John Burnet of Barns: A Romance

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER II

  THE HOUSE OF BARNS

  The house of Barns stands on a green knoll above the Tweed, half-waybetween the village of Stobo and the town of Peebles. Tweed here is nogreat rolling river, but a shallow, prattling stream, and just below thehouse it winds around a small islet, where I loved to go and fish; forit was an adventure to reach the place, since a treacherous pool lay nota yard below it. The dwelling was white and square, with a beacon toweron the top, which once flashed the light from Neidpath to Drochil whenthe English came over the Border. It had not been used for half ahundred years, but a brazier still stood there, and a pile of rottenlogs, grim mementoes of elder feuds. This also was a haunt of mine, forjackdaws and owls built in the corners, and it was choice fun of aspring morning to search for eggs at the risk of my worthless life. Theparks around stretched to Manor village on the one side, and nigh to thefoot of the Lyne Water on the other. Manor Water as far as Possobelonged to us, and many a rare creel have I had out of its pleasantreaches. Behind, rose the long heathery hill of the Scrape, which is sogreat a hill that while one side looks down on us another overhangs thewood of Dawyck. Beyond that again came Dollar Law and the wild fellswhich give birth to the Tweed, the Yarrow, and the Annan.

  Within the house, by the great hall-fire, my father, William Burnet,spent his days. I mind well his great figure in the armchair, a merewreck of a man, but mighty in his very ruin. He wore a hat, though heseldom went out, to mind him of the old days when he was so busy athunting and harrying that he had never his head uncovered. His beardwas streaked with grey, and his long nose, with a break in the middle(which is a mark of our family), and bushy eyebrows gave him a fearsomelook to a chance stranger. In his young days he had beenextraordinarily handsome and active, and, if all tales be true, nobetter than he should have been. He was feared in those days for hisgreat skill in night-foraying, so that he won the name of the "Howlet,"which never left him. Those were the high days of our family, for myfather was wont to ride to the Weaponshow with seven horsemen behindhim; now we could scarce manage four. But in one of his night-rides hisgood fortune failed him; for being after no good on the hills aboveMegget one dark wintry night, he fell over the Bitch Craig, horse andall; and though he escaped with his life, he was lamed in both legs andcondemned to the house for the rest of his days. Of a summer night hewould come out to the lawn with two mighty sticks to support him, andlooking to the Manor Water hills, would shake his fist at them as oldenemies. In his later days he took kindly to theology and learning,both of which, in the person of Master Porter, dined at his table everyday. I know not how my father, who was a man of much penetration, couldhave been deceived by this man, who had as much religion as an ox. Asfor learning, he had some rag-tag scraps of Latin which were visited onme for my sins; but in eating he had no rival, and would consume beefand pasty and ale like a famished army. He preached every Sabbath inthe little kirk of Lyne, below the Roman camp, and a woful service itwas. I went regularly by my father's orders, but I was the only onefrom the household of Barns. I fear that not even my attendance at hischurch brought me Master Porter's love; for I had acquired nearly asmuch Latin as he possessed himself, and vexed his spirit at lesson-hourswith unanswerable questions. At other times, too, I would rouse him tothe wildest anger by singing a profane song of my own making:

  "O ken ye his Reverence Minister Tam, Wi' a heid like a stot and a face like a ram?"

  To me my father was more than kind. He was never tired of making plansfor my future. "John," he would say, "you shall go to Glasgow College,for you have the makings of a scholar in you. Ay, and we'll make you asoldier, John, and a good honest gentleman to fight for your king, asyour forbears did before you." (This was scarce true, for there neveryet was a Burnet who fought for anything but his own hand.) "No damnedWhig for me. Gad, how I wish I were hale in the legs to be off to thehills with the Johnstones and Keiths. There wouldna be one of the breedleft from Tweedwell to the Brig o' Peebles." Then he would be anxiousabout my martial training, and get down the foils to teach me a lesson.From this he would pass to tales of his own deeds till the past wouldlive before him, and his eyes would glow with their old fire. Then hewould forget his condition, and seek to show me how some parry waseffected. There was but one result; his poor weak legs would give waybeneath him. Then I had to carry him to his bed, swearing deeply at hisinfirmities and lamenting the changes of life.

  In those days the Burnets were a poor family--a poor and a proud. Mygrandfather had added much to the lands by rapine andextortion--ill-gotten gains which could not last. He had been a man ofa violent nature, famed over all the South for his feats of horsemanshipand swordsmanship. He died suddenly, of overdrinking, at the age offifty-five, and now lies in the kirk of Lyne beneath an effigyrepresenting the Angel Gabriel coming for his soul. His last words arerecorded: "O Lord, I dinna want to dee, I dinna want to dee. If ye'lllet me live, I'll run up the sklidders o' Cademuir to a' eternity." Thefolk of the place seldom spoke of him, though my father upheld him as aman of true spirit who had an eye to the improvement of his house. Ofthe family before him I had the history at my finger-ends. This was asubject of which my father never tired, for he held that the genealogyof the Burnets was a thing of vastly greater importance than that of thekings of Rome or Judah. From the old days when we held Burnetland, inthe parish of Broughton, and called ourselves of that ilk, I had theunbroken history of the family in my memory. Ay, and also of the greathouse of Traquair, for my mother had been a Stewart, and, as my fathersaid often, this was the only family in the country bide which couldhope to rival us in antiquity or valour.

  My father's brother, Gilbert, had married the heiress of a westlandfamily, and with her had got the lands of Eaglesham, about theheadwaters of Cart. His son Gilbert, my cousin, was a tall lad somefour years my senior, who on several occasions rode to visit us atBarns. He was of a handsome, soldierly appearance, and looked for anearly commission in a Scots company. At first I admired him mightily,for he was skilful at all sports, rode like a moss-trooper, and coulduse his sword in an incomparable fashion. My father could never abidehim, for he could not cease to tell of his own prowess, and my fatherwas used to say that he loved no virtue better than modesty. Also, heangered every servant about the place by his hectoring, and one day sooffended old Tam Todd that Tam flung a bucket at him, and threatened toduck him in the Tweed; which he doubtless would have done, old as hewas, for he was a very Hercules of a man. This presented a nice problemto all concerned, and I know not which was the more put out, Tam or myfather. Finally it ended in the latter reading Gilbert a long andsevere lecture, and then bidding Tam ask his pardon, seeing that thedignity of the family had to be sustained at any cost.

  One other relative, though in a distant way, I must not omit to mention,for the day came when every man of our name was proud to claim thekinship. This was Gilbert Burnet, of Edinburgh, afterwards DivinityProfessor in Glasgow, Bishop of Salisbury, and the author of the famous"Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times." I met him often in afterdays, and once in London he had me to his house and entertained meduring my stay. Of him I shall have to tell hereafter, but now he wasno more than a name to me, a name which my father was fond of repeatingwhen he wished to recall me to gravity.

  Tam Todd, my father's grieve, who managed the lands about the house,deserves more than a passing word. He was about sixty years of age,stooped in the back, but with long arms and the strength of a giant. Atone time he had fought for Gustavus, and might have risen high in theranks, had not a desperate desire to see his native land come upon himand driven him to slip off one night and take ship for Leith. He hadcome to Peebles, where my father met him, and admiring his goodlystature, took him into his service, in which Tam soon became as expertat the breeding of sheep as ever he had been at the handling of a pikeor musket. He was the best story-teller and the cunningest fisher inthe place, full of quaint
foreign words, French, and Swedish, and HighDutch, for the army of Gustavus had been made up of the riddlings ofEurope. From him I learned to fence with the rapier, and a past-masterhe was, for my father told how, in his best days, he could never so muchas look at Tam. _Bon pied bon oeil_ was ever his watchword, and I haveproved it a good one; for, short though it be, if a man but follow it hemay fear nothing. Also, he taught me a thing which has been most usefulto me, and which I will speak of again--the art of using the broadswordor claymore, as the wild Highlanders call it. My school was on a stripof green grass beside Tweed, and here I have had many a tough encounterin the long summer nights. He made me stand with my back to the deeppool, that I might fear to step back; and thus I learned to keep myground, a thing which he held to be of the essence of swordsmanship.

  My nurse, Jean Morran, was the only woman body about the place. She andTam did the cooking between them, for that worthy had learned the artgastronomical from a Frenchman whose life he saved, and who, ingratitude, taught him many excellent secrets for dishes, and stole tencrowns. She had minded me and mended my clothes and seen to mybehaviour ever since my mother died of a fever when I was scarce twoyears old. Of my mother I remember nothing, but if one may judge frommy father's long grief and her portrait in the dining-hall, she had beena good and a gentle as well as a most beautiful woman. Jean, with heruncouth tongue and stern face, is still a clear figure in my memory.She was a kind nurse in the main, and if her temper was doubtful frommany sore trials, her cakes and sugar were excellent salves to mywronged heart. She was, above all things, a famous housewife, keepingthe place spotless and clean, so that when one entered the house ofBarns there was always something fresh and cool in the very air.

  But here I am at the end of my little gallery, for the place was bare offolk, and the life a lonely one. Here I grew up amid the woods and hillsand the clean air, with a great zest for all the little excellencies ofmy lot, and a tolerance of its drawbacks. By the time I had come tosixteen years I had swam in every pool in Tweed for miles up and down,climbed every hill, fished in every burn, and ridden and fallen fromevery horse in my father's stable. I had been as far west as TintockHill and as far south as the Loch o' the Lowes. Nay, I had once beentaken to Edinburgh in company with Tam, who bought me a noblefishing-rod, and showed me all the wondrous things to be seen. A bandof soldiers passed down the High Street from the Castle with a greatclanking and jingling, and I saw my guide straighten up his back andkeep time with his feet to their tread. All the way home, as I satbefore him on the broad back of Maisie, he told me tales of hiscampaigns, some of them none too fit for a boy's ear; but he was carriedaway and knew not what he was saying. This first put a taste for theprofession of arms into my mind, which was assiduously fostered by myfencing lessons and the many martial tales I read. I found among myfather's books the chronicles of Froissart and a history of the NormanKings, both in the English, which I devoured by night and day. Then Ihad Tacitus and Livy, and in my fourteenth year I began the study ofGreek with a master at Peebles. So that soon I had read most of the"Iliad" and all the "Odyssey," and would go about repeating the long,swinging lines. I think that story of the man who, at the siege of someFrench town, shouted a Homeric battle-piece most likely to be true, forwith me the Greek had a like effect, and made me tramp many miles overthe hills or ride the horses more hard than my father permitted.

  But this book-work was, after all, but half of my life, and that theless memorable. All the sights and sounds of that green upland vale arelinked for me with memories of boyish fantasies. I used to climb up theridge of Scrape when the sun set and dream that the serried ranks ofhills were a new country where all was strange, though I knew well thatan hour of the morning would dispel the fancy. Then I would descendfrom the heights, and for weeks be so fiercely set on the sports of thetime of year that I had scarcely time for a grave thought. I have oftengone forth to the lambing with the shepherds, toiled all day in thebrown moors, and at night dropped straight off to sleep as I sat in mychair at meat. Then there was the salmon-fishing in the late spring,when the blood ran hot at the flare of the torches and the shimmer ofthe spears, and I, a forlorn young fool, shivered in my skin as the keenwind blew down the water. There was the swing and crackle of the stonesin winter when the haughlands of Manor were flooded, and a dozenbrown-faced men came to the curling and the air rang with shouts andlaughter. I have mind, too, of fierce days of snow when men lookedsolemn and the world was so quiet that I whistled to keep me fromdespondency, and the kitchen at Barns was like a place in an inn withfamishing men and dripping garments. Then Tweed would be buried undersome great drift and its kindly flow sorely missed by man and beast.But best I remember the loosening of winter, when the rains from themoors sent down the river roaring-red, and the vale was one pageant ofdelicate greenery and turbid brown torrent.

  Often I would take my books and go into the heart of the hills for daysand nights. This, my father scarce liked, but he never hindered me. Itwas glorious to kindle your fire in the neuk of a glen, broil yourtrout, and make your supper under the vault of the pure sky. Sweet,too, at noonday to lie beside the wellhead of some lonely burn, andthink of many things that can never be set down and are scarceremembered. But these were but dreams, and this is not their chronicle;so it behooves me to shut my ear to vagrom memories.

  To Dawyck I went the more often the older I grew. For Marjory Veitch hadgrown into a beautiful, lissom girl, with the same old litheness of bodyand gaiety of spirit. She was my comrade in countless escapades, andthough I have travelled the world since then I have never found areadier or a braver. But with the years she grew more maidenly, and Idared less to lead her into mad ventures. Nay, I who had played withher in the woods and fished and raced with her as with some other lad,began to feel a foolish awe in her presence, and worshipped her fromafar. The fairy learning of her childhood was but the index of awistfulness and delicacy of nature which, to my grosser spirit, seemedsomething to uncover one's head before. I have loved her dearly all mylife, but I have never more than half understood her; which is a goodgift of God to most men, for the confounding of vanity.

  To her a great sorrow had come. For when she was scarce thirteen, herfather, the laird of Dawyck, who had been ever of a home-keeping nature,died from a fall while hunting on the brow of Scrape. He had been herchildhood's companion, and she mourned for him as sorely as ever humanbeing mourned for another. Michael, her only brother, was far abroad ina regiment of the Scots French Guards, so she was left alone in thegreat house with no other company than the servants and a cross-grainedaunt who heard but one word in twenty. For this reason I rode over theoftener to comfort her loneliness.