Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 17
ОглавлениеI
Paddy Joe Long went across to the bed, whistling the “Corkman’s Retreat”:
O’er hedges and ditches, he tore his old britches—
He ran like the wind—he ran like the wind.
He tore his old britches o’er hedges and ditches,
And she close behind—and she close behind....
“A dim funereal light wherein the dying man grinds his teeth. Let us dispel phantoms while yet he swears.” The Irishman turned up the light and started back from the bed. “Jehosophat Columbus! Brands’s brand in pyjamas.”
“ ’Tain’t no pyjamas,” protested Alistair MacIan, grinning ruefully. “An honest-to-God nightgown, Paddy Joe.”
“None of your Yankeeisms! A nightshirt, you mean. Wear one myself if I wasn’t afraid of society.” Long placed his hand on the arm outside the bed-clothes and ran it down to the wrist, where it gripped for a moment. “Muscle in repose should be smoothly soft—like yours, son, and your pulse is like a rock. An even thing I don’t kick you out of your night-attire for a malingerer. What?”
“Go on. Haze a fellow not able to help himself. Are you two the vanguard of Highland Drum?”
“No, boy. Brands found us looking for you down at the river and brought us up. Outside this house no one knows.”
“And need not.”
“Depends on you. Needn’t know how it happened, at any rate.”
“I shall be all right by morning. Is that Cousin Don back of you?—Forward, Don, where I can see you. I have a crick in my neck.”
Don Webster went to the bed-end and placed his hands on the wooden bar, his dark face set, and his clouded eyes on the face that was a little less white then the pad of linen on his brow. That white face smiled quizzically. “Take an eyeful of your handiwork, cousin.”
“I never knew this happened, ’Stair.”
“It wouldn’t, if you hadn’t been in such a blamed hurry—not the way it did, anyhow.”
“The whole thing was d——d silly.”
Alistair MacIan opened his eyes. “How do you get it that way?”
“Grown men behaving like guttersnipes.”
“But if a point couldn’t be settled in any other way?”
Don Webster made no reply, and Long chuckled. “In these islands,” he explained, “our sense of dignity often saves the other fellow’s skin—and our own. You see, young fellow, Don is not one damn bit sorry for standing you on your ear, but he is touched to the quick at his loss of dignity.”
“Rot, Paddy Joe!” protested Webster.
“Should think so,” agreed the American. “Where I come from we settle a point one way or another, and the licked man stays put.”
“The primitiveness of a young people. Don, here, having licked you——”
“Licked me! Not that you could notice. He had me only groggy, and was lucky to beat it. You must try again, Don.”
“That folly is done with,” maintained Don Webster with emphasis, but yet a thought settled down at the back of his brain.
“Enough talk,” said Long. “You have a head on you, boy, and need a rest. We’ll be round in the morning and make our plans.”
“Just a moment,” requested Alistair. “Say, Don, does Paddy Joe know why we rough-housed it?” He asked this a little shamefacedly.
“Yes. So does Brands. He was about somewhere—poaching, I suppose.”
“Will he have told the girl—Margaret, he called her?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” said Paddy Joe. “He is too good a man for a sense of dignity. Son, had you sense to notice the lovely curled red hair of her?”
“Hell! I made a bad break there,” admitted Alistair naïvely. “The first thing I said when I came out of the count was that I despised red hair.”
“You ungrateful pup! And she has poured coals of fire on your head by giving you her room.”
“Who told you?” cried Alistair, startled.
“Look round you, man. Sorry! that was a sore twinge. That bed-cover and the ruffled pillow-slips and the dressing-table yonder with its array. I can’t quite locate that young beauty. What is she?”
“Sculptor. Lives in London.”
“Did she tell you so much? A sculptor! I thought I caught her taking elevations of this nose of mine. Damn it for a beak!”
“I hate being a nuisance. Could you and Don horse me up to Highland Drum and smuggle me in?”
“Stay where you are, boy, and in the still watches of the night you’ll maybe mull out an apology.”
“I tried one already and got shot over. She is a clever kid.” MacIan’s hand smoothed across his brow, and his eyes closed for a moment.
“Good-night now,” said Paddy Joe.—“Come away, Don.” He turned the light low, and moved towards the door.
Don Webster took one pace after him and paused. “Let us forget that this happened, MacIan,” he said in a low voice. “I am sorry about it.”
“Right, Don! It will make no difference to me one way—or the other.”
Webster still paused, as if contemplating what that meant, and then without a word followed Long out of the room.
II
“The patient is doing fine,” said Paddy Joe to Aelec and Margaret at the fireside.—“I hope,” turning to Margaret, “that you will not be inconvenienced, Miss Brands.”
“Not she,” put in Aelec. “It’s for me the settle there will make a bed. Do you think he has taken any hurt, Mr Long?”
“He has a head, of course, but a night’s rest should settle that.”
“If it does not, we might get Dr Angus over from Muiryside.”
“We might. I’ll be over early in the morning, and we’ll see. Meantime, nothing need be said—anywhere.” His look expressed much more.
“Just as well,” Aelec agreed. “A lump of stone will take a lot of blame. There’s a sandbank the other side of Urdog Pool, and I mind falling over it myself once.”
“And a hard knock you gave yourself, too.—Good-night now, Miss Brands.” Long shook hands warmly with the two, and Don Webster, murmuring a word of thanks, could do no less.
“I’ll put your feet on top of the road,” Aelec volunteered. “It’s rough going hereabouts, and you’ll no’ manage the short-cut this hour.”
They followed him into the night, that was still serene, and was now made faintly luminous by a half-moon low down in the south-east. Scarcely a word passed between them. There seemed nothing more to say, and the detached calm of the night possessed them. Where the cart-track debouched through a wooden gate on the main road that swept in a grey line round the first swell of the slope, Aelec Brands bade them good-night, and with a “See you in the morning,” they left him there. He stood, pipe aglow and slow spirals of smoke dying out a foot from his face, and watched them fade into the half-dark—the tall Irishman moving with an easy sway of shoulder, and the broad Anglo-Scot striding firmly. Then, for the third time that night, he turned riverwards, the terrier following sedately at his heels.
“I have great trouble with that fish,” was his quaint thought. “By Adam! the next chiel that interrupts me—I’ll drown him.”
He was not interrupted this time. He recovered his salmon and tackle, and won clear of alders and whins. As he walked he lifted the salmon in his great right hand.
“Between eighteen and twenty pounds, Fruachan,” he said. “A nice fish for August. I wager you, my brother Dod will wish he was here.”
Fruachan maintained an agreeable silence, and a mood of quiet satisfaction filled his master’s heart.
