Second Sight

by Neil M. Gunn

  “Well, I couldn’t say as to explicit statement. The trouble in those far-off days was, of course, that no one wrote, or no one thought of writing down facts to stand as evidence. Everything was committed not to paper but to memory. Poems and everything else. That fact has got to be taken into account when it comes to destructive criticism. Evidence was not deliberately or consciously withheld. For example, you will find here many prophecies of the Seer, utterly fantastic things, which never have been fulfilled. Nor, I should say, ever have the remotest chance of being fulfilled—short, perhaps, of a world war that will turn us into primitive barbarians again.”

  “And that’s extremely unlikely the way things are going, what!” said George.

  Mr. Blair glanced at him and smiled.

  “But tell me,” asked Joyce, “how on earth could he see hundreds of years ahead?”

  “He could see millions of years ahead,” said Geoffrey, “with the greatest of ease, because a million years to a man like that are but as a day.”

  “Are you trying to be sarcastic?”

  “Trying? I’m only trying my best to understand the extraordinary credulity of men who dabble in this sort of thing. If you only understood the terrific fight that science has had to put up against every kind of religious prophet and tribal witch-doctor and cultured dabbler in the occult, you would understand my impatience. And surely to goodness, you know them in London: you know people who go to crystal gazers and diviners of one kind or another, and in particular those loathsome mystics who have west-end parlours, oh very cultured, esoteric, you don’t pay—no, no, you just leave something, all in the nature of a religious service, dim lights, incense—oh God, it turns my stomach. The new Messiah!” He laughed.

  Mr. Blair laughed also, and then, lowering his voice, “I like your attitude. It’s what I call classical. Now, wait! I have an idea. Something has presumably been happening over at your place. Why not carry out an experiment? Why not? If you really have some material to go on. I understand about your laboratory tests and so forth, but after all you can’t bring these surroundings and people to London. There is just this about the real second sight. It apparently is an involuntary and unusual exhibit. You can’t ask the subject to sit down in a chair and turn on the prophetic tap. You see my point?”

  Geoffrey’s eyes gleamed. “I am tempted,” he said. He gave a small reflective chuckle to himself. “It might be fun.”

  “I doubt really if we should take any more notice of it,” said Marjory hesitantly.

  “Why not?” asked George. “Should I like to see it going up in a shower of sparks!”

  “What a game!” cried Joyce, and laughed so loudly that Lady Marway turned round.

  “Hush!” said Mr. Blair, with exaggerated secrecy. His party nodded. Mum was the word! The air of conspiracy made Mr. Blair very jolly, and when the maids brought in tea trolleys, he had everyone seated again, except Colonel Brown, Harry, and Helen, who seemed to be quite lost in their debate.

  Into the involuntary silence came Harry’s voice: “But what of the Seer’s prophecies that have not been fulfilled? I can see that the mere fact that they have been recorded shows that people in the Highlands knew of them and even wrote them down. But I mean it’s so fantastic to expect they ever will happen now——”

  “Precisely,” said Colonel Brown. “So far as I know here’s a point about them that’s never been made before. Remembering that in the fourth-dimensional world—the world, we assume, of second sight—it’s as easy to step back into the past as forward into the future, then we may conclude that among the Brahan Seer’s visions some in fact referred to the past, though the Seer himself might not know that, and, therefore, be perfectly honest in placing them in the future. For example, he said that boats would one day tie up to a certain rock in Strathpeffer. From lack of knowledge, it simply could not have occurred to him that, as is obvious to us now, the valley between Dingwall and Strathpeffer was once upon a time under water and that boats in all probability have tied up to the said rock in time past. That may be a dubious case. But take.…”

  Mr. Blair tiptoed to a desk, picked up an old cow-bell, and rang it furiously. Three solemn, startled faces turned round, and then, for a few seconds, there was the gayest laughter.

  On the way to their cars, when cordial greetings had been spoken, Geoffrey said to Marjory, “What a show!”

  “I think he’s a dear old man, the Dean,” she replied.

  “Of course! But heavens, that old philosophic style! At this time of day! Isn’t it remarkable that a man of such obvious intelligence should deliberately let it get fogged in that way? Fogged, moth-eaten. And he went on—heavens, didn’t he go on!”

  “Hsh!” said Marjory, as Sir John and Lady Marway joined them and they all got seated.

  “David seems tired a bit,” said Lady Marway quietly to her husband. “He has somehow the air—I don’t know what it is—of being world-weary at the back of all his simple, kind ways.”

  “Yes,” said Sir John. “I think the real trouble is that he feels the conditions of the world to-day, feels it is due to the triumph of the material over the spiritual. Really feels it.” The car started off. “It’s an odd thing, but you’d notice that he never mentioned religion. It’s as profound in him as that. Somehow, I felt what he was getting at. I—felt it.”

  “I did, too.”

  “I always liked him,” said Sir John.

  In the second car, Harry said to Helen, as they got seated, “Enjoyed the evening?”

  “Yes,” said Helen.

  There was silence until Joyce, having recovered her scarf, rushed up and slammed the door, whereupon George observed, “I think the way you’ve been getting off with mine host was obvious enough positively to be offensive.”

  Joyce laughed. “I say, isn’t he a dear old funny old thing! Whatever does he do with himself normally?”

  “Breeds parrots, I should say,” said George.

  “George! And after the amount of his food and drink you contrived to stow away!”

  “I withdraw. Do you know what I was trying to do that time I choked?”

  “No.”

  “I was trying to catch the wine as it slipped down. It was so smooth, hanged if I could. I wonder where that sort of stuff is grown. Whoops!”

  The mist had grown thicker, but presently they climbed out of it into a cloudless night of moonlight and shadows, a night of such serene starry loveliness that, as each car entered it, silence fell on its occupants.

  “So lovely,” said Marjory on an undertone.

  Geoffrey glanced at her, and then fixed himself comfortably into his corner where he could see her without appearing to look at her. Now that he thought of it, she had been very silent to-night. Her fairness in the shadowed moonlight had a quality of gossamer that made him stare at it as at an illusion of beauty. He saw the dark places of her eyes, wondered if they were looking at him, suddenly felt they were, and experienced a sensation of constriction about his chest and throat.

  Harry stared out of his window. Helen glanced at him and knew that he was not thinking of her.

  Joyce adventured upon the Barcarolle—night of stars and night of love—humming it thoughtfully, and sighed.

  George sobbed softly and sadly.

  They came down into banks of fog again, and then suddenly across the night came strange elusive sounds.

  “Stop!” said Harry.

  George drew up and as Harry lowered his window they heard remote, muffled, eddying music coming from the hills on their left.

  “Isn’t it weird?” Joyce caught her breath.

  They listened.

  “Whatever can be doing it?” Joyce wondered.

  “Barrie and Mary Rose and her keening,” said George in deep sadness. “They will not have been finding their island yet.” But there was no real mockery in his tone.

  “Would you mind waiting for me for five minutes? I promise not to be more than ten at the outside,” said Harry.


  There was astonished silence in the dark car. George switched on the roof light and turned to look at him.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Harry smiled to the girls.

  They didn’t mind, of course, but exactly what was the big idea?

  “Here,” called George, “don’t be mad!”

  The door slammed. Harry passed through the spot light. His body grew into a phantasmal shape, grey as the night, then vanished in a moment. George switched on the full headlights and was blinded by a white wall. He swore mildly, but with expression. They listened. No sound—except the eddying music, that wasn’t music, but a weird crying out of the heart of the hills, a sad crying, a high insistent note, that doubled and trebled upon itself, fell and rose, eddied away altogether, to come again more insistent than ever.

  “Whatever do you think has gone wrong with him?” Joyce asked Helen.

  “I don’t know,” said Helen.

  “Oh God, what is it?” cried Joyce.

  “Someone playing bagpipes on the hill,” said Helen.

  “Bagpipes!” said Joyce. She laughed harshly, then instantly was silent.

  “I never did understand the things before,” said George. “This is obviously their locale.”

  “I should say so!” said Joyce. “Turns the stomach all queer.”

  “Lord God,” said George, “it is like something yearning!”

  “What was it that yearned in pain?” asked Joyce.

  “A god,” said Helen.

  Joyce laughed.

  “I know,” said George, “I know what it is. It’s a pibrok.”

  “A what?” asked Joyce.

  “A pibrok,” said George. “A lament.”

  “A lament? Whatever for?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said George. “They get a gold medal for playing it at the Northern Meetings.”

  “A gold medal!” echoed Joyce, and went off into high laughter. George joined her.

  “Though I must say I don’t quite see the joke,” said George.

  “Neither do I,” said Joyce.

  So they laughed again and felt better.

  Into the silence came the insistent playing, deceitful in its movement as the cry of a golden plover, near and far, the moor and the hill, passing over the tops…coming out of the bog, the bowels of the mountain.

  “Heavens, I wish it would stop! Where on earth could Harry have gone?” Joyce asked impatiently.

  “He’ll be back within ten minutes if he said he would,” Helen suggested.

  And at that the music ceased.

  Joyce applauded “And thank you very much for stopping.”

  At the end of what seemed much more than ten minutes, George looked at his clock. Ten clear minutes later, Harry had not yet appeared. This was getting a bit too much! With all due respect to Harry, this was going beyond the limit!

  An argument arose between George, who wanted to sound the horn, and Helen who didn’t.

  “He’s lost,” said George.

  “He’s probably turning round in circles,” said Joyce. “Press it hard.”

  George blew a prolonged blast.

  “What’s that?” whispered Joyce. Then she collapsed backwards with a groan. The hill music had started again.

  “We’re lost. We’re damned. This bloody spot is haunted,” George intoned.

  “Oh—shut—up!” cried Joyce. She turned to Helen. “You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you, Helen?”

  “I do feel one or two moving around,” said Helen. “I am beginning to have the awful sensation of being fourth-dimensional.”

  “Oh God!” groaned Joyce. “You make me crawl with them.” Quite involuntarily she brushed her shoulders, and, diving for the wheel, pressed the horn-button.

  A seven-foot, ghostly representation of Harry wavered on the edge of the mist and disappeared. The door handle shook. “I’m very sorry,” said Harry, entering by the head and slamming the door after him. “I couldn’t get away.”

  “Where on earth were you?” Joyce demanded.

  “Corr Inn is just up there,” Harry explained. “I had a small debt to pay the landlord for beer. Have I been more than ten minutes?”

  George and Joyce turned on him and rent him with their tongues into small pieces. The process lasted the six miles to Corbreac, where they found the first car getting ready to come and look for them.

  Harry explained how he had come to owe the landlord a debt, decided he might as well pay it, and take the opportunity of enjoying bagpipes on the hills at night. He was sorry the others had not heard the excellent entertainment. Very sorry if his thoughtlessness had upset anybody.

  But clearly none of them wanted to discuss it, though a gleam did come into Geoffrey’s eye. Joyce yawned, looking exhausted.

  “Are you aware it’s midnight?” Lady Marway asked.

  “Yes, high time we were in bed,” her husband agreed. “I’ll see to the doors.”

  Within a few minutes the room was in darkness.

  When Sir John had undressed and washed and was getting ready to go through the ritual of brushing his hair, Lady Marway, from her bed, looking at him, said quietly:

  “Do you remember, to-night, when David had finished talking, you said to him that the spirit of the East, with its power of seeing and knowing, would have been quite incomprehensible to you, were it not for one personal experience? I somehow can’t get it out of my head. I’ve been racking my memory. What was it, Jack?”

  He looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, and then shrugged slightly. “I’d rather not say.”

  “I’m sorry. I did not mean——”

  “Now, now,” said Sir John. “That understanding tone did always make me tell.”

  “No, please. I merely felt it because I thought that I had forgotten. If I did not know, then I don’t mind.”

  “But you did know. At least I always thought you knew.”

  “Jack!”

  “Well,” he said, taking a brush in each hand and proceeding calmly to deal with his tough, dark-grey hair, “the experience was simply my being in love with you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sir John raised his eyebrows as he saw Geoffrey emerge from the gun-room door ready for the hill. Harry and George showed an equal surprise. Maclean was the first to say good morning.

  “Really feeling fit for it?” asked Sir John.

  “Yes,” said Geoffrey. “Not quite free and easy but exercise should oil the parts.”

  “I’m glad,” said George handsomely, for he would now have to stand down.

  “Quite sure?” asked Geoffrey.

  Harry offered George his beat and so did Sir John, but George assured them that he had yesterday set so high a standard that he was relieved, for their sakes, not to have to repeat it.

  When the beats were gone over and the wind discussed, Sir John asked Geoffrey what he thought was the easiest one for him.

  “Benuain, if I may have my choice.”

  Sir John regarded him with frank astonishment. “But—the climbing?”

  Geoffrey shrugged. He would manage all right.

  The pony had been sent on. The car would take him round by the public road to within a mile or two. The wind was just right for the west approach.… He would have a bite of breakfast.

  George, seeing Joyce come round the corner of the house, went towards her, signalling silence with his face. “Geoff!” he muttered. Then aloud, “Would you care to come with us, while I drive Geoffrey round?” And he marched her off to the garage.

  When, at the end of the drive, Geoffrey and Angus got out and good wishes had been offered, Joyce said to George, “Isn’t he determined to get something?”

  “Something!” said George. “He’s going to get King Brude or bust. He was merely in a funk lest Harry or I got him. Odd chap, Geoffrey, in many ways. Fighter and all that; keen and jealous as a schoolboy. Angus will have to watch his step to-day! See, there’s the pony coming.” George had to go on half a mile before he could turn
his car. On the way back they saw Geoffrey’s large figure astride the small beast and stopped the car to chuckle.

  “Wonder what’s in his mind?” asked Joyce.

  “Death,” said George.

  Which was wonderfully near the truth, for at that moment Geoffrey called to Angus and spoke to him, saying that this was not a day for any mistake to be made; if King Brude was on Benuain, then King Brude must die. What was the plan? And as Angus went over the ground, from one spy point to the next, Geoffrey cross-questioned him. There was no laughter in his face. It was grey and grim. There was none in Angus’s face, which showed signs of last night’s wastage at Corr Inn.

  “He may not be there at all,” said Angus.

  “No doubt. But he is more likely to be there than anywhere else in the forest, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Angus.

  “You know that the heights of Benuain are his usual ground; that in this weather he’ll never be lower down?”

  “It’s not likely,” said Angus.

  “Well, what do you mean?”

  “I mean that he may not be in the forest at all.”

  “He may not. He may be in the damned moon, but it’s not likely. Unless, of course, he has second sight.” He laughed. “He may move in four dimensions.” He felt cheered a bit, for he was not in good physical form. “Know anything about the fourth dimension?”