by John Buchan
The sea was as delicious as it looked, but Bill, though a good swimmer, kept near the edge for fear of sharks. He wallowed and splashed, with the fresh salt smell which he loved in his nostrils. Minutes passed rapidly, and he was just on the point of striking out for a little reef, when he cast a glance towards the shore...
At the edge of the forest stood men — dark-skinned men, armed with spears.
Bill scrambled to his feet with a fluttering heart, and as he rose the men moved forward. He was, perhaps, fifty yards from the stick, which cast its long morning shadow on the sand, and they were two hundred yards on the farther side. At all costs he must get there first. He sprang out of the sea, and as he ran he saw to his horror that the men ran also — ran in great bounds — shouting and brandishing their spears.
Those fifty yards seemed miles, but Bill won the race. No time to put on his clothes. He seized his dressing-gown with one hand and the stick with the other, and as he twirled the handle a spear whizzed by his ear. ‘I want to be home,’ he gasped, and the next second he stood naked between the shrubbery and the pond, clutching his dressing-gown. The Solomon Islands had got his fives-shoes and his pyjamas.
The cold of a November morning brought him quickly to his senses. He clothed his shivering body in his dressing-gown and ran by devious paths to the house. Happily the gun-room door was unlocked, and he was able to ascend by way of empty passages and back-stairs to the nursery floor. He did not, however, escape the eagle eye of Elsie, the nurse, who read a commination service over a boy who went out of doors imperfectly clad on such a morning. She prophesied pneumonia, and plumped him into a hot bath.
Bill applied his tongue to the back of his hand. Yes. It tasted salt, and the salt smell was still in his nose. It had not been a dream... He hugged himself in the bath and made strange gurgling sounds of joy. Life had suddenly opened up for him in dazzling vistas of adventure.
His conduct in church that morning was exemplary, for while Peter at his side had his usual Sunday attack of St Vitus’s Dance, Bill sat motionless as a mummy. On the way home his mother commented on it and observed that Lower Chapel seemed to have taught him how to behave. But his thoughts during the service had not been devotional. The stick lay beside him on the floor, and for a moment he had a wild notion of twisting it during the Litany and disappearing for a few minutes to Kamschatka. Then prudence supervened. He must go very cautiously in this business, and court no questions. That afternoon he and Peter would seek a secluded spot and make experiments. He would take the stick back to school and hide it in his room — he had a qualm when he thought what a ‘floater’ it would be if a lower boy appeared with it in public! For him no more hours of boredom. School would no longer be a place of exile, but a rapturous holiday. He would slip home now and then and see what was happening — he would go often to Glenmore — he would visit any spot in the globe which took his fancy. His imagination reeled at the prospect, and he cloaked his chortles of delight in a fervent Amen.
At luncheon it was decided that Peter and he should go for a walk together, and should join the others at a place called the Roman Camp. ‘Let the boys have a chance of being alone,’ his father had said. This exactly suited Bill’s book, and as they left the dining-room he clutched his small brother. ‘Shrimp,’ he said in his ear, ‘You’re going to have the afternoon of your life.’
It was a mild, grey day, with the leafless woods and the brown ploughlands lit by a pale November sun. Peter, as he trotted beside him, jerked out breathless inquiries about what Bill proposed to do, and was told to wait and see.
Arrived at a clump of beeches which promised privacy, Bill first swore his brother to secrecy by the most awful oaths which he could imagine.
‘Put your arm round my waist and hang on to my belt,’ he told him. ‘I’m going to take you to have a look at Glenmore.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Peter. ‘That only happens in Summer, and we haven’t packed yet.’
‘Shut up and hold tight,’ said Bill as he twirled the stick and spoke the necessary words...
The boys were looking not at the smooth boles of beeches, but at a little coppice of rowans and birches above the narrow glen of the hill burn. It was Glenmore in very truth. There was the strip of mossy lawn, the white-washed gable end of the lodge; there to the left beside the walled garden was the smoking chimney of the keeper’s cottage; there beyond the trees was the long lift of brown moorland and the blue top of Stob Ghabhar. To the boys Glenmore was the true home of the soul, but they had seen it only in the glory of late summer and early autumn. In its winter dress it seemed for a moment strange. Then the sight of an old collie waddling across the lawn gave the connecting link.
‘There’s Wattie,’ Peter gasped, and lifted up his voice in an excited summons. His brother promptly scragged him.
‘Don’t be an ass, Shrimp,’ he said fiercely. ‘This is a secret, you fathead. This is magic. Nobody must know we are here. Come on and explore.’
For an hour - it must have been an hour, Bill calculated afterwards, but it seemed like ten minutes — the two visited their favourite haunts. They found the robbers’ cave in the glen where a raven nested, and the pool where Bill had caught his first pound trout, and the stretch in the river where their father that year had had the thirty pound salmon. There were no blaeberries or crowberries in the woods, but there were many woodcock, and Bill had a shot with his catapult at a wicked old blackcock on a peat-stack. Also they waylaid Wattie, the collie, and induced him to make a third in the party. All their motions were as stealthy as an Indian’s, and the climax of the adventure was reached when they climbed the garden wall and looked in at the window of the keeper’s cottage.
Tea was laid before a bright peat fire in the parlour, so Mrs Macrae must be expecting company. It looked a very good tea, for there were scones and pancakes, and shortbread and currant-loaf and heather honey. Both boys felt suddenly famished at the sight.
‘Mrs Macrae always gives me a scone and honey,’ Peter bleated. ‘I’m hungry. I want one.’
So did Bill. His soul longed for food, but he kept hold of his prudence.
‘We daren’t show ourselves,’ he whispered. ‘But, perhaps, we might pinch a scone. It wouldn’t be stealing, for if Mrs Macrae saw us she would say “Come awa in, laddies, and get a jeely piece.” I’ll give you a back, Shrimp, and in you get.’
The window was open, and Peter was hoisted through, falling with a bang on a patch-work rug. But he never reached the table, for at that moment the parlour door opened and someone entered. After that things happened fast. Peter, urged by Bill’s anguished whisper, turned back to the window, and was hauled through by the scruff of the neck. A woman’s voice was heard crying, ‘Mercy on us, it’s the bairns,’ as the culprits darted to the shelter of the gooseberry bushes.
Bill realised that there was no safety in the garden, so he dragged Peter over the wall by the way they had come, thereby seriously damaging a pear tree. But they had been observed, and as they scrambled out of a rose-bed, they heard cries and saw Mrs Macrae appearing round the end of the wall, having come through the stable yard. Also a figure, which looked like Angus, the river gillie, was running from the same direction.
There was nothing for it but to go. Bill seized Peter with one hand and the stick with the other, and spoke the words, with Angus not six yards away... As he looked once more at the familiar beech boles, his ears were still full of the cries of an excited woman and the frenzied howling of Wattie, the dog.
The two boys, very warm and flustered and rather scratched about the hands and legs, confronted their father and mother and their sister, Barbara, who was sixteen and very proud.
‘Hullo, hullo,’ they heard their father say. ‘I thought you’d be hiding somewhere hereabouts. You young rascals know how to take cover, for you seemed to spring out of the ground. You look as if you’d been playing football. Better walk home with us and cool down... Bless my soul, Peter, what’s that you’ve got? It’s bog m
yrtle! Where on earth did you find it? I’ve never seen it before in Oxfordshire.’
Then Barbara raised a ladylike voice. ‘Oh, Mummy, look at the mess they’ve made of themselves. They’ve been among the brambles, for Peter has two holes in his stockings. Just look at Bill’s hands!’ And she wrinkled her finical nose, and sniffed.
Bill kept a diplomatic silence, and Peter, usually garrulous, did the same, for his small wrist was in his brother’s savage clutch.
That night, before Peter went to bed, he was compelled once more to swear solemn oaths, and Bill was so abstracted that his mother thought that he was sickening for some fell disease. He lay long awake, planning out the best way to use his marvellous new possession. His thoughts were still on the subject next morning, and to his family’s amazement he made no protest when, to suit his mother’s convenience, it was decided to start for London soon after breakfast, and the walk with the dogs was cancelled. He departed in high spirits, most unlike his usual leave-takings, and his last words to Peter were fierce exhortations to secrecy.
All the way to London he was in a happy dream, and at luncheon he was so urbane that Aunt Alice, who had strong and unorthodox views about education, announced that in Bill’s case, at any rate, the public school system seemed to answer, and gave him double her customary tip.
Then came the conjuring show at the Grafton Hall. Bill in the past had had an inordinate appetite for such entertainments, and even in his new ecstasy he looked forward to this one. But at the door of the hall he had a shock. Hitherto he had kept close to his stick, but it was now necessary to give it up and receive a metal check for it. To his mother’s surprise he protested hotly. ‘It won’t do any harm,’ he pleaded. ‘It will stay beside me under the seat.’ But the rule was inexorable and he had to surrender it. ‘Don’t be afraid, darling,’ his mother told him. ‘That funny new stick of yours won’t be lost. The check is a receipt for it, and they are very careful.’
The show was not up to his expectations. What were all these disappearing donkeys and vanishing ladies compared to the performances he had lately staged? Bill was puffed up with a great pride. With the help of his stick he could make rings round this trumpery cleverness. He was the true magician... He wished that the thing would end that he might feel the precious stick again in his hand.
At the counter there was no sign of the man who had given him the check. Instead there was a youth who seemed to be new to the business, and who was very slow in returning the sticks and umbrellas. When it came to Bill’s turn he was extra slow, and presently announced that he could find no Number 229.
Bill’s mother, seeing his distress, intervened, and sent the wretched youth to look again, while other people were kept waiting, but he came back with the same story. There was no duplicate Number 229, or any article to correspond to the check. After that he had to be allowed to attend to the others, and Bill, almost in tears, waited hysterically till the crowd had gone. Then there was a thorough search, and Bill and his mother were allowed to go behind the counter. But no Number 229 could be found, and there were no sticks left, only three umbrellas.
Bill was now patently in tears.
‘Never mind, darling,’ his mother said, ‘we must be off now, or you will be late for lock-up. I promise that your father will come here tomorrow and clear up the whole business. Never fear — the stick will be found.’
But it is still lost.
When Bill’s father went there next day, and cross-examined the wretched youth — for he had once been a barrister — he extracted a curious story. If the walking-stick was lost, so also was the keeper of the walking-sticks, for the youth was only an assistant. The keeper — his name was Jukes and he lived in Hammersmith — had not been seen since yesterday afternoon during the performance, and Mrs Jukes had come round and made a scene last night, and that morning the police had been informed. Mr Jukes, it appeared, was not a very pleasant character, and he had had too much beer at luncheon. When the audience had all gone in, he had expressed to his assistant his satiety of life. The youth’s testimony ran as follows: ‘Mr Jukes, ‘e was wavin’ his arm something chronic and carryin’ on about ‘ow this was no billet for a man like ‘im. He picks up a stick, and I thought he was goin’ to ‘it me. “Percy, me lad,” says ‘e, “I’m fed up — fed up to the back teeth.” He starts twisting the stick, and says ‘e “I wish to ‘eaven I was out of ‘ere.” After that I must ‘ave come over faint, for when I looks again, ‘e ‘ad ‘opped it.’
Mr Jukes’ case is still a puzzle to Mrs Jukes and the police, but Bill understands only too clearly what happened. Mr Jukes and the stick have gone ‘out of ‘ere’, and where that may be neither Bill nor I can guess.
But he still lives in hope, and he wants me to broadcast this story in case the stick may have come back to earth. So let every boy and girl keep a sharp eye on shops where sticks are sold. The magic walking-stick is not quite four feet long, and about one inch and a quarter thick. It is made of a heavy dark-red wood, rather like the West Indian purpleheart. Its handle is in the shape of a crescent with the horns uppermost, made of some white substance which is neither bone nor ivory. If anyone sees such a stick, then Bill will give all his worldly wealth for news of it.
Failing that, he would like information about the man who sold it to him. He is very old, small and wizened, but his eyes are the brightest you ever saw in a human head. He wears a shabby, greeny-black overcoat which reaches down to his heels, and a tall, greeny-black bowler hat. It is possible that the stick may have returned to him. So if you meet anyone like him, look sharply at his bundle, and if it is there and he is willing to sell, buy it - buy it — buy it, or you will regret it all your days. For this purpose it is wiser always to have a farthing in your pocket, for he won’t give change.
Ho! The Merry Masons
THE THURSDAY CLUB — the successor of the old Runagates Club of which I have compiled a few chronicles — is not quite the same home of wild tales as its progenitor. Its newer members are too pre-occupied with the cares of life, and are apt to engage in grave discussions of current problems. But now and then the conversation strays into fantastic paths, and sometimes a story emerges.
One April night, when the street corners were scented with wallflowers, and oysters were no longer on the dinner menu, the company was small, for half a dozen members had gone after salmon to the Dee, the Whye, and the Blackwater. Burmester, who was in the chair, brought the news of the death of one who had often been a guest, Sir Alwyn Thomasson, the retired diplomat, who had recently settled in Gloucestershire. ‘Rotten bad luck,’ he said. ‘He was only in his early seventies, and as healthy as a blood-horse. I’d have given him another ten or fifteen years. You had heard about it, Ned?’ and he turned to Leithen. ‘Wasn’t he a near neighbour?’
Leithen nodded. ‘I went over to Scaip yesterday. It’s a melancholy business, and that poor girl of his has a lonely future.’
Some man asked what he had died of.
‘Heart failure, they say,’ Burmester replied, ‘though he didn’t look like a man with a heart. But you never know with a fellow that has lived in hot countries and led a pretty gruelling life. Had you any suspicions, Ned?’
‘No. And I don’t believe he had himself.’ Leithen’s fine-drawn sallow face was curiously grave, as if this death meant more to him than that of an ordinary country neighbour, and Burmester discreetly passed from the subject.
That evening, I remember, was like one of the old Runagates sederunts. It was a soft spring night, the windows were left open and the curtains undrawn, and the only light came from the unshaded candles which burned without a flicker. The talk wandered discursively from the dangers of yellow fever spreading to East Africa, through the latest pronouncements of Mussolini, to certain speculations in the physics of hyper-space which a Cambridge professor had just made public. Peckwether, who was scientist as well as historian, had something to say about the last, and he stirred up Anthony Hurrell, the ornithologist.
Leithen, who had spoken little at dinner, now found his voice. ‘That was what Hollond used to say. Did any of you ever know Hollond? He perished years ago on the Chamonix Aiguilles. A genius in his way, and, though he is superseded now, he was the forerunner of Einstein and Planck and all that lot. He used to say that he could not see why some event should not have left an indelible mark on the ether, and that under certain conditions that mark might become audible or visible or present in some way to the human consciousness. There are places, you know, where you can wake an echo only by striking a particular note; to any other note in the scale the place is dumb.’ Burmester observed that the ether was a dashed queer thing. Someone had been telling him that every sound made since the beginning of time was still tucked away in the ether, and that some day scientific instruments might be devised which would be capable of eliciting them. He had been told that it might even be possible to dig out the actual Sermon on the Mount and Caesar’s Et tu, Brute, if Caesar ever said it, and Philip Sidney’s dying words, and the notion had solemnised him.
But Hurrell was not to be diverted by Burmester’s fantasies. He said that he agreed with Hollond, whom he had known a little. ‘Suppose you have some great crisis of human emotion — panic, lust, hate, self-sacrifice — a murder, a great renunciation — anything which strains the nerves to the extreme limit. We talk about an atmosphere being tense, and the tenseness may be not merely subjective. Why shouldn’t human passion create some subtle physical dislocation which abides in the air of a particular place, and which may be recalled if somehow the trait d’union appears again? That would explain certain ghost stories — or, at least, it would point the way to their explanation.’
