by John Buchan
There was a tough hardihood about the man which made Jaikie invite him more than once to be his companion in some of his more risky enterprises — invitations regretfully refused, for some business always took Ashie home. That home Jaikie knew to be in Eastern Europe, but he had not associated him with Evallonia. There was also an extreme innocence. He wanted to learn everything about England, and took Jaikie as his mentor, believing that in him he had found the greatest common measure of the British people. Whether he learned much may be doubted, for Jaikie was too little of a dogmatist to be a good instructor. But they slipped into a close friendship, and rubbed the corners off each other’s minds.
“I know what I’m doing,” said Ashie at last; “but I am not quite sure where it will finish. But that’s a long story. You’re a little devil, Jaikie, to come here at the tag-end of your holiday. If you had come a month ago we might have had all sorts of fun.”
He had relapsed into the manner of the undergraduate, but there was something in him now which made it a little absurd. For the figure opposite Jaikie was not the agreeable and irresponsible companion he had known. Ashie looked desperately foreign, without a hint of Cambridge and England; bigger too, more mature, and rather formidable. The thick dark eyebrows in combination with the fair hair had hitherto given his appearance a touch of comedy; now the same brows bent above the grey eyes had something in them martial and commanding. Rob Roy was more of a man on his native heath than on the causeways of Glasgow.
“If you can arrange to stay here for a little,” said Ashie, “I promise to show you life.”
“Thank you very much, but I can’t. I must be off home to-morrow — a week’s tramping, and then the train.”
“Give me three weeks.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.” Jaikie found it hard to sort out his feelings, but he was clear that he did not want to dally in Evallonia.
Ashie’s voice became almost magisterial.
“What are you doing here to-day?” he asked.
“I’m lunching with a friend and going back to Kremisch in the evening.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“I’m not quite sure of his name.” Jaikie’s caution told him that Mr Glynde might have many aliases. “He’s in a circus.”
Ashie laughed — almost in the old light-hearted way. “Just the kind of friend you’d have. The Cirque Doré? I saw some of the mountebanks in the streets. . . . You won’t accept my invitation? I can promise you the most stirring time in your life.”
“I wish I could, but — well, it’s no use, I can’t.”
“Then we must part, for I have a lot to do.”
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing.”
“No. Some day I will — in England, if I ever come back to England.”
He called one of his scouts, to whom he said something in a strange tongue. The latter saluted and waited for Jaikie to follow him. Ashie gave him a perfunctory handshake—”Good-bye. Good luck to you”; and entered his tent.
The boy led Jaikie beyond the encampment, and, with a salute and a long stare, left him at the entrance to the bridge. A clock on a steeple told him that it was a quarter-past twelve, pretty much the time that Mr Glynde had appointed. The bridge was almost empty, for the sight-seers who had followed Ashie’s outfit had trickled back to their midday meals. Jaikie spent a few minutes looking over the parapet at the broad waters of the river. This must be the Rave, the famous stream which sixty miles on flowed through the capital city of Melina. He watched its strong current sweep past the walls of the great Schloss, which there dropped sheer into it, before in a wide circuit it formed the western boundary of the castle park. What an impregnable fortress, he thought, must have been this House of the Four Winds in the days before artillery, and how it must have lorded it over the little burgh under its skirts!
There was a gatehouse on the Tarta side of the bridge, an ancient crumbling thing bright with advertisements of the Cirque Doré. Beyond it a narrow street wound under the blank wall of the castle, ending in a square in which the chief building was a baroque town-house. From where Jaikie stood this town-house had an odd apologetic air, a squat thing dwarfed by the Schloss: like a dachshund beside a mastiff. The day was very warm, and he crossed over from the glare of one side of the street to the shadow of the other. The place was almost empty, most of the citizens being doubtless engaged with food behind shuttered windows. Jaikie was getting hungry, and so far he had looked in vain for Mr Glynde’s Luigi. But as he moved towards the central square a man came out of an entry, and, stopping suddenly to light a cigarette, almost collided with him. Jaikie saw a white cap and scarlet lettering, and had a glimpse of gold earrings and a hairy face. He remembered his instructions.
“Can you show me the way to the Cirque Doré?” he asked.
The man grinned. “I will lead you to a better restaurant,” he said in French with a villainous accent. He held out his hand and shook Jaikie’s warmly, as if he had found a long-lost friend. Then he gripped him by the arm and poured forth a torrent of not very intelligible praise of the excellence of the cuisine to which he was guiding him.
Jaikie found himself hustled up the street and pulled inside a little dark shop, which appeared to be a combination of a bird-fancier’s and a greengrocer’s. There was nobody there, so they passed through it into a court strewn with decaying vegetables and through a rickety door into a lane, also deserted. After that they seemed to thread mazes of mean streets at a pace which made the sweat break on Jaikie’s forehead, till they found themselves at the other end of the town, where it ebbed away into shacks and market-gardens.
“I am very hungry,” said Jaikie, who saw his hopes of luncheon disappearing.
“The Signor must have patience,” was the answer. “He has still a little journey before him, but at the end of it he will have honest food.”
Luigi was an adept at under-statement. He seemed to wish to escape notice, which was easy at this stagnant hour of the day. Whenever anyone appeared he became still as a graven image, with an arresting hand on Jaikie’s arm. They chose such cover as was available, and any track they met they crossed circumspectly. The market-gardens gave place to vineyards, which were not easy to thread, and then to wide fields of ripe barley, hot as the Sahara. Jaikie was in good training, but this circus-man Luigi, though he looked plump and soft, was also in no way distressed, never slackening pace and never panting. By and by they entered a wood of saplings which gave them a slender shade. At the far end of it was a tall palisade of chestnut stakes, lichened and silvery with age. “Up with you,” said Luigi, and gave Jaikie a back which enabled him to grasp the top and swing himself over. To his annoyance the Italian followed him unaided, supple as a monkey.
“Rest and smoke,” he said. “There is now no reason for hurry except the emptiness of your stomach.”
They rested for ten minutes. Behind them was the palisade they had crossed, and in front of them glades of turf, and wildernesses of fern and undergrowth, and groves of tall trees. It was like the New Forest, only on a bigger scale.
“It is a noble place,” said Luigi, waving his cigarette. “From here it is seven miles to Zutpha, where is a railway. Tarta in old days was only, so to say, the farmyard behind the castle. From Zutpha the guests of the princes of this house were driven in great coaches with outriders. Now there are few guests, and instead of a coach-and-eight a Ford car. It is the way of the world.”
When they resumed their journey it was at an easier pace. They bore to their left, and presently came in view of what had once been a formal garden on a grandiose scale. Runnels had been led from the river, and there was a multitude of stone bridges and classic statuary and rococo summer-houses. Now the statues were blotched with age, the bridges were crumbling, and the streams were matted beds of rushes. Beyond, rising from a flight of terraces, could be seen the huge northern façade of the castle, as blank as the side it showed to Tarta. It had been altered and faced with a white stone a century ago,
but the comparative modernity of this part made its desolation more conspicuous than that of the older Gothic wings. What should have been gay with flowers and sun-blinds stood up in the sunlight as grim as a deserted factory; and that, thought Jaikie, is grimmer than any other kind of ruin.
Luigi did not take him up the flights of empty terraces. Beyond the formal garden he turned along a weedy path which flanked a little lake. On one side was the Cyclopean masonry of the terrace wall, and, where it bent at an angle, cloaked by a vast magnolia, they came suddenly upon a little paved court shaded by a trellis. It was cool, and it was heavily scented, for on one side was a thicket of lemon verbena. A table had been set for luncheon, and at it sat two men, waited on by a foot-man in knee breeches and a faded old coat of blue and silver.
“You are not five minutes behind time,” said the elder of the two. “Anton,” he addressed the servant, “take the other gentleman indoors and see to his refreshment.” . . . To Jaikie he held out his hand. “We have met before, Mr Galt. I have the honour to welcome you to my poor house. Mr Glynde I think you already know.”
“You expected me?” Jaikie asked in some surprise.
“I was pretty certain you would come,” said Mr Glynde.
Jaikie saw before him that Prince Odalchini whom two years ago he had known as one of the tenants of the Canonry shooting of Knockraw. The Prince’s hair was a little greyer, his well-bred face a little thinner, and his eyes a little darker round the rims. But in the last burned the same fire of a gentle fanaticism. He was exquisitely dressed in a suit of white linen with a tailed coat, and shirt and collar of turquoise-blue silk — blue and white being the Odalchini liveries. Mr Randal Glynde had shed the fantastic garments of the previous night, but he had not returned to the modishness of his English clothes; he wore an ill-cut suit of some thin grey stuff that made him look like a commis-voyageur in a smallish way of business, and to this part he had arranged his hair and beard to conform. To his outfit a Guards tie gave a touch of startling colour. “We will not talk till we have eaten,” said the Prince. “Mr Galt must have picked up an appetite between here and Kremisch.”
Jaikie had one of the most satisfying meals of his career. There was an omelet, a dish of trout, and such peaches as he had never tasted before. He had acquired a fresh thirst during his journey with Luigi, and this was assuaged by a white wine which seemed to be itself scented with lemon verbena, a wine in slim bottles beaded with the dew of the ice-cellar. He was given a cup of coffee made by the Prince’s own hands, and a long fat cigarette of a brand which the Prince had specially made for him in Cairo.
“Luigi spoke the truth,” said Mr Glynde smiling, “when he said that he would conduct you to a better restaurant.”
The footman withdrew and silence fell. Bees wandered among the heliotrope and verbena and pots of sapphire agapanthus, and even that shady place felt the hot breath of the summer noon. Sleep would undoubtedly have overtaken Jaikie and Mr Glynde, but for the vigour of Prince Odalchini, who seemed, like a salamander, to draw life and sustenance from the heat. His high-pitched, rather emotional voice kept his auditors wakeful. “I will explain to you,” he told Jaikie, “what you cannot know or have only heard in a perversion. I take up the history of Evallonia after Prince John sailed from your Scotch loch.”
He took a long time over his exposition, and as he went on Jaikie found his interest slowly awakening. The cup of the abominations of the Republican Government had apparently long ago been filled. Evallonia was ready to spew them out, but unfortunately the Monarchists were not quite ready to take their place. This time it was not trouble with other Powers or with the League of Nations. Revolutions had become so much the fashion in Europe that they were taken as inevitable, whether their purpose was republic, monarchy, or dictatorship. The world was too weary to argue about the merits of constitutional types, and the nations were too cumbered with perplexed economics to have any desire to meddle in the domestic affairs of their neighbours. Aforetime the Monarchists had feared the intervention of the Powers or some finding of the League, and therefore they had sought the mediation of British opinion. Now their troubles were of a wholly different kind.
Prince Odalchini explained. Communism was for the moment a dead cause in Evallonia, and Mastrovin and his friends had as much chance of founding a Soviet republic as of plucking down the moon. Mastrovin indeed dared not show himself in public, and the present administration of his friends staggered along, corrupt, incompetent, deeply unpopular. It would collapse at the slightest pressure. But after that?
“Everywhere in the world,” said the Prince, “there is now an uprising of youth. It does not know what it seeks. It did not know the hardships of war. But it demands of life some hope and horizon, and it is determined to have the ordering of things in its hands. It is conscious of its ignorance and lack of discipline, so it seeks to inform and discipline itself, and therein lies its danger.”
“Ricci,” he went on. “You remember him in the Canonry? — a youngish man like a horse-dealer. At that time he was a close ally of the Republican Government, but eighteen months ago he became estranged from it — he and Count Jovian, who was not with the others in Scotland. Well, Ricci had an American wife of enormous wealth, and with the aid of her money he set out to stir up our youth. He had an ally in the Jovian I have mentioned, who was a futile vain man, like your Justice Shallow in Shakespeare, easily flattered and but little respected, but with a quick brain for intrigue. These two laid the foundations of a body called Juventus, which is now the strongest thing in Evallonia. They themselves were rogues, but they enlisted many honest helpers, and soon, like the man in the Arabian Nights, they had raised a jinn which they could not control. Jovian died a year ago — he was always sick — and Ricci is no longer the leader. But the thing itself marches marvellously. It has caught the imagination of our people and fired their pride. Had we an election, the Juventus candidates would undoubtedly sweep the board. As it is, it contains all the best of Evallonian youth, who give up to it their leisure, their ambition and their scanty means. It is in its way a noble thing, for it asks only for sacrifice, and offers no bribes. It is, so to speak, a new Society of Jesus, sworn to utter obedience. But, good or ill, it has most damnably spiked the guns of us Royalists.”
Jaikie asked why.
“Because it is arrogant, and demands that whatever is done for Evallonia it alone shall do it. The present Government must go, and at once, for it is too gross a scandal. If we delay, there will be a blind revolution of the people themselves. You will say — let Juventus restore Prince John. Juventus will do nothing of the kind, since Prince John is not its own candidate. If we restore him, Juventus will become anti-Monarchist. What then will it do? I reply that it does not yet know, but there is a danger that it may set up one of its own people as dictator. That would be tragic, for in the first place Evallonia does not need or desire a dictator, being Monarchist by nature, and in the second place Juventus does not want a dictatorship either. It is Nationalist, but not Fascist. Yet the calamity may happen.”
“Has Juventus any leader who could fill the bill?” Jaikie asked.
The Prince shook his head. “I do not think so — therefore its action would be only to destroy and obstruct, not to build. Ricci with his wife’s millions is now discredited; they have used him and cast him aside. There are some of the very young with power I am told — particularly a son of Jovian’s.”
“Is his name Paul?” Jaikie asked, and was told yes.
“I know him,” he said. “He was at Cambridge with me. I have just seen him, for about two hours ago he stood me a drink.”
The Prince in his surprise upset the coffee-pot, and even the sophisticated eyes of Mr Glynde opened a little wider.
“You know Paul Jovian? That is miraculous, Mr Galt. Will you permit me to speak a word in private with Mr Glynde? There are some matters still too secret even for your friendly ears.”
The two withdrew and left Jaikie alone in the alcove among
bees and butterflies and lemon verbena. He was a little confused in his mind, for after a solitary month he had suddenly strayed into a place where he seemed to know rather too many people. Embarrassing people, all of whom pressed him to stay longer. He did not much like their country. It was too hot for him, too scented and airless. He was not in the least interested in the domestic affairs of Evallonia, either the cantrips of Ashie or the solemn intrigues of the Prince. It was not his world; that was a cool, bracing upland a thousand miles away, for which he had begun to feel acutely homesick. Alison would soon be back in the Canonry, and he must be there to meet her. He felt that for the moment he was fed up with foreign travel.
The two men returned, and sat down before him with an air of purpose.
“Where did you find Count Paul?” the Prince asked.
“On the Kremisch side of the Tarta bridge. He was going into camp with a detachment of large-sized Boy Scouts.”
“You know him well?”
“Pretty well. We have been friends ever since his first year. I like him — at least I liked him at Cambridge, but here he seems a rather different sort of person. He wanted me to stay on in Evallonia — to stay for three weeks.”
