On the edge of the pond, near the stone Cupid with mossy hair and corroded nose, sat Harry the gardener apprentice playing cheerful tunes on his mouth organ. Beside him, chewing gum and breaking into song occasionally, was Betty the landgirl. They were dressed for the deer drive, he in a tunic of camouflage colours, and she in her official khaki. Over her head, however, she had wrapped a red-white-and-blue scarf.
It was so peaceful by the pond that, in the midst of the music, could be heard such sounds as the drone of a late bee, the plop of a frog, and the rasp of Erchie Graham’s nails along his midge-tormented scalp.
Always irascible, the old handyman that afternoon was furious. His proper task should have been to sweep fallen leaves from the paths about the big house. He had looked forward to it, with spits of relish. There would have been no one to superintend him, except a squirrel perhaps or a jenny wren, at which he might have winked. Not a drop of sweat would have been shed, and at his age, sixty-nine, sweat must be hoarded like blood and breath. Now all that bliss had been blasted by this order to take part in the deer drive; the dignity of old age, smoking at leisure in the sunshine in the company of mellow trees, was to be outraged by a sweating roaring helter-skelter race through brambles, briers, and nettles, over marshes and burns, up hills and down precipices, all in pursuit of deer that had never done him any harm and that, as venison, he did not like. Even if the deer were shot at the finish, they were luckier than he: they at least would be put out of the pain of tortured lungs and racked limbs.
‘And by God,’ he said to Charlie, Adamson’s labourer, who sat beside him, ‘there’s no guarantee I’ll not be shot. Your boss once had a damned good try. He put a couple of slugs into me.’ He slapped his left rump. ‘But for a tree that got in the road, it’s doubtful if I ever again would have enjoyed what’s every free man’s privilege, a seat in comfort.’
Charlie neither agreed nor disagreed: he just puffed at his pipe; he was as deaf as Cupid.
Betty, moved by the tranquillity and loveliness of the scene, asked for something sad. Harry wasn’t sure he knew anything.
‘Loch Lomond,’ suggested Betty, with wide slow meditative chews of her gum.
Harry tried, but could not keep cheerfulness out. The lovers of the song mourned their eternal separation with admirable jauntiness.
Betty was displeased. She even took the gum out to demonstrate, in a Glasgow accent as buoyant as it was raucous, how the sadness of true love ought to be rendered.
Grinning, Harry played sadly.
Graham, scowling at them, informed Charlie he was lucky he was deaf.
Then they were all appalled into silence.
From amongst the rhododendrons came a shout of anguish: ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ And as they all, except Charlie who kept staring at a frog in the pond, turned in that direction they saw Duror rise up with his hand at his head and stagger about as if he was drunk or had just wakened from a nightmare.
In that nightmare Peggy had been sleeping in the garden. It was spring, for the gean tree in the corner by the elm was in glorious white blossom, and many birds were singing. He had helped her mother to dress her, handling with care and love her legs pale and swollen like monstrous slugs. Then he had wheeled her out into the garden which was more beautiful than he had ever seen it before. She had quickly fallen asleep. A thrush, speckled and alert, had hopped around her as if to protect her from insects. Cold cream had been smeared on her face lest the sun burn her skin, pale as mushroom; the garden was full of that fragrance. Suddenly everything had turned dark. There was a tremendous fluttering and chirping. Thousands of thrushes were flying out of the gean tree straight towards Peggy, until they were round her as multitudinous as midges. When he had made to rush forward to drive them away, he had been unable; and it was in the terror of that paralysis that he had wakened.
Harry waited, with the mouth organ still at his lips. Betty nudged him as a warning to mind his manners. Graham stared at Charlie’s frog, as if it was as much his business as a gamekeeper with a whale for his wife.
The gum was at rest in Betty’s mouth.
‘Is there onything the maitter, Mr Duror?’ she asked.
As he gazed about him the actual scene, with the girl in the bright scarf, the boy with the mouth organ, the two old men smoking, and the pond dotted with lily leaves, became confused in his vision with that imaginary one of his garden invaded by inimical thrushes and his wife pecked to pieces.
Shaking his head like a sick dog, he tried to shake off that hallucination; but though he could tell himself its cause was his lack of sleep over the past months, and lack of food that day, he still could not banish it. Horror of its possible permanence was gripping him more and more suffocatingly when he saw slipping through the bushes on the other side of the pond the two cone-gatherers; and he could not be sure whether they were really there in the actual world or had entered the garden. Never had the smaller one looked so like a monkey, as he came shuffling along, his hands close to the ground, his head without a neck turned up towards his brother, and his shoulders humped so grotesquely. Above them in the distance soared the wood, with the sun bright on its many crests of green and bronze and orange; and above those, gigantic cloud-castles with their turrets gleaming. He himself seemed to have shrunken to the tininess of the insect he had watched at the foot of the larch: yet the concept of unattainableness in his mind was as vast and as high as the heavens themselves.
‘Here are the cone-men now,’ shouted Betty.
She rose, and the rest rose with her. Whatever it was that had disturbed their leader in his doze, here had arrived the men for whom they had been waiting. The deer drive could now proceed.
Betty gave a shiver as she looked at the hunchback.
‘God forgie me,’ she muttered, ‘but he fair gies me the creeps.’
‘I saw a picture once,’ whispered Harry. ‘A jungle picture. There was a man in it had a pet ape; he led it about on a silver chain. It looked just like him.’
‘Shut your mouths,’ snarled Graham. ‘The man’s working for his keep.’
Charlie studied the cone-gatherers without bias; he gave them a nod each.
They reported to Duror.
‘You’re late,’ he said.
‘We’ve got no watch,’ replied Neil truculently. ‘I had to go by the sun. Before I agree to go on this deer drive, Mr Duror, there’s something you’ll have to promise.’
Duror said nothing.
‘If there’s a clear stretch,’ went on Neil fiercely, ‘my brother’s got to have it.’ He turned and glared at his fellow-drivers.
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ said Graham, ‘the stretch is his; but, mind you, there’s none easy.’
Betty and Harry nodded. Charlie, who did not understand, also nodded; his was a confirming salutation.
‘And I would like,’ said Neil, ‘to be put next to Calum.’
‘Fair enough,’ grunted Graham, and indicated he was speaking for them all.
Could that dream have had any meaning? thought Duror. Was Peggy dead? Suddenly it was as if the burden of misery was lifted from him. He began to laugh.
‘Are you all ready?’ he cried, and set off towards the dead ash where the drive would begin.
They hurried after him.
‘What the hell’s he got to be jolly about?’ grumbled Graham. ‘And what’s the big hurry for?’
Betty and Harry found the quick pace a relief; it exercised their legs after the seat on the stone edge of the pond, and it enabled them to keep ahead of the cone-gatherers. Harry played ‘Tipperary’ on his mouth organ. To Graham, Neil confided his worries about Calum.
The old sour-faced handyman glanced at the hunchback, who was smiling like a child.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he said, ‘his lack of height will be to his advantage.’
There was no sarcasm in the observation; only much fellow-feeling and considerable envy.
‘About the size of a stoat,’ he said, ‘is the right size for a deer drive through a wood.’
They had now entered the wood, in whose immense unassailable silence Harry’s music sounded forlorn and Graham’s grumbles seemed as inconsequential as the squeaks of mice. Nevertheless he persevered with them.
Duror’s light-footed speed particularly annoyed him.
‘Has he no mind I could give him twenty years?’ he demanded of the tall trunks he passed. ‘It’s a wonder he doesn’t expect us to catch the damned things by the tails and drag them up to the guns.’
He turned to Neil and Calum.
‘Let me give you some advice,’ he said grimly. ‘When we get near the guns, drop down on your face as if you were praying for your life; and that’s exactly what you will be doing, for there’s a man yonder with a gun that’s as blind as a mole and shouldn’t be trusted with a peashooter. He damned near shot the arse off me. I didn’t even see the deer. I was too busy finding breath and picking bramble hooks out of my hands. The guns started banging as if I’d wandered into the middle of the war itself. I did what any sensible man would have done. I ran for the nearest tree, but this blind character took me for a deer and banged away at me. Damned if he missed too. Now you would think that that man would never be trusted with a gun again as long as he, or anybody else, lived. You’d think, in a sensible world, nobody would allow him another chance for murder. Well, I’m warning you that he’s yonder, at the far end, waiting, with a gun and an itching finger, to let fly at any living thing, deer or man, that bursts out of the wood. There are men getting medals for far less than what we’re going to face.’
The dead ash clawed at the sky with branches white as bones. Under it Duror, pale but smiling, issued orders. Somehow he seemed to find it difficult to express himself clearly, or even to pronounce individual words distinctly; he was like a man talking in his sleep. His subordinates were surprised. These vague yet eager mumbles contrasted with his usual cool instructions: just as his bleary anxious unshavenness was so unlike his customary smooth inscrutability. They thought he must be ill; but none cared to ask.
The part of the wood to be beaten for deer sloped all the way from the roadside to the loch. Near the water the ground was gashed by deep gullies, overgrown with wild birches, bracken, and brambles. Harry, imagining himself a commando in the jungle, volunteered for this most perilous section. It was Graham who accepted his offer and packed him off, with the advice that if he met any wolves or tigers there, which was likely, it was better to run up a tree than to jump into the loch. Indeed, it turned out to be Graham who, like a lieutenant, disposed the forces; Duror stood by, smiling, and making an occasional not very relevant remark. Betty at her own request was placed next to Harry; she sauntered off to her station, chewing nonchalantly and letting loose some practice yodels. Her neighbour was Charlie, who was informed by a series of roars fit – so Graham said, in a hoarse parenthesis – to make any sensitive deer drop dead. As they watched him plod away with the deliberation of a man sent to stand upon a particular square foot of the wood, Graham prophesied that even if the drive was successful and deer were quickly shot the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening would have to be spent in searching for Charlie, who would be found miles away in another wood altogether.
Next in line came Calum, Neil, and Graham himself nearest the road. This last was the best stretch really, but only for a man with the devil and the enterprise to break the holy rules of deer-driving. If the going through the wood became too arduous, there was the fence to climb over and the road to sneak along. It was not likely, thought Graham, that the poor wee crooked saftie would be able to take advantage of those circumstances.
Duror took up position with his dogs between Calum and Charlie. At half-past two he fired his gun into the air to start the drive. Out of the trees at the bang shot several wood pigeons, slapping against the branches.
Deer drives can be revealers of personality. A conscript such as Erchie Graham let out at deliberately prolonged intervals snarls and barks and hoots, whose purpose was as much to express his disapproval as to terrify any deer in front of him. Charlie was conscientious, unresentful, and unimaginative. He tried out two or three calls, and decided that the utilitarian ‘hoi’ was best. He repeated it often. ‘Hoi, hoi, hoi,’ he would cry, and then would be silent for the same length of time. That was how he began, but later, when exhaustion and confusion had bewildered him, he often forgot to cry, and had to issue as many as ten ‘hois’ in a row to make up for his dereliction.
Betty had a generous repertoire. She put both hands to her mouth and yelled Glasgow street cries, such as: ‘Ripe juicy tomatoes; toys for rags; coal, briquettes.’ Then she sang, with an exaggeration of her native gallousness, several sentimental ballads of the day. Once when a sharp stick grazed her knee she flyted like a cheated delf wife; her own performance amused her so much she broke into laughter, which she raised gradually in pitch till it was like what she thought a hyena’s would be or a crazy person’s. That joke over, she sang or rather screamed to the silent senatorial trees some childhood doggerel:
‘Auntie Leezie’s currant bun!
We sat on the stairs
And we had such fun
Wi’ Auntie Leezie’s currant bun.’
Below her, plunging into his gullies and panting up them, Harry was the intrepid commando, dashing single-handed to the rescue: his cries were threats and challenges to the enemy, and encouragement to his captured comrades.
Neil dourly kept his mouth shut: the noise he made crashing through thickets was enough. Calum, however, was enticed by the beauty of the wood and the mystery of the game; he uttered long melodious calls and little chuckles.
It was Calum who first saw the deer.
The drive was nearly over. Only a hundred or so yards away were the waiting guns. Frightened by the noises approaching them from the rear, and apprehensive of the human silence ahead, the five roe deer were halted, their heads high in nervous alertness. When Calum saw them, his cry was of delight and friendship, and then of terrified warning as the dogs too, and Duror, caught sight of them and rushed in pursuit. Silently, with marvellous grace and agility over such rough ground, the deer flew for the doom ahead. Their white behinds were like moving glints of sunlight; without them their tawny hides might not have been seen in the autumnal wood.
Calum no longer was one of the beaters; he too was a deer hunted by remorseless men. Moaning and gasping, he fled after them, with no hope of saving them from slaughter but with the impulse to share it with them. He could not, however, be so swift or sure of foot. He fell and rose again; he avoided one tree only to collide with another close to it; and all the time he felt, as the deer must have, the indifference of all nature; of the trees, of tall withered stalks of willow herb, of the patches of blue sky, of bushes, of piles of cut scrubwood, of birds lurking in branches, and of the sunlight: presences which might have been expected to help or at least sympathise.
The dogs barked fiercely. Duror fired his gun in warning to those waiting in the ride. Neil, seeing his brother rush into the danger, roared to him to come back. All the beaters, except Charlie far in the rear, joined in the commotion; the wood resounded with their exultant shouts. Realising this must be the finish or kill, Graham, recuperating on the road, hopped back over the fence into the wood and bellowed loudest of all.
As Duror bawled to his dogs to stop lest they interfere with the shooting, and as the deer hesitated before making the dash across the ride, Calum was quite close to them as, silent, desperate, and heroic, they sprang forward to die or escape. When the guns banged he did not, as Neil had vehemently warned him to do, fall flat on the ground and put his fingers in his ears. Instead, with wails of lament, he dashed on at demented speed and shot out onto the broad green ride to hear a deer screaming and see it, wounded in the breast and forelegs, scrabbling about on its hindquarters. Captain Forgan was feverishly reloading his gun to fire again. Calum saw no one else, not even the lady or Mr Tulloch, who was standing by himself about twenty yards away.
Screaming in sympathy, heedless of the danger of being shot, Calum flung himself upon the deer, clasped it round the neck, and tried to comfort it. Terrified more than ever, it dragged him about with it in its mortal agony. Its blood came off onto his face and hands.
While Captain Forgan, young Roderick, and Lady Runcie-Campbell stood petrified by this sight, Duror followed by his dogs came leaping out of the wood. He seemed to be laughing in some kind of berserk joy. There was a knife in his hand. His mistress shouted to him: what it was she did not know herself, and he never heard. Rushing upon the stricken deer and the frantic hunchback, he threw the latter off with furious force, and then, seizing the former’s head with one hand cut its throat savagely with the other. Blood spouted. Lady Runcie-Campbell closed her eyes. Captain Forgan shook his head slightly in some kind of denial. Roderick screamed at Duror. Tulloch had gone running over to Calum.
The deer was dead, but Duror did not rise triumphant; he crouched beside it, on his knees, as if he was mourning over it. His hands were red with blood; in one of them he still held the knife.
There were more gunshots and shouts further down the ride.
It was Tulloch who hurried to Duror to verify or disprove the suspicion that had paralysed the others.
He disproved it. Duror was neither dead nor hurt.
Duror muttered something, too much of a mumble to be understood. His eyes were shut. Tulloch bent down to sniff; but he was wrong, there was no smell of whisky, only of the deer’s sweat and blood. All the same, he thought, Duror had the appearance of a drunk man, unshaven, slack-mouthed, mumbling, rather glaikit.
Lady Runcie-Campbell came forward, with involuntary grimaces of distaste. She avoided looking at the hunchback, seated now against the bole of a tree, sobbing like a child, his face smeared with blood.
‘Has he hurt himself?’ she asked of Tulloch.
‘I don’t think so, my lady. He seems to have collapsed.’
Graham came panting down the ride.
His mistress turned round and saw him.
‘Oh, Graham,’ she said, ‘please be so good as to drag this beast away.’
Graham glanced at deer and keeper. Which beast, your ladyship? he wanted to ask. Instead, he caught the deer by a hind leg and pulled it along the grass, leaving a trail of blood.
She turned back to Duror, now leaning against Tulloch.
‘Have we nothing to wipe his face with?’ she murmured peevishly.
Her brother was first to offer his handkerchief. With it Tulloch dabbed off the blood.
Duror opened his eyes.
‘Peggy?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened to Peggy?’
They all exchanged puzzled glances.
‘There’s nothing happened to your wife, Duror,’ said Lady Runcie-Campbell. ‘You seem to have fainted.’
Slowly he understood. His face worked painfully. She thought he looked at least twenty years older than he was. He saw the deer with its throat gashed; he made no sign of recognition, until he caught sight of his hands. From them he looked to where the hunchback was being attended to by his brother.
Duror seemed possessed by a fury to rise up and attack the hunchback. Tulloch and the Captain had to restrain him. They thought he was blaming the hunchback for having turned the drive into this horrid fiasco.
Lady Runcie-Campbell glanced towards the little cone-gatherer with aversion.
‘I never thought a deer shoot could be made appear so dreadfully sordid,’ she murmured.
She noticed Tulloch glancing at her with a frown.
The rest of the guns came up the ride, announcing with cheerful regret that they had fired but missed. Old Adamson cried that he thought he had winged one but he couldn’t be sure. Their cheerfulness died when they saw Duror sitting on the ground. They thought there had been an accident.
Lady Runcie-Campbell felt annoyed: the situation was so grotesque that anything, even decent pity or pardonable amazement, would add to the sordidness. She felt that her own hands and face were all blood. Roderick too was in the thick of this defilement.
‘Duror took an ill turn,’ she explained sharply. ‘I think, Duror,’ she said, turning to him, ‘the quicker we get you home the better. You’ll have to stay in bed for a day or two, and of course you must see a doctor.’
Duror got to his feet, pushing off Tulloch’s hand.
‘I’m all right, my lady,’ he said.
Again he threw a glance of hatred at the little cone-gatherer. It seemed to them he was still blaming the hunchback for what had happened. They did not know that there by the dead deer he understood for the first time why he hated the hunchback so profoundly and yet was so fascinated by him. For many years his life had been stunted, misshapen, obscene, and hideous; and this misbegotten creature was its personification. Had the face been savage, brutal, ugly, in keeping with the body, there could have been no identification with his own case: then the creature would have been merely itself, as a toad was or a dragonfly larva, horrible but natural; but the face was mild, peaceful, and beautiful.
He knew too his wife was not dead, killed by thrushes’ beaks or hunting knife. The misery, so miraculously shed that afternoon by the lilypond, sprang on him again, savage and over-powering as a tiger.
‘Never mind, Duror,’ said his mistress. ‘I quite understand how you feel. The drive has been spoiled, and I agree with you as to the culprit.’
Again she noticed Tulloch glancing at her.
‘But that’s a different matter from your health,’ she went on haughtily. ‘You’ll have to look after it, you know.’
‘I’ll live till I’m eighty, my lady,’ he said, in an agony of bitterness.
She was taken aback.
‘Well, I’m sure we all hope so,’ she said at last.
Duror turned to the Captain.
‘I’m sorry your drive was spoiled, sir,’ he said.
Forgan laughed with nervous good nature. ‘Don’t worry about that, Duror,’ he replied. But it was obvious he would worry about it himself.
His sister noticed. ‘I feel pretty displeased about it,’ she said. ‘I must admit that. You, Duror, really ought to look after yourself more carefully. As for’ – she again glanced towards the cone-gatherers – ‘certain others, I think the sooner we see the last of them the better. Times are grim enough, heaven knows, without putting up with what’s avoidable.’
On Tulloch’s long thin bony face appeared a dour huff. She would not argue with him, she decided; if he made himself troublesome, she would go over his head to the District Officer, a man of education, breeding, and discernment.
Duror had turned aside to get on with his job. He ordered Graham to tie the deer by its legs to a long pole brought for the purpose, and carry it down the road to the house.
Graham was incensed. He had wished the beast no harm. He had not even seen it killed. He wouldn’t get as much as an ounce of it to eat, and wouldn’t eat it anyway if he did get it. Yet here he was being burdened with it all the way to the house, a distance of more than a mile.
‘A pole’s got two ends,’ he observed. ‘Am I to take them both?’
Duror looked round. He saw Betty and Harry.
‘The boy and the girl can take turn about with the other end,’ he said.
‘Who,’ asked Graham, ‘is going to take turn about with my end? Me and Erchie Graham, is that it?’
Duror looked scornfully from him to the deer.
‘It’s a small beast,’ he said. ‘I could carry it under my oxter.’
Do it then, said Graham’s face; his voice, more discreet, muttered: ‘Are you forgetting that I’m above the age when most men are either buried or pensioned off? Anyway,’ he added, looking up and down the ride, ‘where’s Charlie?’
Charlie hadn’t yet come out of the wood.
Adamson his master had gone up the ride with Lady Runcie-Campbell and her party.
‘Maybe we ought to go and look for him?’ suggested Graham.
‘Do that if you like,’ said Duror, ‘so long as you carry the deer back afterwards.’
Then the gamekeeper turned and went up the ride.
Graham put his thumb to his nose and twiddled his fingers after him.
Meanwhile Tulloch had been talking to his cone-gatherers.
‘When they asked you to take part in the drive, Neil,’ he asked, ‘did you explain about Calum?’
‘I did, Mr Tulloch.’
‘And yet they still persisted that he should go?’
‘Aye.’
‘Was it the keeper came to you?’
Neil nodded.
‘He seems to have a spite against you. Is there any reason for it?’ He saw from Neil’s face there was some such reason. ‘You’d better tell me, Neil, and be quick about it. I want to speak to the lady about this business. She blames Calum for spoiling the deer hunt.’
‘I ken that, and it’s not fair.’
‘No, it isn’t fair, Neil, and I’ll tell her so. But first tell me why the keeper’s got this grudge against you.’
Bitterly Neil divulged about the rabbits released from the snares.
‘How long had they been in the snares?’ asked Tulloch quickly.
‘A whole night and a day. Maybe longer. It was cruelty.’
‘Well,’ said Tulloch slowly, ‘I suppose the man’s short-handed these days. In peacetime he’ll have somebody to help him. But it’s still against humanity to leave creatures to starve or choke themselves to death. You’re sure that’s all he’s got against you?’
‘I’d swear it on my mother’s grave.’
Tulloch’s voice softened. ‘All right, Neil,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t worry. Whatever the upshot of this, I’ll see you two don’t suffer.’
‘There are men above you, Mr Tulloch. She might appeal to them. She might get you into trouble if you cross her. We wouldn’t want that. You’ve been good to us, and forby you’ve got a wife and children to think of.’
Tulloch smiled bleakly towards that wife and children. These were hostages which had already thwarted him in his desire to champion his underlings against his superiors. Though he loved them he loved justice too.
‘It’ll turn out all right,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. You see, Neil, I think she’s genuine. She’ll not penalise anybody unfairly.’
Neil shook his head; he did not have so much trust in her. She was wealthy and powerful, they were poor and weak: why should she trouble to be fair to them?
‘Just you wait here a few minutes,’ said Tulloch. ‘I’ll come back and let you know how I get on.’ He turned to Calum. ‘Are you feeling all right now, Calum?’
‘Yes,’ whispered the hunchback.
Tulloch laid his hand on the deformed back.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Calum,’ he said. ‘I saw it all with my own eyes. You weren’t to blame.’
‘He was,’ muttered Neil. ‘Why didn’t he do what I told him? Why didn’t he just drop on his face and stay there?’
Again Tulloch gazed away with that peculiar bleak smile.
‘It’s not for us, Neil,’ he said, ‘to say that it’s a mistake to break your heart over an injured and dying creature, even if that creature’s only a deer. I’ll have to hurry though, or I’ll miss her. I’ll not be long.’
He turned and ran up the ride, while behind him Neil continued to nag at Calum, and Graham, Betty, and Harry called in the wood for Charlie. Tied to the pole, the deer lay bleeding on the grass.
When Tulloch arrived at the big shooting-brake, Lady Runcie-Campbell was about to climb into the driver’s seat. Her brother and Roderick were already in the car. Duror stood by the gate, ready to shut it when the car had passed through; his dogs sat beside him.
Adamson and Baird had gone off in the former’s rusty rattling old car.
Tulloch suspected that the lady too would have been away had she not felt that courage and decency demanded she wait and tell him what she had already told the others.
Her first words proved him right. She spoke in a high-pitched patrician tone, and her fingers drummed imperiously against the door of the car.
‘Mr Tulloch,’ she said, ‘I’ve decided that I want you to remove those two men from the wood. I have no objection to the cone-gathering as such, but please arrange to have two others sent in their place. It will not do any good whatever to argue or plead with me. I have seen all I want of them. It is perhaps a small thing that deer-shooting should have been turned into a shocking demeaning spectacle, permanently it may be; but small thing or not, I object to being subjected to such a humiliation on my own land. They must go, as soon as it can be arranged.’
It was not Tulloch who protested. Her son Roderick cried from the car: ‘But that’s not fair, mother. You said yourself he didn’t want to take part in the deer drive.’
‘When I wish to have your advice, Roderick,’ she said coldly, ‘I shall ask for it.’
His pale toothy rather spoiled face was as stubborn as her beautiful one; and there were other resemblances.
‘But it isn’t fair,’ he insisted. ‘He didn’t try it; he couldn’t help it. If he’d been left to climb the trees, there would have been no trouble.’
‘Will you hold your tongue?’ she cried.
‘You told me yourself,’ he muttered intensely, ‘never to be quiet if I saw injustice being done.’
She started, and was painfully embarrassed by having that grandiloquent precept, that maternal counsel of perfection, repeated to her there, by him, in the open, in the presence of strangers, of inferiors.
Tulloch intervened. He spoke with quiet sincerity. He knew that right was on his side, and against her such an ally must prevail, provided her pride as the grand lady, the representative of aristocracy, was not insulted.
‘I have questioned them, my lady,’ he said, ‘and I saw what happened; and I find no fault in them.’
She gasped, and looked sharply at him, wondering whether his words were a deliberate quotation aimed against her faith, or whether their resemblance to Pilate’s was fortuitous. Her father had been fond of quoting those words.
‘If I am to take them away from the wood,’ added Tulloch, ‘what am I to tell them is the reason? They are simple men, easily discouraged. If they have done wrong, they will accept their punishment; but if they have done no wrong, and are punished, it will take away all their confidence.’
‘Is it not enough that I wish them to go?’ she asked haughtily.
Tulloch did not answer.
She turned towards Duror. ‘What do you think, Duror?’ she asked. ‘Since Black’s away the wood is your province. Surely you agree with me that their presence in it is now, to say the least, distasteful?’
Duror felt tired, weak, hungry, and sick; yet he would not lean against the gate. He stood erect, giving the impression of aloofly but impartially considering the question. The truth was his thoughts were fragmentary and elusive. Yes, he wanted the cone-gatherers out of the wood. Had he not vowed to have them driven out? But the hunchback in some dreadful way had become associated with him, in fact had become necessary to him. If the crooked little imbecile was sent back now to the forest at Ardmore, he would live happily there whilst here in the wood Duror’s own torment continued. His going therefore must be a destruction, an agony, a crucifixion. A way to achieve that would be to spread the lie about his indecencies in the wood. But was this a suitable time to let it out, in the presence of the boy, and the brother, and Tulloch, who would deny it and might even be able to disprove it?
‘Don’t be afraid to speak,’ said his mistress, ‘even if you do not agree with me. Perhaps I am in a minority of one here. Mr Tulloch thinks I’m being unjust; Roderick has expressed his opinion most plainly; you hesitate to answer; and Captain Forgan remains neutral.’ Though she smiled it was evident she was agitated. ‘What do you think, Eric?’ she asked her brother. ‘It was your deer shoot he spoiled, your memories he polluted. I shall leave the decision to you.’
‘No,’ he said quietly, shaking his head. ‘The decision cannot be mine. If it’s any help, though, I may say that I bear the poor fellow no ill will; and my memories are not polluted.’
She threw up her hand in surrender.
‘Very well then,’ she cried. ‘I am outnumbered. Let them stay. But please, for God’s sake,’ she added with trembling voice as she climbed into the car, ‘warn them to keep out of my way; and as for the silver firs near the house, those are forfeit.’ She tried to make a joke of this retaliation, and laughed; but they all saw she was deeply troubled.
Tulloch’s salute to her, and his gratitude, were genuine. She was wealthy and influential enough to dispense with conscience, or at least to bribe it successfully; but she was too honest in her endeavour to be a Christian. She knew how hard it was for the rich and powerful to enter the kingdom of heaven.
‘I’ll close the gate after you, my lady,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Mr Tulloch. You’d better get in then, Duror.’
The gamekeeper hesitated. ‘What about the dogs, my lady?’ he muttered. ‘Maybe I should walk with them.’
‘You will do no such thing. I owe you an apology, Duror. I’m afraid I’ve been forgetting you’re not well.’
‘I’m well enough, my lady.’
‘You don’t look it. Get in. We’ve had dogs in the car before.’
The Captain repeated the invitation and reached out to help Duror and the dogs in.
As the car passed Tulloch, he was struck most of all by the boy’s face; for all its gawkiness it was so like his mother’s; and on it was a look of dedication, to what the forester could only guess.