‘So am I,’ I said; ‘but I’m not complaining’
‘But you have your home – you can reach it in a day. Anna and I have a home, but it is shut to us. She is like the poor Princess in the tale – there is a ring of flame round her dwelling.’
‘Oh, we’re going to put those fires out,’ I said cheerfully. ‘It won’t be long till you’re as snug in your island as Sandy in Laverlaw and me at Fosse – a dashed sight more snug, for you haven’t to pay income-tax. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll come and join you.’
A sudden queer look came into his face. He had been talking dolefully in a brisk voice, and he had been half laughing. But now his eyes grew grave, just as his father’s used to.
‘I wonder if I shall ever find peace,’ he said slowly. ‘We Norlanders get tied up in a skein of fate from which there is no escape. Read in the Sagas, and you will see how relentless is the wheel. Hrut slays Hrap, and Atli slays Hrùt, and Gisli slays Atli, and Kari slays Gisli. My father, God rest him, punishes the old Troth, and the younger Troth would punish me, and if he succeeds perhaps Anna or some child of Anna’s will punish him.’
It was in a whirl of outlandish names and with Haraldsen looking as mysterious as a spae-wife that we plashed through the burn and off-saddled on the green of Clatteringshaws.
You could not imagine a pleasanter spectacle. A dozen shepherds had brought their womenfolk, and there was a big contingent of the Laverlaw servants, and an ancient horse-bus had conveyed a party from Hangingshaw village. The minister, an active young man who had got a Military Cross in the War, had come on a bicycle. Stoddart, the head-shepherd on the Mains, was the master of ceremonies, and he was busy with the preparations for tea, with Sim and Oliver as his lieutenants. Tarras welcomed us with that kindly composure which makes a Border shepherd the best gentleman on earth, for he is as sure of himself as any king. There must have been fully fifty guests. The older men were in their Sunday blacks, their regular garb for church, weddings, and funerals, but the younger wore the glen homespun, and the keepers were, of course, in knickerbockers. I noticed that every man had a black-and-white checked necktie, a thing which Sandy always wore at home and which was the Laverlaw equivalent to a tartan. The women were in bright colours, except the bride, who wore white, and I thought how female clothes had been evened up since the War. Most of the girls were fully as well-dressed as Barbara or Janet.
The ceremony in Tarras’s little parlour was a suffocating business, but happily it did not last long. Then the blushing Nickson and the very demure bride disappeared up a wooden ladder to shed some of their finery, and we examined the presents laid out in the kitchen. Tarras and his wife did hosts at the tea on the green, and I have never seen a company tuck in more resolutely to more substantial viands. There were hot mutton pies, and cold mutton hams, and all that marvellous variety of cakes and breads in which Scotland has no rival, and oceans of strong tea and rich cream, and beer for those who liked it, and whisky for the elderly. Old Tarras made a speech of welcome, and Barbara replied almost in his own accent, for the American South, when it likes, has the same broad vowels as the Border. And then, after a deal of eating and drinking, all hands set to work to remove the tables, and the company split up into groups, while youth wandered off by itself. Presently dancing would begin in the wool-shed – the fiddlers were already tuning up – and there would be supper some time in the small hours.
The ladies started for home early, and, since I wanted exercise, I sent my pony back with Geordie Hamilton. Lombard professed the same wish, and Haraldsen, who had been a silent figure at the feast, followed suit, so that Geordie departed like a horse-thief who had made a good haul. We were in no hurry, for it was less than an hour’s walk home over hill turf, so we went round to the back of the cottage, where some of the older men were sitting on a rock above a small linn, smoking their pipes and talking their slow talk. I remember thinking that I had rarely had so profound an impression of peace. The light wind had dropped, and the honey-coloured bent and the blue of the sky were melting into the amethyst of twilight. In that cool, mellow, scented dusk, where the only sounds were the drift of distant human speech, and the tinkle of the burn, and the calling of wild birds, and the drowsy bleat of an old ewe, I seemed to have struck something as changeless as the hills.
The dogs were mostly congregated round Tarras’s backdoor, on the look-out for broken meats, and I had just taken a seat on a bank beside Stoddart when a most infernal racket started in their direction. It sounded like the father and mother of dog-fights. All of us got to our feet, but we were on the wrong side of the burn, and it took us some minutes to circumvent the linn, pass through the gates of the sheep-fold, and get to the back-door where bicycles and the Hangingshaw horse-bus was parked. For the last dozen yards we had the place in sight, where a considerable drama was going on.
The centre of it was Stoddart’s dog, the patriarch Yarrow. He was about twelve years old, and in his day had been the pride of the countryside, for he had won twice at the big sheep-trials. I dare say he was an arrogant old fellow, and said nasty things to the young collies, for it isn’t in dog nature to be a swell without showing it. But as Stoddart’s dog he had a position of acknowledged preeminence, and at clippings and speanings and lamb sales he took precedence, and was given, so to speak, the first lick from the plate. But now he must have gone a bit too far. Every dog in the place had it in for him, and with bared teeth was intent on his massacre.
The old beast was something of a strategist. He had got into the corner where the peat-shed projected beyond the cottage wall, so that he couldn’t be taken in flank or in rear, and there he was putting up a sturdy fight. He had a dozen enemies, but they had not much notion of a mass assault, for if they had come on in a wave they would have smothered him. What they did was to attack singly. A little black-and-tan dog would dart forward and leap for his neck, only to be hurled back by Yarrow’s weight, for though his teeth were old and blunt, he was a heavy beast, and could have given pounds to anything else there. But some of his assailants must have got home, for he had an ear in tatters, and his neck and throat were blotched with blood.
His opponents’ game was the old one of the pack, learned when their ancestors hunted on the plains of Asia. They meant to wear the old fellow down, and then rush in and finish him. Stoddart saw what they were after, and flung his stick at them, roaring abuse. I would have bet any sum that, but for us, in ten minutes the poor old beast would have been dead.
But I would have been wildly wrong, for suddenly Yarrow changed his plan, and the fight was transformed. Instead of standing on the defence he attacked. With lips snarling back over his gums, and every hair on his thick collar a-bristle, and with something between a bark, a bay, and a howl, he charged his enemies. He didn’t snap – his teeth weren’t good enough – he simply hurled his weight on them, using jaw and paws and every part of him as weapons of offence. Far more important, he let them see that he was out for. blood. He didn’t want to save his hide now, but to rend theirs. I have never seen such determination in any animal, except in African wild game. Yarrow’s twelve years by Stoddart’s fireside were forgotten. He was no more the household pet, the shepherd’s working partner, the prize-winner at shows to be patted and stroked; he was a lightning-bolt, a tornado, a devouring fiend… There was a cloud of dust and fur, and then the whole mob streaked into flight. One went between my legs, one tripped up Lombard, several felt the weight of their master’s crooks. As for old Yarrow, he had fixed his stumps in the hind-leg of a laggard, and it took Stoddart all his time to loose them.
I stopped to laugh, for it was one of the best finishes I had ever seen. Each shepherd was busy rounding up and correcting his own special miscreant, and Lombard, Haraldsen, and Peter John, and I were left to ourselves. I got a glimpse of Haraldsen’s face and gripped his arm, for I thought he was going to faint. He was white as paper, and shaking like a leaf. He looked just as he had done that morning on Hanham sands when the white-front had escaped from
Peter John’s falcon.
Words came slowly from his pale lips. He was drawing a moral, but it was the opposite of the Hanham one. But the first words were the same.
‘It is a message to me,’ he croaked. ‘That dog is like Samr, who died with Gunnar of Lithend. He reminds me of what I had forgotten.’
By now Stoddart had dragged Yarrow indoors to be washed and bandaged, and the other shepherds were busy with their own dogs. The gathering twilight showed that it was time for us to set out for home. Haraldsen followed us mechanically as we crossed the paddock where Tarras grew his potatoes, and the meadow where he cut his bog-hay, and breasted the long slopes which the westering sun had made as yellow as corn. He walked with great strides, keeping abreast of us, but a little to the right, as if he wished to be left alone to his gloomy Scandinavian meditations. But there was something new about him that caught my eye. He was wearing a suit of that russet colour called crotal, and it somehow enlarged his bulk. He kept his head down and poked forward, with his great shoulders hunched, and he had the look of a big brown bear out for action. There was fight and purpose in his air which before then had only been a lounging, loose-limbed acquiescence. Now there was something of old Yarrow when he had gathered himself up for the final rush.
At the watershed of the glen we stopped by consent, for the view there was worth looking at with its twenty miles of rounded hills huddling into the sunset. There was a little cairn on which Lombard and I seated ourselves, while Peter John as usual circled round us like a restless collie. Then Haraldsen spoke:
‘I must leave you soon – Anna and I – at once,’ he said. ‘I have been too long a trespasser.’
‘We’re all trespassers on Sandy,’ I said.
He didn’t listen to me. He was in his proverbial mood, and quoted something from the Hava-mal (whatever that may be). It ran like this: ‘Stay not in the same house long, but go; for love turns to loathing if a man stays long on another’s floor.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ I said. ‘We’re not here cadging hospitality. We’re all in the same game, and this is part of it.’
‘That is what I mean,’ he answered. ‘We are not playing it right. I, at any rate, have been a fool.’
We waited, for he was labouring with some thought for which he found it hard to get words. But it was only the words that were lacking, for every line of his face spoke of purpose.
He put a big hand on my shoulder.
‘In January, do you remember, on the Norfolk shore? I saw the goose escape the hawk by flying low. I thought that I too might escape by being quiet and humble… I was wrong, for humility drains manhood away, but does not give safety. Today I have seen the virtue of boldness. I will no longer be passive, and try to elude my enemies. I will seek them out and fight them, like Samr the hound.’
All three of us sat up and took notice, for this was a Haraldsen we had not met before. Except for his shaven chin he might have been his father. He had identified old Yarrow with some Saga dog, and he seemed to have got himself into the skin of an ancestor. His great nose looked like the beak of a Viking galley, and his pale eyes had the ice-blue fanaticism of the North.
‘I have been forgetting my race,’ he went on. ‘Always a weird followed us, and Fate was cruel to us. But we did not run from it or hide from it, but faced it and grappled with it, and sometimes we overthrew it. I have been a coward and I have seen the folly of cowardice. I have been sick, too, but I am a whole man again. I will no longer avoid my danger, but go out to meet it, since it is the will of God.’…
‘Quisque suos patimer Manes.’ A voice spoke below us, but I did not know what the words meant. Lombard did, and perhaps Peter John, though I doubt it.
We turned to find Sandy. He had come quietly up the hill while we had been talking, and had been eavesdropping at our backs. He was wearing an old grey flannel suit, and looked pale, as if he had been too much indoors lately.
‘How on earth did you get here?’ I asked.
‘Flew. Archie Roylance dropped me at Chryston, and that’s only five miles off. I was just in time to kiss Jean Tarras and drink her health… You were saying, when I interrupted?’ and he turned to Haraldsen.
On Haraldsen’s face there was no sign of surprise at Sandy’s sudden appearance, for he was far too full of his own thoughts.
‘I was saying,’ he replied, ‘that I will skulk no longer in a foreign country or in other men’s houses. I will go home to my own land and there will fight my enemies.’
‘Alone?’ Sandy asked.
‘If need be, alone. You have been true friends to me, but no friends can take from me the burden of my own duty.’
Sandy looked at him with that quick appraising glance of his which took in so much. I could see in his eyes that, like me, he had found something new in Haraldsen which he had not expected, and which mightily cheered him. His face broke into a smile.
‘A very sound conclusion,’ he said. ‘It’s the one I’ve been coming to myself. I’ve come up here to talk about it… And now let us push on for dinner. Laverlaw air has given me the first appetite I’ve had for weeks.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We Shift our Base
That night after dinner we held a council of war, at which we all agreed that Peter John should be present. That was a comfort to him, for since Anna’s coming he had been rather left out of things. Sandy, as was his habit at Laverlaw, wore the faded green coat of a Border dining club, but it didn’t make him look, as it usually did, a Scots laird snug among his ancestral possessions. His face had got that special fining-down, which I so well remembered, and his eyes that odd dancing light which meant that he was on the warpath again.
We had heard nothing of him for weeks, so I had a good many questions to ask.
‘What have I been doing?’ he said. ‘Going to and fro on the earth. Trying to get a line on various gentry. My old passion for queer company has stood me in good stead, and by voluptuous curves I’ve been trying to get in on their flanks. One way and another I’ve learned most of what I wanted to know. Several of the unknown quantities I can now work out to four places of decimals. We’re up against a formidable lot – no mistake about that.’
‘More formidable than you thought?’ asked Lombard.
‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘But in a different way. That is my chief discovery.’
‘What was your method?’ I asked. ‘Have you been up to your old tricks?’ I turned to Lombard. ‘Perhaps you don’t know that he’s one of the best quick-change artists in the world.’
‘Partly,’ Sandy replied. ‘I’ve had quite a lot of fun in the business. But I met some of them in my own name and person. We had better be clear about one thing – they know all about us. Dick they marked down long ago; and Lombard since he levanted with Miss Anna. They don’t know our motive, but they realize that we are backing Haraldsen. If I’ve got a good deal of their dossiers, they’ve got plenty of ours. You’d be surprised, Dick, to know how zealously they have been searching into your tattered past, and I’m glad to think that what they found has made them fairly uncomfortable. They’ve been pumping, very cleverly and quietly, all your old pals like Artinswell and Julius Victor and Archie Roylance. They even got something out of Macgillivray, though he wasn’t aware of it.’
‘What do they make of you?’
Sandy laughed. ‘Oh, I puzzle them horribly. I’ve got the jade tablet, so I’m in the thick of it, and they’re gunning for me just as much as for Haraldsen. But I’m a troublesome proposition, for they understand quite well that I’ve taken the offensive, and they’ve an idea that when I fix my teeth in anything I’m apt to hang on. That’s the worst of my confounded melodramatic reputation. It sounds immodest, but I’ve a notion that they’ve got the wind up badly about me, and if we had only the first lot to deal with I might make them cry off… Only of course we haven’t.’
‘What’s the new snag?’ I asked.
‘Patience,’ he said. ‘We’ll go through the list one by one. Fi
rst, Varrinder, the youth with the rabbit teeth We can count him out, for he’ll worry us no more. He was what I suspected – an indicateur, and at heart a funk. I laid myself out to scare Master Varrinder, and I succeeded. He was very useful to me, so far as his twittering nerves allowed him. Yesterday he sailed, under another name, for Canada, and he won’t come back for a long, long time. Next, Dick.’
‘Albinus,’ I said.
‘Right. He’s the second least important. Well, I’ve seen a lot of Mr Erick Albinus. I played bridge with him at Dillon’s, which cost me twenty pounds. We went racing together, and I had a boring but illuminating day. I gave a little dinner for him, to which I made a point of asking one or two of his City friends about whom he is most nervous. He’s a nasty piece of work, that lad, and it beats me how people tolerate him as they do, for he’s the oily faux bonhomme if there ever was one. He’s in the job for greed, for financially he’s on the edge of Queer Street, and also Troth has some kind of family pull on him. But I think I could scare him out of it, like Varrinder, if I wanted to. But I don’t. I’ve decided that he’s safer in than out, for he has a big yellow streak in him, and, though he’s a clever devil, he’ll be a drag on his friends in the long run. So I’ve remained on good terms with Mr Albinus, and he flatters himself that he has thrown dust in my eyes, more power to him.
‘Now we get to bigger business. Troth – Mr Lancelot Troth. I’ve come to a clear decision about Troth. He’s a ruffian, but I don’t think he’s altogether a rogue. A fine distinction, you say. Maybe, but it’s important. First, he has his friends who genuinely like him, quite honest fellows, some of them. I got myself invited to the annual dinner of his Fusilier regiment, where he made a dashed good speech. I gathered that in the War he was a really good battalion officer, and very popular with the men. I did my best to follow his business tracks, and pretty tangled they are, but my impression is that he is more of a buccaneer than a swindler. He’s a bold fellow who runs his head now and then against the law, because he likes taking risks. Did you ever read The Wrong Box? There’s a touch of Michael Finsbury in Troth.’