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Castle Gay
John Buchan
Chapter 1 TELLS OF A RUGBY THREE-QUARTER
Mr Dickson McCunn laid down the newspaper, took his spectacles from his nose, and polished them with a blue-and-white spotted handkerchief.
"It will be a great match," he observed to his wife. "I wish I was there to see. These Kangaroos must be a fearsome lot." Then he smiled reflectively. "Our laddies are not turning out so bad, Mamma. Here's Jaikie, and him not yet twenty, and he has his name blazing in the papers as if he was a Cabinet Minister."
Mrs McCunn, a placid lady of a comfortable figure, knitted steadily. She did not share her husband's enthusiasms.
"I know fine," she said, "that Jaikie will be coming back with a bandaged head and his arm in a sling. Rugby in my opinion is not a game for Christians. It's fair savagery."
"Hoots, toots! It's a grand ploy for young folk. You must pay a price for fame, you know. Besides, Jaikie hasn't got hurt this long time back. He's learning caution as he grows older, or maybe he's getting better at the job. You mind when he was at the school we used to have the doctor to him every second Saturday night… . He was always a terrible bold laddie, and when he was getting dangerous his eyes used to run with tears. He's quit of that habit now, but they tell me that when he's real excited he turns as white as paper. Well, well! we've all got our queer ways. Here's a biography of him and the other players. What's this it says?"
Mr McCunn resumed his spectacles.
"Here it is. 'J. Galt, born in Glasgow. Educated at the Western Academy and St Mark's College, Cambridge … played last year against Oxford in the victorious Cambridge fifteen, when he scored three tries… . This is his first International … equally distinguished in defence and attack… . Perhaps the most unpredictable of wing three-quarters now playing… .' Oh, and here's another bit in 'Gossip about the Teams.'" He removed his spectacles and laughed heartily. "That's good. It calls him a 'scholar and a gentleman.' That's what they always say about University players. Well, I'll warrant he's as good a gentleman as any, though he comes out of a back street in the Gorbals. I'm not so sure about the scholar. But he can always do anything he sets his mind to, and he's a worse glutton for books than me. No man can tell what may happen to Jaikie yet… . We can take credit for these laddies of ours, for they're all in the way of doing well for themselves, but there's just the two of them that I feel are like our own bairns. Just Jaikie and Dougal—and goodness knows what will be the end of that red-headed Dougal. Jaikie's a douce body, but there's a determined daftness about Dougal. I wish he wasn't so taken up with his misguided politics."
"I hope they'll not miss their train," said the lady. "Supper's at eight, and they should be here by seven-thirty, unless Jaikie's in the hospital."
"No fear," was the cheerful answer. "More likely some of the Kangaroos will be there. We should get a telegram about the match by six o'clock."
So after tea, while his wife departed on some domestic task, Mr McCunn took his ease with a pipe in a wicker chair on the little terrace which looked seaward. He had found the hermitage for which he had long sought, and was well content with it. The six years which had passed since he forsook the city of Glasgow and became a countryman had done little to alter his appearance. The hair had indeed gone completely from the top of his head, and what was left was greying, but there were few lines on his smooth, ruddy face, and the pale eyes had still the innocence and ardour of youth. His figure had improved, for country exercise and a sparer diet had checked the movement towards rotundity. When not engaged in some active enterprise, it was his habit to wear a tailed coat and trousers of tweed, a garb which from his boyish recollection he thought proper for a country laird, but which to the ordinary observer suggested a bookmaker. Gradually, a little self-consciously, he had acquired what he considered to be the habits of the class. He walked in his garden with a spud; his capacious pockets contained a pruning knife and twine; he could talk quite learnedly of crops and stock, and, though he never shouldered a gun, of the prospects of game; and a fat spaniel was rarely absent from his heels.
The home he had chosen was on the spur of a Carrick moor, with the sea to the west, and to south and east a distant prospect of the blue Galloway hills. After much thought he had rejected the various country houses which were open to his purchase; he felt it necessary to erect his own sanctuary, conformable to his modest but peculiar tastes. A farm of some five hundred acres had been bought, most of it pasture-fields fenced by dry-stone dykes, but with a considerable stretch of broom and heather, and one big plantation of larch. Much of this he let off, but he retained a hundred acres where he and his grieve could make disastrous essays in agriculture. The old farm-house had been a whitewashed edifice of eight rooms, with ample outbuildings, and this he had converted into a commodious dwelling, with half a dozen spare bedrooms, and a large chamber which was at once library, smoking-room, and business-room. I do not defend Mr McCunn's taste, for he had a memory stored with bad precedents. He hankered after little pepper-box turrets, which he thought the badge of ancientry, and in internal decoration he had an unhallowed longing for mahogany panelling, like a ship's saloon. Also he doted on his vast sweep of gravel. Yet he had on the whole made a pleasing thing of Blaweary (it was the name which had first taken his fancy), for he stuck to harled and whitewashed walls, and he had a passion for green turf, so that, beyond the odious gravel, the lawns swept to the meadows unbroken by formal flowerbeds. These lawns were his special hobby. "There's not a yard of turf about the place," he would say, "that's not as well kept as a putting-green."
The owner from his wicker chair looked over the said lawns to a rough pasture where his cows were at graze, and then beyond a patch of yellowing bracken to the tops of a fir plantation. After that the ground fell more steeply, so that the tree-tops were silhouetted against the distant blue of the sea. It was mid-October, but the air was as balmy as June, and only the earlier dusk told of the declining year. Mr McCunn was under strict domestic orders not to sit out of doors after sunset, but he had dropped asleep and the twilight was falling when he was roused by a maid with a telegram.
In his excitement he could not find his spectacles. He tore open the envelope and thrust the pink form into the maid's face. "Read it, lassie—read it," he cried, forgetting the decorum of the master of a household.
"Coming seven-thirty," the girl read primly. "Match won by single point." Mr McCunn upset his chair, and ran, whooping, in search of his wife.
The historian must return upon his tracks in order to tell of the great event thus baldly announced. That year the Antipodes had despatched to Britain such a constellation of Rugby stars that the hearts of the home enthusiasts became as water and their joints were loosened. For years they had known and suffered from the quality of those tall young men from the South, whom the sun had toughened and tautened—their superb physique, their resourcefulness, their uncanny combination. Hitherto, while the fame of one or two players had reached these shores, the teams had been in the main a batch of dark horses, and there had been no exact knowledge to set a bar to hope. But now Australia had gathered herself together for a mighty effort, and had sent to the field a fifteen most of whose members were known only too well. She had collected her sons wherever they were to be found. Four had already played for British Universities; three had won a formidable repute in international matches in which their country of ultimate origin had entitled them to play. What club, county, or nation could resist so well equipped an enemy? And, as luck decided, it fell to Scotland, which had been having a series of disastrous seasons, to take the first shock.
That ancient land seemed for the moment to have forgotten her prowess. She could produce a strong, hard-working and effective pack, but her great three-quarter line had gone, and she had lost the scrum-half who the year before had been her chief support. Most of her fifteen were new to an international game, and had never played together. The danger lay in the enemy halves and three-quarters. The Kangaroos had two halves possessed of miraculous hands and a perfect knowledge of the game. They might be trusted to get the ball to their three-quarters, who were reputed the most formidable combination that ever played on turf. On the left wing was the mighty Charvill, an Oxford Blue and an English International; on the right Martineau, who had won fame on the cinder-track as well as on the football-field. The centres were two cunning brothers, Clauson by name, who played in a unison like Siamese twins. Against such a four Scotland could scrape up only a quartet of possibles, men of promise but not yet of performance. The hosts of Tuscany seemed strong out of all proportion to the puny defenders of Rome. And as the Scottish right-wing three-quarter, to frustrate the terrible Charvill, stood the tiny figure of J. Galt, Cambridge University, five foot six inches in height and slim as a wagtail.
To the crowd of sixty thousand and more that waited for the teams to enter the field there was vouchsafed one slender comfort. The weather, which at Blaweary was clear and sunny, was abominable in the Scottish midlands. It had rained all the preceding night, and it was hoped that the ground might be soft, inclining to mud—mud dear to the heart of our islanders but hateful to men accustomed to the firm soil of the South.
The game began in a light drizzle, and for Scotland it began disastrously. The first scrimmage was in the centre of the ground, and the ball came out to the Kangaroo scrum-half, who sent it to his stand-off. From him it went to Clauson, and then to Martineau, who ran round his opposing wing, dodged the Scottish full-back, and scored a try, which was converted. After five minutes the Kangaroos led by five points.
After that the Scottish forwards woke up, and there was a spell of stubborn defence. The Scottish full-back had a long shot at goal from a free kick, and missed, but for the rest most of the play was in the Scottish twenty-five. The Scottish pack strove their hardest, but they did no more than hold their opponents. Then once more came a quick heel out, which went to one of the Clausons, a smart cut-through, a try secured between the posts and easily converted. The score was now ten points to nil.
Depression settled upon the crowd as deep as the weather, which had stopped raining but had developed into a sour haar. Followed a period of constant kicking into touch, a dull game which the Kangaroos were supposed to eschew. Just before half-time there was a thin ray of comfort. The Scottish left-wing three-quarter, one Smail, a Borderer, intercepted a Kangaroo pass and reached the enemy twenty-five before he was brought down from behind by Martineau's marvellous sprinting. He had been within sight of success, and half-time came with a faint hope that there was still a chance of averting a runaway defeat.
The second half began with three points to Scotland, secured from a penalty kick. Also the Scottish forwards seemed to have got a new lease of life. They carried the game well into the enemy territory, dribbling irresistibly in their loose rushes, and hooking and heeling in the grand manner from the scrums. The white uniforms of the Kangaroos were now plentifully soiled, and the dark blue of the Scots made them look the less bedraggled side. All but J. Galt. His duty had been that of desperate defence conducted with a resolute ferocity, and he had suffered in it. His jersey was half torn off his back, and his shorts were in ribbons: he limped heavily, and his small face looked as if it had been ground into the mud of his native land. He felt dull and stupid, as if he had been slightly concussed. His gift had hitherto been for invisibility; his fame had been made as a will-o'-the-wisp; now he seemed to be cast for the part of that Arnold von Winkelreid who drew all the spears to his bosom.
The ball was now coming out to the Scottish halves, but they mishandled it. It seemed impossible to get their three-quarters going. The ball either went loose, or was intercepted, or the holder was promptly tackled, and whenever there seemed a chance of a run there was always either a forward pass or a knock-on. At this period of the game the Scottish forwards were carrying everything on their shoulders, and their backs seemed hopeless. Any moment, too, might see the deadly echelon of the Kangaroo three-quarters ripple down the field.
And then came one of those sudden gifts of fortune which make Rugby an image of life. The ball came out from a heel in a scrum not far from the Kangaroo twenty-five, and went to the Kangaroo stand-off half. He dropped it, and, before he could recover, it was gathered by the Scottish stand-off. He sent it to Smail, who passed back to the Scottish left-centre, one Morrison, an Academical from Oxford who had hitherto been pretty much of a passenger. Morrison had the good luck to have a clear avenue before him, and he had a gift of pace. Dodging the Kangaroo full-back with a neat swerve, he scored in the corner of the goal-line amid a pandemonium of cheers. The try was miraculously converted, and the score stood at ten points to eight, with fifteen minutes to play.
Now began an epic struggle, not the least dramatic in the history of the game since a century ago the Rugby schoolboy William Webb Ellis first "took the ball in his arms and ran with it." The Kangaroos had no mind to let victory slip from their grasp, and, working like one man, they set themselves to assure it. For a little their magnificent three-quarter line seemed to have dropped out of the picture, but now most theatrically it returned to it. From a scrimmage in the Kangaroo half of the field, the ball went to their stand-off and from him to Martineau. At the moment the Scottish players were badly placed, for their three-quarters were standing wide in order to overlap the faster enemy line. It was a perfect occasion for one of Martineau's deadly runs. He was, however, well tackled by Morrison and passed back to his scrum-half, who kicked ahead towards the left wing to Charvill. The latter gathered the ball at top-speed, and went racing down the touch-line with nothing before him but the Scottish right-wing three-quarter. It seemed a certain score, and there fell on the spectators a sudden hush. That small figure, not hitherto renowned for pace, could never match the Australian's long, loping, deadly stride.
Had Jaikie had six more inches of height he would have failed. But a resolute small man who tackles low is the hardest defence to get round. Jaikie hurled himself at Charvill, and was handed off by a mighty palm. But he staggered back in the direction of his own goal, and there was just one fraction of a second for him to make another attempt. This time he succeeded. Charvill's great figure seemed to dive forward on the top of his tiny assailant, and the ball rolled into touch. For a minute, while the heavens echoed with the shouting, Jaikie lay on the ground bruised and winded. Then he got up, shook himself, like a heroic, bedraggled sparrow, and hobbled back to his place.
There were still five minutes before the whistle, and these minutes were that electric testing time, when one side is intent to consolidate a victory and the other resolute to avert too crushing a defeat. Scotland had never hoped to win; she had already done far better than her expectations, and she gathered herself together for a mighty effort to hold what she had gained. Her hopes lay still in her forwards. Her backs had far surpassed their form, but they were now almost at their last gasp.
But in one of them there was a touch of that genius which can triumph over fatigue. Jaikie had never in his life played so gruelling a game. He was accustomed to being maltreated, but now he seemed to have been pounded and smothered and kicked and flung about till he doubted whether he had a single bone undamaged. His whole body was one huge ache. Only the brain under his thatch of hair was still working well… . The Kangaroo pack had gone down field with a mighty rush, and there was a scrum close to the Scottish twenty-five. The ball went out cleanly to one of the Clausons, but it was now very greasy, and the light was bad, and he missed his catch. More, he stumbled after it and fell, for he had had a punishing game. Jaikie on the wing suddenly saw his chance. He darted in and gathered the ball, dodging Clauson's weary tackle. There was no other man of his side at hand to take a pass, but there seemed just a slender chance for a cut-through. He himself of course would be downed by Charvill, but there was a fraction of a hope, if he could gain a dozen yards, that he might be able to pass to Smail, who was not so closely marked.
His first obstacle was the Kangaroo scrum-half, who had come across the field. To him he adroitly sold the dummy, and ran towards the right touch-line, since there was no sign of Smail. He had little hope of success, for it must be only a question of seconds before he was brought down. He did not hear the roar from the spectators as he appeared in the open, for he was thinking of Charvill waiting for his revenge, and he was conscious that his heart was behaving violently quite outside its proper place. But he was also conscious that in some mysterious way he had got a second wind, and that his body seemed a trifle less leaden.
He was now past the half-way line, a little distance ahead of one of the Clausons, with no colleague near him, and with Charvill racing to intercept him. For one of Jaikie's inches there could be no hand-off, but he had learned in his extreme youth certain arts not commonly familiar to Rugby players. He was a most cunning dodger. To the yelling crowd he appeared to be aiming at a direct collision with the Kangaroo left-wing. But just as it looked as if a two-seater must meet a Rolls-Royce head-on at full speed, the two-seater swerved and Jaikie wriggled somehow below Charvill's arm. Then sixty thousand people stood on their seats, waving caps and umbrellas and shouting like lunatics, for Charvill was prone on the ground, and Jaikie was stolidly cantering on.
He was now at the twenty-five line, and the Kangaroo full-back awaited him. This was a small man, very little taller than Jaikie, but immensely broad and solid, and a superlative place-kick. A different physique would have easily stopped the runner, now at the very limits of his strength, but the Kangaroo was too slow in his tackle to meet Jaikie's swerve. He retained indeed in his massive fist a considerable part of Jaikie's jersey, but the half-naked wearer managed to stumble on just ahead of him, and secured a try in the extreme corner. There he lay with his nose in the mud, utterly breathless, but obscurely happy. He was still dazed and panting when a minute later the whistle blew, and a noise like the Last Trump told him that by a single point he had won the match for his country.
There was a long table below the Grand Stand, a table reserved for the Press. On it might have been observed a wild figure with red hair dancing a war dance of triumph. Presently the table collapsed under him, and the rending of timber and the recriminations of journalists were added to the apocalyptic din.
At eight o'clock sharp a party of four sat down to supper at Blaweary. The McCunns did not dine in the evening, for Dickson declared that dinner was a stiff, unfriendly repast, associated in his mind with the genteel in cities. He clung to the fashions of his youth—ate a large meal at one o'clock, and a heavy tea about half-past four, and had supper at eight from October to May, and in the long summer days whenever he chose to come indoors. Mrs McCunn had grumbled at first, having dim social aspirations, but it was useless to resist her husband's stout conservatism. For the evening meal she was in the habit of arraying herself in black silk and many ornaments, and Dickson on occasions of ceremony was persuaded to put on a dinner jacket; but to-night he had declined to change, on the ground that the guests were only Dougal and Jaikie.
There were candles on the table in the pleasant dining-room, and one large lamp on the sideboard. Dickson had been stubborn about electric light, holding that a faint odour of paraffin was part of the amenities of a country house. A bright fire crackled on the hearth, for the October evenings at Blaweary were chilly.
The host was in the best of humours. "Here's the kind of food for hungry folk. Ham and eggs—and a bit of the salmon I catched yesterday! Did you hear that I fell in, and Adam had to gaff me before he gaffed the fish? Everything except the loaf is our own providing—the eggs are our hens', the ham's my own rearing and curing, the salmon is my catching, and the scones are Mamma's baking. There's a bottle of champagne to drink Jaikie's health. Man, Jaikie, it's an extraordinary thing you've taken so little hurt. We were expecting to see you a complete lameter, with your head in bandages."
Jaikie laughed. "I was in more danger from the crowd at the end than from the Kangaroos. It's Dougal that's lame. He fell through the reporters' table."
He spoke with the slight sing-song which is ineradicable in one born in the west of Scotland, but otherwise he spoke pure English, for he had an imitative ear and unconsciously acquired the speech of a new environment. One did not think of Jaikie as short, but as slight, for he was admirably proportioned and balanced. His hair was soft and light and unruly, and the small wedge of face beneath the thatch had an air of curious refinement and delicacy, almost of wistfulness. This was partly due to a neat pointed chin and a cherubic mouth, but chiefly to large grey eyes which were as appealing as a spaniel's. He was the incarnation of gentleness, with a hint of pathos, so that old ladies longed to mother him, and fools occasionally despised him—to their undoing. He had the look of one continually surprised at life, and a little lost in it. To-night his face from much contact with mother earth had something of the blue, battered appearance of a pugilist's, so that he seemed to be a cherub, but a damaged cherub, who had been violently ejected from his celestial home.
The fourth at the table, Dougal Crombie, made a strong contrast to Jaikie's elegance. The aforetime chieftain of the Gorbals Die-hards had grown into a powerful young man, about five feet ten inches in height, with massive shoulders and a fist like a blacksmith's. Adolescence had revised the disproportions of boyhood. His head no longer appeared to be too big for his body; it was massive, not monstrous. The fiery red of his hair had toned down to a deeper shade. The art of the dentist had repaired the irregularities of his teeth. His features were rugged but not unpleasing. But the eyes remained the same, grey-green, deep-set, sullen, smouldering with a fierce vitality. To a stranger there was something about him which held the fancy, as if a door had been opened into the past. Even so must have looked some Pictish warrior, who brewed heather-ale, and was beaten back from Hadrian's Wall; even so some Highland cateran who fired the barns of the Lennox; even so many a saturnine judge of Session and heavy-handed Border laird. Dougal in appearance was what our grandfathers called a "Gothic survival." His manner to the world was apt to be assertive and cynical; he seemed to be everlastingly in a hurry, and apt to jostle others off the footpath. It was unpleasant, many found, to argue with him, for his eye expressed a surly contempt; but they were wrong—it was only interest. Dougal was absorbed in life, and since his absorption was fiercer than other people's, it was misunderstood. Therefore he had few friends; but to those few—the McCunns, Jaikie, and perhaps two others—he was attached with a dog-like fidelity. With them he was at his ease and no longer farouche; he talked less, and would smile happily to himself, as if their presence made him content. They gave him the only home life he had ever known.
Mr McCunn spoke of those who had years before acknowledged Dougal's sway.
"You'll want to have the last news," he said. "Bill's getting on grand in Australia. He's on his own wee farm in what they call a group settlement, and his last letter says that he's gotten all the roots grubbed up and is starting his first ploughing, and that he's doing fine with his hens and his dairy cows. That's the kind of job for Bill—there was always more muscle than brains in him, but there's a heap of common sense… . Napoleon's in a bank in Montreal—went there from the London office last July. He'll rise in the world no doubt, for he has a great head for figures. Peter Paterson is just coming out for a doctor, and he has lifted a tremendous bursary—I don't mind the name of it, but it will see him through his last year in the hospitals. Who would have said that Peter would turn out scientific, and him such a through-other laddie? … But Thomas Yownie is the big surprise. Thomas, you mind, was all for being a pirate. Well, he'll soon be a minister. He had aye a grand voice, and they tell me his sermons would wile the birds from the trees… . That's the lot, except for you and Jaikie. Man, as Chief Die-hard, I'm proud of my command."
Dickson beamed on them affectionately, and they listened with a show of interest, but they did not share his paternal pride. Youth at twenty is full of hard patches. Already to the two young men the world of six years ago and its denizens had become hazy. They were remotely interested in the fates of their old comrades, but no more. The day would come when they would dwell sentimentally on the past: now they thought chiefly of the present, of the future, and of themselves.
"And how are you getting on yourself, Dougal?" Dickson asked. "We read your things in the paper, and we whiles read about you. I see you're running for Parliament."
"I'm running, but I won't get in. Not yet."
"Man, I wish you were on a better side. You've got into an ill nest. I was reading this very morning a speech by yon Tombs—he's one of your big men, isn't he?—blazing away about the sins of the boorjoysee. That's just Mamma and me."
"It's not you. And Tombs, anyway, is a trumpery body. I have no use for the intellectual on the make, for there's nothing in him but vanity. But see here, Mr McCunn. The common people of this land are coming to their own nowadays. I know what they need and I know what they're thinking, for I come out of them myself. They want interpreting and they want guiding. Is it not right that a man like me should take a hand in it?"
Dickson looked wise. "Yes, if you keep your head. But you know fine, Dougal, that those who set out to lead the mob are apt to end by following. You're in a kittle trade, my man. And how do you manage to reconcile your views with your profession? You've got a good job with the Craw papers. You'll be aspiring some day to edit one of them. But what does Mr Craw say to your politics?"
The speaker's eye had a twinkle in it, but Dougal's face, hitherto as urbane as its rugged features permitted, suddenly became grim.
"Craw!" he cried. "Yon's the worst fatted calf of them all. Yon's the old wife. There's no bigger humbug walking on God's earth to-day than Thomas Carlyle Craw. I take his wages, because I give good value for them. I can make up a paper with any man, and I've a knack of descriptive writing. But thank God! I've nothing to do with his shoddy politics. I put nothing of myself into his rotten papers. I keep that for the Outward every second Saturday."
"You do," said Dickson dryly. "I've been reading some queer things there. What ails you at what you call 'modern Scotland'? By your way of it we've sold our souls to the English and the Irish."
"So we have." Dougal had relapsed again into comparative meekness. It was as if he felt that what he had to say was not in keeping with a firelit room and a bountiful table. He had the air of being a repository of dark things which were not yet ready for the light.
"Anyway, Scotland did fine the day. It's time to drink Jaikie's health."
This ceremony over, Dickson remained with his glass uplifted.
"We'll drink to your good health, Dougal, and pray Heaven, as the Bible says, to keep your feet from falling. It would be a sad day for your friends if you were to end in jyle… . And now I want to hear what you two are proposing to do with yourselves. You say you have a week's holiday, and it's a fortnight before Jaikie goes back to Cambridge."
"We're going into the Canonry," said Jaikie.
"Well, it's a fine countryside, the Canonry. Many a grand day I've had on its hill burns. But it's too late for the fishing… . I see from the papers that there's a by-election on now. Is Dougal going to sow tares by the roadside?"
"He would like to," said Jaikie, "but he won't be allowed. We'll keep to the hills, and our headquarters will be the Back House of the Garroch. It's an old haunt of ours."
"Fine I know it. Many a time when I've been fishing Loch Garroch I've gone in there for my tea. What's the wife's name now? Catterick? Aye, it was Catterick, and her man came from Sanquhar way. We'll get out a map after supper and you'll show me your road. The next best thing to tramping the hills yourself is to plan out another man's travels. There's grand hills round the Garroch—the Muneraw and the Yirnie and the Calmarton and the Caldron… . Stop a minute. Doesn't Mr Craw bide somewhere in the Canonry? Are you going to give him a call in, Dougal?"
"That's a long way down Glen Callowa," said Jaikie. "We mean to keep to the high tops. If the weather holds, there's nothing to beat a Canonry October."
"You're a pair of desperate characters," said Dickson jocosely. "You're going to a place which is thrang with a by-election, and for ordinary you'll not keep Dougal away from politics any more than a tyke from an ash-bucket. But you say you're not heeding the election. It's the high hills for you—but it's past the time for fishing, and young legs like yours will cover every top in a couple of days. I wish you mayna get into mischief. I'm afraid of Dougal with his daftness. He'll be for starting a new Jacobite rebellion. 'Kenmure's on and awa', Willie.'"
Mr McCunn whistled a stave of the song. His spirits were soaring.
"Well, I'll be at hand to bail you out… . And remember that I'm old, but not dead-old. If you set up the Standard on Garroch side, send me word and I'll on with my boots and join you."
Chapter 2 INTRODUCES A GREAT MAN IN ADVERSITY
Fifty-eight years before the date of this tale a child was born in the school-house of the landward parish of Kilmaclavers in the Kingdom of Fife. The schoolmaster was one Campbell Craw, who at the age of forty-five had espoused the widow of the provost of the adjacent seaport of Partankirk, a lady his junior by a single summer. Mr Craw was a Scots dominie of the old style, capable of sending boys direct to the middle class of Humanity at St Andrews, one who esteemed his profession, and wore in the presence of his fellows an almost episcopal dignity. He was recognised in the parish and far beyond it as a "deep student," and, when questions of debate were referred to his arbitrament, he would give his verdict with a weight of polysyllables which at once awed and convinced his hearers. The natural suspicion which might have attached to such profundity was countered by the fact that Mr Craw was an elder of the Free Kirk and in politics a sound Gladstonian. His wife was a kindred spirit, but, in her, religion of a kind took the place of philosophy. She was a noted connoisseur of sermons, who would travel miles to hear some select preacher, and her voice had acquired something of the pulpit monotone. Her world was the Church, in which she hoped that her solitary child would some day be a polished pillar.
The infant was baptised by the name of Thomas Carlyle, after the sage whom his father chiefly venerated; Mrs Craw had graciously resigned her own preference, which was Robert Rainy, after the leader of her communion. Never was a son the object of higher expectations or more deeply pondered plans. He had come to them unexpectedly; the late Provost of Partankirk had left no offspring; he was at once the child of their old age, and the sole hope of their house. Both parents agreed that he must be a minister, and he spent his early years in an atmosphere of dedication. Some day he would be a great man, and the episodes of his youth must be such as would impress the readers of his ultimate biography. Every letter he wrote was treasured by a fond mother. Each New Year's Day his father presented him with a lengthy epistle, in the style of an evangelical Lord Chesterfield, which put on record the schoolmaster's more recent reflections on life: a copy was carefully filed for the future biographer. His studies were minutely regulated. At five, though he was still shaky in English grammar, he had mastered the Greek alphabet. At eight he had begun Hebrew. At nine he had read Paradise Lost, Young's Night Thoughts, and most of Mr Robert Pollok's Course of Time. At eleven he had himself, to his parents' delight, begun the first canto of an epic on the subject of Eternity.
It was the way to produce a complete prig, but somehow Thomas Carlyle was not the ordinary prig. For one thing, he was clearly not born for high scholastic attainments. There was a chronic inaccuracy in him which vexed his father's soul. He was made to dabble in many branches of learning, but he seemed incapable of exact proficiency in any. When he had finished with the school of Kilmaclavers, he attended for two years the famous academy of Partankirk, which had many times won the first place in the college bursaries. But he was never head boy, or near it, and the bursary which he ultimately won (at Edinburgh) was only a small one, fitted to his place of twenty-seventh in the list. But he was noted for his mental activity. He read everything he could lay his hand on, and remembered a good deal of it. He was highly susceptible to new ideas, which he frequently misunderstood. At first he was unpopular among his contemporaries, because of his incapacity for any game and his disinclination to use his fists, but in each circle he entered he won his way eventually to tolerance if not to popularity. For he was fruitful of notions; he could tell his illiterate comrades wonderful things which he had picked up from his voracious reading; he could suggest magnificent schemes, though in carrying them out he was at the best a camp-follower.
At the age of twenty we find Thomas Carlyle Craw in the last year of his Edinburgh arts course, designing to migrate presently to a theological college. His career has not been distinguished, though he has won a fifth prize in the English Literature class and a medal for an essay on his namesake. But he has been active in undergraduate journalism, and has contributed many pieces to the evening papers. Also he has continued his miscellaneous reading, and is widely if inaccurately informed on every current topic. His chief regret is that he is a miserable public speaker, his few efforts having been attended by instant failure, and this is making him lukewarm about a ministerial career. His true weapon, he feels, is the pen, not the tongue. Otherwise he is happy, for he is never bored—and pleasantly discontented, for he is devouringly ambitious. In two things his upbringing has left an abiding mark. The aura of dedication hangs over him; he regards himself as predestined to be a great man, though he is still doubtful about the kind of greatness to be attained. Also father and mother have combined to give him a serious view of life. He does not belie his name, for the sage of Ecclefechan has bequeathed him some rags of his mantle. He must always be generalising, seeking for principles, philosophising; he loves a formula rather than a fact: he is heavily weighted with unction; rhetoric is in every fibre. He has a mission to teach the world, and, as he walks the pavements, his head is full of profound aphorisms or moving perorations—not the least being the obituary which some day men will write of him. One phrase in it will be, "He was the Moses who led the people across the desert to the Promised Land"; but what the Promised Land was to be like he would have been puzzled to say.
That winter he suffered his first calamity. For Campbell Craw fell ill of pneumonia and died, and a month later Euphemia, his wife, followed him to Kilmaclavers churchyard. Thomas Carlyle was left alone in the world, for his nearest relative was a cousin in Manitoba whom he had never seen. He was an affectionate soul and mourned his parents sincerely; when his grief dulled a little he wrote a short biography of them, "A Father and a Mother in Israel," which appeared in the Partankirk Advertiser and was justly admired. He was left now to his own resources, to shape his life without the tender admonitions of the school-house. Long and solemnly he perpended the question of the ministry. It had been his parents' choice for him, he had been "dedicated" to it, he could not lightly forsake it. But his manifest lack of preaching endowments—he had a weak, high-pitched voice and an extreme nervousness—convinced him that common sense must prevail over filial piety. He discussed the matter with the Minister of Kilmaclavers, who approved. "There's more ways of preaching than in a pulpit," was that sage's verdict.
So Thomas decided upon letters. His parents had bequeathed him nearly three thousand pounds, he had no debts, he was accustomed to live sparingly; on such a foundation it seemed to him that he could safely build the first storey of what should one day be a towering edifice. After taking an undistinguished degree, he migrated to London, according to the secular fashion of ambitious Scottish youth.
His first enterprises were failures. The serious monthlies would have none of his portentous treatises on the conduct of life, and The Times brusquely refused a set of articles on current politics, in the writing of which he had almost wept at his own eloquence. But he found a niche in a popular religious weekly, where, under the signature of "Simon the Tanner," he commented upon books and movements and personalities.
Soon that niche became a roomy pulpit, from which every week he fulminated, argued, and sentimentalised with immense acceptation. His columns became the most popular feature of that popular journal. He knew nothing accurately about any subject in the world, but he could clothe his ignorance in pontifical vestments and give his confusion the accents of authority. He had a remarkable flair for discerning and elaborating the tiny quantum of popular knowledge on any matter. Above all, he was interesting and aggressively practical. He took the hand of the half-educated and made them believe that he was leading them to the inner courts of wisdom. Every flicker of public emotion was fanned by him into a respectable little flame. He could be fiercely sarcastic in the manner of his namesake, he could wallow in the last banalities of sentiment, he could even be jocose and kittenish, but he knew his audience and never for a moment lost touch with it. "Helpful" was the epithet most commonly applied to him. He was there to encourage and assist, and his answers to correspondents began to fill a large space in his chosen journal.
So at the age of twenty-four Thomas was making a good income, and was beginning to be much in request by uplift societies. He resolutely refused to appear in public: he was too wise to let his halting utterance weaken the impression of his facile pen. But a noble discontent was his, and he marshalled his forces for another advance. Generations on his mother's side of small traders in Partankirk had given him considerable business acumen, and he realised that the way to fortune did not lie in writing for other men. He must own the paper which had its vogue from his talents, and draw to himself the whole profits of exploiting the public taste. Looking about him, he decided that there was room for a weekly journal at a popular price, which would make its appeal to the huge class of the aspiring half-baked, then being turned out by free education. They were not ardent politicians; they were not scholars; they were homely, simple folk, who wanted a little politics, a little science, a little religion, set to a domestic tune. So he broke with his employers, and, greatly daring, started his own penny weekly. He had considerably added to his little fortune, for he had no extravagant tastes, and he had made many friends in the circles of prosperous nonconformity. There was a spice of the gambler in Thomas, for every penny he possessed or could borrow he put into the new venture.
The Centre-Forward was a success from the first. The name was a stroke of genius; being drawn from the popular sport of football, it was intelligible to everyone, and it sounded a new slogan. The paper would be in the van of progressive thought, but also in the centre of the road, contemptuous alike of right-hand reaction and left-hand revolution. It appeared at that happy time in the 'nineties, when the world was comfortable, mildly progressive, and very willing to be amused by toys. And Thomas was an adroit editor. He invented ingenious competitions, and offered prizes of a magnitude hitherto unknown in British journalism. He discovered three new poets—poetry was for the moment in fashion—and two new and now completely forgotten humorists, and he made each reader share in the discovery and feel that he too was playing the part of a modest Mæcenas. He exposed abuses with a trenchant pen, when his lawyers had convinced him that he was on safe legal ground. Weekly he addressed the world, under his own signature, on every conceivable topic and with an air of lofty brotherhood, so that the humblest subscriber felt that the editor was his friend. The name of Thomas Carlyle Craw might be lightly regarded by superfine critics, but by some hundreds of thousands of plain Britons it was extolled and venerated.
Thomas proved an acute man of business. The Centre-Forward was never allowed to languish for lack of novelties; it grew in size, improved in paper and type, carried a great weight of advertisements, and presently became a pioneer in cheap pictures. Every detail of its manufacture and distribution, in which it struck out many new lines, he personally supervised. Also it became the parent of several offspring. It was the time when the gardening craze was beginning in England, and The Country-Dweller was founded, a sumptuously produced monthly which made a feature of its illustrations. This did no more than pay its way, but a children's halfpenny made a big hit, and an unctuous and snobbish penny weekly for the home made a bigger. He acquired also several trade journals, and put them on a paying basis.
When the South African War broke out Thomas was a wealthy man, piling up revenue yearly, for he still lived in two rooms in Marylebone and spent nothing on himself. The war more than doubled his profits. In the Centre-Forward he had long been a moderate exponent of the new imperialism, and his own series of articles "The Romance of Empire" had had a large sale when issued as a book. Now he became a fervent patriot. He exposed abuses in the conduct of the campaign—always on the best legal advice, he had much to say about inefficient generals, he appeared before the world as the soldiers' friend. The result was a new paper, Mother England, price one penny, which was the Centre-Forward adapted to lower strata of democracy—a little slangy and vulgar, deliberately sensational, but eminently sound at heart. Once a month Thomas Carlyle Craw compelled the motley array of its subscribers to view the world from his own lofty watch-tower.
Fortune treated him kindly. After the war came the Liberal revival, and he saw his chance. His politics now acquired a party character, and he became the chief Free Trade trumpet in the generally Protectionist orchestra of the Press. Once again he took a bold step, for he started a new halfpenny daily. For the better part of a year it hovered on the brink of failure, and the profits on Thomas's other publications went into its devouring maw. Then, suddenly, it turned the corner, and raced up the slope to the pinnacle of public favour. The View fed an appetite the existence of which Thomas alone had divined. It was bright and fresh and admirably put together; large sums were spent on special correspondence; its picture pages were the best of their kind; every brand of notable, at high fees, enlivened its pages. But above all it was a paper for the home and the home-maker, and the female sex became its faithful votaries. Much of this success was due to Thomas himself. He made himself the centre of the paper and the exponent of its policy. Once a week, in the View, as in the Centre-Forward, he summarised the problems of immediate interest and delivered his weighty judgments.
He was compelled to change his simple habits of life. He was compelled, indeed, elaborately to seek seclusion. There was no other alternative for one who had no gift of utterance and had hitherto gone little into society. With hundreds daily clamouring for interviews, demanding his help in cash or influence, urging policies and persons upon his notice, he must needs flee to sanctuary. In the palatial offices which he built in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street he had a modest flat, where he occasionally passed a night behind a barbed-wire entanglement of secretaries. But for the rest he had no known abode, though here I am privileged to say that he kept suites at several hotels, English and foreign, in the name of his principal aide-de-camp.
He escaped the publicity given to most press magnates by the Great War, for he used the staffs of his many papers as a bodyguard for his anonymity. The Prime Minister might summon him to urgent conferences, but Thomas did not attend—he sent an editor. New Year and Birthday honours were offered and curtly declined. Yet Thomas was only physically in retreat; spiritually he held the forefront of the stage. His signed articles had a prodigious vogue. Again, as fifteen years before, he was the friend of the men in the trenches; his criticisms of generals and politicians were taken seriously, for they were in accord with the suspicions and fears of the ordinary man. On the whole the Craw Press played a useful part in the great struggle. Its ultimatums were at any rate free from the charge of having any personal motive, and it preserved a reasonable standard of decency and good sense. Above all it was sturdily optimistic even in the darkest days.
The end of the War found Thomas with fifteen successful papers under his control, including a somewhat highbrow Sunday publication, an immense fortune rapidly increasing by judicious investment, and a commanding if ill-defined position in the public eye. He permitted himself one concession to his admirers. His portrait now appeared regularly in his own prints. It showed a middle-aged, baldish man, with a round head and a countenance of bland benevolence. His eyes were obscured by large tortoise-shell spectacles, but they had a kindly gleam, and redeemed for suavity the high cheek-bones and the firmly compressed lips. A suspicion of a retreating chin helped to produce the effect of friendliness, while the high forehead augured wisdom. It was the face which the public had somehow always imagined, and it did much to define Thomas's personality in his readers' eyes.
The step had its importance, for he had now become a figure of almost international note. Weekly he emerged from the shadows where he lived to give counsel and encouragement to humanity. He was Optimism incarnate, Hope embodied not in a slim nymph but in a purposeful and masculine Colossus. His articles were printed in all his papers and syndicated in the American and Continental press. Sursum Corda was his motto. A Browning in journalese, his aim was to see the bright side of everything, to expound partial evil as universal good. Was there a slump in the basic industries? It was only the prelude to an industrial revival, in which Britain would lead the world in new expert trades. Was there unrest among the workers? It was a proof of life, that "loyal unrest" inseparable from Freedom. High-speed motoring, jazz music, and the odd habits of the young were signs of a new Elizabethan uplift of spirit. Were the churches sparsely attended? It only meant that mankind was reaching after a wider revelation. For every difficulty Thomas Carlyle Craw had his happy solution. The Veiled Prophet was also the Smiling Philosopher. Cheerfulness in his hands was not a penny whistle but a trumpet.
He had of course his critics. Rude persons declared that his optimism was a blend of Martin Tupper and the worst kind of transatlantic uplift-merchant. Superfine people commented upon the meagreness of his thought and the turgidity of his style. Reformers in a hurry considered his soothing syrup a deadly opiate. The caustic asked who had made this tripe-merchant a judge in Israel. Experts complained that whenever he condescended to details he talked nonsense. But these were the captious few; the many had only admiration and gratitude. In innumerable simple homes, in schoolrooms, in village clubs, in ministers' studies, the face of Thomas Carlyle Craw beamed benevolently from the walls. He had fulfilled the old ambition both of his parents and himself; he spoke from his pulpit urbi et orbi; he was a Moses to guide his people to the Promised Land.
The politics of the Craw Press were now generally Conservative, but Thomas kept himself aloof from party warfare. He supported, and mildly criticised, whatever Government was in power. In foreign affairs alone he allowed himself a certain latitude. His personal knowledge of other lands was confined to visits to familiar Riviera resorts, when he felt that he needed a little rest and sunshine. But he developed an acute interest in Continental politics, and was in the habit of sending out bright young men to act as private intelligence-officers. While mildly supporting the League of Nations, he was highly critical of the settlement made at Versailles, and took under his wing various countries which he considered to have a grievance. On such matters he permitted himself to write with assurance, almost with truculence. He was furiously against any recognition of Russia, but he demanded that judgment on the Fascist régime in Italy should be held in abeyance, and that the world should wait respectfully on the results of that bold experiment.
But it was in the hard case of Evallonia that he specially interested himself. It will be remembered that a republic had been established there in 1919, apparently with the consent of its people. But rifts had since appeared within the lute. There was a strong monarchist party among the Evallonians, who wished to reinstate their former dynasty, at present represented by an attractive young Prince, and at the same time insisted on the revision of Evallonian boundaries. To this party Thomas gave eloquent support. He believed in democracy, he told his millions of readers, and a kingdom (teste Britain) was as democratic a thing as a republic: if the Evallonians wanted a monarch they should be allowed to have one: certain lost territories, too, must be restored, unless they wished to see Evallonia Irredenta a permanent plague-spot. His advocacy made a profound impression in the south and east of Europe, and to Evallonian monarchists the name of Craw became what that of Palmerston was once to Italy and Gladstone to Bulgaria. The mildness of his published portraits did not damp them; they remembered that the great Cavour had looked like Mr Pickwick. A cigar, a begonia, a new scent, and a fashionable hotel in the Evallonian capital were named in his honour.
Such at the date of this tale was the position of Thomas Carlyle Craw in the world of affairs. He was an illustrious figure, and a self-satisfied, though scarcely a happy, man. For he suffered from a curious dread which the scientific call agoraphobia. A master of publicity, he shrank from it in person. This was partly policy. He had the acumen to see that retirement was his chief asset; he was the prophet, speaking from within the shrine, a voice which would lose its awfulness if it were associated too closely with human lineaments. But there was also timidity, a shrinking of the flesh. He had accustomed himself for thirty years to live in a shell, and he had a molluscan dread of venturing outside it. A lion on paper, he suspected that he would be a rabbit in personal intercourse. He realised that his vanity would receive cruel wounds, that rough hands would paw his prophetic mantle. How could he meet a rampant socialist or a republican Evallonian face to face? The thought sent a shiver down his spine… .
So his sensitiveness became a disease, and he guarded his seclusion with a vestal jealousy. He had accumulated a personal staff of highly paid watch-dogs, whose business was not only the direction of the gigantic Craw Press but the guardianship of the shrine consecrated to its master. There was his principal secretary, Freddy Barbon, the son of a bankrupt Irish peer, who combined the duties of grand vizier and major-domo. There was his general manager, Archibald Bamff, who had been with him since the early days of the Centre-Forward. There was Sigismund Allins, an elegant young man who went much into society and acted, unknown to the world, as his chief's main intelligence-officer. There was Bannister, half valet, half butler, and Miss Elena Cazenove, a spinster of forty-five and the most efficient of stenographers. With the exception of Bamff, this entourage attended his steps—but never together, lest people should talk. Like the police in a Royal procession, they preceded or followed his actual movements and made straight the path for him. Among them he ruled as a mild tyrant, arbitrary but not unkindly. If the world of men had to be kept at a distance lest it should upset his poise and wound his vanity, he had created a little world which could be, so to speak, his own personality writ large.
It is the foible of a Scot that he can never cut the bonds which bind him to his own country. Thomas had happy recollections of his childhood on the bleak shores of Fife, and a large stock of national piety. He knew in his inmost heart that he would rather win the approval of Kilmaclavers and Partankirk than the plaudits of Europe. This affection had taken practical form. He had decided that his principal hermitage must be north of the Tweed. Fife and the East coast were too much of a home country for his purpose, the Highlands were too remote from London, so he settled upon the south-west corner, the district known as the Canonry, as at once secluded and accessible. He had no wish to cumber himself with land, for Thomas desired material possessions as little as he desired titles; so he leased from Lord Rhynns (whose wife's health and declining fortune compelled him to spend most of the year abroad) the ancient demesne of Castle Gay. The place, it will be remembered, lies in the loveliest part of the glen of the Callowa, in the parish of Knockraw, adjoining the village of Starr, and some five miles from the town of Portaway, which is on the main line to London. A high wall surrounds a wild park of a thousand acres, in the heart of which stands a grey stone castle, for whose keep Bruces and Comyns and Macdowalls contended seven centuries ago. In its cincture of blue mountains it has the air of a place at once fortified and forgotten, and here Thomas found that secure retirement so needful for one who had taken upon himself the direction of the major problems of the globe. The road up the glen led nowhere, the fishing was his own and no tourist disturbed the shining reaches of the Callowa, the hamlet of Starr had less than fifty inhabitants, and the folk of the Canonry are not the type to pry into the affairs of eminence in retreat. To the countryside he was only the Castle tenant—"yin Craw, a newspaper body frae England." They did not read his weekly pronouncements, preferring older and stronger fare.
But at the date of this tale a thorn had fixed itself in Thomas's pillow. Politics had broken in upon his moorland peace. There was a by-election in the Canonry, an important by-election, for it was regarded as a test of the popularity of the Government's new agricultural policy. The Canonry in its seaward fringe is highly farmed, and its uplands are famous pasture; its people, traditionally Liberal, have always been looked upon as possessing the toughest core of northern common sense. How would such a region regard a scheme which was a violent departure from the historic attitude of Britain towards the British farmer? The matter was hotly canvassed, and, since a General Election was not far distant, this contest became the cynosure of political eyes. Every paper sent a special correspondent, and the candidates found their halting utterances lavishly reported. The Canonry woke up one morning to find itself "news."
Thomas did not like it. He resented this publicity at his doorstep. His own press was instructed to deal with the subject in obscure paragraphs, but he could not control his rivals. He was in terror lest he should be somehow brought into the limelight—a bogus interview, perhaps—such things had happened—there were endless chances of impairing his carefully constructed dignity. He decided that it would be wiser if he left the place till after the declaration of the poll. The necessity gave him acute annoyance, for he loved the soft bright October weather at Castle Gay better than any other season of the year. The thought of his suite at Aix—taken in the name of Mr Frederick Barbon—offered him no consolation.
But first he must visit Glasgow to arrange with his builders for some reforms in the water supply, which, with the assent of Lord Rhynns, he proposed to have installed in his absence. Therefore, on the evening of the Kangaroo match already described, his discreet and potent figure might have been seen on the platform of Kirkmichael as he returned from the western metropolis. It was his habit to be met there by a car, so as to avoid the tedium of changing trains and the publicity of Portaway station.
Now, as it chanced, there was another election in process. The students of the western capital were engaged in choosing their Lord Rector. On this occasion there was a straight contest; no freak candidates, nationalist, sectarian, or intellectual, obscured the issue. The Conservative nominee was a prominent member of the Cabinet, the Liberal the leader of the Old Guard of that faith. Enthusiasm waxed high, and violence was not absent—the violence without bitterness which is the happy mark of Scottish rectorial contests. Already there had been many fantastic doings. The Conservative headquarters were decorated by night with Liberal red paint, prints which set the law of libel at nought were sold in the streets, songs of a surprising ribaldry were composed to the discredit of the opposing candidates. No undergraduate protagonist had a single physical, mental, or moral oddity which went unadvertised. One distinguished triumph the Liberals had won. A lanky Conservative leader had been kidnapped, dressed in a child's shorts, blouse, socks, and beribboned sailor hat, and attached by padlocked chains to the college railings, where, like a culprit in the stocks, for a solid hour he had made sport for the populace. Such an indignity could not go unavenged, and the Conservatives were out for blood.
The foremost of the Liberal leaders was a man, older than the majority of students, who, having forsaken the law, was now pursuing a belated medical course. It is sufficient to say that his name was Linklater, for he does not come into this story. The important thing about him for us is his appearance. He looked older than his thirty-two years, and was of a comfortable figure, almost wholly bald, with a round face, tightly compressed lips, high cheek-bones and large tortoise-shell spectacles. It was his habit to wear a soft black hat of the kind which is fashionable among statesmen, anarchists, and young careerists. In all these respects he was the image of Thomas Carlyle Craw. His parental abode was Kirkmichael, where his father was a Baptist minister.
On the evening in question Thomas strode to the door of the Kirkmichael booking-office, and to his surprise found that his car was not there. It was a drizzling evening, the same weather which that day had graced the Kangaroo match. The weather had been fine when he left Castle Gay in the morning, but he had brought a light raincoat with which he now invested his comfortable person. There were no porters about, and in the dingy station yard there was no vehicle except an antique Ford.
His eye was on the entrance to the yard, where he expected to see any moment the headlights of his car in the wet dusk, when he suddenly found his arms seized. At the same moment a scarf was thrown over his head which stopped all utterance… . About what happened next he was never quite clear, but he felt himself swung by strong arms into the ancient Ford. Through the folds of the scarf he heard its protesting start. He tried to scream, he tried to struggle, but voice and movement were forbidden him… .
He became a prey to the most devastating fear. Who were his assailants? Bolshevists, anarchists, Evallonian Republicans, the minions of a rival press? Or was it the American group which had offered him two days ago by cable ten millions for his properties? … Whither was he bound? A motor launch on the coast, some den in a city slum? …
After an hour's self-torture he found the scarf switched from his head. He was in a car with five large young men in waterproofs, each with a muffler covering the lower part of his face. The rain had ceased, and they seemed to be climbing high up on to the starlit moors. He had a whiff of wet bracken and heather.
He found his voice, and with what resolution he could muster he demanded to know the reason of the outrage and the goal of his journey.
"It's all right, Linklater," said one of them. "You'll know soon enough."
They called him Linklater! The whole thing was a blunder. His incognito was preserved. The habit of a lifetime held, and he protested no more.
Chapter 3 THE BACK HOUSE OF THE GARROCH
The road to the springs of the Garroch water, a stream which never descends to the lowlands but runs its whole course in the heart of mossy hills, is for the motorist a matter of wide and devious circuits. It approaches its goal circumspectly, with an air of cautious reconnaissance. But the foot-traveller has an easier access. He can take the cart-road which runs through the heather of the Clachlands glen and across the intervening hills by the Nick of the Threshes. Beyond that he will look into the amphitheatre of the Garroch, with the loch of that name dark under the shadow of the Caldron, and the stream twining in silver links through the moss, and the white ribbon of highway, on which wheeled vehicles may move, ending in the yard of a moorland cottage.
The Blaweary car had carried Jaikie and Dougal swiftly over the first fifteen miles of their journey. At about three o'clock of the October afternoon they had reached the last green cup where the Clachlands has its source, and were leisurely climbing the hill towards the Nick. Both had ancient knapsacks on their shoulders, but it was their only point of resemblance. Dougal was clad in a new suit of rough tweed knickerbockers which did not fit him well; he had become very hot and carried his jacket on his arm, and he had no hat. Jaikie was in old flannels, for he abominated heavy raiment, and, being always more or less in training, his slender figure looked pleasantly cool and trim. Sometimes they sauntered, sometimes they strode, and now and then they halted, when Dougal had something to say. For Dougal was in the first stage of holiday, when to his closest friend he had to unburden himself of six months' store of conversation. It was as inevitable as the heat and discomfort which must attend the first day's walk, before his body rid itself of its sedentary heaviness. Jaikie spoke little; his fate in life was to be a listener.
It is unfair to eavesdrop on the babble of youth when its flow has been long pent up. Dougal's ran like Ariel over land and sea, with excursions into the upper air. He had recovered his only confidant, and did not mean to spare him. Sometimes he touched upon his daily task—its languors and difficulties, the harassments of the trivial, the profound stupidity of the middle-aged. He defended hotly his politics, and drew so many fine distinctions between his creed and those of all other men, that it appeared that his party was in the loyal, compact, and portable form of his single self. Then ensued torrential confessions of faith and audacious ambition. He was not splashing—he was swimming with a clean stroke to a clear goal. With his pen and voice he was making his power felt, and in time the world would listen to him. His message? There followed a statement of ideals which was nobly eclectic. Dougal was at once nationalist and internationalist, humanitarian and man of iron, realist and poet.
They were now in the Nick of the Threshes, where, in a pad of green lawn between two heathery steeps, a well bubbled among mosses. The thirsty idealist flung himself on the ground and drank deep. He rose with his forelock dripping.
"I sometimes think you are slipping away from me, Jaikie," he said. "You've changed a lot in the last two years… . You live in a different kind of world from me, and every year you're getting less and less of a Scotsman… . And I've a notion, when I pour out my news to you and haver about myself, that you're criticising me all the time in your own mind. Am I not right? You're terribly polite, and you never say much, but I can feel you're laughing at me. Kindly, maybe, but laughing all the same. You're saying to yourself, 'Dougal gets dafter every day. He's no better than a savage.'"
Jaikie regarded the flushed and bedewed countenance of his friend, and the smile that broadened over his small face was not critical.
"I often think you daft, Dougal. But then I like daftness."
"Anyway, you've none of it yourself. You're the wisest man I ever met. That's where you and I differ. I'm always burning or freezing, and you keep a nice, average, normal temperature. I take desperate likes and dislikes. You've something good to say about the worst scallywag, and, if you haven't, you hold your tongue. I'm all for flinging my cap over the moon, while you keep yours snug on your head. No. No"—he quelled an anticipated protest. "It's the same in your football. It was like that yesterday afternoon. You never run your head against a stone wall. You wait till you see your chance, and then you're on to it like forked lightning, but you're determined not to waste one atom of your strength."
"That's surely Scotch enough," said Jaikie laughing. "I'm economical."
"No, it's not Scotch. We're not an economical race. I don't know what half-wit invented that libel. We spend ourselves—we've always spent ourselves—on unprofitable causes. What's the phrase—perfervidum ingenium? There's not much of the perfervid about you, Jaikie."
"No?" said the other, politely interrogatory.
"No. You've all the pluck in creation, but it's the considering kind. You remember how Alan Breck defined his own courage—'Just great penetration and knowledge of affairs.' That's yours… . Not that you haven't got the other kind too. David Balfour's kind—'auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage.'"
"I've no courage," said Jaikie. "I'm nearly always in a funk."
"Aye, that's how you would put it. You've picked up the English trick of understatement—what they call meiosis in the grammar books. I doubt you and me are very unlike. You'll not catch me understating. I want to shout both my vices and my virtues on the house-tops… . If I dislike a man I want to hit him on the head, while you'd be wondering if the fault wasn't in yourself… . If I want a thing changed I must drive at it like a young bull. If I think there's dirty work going on I'm for starting a revolution… . You don't seem to care very much about anything, and you're too fond of playing the devil's advocate. There was a time … "
"I don't think I've changed," said Jaikie. "I'm a slow fellow, and I'm so desperately interested in things that I feel my way cautiously. You see, I like so much that I haven't a great deal of time for hating. I'm not a crusader like you, Dougal."
"I'm a poor sort of crusader," said Dougal ruefully. "I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away. But still I've a good hearty stock of dislikes and they keep me from boredom. That's the difference between us. I'm for breaking a man's head, and I probably end by shaking hands. You begin by shaking hands… . All the same, God help the man or woman or creed or party that you make up your slow mind to dislike… . I'm going to make a stir in the world, but I know that I'll never be formidable. I'm not so sure about you."
"I don't want to be formidable."
"And that's maybe just the reason why you will be—some day. But I'm serious, Jaikie. It's a sad business if two ancient friends like you and me are starting to walk on different sides of the road. Our tracks are beginning to diverge, and, though we're still side by side, in ten years we may be miles apart… . You're not the good Scotsman you used to be. Here am I driving myself mad with the sight of my native land running down the brae—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 for it. But all the time I'm despising my job, and despising the paper I help to make up, and despising myself. Thank God, I've nothing to do with policy, but I ask myself if I'm justified in taking money from a thing that turns my stomach."
"But you're no more responsible for the paper than the head of the case-room that sets the type. You're a technical expert."
"That's the answer I've been giving myself, but I'm not sure that it's sound. It's quite true that my leaving Craw's would make no difference—they'd get as good a man next day at a lower wage—maybe at the same wage, for I will say that for them, they're not skinflints. But it's a bad thing to work at something you can't respect. I'm condescending on my job, and that's ruin for a man's soul."
"I see very little harm in the Craw papers," said Jaikie. "They're silly, but they're decent enough."
"Decent!" Dougal cried. "That's just what they are not. They're the most indecent publications on God's earth. They're not vicious, if that's what you mean. They would be more decent if they had a touch of blackguardism. They pander to everything that's shoddy and slushy and third-rate in human nature. Their politics are an opiate to prevent folk thinking. Their endless stunts, their competitions and insurances and country-holiday schemes—that's the ordinary dodge to get up their circulation, so as to raise their advertisement prices. I don't mind that, for it's just common business. It's their uplift, their infernal uplift, that makes my spine cold. Oh, Lord! There's not a vulgar instinct, not a half-baked silliness, in the whole nation that they don't dig out and print in leaded type. And above all, there's the man Craw!"
"Did you ever meet him?" Jaikie asked.
"Never. Who has? They tell me he has a house somewhere in the Canonry, when he gets tired of his apartments in foreign hotels. But I study Craw. I'm a specialist in Craw. I've four big press-cutting books at home full of Craw. Here's some of the latest."
Dougal dived into a pocket and produced a batch of newspaper cuttings.
"They're mostly about Evallonia. I don't worry about that. If Craw wants to be a kingmaker he must fight it out with his Evallonians… . But listen to some of the other titles. 'Mr Craw's Advice to Youth!' 'Mr Craw on the Modern Drama.'—He must have sat in the darkness at the back of a box, for he'd never show up in the stalls.—'Mr Craw on Modern Marriage.'—A fine lot he knows about it!—'Mr Craw warns the Trade Unions.'—The devil he does!—'Mr Craw on the Greatness of England.' 'Mr Craw's Open Letter to the President of the U.S.A.' Will nobody give the body a flea in his ear? … I could write a book about Craw. He's perpetually denouncing, but always with a hopeful smirk. I've discovered his formula. 'This is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.' He wants to be half tonic and half sedative, but for me he's just a plain emetic."
Dougal waved the cuttings like a flag.
"The man is impregnable, for he never reads any paper but his own, and he has himself guarded like a gun-factory. But I've a notion that some day I'll get him face to face. Some day I'll have the chance of telling him just what I think of him, and what every honest man—"
Jaikie by a dexterous twitch got possession of the cuttings, crumpled them into a ball, dropped it in a patch of peat, and ground it down with his heel.
"What's that you've done?" Dougal cried angrily. "You've spoiled my Craw collection."
"Better that than spoiling our holiday. Look here, Dougal, my lad. For a week you've got to put Craw and all his works out of your head. We are back in an older and pleasanter world, and I won't have it wrecked by your filthy journalism… ."
For the better part of five minutes there was a rough-and-tumble on the green moor-road, from which Jaikie ultimately escaped and fled. When peace was made the two found themselves at a gate in a dry-stone dyke.
"Thank God," said Dougal. "Here is the Back House at last. I want my tea."
Their track led them into a little yard behind the cottage, and they made their way to the front, where the slender highway which ascended the valley of the Garroch came to an end in a space of hill gravel before the door. The house was something more than a cottage, for fifty years ago it had been the residence of a prosperous sheep-farmer, before the fashion of "led" farms had spread over the upland glens. It was of two storeys and had a little wing at right angles, the corner between being filled with a huge bush of white roses. The roof was slated, the granite walls had been newly whitewashed, and were painted with the last glories of the tropæolum. A grove of scarlet-berried rowans flanked one end, beyond which lay the walled garden of potatoes and gooseberry bushes, varied with golden-rod and late-flowering phloxes. At the other end were the thatched outhouses and the walls of a sheepfold, where the apparatus for boiling tar rose like a miniature gallows above the dipping-trough. The place slept in a sunny peace. There was a hum of bees from the garden, a slow contented clucking of hens, the echo of a plashing stream descending the steeps of the Caldron, but the undertones made by these sounds were engulfed in the dominant silence. The scent of the moorlands, compounded of miles of stone and heather and winds sharp and pure as the sea, made a masterful background from which it was possible to pick out homelier odours—peat-reek, sheep, the smell of cooking food. To ear, eye, and nostril the place sent a message of intimate and delicate comfort.
The noise of their feet on the gravel brought someone in haste to the door. It was a woman of between forty and fifty, built like a heroine of the Sagas, deep-bosomed, massive, straight as a grenadier. Her broad comely face was brown like a berry, and the dark eyes and hair told of gipsy blood in her ancestry. Her arms were bare, for she had been making butter, and her skirts were kilted, revealing a bright-coloured petticoat, so that she had the air of a Highland warrior.
But in place of the boisterous welcome which Jaikie had expected, her greeting was laughter. She stood in the doorway and shook. Then she held up a hand to enjoin silence, and marched the two travellers to the garden gate out of earshot of the house.
"Did you get my postcard, Mrs Catterick?" Jaikie asked, when they had come to a standstill under a rowan tree.
"Aye, I got your postcaird, and I'm blithe to see ye baith. But ye come at an unco time. I've gotten anither visitor."
"We don't want to inconvenience you," Jaikie began. "We can easily go down the water to the Mains of Garroch. The herd there will take us in."
"Ye'll dae nae siccan thing. It will never be said that Tibby Catterick turned twae auld freends frae her door, and there's beds to spare for ye baith… . But ye come at an unco time and ye find me at an unco job. I'm a jyler."
"A what?"
"A jyler. I've a man inbye, and I'm under bond no to let him stir a fit frae the Back House till the morn's morn… . I'll tell ye the gospel truth. My guid-brither's son—him that's comin' out for a minister—is at the college, and the morn the students are electin' what they ca' a Rector. Weel, Erchie's a stirrin' lad and takes muckle ado wi their politics. It seems that there was a man on the ither side that they wanted to get oot o' the road—it was fair eneugh, for he had pitten some terrible affronts on Erchie. So what maun the daft laddie dae but kidnap him? How it was done I canna tell, but he brocht him here late last nicht in a cawr, and pit me on my aith no to let him leave the place for thirty 'oors… . So you see I'm turned jyler." Mrs Catterick again shook with silent merriment.
"Have you got him indoors now?"
"He's ben the hoose in the best room. I kinnled a fire for him, for he's a cauldrife body. What's he like? Oh, a fosy wee man wi' a bald heid and terrible braw claithes. Ye wad say he was ower auld to be a student, but Erchie says it takes a lang time to get through as a doctor. Linklater, they ca' him."
"Has he given you any trouble?" Dougal asked anxiously. He seemed to long to assist in the task of gaoler.
"No him. My man's awa wi' the crocks to Gledmouth, and, as ye ken, we hae nae weans, but I could manage twa o' him my lane. But he never offered to resist. Just ate his supper as if he was in his ain hoose, and spak nae word except to say that he likit my scones. I lent him yin o' John's sarks for a nicht-gown and this mornin' he shaved himsel' wi' John's razor. He's a quiet, saft-spoken wee body, but there's nae crack in him. He speaks wi' a kind o' English tongue and he ca's me Madam. I doot that deil Erchie maun be in the wrang o' it, but kin's kin and I maun tak the wyte o' his cantrips."
Again Jaikie became apologetic and proposed withdrawal, and again his proposal was rejected.
"Ye can bide here fine," said Mrs Catterick, "now that ye ken the truth. I couldna tell it ye at the door-cheek, for ye were just forenent his windy… . Ye'll hae your meat wi' me in the kitchen, and ye can hae the twa beds in the loft… . Ye'd better no gang near Linklater, for he maybe wadna like folk to ken o' this performance—nor Erchie neither. He has never stirred frae his room this day, and he's spak no word except to speir what place he was in and how far it was frae Glen Callowa… . Now I think o't, that was a queer thing to speir, for Erchie said he brocht him frae Kirkmichael… . Oh, and he was wantin' to send a telegram, but I tell't him there was nae office within saxteen miles and the post wadna be up the water till the morn… . I'm just wonderin' how he'll get off the morn, for he hasna the buits for walkin'. Ye never saw sic snod, wee, pappymashy things on a man's feet. But there's twa bicycles, yin o' John's and yin that belongs to the young herd at the west hirsel. Wi' yin o' them he'll maybe manage down the road… . But there's nae sense in crossin' brigs till ye come to them. I've been thrang wi' the kirnin', but the butter's come, and the kettle's on the boil. Your tea will be ready as sune as ye've gotten your faces washed."
Half an hour later Jaikie and Dougal sat in the kitchen, staying a hearty hunger with farles of oatcake and new-baked scones, and a healthier thirst with immense cups of strong-brewed tea. Their hostess, now garbed somewhat more decorously, presided at the table. She apologised for the delay.
"I had to gie Linklater his tea. He's gettin' terrible restless, puir man. He's been tryin' to read the books in the best room, but he canna fix his mind, and he's aye writin' telegrams. He kens ye're here, and speired whae ye were, and I telled him twa young lads that were trampin' the country. I could see that he was feared o' ye, and nae wonder. It would be sair on a decent body if folk heard that he had been kidnapped by a deil like Erchie. I tried to set his mind at rest about the morn, and telled him about John's bicycle."
But the meal was not the jovial affair which Jaikie remembered of old. Mrs Catterick was preoccupied, and did not expand, as was her custom, in hilarious gossip. This new task of gaoler lay heavy on her shoulders. She seemed always to be listening for sounds from the farther part of the house. Twice she left the table and tiptoed along the passage to listen at the door.
"He's awfu' restless," she reported. "He's walkin' aboot the floor like a hen on a het girdle. I wish he mayna loss his reason. Dod, I'll warm Erchie's lugs for this ploy when I get a haud o' him. Sic a job to saddle on a decent wumman!"
Then for a little there was peace, for a question of Jaikie's led their hostess to an account of the great April storm of that year.
"Thirty and three o' the hill lambs deid in ae nicht… . John was oot in the snaw for nineteen 'oors and I never looked to see him mair. Puir man, when he cam in at last he couldna eat—just a dram o' whisky in het milk—and he sleepit a round o' the clock… . I had fires in ilka room and lambs afore them in a' the blankets I possessed… . Aye, and it was waur when the snaw went and the floods cam. The moss was like a sea, and the Caldron was streikit wi' roarin' burns. We never saw the post for a week, and every brig atween here and Portaway gaed doun to the Solway… . Wheesht!"
She broke off and listened. A faint cry of "Madam" came from the other end of the house.
"It's him. It's Linklater. 'Madam' he ca's me. Keep us a'!"
She hurried from the kitchen, shutting the door carefully behind her.
When she returned it was with a solemn face.
"He's wonderin' if ane o' you lads wad take a telegram for him to the office. He's terrible set on't. 'Madam,' he says wi' his Englishy voice, 'I assure you it's a matter of the first importance.'"
"Nonsense," said Dougal. "Sixteen miles after a long day's tramp! He can easily wait till the morning. Besides, the office would be closed before we got there."
"Aye, but hearken." Mrs Catterick's voice was hushed in awe. "He offers twenty punds to the man that will dae his will. He's gotten the notes in his pooch."
"Now where on earth," said Dougal, "did a medical student get twenty pounds?"
"He's no like a student. The mair I look at him the better I see that he's nane o' the rough clan that Erchie rins wi'. He's yin that's been used wi' his comforts. And he's aulder than I thocht—an aulder man than John. I wadna say but that blagyird Erchie has kidnapped a Lord Provost, and whaur will we a' be then?"
"We had better interview him," said Dougal. "It's a shame to let him fret himself."
"Ane at a time," advised Mrs Catterick, "for he's as skeery as a cowt. You gang, Dougal. Ye ken the ways o' the college lads."
Dougal departed and the two left behind fell silent. Mrs Catterick's instinct for the dramatic had been roused, and she kept her eye on the door, through which the envoy would return, as if it had been the curtain of a stage play. Even Jaikie's placidity was stirred.
"This is a funny business, Mrs Catterick," he said. "Dougal and I come here for peace, and we find the Back House of the Garroch turned into a robbers' den. The Canonry is becoming a stirring place. You've an election on, too."
"So I was hearin', and the post brings us papers about it. John maun try and vote, if he can get an orra day atween the sales. He votit last time, honest man, but we never heard richt whae got in. We're ower far up the glens for poalitics. Wheesht! Is that Dougal?"
It was not. He did not return for nearly half an hour, and when he came it was to put his head inside the door and violently beckon Jaikie. He led him out of doors to the corner of the garden, and then turned on him a face so excited and portentous that the appropriate utterance should have been a shout. He did not shout: he whispered hoarsely.
"Do you mind our talk coming up the road? … Providence has taken me at my word… . Who do you think is sitting ben the house? It's the man Craw!"
Chapter 4 THE RECONNAISSANCE OF CASTLE GAY
The westering sun was lighting up the homely furniture of Mrs Catterick's best room—the sheepskins on the floor, the framed photographs decorated with strings of curlews' eggs on the walls—when Dougal and Jaikie entered the presence of the great man. Mr Craw was not at the moment an impressive figure. The schoolmaster's son of Kilmaclavers had been so long habituated to the attentions of an assiduous valet that he had found some difficulty in making his own toilet. His scanty hair was in disorder, and his spruce blue suit had attracted a good deal of whitewash from the walls of his narrow bedroom. Also he had lost what novelists call his poise. He sat in a horsehair-covered arm-chair drawn up at a table, and strove to look as if he had command of the situation, but his eye was uncertain and his fingers drummed nervously.
"This is Mr Galt, sir," said Dougal, adding, "of St Mark's College, Cambridge."
Mr Craw nodded.
"Your friend is to be trusted?" and his wavering eyes sought Jaikie. What he saw cannot have greatly reassured him, for Jaikie was struggling with a strong inclination to laugh.
"I have need to be careful," he said, fixing his gaze upon a photograph of the late Queen Victoria, and picking his words. "I find myself, through no fault of my own, in a very delicate position. I have been the subject of an outrage on the part of—of some young men of whom I know nothing. I do not blame them. I have been myself a student of a Scottish University… . But it is unfortunate—most unfortunate. It was apparently a case of mistaken identity. Happily I was not recognised… . I am a figure of some note in the world. You will understand that I do not wish to have my name associated with an undergraduate—'rag,' I think, is the word."
His two hearers nodded gravely. They were bound to respect such patent unhappiness.
"Mr—I beg your pardon—Crombie?—has told me that he is employed on one of my papers. Therefore I have a right to call upon his assistance. He informs me that I can also count on your goodwill and discretion, sir," and he inclined his head towards Jaikie. "It is imperative that this foolish affair should never be known to the public. I have been successful in life, and therefore I have rivals. I have taken a strong stand in public affairs, and therefore I have enemies. My position, as you are no doubt aware, is one of authority, and I do not wish my usefulness to be impaired by becoming the centre of a ridiculous tale."
Mr Craw was losing his nervousness and growing fluent. He felt that these two young men were of his own household, and he spoke to them as he would have addressed Freddy Barbon, or Sigismund Allins, or Archibald Bamff, or Bannister, his butler, or that efficient spinster Miss Elena Cazenove.
"I don't think you need be afraid, sir," said Dougal. "The students who kidnapped you will have discovered their mistake as soon as they saw the real Linklater going about this morning. They won't have a notion who was kidnapped, and they won't want to inquire. You may be sure that they will lie very low about the whole business. What is to hinder you sending a wire to Castle Gay to have a car up here to-morrow, and go back to your own house as if nothing had happened? Mrs Catterick doesn't know you from Adam, and you may trust Jaikie and me to hold our tongues."
"Unfortunately the situation is not so simple." Mr Craw blinked his eyes, as if to shut out an unpleasing picture, and his hands began to flutter again. "At this moment there is a by-election in the Canonry—a spectacular by-election… . The place is full of journalists—special correspondents—from the London papers. They were anxious to drag me into the election, but I have consistently refused. I cannot embroil myself in local politics. Indeed, I intended to go abroad, for this inroad upon my rural peace is in the highest degree distasteful… . You may be very certain that these journalists are at this moment nosing about Castle Gay. Now, my household must have been alarmed when I did not return last night. I have a discreet staff, but they were bound to set inquiries on foot. They must have telephoned to Glasgow, and they may even have consulted the police. Some rumours must have got abroad, and the approaches to my house will be watched. If one of these journalists learns that I am here—the telegraph office in these country parts is a centre of gossip—he will follow up the trail. He will interview the woman of this cottage, he will wire to Glasgow, and presently the whole ridiculous business will be disclosed, and there will be inch headlines in every paper except my own."
"There's something in that," said Dougal. "I know the ways of those London journalists, and they're a dour crop to shift. What's your plan, sir?"
"I have written a letter." He produced one of Mrs Catterick's disgraceful sheets of notepaper on which her disgraceful pen had done violence to Mr Craw's neat commercial hand. "I want this put into the hand of my private secretary, Mr Barbon, at once. Every hour's delay increases the danger."
"Would it not be best," Dougal suggested, "if you got on to one of the bicycles—there are two in the outhouse, Mrs Catterick says—and I escorted you to Castle Gay this very night. It's only about twenty miles."
"I have never ridden a bicycle in my life," said Mr Craw coldly. "My plan is the only one, I fear. I am entitled to call upon you to help me."
It was Jaikie who answered. The first day's walk in the hills was always an intoxication to him, and Mrs Catterick's tea had banished every trace of fatigue.
"It's a grand night, Dougal," he said, "and there's a moon. I'll be home before midnight. There's nothing I would like better than a ride down Garroch to the Callowa. I know the road as well as my own name."
"We'll go together," said Dougal firmly. "I'm feeling fresher than when I started… . What are your instructions, sir?"
"You will deliver this letter direct into Mr Barbon's hands. I have asked him to send a car in this direction to-morrow before midday, and I will walk down the glen to meet it. It will wait for me a mile or so from this house… . You need not say how I came here. I am not in the habit of explaining my doings to my staff."
Mr Craw enclosed his letter in a shameful envelope and addressed it. His movements were brisker now and he had recovered his self-possession. "I shall not forget this, Mr Crombie," he said benignly. "You are fortunate in being able to do me a service."
Dougal and Jaikie betook themselves to the outhouse to examine the bicycles of John Catterick and the herd of the west hirsel.
"I eat the man's bread," said the former, "so I am bound to help him, but God forbid that I should ever want to accept his favours. It's unbelievable that we should spend the first night of our holiday trying to save the face of Craw… . Did you ever see such an image? He's more preposterous even than I thought. But there's a decency in all things, and if Craw's bones are to be picked it will be me that has the picking of them, and not those London corbies."
But this truculence did not represent Dougal's true mind, which presently became apparent to his companion as they bumped their way among the heather bushes and flood-gravel which composed the upper part of the Garroch road. He was undeniably excited. He was a subaltern officer in a great army, and now he had been brought face to face with the general-in-chief. However ill he might think of that general, there was romance in the sudden juxtaposition, something to set the heart beating and to fire the fancy. Dougal regarded Mr Craw much as a stalwart republican might look on a legitimate but ineffectual monarch; yet the stoutest republican is not proof against an innocent snobbery and will hurry to a street corner to see the monarch pass. Moreover, this general-in-chief was in difficulties; his immediate comfort depended upon the humble subaltern. So Dougal was in an excited mood and inclined to babble. He was determined to do his best for his chief, but he tried to salve his self-respect by a critical aloofness.
"What do you think of the great Craw?" he asked Jaikie.
"He seems a pleasant fellow," was the answer.
"Oh, he's soft-spoken enough. He has the good manners of one accustomed to having his own way. But, man, to hear him talk was just like hearing a grandfather-clock ticking. He's one mass of artifice."
Dougal proceeded to a dissection of Mr Craw's mind which caused him considerable satisfaction. He proved beyond question that the great man had no brains of his own, but was only an echo, a repository for other men's ideas. "A cistern, not a spring," was his conclusion. But he was a little dashed by Jaikie, who listened patiently to the analysis, and then remarked that he was talking rubbish.
"If a man does as much in the world as Craw, and makes himself as important, it's nonsense to say he has no brains. He must have plenty, though they may not be the kind you like. You know very well, Dougal, that you're mightily pleased to have the chance of doing the great man a favour. And maybe rather flattered."
The other did not reply for a moment. "Perhaps I am," he said at length. "We're all snobs in a way—all but you. You're the only true democrat I know. What's the phrase—'Fellow to a beggar and brother to a king, if he be found worthy'? It's no credit to you—it's just the way you're made."
After that it was impossible to get a word out of Jaikie, and even Dougal drifted by way of monosyllables into silence, for the place and the hour had their overmastering enchantments. There was no evening mist, and in the twilight every hill stood out clean-cut in a purple monochrome. Soon the road skirted the shores of the Lower Loch Garroch, twining among small thickets of birch and hazel, with the dark water on its right lapping ghostly shingle. Presently the glen narrowed and the Garroch grumbled to itself in deep linns, appearing now and then on some rockshelf in a broad pool which caught the last amethyst light of day. There had been no lamps attached to the bicycles of John Catterick and the herd of the west hirsel, so the travellers must needs move circumspectly. And then the hills fell back, the glen became a valley, and the Garroch ran free in wild meadows of rush and bracken.
The road continued downstream to the junction with the Callowa not far from the town of Portaway. But to reach Castle Gay it was necessary to break off and take the hill-road on the left, which crossed the containing ridge and debouched in the upper part of Glen Callowa. The two riders dismounted, and walked the road which wound from one grassy howe to another till they reached the low saddle called the Pad o' the Slack, and looked down upon a broader vale. Not that they had any prospect from it—for it was now very dark, the deep autumn darkness which precedes moonrise; but they had an instinct that there was freer space before them. They remounted their bicycles, and cautiously descended a road with many awkward angles and hairpin bends, till they found themselves among trees, and suddenly came on to a metalled highway.
"Keep to the right," Jaikie directed. "We're not more than two miles from the Castle gates."
The place had the unmistakable character of a demesne. Even in the gloom it had an air of being well cared for, and the moon, which now began to send a shiver of light through the darkness, revealed a high wall on the left—no dry-stone dyke but a masoned wall with a coping. The woods, too, were not the scrub of the hills, but well-grown timber trees and plantations of fir. Then the wall fell back, there were two big patches of greensward protected by chains and white stones, and between them a sweep of gravel, a castellated lodge, and vast gates like a portcullis. The Lord Rhynns of three generations ago had been unhappily affected by the Gothic Revival.
"Here's the place," said Dougal. "It's a mighty shell for such a wee body as Craw."
The gates were locked. There was a huge bell pendant from one of the pillars and this Jaikie rang. It echoed voluminously in the stillness, but there was no sign of life in the lodge. He rang again and yet again, making the night hideous, while Dougal hammered at the massive ironwork of the gate.
"They're all dead or drunk," the latter said. "I'm positive there's folk in the lodge. I saw a bit of a light in the upper window. What for will they not open?"
Jaikie had abandoned the bell and was peering through the ironwork.
"Dougal," he whispered excitedly, "look here. This gate is not meant to open. Look what's behind it. It's a barricade. There's two big logs jammed between the posts. The thing would keep a Tank out. Whoever is in there is terrified of something."
"There's somebody in the lodge watching us. I'm certain of that. What do they mean by behaving as if they were besieged? I don't like it, Jaikie. There's something here we don't understand—and Craw doesn't understand. How can they expect to defend as big a space as a park? Any active man could get over the wall."
"Maybe they want to keep out motors… . Well, we needn't waste time here. That letter has got to be delivered, and there's more roads than the main road."
"Is there another entrance?"
"Yes. This is the main one, but there's a second lodge a mile beyond Starr—that's the village—on the Knockraw road. But we needn't worry about that. We can leave our bicycles, and get into the park at the Callowa bridge."
They remounted and resumed their course along the highway. One or two cottages were passed, which showed no sign of life, since the folk of these parts rise early and go early to bed. But in an open space a light was visible from a larger house on the slope to the right. Then came a descent and the noise of a rapid stream.
The bicycles were shoved under a hawthorn bush, and Jaikie clambered on to the extreme edge of the bridge parapet.
"We can do it," he reported. "A hand traverse for a yard or two and then a ten-foot drop. There's bracken below, so it will be soft falling."
Five minutes later the two were emerging from a bracken covert on to the lawn-like turf which fringed the Callowa. The moon was now well up in the sky, and they could see before them the famous wild park of Castle Gay. The guide-books relate that in it are both red deer and fallow-deer, and in one part a few of the ancient Caledonian wild cattle. But these denizens must have been asleep, for as Jaikie and Dougal followed the river they saw nothing but an occasional rabbit and a belated heron. They kept to the stream side, for Jaikie had once studied the ordnance map and remembered that the Castle was close to the water.
The place was so magical that one of the two forgot his errand. It was a cup among high hills, but, seen in that light, the hills were dwarfed, and Jaikie with a start realised that the comb of mountain, which seemed little more than an adjacent hillock, must be a ridge of the great Muneraw, twenty miles distant. The patches of wood were black as ink against the pale mystery of the moonlit sward. The river was dark too, except where a shallow reflected the moon. The silence was broken only by the small noises of wild animals, the ripple of the stream, and an occasional splash of a running salmon.
Then, as they topped a slope, the house lay before them. It stood on its own little plateau, with the ground falling from it towards the park and the stream, and behind it the fir-clad Castle Hill. The moon turned it into ivory, so that it had the air of some precious Chinese carving on a jade stand. In such a setting it looked tiny, and one had to measure it with the neighbouring landscape to realise that it was a considerable pile. But if it did not awe by its size, it ravished the eyes with its perfection. Whatever may have been crude and ugly in it, the jerry-building of our ancestors, the demented reconstruction of our fathers, was mellowed by night into a classic grace. Jaikie began to whistle softly with pure delight, for he had seen a vision.
The practical Dougal had his mind on business. "It's past eleven o'clock, and it looks as if they were all in their beds. I don't see a light. There'll be gardens to get through before we reach the door. We'd better look out for dogs too. The folk here seem a bit jumpy in their nerves."
But it was no dog that obstructed them. Since they had come in sight of their goal they had moved with circumspection, and, being trained of old to the game, were as noiseless as ferrets. They had left the wilder part of the park, had crossed a piece of meadowland from which an aftermath of hay had lately been taken, and could already see beyond a ha-ha the terraces of a formal garden. But while they guarded against sound, their eyes were too much on their destination to be wary about the foreground.
So it befell that they crossed the ha-ha at the very point where a gentleman was taking his ease. Dougal fell over him, and the two travellers found themselves looking at the startled face of a small man in knickerbockers.
His pipe had dropped from his mouth. Jaikie picked it up and presented it to him. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "I hope you're not hurt." In the depths of the ha-ha there was shadow, and Jaikie took the victim of Dougal's haste for someone on the Castle staff.
"What are you doing here?" The man's air was at once apologetic and defiant. There was that in his tone which implied that he might in turn be asked his business, that he had no prescriptive right to be sitting smoking in that ha-ha at midnight.
So Jaikie answered: "Just the same as you. Taking the air and admiring the view."
The little man was recovering himself.
"You gave me quite a start when you jumped on the top of me. I thought it was one of the gamekeepers after a poacher." He began to fill his pipe. "More by token, who are you?"
"Oh, we're a couple of undergraduates seeing the world. We wanted a look at the Castle, and there's not much you can see from the highroad, so we got in at the bridge and came up the stream… . We're strangers here. There's an inn at Starr, isn't there? What sort of a place is it?"
"Nothing to write home about," was the answer. "You'd better go on to Portaway… . So you're undergraduates? I thought that maybe you were of my own profession, and I was going to be a bit jealous. I'm on the staff of the Live Wire."
Dougal's hand surreptitiously found Jaikie's wrist and held it tight.
"I suppose you're up here to cover the by-election," he observed, in a voice which he strove to keep flat and uninterested.
"By-election be hanged! That was my original job, but I'm on to far bigger business. Do you know who lives in that house?"
Two heads were mendaciously shaken.
"The great Craw! Thomas Carlyle Craw! The man that owns all the uplift papers. If you've never heard of Craw, Oxford's more of a mausoleum than I thought."
"We're Cambridge," said Jaikie, "and of course we've heard of Craw. What about him?"
"Simply that he's the mystery man of journalism. You hear of him but you never see him. He's a kind of Delphic oracle that never shows his face. The Wire doesn't care a hoot for by-elections, but it cares a whole lot about Craw. He's our big rival, and we love him as much as a cat loves water. He's a go-getter, is Craw. There's a deep commercial purpose behind all his sanctimonious bilge, and he knows how to rake in the shekels. His circulation figures are steadily beating ours by at least ten per cent. He has made himself the idol of his public, and, till we pull off the prophet's mantle and knock out some of the sawdust, he has us licked all the time. But it's the deuce and all to get at him, for the blighter is as shy as a wood nymph. So, when this election started, my chief says to me: 'Here's our chance at last,' he says. 'Off you go, Tibbets, and draw the badger. Get him into the limelight somehow. Show him up for the almighty fool he is. Publicity about Craw,' he says, 'any kind of publicity that will take the gilt off the image. It's the chance of your life!'"
"Any luck?" Dougal asked casually.
Mr Tibbets's voice became solemn. "I believe," he said, "that I am on the edge of the world's biggest scoop. I discovered in half a day that we could never get Craw to mix himself up in an election. He knows too much. He isn't going to have the Wire and a dozen other papers printing his halting utterances verbatim in leaded type, and making nice, friendly comments… . No, that cock won't fight. But I've found a better. D'you know what will be the main headline in to-morrow's Wire? It will be 'Mysterious Disappearance of Mr Craw—Household Distracted.'—And by God, it will be true—every word of it. The man's lost."
"How do you mean?"
"Just lost. He never came back last night."
"Why should he? He has probably offed it abroad—to give the election a miss."
"Not a bit of it. He meant to go abroad to-morrow, and all the arrangements were made—I found out that from standing a drink to his second chauffeur. But he was expected back last night, and his car was meeting him at Kirkmichael. He never appeared. He has a staff like Buckingham Palace, and they were on the telephone all evening to Glasgow. It seems he left Glasgow right enough… . I got that from the chauffeur fellow, who's new and not so damned secretive as the rest. So I went to Kirkmichael this morning on a motorbike, and the ticket collector remembered Craw coming off the Glasgow train. He disappeared into the void somewhere between here and Kirkmichael at some time after 7.15 last night. Take my word for it, a judgment has fallen upon Craw."
"Aren't you presuming too much?" Jaikie asked. "He may have changed his mind and be coming back to-morrow—or be back now—or he's wiring his servants to meet him somewhere. Then you and the Wire will look rather foolish."
"It's a risk, no doubt, but it's worth taking. And if you had seen his secretary's face you wouldn't think it much of a risk. I never saw a chap so scared as that secretary man. He started off this afternoon in a sports-model at eighty miles an hour and was back an hour later as if he had seen his father's ghost… . What's more, this place is in a state of siege. They wouldn't let me in at the lodge gates. I made a long detour and got in by the back premises, and blessed if I hadn't to run for my life! … Don't tell me. The people in that house are terrified of something, and Craw isn't there, and they don't know why Craw isn't there… . That's the mystery I'm out to solve, and I'll get to the bottom of it or my name isn't Albert Tibbets."
"I don't quite see the point," said Jaikie. "If you got him on a platform you might make capital out of his foolishness. But if some accident has happened to him, you can't make capital out of a man's misfortunes."
"We can out of Craw's. Don't you see we can crack the shell of mystery? We can make him news—like any shop-girl who runs away from home or city gent that loses his memory. We can upset his blasted dignity."
Dougal got up. "We'll leave you to your midnight reveries, Mr Tibbets. We're for bed. Where are your headquarters?"
"Portaway is my base. But my post at present is in and around this park. I'm accustomed to roughing it."
"Well, good night and good luck to you."
The two retraced their steps down the stream.
"This letter will have to wait till the morn's morn," said Dougal. "Craw was right. It hasn't taken long for the opposition Press to get after him. It's our business, Jaikie my man, to make the Wire the laughing-stock of British journalism… . Not that Tibbets isn't a dangerous fellow. Pray Heaven he doesn't get on the track of the students' rag, for that's just the kind of yarn he wants… . They say that dog doesn't eat dog, but I swear before I've done with him to chew yon tyke's ear… . I'm beginning to think very kindly of Craw."
Chapter 5 INTRODUCES A LADY
Jaikie was roused next morning in his little room in the Westwater Arms by Dougal sitting down heavily on his toes. He was a sound sleeper, and was apt to return but slowly to a waking world. Yet even to his confused perceptions' the state of the light seemed to mark an hour considerably later than that of seven a.m. which had been the appointed time. He reached for his watch and saw that it was nearly nine o'clock.
"You never called me," he explained apologetically.
"I did not, but I've been up since six myself. I've been thinking hard. Jaikie, there's more in this business than meets the eye. I've lain awake half the night considering it. But first I had to act. We can't let the Wire's stuff go uncontradicted. So I bicycled into Portaway and called up the office on the telephone. I caught Tavish just as he was going out to his breakfast. I had to take risks, so I said I was speaking from Castle Gay on Mr Craw's behalf… . Tavish must have wondered what I was doing there… . I said that Mr Craw had left for the Continent yesterday and would be away some weeks, and that an announcement to that effect was to appear in all the Craw papers."
"Did he raise any objection?"
"I thought he would, for this is the first time that Craw has advertised his movements, and I was prepared with the most circumstantial lies. But I didn't need to lie, for he took it like a lamb. Indeed, it was piper's news I was giving him, for he had had the same instructions already. What do you think of that?"
"He got them from Barbon the secretary?"
"Not a bit of it. He had had no word from Castle Gay. He got them yesterday afternoon from London. Now, who sent them?"
"The London office."
"I don't believe it. Bamff, the General Manager, is away in Canada over the new paper contracts. Don't tell me that Craw instructed London to make the announcement before he was bagged by the students. It isn't his way… . There's somebody else at work on this job, somebody that wants to have it believed that Craw is out of the country."
Jaikie shook a sceptical head.
"You were always too ingenious, Dougal. You've got Craw on the brain, and are determined to find melodrama… . Order my breakfast like a good chap. I'll be down in twenty minutes."
Jaikie bathed in the ancient contrivance of wood and tin, which was all that the inn provided, and was busy shaving when Dougal returned. The latter sat himself resolutely on the bed.
"The sooner we're at the Castle the better," he observed, as if the remark were the result of a chain of profound reasoning. "The more I think of this affair the less I like it. I'm not exactly in love with Craw, but he's my chief, and I'm for him every time against his trade rivals. Compared to the Wire crowd, Craw is respectable. What I want to get at is the state of mind of the folk in the Castle. They're afraid of the journalists, and they've cause. A fellow like Tibbets is as dangerous as nitro-glycerine. They've lost Craw, and they want to keep it quiet till they find him again. So far it's plain sailing. But what in Heaven's name did they mean by barricading the gate at the big lodge?"
"To prevent themselves being taken by surprise by journalists in motor-cars or on motor-bicycles," said Jaikie, who was now trying to flatten out his rebellious hair.
"But that's not sense. To barricade the gate was just to give the journalists the kind of news they wanted. 'Mr Craw's House in a State of Siege.' 'Amazing Precautions at Castle Gay'—think of the headlines! Barbon and the rest know everything about newspaper tricks, and we must assume that they haven't suddenly become congenital idiots… . No, Jaikie my lad, they're afraid—blind afraid—of something more than the journalists, and the sooner we find out what it is the better for you and me and Craw… . I'll give you twenty minutes to eat your breakfast, and then we take the road. It'll be by the bridge and the water-side, the same as last night."
It was a still hazy autumn morning with the promise of a warm midday. The woods through which the two sped were loud with pheasants, the shooting of which would be at the best perfunctory, for the tenant at the Castle never handled a gun. No one was on the road, except an aged stonebreaker in a retired nook. They hid their bicycles with some care in a mossy covert, for they might be for some time separated from them, and, after a careful reconnaissance to see that they were unobserved, entered the park by way of the bridge parapet, the traverse and the ten-foot drop. This time they had not the friendly night to shield them, and they did not venture on the lawn-like turf by the stream side. Instead they followed a devious route among brackeny hollows, where they could not be seen from any higher ground. The prospect from the highway was, they knew, shut out by the boundary wall.
Dougal moved fast with a sense of purpose like a dog on a scent. He had lost his holiday discursiveness, and had no inclination to linger in bypaths earthly or spiritual. But Jaikie had his familiar air of detachment. He did not appear to take his errand with any seriousness or to be much concerned with the mysteries which filled Dougal's thoughts. He was revelling in the sounds and scents of October in that paradise which possessed the charm of both lowland and highland. The film of morning was still silver-grey on rush and grass and heather, and the pools of the Callowa smoked delicately. The day revealed some of the park's features which night had obscured. In particular there was a tiny lochan, thronged with wildfowl, which was connected by a reedy burn with the Callowa. A herd of dappled fallow-deer broke out of the thicket, and somewhere near a stag was belling.
The house came suddenly into sight at a slightly different angle from that of the night before. They were on higher ground, and had a full view of the terrace, where even now two gardeners were trimming the grass edges of the plots. That seemed normal enough, and so did the spires of smoke ascending straight from the chimneys into the windless air. They stood behind a gnarled, low-spreading oak, which must have been there as a seedling when steel-bonneted reivers rode that way and the castle was a keep. Dougal's hand shaded his eyes, and he scanned warily every detail of the scene.
"We must push forward," he said. "If anyone tries to stop us we can say we've a letter to Mr Barbon from Mr Craw. Knowing Barbon's name will be a sort of passport. Keep your eyes skinned for Tibbets, for he mustn't see us. I daresay he'll be at his breakfast in Portaway—he'll be needing it if he has been hunkering here all night. We haven't … "
He broke off, for at that instant two animals precipitated themselves against his calves, thereby nearly unbalancing him. They were obviously dogs, but of a breed with which Dougal was unfamiliar. They had large sagacious heads, gentle and profoundly tragic eyes, and legs over which they seemed to have no sort of control. Over Dougal they sprawled and slobbered, while he strove to evade their caresses.
Then came a second surprise, for a voice spoke out of the tree above them. The voice was peremptory and it was young. It said, "Down, Tactful! Down, Pensive!" And then it added in a slightly milder tone: "What are you doing here?"
These last words were so plainly addressed to the two travellers that they looked up into the covert, half green, half russet, above their heads. There, seated in a crutch made by two branches, they beheld to their amazement a girl.
Her face was visible between the branches, but the rest of her was hidden, except one slim pendant brown leg ending in a somewhat battered shoe. The face regarded them solemnly, reprovingly, suspiciously. It was a pretty face, a little sunburnt, not innocent of freckles, and it was surmounted by a mop of tawny gold hair. The eyes were blue and stern. The beagle pups, having finished their overtures to Dougal, were now making ineffective leaps at her shoe.
"How did you get up that tree?" The question was wrung from Jaikie, a specialist in such matters, as he regarded the branchless bole and the considerable elevation of the bough on which she sat.
"Quite easily," was the answer. "I have climbed much harder trees than this. But that is not the question. What are you two doing here?"
"What are you?"
"I have permission to go anywhere in the Castle grounds. I have a key for the gates. But you are trespassers, and there will be an awful row if Mackillop catches you."
"We're not," said Dougal. "We're carrying a letter from Mr Craw to Mr Barbon. I have it in my pocket."
"Is that true?" The eyes were sceptical, but also startled.
For answer Dougal drew the missive from his inner pocket. "There it is: 'The Honourable Frederick Barbon.' Look for yourself!"
The girl peered down at the superscription. The degraded envelope of Mrs Catterick's did not perhaps carry conviction, but something in the two faces below persuaded her of their honesty. With a swift movement she wriggled out of the crutch, caught a bough with both hands, and dropped lightly to the ground. With two deft kicks she repelled the attentions of Tactful and Pensive, and stood before the travellers, smoothing down her short skirt. She was about Jaikie's height, very slim and straight, and her interrogation was that of a general to his staff.
"You come from Mr Craw?"
"Yes."
"When did you leave him?"
"Last night."
"Glory be! Let's sit down. There's no hurry, and we must move very carefully. For I may as well let you know that the Devil has got into this place. Yes. The Devil. I don't quite know what form he has taken, but he's rampant in Castle Gay. I came here this morning to prospect, for I feel in a way responsible. You see it belongs to my father, and Mr Craw's our tenant. My name is Alison Westwater."
"Same name as the pub in Starr?" asked Dougal, who liked to connect his knowledge organically.
She nodded. "The Westwater Arms. Yes, that's my family. I live at the Mains with my aunt, while Papa and Mamma are on the Continent. I wouldn't go. I said, 'You can't expect me after a filthy summer in London to go ramping about France wearing tidy clothes and meeting the same idiotic people.' I had a year at school in Paris and that gave me all the France I want in this life. I said, 'Castle Gay's my home, though you've chosen to let it to a funny little man, and I'm not going to miss my whack of Scotland.' So I hopped it here at the end of July, and I've been having a pretty peaceful time ever since. You see, all the outdoor people are our people, and Mr Craw has been very nice about it, and lets me fish in the Callowa and all the lochs and treat the place as if he wasn't there."
"Do you know Mr Craw well?" Dougal asked.
"I have seen him three times and talked to him once—when Aunt Harriet took me to tea with him. I thought him rather a dear, but quite helpless. Talks just like a book, and doesn't appear to understand much of what you say to him. I suppose he is very clever, but he seems to want a lot of looking after. You never saw such a staff. There's a solemn butler called Bannister. I believe Bannister washes Mr Craw's face and tucks him into bed… . There's a typewriting woman by the name of Cazenove with a sharp nose and horn spectacles, who never takes her eyes off him, and is always presenting him with papers to read. It's slavery of some kind, but whether she's his slave or he's her slave I don't know. I had to break a plate at tea, just to remind myself that there was such a thing as liberty… . Then there is Mr Allins, a very glossy young man. You've probably come across him, for he goes about a lot. Mr Allins fancies himself the perfect man of the world and a great charmer. I think if you met him you would say he wasn't quite a gentleman." She smiled confidentially at the two, as if she assumed that their standards must coincide with hers.
"Mr Barbon?" Dougal asked.
"And of course there's Freddy. There's nothing wrong with Freddy in that way. He's some sort of cousin of ours. Freddy is the chief of the staff and has everything on his shoulders. He is very kind and very anxious, poor dear, and now the crash has come! Not to put too fine a point on it, for the last twenty-four hours Freddy has gone clean off his head… ."
She stopped at an exclamation from Jaikie. He had one of those small field-glasses which are adapted for a single eye, with which he had been examining the approaches to the castle.
"Tibbets can't have had much of a breakfast," he announced. "I see him sitting in that trench place."
"Who is Tibbets?" she demanded.
"He's a journalist, on the Live Wire, one of Mr Craw's rivals. We ran into him late last night, and that's why we couldn't deliver the letter."
"Little beast! That's the first of Freddy's anxieties. This place has been besieged by journalists for a week, all trying to get at Mr Craw… . Then the night before last Mr Craw did not come home. You know where he is, but Freddy doesn't, so that's the second of his troubles. Somehow the fact of Mr Craw's disappearance has leaked out, and the journalists have got hold of it, and yesterday it almost came to keeping them off with a gun… . And out of the sky dropped the last straw."
She paused dramatically.
"I don't know the truth about it, for I haven't seen Freddy since yesterday morning. I think he must have had a letter, for he rushed to the Mains and left a message for Aunt Harriet that she was on no account to let any stranger into the house or speak to anybody or give any information. He can't have meant the journalists only, for we knew all about them… . After that, just after luncheon, while I was out for a walk, I saw a big car arrive with three men in it. It tried to get in at the West Lodge, but Jameson—that's the lodge-keeper—wouldn't open the gate. I thought that odd, but when I went riding in the evening I couldn't get in at the West Lodge either. They had jammed trunks of trees across. That means that Freddy is rattled out of his senses. He thinks he is besieged. Is there any word for that but lunacy? I can understand his being worried about the journalists and Mr Craw not coming home. But this! Isn't it what they call persecution-mania? I'm sorry about it, for I like Freddy."
"The man's black afraid of something," said Dougal, "but maybe he has cause. Maybe it's something new—something we know nothing about."
The girl nodded. "It looks like it. Meantime, where is Mr Craw? It's your turn to take up the tale."
"He's at the Back House of the Garroch, waiting for Barbon to send a car to fetch him."
Miss Westwater whistled. "Now how on earth did he get there? I know the place. It's on our land. I remember the shepherd's wife. A big, handsome, gipsy-looking woman, isn't she?"
Dougal briefly but dramatically told the story of the rape of Mr Craw. The girl listened with open eyes and an astonishment which left no room for laughter.
"Marvellous!" was her comment. "Simply marvellous! That it should happen to Mr Craw of all people! I love those students… . What by the way are you? You haven't told me."
"Jaikie here is an undergraduate—Cambridge."
"Beastly place! I'm sorry, but my sympathies are all with Oxford."
"And I'm a journalist by trade. I'm on one of the Craw papers. I've no sort of admiration for Craw, but of course I'm on his side in this row. The question is—"
Jaikie, who had been busy with his glass, suddenly clutched the speaker by the hair and forced him down. He had no need to perform the same office for Miss Westwater, for at his first movement she had flung herself on her face. The three were on a small eminence of turf with thick bracken before and behind them, and in this they lay crouched.
"What is it?" Dougal whispered.
"There's a man in the hollow," said Jaikie. "He's up to no good, for he's keeping well in cover. Wait here, and I'll stalk him."
He wriggled into the fern, and it was a quarter of an hour before he returned to report. "It's a man, and he's wearing a queer kind of knicker-bocker suit. He hasn't the look of a journalist. He has some notion of keeping cover, for I could get no more than a glimpse of him. He's trying to get to the house, so we'll hope he'll tumble over Tibbets in the ditch, as Dougal and I did last night."
"The plot thickens!" The girl's eyes were bright with excitement. "He's probably one of the strangers who came in the car… . The question is, what is to be done next? Mr Craw is at the Back House of the Garroch, twenty miles away, and no one knows it but us three. We have to get him home without the unfriendly journalists knowing about it."
"We have also to get him out of the country," said Dougal. "There was some nonsense in the Wire this morning about his being lost, but all the Craw papers will announce that he has left for the Continent… . But the first thing is to get him home. We'd better be thinking about delivering that letter, Jaikie."
"Wait a moment," said the girl. "How are you going to deliver the letter? Freddy won't let you near him, even though you say you come from Mr Craw. He'll consider it a ruse de guerre, and small blame to him. I don't know what journalists look like as a class, but I suppose you bear the mark of your profession."
"True. But maybe he wouldn't suspect Jaikie."
"He'll suspect anyone. He has journalists on the brain just now."
"But he'd recognise the handwriting."
"Perhaps, if the letter got to him. But it won't… . Besides, that man in the ha-ha—what do you call him—Tibbets?—will see you. And the other man who is crawling down there. All the approaches to the house on this side are as bare as a billiard table. At present you two are dark horses. The enemy doesn't connect you with Mr Craw, and that's very important, for you are the clue to Mr Craw's whereabouts. We mustn't give that card away. We don't want Tibbets on your track, for it leads direct to the Back House of the Garroch."
"That's common sense," said Dougal with conviction. "What's your plan, then?"
The girl sat hunched in the fern, with her chin on one hand, and her eyes on the house and its terraces, where the gardeners were busy with the plots as if nothing could mar its modish tranquillity.
"It's all very exciting and very difficult. We three are the only people in the world who can do anything to help. Somehow we must get hold of Freddy Barbon and pool our knowledge. I'm beginning to think that he may not be really off his head—only legitimately rattled. What about getting him to come to the Mains? I could send a message by Middlemas—that's our butler—he wouldn't suspect him. Also we could get Aunt Harriet's advice. She can be very wise when she wants to. And—"
She broke off.
"Mother of Moses!" she cried, invoking a saint not known to the Calendar. "I quite forgot. There's an Australian cousin coming to stay. He's arriving in time for luncheon. He should be a tower of strength. His name is Charvill—Robin Charvill. He's at Oxford and a famous football player. He played in the international match two days ago."
"I saw him," said Jaikie.
"He's marvellous, isn't he?"
"Marvellous."
"Well, we can count him in. That makes four of us—five if we include Aunt Harriet. A pretty useful support for the distraught Freddy! The next thing to do is to get you inconspicuously to the Mains. I'll show you the best way."
Dougal, who had been knitting his brows, suddenly gave a shout.
"What like was the man you stalked down there?" he demanded of Jaikie.
"I didn't see much of him. He was wearing queer clothes—tight breeches and a belt round his waist."
"Foreign looking?"
"Perhaps."
He turned to the girl.
"And the men you saw yesterday in the car? Were they foreigners?"
She considered. "They didn't look quite English. One had a short black beard. I remember that one had a long pale face."
"I've got it," Dougal cried. "No wonder Barbon's scared. It's the Evallonian Republicans! They're after Craw!"
Chapter 6 THE TROUBLES OF A PRIVATE SECRETARY
The pleasant dwelling, known as the Mains of Starr, or more commonly the Mains, stands on a shelf of hillside above the highway, with a fine prospect over the park of Castle Gay to the rolling heathy uplands which form the grouse-moor of Knockraw. From it indeed had shone that light which Jaikie and Dougal had observed the previous night after they left the barricaded lodge. It is low and whitewashed; it has a rounded front like the poop of a three-decker; its gables are crow-stepped; its air is resolutely of the past.
As such it was a fitting house for its present occupant. In every family there are members who act as guardians of its records and repositories of its traditions. Their sole distinction is their family connection, and they take good care that the world shall not forget it. In Scotland they are usually high-nosed maiden ladies, and such a spinsterhood might well have seemed to be the destiny of Harriet Westwater. But, on a visit to Egypt one winter, she had met and espoused a colonel of Sappers, called Brisbane-Brown, and for a happy decade had followed the drum in his company. He rose to be a major-general before he died of pneumonia (the result of a bitter day in an Irish snipe-bog), and left her a well-dowered widow.
The marriage had been a success, but the change of name had been meaningless, for the lady did not cease to be a Westwater. It used to be the fashion in Scotland for a married woman to retain her maiden name even on her tombstone, and this custom she had always followed in spirit. The Brisbane-Browns gave her no genealogical satisfaction. They were Browns from nowhere, who for five generations had served in the military forces of the Crown and had spent most of their lives abroad. The "Brisbane" was not a link with the ancient Scottish house of that ilk; the General's father had been born in the capital of Queensland, and the word had been retained in the family's nomenclature to distinguish it from innumerable other Browns. As wife and widow she remained a Westwater, and the centre of her world was Castle Gay.
Her brother, Lord Rhynns, did not share her creed, for increasing financial embarrassments had made him a harsh realist; but, though acutely aware of his imperfections, she felt for him, as head of the family, the reverence with which the devout regard a Prince of the Church. Her pretty invalidish sister-in-law—a type which she would normally have regarded with contempt—shared in the same glamour. But it was for their only child, Alison, that her family loyalty burned most fiercely. That summer, at immense discomfort to herself, she had chaperoned the girl in her first London season. Her house was Alison's home, and she strove to bring her up in conformity with the fashions of her own childhood. She signally failed, but she did not repine, for behind her tartness lay a large, tolerant humour, which gave her an odd kinship with youth. The girl's slanginess and tom-boyishness were proofs of spirit—a Westwater characteristic; her youthful intolerance was not unpleasing to a laudator of the past; her passionate love of Castle Gay was a variant of her own clannishness. After the experience of a modern season she thanked her Maker that her niece was not one of the lisping mannequins who flutter between London nightclubs and the sands of Deauville or the Lido.
To the tenant of the Castle she was well disposed. She knew nothing of him except that he was a newspaper magnate and very rich, but he paid her brother a large rent, and did not, like too many tenants nowadays, fill the house with noisy underbred parties, or outrage the sense of decency of the estate servants. She respected Mr Craw for his rigid seclusion. On the occasion of her solitary visit to him she had been a little shocked by the luxury of his establishment, till she reflected that a millionaire must spend his money on something, and that three footmen and a horde of secretaries were on the whole innocent extravagances. But indeed Mr Craw and the world for which he stood scarcely came within the orbit of her thoughts. She was no more interested in him than in the family affairs of the Portaway grocer who supplied her with provisions.
Politics she cared nothing for, except in so far as they affected the families which she had known all her life. When there was a chance of Cousin Georgie Whitehaven's second boy being given a post in the Ministry, she was much excited, but she would have been puzzled to name two other members of that Ministry, and of its policy she knew nothing at all. She read and re-read the books which she had loved from of old, and very occasionally a new work, generally a biography, which was well spoken of by her friends. She had never heard of Marcel Proust, but she could have passed a stiff examination in Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott. Morris and Burne-Jones had once enchained her youthful fancy; she could repeat a good deal of the more decorous parts of Swinburne; she found little merit in recent painting, except in one or two of Sargent's portraits. Her only musician was Beethoven, but she was a learned connoisseur of Scottish airs.
In her small way she was a notable administrator. The Edinburgh firm of Writers to the Signet who managed her affairs had cause to respect her acumen. Her banker knew her as a shrewd judge of investments. The household at the Mains ran with a clockwork precision, and all the servants, from the butler, Middlemas, to the kitchenmaid, were conscious of her guiding hand. Out of doors an ancient gardener and a boy from the village wrought under her supervision, for she was a keen horticulturist, and won prizes at all the local flower shows for her sweet-peas and cauliflowers. She had given up her carriage, and refused to have a motor-car; but she drove two fat lazy ponies in a phaeton, and occasionally a well-bred grey gelding in a high dogcart. The older folk in the countryside liked to see her pass. She was their one link with a vanished world which they now and then recalled with regret.
Mrs Brisbane-Brown was a relic, but only the unthinking would have called her a snob. For snobbishness implies some sense of insecurity, and she was perfectly secure. She was a specialist, a specialist in kindred. Much has been made in history and fiction of the younger son, but we are apt to forget the younger daughters—the inconspicuous gentlewomen who cling loyally to the skirts of their families, since their birth is their chief title to consideration, and labour to preserve many ancient trifling things which the world to-day holds in small esteem. Mrs Brisbane-Brown loved all that had continuance, and strove to rivet the weakening links. She kept in touch with the remotest members of her own house, and, being an indefatigable letter writer, she constituted herself a trait d'union for a whole chain of allied families. She was a benevolent aunt to a motley of nephews and nieces who were not nephews and nieces by any recognised table of affinity, and a cousin to many whose cousinship was remote even by Scottish standards. This passion for kinship she carried far beyond her own class. She knew every ascendant and descendant and collateral among the farmers and cottagers of the countryside. Newcomers she regarded with suspicion, unless they could link themselves on to some of the Hislops and Blairs and Macmichaels whom she knew to be as long descended as the Westwaters themselves. Her aristocracy was wholly of race; it had nothing to do with position or wealth; it was a creed belated, no doubt, and reactionary, but it was not vulgar.
Jaikie and Dougal made a stealthy exit from the park by the gate in the wall which Alison unlocked for them. Then, with a promise to appear at the Mains for luncheon at one o'clock, they sought the inn at Starr, where they had left their knapsacks, recovering on the road their bicycles from the hazel covert. They said little to each other, for both their minds were full of a new and surprising experience. Dougal was profoundly occupied with the Craw problem, and his own interpretation of its latest developments. Now and then he would mutter to himself, "It's the Evallonians all right. Poor old Craw has pulled the string of the shower-bath this time." Jaikie, it must be confessed, was thinking chiefly of Alison. He wished he was like Charvill, and could call her cousin.
As they made their way to the Mains they encountered Tibbets on his motor-bicycle, a dishevelled figure, rather gummy about the eyes. He dismounted to greet them.
"Any luck?" Dougal asked.
He shook his head. "Not yet. I'll have to try other tactics. I'm off to Portaway to get to-day's Wire. And you?"
"We're continuing our travels. The Wire will keep us informed about your doings, no doubt. Good-bye."
Tibbets was off with a trail of dust and petrol fumes. Dougal watched him disappear round a corner.
"Lucky he doesn't know yet what a chance he has. God help Craw if Tibbets once gets on to the Evallonians!"
With this pious thought they entered the gate of the Mains, and pushed their bicycles up the steep avenue of sycamores and horse-chestnuts. The leaves were yellowing with the morning frosts, and the fallen nuts crackled under the wheels, but, when they reached the lawn, plots and borders had still a summer glory of flowers. Great banks of Michaelmas daisies made a glow like an autumn sunset, and multi-coloured dahlias stood stiffly like grenadiers on parade. The two followed Middlemas through the shadowy hall with a certain nervousness. It seemed odd to be going to luncheon in a strange house at the invitation of a girl whom they had seen that morning for the first time.
They were five minutes late owing to Tibbets, and the mistress of the house was a precisian in punctuality. Consequently they were ushered into the dining-room, where the meal had already begun. It was a shy business, for Alison did not know their names. She waved a friendly hand. "These are my friends, Aunt Hatty," she began, when she was interrupted by a tall young man who made a third at the table.
"Great Scot!" he cried, after one stare at Jaikie. "It's Galt! Whoever would have thought of seeing you here!" And he seized Jaikie's hand in a massive fist. "You're entertaining a first-rate celebrity, Aunt Harriet. This is the famous John Galt, the greatest Rugby three-quarter playing to-day. I'm bound to say that in self-defence, for he did me in most nobly on Wednesday."
The lady at the head of the table extended a gracious hand. "I am very glad to see you, Mr Galt. You bear a name which is famous for other things than football. Was it a kinsman who gave us the Annals of the Parish?"
Jaikie, a little confused, said no, and presented Dougal, who was met with a similar genealogical probing. "I used to know Crombies in Kincardine. One commanded a battalion of the Gordons when I was in India. You remind me of him in your colouring."
These startling recognitions had the effect of putting Dougal more at his ease. He felt that he and Jaikie were being pleasantly absorbed into an unfamiliar atmosphere. Jaikie on the contrary was made slightly unhappy, the more so as the girl beside whom he sat turned on him reproachful eyes.
"You ought to have told me you played in the match," she said, "when I spoke about Cousin Robin. I might have made an awful gaffe."
"We were talking about more solemn things than football," he replied; adding, "I thought Mr Barbon would be here."
"He is coming at three. Such a time we had getting hold of him! They wouldn't let Middlemas in—he only managed it through one of our maids who's engaged to the second footman… . But we mustn't talk about it now. My aunt forbids disagreeable topics at lunch, just as she won't let Tactful and Pensive into the dining-room."
Mrs Brisbane-Brown had strong views about the kind of talk which aids digestion. It must not be argumentative, and it must not be agitating. It was best, she thought, when it was mildly reminiscent. But her reminiscences were not mildly phrased; as a rule they pointed with some acerbity the contrast between a dignified past and an unworthy present. She had been brought up in the school of straight backs, and she sat as erect as a life-guardsman. A stiff net collar held her head high, a head neat and poised like that of a superior bird of prey. She had the same small high-bridged nose as her niece, and that, combined with a slight droop at the corners of her mouth, gave her an air of severity which was redeemed by her bright, humorous brown eyes. Her voice was high and toneless, and, when she was displeased, of a peculiar, detached, insulting flatness, but this again was atoned for by a very pleasant, ready, girlish laugh. Mrs Brisbane-Brown was a good example of the art of ageing gracefully. Her complexion, always a little high coloured from being much out of doors, would have done credit to a woman of twenty-five; her figure had the trimness of youth; but the fine wrinkles about her eyes and the streak of grey in her hair told of the passage of time. She looked her fifty-seven years; but she looked what fifty-seven should be at its happiest.
The dining-room was of a piece with its mistress. It was full of pictures, most of them copies of the Rhynns family portraits, done by herself, and one fine Canaletto which she had inherited from her mother. There was a Rhynns with long love-locks and armour, a Rhynns in periwig and lace, a Rhynns in a high-collared coat and cravat, and the original Sir Andrew Westwater, who had acquired Castle Gay by a marriage with the Macdowall heiress, and who looked every inch the ruffian he was. There were prints, too, those mellow mezzotints which are the usual overflow of a great house. The room was sombre and yet cosy, a place that commemorated the past and yet was apt for the present. The arrogant sheen of the mahogany table, which mirrored the old silver and the great bowl of sunflowers (the Westwater crest), seemed to Dougal to typify all that he publicly protested against and secretly respected.
The hostess was cross-examining Mr Charvill about his knowledge of Scotland, which, it appeared, was confined to one visit to a Highland shooting lodge.
"Then you know nothing about us at all," she declared firmly. "Scotland is the Lowlands. Here we have a civilisation of our own, just as good as England, but quite different. The Highlands are a sad, depopulated place, full of midges and kilted haberdashers. I know your Highland lodges—my husband had an unfortunate craze for stalking—gehennas of pitch-pine and deer's hair—not a bed fit to sleep in, and nothing for the unfortunate women to do but stump in hobnails between the showers along boggy roads!"
Charvill laughed. "I admit I was wet most of the time, but it was glorious fun. I never in my life had so much hard exercise."
"You can walk?"
"A bit. I was brought up pretty well on horseback, but since I came to England I have learned to use my legs."
"Then you are a fortunate young man. I cannot think what is to become of the youth of to-day. I was staying at Glenavelin last year, and the young men when they went to fish motored the half-mile to the river. My cousin had a wire from a friend who had taken Machray forest, begging him to find somebody over fifty to kill his stags, since his house was full of boys who could not get up the hills. You two," her eyes passed from Dougal to Jaikie, "are on a walking tour. I'm very glad to hear it. That is a rational kind of holiday."
She embarked on stories of the great walkers of a century ago—Barclay of Urie, Horatio Ross, Lord John Kennedy. "My father in his youth once walked from Edinburgh to Castle Gay. He took two days, and he had to carry the little spaniel that accompanied him for the last twenty miles. We don't breed such young men to-day. I daresay they are more discreet and less of an anxiety to their parents, and I know that they don't drink so much. But they are a feeble folk, like the conies. They never want to fling their caps over the moon. There is a lamentable scarcity of wild oats of the right kind."
"Aunt Harriet," said the girl, "is thinking of the young men she saw at balls this summer."
Mrs Brisbane-Brown raised her hands. "Did you ever know such a kindergarten? Pallid infants with vacant faces. It was cruel to ask a girl to waste her time over them."
"You asked me, you know, in spite of my protests."
"And rightly, my dear. It is a thing every girl must go through—her form of public-school education. But I sincerely pitied you, my poor child. When I was young and went to balls I danced with interesting people—soldiers, and diplomats, and young politicians. They may have been at the balls this season, but I never saw them. What I did see were hordes upon hordes of children—a sort of crèche—vapid boys who were probably still at school or only just beginning the University. What has become of the sound English doctrine that the upbringing of our male youth should be monastic till at least twenty-one? We are getting as bad as the Americans with their ghastly co-education."
Jaikie was glad when they rose from table. He had wanted to look at Alison, who sat next him, but that meant turning his head deliberately, and he had been too shy. He wished that, like Dougal, he had sat opposite her. Yet he had been cheered by Mrs Brisbane-Brown's diatribes. Her condemnation of modern youth excluded by implication the three who lunched with her. She approved of Charvill, of course. Who wouldn't? Charvill with his frank kindliness, his height, his orthodox good looks, was the kind of person Jaikie would have envied, had it been his nature to envy. But it would appear that she had also approved of Dougal and himself, and Jaikie experienced a sudden lift of the heart.
Now he was free to look at Alison, as she stood very slim and golden in the big sunlit drawing-room. It was the most beautiful room Jaikie had ever beheld. The chairs and sofas were covered with a bright, large-patterned chintz, all roses, parrots, and hollyhocks; the carpet was a faded Aubusson, rescued from a bedroom in Castle Gay; above the mantelpiece, in a gilt case, hung a sword of honour presented to the late General Brisbane-Brown, and on the polished parts of the floor, which the Aubusson did not reach, lay various trophies of his marksmanship. There was a huge white fleecy rug, and between that and the fire a huge brass fender. There were vitrines full of coins and medals and Roman lamps and flint arrows and enamelled snuff-boxes, and cabinets displaying Worcester china and Leeds earthenware. On the white walls were cases of miniatures, and samplers, and two exquisite framed fans, and a multitude of water-colours, all the work of Mrs Brisbane-Brown. There were views from the terraces of Florentine villas, and sunsets on the Nile, and dawns over Indian deserts, and glimpses of a dozen strange lands. The series was her travel diary, the trophy of her wanderings, just as a man will mount heads on the walls of his smoking-room. But the best picture was that presented by the two windows, which showed the wild woods and hollows of the Castle park below, bright in the October afternoon, running to the dim purple of the Knockraw heather.
In this cheerful and gracious room, before Middlemas had finished serving coffee, before Jaikie had made up his mind whether he preferred Alison in her present tidiness or in the gipsydom of the morning, there appeared a figure which effectually banished its complacent tranquillity.
Mr Frederick Barbon entered by an open window, and his clothes and shoes bore the marks of a rough journey. Yet neither clothes nor figure seemed adapted for such adventures. Mr Barbon's appearance was what old-fashioned people would have called "distinguished." He was very slim and elegant, and he had that useful colouring which does not change between the ages of thirty and fifty; that is to say, he had prematurely grizzled locks and a young complexion. His features were classic in their regularity. Sometimes he looked like a successful actor; sometimes, when in attendance on his master, like a very superior footman in mufti who had not got the powder out of his hair; but there were moments when he was taken for an eminent statesman. It was his nervous blue eyes which betrayed him, for Mr Barbon was an anxious soul. He liked his little comforts, he liked to feel important and privileged, and he knew only too well what it was to be a poor gentleman tossed from dilemma to dilemma by the unsympathetic horns of destiny. Since the war—when he had held a commission in the Foot Guards—he had been successively, but not successfully, a land-agent (the property was soon sold), a dealer in motor-cars (the business went speedily bankrupt), a stockbroker on half-commission, the manager of a tourist agency, an advertisement tout, and a highly incompetent society journalist. From his father, the aged and penniless Clonkilty, he could expect nothing. Then in the service of Mr Craw he had found an undreamed of haven; and he was as determined as King Charles the Second that he would never go wandering again. Consequently he was always anxious. He was an admirable private secretary, but he was fussy. The dread that haunted his dreams was of being hurled once more into the cold world of economic strife.
He sank wearily into a chair and accepted a cup of coffee.
"I had to make a detour of nearly three miles," he explained, "and come down on this place from the hill. I daren't stop long either. Where is Mr Craw's letter?"
Dougal presented the missive, which Mr Barbon tore open and devoured. A heavy sigh escaped him.
"Lucky I did not get this sooner and act on it," he said. "Mr Craw wants to come back. But the one place he mustn't come near is Castle Gay."
Dougal, though very hungry and usually a stout trencherman, had not enjoyed his luncheon. Indeed he had done less than justice to the excellent food provided. He was acutely aware of being in an unfamiliar environment, to which he should have been hostile, but which as a matter of plain fact he enjoyed with trepidation. Unlike Jaikie he bristled with class-consciousness. Mrs Brisbane-Brown's kindly arrogance, the long-descended air of her possessions, the atmosphere of privilege so secure that it need not conceal itself—he was aware of it with a half-guilty joy. The consequence was that he was adrift from his moorings, and not well at ease. He had not spoken at table except in answer to questions, and he now stood in the drawing-room like a colt in a flower-garden, not very certain what to do with his legs.
The sight of the embarrassed Barbon revived him. Here was something he could understand, a problem in his own world. Craw might be a fool, but he belonged to his own totem, and this Barbon man (of his hostess's world) was clearly unfit to deal with the web in which his employer had entangled himself. He found his voice. He gave the company a succinct account of how Mr Craw had come to be in the Back House of the Garroch.
"That's all I have to tell. Now you take up the story. I want to hear everything that happened since Wednesday night, when Mr Craw did not come home."
The voice was peremptory, and Mr Barbon raised his distinguished eyebrows. Even in his perplexity he felt bound to resent this tone.
"I'm afraid … I … I don't quite understand your position, Mr—?"
"My name's Crombie. I'm on one of the Craw papers. My interest in straightening things out is the same as yours. So let's pool our knowledge and be quick about it. You began to get anxious about Mr Craw at half-past eight on Wednesday, and very anxious by ten. What did you do?"
"We communicated with Glasgow—with Mr Craw's architect. He had accompanied him to the station and seen him leave by the six-five train. We communicated with Kirkmichael station, and learned that he had arrived there. Then I informed the police—very confidentially of course."
"The journalists got wind of that. They were bound to, since they sit like jackdaws on the steps of the telegraph office. So much for Wednesday. What about yesterday?"
"I had a very anxious day," said Mr Barbon, passing a weary hand over his forehead and stroking back his thick grizzled hair. "I hadn't a notion what to think or do. Mr Craw, you must understand, intended to go abroad. He was to have left this morning, catching the London express at Gledmouth. Miss Cazenove and I were to have accompanied him, and all arrangements had been made. It seemed to me that he might have chosen to expedite his departure, though such a thing was very unlike his usual custom. So I got the London office to make inquiries, and ascertained that he had not travelled south. You are aware of Mr Craw's dislike of publicity. I found myself in a very serious quandary. I had to find out what had become of him. Anything might have happened—an accident, an outrage. And I had to do this without giving any clue to those infernal reporters."
"Practically impossible," said Dougal. "No wonder you were in a bit of a stew. I suppose they were round the house like bees yesterday."
"Like wasps," said Mr Barbon tragically. "We kept them at arm's length, but they have defeated us." He produced from his pocket and unfolded a copy of a journal. "We have special arrangements at the Castle for an early delivery of newspapers, and this is to-day's Live Wire. Observe the headings."
"I know all about that," said Dougal. "We ran across the Wire man—Tibbets they call him—and he was fair bursting with his news. But this will only make the Wire crowd look foolish if they can't follow it up. That's what we've got to prevent. I took the liberty this morning of speaking to Tavish in Glasgow on the telephone, and authorising him—I pretended I was speaking for Mr Craw—to announce that Mr Craw had left for the Continent. That will give us cover to work behind."
"You might have spared yourself the trouble," said Mr Barbon, unfolding another news-sheet. "This is to-day's issue of the View. It contains that announcement. It was inserted by the London office. Now who authorised it?"
"I heard of that from Tavish. Could it have been Mr Craw?"
"It was not Mr Craw. That I can vouch for, unless he sent the authorisation after half-past seven on Wednesday evening, which on your story is impossible. It was sent by some person or persons who contrived to impress the London office with their authority, and who wished to have it believed that Mr Craw was out of the country. For their own purpose. Now, what purpose?"
"I think I can make a guess," said Dougal eagerly.
"There is no need of guess-work. It is a matter of certain and damning knowledge. Mr Craw left for Glasgow on Wednesday before his mail arrived. In that mail there was a registered letter. It was marked 'most confidential' and elaborately sealed. I deal with Mr Craw's correspondence, but letters marked in such a way I occasionally leave for him to open, so I did not touch that letter. Then, yesterday morning, at the height of my anxieties, I had a telephone message."
Mr Barbon paused dramatically. "It was not from London. It was from Knockraw House, a place some five miles from here. I knew that Knockraw had been let for the late autumn, but I had not heard the name of the tenant. It is the best grouse-moor in the neighbourhood. The speaker referred to a confidential letter which he said Mr Craw had received on the previous day, and he added that he and his friends proposed to call upon Mr Craw that afternoon at three o'clock. I said that Mr Craw was not at home, but the speaker assured me that Mr Craw would be at home to him. I did not dare to say more, but I asked for the name. It was given me as Casimir—only the one word. Then I think the speaker rang off."
"I considered it my duty," Mr Barbon continued, "to open the confidential letter. When I had read it, I realised that instead of being in the frying pan we were in the middle of the fire. For that letter was written in the name of the inner circle of the—"
"Evallonian Republicans," interjected Dougal, seeking a cheap triumph.
"It was not. It was the Evallonian Monarchists."
"Good God!" Dougal was genuinely startled, for he saw suddenly a problem with the most dismal implications.
"They said that their plans were approaching maturity, and that they had come to consult with their chief well-wisher. There was an immense amount of high-flown compliment in it after the Evallonian fashion, but there was one thing clear. These people are in deadly earnest. They have taken Knockraw for the purpose, and they have had the assurance to announce to the world Mr Craw's absence abroad so that they may have him to themselves without interruption. They must have had private information about his movements, and his intention of leaving Scotland. I don't know much about Evallonian politics—they were a personal hobby of Mr Craw's—but I know enough to realise that the party who wish to upset the republic are pretty desperate fellows. It was not only the certain notoriety of the thing which alarmed me, though that was bad enough. Imagine the play that our rivals would make with the story of Mr Craw plotting with foreign adventurers to upset a Government with which Britain is in friendly relations! It was the effect upon Mr Craw himself. He hates anything to do with the rough-and-tumble of political life. He is quite unfit to deal with such people. He is a thinker and an inspirer—a seer in a watch-tower, and such men lose their power if they go down into the arena."
This was so manifestly an extract from the table-talk of Mr Craw that Dougal could not repress a grin.
"You laugh," said Mr Barbon gloomily, "but there is nothing to laugh at. The fortunes of a great man and a great Press are at this moment on a razor-edge."
"Jaikie," said Dougal in a whisper, "Mr McCunn was a true prophet. He said we were maybe going to set up the Jacobite standard on Garroch side. There's a risk of another kind of Jacobite standard being set up on Callowa side. It's a colossal joke on the part of Providence."
Mr Barbon continued his tale.
"I felt utterly helpless. I did not know where Mr Craw was. I had the threatening hordes of journalists to consider. I had those foreign desperadoes at the gates. They must not be allowed to approach Castle Gay. I had no fear that Casimir and his friends would take the journalists into their confidence, but I was terribly afraid that the journalists would get on to the trail of Casimir. An Eastern European house-party at Knockraw is a pretty obvious mark… . I gave orders that no one was to be admitted at either lodge. I went further and had the gates barricaded, in case there was an attempt to force them."
"You lost your head there," said Dougal. "You were making the journalists a gift."
"Perhaps I did. But when one thinks of Eastern Europe one thinks of violence. Look at this letter I received this morning. Note that it is addressed to me by my full name."
The writer with great simplicity and in perfect English informed the Honourable Frederick Barbon, M.C., that it was quite futile to attempt to deny his friends entrance to Castle Gay, but that they had no wish to embarrass him. Tomorrow at 11 a.m. they would wait upon Mr Craw, and if they were again refused they would take other means of securing an audience.
Dougal whistled. "The writer of this knows all about the journalists. And he knows that Mr Craw is not at the Castle, but believes that you are hiding him somewhere. They've a pretty useful intelligence department."
Mrs Brisbane-Brown, who had listened to Mr Barbon's recital with composure, now entered the conversation.
"You mustn't let your nerves get the upper hand of you, Freddy. Try to take things more calmly. I'm afraid that poor Mr Craw has himself to thank for his predicament. Why will newspaper owners meddle with things they don't understand? Politics should be left to those who make a profession of them. But we must do our best to help him. Mr Crombie," she turned to Dougal, whose grim face was heavy with thought, "you look capable. What do you propose?"
The fire of battle had kindled in Dougal's eyes, and Jaikie saw in them something which he remembered from old days.
"I think," he said, "that we're in for a stiff campaign, and that it must be conducted on two fronts. We must find some way of heading off those Evallonians, and it won't be easy. When a foreigner gets a notion into his head he's apt to turn into a demented crusader. They're all the same—Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Republicans, Monarchists—I daresay Monarchists are the worst, for they've less inside their heads to begin with… . And we must do it without giving the journalists a hint of what is happening. We must suppress Tibbets by force, if necessary."
"Perhaps the Evallonians will do that for you," suggested Alison.
"Very likely they will… . The second front is wherever Mr Craw may be. At all costs he must be kept away from here. Now, he can't stay at the Back House of the Garroch. The journalists will very soon be on to the Glasgow students, and they'll hear about the kidnapping, and they'll track him to the Back House. I needn't tell you that it's all up with us if any reporter gets sight of Mr Craw. I think he had better be smuggled out of the country as quickly as possible."
Mr Barbon shook his head.
"Impossible!" he murmured. "I've already thought of that plan and rejected it. The Evallonians will discover it and follow him, and they will find him in a foreign land without friends. I wonder if you understand that Mr Craw will be terrified at the thought of meeting them. Terrified! That is his nature. I think he would prefer to risk everything and come back here rather than fall into their hands in another country than his own. He has always been a little suspicious of foreigners."
"Very well. He can't come back here, but he needn't go abroad. He must disappear. Now, how is that to be managed?"
"Jaikie," he said, after a moment's reflection, "this is your job. You'll have to take charge of the Craw front."
Jaikie opened his eyes. He had not been attending very carefully, for the preoccupations of the others had allowed him to stare at Alison, and he had been wondering whether her hair should be called red or golden. For certain it had no connection with Dougal's … Also, why a jumper and a short tweed skirt made a girl look so much more feminine than flowing draperies… .
"I don't quite understand," he said.
"It's simple enough. We're going to have some difficult work on the home front, and the problem is hopeless if it's complicated by the presence of Mr Craw. One of us has to be in constant attendance on him, and keep him buried … "
"But where?"
"Anywhere you like, as long as you get him away from the Back House of the Garroch. He'll not object. He's not looking for any Evallonians. You've the whole of Scotland, and England too, to choose from. Pick your own hidy-hole. He'll not be difficult to hide, for few people know him by sight and he looks a commonplace little body. It's you or me—and better you than me, for you're easy tempered, and I doubt Mr Craw and I would quarrel the first day."
Jaikie caught Alison's eyes and saw in them so keen a zest for a new, exciting adventure that his own interest kindled. He would have immensely preferred to be engaged on the home front, but he saw the force of Dougal's argument. He had a sudden vision of himself, tramping muddy roads in October rain, putting up at third-rate inns, eating bread and cheese in the heather—and by his side, a badly scared millionaire, a fugitive leader of the people. Jaikie rarely laughed aloud, but at the vision his face broke into a slow smile.
"I'll need a pair of boots," he said, "not for myself—for Mr Craw. The things he is wearing would be knocked to pieces in half a day."
Mr Barbon, whose dejection had brightened at the sound of Dougal's crisp mandates, declared that the boots could be furnished. He suggested other necessaries, which Jaikie ultimately reduced to a toothbrush, a razor, spare shirts, and pyjamas. A servant from the Castle would deliver them a mile up the road.
"You'd better be off," Dougal advised. "He'll have been ranging round the Back House these last four hours like a hyena, and if you don't hurry we'll have him arriving here on his two legs… . You'll have to give us an address for letters, for we must have some means of communication."
"Let it be Post Office, Portaway," said Jaikie; and added, in reply to the astonished stare of the other, "Unless there's a reflector above, the best hiding place is under the light."
Chapter 7 BEGINNING OF A GREAT MAN'S EXILE
Jaikie had not a pleasant journey that autumn afternoon over the ridge that separates Callowa from Garroch and up the latter stream to the dark hills of its source. To begin with, he was wheeling the bicycle which Dougal had ridden, for that compromising object must be restored as soon as possible to its owner; and, since this was no easy business on indifferent roads, he had to walk most of the way. Also, in addition to the pack on his back, he had Dougal's, which contained the parcel duly handed over to him a mile up the road by a Castle Gay servant… . But his chief discomfort was spiritual.
From his tenderest years he had been something of a philosopher. It was his quaint and placid reasonableness which had induced Dickson McCunn, when he took in hand the destinies of the Gorbals Diehards, to receive him into his own household. He had virtually adopted Jaikie, because he seemed more broken to domesticity than any of the others. The boy had speedily become at home in his new environment, and with effortless ease had accepted and adapted himself to the successive new worlds which opened to him. He had the gift of living for the moment where troubles were concerned and not anticipating them, but in pleasant things of letting his fancy fly happily ahead. So he accepted docilely his present task, since he was convinced of the reason for it; Dougal was right—he was the better person of the two to deal with Craw… . But the other, the imaginative side of him, was in revolt. That morning he had received an illumination. He had met the most delightful human being he had ever encountered. And now he was banished from her presence.
He was not greatly interested in Craw. Dougal was different; to Dougal Craw was a figure of mystery and power; there was romance in the midge controlling the fate of the elephant. To Jaikie he was only a dull, sententious, elderly gentleman, probably with a bad temper, and he was chained to him for an indefinite number of days. It sounded a bleak kind of holiday… . But at Castle Gay there were the Evallonians, and Mrs Brisbane-Brown, and an immense old house now in a state of siege, and Alison's bright eyes, and a stage set for preposterous adventures. The lucky Dougal was there in the front of it, while he was condemned to wander lonely in the wings.
But, as the increasing badness of the road made riding impossible, and walking gave him a better chance for reflection, the prospect slowly brightened. It had been a fortunate inspiration of his, the decision to keep Craw hidden in the near neighbourhood. It had been good sense, too, for the best place of concealment was the unexpected. He would not be too far from the main scene of conflict, and he might even have a chance of a share in it… . Gradually his interest began to wake in the task itself. After all he had the vital role. If a man-hunt was on foot, he had charge of the quarry. It was going to be a difficult business, and it might be exciting. He remembered the glow in Alison's eyes, and the way she had twined and untwined her fingers. They were playing in the same game, and if he succeeded it was her approval he would win. Craw was of no more interest to him than the ball in a Rugby match, but he was determined to score a try with him between the posts.
In this more cheerful mood he arrived at the Back House about the hour of seven, when the dark had fallen. Mrs Catterick met him with an anxious face and the high lilt of the voice which in her type is the consequence of anxiety.
"Ye're back? Blithe I am to see ye. And ye're your lane? Dougal's awa on anither job, says you? Eh, man, ye've been sair looked for. The puir body ben the hoose has been neither to haud nor to bind. He was a mile doun the road this mornin' in his pappymashy buits. He didna tak a bite o' denner, and sin' syne he's been sittin' glunchin' or lookin' out o' the windy." Then, in a lowered voice, "For guid sake, Jaikie, do something, or he'll loss his reason."
"It's all right, Mrs Catterick. I've come back to look after him. Can you put up with us for another night? We'll be off to-morrow morning."
"Fine that. John'll no be hame or Monday. Ye'll hae your supper thegither? It's an ill job a jyler's. Erchie will whistle lang ere he sees me at it again."
Jaikie did not at once seek Mr Craw's presence. He spread his map of the Canonry on the kitchen table and brooded over it. It was only when he knew from the clatter of dishes that the meal was ready in the best room that he sought that chamber.
He found the great man regarding distastefully a large dish of bacon and eggs and a monstrous brown teapot enveloped in a knitted cosy of purple and green. He had found John Catterick's razor too much for him, for he had not shaved that morning, his suit had acquired further whitewash from the walls of his bedroom, and his scanty hair was innocent of the brush. He had the air of one who had not slept well and had much on his mind.
The eyes which he turned on Jaikie had the petulance of a sulky child.
"So you've come at last," he grumbled. "Where is Mr Crombie? Have you brought a car?"
"I came on a bicycle. Dougal—Mr Crombie—is staying at Castle Gay."
"What on earth do you mean? Did you deliver my letter to Mr Barbon?"
Jaikie nodded. He felt suddenly rather dashed in spirits. Mr Craw, untidy and unshaven and as cross as a bear, was not an attractive figure, least of all as a companion for an indefinite future.
"I had better tell you exactly what happened," he said, and he recounted the incidents of the previous evening up to the meeting with Tibbets. "So we decided that it would be wiser not to try to deliver the letter last night."
Mr Craw's face showed extreme irritation, not unmingled with alarm.
"The insolence of it!" he declared. "You say the Wire man has got the story of my disappearance, and has published it in to-day's issue? He knows nothing of the cause which brought me here?"
"Nothing. And he need never know, unless he tracks you to this place. The Wire stands a good chance of making a public goat of itself. Dougal telephoned to your Glasgow office and your own papers published to-day the announcement that you had gone abroad."
Mr Craw looked relieved. "That was well done. As a matter of fact I had planned to go abroad to-day, though I did not intend to announce it. It has never been my habit to placard my movements like a court circular… . So far good, Mr Galt. I shall travel south to-morrow night. But what possessed Barbon not to send the car at once? I must go back to Castle Gay before I leave, and the sooner the better. My reappearance will spike the guns of my journalistic enemies."
"It would," Jaikie assented. "But there's another difficulty, Mr Craw. The announcement of your going abroad to-day was not sent to your papers first by Dougal. It was sent by very different people. The day before yesterday, when you were in Glasgow, these same people sent you a letter. Yesterday they telephoned to Mr Barbon, wanting to see you, and then he opened the letter. Here it is." He presented the missive, whose heavy seals Mr Barbon had already broken.
Mr Craw looked at the first page, and then subsided heavily into a chair. He fumbled feverishly for his glasses, and his shaking hand had much ado to fix them on his nose. As he read, his naturally ruddy complexion changed to a clayey white. He finished his reading, and sat staring before him with unseeing eyes, his fingers picking nervously at the sheets of notepaper. Jaikie, convinced that he was about to have a fit, and very much alarmed, poured him out a scalding cup of tea. He drank a mouthful, and spilled some over his waistcoat.
It was a full minute before he recovered a degree of self-possession, but self-possession only made him look more ghastly, for it revealed the perturbation of his mind.
"You have read this?" he stammered.
"No. But Mr Barbon told us the contents of it."
"Us?" he almost screamed.
"Yes. We had a kind of conference on the situation this afternoon. At the Mains. There was Mr Barbon, and Miss Westwater, and her aunt, and Dougal and myself. We made a sort of plan, and that's why I'm here."
Mr Craw clutched at his dignity, but he could not grasp it. The voice which came from his lips was small, and plaintive, and childish, and, as Jaikie noted, it had lost its precise intonation and had returned to the broad vowels of Kilmaclavers.
"This is a dreadful business… . You can't realise how dreadful… . I can't meet these people. I can't be implicated in this affair. It would mean absolute ruin to my reputation… . Even the fact of their being in this countryside is terribly compromising. Supposing my enemies got word of it! They would put the worst construction on it, and they would make the public believe it… . As you are aware, I have taken a strong line about Evallonian politics—an honest line. I cannot recant my views without looking a fool. But if I do not recant my views, the presence of those infernal fools will make the world believe that I am actually dabbling in their conspiracies. I, who have kept myself aloof from the remotest semblance of political intrigue! Oh, it is too monstrous!"
"I don't think the Wire people will get hold of it very easily," was Jaikie's attempt at comfort.
"Why not?" he snapped.
"Because the Evallonians will prevent it. They seem determined people, determined to have you to themselves. Otherwise they wouldn't have got your papers to announce that you had gone abroad."
This was poor comfort for Mr Craw. He ejaculated "Good God!" and fell into a painful meditation. It was not only his repute he was thinking of, but his personal safety. These men had come to coerce him, and their coercion would not stop at trifles. I do not know what picture presented itself to his vision, but it was probably something highly melodramatic (for he knew nothing at first hand of foreign peoples)—dark sinister men, incredibly cunning, with merciless faces and lethal weapons in every pocket. He groaned aloud. Then a thought struck him.
"You say they telephoned to Castle Gay," he asked wildly. "Where are they?"
"They are at Knockraw. They have taken the place for the autumn. Mr Barbon, as I told you, refused to let them in. They seemed to know about your absence from the Castle, but they believe that he can put his hand on you if he wants. So they are going there at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning, and they say they will take no denial."
"At Knockraw!" It was the cry of a fugitive who learns that the avenger of blood is in the next room.
"Yes," said Jaikie. "We've got the Recording Angel established in our back garden on a strictly legal tenure. We must face that fact."
Mr Craw seemed disinclined to face it. He sunk his face in his hands and miserably hunched his shoulders. Jaikie observed that the bacon and eggs were growing cold, but the natural annoyance of a hungry man was lost in pity for the dejected figure before him. Here was one who must have remarkable talents—business talents, at any rate, even if he were not much of a thinker or teacher. He was accustomed to make men do what he wanted. He had the gift of impressing millions of people with his strength and wisdom. He must often have taken decisions which required nerve and courage. He had inordinate riches, and to Jaikie, who had not a penny, the acquisition of great wealth seemed proof of a rare and mysterious power. Yet here was this great man, unshaven and unkempt, sunk in childish despair, because of a situation which to the spectator himself seemed simple and rather amusing.
Jaikie had a considerable stock of natural piety. He hated to see human nature, in which he profoundly believed, making a discreditable exhibition of itself. Above all he hated to see an old man—Mr Craw seemed to him very old, far older than Dickson McCunn—behaving badly. He could not bring himself to admit that age, which brought success, did not also bring wisdom. Moreover he was by nature kindly, and did not like to see a fellow-being in pain. So he applied himself to the duties of comforter.
"Cheer up, Mr Craw," he said. "This thing is not so bad as all that. There's at least three ways out of it."
There was no answer, save for a slight straightening of the shoulders, so Jaikie continued:
"First, you can carry things with a high hand. Go back to Castle Gay and tell every spying journalist to go to blazes. Sit down in your own house and be master there. Your position won't suffer. If the Wire gets hold of the story of the students' rag, what does it matter? It will be forgotten in two days, when the next murder or divorce comes along. Besides, you behaved well in it. You kept your temper. It's not a thing to be ashamed of. The folk who'll look foolish will be Tibbets with his bogus mysteries, and the editor who printed his stuff. If I were you I'd put the whole story of your adventure in your own papers and make a good yarn of it. Then you'll have people laughing with you, not at you."
Mr Craw was listening. Jaikie understood him to murmur something about the Evallonians.
"As for the Evallonians," he continued, "I'd meet them. Ask the whole bally lot to luncheon or dinner. Tell them that Evallonia is not your native land, and that you'll take no part in her politics. Surely a man can have his views about a foreign country without being asked to get a gun and fight for it. If they turn nasty, tell them also to go to the devil. This is a free country, and a law-abiding country. There's the police in the last resort. And you could raise a defence force from Castle Gay itself that would make yon foreign bandits look silly. Never mind if the thing gets into the papers. You'll have behaved well, and you'll have reason to be proud of it."
Jaikie spoke in a tone of extreme gentleness and moderation. He was most anxious to convince his hearer of the desirability of this course, for it would remove all his own troubles. He and Dougal would be able with a clear conscience to continue their walking tour, and every minute his distaste was increasing for the prospect of taking the road in Mr Craw's company.
But that moderation was an error in tactics. Had he spoken harshly, violently, presenting any other course as naked cowardice, it is possible that he might have struck an answering spark from Mr Craw's temper, and forced him to a declaration from which he could not have retreated. His equable reasonableness was his undoing. The man sitting hunched up in the chair considered the proposal, and his terrors, since they were not over-ridden by anger, presented it in repulsive colours to his reason.
"No," he said, "I can't do that. It is not possible… . You do not understand… . I am not an ordinary man. My position is unique. I have won an influence, which I hold in trust for great public causes. I dare not impair it by being mixed up in farce or brawling."
Jaikie recognised the decision as final. He also inferred from the characteristic stateliness of the words and the recovered refinement of the accent, that Mr Craw was beginning to be himself again.
"Very well," he said briskly. "The second way is that you go abroad as if nothing had happened. We can get a car to take you to Gledmouth, and Mr Barbon will bring on your baggage. Go anywhere you like abroad, and leave the Evallonians to beat at the door of an empty house. If their mission becomes known, it won't do you any harm, for you'll be able to prove an alibi."
Mr Craw's consideration of this project was brief, and his rejection was passionate. Mr Barbon had been right in his forecast.
"No, no," he cried, "that is utterly and eternally impossible. On the Continent of Europe I should be at their mercy. They are organised in every capital. Their intelligence service would discover me—you admit yourself that they know a good deal about my affairs even in this country. I should have no protection, for I do not believe in the Continental police."
"What are you afraid of?" Jaikie asked with a touch of irritation. "Kidnapping?"
Mr Craw assented darkly. "Some kind of violence," he said.
"But," Jaikie argued in a voice which he tried to keep pleasant, "how would that serve their purpose? They don't need you as a hostage. They certainly don't want you as leader of an armed revolution. They want the support of your papers, and the influence which they think you possess with the British Government. You're no use to them except functioning in London."
It was a second mistake in tactics, for Jaikie's words implied some disparagement of Craw the man as contrasted with Craw the newspaper proprietor. There was indignation as well as fear in the reply.
"No. I will not go abroad at such a time. It would be insanity. It would be suicide. You must permit me to judge what is politic in such circumstances. I assure you I do not speak without reflection."
"Very well," said Jaikie, whose spirits had descended to his boots. "You can't go back to Castle Gay. You won't go abroad. You must stay in this country and lie low till the Evallonians clear out."
Mr Craw said nothing, but by his silence he signified an unwilling assent to this alternative.
"But when?" he asked drearily after a pause. "When will the Evallonians give up their mission? Have we any security for their going within a reasonable time? You say that they have taken Knockraw for the season. They may stay till Christmas."
"We've left a pretty effective gang behind us to speed their departure."
"Who?"
"Well, there's Mrs Brisbane-Brown. I wouldn't like to be opposed to yon woman."
"The tenant of the Mains. I scarcely know her."
"No, she said that when she met you you looked at her as if she were Lady Godiva. Then there's her niece, Miss Westwater."
"The child I have seen riding in the park? What can she do?"
Jaikie smiled. "She might do a lot. And there's your staff at the Castle, Mr Barbon and the rest. And most important of all, there's Dougal."
Mr Craw brightened perceptibly at the last name. Dougal was his own henchman, an active member of the great Craw brotherhood. From him he could look for loyal and presumably competent service. Jaikie saw the change in expression, and improved the occasion.
"You don't know Dougal as I know him. He's the most determined fellow on earth. He'll stick at nothing. I'll wager he'll shift the Evallonians, if he has to take to smoke bombs and poison gas… . Isn't it about time that we had supper? I'm famished with hunger."
The bacon and eggs had to be sent back to be heated up, and Mrs Catterick had to make a fresh brew of tea. Under the cheering influence of the thought of Dougal Mr Craw made quite a respectable meal. A cigar would have assisted his comfort, but he had long ago emptied his case, and he was compelled to accept one of Jaikie's cheap Virginian cigarettes. His face remained a little clouded, and he frequently corrugated his brows in thought, but the black despair of half an hour ago had left him.
When the remains of supper had been cleared away he asked to see Jaikie's map, which for some time he studied intently.
"I must reach the railway as soon as possible," he said. "On the other side from Castle Gay, of course. I must try to walk to some place where I can hire a conveyance."
"Where did you think of going?" Jaikie asked.
"London," was the reply. "I can find privacy in the suite in my office."
"Have you considered that that will be watched? These Evallonians, as we know, are careful people who mean business, and they seem to have a pretty useful intelligence system. You will be besieged in your office just as badly as if you were at Castle Gay. And with far more publicity."
Mr Craw pondered ruefully. "You think so? Perhaps you are right. What about a quiet hotel?"
Jaikie shook his head. "No good. They will find you out. And if you go to Glasgow or Edinburgh or Manchester or Bournemouth it will be the same. It doesn't do to underrate the cleverness of the enemy. If Mr Craw goes anywhere in these islands as Mr Craw some hint of it will get out, and they'll be on to it like a knife."
Despair was creeping back into the other's face. "Have you any other course to suggest?" he faltered.
"I propose that you and I go where you're not expected, and that's just in the Canonry. The Evallonians will look for you in Castle Gay and everywhere else except in its immediate neighbourhood. It's darkest under the light, you see. Nobody knows you by sight, and you and I can take a quiet saunter through the Canonry without anybody being the wiser, while Dougal finishes the job at the Castle."
Mr Craw's face was a blank, and Jaikie hastened to complete his sketch.
"We'll be on a walking tour, the same as Dougal and I proposed, but we'll get out of the hills. An empty countryside like this is too conspicuous… . I know the place, and I'll guarantee to keep you well hidden. I've brought Dougal's pack for you. In it there's a suit of pyjamas and a razor and some shirts and things which I got from Mr Barbon … "
Mr Craw cried out like one in pain.
"… And a pair of strong boots," Jaikie concluded soothingly. "I'm glad I remembered that. The boots you have on would be in ribbons the first day on these stony roads."
It was Jaikie's third error in tactics. Mr Craw had experienced various emotions, including terror, that evening, and now he was filled with a horrified disgust. He had created for himself a padded and cosseted life; he had scaled an eminence of high importance; he had made his daily existence a ritual every item of which satisfied his self-esteem. And now this outrageous young man proposed that he should scrap it all and descend to the pit out of which thirty years ago he had climbed. Even for safety the price was far too high. Better the perils of high politics, where at least he would remain a figure of consequence. He actually shivered with repulsion, and his anger gave him a momentary air of dignity and power.
"I never," he said slowly, "never in my life listened to anything so preposterous. You suggest that I—I—should join you in wandering like a tramp through muddy Scottish parishes and sleeping in mean inns! … To-morrow I shall go to London. And meantime I am going to bed."
Chapter 8 CASIMIR
Miss Alison Westwater rose early on the following morning, and made her way on foot through the now unbarricaded lodge-gates to the Castle. The fateful meeting with the Evallonians, to which she had not been bidden, was at eleven, and before that hour she had much to do.
She was admitted by Bannister. "I don't want to see Mr Barbon," she said. "I want to talk to you." Bannister, in his morning undress, bowed gravely, and led her into the little room on the left side of the hall where her father used to keep his boots and fishing-rods.
Bannister was not the conventional butler. He was not portly, or sleek, or pompous, or soft-voiced, though he was certainly soft-footed. He was tall and lean, with a stoop which, so far from being servile, was almost condescending. He spoke the most correct English, and was wont to spend his holidays at a good hotel in this or that watering place, where his well-cut clothes, his quiet air, his wide knowledge of the world, and his somewhat elaborate manners caused him to be taken in the smoking-room for a member of the Diplomatic Service. He had begun life in a famous training-stable at Newmarket, but had been compelled to relinquish the career of a jockey at the age of eighteen owing to the rate at which he grew. Thereafter he had passed through various domestic posts, always in the best houses, till the age of forty-seven found him butler to that respected but ineffective statesman, the Marquis of Oronsay. At the lamented death of his patron he had passed to Mr Craw, who believed that a man who had managed four different houses for an irascible master with signal success would suit his own more modest requirements. He was right in his judgment. Bannister was a born organiser, and would have made an excellent Quartermaster-General. The household at Castle Gay moved on oiled castors, and Mr Craw's comfort and dignity and his jealous retirement suffered no jar in Bannister's hands. Mr Barbon might direct the strategy, but it was the butler who saw to the tactics.
The part suited him exactly, for Bannister was accustomed to generous establishments—ubi multa supersunt—and he loved mystery. It was meat and drink to him to be the guardian of a secret, and a master who had to be zealously shielded from the public eye was the master he loved to serve. He had acquired the taste originally from much reading of sensational fiction, and it had been fostered by the circumstances of his life. He had been an entranced repository of many secrets. He knew why the Duke of Mull had not received the Garter; why the engagement between Sir John Rampole and the Chicago heiress was broken off—a tale for which many an American paper would have gladly paid ten thousand dollars; almost alone he could have given a full account of the scandals of the Braddisdale marriage; he could have explained the true reason for the retirement from the service of the State of one distinguished Ambassador, and the inexplicable breakdown in Parliament of a rising Under-Secretary. His recollections, if divulged, might have made him the humble Greville of his age. But they were never divulged—and never would be. Bannister was confidential, because he enjoyed keeping a secret more than other men enjoy telling one. It gave him a sense of mystery and power.
There was only one thing wanting to his satisfaction. He had a profound—and, as he would have readily admitted, an illogical—liking for the aristocracy. He wished that his master had accepted a peerage, like other Press magnates; in his eyes a new title was better than none at all. For ancient families with chequered pasts he had a romantic reverence. He had studied in the county histories the story of the house of Rhynns, and it fulfilled his most exacting demands. It pleased him to dwell in a mansion consecrated by so many misdeeds. He wished that he could meet Lord Rhynns in the flesh. He respected the household at the Mains as the one link between himself and the older nobility. Mrs Brisbane-Brown was his notion of what a middle-aged gentlewoman should be; and he had admired from afar Alison galloping in the park. She was like the Ladies Ermyntrude and Gwendolen of whom he had read long ago, and whom he still cherished as an ideal, in spite of a lifetime of disillusionment. There was a fount of poetry welling somewhere in Bannister's breast.
"I've come to talk to you, Bannister," the girl began, "about the mess we're in. It concerns us all, for as long as Mr Craw lives in Castle Gay we're bound to help him. As you are aware, he has disappeared. But, as you may have heard, we have a rough notion of where he is. Well, we've got to straighten out things here while he is absent. Hold the fort, you know."
The butler bowed gravely.
"First, there's the foreigners, who are coming here at eleven."
"If I might hazard a suggestion," Bannister interrupted. "Are you certain, Miss, that these foreigners are what they claim to be?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is it not possible that they are a gang of international crooks who call themselves Evallonians, knowing Mr Craw's interest in that country, and wish to effect an entry into the castle for sinister purposes?"
"But they have taken Knockraw shooting."
"It might be a blind."
The girl considered. "No," she said emphatically. "That is impossible. You've been reading too many detective stories, Bannister. It would be imbecility for a gang of crooks to take the line they have. It would be giving themselves away hopelessly… . These people are all right. They represent the Evallonian Monarchist party, which may be silly but is quite respectable. Mr Barbon knows all about them. One is Count Casimir Muresco. Another is Prince Odalisque, or some name like that. And there's a Professor Something or other, who Mr Crombie says has a European reputation for something. No doubt about it. They're tremendous swells, and we've got to treat them as such. That's one of the things I came to speak to you about. We're not going to produce Mr Craw, which is what they want, but, till we see our way clear, we must snow them under with hospitality. If they are sportsmen, as they pretend to be, they must have the run of the Callowa, and if Knockraw is not enough for them we must put the Castle moors at their disposal. Oh, and the Blae Moss. They're sure to want to shoot snipe. The grouse is only found in Britain, but there must be plenty of snipe in Evallonia. You know that they're all coming to dine here to-night?"
"So Mr Barbon informed me."
"Well, it must be a Belshazzar. That's a family word of ours for a regular banquet. You must get the chef to put his best foot forward. Tell him he's feeding Princes and Ministers and he'll produce something surprising. I don't suppose he knows any special Evallonian dishes, so the menu had better have a touch of Scotland. They'll appreciate local colour. We ought to have a haggis as one of the entrées, and grouse of course, and Mackillop must dig a salmon out of the Callowa. I saw a great brute jumping in the Dirt Pot… . Plenty of flowers, too. I don't know what your cellar is like?"
"I can vouch for it, Miss. Shall the footmen wear their gala liveries? Mr Craw made a point of their possessing them."
"Certainly… . We have to make an impression, you see. We can't produce Mr Craw, but we must impress them with our importance, so that they will take what we tell them as if it came from Mr Craw. Do you see what I mean? We want them to go away as soon as possible, but to go away satisfied and comfortable, so that they won't come back again."
"What will be the party at dinner?"
"The three Evallonians—the Count, and the Prince, and the Herr Professor. You can get the names right from Mr Barbon. Mr Barbon and Mr Crombie, of course, who are staying in the house. My aunt and Mr Charvill and myself. It's overweighted with men, but we can't help that."
"May I ask one question, Miss? Mr Crombie, now. He is not quite what I have been accustomed to. He is a very peremptory gentleman. He has taken it upon himself to give me orders."
"Obey them, Bannister, obey them on your life. Mr Crombie is one of Mr Craw's trusted lieutenants. You may consider him the leader of our side… . That brings me to the second thing I wanted to say to you. What about the journalists?"
"We have had a visit from three already this morning." There was the flicker of a smile on the butler's face. "I made a point of interviewing them myself." He drew three cards from a waistcoat pocket, and exhibited them. They bore the names of three celebrated newspapers, but the Wire was not among them. "They asked to see Mr Craw, and according to my instructions I informed them that Mr Craw had gone abroad. They appeared to accept my statement, but showed a desire to engage me in conversation. All three exhibited money, which I presume they intended as a bribe. That, of course, led to their summary dismissal."
"That's all right," the girl declared, "that's plain sailing. But I don't like Tibbets keeping away. Mr Crombie says that he's by far the most dangerous. Look here, Bannister, this is your very particular job. You must see that none of these reporters get into the Castle, and that nobody from the Castle gossips with them. If they once get on the trail of the Evallonians we're done. The lodge-keeper has orders not to admit anybody who looks like a journalist. I'll get hold of Mackillop and tell him to clear out anybody found in the policies. He can pretend they're poachers. I wonder what on earth Tibbets is up to at this moment?"
Dougal could have provided part of the answer to that question. The night before, when it was settled that he should take up his quarters in the Castle, he had wired to his Glasgow lodgings to have his dress clothes sent to him by train. That morning he had been to Portaway station to collect them, in a car hired from the Westwater Arms, and in a Portaway street he had run across Tibbets. The journalist's face did not show, as he had hoped, embarrassment and disappointment. On the contrary the light of victorious battle was in his eye.
"I thought you were off for good," was his greeting, to which Dougal replied with a story of the breakdown of his bicycle and his compulsory severance from his friend. "I doubt I'll have to give up this expedition," Dougal said. "How are you getting on yourself? I read your thing in the Wire last night."
"Did you see the Craw papers? They announce that Craw has gone abroad. It was Heaven's own luck that they only got that out the same day as my story, and now it's bloody war between us, for our credit is at stake. I wired to my chief, and I've just got his reply. What do you think it is? Craw never left the country. Places were booked for him in the boat train yesterday in the name of his man Barbon, but he never used them. Our information is certain. That means that Craw's papers are lying. Lying to cover something, and what that something is I'm going to find out before I'm a day older. I'm waiting here for another telegram, and then I'll go up the Callowa to comfort Barbon."
Dougal made an inconspicuous exit from the station, after satisfying himself that Tibbets was not about. He left his suit-case at the Starr inn, with word that it would be sent for later, for he did not wish to publish his connection with the Castle any sooner than was needful. He entered the park by the gate in the wall which he opened with Alison's key, and had immediately to present his credentials—a chit signed by Barbon—to a minion of Mackillop's, the head keeper, who was lurking in a covert. He was admitted to the house by Bannister at ten minutes to eleven, five minutes after Alison had left on her quest of Mackillop and a Callowa salmon.
The party from Knockraw was punctual. Mr Barbon and Dougal received them in the library, a vast apartment on the first floor, lit by six narrow windows and commanding a view of the terrace and the windings of the river. The seventh Lord Rhynns had been a collector, and from the latticed shelves looked down an imposing array of eighteenth-century quartos and folios. Various pieces of classical sculpture occupied black marble pedestals, and a small, richly carved sarcophagus, of a stone which looked like old ivory, had a place of honour under the great Flemish tapestry, which adorned the only wall free of books. The gilt baroque clock on the mantelpiece had not finished chiming when Bannister ushered in the visitors.
They bowed from their hips at the door, and they bowed again when they were within a yard of Barbon. One of the three spoke. He was a tall man with a white face, deep-set brown eyes, and short curly brown hair. Except for his nose he would have been theatrically handsome, but his nose was a pronounced snub. Yet this imperfection gave to his face a vigour and an attractiveness which more regular features might have lacked. He looked amazingly competent and vital. His companions were a slim, older man with greying hair, and a burly fellow with spectacles and a black beard. All three were ceremoniously garbed in morning coats and white linen and dark ties. Dougal wondered if they had motored from Knockraw in top hats. "Permit me to make the necessary introductions," said the spokesman. "I am your correspondent, Count Casimir Muresco. This is Prince Odalchini, and this is the Herr Doctor Jagon of the University of Melina. We are the chosen and accredited representatives of the Nationalist Party of Evallonia."
Barbon had dressed himself carefully for the occasion, and his flawless grey suit made a painful contrast to Dougal's ill-fitting knickerbockers. He looked more than ever like an actor who had just taken his cue in a romantic Victorian comedy.
"My name is Barbon," he said, "Frederick Barbon. As you are no doubt aware, I am Mr Craw's principal confidential secretary."
"You are the second son of Lord Clonkilty, is it not so?" said the Prince. "You I have seen once before—at Monte Carlo."
Barbon bowed. "I am honoured by your recollection. This is Mr Crombie, one of Mr Craw's chief assistants in the management of his newspapers."
The three strangers bowed, and Dougal managed to incline his stiff neck.
"You wish to see Mr Craw. Mr Craw unfortunately is not at home. But in his absence my colleague and I are here to do what we can for you."
"You do not know where Mr Craw is?" inquired Count Casimir sharply.
"Not at this moment," replied Barbon truthfully. "Mr Craw is in the habit of going off occasionally on private business."
"That is a misfortune, but it is temporary. Mr Craw will no doubt return soon. We are in no hurry, for we are at present residents in your beautiful country. You are in Mr Craw's confidence, and therefore we will speak to you as we would speak to him."
Barbon motioned them to a table, where were five chairs, and ink, pens, and blotting paper set out as for a board meeting. He and Dougal took their seats on one side, and the three Evallonians on the other.
"I will be brief," said Count Casimir. "The movement for the restoration of our country to its ancient rights approaches fruition. I have here the details, which I freely offer to you for your study. The day is not yet fixed, but when the word is given the people of Evallonia as one man will rise on behalf of their Prince. The present misgovernors of our land have no popular following, and no credit except among international Jews."
Mr Barbon averted his eyes from the maps and papers which the other pushed towards him.
"That is what they call a Putsch, isn't it?" he said. "They haven't been very successful, you know."
"It is no foolish thing like a Putsch," Count Casimir replied emphatically. "You may call it a coup d'état, a bloodless coup d'état. We have waited till our cause is so strong in Evallonia that there need be no violence. The hated republic will tumble down at a touch like a rotten branch. We shall take the strictest precautions against regrettable incidents. It will be the sudden uprising of a nation, a thing as irresistible as the tides of the sea."
"You may be right," said Barbon. "Obviously we cannot argue the point with you. But what we want to know is why you come to us. Mr Craw has nothing to do with Evallonia's domestic affairs."
"Alas!" said Prince Odalchini, "our affairs are no longer domestic. The republic is the creation of the Powers, the circumscription of our territories is the work of the Powers, the detested League of Nations watches us like an elderly and spectacled governess. We shall succeed in our revolution, but we cannot maintain our success unless we can assure ourselves of the neutrality of Europe. That is why we come to Britain. We ask her—how do you say it?—to keep the ring."
"To Britain, perhaps," said Barbon. "But why to Mr Craw?"
Count Casimir laughed. "You are too modest, my friend. It is the English habit, we know, to reverence historic forms even when the power has gone elsewhere. But we have studied your politics very carefully. The Herr Professor has studied them profoundly. We know that in these days with your universal suffrage the fount of authority is not in King or Cabinet, or even in your Parliament. It lies with the whole mass of your people, and who are their leaders? Not your statesmen, for you have lost your taste for oratory, and no longer attend meetings. It is your newspapers that rule you. What your man in the street reads in his newspaper he believes. What he believes he will make your Parliament believe, and what your Parliament orders your Cabinet must do. Is it not so?"
Mr Barbon smiled wearily at this startling version of constitutional practice.
"I think you rather exaggerate the power of the printed word," he said.
Count Casimir waved the objection aside.
"We come to Mr Craw," he went on. "We say, 'You love Evallonia. You have said it often. You have ten—twenty millions of readers who follow you blindly. You will say to them that Evallonia must be free to choose her own form of government, for that is democracy. You will say that this follows from your British principles of policy and from that Puritan religion in which Britain believes. You will preach it to them like a good priest, and you will tell them that it will be a very great sin if they do not permit to others the freedom which they themselves enjoy. The Prime Minister will wake up one morning and find that he has what you call a popular mandate, which if he does not obey he will cease to be Prime Minister. Then, when the day comes for Evallonia to declare herself, he will speak kind words about Evallonia to France and Italy, and he will tell the League of Nations to go to the devil.'"
"That's all very well," Barbon protested. "But I don't see how putting Prince John on the throne will help you to get back your lost territories."
"It will be a first step. When we have once again a beloved King, Europe will say, 'Beyond doubt Evallonia is a great and happy nation. She is too good and happy a nation to be so small.'"
"We speak in the name of democracy," said the Professor in a booming voice. He spoke at some length, and developed an intricate argument to show the true meaning of the word "self-determination." He dealt largely with history; he had much to say of unity of culture as opposed to uniformity of race; he touched upon Fascism, Bolshevism, and what he called "Americanism"; he made many subtle distinctions, and he concluded with a definition of modern democracy, of which he said the finest flower would be an Evallonia reconstituted according to the ideas of himself and his friends.
Dougal had so far maintained silence, and had studied the faces of the visitors. All three were patently honest. Casimir was the practical man, the schemer, the Cavour of the party. The Prince might be the prophet, the Mazzini—there was a mild and immovable fanaticism in his pale eyes. The Professor was the scholar, who supplied the ammunition of theory. The man had written a famous book on the British Constitution and had a European reputation; but this was Dougal's pet subject, and he suddenly hurled himself into the fray.
It would have been well if he had refrained. For half an hour three bored and mystified auditors were treated to a harangue on the fundamentals of politics, in which Dougal's dialectical zeal led him into so many overstatements that to the scandalised Barbon he seemed to be talking sheer anarchism. Happily to the other two, and possibly to the Professor, he was not very intelligible. For just as in the excitement of debate the Professor lost hold of his careful English and relapsed into Evallonian idioms, so Dougal returned to his ancestral language of Glasgow.
The striking of a single note by the baroque clock gave Count Casimir a chance of breaking off the interview. He gathered up his papers.
"We have opened our case," he said graciously. "We will come again to expand it, and meantime you will meditate… . We dine with you to-night at eight o'clock? There will be ladies present? So?"
"One word, Count," said Barbon. "We're infernally plagued with journalists. There's a by-election going on now in the neighbourhood, and they all want to get hold of Mr Craw. I needn't tell you that it would be fatal to your cause if they got on to your trail—and very annoying to us."
"Have no fear," was the answer. "The official tenant of Knockraw is Mr Williams, a Liverpool merchant. To the world we are three of Mr Williams's business associates who are enjoying his hospitality. All day we shoot at the grouse like sportsmen. In the evening our own servants wait upon us, so there are no eavesdroppers."
Mr Craw had entertained but little in Castle Gay, but that night his representatives made up for his remissness. The party from the Mains arrived to find the hall blazing with lights, Bannister with the manner of a Court Chamberlain, and the footmen in the sober splendour of their gala liveries. In the great drawing-room, which had scarcely been used in Alison's recollection, Barbon and Dougal were holding in play three voluble gentlemen with velvet collars to their dress-coats and odd bits of ribbon in their buttonholes. Their presentation to the ladies reminded Alison of the Oath of the Tennis Court or some other high and disposed piece of history, and she with difficulty preserved her gravity. Presently in the dining-room, which was a remnant of the old keep and vaulted like a dungeon, they sat down to a meal which the chef was ever afterwards to refer to as his masterpiece.
The scene was so bright with flowers and silver, so benignly backgrounded by the mellow Westwater portraits, that it cast a spell over the company and made everyone content—except Dougal. The Evallonians did not once refer to their mission. They might have been a party of county neighbours, except that their talk was of topics not commonly discussed by Canonry sportsmen. The Prince spoke to Mrs Brisbane-Brown of her own relations, for he had been a secretary of legation in London and had hunted several seasons with the Cottesmore. The Professor oraculated on letters, with an elephantine deference to his hearers' opinions, withdrawing graciously his first judgment that Shakespeare was conspicuously inferior to Mr Bernard Shaw when he saw Mrs Brisbane-Brown's scandalised face. Count Casimir endeavoured to propitiate Dougal, and learned from him many things about the Scottish race which are not printed in the books. All three, even the Professor, understood the art of social intercourse, and the critical Alison had to admit to herself that they did it well. It appeared that the Prince was a keen fisherman, and Count Casimir an ardent snipe shot, and the offer of the Callowa and the Blae Moss was enthusiastically received.
Dougal alone found the evening a failure. He felt that they were wasting time. Again and again he tried to lead the talk to the position of the Press in Britain, in the hope that Mrs Brisbane-Brown, with whom the strangers were obviously impressed, would enlighten them as to its fundamental unimportance. But Mrs Brisbane-Brown refused his lead. Indeed she did the very opposite, for he heard her say to the Professor: "We have new masters to-day. Britain still tolerates her aristocracy as a harmless and rather ornamental pet, but if it tried to scratch it would be sent to the stables. Our new masters don't do it badly either. When my brother lived here this was a shabby old country house, but Mr Craw has made it a palace."
"It is the old passion for romance," the Professor replied. "The sense of power is generally accompanied by a taste for grandeur. Ubi magnitudo ibi splendor. That, I believe, is St Augustine."
Late that night, in the smoking-room at Knockraw, there was a consultation. "Things go well," said Casimir. "We have prepared the way, and the Craw entourage will not be hostile. I do not like the red-haired youth. He is of the fanatic student type, and his talk is flatulence. Him I regard as an enemy. But Barbon is too colourless and timid to oppose us, and we have won favour, I think, with the high-nosed old woman and the pretty girl. They, as representatives of an ancient house, have doubtless much weight with Craw, who is of the lesser bourgeoisie. With them in view, I think it may be well to play our trump card now. His Royal Highness arrives to-day in London, and is graciously holding himself at our disposal."
"That thought was in my own mind," said Prince Odalchini, and the Professor concurred.
At the same hour Dougal at Castle Gay was holding forth to Barbon. "Things couldn't be worse," he said. "The dinner was a big mistake. All that magnificence only increases their belief in Craw's power. We've got to disillusion them. I can't do it, for I can see fine that they think me a Bolshevik. You can't do it, for they believe that you would do anything for a quiet life, and they discount your evidence accordingly. What we want is some real, representative, practical man who would come down like a sledge hammer on their notions—somebody they would be compelled to believe—somebody that they couldn't help admitting as typical of the British nation."
"I agree. But where are we to find him without giving Mr Craw away?"
"There's one man," said Dougal slowly. "His name's McCunn—Dickson McCunn—and he lives about fifty miles from here. He was a big business man in Glasgow—but he's retired now. I never met his equal for whinstone common sense. You've only to look at him to see that what he thinks about forty million others think also. He is the incarnate British spirit. He's a fine man, too, and you could trust him with any secret."
"How old?" Barbon asked.
"A few years older than Craw. Not unlike him in appearance. The morn's Sunday and there's no train where he lives. What about sending a car with a letter from me and bringing him back, if he'll come? I believe he'd do the trick."
Barbon, who was ready to seek any port in the storm, and was already in the grip of Dougal's fierce vitality, wearily agreed. The pleasantness of the dinner had for a little banished his anxieties, but these had now returned and he foresaw a sleepless night. His thoughts turned naturally to his errant master.
"I wonder where Mr Craw is at this moment?" he said.
"I wonder, too. But if he's with Jaikie I bet he's seeing life."
Chapter 9 THE FIRST DAY OF THE HEJIRA--THE INN AT WATERMEETING
The October dawn filled the cup of the Garroch with a pale pure light. There had been no frost in the night, but the heather of the bogs, the hill turf, and the gravel of the road had lost their colour under a drench of dew. The mountains were capped with mist, and the air smelt raw and chilly. Jaikie, who, foreseeing a difficult day, had prepared for it by a swim in the loch and a solid breakfast, found it only tonic. Not so Mr Craw, who, as he stood before the cottage, shivered, and buttoned up the collar of his raincoat.
Mrs Catterick scornfully refused payment. "Is it likely?" she cried. "Ye didna come here o' your ain wull. A body doesna tak siller for bein' a jyler."
"I will see that you are remunerated in some other way," Mr Craw said pompously.
He had insisted on wearing his neat boots, which his hostess had described as "pappymashy," and refused those which Jaikie had brought from Castle Gay. Also he made no offer to assume Dougal's pack, with the consequence that Jaikie added it to his own, and presented the appearance of Christian at the Wicket-gate in some old woodcut from the Pilgrim's Progress. Mr Craw even endued his hands with a pair of bright wash-leather gloves, and with his smart Homburg hat and silver-knobbed malacca looked exactly like a modish elderly gentleman about to take a morning stroll at a fashionable health-resort. So incongruous a figure did he present in that wild trough of the hills, that Mrs Catterick cut short her farewells and politely hid her laughter indoors.
Thus fantastically began the great Hejira.
Mr Craw was in a bad temper, and such a mood was new to him, for in his life small berufflements had been so rare that his ordinary manner was a composed geniality. Therefore, besides being cross, he was puzzled, and a little ashamed. He told himself that he was being scandalously treated by Fate, and for the first half-mile hugged his miseries like a sulky child… . Then he remembered that officially he had never admitted the existence of Fate. In how many eloquent articles had he told his readers that man was the maker of his own fortunes, the captain of his soul? He had preached an optimism secure against the bludgeonings of Chance! … This would never do. He cast about to find an attitude which he could justify.
He found it in his intention to go straight to London. There was vigour and decision in that act. He was taking up arms against his sea of troubles. As resolutely as he could he shut out the thought of what might happen when he got to London—further Evallonian solicitations with a horrid chance of publicity. London was at any rate familiar ground, unlike this bleak, sodden wilderness. He had never hated anything so much as that moorland cottage where for two days and three nights he had kept weary vigil. Still more did he loathe the present prospect of sour bent, gaping haggs, and mist low on the naked hills.
"How far is it to the nearest railway station?" he asked the burdened figure at his side.
"It's about twelve miles to Glendonan," Jaikie answered.
"Do you know anything about the trains?"
"It's a branch line, but there's sure to be an afternoon train to Gledmouth. The night mail stops there about eleven, I think."
Twelve miles! Mr Craw felt some sinking of the heart, which was succeeded by a sudden consciousness of manhood. He was doing a bold thing, the kind of thing he had always admired. He had not walked twelve miles since he was a boy, but he would force himself to finish the course, however painful it might be. The sight of the laden Jaikie woke a momentary compunction, but he dared not cumber himself with the second pack. After all he was an elderly man and must husband his strength. He would find some way of making it up to Jaikie.
The road, after leaving the Back House of the Garroch, crossed a low pass between the Caldron and a spur of the great Muneraw, and then, after threading a patch of bog, began to descend the upper glen of a burn which joined a tributary of the distant Gled. Mr Craw's modish boots had been tolerable on the fine sand and gravel of the first mile. They had become very wet in the tract of bog, where the heather grew thick in the middle of the road, and long pools of inky water filled the ruts. But as the path began its descent they became an abomination. The surface was cut by frequent rivulets which had brought down in spate large shoals of gravel. Sometimes it was deep, fine scree, sometimes a rockery of sharp-pointed stones. The soles of his boots, thin at the best, and now as sodden as a sponge, were no protection against the unyielding granite. His feet were as painful as if he was going barefoot, and his ankles ached with constant slips and twists.
He was getting warm, too. The morning chill had gone out of the air, and, though the sky was still cloudy, there was a faint glow from the hidden sun. Mr Craw began by taking off his gloves. Then he removed his raincoat, and carried it on his arm. It kept slipping and he trod on its tail, the while he minced delicately to avoid the sharper stones.
The glen opened and revealed a wide shallow valley down which flowed one of the main affluents of the Gled. The distances were hazy, but there was a glimpse of stubble fields and fir plantations, proof that they were within view of the edge of the moorlands. Mr Craw, who for some time had been walking slowly and in evident pain, sat down on the parapet of a little bridge and lifted his feet from the tormenting ground.
"How many miles more?" he asked, and when told "Seven," he groaned.
Jaikie unbuckled his packs.
"It's nonsense your wearing these idiotic things," he said firmly. "In another hour you'll have lamed yourself for a week." From Dougal's pack he extracted a pair of stout country boots and from his own a pair of woollen socks. "If you don't put these on, I'll have to carry you to Glendonan."
Mr Craw accepted the articles with relief. He bathed his inflamed and aching feet in the burn, and encased them in Jaikie's homespun. When he stood up he regarded his new accoutrements with disfavour. Shooting boots did not harmonise with his neat blue trousers, and he had a pride in a natty appearance. "I can change back at the station," he observed, and for the first time that day he stepped out with a certain freedom.
His increased comfort made him magnanimous.
"You had better give me the second pack," he volunteered.
"I can manage all right," was Jaikie's answer. "It's still a long road to Glendonan."
Presently, as the track dipped to the levels by the stream side, the surface improved, and Mr Craw, relieved of his painful bodily preoccupation, and no longer compelled to hop from stone to stone, returned to forecasting the future. Tomorrow morning he would be in London. He would go straight to the office, and, the day being Sunday, would have a little time to think things out. Bamff, his manager, was in America. He could not summon Barbon, who had his hands full at Castle Gay. Allins—Allins was on holiday—believed to be in Spain—he might conceivably get hold of Allins. There were others, too, who could assist him—his solicitor, Mr Merkins, of Merkins, Thrawn & Merkins—he had no secrets from him. And Lord Wassell, whom he had recently brought on to the board of the View—Wassell was a resourceful fellow, and deeply in his debt.
He was slipping into a better humour. It had been a preposterous adventure—something to laugh over in the future—meminisse juvabit—how did the tag go?—he had used it only the other day in one of his articles… . He felt rather hungry—no doubt the moorland air. He ought to be able to get a decent dinner in Gledmouth. What about his berth in the sleeping-car? It was the time of year when a good many people were returning from Scotland. Perhaps he had better wire about it from Glendonan… . And then a thought struck him, which brought him to a halt and set him feeling for his pocket-book.
It was Mr Craw's provident habit always to carry in his pocket-book a sum of one hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes as an insurance against accidents. He opened the pocket-book with anxiety, and the notes were not there.
He remembered only too well what had happened. The morning he had gone to Glasgow he had emptied the contents of his pocket-book on his dressing-table in order to find the card with his architect's address. He had not restored the notes, because they made the book too bulky, and he had proposed to get instead two fifty-pound notes from Barbon, who kept the household's petty cash. He had forgotten to do this, and now he had nothing on his person but the loose change left from his Glasgow journey. It lay in his hand, and amounted to twelve shillings, a sixpence, two threepenny bits, and four pennies.
To a man who for the better part of a lifetime has taken money for granted and has never had to give a thought to its importance in the conduct of life, a sudden shortage comes as a horrid surprise. He finds it an outrage alike against decency and dignity. He is flung neck and crop into a world which he does not comprehend, and his dismay is hysterical.
"I have no money," he stammered, ignoring the petty coins in his palm.
Jaikie slid the packs to the ground.
"But you offered Dougal and me twenty pounds to go to Castle Gay," he protested.
Mr Craw explained his misadventure. Jaikie extracted from an inner pocket a skimpy leather purse, while the other watched his movements with the eyes of a hungry dog who believes that there is provender going. He assessed its contents.
"I have two pounds, thirteen and ninepence," he announced. "I didn't bring much, for you don't spend money in the hills, and I knew that Dougal had plenty."
"That's no earthly use to me," Mr Craw wailed.
"I don't know. It will buy you a third-class ticket to London and leave something for our meals to-day. You're welcome to it."
"But what will you do?"
"I'll go back to Mrs Catterick, and then I'll find Dougal. I can wire for some more. I'm pretty hard up just now, but there's a few pounds left in my allowance. You see, you can't get any more till you get to London."
Mr Craw's breast was a maelstrom of confused emotions. He was not without the quality which in Scotland is called "mense," and he was reluctant to take advantage of Jaikie's offer and leave that unfortunate penniless. Moreover, the thought of travelling third-class by night roused his liveliest disgust. Fear, too—for he would be mixed up in the crowd, without protection against the enemies who now beset his path. He shrank like a timid spinster from rough contacts. Almost to be preferred was this howling wilderness to the chances of such sordid travel.
"There's another way," said the helpful Jaikie. He wanted to get rid of his companion, but he was aware that it was his duty, if possible, to detain that companion at his side, and to detain him in the Canonry. The conclave at the Mains had instructed him to keep Mr Craw hidden, and he had no belief in London as a place of concealment. So, "against interest," as the lawyers say, he propounded an alternative.
"We could stay hereabouts for a couple of days, and I could borrow a bicycle and slip over to Castle Gay and get some money."
Mr Craw's face cleared a little. He was certain now that the moors of the Canonry were better than a third-class in the London train. He brooded a little and then announced that he favoured the plan.
"Good," said Jaikie. "Well, we needn't go near Glendonan. We'd better strike south and sleep the night at Watermeeting. It's a lonely place, but there's quite a decent little inn, and it's on the road to Gledmouth. To-morrow I'll try to raise a bicycle and get over to Castle Gay, and with luck you may be in London on Monday morning. We needn't hurry, for it's not above ten miles to Watermeeting, and it doesn't matter when we turn up."
"I insist on carrying one of the packs," said Mr Craw, and, his future having cleared a little, and being conscious of better behaviour, he stepped out with a certain alacrity and ease.
Presently they left the road, which descended into the Gled valley, and took a right-hand turning which zigzagged up the containing ridge and came out on a wide benty moor, once the best black-game country in Scotland, which formed the glacis of the chief range of the hills. A little after midday they lunched beside a spring, and Mr Craw was moved to commend Mrs Catterick's scones, which at breakfast he had despised. He accepted one of Jaikie's cigarettes. There was even a little conversation. Jaikie pointed out the main summits among a multitude which had now become ominously blue and clear, and Mr Craw was pleased to show a certain interest in the prospect of the Muneraw, the other side of which, he said, could be seen from the upper windows of Castle Gay. He became almost confidential. Landscape, he said, he loved, but with a temperate affection; his major interest was reserved for humanity. "In these hills there must be some remarkable people. The shepherds, for instance—"
"There's some queer folk in the hills," said Jaikie. "And I doubt there's going to be some queer weather before this day is out. The wind's gone to the south-west, and I don't like the way the mist is coming down on the Black Dod."
He was right in his forecast. About two o'clock there came a sudden sharpness into the air, the hills were blotted out in vapour, and a fine rain descended. The wind rose; the drizzle became a blast, and then a deluge, the slanting, drenching downfall of October. Jaikie's tattered burberry and Mr Craw's smart raincoat were soon black with the rain, which soaked the legs of their trousers and trickled behind their upturned collars. To the one this was a common experience, but to the other it was a revelation, for he had not been exposed to weather for many a year. He thought darkly of rheumatism, the twinges he had suffered from two years ago and had gone to Aix to cure. He might get pneumonia—it was a common complaint nowadays—several of his acquaintances had fluffed out like a candle with it—healthy people, too, as healthy as himself. He shivered, and thought he felt a tightness in his chest. "Can we not shelter?" he asked, casting a woeful eye round the wet periphery of moor.
"It'll last the day," said Jaikie. "We'd better step out, and get under cover as soon as we can. There's no house till Watermeeting."
The thought of Watermeeting did not console Mr Craw. A wetting was bad enough, but at the end of it there was no comforting hot bath and warm dry clothes, and the choice between bed and a deep armchair by a fire. They would have to pig it in a moorland inn, where the food would certainly be execrable, and the bed probably damp, and he had no change of raiment. Once again Mr Craw's mind became almost hysterical. He saw sickness, possibly death, in the near future. His teeth were chattering, and, yes—he was certain he had a pain in his side.
Something loomed up in the haze, and he saw that it was a man with, in front of him, a bedraggled flock of sheep. He was a loutish fellow, much bent in the shoulders, with leggings, which lacked most of the buttons, over his disreputable breeks. By his side padded a big ruffianly collie, and he led by a string a miserable-looking terrier, at which the collie now and then snapped viciously.
The man did not turn as they came abreast. He had a bag slung on his shoulders by a string, from which protruded the nose of a bottle and the sodden end of a newspaper. The peak of his cap hid the upper part of his face; the lower part was composed of an unshaven chin, a gap-toothed mouth, and a red ferrety nose.
"Ill weather," said Jaikie.
"Hellish," was the answer. A sharp eye stole a sidelong glance and took in Mr Craw's prosperous but water-logged garments. The terrier sniffed wistfully at Jaikie's leg. Jaikie looked like the kind of person who might do something for him.
"Hae ye a smoke?" the drover asked. Jaikie reluctantly parted with a cigarette, which the other lit by making a shelter of his cap against the wind. The terrier, in order to avoid the collie, wove its string round his legs and received a savage kick.
"Where are you bound for?" Jaikie asked.
"Near by. I've brocht thae sheep frae Cumnock way." Then, as an overflow of water from the creases of his cap reached his unwashen neck, he broke into profanity about the weather, concluding with a malediction on the unhappy terrier, who showed signs of again entangling his lead. The dog seemed to be a cross between wire-haired and Sealyham, a wretched little fellow with a coat as thick as a sheep's, a thin piebald face, whiskers streaked backwards by the wet, and a scared eye. The drover brought his stick down hard on its hind quarters, and as it jumped howling away from him the collie snapped at its head. It was a bad day for the terrier.
"That's a nice little beast," said Jaikie.
"No bad. Pure-bred Solomon. He's yours if ye'll pay my price."
"I've no use for a dog. Where did you get him?"
"A freend bred him. I'm askin' a couple o' quid. I brocht him along wi' me to sell. What about the other yin o' ye? He'd be the better o' a dug."
Mr Craw did not look as if such an acquisition would ease his discomfort. He was glancing nervously at the collie which had turned on him an old-fashioned eye. Jaikie quickened his pace, and began to circumvent the sheep.
"Haud on," said the drover. "I turn up the next road. Gie's your crack till the turn."
But Jaikie had had enough of him, and the last they heard was the whining of the terrier, who had again been maltreated.
"Is that one of the hill shepherds?" Mr Craw asked.
"Hill shepherd! He's some auction-ring tout from Glasgow. Didn't you recognise the tongue? I'm sorry for that little dog. He stole it, of course. I hope he sells it before he kills it."
The high crown of the moorland now began to fall away into a valley which seemed to be tributary to the Gled. The two were conscious that they were descending, but they had no prospect beyond a yard or two of dripping roadside heather. Already the burns were rising, and tawny rivulets threaded the road, all moving in the direction they were going. Jaikie set a round pace, for he wanted to save his companion from a chill, and Mr Craw did his best to keep up with it. Sometimes he stopped, put his hand to his side, and gasped—he was looking for the pain which was the precursor of pneumonia. Soon he grew warm, and his breath came short, and there had to be frequent halts to relieve his distress. In this condition of physical wretchedness and the blackest mental gloom Mr Craw became aware of a roaring of flooded waters and a bridge which spanned a porter-coloured torrent. The sight of that wintry stream combined with the driving rain and the enveloping mist to send a chill almost of terror to Mr Craw's heart. He was terribly sundered from the warm kindly world which he knew. Even so, from an icy shore, might some lost Arctic explorer have regarded the approach of the Polar night.
"That's the Gryne burn," said Jaikie reverentially. "It's coming down heavy. It joins the Water of Stark out there in the haugh. The inn's not a hundred yards on."
Presently they reached a low building, a little withdrawn from the road, on which a half-obliterated sign announced that one Thomas Johnston was licensed to sell ale and tobacco. Jaikie's memory was of a sunny place visited once in a hot August noon, when he had drunk ginger beer on the settle by the door, and amid the sleepy clucking of hens and the bleating of sheep had watched the waters of Gryne and Stark beginning their allied journey to the lowlands. Now, as it came into view through the veils of rain, it looked a shabby place, the roughcast of the walls blotched and peeling, the unthatched stacks of bog-hay sagging drunkenly, and a disconsolate up-ended cart with a broken shaft blocking one of the windows. But at any rate here was shelter, and the smell of peat reek promised a fire.
In the stone-flagged kitchen a woman was sitting beside a table engaged in darning socks—a thin-faced elderly woman with spectacles. The kitchen was warm and comfortable, and, since she had been baking earlier in the day, there was an agreeable odour of food. On the big old-fashioned hearth a bank of peats glowed dully, and sent out fine blue spirals.
The woman looked them over very carefully in response to Jaikie's question.
"Bide the nicht? I'm sure I dinna ken. My man's lyin'—he rickit his back bringin' hame the peats, and the doctor winna let him up afore the morn. It's a sair business lookin' after him, and the lassie's awa' hame for her sister's mairriage. Ye'll no be wantin' muckle?"
"That's a bad job for you," said Jaikie sympathetically. "We won't be much trouble. We'd like to get dry, and we want some food, and a bed to sleep in. We're on a walking tour and we'll take the road again first thing in the morning."
"I could maybe manage that. There's just the one room, for the ceiling's doun in the ither, and we canna get the masons out from Gledmouth to set it right. But there's twa beds in it … "
Then spoke Mr Craw, who had stripped off his raiment and flung it from him, and had edged his way to the warmth of the peats.
"We must have a private room, madam. I presume you have a private sitting-room. Have a fire lit in it as soon as possible."
"Ye're unco partic'lar," was the answer. "What hinders ye to sit in the kitchen? There's the best room, of course, but there hasna been a fire in the grate since last New Year's Day, and I doot the stirlins have been biggin' in the lum."
"The first thing," said Jaikie firmly, "is to get dry. It's too early to go to bed. If you'll show us our room we'll get these wet things off. I can manage fine in pyjamas, but my friend here is not so young as me, and he would be the better of something warmer. You couldn't lend him a pair of breeks, mistress? And maybe an old coat?"
Jaikie, when he chose to wheedle, was hard to resist, and the woman regarded him with favour. She also regarded Mr Craw appraisingly. "He's just about the size o' my man. I daresay I could find him some auld things o' Tam's… . Ye'd better tak off your buits here and I'll show ye your bedroom."
In their wet stocking-soles the travellers followed their hostess up an uncarpeted staircase to a long low room, where were two beds and two wash-stands and little else. The rain drummed on the roof, and the place smelt as damp as a sea-cave. She brought a pail of hot water from the kitchen kettle, and two large rough towels. "I'll be gettin' your tea ready," she said. "Bring doun your wet claithes, and I'll hang them in the kitchen."
Jaikie stripped to the skin and towelled himself violently, but Mr Craw hung back. He was not accustomed to baring his body before strangers. Slowly and warily he divested himself of what had once been a trim blue suit, the shirt which was now a limp rag, the elegant silk underclothing. Then he stood irresolute and shamefaced, while Jaikie rummaged in the packs and announced gleefully that their contents were quite dry. Jaikie turned to find his companion shivering in the blast from the small window which he had opened.
"Tuts, man, this will never do," he cried. "You'll get your death of cold. Rub yourself with the towel. Hard, man! You want to get back your circulation."
But Mr Craw's efforts were so feeble that Jaikie took the matter in hand. He pummelled and slapped and scrubbed the somewhat obese nudity of his companion, as if he had been grooming a horse. He poured out a share of the hot water from the pail, and made him plunge his head into it.
In the midst of these operations the door was half opened and a bundle of clothes was flung into the room. "That's the best I can dae for ye," said the voice of the hostess.
Jaikie invested Mr Craw with a wonderful suit of pale blue silk pyjamas, and over them a pair of Mr Johnston's trousers of well-polished pepper-and-salt homespun, and an ancient black tailed coat which may once have been its owner's garb for Sabbaths and funerals. A strange figure the great man presented as he stumbled down the stairs, for on his feet were silk socks and a pair of soft Russia leather slippers—provided from Castle Gay—while the rest of him was like an elderly tradesman who has relinquished collar and tie in the seclusion of the home. But at any rate he was warm again, and he felt no more premonitions of pneumonia.
Mrs Johnston met them at the foot of the stairs and indicated a door. "That's the best room. I've kinnled a fire, but I doot it's no drawin' weel wi' thae stirlins."
They found themselves in a small room in which for a moment they could see nothing because of the volume of smoke pouring from the newly-lit fire of sticks and peat. The starlings had been malignly active in the chimney. Presently through the haze might be discerned walls yellow with damp, on which hung a number of framed photographs, a mantelpiece adorned with china mugs and a clock out of action, several horsehair-covered chairs, a small, very hard sofa, and a round table decorated with two photograph albums, a book of views of Gledmouth, a workbox, and a blue-glass paraffin lamp.
Jaikie laboured with the poker at the chimney, but the obstruction was beyond him. Blear-eyed and coughing, he turned to find Mr Craw struggling with a hermetically-sealed window.
"We can't stay here," he spluttered. "This room's uninhabitable till the chimney's swept. Let's get back to the kitchen. Tea should be ready by now."
Mrs Johnston had spread a clean cloth on the kitchen table, and ham and eggs were sizzling on the fire. She smiled grimly when she saw them.
"I thocht ye would be smoored in the best room," she said. "Thae stirlins are a perfect torment… . Ay, ye can bide here and welcome. I aye think the kitchen's the nicest bit in the hoose… . There's a feck o' folk on the road the day, for there's been anither man here wantin' lodgins! I telled him we were fou' up, and that he could mak a bed on the hay in the stable. I didna like the look o' him, but a keeper o' a public daurna refuse a body a meal. He'll hae to get his tea wi' you."
Presently she planted a vast brown teapot on the table, and dished up the ham and eggs. Then, announcing that she must see to her husband, she left the kitchen.
Jaikie fell like a famished man on the viands, and Mr Craw, to his own amazement, followed suit. He had always been a small and fastidious eater, liking only very special kinds of food, and his chef had often a difficult task in tempting his capricious appetite. It was years since he had felt really hungry, and he never looked forward to the hour of dinner with the gusto of less fortunate mortals. But the hard walking in the rain, and the rough towelling in the bedroom, had awakened some forgotten instinct. How unlike the crisp shavings of bacon and the snowy puff-balls of eggs to which he was accustomed was this dish swimming in grease! Yet it tasted far better than anything he had eaten for ages. So did the thick oat-cakes and the new scones and the butter and the skim-milk cheese, and the strong tea sent a glow through his body. He had thought that he could tolerate nothing but the best China tea and little of that, and here he was drinking of the coarsest Indian brew… . He felt a sense of physical wellbeing to which he had long been a stranger. This was almost comfort.
The door opened and there entered the man they had met driving sheep. He had taken off his leggings, and his wet trouser ends flapped over his grimy boots. Otherwise he had made no toilet, except to remove his cap from his head and the bag from his shoulder. His lank black hair straggled over his eyes, and the eyes themselves were unpleasant. There must have been something left in the bottle whose nose had protruded from the bag.
He dropped into a chair and dragged it screamingly after him along the kitchen floor till he was within a yard of the table. Then he recognised the others.
"Ye're here," he observed. "Whit was a' your hurry? Gie's a cup o' tea. I'm no wantin' nae meat."
He was obviously rather drunk. Jaikie handed him a cup of tea, which, having dropped in four lumps of sugar, he drank noisily from the saucer. It steadied him, and he spread a scone thick with butter and jelly and began to wolf it. Mr Craw regarded him with extreme distaste and a little nervousness.
"Whit about the Solomon terrier?" he asked. "For twa quid he's yours."
The question was addressed to Mr Craw, who answered coldly that he was not buying dogs.
"Ay, but ye'll buy this dug."
"Where is it?" Jaikie asked.
"In the stable wi' the ither yin. Toff doesna like the wee dug, so I've tied them up in separate stalls, or he'd hae it chowed up."
The rest of the meal was given up to efforts on the part of the drover to effect a sale. His price came down to fifteen shillings and a glass of whisky. Questioned by Jaikie as to its pedigree, he embarked on a rambling tale, patently a lie, of a friend who bred Solomons and had presented him with this specimen in payment of a bet. Talk made the drover thirsty. He refused a second cup of tea and shouted for the hostess, and when Mrs Johnston appeared he ordered a bottle of Bass.
Jaikie, remembering the plans for the morrow, asked if there was such a thing as a bicycle about the place, and was told that her man possessed one. She saw no objection to his borrowing it for half a day. Jaikie had found favour in her eyes.
The drover drank his beer morosely and called for another bottle. Mrs Johnston glanced anxiously at Jaikie as she fulfilled the order, but Jaikie gave no sign. Now beer on the top of whisky is bad for the constitution, especially if little food has accompanied it, and soon the drover began to show that his case was no exception. His silence gave place to a violent garrulity. Thrusting his face close to the scandalised Mr Craw, he announced that that gentleman was gorily well going to buy the Solomon—that he had accepted the offer and that he would be sanguinarily glad to see the immediate colour of his money.
Mr Craw withdrew his chair, and the other lurched to his feet and came after him. The profanity of the drover, delivered in a hoarse roar, brought Mrs Johnston back in alarm. The seller's case was far from clear, but it seemed to be his argument that Mr Craw had taken delivery of a pup and was refusing payment. He was working himself into a fury at what he declared to be a case of strongly qualified bilk.
"Can ye dae naething wi' him?" the hostess wailed to Jaikie.
"I think we've had enough of him," was the answer. Then he lifted up his voice. "Hold on, man. Let's see the dog. We've never had a proper look at it."
But the drover was past caring about the details of the bargain. He was pursuing Mr Craw, who, he alleged, was in possession of monies rightly due to him, and Mr Craw was retreating from the fire to the vacant part of the floor where Jaikie stood.
Then suddenly came violent happenings. "Open the door, mistress," cried Jaikie. The drover turned furiously towards the voice, and found himself grabbed from behind and his arms forced back. He was a biggish fellow and managed to shake himself free. There was a vicious look in his eye, and he clutched the bread-knife from the table. Now, Mrs Johnston's rolling-pin lay on the dresser, and with this Jaikie hit him smartly on the wrist, causing the knife to clatter on the floor. The next second Jaikie's head had butted his antagonist in the wind, and, as he stumbled forward gasping, Jaikie twisted his right arm behind his back and held it in a cruel lock. The man had still an arm loose with which he tried to clutch Jaikie's hair, and, to his own amazement, Mr Craw found himself gripping this arm, and endeavouring to imitate Jaikie's tactics, the while he hammered with his knee at the drover's hind quarters. The propulsion of the two had its effect. The drover shot out of the kitchen into the rain, and the door was locked by Mrs Johnston behind him.
"He'll come back," Mr Craw quavered, repenting of his temerity.
"Not him," said Jaikie, as he tried to smooth his hair. "I know the breed. I know the very Glasgow close he comes out of. There's no fight in that scum. But I'm anxious about the little dog."
The kitchen was tidied up, and the two sat for a while by the peats. Then Mr Craw professed a desire for bed. Exercise and the recent excitement had made him weary; also he was still nervous about the drover and had a longing for sanctuary. By going to bed he would be retiring into the keep of the fortress.
Jaikie escorted him upstairs, helped him to get out of Mr Johnston's trousers, borrowed an extra blanket from the hostess, and an earthenware hot bottle which she called a "pig," and saw him tucked up comfortably. Then Jaikie disappeared with the lamp, leaving him to solitude and darkness.
Mr Craw for a little experienced the first glimmerings of peace which he had known since that fateful hour at Kirkmichael when his Hejira began. He felt restful and secure, and as his body grew warm and relaxed he had even a moment of complacence… . He had, unsolicited, helped to eject a ruffian from the inn kitchen. He had laid violent hands upon an enemy. The thing was so novel in his experience that the memory of it sent a curious, pleasant little shiver through his frame. He had shown himself ready in a crisis, instant in action. The thinker had proved himself also the doer. He dwelt happily with the thought… . Strange waters surrounded him, but so far his head was above the waves. Might there not be a purpose in it all, a high purpose? All great teachers of mankind had had to endure some sojourn in the wilderness. He thought of Mahomet and Buddha, Galileo in prison, Spinoza grinding spectacles. Sometimes he had wondered if his life were not too placid for a man with a mission. These mishaps—temporary, of course—might prove a stepping-stone from which to rise to yet higher things.
Then he remembered the face of the drover as he had last seen him, distorted and malevolent. He had incurred the enmity of a desperate man. Would not his violence be terribly repaid? Even now, as the drunkenness died in him, his enemy would be planning his revenge. To-morrow—what of to-morrow? Mr Craw shuddered, and, as the bedroom door opened and a ray of candlelight ran across the ceiling, he almost cried aloud.
It was only Jaikie, who carried in his arms a small dog. Its thick fleece, once white, was matted in dry mud, and the finer hair of its face and legs, streaked down with wet, gave these parts of it so preposterous an air of leanness, that it looked like a dilapidated toy dog which had lost its wheels. But it appeared to be content. It curled itself at the foot of Jaikie's bed, and, before beginning its own toilet, licked his hand.
"I've bought that fellow's dog," Jaikie announced. "It must have been stolen, but it has come through a lot of hands. I beat him down to four shillings."
"Were you not afraid?" gasped Mr Craw.
"He's practically sober now," Jaikie went on. "You see, he barged into the cart beside the door and got a crack on the head that steadied him. There was nothing to be afraid of except his brute of a collie."
As Jaikie wriggled into bed he leaned forward and patted the head of his purchase. "I'm going to call him Woolworth," he said, "for he's as woolly as a sheep, and he didn't cost much."
