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

He had no trouble in finding a way down the pitch to the loch side: a stone ladder with the tilt of a steep roof, where a trickle of water slid and fell and tinkled and frail ferns drooped and nodded in the crannies.

When at last he reached the made path at the foot of the loch there was no glow on any hill, and the even hush of twilight was over all that heaped land. And yet the awesomeness had gone out of the landscape. There was no disturbing whisper off the heather, no wailing note from the cliffs of Ben a Mhuic, no sense of an inimical presence tugging at reason. Fifty yards below him the swift Abhain Ban, the clear-running river, ran checking and gurgling over its white-pebbled bed, and a green ribbon of grass looped in the windings of it; the great breasts of the hills, solemnly brown, lifted in a smooth swell to the immense blue arch of the sky where already a star was shining; and the white path of disintegrated granite, winding out of sight round a curve of the valley, called him forwards to a secure haven.

All that was demanded now was steady walking and, at the end, a meal and a drink with his great Tearlath. And meantime, by way of company, he would nibble an Abernethy biscuit and a scrap of cheese, and thereafter light a strong pipe of Tam o’ Shanter. It had been a hard afternoon: a four-thousand-foot mountain, climbed the long way, was behind him; sixteen miles of track curved in front of him; the dim shining night of the north was down on him; but he had still a kick left. A small dark man he was, who had gathered hardihood of mind in a hardy body, and made it natural and unassuming and almost secret. And though he was in a strange upheaved land, on a road he had never before set foot on, with no known landmarks to guide him, he was complete master of himself and not awed by his surroundings. He was a hillman.

Around the horn of that first curve was another curve exactly similar, and beyond that another and another—world without end. In the declining light, with the dim white line of the path ever tailing away in front of him, this similarity grew irksome in time. “A day or half a day might be pleasant on this road,” he said to himself, “but a man condemned to walk it forever would choose some other hell. ’Tis, surely, a terrible hell that begins by being pleasant.”

The zenith was scattered with faint stars, and the sky above the eastern ramparts aglow above a rising moon, when, at last, he won out of that first series of curves into the mouth of a side valley. And there he halted. A quarter of a mile away a small square window glowed at him with a dull-red light.

“The deer-stalkers’ bothy,” he spoke aloud, “and someone in it—two probably, and I’ll be damn’d if I’ll love them.”

In blood or bone

They are not kin.

The pull of Race

Is strong within.

Love limps slow behind hot Hate,

Yet is the weapon tried of Fate.

I

Charles William Vivian Stark, standing upright, dropped three peat sods on the fire, and raised a mist of ashes and a drove of sparks. The sparks went up the wide chimney above the open hearth in pleasant darts and spirals after the manner of peat sparks, but the ashes found Stark’s nostrils for his foolishness. He stepped back, sneezed, said a word under his breath, and then stood, head adroop, and watched in glum silence the small tongues of flame already licking round the black sods.

Frances Mary Grant opened her mouth to tell him that that was not the way to treat a peat fire, but thought better of it. Instead, she said in a tone of well-assumed disgust, “I am ashamed of myself, Vivian—and we so near home.” But there was no trace of shame or chagrin in the face she turned to him.

She sat back in an old and decrepit wicker-chair, and one knee was lifted over the other. Her eyes left his face and followed her shapely, cream-hosed leg from knee to foot, and there rested. That foot was without its brown shoe, and, instead, a flimsy silk handkerchief was tied under the heel and over the instep. She moved her toes, turned ankle back and forth, and took breath with a little grimace. “Rotten of me to fail you,” she said, and looked up at him.

If silence means consent, Stark agreed that it was rotten of her to fail him so near home. Perhaps she hoped that he would say something agreeably excusing, for the firelight revealed a beseeching look in her glistening grey eyes and a smile faintly wistful on her lips. But his chiselled profile was turned obstinately to her and his eyes remained sullenly on the fire. Indeed this girl had tell-tale eyes. Anyone looking at her then would admit that she liked this young man—at the very least. Liked him for his physical beauty, surely not for his manners!

His eyes still on the fire, he spoke at last out of some context of thought not difficult to follow. “You should have told me earlier, Fred. At Croghanmoyle—we had time then to catch the train at Kirkton.”

“But you were so keen on doing the four big peaks inside the week.” Her voice grew cheerful. “And we have done them, you know. I didn’t want you to miss Cairn Ban.”

Even now he would not commend her. “I could have seen you to the station, climbed the peak, and been home before you.” It was the unkind truth.

“I never thought.” Her voice was quiet, but the sudden creak of the chair showed her discomfort.

“Of course you did splendidly, Fred,” he said, relenting a little. “But this is—I am sorry this happened.”

“So am I, Vivian; but, really, there is no harm done. This old bothy is quite cosy, and after a rest——”

“No, no. A blistered heel is not to be trifled with. The moon will be up in a few minutes, and I can easily make Innismore in two hours, and be back with a pony in other two.”

“After such a hard day——”

“No trouble,” he said shortly. “We must get to Innismore to-night.”

“I suppose so.” She was a little piqued now. “Really, I don’t mind. I am used to these hills, and have stayed a night in a bothy before now.”

“Hardly do, would it?”

She chuckled pleasantly. “Not with a conventional young man like you. I don’t mind.”

He made no reply to that. He moved across the floor to a black doorway in the rear wall and scraped a match on the jamb. “I’ll get you a store of peats,” he said over his shoulder, and then she heard him fumbling in the lean-to back place. He returned with an armful of black sods and built them up on the brick hearth. “That will keep the fire going till I return.” She did not care to tell him that several armfuls would be required to keep a peat fire going for four hours. “You won’t mind being alone, Fred?” he inquired.

“No-o. I can stand it. I am not afraid—in my own hills—of loneliness.” A careful listener might have gathered that she would prefer company—this man’s company.

Perhaps Stark gathered that too, for he turned to the door and spoke briskly. “And there’s the moon—” And there he halted, his mouth half-open and a sudden, small, psychic fear in his Nordic heart.

“What is it?” whispered Frances Mary Grant.

II

From outside, across the heather, came the sound of a voice singing. Out of that valley of loneliness and silence came a man’s voice in a slow tune that was old as the hills, lonely as the hills, sad as the sadness that lurks in heather valleys. The great long roll of that baritone voice filled rather than pierced the air, and the gutturals of the Gaelic held the rumble of heavy water. Before Sulcoid, before Clontarf, before Largs, Nordic fighting men had heard songs like that song drifting down from the night camp of the Gael, and, having survived the long day’s fight, could never hear again a Gaelic air without remembering the carnage and the defeat.