Kitabı oku: «Hempfield», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXII
FERGUS AND NORT

Fergus MacGregor was approaching the supreme moment of his life. As I have said before, it was a long time before I began to understand that roseate Scotchman. His husk was so thick and prickly that one approached him at his peril. I knew that he was as hard as nails and as real as boiled cabbage; I knew, also, that just within his rough exterior there were unusual qualities of strength and warmth, and I had grown strangely to like him and trust him; but there were reaches and depths in his character that I was long in discovering.

I remember his telling me with some pride that he was a skeptic in religion, "an infidel if ye like," and that the "Address to the Unco Guid," about expressed his views. He could also repeat "Holy Willie's Prayer" to perfection. But I soon found that he was an infidel in much the same terms that his forefathers had been Covenanters – a terribly orthodox infidel, if that can be imagined. Skepticism meant no mushy liberalism with him; it only meant that he had adopted a new creed, and that he would fight as hard for his skepticism as other men fight for their more positive beliefs. But if he had changed his religious views, the moral standards which lay beneath them like the primordial rocks had not been in the least shaken.

There remained something deep within him of the old spirit of clan loyalty. Anthy's father had almost brought him up; he had been in the office of the Star for more years than he cared to remember; he had watched Anthy through her unconscious and dreamy girlhood; had seen her blossom into youth and come to the full glory of womanhood. I never found out how old he was, for he was one of those hard-knit, red-favoured men who live sometimes from the age of twenty-five to fifty with scarcely more evidences of change than a granite boulder. He thought himself ugly, and he was, indeed, rough, uncouth, and uneducated in the schools, though in many ways as thoroughly educated a man, if education means the ability to command instantly and for any purpose the full powers of one's mind and body, as one often finds.

I do not know to this day whether Fergus loved Anthy in the sense in which a man loves a woman. Certainly it was no selfish love, but rather a great passionate fidelity to one who, he thought, was infinitely above him, the sort of devotion which asks only to serve, and expects no reward. There are few such people in this world, and they usually get what they expect.

I saw afterward, as I did not see so clearly at the time, how faithfully, jealously, completely, Fergus had served and watched over Anthy, particularly since the death of her father. He lived in the poor back room of the printing-office, worked hard at absurdly low wages, had few pleasures in life beyond his pipe and his beloved books – and watched over Anthy. He had seen, far more clearly than Anthy and Nort themselves had seen it, the growing attachment between them, had seen it with what misery of soul I can only guess.

He had begun by liking Nort in his rough way, partly because Nort had come friendless to our office and needed a friend, and partly because he could not resist Nort; and his knowledge of the true drift of affairs had not led him to hate Nort. But he saw with the clear eyes of perfect devotion just what Nort was – undisciplined, erratic, uncontrolled. He had himself felt Nort's irresistible charm and he dreaded the effect of it upon Anthy. Nort was likely to tire of Hempfield at any time, he might even tire of Anthy, having won her, and break her heart. Moreover, in Fergus's eyes, not Sir Galahad himself would have been good enough for Anthy.

It was not because Nort appeared penniless, not because he was a tramp printer, that Fergus began to set so indomitably against him, but because he was not a man. Fergus had that terrible sense of justice, duty, loyalty, that would have caused him to sacrifice his greatest friend to serve Anthy as quickly and completely as he would have sacrificed himself.

Quite unknown to me, Fergus had been watching the situation for some time, and it was his anxiety which had caused his changeableness of mood. He was not a quick thinker, and, like many men of strong character, moved to his resolutions with geologic slowness – and geologic irresistibility. For a long time he debated in his own mind what he should do. He finally concluded to take the whole matter into his own hands. He would deal directly with Nort.

It was worse than he had expected. He had seen the episode in the starlight at the gate – it burned itself into his very soul – and he had seen Anthy running toward the house with her face hidden in her hands. To a certain extent he misconstrued this incident. He could not see what happened afterward: he could not see Anthy running up the dark stairway in her home, could not see her turn on the full light in her room and look into the mirror at her own glowing face, her own brilliant eyes. She had never before even seen herself! And Nort's words, the very tone and thrill of them – "You are the most beautiful woman in the world" – singing themselves wildly within her, were changing the world for her. Through all the future years, she did not know it then, she was to see herself as some other person, the person who had sprung into glorious being when Nort had called her Anthy. She looked only once at her face – she could not bear more of it – and then threw herself on her bed, burying her burning cheeks in her pillow, and lay thus for a long, long time.

All of this Fergus could not know about, and it is possible that if he had known about it he would still have misinterpreted it. Like many an excellent older person he suspected that youth was not sufficient to its own problems.

Nort never knew, while he stood there at the gate looking up at the dark house into which Anthy had disappeared, how near he was to feeling Fergus's wiry hands upon his throat. But Fergus held himself in, his grim mind made up, considering how best he should do what he had to do.

I suppose life is tragic, or comic, or merely humdrum, as you happen to look at it. If you are old and sour, you will see little in the rages of youth, they will appear to you excessively absurd and enormously distant. You will probably not recall that you yourself, in your time, were a moderately great fool, or, if you were not a fool, you have missed – What have you not missed?

Nort could never remember exactly what he did next. He recalls rushing through shadowy roads, with the cool, sharp air of the night biting his hot face. He remembers standing somewhere on a hilltop and looking up at the wonderful blue bowl of the sky all lit with stars. He could remember talking aloud, but not what it was that he said, only that it came out of the vast tumult within him. From time to time he would see with incomparable vividness Anthy's face looking up at him, he would hear, actually hear, his own thick voice speaking; every minute detail of the moment, every sight, sound, odour, would pass before him in flashes of consciousness. He would live over the entire evening, as it seemed to him, in a moment of time. He did not know that the world could be so beautiful; he did not imagine that he himself was like that!

At its height emotion seems endless and indestructible, but it is, in its very nature, brief and elusive – else men might die of it. Nort's mood began finally to quiet down, the impressions and memories of the night rushed less wildly through his mind. And suddenly – he said it came to him with a shock – he thought of the future. He stopped still in the road. He had been so intoxicated with the experiences he had just passed through that it had actually never occurred to him what they might mean; and according to Nort's temperament the new vision instantly swallowed up the old, and, as it was cooler and clearer, seemed even more wonderful. He remembered saying very deliberately and aloud:

"I must work for Anthy all my life."

It came to him as a very wonderful thing that he could do this! Why, he could do anything for her: he could slave and dig and die! He could be great for her – and let no one else know how great he was! He could win a battle, he could command men, he could write the greatest book in the world, and no one should know it but Anthy! Oh, youth, youth!

His mind again became inordinately active: the whole wonderful future opened before him. He began to plan a thousand things that he might do. He would imagine himself walking home with Anthy, just as he had done that night, thrilling with the thought of her at his side, and he would be telling her his plans, and always she would be looking up into his face just as she had been doing at that last moment!

All these things seem long in the telling – and they lasted for ages in Nort's soul – but as a matter of fact they were brief enough in time. Fergus, stumbling along behind in the cold road, his hard-set spirit suffering dumbly, was only waiting the choice of a moment to lay his hand upon Nort's shoulder. And thus the two of them came, by no forethought, to the little hill just north of my farm, and I entered for a moment, all unconsciously, upon the comedy, or the tragedy, of that historic night.

I can't tell exactly what time it was, but I had been asleep for some time when I heard knocking on the outer door. As I started up in bed I heard some one calling my name, "David! David!" I ran downstairs quickly, wondering why Harriet was not before me, for she is a light sleeper. As I opened the door I saw a man on the porch.

"David!"

"Nort! What are you doing here at this time of the night?"

"Let me come in!" he said in a tense voice. "I've got something I must tell you."

I got him into my study and shut the door so that Harriet would not be disturbed. Then I struck a light and looked at Nort. His face was uncommonly pale; but his eyes, usually blue and smiling, were black with excitement. I could not fathom it at all. I had seen him before in a mood of exaltation, but nothing like this.

"David," said he, "I'm going to write a novel – a great novel."

He paused and looked at me with tremendous seriousness. The whole thing struck me all at once, partly in revulsion from the alarm I had felt when he first came in, as being the most absurd and humorous proceeding I had ever known. I laughed outright.

"Is this what you came to tell me at three o'clock in the morning?"

But Nort's mood was beyond ridicule. He did not seem to notice my laughter at all, but plunged at once into an account, a more or less jumbled account I am forced to admit, of all the things he would put into his novel. As nearly as I could make out he proposed to leave nothing out, nothing whatever that was in any way related to American life – politics, religion, business, love, art, city life, country life – everything. He didn't seem to be quite sure yet whether he could get it all into one large volume, like one of Scott's novels, or whether he would make a trilogy of volumes, like Frank Norris, or a whole comédie humaine after the manner of Balzac. I gathered that it was not only to be the great American novel, but the greatest that would ever be written.

It was so preposterous, so extraordinary! But it was Nort. I can see him now, vividly, pacing up and down the room, head thrown back, hair flying wild, telling me of his visions. I slipped into my overcoat, for it was cold, and still he talked on, and at moments I actually thought the rascal had lost control of himself. This impression was increased by a startling incident which was wholly unexplainable to me at the time. Just as Nort was walking down the study toward the east window he stopped suddenly, looked around at me, and said in a low voice:

"David, I saw a face looking in at that window."

I followed his glance quickly, but could see nothing.

"You're dreaming, Nort," said I.

"No, I saw it."

"See here, Nort," I said, "this is not reasonable. I want you to stop talking and go to bed. Can't you see how foolish it is?"

For the first time Nort laughed his old laugh.

"I suppose, David, it is – but it seems to me I never lived before to-night."

He seemed on the point of telling me something more. I wish he had, though it probably would not have changed the course of events which followed.

"Well," he said, "I'll go home and be decent. I never thought until this moment what you must think of me for routing you out in the middle of the night! And Harriet, too! What will she say?"

He looked at me ruefully, whimsically. It was just as he had said: he had never thought of it.

"David, I'm awfully sorry and ashamed of myself. I'm a selfish devil."

What a boy he was: and how could any one hold a grudge against him! He was now all contrition, feared he'd wake up Harriet, and promised to creep out without making a sound. I asked him to stay with us, but he insisted that he couldn't, that he must get home. So he opened the door of the study, and tiptoed with exaggerated caution down the hall. At the door he paused and said in a whisper:

"David, there was some one at that window."

"Nonsense."

"Well, good-night."

"Good-night, Nort, and God bless you."

He closed the door with infinite caution, and I thought I had seen the last of him, but a moment later he stuck his head in again.

"David," he said in a stage whisper, "the great trouble is, I can't think of any heroine, any really great heroine, for my novel that isn't exactly like Anthy – "

"Nort, get out!" I laughed, not catching the significance of his remark until after he had gone.

"Well, good-night, anyhow, David," he said, "or good-morning. You're a downright good fellow, David."

And good morning it was: for when Nort went down the steps the dawn was already breaking. As I went upstairs I heard Harriet, in a frightened whisper:

"What in the world is the matter, David?"

But I refused to explain, at least until morning.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE BATTLE

It was gray dawn, with a reddening sky in the east, when Nort walked up the town road. The fire within him had somewhat died down, and he began to feel tired and, yes, hungry. At the brook at the foot of the hill he stopped and threw himself down on the stones to drink, and as he lifted his head he looked at himself curiously in the pool. The robins were beginning to sing, and all the world was very still and beautiful.

When he got up Fergus touched him on his shoulder. He was startled, and glanced around suddenly, and the two men stood for a moment looking into each other's eyes. And Nort knew as well as though some one had told him, that it had come to an unescapable issue between him and this grim Scotchman.

"Well, Fergus, where did you drop from?"

He tried to carry it off jauntily: he had always played with Fergus.

"I've been waitin' fer ye," said Fergus. "I want ye to come in the wood wi' me. I have a bone to pick wi' ye."

Fergus seemed perfectly cool; whatever agitation he felt showed itself only in the increasing Scotchiness of his speech.

Nort objected faintly, but was borne along by a will stronger than his own. They stepped into the woods and walked silently side by side until they came to an opening near the edge of a field. Here there were beech trees with spaces around them, and the ground was softly clad in new green bracken and carpeted with leaves. Nort felt a kind of cold horror which he could not understand.

"Fergus," he said, again trying to speak lightly, "it was you I saw looking in at David's window."

"It was," said Fergus. "I couldna let ye escape me."

They had now paused, and in spite of himself Nort was facing Fergus.

"We must ha' it oot between us, Nort," said Fergus.

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"Yes, ye do."

Nort looked up at him suddenly.

"Anthy?"

"You've said it; ye ain't fit fer her, an' ye know it."

Nort turned deadly pale.

"Fergus," he said, "do you – have you – "

"I promised Anthy's father I'd look after her, an' I wull."

"But, Fergus, what have you got against me? I thought we were friends."

"What's friendship to do wi' it? Ye ain't good enough for Anthy: an' I wull na' ha' ye breakin' her heart. Who are ye that ye should be lookin' upon a girl like that?"

Fergus's voice was shaking with emotion.

"Well, I know I'm not good enough, Fergus, you're right about that. No one is, I think. But I – I love her, Fergus."

"Ye love her: ye think ye do: next week ye'll think ye don't."

At this a flame of swift anger swept over Nort.

"If I love her and she loves me, who else has got anything to say about it I'd like to know?"

"Wull, I have," said Fergus grimly.

Nort laughed, a nervous, fevered laugh, and threw out his arms in a gesture of impatience.

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Go away," said Fergus, "go away and let her alone. Go back whur ye come from, an' break no hearts."

Although the words were gruff and short, there was a world of pleading in them, too. Fergus had no desire to hurt Nort, but he wanted to get him away forever from Hempfield. It was only Anthy that he had in mind. He must save Anthy. Nort felt this note of appeal, and answered in kind:

"I can't do it, Fergus, and you have no right to ask me. If Anthy tells me to go, I will go. It is between us. Can't you see it?"

"Wull," said Fergus, hopelessly, "you an' me must ha' it oot."

With this, Fergus turned about and began to take off his coat. Nort remembered long afterward the look of Fergus deliberately taking off his coat – his angular, bony form, his wiry, freckled neck, his rough, red hair, his loose sleeves held up by gayly embroidered armlets, the trousers bagging in extremity at his knees. Even in that moment he felt a curious deep sense of pity, pity mingled with understanding, sweep over him. He had come some distance in the few short hours since Anthy's face had looked up into his.

Fergus laid his coat and hat at the trunk of a beech tree and began slowly to roll up his sleeves.

"Will ye fight wi' yer coat on or off?"

Nort suddenly laughed aloud. It was unbelievable, ridiculous! Why, it was uncivilized! It simply wasn't done in the world he had known.

Nort had never in his life been held down to an irrevocable law or principle, never been confronted by an unescapable fact of life. Some men go through their whole lives that way. He had never met anything from which there was not some easy, safe, pleasant, polite way out – his wit, his family connections, his money. But now he was looking into the implacable, steel-blue eyes of Fergus MacGregor.

"But, Fergus," he said, "I don't want to fight. I like you."

"There's them that has to fight," responded Fergus.

"I never fought anybody in my life," said Nort, as though partly to himself.

"That may be the trouble wi' ye."

Fergus continued, like some implacable fate, getting ready. He was now hitching up his belt.

Every artistic nature sooner or later meets some such irretrievable human experience. It asks only to see life, to look on, to enjoy. But one day this artistic nature makes the astonishing discovery that nature plays no favourites, that life is, after all, horribly concrete, democratic, little given to polite discrimination, and it gets itself suddenly taken seriously, literally, and dragged by the heels into the grime and common coarseness of things.

Nort was still inclined to argue, for it did not seem real to him.

"It won't prove anything, Fergus, fighting never does."

"'Fraid, are ye?"

"Yes," said Nort, "horribly."

And yet at the very moment that Nort was saying that he was horribly afraid, and he spoke the literal truth, a very strange procession of thoughts was passing swiftly through the back of his mind. He was somehow standing aside and seeing himself as he was at that moment, seeing, indeed, every detail of the scene before him like a picture, every tree and leaf, the carpet of leaves and bracken, seeing Fergus moving about. Yes, and he was laughing, away back there, at the picture he saw, and wondering at it, and thrilling over it, at the very moment that he was so horribly afraid. He was even speculating, back there, a little cynically, whether he, Nort, would finally stay to fight or run away. He actually did not know!

Fergus's dull, direct, geologic mind could not possibly have imagined what was passing nimbly behind those frightened, boyish blue eyes. Fergus was moving straight ahead in the path he had planned, and, on the whole, placidly. What a blessing in this world is a reasonable amount of dulness!

Having prepared himself, Fergus now stepped forward. Nort stood perfectly still, his arms hanging slack at his sides, his face as pale as marble, his eyes widening as Fergus approached.

"I can't see any reason for fighting," he was saying. "Why should you fight me?"

"Wull, we needna fight – if ye'll go away."

For one immense moment Nort saw himself running away, and with an incredible inner sense of relief and comfort. He wanted to run, intended to run, but somehow he could not. He was afraid to fight, but somehow he was still more afraid to run. And then, with a blinding flash he thought of Anthy. What would she say if she saw him running?

At that moment Fergus struck him lightly on the cheek.

It was like an electric shock to Nort. He stiffened in every muscle, red flashes passed before his eyes, his throat twisted hard and dry, and the tears came up to his eyes. In another moment he was grappling with Fergus, striking wildly, blindly. And he was, curiously, no longer confused. An incredible clearness of purpose swept over him. This purpose was to kill Fergus. There was to be no longer any foolery about it; he was going to kill him.

If Fergus had known what Nort was thinking at that moment he would have been horrified and shocked beyond measure. Fergus had not the most distant intent of injuring Nort seriously. He did not even hate him, but, I fully believe, really loved him, and was going through this disagreeable business quite coldly. As he received Nort's impetuous assault, he smiled with a sort of high exultation and found words to remark:

"The mair haste, Nort, the waur speed."

With that he hit out squarely with his wiry, muscular arm – just once – and Nort went down in the bracken and lay quite still.

Fergus stood looking down at him: the silent face upturned, very white, very boyish, very beautiful, the soft hair tumbling about his temples, the lax arms spread out among the leaves. And all around the still woods, and quiet fields, and the robins singing, and the sun coming up over the hill.

As Fergus looked down his breast began to heave and the tears came into his eyes.

"The bonnie, bonnie lad," he said; "he wadna run awa'."

Presently Nort stirred uneasily.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Come, now," said Fergus tenderly, "we'll get down ta the brook."

With one arm around him, Fergus helped him through the woods, and knelt beside him while he dashed the cold water over his face and head.

"I hit ye hard," said Fergus, "and it's likely yer eye'll be blackened."

Nort sat down with his back to a tree trunk. He was sick and dizzy. It seemed to him that the thing he wanted most in all the world was to be left alone.

"I'm going away, Fergus. Leave me here. I shall not go back to Hempfield."

Fergus offered no excuses, suggested no change in plan. It was working out exactly as he intended: he was sorry for Nort, but this was his duty. He made Nort as comfortable as he could, and then set off toward town. As he proceeded, he stepped faster and faster. He began to feel a curious exaltation of spirit. It was the greatest moment of his whole life. If you had seen him at that moment, with his head lifted high, you would scarcely have known him. As the town came into view, with the eastern sun upon it, Fergus burst out in a voice as wild and harsh as a bagpipe:

 
"Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha will fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!"
 

For that which followed I make no excuse, nor think I need to, but I must tell it, for it is a part of the history of Hempfield and of the life of Fergus MacGregor. Ours is a temperance town, and Fergus MacGregor a temperate man; but that morning Fergus was seen going over the hill beyond the town, unsteady in the legs, and still singing. He did not appear at the office of the Star all that day.

As for Nort, he lay for a long time there at the foot of the beech tree, miserably sick in body and soul – dozing off from time to time, and trying to think, dumbly, what was left to him in the world. He was as deep in the depths that morning as he had been high in the heavens the evening before.