t think so,” said Geoffrey.
“But——”
“Surely the whole matter”, said Helen, “is quite simple. I bet five bob I’ll explain it to anyone’s satisfaction in a few words.”
“Done!” said George.
“Angus returned and told Alick the general lie of things.” She tipped off her thumb. “Alick argues that if Geoffrey follows suit, the only real danger is this corrie with its cliff. He decides to go there to intercept him. If he doesn’t come this way, it doesn’t matter. If he does—he’ll be stopped on the right side of death. O.K.?” And she tipped off her little finger.
They all gazed at her. It seemed so simple and reasonable.
“Oh, but look here,” said George. “Geoffrey could have gone any way, any point of the compass. Let us be realistic. I am not satisfied.”
“But,” said Harry, “surely Alick was very realistic, for the chances were that Geoffrey would come this way.”
“Now,” said Geoffrey sceptically, “how exactly do you make that out?”
“Because”, said Harry, “you did come this way.”
“Isn’t that”, said Geoffrey, “a mere arguing after the event?”
“What else is the scientific determinism to which you pin your faith? Presumably the causal factors that combined to make you come the way you did were stronger than all other factors. Isn’t that the idea?”
“I put it to the vote of the meeting,” cried Helen. “Does George owe me five bob or not? I’ll have a show of hands, please.”
“I object,” said Geoffrey. He looked hard at Helen. “Have you had access to special information?”
Despite herself, she flushed. “Special information?”
Geoffrey smiled with dry triumph. “It merely isn’t supposed to be good sportsmanship to bet on a certainty.”
“But—but,” stammered Helen, “I spoke to no one about it.”
“Did anyone speak to you?” Geoffrey asked.
“No.”
“I smell a quibble,” said Marjory.
Geoffrey laughed.
“You are not very good at dissembling, my child,” said her mother. “Tell us about it.”
“I merely overheard a few remarks, from which I saw what happened. I refuse to say any more.”
“Do I owe you five bob?” asked George.
“If you are as mean as that about it, I wouldn’t touch your filthy money.”
“Loud and prolonged applause,” cried George. “Hip-hiphooray!”
Voices spoke at once, and Sir John’s gaunt face smiled down upon them.
“There’s Maclean, I think,” said Lady Marway.
Sir John opened the gun-room door, greeted Maclean, and hoped he had not been kept waiting.
When Sir John returned and asked about the morning, George’s voice rose above the others with the suggestion that, Geoffrey being so inconvenienced, he was prepared to take his place, “Do or die!”
“And I’ll be your gillie,” cried Joyce. “What a splendid idea!” Immediately she became loud and enthusiastic.
George glanced at Sir John.
“And here, Helen—what about you accompanying Harry?” Joyce demanded.
“Why not?”
Helen took a moment, then shook her head, smiling.
“But,” said Joyce, “why not? Is it implied that women couldn’t stalk as well as men? What’s the big idea present?” And she looked round.
“The idea,” said Geoffrey, “is that this is a deer forest, not a sea-side resort.” Then his suppressed laugh came through, more loudly than it had done that night, as if he were beginning to be pleased with himself again.
“What an impertinence!” said Joyce.
“He’s merely frightened,” said George, “that I’ll bag King Brude. He’s afraid of beginner’s luck. And I tell him now to his face, that I’ll leave no avenue unexplored, no stone unturned, to achieve my ends.”
This dramatic declamation was applauded.
Joyce went up to Sir John. “May I accompany George—for this one day?”
Sir John smiled to her. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t.”
“Helen—are you going to let your sex down?” demanded Joyce.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Dirty dog. As for you, Geoffrey, I think you are a worm.”
Sir John’s smile broke into a soft laugh.
This sort of talk went on for quite a time, any uncomfortable suggestion being hilariously drowned, until Joyce said:
