Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “Weel, to Newbiggin ye gang, and your departure maun be public. Crack about it for days afore. Tell the auld wife at the manse and deave her wi’ your preparations. For, if you’re no oot o’ the parish in guid time, ye’ll be lockit in your chamber, as ye were on the second Beltane. And ye maun be in the Wud that nicht as a witness, for there’s just us twasome, you and me, and we maun be witnesses that the Presbytery and the Sheriff and the Lords in Embro cannot deny.”

  “I see that. But have you found out nothing more in Woodilee?”

  “I’ve gotten a hantle o’ suspeecions. Man, ye’d wonder to see how chief me and Chasehope are these days. I’ve been ower to see his English bull, and I’ve ta’en his advice about sheep, and I’ve sell’t him a score o’ gimmers at a price that made me voamit. He thinks I’m a dacent, saft, through-ither body, wi’ his wits sair fuddled by strong drink, and has nae back-thochts o’ ane that’s just clay in his hands. . . . Ay, and I’ve been payin’ muckle attention to his hen-house. His wife, ye maun ken, is a notable hen-wife, and she has a red cock that there’s no the like o’ in the countryside. I took Rab Prentice up wi’ me to Chasehope toun, and I bade Rab tak’ special note o’ the red cock.”

  “But I do not see the purpose . . .”

  “Ye needna — yet. Ye’ll be tell’t in guid time. I’m thinkin’ o’ the process afore the Presbytery, and it’s witnesses I’m seekin’. I hae twa honest men, my herds Richie Smail and Rab Prentice, but Richie’s ower auld to tak’ the Wud and Hirplin’ Rab wad dee afore he would pit his neb inside it. So there’s just you and me for the chief job, though the ither twa will hae their uses.”

  The imminence of the trial made David’s heart sick, for he had now brooded for three months on the mysteries of the Wood, whereas at Beltane he had stumbled upon them in hot blood unwittingly. He was confident in his cause, but he believed most firmly that the Devil in person would be his antagonist, and the cool tones of Reiverslaw struck him with admiration and awe.

  “Man, you speak as calm as if you were making ready for a clipping. Is it that you do not believe in the power of Satan?”

  “I believe in God,” said the man, “and I’ve seen ower muckle o’ the world no to believe in the Deil. But I’ll no be feared o’ a Deil that misguides auld wives and tak’s up wi’ rotten peats like Chasehope, and though he comes in a brimstane lowe I’ll hae a nick at him.”

  Then began for David a time of doubt and heart-searching. He could not share the robust confidence of Reiverslaw, for his memory of Beltane was too clear and he had lived too long under its shadows. His imagination, always quick and easily kindled, ran riot, and he saw the Wood as an abode of horrid mysteries, which spread into subtle ramifications of evil the more he pondered them. His secular learning was so much fuel to this fire. Courage did not fail him, but brightness died out of his world, and he knew himself condemned to tread a dark winepress alone.

  It was the thought of Katrine that most disquieted him. The Wood, the whole parish, the very mission on which he was engaged, seemed to him one vast pollution, to be kept hidden for ever from youth and innocence. The girl must not be allowed to come within sight of the skirts of it. There could be no friendship between them, and it was his first duty to warn her.

  So when they met in Paradise it was a shamefaced young man that stood before her, a young man with a white face who kept his eyes on the ground and spoke terrible things. Words came unreadily, but his broken speech was more moving than eloquence. He bade her keep to the clean precincts of Calidon and come not even near the greenwood. God’s curse was on the parish, and in the judgment preparing innocent might share with guilty. As for himself, he was no friend for such as she.

  “I am too heavily burdened,” he stammered. “I must touch pitch, and my hands will be defiled. I will blight your youth with my dark duties. . . . I will never come again to this place, and I plead with you to come no more, for it is too near the Enemy’s country. . . . Go now, I beg of you, and forget that you have ever seen me and called me friend. You will torture me if you bide. . . .”

  There was more of the same sort, and then David stopped, confident that he had done his purpose, and that no proud girl would linger in the face of such a warning. He waited, very cold and lonely at heart, and he thought he heard her departing feet on the grass.

  But when he raised his eyes she had not moved, and her face was smiling.

  CHAPTER X. WHAT THE MOON SAW

  There was great heat at the end of July — sultry, thunderous weather, when the hills drowsed under a haze and the sun’s beams seemed to be the more torrid for the screen of vapour through which they fell. The heavens were banking up for the Lammas rains. But each evening the skies cleared, and the night was an amethyst dome sprinkled with stars.

  David made a great to-do about his visit to Newbiggin. On the Monday morning he announced it to Isobel, and in an hour the word had gone through the village. His housekeeper seemed to receive the news with relief. “Blithe I am to hear it, sir. Folk suld whiles change their ground like bestial, and ye’ve been ower lang tethered to this parochine. Newbiggin will be a caller bit in this lown weather, and while ye’re awa’ I’ll get your chamber cleaned and the stairs washed doun. Dinna haste to come back, for I’ll no look for ye or Setterday.”

  He set off on the Tuesday after midday, and there were many eyes in Woodilee to mark his going. That night he duly slept at Newbiggin, but the next day, which was Lammas Eve, he left his cousin’s house and rode up Clyde water into the farthest moors. It was a wide circuit, which brought him in the afternoon to the uplands which separate Rood from Annan. All day he had been out of sight of human dwelling, and the first he saw was in the dusk, when he descended upon the tower of Calidon by the glen of the Calidon burn. At Calidon he left his horse with the grieve, promising to return for it on the morrow, and, with one look at the lit windows of the tower, he set out on foot to ford the Rood. About nine o’clock in the mulberry gloaming he reached the cottage of the Greenshiel.

  Three figures greeted him there. One was the herd of the outer hirsel, Richie Smail; another was Rab Prentice, the herd of the home hirsel, who sat on the turf deas at the cottage-end with his crutch beside him; the third was Reiverslaw himself, who was also seated, smoking a pipe of tobacco.

  “Ye’re in braw time, Mr. Sempill,” said the last. “Did ye pass ony folk on the road?”

  “I have seen no man since the morning, except the Calidon grieve half an hour syne.”

  “And that’s just as weel. Richie, kindle the cruisie, for our job is better done indoors.”

  The feeble light in the hut revealed a curious assembly. The two shepherds had faces of portentous gravity, and their twitching mouths and restless eyes were proof of an extreme discomfort. Reiverslaw wore his usual frieze small-clothes and boot-hose, but he had no coat, though he had slung on his arm what might have been that garment. He flung this on the settle. “It’s ower het to wear that muckle maud till the time comes. We maun get to business, Mr. Sempill, for you should be on the road afore the moon rises. We’re here to get our plan strauchtit oot and there’s jimp [scarcely] time. Rab Prentice, ye’ve been twice wi’ me to Chasehope in the last se’en days. Ye mind the braw red cock the wife has gotten?”

  “Fine,” said the shepherd.

  “There’s no sic another fowl in the countryside?”

  “That I’ll engage.”

  “Therefore if I show ye the morn a pluckin’ o’ red feathers, ye’ll jalouse it’s the Chasehope cock?”

  “Ay. But I’m no gaun intil the Wud . . . not even in braid daylicht.”

  “If I bid ye, ye’ll gang, Rab Prentice, though I suld carry ye myself. . . . Now, secondly, as the ministers say. Do ye see this bottle? Smell it, a’ three of ye. That’s a smell ye never fand afore? It’s what they call oil of hennyseed, and I got it frae a horse-doctor at Carlisle. I’ll wager there’s no anither phial o’ the same between here and Embro. It’s a smell ye’ll no sune forget. Pit a dab o
n yer sleeves to remind ye o’t. If the three o’ us gangs to Chasehope the morn and finds Chasehope’s breeks and Chasehope’s sark stinkin’ o’ this oil, ye’ll be able to swear to it, and to swear that I showed it you this verra nicht and that ye kenned the smell when ye fand it again.”

  The two men agreed, sniffing the drop on their sleeve.

  “Thirdly,” said Reiverslaw, “I’m gaun to turn mysel’ intil a guisyard.”

  He picked up the thing he had been carrying, and revealed it as a cloak of deerskins which fitted like a loose jerkin. Over his head he drew a cap of skins with slits for his eyes, a roughly-shaped nozzle like a deer’s, and on the top the horns of a goat.

  “Save us a’!” Richie cried, as he saw his master stand up, his lean, active body surmounted by a beast’s head. “Save us a’, ye’re no gaun to tamper wi’ the accursed thing?”

  “That’s what I ettle, but the intention is guid, and it’s by our intentions we’ll be judged, as Mr. Sempill will tell ye. Look at me, ye daft auld fules, for there’s naething to be feared o’. I’m for the Wud the nicht, and it’s my purpose to bide in cover till the folk are half dementit, and syne, when their een are blind, to join them. I’ve a notion that there will be some wark wi’ the red cock, and I’d like a feather or twa as a keepsake. And I’ve a sort of notion that my auld friend Chasehope will be there; so as a token o’ friendship I’ll pit saut on his tail — whilk means that if I get the chance I’ll anoint his dowp wi’ the hennyseed. Now, you twa, take tent and listen to me. Ye will swear that I telled ye what I have telled ye, and that ye saw me at the Greenshiel dressed up like a merry-andrew. The horns suld hae been a stag’s, but I was feared o’ hankin’ them in the busses, so the puir auld Reiverslaw billy-goat had to dee.”

  He was a crazy sight with the goat’s head on him, and a formidable sight without it, for as he stood in that dusk beside two men bent with labour, the one maimed and the other past the allotted span of human years, David had an impression of something desperate and fearless and light-hearted. The shepherds were clearly torn between loyalty and terror, and he himself, while firm enough in his resolve, had to keep his thoughts battened down to prevent his knees knocking. But Reiverslaw seemed to have no fears. He had set about the thing as cannily as if he were selling sheep at Lockerbie fair, and now, with a venture before him which not two other men in Scotland would have contemplated, he was notably the least embarrassed of the party.

  “I saw three pyets [magpies] flee intil the Wud this morning,” said Prentice, “and but ane cam’ back. That’s an unco freit [omen] for the beginnin’ o’t!”

  “Haud your tongue, ye auld wife,” said Reiverslaw. “Freits fa’ to them that fear them, and I’m no gaun to fash my heid about twa jauds o’ birds. . . .”

  “I had a vision yestereen,” Richie put in. “I saw the haill land o’ Scotland like a field o’ aits, white until the harvest, the haill land frae John o’ Groats to Galloway, a’ but the parish o’ Woodilee, whilk was unplewed and rough wi’ briars and thrissles. An’ says I to mysel’, ‘Whatever place is yon?’ and says a voice to me, ‘That’s what we ca’ the Deil’s Baulk in the gospel field o’ Scotland.’”

  “And a very true observe, for Deil’s Baulk is just what the Wud is, and it’s for us to pit a plew intill’t and mak’ a fire o’ the wastry. Set bite and sup afore the minister, Richie.”

  The shepherd produced some oatcakes, of which David ate only a mouthful, for though he had had no food since morning, his throat was dry and his tongue like a stick. He drank, however, a pint of buttermilk.

  “Kirn-milk for you?” the host asked of Reiverslaw. “I hae nae yill, but Rab has brocht a flask o’ aquavitty ye gied him at the lambin’.”

  “I’ll hae spring water. Nae strong drink for me, for this nicht I’m like Jonadab the son of Rechab. . . . Are ye ready, Mr. Sempill? Ye maun start first, for ye’ve a tree to speel. There’s nae hurry for me till the Deil begins his pipin’.”

  “You are either strong in the faith, or of a very stout heart,” said David admiringly.

  “No as strong as I might be,” was the answer. “Afore we part, wad it no be weel for you to pit up a prayer?”

  The minister prayed — and it was as if he confessed alone to his God in his closet. He himself was strengthened by it, and the comfort of Richie and Rab was visibly enlarged. But Reiverslaw stood through the devotions in no very devout position, and from him came none of the responses which flowed from the others. Before the “Amen” he had his goat-cap on, and was peering at the rising moon. He made his staff sing as he whirled it.

  David took his strange confederate’s hand, and his own shook. Reiverslaw noted his trepidation.

  “Fear nocht, sir. It’ll gang ill wi’ the wirriecow gin we meet him. But what brocht a man o’ peace like you into this tuilzie?”

  “Jealousy for the honour of my God. And you? For it is less your quarrel than mine.”

  The man grinned. “Write it down that Andra Shillinglaw couldna see an honest man beat, and that he didna like kail-worms.”

  David had many times gone over in his mind the route to the glade of the altar, and had compared notes with Reiverslaw that very night. The distance was less than three miles, and he had a couple of hours to reach the place and still be in position well before midnight. As on all the nights of the past week, the oppressive haze of the day had lifted, and the sky rose to an infinite height, thick studded with stars, for the moon was only new risen. David made his way to the dividing glen between the pines and the hazels in a miserable disquiet. He had lost the first fierce anger which had stiffened him for his frustrated expedition on the eve of the second Beltane, and his tacit ostracism all summer by the folk of Woodilee had engendered a profound self-distrust. Even the thought of Katrine Yester did not nerve him; she belonged to a world separated by impassable gulfs from that black necromancy which he warred against. Nor did the fact that he had an ally comfort him, for Reiverslaw, he greatly feared, fought in his own strength and not in that of the Lord, and in such a strife the arm of flesh could not avail them. As he stumbled through the dark undergrowth David’s lips moved in anxious prayers.

  He entered the pines, and, shaping his course by the low line of cliffs, came to the place where he had first met Katrine. Thus far he felt that he was not wholly outside the pale of kindly things. But after that he was in enemy country, and the moon was still too low to give him help. He wasted half an hour in the thickets, till by a strong effort of will he forced himself to take his bearings and remember Reiverslaw’s instructions. He scrambled up hill again till he was in touch with the outcrop of rock, and then suddenly found himself looking down on the glade where stood the altar.

  It was very dark, and the stone was only a ghostly blur. But the darkness was a blessing, for the place was not as he had seen it before, and the sight of it did not revive the terrors he had feared. It looked no more than a woodland glade, and the fact that a rabbit scurried from under his feet seemed a friendly omen. On the far side the trees grew thick, and he selected a gnarled Scots fir as his perch for the night. Its trunk, branchless for sixty feet, was too thick to climb, but he found a younger and slimmer tree, up which he could squirm and from its upper branches traverse to the other. He had not tried the game since he was a boy, and at first his legs and arms seemed too feeble; but the exercise warmed him, and after twice sliding back to the ground, he at last reached the umbrella-like spread of the crest. To gain the other tree proved more difficult than he had thought, and he was compelled to let his body swing and make a long stretch with his right arm. But the task was accomplished in the end, and he found himself on a platform of crooked fir boughs, hidden from everything but the stars, and with a view through the gaps of the branches to the glade below him.

  He had now a clear sight of the sky. The moon was three-quarters up, and the whole of Melanudrigill, with its slopes and valleys, was washed in silver. He was in it and yet above it and outside it, like a man on a hillside l
ooking into a cleft. He made his body comfortable in a crutch of the tree, and looked down on the stage beneath him. It was now lighting up, and the altar was whitened by a stray moonbeam. For the first time that night he felt his spirits returning. The oppression of the Wood was not realized on this outer shell of it, for here only winged things dwelt, and the unclean things of the dark had no wings.

  In this happier mood his eyes sought the whereabouts of Calidon. It was hidden by a ridge, the ridge to the west where lay Paradise. The thought gave him an unreasoning pleasure. He was not cut off from the world of light, for, whatever befell on the earth beneath him, he had but to lift up his eyes and they rested on a happier country.

  As the moon rose, the multitudinous little noises of a wood at night were hushed. There was a sleepy muttering of cushats to the south of him, and then, with a clatter which made him jump, the birds rose in a flock and flew across the valley. After that there was no sound until the music began.

  There was no fixed moment for its beginning, for it seemed to steal insensibly into the air. And it was scarcely music, but rather a delicate babble of tongues which made a crooning like the low notes of a pipe. The sound was all beneath him near the ground, and gathering from different quarters to one centre. Suddenly, in the midst of it came a sharp liquid note, several times repeated, a note with authority in it like a trumpet, and yet ineffably faint and distant as if it were the echo of an echo. It did not flutter David’s heart, for there was no threat in it, but it had a strange effect upon his mind. For it seemed familiar, and there was that in him which answered it. He felt a boy again, for in the call there was the happy riot and the far horizons of childhood, and the noise of hill winds and burns, and the scent of heather and thyme, and all the unforgotten things of memory.

  The silver trumpet did not speak again, but the soft babble was creeping nearer, and suddenly just beneath him it broadened and deepened into the sound of pipes. He looked down and saw that the dance had begun. As before, the piper with his hound mask sat cross-legged beyond the altar, and the dancers revolved widdershins around him. . . .