From London Far (20 page)

‘You do that.’ Captain Maxwell had risen and was buttoning his reefer jacket. ‘Only there’s little more to tell. It seems that the folk who were being converted by this American creature had just got to that part o’ the jiggery-pokery when they began seeing visions – which is things right edifying to read about in the Scriptures and harmless enough in poetry, but no part o’ decent piety in these latter days. But here were the silly chiels, springing up one after the other and declaring that they saw St Columba in his wee boat or a great feast and dance in Heaven or the signing o’ the Solemn League and Covenant or Nebuchadnezzar out at grass or a choir of angels attending some minister that died a while back in a special odour o’ sanctity. Well, Higbed, it seems, listened a while to a’ this stite about seeing one unco thing or another. And he thought – kind o’ rationally enough, as you’ve just remark it – that this was no more than some sort o’ clinic o’ his friend’s in which he had fallen in with others similarly afflicted to himself. So up he gets in his turn to declare–’

Jean Halliwell had been staring at Captain Maxwell round-eyed. Now she interrupted him. ‘How utterly grotesque!’ she said. ‘How grotesque and rather horrible.’

‘Aye. It was what the author-billies might well call a macabre situation. “I see a great crowd o’ the heavenly host,” says one gorkie body, “haudin’ in wi’ the late reverend McCloskey o’ Minervie.” “I see King Solomon’s Temple,” says another, “and the twirly upper parts o’ it is embellishit wi’ knops.” “I see a mean and rather dirty little hall,” says Higbed, “and outside it what looks like a dreary bit of the highlands of Scotland.” “I see men which have the mark o’ the beast,” says one, “and noisome and grievous sores.” “I see an ill-favoured fellow on a platform,” says Higbed, “and I should say that he drank.” “I see a great cloud o’ witnesses,” says another. “I see about twenty uncouth persons of low intelligence in a condition of unwholesome excitement,” says Higbed. And by that time, as ye can imagine, he had the others beaten fair to it. Some were for regarding the strange creature as abounding in a special grace, for a’ the hard things he said o’ them. But the revivalist, who was sore affronted at being called ill-favoured and accused o’ the drink, listened for a while and syne declared that the man was mad. So Higbed goes back to his scraiching. “I’m Higbed!” he roars. And at that the revivalist gets scared and says they must send for the police or a doctor. The folk think little o’ that, though – and presently an old wife, a bit more enthusiastic than the rest, ups and says it has straight been revealed to her that our poor brother is possessed by seven devils. He must be manacled, she says, and live in straw, and be beaten till he hollars like a bairn sore breeched. And so they all fa’ on Properjohn’s poor daftie, and tear the jacket and the breeks off him, and at that the revivalist has his own vision – which is of the dock looming afore him, like enough – and he goes louping through the door and isn’t seen again.

‘So after that there’s a clear field for those uncouthy Highlanders. And when they’ve fair paiked the daftie black and blue the old wife says yes, she’s seen one devil flee out o’ his gob and go limping off, and that leaves no more than six to expel after the same pleasurable fashion. And so they fell to it again, still having their bit vision o’ the fifth angel sounding or Jeannie Deans throwing her stool at the bishop or John Knox preaching the head off Queen Mary at Holyrood. Regular sadistic it was, and whiles the old wife would say yes, there was another devil, and whiles she would say no, but she was mistaken, and to scourge him the sounder. It was the fourth devil that was right obstinate, it seems; they could no more get it out than a red-breast a worm too big for it on a frosty day, or a bairn digging at a winkle with a wee pin. And so they might have gone on, right crazed and savage and a disgrace to Scotland, until sundown or after, had it no’ been for wee Georgie Black, the flesher’s wean o’ Dundargie, who comes running in to the shop where his father is quartering a sheep and says that somebody is killing a pig up by the kirk ha’ and is fell unskilly in the art o’ it. So up goes Black and finds these Highlanders thrashing away and with a right skimmering look to them as if they were idiot themselves by now. And there was Higbed nigh skirl-naked, and whiles roaring in simple agony and whiles expostulating as sane as could be. For there was something in the old wife’s prescription after all, it seems, and the sore drubbing he had suffered was right clarifying to the mind. And Black was just coming to get the hang of the affair when up drives a great car hooting like a fire engine, and out jumps Properjohn full of wrath and commiseration, and this Higbed is carried off to his rest cure not afore he needed it.’

Again the
Oronsay
hooted from the anchorage. And Captain Maxwell, having completed his narrative to the evident satisfaction of his own artistic sense, advanced to take a ceremonious farewell of the Misses Macleod. ‘Awfu’ times,’ he said. ‘Scourging at Dundargie and dancing on Larra. It’s right comforting to think there’s no’ likely to be anything scunnersome on Moila.’

It was three o’clock when Meredith set off on his reconnaissance. The
Oronsay
was hull-down on the horizon. Its decks, he had noticed, were crowded with white-faced sheep; and now the black-faced sheep were spreading over Moila. This mysterious exchange would no doubt be re-enacted in reverse upon the next second Thursday – and in the interval the castle would maintain its unbroken feudal solitude. Meredith, as he crossed the island under Shamus’ guidance, found himself more than once turning round to watch the diminishing trail of smoke from the little steamer’s funnel; before he reached the farther side all trace of this had vanished, and beyond the grey, eroded line of the ruined buildings was only the white gleam of Inchfarr, and empty sea already glittering beneath the westering sun.

An irrational sense of being left in the lurch seized Meredith. Captain Maxwell was a reliable man. Moreover, being a Lowlander, he was thoroughly comprehensible. Meredith glanced with some misgiving at Shamus, with whom articulate communication was no more possible than with a Chinese, and who was assuredly no less inscrutable than the most impassive oriental. Not that the lad was himself by any means impassive, for he combined with slow movements and an expression sufficiently withdrawn a lively eye which seemed to converse with whatever it fell upon. Here again, however, was a language as closed to Meredith as was the Gaelic in which Shamus occasionally uttered a few absent words. Whether Shamus knew that Moila was besieged and that this was a foray upon enemy ground Meredith had by no means determined. Nor was it possible to hazard a guess as to how he would comport himself should some untoward situation arise – this if only because he had the trick of appearing now a grown man and now a child scarcely of years to hold a sheep-hook. But when he had rowed Meredith across the Sound in a cockshell whose gunwales came much too close for comfort to a choppy sea, and when they were climbing up through broken cliffs to the swell of the moor, his speaking eye appeared to hold its discourse with invisible but beckoning powers. It was the strain of Celtic mysticism, Meredith decided; and Shamus’ vision was penetrating beyond the tangible and visible surfaces of nature to some superior reality beyond. Mildly pleased by company so little Saxon and everyday, Meredith held on his course to whatever fate awaited him.

The sea was only a faint murmur behind them; they trod heather and by old association the smell of it reinforced a rapidly intensifying sense of loneliness abundantly warranted by the landscape. For what now revealed itself was both monotone and featureless; Ben Carron itself had through some odd configuration of the ground flattened itself before them, and the infinite roll of the moor was unbroken even by those protuberances and nodosities which had once a little relieved the wearied eye of Dr Johnson.
Matter left in its original elemental state
, thought Meredith,
or quickened only with one sullen power of useless vegetation.
Marvellous writing. But the point lay in the absence of landmarks to which to relate oneself; it was this that quickly shrivelled one to the stature of a fly crawling over the interminable curves of some small barren brownish-purple planet.

It was to be noted, however, that Shamus appeared not affected in this way. He walked with what was almost a rapid stride, his eye was on the horizon, over his set features played the ghost of a triumphant and not notably innocent smile.

Was it possible, thought Meredith – suddenly changing his mind about Shamus’ being in communion with a transcendental order – was it possible that the lad was in the pay of the monstrous Properjohn, and very well knew what reception was being prepared for the stranger under his guidance? Chance or calculation had made this remote island the linch-pin of a ruthless and ramifying criminal organization; was it not likely that in the castle they would keep a servant fee’d? And Shamus – he had surely heard Miss Dorcas remark – was the most recently acquired of the hereditary Captain’s retainers. Meredith glanced cautiously at the enigmatic youth striding beside him. There was an increasing purposefulness in his bearing – whereas his instructions had surely been merely to transport Meredith to the mainland and there give whatever attendance was required of him. Was this not a sign of the real state of the case? Properjohn, then, had known well that morning that it was an enemy with whom he was confronted, and now his agent was leading that enemy into a trap.

But Meredith had no sooner cast Shamus for this sinister role than he saw that it was a superfluous one. Properjohn had hinted at a meeting; the hint had been freely accepted; and now no particular leading into a trap was required. Were Properjohn’s intentions immediately lethal, he had only to scan this barren space with a telescope and then manoeuvre himself with a rifle behind some convenient tump of heather. If, on the other hand, he hoped to get information by means of either ruse or threat, his obvious course would be to contrive what had the appearance of a casual encounter. Perhaps, then, Shamus’ part would come later, when there was question of putting the body of an intrusive scholar in a sack and rowing out with it by night somewhere beyond Inchfarr. Or perhaps this was all wide of the mark, and Properjohn even more doubtful of the true state of the case than Meredith. Perhaps he did indeed believe or hope that he was about to contact his new associate, Vogelsang. In which case the presence of Shamus, whether as enemy or ally, was neither here nor there.

And there was a point of comfort – thought Meredith, trudging deeper into solitude – in the absence of Jean. With the departure of Captain Maxwell, that monthly link with an external and contemporary world, the mind of Miss Isabella Macleod had again embraced the conception of a state of siege, and it had been only reluctantly that she had agreed on the strategic expediency of a reconnaissance. And that Miss Halliwell should go she had declared altogether out of the question. Lady Flora Macleod, with a kiss instead of the king’s shilling, might have raised a regiment for Prince Charles Edward in the Forty-five, but she had not thought it proper to appear in person at Prestonpans or Culloden. Miss Halliwell, therefore, must remain behind the security of Castle Moila’s portcullis. And Jean, since she already owed something to the hospitality of the Misses Macleod and recognized that their continued countenance might be vital, had reluctantly agreed. Which – thought Meredith – was a capital thing, for had he not already seen this young woman enjoy more than her fill of danger? For danger, it was true, she had made this journey to the Western Highlands of Scotland. But of danger – if it was possible that an alarmed and desperate Properjohn might indeed after a fashion besiege Moila – future acts held sufficient store. For this afternoon at least it was all to the good that Jean should rest in the wings.

Meanwhile from behind that farther clump of heather a rifle might at this moment be pointing at his, Meredith’s, heart. To remove his mind from this speculation, he fell to considering anew the mystery of Dr Higbed, that eminent practitioner of psychological medicine and widely celebrated polymath of popular science. Not so widely celebrated, however, as to be a familiar name in these fastnesses, where the announcement of his identity had nowhere scored any very notable effect. Meredith tried to imagine himself roaring ‘I am Meredith!’ by way of invoking the special clemency of men or calling down the special favour of heaven. It occurred to him – disturbingly – that this was something which, after all, one does every day, Higbed’s particularity consisting only in bellowing, under severe stress, what one commonly does no more than whisper to one’s own secret ear.

Here, however, was not the point in the Higbed story that called for present consideration. Properjohn’s business, and presumably the business of the late Vogelsang with whom he was proposing to affiliate himself, consisted in the stealing, receiving, smuggling, and disposing of important works of art. But it was more evident than ever that Higbed did not come within this category – unless, indeed, he were ingeniously to be driven mad and then exhibited in some choice private Bedlam?

Both metaphorically and in point of physical motion, Meredith paused on this. Shamus halted beside him and, momentarily suspending his mute conversation with persons or powers in the middle distance, eyed this abstracted
Sasunnach
with what might, or might not, have been a sinister curiosity. It was remarkable, Meredith was thinking, to what bizarre thoughts untoward circumstances rapidly brought one. A wealthy collector of
recherché
lunatics in the interests of whose cabinet furniture vans prowled the cities of Europe from Edinburgh to Gorki; here surely was a conception that even the inventors of horror films might envy. That it should occur to a sober and ageing student of the classics while walking amid the severe beauties of Northern Britain spoke volumes for the unsettling effect of the past few days.

The Higbed problem must have some less picturesque solution. Was it possible that in the course of his practice as an analytical psychologist the unfortunate man had received – perhaps without at once understanding its significance – information endangering the whole vast organization of which Properjohn was the head or near-head? But if this were so a sack and the Firth of Forth would surely have ended the matter, and Jean’s unfortunate acquaintance would not now be enjoying a rest cure at Carron Lodge. Without further data, Meredith decided, continued speculation was futile; he was without hold on any thread leading towards a solution of the mystery.