Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 11
ОглавлениеI
Aelec Brands had stepped outside the porch and paused, as was his custom, to examine the night, and a beautiful, clear, calm night he found it. The sky, deepest blue, was a galaxy of stars, and eastwards over the Bin of Cullen was the brightening promise of a half-moon. The sand-dunes, spreading from the river mouth, were a brown shadow, and a touch of phosphorescence showed an occasional gleam where the bar broke leisurely. The sigh of that breaking came intermittently to his ears like the sigh of a child sleeping. Beyond was the dark plain of the sea, with the far light on Tarbat Ness winking across it, and still darker, the long line of the hills outlined itself starkly against the pale glow of the north. Now and then a restless oyster-catcher gave its plaintive call as it winged its way up the river, and now and then some little spiral of air, on a ploy of its own, whispered “hu-u-s-s-h” amongst the trees far up the slope. But all these small sounds made but the faintest ripple on the abiding stillness that lay on all that land star-deep.
“A grand night,” said Aelec Brands, “and more to come!” He felt a touch at his wet knee. “Right, Fruachan! Come away, then.”
As he passed the gable of the croft-steadings he saw a light in the bothy window at the end of the line. “Not in bed yet, Andra?” he muttered. “Lazy enough you’ll be when I rout you out the morn.”
Dog at heel, he crossed the grey field, went unerringly through the whin-belt, and came amongst the alders where his fish and tackle lay. He took the last few steps with caution, sliding his brogues through the thin grass, so as not to tread on the tip of his precious rod. Reaching his particular tree, he was already crouching, hands agrope, when Fruachan growled at his shoulder—a low-pitched whisper of a growl, not of anger, but of information. “Hst, lad! Down, now!” Aelec Brands carefully straightened amongst the branches, whilst the dog crouched flat at his heels. He bent an ear upstream, but for a time there was no sound but the sigh and gurgle of running water. He could see the curve of the shore dimly, and, beyond it, an occasional spectral line of foam flashing down the rapids, but beyond that all was black against the breast of the hill. And then he heard the clink of shoe on stone and darted his head the other way. The sound came from downstream, and that surprised him for a moment. The matter was made clear in a few minutes.
Again two men crunched and stumbled amongst the stones, and again two men halted within a few yards of him. For a second he had the insane notion that time had taken a leap backwards, and he waited with held breath for the first words of speech. He stood well above them, and, from the hips down, the two were clearly outlined against the white of the washed stones, but above that they were dim against the even dark of the pool.
“It was hereabouts, I think.” The speaker was Don Webster.
“That the dirty work was done,” added the second man, who bent down as if examining the stones. “Devil the fragment of him is in it, and no blood crying to high heaven either. ’Twas no gory battle, I’m thinking.”
“I have a loose tooth to show for it.”
“And Alistair a loose head, by all accounts.”
“That one is Irish, at any rate,” decided Aelec Brands. There was no mistaking the inflection and turn of speech. It was an adequate brogue too, leisurely, round, and giving every word full value.
“He must be back at Highland Drum by now,” said Webster.
“Where else, seeing he is not lying his length here or teaching the Fenwick boys poker—at a price?”
“Ah! So they are on the road back from Buntness,” thought Aelec. “What’ll they think when they go up to the Drum and young MacIan no’ there?”
Poised, he listened, a branch of alder brushing his face and one polished leaf touching his lips. Unthinkingly he caught this in his teeth, and, nibbling it, got the astringent bitterness on his tongue. He wanted to splutter, but dared not, and could only cautiously smooth the bitterness against the ball of a thumb.
“Let’s hurry up and make sure.” This was Don Webster.
“Easy now, my son, easy,” expostulated the other. “The way you rushed me up from Buntness I hadn’t time to fill a pipe.”
Webster grunted impatiently, but did not urge further.
As the Irishman filled his pipe his eyes must have been roving. “Nice piece of water,” he remarked. “Does the tide reach it?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“There might be a fish or two in the neck of it, anyway.”
“Hopeless, trying for them this weather.”
“Maybe so. Did you ever hear of a middling-sized, black-headed worm on a Stewart tackle slipping round the shoulder of a shelf at the edge of dark?”
“You murdering Irishman!”
“There are worse methods—God forgive me for knowing them!”
“That same lad knows a thing or two,” noted Aelec Brands. “I would like to show him a Blue Charm at work. That worm, now! I wonder! Not the Stewart tackle, though—but a good-sized Pennell—quicker, if it’s the fish you’re after and no’ the sport.”
And so another idle word remained to be accounted for, since it set the itch of speculation tickling in a Highlandman’s brain.
II
A match scraped, and Aelec saw a pair of cupped hands with the light gleaming between the fingers. Above the hands he saw the beginning of a long nose, a black edging of brow, and the rim of a tweed hat.
“Shall we go on?”
“A great hurry you’re in. Is it another peg you’d be giving that cousin of yours?”
“Don’t rub it in, Paddy Joe. I have had enough of that.”
“I doubt if he has, then, though you put him on his flat. How the devil you did it I don’t know. Was he looking?”
“Good mind to show you! Are you coming on?”
“Are you afraid that Alistair is back at Highland Drum paying court to Norrey Carr?”
“I gave him his lesson there.”
“You know damn well you did not. It would take more than one wallop to make Alistair MacIan see crooked, and as long as he has a straight eye in his head he will pay court to any lady that pleases him.”
Don Webster growled angrily.
“There you go, Don. A minute ago, all remorse, and now you’d cut his heart out. It is time I spoke to you about your temper.”
At that the other laughed shortly. “As if you haven’t been speaking to me about my temper since I first knew you.”
“Time you were taking heed, then. If Norrey hears of this night’s work——”
“I shan’t tell, and the Yankee’s vanity——”
“He would not tell anyhow; but I might.”
“Some Irishmen we can trust.”
“Just so. The Irishman you know, you trust—’tis the hearsay ones that are irresponsible.”
“So they are, Paddy Joe.”
“Irresponsibility has its advantages, then. Freedom of speech, for instance! If our criticism is tempered by wit you delight in our buffoonery, but if it happens to touch you on the raw we simply can’t mean it.”
“Is that all? Shall we go on now?”
“No—and be hanged to your tone! Wait till I relight this pipe. What I am wanting to say is that I am beginning to suspect that you are not good enough for Norrey Carr.”
“I am prepared to admit it.”
“Of course you are—from the viewpoint that no man is good enough for any woman. My point is that there are better men.”
“I admit that too.”
“Say Alistair MacIan? That touches you. Many a good man makes a damn bad husband. If I thought—you know I have some influence with Norrey?”
“I do. You have influence with all of us when you like, Paddy Joe.”
The admission, instead of mollifying, seemed to anger the Irishman. It also made him brief. “I wish to God,” he said hotly, “you’d take a clove-hitch on yourself.”
“All right! I’ll try,” agreed Don Webster mildly.
“Let us be going, then. But wait you. If Alistair is not back at Highland Drum——”
“We can tell Uncle Hugh he is over at Muiryside drinking Guinness at the Red Lion—as you taught him.”
“An apt pupil, too. We can’t tell your uncle that—it might be true. Let us over and see.”
And here Aelec Brands decided that the right time had come to duck under the branches and step down on the stones. “Good-night, gentlemen,” he saluted them, and waited for the startled pause.
“That you, Johnny?” The question was Don Webster’s.
“No, Mr Webster. I’m Aelec Brands of the Croft o’ Drum above.”
“Oh yes! Aelec Brands.” A pause, and then, “I suppose you heard us talking?” There was no mistaking the tone.
“I know you are looking for young Mr MacIan.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“He is up at my place”; and before Don Webster got over his surprise, Aelec added, “and in bed—with a lump on his head like a duck’s egg.”
“Good God, Paddy Joe!”
“Kicked him, you must have,” said Paddy Joe; and to Aelec, “Is he badly hurt, sir?”
“No’ badly hurt, maybe, but with a gey good bash on the head.”
“But I left him sitting on the stones just here,” cried Don Webster, with perplexity and doubt in his voice.
“After giving him hell’s own pile-driver,” remarked the Irishman dryly.
“And I found him lying on his face just here, too,” said Aelec Brands, “and the senses knocked out of him.”
“But—but what happened?”
“I know that too.” Aelec Brands did not like Don Webster’s tone, and while he was man enough not to resent it, he was man enough to express his opinion. “If men will be talking and quarrelling,” he said, “where another man might be about some bit business, they can blame whom they like and the blame winna stick. You’ll be knowing fine what was heard, Mr Webster, and I’ll tell you now what was seen that you did not see.”
“I like his style,” murmured the Irishman.
III
Pithily Aelec Brands told them what he had seen and done. “And it’s in bed he’ll stay for a day or two, I’m thinking,” he finished.
“A damnable situation!” growled Webster. “Deeper in the mud than ever, Paddy Joe. The whole countryside will know in a day or two.”
“If it does,” said Aelec Brands firmly, “it is one of you two that will tell it.”
“More or less you could not say,” agreed the Irishman.
“We must see how he is,” said Don Webster, and added, “if you don’t mind, Brands?”
“Ye are welcome. If ye follow me and watch your feet—” He turned, and then paused. He smoothed a great hand over his face from brow to chin, and it was as if he smoothed away one mood and superseded it with another. He smiled into the dark, and faced towards the Irishman. “I know Mr Webster,” he said quietly, “but I don’t know your name, sir. You are Irish, I’m thinking.”
“And I trying to hide it! I am, Mr Brands. My name is Long—and longish—Patrick Joseph Stanislaus Long—Paddy Joe to his friends—tramps mostly.”
“Thank you, Mr Long. I was wondering, now, if you mightn’t be right about that worm.”
“Worm? Which? Don Webster or——”
“About getting a fish out of the pool here.”
“Oh yes! Did you ever try it?”
“No, then. I was thinking that a Pennell tackle would be better than a Stewart.”
“More fun with a Stewart, though.”
“If it’s a matter of fun, there’s a small fly I tied myself I could show you.”
“Ah! I’m listening to you. Say, is that a dog you have there?”
“Ay, that’s Fruachan. Maybe you’ll know his breed when you see him in the light. Don’t touch him yet, sir—he’s no’ acquainted. We can be going on now.”
Aelec Brands made a wide curve round the tree where lay his spoil, and led them through the prickly whins.
