Independent People (16 page)

“Well,” he said at length, “I can’t afford to hang around like this much longer. It’s getting on.”

She sat with drooping head, still motionless.

Once more he tested the thong of his shoes, swore a little, pushed at the roof and the rafters with his knuckles, as if there might be some danger of the house collapsing, once more quoted a line or two.

“Well,” he said, “this won’t do.”

No answer, no movement.

“Perhaps I’d better leave the bitch with you, then. I don’t suppose there’ll be much to herd in any case.”

Silence.

“So I’ll leave you the bitch, and you won’t even think of going off and making yourself a burden on other people. Don’t forget you’re the wife of a landowner.”

Continued silence.

“God Almighty, why in the name of hell do you have to behave like a lump of dead mutton?” he cried, losing all patience. “Just as if there wasn’t time enough to keep your mouth shut in the grave.”

In an uncertain temper he went down the stairs and called the dog, but she saw immediately that he was going somewhere and
was greatly cheered by the prospect of accompanying him. When he called her inside, however, she began to feel suspicious and did not wish to obey, as nothing appealed to her less than to be shut up inside while her master was on a journey.

“Here, inside with you,” he said. “You women had better stick together.”

But as he advanced she kept on evading him with a variety of cringing antics; she let her tail droop half-way but still wagged it, looked round at him, laid her ears back, yelped. At length she sat down on the frozen grass and whimpered like a baby, then, surrendering entirely, lay on her belly with her muzzle along the ground, blinking her eyes as she watched him approach. When he was almost within reach she rolled over on her back and stretched up her paws, quivering. He took her under his arm, carried her home, and slung her by the skin of the neck up through the hatchway. She lay there on the floor, no longer showing any wilfulness, but quivering still.

“There you are, Rosa,” he said, “there’s your dog. You had better keep her shut up or she’s sure to smell out my tracks. Goodbye, then, darling. And promise me not to disgrace me with the damned parish council by running off to other people.”

He took his package of food and his stick, and he kissed his wife before leaving. “Good-bye,” he said—“my rose.”

When she felt the warmth of his farewell her heart melted so quickly that the tears started from her eyes before she had time to stand up and kiss him. “Good-bye,” she whispered, raising her hand to her eyes and wiping them on her sleeve. Titla still lay by the trapdoor with outstretched paws.

He went down the stairs and they creaked, closed the trapdoor after him, closed the outer door. Half-running he set off over the marshes, white with rime, southward towards the moors.

B
JARTUR
of Summerhouses knew better than most people all those nooks and crannies of the far mountain pastures where sheep are still to be found after the last of the round-ups. It was on the eastern slopes of this extensive moorland plateau that he had spent his childhood, on its western border that he had worked as a shepherd all the years of his youth, and in one of its valleys that he now lived as a freeholder, so he knew it from spring to the
end of winter, in fragrance and the song of birds, in frost and silence, through innumerable journeys in search of the sheep that bound him
so
closely to it. But the high heath had also a value for this man other than the practical and the economic. It was his spiritual mother, his church, his better world, as the ocean must inevitably be to the seafarer. When he walked along over the moors on the clear, frosty days of late autumn, when he ran his eyes over the desert’s pathless range and felt the cold clean breeze of the mountains on his face, then he too would prove the substance of patriotic song. He would feel himself exalted above the trivial, commonplace existence of the settlements and live in that wonderful consciousness of freedom that can be likened to nothing except perhaps the love of native land shown by sheep themselves, for they would die on their own mountains were they not driven back to the farmsteads by dogs. On such autumn journeys, when he walked from watercourse to watercourse, from crest to crest of the undulating tableland, as if his path lay through infinity itself, there was nothing to trouble the proud eye of the poet. Nothing nurtures the poet’s gift so much as solitude on long mountain journeys. He could chew over the same words for hours on end till he had succeeded in beating them into verse. Here there was nothing to distract the mind from poetry. Today when he once more greeted his old friend the moorland breeze, he allowed no sentimental twinges about his parting from Rosa to delay him longer from enjoying the true freedom of the wastes. Nothing is so alluring in the autumn as to make off into the wilderness, away, away, for then the Blue Mountains gleam with a greater fascination than at any other time. The winged summer visitors of the moors have most of them flown, but the grouse has not yet left for the farms and remains to skim the frozen peat in low flight, gurgling much, blinking an inquisitive eye. Most of the ducks have flown down to the seashore, or to the warmer lakes near the coast, for the moorland tarns are frozen over and the rivers edged with ice. Occasional ravens may be seen flapping round, croaking horribly, and this may often be an ominous sign that a sheep, dying or dead, lies somewhere in the neighbourhood. On this occasion there was still very little snow, but where the ground was bare of turf it was covered with little flat cakes of ice. In one place a fox darted behind a hummock, and an hour or two later he crossed tie spoor of a number of reindeer in the snow.

Bjartur that day explored two valleys, in one of which he remembered sheltered slopes with ling on them, and in the other,
evergreen swamps round a spring which kept the same temperature all the year round. But in neither place was there living creature to be seen, except a family of mallards in an open pool in the river flowing through the more southerly of the two valleys, just below the swamps. Evening was now falling and there was scarcely light enough left to search for sheep, so Bjartur headed for a place in the Blue Mountains where he knew of hospitable night quarters, intending also to search the mountains on the morrow, especially those to the south, where there are valleys in which the ground is warm and sheep have been known to live all through the winter without harm. Early in the evening the moon peeped over the horizon and swept first the moorland bluffs, then the valleys, with its blue light, making the dusty ice-flats shine like gold. The silence of the moors was perfect. In this silence, this light, this landscape, the man also was perfect in his harmony with the soul within him.

Late in the evening he reached his lodging, a cave under Strutfell formed of projecting rocks, and sitting down in the entrance, he ate facing the moon. When he had eaten he went into the cave, where a great flat block of stone, lying on some large pebbles, had served from time immemorial as a resting-place for travellers. On this Bjartur lay down to sleep, using his bundle as a pillow. He was practically the only traveller who paid a regular yearly visit to the cave at this season, and as he had acquired the art of sleeping on the block without ill effect in any weather, he was very fond of the place. When he had slept for a good while, he woke up shivering. This shiver was a characteristic of the lodging, but it was unnecessary to lose one’s temper over it if one only knew the trick of getting rid of it. This trick consisted in getting up, gripping the block with both arms, and turning it round till one was warm again. According to ancient custom it had to be turned around eighteen times, thrice a night. It would have been considered a most formidable task in any other lodging, for the block weighed not less than a quarter of a ton, but Bjartur thought nothing more natural than to revolve it fifty-four times a night, for he enjoyed trying his strength on large stones. Each time that he had given the block eighteen turns, he felt warm enough to lie down again and go to sleep with his bundle under his head. But when he woke up the fourth time, he was well rested, and, indeed, dawn was in the sky. He set out at once up the mountain slopes and looked in several gullies. When he had warmed himself with walking, he sat down on a stone and ate some black pudding. After
threading a pass in the mountains, he came about midday into the district of Reykjadalir. In the valleys here there are many places where the soil is warm and steam rises from the sands, but there are no open hot springs here; farther down are great tracts of ground stained red with iron-water, and descending towards them from the mountain slopes, strips of grass and ling where stray sheep are often to be found. On this occasion, however, there was nothing to be seen except a bird that Bjartur did not know; it rose from one of the warm spots and flew off, probably a hot-spring bird.

He decided now to make his way eastwards in order to search some gullies running down into Glacier River, then spend the night in a shepherds’ hut near the river and on the eastern boundary of the moors, a far cry. There was not much frost, but the sky was overcast, and as day wore on, it began to snow quite heavily. His way lay along the western bank of Glacier River, for on the other side began the far pastures of another county, and as this was a major river, flowing deep and swift all the way from its source in Glacier, sheep had seldom been known to cross from one bank to the other. But on many of the curves of the river flats had been formed, with a fair growth of ling on them, and sheep often hid themselves there until well on into the winter. The river thundered past, dark and heavy in the drizzling snow, with a roar that could be heard for miles around. The nights had long been creeping in, but today the period of light was shortened further the thicker the drizzle grew; the snow fell to the earth in heavy flakes and in a short while it lay so deep underfoot that the going rapidly worsened. In the snow the ice-free Glacier River seemed to stream through its wilderness in redoubled coldness.

Bjartur now realized that there would be little point in trying to find any animal in this light, the snow growing heavier and heavier, the face of the desert wearing a sullen look. He was beginning also to feel anxious about his lambs, which were still out in the open at home, and in danger if it came to a blizzard. But in the circumstances the idea of making his way home now right over the plateau was not very tempting, since night was almost upon him, the weather was rapidly deteriorating, and he was not altogether fresh after the day’s tramp; so he decided to make the best of it and hold to his original intention of heading eastward along Glacier River towards the shepherds’ hut, there to spend the night.

But it is one of the peculiarities of life that the most unlikely
accident, rather than the best-laid plan, may on occasion determine the place of a man’s lodging; and thus it fared for Bjartur of Summerhouses now. Just as he was about to cross one of the many gullies that cleave the sides of the valley all the way down to the river, he saw some animals leap lightly down a watercourse not far ahead of him and come to a halt well out on the river bank. He saw immediately that they were reindeer, one bull and three cows. They tripped about on the bank for a little while, the bull next the river and the cows seeking shelter in his lee, all with their antlers in the weather and their hindquarters facing the man, for the wind was blowing from across the river.

Halting in the gulley, Bjartur eyed the animals for some moments. They kept up a continual shifting about, but always so that they were turned away from him. They were fine beasts, probably just in their prime, so it was no wonder that it occurred to Bjartur that he was in luck’s way tonight, for it would be no mean catch if he could trap only one of them even. The bull especially looked as if it would make an excellent carcass, judging by its size, and he had not forgotten that reindeer venison is one of the tastiest dishes that ever graced a nobleman’s table. Bjartur felt that even if he did not find the ewe, the trip would have proved well worth while if he managed now to capture a reindeer. But supposing that he caught the bull, how was he to kill it so that its blood did not run to waste?—for from reindeer blood may be made really first-class sandwich meat. The best plan, if he could only manage it, would be to take it back home alive, and with this intention in his mind he searched his pockets for those two articles which are most indispensable to a man on a journey, a knife and some string, and found both, a nice hank of string and his pocket-knife. He thought: “I'll make a rush at him now and get him down. Then I'll stick the point of my knife through his nose, thread the string through the hole, and make a lead of it. In that way I ought to be able to lead him most of the way over the moors, or at least till I come to some easily remembered spot where I can tether him and keep him till I go down to the farms and fetch men and materials.” Summerhouses was, of course, easily a day’s journey for a man travelling on foot. When Bjartur had completed his plan of attack he stole half-bent down the gully till he was opposite the reindeer, where they stood with their horns in the wind on the strip between the gully and the river. He stole cautiously over the runnels, crept silently up the bank, and, peeping over the edge, saw that he was no more than twelve feet from the buck. His
muscles began to taughten with the thrill of the hunt and he felt a certain amount of palpitation. Inch by inch he pulled himself higher over the brink, until he was standing on the bank; slowly, very slowly he stole up to the bull, half a pace alongside—and the next instant had leaped at him and gripped him by one of the antlers, low down near the head. At the man’s unexpected attack, the animals gave a sudden bound, flung up their heads, and pricked their ears, and the cows were off immediately, running lightly down the river through the drizzling snow. At first the bull had intended making off with Bjartur holding on to its head as if he made no difference at all, but Bjartur hung on and the bull could not get free, and though it tossed its head repeatedly, it was none the freer for it. But Bjartur soon found that his hold on the antler was uncertain, there being something on it like smooth bark that kept on slipping in his grip, and the creature too lively to allow a secure purchase anywhere else. He saw too, when it came to the point, that he would have to abandon his hope of getting under the animal’s neck and gripping it with a wrestling hold, for its horns were of the sharpest and the prospect of having them plunged into his bowels not particularly attractive. For a while they continued their tug of war, the reindeer gradually gaining ground, till it had reached a tolerable speed and had dragged Bjartur quite a distance down the river. Then involuntarily there flashed across Bjartur’s mind the trick he had been taught from childhood to use with wild horses: try to get alongside them, then jump on their backs. It succeeded. Next instant he was sitting astride the reindeer’s back holding on to its antlers—and said later that though this animal species seemed light enough on its feet, a bull reindeer was as rough a ride as he had ever come across, and, indeed, it took him all his time to hang on. But the jaunt was not to be a long one. For when the bull had hopped a few lengths with this undesirable burden on his back without managing to shake it off, he saw quickly that desperate measures would have to be taken and, making a sudden leap at right angles to his previous course, shot straight into Glacier River and was immediately churning the water out of his depth.