Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “Si jeunesse savait!” said Hugh. “That’s the tragedy of life — that the men who do the things can never tell about them or quite understand them. They only feel dimly that they are in the grip of some gigantic destiny. I don’t suppose the Three Hundred when they combed their long hair for death before Thermopylae ever thought what a gorgeous game they were playing. If they had, they would have gone into battle drunk with pride and walked through Xerxes’ army. It seems a law of mortality that the instinct for deeds and the guiding and understanding brain cannot be equally matched, except once in a thousand years in a Cæsar. The world is full of dumb, blind people, doing admirable work and faced with wonderful sights, and all the time without a glimmering of an idea of the magnificence of it.”

  Sir Edward Considine was in ordinary life a gentleman of cultivated manners, who spoke the English tongue with reasonable purity. But in the bush he developed a style of his own, and talked a slang culled from four continents, which the present writer cannot hope to reproduce. He tossed Hugh’s tobacco-pouch back to him, raised himself on one elbow from his couch, and shook his head emphatically.

  “They understand,” he said, “better than you or I can tell. I’ve made a special study of the scallywag, and what I don’t know about him ain’t worth knowing. Most people make the mistake of thinking that he is always of the same type. There are a hundred types of him, and only one thing common to each — they are all dreamers.”

  “But for your infernal noise I should be one now,” said Graham sleepily from the far bed. Considine picked up a boot, landed it neatly in the midst of the heap of rugs, and continued —

  “I’ve been stuck up in half a dozen parts of the world with fellows who hadn’t been home for years. Most of them used to talk Johnsonian English simply because they had forgotten when they last spoke to a white man, and thought of English only as a book language. None of them talked much, and it was the devil’s own job to get them to speak of themselves. But they were the salt of the earth for all that, living hard, working hard, and ready to sell their lives any day in the way of business. Do you think that kind of man is only a mill-horse, jogging on in his round because there is nothing else for him to do? I tell you every man-jack of them has got his own private dream. He knows he has got his race behind him, and that he is the advance-guard, and the thought bucks him up to rot away in swamps and shiver with fever, and in all probability be cleaned out in some obscure row. Nobody knows another man’s life, but we get glimpses now and then of his inner soul and take off our hats to it. You remember Lacey, who was at Eton with Alastair and me? Ask Alastair about him.”

  “What? the fellow who was killed somewhere up Chitral way?”

  Considine’s boot had brought Graham to attention. “Yes; he held a border fort with a dozen men for five days against several hundred ruffians. He fought so well that they wanted to spare him at the end and made him all kinds of offers. But he stuck it out, and they only got in over his body. When we found him he had about fifty wounds on him.”

  “I remember the story,” said Hugh.

  “Well, I was a pal of his, and he had made me his executor. I got his diary that he had written up till the day he died. If I hadn’t seen that book I would have sworn that Lacey was the ordinary stupid fellow who fought because he liked it, and that he had stuck it out more from obstinacy than from policy. But the diary changed my mind. I found that he had carefully considered the whole question of surrender. Overtures had been made to him, and apparently they were such as he could have trusted. But he concluded it was a case for the white man’s pride. He reasoned it all out. If he kept his head up to the last, he thought that the moral effect on that particular part of the border would be so great that there would be little more trouble. He deliberately chose death because he fancied it was his duty. And of course he was happy. The last pages of that little book, all grimy and blotted with blood, were one long paean of triumph. He couldn’t spell, and he had very little idea of writing, yet the end of that book was the purest lyric of joy. The sacrifice was not in vain either, for, as you know, it ended the war, and now the blackguards who killed him burn offerings to his shade at hillside shrines.”

  “I don’t for one moment deny that the great spirits — the leaders — have a clear ideal before them. But surely the same thing doesn’t apply to the ordinary rolling-stone who wanders into adventures because he cannot keep out of them, and hasn’t an idea in his head except that he likes to knock about the world.”

  “I never yet met the man without an idea in his head,” said Considine; “but I give you up the ne’er-do-well, who has something rotten about him in heart or brain. I mean the wanderer who likes the wilds better than civilisation, and therefore is what civilised people call an idler, simply because the only things they recognise as work cannot be done in the kind of places he frequents. I know the breed, for he belongs to my own totem, and in defending him I am more or less justifying myself. My game is exploration, and I work at it pretty hard, though it’s what you might call an intermittent profession. Another fellow’s is natural history or mapping or prospecting or something else. We’re devilish unsatisfactory people to our wives and families, I know, but, still, we don’t rust. We keep our minds keen and our bodies active, and I scarcely call that idling. We’re the least frivolous kind of man on the planet, and the least vulgar. Look at the ordinary industrious citizen. He wants to ‘get on’ in his beastly trade, and to have a house in Mayfair and a place in the country, and marry his daughters well, and get into Parliament and have a title to clap on to his squalid name. Or perhaps he wants to be applauded in the papers and be treated as a personage wherever he goes. I ask you if these are ambitions for a white man?”

  Considine filled his pipe again from Hugh’s pouch, and lit a match with difficulty. A light wind had got up which flickered among the high branches.

  “Last time I was at home I went with Blanche to a ball at the Templetons. It was a big affair — royalty and ambassadors and a brace of foreign grand dukes, one of whom once hunted with me in the Selkirks. I stood for about half an hour beside a pillar and watched and meditated. The noise round about me was just like the jabbering of monkeys in a Malayan forest. None of the people looked you squarely in the eyes, and the women had all faces like marionettes. I saw my aunt’s head bobbing and grinning, and her talk was some scandal about her oldest friend. Two fellows were standing near me — one was in the Cabinet and the other was a tremendous legal swell — and they were laughing at some of Manton’s last sayings. Hanged if I could see any humour in ‘em! One of the two came and spoke to me afterwards, and said he supposed the scene must be a pleasant change to me after the Congo. I told him it wasn’t much of a change, only the monkeys were caged instead of running wild on the tree-tops. He laughed as if I had said something funny. After a bit I got very sad and sober. Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead. I seemed to be looking on at a vast puppet-show, and I began to wonder if anybody was alive except myself. And then the comedy of it struck me, and I laughed to myself till people turned round to look at me, and Blanche came and asked me if I was ill. Of course, it was a game, and a good enough game, but yet to most of the people it was a tremendous reality, all they knew of life, and they would have shrieked in holy horror if I had told them that they represented not the last word in civilisation but a return to a very early stage of barbarism. The rough fellow clearing trees with an axe for his home was miles farther up the scale of being than they.... And then old Thirlstone drifted towards me. I daresay you know him, Hugh?”

  “The man who was made an Under-Secretary the other day?”

  “Same fellow. I used to know him long ago in the Service, and he was the hardest-bitten devil I have ever struck. He was in Tibet with Alastair, and he and I once had a try at getting into Kafiristan. Then his uncle died, and he became an enormously rich peer and had to come home and attend to his affairs. When he first came
back he dined with us, and Blanche had a lot of people to meet him. He hadn’t much to say for himself, and everybody thought him a bore, except me and a few of his own kind. Well, he settled down and married, and got into the ordinary rut, and there he was, still brown in the face but rather tired about the eyes. Blanche had told me he was much improved, so I knew what to look out for. All his roughness and shyness were gone, and he had the same kind of manner as the other monkeys, only he looked more wholesome. I wanted to speak to him, so we found a quiet corner in the supper-room. And then I put it straight to him, if he liked his new life. He said he did, talked a lot of rot about doing his duty in the sphere into which it had pleased God to call him, and about the fun of being at the centre of things; but there was not much conviction in his tone. So I began to tell him what had been happening to me, mentioned some places we had been together in and friends we had known. Soon I got him as keen as mustard. He dropped all his long words and fell into the honest slang of the backwoods. We had half an hour’s talk of old times, and then his wife came in with the big boss of his party. You know Lady Thirlstone, I daresay. A pretty American with a figure and fine eyes, but neither complexion nor heart. Thirlstone got up to join them and looked at me rather sickly. ‘I’ve got my wings clipped, old man,’ he said. ‘Wish me joy of my gilt cage, for if I weren’t a gentleman I’d kick it to splinters to-morrow.’”

  Somewhere in the forest a jackal barked and was answered from the far side of the camp. The fire was dying down, and a native boy came forward to heap on more logs.

  “And yet,” said Hugh, “what good is the wanderlust in itself? You may have all manner of dreams, but you spend your strength in futility. I daresay Thirlstone sitting chafing in Parliament is playing a better part in the solid work of the world than Thirlstone gallivanting about the Hindu Kush.”

  “That’s where you are wrong, my dear,” said Considine. “We are the advance-guard, always pushing a little farther on and making the road easier for those who come after us, the serious solid fellows who make laws and create industries, and generally reap where we have sown. You cannot measure the work of a pioneer by the scale of a bagman. We keep the fire burning, though we go out ourselves. Our failure is our success. We don’t found colonies and build cities, but unless we had gone before no one would have come after.”

  “Hugh,” said Graham solemnly, “if you encourage Teddy, he’ll keep on talking like a minor poet till daybreak.”

  “I like his minor poetry. Go on, and never mind that savage. You defend the adventurer because he keeps a nation restless?”

  “True for you. He is the electric force in’ civilisation. Without him we should settle, like Moab, on our lees and rot. And you cannot measure him by ordinary results, because his work is spiritual and unworldly. Raleigh failed in everything he put his hand to, and went to the scaffold with all his schemes discredited. And yet he had set moving the force which was to make his dreams a superb reality. The pioneer must always be ploughed under, but only the fool considers him a failure. That Nietzsche fellow Appin was chaffing me about the other night has got the right end of the stick. The individual is tremendously important. We think of men as mere cog-wheels in some great machine, whose only value is as part of the works. Heaven forbid that I should deny the value of the great social machine in ordinary life. But there are many who have no share in it, and they have their value none the less, for, if you don’t mind mixed metaphors, they somehow generate the motive power for the whole show. Take the case of Gordon. You may tell me that he was mad and a fanatic, that he ran his own head into the noose, that he had flaws in his character, that he was impossible as a colleague or a subordinate. I daresay that is all true, and I don’t care. His failure and the manner of it were worth a dozen successful wars and a whole regiment of impeccable statesmen. It put new faith into the race, and screwed us up for another century.

  “Remember,” Considine continued, “that individualism is the keynote of our work. I have seen the French business in North Africa, and know their methods. There the State moves forward as one man, and not a step is taken in the advance till lines are laid from the base and the country is well held in the rear. Everything is centralised and officially directed. That is not our way. We send our younger sons out into the world, expressly forbid them to do things, disavow and discourage them, and then profit by their disobedience. As long as we have hundreds of young men who ask only the chance of danger, and are ready to take the whole world on their shoulders, we need have no fear for the future. When every one demands his price and asks to be shown some fair likelihood of success before he tackles his job, then we are morally bound to decay —

  “My pipe is out, and I am getting sleepy. We’ve an early start before us, so I suppose we should compose ourselves to slumber.”

  Soon the world was quiet, save for the occasional crackling of a log and the deep breathing of the sleepers. Hugh pulled the furs about his chin, and watched the red heart of the fire glowing in the velvet dark of the night. He floated off into vague dreams, where lion-hunts ended in London ball-rooms, and almost in the same moment it seemed to him that he was awake again, with the fire black and the bitter cold gripping at his exposed neck and shoulders. He drew his coverings together, and sank into that light dreamless sleep which is the true luxury of the wilds. In another moment of time it was dawn, and, wide awake and refreshed, he was looking at a pale morning sky from which the stars were fading, and hearing the cheerful sound of the boys making early coffee.

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE gardens at Musuru cover three thousand feet of a mountain-side, sloping steeply down from the lawns around the house to a tropical glen, where a brawling stream runs in thickets of palm and cactus. For Carey’s guests it was a prescribed excursion to descend to the Tropics some morning, lunch in a summer-house, and make the best of an arduous return in the late afternoon. Such an expedition had its charm, for it was a stimulating adventure to climb down, as it were, in a few hours through many degrees of latitude, and witness in a brief day the scenery of twenty climates. But it had also its drawbacks, for in the morning when human energy is high the task was easy, and all the difficulties were reserved for that unhallowed season when lunch is a memory and tea a distant hope. So mules were provided for the women, and with the accompaniment of native muleteers and an Arab guide, the party assembled about eleven o’clock at the point where the road dipped into an avenue of cool cedars. Mrs Yorke, in a dress of delicate green muslin, carried a parasol, and sat her mule with the ease of one long at home in Southern places. The others, Marjory Haystoun, Lady Flora, and Mrs Deloraine, wore broad-brimmed hats and clothes of some serviceable linen stuff. Lady Flora refused to mount her mule, and tramped sturdily along with Mr Wakefield and Mr Astbury.

  The garden was a labyrinth of paths, for the most part shadowed with trees, but coming suddenly at times to a kind of stage where the travellers had a wide prospect of the valley. At first the deep rooty fragrance of pines and cedars was all about them. Rhododendrons and azaleas formed the thicket, and there were stretches of mossy turf down which little streams fell in cascades to the forest below. Except for the greater heat of the sun, which the canopy of green scarcely averted, the road might have been a drive in some English park. Every now and then came patches of well-known English flowers, most of them past their first bloom, though the heath was still a gorgeous sheet of colour. Insensibly, however, the place changed to another latitude. Now it was some superb Riviera garden, where myrtles and syringas and shrubby geraniums crowded on the paths. At one halting place there was a parterre of flower-beds bright with a dozen species of canna and lily. A stream had been dammed to make a small hanging reservoir, where every variety of water-plant blossomed, and ducks of a curious burnished green swam among the white petals. Still they descended, and now the vegetation closed in, and instead of an avenue the path was a tunnel. Huge trees matted with vines and passion-flowers, tall forests of fern, broad-leaved wild bananas, and quant
ities of little palms, made a jungle which it seemed vain to hope to penetrate. Insect and bird life, which had been silent above, awoke in these regions, and the air was a-flutter with delicate wings. It was very hot, not the strong glare of the sun, but the moist warmth of rich vegetable life and a too generous earth. Mr Wakefield laboured in his tracks, the ladies on the mules ceased to gossip, and even Lady Flora looked flushed and breathless. Soon the noise of water rose above the hum of the forest, and suddenly through the blue and orange shadows of the trees gleamed the foam of a great torrent, as milk - white as any glacier stream. A well-made bridge of logs led across, and a few minutes later the party were seated in a little bungalow, with a floor of beaten earth, a thatched roof, and a shady verandah.

  The sight of a cool luncheon-table with waiting servants in white tunics restored the travellers to comfort. They found a light meal of fruit and cold foods, while Mr Wakefield industriously set about the quenching of a very respectable thirst. After a while he recovered his composure, and had leisure to regard his companions.

  “‘If these things be done in the green tree,’” he said, “‘what shall be done in the dry?’ If I am out of breath coming downhill, how on earth am I to get up again? I have never understood why an all-wise Providence created the Tropics. They are full of noxious animals; their climate embitters life and is apt to end it prematurely.”

  Astbury, squarely built, fair-haired and ruddy, was also ill fitted for violent exercise in hot climates. A noted athlete and a mountaineer of high reputation, he could endure extremes of cold and exhaustion and only find his energy quickened, but in the Tropics he was apt to lose his restless activity and become an idle and good-humoured spectator of life.