Castle Gay - MVK World

ae—the cities filling up with Irish, the countryside losing its folk, our
law and our letters and our language as decrepit as an old wife. Damn it,
man, in another half-century there will be nothing left, and we'll be a
mere disconsidered province of England… . But you never bother your
head about it. Indeed, I think you've gone over to the English. What was
it I heard you saying to Mr McCunn last night?—that the English had the
most political genius of any people because they had the most humour?"
"Well, it's true," Jaikie answered. "But every day I spend out of Scotland
I like it better. When I've nothing else to do I run over in my mind
the places I love best—mostly in the Canonry—and when I get a sniff of
wood smoke it makes me sick with longing for peat-reek. Do you think I
could forget that?"
Jaikie pointed to the scene which was now spread before them, for
they had emerged from the Nick of the Threshes and were beginning the
long descent to the Garroch. The October afternoon was warm and
windless, and not a wisp of cloud broke the level blue of the sky. Such
weather in July would have meant that the distances were dim, but on
this autumn day, which had begun with frost, there was a crystalline
sharpness of outline in the remotest hills. The mountains huddled
around the amphitheatre, the round bald forehead of the Yirnie, the twin
peaks of the Caldron which hid a tarn in their corrie, the steel-grey fortress
of the Calmarton, the vast menacing bulk of the Muneraw. On the
far horizon the blue of the sky seemed to fade into white, and a hill
shoulder which rose in one of the gaps had an air of infinite distance.
The bog in the valley was a mosaic of colours like an Eastern carpet, and
the Garroch water twined through it like some fantastic pictured stream
in a missal. A glimpse could be had of Loch Garroch, dark as ink in the
shadow of the Caldron. There were many sounds, the tinkle of falling
burns far below, a faint calling of sheep, an occasional note of a bird. Yet
the place had an overmastering silence, a quiet distilled of the blue heavens
and the primeval desert. In that loneliness lay the tale of ages since
the world's birth, the song of life and death as uttered by wild living
things since the rocks first had form.
The two did not speak for a little. They had seen that which touched in
both some deep elemental spring of desire.
Down on the level of the moss, where the green track wound among
the haggs, Dougal found his tongue.
"I would like your advice, Jaikie," he said, "about a point of conduct.
It's not precisely a moral question, but it's a matter of good taste. I'm
drawing a big salary from the Craw firm, and I believe I give good value
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