by Neil M. Gunn
“Nothing serious, I hope?” Harry regarded his limp.
“No, nothing much,” said Geoffrey. “One of a search party?”
“Well, we thought we’d come out to cheer you home!”
“Other parties also?”
“Well——”
“Good God!” said Geoffrey, going on determinedly.
“Good morning, Alick!”
“Good morning, sir.”
Harry saw the missing thermos flask sticking out of Alick’s pocket. Donald went up to Alick and they stood together until Harry and Geoffrey drew some distance ahead.
“You must have had a rotten night,” Harry said.
“It was bitterly cold,” Geoffrey acknowledged indifferently, and Harry saw that he was in a vile humour and did not want to be questioned.
“That fellow Angus got back apparently?”
“Yes,” said Harry. “Late last night.”
“Hmff,” said Geoffrey.
“What happened?”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“We did. He seemed very upset at losing you.”
“Losing me! Pretty good I must say!” He laughed a harsh note or two. “The damned fool! What excuse did he give for clearing out and leaving me?”
“He says he went back to where he had left you, but you were gone.”
“Same story as he gave to Alick. It positively tallies.”
“What actually happened?”
“He lost his way in his own forest, and kept me going round in circles before he admitted it. Then he said, ‘You stay here and I’ll go out for a little way and come straight back.’ He went out. He never came back. I must have waited an hour. I shouted. Then I struck out, thinking he had fallen and broken his neck. He apparently took care to avoid so drastic a step. Logic is not their strong point.”
“He said——”
“Is that some of them?”
It was Maclean’s small party, with a pony. Harry nodded:
“Yes.”
“Good God!” said Geoffrey. He deliberately sat down, and, lowering a stocking and pulling up his breeches, examined his flesh as far as possible. The skin was not broken, but it was discoloured, and he probed the knee-cap.
“You got a toss,” said Harry.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it? However, there’s nothing broken. And there might have been.” He felt his hip-bone, and then his shoulder. “God, I’m tired,” he said, with dry malevolence.
“What about a small tot?”
“A what? Why didn’t you——” He bit off the sentence, took the flask, and drank. Then he shuddered. “No water in it.” He eased his throat harshly.
“Sorry,” said Harry. “Have a cigarette?”
“No, thanks. I wish you had told me there was no water in it.”
“We don’t usually carry water in it.”
“My throat.” It was obviously tender. “Thanks.” He looked towards the approaching party: Sir John, Maclean, and a lad with a pony. “Where are all the women?”
“Waiting anxiously to receive you at home.”
Geoffrey gave him a glance, but was beyond comment. Harry’s dry smile irritated him acutely.
Harry saw the slow, deliberate effort with which he pulled himself together to greet Sir John and Maclean. But these two experienced men soon realised his mood and sympathised with it. “Get up here,” said Sir John. “We can talk later.”
The young man led the pony that Geoffrey bestrode. Sir John and Maclean fell in behind. The most comfortable going was in single file.
Walking alone, Harry felt relieved, as if his own company were better than Geoffrey’s any time! He smiled at the dry touch of spite. But it was odd how a mood like Geoffrey’s could blast the morning sunlight. Didn’t, of course, affect the sunlight at all—only his own mind, inducing in it a mood somewhat like Geoffrey’s. And Geoffrey had obviously the greater cause to feel disgruntled!…
But deep in him, Harry knew that all this arguing was beside the point. The glory of the hill-top had been destroyed. And that, he thought—lifting the argument from the personal—is what tends to happen so often in this old life. The glory of the hill-top was far back in his mind—a sheen of memory—a divine stillness and loveliness. He lowered his head, wondering about it, idly, without concentration, as one wonders in a day-dream, and presently the irony lingering about his mouth faded out and his face became expressionless, like a face asleep, except for the eyes that gathered a sheen of their own, a steady glimmering.
He came out of this vague mood, this half-lost region, without any distinct consciousness of coming out of it, to find his mind quite calm, as if it had been washed clean. His body felt cool, too, and clean. He looked at Geoffrey on his pony. Was he a conqueror, leading the silent cavalcade? Or a prisoner, being led?
The prisoner—of what and towards what?
Harry glanced at the sky—and then at Sir John’s tall gaunt figure, obscured, except for the head, every now and then by the broad set figure of Maclean. Glancing behind, he saw Donald come next at a respectful distance and then Alick, expressionless as ever.
A thought struck him sharply: how exactly had Alick found Geoffrey? In the relief of first seeing Geoffrey coming under his own steam, he had taken it for granted that Alick was just the sort of person who would find him.
But—how? Alick must have lifted the second full thermos flask, after he had deliberately put Angus to sleep, walked from the garage direct into the centre of the hills in a darkness black as pitch, gone up to an invisible but real Geoffrey and said, “I’ve brought some hot tea for you.”
The thing was just too utterly incredible for any sort of belief. The chances were infinity to one against. Not merely a miracle, but a fantastic one.
Soft gusts of humour came through Harry’s nose. For he knew in his bones that there had been no miracle. What, in any case, is a miracle but a happening whose laws we do not know?
And then one further thought struck Harry: what exactly had happened at that miraculous meeting? Geoffrey had made no reference to Alick. He was in a vile mood.
You pays your money and takes your choice! thought Harry in a wild amaze.
At which moment, the track widened into a bay where a car could turn, and continued in the shape of a narrow gravelled road. Sir John went up and spoke to Geoffrey, walking by his side for a little, then dropped back and spoke to Maclean. Harry wanted to wait for Alick, but felt he dared not, lest Geoffrey look round. So they came down on the bridge and saw the women, four to the front of the house and three—Cook, Mairi, and Ina—to the rear.
Harry’s face began to twitch. Pretty tough on poor old Geoff! he thought.
But Geoffrey bore up very well. The laugh had gone out of him. He could not say, “See the conquering hero comes!” His mind was too grey for that, too wearied and angry and exhausted. And because he could not say it, a deep spite came upon him. But he smiled with a wry mouth, when Helen whooped a welcome.
“I feel pretty done up,” he said to Lady Marway. “You’ll excuse me if I get to bed?”
They saw he did not want to speak to them, that all this attention annoyed him. Only Marjory seemed calm and unperturbed.
“I should hop off at once if I were you,” she said.
“I think I will, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Certainly,” said Lady Marway. “You’re sure you don’t want something to eat or drink?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks.” His leg had gone very stiff. He nearly fell. “Nothing,” he said. He was very grey.
“Come along,” said Sir John and gave him his arm, and they walked to the stairs.
“He’s had a bad night,” said Lady Marway to Harry in a low voice. “Did he tell you much?”
The four women stood around him. Their profound relief at finding Geoffrey safe was seeking outlet in a natural curiosity. They talked in quiet voices.
And Harry told them all he could, even more than perhaps he quite knew. “Though, as y
ou can understand, he was not in the mood to talk and I did not press him. We must give him time.”
“Who found him?” Joyce asked.
“Alick,” said Harry.
Lady Marway looked at him. “That’s one good thing about Alick—he does know the forest.”
“But I thought Alick could not be found this morning?” Joyce went on.
“He left earlier, by himself,” Harry said.
“But—do you mean—he went away in that fog—and found him?”
“Apparently,” said Harry.
“You mean in that utter darkness that George and I——”
Harry nodded.
“No, I don’t believe it,” said Joyce. “I just don’t believe it. It couldn’t humanly be done.”
“Where did he find him?” Helen asked calmly.
“We got to the top of Benbeg, before the mist lifted. When it did lift, we saw them coming, between us and Benuain.”
“As far as that?” murmured Lady Marway. “Of course they do know the ground marvellously. Just as we could get about this house in complete darkness, if we had to.”
“Where’s George?” Joyce asked.
“I sent Donald away to whistle them back. They shouldn’t be long now.”
“Is Geoffrey’s leg really bad?” Marjory asked.
“Not really. The flesh is discoloured, but the bones are absolutely all right.”
“No need, of course, to get a doctor?” Lady Marway looked at him.
“No, no!” said Harry quickly. “For heaven’s sake, no!”
“Well, for anyone who hates a fuss—to have to come riding in like that—I mean——” Marjory shrugged in understanding.
Quite! They all agreed.
Sir John came in. “I’ll say a word of thanks to the men,” and he passed out through the gun-room. Lady Marway set off to see about lunch at the earliest moment, and Marjory immediately followed her, asking Ina in a quiet aside if she had actually put the hot bottle in Mr. Smith’s bed.
Joyce went out to look for George’s party.
“Suppose you all had an anxious morning,” Harry said to Helen casually, as he poured himself a small drop of whisky and plenty of soda.
“Naturally,” said Helen.
“Uhm,” said Harry, and drank off the lot. “A fine day now, isn’t it?”
“Very excellent day indeed.”
“I hope it keeps up,” said Harry. “It’s nice when a good thing keeps up,” and he dropped into an arm-chair.
Helen walked over to the window.
“Though not so nice,” said Harry vaguely, “when it doesn’t keep up.”
“Are you trying to be smart or what?”
“Not smart. I wouldn’t say smart exactly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Uhm.”
Helen could not very well now leave the room, so she walked to the bookcase.
“Been reading a lot lately?” Harry inquired.
“Quite a bit.”
“Any more dreams?”
She shut the book with a snap and swung round on him.
“I had a dream about you,” he said, without looking at her. Suddenly remembering the dream, he did look at her. Heaven knows why he had mixed her up with the Rossetti type—she was so uniquely, so vividly, so angrily—she was, oh lord, he didn’t know what she was, with the whirl and disturbance going on inside him. He strove to keep casual, rubbed his jaw, and smiled towards the cannibal trout.
She simply stopped looking at him and walked out.
His head fell back, his eyes closed, he breathed like one exhausted. I am really pretty tired! he thought, and gripped the arms of the chair, and in a moment was on his feet. But not to do anything. Just to stand. While he was still standing, Helen came back. It was clear that she had thought out the proper thing to say and was now in the mood to say it. She met his face, and saw that it was quite naked. This knocked the beginning of the words out of her head and she stared back at him as she might in a dream or a half-nightmare. Sir John’s footsteps came into the gun-room. She looked sideways, towards the window with a strange glancing expression, then turned and left the room for the second time.
Chapter Seven
That afternoon, after tea, Helen walked down the winding path towards the river. No one even suggested going with her, for the Lodge itself lay heavy and inert after the night’s adventures.
She did not mind this. She was indeed glad of it. Every now and then, after longer or shorter intervals, hours or weeks, she had this impulse to slip away into some place where she had herself for company.
And she was in for it now! She knew it whenever she sniffed the birches. The thrill of the scent went right through her body, quickened her sleeping heart, and so up to her head, where it brightened her eyes, enriched the skin, and lightened the grey matter so notably that the heels had an urge to rise above the toes.
The brown note in her dark hair seemed more pronounced; her lips looked soft and warm. Her skirt, all neat and simple, hung to just below her knees, so that her ankles and sufficient of her legs could be seen to enhance the suggestion of upflowing curves, suave and taut, and really there seemed no reason why she shouldn’t stretch out her arms and take off down the waves of hazel leaves!
Yet nothing would come quite right. She would be on the point of becoming her old simple self, when she didn’t know what happened but she had to move on; move on, not merely in her mind but in her physical body, getting up to take it from one spot to another.
Something had invaded her secret place. It was not a person. She could talk to persons, hold long, eye-bright conversations with them. As she had done, for example, many a time with Harry—particularly when she had been at the age to make Harry her husband. She had worked out house, furnishings, and social affairs for Harry and herself more than once. And she hadn’t to go back an endless period for the last time!
But that had been a pure game, with Harry the necessary pawn or king. At the back of things, she knew it might very easily not be Harry, almost certainly would not be Harry—if the mysterious something happened to her. At which apprehension of the ecstatic unknown, a hush came upon her heart and a gulp into her throat. Once or twice she had got up and run away.
But this present feeling could clearly have nothing to do with all that. For it was not a person but a form of malaise that had invaded her, so that she couldn’t get the old harmony, the bright fun of being totally herself. She was not afraid, not in a panic: she was—oh she didn’t know what she was. And, the most extraordinary thing of all, she had never, never apprehended the scent of the birches, the beauty of the glen, as she did now.
Ah, it was this beauty that was getting the better of her, the sheer loveliness of the birches, the splashes of autumn colour, golden flotsam on the billows of green, the bracken, the bronzes, the rowan tree, the blood-red berries, the blackbird with the brilliant orange beak, harebells—“the Scottish bluebells”—and scabious, the taste of wild raspberries, the lines and the depth—and the scent of it all, with that pervasive under-scent of the earth itself, that quickening and terrifying scent.
Blowing into her stone circle, about its ultimate altar stone, on the wind’s breath.
That was what her growth had been towards, as the growth of the compact bud to the blown rose.
She was being invaded, her own beauty by the strange beauty in the world. Not of the world. In the world. In the world.
She wanted to shut it out, and she didn’t want to shut it out, and so she wandered on in her strange sweet misery, sometimes on the path, sometimes on a stone by the bouldered river—until the sound of the water, the meandering infinite rhythm, caught a cry in the heart of it, and she had to get up and go. From the wooded path to the bank, and from the bank—
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin…
The words came into her mind like a cry, from that haunting old Scots sonnet, repeated to her so often by her s
choolgirl friend, Maisie, and surely the most beautiful ever written:
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin
Ourhailit with my feeble fantasie
Like til a leaf that fallis from the tree
Or til a reed ourblawin with the wind,
Two gods guides me, the ane of them is blin,
Yea, and a bairn brocht up in vanitie,
The next a wife ingenrit of the sea
And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin.
Unhappy is the man for evermair
That tills the sand and sawis in the air,
But twice unhappier is he, I lairn,
That feidis in his heart a mad desire
And follows on a woman throw the fire
Led by a blind and teachit by a bairn.
The lightness, the dolphin ease, the fin—moulded like her own body, her breast, her arms. And follows on a woman through the fire.
Follows on…
Fra bank to bank, fra wood to wood…
Till her feeble fantasy quite overcame her, and she suddenly sat down beneath the birches, and drooped her head, and burst into tears, pressing her hands up against her face, hiding it in shame and in sorrow.