by Neil M. Gunn
“Well,” said the landlord, with a friendly, even an engaging smile, “we haven’t opened yet. Eleven o’clock is opening time, you know.” He looked at Harry.
Harry looked at his watch. “It’s after ten now,” he said, “and I think I’m slow.”
“Well, now, perhaps you are. But have you come far?”
“I have come from Corbreac Lodge. And that’s far enough, surely.”
For one instant Harry thought the dark eyes winced, but in the next he decided he must have been deceived for the man’s expression had merely become astonished.
“On foot?”
“Yes.”
“Please come in.”
Chapter Four
Harry was late for lunch, and still later he found Helen in the sitting-room.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed, his eyes brightening at sight of her. “You didn’t go with them?”
“No,” she said, leaning back in her chair and letting her arm fall by her side in a characteristically frank gesture.
“I say!” He was still looking at her.
“I somehow didn’t feel like it—not a whole day of it,” and she stirred and sat up.
“No, not a whole day,” he said, as he pushed round the leg of the neighbouring armchair with a lazy foot and sat down. “Have one?” And holding the light to her cigarette he murmured, “I was glad to see you,” as though some sort of explanation of the way he had looked at her was necessary.
“Well, I’m glad to see you, I don’t mind confessing.”
“And here we are!”
“Like conspirators.”
“Exactly. I wish I had known you weren’t going with them.” He tried to speak casually, but it was difficult to subdue the note of excitement that had come from nowhere. She was really very good-looking at the moment, very vivid, with a warmth in her skin and a depth of brightness in her clear eyes.
“If I had been up as early as usual, I might have caught you. But I overslept.”
“Did you?”
She smiled. “You’re astonished! You haven’t found out anything about Alick?”
“No. Can’t trace him at all. I don’t know what to make of it.” He smiled. “I really had a rotten night last night. Quite abysmal.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I had a nightmare.”
“Had you?” He laughed. “There is something in what Geoffrey says: you can work up a situation. You know, there was a moment during the night when I became so sensitive that I heard the wind crying round the house and crying away out on to the moors.” He shrugged. “It’s not exactly that you hear voices in the wind, but that you hear the wind itself—as if you were a small boy, listening to it, with a strange dread, in a lonely country house. But I can’t explain.”
“Do you have that feeling, too?”
“Why, do you?”
She nodded. They both smiled.
“Do you ever feel,” she asked, “a gust of wind going away up into the sky—and curving over—into a sort of dome—like a vast parachute—going away up—and you hold down—you snuggle down into your bed? It’s not altogether unpleasant—if you have nothing on your mind. But if you wake up out of a horrid dream and hear it.…”
“What was your dream about?”
“Oh well—pretty complicated—and pretty awful.”
“Was it?”
“Uhm.” She nodded.
“Why won’t you tell it?
Was I in it?”
“As a matter of fact, you were.”
“Was I horrid?”
“No.”
“Purely as a matter of research, what was I?”
“Purely as a matter of fact, I hung on to you. But then—I was beside myself with terror.”
“I happened to be a handy sheet anchor in the wind?”
“You can be helpful.”
“Good! And—purely in the dream of course—how did I take your hanging on to me?”
“Again, as a matter of fact, you took it very well. You were really very nice indeed.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Why?” Her glance was quick.
“Well—you wouldn’t have liked me to be nasty to you—in such circumstances.”
“You mean—when you might naturally have been?”
“Not me naturally. It’s you who dreamed, remember.”
“I don’t—quite see—”
“Never mind—so long as I was nice to you. Was I very nice?”
She found she could not quite carry off this persiflage, and, in a slight embarrassment, got up. “Oh, you were quite all right, quite helpful. I then looked at the time.” She looked at her wrist-watch. “It was three o’clock.”
“That was when I looked at the time.” Harry got up. “We must have been singularly in tune.”
“To the same idea, perhaps—not necessarily to each other.”
“Oh, naturally. I should not presume for a moment to go outside the idea.”
They both laughed, excitedly. They had often pulled each other’s leg, but never quite to this extent.
Then Helen’s expression became serious, as a shadow follows light. “Was Alick in your dream?”
“Yes,” responded Harry quietly. “Was he in yours?”
She nodded. “Yes. His face—looking back over his shoulder—as he went away into the night…awful—it tore my heart.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.” She took a restless step or two. “He has a strange gift—when you think of it afterwards—of making you see things.” She looked at Harry with all her natural frankness. “I understood you so well when you said that about enchantment last night. He points to something in the grass—a moment—and goes on. Or he stops and you hear a bird. ‘Chaffinch,’ he says, and goes on. Time and again, with such ease, such a feeling of leisure, as if time had no end, until.…”
“The scales fall off your eyes.”
“That was a dreadfully hackneyed thing for me to say, wasn’t it? And before them all, too. It made me squirm in bed. But that’s exactly what happens all the same, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And scales off your ears.”
“Yes. Do you know”—and her voice caught a note of wonder—“I do believe there is enchantment. I mean—really enchantment. And the best of it all is that you know it isn’t a delusion. On the contrary, you know that it is the real thing. That it is exact and real—where before everything was vague or blurred. You…oh, I can’t explain. Imagine someone, colour-blind, suddenly seeing all the colours—the real colours, vivid and lovely—growing—in sunlight. Like that—only, too, it’s somehow full of fun and—and you find yourself having a small laugh to yourself.” She looked at him as if she were going to have a small laugh to herself. “Or have I gone too far for you?” And her smile held the sound of a small, secret laugh.
“You have gone too far,” he said solemnly.
“It seems,” she said thoughtfully, “that when I go as far as Alick I go too far for you.” It was a pity.
“You are enchanting me.”
She opened her eyes on him. “I’m what?”
“I accuse you of enchanting me.”
“Harry, how horrid of you!”
They faced each other, challengingly, until her expression ran into a rare smile and her splutter of laughter broke through. She turned away and, as he followed her, got a chair between them.
“No horse-play, please. Remember we are grown up.”
“Hmf!” He shrugged, and his voice thickened in harsh satire. “Fancy having all the tricks—at your age!”
“Tricks!” She flamed upon him. “What do you mean? How dare you say that to me?”
“Well, it’s true.” Even the twist of his lips looked ugly. “You are an enchantress—with all the tricks.”
“Tricks!” She was hurt to the quick and made to walk past him, but he got in her way.
“Don’t be a fool,” he suggested. “What on earth do you expect me to say?”
“Certainly
nothing but what you believe to be the truth. I will thank you to get out of my way.”
“Going all dramatic?”
“I am not dramatic. I am hurt.”
“Sorry.” And then he smiled. “Hang it all, Helen, there’s a limit to what you can do and what a fellow can stand. And anyway you must understand that you can’t go on talking about enchantment like that, about colour and bird-singing and enchantment. It’s simply not done. You forget that we are English. We keep that for books on bird life and plants.” He paused. “Perhaps that is why the English write the best books in the world on birds and wild flowers and—and rock gardens. It is a profound thought.”
“You’re being pretty clever,” she said doubtfully, her eyes on him.
“No.” He shook his head. “Simple truth. Think it out. This affair here has set me thinking. You see, a fellow like Alick does not get his kick out of reading about—well, all this rather magnificent environment of bens and glens and so on. He gets the kick direct. And we needn’t go out of our way to misunderstand or sentimentalise the folk hereabouts. That’s an old romantic trick. They are realists—with a feel for what is real in life like the feel of earth in your hand. I mean, the actual business of living, of being alive, in all its hidden twists.” He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.”
She still had her eyes on him, for he had taken a step or two in the difficult labour of definition, and after a moment she asked directly, “What do you think has happened to Alick?”
He looked at her frankly. “I just don’t know. That’s why I know I can see only a very little way into this.” Then he remembered Geoffrey. “But Geoffrey was quite sure. He said Alick went and got blind drunk.”
Her face cleared. “How characteristic of Geoffrey!”
“I hope Geoffrey was right,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“If Alick only got blind drunk, he’ll turn up.”
“Harry. Do you think he might have——” Her voice sank.
“God knows,” said Harry. “I went over to Corbeg this morning to see if I could spot him. I ran into his father by an old outhouse, carrying his scythe, like old man Time. A quiet-spoken old fellow, keeps his head up, eyes steady and looking beyond you, and that grave rather attractive dignity. Sort of puts you on your best manners. Then the mother came out: short and stout and dark, but busked all tight and hardy, like one of the really old inhabitants, Iberian or something. Actually they were two pretty good samples of the small dark and tall fair. Have you ever read anything about the ethnology of the Highlands?”
“No.”
“Oh well, you see——”
“Tell me—what happened?”
He chuckled. “Well, she had those dark, shy, halfembarrassed eyes—as if she were so full of kindness that she was frightened to intrude it upon you. But you won’t understand that.”
“Go on,” said Helen.
“So in I went and had her glass of milk and right creamy it was. I had completely forgotten how good milk tastes. Have you? But of course not—you’re young enough to remember. Well, we talked and I casually found out that Alick had not slept there last night. She had been a bit alarmed, but he said to her ‘I told you so’, for apparently Alick has been known to sleep in the Lodge here, when there is a very early start. Very rarely, of course, but it’s happened.”
“Didn’t they wonder why you——”
“I told them I was having a day off. But not the others—who were having a long day.”
“He didn’t sleep here?”
“No. So remembering Geoffrey’s ‘blind drunk’, off I set for Corr Inn. I wish I could tell you what happened there, but I can’t because it’s only still working itself out in my mind. In the cleverest way the landlord made me tell him I was staying here and had walked on foot to the inn and so on. An extremely engaging fellow, simple as the black water you see in some of these tarns on the high-ground moor, anything but translucent, yet really clear enough. How astonished a fellow must be who drowns in one of them! I feel like the fellow who has just managed to crawl out.”
“I say, you are getting deep!”
“Bogged is the word. He played me like a trout. But once—twice—I hit him.”
“Your metaphors are obscure.”
“You would hardly notice it. I was on the way home before I completely noticed it myself. I could not ask for Alick directly, so very cleverly I began asking if the stalkers and gillies came to this inn of his for a jollification, as it seemed an excellent place for it. Have you ever touched a snail when its feelers are out? Well, something in his expression, his eyes, went in like that. Momentarily isn’t in it, of course. But there it was—and in that moment he not only knew who I was, but what I was after, and I know quite positively that by this time he has contrived to warn Alick of my spying. Even at the time, it made me feel uneasy and mean. Remarkable, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “I do understand that. I have had that sensation of their mind feeling you.”
“Invisible feelers. Yes.” His smile took a thoughtful twist. “Now normally one of two things may happen—though I don’t know quite how I know this—when you hit the mind and it goes in like that: either the body may lash out at you dangerously or the body may go opaque and stupid-looking. And it is inclined to go stupid—to its superiors. We are its superiors.”
The quiet irony excited Helen and she moved about restlessly.
“Not that that happened,” Harry explained, “in the case of the landlord, of course, because he could cover up, not being personally involved. But—I know I’m right, exactly as if he had demonstrated.”
Helen stopped. “And what are you going to do next?”
“Just wait. You cannot go against destiny.”
“You are not growing fatalist, are you?”
“No. I merely have an intuition that I should do nothing.”
“An intuition?”
“I am beginning to go like that. Pretty bad, isn’t it?”
She turned away to the window and stared out.
“There’s Alick,” she said quietly.
“Is it?” He did not move.
“And there’s Father and Geoffrey.… A pony with a stag.”
“Only one stag?”
“Yes.”
“Geoffrey’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then it’s your father’s. Is Alick with them?”
“No, he’s gone. Maclean is weighing the stag.”
Harry walked over to the window.
“Yes, your father’s. Geoffrey has manifestly had no luck. Which way did Alick go?”
“Round that way,” and she indicated the right. Then she left the window and Harry slowly followed her. “Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes.”
But the brightness in her question was artificial and Harry did not respond to it. He stood preoccupied. It was a mood utterly unaccountable to him, in which there was no relief.
He said vaguely, “I wonder what’s happened?” And she answered, “I don’t know.”
The figures of Sir John and Geoffrey passing the window and their voices as they came in at the outside door to the gun-room stirred them reluctantly. Their eyes met in a glance, in a half-rueful smile. Had they been children they might have taken hands and fled.
But Geoffrey’s loud, “Hallo, you two!” brought the real world into the room, and Harry asked, “What luck?”
“Rotten!” said Geoffrey, rubbing his palms audibly and sending currents of fresh air about the room. “We had a magnificent stalk into the Rock Corrie. The last bit I had to do all on my own. The stag could see me. So Angus stayed behind. I crawled flat out. When the stag’s head went up, I lay still. Oh, devilish tricky. But I did it! And then—I don’t know what happened. Hang it, I was mad! It was not that the shot was too far. I should have done it. Only I was firing downhill.”
“And you fired over his back?”
“No,” said Geoffrey. “N
o. That’s the cursed thing. You are told that you are likely to fire over his back, downhill. So I tried to correct it. And I am now quite satisfied I was too low. If Angus hadn’t whispered, ‘Remember it’s downhill’, I’m certain I’d have got him.”
Harry laughed, and Helen went to meet her father quickly, implanting a swift kiss on his cheek. “Because you deserve your luck!”
“Thank you, my dear. And Maclean was so good——”
“Oh.” She flew to the drink cabinet.
“So you had all the luck to-day,” Harry greeted him.
“I’m afraid so,” said Sir John. “But—one minute.”
“My sympathy, Geoffrey,” said Helen.
Geoffrey, who had hardly ceased talking, turned to her. “Yes, rotten luck, wasn’t it? Dash it, and I wondered to myself even as I was pulling—what if I’m too low? And quite a good head. We had come to the top of a little watercourse, and now there was the curve-over of the ground which brought me into sight. The stag could see me. So it was inch by inch, pulling with my fingers and pushing with my toes, stopping when he raised his head—and then waiting a second to see he did not raise it quickly again—and then wriggling on. And all the time in my head”—Geoffrey attempted Angus’s accent—“ ‘Remember eet’s downhill’.”