by John Buchan
The sederunt had been the queerest in his recollection. The great boat-shed on the edge of the tide had been bright at first with a red sunset, but presently the April dusk had gathered, and ships’ lanterns, swung from the rafters, had made patches of light among its shadows. Beneath, round the rude table, had sat fifty and more shaggy seafarers, each one entering the guarded door with the password for the night. Old Sandy Kyles was dead, and in the chair of the Chief Fisher sat Eben Garnock, a mountainous man with a beard like Moses and far-sighted blue eyes beneath pent-house brows. There were gaps in the familiar company, and Mr Lammas heard how one had lost his boat and his life off the Bass in the great January storm, and another had shipwrecked at Ushant and was now in a French gaol. But there was a goodly number of old friends — Tam Dorrit, who had once taken him on a memorable run to the Eastern Banks; Andrew Cairns, who had sailed his smack far into the unpermitted Baltic; the old man Stark who, said rumour, had been a pirate in western waters; and young Bob Muschat, a new member, who had bird-nested with him many a Saturday in the Dunnikier woods. There were faces that were new to him, and he noted that they were of a wilder cast than those he first remembered. The war was drawing the Free Fishers into odd paths. There were men there who had been pressed for the Navy and had seen Trafalgar, men who had manned privateers and fought obscure fights in forgotten seas, men who on Government business had talked in secret chambers with great folk and risked their lives in the dark of the moon. It was not his recovered boyhood that Mr Lammas saw, but a segment of a grimmer world whose echoes came faintly at intervals to St Andrews halls.
The company had been piped to meat by a bosun’s whistle, and they had said the Fisher’s Grace, which begins:
“For flukes and partans, cakes and ale,
Salty beef and seein’ kale—”
and concludes with a petition for the same mercies at the next meeting. There was no formality round their table, but there was decorum, the decorum of men for whom the world was both merry and melancholy. They faced death daily, so even in their cups they could not be children. Mighty eaters and drinkers, good fare only loosed their tongues. Mr Lammas heard tales which he knew would haunt his dreams. When they forsook ale for whisky-toddy, brewed in great blue bowls of Dutch earthenware, the first songs began. He drank liquors new to him, in particular a brew of rum, burned and spiced, which ran in his veins like a pleasant fire. His precision was blown aside like summer mist; he joined lustily in the choruses; himself he sang “Dunbarton’s Drums” in his full tenor; his soul melted and expanded till he felt a kindness towards all humanity and a poet’s glory in the richness of the world.
This high mood had accompanied his striding under the spring moon for three-quarters of his homeward journey. His fancy had been kindled by glimpses into marvels — marvels casually mentioned as common incidents of life. One man had sailed round the butt of Norway to Archangel, and on returning had been blocked for five days among icebergs. “Like heidstanes in a kirkyaird,” he had said—”I hae still the grue of them in my banes.” Another had gone into the Arctic among the great whales, and stammered a tale — he had some defect in his speech — of waters red like a battlefield, of creatures large as a hill rolling and sighing in their death-throes, and of blood rising in forty-foot spouts and drenching the decks like rain. Still another, a little man with a mild face and a mouth full of texts, had been cast away on the Portugal coast, and had shipped in a Spanish boat and spent two years in the rotting creeks of the Main. “God’s wonders in the deep!” he had cried. “Maybe, but it’s the Deil’s wonders in yon unco land,” and, being a little drunk, he had babbled of blood-sucking plants and evil beasts and men more evil. Poetry churned in Mr Lammas’s head, and he strung phrases which ravished him. . . .
But the excitement was ebbing, and “Dunbarton’s Drums” was dying in his ears. He was almost across the King’s Muir, and could see the first lights of St Andrews twinkling in the hollow. With an effort he pulled himself together. He was returning to duty, and must put away childish things.
Suddenly he was aware of a figure on his left. He saw it only as a deeper shadow in the darkness, but he heard its feet on the gravel of the track. A voice caused him to relax the grip which had tightened on his staff; it was a voice he knew.
“You have the pace of me, sir.” The owner of the voice dropped into step.
Had there been light to see, the face of Mr Lammas would have been observed to fall into lines of professorial dignity.
“You walk late, Mr Kinloch,” he said.
“Like yourself, sir, and for the same cause. I, too, have been in loco. . . . Dulce est desipere, you know. Old Braxfield used to translate the line, ‘How blessed it is now and then to talk noansense’!”
“I do not follow.”
“I mean that I had the honour of supping in your company, sir. Of supping under your benediction. I am the latest recruit to the honourable company of the Free Fishers.”
Mr Lammas was startled. Here was his secret disclosed with a vengeance, for one of his own pupils shared it. His safety lay in the Fishers’ Oath and also in the character of the participant. By the mercy of Providence this lad, Jock Kinloch, and he had always been on friendly terms. The only son of Lord Mannour, the judge whom he was trysted to meet on the morrow, he was unlike the ordinary boys from the country manse, the burgh shop or the plough-tail. Among the two hundred there was at the moment no “primar,” that is, a nobleman’s son, and Jock ranked as one of the few “secondars” or scions of the gentry. He was a stirring youth, often at odds with authority, and he had more than once been before the Rector and his assessors at the suit of an outraged St Andrews townsman. He was popular among his fellows, for he had money to spend and spent it jovially, his laugh was the loudest at the dismal students’ table in St Leonards, on the links he smote a mighty ball, he was esteemed a bold rider with the Fife Hunt, and he donned the uniform of the Fencibles. No scholar and a sparing attendant at lectures, he had nevertheless revealed a certain predilection for the subjects which Mr Lammas professed, had won a prize for debate in the Logic class, and in Rhetoric had shown a gift for declamation and a high-coloured taste in English style. He had written poetry, too, galloping iambics in the fashionable mode, and excursions in the vernacular after the manner of Burns. Sometimes of an evening in the Professor’s lodgings there would be a session of flamboyant literary talk, and once or twice Mr Lammas had been on the brink of unlocking his study drawer and disclosing his own pursuit of the Muses. For most of his pupils he had a kindliness, but for Jock Kinloch he felt something like affection.
“It is an old story with me,” he said primly. “It goes back to my Dysart boyhood, when I was never away from the harbour-side. I have kept up the link out of sentiment, Mr Kinloch. As one grows older one is the more tenderly affectioned to the past.”
The young man laughed.
“You needn’t apologise to me, sir. I honour you for this night’s cantrip — maybe I had always a notion of something of the sort, for there must be that in you that keeps the blood young compared to the sapless kail-runts of the Senatus. I had thought it might be a woman.”
“You thought wrong,” was the icy answer. Mr Lammas was a little offended.
“Apparently I did, and I make you my apologies for a clumsy guess.” The boy’s tone was respectful, but Mr Lammas knew that, could he see it, there was a twinkle in the black eyes. Jock Kinloch’s eyes were dark as a gipsy’s and full of audacious merriment.
“Maybe yon queer folk at Pittenweem,” he went on, “brew a better elixir of youth than any woman. They were doubtless more circumspect at your end of the table, but at my end the tongues were slack and I got some wild tales. It would have done that douce St Andrews folk a world of good to sit down at yon board and hear the great Professor ask the blessing. . . . But no, no,” he added, as if conscious of some mute protest from his companion, “they’ll never hear a word of it from me. There’s the Fishers’ Oath between us. You’ll be
Professor Anthony Lammas as before, the man that keeps the Senatus in order and guides my erring steps in the paths of logic and good taste, and Nanty Lammas will be left among the partans and haddies and tarpots of Pittenweem.”
“I am obliged to you, Mr Kinloch. As you say, the oath is between us, and the Free Fishers sup always under the rose.”
The boy edged closer to his companion. The lights of the town were growing near — few in number, for the hour was late. He laid a hand upon Mr Lammas’s arm.
“There’s more in the oath than secrecy, sir,” he said; “there’s a promise of mutual aid. I took pains to make up on you, for I wanted to ask a favour from you as from a brother in the mystery. I want information, and maybe I want advice. Will you give it me?”
“Speak on.” Mr Lammas, his mind at ease, was well disposed to this garrulous youth.
“It’s just this. When you finished college you were tutor in my Lord Snowdoun’s family? You were the governor of his eldest son and prepared him for Oxford? Am I right, sir?”
“I was governor to the young Lord Belses, and for two years lived in his lordship’s company.”
“Well, I’d like to know what kind of a fellow he is. I don’t want to hear about a brilliant and promising young nobleman — born to a great estate — a worthy successor of his father — bilge-pipe stuff like that. I want a judgment of him from an honest man, whose hand must have often itched for his ears.”
“I assure you it never did. There was much in Harry I did not understand, but there was little to offend me. He was a most hopeful scholar, with taste and knowledge beyond his years. He was an adept at sports in which I could not share. His manners were remarkable for their urbanity and in person he was altogether pleasing.”
“In short, a damned pompous popinjay!”
“I said nothing of the kind, and let me tell you that it ill-becomes you, Mr Kinloch, to speak thus of one of whom you can know nothing. Have you become a Jacobin to rave against rank? Have you ever seen the young lord?”
“Aye, I have seen him twice.” The boy spoke moodily. “Once he came out with the Hunt. He was the best mounted of the lot of us, and I won’t deny he can ride. At first I took the fences side by side with him, but my old Wattie Wud-spurs was no match for his blood beast, and I was thrown out before the kill. He spoke to me, and he was so cursed patronising I could have throttled him. Minced his words like an affected school-miss.”
“I see in that no cause for offence.”
“No, but the second time he gave me cause — weighty cause, by God. It was at Mount Mordun, at the Hogmanay ball, and he came with Kirsty Evandale’s party. Kirsty was to be my partner in the first eightsome, and she jilted me, by gad — looked through me when I went to claim her — and danced all night with that rotten lordling.”
“Your grievance seems to lie rather against Miss Christian Evandale.”
“No — she was beguiled — women are weak things. There were the rest of us — country bumpkins compared to this spruce dandy, with the waist of a girl and the steps of a dancing-master. There was me — not a word to say for myself — boiling with passion and blushing and fuming — and all the time as gawky as a gander. . . . You say there has never been a woman in your life. Well, there’s one in mine — Kirsty. I’m so crazily in love with her that she obscures daylight for me. They tell me that the Snowdouns want to make a match of it with Belses, for they are none too well off for grandees, and Kirsty will own half the land between Ore and Eden. . . . Now here is what I want to know. What about the popinjay? Is he scent and cambric and gold chains and silk waistcoats and nothing more, or is there a man behind the millinery? For if there’s a man, I’m determined to come to grips with him.”
The two were now under the shadow of the ruined tower of St Regulus, and their feet were on the southward cobbles of the little city.
“Dear me, you are very peremptory,” said Mr Lammas. “You summon me like an advocate with an unfriendly witness.”
“I summon you by the Fishers’ Oath,” said the boy. “I know that what you say will be honest and true.”
“I am obliged, and I will answer you, but my knowledge stops short five years back. When I knew Harry he was immature — there was no question of a man — he was only boy and dreamer. But I can bear witness to a warm heart, a just mind and a high spirit. He may end as a fantastic, but not as a fop or a fool. He made something of a name at Christ Church, I understand, has travelled much in Europe, and has now entered Parliament. I have heard rumour of some extravagance in his political views, but I have heard no charge against his character. Your picture does not fit in with my recollection, Mr Kinloch, and you will do well to revise it. A dainty dress and deportment do not necessarily imply effeminacy, just as rudeness is no proof of courage.”
“You think he will fight, then?”
“Fight? What is this talk of fighting?”
“Simply that if he is going to cast his glamour over Kirsty, I’ll have him out by hook or by crook. I’m so damnably in love with her that I’ll stick at nothing.”
“You are a foolish child. If I did my duty I would report you to—”
“The Fishers’ Oath! Remember the Fishers’ Oath — Nanty Lammas!” He darted down a side street without further word, as the clock on the town-kirk steeple struck the hour of twelve.
CHAPTER II. In Which Lord Mannour Discourses
Mr Lammas tumbled into bed in the closet behind his living-room, and fell instantly asleep, for he was drowsy with salt air and many long Scots miles. There seemed but an instant between his head touching the pillow and the knuckles of his landlady, Mrs Babbie McKelvie, sounding on his door. “It’s chappit five, Professor,” her voice followed. “Ye’ll mind ye maun be on the road by seven.”
He rose in a very different mood from that of the night before. Now he was the learned professor, the trusted emissary of his university, setting out on a fateful journey. Gravity fell upon him like a frost. He shaved himself carefully, noting with approval the firm set of his chin and the growing height of his forehead as the hair retreated. A face, he flattered himself, to command respect. His locks had been newly cut by Jimmy Jardine, the college barber, and he subdued their vagaries with a little pomatum. His dress was sober black, his linen was fresh, and he had his father’s seals at his fob; but, since he was to travel the roads, he wore his second-best pantaloons and he strapped strong frieze leggings round the lower part of them. Then he examined the rest of his travelling wardrobe, the breeches and buckled shoes to be worn on an occasion of ceremony, the six fine cravats Mrs McKelvie had hemmed for him, the six cambric shirts which were the work of the same needlewoman, the double-breasted waistcoat of wool and buckram to be worn if the weather grew chilly. He was content with his preparations, and packed his valise with a finicking neatness. He was going south of the Border into unknown country, going to the metropolis itself to uphold his university’s cause among strangers. St Andrews should not be shamed by her ambassador. He looked at his face again in his little mirror. Young, but not too young — the mouth responsible — a few fine lines of thought on the brow and around the eyes — he might pass for a well-preserved forty, if he kept his expression at a point of decent gravity.
As his habit was, he took a short turn in the street before breakfast. It was a wonderful morning, the wind set in the north-west, the sky clear but for a few streamers, and the bay delicately crisped like a frozen pool. The good-wives in the west end of the Mid Street were washing their doorsteps or fetching water from the well, and as they wrought they shouted to each other the morning’s news. There were no red gowns about, for it was vacation time, but far down the street he saw a figure which he knew for the Professor of Humanity, returning from his pre-breakfast walk on the links. His colleague was a sick man who lived by a strict regime, and Mr Lammas thanked Heaven that he had a sound body. Never had he felt more vigorous, more master of himself, he thought, as he drew the sweet air into his lungs. He was exhilarated, and would h
ave liked to sing, but he repressed the feeling and looked at the sky with the brooding brow of one interrupted in weighty thoughts. “Dunbarton’s Drums” was a hundred years away. The housewives gave him good morning, and he ceremonially returned their salutes. He knew that they knew that he was bound for London — not in the ramshackle diligence that lumbered its way daily westward, but riding post, as became a man on an urgent errand. In half an hour the horses from Morrison’s stables would be at the door, for at Kirkcaldy he must catch the tide and the Leith packet.
As he re-entered his house his mouth had shaped itself for whistling, which he only just checked in time. “The Auld Man’s Mare’s Deid” was the inappropriate tune which had almost escaped his lips. He bent his brows, and straightened his face, and became the dignitary. A faint smell of burning came to his nostrils.
“Babbie,” he thundered, “you are letting the porridge burn again. Have I not told you a hundred times that I cannot abide burnt porridge?”
The scarlet face of Mrs McKelvie appeared from the little kitchen. “‘Deed sir, I’m sore flustered this morning. The lassie was late wi’ the baps, and the fire wadna kindle, and I dauredna dish the parritch wi’ you stravaigin’ outbye. We maun haste, or Cupar Tam will be round wi’ the horses afore ye have drucken your tea. . . . Eh, sirs, but ye’re a sight for sair een, Mr Lammas. I’ve never seen ye sae trig and weel set up. Tak my advice and keep out o’ the lassies’ gait, for they tell me there’s daft queans about England.”