by John Buchan
A heavy gate of axe-hewn bars shut the road, and he had to descend and open it with cramped fingers. It looked as if they were entering some sort of neglected policies. Stunted evergreens dotted the roadside, and a burn was crossed by what had once been an ornamental bridge with a broken stucco coping. Mr Dott peered into the gloom to detect the first sign of a dwelling.
Suddenly at a turn of the road a man stepped from a clump of hollies.
He was a long man in a frieze coat, and on his head was a leather cap with the flaps tied under his chin — a cross between keeper and earth-stopper. He held up a hand and whistled, and at the sound two men appeared from the opposite side of the road, smaller men, but cut to the same pattern. He roughly seized the horse’s bridle and forced him back.
“Who are you that make so free with Hungrygrain?” he asked in a voice as harsh as a crow’s. Mr Dott observed that his accent was not that of a peasant.
“Canny, friend,” said Niven. “We’re frae the King’s Arms in Berwick. This gentleman is seekin’ a word wi’ the laird.”
Mr Dott spoke up.
“I have announced my coming by letter to her ladyship. It’s with her that my business lies, for I’m the factor of her lands in Scotland.”
The tall man did not take his hand from the bridle.
“Are you so! A responsible job. But you have come on a fool’s errand, for we have no use for factors in Hungrygrain. Turn you about and back with you before you get a belt on your hinderlands.”
Mr Dott’s temper rose. “What the devil have you to do with your mistress’s affairs? I tell you this is an important matter in which good money is involved. Take your hand from the beast’s head or I’ll report you for insolence.”
The man laughed, showing broken teeth.
“You’re a brisk little bantam, but you are crowing on the wrong dungheap. There is no mistress here.”
“But I had it from her own pen that she was to be here in this week of April. Stand out of the way. I will see the lady.”
“There is no lady here.”
“Where is she?”
“Where indeed?” The man had a disquieting gap-toothed grin. “Where can she be? Maybe
‘Up the mossy mountain
And down the dowie glen?’
Anyway, she is not here.”
“Then I will speak with Squire Cranmer.”
The other’s grin vanished, and his face became suddenly fierce and malevolent.
“You will not speak with the Squire. You’ll be out of here in ten seconds. You’re not wanted.”
“I protest,” Mr Dott began, but his words were cut short, for the tall man swung the horse round so violently that it almost fell, and the wheels crashed into a tangle of young birches. One of the others struck the animal over the rump with a cutting switch, and the next the travellers knew they were being borne at a gallop back the road they had come.
Niven after five minutes succeeded in pulling up on a little hill. He wiped his brow with a damp sleeve.
“So that’s that,” he observed. “Did I no tell you there were queer folk in Hungrygrain?”
Mr Dott was in a furious temper. “Heard you ever the like of such impudence? You’ll turn this moment and go back.”
“No me. I’m no for a slit weazand, and that’s what we’ll get if we gang contrar to Gibbie Winfortune.”
“Winfortune?”
“Ay, that’s the name o’ the lang chiel.”
“You know him?”
“Muckle o’ him and naething that’s guid. I’m bauld enough in my day, but the bauldest will keep a quiet tongue if Winfortune is on the road. He’s kenned for the wildest deevil atween Tyne and Till.”
The rain had stopped and the wind had blown clear a space in the clouds which suddenly revealed the sun. What had been an enclave in the fog expanded for a moment into a wide landscape. Mr Dott looked back, and got his first view of Hungrygrain.
The glen above the gorge became a valley a mile broad between steep grey-green hills. To Mr Dott, accustomed to Waucht side, where the lairds vied with each other in lining their fields with strips of woodland and crowning the tops with acres of feathery larch, the place seemed indecently bare. There appeared to be no cultivation, no ploughland. He was on an eminence and could see the house itself in its shabby policies, and the upper course of the stream. The Yonder ran in a deep-cut green trench well below the valley level, so that it showed no friendly pools and shallows, but had the secret air of a river underground. The containing walls of the hills seemed so sheer that only a goat could graze on them. Mr Dott had been wont to look on a pastoral upland as a thing homely and kindly, but this place had a horrid savagery, a chill sharper than the April rain.
But it was the sight of the house of Hungrygrain that sent a shiver down his spine. He had never been so unpleasantly affected by any human habitation. It stood in what may once have been a lawn, but was now a rough field. Part was a ruinous peel-tower, to which wings had been added of good whinstone with some pretensions to elegance; likewise there was a small square building connected with the rest by a kind of arcade. The whole place was of an extreme shabbiness, but, except for the peel, it was not in decay; it was lived in, used, misused, a place not of death and emptiness, but crowded with a maleficent life. Secret, too, as secret as the deep-trenched stream. The blink of sun only made it more eerie. It would have been more decent, he felt, had it been perpetually shrouded in mist, for no sunshine could make it other than menacing and furtive.
“An ugly bit,” said the philosophic Niven. “Weel, the sooner we’re ower Tweed the better.”
“I’m not going back,” said Mr Dott.
“Are ye clean daft?”
Mr Dott felt that he was, but the behaviour of the man Winfortune had roused in his soul a desperate obstinacy which mystified and slightly scared him.
“I do not leave till I have done my business. I did not travel all these miles from Waucht to be turned away by an impudent dog of a gamekeeper. You will turn and go back.”
“I’ll do naething of the kind. I’m not meeting my Maker afore my time. Bethink ye, sir. If ye go back to Hungrygrain ye’ll be flung out and get rougher usage than afore. One man canna force a door that a dozen are haudin’ against him.”
“Nevertheless, I must try. And if you will not take me, my feet will.” Suiting his action to his words Mr Dott attempted to descend from the gig.
Niven rubbed his chin in dire perplexity.
“If I did my duty I would carry ye back to Berwick, though I had to fell ye first. . . . Bide a wee, sir. There’s maybe another way. Ye canna get into Hungrygrain wi’ Winfortune on the rampage, but he’ll no aye be there. Half his time they tell me is spent ryngin’ the country. What for should ye no sit ye down somewhere in Yonderdale and wait your chance? Ye’d maybe find the leddy walkin’ her lane. Or get a word wi’ the maister, whae’s mair ceevil-spoken than the man.”
“You’re right,” said Mr Dott. “I’ll go to the inn.”
“Ye maunna do that. Purdey’s ower thick wi’ Winfortune. Na, na, but I’ll tell ye what. I’ll tak ye to the manse.”
“The manse? We’re not in Scotland.”
“No, but Yonderdale has a minister. Oh, a rector o’ the parish likewise that bides in the low country, but up here there’s a kirk, manse and minister. Ye see, sir, in the auld days the folk came to Yonderdale maistly frae the other side o’ the Border — frae Rule Water and Jeddart way — in the early days o’ the lang sheep. And they brought their kirk wi’ them, and built a manse, and had their placed minister and twae screeds ilka Sabbath day. Things is sore changed now, and I doubt there’s few darkens the kirk door, forby a wheen wives and weans. But there’s a minister still, whae baptises them and buries them, and marries them when they’ve the decency to think o’ lawfu’ marriage. His name’s Blackstocks, Richie Blackstocks, frae Ettrick or Yarrow, I mindna which. He’s an auld man that bides alane wi’ nae wife, and by a’ accounts a quiet mensefu’ body
and wise enough to let sleepin’ tykes lie. He’ll gie ye a bed for the nicht, and tell ye the lie o’ the land. I’ll drive ye to the manse. It’s down in the wuds they ca’ Yonder Dene.”
They jogged downhill back to the narrow part of the glen and the thick coverts, Mr Dott’s mind in a sad ferment. He was at once resolved and miserably afraid. The training of a lifetime forbade him to give up a piece of business before it was completed, but in Waucht there were peaceable folk who treated him with respect, and never before had he encountered naked savagery. His world was disrupted, he had lost his bearings, and it was necessary that he should find again the points of his mental compass.
The brief sunlight passed, and once again the rain descended, this time with a steadiness which promised a wet evening. Niven turned down a woodland track which seemed to lead towards the stream. In a few hundred yards it opened upon a clearing in the trees, a shelf of level ground beyond and behind which, even in the wild weather, could be heard the churning of the Yonder. A low privet hedge bounded a little garden.
“Here’s the manse,” said Niven. “Ye’ve nae baggage? Weel, I’ll wait till I see ye inside.”
Mr Dott pushed open a white gate and very stiffly advanced up a path gravelled with rough pebbles from the stream. The house was scarcely more than a cottage, but it had been newly whitewashed, the garden was tidy and bright with daffodil and primrose, and from the smoking chimney came the comforting smell of peat-reek.
He knocked at the door, but there was no answer. Again he knocked, and then with the head of his stick he beat a loud tattoo. By and by steps were heard approaching, the latch was lifted, and before him stood a little old man. Behind this figure a moment later appeared a second, a stalwart old woman in a mutch with her skirts kilted as if she had been tramping the fields. It was she who spoke.
“Whae is it? If ye’re frae Hedderwick’s at Yondermouth ye can gang back, for there’s nae mair dealings atween him and huz. The last seed tatties ye sent us were a black disgrace.”
“I am a traveller from Scotland,” said Mr Dott, “with business at Hungrygrain, on which I would fain as a fellow Scot consult the minister.”
The woman’s face changed.
“Come inbye, sir,” she said. “There’s no mony travellers seek the manse o’ Yonderdale. Come your ways in, for ye canna stand there in this unconvenantit weather. And you, sir,” this to the old man, “ye’ll get your death o’ cauld standin’ there in your hosen feet. Where’s your bauchles?”
As he entered Mr Dott heard wheels move on the road. Niven, seeing him safely bestowed, had departed for Berwick.
He was ushered into a little low-ceilinged room, with books everywhere, lining the walls in home-made shelves, stacked in corners, and piled on chairs and on most of the table. A peat-fire glowed dully, and a little clock on the mantelpiece as they entered chimed very sweetly the hour of five.
“Ye’ll hae to change your clothes,” said the woman, “for ye’re as wat as a flowe-moss. Ye’ll put on a sark o’ the minister’s and an auld pair o’ his breeks, and his chamber-robe, till your ain things are dried. I’ll mak up a bed for ye, and get ye ane o’ his nightgowns, though it’ll maybe jimp your size. . . . Ye’re frae Scotland, sir? Whatna pairt?
“Waucht!” she cried. “Man, I was bred within five miles o’t, though we flittit to Caddonside when I was a young lassie. Brydon, they ca’ me, and we bode at the Blackcleuchfoot. It’s heartsome to see a body frae Waucht. Quick wi’ your changin’, sir, for ye’ll be wantin’ meat. The minister has his supper at six.”
The old man had not spoken, but had made little sounds of welcome, and now he patted Mr Dott’s arm. He had thin silvery hair which hung almost to his shoulders, and a fine-drawn face the colour of old ivory. His dress was knee-breeches of homespun, homespun stockings, and a very shabby black coat. He looked old, but hale, and there was still vigour in his movements. Mr Dott, as he got rid of his drenched garments, began to think less evilly of Yonderdale.
Half an hour later he sat warm and dry before a fire which had been enlivened with birch billets. Presently came the housekeeper with a summons to meat, and in the other living-room, which looked towards the stream, he listened to a lengthy grace. Then the three fell to a meal of burn trout, oatcakes, scones, cloudberry jam, and thick creamy milk, after which the host concocted a modest bowl of toddy.
“Awa’ into the study,” the housekeeper told them, “and hae your crack. The weather’s clearin’ and you’ll maybe get your nightcap after a’. The minister,” she turned to Mr Dott, “is fond o’ a breath o’ caller air afore he gangs to his bed. He ca’s it his nightcap, and, certes, it maun be guid for his health, for there was never a man o’ his age less troubled wi’ his perishin’ body.”
The conversation at the meal had been of the most formal kind, chiefly, on Mr Dott’s part, replies to the housekeeper’s questions about Waucht and its people. But when the two men sat by the study fire they seemed to enter suddenly into intimacy. Mr Dott’s voice may have been one reason, the soft singsong very different from the Northumbrian burr, and the sight of the minister’s face was another, for from every line of it shone a kindly simplicity. But it was simplicity that did not exclude shrewdness, for he had already guessed Mr Dott’s predicament.
“You went to Hungrygrain on an honest errand, and got a surly answer? That, I regret to say, is nothing uncommon. . . . No, I have no dealings with the squire or his people. I cannot tell you if Mrs Cranmer is there now. I see none of the family. Three years ago when she was a bride she visited me, but since then I have heard little of her and have seen nothing. I fear that it may be an ill-assorted marriage, and I do not think it can be the lady’s fault, for she seemed to me as kind as she was beautiful. . . . The squire I can hardly claim even as an acquaintance. There is a small endowment from which my stipend is paid by a firm of Newcastle lawyers, so I have no cause to meet Squire Cranmer on worldly affairs, and he does not frequent the house of God.”
Mr Blackstocks drew a strange picture of the valley. “A hundred years ago,” he said, “Yonderdale was a pleasant little haven by a burnside. The Squire Cranmer of that day had lands in Teviotdale through his wife, and was a leader in the new ways of sheep-farming. So he brought many Scots folk to Yonderdale, and with them their Presbyterian faith. Since then there has been a sad decline, both in the lairds and in the people. The place had always a certain repute for lawlessness, but then it was no worse than shifting from glen to glen merchandise which had not paid the King his dues. But soon the thing took a darker colour. Our men became known as hard drinkers and desperate fighters, and got an ill name over all the Border. When I came here forty years ago I lifted up my testimony against the iniquity, and for ten years I was a voice crying in the wilderness. It was as useless, Mr Dott, as the bleating of a snipe. But I loved the place and some of the folk and I resolved to stay here. I could still lead a sheep or two into the fold, and if Ephraim was joined to his idols I might be of use to Ephraim’s wife and bairns. I had failed as an iconoclast, but I believed that I might still be a comforter. So I stayed on, and shall doubtless lay my bones here.”
The old man’s conversation was as soothing to Mr Dott as the warm fire and the excellent supper. His errand and the mischances of the day slipped from his mind, and he was content to explore the soul of this philosopher, for he had a lively interest in his fellows. He asked his host how he filled his time.
“Too pleasantly, I fear,” was the answer. “I have the duties of my calling — my diets of worship on the Sabbath, and such pastoral visitation as I am permitted. But for the rest I have a noble leisure, and I am fortunate enough to have the tastes to fill it. I am a devout lover of nature and something of a naturalist. I derive much happiness from cultivating my little garden, and I am a noted bee-keeper. But I have two occupations which lie next my heart. Imprimis, I am a fisherman, and I think I have cast a fly in every burn in Cheviot, for I used to be a famous walker, Mr Dott, and these ageing shanks of mine
can still do their twenty miles in a day over heather. Yonder is a great stream for fish — the trouts you ate at supper were taken from it by myself. It is a sport in which I have no competitor save the little boys who guddle the stones, for the folk of the glen follow less innocent pursuits. Secundo, I have my books. You see them round you, and soon they will drive me out of house and home. A new volume from Newcastle or Edinburgh is my chief indulgence. You are college-bred, Mr Dott?”
“Glasgow,” was the answer.
“Ah, I was at the college of Edinburgh, and I fear I gave more time to pagan lore than to the Scriptures. I fell in love with the classics and the classical philosophers. I mind how my worthy father would reprehend me when I quoted Plato or Seneca. He was a divine of the old Scottish stamp and would shake his head woefully. ‘I am not concerned,’ he would say, ‘to hear what the heathen have thought. What did Mr Alexander Henderson think, or Mr George Gillespie, or Mr Samuel Rutherford?’ But he lived to see me a placed minister, though he never held me quite sound in the fundamentals. . . . Dearie me! As we grow old we see that there are many roads to Jerusalem. Uno itinere non potest pervenire ad tam grande secretum. The classics have ever since been my delight, and I amuse myself by little ventures in translation — in emendation, too — the idle pleasures of an idle old man. So with that and angling I fill my days contentedly.”
“You’re the first true philosopher I have ever met,” said Mr Dott. “Man, you’ve discovered the secret of a happy life.”
The minister smiled and held up a deprecatory hand.
“No, no,” he said. “Only of an idle one. Yet I hope I do not let these trifling joys come between me and my duty God-wards. I try to sit loose to my pleasant idols, for soon I must bid them good-bye. This very morning, reading in Epictetus, I found a word for myself.”
He rose and fetched a book from the table.
“Here is what the Enchiridion says. I will roughly translate the passage. Listen, Mr Dott. ‘As on a voyage, when your ship has moored off-shore, if you go on land to get fresh water, you may pick up as an extra on your way a small mussel or a little fish; but you have to keep your attention fixed on the ship and turn round frequently for fear lest the captain should call. So it is also in life. If there is given you, instead of a little fish or a small mussel, a little wife or a small child, there is no harm in it. But if the captain calls, give up all that and run to the ship without even turning to look back. And if you are an old man, never even get far away from the ship, for fear that when he calls you may be missing.’ That is a word in season for me. I have no wife and child, and my little fish and small mussel are my rod and my books. But I must sit loose to them, for my call will not be long in coming.”
