by Neil M. Gunn
Geoffrey glared at him. “You call that a joke!”
“From our point of view, it had”, said Harry, “its amusing aspect,” and he strolled out of the room and up to his bedroom, where the hand-lamp, with its red glass bowl, was lit.
As he entered and stood in the silence he caught a face looking at him from a little distance. It was his own face in the mirror, of course, but it was considering him in a detached way, the features a trifle darker than they should be, as if with dark blood. Harry’s mouth twisted to one side. So did the mouth in the glass.
Long ago in Lewis a man was haunted by a spirit in every respect like himself. This spirit accompanied him out into the fields and, while mimicking his every act and gesture, would sometimes ask very impertinent questions. He turned up at night in the house, but sat silent, invisible to everyone except the man himself. The story came into Harry’s mind, and he turned his head slowly and looked at the mirror. Reflected in the glass was the top edge of the door slightly ajar. He could have sworn he had closed the door when he entered the room. He got up and closed it, but omitted to contemplate himself in the mirror, as he returned to his seat on the bed.
He knew he was occupying his mind with trivialities. The truth was that there had been a moment when he could have sprung at Geoffrey. Many a time in his boyhood he had been ferocious enough. But somehow it had been of the flesh. The desire had been to hit and smash. He could see there might be a desire, springing out of some primeval evil, to tear asunder.
He saw how a man could be murdered.
The evil knowledge sickened him a little, sent weakening tremors over his flesh. Oh, but this is damned fantastic! he thought, moving restlessly from hip to hip.
For the real truth of the whole thing was that what would get torn asunder would be the peace of the house. And to help to that end in any way would be utterly and absolutely swinish. Oh God yes! he cried inwardly, twisting on the bed.
That moment when Geoffrey had turned on him, there had been something in his face while he yet struggled for control that had been really dangerous. And not only Geoffrey’s face but his chest and arms, which had snakewrithed in a spasm of impotence.
How drastically Geoffrey would have dealt with the King Brude accusation had it been untrue!
Hell, I’ve been making a mess of things! he thought. I must stop this.
But he couldn’t cover the real hurt to his mind much longer, and suddenly he threw himself face down on the bed. “Helen,” he said, “it came over me. I didn’t mean to do it—there—like that. I’m sorry.” The shame seeped into him bitterly.
Chapter Five
The following morning, Harry saw that Geoffrey had had a bad night. His effort at being agreeable showed it. The skin over his face seemed stretched a little more, his eyes goggled slightly, and his laugh in restraint tended to become a giggle. It was a curious old-maidish expression flickering over the real force of the man beneath. In some obscure way it made Harry feel ashamed.
For he did see now that if the peace of the house was not to be damaged beyond repair he would have to subdue himself and give in to Geoffrey, by degrees, but starting from this very moment.
“You have that beat, Geoffrey.”
“Not at all,” said Geoffrey. “You have it.”
“Oh, go on!” said Harry. “You have it. You know you’re the better shot.”
Geoffrey looked at him.
Harry’s tentative smile grew awkward despite himself. He had never intended any reference to Geoffrey’s markmanship of the day before. It was the last thing he would want to do. But apparently Geoffrey did not think so. In a sudden fear lest Sir John and Maclean should feel there was something wrong, he accepted the beat when Geoffrey refused it.
But for a long way it irritated him, and only when Alick and himself were at last alone did the tension in his mind ease.
For it was absurd to him, amid this peace of the hills, that human beings should behave to each other in so childish a way. And surely extraordinary, that out of such behaviour could be distilled a real venom. A thin dark poison that seeped in about the roots of the mind. Lord, it made one think!
For in one’s own mind one could feel what the cumulative effect of it might be. Between individuals and peoples and everything. This dark poison distilled out of the ego.
Harry had a vision of it world-wide. Or, rather, an apprehension, for he saw nothing very distinctly, and thought nothing very clearly; yet the truth of this apprehension was so powerfully in him that he experienced the illusory feeling of holding the round dark world in the eye and thought of his mind.
Which softened his smile in humour as his carnal eye took in the smooth round of a slope, a suave timeless shoulder of a hill. For here was a thing he was noticing now: that from an intricate vision of the poisons of life he could lift his eye to such a slope and experience a feeling not only of exquisite relief but of sheer positive happiness.
And as he went plodding on, ordinary words like release, freedom were overtones from bells struck beyond the range of the ear.
Geoffrey could crawl down in his valley bottom. What was that to him? Why should he worry his head about it? Which showed that he did worry his head about it. Which showed that he would take Geoffrey to the mountain-tops, if he could. And everyone. And he had to admit, with a confused smile, that that is precisely what he would like to do at this moment—always assuming it could be done inadvertently, don’t you know!
What else had one to think about, following a fellow like Alick? What other sort of thought could one indulge in, with that tall solid figure in front, stepping so quietly, with easy poise, that opaque body—with its deathly visions?
Alick stopped, laid down the rifle, and silently took the hazel crook from Harry. After he had stuck it in the ground, he withdrew the spy-glass from its slung leather case, adjusted it to his own marks, and, supporting it against the stick, directed it at once into a distant corrie. “There are a few of them there. One good beast, I think,” he said quietly, handing the glass to Harry. Harry sat down and steadied the telescope against the stick, leaning back like Alick in what always seemed a difficult posture.
He had to glance once or twice along the top of the telescope before he could make sure he was aiming at the right corrie and then could find nothing. “A little more to the left…not so far,” said the voice above him.
“I’ve got them!” said Harry.
It always gave him a thrill of pleasure when he picked up the distant quarry with the glass. Something about it of the magic eye, annihilating distance, bringing the remote and secure and unsuspecting quite close for him to look at and study. A godlike intrusion, with omniscience somewhere.
“See the beast to the left—a little above the others?”
“Yes.”
“That’s him.”
Harry eased his neck and sat forward. “King Brude?”
Alick smiled, his keen eyes on the corrie. “No.”
Harry had another look, but could not see any marked difference in the beast from some others. Then Alick took the telescope again, slowly went over the wide areas in front of them, shut it up and returned it to its case.
“Nothing else?” asked Harry, appreciating, as he always did, this sure display.
“No. It will make a good stalk. They’re eating over towards that broken rocky ground to the right of the corrie. They’ve come across from Benuain way, and, with any luck, by the time they come within range of the outcrop we should be in position. But it’s a long stalk, because we’ll have to circle down and round and the wind may be faulting just on the crest there. There’s not much of it and it’s going to die out. In fact I don’t like the look of the day very much.”
“Why?” said Harry, scanning a cloudless sky, glittering high rock faces under a hot September sun, and moors so stretched out and at peace that surely bad weather would never visit them again. On the far horizon towards the sea, there was a soft haze, that at evening would turn opalesce
nt and——
“Mist,” said Alick. “There will be mist to-night. You will see it coming over the moor, solid and white as a cloud, and Benuain will draw it up like a blanket. Anyway, I hope it will be no worse.”
“Why?”
“Angus is inclined to forget the weather—and they will go far.”
“Do you mean that he and Mr. Smith might get caught in the mist on Benuain?”
“They might. I’ve been caught once or twice myself. It just means patience—if you do lose your way. But perhaps we’d better be going.”
They dropped down below the level of the distant corrie and then walked on at a steady pace.
“There’s no danger in it really?” Harry asked presently.
“In the mist? Oh no. You just lose yourself, and when you know you are lost, if you’re wise, you find the best shelter you can at once before the night comes.”
“But surely a man used to these hills would know at least where he was. I mean when he came to a burn, for example, wouldn’t he be bound to know it and then follow it, until it went into the Corr, say, and then he could follow that?
“Yes,” said Alick politely, “he might do that.”
Harry laughed. “If he was lucky, you mean?”
“Well, he wouldn’t be lost then.”
“But I mean he could go on until he struck something he knew, couldn’t he?”
“Oh yes. Only he mightn’t find it. He might even know that it’s within a hundred yards of him and yet not find it. It’s a queer feeling when you discover that you have lost your direction. The mist is all around you. The heather roots are smoking with it. The place you stand on goes strange. But you know that the track is only a hundred yards away. And you are quite sure you know the way to it. So you go for a hundred yards. And then you go a bit farther. But there is no track. You still do not believe you are lost. So you try again and again until suddenly you just know you are lost. It is an eerie feeling.”
“But if you go on, I mean a man like you who knows the forest, you are bound to strike something you know, and so get your bearings, aren’t you?”
“You would think so. But you may not. You will come on a little lochan and it is quite strange to you. The ground is boggy and when you begin to go over the boots, you pull back. You circle it, and go on. You can spend hours like that, getting nowhere; and always you are mocked by what you feel is something familiar here or there. Then you get to know that these are deceptions. And all the time the mist is about you, surrounding you in the same way wherever you go, like a cage or prison whose walls you can never touch, Queer shapes come out of it. And its silence is the most complete thing you ever heard. Perhaps then you will come on a burn. And, ah yes, you know the burn, and you will see by how relieved you are how panicky you must have been getting. Yes, this is the burn at the back of so-and-so, and you follow it. It has small features you never seemed to notice before, but then how little we do notice exactly. So you go on—and on—until you no longer are sure if it is the burn. The moment comes when you are sure it is not the burn, and you stand and try to think. First you try to work out where you might be if you had gone the wrong way. You are angry at the mist. You could cry out. Perhaps you do cry out. And that’s a queer sound, too. Then you see that the mist is getting thicker, that you can hardly see one step in front of you. And suddenly you realise that it is not the mist that is getting thicker: it is the darkness that is falling.”
He spoke with such ease in his quiet, rather small, and toneless voice, that the words might have come out of the mist he was describing, without the least emotion or force, yet with a friendliness, a curious intimacy, that made of time itself a legend. It was not a thing you could intrude upon, yet it was very companionable.
It was at this moment that Harry realised he could not question him again on the second-sight episode. Several times he had thought to himself, particularly in bed, that he would get hold of Alick and put the whole thing before him in all its bearings, sensibly, man to man. With an odd feeling of the strangeness, the isolation, of human personality, he realised it could not be done.
“There is no real danger of course?”
“Not if you keep your head,” said Alick.
“A fellow like Angus would keep his head, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh yes.”
“But you are not so sure of Mr. Smith?”
“I feel that Mr. Smith is not the sort of one that would like to be beaten by mist.”
Harry laughed and fell in behind Alick in a short, steep climb. That hit Geoffrey straight down the fairway! There is no time when a man can be more free with himself than when climbing behind another. The fellow in front has all the responsibility, and concentration limits him, but the fellow behind is free and can indulge in the most wayward thought.
And Harry’s thought was extremely wayward. From Alick’s solid back it slid sideways over the hill-face, over the moors, to a hazed horizon, between one step and the next, and an airy smile would in as short a time pass to a pressure of teeth and to knuckles that blenched as he gripped the heather. For he simply could not look at Helen, could not contemplate what happened last night. And yet she was behind his mind, behind the airy smile and this incommunicable happiness coming out of the world around him.
Not that it mattered a damn kissing anyone. He had kissed more than he could remember. He had pecked at Helen more than once, for they had been normal companions from her childhood. There was a time when he had kissed her to make her mad. So what was all the fuss about and the teeth-grinding?
When the real stalking began, his mind drew to so fine an edge that Alick’s abdominal curves and hobnail boots held a gargantuan humour, full of warmth and friendliness. Close to the ground, they wriggled on in front of him, with a noble earnestness. Harry wiped the sweat out of his eyes. This was noble living; keen and clean as the tang of the heather in his mouth and behind his nostrils. The hunter’s instinct, direct and quivering and true.
Alick paused, and crept a foot or two, and paused, and crept, and steadied, and slid slowly back. Then his head turned and beckoned Harry, who noiselessly drew up beside him.
“He’s there,” whispered Alick, a faint smile on his face, a glimmer in his eyes.
“Is he?” whispered Harry.
Alick nodded slowly.
He was there! No need for hurry now. The ultimate moment was at hand. For a few seconds they lay without moving, lost in this first stage of accomplishment. Alick’s duty was done. Harry’s was to begin, and already the excitement of it was about his heart, weakening him a little, and searching out a flat and empty stomach.
Alick’s soft whisper went on: “About one hundred and eighty yards—the nearest beast. A twelve-pointer—a royal. A really fine head.”
“A royal!”
Alick nodded, the glimmer in his eyes again.
There is a communion in which minds do not meet or commingle but merely look at each other with all the strangeness of personality behind. Nothing is given away, but something is glimpsed, friendly and timeless.
“Take your time,” said Alick.
Harry pushed the rifle ahead of him. He was on his mettle now. To fail would be to lose something more than the stag. It was Alick’s turn to watch the body in front, and his appreciation hung for a moment on the quiver of an eyelid, a faint satire, detached, considering, but not unfriendly. From the cylindrical leather case he withdrew his spy-glass.
When Harry saw the stag, he had to take a deep breath to ease his lungs. The stag was quietly eating, as were four others farther out. He waited a moment, then pulled up against the rifle stock, and at that moment the stag raised his head and, turning it over his shoulder, looked directly at him.
Another head went up, another…until they were all looking at him.
Normally Harry had a short secret ritual that he went through at this particular moment. After taking careful aim, he would withdraw his eye from the sights and say to himself, “No need to be excit
ed;” then go through the process a second time, before putting gradual pressure on the trigger.
But now he had an intuition that the stag was on the very point of swinging his head back again and trotting off. He got excited. He sighted midway down the body, behind the shoulder, where the heart is. The outline of the stag against the sparse heather and the brown burnt tips of the bent was anything but clear. At this distance there was no need to worry over elevation or shifting of the sights. The trajectory of his modern rifle was straight up to about two hundred yards. The point of his rifle was fairly steady. The stag’s head swung away. He pulled.
The stag leapt, and head up, began scrambling away.
“Got him through the spine,” said Alick, on his feet.
He found himself leaping after Alick, his eyes on the stag. He fell, head first, but was on his feet in an instant. The stag, head up, antlers sweeping the air, was going very slowly, as if pulling an invisible weight. Then Harry saw that the hind legs were paralysed, that he was dragging them.
A pang struck him; he groaned and stood still as the royal head, at bay, turned and faced them.
But Alick kept up his swift assured stride, the walking-stick in his hand, straight for the head. Oh God! cried Harry, feeling beforehand the lengthy fumbling bloody business of killing with a knife. The eyes of the brute, the soft deep liquid eyes, the dumb eyes, in the magnificent head, the proud wild head. Quick! quick! his spirit cried. Quick!