Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  The afternoon was foggy and biting cold, so that Alastair looked for snow and called on Johnson to hurry before the storm broke. But the fall was delayed, and up to the darkening they rode in an icy haze through the confused foothills. The mountains were beginning again, the hills of bent and heather that he knew; the streams swirled in grey rock-rimmed pools, the air had the sour, bleak, yet invigorating tang of his own country. But now he did not welcome it, for it was the earnest of defeat. He was returning after failure. Nay, he was leaving his heart buried in the soft South country, which once he had despised. A wild longing, the perversion of homesickness, filled him for the smoky brown champaigns and the mossy woodlands which now enshrined the jewel of Claudia. He had thought that regrets were put away for ever and that he had turned his eyes stonily to a cold future, but he had forgotten that he was young.

  In the thick weather they came from the lanes into a broader high road, and suddenly found their progress stayed. A knot of troopers bade them halt, and unslung their muskets. They were fellows in green jackets, mounted on shaggy country horses, and they spoke with the accent of the Midlands. Alastair repeated his tale, and was informed that their orders were to let no man pass that road and to take any armed and mounted travellers before the General. He asked their regiment and was told that it was the Rangers, a corps of gentlemen volunteers. The men were cloddish but not unfriendly, and, suspecting that the corps was some raw levy of yokels commanded by some thickskulled squire, Alastair bowed to discretion and bade them show the way to the General’s quarters.

  But the moorland farmhouse to which they were led awoke his doubts. The sentries had the trimness of a headquarters guard, and the horses he had a glimpse of in the yard were not the screws or carthorses of the ordinary yeoman. While they waited in the low-ceiled kitchen he had reached the conclusion that in the General he would find some regular officer of Wade’s or Cumberland’s command, and as he bowed his head to enter the parlour he had resolved on his line of conduct.

  But he was not prepared for the sight of Oglethorpe; grim, aquiline, neat as a Sunday burgess, who raised his head from a mass of papers, stared for a second and then smiled.

  “You have brought me a friend, Roger,” he told the young lieutenant. “These gentlemen will be quartered here this night, for the weather is too thick to travel further; likewise they will sup with me.”

  When the young man had gone, he held out his hand to Alastair.

  “We seem fated to cross each other’s path, Mr Maclean.”

  “I would present to you my friend, Mr Samuel Johnson, sir. This is General Oglethorpe.”

  Johnson stared at him and then thrust forward a great hand.

  “I am honoured, sir, deeply honoured. Every honest man has heard the name.” And he repeated:

  “One, driven by strong benevolence of soul,

  Shall fly like Oglethorpe from pole to pole.”

  The General smiled. “Mr Pope was over-kind to my modest deserts. But, gentlemen, I am in command of a part of His Majesty’s forces, and at this moment we are in the region of war. I must request from you some account of your recent doings and your present purpose. Come forward to the fire, for it is wintry weather. And stay! Your Prince’s steward has been scouring the country for cherry brandy, to which it seems His Highness is partial. But all has not been taken.” He filled two glasses from a decanter at his elbow.

  Looking at the rugged face and the grave kindly eyes, Alastair resolved that it was a case for a full confession. He told of his doings at Brightwell after the meeting with Oglethorpe at the Sleeping Deer, and of the fate of Mr Nicholas Kyd, but he made no mention of Sir John Norreys. He told of his ride to Derby, and what he had found on the Ashbourne road. It is possible that there was a break in his voice, for Oglethorpe averted his eyes and shook his head.

  “I cannot profess to regret a failure which it is my duty to ensure,” he said, “but I can pity a brave man who sees his hopes destroyed. And now, sir? What course do you shape?”

  “I must pursue the poor remains of my duty. I go to join my Prince.”

  “And it is my business to prevent you!”

  Alastair looked at him composedly. “Nay, sir, I do not think that such can be your duty. It might be Cumberland’s or Wade’s, but not Oglethorpe’s, for you can understand another loyalty than your own, and I do not think you will interfere with mine. I ask only to go back to my own country. I will give you my word that I will not strike a blow in England.”

  Again Oglethorpe smiled. “You read my heart with some confidence, sir. If I were to detain you, what would be the charge? You have not yet taken arms against His Majesty. Of your political doings I have no experience: to me you are a gentleman travelling to Scotland, who has on one occasion rendered good service to myself and so to His Majesty. That is all which, as a soldier, I am concerned to know. You will have quarters for the night, and tomorrow, if you desire it, continue your journey. But I must stipulate that the road you follow is not that of the Prince’s march. You will not join his army till it is north of Esk.”

  Alastair bowed. “I am content.”

  “But your friend,” Oglethorpe continued. “This Mr Samuel Johnson who quotes so appositely the lines of Mr Pope. He is an Englishman, and is in another case. I cannot permit Mr Johnson to cross the Border.”

  “He purposes to keep me company,” said Alastair, “till I have joined the Prince.”

  “Nay, sir,” cried Johnson. “You have been honest with us, and I will be honest with you. My desire is to join the Prince and fight by my friend’s side.”

  Oglethorpe looked at the strange figure, below the skirts of whose old brown coat peeped a scabbard. “You seem,” he said, “to have fulfilled the scriptural injunction ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’ But, sir, it may not be. I would not part two friends before it is necessary, but you will give me your parole that you will not enter Scotland, or I must hold you prisoner and send you to Manchester.”

  Johnson turned to Alastair and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It seems that Providence is on your side, my friend, and has intervened to separate us. That was your counsel, but it was never mine. . . . So be it, then.” He walked to the window and seemed to be in trouble with his dingy cravat.

  *****

  Next morning when Oglethorpe’s Rangers began their march towards Shap, the two travellers set out by an easterly road, forded the Lune and made for the Eden valley. The rains filled the streams and mosses, and their progress was slow, so that for days they were entangled among the high Cumbrian hills. News of the affair at Clifton, where Lord George beat off Cumberland’s van and saved the retreat, came to them by a packman in a herd’s sheiling on Cross Fell, and after that their journey was clear down the Eden, till the time came to avoid Carlisle and make straight across country for Esk. The last night they lay at an ale-house on the Lyneside, and Alastair counted thirty guineas from his purse.

  “With this I think you may reach London,” he told Johnson, and when the latter expostulated, he bade him consider it a loan. “If I fall, it is my bequest to you; and if I live, then we shall assuredly meet again and you can repay me. I would fain make it more, but money is likely to be a scarce commodity in yonder army.”

  “You have a duty clear before you,” said the other dismally. “For me, I have none such; I would I had. But I will seek no opiates in a life of barbarism. I am resolved to spend what days the Almighty may still allot me on the broad highway of humanity. When I have found my task I will adhere to it like a soldier.”

  Next morning they rode to a ridge beneath which the swollen Esk poured through the haughlands. It was a day of flying squalls, and the great dales of Esk and Annan lay mottled with sun-gleams and purple shadows up to the dark hills, which, chequered with snow, defended the way to the north. Further down Alastair’s quick eye noted a commotion on the river banks, and dark objects bobbing in the stream.

  “See,” he cried, “His
Highness is crossing. We have steered skilfully, for I enter Scotland by his side.”

  “Is that Scotland?” Johnson asked, his shortsighted eyes peering at the wide vista.

  “Scotland it is, and somewhere over yon hills lies Ramoth-Gilead.”

  Alastair’s mind had in these last days won a certain peace, and now at the sight of the army something quickened in him that had been dead since the morning on the Ashbourne road. Youth was waking from its winter sleep. The world had become coloured again, barriers were down, roads ran into the future. Hazard seemed only hazard now and not despair. Suddenly came the sound of wild music, as the pipers struck up the air of “Bundle and go.” The strain rose far and faint and elfin, like a wandering wind, and put fire into his veins.

  “That is the march for the road,” Alastair cried. “Now I am for my own country.”

  “And I for mine,” said Johnson, but there was no spring in his voice. He rubbed his eyes, peered in the direction of the music, and made as if to unbuckle his sword. Then he thought better of it. “Nay, I will keep the thing to nurse my memory,” he said.

  The two men joined hands; and Alastair, in his foreign fashion, kissed the other on the cheek. As they mounted, a shower enveloped them, and the landscape was blotted out, so that the two were isolated in a world of their own.

  “We are naked men,” said Johnson. “Each must go up to his own Ramoth-Gilead, but I would that yours and mine had been the same.”

  Then he turned his horse and rode slowly southward into the rain.

  Postscript

  Thus far Mr Derwent’s papers.

  With the farewell on the Cumberland moor Alastair Maclean is lost to us in the mist. Of the nature of Ramoth-Gilead let history tell; it is too sad a tale for the romancer. But one is relieved to know that he did not fall at Culloden, or swing like so many on Haribee outside the walls of Carlisle. For the Editor has been so fortunate as to discover a further document, after a second search among Mr Derwent’s archives, a document in the handwriting of Mr Samuel Johnson himself; and there seems to be the strongest presumption that it was addressed to Alastair at some town in France, for there is a mention of hospitality shown one Alan Maclean who had crossed the Channel with a message and was on the eve of returning. There is no superscription, the letter begins “My dear Sir,” and the end is lost; but since it is headed “Gough Square,” and contains a reference to the writer’s beginning work on his great dictionary, the date may be conjectured to be 1748. Unfortunately the paper is much torn and discoloured, and only one passage can be given with any certainty of correctness. I transcribe it as a memorial of a friendship which was to colour the thoughts of a great man to his dying day and which, we may be assured, left an impress no less indelible upon the mind of the young Highlander.

  “. . . I send by your kinsman the second moiety of the loan which you made me at our last meeting, for I assume that, like so many of your race and politics now in France, you are somewhat in straits for money. I do assure you that I can well afford to make the repayment, for I have concluded a profitable arrangement with the booksellers for the publication of an English dictionary, and have already received a considerable sum in advance. . . .

  “I will confess to you, my dear sir, that often in moments of leisure and in quiet places, my memory traverses our brief Odyssey, and I am moved again with fear and hope and the sadness of renunciation. You say, and I welcome your generosity, that from me you acquired something of philosophy; from you I am bound to reply that I learned weighty lessons in the conduct of our mortal life. You taught me that a man can be gay and yet most resolute, and that a Christian is not less capable of fortitude than an ancient Stoic. The recollection of that which we encountered together lives in me to warm my heart when it is cold, and to restore in dark seasons my trust in my fellow men. The end was a proof, if proof were wanted, of the vanity of human wishes, but sorrow does not imply failure, and my memory of it will not fade till the hour of death and the day of judgment. . . .

  “I have been at some pains to collect from my friends in Oxford news of my lady N — . You will rejoice to hear that she does well. Her husband, who has now a better name in the shire, is an ensample of marital decorum and treats her kindly, and she has been lately blessed with a male child. That, I am confident, is the tidings which you desire to hear, for your affection for that lady has long been purged of any taint of selfishness, and you can rejoice in her welfare as in that of a sister. But I do not forget that you have buried your heart in that monument to domestic felicity. Our Master did not place us in this world to win even honest happiness, but to shape and purify our immortal souls, and sorrow must be the companion of the noblest endeavour. Like the shepherd in Virgil you grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. . . .”

  THE END

  THE THREE HOSTAGE S

  Initially published in 1924, this is the fourth of Buchan’s five ‘shocker’ novels featuring Richard Hannay. The Three Hostages represents a change of pace compared to the previous novels in the series. Set seven years after The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay finds himself battling against Dominick Medina, a charismatic rising star of the political firmament. Medina is perhaps Buchan’s most memorable villain, being a complex hybrid of gifted scholar, first-rate sportsman and a handsomely witty gentleman, who fools many, even Hannay at first, of his true intentions. However, behind his virtuous exterior, Medina is evil, with a burning passion to bend men’s minds to his own will. The three hostages of the title are the victims of an international conspiracy, with Medina at its centre, hypnotising members of the families of important public figures and then manipulating them for criminal purposes.

  When Hannay is first asked to help find the hostages, the only clue as to their whereabouts lies in cryptic lines of verse which the malefactors have left for their pursuers. Hannay is forced to decipher obscure classical and literary references in order to track them down and save the day.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. DOCTOR GREENSLADE THEORISES

  CHAPTER II. I HEAR OF THE THREE HOSTAGES

  CHAPTER III. RESEARCHES IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS

  CHAPTER IV. I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A POPULAR MAN

  CHAPTER V. THE THURSDAY CLUB

  CHAPTER VI. THE HOUSE IN GOSPEL OAK

  CHAPTER VII. SOME EXPERIENCES OF A DISCIPLE

  CHAPTER VIII. THE BLIND SPINNER

  CHAPTER IX. I AM INTRODUCED TO STRONG MAGIC

  CHAPTER X. CONFIDENCES AT A WAYSIDE INN

  CHAPTER XI. HOW A GERMAN ENGINEER FOUND STRANGE FISHING

  CHAPTER XII. I RETURN TO SERVITUDE

  CHAPTER XIII. I VISIT THE FIELDS OF EDEN

  CHAPTER XIV. SIR ARCHIBALD ROYLANCE PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

  CHAPTER XV. HOW A FRENCH NOBLEMAN DISCOVERED FEAR

  CHAPTER XVI. OUR TIME IS NARROWED

  CHAPTER XVII. THE DISTRICT-VISITOR IN PALMYRA SQUARE

  CHAPTER XVIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE

  CHAPTER XIX. THE NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF JUNE — LATER

  CHAPTER XX. MACHRAY

  CHAPTER XXI. HOW I STALKED WILDER GAME THAN DEER

  DEDICATION

  To a Young Gentleman of Eton College

  HONOURED SIR,

  On your last birthday a well-meaning godfather presented you with a volume of mine, since you had been heard on occasion to express approval of my works. The book dealt with a somewhat arid branch of historical research, and it did not please you. You wrote to me, I remember, complaining that I had “let you down,” and summoning me, as I valued your respect, to “pull myself together.” In particular you demanded to hear more of the doings of Richard Hannay, a gentleman for whom you professed a liking. I, too, have a liking for Sir Richard, and when I met him the other day (he is now a country neighbour) I observed that his left hand had been considerably mauled, an injury which I knew had not been due to the War. He was so good as to tell me the tale of an unpleasant busi
ness in which he had recently been engaged, and to give me permission to retell it for your benefit. Sir Richard took a modest pride in the affair, because from first to last it had been a pure contest of wits, without recourse to those more obvious methods of strife with which he is familiar. So I herewith present it to you, in the hope that in the eyes of you and your friends it may atone for certain other writings of mine with which you have been afflicted by those in authority.

  J.B.

  June, 1924.

  CHAPTER I. DOCTOR GREENSLADE THEORISES

  That evening, I remember, as I came up through the Mill Meadow, I was feeling peculiarly happy and contented. It was still mid-March, one of those spring days when noon is like May, and only the cold pearly haze at sunset warns a man that he is not done with winter. The season was absurdly early, for the blackthorn was in flower and the hedge roots were full of primroses. The partridges were paired, the rooks were well on with their nests, and the meadows were full of shimmering grey flocks of fieldfares on their way north. I put up half a dozen snipe on the boggy edge of the stream, and in the bracken in Sturn Wood I thought I saw a woodcock, and hoped that the birds might nest with us this year, as they used to do long ago. It was jolly to see the world coming to life again, and to remember that this patch of England was my own, and all these wild things, so to speak, members of my little household.

  As I say, I was in a very contented mood, for I had found something I had longed for all my days. I had bought Fosse Manor just after the War as a wedding present for Mary, and for two and a half years we had been settled there. My son, Peter John, was rising fifteen months, a thoughtful infant, as healthy as a young colt and as comic as a terrier puppy. Even Mary’s anxious eye could scarcely detect in him any symptoms of decline. But the place wanted a lot of looking to, for it had run wild during the War, and the woods had to be thinned, gates and fences repaired, new drains laid, a ram put in to supplement the wells, a heap of thatching to be done, and the garden borders to be brought back to cultivation. I had got through the worst of it, and as I came out of the Home Wood on to the lower lawns and saw the old stone gables that the monks had built, I felt that I was anchored at last in the pleasantest kind of harbour.