“And the other?”
“Oh, just a lassie.”
“What was she like?”
Dougal seemed to be searching for adequate words. “She is… ” he began. Then a popular song gave him inspiration. “She’s pure as the lully in the dell!”
In no way discomposed by Heritage’s fierce interrogatory air, he continued: “She’s either foreign or English, for she couldn’t understand what I said, and I could make nothing o’ her clippit tongue. But I could see she had been greetin’. She looked feared, yet kind o’ determined. I speired if I could do anything for her, and when she got my meaning she was terrible anxious to ken if I had seen a man—a big man, she said, wi’ a yellow beard. She didn’t seem to ken his name, or else she wouldna’ tell me. The auld wife was mortal feared, and was aye speakin’ in a foreign langwidge. I seen at once that what frightened them was Lean and his friends, and I was just starting to speir about them when there came a sound like a man walkin’ along the passage. She was for hidin’ me in behind a sofy, but I wasn’t going to be trapped like that, so I got out by the other door and down the kitchen stairs and into the coal-hole. Gosh, it was a near thing!”
The boy was on his feet. “I must be off to the camp to give out the orders for the morn. I’m going back to that Hoose, for it’s a fight atween the Gorbals Die-Hards and the scoondrels that are frightenin’ thae women. The question is, Are ye comin’ with me? Mind, ye’ve sworn. But if ye’re no, I’m going mysel’, though I’ll no’ deny I’d be glad o’ company. You anyway—” he added, nodding at Heritage. “Maybe auld McCunn wouldn’t get through the coal-hole.”
“You’re an impident laddie,’ said the outraged Dickson. “It’s no’ likely we’re coming with you. Breaking into other folks’ houses! It’s a job for the police!”
“Please yersel’,” said the Chieftain, and looked at Heritage.
“I’m on,” said that gentleman.
“Well, just you set out the morn as if ye were for a walk up the Garple glen. I’ll be on the road and I’ll have orders for ye.”
Without more ado Dougal left by way of the back kitchen. There was a brief denunciation from Mrs. Morran, then the outer door banged and he was gone.
The Poet sat still with his head in his hands, while Dickson, acutely uneasy, prowled about the floor. He had forgotten even to light his pipe. “You’ll not be thinking of heeding that ragamuffin boy,” he ventured.
“I’m certainly going to get into the House tomorrow,” Heritage answered, “and if he can show me a way so much the better. He’s a spirited youth. Do you breed many like him in Glasgow?”
“Plenty,” said Dickson sourly. “See here, Mr. Heritage. You can’t expect me to be going about burgling houses on the word of a blagyird laddie. I’m a 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 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