John Brunner Huntingtower

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

respectable man--aye been. Besides, I'm here for a holiday, and I've no call
to be mixing myself up in strangers' affairs."
"You haven't. Only you see, I think there's a friend of mine in that place,
and anyhow there are women in trouble. If you like, we'll say goodbye after
breakfast, and you can continue as if you had never turned aside to this
damned peninsula. But I've got to stay."
Dickson groaned. What had become of his dream of idylls, his gentle bookish
romance? Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly of crude melodrama
and possibly of sordid crime. His gorge rose at the picture, but a thought
troubled him. Perhaps all romance in its hour of happening was rough and ugly
like this, and only shone rosy in retrospect. Was he being false to his
deepest faith?
"Let's have Mrs. Morran in," he ventured. "She's a wise old body and I'd like
to hear her opinion of this business. We'll get common sense from her."
"I don't object," said Heritage. "But no amount of common sense will change my
mind."
Their hostess forestalled them by returning at that moment to the kitchen.
"We want your advice, mistress," Dickson told her, and accordingly, like a
barrister with a client, she seated herself carefully in the big easy chair,
found and adjusted her spectacles, and waited with hands folded on her lap to
hear the business. Dickson narrated their pre-supper doings, and gave a sketch
of Dougal's evidence. His exposition was cautious and colourless, and without
conviction. He seemed to expect a robust incredulity in his hearer.
Mrs. Morran listened with the gravity of one in church. When Dickson finished
she seemed to meditate. "There's no blagyird trick that would surprise me in
thae new folk. What's that ye ca'
them- -Lean and Spittal? Eppie Home threepit to me they were furriners, and
these are no furrin names."
"What I want to hear from you, Mrs. Morran,' said Dickson impressively, "is
whether you think there's anything in that boy's story?"
"I think it's maist likely true. He's a terrible impident callant, but he's
no' a leear."
"Then you think that a gang of ruffians have got two lone women shut up in
that house for their own purposes?"
"I wadna wonder."
"But it's ridiculous! This is a Christian and law-abiding country. What would
the police say?"
"They never troubled Dalquharter muckle. There's no' a polisman nearer than
Knockraw--yin
Johnnie Trummle, and he's as useless as a frostit tattie."
"The wiselike thing, as I think," said Dickson, "would be to turn the
Procurator-Fiscal on to the job. It's his business, no' ours."
"Well, I wadna say but ye're richt,' said the lady.
"What would you do if you were us?" Dickson's tone was subtly confidential.
"My friend here wants to get into the House the morn with that red-haired
laddie to satisfy himself about the facts. I say no. Let sleeping dogs lie, I
say, and if you think the beasts are mad, report to the authorities. What
would you do yourself?"
"If I were you," came the emphatic reply, "I would tak' the first train hame
the morn, and when I got hame I wad bide there. Ye're a dacent body, but ye're
no' the kind to be traivellin'
the roads."
"And if you were me?' Heritage asked with his queer crooked smile.
"If I was young and yauld like you I wad gang into the Hoose, and I wadna rest
till I had riddled oot the truith and jyled every scoondrel about the place.
If ye dinna gang, 'faith I'll kilt my coats and gang mysel'. I havena served
the Kennedys for forty year no' to hae the honour
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/John%20Brunner%20-%20Huntingtower.tx
t (21 of 87) [10/18/2004 5:04:23 PM]
Page 29
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/John%20Brunner%20-%20Huntingtower.tx
t o' the Hoose at my hert....Ye've speired my advice, sirs, and ye've gotten
it. Now I maun clear awa' your supper."
Dickson asked for a candle, and, as on the previous night, went abruptly to
bed. The oracle of prudence to which he had appealed had betrayed him and
counselled folly. But was it folly? For him, assuredly, for Dickson McCunn,
late of Mearns Street, Glasgow, wholesale and retail provision merchant, elder
in the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, and fifty-five years of age. Ay, that was the
rub.
He was getting old. The woman had seen it and had advised him to go home. Yet
the plea was curiously irksome, though it gave him the excuse he needed. If
you played at being young, you had to take up the obligations of youth, and he
thought derisively of his boyish exhilaration of the past days. Derisively,
but also sadly. What had become of that innocent joviality he had dreamed of,
that happy morning pilgrimage of Spring enlivened by tags from the poets? His
goddess had played him false. Romance had put upon him too hard a trial.
He lay long awake, torn between common sense and a desire to be loyal to some
vague whimsical standard. Heritage a yard distant appeared also to be
sleepless, for the bed creaked with his turning. Dickson found himself envying
one whose troubles, whatever they might be, were not those of a divided mind.
CHAPTER V
OF THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER
Very early the next morning, while Mrs. Morran was still cooking breakfast,
Dickson and
Heritage might have been observed taking the air in the village street. It was
the Poet who had insisted upon this walk, and he had his own purpose. They
looked at the spires of smoke piercing the windless air, and studied the
daffodils in the cottage gardens. Dickson was glum, but Heritage seemed in
high spirits. He varied his garrulity with spells of cheerful whistling.
They strode along the road by the park wall till they reached the inn. There
Heritage's music waxed peculiarly loud. Presently from the yard, unshaven and
looking as if he had slept in this clothes, came Dobson the innkeeper.
"Good morning," said the poet. "I hope the sickness in your house is on the
mend?"
"Thank ye, it's no worse," was the reply, but in the man's heavy face there
was little civility. His small grey eyes searched their faces.
"We're just waiting for breakfast to get on the road again. I'm jolly glad we
spent the night here. We found quarters after all, you know."
"So I see. Whereabouts, may I ask?"
"Mrs. Morran's. We could always have got in there, but we didn't want to fuss
an old lady, so we thought we'd try the inn first. She's my friend's aunt."
At this amazing falsehood Dickson started, and the man observed his surprise.
The eyes were turned on him like a searchlight. They roused antagonism in his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Archiwum