by John Buchan
Once here the Captain raised the hymn. It was ‘Oh, haven’t I been happy since I met the Lord?’, some rhapsodical words set to a popular music-hall air. To the chance hearer who hailed from more civilised places the thing must have seemed little better than a blasphemous parody. But all element of farce was absent from the hearts of the grim-faced men and women; and the scene as it lay, the squalid street with its filth stirred by the March wind, the high shifting sky overhead, the flicker and glare of the street lamps as each gust jostled them, the irregular singing, the marching amid the laughs or silent scorn of the bystanders — all this formed a picture which had in it more of the elements of the tragic or the noble than the ludicrous.
And the heart of the man at the head of the little procession was the stage of a drama which had little of the comic about it. The street, the open air, had inflamed again the old longings. Something of the enthusiasm of his following had entered into his blood; but it was a perverted feeling, and instead of desiring earnestly the success of his mission, he longed madly, fiercely for forbidden things. In the short encounter in his room he had come off the victor; but it had only been a forced peace, and now the adversary was at him tooth and nail once more. The meeting with the others had roused in him a deep disgust. Heaven above, was it possible that he, the cock of his troop, the man whom all had respected after a fashion, as men will respect a strong man, should be a bear-leader to fools! The shame of it took him of a sudden, and as he shouted the more loudly he felt his heart growing hot within him at the thought. But, strangely enough, his very pride came once more to help him. At the thought, ‘Have I really come to care what men say and think about me?’ the strong pride within him rose in revolt and restored him to himself.
But the quiet was to be of short duration. A hateful, bitter thought began to rise in him—’What am I in the world but a man of no importance? And I might have been — oh, I might have been anything I chose! I made a mess of it at the beginning, but is it not possible for a man to right himself again with the world? Have I ever tried it? Instead of setting manfully to the task, I let myself drift, and this is what I have become. And I might have been so different. I might have been back at my old clubs with my old friends, married, maybe, to a pretty wife, with a house near the Park, and a place in the country with shooting and riding to hounds, and a devilish fine time of it. And here I must go on slaving and gabbling, doing a fool’s work at a drainer’s pay.’ Then came a burst of sharp mental anguish, remorse, hate, evil craving. But it passed, and a flood of counter-thoughts came to oppose it. The Captain was still unregenerate in nature, as the phrase goes, but the leaven was working in him. The thought of all that he had gained — God’s mercy, pardon for his sins, a sure hope of happiness hereafter, and a glorified ideal to live by — made him stop short in his regrets.
The hymn had just dragged itself out to its quavering close. Wheeling round, he turned a burning eye on his followers. ‘Let us raise another, friends,’ he cried; and began, ‘The Devil and me we can’t agree’ — which the rest heartily joined in.
And now the little procession reached a new stage in its journey. The narrow street had grown still more restricted. Gin palaces poured broad splashes of garish light across the pavement. Slatternly women and brutal men lined the footpath, and in the kennels filthy little urchins grinned and quarrelled. Every now and then some well-dressed, rakish artiste, or lady of the half-world, pushed her way through the crowds, or a policeman, tall and silent, stalked among the disorderly. Vanity Fair and its denizens were everywhere, from the chattering hucksters to the leering blackguards and sleek traffickers in iniquity. If anything on earth can bring a ray of decency into such a place, then in God’s name let it come, whether it be called sense or rant by stay-at-home philosophers.
The hymn-singing added one more element to the discordant noise. But there was in it a suggestion of better things, which was absent from the song of the streets. The obvious chords of the music in that place acquired an adventitious beauty, just as the song of a humble hedge-linnet is lovely amid the croaking of ravens and hooting of owls. The people on the pavement looked on with varying interest. To most it was an everyday exhibition of the unaccountable. Women laughed, and shrieked coarse railleries; some of the men threatened, others looked on in amused scorn; but there was no impulse to active violence. The thing was tolerated as yonder seller of cheap watchguards was borne; for it is an unwritten law in the slums, that folk may do their own pleasure, as long as they cease from interfering offensively with the enjoyment of others.
“Oo’s the cove wi’ the flag, Bill?’ asked one woman. “E haint so bad as the rest. Most loikely ‘e’s taken up the job to dodge the nick.’
‘Dodge the nick yersel’, Lizer,’ said the man addressed. ‘Wy, it’s the chap’s wye o’ making his livin’, a roarin’ and a preachin’ like that. S’help me, I’d rather cry “Welks” any dye than go about wi’ sich a crew.’
A woman, garishly adorned, with a handsome flushed face, looked up at the Captain.
‘Why, it’s Jack,’ she cried. ‘Bless me if it ain’t Jack. Jack, Jack, what are you after now, not coming to speak to me. Don’t you mind Sal, your little Sal. I’m coming to yer, I ain’t forgotten yer.’ And she began to push her way into mid-street.
The Captain looked to the side, and his glance rested upon her face. It was as if the Devil and all his angels were upon him that night. Evil memories of his past life thronged thick and fast upon him. He had already met and resisted the world, and now the flesh had come to torment him. But here his armour was true and fast. This was a temptation which he had choked at the very outset of his reformation. He looked for one moment at her, and in the utter loathing and repugnance of that look, she fell back; and the next instant was left behind.
The little streets, which radiate from the wharf known as Mordon’s, are so interlaced and crooked that to find one’s way in them is more a matter of chance than good guiding even to the initiated. The houses are small and close, the residence of the very sweepings of the population; the shops are ship-chandlers and low eating-houses, pawnshops, emporia of cheap jewellery, and remnant drapers. At this hour of the night there is a blaze of dull gas-light on either side, and the proprietors of the places of custom stand at their doors inviting the bystanders to inspect their goods. This is the hotbed of legalised crime, the rendezvous of half the wickedness of the earth. Lascars, Spaniards, Frenchmen jostle Irishmen, and Scotsmen, and the true-born Englishmen in these narrow purlieus. If a man disappears utterly from view you may be sure to find him somewhere in the network of alleys, for there it would be hard for the law to penetrate incolis invitis. It is a sort of Cave of Adullam on the one hand, to which the morally halt and maimed of all nations resort; and, on the other, a nursery of young vice and unformed devilry. Sailors straddled about the pavement, or stood in knots telling their tales in loud voices and plentiful oaths; every beershop was continually discharging its stream of filthy occupants, filthy and prosperous. The element of squalor and misery was here far less in evidence. All the inhabitants seemed gorged and well clad, but their faces were stained with vice so horrible that poverty and tatters would have been a welcome relief.
The Salvation band penetrated into this Sodom with fear in the heart of each member. It was hard for the Gospel to strive with such seared and branded consciences. The repulsive, self-satisfied faces of the men, the smug countenances of the women, made that little band seem hopeless and Quixotic in the extreme. The Captain felt it, too; but in him there was mingled another feeling. He thought of himself as a combatant entering the arena. He felt dimly that some great struggle was impending, some monstrous temptation, some subtle wile of the Evil One. The thought made him the more earnest. ‘Sing up, men,’ he cried, ‘the Devil is strong in this place.’
It was the truth, and the proof awaited him. A man stepped out from among the bystanders and slapped his shoulder. The Captain started and looked. It was the Devil in person.
The Captain shivered. He knew the speaker for one of his comrades of the old days, the most daring and jovial of them all. The two had been hand and glove in all manner of evil. They had loved each other like brothers, till the great change came over the one, which fixed a gulf between them for ever.
‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve taken up with this infernal nonsense, Jack? No, I won’t believe it. It’s just another of your larks. You were always the one for originality.’
‘Go away, Hilton,’ said the Captain hoarsely, ‘go away. I’ve done with you. I can’t see you any more.’
‘What the deuce has come over you, Jack? Not speak to me any more! Why, what foolery is this? You’ve gone and turned a regular old wife, bless me if you haven’t. Oh, man, give it up. It’s not worth it. Don’t you remember the fun we’ve had in our time? Gad, Jack, when you and I stood behind yon big tree in Kaffraria with twenty yelling devils wanting our blood; don’t you remember how I fell and you got over me, and, though you were bleeding like a pig, you kept them off till the Cape troopers came up? And when we were lost, doing picketing up in the Drakenberg, you mind how we chummed together for our last meal? And heavens! it was near our last. I feel that infernal giddiness still. And yet you tell me to go away.’
‘Oh, Hilton,’ said the Captain, ‘come and be one of us. The Lord’s willing to receive you, if you’ll only come. I’ve got the blessing, and there’s one waiting for you if you’ll only take it.’
‘Blessing be damned!’ said the other with a laugh. ‘What do I want with your blessing when there’s life and the world to see? What’s the good of poking round here, and crying about the love of Jesus and singing twaddle, and seeing nobody but old wives and white-faced shopmen, when you might be out on the open road, with the wind and the stars and the sun, and meet with men, and have your fling like a man. Don’t you remember the days at Port Said, when the old Frenchman twanged his banjo and the girls danced and — hang it, don’t you feel the smell of the sand and the heat in your nostrils, you old fool?’
‘Oh, my God!’ said the Captain, ‘I do. Go away, Hilton. For God’s sake, go away and leave me!’
‘Can’t you think,’ went on the other, ‘of the long nights when we dropped down the Irrawaddy, of the whistle of the wind in the white sails, and the singing of the boatmen, and the sick-suck of the alligators among the reeds; and how we went ashore at the little village and got arrack from the natives, and made a holy sight of the place in the morning? It was worth it, though we got the sack for it, old man.’
The Captain made no answer. He was muttering something to himself. It might have been a prayer.
‘And then there was that time when we were up country in Queensland, sugar farming in the bush, thinking a billy of tea the best thing on earth, and like to faint with the work and the heat. But, Jove, wasn’t it fine to head off the cattle when you knew you might have a big bull’s horn in your side every minute? And then at night to sit outside the huts and smoke pig-tail and tell stories that would make your hair rise! We were a queer lot, Jack, but we were men, men, do you hear?’
A flood of recollection came over the Captain, vehement, all-powerful. He felt the magic of the East, the wonder of the South, the glory of the North burning in his heart. The old wild voices were calling him, voices of land and sea, the tongues of the moon and the stars and the beasts of the field, the halcyon voices of paganism and nature which are still strong in the earth. Behind him rose the irregular notes of the hymn; at his side was the tempter, and in his own heart was the prince of the world, the master of pleasure, the great juggler of pain. In that man there was being fought the old fight, which began in the Garden, and will never end, the struggle between the hateful right and the delicious wrong.
‘Oh man, come with me,’ cried Hilton, ‘I’ve got a berth down there in a ship which sails to-morrow, and we’ll go out to our old place, where they’ll be glad to get us, and we’ll have a devilish good time. I can’t be staying here, with muggy stinks, and white-faced people, and preaching and praying, and sloppy weather. Come on, and in a month we’ll be seeing the old Coal-sack above us, and smelling the palms and the sea-water; and then, after that, there’ll be the Bush, the pines and the gum-trees and the blue sky, and the hot, clear air, and rough-riding and adventure; and by God we’ll live like gentlemen and fine fellows, and never come back to this cursed hole any more. Come on, and leave the psalm-singing.’
A spasm of convulsive pain, of exquisite agony, of heart-breaking struggle came over the Captain’s face, stayed a moment, and passed. He turned round to his followers. ‘Sing louder, lads,’ he cried, ‘we’re fighting a good fight.’ And then his voice broke down, and he stumbled blindly on, still clutching the flag.
A Journey of Little Profit
Yellow Book, 1896
The Devil he sang, the Devil he played
High and fast and free.
And this was ever the song he made,
As it was told to me.
Oh, I am the king of the air and the ground,
And lord of the seasons’ roll,
And I will give you a hundred pound,
If you will give me your soul!
from The Ballad of Grey Weather
THE CATTLE MARKET of Inverforth is, as all men know north of the Tweed, the greatest market of the kind in the land. For days in the late Autumn there is the lowing of oxen and the bleating of sheep among its high wooden pens, and in the rickety sale-rings the loud clamour of auctioneers and the talk of farmers. In the open yard where are the drovers and the butchers, a race always ungodly and law-despising, there is such a Babel of cries and curses as might wake the Seven Sleepers. From twenty different adjacent eating-houses comes the clatter of knives, where the country folk eat their dinner of beef and potatoes, with beer for sauce, and the collies grovel on the ground for stray morsels. Hither come a hundred types of men from the Highland cateran with scarce a word of English, and the shentleman-farmer of Inverness and Ross, to lowland graziers and city tradesmen, not to speak of blackguards of many nationalities and more professions.
It was there I first met Duncan Stewart of Clachamharstan, in the Moor of Rannoch, and there I heard this story. He was an old man when I knew him, grizzled and wind-beaten; a prosperous man, too, with many herds like Jacob and much pasture. He had come down from the North with kyloes, and as he waited on the Englishmen with whom he had trysted, he sat with me through the long day and beguiled the time with many stories. He had been a drover in his youth, and had travelled on foot the length and breadth of Scotland; and his memory went back hale and vigorous to times which are now all but historical. This tale I heard among many others as we sat on a pen amid the smell of beasts and the jabber of Gaelic:
‘When I was just turned of twenty-five I was a wild young lad as ever was heard of. I had taken to the droving for the love of a wild life, and a wild life I led. My father’s heart would be broken long syne with my doings, and well for my mother that she was in her grave since I was six years old. I paid no heed to the ministrations of godly Mr. Macdougall of the Isles, who bade me turn from the error of my ways, but went on my own evil course, making siller, for I was a braw lad at the work and a trusted, and knowing the inside of every public from the pier of Cromarty to the streets of York. I was a wild drinker, caring in my cups for neither God nor man, a great hand with the cards, and fond of the lasses past all telling. It makes me shameful to this day to think on my evil life when I was twenty-five.
‘Well, it chanced that in the back of the month of September I found myself in the city of Edinburgh with a flock of fifty sheep which I had bought as a venture from a drunken bonnet-laird and was thinking of selling somewhere wast the country. They were braw beasts, Leicester every one of them, well-fed and dirt-cheap at the price I gave. So it was with a light heart that I drove them out of
the town by the Merchiston Road along by the face of the Pentlands. Two or three friends came with me, all like myself for folly, but maybe a little bit poorer. Indeed, I cared little for them, and they valued me only for the whisky which I gave them to drink my health in at the parting. They left me on the near side of Colinton, and I went on my way alone.
‘Now, if you’ll be remembering the road, you will mind that at the place called Kirk Newton, just afore the road begins to twine over the Big Muir and almost at the head of the Water o’ Leith, there is a verra fine public. Indeed, it would be no lee to call it the best public between Embro’ and Glesca. The good wife, Lucky Craik by name, was an old friend of mine, for many a good gill of her prandy have I bought; so what would I be doing but just turning aside for refreshment? She met me at the door, verra pleased-like to see me, and soon I had my legs aneath her table and a basin of toddy on the board before me. And whom did I find in the same place but my old comrade Toshie Maclean from the backside of Glen-Lyon. Toshie and I were acquaintances so old that it did not behoove us to be parting quick. Forbye the day was chill without; and within the fire was grand and the crack of the best.
‘Then Toshie and I got on quarrelling about the price of Lachlan Farawa’s beasts that he sold at Falkirk; and, the drink having aye a bad effect on my temper, I was for giving him the lie and coming off in a great rage. It was about six o’clock in the evening and an hour to nightfall, so Mistress Craik comes in to try and keep me. “Losh, Duncan,” says she, “ye’ll never try and win ower the muir the nicht. It’s mae than ten mile to Carnwath, and there’s nocht atween it and this but whaups and heathery braes.” But when I am roused I will be more obstinate than ten mules, so I would be going, though I knew not under Heaven where I was going till. I was too full of good liquor and good meat to be much worth at thinking, so I got my sheep on the road an a big bottle in my pouch and set off into the heather. I knew not what my purpose was, whether I thought to reach the shieling of Carnwath, or whether I expected some house of entertainment to spring up by the wayside. But my fool’s mind was set on my purpose of getting some miles further in my journey ere the coming of darkness.
