The Half-Hearted

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER XI

  THE PRIDE BEFORE A FALL

  The result of the election was announced in Gledsmuir on the nextWednesday evening, and carried surprise to all save Lewis's nearerfriends. For Mr. Albert Stocks was duly returned member for theconstituency by a majority of seventy votes. The defeated candidatereceived the news with great composure, addressed some good-humouredwords to the people, had a generous greeting for his opponent, and methis committee with a smiling face. But his heart was sick within him,and as soon as he decently might he escaped from the turmoil, found hishorse, and set off up Glenavelin for his own dwelling.

  He had been defeated, and the fact, however confidently looked for,comes with a bitter freshness to every man. He had lost a seat for hisparty--that in itself was bad. But he had proved himself incompetent,unadaptable, a stick, a pedantic incapable. A dozen stings rankled inhis soul. Alice would be justified of her suspicions. Where would hisplace be now in that small imperious heart? His own people had forsakenhim for a gross and unlikely substitute, and he had been wrong in hisestimate alike of ally and enemy. Above all came that crueleststab--what would Wratislaw think of it? He had disgraced himself in theeyes of his friend. He who had made a fetish of competence hadmanifestly proved wanting; he who had loved to think of himself as thebold, opportune man, had shown himself formal and hidebound.

  As he passed Glenavelin among the trees the thought of Alice was a sharppang of regret. He could never more lift his eyes in that young andradiant presence. He pictured the successful Stocks welcomed by her,and words of praise for which he would have given his immortal soul,meted out lavishly to that owl-like being. It was a dismal business,and ruefully, but half-humorously, he caught at the paradox of his fate.

  Through the swiftly failing darkness the inn of Etterick rose beforehim, a place a little apart from the village street. A noise of talkfloated from the kitchen and made him halt at the door and dismount.The place would be full of folk discussing the election, and he would goin among them and learn the worst opinion which men might have of him.After all, they were his own people, who had known him in his power asthey now saw him in his weakness. If he had failed he was not whollyfoolish; they knew his few redeeming virtues, and they would begenerous.

  The talk stopped short as he entered, and he saw through the tobaccoreek half a dozen lengthy faces wearing the air of solemnity which thehillman adopts in his pleasures. They were all his own herds andkeepers, save two whom he knew for foresters from Glenavelin. He wasrecognized at once, and with a general nervous shuffling they began tomake room for the laird at the table. He cried a hasty greeting to all,and sat down between a black-bearded giant, whose clothes smelt ofsheep, and a red-haired man from one of the remoter glens. The notionof the thing pleased him, and he ordered drinks for each with a lavishcarelessness. He asked for a match for his pipe, and the man who gaveit wore a decent melancholy on his face and shook his head with unction.

  "This is a bad job, Lewie," he said, using the privileged name of theancient servant. "Whae would have ettled sic a calaamity to happen inyour ain countryside? We a' thocht it would be a grand pioy for ye, forye would settle down here and hae nae mair foreign stravaigins. Andthen this tailor body steps in and spoils a'. It's maist vexaatious."

  "It was a good fight, and he beat me fairly; but we'll drop the matter.I'm sick--tired of politics, Adam. If I had been a better man theymight have made a herd of me, and I should have been happy."

  "Wheesht, Lewie," said the man, grinning. "A herd's job is no for thelikes o' you. But there's better wark waiting for ye than poalitics.It's a beggar's trade after a', and far better left to bagman bodieslike yon Stocks. It's a puir thing for sac proper a man as you."

  "But what can I do?" cried Lewis in despair. "I have no profession. Iam useless."

  "Useless! Ye are a grand judge o' sheep and nowt, and ye ken a horsebetter than ony couper. Ye can ride like a jockey and drive like aJehu, and there's no your equal in these parts with a gun or afishing-rod. Forbye, I would rather walk ae mile on the hill wi' yethan twae, for ye gang up a brae-face like a mawkin! God! There's no asingle man's trade that ye're no brawly fitted for. And then ye've aheap o' book-lear that folk learned ye away about England, though Icannot speak muckle on that, no being a jidge."

  Lewis grinned at the portraiture. "You do me proud. But let's talkabout serious things. You were on sheep when I came in. Get back tothem and give me your mind on Cheviots. The lamb sales promise well."

  For twenty minutes the room hummed with technicalities. One man mightsupport the conversation on alien matters, but on sheep the humblestfound a voice: Lewis watched the ring of faces with a sharp delight.The election had made him sick of his fellows--fellows who chattered andwrangled and wallowed in the sentimental. But now every line of thesebrown faces, the keen blue eyes, the tawny, tangled beards, and theinimitable soft-sounding southern speech, seemed an earnest of a realand strenuous life. He began to find a new savour in existence. Thesense of his flat incompetence left him, and he found himself speakingheartily and laughing with zest.

  "It's as I say," said the herd of the Redswirebead. "I'm getting anauld man and a verra wise ane, and the graund owercome for the world isjust 'Pay no attention.' Ye'll has heard how the word cam' to be. Itwas Jock Linklater o' the Caulds wha was glen notice to quit by thelaird, and a' the countryside was vexed to pairt wi' Jock, for he was apopular character. But about a year after a friend meets him atGledsmuir merkit as crouse as ever. 'Lodsake, Jock, man, I thocht yewere awa',' says he. 'No,' says Jock, 'no. I'm here as ye see.' 'Buthow did ye manage it?' he asked. 'Fine,' says Jock. 'They sent me aletter tellin' me I must gang; but I just payed no attention. Syne theysent me a blue letter frae the lawyer's, but I payed no attention. Synethe factor cam' to see me.' 'Ay, and what did ye do then, Jock?' sayshe. 'Oh, I payed no attention. Syne the laird cam' himsel.' 'Ay, thatwould fricht ye,' he says. 'No, no a grain,' said Jock, verra calm. 'Ijust payed no attention, and here I am.'"

  Lewis laughed, but the rest of the audience suffered no change offeature. The gloaming had darkened, and the little small-paned windowwas a fretted sheet of dark and lucent blue. Grateful odours of foodand drink and tobacco hung in the air, though tar and homespun and thefar-carried fragrance of peat fought stoutly for the mastery.

  One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for thenight and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning,it was the sign--and the hour--for stories of many kinds--tales ofweather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountainrealities. Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believedlegends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men forwhom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewislistened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, andagain by a question.

  The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, whoswam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the headof Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorousstory, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, whotold a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simono' the Heid o' the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when heswung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quiveredbeneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.

  "And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down theriver with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin'. But Igripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel' for an hour till the waterknockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I'm amortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless.When a man's feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist."

  "I know," said Lewis, with excitement. "I have found the same myself."

  "Where?" asked the man, without rudeness.

  "Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorabhills above Abjela."

  "Were ye sick when they rescued ye? I was. I had twae muscles sprun
gon my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when theylaid me on the heather. Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though hewasna touching me I began to suffocate, and yet I was ower weak to cryout and had to thole it."

  "I know. If you hang up in the void for a little and get the feeling ofgreat space burned on your mind, you nearly die of choking when you arepulled up. Fancy you knowing about that."

  "Have you suffered it, Maister Lewie?" said the man.

  "Once. There was a gully in the Doorabs just like the Scarts o' theMuneraw, only twenty times deeper, and there was a bridge of tree-trunksbound with ropes across it. We all got over except one mule and acouple of men. They were just getting off when a trunk slipped anddangled down into the abyss with one end held up by the ropes. The pooranimal went plumb to the bottom; we heard it first thud on a jag of rockand then, an age after, splash in the water. One of the men went withit, but the other got his legs caught between the ropes and the tree andmanaged to hang on. The poor beggar was helpless with fright; and hesquealed--great heavens! how he did squeal!"

  "And what did ye dae?" asked a breathless audience.

  "I went down after him. I had to, for I was his master, and besides, Iwas a bit of an athlete then. I cried to him to hang on and not lookdown. I clambered down the swaying trunk while my people held the ropesat the top, and when I got near the man I saw what had happened.

  "He had twisted his ankles in the fall, and though he had got them outof the ropes, yet they hung loose and quite obviously broken. I got asnear him as I could, and leaned over, and I remember seeing throughbelow his armpits the blue of the stream six hundred feet down. It mademe rather sick with my job, and when I called him to pull himself up abit till I could grip him I thought he was helpless with the samefright. But it turned out that I had misjudged him. He had no power inhis arms, simply the dead strength to hang on. I was in a nice fix, forI could lower myself no farther without slipping into space. Then Ithought of a dodge. I got a good grip of the rope and let my legsdangle down till they were level with his hands. I told him to try andchange his grip and catch my ankles. He did it, somehow or other, andby George! the first shock of his weight nearly ended me, for he was aheavy man. However, I managed to pull myself up a yard or two and thenI could reach down and catch his arms. We both got up somehow or other,but it took a devilish time, and when they laid us both on the groundand came round like fools with brandy I thought I should choke and hadscarcely strength to swear at them to get out."

  The assembly had listened intently, catching its breath with a sharp_risp_ as all outdoor folks will do when they hear of an escapade whichstrikes their fancy. One man--a stranger--hammered his empty pipe-bowlon the table in applause.

  "Whae was the man, d'ye say?" he asked. "A neeger?"

  Lewis laughed. "Not a nigger most certainly, though he had a brownface."

  "And ye risked your life for a black o' some kind? Man, ye must beawfu' fond o' your fellow men. Wad ye dae the same for the likes o' us?

  "Surely. For one of my own folk! But it was really a very smallthing."

  "Then I have just ae thing to say," said the brown-bearded man. "I amwhat ye cal a Raadical, and yestreen I recorded my vote for yon manStocks. He crackit a lot about the rights o' man--as man, and I was wi'him. But I tell ye that you yoursel' have a better notion o' humankindness than ony Stocks, and though ye're no o' my party, yet Iherewith propose a vote o' confidence in Maister Lewis Haystoun."

  The health was drunk solemnly yet with gusto, and under cover of itLewis fled out of doors. His despondency had passed, and a fit offierce exhilaration had seized him. Men still swore by his name; he wasstill loved by his own folk; small matter to him if a townsman haddefeated him. He was no vain talker, but a doer, a sportsman, anadventurer. This was his true career. Let others have the applause ofexcited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man's path, a man'swork, and a man's commendation.

  The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in thestill weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides,as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge shoulder thelights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. Asense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil from theconstraint of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozenfragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure oflife. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful;laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth and the openroad--all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living."I'll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them," he was humming aloud,when suddenly his bridle was caught and a man's hand was at his knee.

  "Lewie," cried Wratislaw, "gracious, man! have you been drinking?" Andthen seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through thestirrup leathers, and walked by the horse's side. "So that's the wayyou take it, old chap? Do you know that you are a discredited anddefeated man? and yet I find you whistling like a boy. I have hopesfor you, Lewie. You have the Buoyant Heart, and with that nothing canmuch matter. But, confound it! you are hours late for dinner."