Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  ‘But it is madness. He is old and worn and sick. His day is long past for winning a crown.’

  ‘All this I have said, but it does not move them.’ And I told her rapidly Mr Galloway’s argument.

  She fell into a muse. ‘At the eleventh hour! Nay, too late, too late. Had he been twenty years younger, what a stroke of fortune! Fate bears too hard on us, too hard!’

  Then she turned to me fiercely. ‘You have no doubt heard, sir, the gossip about my father, which is on the lips of every fool in Europe. Let us have done with this pitiful make-believe. My father is a sot. Nay, I do not blame him. I blame his enemies and his miserable destiny. But there is the fact. Were he not old, he would still be unfit to grasp a crown and rule over a turbulent people. He flees from one city to another, but he cannot flee from himself. That is his illness on which you condoled with me yesterday.’

  The lady’s control was at breaking-point. Another moment and I expected a torrent of tears. But they did not come. With a great effort she regained her composure.

  ‘Well, the gentlemen must have an answer. You will tell them that the Count, my father — nay, give him his true title if you care — is vastly obliged to them for the honour they have done him, but would decline on account of his age and infirmities. You know how to phrase a decent refusal.’

  ‘Pardon me,’ said I, ‘but I might give them that answer till doomsday and never content them. They have not travelled many thousand miles to be put off by hearsay evidence. Nothing will satisfy them but an interview with your father himself.’

  ‘It is impossible,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Then we must expect the renewed attentions of our American friends. They will wait till they see him.’

  She rose and paced the room.

  ‘They must go,’ she repeated many times. ‘If they see him sober he will accept with joy, and we shall be the laughing-stock of the world. I tell you it cannot be. I alone know how immense is the impossibility. He cannot afford to lose the last rags of his dignity, the last dregs of his ease. They must not see him. I will speak with them myself.’

  ‘They will be honoured, madame, but I do not think they will be convinced. They are what we call in my land “men of business”. They will not be content till they get the Count’s reply from his own lips.’

  A new Duchess seemed to have arisen, a woman of quick action and sharp words.

  ‘So be it. They shall see him. Oh, I am sick to death of fine sentiments and high loyalty and all the vapouring stuff I have lived among for years. All I ask for myself and my father is a little peace, and, by Heaven! I shall secure it. If nothing will kill your gentlemen’s folly but truth, why, truth they shall have. They shall see my father, and this very minute. Bring them up, Mr Townshend, and usher them into the presence of the rightful King of England. You will find him alone.’ She stopped her walk and looked out of the window.

  I went back in a hurry to the Americans. ‘I am bidden to bring you to the Count’s chamber. He is alone and will see you. These are the commands of madame his daughter.’

  ‘Good!’ said Mr Galloway, and all four, grave gentlemen as they were, seemed to brace themselves to a special dignity as befitted ambassadors to a king. I led them upstairs, tapped at the Count’s door, and, getting no answer, opened it and admitted them.

  And this was what we saw. The furniture was in disorder, and on a couch lay an old man sleeping a heavy drunken sleep. His mouth was open and his breath came stertorously. The face was purple, and large purple veins stood out on the mottled forehead. His scanty white hair was draggled over his cheek. On the floor was a broken glass, wet stains still lay on the boards, and the place reeked of spirits.

  The four looked for a second — I do not think longer — at him whom they would have made their king. They did not look at each other. With one accord they moved out, and Mr Fish, who was last, closed the door very gently behind him.

  In the hall below Mr Galloway turned to me. ‘Our mission is ended, Mr Townshend. I have to thank you for your courtesy.’ Then to the others, ‘If we order the coaches now, we may get well on the way to Verona ere sundown.’

  An hour later two coaches rolled out of the courtyard of the Tre Croci. As they passed, a window was half-opened on the upper floor, and a head looked out. A line of a song came down, a song sung in a strange quavering voice. It was the catch I had heard the night before:

  Qu’est-c’ qui passe ici si tard,

  Compagnons de la Marjolaine — e?

  It was true. The company came late indeed — too late by forty years...

  A Lucid Interval

  Blackwood’s Magazine, 1910

  TO ADOPT THE opening words of a more famous tale, ‘The truth of this strange matter is what the world has long been looking for.’ The events which I propose to chronicle were known to perhaps a hundred people in London whose fate brings them into contact with politics. The consequences were apparent to all the world, and for one hectic fortnight tinged the soberest newspapers with saffron, drove more than one worthy election agent to an asylum, and sent whole batches of legislators to Continental ‘cures’. But no reasonable explanation of the mystery has been forthcoming until now, when a series of chances gave the key into my hands.

  Lady Caerlaverock is my aunt, and I was present at the two remarkable dinner-parties which form the main events in this tale. I was also taken into her confidence during the terrible fortnight which intervened between them. Like everybody else, I was hopelessly in the dark, and could only accept what happened as a divine interposition. My first clue came when James, the Caerlaverocks’ second footman, entered my service as valet, and, being a cheerful youth, chose to gossip while he shaved me. I checked him, but he babbled on, and I could not choose but learn something about the disposition of the Caerlaverock household below-stairs. I learned — what I knew before — that his lordship had an inordinate love for curries, a taste acquired during some troubled years as Indian Viceroy. I had often eaten that admirable dish at his table, and had heard him boast of the skill of the Indian cook who prepared it. James, it appeared, did not hold with the Orient in the kitchen. He described the said Indian gentleman as a ‘nigger’, and expressed profound distrust of his ways. He referred darkly to the events of the year before, which in some distorted way had reached the servants’ ears. ‘We always thought as ‘ow it was them niggers as done it,’ he declared; and when I questioned him on his use of the plural, admitted that at the time in question ‘there ‘ad been more nor one nigger ‘anging about the kitchen.’

  Pondering on these sayings, I asked myself if it were not possible that the behaviour of certain eminent statesmen was due to some strange devilry of the East, and I made a vow to abstain in future from the Caerlaverock curries. But last month my brother returned from India, and I got the whole truth. He was staying with me in Scotland, and in the smoking-room the talk turned on occultism in the East. I declared myself a sceptic, and George was stirred. He asked me rudely what I knew about it, and proceeded to make a startling confession of faith. He was cross-examined by the others, and retorted with some of his experiences. Finding an incredulous audience, his tales became more defiant, until he capped them all with one monstrous yarn. He maintained that in a Hindu family of his acquaintance there had been transmitted the secret of a drug, capable of altering a man’s whole temperament until the antidote was administered. It would turn a coward into a bravo, a miser into a spendthrift, a rake into a fakir. Then, having delivered his manifesto, he got up abruptly and went to bed.

  I followed him to his room, for something in the story had revived a memory. By dint of much persuasion I dragged from the somnolent George various details. The family in question were Beharis, large landholders dwelling near the Nepal border. He had known old Ram Singh for years, and had seen him twice since his return from England. He got the story from him, under no promise of secrecy, for the family drug was as well known in the neighbourhood as the nine incarnations of Krishna. He had no
doubt about the truth of it, for he had positive proof. ‘And others besides me,’ said George. ‘Do you remember when Vennard had a lucid interval a couple of years ago and talked sense for once? That was old Ram Singh’s doing, for he told me about it.’

  Three years ago, it seems, the Government of India saw fit to appoint a commission to inquire into land tenure on the Nepal border. Some of the feudal Rajahs had been ‘birsing yont’, like the Breadalbanes, and the smaller zemindars were gravely disquieted. The result of the commission was that Ram Singh had his boundaries rectified, and lost a mile or two of country which his hard-fisted fathers had won. I know nothing of the rights of the matter, but there can be no doubt about Ram Singh’s dissatisfaction. He appealed to the law courts, but failed to upset the commission’s finding, and the Privy Council upheld the Indian judgement. Thereupon in a flowery and eloquent document he laid his case before the Viceroy, and was told that the matter was closed. Now Ram Singh came of fighting stock, so he straightway took ship to England to petition the Crown. He petitioned Parliament, but his petition went into the bag behind the Speaker’s chair, from which there is no return. He petitioned the King, but was courteously informed that he must approach the Department concerned. He tried the Secretary of State for India, and had an interview with Abinger Vennard, who was very rude to him, and succeeded in mortally insulting the feudal aristocrat. He appealed to the Prime Minister, and was warned off by a harassed private secretary. The handful of members of Parliament who make Indian grievances their stock-in-trade fought shy of him, for indeed Ram Singh’s case had no sort of platform appeal in it, and his arguments were flagrantly undemocratic. But they sent him to Lord Caerlaverock, for the ex-viceroy loved to be treated as a kind of consul-general for India. But this Protector of the Poor proved a broken reed. He told Ram Singh flatly that he was a belated feudalist, which was true; and implied that he was a land-grabber, which was not true, Ram Singh having only enjoyed the fruits of his forbears’ enterprise. Deeply incensed, the appellant shook the dust of Caerlaverock House from his feet, and sat down to plan a revenge upon the Government which had wronged him. And in his wrath he thought of the heirloom of his race, the drug which could change men’s souls.

  It happened that Lord Caerlaverock’s cook came from the same neighbourhood as Ram Singh. This cook, Lai Muhammad by name, was one of a large poor family, hangers-on of Ram Singh’s house. The aggrieved landowner summoned him, and demanded as of right his humble services. Lai Muhammad, who found his berth to his liking, hesitated, quibbled, but was finally overborne. He suggested a fee for his services, but hastily withdrew when Ram Singh sketched a few of the steps he proposed to take on his return by way of punishing Lai Muhammad’s insolence on Lai Muhammad’s household. Then he got to business. There was a great dinner next week — so he had learned from Jephson, the butler - and more than one member of the Government would honour Caerlaverock House by his presence. With deference he suggested this as a fitting occasion for the experiment, and Ram Singh was pleased to assent.

  I can picture these two holding their meetings in the South Kensington lodgings where Ram Singh dwelt. We know from James, the second footman, that they met also at Caerlaverock House, no doubt that Ram Singh might make certain that his orders were duly obeyed. I can see the little packet of clear grains — I picture them like small granulated sugar — added to the condiments, and soon dissolved out of sight. The deed was done; the cook returned to Bloomsbury and Ram Singh to Gloucester Road, to await with the patient certainty of the East the consummation of a great vengeance.

  II

  My wife was at Kissingen and I was dining with the Caerlaverocks en garçon. When I have not to wait upon the adornment of the female person I am a man of punctual habits, and I reached the house as the hall clock chimed the quarter-past. My poor friend, Tommy Deloraine, arrived along with me, and we ascended the staircase together. I call him ‘my poor friend’, for at the moment Tommy was under the weather. He had the misfortune to be a marquis, and a very rich one, and at the same time to be in love with Claudia Barriton. Neither circumstance was in itself an evil, but the combination made for tragedy. For Tommy’s twenty-five years of healthy manhood, his cleanly made up-standing figure, his fresh countenance and cheerful laugh, were of no avail in the lady’s eyes when set against the fact that he was an idle peer. Miss Claudia was a charming girl, with a notable bee in her bonnet. She was burdened with the cares of the State, and had no patience with anyone who took them lightly. To her mind the social fabric was rotten beyond repair, and her purpose was frankly destructive. I remember some of her phrases: ‘A bold and generous policy of social amelioration’; ‘The development of a civic conscience’; ‘A strong hand to lop off decaying branches from the trunk of the State’. I have no fault to find with her creed, but I objected to its practical working when it took the shape of an inhuman hostility to that devout lover, Tommy Deloraine. She had refused him, I believe, three times, with every circumstance of scorn. The first time she had analysed his character, and described him as a bundle of attractive weaknesses. ‘The only forces I recognise are those of intellect and conscience,’ she had said, ‘and you have neither.’ The second time — it was after he had been to Canada on the staff — she spoke of the irreconcilability of their political ideals. ‘You are an Imperialist,’ she said, ‘and believe in an empire of conquest for the benefit of the few. I want a little island with a rich life for all.’ Tommy declared that he would become a Doukhobor to please her, but she said something about the inability of Ethiopians to change their skin. The third time she hinted vaguely that there was ‘another’. The star of Abinger Vennard was now blazing in the firmament, and she had conceived a platonic admiration for him. The truth is that Miss Claudia, with all her cleverness, was very young and — dare I say it? — rather silly.

  Caerlaverock was stroking his beard, his legs astraddle on the hearthrug, with something appallingly viceregal in his air, when Mr and Mrs Alexander Cargill were announced. The Home Secretary was a joy to behold. He had the face of an elderly and pious bookmaker, and a voice in which lurked the indescribable Scotch quality of ‘unction’. When he was talking you had only to shut your eyes to imagine yourself in some lowland kirk on a hot Sabbath morning. He had been a distinguished advocate before he left the law for politics, and had swayed juries of his countrymen at his will. The man was extraordinarily efficient on a platform. There were unplumbed depths of emotion in his eye, a juicy sentiment in his voice, an overpowering tenderness in his manner, which gave to politics the glamour of a revival meeting. He wallowed in obvious pathos, and his hearers, often unwillingly, wallowed with him. I have never listened to any orator at once so offensive and so horribly effective. There was no appeal too base for him, and none too august: by some subtle alchemy he blended the arts of the prophet and the fishwife. He had discovered a new kind of language. Instead of the hungry millions’, or ‘the toilers’, or any of the numerous synonyms for our masters, he invented the phrase, ‘Goad’s people’. ‘I shall never rest,’ so ran his great declaration, ‘till Goad’s green fields and Goad’s clear waters are free to Goad’s people.’ I remember how on this occasion he pressed my hand with his famous cordiality, looked gravely and earnestly into my face, and then gazed sternly into vacancy. It was a fine picture of genius descending for a moment from its hill-top to show how close it was to poor humanity.

  Then came Lord Mulross, a respectable troglodytic peer, who represented the one sluggish element in a swiftly progressing Government. He was an oldish man with bushy whiskers and a reputed mastery of the French tongue. A Whig, who had never changed his creed one iota, he was highly valued by the country as a sober element in the nation’s councils, and endured by the Cabinet as necessary ballast. He did not conceal his dislike for certain of his colleagues, notably Mr Vennard and Mr Cargill.

  When Miss Barriton arrived with her stepmother the party was almost complete. She entered with an air of apologising for her prettiness. Her man
ner with old men was delightful, and I watched with interest the unbending of Caerlaverock and the simplifying of Mr Cargill in her presence. Deloraine, who was talking feverishly to Mrs Cargill, started as if to go and greet her, thought better of it, and continued his conversation. The lady swept the room with her eye, but did not acknowledge his presence. She floated off with Mr Cargill to a window-corner, and metaphorically sat at his feet. I saw Deloraine saying things behind his moustache, while he listened to Mrs Cargill’s new cure for dyspepsia.

  Last of all, twenty minutes late, came Abinger Vennard. He made a fine stage entrance, walking swiftly with a lowering bow to his hostess, and then glaring fiercely round the room as if to challenge criticism. I have heard Deloraine, in a moment of irritation, describe him as a ‘Pre-Raphaelite attorney’, but there could be no denying his good looks. He had a bad, loose figure, and a quantity of studiously neglected hair, but his face was the face of a young Greek. A certain kind of political success gives a man the manners of an actor, and both Vennard and Cargill bristled with self-consciousness. You could see it in the way they patted their hair, squared their shoulders, and shifted their feet to positions loved by sculptors.

  ‘Well, Vennard, what’s the news from the House?’ Caerlaverock asked.

  ‘Simpson is talking,’ said Vennard wearily. ‘He attacks me, of course. He says he has lived forty years in India — as if that mattered! When will people recognise that the truths of democratic policy are independent of time and space? Liberalism is a category, an eternal mode of thought, which cannot be overthrown by any trivial happenings. I am sick of the word ‘facts’. I long for truths.’

  Miss Barriton’s eyes brightened, and Cargill said, ‘Excellent.’ Lord Mulross, who was a little deaf, and in any case did not understand the language, said loudly to my aunt that he wished there was a close time for legislation. ‘The open season for grouse should be the close season for politicians.’