Huntingtower Part 3

Mr. McCunn, having delivered his defence of the bourgeoisie, rose abruptly and went to bed. He felt jarred and irritated. His innocent little private domain had been badly trampled by this stray bull of a poet. But as he lay in bed, before blowing out his candle, he had recourse to Walton, and found a pa.s.sage on which, as on a pillow, he went peacefully to sleep:

"As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me; 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all care, and sang like a nightingale; her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it; it was the smooth song that was made by _Kit Marlow_ now at least fifty years ago. And the milkmaid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by _Sir Walter Raleigh_ in his younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."

CHAPTER III

HOW CHILDE ROLAND AND ANOTHER CAME TO THE DARK TOWER

d.i.c.kson woke with a vague sense of irritation. As his recollections took form they produced a very unpleasant picture of Mr. John Heritage. The poet had loosened all his placid idols, so that they shook and rattled in the niches where they had been erstwhile so secure. Mr. McCunn had a mind of a singular candour, and was prepared most honestly at all times to revise his views. But by this iconoclast he had been only irritated and in no way convinced. "_Sich_ poetry!" he muttered to himself as he shivered in his bath (a daily cold tub instead of his customary hot one on Sat.u.r.day night being part of the discipline of his holiday). "And yon blethers about the working-man!" he ingeminated as he shaved. He breakfasted alone, having outstripped even the fishermen, and as he ate he arrived at conclusions. He had a great respect for youth, but a line must be drawn somewhere. "The man's a child," he decided, "and not like to grow up. The way he's besotted on everything daftlike, if it's only _new_. And he's no rightly young either--speaks like an auld dominie, whiles. And he's rather impident," he concluded, with memories of "Dogson."... He was very clear that he never wanted to see him again; that was the reason of his early breakfast. Having clarified his mind by definitions, d.i.c.kson felt comforted. He paid his bill, took an affectionate farewell of the landlord, and at 7.30 precisely stepped out into the gleaming morning.

It was such a day as only a Scots April can show. The cobbled streets of Kirkmichael still shone with the night's rain, but the storm clouds had fled before a mild south wind, and the whole circ.u.mference of the sky was a delicate translucent blue. Homely breakfast smells came from the houses and delighted Mr. McCunn's nostrils; a squalling child was a pleasant reminder of an awakening world, the urban counterpart to the morning song of birds; even the sanitary cart seemed a picturesque vehicle. He bought his ration of buns and ginger biscuits at a baker's shop whence various ragam.u.f.fin boys were preparing to distribute the householders' bread, and took his way up the Gallows Hill to the Burgh Muir almost with regret at leaving so pleasant a habitation.

A chronicle of ripe vintages must pa.s.s lightly over small beer. I will not dwell on his leisurely progress in the bright weather, or on his luncheon in a coppice of young firs, or on his thoughts which had returned to the idyllic. I take up the narrative at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he is revealed seated on a milestone examining his map. For he had come, all unwitting, to a turning of the ways, and his choice is the cause of this veracious history.

The place was high up on a bare moor, which showed a white lodge among pines, a white cottage in a green nook by a burnside, and no other marks of human dwelling. To his left, which was the east, the heather rose to a low ridge of hill, much scarred with peat-bogs, behind which appeared the blue shoulder of a considerable mountain. Before him the road was lost momentarily in the woods of a shooting-box, but reappeared at a great distance climbing a swell of upland which seemed to be the glacis of a jumble of bold summits. There was a pa.s.s there, the map told him, which led into Galloway. It was the road he had meant to follow, but as he sat on the milestone his purpose wavered. For there seemed greater attractions in the country which lay to the westward. Mr. McCunn, be it remembered, was not in search of brown heath and s.h.a.ggy wood; he wanted greenery and the Spring.

Westward there ran out a peninsula in the shape of an isosceles triangle, of which his present highroad was the base. At a distance of a mile or so a railway ran parallel to the road, and he could see the smoke of a goods train waiting at a tiny station islanded in acres of bog. Thence the moor swept down to meadows and scattered copses, above which hung a thin haze of smoke which betokened a village. Beyond it were further woodlands, not firs but old shady trees, and as they narrowed to a point the gleam of two tiny estuaries appeared on either side. He could not see the final cape, but he saw the sea beyond it, flawed with catspaws, gold in the afternoon sun, and on it a small herring smack flapping listless sails.

Something in the view caught and held his fancy. He conned his map, and made out the names. The peninsula was called the Cruives--an old name apparently, for it was in antique lettering. He vaguely remembered that "cruives" had something to do with fishing, doubtless in the two streams which flanked it. One he had already crossed, the Laver, a clear tumbling water springing from green hills; the other, the Garple, descended from the rougher mountains to the south. The hidden village bore the name of Dalquharter, and the uncouth syllables awoke some vague recollection in his mind. The great house in the trees beyond--it must be a great house, for the map showed large policies--was Huntingtower.

The last name fascinated and almost decided him. He pictured an ancient keep by the sea, defended by converging rivers, which some old Comyn lord of Galloway had built to command the sh.o.r.e road and from which he had sallied to hunt in his wild hills.... He liked the way the moor dropped down to green meadows, and the mystery of the dark woods beyond.

He wanted to explore the twin waters, and see how they entered that strange shimmering sea. The odd names, the odd cul-de-sac of a peninsula, powerfully attracted him. Why should he not spend a night there, for the map showed clearly that Dalquharter had an inn? He must decide promptly, for before him a side-road left the highway, and the signpost bore the legend, "Dalquharter and Huntingtower."

Mr. McCunn, being a cautious and pious man, took the omens. He tossed a penny--heads go on, tails turn aside. It fell tails.

He knew as soon as he had taken three steps down the side-road that he was doing something momentous, and the exhilaration of enterprise stole into his soul. It occurred to him that this was the kind of landscape that he had always especially hankered after, and had made pictures of when he had a longing for the country on him--a wooded cape between streams, with meadows inland and then a long lift of heather. He had the same feeling of expectancy, of something most interesting and curious on the eve of happening, that he had had long ago when he waited on the curtain rising at his first play. His spirits soared like the lark, and he took to singing. If only the inn at Dalquharter were snug and empty, this was going to be a day in ten thousand. Thus mirthfully he swung down the rough gra.s.s-grown road, past the railway, till he came to a point where heath began to merge in pasture, and dry-stone walls split the moor into fields. Suddenly his pace slackened and song died on his lips. For, approaching from the right by a tributary path, was the Poet.

Mr. Heritage saw him afar off and waved a friendly hand. In spite of his chagrin d.i.c.kson could not but confess that he had misjudged his critic.

Striding with long steps over the heather, his jacket open to the wind, his face a-glow and his capless head like a whin-bush for disorder, he cut a more wholesome and picturesque figure than in the smoking-room the night before. He seemed to be in a companionable mood, for he brandished his stick and shouted greetings.

"Well met!" he cried; "I was hoping to fall in with you again. You must have thought me a pretty fair cub last night."

"I did that," was the dry answer.

"Well, I want to apologise. G.o.d knows what made me treat you to a university-extension lecture. I may not agree with you, but every man's ent.i.tled to his own views, and it was dashed poor form for me to start jawing you."

Mr. McCunn had no gift of nursing anger, and was very susceptible to apologies.

"That's all right," he murmured. "Don't mention it. I'm wondering what brought you down here, for it's off the road."

"Caprice. Pure caprice. I liked the look of this b.u.t.t-end of nowhere."

"Same here. I've aye thought there was something terrible nice about a wee cape with a village at the neck of it and a burn each side."

"Now that's interesting," said Mr. Heritage. "You're obsessed by a particular type of landscape. Ever read Freud?"

d.i.c.kson shook his head.

"Well, you've got an odd complex somewhere. I wonder where the key lies.

Cape--woods--two rivers--moor behind. Ever been in love, Dogson?"

Mr. McCunn was startled. "Love" was a word rarely mentioned in his circle except on death-beds. "I've been a married man for thirty years,"

he said hurriedly.

"That won't do. It should have been a hopeless affair--the last sight of the lady on a spur of coast with water on three sides--that kind of thing, you know. Or it might have happened to an ancestor.... But you don't look the kind of breed for hopeless attachments. More likely some scoundrelly old Dogson long ago found sanctuary in this sort of place.

Do you dream about it?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, I do. The queer thing is that I've got the same prepossession as you. As soon as I spotted this Cruives place on the map this morning, I saw it was what I was after. When I came in sight of it I almost shouted. I don't very often dream, but when I do that's the place I frequent. Odd, isn't it?"

Mr. McCunn was deeply interested at this unexpected revelation of romance. "Maybe it's being in love," he daringly observed.

The Poet demurred. "No. I'm not a connoisseur of obvious sentiment. That explanation might fit your case, but not mine. I'm pretty certain there's something hideous at the back of _my_ complex--some grim old business tucked away back in the ages. For though I'm attracted by the place, I'm frightened too!"

There seemed no room for fear in the delicate landscape now opening before them. In front in groves of birch and rowans smoked the first houses of a tiny village. The road had become a green "loaning" on the ample margin of which cattle grazed. The moorland still showed itself in spits of heather, and some distance off, where a rivulet ran in a hollow, there were signs of a fire and figures near it. These last Mr.

Heritage regarded with disapproval.

"Some infernal trippers!" he murmured. "Or Boy Scouts. They desecrate everything. Why can't the _tunicatus popellus_ keep away from a paradise like this!" d.i.c.kson, a democrat who felt nothing incongruous in the presence of other holiday-makers, was meditating a sharp rejoinder, when Mr. Heritage's tone changed.

"Ye G.o.ds! What a village!" he cried, as they turned a corner. There were not more than a dozen whitewashed houses, all set in little gardens of wallflower and daffodil and early fruit blossom. A triangle of green filled the intervening s.p.a.ce, and in it stood an ancient wooden pump.

There was no schoolhouse or kirk; not even a post-office--only a red box in a cottage side. Beyond rose the high wall and the dark trees of the demesne, and to the right up a by-road which clung to the park edge stood a two-storeyed building which bore the legend "The Cruives Inn."

The Poet became lyrical. "At last!" he cried. "The village of my dreams!

Not a sign of commerce! No church or school or beastly recreation hall!

Nothing but these divine little cottages and an ancient pub! Dogson, I warn you, I'm going to have the devil of a tea." And he declaimed:

"Thou shalt hear a song After a while which G.o.ds may listen to; But place the flask upon the board and wait Until the stranger hath allayed his thirst, For poets, gra.s.shoppers and nightingales Sing cheerily but when the throat is moist."

d.i.c.kson, too, longed with sensual gusto for tea. But, as they drew nearer, the inn lost its hospitable look. The cobbles of the yard were weedy, as if rarely visited by traffic, a pane in a window was broken, and the blinds hung tattered. The garden was a wilderness, and the doorstep had not been scoured for weeks. But the place had a landlord, for he had seen them approach and was waiting at the door to meet them.

He was a big man in his shirt sleeves, wearing old riding breeches unb.u.t.toned at the knees, and thick ploughman's boots. He had no leggings, and his fleshy calves were imperfectly covered with woollen socks. His face was large and pale, his neck bulged, and he had a gross unshaven jowl. He was a type familiar to students of society; not the innkeeper, which is a thing consistent with good breeding and all the refinements; a type not unknown in the House of Lords, especially among recent creations, common enough in the House of Commons and the City of London, and by no means infrequent in the governing circles of Labour; the type known to the discerning as the Licensed Victualler.

His face was wrinkled in official smiles, and he gave the travellers a hearty good afternoon.

"Can we stop here for the night?" d.i.c.kson asked.

The landlord looked sharply at him, and then replied to Mr. Heritage.

His expression pa.s.sed from official bonhomie to official contrition.

"Impossible, gentlemen. Quite impossible.... Ye couldn't have come at a worse time. I've only been here a fortnight myself, and we haven't got right shaken down yet. Even then I might have made shift to do with ye, but the fact is we've illness in the house, and I'm fair at my wits'

end. It breaks my heart to turn gentlemen away and me that keen to get the business started. But there it is!" He spat vigorously as if to emphasise the desperation of his quandary.

The man was clearly Scots, but his native speech was overlaid with something alien, something which might have been acquired in America or in going down to the sea in ships. He hitched his breeches, too, with a nautical air.

"Is there nowhere else we can put up?" d.i.c.kson asked.