Читать книгу The Small Dark Man (Maurice Walsh) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Maurice Walsh - Страница 13

No leaf shall fall,

No shadow flow,

But was thus doomed

To fall or flow

Before Time winged its little flight

Or God created Life from Light.

I

The path down the glen, a white line fading along the breast of the brae, started again at the corner of the bothy, and the two men set foot on it and went on marching. Hugh Forbes went first, or was propelled first, for Vivian Stark still grasped his shoulder. The small man seemed to suffer no embarrassment, and his head moved freely as he looked down and across the great valley.

“Thunder o’ God!” he whispered; “what a night, and what a glen!”

The moon had risen above the mountain ramparts of the east, and that side of the glen was black lightening to soft purple. High up against the glow of the sky, right and left, ran the serrated midnight-black silhouette of the great peaks, hushed and stark. Down below in the bottom of the valley the Abhain Ban chuckled subduedly over its shallows, and gleams of silver showed and shimmered and vanished over the white stones. The western slope of the glen, where the moonlight shone, was ghost-like in that pale glow—grey, substanceless, without perspective, scarcely less dark than the star-dusted sky and scarcely less remote. Except for that subdued chuckle of the river there was no sound, no hu-u-sh of air over heather, no cry of bird, no snort of stag—no sound at all. But silence was there, a presence.

“Move on,” ordered Stark, thrusting the shoulder he held.

“Time enough for to admire and for to see,” said the small man calmly. “Let us hurry, then.” He strained at the long arm like a dog on a leash.

They went on thus for perhaps two minutes till the curving path took them out of sight of the bothy, and then went on another minute till no sound might reach the bothy. And there the small man, with a twist that seemed easy and even nonchalant, brought his shoulder away from Stark’s grip, leaving the old trench-coat in the clutching fingers.

“Let us talk,” said Hugh Forbes, his voice deep and grave.

But Vivian Stark had no intention of talking. He threw the old coat aside in the heather and clutched at the shoulder that was still within reach.

The small man, nimble as a cat, was out of distance. “Don’t be a blasted fool,” he said very rudely. “Listen to me for a minute.”

But Vivian Stark had become obsessed by the sense of power that that shoulder-grip had given him. Free, this little thug had an outrageous manner of speech: in leash he was subdued and obedient. Therefore, Stark did not heed the small man’s exhortation. This time he sprang forward and his hand pounced.

“Hell!” snapped the other, and his hand was the quicker. It got first wrist purchase.

The two men came together, breast to breast. . . .