Written With My Left Hand

by Nugent Barker

  Stirred by the broth, Mr Bond began to describe minutely his journey out of the valley. His voice grew as prosy, his words as involved, as though he were talking at home amongst his own people. ‘Now, let me see—where was I?’ he buzzed again and again. And later: ‘I was very glad to see your light, I can tell you!’ he chuckled. Then Crispin jumped up from the table, his small mouth pouting with laughter.

  The evening shifted to the fireside. Fresh logs cracked like pistol shots as Crispin Sasserach dropped them into the flames. The traveller could wish for nothing better than to sit here by the hearth, talking plangently to Crispin, and slyly watching Myrtle as she cleared away the supper things; though, indeed, amongst his own people, Mr Bond was thought to hold women in low esteem. He found her downcast eyes modest and even pretty. One by one she blew the candles out; with each extinguishment she grew more ethereal, while reaping a fuller share of the pagan firelight. ‘Come and sit beside us now, and talk,’ thought Mr Bond, and presently she came.

  They made him very comfortable. He found a log fire burning in his bedroom, and a bowl of broth on the bedside table. ‘Oh, but they’re overdoing it!’ he cried aloud, petulantly; ‘they’re crude, crude! They’re nothing but schoolchildren!’—and, seizing the bowl, he emptied it onto the shaggy patch of garden beneath his window. The black wall of the forest seemed to stand within a few feet of his eyes. The room was filled with the mingled light of moon, fire, and candle.

  Mr Bond, eager at last for the dreamless rest, the abandoned sleep, of the traveller, turned and surveyed the room in which he was to spend the night. He saw with pleasure the four-poster bed, itself as large as a tiny room; the heavy oaken chairs and cupboards; the tall, twisting candlesticks, their candles burnt half-way, no doubt, by a previous guest; the ceiling, that he could touch with the flat of his hand. He touched it.

  In the misty morning he could see no hint of the forest, and down the shallow staircase he found the hall thick with the odour of broth. The Sasserachs were seated already at the breakfast-table, like two children, eager to begin the day with their favourite food. Crispin Sasserach was lifting his spoon and pouting his lips, while Myrtle was stirring her ladle round the tureen, her eyes downcast; and Mr Bond sighed inaudibly as he saw again the woman’s dark and lustrous hair. He noticed also the flawless condition of the Sasserach skin. There was not a blemish to be seen on their two faces, on their four hands. He attributed this perfection to the beneficial qualities of the broth, no less than to the upland air; and he began to discuss, in his plangent voice, the subject of health in general. In the middle of this discourse Crispin Sasserach remarked, excitedly, that he had a brother who kept an inn a day’s journey along the edge of the forest.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Bond, pricking up his ears, ‘so you have a brother, have you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ whispered the innkeeper. ‘It is most convenient.’

  ‘Most convenient for what?’

  ‘Why, for the inns. His name’s Martin. We share our guests. We help each other. The proper brotherly spirit, b’God!’

  Mr Bond stared angrily into his broth. ‘They share their guests. . . . But what,’ he thought, ‘has that to do with me?’ He said aloud: ‘Perhaps I’ll meet him one day, Mr Sasserach.’

  ‘Today!’ cried Crispin, whacking his spoon on to the table. ‘I’m taking you there today! But don’t you worry,’ he added, seeing the look on the other’s face, and flattering himself that he had read it aright; ‘you’ll be coming back to us. Don’t you worry! Day after tomorrow—day after that—one of these days! Ain’t that right, Myr? Ain’t that right?’ he repeated, bouncing up and down in his chair like a big child.

  ‘Quite right,’ answered Myrtle Sasserach to Mr Bond, whose eyes were fixed upon her with heavy attention.

  A moment later the innkeeper was out of his chair, making for the hall, calling back to Myrtle to have his boots ready. In the midst of this bustle, Mr Bond bowed stiffly to Myrtle Sasserach, and found his way with dignity to the back garden, that now appeared wilder than he had supposed—a fenced-in plot of grass reaching above his knees and scattered with burdock whose prickly heads clung to his clothes as he made for the gate in the fence at the foot of this wilderness. He blinked his eyes, and walked on the rough turf that lay between him and the forest. By this time the sun was shining in an unclouded sky; a fine day was at hand; and Mr Bond was sweeping his eye along the endless wall of the forest when he heard the innkeeper’s voice calling to him in the stillness. ‘Mr Bond! Mr Bond!’ Turning reluctantly, and stepping carefully through the garden in order to avoid the burrs of the burdock, the traveller found Crispin Sasserach on the point of departure, in a great bustle, with a strong horse harnessed to a two-wheeled cart, and his wife putting up her face to be kissed.

  ‘Yes, I’ll go with you,’ cried Mr Bond, but the Sasserachs did not appear to hear him. He lingered for a moment in the porch, scowling at Myrtle’s back, scowling at the large young horse that seemed to toss its head at him with almost human insolence; then he sighed, and, slinging his knapsack over his shoulder, sat himself beside the driver; the horse was uncommonly large, restless between the shafts, and in perfect fettle; and without a word from Crispin the animal began to plunge forward rapidly over the worn track.

  ***

  For some time the two men drove in silence, on the second stage of Mr Bond’s adventure above the valley. The traveller sat up stiffly, inflating his lungs methodically, glaring through his small eyes, and forcing back his shoulders. Presently he began to talk about the mountain air, and received no answer. On his right hand the wall of the forest extended as far as his eyes could see; while on his left hand ran the brink of the valley, a mile away, broken here and there by rowan trees.

  The monotony of the landscape, and the continued silence of the innkeeper, soon began to pall on Mr Bond, who liked talking and was seldom at ease unless his eyes were busy picking out new things. Even the horse behaved with the soundless regularity of a machine; so that, besides the traveller, only the sky showed a struggle to make progress.

  Clouds came from nowhere, shaped and broke, and at midday the sun in full swing was riding between white puffs of cloud, glistening by fits and starts on the moist coat of the horse. The forest beneath, and the stretch of coarse grass running to the valley, were constantly shining and darkening, yet Crispin Sasserach never opened his mouth, even to whisper, though sometimes, between his teeth, he spat soundlessly over the edge of the cart. The landlord had brought with him a casserole of the broth; and during one of these sunny breaks he pulled up the horse, without a word, and poured the liquor into two pannikins, which he proceeded to heat patiently over a spirit-stove.

  In the failing light of the afternoon, when the horse was still making his top speed, when Crispin Sasserach was buzzing fitfully between his teeth, and sleep was flirting with the traveller, a shape appeared obscurely on the track ahead, and with it came the growing jingle of bells. Mr Bond sat up and stared. He had not expected to meet, in such a Godforsaken spot, another cart, or carriage. He saw at length, approaching him, a four-wheeled buggy, drawn by two sprightly horses in tandem. A thin-faced man in breeches and a bowler hat was driving it. The two drivers greeted each other solemnly, raised their whips, but never slackened speed.

  ‘Well—who was that?’ asked Mr Bond, after a pause.

  ‘My brother Martin’s manservant.’

  ‘Where is he going?’ asked Mr Bond.

  ‘To The Rest of the Traveller. With news.’

  ‘Indeed? What news?’ persisted Mr Bond.

  The landlord turned his head.

  ‘News for my Myrtle,’ he whispered, winking at the traveller.

  Mr Bond shrugged his shoulders. ‘What is the use of talking to such a boor?’ he thought, and fell once more into his doze; the harvest-moon climbed up again, whitening the earth; while now and then the landlord spat towards the forest, and never spoke another word until he came to Martin Sasserach’s.

  The
n Crispin leapt to life.

  ‘Out with you!’ he cried. ‘Pst! Mr Bond! Wake up! Get out at once! We’ve reached The Headless Man, sir!’

  Mr Bond, staggered by so much energy, flopped to the ground. His head felt as large as the moon. He heard the horse panting softly, and saw the breath from its nostrils flickering upwards in the cold air; while the whitefaced Crispin Sasserach was leaping about under the moon, whistling between his teeth, and calling out enthusiastically:

  ‘Mar-tin! Mar-tin! Here he is!’

  The sheer wall of forest echoed back the name. Indeed, the whole of the moonlight seemed to be filled with the name ‘Martin’; and Mr Bond had a fierce desire to see this Martin Sasserach whose sign was hanging high above the traveller’s head. After repeated calls from Crispin, the landlord of The Headless Man appeared, and Mr Bond, expecting a very giant in physical stature, was shocked to see the small and bespectacled figure that had emerged from the house. Crispin Sasserach grew quick and calm in a moment. ‘Meet again,’ he whispered to Mr Bond, shutting his eyes, and stretching his small mouth as though in ecstasy; then he gave the traveller a push towards the approaching Martin, and a moment later he was in his cart, and the horse was springing its way back to The Rest of the Traveller.

  Mr Bond stood where he was, listening to the dying sound of the horse, and watching the landlord of The Headless Man; and presently he was staring at two grey flickering eyes behind the landlord’s glasses.

  ‘Anyone arriving at my inn from my brother’s is trebly welcome. He is welcome not only for Crispin’s own sake and mine, but also for the sake of our brother Stephen.’ The voice was as quiet and as clear as the moonlight, and the speaker began to return to his inn with scarcely a pause between speech and movement. Mr Bond examined curiously the strongly-lighted hall that in shape and size was the very double of Crispin’s. Oil-lamps, gracefully columned, gleamed almost as brightly from their fluted silver surfaces as from their opal-lighted heads; and there was Martin stooping up the very stairs, it seemed, that Mr Bond had walked at Crispin Sasserach’s—a scanty man, this brother, throwing out monstrous shadows, turning once to peer back at his guest, and standing at last in a bright and airy bedroom, where, with courteous words from which his eyes, lost in thought and gently flickering, seemed to be far distant, he invited his guest to wash before dining.

  Martin Sasserach fed Mr Bond delicately on that evening of his arrival, presenting him with small, cold dishes of various kinds and always exquisitely cooked and garnished; and these, together with the almost crystalline cleanliness of the room and of the table, seemed appropriate to the chemist-like appearance of the host. A bottle of wine was opened for Mr Bond, who, amongst his own people, was known to drink nothing headier than bottled cider. During dinner, the wine warmed up a brief moment of attention in Martin Sasserach. He peered with sudden interest at his guest. ‘The Headless Man? There is, in fact, a story connected with that name. If you can call it a story.’ He smiled briefly, tapping his finger, and a moment later was examining an ivory piece, elaborately carved, that held the bill of fare. ‘Lovely! Lovely! Isn’t it? . . . In fact, there are many stories,’ he ended, as though the number of stories excused him from wasting his thought over the recital of merely one. Soon after dinner he retired, alluding distantly to work from which he never liked to be away long.

  Mr Bond went to bed early that night, suffering from dyspepsia, and glowering at the absence of home comforts in his bright and efficient bedroom.

  The birds awakened him to a brisk, autumnal morning. Breathing heavily, he told himself that he was always very fond of birds and trees and flowers; and soon he was walking sleepily in Martin Sasserach’s garden. The trimness of the beds began to please him. He followed the right-angled paths with dignified obesity, his very bones were proud to be alive.

  A green gate at the garden-foot attracted Mr Bond’s attention; but, knowing that it would lead him on to the wild grass beyond, and thence to the forest, whose motionless crest could be seen all this while over the privet hedge, he chose to linger where he was, sniffing the clear scent of the flowers, and losing, with every breath and step, another whiff of Crispin’s broth, to his intense delight.

  Hunger drew him back into the house at last, and he began to pace the twilit rooms. Martin Sasserach, he saw, was very fond of ivory. He stooped and peered at the delicate things. Ivory objects of every description, perfectly carved paper-knives, chess-men, salad-spoons; tiny busts and faces, often of grotesque appearance; and even delicate boxes, fretted from ivory.

  The echo of his feet on the polished floors intensified the silence of ‘The Headless Man’; yet even this indoor hush was full of sound, when compared with the stillness of the scene beyond the uncurtained windows. The tufted grass was not yet lighted by the direct rays of the sun. The traveller stared towards the rowan trees that stood on the brink of the valley. Beyond them stretched a carpet of mist, raising the rest of the world to the height of the plateau; and Mr Bond, recalling the house and town that he had left behind him, began to wonder whether he was glad or sorry that his adventures had brought him to this lost region. ‘Cold enough for my cape,’ he shivered, fetching it from the hall, and hurrying out of the inn; the desire had seized him to walk on the tufted grass, to foot it as far as the trees; and he had indeed gone some distance on his journey, wrapped in his thoughts and antique Inverness cape, when the note of a gong came up behind him, like a thread waving on the air.

  ‘Hark at that,’ he whispered, staring hard at the ragged line of rowan trees on which his heart was set; then he shrugged his shoulders, and turned back to The Headless Man, where his host was standing lost in thought at the breakfast-table that still held the crumbs of the night before.

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes. It’s you. . . . You slept well?’

  ‘Tolerably well,’ said Mr Bond.

  ‘We breakfast rather early here. It makes a longer day. Stennet will be back later. He’s gone to my brother Crispin’s.’

  ‘With news?’ said Mr Bond.

  Martin Sasserach bowed courteously, though a trifle stiffly. He motioned his guest towards a chair at the table. Breakfast was cold and short and silent. Words were delicate things to rear in this crystalline atmosphere. Martin’s skin sagged and was the colour of old ivory. Now and then he looked up at his guest, his grey eyes focused beyond mere externals; and it seemed as though they lodged themselves in Mr Bond’s very bones. On one of these occasions the traveller made great play with his appetite. ‘It’s all this upland air,’ he asserted, thumping his chest.

  The sun began to rise above the plateau. Again the landlord vanished, murmuring his excuses; silence flooded The Headless Man, the garden purred in the full blaze of the sun that now stood higher than the forest, and the gravelled paths crunched slowly beneath Mr Bond’s feet. ‘News for Myrtle,’ he pondered, letting his thoughts stray back over his journey; and frequently he drifted through the house where all was still and spacious: dusty, museumlike rooms brimming with sunlight, while everywhere those ivory carvings caught his eye, possessing his sight as completely as the taste of Crispin’s broth had lodged in his very lungs.

  Lunch was yet another meal of cold food and silence, broken only by coffee that the landlord heated on a spirit stove at the end of the table, and by a question from the traveller, to which this thin-haired Martin, delicately flicking certain greyish dust off the front of his coat and sleeve, replied that he had been a collector of carvings for years past, and was continually adding to his collection. His voice drew out in length and seemed, in fact, to trail him from the sunlit dining-room, back to his everlasting work . . . and now the afternoon itself began to drag and presently to settle down in the sun as though the whole of time were dozing.

  ‘Here’s my indigestion back again,’ sighed Mr Bond, mooning about. At home he would have rested in his bedroom, with its pink curtains and flowered wallpaper.

  He crept into the garden, and eyed the back of the house. Which of those windows
in the trimly-creepered stone lit up the landlord and his work? He listened for the whirring of a lathe, the scraping of a knife . . . and wondered, startled, why he had expected to hear such things. He felt the forest behind his back, and turned, and saw it looming above the privet hedge. Impulsively, he started to cross the sun-swept grass beyond the gate: but within a few yards of the forest his courage failed him again: he could not face the wall of trees: and with a cry he fled into the house, and seized his Inverness.

  His eyes looked far beyond the rowans on the skyline as he plodded over the tufted grass. Already he could see himself down there below, counties and counties away, on the valley level, in the house of his neighbours the Allcards, drinking their coffee or tea and telling them of his adventures and especially of this adventure. It was not often that a man of his age and secure position in the world went off alone, in search of joy or trouble. He scanned the distant line of rowan trees, and nodded, harking back: ‘As far as it has gone. I’ll tell them this adventure, as far as it ever went.’ And he would say to them: ‘The things I might have seen, if I had stayed! Yes, Allcard, I was very glad to climb down into the valley that day, I can tell you! I don’t mind admitting I was a bit frightened!’

  The tippet of his cape caressed his shoulders, like the hand of a friend.

  Mr Bond was not yet half-way to the rowan trees when, looking back, he saw, against the darkness of the forest wall, a carriage rapidly approaching The Headless Man. At once there flashed into his memory the eyes of the manservant Stennet who went between the Sasserach inns.

  He knew that Stennet’s eyes were on him now. The sound of the horses’ feet was coming up to him like a soft ball bouncing over the grass. Mr Bond shrugged his shoulders, and stroked his pendulous cheeks. Already he was on his way back to The Headless Man, conscious that two flying horses could have overtaken him long before he had reached the rowans. ‘But why,’ he thought, holding himself with dignity, ‘should I imagine that these people are expecting me to run away? And why that sudden panic in the garden? It’s all that deathly quietness of the morning getting on my nerves.’