Читать книгу Thomasina - Paul Gallico - Страница 9

Outside MacDhui’s surgery, Geordie McNabb went wandering away clutching his box in which the injured frog reposed on a bed of grass and young heather. Occasionally he proceeded with an absent-minded hop, skip and jump, until, brought up by recollection of the more sobering aspects of his situation, he slowed down to a mere trot or saunter.

He was not aware of going in any particular direction, but was only glad to be away once more from the ken of grown-ups who loomed over one tall, bristly and unsympathetic and hustled about with a pat on the bottom, an indignity unworthy to be bestowed upon a Wolf Cub.

But ever and anon he paused to look into the box and give the frog a tentative poke reaffirming his diagnosis of a broken leg which prevented it from hopping and carrying on a frog’s business. At such times he regarded the little fellow with a combination of interest, affection and deep concern. He was fully aware that he had a problem on his hands connected with the eventual disposition of his charge, since take it home he could not, owing to house laws on the importation of animals, while at the same time to abandon it as recommended by the veterinarian was unthinkable. It was Geordie’s first encounter with the uncooperative attitude of the world towards one who has taken the fatal step of accepting a responsibility.

His seemingly unguided wanderings had taken him to the edge of the town, that is, to the back of it where the houses ended abruptly and the several farms and meadows began, beyond which lay the dark and mysterious woods covering the hill of Glen Ardrath, where the Red Witch lived, and he realised that he had thought of this fearful alternative as a possible solution but had quickly rejected it as altogether too frightening and dangerous.

Yet now that he was there by the bridge crossing the river Ardrath, that peaceful stream flowing into Loch Fyne, but which was fed by the tumbling mountain torrents that came frothing down out of the glen, the prospect of paying her a visit seemed awesomely and repellently attractive and exciting. For it was a fact that the townspeople avoided the lair, or vicinity of the Red Witch who was also known as Daft Lori, or sometimes even Mad Lori, and most certainly small boys fed on old wives’ tales and fairy-book pictures of hook-nosed crones riding on brooms avoided the neighbourhood, except when in considerable force.

But there were two sides to the estimate of the so-called Red Witch of Glen Ardrath, one in which the picture was supplied by the overheated imagination reacting to the word ‘witch’ and the other was that she was a harmless woman who lived alone in a crofter’s cottage up in the hills where she made a living by weaving on a hand loom, conversed with birds and animals whom she nursed, mothered and fed, and communed with the angels and the Little Folk with which the glen was peopled.

Geordie was aware of both these tales. If it was true that the roe deer came down from the flanks of Ben Inver to feed out of her hand, the birds settled on her head and shoulders, the trout and salmon rose from the sunny shallows of the burn at her call and that in the stables behind the cottage where she lived there were sick beasties she found in the woods or up the rocky glen, or who came to her driven by instinct to seek human help and whom she tended back to health, why then it might well be worth the risk to deposit his frog with her. At any rate it appeared to be a legitimate excuse for the having of a tremendous adventure, whatever came of it.

He crossed the humpback bridge over the river and commenced the climb to the forest at the entrance to Glen Ardrath, past the grey bones of Castle Ardrath of which the circular inner keep and part of the stone curtain was all that had remained standing.

The home of the Red Witch was supposed to be situated a mile or more up the glen where the forest was heaviest and it took considerable courage for a small boy alone, even though panoplied as a Wolf Cub and filled with some of their woods lore, to enter the darkening area of lichened oak, spreading beech and sombre fir, and to push his way through the head-high bracken. He tamed his apprehensions by looking for and identifying the summer wildflowers in full blossom of July that cropped up beside the path he was following, purple thrift and scarlet pimpernel, yellow broom and the pink of the wild dog-rose that grew entangled with the white-flowering bramble, which in the late summer and fall would yield the sweetest blackberries. He recognised purple colum, red campion and the blue harebell, the true bluebell of Scotland, growing in profusion in a glade that seemed made by the traditional fairy ring of trees growing about a circle carpeted with flowers and warmed by shafts of sunlight that penetrated through the branches of the trees.

From there the hill climbed more steeply and he could hear, though not see, the wild rushing of the burn. He sat down there a moment to rest and took the frog out of the box and laid it on the moss where it palpitated but did not move. Watching it, Geordie felt his heart swell with pity for its plight and helplessness and, putting it back into the box, determined to see the matter through without further delay.

At last he came in sight of the cottage he sought, and with the guile of the Red Indian, properly instilled into every Wolf Cub, he paused, flattened out to reconnoitre.

The stone cottage was long and narrow and had chimneys standing up like ears at either end. The lids of green shutters were closed over the windows of its eyes and it seemed to be sleeping, poised on the edge of a clearing of the woods on what seemed to be a small plateau, a broadening of the side of the glen, and where the burn too widened out and moved more sluggishly. Behind it and off to one side was another long, low stone building that had once been a barn, no doubt, or cattle shelter. Geordie hugged his box close to his beating heart and continued to study the surroundings.

A Coven Oak raised its thick bole a dozen or so yards before the cottage and yet its spreading branches reached to the tiles of the roof, and the topmost ones overshadowed it. The great oak must have been more than two hundred years old and from the lowest of its branches there hung a silvered bell. From the tongue of the bell, a thin rope reached to the ground and trailed there. And now that he was himself quiet, Geordie was becoming aware of movements and sounds. From within the cottage there came a high, clear, sweet singing and a curiously muffled thumping. This, Geordie decided, was the witch, and he trembled now in his cover of fern and bracken and wished he had not come. The singing held him spellbound, but the thumping was sinister and ominous for he had never heard the working of a treadle on a hand loom.

Overhead, a red squirrel scolded him from the branch of a smooth grey-green beech; a raven and a hooded black crow were having a quarrel and suddenly began to flap and scream and beat one another with great strokes of their wings so that all of the birds in the area took fright and flew up, blue tits, robins, yellow wagtails, thrush and wrens, sparrow and finches. They circled the chimneys, chattering and complaining; two black and white magpies flashed in and out of the trees and from somewhere an owl called.

The voice from within rose higher in purest song though no melody that Geordie had ever heard, yet it had the strange effect of making him wish suddenly to put his hands to his eyes and weep. The beating wings ceased to flail and the cries and the flutterings of the birds quieted down. Geordie saw the white cotton tail of a rabbit down by the burn.

Thereupon, Geordie McNabb did something instinctively right and quite brave. He crept out from beneath his cover and advanced as far as the bell suspended from the Coven Tree and the rope hanging therefrom. At the foot of it he deposited his box with the frog in it and gave the rope a gentle tug until the bell, shivering and vibrating, rent the forest with its silvery echoes, stilling the voice and the thumping from within the house. As fast as his stumpy legs could carry him, Geordie fled across the clearing and dived once more into the safety of the cover of thick green fern.

The peal of the bell died away, but the quiet was immediately shattered by the hysterical barking of a dog. A Scotch terrier came racing around from the barn behind the house. A hundred birds rose into the air, making a soughing and whirring with their wings as they flew wildly about the chimneys. Two cats came walking formally and with purpose around the corner of the house, their tails straight up in the air, a black and a tiger-striped grey. They sat down quietly some distance away and waited. As Geordie watched, a young roe buck suddenly appeared out of the underbrush, head up and alert, the sun shining from its moist black nose and liquid eyes. It moved warily, tossing its fine head, its eyes fixed upon the house where the front door was slowly opening and with infinite caution.

Geordie McNabb’s heart beat furiously and he came close to giving way to panic and running for all he was worth. But his curiosity to see the Red Witch of Glen Ardrath, now that he had come this far and dared so much, and his need to find out what was to become of his frog, kept him there.

The door opened wide, but no Red Witch appeared, almost to Geordie McNabb’s disappointment, only a young woman, hardly more than a girl, it seemed to Geordie, a plain girl, a country girl, such as you could see anywhere on the farms surrounding Inveranoch, in simple skirt and smock with thick stockings and shoes, and a shawl around her shoulders.

She could not have been a witch, for she was neither beautiful nor hideous, and yet little Geordie found that he could not seem to take his eyes from her countenance. What was it that drew and held his gaze? He could not tell. Her nose was long and wise, and the space between it and her upper lip seemed wide and humorous so that somehow it made you want to smile looking at it. The mouth was both tender and rueful, and in the grey-green eyes there was a far-away look. Her hair, which hung loose to her shoulders in the fashion of country girls, was not bound and was the cherry colour of a glowing blacksmith’s bar before he begins to cool it.

She looked out of the door, brushing away a lock of the dark red hair from her forehead and the gesture too was of one who is also clearing away cobwebs from the mind. Geordie lay there on his belly, hidden by the ferns, loving her suddenly with all his heart and he did not know why nor did he think of any spell cast upon him but only that she was there and he loved her.

The girl looked about her for a moment and then to Geordie’s surprise gave a high, clear call on two notes. For a moment, Geordie thought that the silver bell was still ringing, so clear and piercing was the call, but the sides of the metal had long ceased vibrating and it was only her throat that produced the marvellous sound.

It acted upon the buck, who came stepping nimbly out of the woods and walked slowly across half the clearing as she stood contemplating the animal out of her far-away eyes, with a rueful smile at her lips. The deer stopped and lowered its head and stood there gazing up at her mischievously and playfully so that she burst into laughter and cried – “Was it you then, at the bell again? For that you’ll be waiting for your supper –”

But the buck, as though suddenly alarmed, or sensing the presence of another, turned and bounded away into the forest. The cats came sedately forward, walking almost in tandem, and began to weave in and out of her feet. But the Scottie dog ran to the box containing the frog and began to sniff it, thus calling her attention to its presence.

She crossed the threshold then and Geordie watched her run to the box with quick, lithe steps that had in them something of the movements of the deer. She knelt, her hands folded in her lap for an instant and peered down into the box. Then she reached in and removed the wearing, injured, palpitating little creature.

She held it gently in her hand and the broken leg spilled from the side of it and hung limp. Carefully she probed it with a finger and looked into its beady yellow-green eyes and the odd space between her nose and upper lip twitched most movingly as she lifted the frog and held it to her cheek for an instant while she said: “Was it the angels or the Little Folk who brought you here to me? Poor wee frog. I’ll be doing what I can for you.” Then she arose and disappeared into the house, shutting the door after her.

The cottage slept again, its eyes tightly shut. The two cats and the dog retired whence they had come. The whirring birds quieted down. Only the squirrel in the tree who knew where Geordie was continued to scold. Geordie felt as though the greatest load he had ever known in his life had been lifted from him and he was free at last. The frog was safe and in good hands. His heart filled now almost to bursting with a new and strange kind of joy and singing, he left the shelter of the bracken, and as fast as his legs would carry him hop-skipped and jumped along the path alongside the foaming burn, downhill towards Inveranoch and home.

The same summer’s morning, Mr MacDhui, finishing with his waiting list of clients, motioned with his head to his friend Mr Peddie, who had waited until the last, to go inside with his groaning animal. He followed him remarking: “Come in, Angus. I am sorry you have had to wait for so long. These fools with their useless pets seem to take up all of my time. Well, what is the trouble? Have you been overfeeding the beast on sweets again? I warned you, did I not?” He seemed hardly aware he had included his friend in the category.

Mr Peddie, who really did not have the proper physical aspect for it, contrived to look both guilty and sheepish. He replied: “Of course you are right, Andrew, but what am I to do? He sits up and begs so prettily. He is mortally fond of sweets.” He looked fondly upon the pug dog who lay belly flat upon the enamelled examining table with an occasional belch disturbing his normal wheezing. He rolled his creamy eyes pleadingly in the direction of Mr MacDhui, who, memory and experience told him, possessed the formula to pardon over-indulgence.

The vet leaned down to smell the dog, wrinkling his nose in distaste; he probed his belly and took his temperature. “Hmph!” he grunted. “The same complaint – only aggravated …” He stuck his chin out and bristled his beard at the divine and mocked: “A man of God, you are, speaking for the Creator, and himself having no more self-control than to stuff this wretched animal with sweets to his own detriment.”

“Oh,” replied Peddie, squirming uneasily, his usually joyous moon face exhibiting the sadness of the scolded child: “Not really a man of God, though I do try. No more than an employee of His in the division of humans who must make up in love what they lack in brains and grace.” He made a deprecating gesture – “So many men, good men, go into the army, or politics, or law, He is often compelled to take what He can get.”

MacDhui grinned appreciatively and looked at his friend with affection. “Do you think He really enjoys all this sycophancy, flattery, bribery and cajoling that you chaps seem to think necessary to keep Him good-tempered and tractable?”

Mr Peddie answered immediately and with equal good humour: “If ever God inveigled Himself into error it was when He let man imagine Him in his own image, but I rather think this was man’s rather than God’s idea since it has been more flattering to the former.”

MacDhui barked like a fox, flashing his strong white teeth through the red line of his full lips. He loved the running battle with Peddie which had been going on between them ever since he had moved from Glasgow to Inveranoch at his behest, and which they carried on almost whenever and wherever they encountered one another. “Oh, no,” he said. “Then you admit that man has endowed God with a full set of his own faults and spends most of his praying time catering to them?”

The minister stroked the head of his little dog lovingly. “I suspect the real punishment for the sin in Eden,” he said, “was when He made us human, when He took away the divinity He had loaned us and made us kin and blood brothers with –” and here he nodded with his head towards the suffering pug dog – “these. You must admit the sentence contains an element of humour, something for which God is rarely given credit.”

For once Mr MacDhui was caught without a retort, for with a university cunning, his friend had suddenly made use of some of his own best arguments.

“But you won’t even admit that relationship,” the minister continued, cheerful at having extricated himself from the position where MacDhui could lecture him, “whereas I love this little fellow foolishly and consider him as important as myself when it comes to indulgence. Tell me, Andrew, do you not at all come to love these suffering animals you treat? Does not your heart break when they look at you so helplessly and trustingly?”

MacDhui turned his aggressive beard upon the pastor and regarded him with mingled truculence and pity as he replied: “Hardly. Even if I am only a vet I am still a doctor. If every doctor permitted himself to become emotionally involved with each of his patients or relatives of his patients, he would not last long. I am not sentimental, nor can I abide this indulgent affection wasted upon useless animals.” And he thrust out his beard again.

The Rev. Angus Peddie nodded his round, smooth face as though in understanding and agreement and quite suddenly attacked from another quarter. He asked: “Was there then nothing you could do as a doctor for that poor old woman’s dog – I mean Mrs Laggan’s? The one you persuaded her to have put away, and I doubt not have done so by now.”

Mr MacDhui turned as red as his hair, and his eyes grew hard and angry. “Why, has she complained to you, or said anything?”

“Do you find that so strange then? No, she did not complain, but she could not conceal her desolation. I saw her eyes as she went out. She is now all alone in the world.”

MacDhui continued defiant. “You thought I was hard on her, did you? Well, and what if I could have kept the animal alive for another three weeks, or a month, or even two? The end result would be the same. She would still be alone in the world. And besides, I offered to procure her another dog. People are always wishing me to find homes for all sorts.”

“But it was that poor, wretched, wheezy dog she loved and whose presence and friendship gave her comfort – just as this little fellow here fills a part of my life. Don’t you believe in the power of love at all to make our tour of duty here a little more bearable?”

MacDhui shrugged and did not reply. He had loved and wooed and would have devoted his life to the profession of medicine and it had been denied him. He had loved Anne MacLean, his wife, and she had been taken from him … Love was a snare and love was a danger. One was better off without it, if one could avoid it, which was not always possible, and he thought of Mary Ruadh and his love for her. Simpler perhaps to be a stick or a stone, or a tree and feel nothing.

Mr Peddie was ruminating with his brow knitted in a frown. “There must be a key, you know,” he said.

“Key to what?”

“Perhaps it IS love. The key to the relationship between man and the four-footed, the winged and the finned creatures who are his neighbours in woods, field and stream, and his brothers and sisters on earth—”

“Tosh!” snorted MacDhui. “We are all part of the gigantic cosmic accident that put us here. We all started even, you know. We developed the upright position and the thumb and they lost. Bad luck for them.”

Peddie regarded MacDhui keenly through his spectacles and said with a smile – “Ah, Angus – I did not know you had come so far already. To admit we were put here seems to me a weakening of your position you can ill afford. And who, may I ask, arranged this cosmic accident? For surely you are not so old-fashioned as to believe any longer that accidents just happen—”

“And if I ask you who, you will say God, of course.”

“Who but?”

“Anti-God. The system is wretchedly run. I could conduct it better myself.” MacDhui reached up to a shelf and took down a small bottle of medicine. The pug dog emitted a gigantic belch, struggled to its feet and sat up begging. The two men looked at one another and burst into roars of laughter.