The Half-Hearted

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE BRINK OF THE RUBICON

  The next evening Wratislaw drove in a hired dogcart up Glenavelin fromGledsmuir just as a stormy autumn twilight was setting in over the barefields. A wild back-end had followed on the tracks of a marvelloussummer. Though it was still October the leaves lay heaped beneath thehedgerows, the bracken had yellowed to a dismal hue of decay, and theheather had turned from the purple of its flower to the grey-blue of itspassing. Rain had fallen, and the long road-side pools were fired bythe westering sun. Glenavelin looked crooked and fantastic in thefalling shadows, and two miles farther the high lights of Etterick roselike a star in the bosom of the hills. Seen after many weeks' work inthe bustle and confinement of town, the solitary, shadow-haunted worldsoothed and comforted.

  He found Lewis in his room alone. The place was quite dark for no lampwas lit, and only a merry fire showed the occupant. He welcomed hisfriend with crazy vehemence, pushing him into a great armchair, offeringa dozen varieties of refreshment, and leaving the butler aghast withcontradictory messages about dinner.

  "Oh, Tommy, upon my soul, it is good to see you here! I was getting asdull as an owl."

  "Are you alone?" Wratislaw asked.

  "George is staying here, but he has gone over to Glenaller to a bigshoot. I didn't care much about it, so I stayed at home. He will beback to-morrow."

  Lewis's face in the firelight seemed cheerful and wholesome enough, buthis words belied it. Wratislaw wondered why this man, who had been wontto travel to the ends of the earth for good shooting, should denyhimself the famous Glenaller coverts.

  At dinner the lamplight showed him more clearly, and the worried look inhis eyes could not be hidden. He was listless, too, his kindly,boisterous manner seemed to have forsaken him, and he had acquired agreat habit of abstracted silence. He asked about recent events in theHouse, commenting shrewdly enough, but without interest. When Wratislawin turn questioned him on his doings, he had none of the readyenthusiasm which had been used to accompany his talk on sport. He gavebare figures and was silent.

  Afterwards in his own sanctum, with drawn curtains and a leaping fire,he became more cheerful. It was hard to be moody in that pleasant room,with the light glancing from silver and vellum and dark oak, and athousand memories about it of the clean, outdoor life. Wratislawstretched his legs to the blaze and watched the coils of blue smokemounting from his pipe with a feeling of keen pleasure. His errand wasout of the focus of his thoughts.

  It was Lewis himself who recalled him to the business.

  "I thought of coming down to town," he said. "I have been getting outof spirits up here, and I wanted to be near you."

  "Then it was an excellent chance which brought me up to-night. But whyare you dull? I thought you were the sort of man who is sufficient untohimself, you know."

  "I am not," he said sharply. "I never realized my gross insufficiencyso bitterly."

  "Ah!" said Wratislaw, sitting up, "love?"

  "Did you happen to see Miss Wishart's engagement in the papers?"

  "I never read the papers. But I have heard about this: in fact, Ibelieve I have congratulated Stocks."

  "Do you know that she ought to have married me?" Lewis cried almostshrilly. "I swear she loved me. It was only my hideous folly thatdrove her from me."

  "Folly?" said Wratislaw, smiling. "Folly? Well you might call itthat. I have come up 'ane's errand,' as your people hereabouts say, totalk to you like a schoolmaster, Lewie. Do you mind a good talking-to?"

  "I need it," he said. "Only it won't do any good, because I have beentalking to myself for a month without effect. Do you know what I am,Tommy?"

  "I am prepared to hear," said the other.

  "A coward! It sounds nice, doesn't it? I am a shirker, a man who wouldbe drummed out of any regiment."

  "Rot!" said Wratislaw. "In that sort of thing you have the courage ofyour kind. You are the wrong sort of breed for common shirking cowards.Why, man, you might get the Victoria Cross ten times over with ease, asfar as that goes. Only you wouldn't, for you are something much moresubtle and recondite than a coward."

  It was Lewis's turn for the request. "I am prepared to hear," he said.

  "A fool! An arrant, extraordinary fool! A fool of quality and parts, afool who is the best fellow in the world and who has every virtue a mancan wish, but at the same time a conspicuous monument of folly. And itis this that I have come to speak about."

  Lewis sat back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the glowing coal.

  "I want you to make it all plain," he said slowly. "I know it allalready; I have got the dull, dead consciousness of it in my heart, butI want to hear it put into words." And he set his lips like a man inpain.

  "It is hard," said Wratislaw, "devilish hard, but I've got to try." Heknocked out the ashes from his pipe and leaned forward.

  "What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked.

  "The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.

  "Right. And what do we mean by competence? Not success! God knows itis something very different from success! Any fool may be successful,if the gods wish to hurt him. Competence means that splendid joy inyour own powers and the approval of your own heart, which great men feelalways and lesser men now and again at favoured intervals. There are acertain number of things in the world to be done, and we have got to dothem. We may fail--it doesn't in the least matter. We may get killedin the attempt--it matters still less. The things may not altogether beworth doing--it is of very little importance. It is ourselves we havegot to judge by. If we are playing our part well, and know it, then wecan thank God and go on. That is what I call happiness."

  "And I," said Lewis.

  "And how are you to get happiness? Not by thinking about it. The greatthings of the world have all been done by men who didn't stop to reflecton them. If a man comes to a halt and analyses his motives anddistrusts the value of the thing he strives for, then the odds are thathis halt is final. You strive to strive and not to attain. A man musthave that direct practical virtue which forgets itself and sees only itswork. Parsons will tell you that all virtue is self-sacrifice, and theyare right, though not in the way they mean. It may all seem a tissue ofcontradictions. You must not pitch on too fanciful a goal, nor, on theother hand, must you think on yourself. And it is a contradiction whichonly resolves itself in practice, one of those anomalies on which theworld is built up."

  Lewis nodded his head.

  "And the moral of it all is that there are two sorts of people who willnever do any good on this planet. One is the class which makes formulasand shallow little ideals its gods and has no glimpse of human needs andthe plain issues of life. The other is the egotist whose eye is alwaysfilled with his own figure, who investigates his motives, and hesitatesand finicks, till Death knocks him on the head and there is an end ofhim. Of the two give me the second, for even a narrow littleegotistical self is better than a formula. But I pray to be deliveredfrom both."

  "'Then who shall stand if Thou, O Lord, dost mark iniquity?'" Lewisquoted.

  "There are two men only who will not be ashamed to look their work inthe face in the end--the brazen opportunist and the rigid Puritan.Suppose you had some desperate frontier work to get through with and abody of men to pick for it, whom would you take? Not the ordinary,colourless, respectable being, and still less academic nonentities! IfI had my pick, my companions should either be the narrowest religionistsor frank, unashamed blackguards. I should go to the Calvinists and thefanatics for choice, but if I could not get them then I should have therankers. For, don't you see, the first would have the fear of God inthem, and that somehow keeps a man from fearing anything else. Theywould do their work because they believed it to be their duty. And thesecond would have the love of the sport in them, and they should also bemade to dwell in the fear of me. They would do their work because theyliked it, and liked me, and I told them to do it."

  "I agree with you absolutely," said Lewis. "I never
thought otherwise."

  "Good," said Wratislaw. "Now for my application. You've had themisfortune to fall between the two stools, Lewie. You're too clever fora Puritan and too good for a ranker. You're too finicking andhigh-strung and fanciful for a prosaic world. You think yourself thelaughing philosopher with an infinite appreciation of everything, andyet you have not the humour to stand aside and laugh at yourself."

  "I am a coward, as I have told you," said the other dourly.

  "No, you are not. But you can't bring yourself down to the world ofcompromises, which is the world of action. You have lost the practicaltouch. You muddled your fight with Stocks because you couldn't get outof touch with your own little world in practice, however you mightmanage it in theory. You can't be single-hearted. Twenty impulses arealways pulling different ways with you, and the result is that youbecome an unhappy, self-conscious waverer."

  Lewis was staring into the fire, and the older man leaned forward andput his hand very tenderly on his shoulder.

  "I don't want to speak about the thing which gives you most pain, oldchap; but I think you have spoiled your chances in the same way inanother matter--the most important matter a man can have to do with,though it ill becomes a cynical bachelor like myself to say it."

  "I know," said Lewis dismally.

  "You see it is the Nemesis of your race which has overtaken you. Therich, strong blood of you Haystouns must be given room or it sours intomoodiness. It is either a spoon or a spoiled horn with you. You arecapable of the big virtues, and just because of it you areextraordinarily apt to go to the devil. Not the ordinary devil, ofcourse, but to a very effective substitute. You want to be braced andpulled together. A war might do it, if you were a soldier. A religiousenthusiasm would do it, if that were possible for you. As it is, I havesomething else, which I came up to propose to you."

  Lewis faced round in an attitude of polite attention. But his eyes hadno interest in them.

  "You know Bardur and the country about there pretty well?"

  Lewis nodded.

  "Also I once talked to you about a man called Marka. Do you remember?"

  "Yes, of course I do. The man who went north from Bardur the weekbefore I turned up there?"

  "Well, there's trouble brewing thereabouts. You know the Taghaticountry up beyond the Russian line. Things are in a ferment there,great military preparations and all the rest of it, and the reason, theysay, is that the hill-tribes in the intervening No-man's-land are attheir old games. Things look very ugly abroad just now, and we can'tafford to neglect anything when a crisis may be at the door. So we wanta man to go out there and find out the truth."

  Lewis had straightened himself and was on his feet before Wratislaw haddone. "Upon my word," he cried, "if it isn't what I expected! We havebeen far too sure of the safety of that Kashmir frontier. You mean, ofcourse, that there may be a chance of an invasion?"

  "I mean nothing. But things look ugly enough in Europe just now, andAsia would naturally be the starting-point."

  Lewis made some rapid calculations in his head which he jotted on thewood of the fireplace. "It would take a week to get from Bardur toTaghati by the ordinary Kashmir rate of travelling, but of course theplace is unknown and it might take months. One would have to try it?"

  "I can only give you the bare facts. If you decide to go, Beauregardwill give you particulars in town."

  "When would he want to know?"

  "At once. I go back to-morrow morning, and I must have your answerwithin three days. You would be required to start within a week. Youcan take time and quiet to make up your mind."

  "It's a great chance," said Lewis. "Does Beauregard think itimportant?"

  "Of the highest importance. Also, of course it is dangerous. Thetravelling is hard, and you may be knocked on the head at any moment asa spy."

  "I don't mind that," said the other, flushing. "I've been through thesame thing before."

  "I need not say the work will be very difficult. Remember that yourerrand will not be official, so in case of failure or trouble we couldnot support you. We might even have to disclaim all responsibility. Inthe event of success, on the other hand, your fortune is something morethan made."

  "Would you go?" came the question.

  "No," said Wratislaw, "I shouldn't."

  "But if you were in my place?"

  "I should hope that I would, but then I might not have the courage. Iam giving you the brave man's choice, Lewie. You will be going out touncertainty and difficulty and extreme danger. On the other hand, Ibelieve in my soul it will harden you into the man you ought to be.Lord knows I would rather have you stay at home!"

  The younger man looked up for a second and saw something in Wratislaw'sface which made him turn away his eyes. The look of honest regret cuthim to the heart. Those friends of his, of whom he was in nowiseworthy, made the burden of his self-distrust doubly heavy.

  "I will tell you within three days," he said hoarsely. "God bless you,Tommy. I don't deserve to have a man like you troubling himself aboutme."

  It was his one spoken tribute to their friendship; and both, with thenervousness of honest men in the presence of emotion, hastened to changethe subject.