by Paul Gallico
Mr. MacDhui yanked again and again at the clapper rope, setting the bell to crashing and dancing. He felt, more than saw, a streak of something, some small animal that darted to the tree and for an instant, between peals of the bell, heard the dry scrabble of claws as it vanished up into the jungle of high foliage. And he was in no wise prepared for the sight of the plain-looking girl with red hair who appeared suddenly from behind the crofter’s cottage and came toward him.
MacDhui had gathered from his talk with Mr. Peddie that Lori was no hook-nosed old crone in the tradition of witch and simple women, but he was not prepared for her youth and simplicity—at first glimpse he judged her to be twenty-six, perhaps twenty-seven at the most—but what startled him, for its contrast with the marks of blood upon her green smock, and upon her hands too, was her aspect of tenderness.
There was no other word for it, MacDhui decided, even at first glance, or rather this was the word he was aware of. She was not beautiful, she was not striking, but her bearing, her walk, the carriage of her head upon her shoulders, the flow of her limbs and the white arms, suggested gentleness and tenderness.
He was conscious of surprise even that so plain and ordinary a person should have impressed as hardheaded a community as Inveranoch to name her the Red Witch of Glen Ardrath and led children to fear and avoid her neighborhood.
And yet he was likewise aware that with her presence, all at once everything seemed to fall into perspective about the place, the feeling of many shy, inquisitive animals, unseen but present, the stirring and whirring of the many birds and even the thing that had flapped off laughing into the forest. If it was a piece from a fairy tale, it remained to be determined whether she was a good or bad fairy, was the strange thought pursued by Mr. MacDhui as she came striding toward him, accompanied by what, he reflected grimly to himself, might have been her familiars, two cats, one yellow, one black, an aged sheep dog and a rollicking black Scots terrier. The red squirrel ran down the bark of the tree, flirting his tail.
But he noted that the stains of blood upon her hands and smock were fresh, and the sight worked the needed disenchantment upon him, closing his mind to all else but the fact that if he needed any proof that she was practicing veterinary medicine without authority, here it was before him. She had apparently answered the summons of the silver bell straight from the operating table of her surgery.
It needed no more to evoke all the choler and indignation he had been storing for this visit, and as she drew near but without speaking, he cried out harshly, “Are you Lori?”
“Aye. I am Lori.”
Tender. Tender and gentle. It surged through his mind again as the softness of her voice pierced him. But he had nursed and coddled his anger too long to have it thus put off by soft speaking and in voice no less harsh he rasped, “Do you know who I am?”
“No. That I do not.”
He revealed it then with voice and demeanor that wanted only Jovian thunders and lightnings to accompany, and the trembling of the ground: “I am Mr. Andrew MacDhui, veterinary surgeon and sanitary officer for Inveranoch and district!”
If he expected her to be embarrassed, chagrined, or taken aback at this confrontation, another surprise awaited him. For she became suffused with a great joy, as one who can hardly believe her ears. A glow of relief and gratitude came into her expressive eyes, and for a moment all plainness vanished from her features as her face became illuminated from within.
“Och,” she cried, with a smile of acknowledgment, “then you will have been sent in answer to my prayer. Oh, you are sair needed and very welcome, Mr. MacDhui. Only come quickly before it is too late—”
Mr. MacDhui suddenly found himself drained of all choler by the strangeness of this welcome. He, come to read the riot act to her, the answer to her prayers? What manner of talk and behavior was this? And then he thought he knew. For the moment he had forgotten that other name that she was called and what was said of her.
Daft, he thought to himself, daft as a cat under a full moon, poor thing, and never realized that he had characterized her to himself as “poor thing” instead of “wicked” or “scheming.”
Yet he found himself following in her train as she glided ahead, as graceful as the red roe deer he had glimpsed, he walking soberly with the entourage of animals weaving about his ankles. They skirted the house and went on to the stone outbuilding, into which she led him, the outer door opening into a small room in which stood a table, covered with a white cloth, now blood and matter stained, on which reposed the still gasping form of a badger.
MacDhui’s practiced eye at once took in the nature and extent of the damage, the crushed hindquarter, the cracked shoulder and shredded forepaw, while his nose acknowledged the sour odor of the infection.
He screwed up his face in distaste and said, “Faugh! Here’s a mess.” Then he asked briefly, “Trap?”
Lori replied, “Aye. And surely a dog must have been at him while he was fast. Then he broke the chain and came here . . . I could do no more for him. I am not very skilled. That is why I asked for help.”
Mr. MacDhui nodded absently, not quite having caught the point of WHO had been asked for help, or the immediate irony of his having come there to put the quietus on an unauthorized rival, only to be called in consultation. However there was obviously no use lingering over the matter and he came to the point quickly. “Have you a can of ether, or chloroform and a bit of rag so that we can have the beast out of his misery, for that is the best that can be done for him.”
Lori said softly and confidingly, “God didna send him here to die, or you to be the instrument of his death, Mr. MacDhui.”
He drew back somewhat and stared at her. “Eh? How do you know?” And then he added curtly, “I do not believe in God.”
Lori said, “It does not matter. God believes in you, else ye would not be here.” She looked into his face with trust, and a soft, mysterious smile appeared at the corners of Lori’s mouth, a smile with almost a wisp of mischief in it, and which, for some reason he could not fathom, pierced straight to Mr. MacDhui’s heart, touching him and moving him most unaccountably almost to tears, so that he drew back yet further, gazing at her with astonishment . . . He was remembering then the sound her voice had given his name, a note he had almost forgotten. He became aware for the first time of the clarity of her gaze and the curiously endearing simplicity and containment of her features.
He was so shaken that he gestured rather too strongly and ridiculously toward the injuries of the animal on the table, saying loudly, as though addressing a particularly obtuse client in his own surgery, “But don’t you see it is impossible, madame?” and then added, “Besides I have not my case with me—having come on a somewhat different errand.”
Lori cried, “Oh no, no. It was because of your great skill you were sent.”
Andrew MacDhui looked down upon the suffering badger again, noting the condition of the forepaw, the gashed flesh and torn tendons, the nasty three-day-old fracture at the clavicle, the mangled hindquarter further damaged by infection. And he experienced suddenly the most curiously young, almost boyish desire to show off before this strange creature, to shine in her eyes, to bring back that wisp of smile to the corners of her mouth. He stole a glance now at this country girl whose copper-red hair fell loosely to her shoulder, noting the line of the nose that emerged so straight from the base of the wide, calm brow and gave such an expression of gentle and intimate wisdom to her face, but a wisdom and knowledge of things other than mundane. He had quite forgotten that she was mad.
“Och,” he said, “this is a very poor business—still, the major tendon is still attached—we must see now to what extent the nerves have been—you will have nothing to tie the beast down and no bit of chloroform either, I suspect—”
Lori said simply, “I will hold him. He trusts me.” She slipped a hand beneath the head of the wounded badger, laid the other on his flank and, bending down, leaned her cheek to the beast’s jowl close to his muzzle,
while making sweet, soft sounds in her throat. The badger whimpered, sighed, and rolled his eyes.
Beads of moisture stood out upon the brow of the veterinary. “For God’s sake, child,” he cried, “that was a mad thing to do.”
Lori lifted her head, the rueful expression had pre-empted her mouth. She regarded him with a stabbing simplicity and said, “They call me Mad Lori.” Then she added, “I will keep him quiet. He will not stir—”
MacDhui did not reply but merely glanced at her again and thereafter, using what few primitive instruments and equipment she possessed, went to work, patching, sewing, building, and lecturing as he worked in the manner of a college professor to an audience of students:
“Hm—so. Now we have built an anchor for the muscle with a good blood supply—you see where I have attached it to the undamaged portion—of course we shall have to see how it takes—still these are hardy beasts with great vitality. Ah, ah! This nerve here; note how it has been crushed. But the nerve sheath has not been ruptured and so there is a chance if we can find a way to nourish it—” He stopped suddenly and asked a question of her. “What is this power you exert over the animal, Lori? It should be snarling and snapping.”
“He trusts me.” Lori replied, her eyes riveted fascinated upon the near miracles the skilled fingers of the surgeon were performing.
MacDhui improvised brilliantly with the broken shoulder, punching two holes in a sixpence and using it in lieu of a silver plate to rivet it together. He said, “If this succeeds, here will be one badger who will never lack for bus fare.” As he worked he questioned Lori again. “And where did you find this poor beast?”
“It came here.”
“I see. And how did it know to come here?”
“The angels guided it.”
“Have you ever seen an angel, Lori?”
“I have heard their voices and the rush of their wings.”
Mr. MacDhui felt himself suddenly filled with an unaccountable sadness, the sadness that results sometimes from a forgotten dream, or some hidden hurt to the soul that is touched off by something accidental or ordinary in life. He bestowed a long and searching look upon the girl standing beside him, gazing with undisguised admiration upon his work, and his sadness did not diminish. He shrugged, completed the bandaging of the animal, and having finished, stepped back, and spreading his hands almost like a stage magician who has performed a trick, said, “There now. It is done!”
Lori’s thanks caught him unprepared. She took one of his hands in both hers and bent her head over it. MacDhui felt the moisture of a teardrop and then the soft touch of her lips. The sadness welled up in him a hundred times intensified. He said gruffly, “I have done the best I could under the circumstances. The important thing is to keep the beast quiet. Tomorrow I will come and put a plaster cast on the shoulder and paw and then it will be safe. Have you some place to keep it?”
Lori replied, “Aye. Come.”
She raised up the badger in her arms with infinite care and led Mr. MacDhui through a door opening to the other part of the building divided into stalls and a few cages partitioned off.
Here was indeed a small hospital, but if the animal doctor expected to find any of his ex-patients quartered here, he was mistaken; they were all wild creatures. He saw a fawn with a broken leg that had been well set and splinted, a red squirrel with one eye out, and a rolled-up ball of a hedgehog that seemed to have no visible wound. He encountered hares that had been victims of weasel bites, a fox cub that had become separated from its mother, and a family of field mice in a box.
A burden seemed momentarily lifted from MacDhui. He had a sudden humorous intuition. “I think the hedgehog is m-a-l-i-n-g-e-r-i-n-g,” he spelled out.
He was rewarded. Lori’s wonderful ruefully tender smile warmed him. “Shhhh. Of course,” she replied, “but I let him. It makes him so happy.”
“And this is your treatment?”
Beneath the eye of the huge man Lori was momentarily troubled. She replied, “I keep them warm and try to make them comfortable. I let them rest and give them food and drink”—her voice fell to a whisper—“and love—”
Mr. MacDhui smiled. The prescription was the old stand-by that he and other veterinarians had used for years—with the exception of the last, which he was sure in his case was supplied by Willie Bannock. MacDhui would have added only, “—and let nature take its course.” He asked of Lori then, “Well, and when people bring their pets to you?”
“They have their own to care for them. It is the wild and lost, the lonely and hurt things of the forest that need me.”
Mr. MacDhui suddenly remembered something. “And Farmer Kinkairlie’s cow?”
Lori seemed neither surprised nor put out that the veterinary should be in possession of this piece of intelligence. The touch of mischief returned to her mouth. She said, “I sent her back with the message to be kinder to her and she would then yield milk again.”
MacDhui threw back his head and roared with laughter. He had a vision of the expression on the face of Farmer Kinkairlie when this message reached him.
They went out. When they came back to the cottage Lori said, “Will ye no’ come in for a moment?”
Curiosity led MacDhui to follow her inside, his eyes roving swiftly over the simple furnishings and the great loom that he could see through the door in another room. His attention was momentarily caught by a glass bowl that stood on a table. It contained some rocks, a miniature wooden ladder, water, and a small green frog. Something stirred in MacDhui’s memory and he pressed his face close to the bowl, his gaze directed at the legs of the frog. The strong white teeth of the man showed through the red bristle of his beard in a delighted grin. Sure enough, there it was, the little lump and swelling indicating there had once been a fracture which had healed.
“He too?” he asked.
“Aye,” Lori replied. “I found him one morning on my doorstep in a box. He had a broken leg.”
MacDhui said, “I can describe the delivering angel. He was aged eight, with a bullet head, freckles, a runny nose, and was dressed in a scout uniform.”
Lori looked troubled. “I didna see it,” she said, “I only heard the bell—”
MacDhui wished he had not made the joke.
Lori said, “I have no’ much siller to pay—”
“There is no need, Lori. I have been repaid.”
On a sudden impulse she darted past him and ran into the room where she did her weaving. She returned carrying a scarf of natural-colored wool of incredible softness and lightness.
“Will ye take this?” she pleaded. “It—it will keep ye warm—when the winds blow.”
“Yes, thank you, Lori. I will.” He wondered whether she knew how moved he was. At the door he repeated, “Thank you, Lori. I shall be glad of this—when the winds blow. I will come tomorrow or the next day and fix a proper cast.”
He turned and went out, leaving her standing in the middle of the room, watching him go. But he had the curious last-minute impression that she no longer saw him, that the gentle eyes seemed to be turned inward, an expression of pain and sorrow was etched momentarily on her lips. He went down the path of the glen remembering the name by which she was known—Daft Lori.
Mr. MacDhui climbed into his parked jeep, placing the wool scarf beside him. On an impulse he picked it up and settled it about his neck. It was as soft and warm as a caress. The almost insupportable feeling of sadness returned to fill him once more, nor could he shake it off as he drove away in the direction of home.
1 6
Driving toward Inveranoch and all that awaited him there and which now took on the aspect of another world situated almost in another universe from the one where he had dwelt the last hours since he had come to the glen, Andrew MacDhui pondered Lori and Lori’s God.
Was it a part of the God-madness that afflicted those whose religious devotion crossed the line of sanity to fail to question the cruelty and capriciousness of a God who would first condemn on
e of His creatures to the steel trap, there to be worried half to death by a savage dog, before relenting and guiding it to the home of the one human being in the vicinity capable of helping it?
Was it a gigantic Jovian puppet game, when the badger’s case had proved too much for her, to arrange with dramatic timing the fortuitous arrival of an Edinburgh-trained veterinary to perform the necessary surgery at just the right moment, and God’s little joke that said surgeon had gone there for the purpose of giving an interfering and meddling half-wit a piece of his mind? Lori in her simplicity had seen none of this. She had said only that he had been sent in answer to her prayer.
For a moment MacDhui entertained the notion to have at his friend Angus Peddie about this and then put it out of his head for an odd reason. He was genuinely and wholeheartedly fond of the little man. He enjoyed arguing with him, but he loved him sufficiently not to wish to triumph over him and leave him embarrassed and demolished.
Besides, he had a suspicion that when he found himself in sore straits Peddie simply retired behind the theologian’s wall by holding that the ways of God were mysterious, that His all-over designs and purposes were not to be discerned in immediate events, and above all that He was unanswerable to man. If He chose to let a dozen million Chinese starve, or the Russians slaughter the patriots of a neighbor nation, or He put a wild thing of the forest to torture, it was for a purpose to be revealed later, or perhaps, God being God, never revealed at all. He reflected that there seemed to be an uncomfortable affinity between the long and often unpleasant arm of coincidence, God, and Moloch.
And yet there was—Lori.
She was touched—of that he had no doubt. Her way of living and her behavior were abnormal, and yet he knew that if there was one over-all characteristic, one key, one clue to her being, it was compassion. And here his thoughts turned again to that God whom, in her mild and sweet aberration, she served in such a strange and faithful manner. Was compassion the link between them?