The Rendezvous and Other Stories Page 4

  It was a bird worthy of a good shot; a fine drake it was, nearly as big as the mallard in the corner. He smoothed its yellow crest: its blue legs and beak were brighter than any he had seen.

  Far away there was the deep boom of a punt-gun. That will get them moving, he said, and the dog moved its tail. A big mixed flight came in: with good fortune he got four barrels into them, killing two mallard and a shoveller. He regretted the shoveller, for by his private rules they were not to be shot. There was something about their coral and prussian blue and white bib and tucker that combined with their disproportionate beaks to make them look too much like agreeable toys. But, firing so quickly, he had not distinguished it.

  For half an hour after that, while the first rays of the true dawn showed, the duck flighted in great numbers over the marshes. He shot a brace of teal right and left, a feat that consoled him for many bad misses, and he killed another widgeon and three mallard. But he was not shooting well: the duck were moving very fast, and his tired eyes were strained by the changing light. After seven successive misses – one bird carried away a deadly wound – he felt a wretched frustration welling up. By now the watery sun was showing a faint rim over the sea. All at once he felt very weary; unshaved, dirty and weary, with his eyes hot.

  A little time passed and the sun came bodily up. The flighting was over, and he bent to his bag. As he stowed each away he smoothed it with care; he put the exquisitely marked teal on the top and strung the bag up. It was barely a quarter full: he had not done at all well. He knew that on such a good day he should have killed many more. He counted the big pile of empty cartridges against his bag, and he thought of the long walk back. He always had a feeling of reaction after he stopped shooting, when the taut excitement died rather ignominiously away, and now there was a strong vexation of spirit upon him as well as that.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said, and slung the bag on his back. He could see far and wide over the marsh now; beyond the sea-wall the masts of the fishing boats showed clearly in the sharp air. It was freezing now for sure. Towards the sea he saw a ragged skein of duck weaving and drifting like a cloud: there was none over the marsh. A curlew cried despairingly over his head; breaking its heart, it was.

  The wind had quite died. Stiffly, with a lumbering gait, he went back towards the sea-wall with his dog padding quietly after him.

  From far away there came a sound over the marsh on the still, frozen air: he looked round and above, but he could see nothing. The sound grew stronger, a rhythmic beating, strangely musical, and he saw three wild swans. The light caught them from below and they flashed white against the cold blue. High up in the air, their great singing wings bore the swans from the north: they flew straight and fast with their long necks stretched before them.

  The rhythm changed a little, sighing and poignant, and a leaping exaltation took the man’s heart as he gazed up at them, up away in the thin air.

  The beat changed more, and now they flew striking all together, so that their wings sung in unison as they went over his head. He stood stock still watching them, and long after they had passed down the sky he stood there, with the noise of their wings about his head.

  Not Liking to Pass the Road Again

  THE ROAD LED UPHILL all the way from the village; a long way, in waves, some waves steeper than others but all uphill even where it looked flat between the crests.

  There was a tall thick wood on the right hand for the first half: for a long time it had been the place of the Scotch brothers. They were maniacs, carpenters by trade, Baptists; and one had done something horrible to his brother.

  I have forgotten now why I thought that only one brother still lived in the wood: perhaps I had been told. I used to throw things into the wood.

  At first they were small things, bits of twig or pebbles from the middle of the road, the loose stuff between the wheel tracks; I threw them furtively, surreptitiously, not looking, just into the nut bushes at the edge. Then I took to larger ones, and on some bold days I would stand in an open wide part of the road flinging heavy stones into the wood: they lashed and tore the leaves far within the wood itself. It was a place where there had been a traction engine and where they had left great piles of things for the road.

  Quite early in the summer (there were a great many leaves, but they were still fresh and the bark was soft and bright) I was there and I had two old chisels without handles; they were brown and their cutting edges were hacked and as blunt as screw drivers, but their squared angles were still sharp. I had gashed a young tree with one, throwing it; it had taken the green bark clean from the white wood.

  I had them purposely this bold day prepared, to throw them in with desperate malice – I was almost afraid of them then. I did not throw them far, but flat and hard and oh God the great bursting crashing in the wood and he came, brutal grunting with speed.

  Before my heart had beat I was running. Running, running, running, and running up that dreadful hill that pulled me back so that I was hardly more than walking and my thin legs going weaker and soft inside.

  I could not run, and here under my feet was the worst hill beginning. At the gap by the three ashes I jigged to the left, off the road to the meadow: downhill, and I sped (the flying strides) downhill to the old bridge and the stream full-tilt and downhill on the grass.

  Into the stream, not over the bridge, into the water where it ran fast over the brown stones: through the tunnel of green up to the falls I knew the dark way. I knew it without thinking, and I did not put a foot on dry ground nor make a noise above the noise of the water until I came to the falls and then I stepped on a dry rock only three times all the way up the wide mouth. It is easier to climb with your hands and feet than to run on a bare road. And I came out into the open for an instant below the culvert on the road, a place where I could look back, back and far down to the smooth green at the foot of the old bridge.

  It was still there, casting to and fro like a hound, but with inconceivable rapidity. Halfway up the meadow sometimes to hit back on the line, so eager, then a silent rush to the water’s edge and a check as if it had run into a stone wall: then over and over again, the eager ceaseless tracing back and fro. Vague (except in movement), uncoloured, low on the ground.

  There was a cart on the road now, well above the ruined cottage, and I went home. I changed my boots without being seen – they had kept the water out for a long time, although I had been up to my knees at once; in the end the water had come in down from my ankles, quite slowly.

  That night and afterwards, when I told the thing over to myself I added a piece to make the passing of the road again more bearable. In the added piece my mother came in and said that we were all to be careful when we went out because there was a mad dog. ‘Hugh was found on the old bridge,’ she said (Hugh was one of the farm boys), ‘at the foot of the old bridge, with his face bitten. They have taken him to hospital, but he will not speak yet.’

  The Slope of the High Mountain

  SNOW HAD FALLEN in the night and it lay on all the ground above five hundred feet, showing brave in the sun and making the sky so blue that it was a living pleasure to look at it.

  To the men walking fast up the Nantmor road the sharp cold was a pleasure too, for their hurry had warmed them to a fine heat. They had already come some miles over the mountains before they had struck the metalled road, along an ancient track that wound among the high bogs, often ambiguous and always hard to be found: they had followed it without losing it, but it had taken time above their allowance. They were hurrying, therefore, with the fear of lateness behind them, and their nailed boots rang quick on the hard road, and they steamed in the frosty air.

  It was to a meet of foxhounds that they were hurrying, a meet right under Snowdon, at ten o’clock. Moel Ddu was on their left, and Moel Hebog after it, and the snow lay well down their sides; the men could not see Snowdon yet, for the hills shut in the top of the valley. The cruel black rocks of the Arddu rose sheer on the right hand, and the Nantmor river ran fierce below them. Far along on the road ahead a man was walking fast: he was a dark figure, dressed in black, incongruous among the rocks, and he was singing passionately. It was a hymn in Welsh and he was a shepherd: presently he vanished at a turning in the road, and although they heard his singing high up among the stunted trees they did not see the man again.

  The road continued to rise and soon there were no more trees on either hand, and the black rocks showed harsher. The top of the valley was desolate with the gigantic spew of a dead slate quarry, high and lonely on the deserted road. Marching lines of square pillars showed where the aqueduct had run: many of them leaned strangely, and some had fallen. Huge, unprofitable slate rocks lined the road, holding back the black hills of jagged spoil.

  The men had spoken little for the last half-hour, but now they said to one another that the road would soon turn to the left, and Gonville began to talk about how birds cannot tell how fast they are going in the air if there is a cloud or no light at all. Brown did not believe what he was told, but he was unable to refute it. Gonville, aware of his disbelief, went on in a dogmatic tone, telling him more about the birds of the air and the way they know nothing except possibly by magnetism. However, Brown did not quarrel with him, and when the road turned to the left all thoughts of wrangling went out of his head.

  Right before them was Snowdon, sharp and brilliant in the sky, with Lliwedd jutting fiercely on the right and deep new snow over all, sparkling nobly in the sun. New clean snow, unspoiled by runnels, and Snowdon’s eastern face looked smooth by reason of the depth of the snow.

  They were looking at Snowdon from a fair height and with a deep valley between: this waste of air below and before them gave the mountain an altitude and a majesty far beyond the amount of its height in feet. The sun was behind them, and it shone on the incisive, spectacular ridge that joins Lliwedd and Snowdon, separating the peaks with a great sweep of hard shadow.

  It was a sight to make even a dull man’s heart leap and exult, like sudden good news or a lost thing found.

  The way was downhill now, down into Nant Gwynant, with the big lakes one on either hand and the river joining them. The hard walking they had done had caught up with the clock, and when they came down into Nant Gwynant, to the Glaslyn and to the gate leading up to the farm of Hafod Llan they were before their time. For all that, anxiety harassed them as they waited by the gate where the milk churn stood, and they discussed the misadventures that might have happened, the possibility of a mistake in the time and of an error in their route – suppose, they said, the Captain has gone up by another way? But when they had been worrying themselves for a quarter of an hour the car and the trailer passed them and swung up the cart track to Hafod Llan. They ran after it and came up as the Master was going into the farmhouse to ask after his fox. There were a few other people, and the farm children stared at them and the hounds.

  Eight couples were there, stretching and walking about: there was a strong smell of hounds everywhere. The outraged farm dogs bawled from a distance, but offered nothing more. The hunt terriers ran busily to and fro; all hard-bitten and many with recent scars and bald patches. The hounds were mixed. There were Welsh hounds, fell-hounds, and crosses, and there was an English bitch with a noble, judicious head who looked strange among the slim, fine-boned creatures around her. Benign hounds they were, but not effusive like some; Ranter, Rambler, Ringwood, Driver and Melody, Drummer, Marquis, and Music, the surest of them all.

  The Master came out of the farmhouse. He was of an ancient family, and his people had hunted this country above three hundred years. He had a falcon’s nose and eye, and his moustache curled with a magnificent arrogance. He wore a very old cloth cap and a torn Burberry which concealed his horn and the whip he carried over the shoulder of his jacket. He spoke to the huntsman in Welsh and they moved off towards the Gallt y Wenallt, the mountain behind the wood.

  When they came to a gate at the bottom of the wood the Master turned off downward and the huntsman, with the field and the hounds, went up through the copse. Hounds were soon out of sight among the trees, and Gonville and Brown pushed themselves to keep up with the long-legged huntsman. Soon they reached the snow where it lay thin and melting in the open spaces between the trees: they climbed quickly past the height where it was melting and came out at the top of the wood. As they cleared the trees a hound spoke below them, and they paused for a moment. Hounds passed up through the wood, working intently, but with very little sound; they were moving quite fast, and when another hound spoke – a deep-mouthed hound it was – they were far along.

  The men had reached a path, and they followed it. It ran up from the wood to the top of a bluff, an almost sheer cliff that rose high above the woods. They could see hounds below them when they reached the top of this bluff and they stopped in a sheltered place – sheltered, because the wind, a small wind that came off the snow, bit very sharp and hard, they being in a sweat with the hurry.

  They had come round the shoulder of the Gallt y Wenallt out of the sun, and here it was much colder. The face of Wenallt, running steeply down to Llyn Gwynant, was on their left: below them, at the bottom of the mountain, was a deep belt of trees; above the trees, a long sloping scree that stretched up to the foot of the cliff. Below the wood was the still lake and its river, and beyond the lake the ranks of bare mountains marching away one behind the other.

  Hounds were working across the scree just below the snow; they were coming slowly up, and dubiously. However, they puzzled it out across the rocks, up through the heather in the face of the cliff, for the scent lay there, and up almost to the men crouched in their bit of lee.

  Now they were hunting more confidently, and it was a rare delight to watch them packed close together with their heads down and almost touching and their backsides wriggling as they carried the line over the hard places, and how they ran streaming out over the easy ones. Down they went again, much faster than they had come up, down and into the wood.

  Then the waiting men heard no more for a long time, nor saw anything. Brown talked to the huntsman, a young, tall Welshman who swore in English; he had most of the terriers with him, and the old white bitch nipped precisely into Brown’s lap. The other terriers crawled in the snow, for the pleasure of scratching their bellies against its crust. The huntsman carried a long pole and he wore old blue breeches: he told Brown that the Master would be below the wood, and that if the fox were a Cwm Dyli fox, as he supposed – but as he was speaking there was a crash of savage music in the wood. They all stood up in silence, and directly hounds were speaking again, singly and in a choir. They were running fast. In a minute or two the huntsman said that they had either got him going or they were very near to him, and in that moment the fox came up out of the wood, up to the clear edge of it. A dark brown fox was he, big and rangy, a long-legged fox. He looked up at the men far above him, and plainly they could see him deliberate as he stood there, looking up and damning their eyes. The fox looked down and trotted away along the top of the wood, inclining rather upward to the mountain – a low-pitched diagonal up the great sloping apron of Wenallt.

  As the fox went away clear of the wood the huntsman sprang down the face of the cliff and holloed him away with great shrieking hooicks: he went down with a wonderful agility, going too fast to fall, and the snow flew up from his feet. The fox did not hurry for all that, but went steadily on: the men could see him between the rocks and low pieces of broken wall, and once or twice he looked up with a fleeting glance. The huntsman was crying to his hounds to lay them on, but they came up rather slowly, and by the time they were running on the line the fox was farther away than a man would have supposed possible.

  He was going toward Cwm Dyli, it appeared, Cwm Dyli, far up at the top of Nant Gwynant, higher up than Llyn Gwynant, and right round the whole mass of the Gallt y Wenallt the men must go to get there.

  This mountain, this Wenallt, is the end of the mass of Snowdon on the Nant Gwynant side – the deep valley and the lake define the mass. The mountain faces the lake squarely. Its top part is craggy, but not pointed: two arms run down from the top, arms that would embrace the lake if they ran further, but the one that shelters Hafod Llan is broken by the cliff and the wood swallows it, and the other, the far one towards the top of Nant Gwynant, peters out in the dead ground at the marshy top of the lake. Between these arms and below the crags of the top is a vast stretch of ground, a table tilted to an angle of fifty-five degrees and more. The men must cross this stretch. They were already about two-thirds of the way up it, and the intention of the first man was plainly to go straight across. The rest of the field followed, for he knew the country well. As soon as they left the rock of the cliff they found the going very hard. The sloping face was covered with thin wiry grass growing in shallow soil, and the grass lay under an inch or two of snow. Everywhere there were rocks and stones, nearly all on the surface, and none to be relied upon for a handhold. The snow was too shallow to tread into steps, and it was of that coarse, crystalline sort that makes a foot slip as ice does; much of the stuff was hail. The grass was no help either; the way it lay was all downhill, so it would not hold a foot up, and its roots were so poor in the red scratching of soil that a very little pull brought the whole handful up.

  They came to a wall, a wall that ran down the mountain to the wood, one of the innumerable walls that intersect the summer sheep-walks there; it accentuated the angle of the slope, and if Brown had not heard the cry of hounds in front of him he would not have followed the leader over the wall, but would have looked for another way.

  It was worse the other side. Brown had not brought a stick – he preferred to have both hands free for climbing – and he missed it sorely now. Gonville was a little way behind him; they were too far apart to talk, and even if they had been closer the difficulty of their way and their hurry would have kept them silent.