Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “Mr Wakefield has suggested the true parallel,” said Lord Appin, who had listened to Mrs Deloraine with grave approval. “We do not profess to teach a religion, but, if we are not theologians, we are in a sense ecclesiastics. The state, remember, has now taken the place of the mediæval church. Once we had popes and bishops supervising the lives of their flock and making themselves sponsors for their spiritual well-being. But their pride crumbled, because’ they fell into that very error against which Lord Launceston has been warning us, and sought to imprison the longings of the human spirit within the narrow walls of creed and ritual Religion has triumphantly proved itself stronger than ecclesiasticism, and to-day we see a revolt — perhaps an unwise revolt — against all that savours of formality. And yet man cannot advance except through organised action, and if his Church is destroyed under one guise he will revive it under another. The Church in the Middle Ages had three great attributes. In the first place it was a brotherhood, a body of men linked together by a common faith. Again, it was inspired by an ideal which was professedly spiritual, a creed where success or failure was defined by other than material standards. Lastly, it was surrounded by an alien and hostile world, so that its members were drawn close to each other, and filled with a zeal which, according to our view of history, we label missionary or intolerant. That old church can never be re-established, for we have travelled too far from the sanctions which gave it strength. But we can no more do without a church than without a religion. Only we have learned nowadays that the true and lasting work for which such an organisation is adapted is rather political than doctrinal, and that the Seal of the Fisherman is better affixed to state decrees than to edicts against conscience. I maintain that our view of empire gives that empire something of the character of a church. We are a brotherhood banded together in a common quest. Our union, if less mystic than that which Augustine preached, has yet in it something not wholly human, not merely the sum of individual effort. In the midst of all our failures the work advances, for the plan is greater than the builders. Above all, we must achieve our desires in face of a stubborn and alien world. All around us are the frontiers of barbarism — I use the word as the Greeks used it. It is this environment which will perfect our brotherhood and give us something of the old crusading fervour. And if we have this clear purpose, not untouched with emotion, our empire will be another, and more truly Catholic, church. Then — to use Plato’s phrase — the quest of truth will not lack the warmth of desire.”

  The party had hitherto been sitting in darkness, broken only by the glow from the hearth and Mrs Deloraine’s lamp. Now the lights were turned on and there was a general shifting of seats. Lady flora, who had sat with exemplary patience through the long discussion, discovered that only a walk on the terrace would be sufficient reward, and carried off Hugh and Mr Wakefield in her train. Soon wild laughter and the barking of small terriers showed that some mischief was afoot.

  “What I feel about all that has been said to-night,” said Mrs Yorke wearily, “and about everything that you all have said since you came here, is that Imperialism promises to be a very exhausting faith. It demands a superb vitality like Flora’s or Sir Edward’s. We are all to live at high pressure. We must try all our easy-going beliefs by a new touchstone, we must forget all our comfortable clichés, and we must never weary in well-doing. For the young, I grant you, it is an inspiring creed, but for a woman drawing towards middle life it is — well, exacting.”

  “So is any creed worth the name,” said Carey. “They are all counsels of perfection, requiring us to strain every nerve for their fulfilment. Of course we tire and slacken, but our energy revives if we have got the true fire in our hearts. As for growing old, I do not believe in the thing. If our vitality sinks in one direction it increases in another. You are a much more active man now, Appin, than when in your youth you slumbered peacefully on the right hand of the Woolsack. We can no longer climb mountains like Astbury, or go lion-hunting like Teddy, but we make up for it by getting rid of the preoccupations which distract the young. Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth. Wakefield, for example...”

  But at this moment Lady Flora came in breathlessly from the verandah.

  “Oh, Aunt Susan, do you know what those extraordinary men are doing? They have made a kind of toboggan and are glissading down the steep part of the lawn into the Dutch garden. I daren’t try it, for I know I should ruin my gown.”

  CHAPTER XII.

  LADY FLORA woke early, before daybreak, and found it impossible to go to sleep again. The strange foreglow of dawn looked so attractive that she dressed and descended a silent staircase to the inner hall, where already the house-boys were beginning their labours. The verandahs were still in dusk, but when she had crossed the terrace and reached the lawns on the edge of the hill she came into a patch of pale sunlight and found that the skies were clear and that the sun was rising over the crest of the downs. The place intoxicated her, so quiet it was, so cool and fresh and dewy. She drank great draughts of the delicious air, and wondered why she had never discovered the charm of early rising before. At this hour most people were still wrapt in dull slumber with a doleful getting-up before them when the natural hour should have passed and the world become noisy and common. In this airy clime one’s thoughts must perforce be clear and beautiful. Even a flower-pot looked an exquisite thing with the dew on it and the gold of sunrise on the dew. It occurred to her that it might be well if life were to be so rearranged that all the things which mattered were done before breakfast. Or it might be enough, she reflected, if one could attain to this morning frame of mind and keep it unsullied at all hours. Some creed might give this, or some great passion. And as the girl wandered through the ineffable colours of the awakening day she thought very deeply.

  Hugh, coming back from an early gallop on the moor, found her sitting on a sunny corner of a parapet absorbed in thought. His horse shied at the apparition, and the rider, who had been half in a dream himself, promptly came off and disappeared in a bed of lilies. The horse began to graze peaceably, and Hugh, emerging dishevelled and surprised, found that the Muse of Contemplation had changed into a laughing girl.

  “‘The lark now leaves his watery nest,’” she quoted. “When you have shaken your ‘dewy wing,’ Mr Somerville, you might get one of the garden boys to take back the horse to the stable and come for a walk with me. I’ve been up since before daybreak, and I don’t a bit want to go back yet.”

  Hugh commandeered the services of the nearest gardener, and with Lady Flora wandered back across the lawn.

  “What brought you out of doors at this time?” he asked.

  “Restlessness and this glorious morning. And, once out, I made up my mind that I must find a creed. I had nearly got one when you came tumbling off your horse among the lilies. Do you remember the contract we made our second day here? You were to explain to me all the things I could not understand. Well, I haven’t bothered you much, for I found I was cleverer than I thought, and I followed most of the discussions quite easily. But last night Barbara stumped me completely. It wasn’t so much what she said, for I understood her meaning more or less, but she and all the others seemed to find so much more in it than I could see. I am not an artist of any kind, or ever likely to be, but I agree with her argument about the new field for art which empire gives. And of course it makes life pleasanter all round to have big horizons and a great deal to do. But in spite of all that Lord Launceston said, I think we are making more out of the creed than reason allows. Though we deny it in words, yet we behave as if this were a new religion instead of merely a better groundwork for one. We can’t turn politics into something which satisfies all our longings and fills all our life.”

  Hugh looked gravely at his companion. “You have your aunt’s appalling clearness of mind. I agree with every word you say. What next?”

  “Well, I want to know how I am to find the trait d’union? For I have become an I
mperialist, you know. I have got an interest so absorbing that I do not think I can ever be bored again. I suppose there are things I can do to help, for you said that in our new state no one would be left out of citizenship. But Barbara and Mr Carey and Lord Launceston — but especially Barbara — make me feel as if Imperialism shaded off into all manner of beautiful and far-off things, and I can’t see it. I have my own private dreams, but they are my own, and I can’t fit them in with politics. I wish I could, for I am sure the happiest people have only one creed which covers everything in their lives.”

  Hugh began to laugh, but stopped short at the sight of the girl’s serious eyes.

  “Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was never so surprised before. What you want is a synthetic philosophy, and that you should want it and know that you want it staggers me. You are a very remarkable young woman.”

  “I will not be treated like a child,” said Lady Flora indignantly, “and I will not have philosophy talked to me. I agree with Mr Wakefield that metaphysics are a bore, and only useful in staving off a difficult question. I have no more a desire for a synthetic philosophy than for the moon. But you might give me a Christian answer.”

  “I have given it you. You must find a philosophy, and it will take years in the finding. Don’t you see, Lady Flora, that your question goes to the very root of all things? We want a key to life, an ideal which will leave out nothing and completely satisfy the hunger in our hearts. When you were a child and invented fairylands you brought into them everything you loved — cats and dogs and toys and people — and so with the bigger fairyland we make when we grow up. Everything shades sooner or later into metaphysics, and the humblest difficulty — if we press it home — brings us within hailing distance of the Infinite. Well, I have no philosophy to teach you. Lord Appin to-night is going to give us what he calls ‘some elementary notes on the speculative basis’ of Imperialism, and I hope you will be very kind and keep Mr Wakefield quiet in a corner. But no ready-made philosophy will be of any use to you. If you and I were great geniuses we might sit down and think it all out from the beginning, but we have neither the time nor the patience for that. But the synthesis, remember, must either be made honestly by ourselves or come to us as a slow distillation from experience. Years, you know, bring the philosophic mind, and a certain unity creeps into life without our knowing it. Mrs Deloraine is absorbed in art, and she is also in love with a new political creed, and the two merge in a common ideaL So with Carey. His interest in empire is so consuming that everything in his life is brought into line with it. It is not the result of a conscious philosophy, for the thing is psychological rather than logical. The nexus is the human character.”

  “Yes,” said Lady Flora, “that sounds as if it might be true. So you advise me not to trouble about the high-falutin side, but to leave that to my old age. And yet — I don’t know. A morning like this makes one feel as if it were the only side that mattered. And after all, unless we can keep the morning freshness we must fail, for to create our uew world we must have uncommon vitality.”

  “We must have vitality, but each must get it as best he can. We all of us, if we are to keep up our heads in the world, must have some secret fountain of youth within us. But an arbitrary unification of life will only choke the springs. Wakefield said a thing to me at the beginning of our visit, and I am daily growing more convinced of its truth. He said that all Imperialists would add their own poetry to the facts, but that it was only on the facts themselves that we could expect agreement, and if we tried to dogmatise on the poetry we should quarrel at once. So by all means let us try to be prosaic, for I don’t think any of us will sink too deeply into prose.”

  “Mr Wakefield said that? What a wise old Philistine he is! He has asked me to go and stay with him next year in Canada. He says that people will call me either ‘Lady Brune’ or ‘Flora,’ and that I shall be an enormous succès. And we are going out to camp in the northern woods, and fish the lakes, and voyage in canoes, and have the time of our lives... Oh, by the by, Mr Somerville, you know you promised me a motto for my journal of our trek. It must be Greek, to look learned, and it must be about camping. Have you found one?”

  Hugh rummaged in the pockets of his coat. “Yes — the very thing you want. It’s Greek — latish to be sure, and it comes out of the Anthology. The sportsman who wrote it was called Antiphilus of Byzantium, and flourished in the reign of the Emperor Nero. I have done a sort of translation, rather rough and free. Here it is: —

  “Give me a mat on the deck

  When the awnings sound to the blows of the spray,

  And the hearthstones crack with the flames a-back,

  And the pot goes bubbling away.

  Give me a boy to cook my broth,

  For table a ship’s plank laid with a cloth (But never a fork or knife);

  And after a game with a rusty pack,

  The bo’sun’s whistle to call us back —

  That’s the fortune fit for a king,

  For oh! I love common life!”

  After dinner, by a general impulse the party sought the library, where Lord Appin ensconced himself in the central arm-chair.

  “I don’t want any lamp,” he said, “for I have nothing to read. My business, as I threatened long ago, is to try to put to you the fundamental question in Imperialism. If we cannot make good our defence on it, then we have surrendered the key of the position.

  “But first of all, there are a few preliminaries to be got over, and I am afraid I must take you through some elementary philosophy. I apologise to you, Launceston, for what must seem very trite and obvious; but unless one condescends to platitudes now and then, there must be gaps in the argument. Let me relieve Mr Wakefield’s mind by saying that I am not going to talk Hegelianism or any other creed. What I have to say is admitted by all philosophers, and belongs to the world’s common stock of speculation.

  “I remember that once in my public career I was twitted with being a philosopher in politics. My critic urged that philosophy unfitted a man for making the clear distinctions which are the working hypotheses of life. Good is good, he said, to the average man, and bad is bad, and on the distinction depends the moral life. Progress and reform are real and ascertained benefits, and on this assumption the State is governed. But the philosopher, he went on, will tell you that black is black only because in some sense it is also white; that vice is only virtue regarded from another plane of thought; that there is no truth in this or that isolated dogma, but only in something which he calls a system; that progress is illusory, since reaction may be one of the forms through which the Infinite is moving towards realisation. All differences are smoothed away by him in some trumpery unification, and yet it is on the reality of these differences that human aspirations and human happiness depend. Therefore, my critic argued, the philosopher must be kept out of politics like a bull out of a china shop, for if he have a persuasive tongue he will end by corrupting the manhood of the nation. I remember that he became quite witty on the subject. ‘Let us remove,’ he cried, ‘such philosophers from public life. There are places already appointed for their reception. Lunatic asylum is a vulgar word, so let us change their name to contemplative retreats. There let them live, happy and well cared for, hobnobbing with the Infinite, and leave the management of human affairs to unsophisticated human nature!’

  “My friend would have been surprised could he have known how cordially I agreed with him. The philosopher has no business in politics, unless he can bring himself to the mode of thinking which that province requires. The pastime of bursting old, but valuable, bottles by putting new wine into them will not commend itself to the sane man. Then what is the mode of thinking which is proper to the political life?

  “I do not propose to trace the history of thought from its first psychological embryo. Let us take the stage where it is manifest to all the world, the stage which is indicated when we speak of a man’s having common-sense, or a practical mind, or a great intelligen
ce. I do not wish to use German words, so let us call it the sphere of the Understanding. Now the essence of this mode of thought is that it insists upon clear divisions, upon the distinctions rather than upon any fundamental unity in things. A vast datum is presented to it by experience, and its business is to classify and arrange that datum. The distinctions which the Mind makes it regards as hard and fast — it must, for it has to act upon them. It acknowledges principles of union within such data, but the union is mechanical and external, like the classification of devices in heraldry. It refuses to theorise, to go one step further in its synthesis than practical needs require. Let us take some of the ordinary political counters. Law, for example, is not and does not profess to be complete justice. It is a working solution under which certain things are called right and certain things are labelled wrong, and have appropriate penalties attached. The good lawyer is he who can make the most of the mechanical unity within such a system; not he who pushes the analysis too far, and gets into metaphysics. But legal dogmas, such as they are, must be treated as final; the half-way house of thought must be regarded as the ultimate goal. Or take Liberty, that old will-o’-the-wisp of man. The Understanding, looking to the common needs of the State, declares that on one point the individual shall be untrammelled, and on another restricted. It does not examine the conception which is provided for it; it only takes steps to give it a practical meaning. So too with other general conceptions, such as education, national character, or the welfare of the people. The Understanding does not consider the welfare of humanity at large, but of humanity in a particular area — the nation or the race. It demands always the practical test, for it is purely utilitarian. It is not cosmopolitan; it is British, or French, or Siamese.