THE SNOW IS melting fast; there’s still heat in the sun. But it’s not a proper thaw. The air is cold behind the sun, and icicles grow in the shadow.
We’ve felt all the seasons while we lived here. Spring when we came, summer to make us glad, painted autumn—today is winter, time to go before our road is closed. When I shut my eyes I can see winter filling our gorge with drifted snow, the world all blurred with drift.
I forced Terry to leave the cave for a while and breathe fresh air and see the glittering hills; morning painted their snowy summits. Stags were roaring close at hand.
‘Did we ever really climb these?’ she breathed in awestruck tones, pointing to mountains whose sides, snow-covered almost to their base, seemed to rise sheer from their dark valleys in steeps that only birds could dare.
‘Climb them!’ I cried, and laughed. ‘Yes, indeed, we ran up and down them like wild goats.’
‘They’re very steep, aren’t they?’ she said.
‘They seem steeper than they are,’ I answered.
I said to myself, ‘We did climb them.’ Not their apparent steepness made me doubt, but my own faint recollection. The dismal time past was sped. I gazed at the country we traversed a couple of days ago. One of the eagles from the Durc soared into view, climbing in a slow magnificent spiral until it wheeled out of sight, too high over its kingdom for our poor eyes to follow. I thought of its terrible vision of the world, its eyes that saw a realm of hills and a mouse stirring in the grass from that invisible throne in air where now it hid. I thought, where my imagination and my memory faltered, it saw. Our footsteps in the snow amongst the hills were plain to its gaze. Then suddenly I remembered and saw as if with the eagle’s sight. I saw the battle in the valley; I perceived our way of retreat to Loch Ericht, and our fire blazing in a cloud of snowflakes, and our return to the top of the Farrow whence we saw other ominous fires gleaming encamped below our cave. Our wanderings were like a map spread out.
‘Don’t go in,’ I begged Terry when she turned to leave me.
‘I must,’ she said.
‘You can’t do any good,’ I went on. ‘You’re tiring yourself to death—you haven’t rested for more than five minutes together—’
‘Soon I can rest,’ she said gently. ‘It’s not his good but my own—making it easier for him has changed me—it won’t be long now.’
‘Is he weak?’ I asked.
‘As water. Are you staying here?’
‘I’ll go in,’ I said.
We bent over him. He was nearly done, his breath as feeble as a child’s, scarce fretting the silence of the cave. He began to smile and whisper and open his eyes wide. He tried to sit up. Terry put her arm under his shoulders. It was ended before we knew it began; his dead weight lay on her arms. She let him back gently; she stooped to touch his forehead with her lips.
And it’s so easy then to die, to die and lose the sun, to open one’s eyes and sleep.
‘He died quiet,’ she whispered. ‘He didn’t die like a beast, alone.’
No, nor at the crooking of my finger. Christ, how near it was. As I look back the days of our flight assume a dreadful air. Fearful and violent, they belong to destruction. With death eager in our hands we fled from death.
‘Terry—’ I began hoarsely. She paused from binding his face with a handkerchief and closing his eyes. She laid her hand softly on mine.
‘Hugh,’ she answered.
‘Terry!’ I broke out, striving in vain to speak, but the best I could say was, ‘If I hadn’t you—if I hadn’t you—’
‘But you have me and I’m with you,’ she murmured. I sank my head on her hands, on the bed where he lay.
‘Hush, hush, my child,’ she said. ‘We’ve left the past behind us—see! I can smile, look at my face, I’ve no fear.’
Her face was radiant. I could not escape so soon from thinking of the past. I knew that nothing could ever destroy my knowledge that I alone would never have escaped from the rage of the past. Not like this our sole guest, not gentle and broken like him, but as a wolf, I’d have killed, and died. How can she help me to escape knowing that when every word she speaks convinces me more surely of what I’d be, if she were not with me?
I’ll bury him in the valley. His eyes are closed. She smoothed his brow and cheeks. Why do we whisper in our cave? He can’t hear and death doesn’t listen. Death makes his face noble.
I said, ‘I thought you were going to die of cold and tiredness. I was mad with fear, Terry.’
‘I thought that fire would never burn up,’ she confessed. ‘We must get ready soon, Hugh. What can we take with us? We can’t carry all I’d like to bring.’
She is busy while I write, recalling yesterday, when we came home, and the day before yesterday, when we fled. We came to the wood by Loch Ericht. I had scarcely energy to gather sticks or strength to break them. The branches of the wood were sodden with rain. We made a fire at last. Terry crouched over it, shivering and trembling like one ague-struck. We could not eat for cold. Night encompassed us with dangerous shadow. We jumped when a bird cried or the waves of the loch made a sudden plash.
Our fire smouldered as if never to take, but at length a resinous branch kindled and a blaze flared up. It revealed large flakes of snow drifting slowly on the wind.
‘Snow!’ Terry cried aghast.
‘Snow!’ I echoed. ‘It might have come more timely, with all the other days of the year to chose from. What new misfortune must we suffer?’ I asked bitterly.
‘It might have come more untimely, Hugh,’ she answered, ‘and showed our footsteps.’
‘Or turned these men back out of the hills,’ I argued.
‘Will it do that?’ she asked eagerly. ‘And we can go home soon?’
I stared gloomily at the fire. I was without hope. She swayed with weariness as she stooped over the fire.
‘Take off your clothes, one thing at a time,’ I bade her. ‘We can’t lie down to sleep in sodden rags.’
I set a long branch across two stones near the fire to make a rack for our garments. We dried them one by one and put them on as they dried. The heat of the fire drove us back into an angle between two rocks where we were sheltered from the rising storm. I hurried out to gather brackens for our couch before the snow hid them and wetted them. The snow came down in huge deliberate flakes. The noise of the wind in the trees grew deeper and we heard the loch beating on its shore, far under us in the thick darkness. When I returned with my arms full of brackens to the light of the fire I was white with snow.
‘Is it going to be a bad storm?’ Terry inquired anxiously as I shook the flakes from my head and shoulders.
‘It’s early yet—’ I answered dubiously; ‘but in this country you never know. We’re more than two thousand feet above sea-level here, Terry, anything can happen. It’s a wild night. Throw on these roots, lassie, heap up the fire to last until morning. We don’t want to waken and find ourselves frozen stiff.’ I made an effort to laugh.
‘Them all?’ she asked. ‘Won’t the fire be too big—and show us—’
‘Anyone abroad to-night will have more thought of shelter than chasing us,’ I assured her. ‘If we lie here, in the shadow, we can’t be seen, however big the blaze. But you couldn’t see a town burning through the blanket of this night.’
Our hearts revived with the warmth of the fire. We ate sparingly; we crept into our pile of bracken and slept soon. The cold wakened me; I slipped out of our bed to put fuel on the fire. It had sunk to a heap of grey ashes, but when I gathered in the butts of sticks which had dropped away from the centre of the fire they commenced to smoke and glow in a very short time. I could not tell how much of the night was past. The world was bright for the snow had ceased falling and a large moon, nearly full, illumined the country out of a cold clear sky. I heard Terry stirring uneasily. She peered from amongst the brackens. Her face was flushed and confused with sleep.
‘Hugh!’ she whispered, ‘where are you, Hugh?’
‘Here,’ I replied.
‘I slept,’ she said.
‘Lie still and sleep more,’ I bade her.
‘I can’t sleep more,’ she answered. She rose slowly, stretching her arms. ‘Oh, I’m stiff and sore!’ she complained. All at once her voice became anxious and afraid. ‘Why are you awake?’ she demanded breathlessly. ‘What made you waken, Hugh?’
‘The cold, Terry,’ I said. ‘Nothing more.’
‘Nothing more? I thought—’ She paused as if revolving what she thought. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she went on. ‘Can we go home?’
‘I don’t know,’ I began.
‘Oh, I’m tired,’ she said, and shivered.
‘Sleep a while longer,’ I said.
‘And what are you going to do?’ she demanded.
‘Oh, I might climb to the top of the Farrow to spy. It’s as bright as day in the open.’
‘I’m going with you,’ she said.
‘But you’re tired out!’ I expostulated. ‘The snow will be deep in drifts up there—’
She would not be dissuaded. We scattered our fire before we set out to reach a viewpoint that would command our cave, its gorge, and the intervening waste. We trudged mechanically up the hill. Fatigue like poison in our veins dulled our senses. We were over the round summit of the Farrow before we halted and saw the cliffs behind our cave black against the snow in the distance.
‘It’s a long way off,’ Terry whispered.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and bad going. Can you face it, Terry?’
‘What light is that?’ she cried. ‘See, Hugh! there below the rocks, near Loch Coulter!’
I stared for a while in the direction she indicated.
‘Fires,’ I said heavily at length; ‘three fires blazing.’
‘Fires! but what fires could be there?’ she demanded.
‘Camp fires,’ I returned.
The warmth engendered by our climbing ebbed out of us. The edged wind went through us as if we were naked.
‘We can’t stay here on this bare top,’ I said. ‘The cold will kill us. Are your feet wet, Terry? Mine are sopping. We’d best go down—at least we can have a fire there— We were mad not to take coats,’ I said as we descended.
‘We never dreamt—’ she began.
‘We should have dreamt,’ I interrupted her roughly. ‘We should know by this time what to expect.’
She kept silent for a time, following me through wreaths which hid morasses and holes amongst rocks.
‘Was it camp fires you said, Hugh?’ she asked breathlessly, hurrying to come up beside me. ‘Those men are camped, is that what you meant?’
‘Probably for the night,’ I assured her with more conviction than I felt. ‘The storm will chase them out of the mountains pretty soon.’
‘I’m glad for the snow,’ she said. ‘Do you think they’re on their way out of this country?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ I answered. ‘What would keep them in this bitter desolation?’
‘What kept ourselves here?’ I asked myself a moment afterwards, mocking my own hope. We lighted a fire once again to dry our stockings. It was not yet near day. We ate the last of our meat. The interminable hours rode over us. We longed for day to come though we expected nothing from day but the knowledge that time indeed passed. Before the sun rose on the peak of the Farrow a string of deer came up from feeding all night in the wood. I killed a calf with a lucky shot. We wrapped its liver and the best of its ribs in moss and buried them in the embers of our fire to cook. We were ravenously hungry.
‘What are we going to do?’ Terry asked when we had eaten of that revolting mess of half-cooked meat.
‘Do?’ I echoed bitterly. ‘Wait, nothing but wait.’
‘Here where we are?’ she went on.
‘Oh, not here, nothing so comfortable and easy,’ I returned. ‘But in the thickest depths of that wood, skulking there—it’s time to go.’
We had scarcely penetrated the fringes of the wood when a rustling close by arrested us. Terry, behind me, cried out, ‘Hugh! lie down! a man with a gun!’
Upon her words the sound of a shot-gun crashed out and pellets, fired from too great a distance to harm us or else deflected by the branches of trees, pattered round us.
‘Lie still!’ I shouted to Terry, throwing myself flat. I commenced to worm a way downhill behind a screen of trees in the direction from which the gun fired. Every thought of danger was out of my head. I recked of nothing save lust to avenge on this skulking murderer the misery we endured, the shame and fear of our flight before his like. I heard the noise of feet like a man running, and leapt to my feet in time to see a figure scurrying through a glade, making for the shelter of trees lower down the hill. My rifle came to my shoulder, it steadied, it followed him, aimed full in the centre of his craven back. He was as good as dead. I saw him in imagination tumbling like a stricken deer. Exultation welled up with rage in me; I delayed shooting to savour and protract the sweetness of revenge. My finger crooked on the trigger, taking the first pull, tightening for the second. When I hear my rifle fire I am always surprised, as if in the last instant my hand acted unawares of my head; I waited for that surprise, as rigid as a rock. I had never felt such burning joy as filled me while I waited for my weak finger to crook and drag him down and avenge all we suffered. He bolted for the trees. He was on the edge of the safety he must not reach, though he might grasp it, when Terry’s hands seized the rifle. Terry’s voice came from the normal world into the dreadful country that I tenanted.
‘Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!’ she shouted, dragging and pulling the rifle towards her. I stared at her for a second as if she was a stranger, and she at me with eyes alight with terror. Her face worked, her mouth made a soundless shape at words.
‘You can’t! you can’t!’ she articulated at last. I let the rifle go and it fell between us in a crevice of rock. I was as weak as if I had come from drowning.
‘Terry!’ I whispered in horror. I sat down on the ground and hid my face in my hands. It was very silent round us.
I heard her say, ‘Hugh—’ and a moment later, ‘Hugh!’ in an urgent voice.
‘He’s down, he’s fallen!’ she exclaimed.
I could not bear to meet her eyes. I lifted the rifle and uncocked it. We walked together to the spot where the man lay on his face sprawling with outstretched arms and one leg doubled under him. I gathered his shot-gun from where he flung it when he fled. It was an old hammer-gun so loose in the lock I heard it clank as I caught hold of it.
‘He’s dead!’ Terry cried, starting to run. At her approach the man stirred; he clutched the ground with his hands to drag himself on. When he could not, and his limbs refused to obey, he trembled and hideous whimpering noises came from him.
Terry stooped over him whispering, ‘Hush! don’t be afraid!’
She laid her hand on his shoulder while she spoke. At her touch he shuddered violently. He uttered such a scream of terror as will never be out of my ears. I hear it now, the voice of incarnate fear to death. What terror had ever we? My heart stood still, my flesh crept. But Terry spoke on, telling him to be at peace. He commenced to sob and rack his throat with coughing mingled with sobs.
‘We must lift him,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘He must be sore hurt.’
When I essayed to move him he screamed again with pain. I raised him in my arms. He had no more weight than a feather. His bare flesh showed through his tattered rags. His face was like a skull, his lips were blue. His blazing eyes closed gently.
‘He’s dead,’ I muttered.
Terry thrust her hand into his breast, through his dirty torn shirt.
‘His heart is beating still,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do with him, Hugh?’
‘What can we do?’ I asked desperately. ‘He’s past any help we can give, Terry.’
‘Is it so bad?’ she whispered. ‘What ails him, Hugh?’
‘Hunger cold and fear,’ I answered grimly.
‘We can’t leave him here,’ she said steadily.
‘We can’t leave him here,’ I echoed. ‘But what can we do, where can we take him?’
‘Home,’ she said.
I looked at her aghast.
‘You saw the fires!’ I exclaimed.
‘Too well.’
‘How can we go home?’
‘How can we leave this human mortal creature to die? Oh, Hugh, we’d risk our bones to save a dog from agony. What’s a little fear, a little danger, compared with his need?’
‘Then we’ll go home,’ I said. ‘Are you ready? Can you carry both the rifles?’
He opened his eyes to watch us. We bent over him.
‘We’re taking you where you’ll have fire, and food, and be safe,’ Terry assured him. He looked wildly at her.
‘Let me go!’ he implored. ‘Let me go!’ He commenced to cry silently. Tears rolled down his grey cheeks from wide panic eyes.
‘You must come with us until you are well,’ Terry said. ‘You can’t lie here—you’ve hurt your leg—’
‘Who are you?’ he interrupted.
‘Friends,’ she said.
‘Friends!’ He laughed in our faces. ‘There’s no word friends any more.’
He closed his eyes and his head fell to one side.
‘We must carry him,’ I said; ‘he’s not fit to walk, even with us helping him.’
‘Leave me alone I tell you!’ he broke in angrily. A weak delirious rage took him.
‘Where’s my gun?’ he shouted. ‘I know what you’re after, you want to steal my gun. Give it to me! you can’t rob me! let me go!’
‘We’ll never carry him so far,’ Terry said.
‘There’s no weight in him,’ I assured her. ‘Now help me up—’
He let himself be lifted without more show of resistance. We set out on our path. I carried him short distances at a time, and rested; when I was not enough revived by my halt we supported him between us with his legs dragging on the ground. I do not think he was ever rightly conscious. We circled the Farrow and Meall nan Eacan by the most level route we could plan. We saw from a long distance off that the fires in our gully were quenched. Our world was empty as of old.
We pieced together the disconnected fragments of his story that he babbled by the way; how he came farther and farther north from the blasted cities hunting for food; how his wife died, and he skulked in hiding every day.
No man was safe, no man had friends, no man helped another, every man’s hand was ready to strike.
So we came home to our cave and laid him in our bed and quickened his flickering pulse with a sup of the whisky Duncan brought.
‘I’ll fetch the haunches of that stag I killed,’ I promised. ‘To-morrow in the morning early. I know where it lies. We must have proper food, for him too. Rest a while,’ I besought Terry. ‘I’ll make a shake-down on the floor where you can sleep a little, I’ll watch—’
‘I can’t sleep,’ she answered. ‘Let me sit here, it won’t be for long, Hugh.’
I shook my head. ‘We came too late,’ I said.
‘When you bring home the stag, and he’s—he’s free, what then?’ she asked.
‘What then? How do you mean “What then”?’ I demanded.
‘Are we staying here?’
‘Where else can we go, Terry? We know the country here. You heard what he said, there’s danger every place.’
‘I’m not speaking about danger, Hugh.’
‘Well,’ I asked harshly, ‘what are you speaking about?’
‘I don’t need to answer that for you to know what I mean, do I, Hugh?’ she said. ‘How safe are we here, if safety’s all that counts? Oh, if we run and hide and kill like wolves at bay, we can escape what’s come to him, and them in the valley, for a time, for a few weeks—months!—years!—what does it matter how long we enjoy safety like that? Safety to become savages like the men we saw!’
‘And if we go do we avoid that?’ I cried. ‘What use will it serve to run our heads into danger?’
‘Great use, if we do it to help other folk, Hugh. We’ve fed while they starved, we’ve slept when they wandered distracted with fear.’
‘Help other folk!’ I laughed. ‘Great help we can give! grand helpers we! Assisting others when we can’t save ourselves. We’ve had to go without food too, Terry, and wander distracted with fear. Who’ll help us?’
‘Ourselves, when we help others. We helped him.’ She pointed to the still figure in the hammock.
‘Aye, and how were we met? Will others aim as badly as he did?’
‘It’s a chance we’ve got to take.’
‘Not chance but certainty. Why? To keep the dying flame of life flickering for a few painful extra moments?’
Colour came into her cheeks and her eyes began to sparkle.
‘Are you bent on saying things to hurt me?’ she cried. ‘Should we have left this creature, this fellow mortal, there, alone? You’re not quarrelling with me, Hugh, but with yourself, you’re saying things you don’t believe.’
‘Tell me how to say what I believe when I don’t know what it is!’ I exclaimed. ‘Then we should have stayed, we should never have come here.’
‘We had to come,’ she answered gravely. ‘Nothing else would have taught us—this.’ Her eyes went to our dying guest.
‘Dear, dear lesson!’ I muttered.
‘All that’s worth learning is dearly paid for,’ she said.
I went to the mouth of the cave to regard the scene we must forsake. I sat there like a stone for a long time. The stable edifice of our life was collapsing, and like one bewildered by the untimely stroke of chance that wrecks all I could not see a way or light or plan. Our habit of life must alter, to what shape I could not guess. Our stay was ended. Yet as I watched the hills, the shattered custom of our life began to form itself anew. If this hour ended a season of our lives, then it made complete that which it finished; with this regard our life, spent in this place, grew whole and rounded before my eyes.
‘We can’t carry all our stuff with us,’ I said a long time later.
‘We must choose what we need most,’ Terry said. ‘The rest will be safe here; we can come for it if we have use for it.’
If we go from here we’ll never come back. I do not speak to tell her what my mind fashions and my thoughts revolve. Why should I vex her with the thoughts that plague my unquiet head? I did not realize she was so much wiser than I, till now. It’s best to go, it’s wise; but I alone would never go. She’d go; I led her amiss when I brought her here. Or did we behave well when we fled and came here? Have I misled—oh hush, hush, mad head that seeks and seeks for certainty, finding none. It’s best to go.
She came to my side.
‘We were happy here,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I answered with an effort to be calm. ‘We were happy.’
‘Are you sad to leave?’ she whispered.
‘It’s best to go,’ I said a moment later.
‘Best to go,’ she echoed. ‘We’re human folk, Hugh. Our place is with our fellows. We can’t forsake them just to keep ourselves safe.’
I am glad we are going. I see the road we were bound on, that same way trod by the men whose work, smashed relics of living men, lies decaying in the valley. All fated and tied to destruction. Destruction battens on the men who feed it. I lusted for this creature’s death. If he died then, not in our hammock, where could I escape? He was as light as a feather in my arms.
Terry burns with pity. Rage and fear live intertwined, to have compassion and lend aid is the only shield that fear will not strike down. I am not afraid. Nothing worse can happen to us than the fate which dogs us every day we quit our cave to hunt for food. Though we meet fate now we face it without dread. We are victors over fate when we choose well, though it destroy us.