Maurice Walsh - The Small Dark Man (Maurice Walsh) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

A drift of steam came from the spout of the kettle. “It is hot enough,” said Hugh Forbes in his throat. Without pause or thought he pulled off his fine velour hat and, using it as a holder, whipped the kettle off the fire. “Mind your feet, Frances Mary.” And boys! it was a lovely name as he said it.

She looked down, and he did not see her smile. Frances Mary! But of course he would know her name, though that was the first time it had been spoken that night in that room.

He poured into the basin some of the hot water, and felt the temperature with the twiddle of a little finger. “Warm enough for a beginning,” he murmured, laid the kettle within reach of her hand, and straightened up. “You will bathe that heel now,” he told her, “and after a piece add a small drop more of the hot water, and then a drop more—until it is as hot as you can bear. And then wrap that wisp of silk round the sore place and slip the stocking over it. If you’re not able to do all that, I’ll help you.”

“Thanks. I’ll manage.”

Praised be the saints for that! He, Hugh Forbes, did not want to have anything at all to do with a woman’s feet. They were strangely disturbing things. No doubt the toes of that foot there would be pressed close together, but the instep would be arched and devastatingly white, and a thin delicate blue vein would reach over to the terrible curve of an ankle. And the smoothness of it: smoother than velvet, cooler than linen, and—“Hotter than the hob o’ hell,” said Hugh Forbes gloomily, and turned to the door. He went out from the hearty, ruddy, unsafe glow of the peat fire into the colder but not safer light of the moon.

The moon was well up now, and the mountains over there were no longer a ragged black silhouette. The black was purple and the purple pearl, and away in the south, high up on the shoulder of Ben a Mhuic, a bank of snow glistened white and aloof. He stood on the brink of the burn that ran gurgling down the brae to the Abhain Ban and let his eyes wander over mountain and sky and finally come to rest on the river below him where silver streaks ran and vanished with the current.

As he stood thus, watching the roily glisten of the moonlight on the water, there came to his ears the sound of a long-drawn breath out of the hills—from near or far he could not say, but it made his neck hairs tingle. He faced round, head forward, shoulders hunched, feet planted. There it was again, back there in the lift behind the house—a long-drawn breath that filled the hills, a little laboured, and with something sibilant in it. Resolutely he walked up the burn towards it, and at once it stopped. He waited a full minute, but the hush of empty night was again supreme, drawn out thin and tense like a fine wire. “Stay in your own place,” ordered the bass of his voice.

Frances Mary had heard that breathing sound too. It could be heard in a tomb. “What was it?” she asked him quietly, as he appeared in the doorway.

“A deer, a hawk, an owl, and the hills turning over in their sleep.”

“A white owl, probably.”

“Whatever it was, it won’t hurt you.” Perhaps the you was slightly accented.

“Oh! I’m not afraid.”

“I am, like hell.” But he did not tell of what he was afraid. He did not know—something elemental that underlay life.

He came to her side and saw the bottom of the pan shining through the water. “Woman!” he boomed, “did you bathe your foot at all?”

“I did; and made the water hot as . . . Look!” she thrust out the foot quickly and withdrew it again, but he saw where the silk bandage bulked under the stocking at the ankle.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Splendid, thank you.”

He took the basin outside the door and poured the water from shoulder-level on the grey grass, and the vanishing curve gleamed in the moonlight. “Let a rose grow there,” his voice rumbled, “or a dandelion—or a thistle.” He dropped the basin and went round to the back of the bothy.

III

When he again entered the room he carried in both arms a bundle of long grass and heather tops. “Could you be standing on one foot for a minute?” he requested, and without demur she obeyed, leaning on one foot, the other tip-toe, and a steadying hand on the arm of the chair. In that posture—in her cunningly shapeless frock—it would be no easy matter for any man to contemplate her reasonably. Hugh Forbes did not contemplate her at all.

He laid his bundle on the ridged seat of the old chair and shook it up loosely. “Wait now.” He picked his coat off the floor and emptied both pockets on the table. There were two packages. “My luggage,” he explained. Then he threw the coat over the chair so that it covered the seat and the open-back, and with a gesture of the hand that somehow displayed the tensed strength of his arm invited her to be seated.

Without a word of thanks she dropped into the chair, but she smiled softly into the fire, and, anyway, her thoughts were too busy for words. A woman must always discover a man’s soul for herself—or his heart. Even her great brother, Charles, must not be allowed to impress his own impressions on her mind. And Charles was sometimes mistaken—as in the case of Vivian. He did not care for Vivian, and was inclined to be rude. A remote young god! Remote my eye! Only too damn cocksure to be inquisitive. That was her brother’s opinion. Vivian could be mistaken too. He had despised this man here and had treated him as he would treat an impudent tramp. But she was discovering him for herself, outrageous tongue and heart of gold. How sure he had been that her heel needed laving, how closely and kindly he must have considered her to know that the old chair was uncomfortable! Vivian would never have thought things out in that way, and it was a pity that Vivian had made the kindly little man suffer under a strong hand. . . . He would be so very sensitive under his seeming bluntness.

Hugh Forbes did not think that he was being kindly. If he knew her thoughts he might say, “Kindly, hell! I am only trying to do the right thing by Tearlath Grant’s sister.” He kept on doing that. First he remade the fire, and then brought two armfuls of peat sods from the back place and built them up on the hearth. Thereafter he paused to think.

“I am quite comfortable now, thank you,” said Frances Mary. “Don’t let me detain you any longer.”

He did not answer. The great hurry she was in to be rid of him! But he would go when he was ready to go, and not before. He felt a feather of chill air from the outside on the back of his neck, and looked over his shoulder at the open door. “The night air is bad for one,” he remarked and went and shut the door, and then sat aside on the table. He placed his black hat over one of his paper packages. “Are you hungry?” he asked her.

“Don’t mention it, please,” she besought him, an eager eye on the hat.

“Would you like an Abernethy biscuit?”

“Only one thing I would like better.”

“Two—and a skelb of cheese. There, then.” His hands juggled with the hat.

“Oh, you dear man!” Her white teeth bit cleanly, and not a flake fell. “We finished our sandwiches early, and I was ready to cry with hunger,” she told him, her mouth full.

The healthy hungry young body of her! It would transform dry biscuit and dull cheese into warm flesh, and the light in grey eyes—and into soul, for all he knew. Himself was not hungry any more. Never again, on top of God’s world, would he really hunger for anything—food or wine, or even whisky, or—except, maybe, a girl, and she with red hair. And that might only be a pose after all. For a long time now the fear had been growing on him that he was no more than a small collection of poses hiding an emptiness that wanted nothing. “Lose hunger and you lose God,” he said gloomily.