by Russell Kirk
There the walls were hung from cornice to floor with square panels of leather, stamped in gold leaf with some intricate pattern of dancing figures; Logan thought he made out the figure of a capering goat in this design, but could not be sure in the twilight of the room. These hangings must have been long neglected, for splotches of white water-stain showed here and there, and some of the panels had pulled almost loose from the stitching that held them one to another, so that the stone of the walls showed through the gaps. Nearly in the middle of the room stood a vast ancient canopied bed, the curtains drawn back. Beside it, huddled on a stool, an old serving-woman looked with lacklustre eyes at Logan, cringing aside to let him approach the bed: this would be Agnes, the shawlie. Certainly she was timid – could she be trembling, or was it a slight palsy? Then he made out the shape under the rich covers upon the bed.
Lady MacAskival lay with closed eyes, and she was very nearly a corpse: almost bloodless, and her face and hands grotesquely wrinkled. Could this pallid immobile thing once have been a beautiful woman of fashion, no better than she should have been – like little Mary MacAskival, perhaps? At their best, Logan suspected, the features must have been slightly vulgar. Mary MacAskival slid between him and the bed-rail. “Aunt!” she whispered, very low. “Aunt, Mr. Logan has come.”
The wrinkled eyelids slid back, snakelike. The fingers of the desiccated left hand stirred slightly. The withered lips writhed, almost as if the ancient creature would have burst into a scream, but no sound came forth.
“Aunt,” said Mary MacAskival, “he may be trusted.” Those purblind eyes of the failing woman flickered, for a moment or two with intelligence. But Logan could not have meant much to her; possibly he was but a dream within a dream, drifting through limbo, less unpleasant than the terrors that often clustered round the bedstead. For either this old woman was drugged, Logan thought, or else she existed, tortoise-like and impotent, in a realm of perpetual terror. In those weary eyes was frozen fright, fright grown so familiar that it was almost identical with consciousness. What kept her alive? Surely she would have been happy to escape from this terror – unless she fancied that worse horrors lay in wait for her beyond the grave.
Now her lips moved, and very faint sounds came forth. “Not Alastair,” Lady MacAskival whispered. “Not Alastair. Good. Go – go with him, Mary. When I am done. He is not the goat, no. Is he Askival? Is he flesh? In Carnglass it is all mist.” The lids slid back again; the left hand ceased to claw at the covers; one would have thought the woman dead, had not nostrils and chest stirred ever so slightly with her labored breathing. Mary MacAskival drew Logan through the still room to the door.
They were back in the book-lined corridor. “Is she under drugs?” Logan asked.
“No,” said the girl, calmly enough, “only hypnotism – and terror. If you had seen the chairs rise up of themselves in this house, and eyes glowing in the dark where no living thing could be, and heard the footsteps in this hall, and if you were very old – why, I think even you would lie there like my aunt, Hugh.”
“Who did these things?”
“Dr. Jackman and Mr. Royall – who else? They have come near to putting me out of my wits. And now and then they put Dr. Jackman himself out of his wits. He believes, in part at least, though Mr. Royall does not, I think. Dr. Jackman has said he will call old Sir Alastair from under the stone by St. Merin’s Chapel. He has said he has made Sir Alastair walk down this very passage where you and I stand.”
Logan looked involuntarily over his shoulder: but of course there was nothing but mouldy books and hangings and family portraits. In this strange place, minds might scamper after any vagary. “Does your aunt wish to see her dead husband?”
“Not she. She feared him while he lived, and she feared him more once he died; and things lie heavy on her conscience. She will give Dr. Jackman anything he wants, so long as he keeps Sir Alastair this side of her bedroom door.” The girl was almost conversational about it all: surely she was either quite mad, or had a grip upon her nerves stronger than that of any woman Logan had known. What lay at her heart, Logan could not even guess; what could be seen was delectable enough, but Logan put no trust in her. Yet, trollop though she might be, Logan resolved to play his masquerade a little while yet, so far as Jackman was concerned, for her sake and his own.
“Now tell me this, Miss MacAskival,” said Logan, “just how old…” Then he heard something in the passage, toward the tower; and so did the girl; and they turned simultaneously. Logan felt tempted to reach for the little gun under his tweed jacket, but refrained. And, after all, it was only that shifty butler. “Dinner is served, Miss MacAskival,” Tomp-kins murmured, quite deferentially, and withdrew back toward the tower.
“Later,” Mary MacAskival said, very low, as they followed Tompkins. “Later I’ll tell you everything that can be told. Now you must meet Mr. Royall.” They went up the ancient stairs again, and passed into the study. It was dark now, but the study was cheerful enough. Many candles, in eighteenth-century silver candlesticks, had been lit; a square table was laid with a cloth and good china; there was soup being kept warm by a paraffin lamp on a sideboard. Tompkins had gone down somewhere to the kitchen, assisted by a footman whose grumbling voice Logan could hear below – Anderson, perhaps; and Jackman and Royall were not yet in the room: doubtless the two of them were discussing Hugh Logan thoroughly. Mary MacAskival, leaning gracefully against the piano which occupied a corner, pointed a little finger toward the painted ceiling.
“Do you know what that is?” She meant the painted monster called the Firgower, only dimly visible by the candlelight, away up there in the shadows. “Oh, Dr. Jackman told you? He should: for he is the Firgower, you know. Why do you look at me so queerly? Of course Dr. Jackman is the Firgower; he’d tell you so himself, if he were candid. He has told me so. You saw the hole in his forehead: that’s his third eye. He sees Sir Alastair MacAskival with his third eye, and tells my aunt.” She took a candlestick from the table, and, standing on tiptoe, lifted it as high toward the ceiling as her little body could reach. “Now come here, Hugh Logan, and look close.”
The painted horrid goat-face of the Firgower stared down at Logan; it seemed to smirk and leer and scowl all at once. “Its forehead – look,” the girl went on.
Now Logan could make out that in the middle of that painted forehead, with horns sprouting above it, was a third eye, faintly visible. It was much less distinct than the two normal goat-slit eyes, but it was very like them. “I don’t know whether it was painted so,” Mary MacAskival murmured in Logan’s ear, leaning a pretty hand on his shoulder, “or whether that nasty third eye wore on the nerves of Sir Alastair or someone else, so that perhaps someone put a trifle of white paint over it. It’s no less an eye than Dr. Jackman’s. Do you understand? That’s Dr. Jackman’s portrait, so to speak. I’m ever so glad you do not have a third eye.”
Logan turned his head to look at this queer little lovely creature. Was she lunatic, coquette, or infinitely subtle? They two stood so close together that his nose touched hers. His right arm almost went round her, as she stood there on tiptoe; but just then boots sounded on the stair, and Miss MacAskival drew away. “My poor bare feet!” she said. “I’m forgetting my manners. Whatever would they say at the convent? They never let young ladies dine there barefoot, you know. I leave you to Dr. Jackman and his secretary, but I’ll be back before the soup has gone quite cold.” With a little swirl of her skirt, she sprang, rather than stepped, through the heavy doorway, and was gone.
She must have passed Jackman and Royall on the stair, for they came in immediately. “Mr. Logan,” Jackman said, “Mr. Royall, my secretary.” The death’s-head secretary nodded curtly. Once the man began to speak, Logan perceived with relief that he was an Englishman, like Jackman, though probably from Yorkshire; had he been a Scot, he might have seen through Logan’s masquerade. Logan would talk as little as possible to the Scots among the servants, lest he give himself away.
Royall mad
e some perfunctory observations about the hunt for Donley, the weather, and all that. A cold fish, but a keen one, Logan hazarded. He was well educated, surely; Logan suspected that he might once have been a fairly highranking civil servant; somehow there was the mark of Winchester school upon him. Yet now he was secretary to this pseudo-doctor, in an island at the back of beyond. Why? Had Royall been dismissed from some civil post – for unreliability of sorts? The man was sick; the signs of a gnawing illness were plain upon his pallid face; and yet Logan guessed – though perhaps he was becoming fanciful, in this house of shadows – that the real cause of his trouble was some sickness not of the body, but of the spirit. Could one trust Royall? If one were of the same faith, undoubtedly; on the man’s grim features was set fanaticism, not simple criminality.
“Do you have a taste for letters, Mr. Logan?” Royall inquired abruptly, in his hoarse voice. Jackman had said very little, but stood back in the shadows, watching, as if he had agreed to let his secretary do the prying this night. Tompkins came round with a tray of sherry-glasses, and Logan sipped before he replied.
“Why, now, Mr. Royall,” Logan said, “I must admit I am fond of Rabbie Burns. Burns, sir, is the poet of the Scottish nation. No nonsense for Rabbie Burns. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Royall, that at the British Linen Bank, Lawnmarket Branch, we know an honest man’s the noblest work of God. How does Burns express it, sir? ‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp…’”
Here Mary MacAskival returned, with neat shoes on her feet, and cotton stockings. Jackman and Royall bowed to her slightly, and the four of them sat down to dinner, Tompkins putting the soup before them. Without bothering to taste his soup, Royall pursued the topic.
“I suppose you know, Mr. Logan, that Burns is perhaps the most popular English writer in the Soviet Union today.” Royall’s sunken eyes seemed to expect some significant response to this.
“Indeed, sir?” Logan said, ingenuously. “Why, now, I would have thought there would be difficulties in doing Rabbie Burns into the Russian tongue.”
“The Soviet Russians, Mr. Logan, are masters of translation. Yes, they appreciate Burns. At a conference in the Crimea, not so very long ago, I had the honor to be asked to read Burns aloud, in English, to a group of intellectuals. I found they especially enjoyed the final stanza of ‘For a’ That and a’ That.’ How does it go —
‘For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s comin’ yet, for a’ that,
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.’
Do I have it quite right, Mr. Logan?” Royall gave him another long stare.
“Aye, as I mind it, it goes so, Mr. Royall. Very sound sentiments – brothers the world o’er.” Logan smiled at him.
Royall hesitated; then, “Would you care to give me a gloss on those lines, Mr. Logan?”
Logan looked puzzled, as indeed he was. “A gloss, sir? Now how do you mean? A commentary?”
“Mr. Royall thought some remarks might occur to your mind, Mr. Logan,” Jackman put in. “Concerning international brotherhood, perhaps.”
“Why, no, Dr. Jackman, I do not believe I could add anything.” Logan turned, simpering, to Mary MacAskival. “Do you think of a proper commentary, Mary, darling?” The girl shook her head slowly; her eyes, their lids half lowered, moved uneasily from Jackman to Royall. “Nevertheless, gentlemen,” Logan went on, still very much the Edinburgh clerk, “we’ve had many a serious discussion of Rabbie Burns in the West End Young Men’s Discussion Club. There’s profound meaning in Rabbie Burns. Profound.”
Royall’s eyes never had ceased to stare at Logan. Now Royall said, “An acquaintance of mine who sometimes visits Edinburgh is an admirer of Burns. Possibly you have met him: a Captain Gare.”
Logan’s training as a lawyer served him well at that moment, for his fatuous smile did not fade, nor did he start. “No, sir,” he told Royall, “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor of making the gentleman’s acquaintance.”
“And then,” said Royall, “I think of a commission agent in Glasgow, a man of the people, who often has Burns on the tip of his tongue. Perhaps you have encountered him. His name is Dowie, Jim Dowie.”
“Dowie? I know a solicitor’s clerk of that name in Dalkeith; but he reads only American thrillers, sir.”
“So, Royall,” Dr. Jackman interjected, “it seems that our Mr. Logan here is not a member, after all, of the little circle you had in mind. You were quite mistaken, I fear; I told you he wouldn’t be. Mr. Logan is a very honest and industrious rising young bank-clerk, I’m sure. But speaking of your national poet Burns, I call to mind a verse you might take to heart —
‘My love she’s but a lassie yet,
My love she’s but a lassie yet,
We’ll let her stand a year or twa,
She’ll no be half sae saucy yet.’
Apropos, Mr. Logan?”
The butler brought the main course, boiled mutton and potatoes, before Logan had to reply. Logan noticed, as Tomp-kins served, that Mary MacAskival’s face had gone crimson at Jackman’s quotation, and then white again.
“Tompkins,” Jackman said as the butler served him, “I take it that Carruthers and Rab have returned by this time?”
“No, Dr. Jackman.” Logan saw that Tompkins’ hands trembled slightly. “Neither of them, sir. Not hide nor hair.”
Jackman bit his lip. “Royall, where do you suppose they’ve got to? It has been quite dark for more than an hour.”
“Ah, well, sir,” Royall answered, “so long as the pair of them hang together, no harm can come to them. They’re both armed with good rifles, and they weren’t reared in ladies’ boudoirs. Rab knows rough country well enough, and some thing of this island. I suppose they may have been hot on Donley’s scent when the sun set, and bedded down in one of the farmhouses or keepers’ cottages. I last saw them toward St. Merin’s Chapel. No doubt they’ll report in the morning.” But Royall seemed to have no appetite for his mutton.
Jackman shrugged. “No doubt, no doubt.” That unpleasant patch on his forehead twitched, almost as if he were trying to lift the lid of the third eye. He turned toward Logan. “As you were about to say…?”
“Why, Dr. Jackman” – but Logan smiled toward Mary MacAskival – “I had thought of another verse from Rabbie Burns, that I like better than yours; and it is this, sir —
‘Gaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
Thou’rt to Love and Heaven sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dearie.’”
“I think that’s very pretty, Hugh,” Mary MacAskival told him. She looked toward Dr. Jackman: “‘Gaist nor bogle…’ A good phrase for the Old House, is it not, Dr. Jackman? But whatever can have become of Rab and Carruthers?”
Jackman looked blacker still. “Leave that to us, if you please, my dear.” He seemed about to add something when Mary MacAskival rose and walked to the piano.
“How very slow Tompkins is in bringing the sweet tonight! May I play until he comes? Hugh, will you sing with me?”
“You know I’ve no voice, Mary, darling,” Logan said, also rising, “but I’ll play to your singing.” He did, indeed, play the piano reasonably well. Miss MacAskival behaved as if she had always known it: wondrously clever, that girl, for fifteen years.
“I’ll set you the tune, Hugh,” she told him, seating herself at the piano, “and then you can take my place here, and I’ll sing you a song from Burns, if you like. Dr. Jackman, can you endure it? Mr. Royall?”
“Of course,” Jackman told her, somewhat absently. He ran his lean hand slowly over his forehead. Royall said nothing: he had stalked to a window, opened it, and was staring uneasily into the night below.
Miss MacAskival played pleasantly – an air Logan knew well, “Charlie He’s My Darling.” Logan took her place at the piano then, and she stood and began to sing. Her young voice was full and tolerably trained, and very sweet.
“An’ Charlie he’s
my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie he’s my darling,
The young Chevalier.”
The night air of Carnglass crept into the ancient room through Royall’s open window. There came the cry of some night bird, winging past the Old House, and the heavy beat of the sea upon the pier of Askival harbor. Mary’s voice swelled up:
“Sae light’s he jimped up the stair,
And tirled at the pin;
And wha sae ready as hersel,
To let the laddie in.”
Then, above the noise of the ocean, there came an unnatural sound, echoing perhaps from the other side of the Old House. It was a burst of horrid laughter, or so it seemed, ending in a desperate sob; then silence; then the high dreadful cackle again. “The devil!” cried Jackman, and leaped to join Royall at the window. Mary MacAskival shivered, but sang the last verse: