THE BATTLE
It was gray dawn, with a reddening sky in the east, when Nort walked up
the town road. The fire within him had somewhat died down, and he began
to feel tired and, yes, hungry. At the brook at the foot of the hill he
stopped and threw himself down on the stones to drink, and as he lifted
his head he looked at himself curiously in the pool. The robins were
beginning to sing, and all the world was very still and beautiful.
When he got up Fergus touched him on his shoulder. He was startled, and
glanced around suddenly, and the two men stood for a moment looking
into each other's eyes. And Nort knew as well as though some one had
told him, that it had come to an unescapable issue between him and this
grim Scotchman.
"Well, Fergus, where did you drop from?"
He tried to carry it off jauntily: he had always played with Fergus.
"I've been waitin' fer ye," said Fergus. "I want ye to come in the wood
wi' me. I have a bone to pick wi' ye."
Fergus seemed perfectly cool; whatever agitation he felt showed itself
only in the increasing Scotchiness of his speech.
Nort objected faintly, but was borne along by a will stronger than his
own. They stepped into the woods and walked silently side by side until
they came to an opening near the edge of a field. Here there were beech
trees with spaces around them, and the ground was softly clad in new
green bracken and carpeted with leaves. Nort felt a kind of cold horror
which he could not understand.
"Fergus," he said, again trying to speak lightly, "it was you I saw
looking in at David's window."
"It was," said Fergus. "I couldna let ye escape me."
They had now paused, and in spite of himself Nort was facing Fergus.
"We must ha' it oot between us, Nort," said Fergus.
"What do you mean? I don't understand."
"Yes, ye do."
Nort looked up at him suddenly.
"Anthy?"
"You've said it; ye ain't fit fer her, an' ye know it."
Nort turned deadly pale.
"Fergus," he said, "do you--have you----"
"I promised Anthy's father I'd look after her, an' I wull."
"But, Fergus, what have you got against me? I thought we were friends."
"What's friendship to do wi' it? Ye ain't good enough for Anthy: an' I
wull na' ha' ye breakin' her heart. Who are ye that ye should be lookin'
upon a girl like that?"
Fergus's voice was shaking with emotion.
"Well, I know I'm not good enough, Fergus, you're right about that. No
one is, I think. But I--I love her, Fergus."
"Ye love her: ye think ye do: next week ye'll think ye don't."
At this a flame of swift anger swept over Nort.
"If I love her and she loves me, who else has got anything to say about
it I'd like to know?"
"Wull, I have," said Fergus grimly.
Nort laughed, a nervous, fevered laugh, and threw out his arms in a
gesture of impatience.
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Go away," said Fergus, "go away and let her alone. Go back whur ye come
from, an' break no hearts."
Although the words were gruff and short, there was a world of pleading
in them, too. Fergus had no desire to hurt Nort, but he wanted to get
him away forever from Hempfield. It was only Anthy that he had in mind.
He must save Anthy. Nort felt this note of appeal, and answered in kind:
"I can't do it, Fergus, and you have no right to ask me. If Anthy tells
me to go, I will go. It is between us. Can't you see it?"
"Wull," said Fergus, hopelessly, "you an' me must ha' it oot."
With this, Fergus turned about and began to take off his coat. Nort
remembered long afterward the look of Fergus deliberately taking off
his coat--his angular, bony form, his wiry, freckled neck, his rough,
red hair, his loose sleeves held up by gayly embroidered armlets, the
trousers bagging in extremity at his knees. Even in that moment he felt
a curious deep sense of pity, pity mingled with understanding, sweep
over him. He had come some distance in the few short hours since Anthy's
face had looked up into his.
Fergus laid his coat and hat at the trunk of a beech tree and began
slowly to roll up his sleeves.
"Will ye fight wi' yer coat on or off?"
Nort suddenly laughed aloud. It was unbelievable, ridiculous! Why, it
was uncivilized! It simply wasn't done in the world he had known.
Nort had never in his life been held down to an irrevocable law or
principle, never been confronted by an unescapable fact of life. Some
men go through their whole lives that way. He had never met anything
from which there was not some easy, safe, pleasant, polite way out--his
wit, his family connections, his money. But now he was looking into the
implacable, steel-blue eyes of Fergus MacGregor.
"But, Fergus," he said, "I don't want to fight. I like you."
"There's them that _has_ to fight," responded Fergus.
"I never fought anybody in my life," said Nort, as though partly to
himself.
"That may be the trouble wi' ye."
Fergus continued, like some implacable fate, getting ready. He was now
hitching up his belt.
Every artistic nature sooner or later meets some such irretrievable
human experience. It asks only to see life, to look on, to enjoy. But
one day this artistic nature makes the astonishing discovery that nature
plays no favourites, that life is, after all, horribly concrete,
democratic, little given to polite discrimination, and it gets itself
suddenly taken seriously, literally, and dragged by the heels into the
grime and common coarseness of things.
Nort was still inclined to argue, for it did not seem real to him.
"It won't prove anything, Fergus, fighting never does."
"'Fraid, are ye?"
"Yes," said Nort, "horribly."
And yet at the very moment that Nort was saying that he was horribly
afraid, and he spoke the literal truth, a very strange procession of
thoughts was passing swiftly through the back of his mind. He was
somehow standing aside and seeing himself as he was at that moment,
seeing, indeed, every detail of the scene before him like a picture,
every tree and leaf, the carpet of leaves and bracken, seeing Fergus
moving about. Yes, and he was laughing, away back there, at the picture
he saw, and wondering at it, and thrilling over it, at the very moment
that he was so horribly afraid. He was even speculating, back there, a
little cynically, whether he, Nort, would finally stay to fight or run
away. He actually did not know!
Fergus's dull, direct, geologic mind could not possibly have imagined
what was passing nimbly behind those frightened, boyish blue eyes.
Fergus was moving straight ahead in the path he had planned, and, on the
whole, placidly. What a blessing in this world is a reasonable amount of
dulness!
Having prepared himself, Fergus now stepped forward. Nort stood
perfectly still, his arms hanging slack at his sides, his face as pale
as marble, his eyes widening as Fergus approached.
"I can't see any reason for fighting," he was saying. "Why should you
fight me?"
"Wull, we needna fight--if ye'll go away."
For one immense moment Nort saw himself running away, and with an
incredible inner sense of relief and comfort. He wanted to run, intended
to run, but somehow he could not. He was afraid to fight, but somehow he
was still more afraid to run. And then, with a blinding flash he thought
of Anthy. What would she say if she saw him running?
At that moment Fergus struck him lightly on the cheek.
It was like an electric shock to Nort. He stiffened in every muscle, red
flashes passed before his eyes, his throat twisted hard and dry, and the
tears came up to his eyes. In another moment he was grappling with
Fergus, striking wildly, blindly. And he was, curiously, no longer
confused. An incredible clearness of purpose swept over him. This
purpose was to _kill_ Fergus. There was to be no longer any foolery
about it; he was going to kill him.
If Fergus had known what Nort was thinking at that moment he would have
been horrified and shocked beyond measure. Fergus had not the most
distant intent of injuring Nort seriously. He did not even hate him,
but, I fully believe, really loved him, and was going through this
disagreeable business quite coldly. As he received Nort's impetuous
assault, he smiled with a sort of high exultation and found words to
remark:
"The mair haste, Nort, the waur speed."
With that he hit out squarely with his wiry, muscular arm--just
once--and Nort went down in the bracken and lay quite still.
Fergus stood looking down at him: the silent face upturned, very white,
very boyish, very beautiful, the soft hair tumbling about his temples,
the lax arms spread out among the leaves. And all around the still
woods, and quiet fields, and the robins singing, and the sun coming up
over the hill.
As Fergus looked down his breast began to heave and the tears came into
his eyes.
"The bonnie, bonnie lad," he said; "he wadna run awa'."
Presently Nort stirred uneasily.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Come, now," said Fergus tenderly, "we'll get down ta the brook."
With one arm around him, Fergus helped him through the woods, and knelt
beside him while he dashed the cold water over his face and head.
"I hit ye hard," said Fergus, "and it's likely yer eye'll be blackened."
Nort sat down with his back to a tree trunk. He was sick and dizzy. It
seemed to him that the thing he wanted most in all the world was to be
left alone.
"I'm going away, Fergus. Leave me here. I shall not go back to
Hempfield."
Fergus offered no excuses, suggested no change in plan. It was working
out exactly as he intended: he was sorry for Nort, but this was his
duty. He made Nort as comfortable as he could, and then set off toward
town. As he proceeded, he stepped faster and faster. He began to feel a
curious exaltation of spirit. It was the greatest moment of his whole
life. If you had seen him at that moment, with his head lifted high, you
would scarcely have known him. As the town came into view, with the
eastern sun upon it, Fergus burst out in a voice as wild and harsh as a
bagpipe:
"Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha will fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!"
For that which followed I make no excuse, nor think I need to, but I
must tell it, for it is a part of the history of Hempfield and of the
life of Fergus MacGregor. Ours is a temperance town, and Fergus
MacGregor a temperate man; but that morning Fergus was seen going over
the hill beyond the town, unsteady in the legs, and still singing. He
did not appear at the office of the _Star_ all that day.
As for Nort, he lay for a long time there at the foot of the beech tree,
miserably sick in body and soul--dozing off from time to time, and
trying to think, dumbly, what was left to him in the world. He was as
deep in the depths that morning as he had been high in the heavens the
evening before.
[Illustration]