The Silver Bough (13 page)

T
he sounds increased. He listened for a while, looked at his watch—it was noon, closed his notebook and crawled back along the passage. Two legs stopped him at its end and he shouted. The legs rose up, and he rose up after them. The legs had belonged to Andie, who was defending the passage against the public. The girl in the shorts continued to wind up a camera while at least a dozen pairs of eyes concentrated on Mr Grant.

“What's all this?” he demanded, his eyes flashing. At such moments his pointed beard gave him a distinguished intolerance.

“I was only wanting in to have a look,” said the man nearest to Andie, a mouse-haired fellow in slacks.

“Well, you can't have a look,” Grant told him.

“And that's that?”

“Yes, that's that! The work going on here is private. It is being carried on by—by special permission. It's important that nothing should be disturbed. Absolutely important.” The camera clicked and his eyes flashed to the girl. She smiled to him in a melting sweetness within a small nod and hitched her pants.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Grant, with such control that his face visibly paled, “I appeal to you to go away.”

Even children don't like to be told to go away. Some faces grew stony, others smiled in a peculiar way. They were doing nobody any harm and it was a free country—so far. Someone laughed. They began to move away but not as if they were really doing it or had to. And now obviously some curious things were being said, some esoteric joke touched upon. The laughter caught at good humour. Some sat down at a little distance.

Mrs Cameron had told him that tourists often came to look at Clachar but that as the cairn was out of sight of the road they generally missed it. “There isn't much else for them to do, poor things.” And he had actually taken a note of her next remark: “It's a favourite place for the Sunday School picnic.” At the time that had held for him a subterranean interest. But he had been miraculously free of visitors until yesterday and now these three, whom he might have asked to be discreet, had blabbed the news. There would be a spate from Kinlochoscar henceforth. They had found a fellow who was actually doing something on his own. At last the Highlands had provided a spectacle for their entertainment. They could stand and gape.

Bitter as his thoughts were, he did not lose his cunning. At the right moment he slipped into the cairn again, leaving Mrs Mackenzie and her son as a human screen. This would have to be Andie's last appearance on the site, for his gape value was obviously tremendous. Presently he called to Mrs Mackenzie from the passage. She bent down. “I want your apron,” he said, “but don't let them see you taking it off.” He crawled out into the light, carefully placing the vase once more in front of him. It had been a laborious business and he was sweating.

But when Andie saw the vase he became tremendously excited and vocal.

“Shut him up!” said Grant hoarsely.

“Andie, be quiet!” she ordered with a calm intensity. His flappings and staggerings eased, but the younger visitors drew near again, two of them indeed all but ran up, while the mouse-haired fellow definitely sauntered.

“Gu—gu—gu——” continued Andie, for it is doubtful if any archaeologist had ever had so enthusiastic an assistant.

“Andie!” Her voice had the remarkable effect of turning off a tap that drips a few final mutters. Grant had the apron round the vase.

“I'll give you something to do,” he said to Andie with a social and vindictive smile as he came erect. “Get that slab against the opening.” He deposited all his gear, including the swathed vase, safely out of reach. Mrs Mackenzie interpreted his order with a single discreet gesture and Andie set to work. But though his neck swelled alarmingly, Andie could not upend the slab, not even with his mother's unobtrusive but powerful help. However, they got it so angled and tilted that Grant was satisfied. “Now for the stones,” he said. And it was to be no light affair this time, it was going to be a complete block-up.

“Carry on the work,” he said to Mrs Mackenzie presently, “and stand by until I return.” Then hung about with his gear and carrying the dark-swathed vase like a funeral offering, he set off for his lodging, followed by many eyes and a few feet.

As he rounded the rock where he had found Anna and Sheena asleep, he glanced down towards Clachar House and saw two men who had obviously just left it and were now making for the cairn. There was no mistaking the black head of the enthusiastic amateur nor the movement of his companion of the spectacles. They had been interviewing Martin!

By God, there's treachery for you! he said through his teeth, and his whole body momentarily locked in rigor. Hell's bells, what would Martin think? Mass invasion! The vase slithered as in collapse. His heart swole up and choked him. He went on blindly for a little way then rested. “I'll carry this for you,” said Anna. He looked at her, then slowly looked about him. “Take off the apron,” he said, “and see if it's whole. Very careful.” “It seems all right. Yes, it's quite whole.”

He nodded, “Thank God,” and breathed more lightly. “I wish I had stuck to you entirely.”

She glanced at him, but obviously he was not being personal. She slung the strap of his bag over her shoulder and lifted the clothed vase. “You can trust me to take care of it,” she said.

“I would trust you with anything,” he answered with a slight resurgence of vindictiveness. Then he got up and, walking beside her, told of the invasion.

Mrs Cameron was hopeful as ever. “It'll all pass in a day or two,” she prophesied. “Just something new for them to wonder at.” When she saw the vase on its rounded bottom: “Well, well, to think it was the best they had, the creatures!” Sheena wanted to see and Mrs Cameron lifted her up. “The kettle is boiling, Anna,” she called; “make Mr Grant a cup of tea.”

“I'm just making it,” answered Anna from the kitchen.

“Now come away, Sheena,” said Mrs Cameron.

“Look!” said Mr Grant to Sheena, and, putting a hand into the vase, he brought out three of the white quartz pebbles. Sheena looked steadily. “Now what would they be for?” asked Mrs Cameron. “I wish I knew,” answered Grant. “Are there many of them?” she asked. “Seven,” he answered. “That's a good number,” she said.

Sheena put out her hand and Mr Grant placed a pebble in it. She looked at it and at the other two; then she looked up at her granny and lifted her face. Mrs Cameron stooped to listen. “Ach you!” declared Mrs Cameron. “She says they would be nice for playing five-stones.”

“What's five-stones?”

“Och, just a lassie's game!”

“Indeed,” said Grant. “Have you ever played it yourself?”

“Many's the time that. As sure as the spring came in, we would be at it.”

“That interests me very much. You couldn't let me see how you played it?”

“I could not then!” She gave a small laugh and called Anna.

Anna came in with the tea on a tray, and when the round table in the centre of the room had been pushed to one side, she sat down on the floor with five white pebbles in her right hand. She scattered the pebbles, then, lifting one, threw it in the air, touched the floor, and caught it; threw it again, grabbed the next pebble off the floor and caught the falling one. As the stone came down for the fifth time, it clicked against the four in her hand and there were all five and not one had been missed.

Grant was staring at her. She was slightly flushed, but the whole swaying movements of her body, the swift flash of the blue eyes down and up, the tumble of red hair, the very sitting on the floor, had a feminine enchantment about it, innocent and invigorating as spring's own self.

“Why seven?” he wondered.

“We played with three, or with five, or with seven, but seven was difficult,” said Anna.

“Ah!” He got up out of his chair.

“Come away,” said Mrs Cameron, “for Mr Grant must have his tea.”

“My chance,” said Sheena for the second time.

“No, no,” said her granny.

“Yes,” said Sheena. “My chance.”

“Certainly,” said Grant before the small eyes could fill with tears, and when she missed her catch he said he could not do it better himself so he tried and did worse. She gave up the pebbles absolutely, but with so continuing a concentration upon them that he said, “You wait till you see the present that I'll get you!”

Then she looked at him and something still as her soul hung between one wonder and another.

She kept looking back at him even after Anna began to lead her away. Alone, he stood quite still, for in the little face he had glimpsed, beyond all doubt, the ghostly presence of the owner of Clachar House.

As he drank his tea, he felt quiet and detached. The turmoil had passed from him. What had to be done inside the cairn could safely wait. He could work for a few hours, very early in the morning, any day. For that matter, it could be done during the dead of night. Perhaps he had better go and see Martin, express his regrets at the mass intrusion, and say that he would have the stones put back on the cairn at once, so that the public would think the whole affair was over.

About four o'clock that afternoon, as he drew near Clachar House, he saw the chauffeur come down from the garage carrying a parcel and a newspaper. “Excuse me,” he said, intercepting him, “but I just wanted to thank you for not mentioning our meeting the other night.”

“It's all right,” answered the chauffeur in an embarrassed way.

“You didn't in fact mention it, did you?” There was something a trifle stormy about the fellow's eyebrows that troubled Grant.

“I did meet two friends of mine, just after you left me, and I asked them if they had seen Foolish Andie. They said no. We scouted round a bit. That's all I mentioned it.”

“Oh. I see. Thank you . . . . Would the other two, do you think——?”

“I shouldn't think so, but it didn't seem at the time that it was something to—hide.”

“I understand. Believe me, I am not trying to blame you. Only, I don't want the public crashing in here. I don't want Mr Martin to be troubled.”

The chauffeur said nothing, then glanced quickly over his shoulder at Mrs Sidbury as she drew near. After she had greeted Grant, she called. “I'll take them, Norman.” Norman handed her the parcel and the newspaper and returned to his garage. “Please come and have some tea.” As he hesitated, she added, “I do get tired of having tea alone.”

“Actually,” he said as they went to the house, “I was coming to see your brother. The public have got wind of our doings up there, and quite a few were on the site this forenoon. They are still wandering around.”

“We heard something about that. Does it worry you?”

“I was frightened it would worry you—especially your brother. And I wanted to tell him that I am finishing up—for the time being.”

“You're not going away?”

“No. Not for a little time. Tell me, is your brother annoyed?”

“Not more than usual!” She half swung round with an amused smile, then entered at the front door. “Have a chair. I'll see about tea.”

She was back in a couple of minutes. “What's all this?” She held the newspaper in her hand.

He looked at her face, then took the newspaper. The large headlines stared at him:

CROCK OF GOLD discovered by SCOTTISH ANTIQUARY.

In a mounting tumult he read: “The most remarkable discovery in the whole history of Scottish archaeology has just been made by Mr Simon Grant. The site is a remote cairn in the Highlands and the circumstances attending the find are already as fabulous as the Gaelic legends about the crock of gold which the fairies were alleged to have hidden under the rainbow . . . .” The print began to dance under his eyes as they moved down the column. Sub-title: THE CROCK VANISHES. “Working alone amid these old skeletons in the dead of night, Mr Grant found the pot of gold. Exactly what happened at this extraordinary moment is not clear. But some of the young men of Clachar, returning home at a late hour, were waylaid by Mr Grant and asked if they had seen his assistant, who had just run away with the treasure. Very naturally the archaeologist was at the time labouring under a considerable degree of excitement. The young men had not in fact seen the assistant and on their own joined in the hunt until the deep dusk of the summer night was lightened by the moon, when it was found that the assistant was in his bed. Strange as this story may seem, it now takes on a truly fantastic kinship to a midsummer night's dream, for the assistant was, and is, no other than the village natural who is incapable of expressing himself in articulate speech. Admirable at hurling stones from the cairn or similarly assisting in the work of excavation, he possesses no language other than obscure guttural sounds and is directed in his labours by his widowed mother of whom he is the sole support. His childish passion for bright ornaments that gleam like gold is well known in the district, and the plain assumption is that he has buried the crock of gold in some private cache which one day may, or may not, be found. When interviewed the following day at the cairn, Mr Grant showed a marked reserve and would neither confirm nor deny . . . . “

But Grant could read no further. His hands shook. He said, “My God!” He sat down.

M
rs Sidbury showed remarkable tact and Grant wiped a drip of tea from his breast in a quietened manner. “You can leave Donald to me. You need not worry about him,” she said, thrusting the newspaper behind the cake stand.

“Thank you.” He put his handkerchief back in his pocket with a shaking fist.

“I'll talk to Norman and find out exactly what happened that night. If the urn could be found before there's any more fuss, then it wouldn't really matter so much.”

“Not so much,” he said automatically and got up.

As he went on his way, he experienced a series of involuntary physical spasms. To think that I could have mistaken that black fellow for anything but a journalist! But the thought merely covered a much deeper one: Colonel Mackintosh, Blair . . . ! Archaeological circles everywhere! The British Museum to Egypt! . . . He groaned quietly. The fabulous crock of gold—stolen by the village idiot! . . . Hush! he said to the universe. Be quiet! He shook his stunned head.

As he went in at the door, he called to Mrs Cameron, and when she appeared asked her if anyone had interviewed her.

“There was one dark young gentleman—and very nice he was, I must say—who asked me what I knew about the pot of gold, but I said it had nothing to do with me and he better ask you.”

“You didn't give him any particulars?”

“I felt it was not my place to do it.”

“What questions did he ask you?”

“He asked me about Foolish Andie and about life in the Highlands. He was very pleasant and gave a little present to Sheena—just to bring him luck, he said, for he was trying to do what he could to make the Highlands better known to the world, for that would help the tourist business, he said. He was so nice that he took a cup of tea.”

“Why didn't you tell me this?”

“I didn't think of it. Besides, he said he had been talking to yourself a little while before up at the cairn. So I thought you would know all about him and I was just doing my best. He said you were a very clever man and that warmed me to him.”

When he had told her what had happened, she was very concerned and not a little amazed at the strange ways of the great world. “And he asked me if you were very tired when you came home late that night after Andie had stolen the pot of gold. And I said you were. Shame on him!”

As he went up the road, he realised how attractive the simple detective work must have been for the journalist who would enjoy it all the more because of the way he had been foiled at the cairn. Norman and his friends had talked of the midnight encounter. The story had reached Kinlochoscar the following morning . . . . He became aware that three tourists were watching his approach. They stood by the side of the road and followed him with their eyes as he passed.

He saw heads on the western skyline (no doubt keeping the movements of Andie under observation) as he turned off the road towards Mrs Mackenzie's cottage. Andie was breaking peats at the stack and putting the clods in a wicker basket. He paused in his labours to regard his employer with a face like a mythological joke. Mrs Mackenzie took her visitor into the kitchen.

Yes, the dark young gentleman had called. “He was very nice, and said that you were the one who would never get Andrew into trouble for stealing the pot of gold. And I said it was very hard on us that it should have happened for you had been so kind.”

“You told him all about it?”

“There was little need to tell him, for, as he said, he knew all about it himself. Everyone seems to know about it.” Her tone was mournful. “I told him nothing but what was the truth.”

He sat in silence.

“He asked me, too, about Andrew and—and about the past. He said I had had a hard life of it. I am not complaining, I said, though I should feel it if shame came on me now. He said he was sure that would not happen. I hope he is right, for I have tried to do my best.”

“Don't worry, Mrs Mackenzie,” he said quietly and hopelessly.

“I have tried to bear my burden.”

“You have borne it nobly,” he answered.

The tears started into her eyes, ran down her strong solemn face. “It's them watching the house!” she cried in a breaking voice. But she controlled herself and with shut mouth drew breath noisily in through her nostrils. It was not an easy grief.

He got up and patted her on the shoulder. “When they speak to you don't tell them anything. Tell them to go to me. I'll deal with them.” He smiled wanly. She had brought a lump to his throat.

Before leaving he said lightly that though work would he suspended meantime, they would both remain on the payroll. For the rest she was to answer no questions. All she had to do was to watch Andie and try to find the hidden pot. If she found that she would not only do a service to him but to the whole learned world.

As he went down the road he felt quietly murderous.

It seemed to him that Mrs Mackenzie and Mrs Cameron carried on a way of life that was the essence, the traditional inheritance, of long periods of human living. It was the invisible good, the selfless kindness, that had kept the living going. Without it, all systems of thought, ideologies, intellectualisms in a hurry, scientific constructions, all would have collapsed. They collapse anyhow damn them! he thought in spiring anger and cast his eyes up to the ridge on his left. There were a couple of torsos on the skyline. He swung left off the road, making for the cairn. Women like them are simple; poor ignorant creatures, immediately vulnerable to the attack of the massive intellect. Figures of fun. Destroy millions of them so that the massive intellect may flourish—at some future date. Don't tell me! he said.

One of the torsos came into full figure and tentatively approached the archaeologist. “You haven't found the pot yet, sir?”

“What pot?” asked Grant, tugging one lapel of his jacket with a gesture that increased the eye-flash.

“The pot of treasure you found in the—the chamber over there.”

“The chamber pot?”

The man laughed awkwardly in face of such devastating concentration and Grant stalked on.

That was the proper way to treat these curiosity-hunters, he decided. That was the kind of pot they understood. Enlivened somewhat, he ignored remnants of humanity still moving around, and contemplated the work which his labour staff had accomplished. They had certainly done a good job in the time. It mightn't be a bad idea if they spent a few hours of the very early morning finishing off the complete replacement of all the stones so that the cairn would then be restored to its original condition. Meantime the entrance to the passage was satisfactorily masked. Before a somewhat flamboyant lady, whose long teeth were already showing in propitiation, could get her words out, he turned away.

Five small pebbles met him on the doorstep, telling their dumb tale while waiting for Sheena and tomorrow morning. A little later, he heard some questions that forced him to a forlorn smile, for he had got into the guilty habit of leaving his door ajar the better to hear the bedtime story.

“Perhaps, Granny, they were the five-stones of a princess?”

“Indeed and why mightn't they be? For a princess would have pretty stones if anyone would.”

“Was she a beautiful princess?”

“Of course she was. A very beautiful princess.”

“Are all princesses beautiful?”

“All the good ones are beautiful whatever. For if you are good then you become beautiful.”

“And are all bad princesses ugly?”

“Ugly enough,” answered her granny.

“Do you think Mr Grant would show me them again?”

“Well, now, we mustn't be troubling Mr Grant, for he has many things to think about and many things to do.”

“Would like to see them.”

“Hsh, now! I'll ask him, but not for a day or two.”

Silence. “Granny?”

“Yes?”

“What's the present he's going to give me?”

“I've told you often enough I don't know. Content yourself, and you'll see that the present will come.”

“When will it come?”

“How do I know? We have just got to wait.”

“Maybe it will never come.”

“It will come all right if he said so. Now it is high time you were at your sleep.” She began to hum the Silver Bough as she moved around.

Later, Grant called her into his sitting room. Having seated her, he said in a friendly voice, “I want to tell you my news.” And he told her of his talk with Mrs Mackenzie. “I'm not blaming anyone but myself, but you can see how awkward it is for me that all this should be appearing in the newspapers? It's making a fool of me, because if the pot of gold is never found, what are folk to think, especially my friends?”

“I understand you,” she said with feeling. “Never a word will I say to anyone now.”

“Tell me this. Did Anna see Norman, the chauffeur at Clachar House? Did anyone tell him not to speak?”

“I saw him myself. But it was a little late in the morning. And Jimmy Sangster, who has the old Ford car, he had left for Kinlochoscar. And he was one of the two Norman ran into on that night. So maybe he said something. I don't know, but I could ask him.”

“It doesn't matter now. Anna didn't care about going to see Norman?”

“No.” Mrs Cameron stirred in the silence. “They were friendly at one time, Norman and Anna, and she didn't care about going to see him herself.”

“Ah, I see. I just wondered.”

The room gradually became charged with feeling.

“He lives in the cottage by the stables and eats in the Big House, so it would have meant going there, too,” she said.

“I see.”

“Maybe you will have heard things about Anna, and maybe what you will have heard is true.”

“I haven't heard anything, for I wouldn't listen,” he answered. “I can see that she has a child and that she is not married. But I think so highly of her that I would let no one gossip about her in my presence.”

“There are not so many gentlemen left now,” said Mrs Cameron simply.

But somehow he shied again at the nearness of Anna's story. “I was talking to Mrs Sidbury this afternoon. Where is her husband?”

“They say he's still out East, in India or somewhere. He's a brigadier in the army.”

“The regular army?”

“Yes. A big solid man. He's been here often enough.”

“I should say that's the kind of man she needs.”

“You would think so,” she said. “All the same, she's a nice lady. When her heart is touched, her hand will give you anything. She was a sprite of a little one and would dance like a fairy. But I never see her now.”

“You think she's not happy in her marriage?”

“Who can say? She's that taken up with her brother and the old House.”

“She seems very concerned about her brother.”

“She always was. Though it may seem a strange thing to say, I think he was always nearer to her than any man. That sometimes happens in families. When it's in the blood nothing will get the better of it.”

He sat quite still, wondering just how far her meaning went, for certain relations, even marriage relations between brother and sister in ancient societies, like Egypt, were known to him. “I'm not sure that I understand,” he said at last.

“It's just in the blood,” she said again. “And when a sister is like that, there's nothing she won't do for the brother.”

“And does the brother feel the same?”

“No, that's different, very different,” she said.

He could not follow her, and felt that this old woman had an understanding of a blood relationship working through the sexes that was beyond him; yet he sensed that it belonged to this place and came out of it in a refining that was at once more elusive and more potent than any straightforwardness of a Mediterranean culture, however archaic or introverted. The picture of the sunlit cairn and the two figures in the short cist flashed through his mind, from yesterday unto today, in the one pattern of time, momentarily apprehended. But in the very clarity of this he was somehow lost.

“Anna was only about eighteen when she went to work in the Big House, just before war broke out. Mrs Sidbury had come home from London and there were some guests and she came and begged for Anna's help. Anna had been a year in the hotel at Kinlochoscar and was doing well. Maybe she had had her lads, like any other bonny young girl, and Norman, who was driving one of the hotel cars then, managed to run her home many a time. He was a well-doing lad, and och! everything was fine. Anna didn't want to go to the Big House, but it seemed a poor thing to me if we couldn't help Mrs Sidbury. Anyway, she went. Then the war broke out, and everyone went away, and Anna herself went into the A.T.S., and soon she was in London.”

Mrs Cameron paused in her story telling. Her face, with its finely etched lines, held her eyes as a lamp its light. A quiet light, in which all that had been written in her life was read. The eyes lifted to the window, to the light outside, quiet, too, before the coming of the night.

“In London, she met him again, met Mr Martin. She wrote and told me of it. She was touched that he was so glad to see her and was so kind to her. Because of their uniforms, for he was a captain, it was not much they saw of each other, just once or twice when he was on leave. But after Dunkirk—I don't know.” She paused again. “It's difficult for me to tell you, but after a time she came home, and the child she had here was his child.”

“I saw that,” he said.

Her lips fell apart and she stared at him.

He nodded. “It was last night; when you were taking Sheena away after she had seen the quartz pebbles. She looked at me in so still a way that he came into her face.”

She heaved a big breath and removed her eyes. “I'm glad to hear that,” she said in a curiously final way.

“Why? Surely no one doubted Anna?” He was watching her narrowly.