Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  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 heath
er-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 II. 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 h
is 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.