Witch Wood. Buchan John
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with their eldritch cries. One flapped across the road not a yard from him, and in a second his beast was on its haunches.
He was now beyond the throat of the glen, and the Woodilee burn had left him, going its own way into the deeps of Fennan Moss, where the wood was thin. The road plucked up courage and for a little ran broad and straight through a covert of birches. Then the pines closed down again, this time with more insistence, so that the path was a mere ladder among gnarled roots. Here there were moths about—a queer thing, David thought—white glimmering creatures that brushed his face and made his horse half crazy. He had ridden at a slow jog, but the beast’s neck and flanks were damp with sweat. Presently he had to dismount and lead it, testing every step with his foot, for there seemed to be ugly scaurs breaking away on his left. The owls kept up a continuous calling, and there was another bird with a note like a rusty saw. He tried to whistle, to shout, to laugh, but his voice seemed to come out of folds of cloth. He thought it was his plaid, but the plaid was about his chest and shoulders and far from his mouth. … And then, at one step the Wood ceased and he was among meadows.
He knew the place, for after the darkness of the trees the land, though the moon had not risen, seemed almost light. There in front was the vale down which Aller flowed, and on the right was his own familiar glen of Rood. Now he could laugh at his oppression—now that he was among the pleasant fields where he had played as a boy. … Why had he forgotten about the Black Wood, for it had no part in his memories? True, he had come always to Roodfoot by the other road behind the Hill of Deer, but there were the dark pines not a mile off—he must have adventured many times within their fringes. He thought that it was because a child is shielded by innocence from ugliness. … And yet, even then, he had had many nightmares and fled from many bogles. But not from the Wood. … No doubt it was the growing corruption of a man’s heart.
The mill at Roodfoot stood gaunt and tenantless, passing swiftly into decay. He could see that the mill-wheel had gone, and its supports stood up like broken teeth; the lade was choked with rushes; the line of a hill showed through the broken rigging. He had known of this, but none the less the sight gave him a pang, for David was a jealous conserver of his past. … But as the path turned up the glen beside the brawling Rood he had a sudden uplifting of spirit. This could not change, this secret valley, whose every corner he had quartered, whose every nook was the home of a delightful memory. He felt again the old ardour, when, released from Edinburgh, he had first revisited his haunts, tearful with excited joy. The Wood was on him again, but a different wood, his own wood. The hazels snuggled close to the roadside, and the feathery birches and rowans made a canopy, not a shadow. The oaks were ancient friends, the alders old playmates. His horse had recovered its sanity, and David rode through the dew-drenched night in a happy rapture of remembrance.
He was riding up Rood—that had always been the thing he had hoped to do. He had never been even so far as Calidon before, for a boy’s day’s march is short. But he had promised himself that some day when he was a man he would have a horse and ride to the utmost springs—to Roodhopefoot, to the crinkle in Moss Fell where Rood was born …. ‘Up the water’ had always been like a spell in his ear. He remembered lying in bed at night and hearing a clamour at the mill door: it was men from up the water, drovers from Moffat, herds from the back of beyond, once a party of soldiers from the south. And up the water lay Calidon, that ancient castle. The Hawkshaws were a name in a dozen ballads, and the tales of them in every old wife’s mouth. Once they had captained all the glens of Rood and Aller in raids to the Border, and when Musgrave and Salkeld had led a return foray it was the Hawkshaws that smote them mightily in the passes. He had never seen one of the race; the men were always at the wars or at the King’s court; but they had filled his dreams. One fancy especially was of a little girl—a figure with gold hair like King Malcolm’s daughter in the ‘Red Etin of Ireland’ tale—whom he rescued from some dire peril, winning the thanks of her tall mail-clad kin. In that dream he too had been mail-clad, and he laughed at the remembrance. It was a far cry from that to the sedate minister of Woodilee.
As he turned up the road to the Greenshiel he remembered with compunction his errand. He had been amusing himself with vain memories when he was on the way to comfort a bed of death. Both horse and rider were in a sober mood when they reached the sheiling, the horse from much stumbling in peat-bogs, and the man from reflections on his unworthiness.
Rushlights burned in the single room, and the door and the one window stood open. It was a miserable hut of unmortared stones from the hill, the gaps stuffed with earth and turf, and the roof of heather thatch. One glance showed him that he was too late. A man sat on a stool by the dead peat-fire with his head in his hands. A woman was moving beside the box bed and unfolding a piece of coarse linen. The shepherd of the Greenshiel might be an old exercised Christian, but there were things in that place which had no warrant from the Bible. A platter full of coarse salt lay at the foot of the bed, and at the top crossed twigs of ash.
The woman—she was a neighbouring shepherd’s wife—stilled her keening at the sound of David’s feet.
‘It’s himsel’,’ she cried. ‘Richie, it’s the minister. Wae’s me, sir, but ye’re ower late to speed puir Mirren. An hour syne she gaed to her reward—just slipped awa’ in a fit o’ hoastin’. I’ve strauchten’d the corp and am gettin’ the deid claes ready—Mirren was aye prood o’ hers and keepit them fine and caller wi’ gall and rosmry. Come forrit, sir, and tak’ a look on her that’s gane. There was nae deid-thraws wi’ Mirren, and she’s lyin’ as peacefu’ as a bairn. Her face is sair faun in, but I mind when it was the bonniest face in a’ Roodwater.’
The dead woman lay with cheeks like wax, a coin on each eye so that for the moment her face had the look of a skull. Disease had sculptured it to an extreme fineness, and the nose, the jaw, and the lines of the forehead seemed chiselled out of ivory. David had rarely looked on death, and the sight gave him a sense first of repulsion and then of an intolerable pathos. He scarcely heard the clatter of the shepherd’s wife.
‘She’s been deein’ this mony a day and now she’s gane joyfully to meet her Lord. Eh, but she was blithe to gang in the hinner end. There was a time when she was sweir to leave Richie. “Elspet,” she says to me, “what will that puir man o’ mine dae his lee lane?” and I aye says to her, “Mirren, my wumman, the Lord’s a grand provider, and Richie will haud fast by Him. Are not twa sparrows,” I says—’
David went over to the husband on the creepie by the fireside, and laid his hand on his shoulder. The man sat hunched in a stupor of misery.
‘Richie,’ he said, ‘if I’m too late to pray with Marion, I can pray with you.’
He prayed, as he always prayed, not in a mosaic of Scripture texts, but in simple words; and as he spoke he felt the man’s shoulder under his hand shake as with a sob. He prayed with a sincere emotion, for he had been riding through a living coloured world and now felt like an icy blast the chill and pallor of death. Also he felt the pity of this lifelong companionship broken, and the old man left solitary. When he had finished, Richie lifted his face from his hands, and into his eyes which had been blank as a wall came the wholesome dimness of tears.
‘I’m no repinin’,’ he said. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, and I bless His name. What saith the Apostle—Mirren has gane to be with Christ, whilk is far better. There was mony a time when the meal-ark was toom, and the wind and weet cam in through the baulks, and the peats wadna kindle, and we were baith hungry and cauld. But Mirren’s bye wi’ a’ that, for she’s bielded in the everlasting arms and she’s suppin’ rich at the Lord’s ain table. But eh, sir, I could wish it had been His will to hae ta’en me wi’ her. I’m an auld man, and there’s nae weans, and for the rest o’ my days I’ll be like a beast in an unco loan. God send they binna mony.’
‘The purposes of the Lord are true and altogether righteous. If He spares you, Richie, it’s because He has still work for you to do on this earth.’
‘I kenna what it can be. My fit’s beginnin’ to lag on the hill, and ony way I’m guid for nocht but sheep. Lambin’s and clippin’s and spainin’s is ower puir a wark for the Lord to fash wi’.’
‘Whatever