Second Sight (25 page)
Authors: Neil M. Gunn
Angus lay dead still for a minute, then went forward on his stomach.
King Brude was lying, his back to the rising slope from which his toady had so ignominiously fled, facing down to open country, instinctively trusting the wind behind and his eyes in front. Angus could not get any nearer. The distance was about two hundred yards.
Angus fired and hit him, but not fatally. King Brude staggered to his feet, but not to fly.
Angus advanced, the rifle against his shoulder. The light was not too good. When he fired again, he must kill. For he knew now that the hunt was over. King Brude had turned, as he would turn against hounds, against all mortal enemies: King Brude was at bay.
Noble he looked, too; the great head up; the eyes, against the westering light, full of fire. A superb beast, the power streaming forward from the lean flanks. Angus saw him gathering his power into neck and shoulders, as if to meet death in a last wild charge, the head sinking and rising with a slow terrible beauty.
Angus could not fire at that head. He dared not mar its beauty as a trophy. He must shoot him in the neck. His body felt weak and light and tremulous as grass.
At ten yards they faced each other. King Brude's flanks moved. As he staggered, Angus fired at the neck. King Brude sank to the ground. Angus dropped the rifle and, opening his knife, ran in.
But King Brude was not yet dead, and Angus was very nearly caught in the wild heave of the antlers. The third or tray tine of the right antler grazed his forehead, drawing blood. Death had never been nearer him. King Brude's spasms were now extremely violent and Angus who, in his own madness, had grasped at the antlers, was thrown about like a bunch of grass. He lost his knife. A sobbing violence came into his throat. There was a wild mad exhilaration in the short battle, before the great head lay sideways and yawed in vomit. Angus retrieved his knife and stuck it to the hilt in the base of the neck above the breast bone. The head jerked and fell for the last time. The blood gushed forth.
Angus sat beside the dead stag, drooping forward, gasping heavily. His right hand came up and wiped blood from his eyes. He had been in at the death of many great stags. He had “blooded” more than one excited gentleman after his first kill. Normally an occasion when the stalker smiles quietly and, after listening to excited speech, offers a word or two of congratulation or praise of the antlers.
Angus's head drooped lower. He was very tired. His shoulders began to jerk. He lay over on his face. His fingers dug into the heath. He muttered into the earth, “Ah, Christ!” and wept.
After a time his body grew quite still and lay as if it had fallen asleep. Then he stirred and sat up. His face was disfigured with blood and tears. His manner was now very quiet. He arose and picked up the rifle and, instead of gralloching the stag, climbed back to the high ground whence he had first fired and stared across at Benuain.
The shadows of the hills were towards him. He could see no one. A stretch of horizon in the west was all vivid greenish blue light, against which the farthest ridges were black and clear cut. Gateway and pathway to another world. He should put up a smoke. Instead he put two bullets in the rifle and fired one. The echo exploded in Benuain with the noise of a distant peal of thunder. He listened and thought he heard a cry. He laid the rifle across his knees and sat staring before him, his face growing expressionless, the eyes like hazed blue glass.
King Brude was lying, his back to the rising slope from which his toady had so ignominiously fled, facing down to open country, instinctively trusting the wind behind and his eyes in front. Angus could not get any nearer. The distance was about two hundred yards.
Angus fired and hit him, but not fatally. King Brude staggered to his feet, but not to fly.
Angus advanced, the rifle against his shoulder. The light was not too good. When he fired again, he must kill. For he knew now that the hunt was over. King Brude had turned, as he would turn against hounds, against all mortal enemies: King Brude was at bay.
Noble he looked, too; the great head up; the eyes, against the westering light, full of fire. A superb beast, the power streaming forward from the lean flanks. Angus saw him gathering his power into neck and shoulders, as if to meet death in a last wild charge, the head sinking and rising with a slow terrible beauty.
Angus could not fire at that head. He dared not mar its beauty as a trophy. He must shoot him in the neck. His body felt weak and light and tremulous as grass.
At ten yards they faced each other. King Brude's flanks moved. As he staggered, Angus fired at the neck. King Brude sank to the ground. Angus dropped the rifle and, opening his knife, ran in.
But King Brude was not yet dead, and Angus was very nearly caught in the wild heave of the antlers. The third or tray tine of the right antler grazed his forehead, drawing blood. Death had never been nearer him. King Brude's spasms were now extremely violent and Angus who, in his own madness, had grasped at the antlers, was thrown about like a bunch of grass. He lost his knife. A sobbing violence came into his throat. There was a wild mad exhilaration in the short battle, before the great head lay sideways and yawed in vomit. Angus retrieved his knife and stuck it to the hilt in the base of the neck above the breast bone. The head jerked and fell for the last time. The blood gushed forth.
Angus sat beside the dead stag, drooping forward, gasping heavily. His right hand came up and wiped blood from his eyes. He had been in at the death of many great stags. He had “blooded” more than one excited gentleman after his first kill. Normally an occasion when the stalker smiles quietly and, after listening to excited speech, offers a word or two of congratulation or praise of the antlers.
Angus's head drooped lower. He was very tired. His shoulders began to jerk. He lay over on his face. His fingers dug into the heath. He muttered into the earth, “Ah, Christ!” and wept.
After a time his body grew quite still and lay as if it had fallen asleep. Then he stirred and sat up. His face was disfigured with blood and tears. His manner was now very quiet. He arose and picked up the rifle and, instead of gralloching the stag, climbed back to the high ground whence he had first fired and stared across at Benuain.
The shadows of the hills were towards him. He could see no one. A stretch of horizon in the west was all vivid greenish blue light, against which the farthest ridges were black and clear cut. Gateway and pathway to another world. He should put up a smoke. Instead he put two bullets in the rifle and fired one. The echo exploded in Benuain with the noise of a distant peal of thunder. He listened and thought he heard a cry. He laid the rifle across his knees and sat staring before him, his face growing expressionless, the eyes like hazed blue glass.
Chapter Eleven
“
T
here is no need for anxiety,” said Sir John. “If anything had happened during the day, one or other of them would have returned for help long before this.”
“Well, I must confess I think it is rather inconsiderate of Geoffrey,” said Lady Marway, “for he is bound to know that we must be anxious about him.”
The others said nothing. It had been decided a few minutes before not to postpone dinner, and when the bell went, they all got up at once. George was full of ideas at table about the possible nature of Geoffrey's great kill and suggested they should go out to meet him and bring him home in triumph. He himself would go to the spot where he had dropped Geoffrey in the morning and, turning the headlights over the forest, switch them on and off. “Tic-tac, you know. Geoffrey could reply by lighting matches. How far could you see a match?” This was debated, until Harry suggested they could make an S.O.S. flare with a bunch of old heather. “Of course!” cried George. The other car could take the Corr route. Voices grew animated and broke now and then into laughter. This would be a small adventure, and immediately after dinner there was an exodus to the garage, Lady Marway staying behind.
Harry announced that he would tackle the Home Beat on foot, and, catching Helen by the arm, departed there and then, before discussion could stop them.
The sky was clear and the stars brilliant, and soon the eyes got used to the dark. The dying moon would not rise for some time.
“It is more difficult”, said Harry, “to get talking to a person alone here than it is in London! I did want to get hold of you after we came back from Screesval.”
“So did I,” said Helen. “I kept thinking about itâI mean about the Dean and Colonel Brown.”
“Did you?” said Harry. “I actually looked at my watch at two in the morning and wondered if you were asleep.”
“Why?”
“If I had been sure you weren't asleep, I might have called on you. Or, alternatively, I thought I might have got up and crept downstairs and outside and round to your window and thrown up something. Would you have come down?”
“I was awake,” said Helen.
Harry stopped. “Helen, would you have come?”
“Let us go on,” said Helen, moving off.
Friendliness was about them and a delicious small excitement.
“Tell me”, she said, “why you were disturbed after Screesval.”
He walked for a little way in silence. “I got an extraordinary feeling there about Geoffrey. Once, when I looked at him, I saw his face. I saw it coldly, in a queer sort of inhuman way. My mind was cold, I mean. Geoffrey's face was isolated. Just for a moment or so. I didn't like it.”
“What did you see in it?”
“I have wondered. I have thought since that you could take three men, a doctor, an artist, and an ordinary man, and each would see something quite different in a face. Remember I was under a certain influence, which the talk of Colonel Brown and the Dean had strengthened. I mean, second sight. You know the common expression: I saw death in his face. Usually that happens when the face has some signsâgone grey or blue or pinched. Geoffrey's face was anything but pinched! I think I must have had a dream or nightmare I have forgotten. I can see Geoffrey's face rigid in death at any moment.”
“Harry, how horrible!”
“I know. It shows you what the mind will do once you give it rein. I put no trust in it at all. Only, it left me uncomfortable. Then on the way home, I stopped the car to go up to Corr Inn. It was pure impulseâor pure curiosity. I felt I wanted to see these fellows by themselves, off guard. Remember in the wood when Angus asked Alick to go to the inn that night? I knew they would be there. They were.”
“What were they doing?”
“Nothing much. Just drinking and yarning and laughing. But as I groped my way up, I heard that playing more clearly. It was one of them on the hill-side above the inn, playing to himself in the night above the mist. It had an effect on me. It is the first time that bagpipes ever did have any sort of effect on me, beyond being a loud and unpleasant noise. I thought to myself: what can you make of a fellow who goes up the hill-side and plays like that? Why is he doing it? And oh lord I knew that he was moved, that what he was playing did not come out of his brain but out of his blood. And yet I do happen to know, from reading, that the affair is not a haphazard impromptu business, but a very rigid art, and to become accomplished at it takes a very long time. What do you make of it?”
“When I was eleven I was taken to my first Highland Games. I was then at school and the Morrisons took me. Major Morrison was Chief of the Games. Dad and Mum were in India, of course. I'll never forget the impression I got of the pipe band as the pipers came marching towards us. They seemed tall and splendid and came marching over the world, tall and proud and marching to that awful music, growing taller as they drew nearer and more terrible in their power. It wasn't that I was terrified that they would march us down without seeing us. I don't know what it was. But I remember I had to keep my lips tight shut in case I should disgrace myself by crying out. What remains is that impression of tallness and pride, of figures advancing, growing, in that irresistible march.”
“Yes. I know it's potent stuff to march to. But this crying of the pipes on the hill-side in the dark, not in marches or in lively dance rhythms or anything like that, but like a curlew, or heaven knows what, in pain! Oh I don't know. It made me feel uneasy. It hurt me in some wayâthough why or how, I haven't the foggiest notion. There was no one about. I didn't want to go in, though if I saw anyone I had some sort of excuse, for I did owe the landlord for a drink. Then I came to a small side window and looked in.
“There must have been a score of men there. Where they came from, Heaven knows. I suppose if the inn had had resident guests, they had departed. Their attitudes were confidential, full of free gestures, and a thick rich mirth. Five or six of them were listening to one oldish man, with a heavy reddish moustache and greying hair. Obviously a character of some sort. Suddenly they rocked back with laughter. There was a heated argument in another corner. These were the people we think of as silent and grave! Young Donald was there with a whole pint of beer, the dark smile on his face, still shy a bit, like a man that has not unfolded. The room was crawling with warm life. I began to get the feeling of being a spy on what was hidden and unauthorised. As it was, I felt uncomfortable. Yet it fascinated me beyond anything I can say. A feeling of life gathered into this room, hidden away. When I think about it now, look at it in my mind, it seems to have something symbolic about it. Oh, I can't explain. And all the time my eye would go back to Alick. And all the time that pipe music would whirl about my ears, with its notes drawn out, drawn out, and high and tragic. And I knew these notes were getting into the room, too. You could tell it by the jerk of a head, the glitter of an eye. And you had the feeling that even part of a note was enough for these fellows. Angus forced a violin into Alick's hands. And he started playing.”
The grey of the hill road was quite discernible now. They walked on without difficulty, though the darkness hid their faces. Helen asked about Alick's playing.
“It was not the playing so much as the fellow himself. You know how straight he stands, how easily, with his full chest. Well, he was sitting, uprightâexactly like a kind of Buddha. Nothing religious, I mean, but that full-bodied simple ease. The violin seemed small. There was never any expression on his face. And he played away, his drink beside him. The tone was not strong, but I should say it was very pure and penetrating. He played Highland dance music. They listened to him for a bit. Then Angus got up and did a
pas seul
, some sort of sword dance affair. They nudged one another. They gave a shout, “Hooch!” Their faces shone with merriment, with a glittering innocence. One or two were getting slightly the worse for wear. They conducted with their arms, did dances in the air with their hands, letting out a yell now and then. Legs were pulled, by way of encouragement. I found myself laughing silently, when suddenly Alick stopped playing, laid down the violin, and left the room.
“I thought it was high time that I beat it. YetâI stayed. Alick came out and we met. Perhaps he was astonished to see me. I couldn't tell. I explained how I had heard the bagpipes and remembered my debt, but had felt loath about intruding. He was silent, then asked me in that aloof way if I cared to have a drink. I said that I realised how unwise it had been of me to come, lest my presence be misunderstood, and suggested he should come back with me a little way before others came out. We moved down, and now I began to feel that awful urge again to ask him that old question about his vision. I stopped him. I spoke to him simply and candidly. I told him of the talk at Screesval and of how even scientists were beginning to believe that a man who had second sight was merely a normal man with an extra power of vision. I told him about the Dean's philosophy. I wanted to make the whole thing seem natural. Then I told him of Colonel Brown's belief that mathematically interference in some degree might be possible. So, if I could be certain of the person who was âvisioned', I might be able to interfere. Could he tell me finally and definitely if it was Mr. Smith? He kept silent. There was obviously a terrific reluctance upon him, and I thinkâI am not sureâthat he hated me at that moment. I could not say any more. The mere thought of words became a horror. I wished to God I had never spoken. Yet, I waited, and at last he said, âI think it was. The others were in the way.' âThey were carrying the shrouded body in their arms?' I asked as if I were seeing it. âYes,' he said. He stood quite still. I wanted to thank him, to shake his hand. I could do nothing. George shattered the night with his horn. I turned away and left him. I was in sheer misery, and sat down not a great distance from you until I felt more normal.”
“What an extraordinary experience!”
They walked on in silence.
“You make me feel uncomfortable. I wish Geoffrey was home,” she added more firmly.
“I wish he was in London.”
“There is nothing we can do?”
“I have thought of that, too. I am trying to be sensible about it. All this may be nonsense. It
may
be nonsense, despite age-old experience and the East and Colonel Brown's mathematics and all that. But it
may
not, for reasons entirely different from what man has ever imagined. If I could conjure up a way of getting Geoffrey back to London at once, I'd do it. Let me say that I am as uneasy as that. Why take any chancesâeven with superstitionâblast it!”
“I know,” said Helen.
“And then there is this other rotten side to it, too, that by some silly process of auto-suggestion we may force on the very issue we want to avoid. We couldn't do that if Geoffrey were reasonable. But he isn't and won't be. On the contrary, he is unfriendly, antagonistic, about this, and you get the perfectly awful feeling that he himself will force the whole issue to an unavoidable end. As if even this business of autosuggestion was also part of foreseen destiny. That's why I don't quite feel that anything desperate has happened to-day. Angus will save him to-day. As Alick did the other night. We shall all save him. If Geoffrey gets killed, I mean, it will be by defying a stalker, by defying the normal sound practice of the forest. And that
is
possible. Very.”
“I have that terrible feeling too. That they will bring him home, and tell the story of how he attempted something he shouldn't have.”
“Well, look here, we can do no more. I'm utterly sick of it. I feel for your mother, too. To blazes with him, anyway! Let us forget. Our own minutes are being lost discussing him.”
“And yet, in some strange way,” said Helen, hesitantly, “with all this talk and feeling and premonition, life has quickened. What lies below the surface comes outâand sees the colours.”
“I know,” said Harry.
They walked for some way in silence, and the excitement of their personal encounter, that had died down, arose again.
“What are you thinking about?” Helen asked.
“Would you like me to be honest?”
“Yes.”
“I have been talking all this about Geoffrey but it is not the real thing in my mind. It is all a sort of unreal vision, a vision of external grotesque things that don't matter finally; for behind themâbehind themâI see your head bowed before the Dean. I haven't let myself think of that. I haven't honestly, Helen. I can't be flippant about it. Oh God, I don't know, Helen. I daren't let myself think. But it was allâit was the whole living truth. For better or for worse, it was the whole living truth for me. And lord, here's the end of the grey road. The truth has petered out!” He tried to laugh. His voice was very nervous. “There's only the path now. What'll we do?”
“We have our coats on. Shall we sit down? You must be tired after your day on the hill.”
He groped about, and found a seat with a sloping back. Her voice was cool as burn water. His hands shook.
“Did I give myself away before the Dean?” she asked, as she seated herself, drawing her coat over her knees.
“You did.”
“In what way?”
He was silent. “I don't know,” he said.
“He spoke so well, didn't he?” she remembered. “He understood in a way that I never thought was possible. How could he know? Was he once in loveâin that way? He must have been, I suppose. And yetâoh I don't knowâit was something in his eyes, so deep. It was a kindness, a loving kindness. You think his eyes are sad, but they're not really. Not for themselves. But for us. He is like one of the mystics he tried to describe. I have been thinking a lot about it. I was thinking over it in bed and wished I could have talked to you. You see, he is like one who has attained that simple serene state of mind, in which there is that harmony he spoke of, like silent music. He could stay there and be happy for ever, whatever happened. But he must come back, because of all the tragedy there is in the world. Don't misunderstand me, Harry, but I got an impression of all the needless tragedy of the world in his eyes. It is awfully difficult for me to get words for this. And I could never have got one, if it hadn't been that he had spoken in the way he did about love. He showed me my own mind. Love seemed the loveliest thing in the world. Not seemedâah, I knew it was the loveliest thing.”
“
T
here is no need for anxiety,” said Sir John. “If anything had happened during the day, one or other of them would have returned for help long before this.”
“Well, I must confess I think it is rather inconsiderate of Geoffrey,” said Lady Marway, “for he is bound to know that we must be anxious about him.”
The others said nothing. It had been decided a few minutes before not to postpone dinner, and when the bell went, they all got up at once. George was full of ideas at table about the possible nature of Geoffrey's great kill and suggested they should go out to meet him and bring him home in triumph. He himself would go to the spot where he had dropped Geoffrey in the morning and, turning the headlights over the forest, switch them on and off. “Tic-tac, you know. Geoffrey could reply by lighting matches. How far could you see a match?” This was debated, until Harry suggested they could make an S.O.S. flare with a bunch of old heather. “Of course!” cried George. The other car could take the Corr route. Voices grew animated and broke now and then into laughter. This would be a small adventure, and immediately after dinner there was an exodus to the garage, Lady Marway staying behind.
Harry announced that he would tackle the Home Beat on foot, and, catching Helen by the arm, departed there and then, before discussion could stop them.
The sky was clear and the stars brilliant, and soon the eyes got used to the dark. The dying moon would not rise for some time.
“It is more difficult”, said Harry, “to get talking to a person alone here than it is in London! I did want to get hold of you after we came back from Screesval.”
“So did I,” said Helen. “I kept thinking about itâI mean about the Dean and Colonel Brown.”
“Did you?” said Harry. “I actually looked at my watch at two in the morning and wondered if you were asleep.”
“Why?”
“If I had been sure you weren't asleep, I might have called on you. Or, alternatively, I thought I might have got up and crept downstairs and outside and round to your window and thrown up something. Would you have come down?”
“I was awake,” said Helen.
Harry stopped. “Helen, would you have come?”
“Let us go on,” said Helen, moving off.
Friendliness was about them and a delicious small excitement.
“Tell me”, she said, “why you were disturbed after Screesval.”
He walked for a little way in silence. “I got an extraordinary feeling there about Geoffrey. Once, when I looked at him, I saw his face. I saw it coldly, in a queer sort of inhuman way. My mind was cold, I mean. Geoffrey's face was isolated. Just for a moment or so. I didn't like it.”
“What did you see in it?”
“I have wondered. I have thought since that you could take three men, a doctor, an artist, and an ordinary man, and each would see something quite different in a face. Remember I was under a certain influence, which the talk of Colonel Brown and the Dean had strengthened. I mean, second sight. You know the common expression: I saw death in his face. Usually that happens when the face has some signsâgone grey or blue or pinched. Geoffrey's face was anything but pinched! I think I must have had a dream or nightmare I have forgotten. I can see Geoffrey's face rigid in death at any moment.”
“Harry, how horrible!”
“I know. It shows you what the mind will do once you give it rein. I put no trust in it at all. Only, it left me uncomfortable. Then on the way home, I stopped the car to go up to Corr Inn. It was pure impulseâor pure curiosity. I felt I wanted to see these fellows by themselves, off guard. Remember in the wood when Angus asked Alick to go to the inn that night? I knew they would be there. They were.”
“What were they doing?”
“Nothing much. Just drinking and yarning and laughing. But as I groped my way up, I heard that playing more clearly. It was one of them on the hill-side above the inn, playing to himself in the night above the mist. It had an effect on me. It is the first time that bagpipes ever did have any sort of effect on me, beyond being a loud and unpleasant noise. I thought to myself: what can you make of a fellow who goes up the hill-side and plays like that? Why is he doing it? And oh lord I knew that he was moved, that what he was playing did not come out of his brain but out of his blood. And yet I do happen to know, from reading, that the affair is not a haphazard impromptu business, but a very rigid art, and to become accomplished at it takes a very long time. What do you make of it?”
“When I was eleven I was taken to my first Highland Games. I was then at school and the Morrisons took me. Major Morrison was Chief of the Games. Dad and Mum were in India, of course. I'll never forget the impression I got of the pipe band as the pipers came marching towards us. They seemed tall and splendid and came marching over the world, tall and proud and marching to that awful music, growing taller as they drew nearer and more terrible in their power. It wasn't that I was terrified that they would march us down without seeing us. I don't know what it was. But I remember I had to keep my lips tight shut in case I should disgrace myself by crying out. What remains is that impression of tallness and pride, of figures advancing, growing, in that irresistible march.”
“Yes. I know it's potent stuff to march to. But this crying of the pipes on the hill-side in the dark, not in marches or in lively dance rhythms or anything like that, but like a curlew, or heaven knows what, in pain! Oh I don't know. It made me feel uneasy. It hurt me in some wayâthough why or how, I haven't the foggiest notion. There was no one about. I didn't want to go in, though if I saw anyone I had some sort of excuse, for I did owe the landlord for a drink. Then I came to a small side window and looked in.
“There must have been a score of men there. Where they came from, Heaven knows. I suppose if the inn had had resident guests, they had departed. Their attitudes were confidential, full of free gestures, and a thick rich mirth. Five or six of them were listening to one oldish man, with a heavy reddish moustache and greying hair. Obviously a character of some sort. Suddenly they rocked back with laughter. There was a heated argument in another corner. These were the people we think of as silent and grave! Young Donald was there with a whole pint of beer, the dark smile on his face, still shy a bit, like a man that has not unfolded. The room was crawling with warm life. I began to get the feeling of being a spy on what was hidden and unauthorised. As it was, I felt uncomfortable. Yet it fascinated me beyond anything I can say. A feeling of life gathered into this room, hidden away. When I think about it now, look at it in my mind, it seems to have something symbolic about it. Oh, I can't explain. And all the time my eye would go back to Alick. And all the time that pipe music would whirl about my ears, with its notes drawn out, drawn out, and high and tragic. And I knew these notes were getting into the room, too. You could tell it by the jerk of a head, the glitter of an eye. And you had the feeling that even part of a note was enough for these fellows. Angus forced a violin into Alick's hands. And he started playing.”
The grey of the hill road was quite discernible now. They walked on without difficulty, though the darkness hid their faces. Helen asked about Alick's playing.
“It was not the playing so much as the fellow himself. You know how straight he stands, how easily, with his full chest. Well, he was sitting, uprightâexactly like a kind of Buddha. Nothing religious, I mean, but that full-bodied simple ease. The violin seemed small. There was never any expression on his face. And he played away, his drink beside him. The tone was not strong, but I should say it was very pure and penetrating. He played Highland dance music. They listened to him for a bit. Then Angus got up and did a
pas seul
, some sort of sword dance affair. They nudged one another. They gave a shout, “Hooch!” Their faces shone with merriment, with a glittering innocence. One or two were getting slightly the worse for wear. They conducted with their arms, did dances in the air with their hands, letting out a yell now and then. Legs were pulled, by way of encouragement. I found myself laughing silently, when suddenly Alick stopped playing, laid down the violin, and left the room.
“I thought it was high time that I beat it. YetâI stayed. Alick came out and we met. Perhaps he was astonished to see me. I couldn't tell. I explained how I had heard the bagpipes and remembered my debt, but had felt loath about intruding. He was silent, then asked me in that aloof way if I cared to have a drink. I said that I realised how unwise it had been of me to come, lest my presence be misunderstood, and suggested he should come back with me a little way before others came out. We moved down, and now I began to feel that awful urge again to ask him that old question about his vision. I stopped him. I spoke to him simply and candidly. I told him of the talk at Screesval and of how even scientists were beginning to believe that a man who had second sight was merely a normal man with an extra power of vision. I told him about the Dean's philosophy. I wanted to make the whole thing seem natural. Then I told him of Colonel Brown's belief that mathematically interference in some degree might be possible. So, if I could be certain of the person who was âvisioned', I might be able to interfere. Could he tell me finally and definitely if it was Mr. Smith? He kept silent. There was obviously a terrific reluctance upon him, and I thinkâI am not sureâthat he hated me at that moment. I could not say any more. The mere thought of words became a horror. I wished to God I had never spoken. Yet, I waited, and at last he said, âI think it was. The others were in the way.' âThey were carrying the shrouded body in their arms?' I asked as if I were seeing it. âYes,' he said. He stood quite still. I wanted to thank him, to shake his hand. I could do nothing. George shattered the night with his horn. I turned away and left him. I was in sheer misery, and sat down not a great distance from you until I felt more normal.”
“What an extraordinary experience!”
They walked on in silence.
“You make me feel uncomfortable. I wish Geoffrey was home,” she added more firmly.
“I wish he was in London.”
“There is nothing we can do?”
“I have thought of that, too. I am trying to be sensible about it. All this may be nonsense. It
may
be nonsense, despite age-old experience and the East and Colonel Brown's mathematics and all that. But it
may
not, for reasons entirely different from what man has ever imagined. If I could conjure up a way of getting Geoffrey back to London at once, I'd do it. Let me say that I am as uneasy as that. Why take any chancesâeven with superstitionâblast it!”
“I know,” said Helen.
“And then there is this other rotten side to it, too, that by some silly process of auto-suggestion we may force on the very issue we want to avoid. We couldn't do that if Geoffrey were reasonable. But he isn't and won't be. On the contrary, he is unfriendly, antagonistic, about this, and you get the perfectly awful feeling that he himself will force the whole issue to an unavoidable end. As if even this business of autosuggestion was also part of foreseen destiny. That's why I don't quite feel that anything desperate has happened to-day. Angus will save him to-day. As Alick did the other night. We shall all save him. If Geoffrey gets killed, I mean, it will be by defying a stalker, by defying the normal sound practice of the forest. And that
is
possible. Very.”
“I have that terrible feeling too. That they will bring him home, and tell the story of how he attempted something he shouldn't have.”
“Well, look here, we can do no more. I'm utterly sick of it. I feel for your mother, too. To blazes with him, anyway! Let us forget. Our own minutes are being lost discussing him.”
“And yet, in some strange way,” said Helen, hesitantly, “with all this talk and feeling and premonition, life has quickened. What lies below the surface comes outâand sees the colours.”
“I know,” said Harry.
They walked for some way in silence, and the excitement of their personal encounter, that had died down, arose again.
“What are you thinking about?” Helen asked.
“Would you like me to be honest?”
“Yes.”
“I have been talking all this about Geoffrey but it is not the real thing in my mind. It is all a sort of unreal vision, a vision of external grotesque things that don't matter finally; for behind themâbehind themâI see your head bowed before the Dean. I haven't let myself think of that. I haven't honestly, Helen. I can't be flippant about it. Oh God, I don't know, Helen. I daren't let myself think. But it was allâit was the whole living truth. For better or for worse, it was the whole living truth for me. And lord, here's the end of the grey road. The truth has petered out!” He tried to laugh. His voice was very nervous. “There's only the path now. What'll we do?”
“We have our coats on. Shall we sit down? You must be tired after your day on the hill.”
He groped about, and found a seat with a sloping back. Her voice was cool as burn water. His hands shook.
“Did I give myself away before the Dean?” she asked, as she seated herself, drawing her coat over her knees.
“You did.”
“In what way?”
He was silent. “I don't know,” he said.
“He spoke so well, didn't he?” she remembered. “He understood in a way that I never thought was possible. How could he know? Was he once in loveâin that way? He must have been, I suppose. And yetâoh I don't knowâit was something in his eyes, so deep. It was a kindness, a loving kindness. You think his eyes are sad, but they're not really. Not for themselves. But for us. He is like one of the mystics he tried to describe. I have been thinking a lot about it. I was thinking over it in bed and wished I could have talked to you. You see, he is like one who has attained that simple serene state of mind, in which there is that harmony he spoke of, like silent music. He could stay there and be happy for ever, whatever happened. But he must come back, because of all the tragedy there is in the world. Don't misunderstand me, Harry, but I got an impression of all the needless tragedy of the world in his eyes. It is awfully difficult for me to get words for this. And I could never have got one, if it hadn't been that he had spoken in the way he did about love. He showed me my own mind. Love seemed the loveliest thing in the world. Not seemedâah, I knew it was the loveliest thing.”
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