Second Sight (13 page)
Authors: Neil M. Gunn
“In that case, we'll wait for a little.”
“Do you think we should, sir?” He was full of indecision and eagerness. Harry could see the excitement in his hands.
“Yes,” said Harry.
“All right, sir,” said Angus. But with the mist obviously beginning to lift, he could not rest. “I'll go along and give a shout to Donald at the well.”
“Do,” said Harry.
Angus started off but after going twenty yards came back. “Ach, it doesn't matter,” he said. “Donald can wait.”
“You're not going to leave
me
,” said Harry.
Angus smiled and flushed.
“Sit down,” said Harry, “and let us watch the world being born.”
He was in the mood for a spectacle of the kind. If Geoffrey was dead, he was dead. Nothing more could be done about it now. Nothing more could be done about anything. God sat on his creative hill-top, and inside his immutable laws things happened thus and thusâas they happened to gnats before the eyes, pursuing and pursued, round the tiny heather trumpets blowing their purple colour, blowing their honey fragrance, round the green stalks, the dark stalks, to the roots, where the damp rotting moss and mire made a soft swarming breeding bed. The eyes watched the gnats with understanding, with gentleness, with detachmentâwith no need or desire to interfere.
A movement came upon the face of the mist. The top fins, the long black ridges, of the backs of primeval beasts cut the upper surface of the white sea. The rock of Benuain grew taller. And rocks far away. And rocks close at hand, down which the mist-cataracts poured into seething cauldrons. The white tide ebbed from the distant reefs. The valleys were being born. The glens. The corries. The passes.
Known placesâborn out of memoryâout of.⦠A surge of feeling came over Harry drowning something he could not grasp, could not know, and leaving him quivering like an instrument struck by a beauty that was triumphant and somehow poignant, too.â¦
Angus, with his glass, let out a low, Gaelic exclamation.
Harry turned on his right side and looked at him. Angus brought his eye from the glass and, in a gulp, said, “They're coming.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Smith and Alick.” He was trembling. “Look!”
It took a little time before the two figures walked into the round eye of the telescope. But there they were, unmistakably, and, oh sweet heaven, how characteristically! Geoffrey in front, limping steadily on, staff in hand, doggedly, and Alick a good six yards behind. There was no intercourse between those two figures! Harry could feel Geoffrey's mood.
He brought his eye from the glass, his whole face shining.
“Yes, there they are!” He began to laugh.
Angus laughed, too, and jumped to his feet and waved his cap and shouted. It was a spontaneous action, and he covered it by saying, “You never know: some of them may have a glass on us.” Then he controlled himself and, putting four fingers in his mouth, let loose three piercing whistles, in quick succession. Whereupon he got hold of his telescope again and directed it at the two figures.
“Will you move about and wave a hand?” he said to Harry.
Harry did this, shouting and jumping and moving his hands. His teeth were clicking. He had not realised how cold he had got. “Hurrah!” he shouted. “Good old Alick! Stick it, Geoff!” I'll soon get warm at this rate! he thought, and laughed all over again. Then he saw Angus, while still contriving to look through the telescope, make a formal salute of recognition.
“They've seen us,” he said. “It's all right.” A treble whistle reached them, like a far echo of their own. “That's Maclean, away under the shoulder of the Druim.”
“What about the other party?” Harry asked him.
Angus took a thoughtful moment.
“I think,” he said, “that I better cut across andâget in touch with them.”
Now that Mr. Smith had been discovered, Angus had no desire to be in at the rejoicings! His look was so innocent, that Harry could not help smiling. “All right,” he said, “You don't mind my smiling, do you?”
Angus's brows wrinkled. “Someone must stop them.”
“Of course,” said Harry. “I was only pulling your leg.”
“We can go down towards the well and pick up Donald, if you like,” said Angus in the same tone. “It'sââ” Donald came up over the crest and joined them, saying, “I heard you.”
Angus told him the good news.
When they reached the path, down in the base of the glen, they paused. They could see Geoffrey and Alick coming slowly on about three-quarters of a mile back. Angus said, “I think I better whistle again.” This time response from the Maclean party sounded much nearer. Angus continued to listen. There was no third response. Harry saw that he was waiting for orders and discussed the matter solemnly with him. “Very good, sir,” said Angus, and started off to find George's party.
Harry looked after him. The relationship between gillie and gentleman had been restored! A likeable fellow, careless probably in the smaller things of life, generous, and touchy, too! With great drive and strength, for so lean a body.
“We'd better go to meet them,” he said to Donald.
Harry became a trifle self-conscious as he drew near Geoffrey, for he was not at all certain of his humour. He hailed him from a little distance, but beyond pausing for a moment, Geoffrey did not respond.
“Congratulations!” he said, and shook Geoffrey's hand with a genuine warmth.
Geoffrey smiled and said, “Thanks,” drily. Pardonably enough, he was not in a hilarious mood. His face was grey and puffy-looking, his brows drawn.
“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?”
“Wellââ”
“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, âYou 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 saidââ”
“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 youââ” 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 allâonly his own mind, inducing in it a mood somewhat like Geoffrey's. And Geoffrey had obviously the greater cause to feel disgruntled!â¦
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 thoughtâlifting the argument from the personalâis what tends to happen so often in this old life. The glory of the hill-top was far back in his mindâa sheen of memoryâa 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 prisonerâof what and towards what?
Harry glanced at the skyâand 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.
Butâhow? 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 threeâCook, Mairi, and Inaâto 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 you 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 Alickâhe does know the forest.”
“Do you think we should, sir?” He was full of indecision and eagerness. Harry could see the excitement in his hands.
“Yes,” said Harry.
“All right, sir,” said Angus. But with the mist obviously beginning to lift, he could not rest. “I'll go along and give a shout to Donald at the well.”
“Do,” said Harry.
Angus started off but after going twenty yards came back. “Ach, it doesn't matter,” he said. “Donald can wait.”
“You're not going to leave
me
,” said Harry.
Angus smiled and flushed.
“Sit down,” said Harry, “and let us watch the world being born.”
He was in the mood for a spectacle of the kind. If Geoffrey was dead, he was dead. Nothing more could be done about it now. Nothing more could be done about anything. God sat on his creative hill-top, and inside his immutable laws things happened thus and thusâas they happened to gnats before the eyes, pursuing and pursued, round the tiny heather trumpets blowing their purple colour, blowing their honey fragrance, round the green stalks, the dark stalks, to the roots, where the damp rotting moss and mire made a soft swarming breeding bed. The eyes watched the gnats with understanding, with gentleness, with detachmentâwith no need or desire to interfere.
A movement came upon the face of the mist. The top fins, the long black ridges, of the backs of primeval beasts cut the upper surface of the white sea. The rock of Benuain grew taller. And rocks far away. And rocks close at hand, down which the mist-cataracts poured into seething cauldrons. The white tide ebbed from the distant reefs. The valleys were being born. The glens. The corries. The passes.
Known placesâborn out of memoryâout of.⦠A surge of feeling came over Harry drowning something he could not grasp, could not know, and leaving him quivering like an instrument struck by a beauty that was triumphant and somehow poignant, too.â¦
Angus, with his glass, let out a low, Gaelic exclamation.
Harry turned on his right side and looked at him. Angus brought his eye from the glass and, in a gulp, said, “They're coming.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Smith and Alick.” He was trembling. “Look!”
It took a little time before the two figures walked into the round eye of the telescope. But there they were, unmistakably, and, oh sweet heaven, how characteristically! Geoffrey in front, limping steadily on, staff in hand, doggedly, and Alick a good six yards behind. There was no intercourse between those two figures! Harry could feel Geoffrey's mood.
He brought his eye from the glass, his whole face shining.
“Yes, there they are!” He began to laugh.
Angus laughed, too, and jumped to his feet and waved his cap and shouted. It was a spontaneous action, and he covered it by saying, “You never know: some of them may have a glass on us.” Then he controlled himself and, putting four fingers in his mouth, let loose three piercing whistles, in quick succession. Whereupon he got hold of his telescope again and directed it at the two figures.
“Will you move about and wave a hand?” he said to Harry.
Harry did this, shouting and jumping and moving his hands. His teeth were clicking. He had not realised how cold he had got. “Hurrah!” he shouted. “Good old Alick! Stick it, Geoff!” I'll soon get warm at this rate! he thought, and laughed all over again. Then he saw Angus, while still contriving to look through the telescope, make a formal salute of recognition.
“They've seen us,” he said. “It's all right.” A treble whistle reached them, like a far echo of their own. “That's Maclean, away under the shoulder of the Druim.”
“What about the other party?” Harry asked him.
Angus took a thoughtful moment.
“I think,” he said, “that I better cut across andâget in touch with them.”
Now that Mr. Smith had been discovered, Angus had no desire to be in at the rejoicings! His look was so innocent, that Harry could not help smiling. “All right,” he said, “You don't mind my smiling, do you?”
Angus's brows wrinkled. “Someone must stop them.”
“Of course,” said Harry. “I was only pulling your leg.”
“We can go down towards the well and pick up Donald, if you like,” said Angus in the same tone. “It'sââ” Donald came up over the crest and joined them, saying, “I heard you.”
Angus told him the good news.
When they reached the path, down in the base of the glen, they paused. They could see Geoffrey and Alick coming slowly on about three-quarters of a mile back. Angus said, “I think I better whistle again.” This time response from the Maclean party sounded much nearer. Angus continued to listen. There was no third response. Harry saw that he was waiting for orders and discussed the matter solemnly with him. “Very good, sir,” said Angus, and started off to find George's party.
Harry looked after him. The relationship between gillie and gentleman had been restored! A likeable fellow, careless probably in the smaller things of life, generous, and touchy, too! With great drive and strength, for so lean a body.
“We'd better go to meet them,” he said to Donald.
Harry became a trifle self-conscious as he drew near Geoffrey, for he was not at all certain of his humour. He hailed him from a little distance, but beyond pausing for a moment, Geoffrey did not respond.
“Congratulations!” he said, and shook Geoffrey's hand with a genuine warmth.
Geoffrey smiled and said, “Thanks,” drily. Pardonably enough, he was not in a hilarious mood. His face was grey and puffy-looking, his brows drawn.
“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?”
“Wellââ”
“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, âYou 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 saidââ”
“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 youââ” 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 allâonly his own mind, inducing in it a mood somewhat like Geoffrey's. And Geoffrey had obviously the greater cause to feel disgruntled!â¦
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 thoughtâlifting the argument from the personalâis what tends to happen so often in this old life. The glory of the hill-top was far back in his mindâa sheen of memoryâa 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 prisonerâof what and towards what?
Harry glanced at the skyâand 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.
Butâhow? 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 threeâCook, Mairi, and Inaâto 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 you 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 Alickâhe does know the forest.”
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