The Serpent (25 page)

As he entered the village street, he at once forgot her. Only those were about who had business with the bus. Peter Grant, after a steady astonished look, nodded shortly and turned to his mail bag. He glanced at Janet's house, but it was dead.

At the booking office in town, he bought a return ticket for Glasgow, and in the long daylight hours as the train went over the Grampians, he tried to think out his plan once more but could not. He had thought over it too long already and was now committed. He left the train at Perth and bought a single ticket for Edinburgh.

His one difficulty lay in getting Donald's address. That had been absolutely impossible at home, for the only place where it could be got was at the manse. Or from Janet! Besides, it might be very essential that no-one at home should know he had gone to Edinburgh. His hope lay in the knowledge that not all the university classes closed at the same time. There was bound to be some head office of the university where the students and their addresses were registered. And when it came to finding his way about a city, he had little to learn.

Easter was early that year, but Tom was not too late, and the following morning, directed by a policeman, he entered an archway, turned to his left, and came before a long desk with a somewhat pompous but affable man asking him his business.

‘I would be obliged to you if you could give me the address of a student who's here. I forgot to take it with me from home, and I said I would call on him.'

‘The name?' asked the official, smiling to this young country man with the Highland accent who was trying to look as if he wasn't embarrassed.

In a few minutes Tom was back on the street, with the address written down in pencil, and the information that his friend had probably already gone away for the Easter recess.

For the rest of the day he hung about the end of a street that ran off the Meadows, but caught no sight of Donald. He did not want to call, however, until it was dark, for part of his plan was to get Donald to come with him out into the country in the darkness. To do that would be quite simple. He knew exactly how to go about it. ‘I have a lot to tell you from home. Let us get away somewhere on to a country road where we can talk.' No more would be needed. No more would be said, for Donald, consumed by his own unease, would lead the way.

Tom felt perfectly calm and assured. And he knew that when it came to the final decision, he would be coldly calm. Tom's intention would gradually grow on Donald. Donald would see it coming like fate. In a quiet spot they would face each other in the dark. Donald's temper, his excuses, his difficulty with his father, all would be cleared to one side and the issue would be stark. There would be no evasion in that final moment.

As the lamps were lit he turned into the street, hesitated as he saw a girl enter at the open door to the tenement building, stood for a little while scanning the four small brass plates on each side of the entrance, read the name Cowan for the third time on the top right-hand plate over the bell-pull, then walked into the stone passage and began mounting the winding stone stairs.

Two flights above him he could hear the girl's feet still ascending slowly. A young man came out of a door on the first landing, slammed it behind him, and rushed downstairs. The stairs were swept clean and small gas jets illumined the well dimly. It was a very much better style of lodging than anything he or his friends had been able to command in Glasgow.

When he started on the fourth flight, the girl's footsteps had died away. He slowed his own steps in order to have command of his breathing. He stopped altogether when he heard a door open and the girl's voice ask, ‘Is Mr. Munro in?'

‘No, he's left here,' answered an old woman's voice.

‘Oh.' A short silence. ‘When?'

‘Yesterday.'

‘Will he – will he be back before he goes?'

‘No. He's gone away.'

‘Has he – did he leave any message for me, for –'

‘No, he left no message.'

‘Thank you.'

The door shut and the girl came slowly away. Tom saw her hand grope for the stair rail and heard a small convulsive sniff. As she descended slowly, he stood back against the wall. If she saw him as she passed, she gave no sign but kept her head up. She was obviously profoundly stirred, holding her sobs in with all her strength. She was a slim fair girl, and in the dim well of the stairs looked to Tom at that moment an intensely tragic figure. His heart quickened knowing so intimately the bitter suffering that shook her.

He listened to her footsteps in the hollow well. They descended slowly, and once, for a few seconds, they ceased altogether.

She, too, had been waiting for the dark.

A bitterness withered his features and his thought; a spasm of hatred for Donald cut more sharply than the edge of any knife. He had gone – but where?

He mounted a step or two, paused and stared at the shut door, then on impulse turned and began going down. As he neared the foot, he saw the girl outlined in the doorway.
From the movements of her elbows she was plainly wiping her eyes and getting command of herself before meeting the street. At the sound of his footsteps, she moved out and turned down towards the open space of the Meadows.

He followed her at a little distance, her upright forsaken figure gathering the vacancy of his mind to a living point. She was an ally in the night of the world and he felt the warm flush of blood hang heavy in the cells of her body.

She crossed the main thoroughfare, passed between some bushes, and entered one of the broad paths heading in the direction of the Infirmary. His stride quickened and lengthened, and here he was now close behind her, by her side.

‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but were you looking for Donald Munro?'

At the first sound of his voice, her body grew taut, her footsteps hurried on – then slackened, and she half-turned, regarding his face with a startled, searching expression.

‘I don't know you,' she replied, vaguely walking on.

‘I think you come from Muirton,' he answered companionably, falling into step beside her as if they were walking on a country road. ‘I know Donald very well.'

After a few more paces, she stopped and turned her face full to him. ‘I don't know you,' she repeated, getting control of herself. ‘Are you a student here?'

‘No. I merely come from Donald's own country, as you might tell by my voice.' He smiled, hardly looking at her.

‘How do you know – I was looking –'

‘I was behind you on the stairs and heard you ask his landlady. I was on the same errand myself.'

‘Then you don't know where he's gone?'

‘I thought I would catch him before he went home. But apparently I'm too late.'

She did not answer, but he felt her eyes searching his face. He looked full at her. ‘Why do you think he has not gone home?'

She glanced away, but did not answer.

‘Please tell me,' he said gently.

She moved on a step or two and paused again.

‘I don't know,' she answered, her emotion threatening her again.

His sympathy for her, the kindness in his heart towards her, was such that she must have felt it. It obviously irked her terribly, but she could not leave him.

‘Tell me,' he said, ‘I wish you would tell me.'

‘Do you know Alastair Chisholm?'

‘I know his father, James Chisholm, the wood merchant, better. My father did business with him.' Then he added, ‘Don't be afraid to tell me anything. If I can help you, I will.'

He did not look at her face, making it easy for her, because it was clear that he had stumbled on her secret trouble and this knowledge was now between them.

‘Alastair told me Donald might not be going home,' she said ‘– he might be going to Canada.' She looked at him, searching for his denial.

But Tom nodded slowly. ‘I – see,' he said.

‘You don't believe it, do you?'

He looked at her. ‘I don't know,' he muttered.

He saw her lips press in between her teeth, saw the quiver go over her body. She turned from him and walked on.

He stood where he was, looking after her. Before leaving the green meadow, she paused and looked back, then drifted across the thoroughfare. He watched her until she had gone from his sight.

Through Toll Cross and down Lothian Road he went until he came to the West End. Almost unconsciously he was heading for Leith and the sea. But as he walked along the garden side of Princes Street, a cavernous train whistle drew him up, its sound indescribably forlorn down there in the black shadow of the rock. His eyes lifted to the outline of the castle and so clearly was it silhouetted against the sky that somewhere the moon must have risen. He saw the outline through the tall iron railings, and for a moment had the shudder of a mediaeval prisoner looking on an eternal fortress.

Through the cab rank and across the wide street he picked his way until he came amid the lights and the sauntering throng. There was a slight touch of frost in the air and
the wide pavement seemed gay with distinguished faces over tall, fashionably-clothed bodies. Drifting like a waif, his loneliness came about him. Opposite the Mound, he stopped.

In this sea of life he was lost; forever in the tides of life he was lost. He turned up to his left, and as he passed a corner of Rose Street a woman invited him from the shadows.

He looked at her and she approached, but he kept walking on and as she drew by his side, he turned his face. ‘Nothing doing tonight,' he said in so natural a voice that she stopped as if a brother had spoken, and with a small upward nod of understanding fell back.

When he got on to the ridge of George Street, he saw the rising moon, nearly at the full. It held him arrested for a long time, and slowly from it, against his will, there trickled into his mind the memory that it was round about the full moon that Janet's mother had usually had one of her bouts. For an instant the memory was a country superstition remote from him in time and place, a necromancy of the past – that advanced and closed upon his mind like a fist. He shook his head and staggered where he stood.

The geography of the world settled about him in vast oceans and continents. Canada – if going to Canada, Donald would have taken train to Glasgow. Tom stared at the moon, at the gleam on its face, the serene unearthly pale gold gleam of the moon-woman.

Turning, he made back for Princes Street and the railway station. He would take the first train for Glasgow.

So weird a night he spent in Glasgow that it had for him long afterwards the quality of one of those dreams in which, amid new scenes and new faces, one hunts and never finds.

His impatience to discover whether a ship was leaving or had left for Canada drew him to the docks. All offices, of course, were closed, but he learned in time that a steamer had left the previous day from the Tail of the Bank, passengers having gone to Greenock to join her. He had no desire to see Dougal Robertson or any of the lads he had known so well, and with a strange outlandish feeling stuck by the half-drunken company he had landed
amongst. He was accepted as a country lad, the inevitable Highlander, anxious to flee the poverty of his native heath. His knowledge of socialism and agnosticism soon drew him into argument. He was utterly without care now, without vanity, without hope. Nothing could offend him, and the thick warm oaths came upon his ears like echoes from some ancient inferno. With what complete liberation hell lets loose the desperations in man's mind! He had some shillings in his trousers pocket, and he offered the money for drink. Though all the pubs were closed, no difficulty was experienced in buying whisky.

The raw spirit went fierily to his head for he had eaten little that day and he spent the night in the room where the liquor was drunk. A tow-haired strident-voiced girl had made a pet of him and taken his head on her knees. The drink had had the effect of letting him see through surface talk and gesture to what appeared to be the essential human nature of his companions, and for a time he was conscious of an almost fantastic feeling of human understanding and liberation. At one point there was a fight and a lean cantankerous man was thrown out, and the meaning behind that fight partook of the nature of revelation.

Under a growing feeling of illness the scene became blurred and the girl bent her head over him.

In the morning his instinct was to slink away, but the same girl gave him some scalding hot tea. What was he going to do now? ‘I'll have a hunt around,' he answered, hardly looking at her or at dim corners of the ill-lit dingy room. There was a strained pain in his eyes and his head was throbbing. But as he left he turned, and with Highland manners, thanked her for her hospitality. She was going to have laughed, but didn't. Her loose mouth came adrift in a jeering expression that her eyes belied. He was glad to get away.

His belt was still round his waist under his shirt, for he had never lost the countryman's fear of being robbed in the city. In a latrine he opened the small leather pocket in the green canvas of the belt. It had held three pound notes. It now contained one.

Even a surge of anger was enough to bring out cold
sweat, but as he stared through his dismay, a dry smile wrinkled his features. Why hadn't she taken them all?

He could not have accused her or anyone – even if he were mad enough to dare accuse them.

Why had she left him one?

In a sudden flurry his fingers dived into a top waistcoat pocket. The return half of his ticket from Glasgow was still there. He breathed heavily with relief.

He started for Greenock and on the train thought that if he had gone to the head office of the steamship company in Glasgow he might have been saved the trip. If Donald had booked as a passenger, his name was bound to be on a passenger list. He could present himself as one who had arrived from the far north with something which Donald had left behind, and so would be glad to know if he, Mr. Donald Munro, had been in time and had actually sailed. He felt, however, that Donald, who could not have the money for the passage, must have signed on as an ordinary seaman or steward. He had probably been trying to arrange this for the last month. If not in the steamship office, then in some Custom House or Board of Trade office his name was bound to be among the names of the crew.