Читать книгу Coloured Spectacles - Frederick Niven - Страница 12

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When living in Glasgow we used often to go down the river. The island of Arran, in the broadening estuary, the firth, we all loved. I set my heart once on walking round the island that now motor cars, whisking round it, have changed as they have changed practically the whole world.

We were at a house at the south end during the summer in which I had my desire. The sea broke on Pladda and smashed ceaselessly against Bennan Head. On the flat-topped hills above the coast-road to right a wind piped thin and shrill in the long tufted grasses. Four hard-boiled eggs and the quarter of a loaf, that were my provender for the day, made my pockets bulge and caused my arms to swing in semi-circles that made me feel like a swaggering stage bully. To carry the eggs and the quarter of loaf inside seemed a simplification of the only hitch in the day; so, although I had but started out, I sat down and ate.

Then, my pockets bulging no more, I swung upon my way. An occasional farm twinkled a window-pane in a fold of the hills above. An occasional thatched roof peeped up, half-hid by twisted trees in some dingle below the road when it left the shore and swept inland over a promontory. In occasional fields the grain ripened in the sun and wind; the heather-slopes basked in the warmth. Now and then a sheep rose and paced along a narrow trail in the heather, like a granite boulder come to life. Kilmory, Lag, Sliddery and the butt end of Glen Scorradale I came to and left behind, and still the road was deserted. Ever and again it seemed a Jacob's ladder passed between field and moor into the blue of sky; then, at the summit and the bend, it showed another stretch twinkling ahead. The wind in the trees, as I write this, might be the lingering sound of the sea in Machrie Bay as I heard it roar on that distant day.

The Isle of Arran was to me then and on many subsequent visits, and as still in memory it seems, an island of enchantment. No myths of kelpies, or of færies, no legend of King Robert the Bruce in "King's Cave," are necessary to enhance its glamour for me. The romance of its reality suffices. The heather, the winds, the dancing waves weaving in and out of themselves in Kilbrennan Sound, and ever and again the sudden desolate yet moving outcry of gulls at their fishing, the flashing of white as they rise—these are enchantments enough. And as for the place-names: to speak them over is to some of us almost as good as chanting a ballad. Kilbrennan Sound might serve as a refrain to one with the sea and the heather in it.

The eggs and the loaf having shaken down, and my legs having got into the steady pacing as of an automaton, there came upon me the ecstasy of the open road, hackneyed phrase of many a lyric, many an essay—and anthology. After a dozen miles or so of that steady plod I was suddenly seized by the feeling of being looked at. Self-consciousness on such a road as that, an open road twining over the ends of falling hills, swerving round their bases, sweeping round bays, seemed ridiculous. It was an emotion out of place. A man may well be pardoned (honoured and respected, indeed) for feeling self-conscious when standing at attention awaiting decoration; but on a vacant highway between a hurrahing sea and the leisurely roll of coloured moors, great clouds, white and gold, high overhead, self-consciousness calls for inquiry.

I felt so strongly that sense of being looked at that I sat down on a boulder of the road-side to dissect myself. I was determined to discover the reason for that unreasonable feeling. Was it the four eggs and the quarter of loaf? No. Had I been drinking too much strong tea or smoking too much? No. I felt very fit. As I sat there considering the matter a tall tuft of sere grass swayed on the crest above the road and I thought that perhaps out of the corner of my eye as I swung along engrossed on the colours of the sea and the contours of the bays, that grass had been responsible for the emotion. All along the crest as the wind ran by the tufts rose and fell like people spying down.

The explanation did not entirely satisfy; and just as I had told myself so, and that I must inquire further, there did come up over the hill a man's head, shoulders—the whole man. On the ridge he halted and two dogs that had followed stood taut beside him, rigid as he. I would not have been astonished if man and dogs had suddenly disappeared. I gazed up at them and they down at me. The man did not smile but frowned heavily. When he decided to be no longer as a statue on the skyline and came down toward me I felt a sense of relief. Perhaps he had only been examining me to discover whether I was a native or a summer visitor, so as to know if he should proffer his good-day in Gaelic or English.

Having given me a greeting in the latter tongue he asked where I had come from and whither I was going; and on hearing that I was walking round the island, he smiled and asked if I had sworn to walk every step, or if I would care for a lift. I told him I had made no resolve against accepting a lift.

"You're tired already?" he asked.

"No," said I.

"You're sitting down," he remarked.

"That's only because I felt as if some one was looking at me round this bend," I explained, "and I sat down to think out the reason for that queer sensation."

On hearing that, he frowned again as he had frowned down from the roll of hill above. His dogs crouched close, looking up at him ever and again in canine anxiety.

"So you felt like that, did you?" he said, and gloomed, opened his mouth as if to speak, then fell silent.

It was at that point there came to us the sound of plodding horse-hoofs and the lumbering roll of wheels. Round the bend from southward (the direction in which I had come) a horse and cart swung into view. The horse was a great heavy beast, but it reared and baulked like any high-strung cayuse. The driver's face had a look on it not far from terror. Up reared the horse again, snorting; the metal disc, below the collar, flashed wildly to and fro.

"Is it afraid of the cliff here?" I asked the man with the dogs, but he seemed not to hear, intent upon the carter's horsemanship. Then:

"I don't know," he replied, without turning his head.

The dogs at his heel whined and cowered close. The cart came rattling nearer.

"Give this lad a lift, will ye?" he hailed. "There ye are. That's all right. When it gets round the curve it will quaten, whateffer. Jump in ahint. That's it—up wi' ye. Good-bye."

Clambering over the tail-board I called my thanks and farewell. Cannily, and with many a "Whoa!" and a "Steady!" and admonitions bilingual, the driver guided the frightened horse round the bend near which I had sat down to play psychologist upon myself because of the inexplicable sense of being looked at where there was no one to look at me. Over my shoulder I had a glimpse of the man with the dogs as he turned about to watch us, still frowning and puzzled, the collies cowering close. Then we took the curve and by degrees the horse overcame his terrors.

"He's in a lather," I remarked to the carter. "What took him?"

"I don't know."

The man spoke in a tone that I thought surly and explained to myself by thinking that perhaps he was an independent fellow who would rather have offered me a lift himself than have been ordered to give me one. Being in too fresh a mood to be snubbed silent and let the amenities of conversation lapse, I voiced aloud a thought that had come into my head.

"Did you notice," I said, "that those two dogs seemed frightened as well as the horse?"

The carter did not look at me, still intent upon the horse's ears.

"You saw that too, did you?" he replied.

His manner was much like that of the man with the dogs when he said, "So you felt like that, did you?" In his turn the carter then (dismissing the subject I had broached), asked me where I had come from and where I was going. Those questions duly answered, I said:

"I had a funny feeling back there that I was being looked at and sat down to try and puzzle it out."

He turned his head and, gazing upon me with a deep interest in his grey eyes, gave a brief ejaculation in his chest. On we rolled and anon, still pondering my remark evidently, he gave another grunt.

"It is a queer thing," he said, and looked over his shoulder; "a queer thing," he repeated. "I am interested at you feeling that way. Dogs and horses and sheep all feel something queer there. I was driving a flock of sheep round that road last year, the idea being to tak' them by the shore road easy during the night, to Lamlash Fair. But when we came to that place"—and again he glanced over his shoulder—"they would not go farder. I tried to get the dogs on the outside, thinking maybe the sheep were feart of the drop below; but the dogs wouldna leave me. I tried to get the dogs to turn them. It was nae use, whateffer. They tried to stop the rush, but even that they did half-he'rted. I tell ye what—they dogs sympatheesed wi' the sheep."

He looked over his shoulder again and reined in. The horse stopped without any terror, seemed indeed glad to halt and rest.

"They ran back helter-skelter as far as here," said the man, "where we are now. And then the dogs worked again and gaithered them—but back they wouldna go, sheep nor dogs. The upshot o't was that I got them up there"—he pointed ahead towards a glen—"and into that fauld there for the nicht, and in the morning I drove them across the island over the hills instead. But this is what I stoppit for to show ye, seeing ye felt like that. Look. Ye see the ruins of a house there?"

Below the cliff where I had felt as though gazed upon, where the horse had shied and the dogs had trembled (which I had seen for myself), and where the flock of sheep, as I had heard, succumbed to terror, I could just pick out the low ruins of a cottage on the shore.

"It looks as if it had been between low and high tide," I said, for I saw a line of seaweed trailed through the toppled parallelogram of stones that had once been cottage walls.

"Oh, that's just the spring-tide mark, or the remains frae some unco storm," he replied, and continued, "I don't know if it's any explanation at all, but there used to be an auld wife lived there her lee lane and ae nicht a ship was wreckit there. Naebody kens anything aboot it. Two of the sailors were found exhausted a mile doon the coast, and anither in Machrie Bay lashed tae a spar. They were the only ones alive; the ithers were a' drooned. But in the morning after that wreck the auld wife was found—just aboot where ye climbed intae the cairt—wi' her throat cut."

I was about to ask, for he appeared to be at an end then, if there was any suspicion that the wrecked sailors had had a hand in the atrocity, when he went on:

"Naebody kens anything aboot it. I don't see that any of these sailors that was picked up could have done it. One had lashed himself tae a spar and hadna strength to loose himself. He was a' but by wi't. The ither twa were lying exhausted a guid way south o' where she was found wi' her shawl blown over her heid and her throat cut."

We were twisted round in the cart looking back at the place, which we could clearly see from there, having passed into the curve of the bay. All round the horseshoe sweep of the shore the waves rolled in with foaming crests and that sound as of cheering.

"Get up," he said to the horse. He drove on a little way, then he stopped. "Well, I'll have to drop you here," he said. "I go up the glen."

Thanking him for the lift, I put foot to hub and leapt down to the white road. Up the track to farm he went. As I tramped on I could hear his voice now and then, with an encouragement to the horse, and the roll and jolt of the cart over stones. Trudging on, I glanced back at the point behind, across the curve of sand and pebbles where the sea came shouting in. I felt a sense of relief, even on that day of blazing sun, when the road took me over the next promontory. For a long while as I walked I heard a dreary note in the sea-wind that had escaped me earlier in the day, and when suddenly a cloud of fishing gulls volleyed up, twinkling off-shore, mewing and calling, there seemed something sinister as well as desolate in their voices.