From London Far (19 page)

‘An admirable manual,’ said Meredith. ‘Particularly in points where Tischendorf–’

‘–and seeing that he appeared to be well-versed in such grave matters. Well, Mr Wooley drove slow, and whiles I listened and whiles we argued, and then the mist grew thicker and Mr Wooley drove slower still. And when he came to the Epistle of Barnabas he clean stopped, and there we sat on the brow of a wee brae, with the haar eddying about us and this o’ the
Codex Sinaiticus
to chew on. And then the haar lifted for the time and there were the twa great furniture vans straight below us, and Properjohn’s muck lorry that I knew fine forbye. And there, lying by the roadside as I was telling ye, was enough books to grace the sanctum of Mr Wooley’s bishop himself. There was something unco about it a’ – there in that dreich and lonesome place – and for a while we sat gowking at it, as still as if we were a couple of bogies set up to scare the crows in a turnip field. And what was going forward was straight to see. A couple o’ billies were getting the books out o’ one o’ the furniture vans, and a third was stowing them in the muck lorry.’

‘Good heavens!’ Meredith’s indignation was not to be curbed. ‘Some priceless library, no doubt, that those scoundrels were making away with.’

‘Is that so, now?’ Captain Maxwell puffed at his pipe, and his tone was massively ironical. ‘It’s one way of making a bit o’ sense o’ the whole unco affair, I’ll admit. But just it wasn’t so. For I had more than a keek at those books a bit later. And they were mostly sets o’ what the learned call journals. Some I mind the name of. There was the
British Medical Journal
, and the
Journal of Ophthalmology
, and the
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis
. A’ fu’ o’ deep matters, no doubt but I dinna ken that priceless would be the word for it.’

‘Very curious,’ said Meredith, somewhat blankly. ‘Very curious, indeed.’

‘Aye, mebbie. But more curious was to come. For as we sat there with none heeding us there was sudden-like a bit o’ stir and confloption by the second furniture van, and a door at the back was thrown open, and out came a ragged, dirty creature and began running up the brae. He was a full-fleshed gawpus and short o’ breath – but up he came louping as if the deil were at his doup in the likeness o’ a slavering hound. Begging your pardon, Miss Macleod.’

‘Higbed!’ said Jean.

‘So it was to appear. Well, up he came, and after him loupit twa bodies it might have been out o’ a bank or an insurance office–’

‘That’s right! The clerkly men.’

‘–and after that again twa billies frae the lorry – right villainous creatures that I didn’t like the ill sight of. Well, no sooner does the daftie see Mr Wooley’s car than he scraiches out like an auld wife after a runaway calf. “Taxi!” he scraiches. “Taxi!” And the next moment he’s up wi’ the car and jumping in at the back. “Caledonian Hotel”, he says – just as if he was at the Haymarket in Edinburgh and anxious to get himself to the other end o’ Shandwick Place. It was fair uncanny. And afore either o’ us could think o’ fit reply up runs his pursuers. “He’s a madman,” one calls out. “And dangerous,” says the other. At that the lorry billies joined in, sweering terrible, right regardless o’ Mr Wooley’s cloth, and making to haul out the poor daftie from where he was crouching on the travelling altar like the timorous beastie in Rabbie Burns’ poem. And at that the gawpus lets out a yammering as if he would outroar Satan’s pandemonium. “I’m Higbed!” he scraiches, “I’m Higbed!” I don’t think it occurred to either of us that he was trying to tell us a name; it was like as if I scraiched at you, Miss Halliwell, that I was stammagasted or some such, and you had no comprehension o’ what I was saying about myself. “I’m Higbed,” he roars again – and at that one o’ the lorry billies puts in an arm and makes a grab at him. But man! you should have heard Mr Wooley at that moment.’

Captain Maxwell leant back and gazed at the vaulted roof of Miss Macleod’s solar, as if the better to visualize a grateful scene. ‘You should have heard him for sure. “Stop!” he cries in a terrible voice. “Mad or sane, the man’s in sanctuary.” “He’s mad,” says one o’ the bodies frae the vans. “And dangerous. And it’s our lawful duty to secure him.” “He’s in sanctuary,” says the reverend. “Sanctuary?” says the body, “and what the hell might you–” And the reverend – he was syne a gran’ rugby player and stands six foot three – the reverend reaches out and takes him by the shoulder and tumbles him into the ditch. “You profane rascals,” he says, “have you never seen an altar before? Captain Maxwell, I’m thinking we’ll drive on.” And drive on we did – with the daftie sitting there on the altar and fair convinced that the empty moor about him was the populous and ungodly streets o’ Edinburgh.’

Miss Dorcas, who had been brewing coffee in a percolator so resplendent as to be evidently, like the tiled bathroom in the Outer Enceinte, a gift of the Flying Foxes, looked up as if a sudden thought had struck her. ‘Tibbie,’ she said, ‘does not all this sound much like the work of Great-aunt Patuffa?’

‘Nonsense, Dorcas.’ Miss Isabella was at her sanest and most contemporary. ‘And we are to understand’ – she turned to Captain Maxwell – ‘that Mr Properjohn himself had hand in this?’

‘That he had, Miss Macleod – as will presently appear. But here was Mr Wooley and myself driving down the brae, and these folk hurrying after, and the daftie havering in the back. And by the vans the reverend stops and has a good look at them – and such a look at the coarse creatures coming up ahint us that they fair stopped in their tracks. And at that we drove on again with the haar closing in around us. “My friend,” says Mr Wooley presently – and courteous as could be – “who were those fellows we were talking to?” Well, he couldn’t have got a dafter reply to his speiring. For “Nobody at all,” says the creature Higbed. “I beg you not to suppose that I believe myself subject to a persecution. I am not being pursued or molested by anybody.” “I’m glad to hear it,” says Mr Wooley, calm as ever; “and I suppose there wouldn’t have been a couple of big red furniture vans?” “Certainly not,” says Higbed – and at that I took a squinny at him and saw that he was in a fair sweat o’ anxiety to convince it might be us or it might be himsel’ o’ the truth o’ so daft a speak. “It’s a simple but ramifying and systematized delusion,” he says. “There’s sustained auditory and visual hallucination,” he says, “but no reference or other symptom of mania.” And at that he keeks out o’ the wee back window, plainly fearing that old Hornie himself was on the tracks o’ him. “I must frankly tell you”, he says, “that I see myself as in the middle of wide moorlands. But there’s nothing very surprising in that. For, as you no doubt know, my particular study has been in the psychopathology of defective vision with particular reference to the hysterias. And a man is very apt to be stricken down by what he specializes in, particularly if he has overworked. This is no more than overwork” – says the daftie, fairly sweating the breeks off his posteriors by this time – “overwork and sexual repressions. The furniture vans are very sexual – very sexual indeed. Would you be so kind as to drive me to Devonshire Place?” “Devonshire Place?” says the reverend mildly. “I mean Moray Place,” says Higbed – minding, it seems, that he was in Edinburgh and no’ his natural London. “Moray Place, if you please, where I have a colleague very well able to treat a mild nervous breakdown like this.”

‘Well, it was an unco thing – and fair pathetic to see a body at once so daft and so gleg. For dafter he plainly was than ony nervous breakdown the faculty could show to their bit classes in Morningside – and yet right gleg and cunning to put the best face on his affliction. Sanctuary or no sanctuary, I doubted it hadn’t been right to take the creature away from his keepers, unco-like though they had been, and clean unhyne that they should be transporting him about as if he were a sofa or a chest o’ drawers. As it was, we had taken a fine bit o’ responsibility by the lug, driving down through the haar from Minervie to the head o’ the loch, wi’ this unsonsie blatherskite crouching like an egg-bound hen on poor Mr Wooley’s altar. But the responsibility didn’t bide wi’ us long. For no sooner had we got to the old ford below Duthie, where the reverend had to come nigh to a stop, than the daftie jumps out o’ the car. “Is this Moray Place?” he asks, and the next minute he fumbles in his pooch, tosses half a crown at Mr Wooley like as if he was throwing a bit dog-biscuit at a tink cur, and disappears into the mist as quick as the bad fairy vanishing down a trap at the panto. “I’m Higbed!” I could hear him scraich – to whomsoever was taking a dander round Moray Place, no doubt. And that, although the two o’ us got out and went searching and shouting about, was the last that either of us saw of him. But I’m thinking from what happened afterwards that the poor creature would have done better to stick to Mr Wooley’s sanctuary a while longer.’

Captain Maxwell paused in his narrative. As he did so the
Oronsay
hooted from the anchorage below. The sound ebbed away amid a screaming of startled gulls. Captain Maxwell looked at the decanter, and found it empty. He looked at his watch. ‘They’re telling me to mind the tide,’ he said. ‘And I must be awa’, for certain.’

‘But I hope’, said Meredith, ‘that you have time to tell us what more you know about Higbed, and how you discovered that Properjohn comes into it?’

‘I have that – but no’ in what ye might ca’ picturesque detail. Though it would make up fine into a fearsome story.’ Captain Maxwell shook his head. ‘For the poor creature fell into the hands o’ a pack o’ gomeril Highlanders. Begging your pardon, Miss Macleod. And I don’t say that Shamus himself is no’ a decent lad enough. But I’ve cruised and bargained among Highlanders half my days, and I know them for kittle cattle and unchancy chiels.’

‘Compared with the phlegmatic Saxon,’ said Miss Dorcas, ‘the temperamental Celt–’

‘Aye – but I’ll be finishing what ye set me to, and we’ll have a bit talk about the Celts the next second Thursday. Well, it’s little enough I know, being no more than putting twa and twa together frae the talk o’ a couple o’ shepherds on the
Oronsay
this morning. It seems that a’ yesterday this Properjohn was driving about the countryside in a great car, much as if petrol was something you could draw from the udders o’ every cow in the country. He was looking for a sick friend, he said, one that had fairly lost his memory and was nigh demented, and who had been coming to Carron Lodge over yonder for a rest cure. Which was a good enough tale until the body Properjohn fetched up with Mr Wooley. He had a bit more explaining to do then – not that explaining appeared to be any trouble to him. His poor friend’s car, he said, had broken down in some right lonely place, and them that had the charge o’ him were sore put out until along came a flitting.’

‘A what?’ said Jean.

‘A removal, Miss Halliwell – meaning those twa great furniture vans. Well, they got a lift frae them, and a message through to Properjohn himself. And Properjohn, because his own car was away, could do no better than commandeer one o’ his own muck lorries to meet the vans at as near as they would come.’

Meredith laughed softly. ‘It’s what might be called a colourable tale.’

‘But this Properjohn had more than that. The bit papers frae doctors and the like about his poor afflicted friend were all there to show the reverend.’

‘You may be sure they were. But what about all those books? Did he come forward with any explanation of them?’

‘That he did, Mr Meredith. A’ this o’ the breakdown and having to ride in a van like a kitchen dresser or a pianola upset the nerves o’ his poor friend and syne made him right violent, so that no sooner had the van stopped than he fell to hurling out o’ it whatever he could lay his hand to among a’ the stuff that was being flitted. Which was mostly books – the same Mr Wooley and I saw lying about the heather. So Properjohn’s story seemed reasonable enough, and by yesterday forenoon he had near a’ the countryside right sorry for his poor daftie and climbing halfway up Ben Carron to find him and get him safely away to his rest cure with this right benevolent friend. And found he was. But no’ before that pairt o’ the tale that’s a fair scunner to think on. I mean the daftie’s scourging.’

‘His
what
?’ asked Meredith.

‘Aye, I tell ye it was a most scunnerfu’ thing – and a’ a matter o’ the false religion and Dark Ages-like notions that ye find in any Highlander ye take a scratch at. Ye mind I said there was to be a dance in the ha’ o’ the Continuing on Larra? But that’s no’ everything that decent kirk ha’s is let out for in these awfu’ days. Up at Dundargie they were having a Revival – a series o’ meetings conducted by some coarse creature from America and never a decent minister within a mile. What do you think o’ that, now, for a Moderator and a General Assembly to chew on? A pack o’ gorkie Highland chiels working themselves up to the Almighty alone kens what daftness, and this American scraiching Hell and a’ its devils at them. And at that in comes the daftie this same poor gouk Higbed. Ye might think he’d be just one more misguided enthusiast slavering over his sins like them on the penitent form. But his luck didn’t take him that way.

‘For it seems that he came into this ha’ at Dundargie – which is a back-o’-beyond place enough – still believing the same unco thing: namely that he was a sane man walking the streets o’ Edinburgh, but just a wee bit troublit with what ye might call hallucinations – like seeing nothing but peat and heather and here and there a bothie or shealin where rightly there ought to be the Scott Monument or Princes Street Gardens. And when he got into the shelter o’ this kirk ha’ the fancy took him that he had found the consulting-room o’ his friend, the Moray Place medico. And he took all the silly folk gathered there for purposes o’ false religious enthusiasm to be a pack o’ patients far further sunk in daftness than himself. I’m thinking he was no’ so far wrong. But naturally it was an attitude sore ill-likit.’

Meredith was looking thoughtfully at the ashes in his pipe. ‘And the poor man’s agonies,’ he interrupted, ‘–for really they must have been that – sprang originally from a sound enough instinct to preserve his own sanity. He was dogged by great furniture vans. Such a thing – he argued – does not in fact happen. Therefore the furniture vans were the product of a disordered vision, and sanity would consist in keeping a firm grasp on this. Presently he was kidnapped and cast into one of these vans which he had assured himself were illusory. Unless he were to abandon his first premise – to wit, the non-existence of the things – the kidnapping must be illusory too and the result of his remaining senses taking the same sort of holiday as his vision. After that there was only one logical attitude to adopt. He was a sane man woefully and obstinately betrayed by disordered sensory perceptions. To admit that it
was
a moor and that these
were
furniture vans would be to take the final plunge into lunacy.’ Meredith shook his head. ‘When one realizes this rational motive in what have been plainly regarded as his worst ravings, the unhappy fellow’s plight becomes positively harrowing. But I interrupt your narrative.’