by A. J. Cronin
It was a fine, warm afternoon when Nessie and Peter arrived at the farm, and Hughie led them straight away to the yard, where, in his arrogant fashion, he nodded to Dougal, the farm lad, to bring out the bull.
“There!” he remarked loudly to Peter, though his remarks were plainly for Nessie. “ Take a look at that, if you please, and tell me if it suits you.”
Peter and Nessie looked at the bull which Dougal had brought out from the darkness of the stall. It was a superb animal, jet black in colour, young, virile, indomitably alive. In the sunshine its black hide glistened, while the muscles of its neck bunched in a powerful hump, and its eye, shot with strange lights, rolled towards Hughie – sullen, unfathomable. Something latent in that eye seemed to fan the blustering bravado of Hughie’s mood.
“Hup, man, hup!” he cried irritably. “Don’t look at me so dour. Ye’ll never win the cup with that red eye. Hup, hup!”
And he twitched the steel chain attached to the beast’s nose-ring until the beautiful animal arched its back angrily.
“Ye see,” Hughie remarked with a grin, “it knows its master, the brute. And a noble brute it is. Hup, hup!”
Domineeringly he laid his big hand on the bull’s pale pink nostrils, as though to show his power, his mastery. But at that moment the bull violently twitched its head and tore the chain out of Hughie’s hands.
It broke loose into the yard and drew up, with its back arched and its forelegs together, stiff. Its hide, tense and living, glistened black against the whitewashed walls that enclosed the yard. The white glare of those walls hurt its eyes. This hot, yellow sand, strewn upon the square, was strangely irritating after the soothing darkness of its stall. Its eyes were fixed on Hughie with a kind of latent animosity.
Hughie started, nonplussed that the bull should have broken loose, forgetful of Nessie and Peter beside him, as they stood cornered in the angle between the byre and bull’s stall. He took a step forward, surprised, cautious.
“Here.” he cried to the bull, “ here, man, here!”
But the bull made no response; it stood quite still, impassive, as if carved in ebony.
Hughie took another step forward, half-blustering, half-cajoling.
“What are ye doin’, man? Here, man, here!”
By way of answer the bull made a run at Hughie, not a furious run, but a slow, rather considering run. Hughie jumped aside and swore as the beast barged heavily past him.
Springing forward, he tried to grip the bull’s neck with both arms, bearing all its weight on his side, trying to steer it towards the open door of its stall. But the bull dragged him a few paces, shook him off easily, impatiently. Then, as he fell, it butted and nosed him about the back.
Hughie felt the horns rake the soft gravel beneath him as he rolled over on his side. He sprang to his feet again, bruised and shaken.
“Damn ye!” he cried. “Damn ye!”
At which the bull, turning on its forefeet, very sharp and sudden, ripped its right horn through Hughie’s shirt.
Swearing loudly, with his face suddenly alarmed, Hughie backed towards the shelter of the farm buildings, directly opposite the corner where Peter and Nessie stood. His torn shirt billowed off his shoulders like a cloak. He kept muttering, “Ye would, would ye? Ye’d horn me, you brute! I’ll learn ye – I’ll learn ye something.”
But, alas! as the bull rushed towards him again Hughie’s pretence of courage left him. He wavered, turned, and, seeing the kitchen door open behind him, he bolted as hard as his heels would carry him into the house.
At the sight of Hughie running away Nessie’s heart constricted.
Stunned, she could not credit it – Hughie showing such arrant cowardice! But she had little time to reflect, for at the same moment the bull swung, and, baulked in its rush at Hughie, lowered its head, then launched itself straight at the spot where she and Peter stood.
It was a savage, tearing rush, which, half-stupefied as she was, might well have proved the end of Nessie. But Peter acted quicker than a flash.
Pushing her violently to one side, while be leapt to the other, he saved them both. Nessie could feel the swish of the horn as it went past her side, and she saw Peter fall with the quickness of his own leap.
Peter jumped up again. His face was pale; not pale with terror, but pale with a hard, cold determination. He realised that Nessie and he, trapped by the angle of the walls, were in a desperate position.
Looking around swiftly, he caught hold of a rusty sickle which lay beside the water-butt. It was a feeble weapon, but he gripped the handle of the old hook till the white cords stood out on his hand. His jaw was set like a rock, his eyes were wide, staringly alert.
The bull, now thoroughly infuriated, came at him again, head down, back muscles humped. Peter held his ground to the last fraction of a second, knowing that the bull would strike to the right. Then, before he jumped, he smashed the back of the hook on the beast’s neck.
It was a felling stroke, but it had little effect upon the bull, which turned short on its own momentum, and then, stopping, tore into Peter. Again and again Peter struck it with the heavy hook before he flung himself away to safety.
The bull paused at a distance of twenty feet, breathing heavily, eyeing the man sideways with one small, wicked eye.
Nessie, in an agony of terror, could see its nostrils widening. Then slowly, dangerously, it moved. No rush, but a slow sidle towards Peter, edging him back into the wall at the corner of the yard where Nessie stood penned in.
Peter backed a few yards, saw his mistake, saw that Nessie was in danger. At that instant the bull charged again. As the bull came in Peter did not move, but, crouching directly in front of Nessie, he took the full impact of the animal’s rush. The bull’s rush. The bull’s horn buried itself in Peter’s side.
Nessie screamed, as, clasping the beast’s free horn with both hands, his face distorted, anguished, Peter wrenched himself away from the horn which impaled him, then slid down the bull’s shoulders to his knees, while the blood came in quick spurts from his torn side.
Tossing its head in triumph, the bull again made to rush at Nessie, but Peter, swaying on his legs, his hands empty of any weapon, got up again to face the bull.
Full of fight and confidence, the bull bored in. Peter never moved. His head hung down, but his jaw was still grimly clenched.
As the bull charged he shut his fist and smashed it with all his force full in the brute’s soft muzzle. The blow nearly broke his wrist, but the shock of it stopped the bull, which paused as though surprised. And in the same moment intervention came from the other, end of the yard.
Dougal and Matt, the ploughman, attracted by Nessie’s screams, raced into the yard, waving their arms to take the bull’s attention, Matt was brandishing a heavy sledge, and as the bull came in on its next rush he planted his feet wide apart, whirled the sledge high in the air, and smashed it fair in the centre of the beast’s brow.
The crack of the impact came clear and hard as a gunshot. The bull halted suddenly. All its venom seemed to wither into the air. Then, stunned, first one knee and then another buckled under it; it sloped over on its side, and finally collapsed.
Swaying on his feet, Peter looked stupidly at the fallen bull. Then he glanced at Nessie.
His face streaked with blood and dust, was filled with a great tenderness. He tried to lift his hand to wipe his lips, but he could not. Then he fell heavily across the body of the bull.
An hour later Finlay drove like a madman up to Tannochbrae. Ignoring the stir that his arrival caused, he made straight into the kitchen, where, on the horse-hair sofa. Peter lay stretched. Bending down amidst a dead silence, Finlay began to minister to the injured man. Beside him, holding some whisky in a tumbler, spilling half of it with a shaky hand, Hughie groaned –
“My God! He’s all right, isn’t he?”
Finlay rose slowly, his face dark and unfriendly.
“Yes, he’s all right. It’s only the muscle that’s been tor
n. He’ll be right again in three or four weeks.”
“Thank God!” cried Hughie again, and he tried to put his arm round Nessie, but Nessie broke away from him with a cold, pale look.
Hughie’s lips began to quiver again. He glanced round the assembled company in a kind of desperate entreaty. But every eye avoided his. Then Hughie groaned again and stumbled into a seat, cowering and twitching like a man who has been in cold water too long.
A moment later he broke down completely. Blubbering, he whispered, “Oh, God in heaven, I dinna ken what came over me.”
A week later, when Peter was well on the way to recovery, Nessie ventured round to see him.
“Is there anything I can do,” she said, her eyes steadily on his, “to make it up to ye, Peter? I’ve always treated ye shameful. And now ye’ve saved my life. It was a brave, brave thing ye did, Peter.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered simply, colouring under her praise. “ It wasn’t that much after all.”
This time Nessie did not smile at Peter’s shyness, for she knew it as the mark of the man’s great heart.
In the following year Peter and Nessie were married, and now they live in the square sandstone manse on the outskirts of Tannochbrae. But, though they are beloved and highly esteemed in the village, they are not so staid as Peter’s learned profession might lead one to expect. They go boating on the loch in their little lugsail, and love to tramp on the moors above the village. There is nothing to mar their happiness.
Hughie, broken and disgraced, sold the farm and went off to Canada in a vain attempt to make a man of himself.
And now, when Nessie takes her children to the woods to gather raspberries, she does not think of him, such is her present happiness, except with pity. But she does not forget the doctor and his love of raspberry jam, nor the all-important fact that by driving her back to make it he saved her one August afternoon from herself and Hughie Riach.
And that is why every year, when the earth yields its bounty, Finlay receives from Tannochbrae the big sweet pot of wild rasp jam.
10. Who Laughs Last
“Don’t go,” pithily remarked Cameron to Finlay that April morning when the call came in for Meg Mirlees. “ Take my tip and give the guid lady a gey wide berth.”
Finlay looked up inquiringly from his finnan haddie which he had been discussing with a healthy appetite before his partner and patron spoke those sage words of admonition and advice.
“And why?” said he.
Cameron smiled.
“In the first place, you’ll never sniff your fee, and in the second, there’s nothing could ever be wrong wi’ Meg Mirlees. She’s the healthiest, hardiest, stingiest old faggot that ever drew breath by the grace o’ God and the Provost in this Royal and ancient burgh.”
Finlay helped himself to more haddock, buttered another of Janet’s famous home-baked bannocks, and listened interestedly while, with a wry and reminiscent smile, Cameron went on.
“Well do I mind the first time I ever waited on her. She had me in for a cough, making out that she had bronchitis, though hang the trouble I could ever discover in her tubes. I called all winter, for it was in my young days in Levenford when I was green and eager and easily led by the nose.
“Well, to cut a long story short, when I sent in my bill, I’m hanged if her ladyship didn’t turn round and argue that she had only asked me to call the once, and the rest of the times had just been for my own pleasure, so to speak. She argued till all was blue, and at the end o’t I lost my temper, tore up the bill, and flung it in her face.”
Cameron chuckled.
“Dod, ’twas just what she wanted. When I told her I wouldn’t take a penny of her rotten money she laughed like an old cuddy and showed me to the door.”
“So that’s her style!” exclaimed Finlay.
“Ay,” Cameron answered, “It is her style. She’s a miser, man; maybe not so much miserly as mean. T cha! she’s as mean with all her gear as a temperance hotel wi’ matches. Mind you, it isn’t as if she wasn’t well off. She’s worth any amount o’ siller. She’s got braw things in her house – antiques, ah, beautiful antiques.”
Cameron sighed with all the envy of a rival collector, for, besides his fiddles, the old doctor was desperately keen on curios and antique china.
“Why, she’s got a plate there – a dish, to be exact, it’s genuine Ming, brought back by her great-grandmother from Canton, and worth a mint of money. Land’s sake! I’d give my eye-teeth to have the like o’t.”
Finlay laughed outright at the sudden longing that had crept into Cameron’s tone. He rolled up his napkin and thrust it in the ring. Somehow his interest had been awakened by the account of Miss Mirlees, and as he rose from the table he declared –
“I’ve a mind to have a look at your friend. She’ll not get the better of me.”
“Ye say so.” Cameron cocked his head shrewdly. “Why, man, I’ll wager she’d get what she wants out o’ you and never pay a penny piece.”
“Nonsense!” protested Finlay stoutly. “ You wouldn’t catch me giving her advice for nothing.”
Cameron hid a smile, caressing his chin with a typical reflective gesture.
“On ye go and try, then. Try your hand at her, by all means. If you think you’re a match for Meg Mirlees, Finlay, man, ye’ve no small conceit of yourself.”
Placed thoroughly on his mettle by this turn of the conversation, and, by the same token, curious to match his wits with the formidable old dame, Finlay, when he had visited his more serious cases that day, dropped in on Meg Mirlees about three in the afternoon.
Meg lived in Chapel Street, a narrow thoroughfare composed mainly of old-fashioned houses, very quiet and genteel, yet opening at the far end into High Street. The window of Meg’s sitting-room did, in fact, afford a splendid view of High Street, and here, ensconced strategically, Meg would sit watching the passing life of the town, craning her neck, criticising, condemning, throwing out a tasty word of scandal to such of her cronies as had come to keep her company.
Meg had no friends, but only a tiny ring of toadies, who, by obsequious flattery, hoped to “ come in for something” in Meg’s will.
Meg, however, was alone when Finlay entered, crouched in her customary chair – a gaunt, hard-bitten, shrunken old maid with high cheek-bones, a healthy colour, and small, beady, bright eyes.
She was dressed entirely in rusty black, with an old, darned shawl happed about her, and a worn pair of elastic-sided boots upon her bunioned feet. A bag of small imperials – her one luxury – lay with the Bible on the fine needle-worked stool which stood beside her.
The plenishings of the room were really excellent; fine old furniture, crystal lustres on the mantelpiece, while, on a table by the window with its back to him, was the famous Ming plate. But the place, for all the value of its contents, had a frowsy smell and dank and chilly air.
“Well, well, doctor,” whined Meg by way of welcome, “it’s good of ye to look in to see a poor auld cratur like mysel’. It’s no’ a professional visit, of course. Ye wouldna think o’ looking on it in that light. Ye see, it’s just a wee bit private word I wanted with ye.”
Before Finlay could protest she went on quickly.
“Ay, ay, sit down there and rest ye. It’s as cheap sittin’ as standin’. I had a mind to light the fire, and then I just didna. I hope you don’t find it cauld.”
Even as Finlay shivered in the frigid room he had to smile. He saw that it was more joy for Meg to sit without a fire to save coal than to be warmed with the cheerful blaze she could have well afforded. He took a chair, and gazed at the bleak and cunning old face before him.
“Well,” said he briskly, “ why did you send for me. Miss Mirlees?”
“Tit, tit, doctor!” cried Meg in a panic, “dinna put it that downricht way. A’ I said was ye might look in if you happened to be passing. I was meaning to offer you a cup of tea, but ‘ deed I do declare, I’ve just discovered we’re out o’ sugar, and the kettl
e’s this meenit gone off the boil for-bye.”
She broke off, shook her head sadly at the strange coincidence which prevented her offering him hospitality, helped herself with relish to a small imperial, then, as an after-thought, half-offered the bag to Finlay.
“Ye’ll no’ be mindin’ for one o’ thae, doctor. Ye’ll no’ care for the peppermints.”
She had no idea he would accept, but before she could withdraw the bag Finlay, suppressing a smile, reached out his hand and helped himself liberally.
“Thanks, Miss Mirlees,” he cried. “I’ve got an awfully sweet tooth. How did you know it?”
Meg’s face froze at the inroads he had made on her precious imperials. She snatched back the bag and declared nippily –
“Ay, it wad seem ye do like them.”
Screwing the paper poke tightly, she gave him a glower and thrust the sweets safely in her pocket.
There was a short silence, broken only as they sucked their imperials at one another.
Finlay, warmed by the initial skirmish, was beginning to enjoy himself.
“And now, Miss Mirlees, that we’re happy and comfortable, what is it all about.
Meg darted a sharp glance at him, but recovering her equanimity with an effort, she assumed a dreadful pretence of sprightliness.
“Weel, it’s this way, doctor. Maybe I have something that might prove interesting for ye. Oh, I ken you doctors are aye lookin’ for something extraordinar’ in the way o’ complaints.”
She paused, considering him shrewdly.
“It’s a bit lump on top o’ my head. It doesna worry me ava’, mind ye. I’ve had it these sax years, too, but, dod, it’s been getting bigger lately, so, says I to myself, it might be real interestin’ for young Dr. Finlay to look in and maybe, in a quiet way, to try his hand at getting quit o’ it for me. It’ll be grand experience for the young man, thinks I, and, ‘deed, I’ve no doubt at all, thinks I, he’d be glad enough to shift it without charge gin I gie him the chance.”