Huntingtower

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER I

  HOW A RETIRED PROVISION MERCHANT FELT THE IMPULSE OF SPRING

  Mr. Dickson McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with thetowel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the looking-glass,and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window. In the littlegarden lilacs were budding, and there was a gold line of daffodilsbeside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a birch flaunted itsnew tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the steeple of theGuthrie Memorial Kirk. A blackbird whistled from a thorn-bush, and Mr.McCunn was inspired to follow its example. He began a tolerable versionof "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch."

  He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safetyrazor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise,and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, andno longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with acountenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster. Calculationrevealed to him the fact that in his fifty-five years, having begun toshave at eighteen, he had wasted three thousand three hundred andseventy hours--or one hundred and forty days--or between four and fivemonths--by his neglect of this admirable invention. Now he felt that hehad stolen a march on Time. He had fallen heir, thus late, to a fortunein unpurchasable leisure.

  He began to dress himself in the sombre clothes in which he had beenaccustomed for thirty-five years and more to go down to the shop inMearns Street. And then a thought came to him which made him discard thegrey-striped trousers, sit down on the edge of his bed, and muse.

  Since Saturday the shop was a thing of the past. On Saturday athalf-past eleven, to the accompaniment of a glass of dubious sherry, hehad completed the arrangements by which the provision shop in MearnsStreet, which had borne so long the legend of D. McCunn, together withthe branches in Crossmyloof and the Shaws, became the property of acompany, yclept the United Supply Stores, Limited. He had received inpayment cash, debentures and preference shares, and his lawyers and hisown acumen had acclaimed the bargain. But all the week-end he had been alittle sad. It was the end of so old a song, and he knew no other tuneto sing. He was comfortably off, healthy, free from any particular caresin life, but free too from any particular duties. "Will I be going toturn into a useless old man?" he asked himself.

  But he had woke up this Monday to the sound of the blackbird, and theworld, which had seemed rather empty twelve hours before, was now briskand alluring. His prowess in quick shaving assured him of his youth."I'm no' that dead old," he observed, as he sat on the edge of the bed,to his reflection in the big looking-glass.

  It was not an old face. The sandy hair was a little thin on the top anda little grey at the temples, the figure was perhaps a little too fullfor youthful elegance, and an athlete would have censured the neck astoo fleshy for perfect health. But the cheeks were rosy, the skin clear,and the pale eyes singularly childlike. They were a little weak, thoseeyes, and had some difficulty in looking for long at the same object, sothat Mr. McCunn did not stare people in the face, and had, inconsequence, at one time in his career acquired a perfectly undeservedreputation for cunning. He shaved clean, and looked uncommonly like awise, plump schoolboy. As he gazed at his simulacrum he stoppedwhistling "Roy's Wife" and let his countenance harden into a noblesternness. Then he laughed, and observed in the language of his youththat "There was life in the auld dowg yet." In that moment the soul ofMr. McCunn conceived the Great Plan.

  The first sign of it was that he swept all his business garmentsunceremoniously on to the floor. The next that he rootled at the bottomof a deep drawer and extracted a most disreputable tweed suit. It hadonce been what I believe is called a Lovat mixture, but was now anondescript sub-fusc, with bright patches of colour like moss onwhinstone. He regarded it lovingly, for it had been for twenty years hisholiday wear, emerging annually for a hallowed month to be stained withsalt and bleached with sun. He put it on, and stood shrouded in anodour of camphor. A pair of thick nailed boots and a flannel shirt andcollar completed the equipment of the sportsman. He had another longlook at himself in the glass, and then descended whistling to breakfast.This time the tune was "Macgregor's Gathering," and the sound of itstirred the grimy lips of a man outside who was deliveringcoals--himself a Macgregor--to follow suit. Mr. McCunn was a veryfountain of music that morning.

  Tibby, the aged maid, had his newspaper and letters waiting by hisplate, and a dish of ham and eggs frizzling near the fire. He fell toravenously but still musingly, and he had reached the stage of sconesand jam before he glanced at his correspondence. There was a letter fromhis wife now holidaying at the Neuk Hydropathic. She reported that herhealth was improving, and that she had met various people who had knownsomebody who had known somebody else whom she had once known herself.Mr. McCunn read the dutiful pages and smiled. "Mamma's enjoying herselffine," he observed to the teapot. He knew that for his wife the earthlyparadise was a hydropathic, where she put on her afternoon dress andevery jewel she possessed when she rose in the morning, ate large mealsof which the novelty atoned for the nastiness, and collected an immensecasual acquaintance with whom she discussed ailments, ministers, suddendeaths, and the intricate genealogies of her class. For his part herancorously hated hydropathics, having once spent a black week under theroof of one in his wife's company. He detested the food, the Turkishbaths (he had a passionate aversion to baring his body beforestrangers), the inability to find anything to do and the compulsion toendless small talk. A thought flitted over his mind which he was tooloyal to formulate. Once he and his wife had had similar likings, butthey had taken different roads since their child died. Janet! He sawagain--he was never quite free from the sight--the solemn littlewhite-frocked girl who had died long ago in the spring.

  It may have been the thought of the Neuk Hydropathic, or more likely thethin clean scent of the daffodils with which Tibby had decked the table,but long ere breakfast was finished the Great Plan had ceased to be anairy vision and become a sober well-masoned structure. Mr. McCunn--I mayconfess it at the start--was an incurable romantic.

  He had had a humdrum life since the day when he had first entered hisuncle's shop with the hope of some day succeeding that honest grocer;and his feet had never strayed a yard from his sober rut. But his mind,like the Dying Gladiator's, had been far away. As a boy he had voyagedamong books, and they had given him a world where he could shape hiscareer according to his whimsical fancy. Not that Mr. McCunn was what isknown as a great reader. He read slowly and fastidiously, and sought inliterature for one thing alone. Sir Walter Scott had been his firstguide, but he read the novels not for their insight into human characteror for their historical pageantry, but because they gave him materialwherewith to construct fantastic journeys. It was the same withDickens. A lit tavern, a stage-coach, post-horses, the clack of hoofs ona frosty road, went to his head like wine. He was a Jacobite not becausehe had any views on Divine Right, but because he had always before hiseyes a picture of a knot of adventurers in cloaks, new landed fromFrance, among the western heather.

  On this select basis he had built up his small library--Defoe, Hakluyt,Hazlitt and the essayists, Boswell, some indifferent romances and ashelf of spirited poetry. His tastes became known, and he acquired areputation for a scholarly habit. He was president of the LiterarySociety of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, and read to its members a varietyof papers full of a gusto which rarely became critical. He had beenthree times chairman at Burns Anniversary dinners, and had deliveredorations in eulogy of the national Bard; not because he greatly admiredhim--he thought him rather vulgar--but because he took Burns as anemblem of the un-Burns-like literature which he loved. Mr. McCunn was noscholar and was sublimely unconscious of background. He grew his flowersin his small garden-plot oblivious of their origin so long as they gavehim the colour and scent he sought. Scent, I say, for he appreciatedmore than the mere picturesque. He had a passion for words and cadences,and would be haunted for weeks by a cunning phrase, savouring it as aconnoisseur savours a vintage. Wherefor
e long ago, when he could illafford it, he had purchased the Edinburgh _Stevenson_. They were theonly large books on his shelves, for he had a liking for smallvolumes--things he could stuff into his pocket in that sudden journeywhich he loved to contemplate.

  Only he had never taken it. The shop had tied him up for eleven monthsin the year, and the twelfth had always found him settled decorouslywith his wife in some seaside villa. He had not fretted, for he wascontent with dreams. He was always a little tired, too, when theholidays came, and his wife told him he was growing old. He consoledhimself with tags from the more philosophic of his authors, but hescarcely needed consolation. For he had large stores of modestcontentment.

  But now something had happened. A spring morning and a safety razor hadconvinced him that he was still young. Since yesterday he was a man of alarge leisure. Providence had done for him what he would never have donefor himself. The rut in which he had travelled so long had given placeto open country. He repeated to himself one of the quotations with whichhe had been wont to stir the literary young men at the Guthrie MemorialKirk:

  "What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold: When we mind labour, then only, we're too old-- What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?"

  He would go journeying--who but he?--pleasantly.

  It sounds a trivial resolve, but it quickened Mr. McCunn to the depthsof his being. A holiday, and alone! On foot, of course, for he musttravel light. He would buckle on a pack after the approved fashion. Hehad the very thing in a drawer upstairs, which he had bought some yearsago at a sale. That and a waterproof and a stick, and his outfit wascomplete. A book, too, and, as he lit his first pipe, he considered whatit should be. Poetry, clearly, for it was the Spring, and besides poetrycould be got in pleasantly small bulk. He stood before his bookshelvestrying to select a volume, rejecting one after another as inapposite.Browning--Keats, Shelley--they seemed more suited for the hearth thanfor the roadside. He did not want anything Scots, for he was of opinionthat Spring came more richly in England and that English people had abetter notion of it. He was tempted by the Oxford Anthology, but wasdeterred by its thickness, for he did not possess the thin-paperedition. Finally he selected Izaak Walton. He had never fished in hislife, but _The Compleat Angler_ seemed to fit his mood. It was old andcurious and learned and fragrant with the youth of things. He rememberedits falling cadences, its country songs and wise meditations. Decidedlyit was the right scrip for his pilgrimage.

  Characteristically he thought last of where he was to go. Every bit ofthe world beyond his front door had its charms to the seeing eye. Thereseemed nothing common or unclean that fresh morning. Even a walk amongcoal-pits had its attractions.... But since he had the right to choose,he lingered over it like an epicure. Not the Highlands, for Spring camelate among their sour mosses. Some place where there were fields andwoods and inns, somewhere, too, within call of the sea. It must not betoo remote, for he had no time to waste on train journeys; nor too near,for he wanted a countryside untainted. Presently he thought of Carrick.A good green land, as he remembered it, with purposeful white roads andpublic-houses sacred to the memory of Burns; near the hills but yetlowland, and with a bright sea chafing on its shores. He decided onCarrick, found a map and planned his journey.

  Then he routed out his knapsack, packed it with a modest change ofraiment, and sent out Tibby to buy chocolate and tobacco and to cash acheque at the Strathclyde Bank. Till Tibby returned he occupied himselfwith delicious dreams.... He saw himself daily growing browner andleaner, swinging along broad highways or wandering in bypaths. Hepictured his seasons of ease, when he unslung his pack and smoked insome clump of lilacs by a burnside--he remembered a phrase ofStevenson's somewhat like that. He would meet and talk with all sorts offolk; an exhilarating prospect, for Mr. McCunn loved his kind. Therewould be the evening hour before he reached his inn, when, pleasantlytired, he would top some ridge and see the welcoming lights of a littletown. There would be the lamp-lit after-supper time when he would readand reflect, and the start in the gay morning, when tobacco tastessweetest and even fifty-five seems young. It would be holiday of thepurest, for no business now tugged at his coat-tails. He was beginning anew life, he told himself, when he could cultivate the seedlinginterests which had withered beneath the far-reaching shade of the shop.Was ever a man more fortunate or more free?

  Tibby was told that he was going off for a week or two. No letters needbe forwarded, for he would be constantly moving, but Mrs. McCunn at theNeuk Hydropathic would be kept informed of his whereabouts. Presently hestood on his doorstep, a stocky figure in ancient tweeds, with a bulgingpack slung on his arm, and a stout hazel stick in his hand. A passer-bywould have remarked an elderly shopkeeper bent apparently on a day inthe country, a common little man on a prosaic errand. But the passer-bywould have been wrong, for he could not see into the heart. The plumpcitizen was the eternal pilgrim; he was Jason, Ulysses, Eric the Red,Albuquerque, Cortez--starting out to discover new worlds.

  Before he left Mr. McCunn had given Tibby a letter to post. That morninghe had received an epistle from a benevolent acquaintance, oneMackintosh, regarding a group of urchins who called themselves the"Gorbals Die-Hards." Behind the premises in Mearns Street lay a tract ofslums, full of mischievous boys with whom his staff waged truceless war.But lately there had started among them a kind of unauthorised andunofficial Boy Scouts, who, without uniform or badge or any kind ofparaphernalia, followed the banner of Sir Robert Baden-Powell andsubjected themselves to a rude discipline. They were far too poor tojoin an orthodox troop, but they faithfully copied what they believed tobe the practices of more fortunate boys. Mr. McCunn had witnessed theirpathetic parades, and had even passed the time of day with their leader,a red-haired savage called Dougal. The philanthropic Mackintosh hadtaken an interest in the gang and now desired subscriptions to send themto camp in the country.

  Mr. McCunn, in his new exhilaration, felt that he could not deny toothers what he proposed for himself. His last act before leaving was tosend Mackintosh ten pounds.