by John Buchan
An hour later the housekeeper looked in. “It’s a braw nicht now and a fine mune. Haste and get your nightcap, sir, for it’s near time for your bed.”
“Marget must be obeyed,” said the minister, and, having clapped an ancient hat on his head, he led his guest out of the back-door to the shelf of garden above the Yonder. After the rain the stream was loud, but the wind had sunk, and there was no other sound but an occasional owl and the soft rustle of homing beasts. On the other bank the trees ceased at the gorge’s edge, and the bare breast of a hill rose to the pale sky. It was the colour of ripe corn in the moonlight and dotted with the white forms of sheep.
The old man filled his lungs with the soft air.
“That is a sight I love,” he said. “The sheep look like white tombstones in some ancient graveyard of the gods.”
Mr Dott did not love it. The peace of the minister’s study had gone from him, and he knew again the curious disquiet that he had felt at the sight of Hungrygrain. It was not the loneliness but the secrecy which oppressed him, an unpleasing sense of anticipation.
“What’s that moving among the sheep?” he asked sharply.
Something was making the animals scatter. Something stirred at the far side of the Yonder. Mr Dott waited tensely, for he realised that whatever it was it was coming towards them. He glanced back to the house where the open door made an oblong of light. Mr Blackstocks was quoting Greek, but he did not listen, for his eyes were strained upon the near lip of the ravine.
Suddenly a figure appeared on it and stumbled towards them. Mr Dott caught the minister’s arm and would have drawn him towards the house, till he saw that there was no menace in the figure. It was that of a young man, whose clothes were dripping wet and much disordered and whose face was white and weary. Blood from a wound on his forehead was blinding his eyes.
CHAPTER VII. In Which a Baronet is Discomposed
The young man’s face was ghastly in the light of the moon. He clutched at Mr Dott, who retreated in alarm, but who came forward when he realised the truth. This was a sick man with no purpose of hostility; his clothes were stained, and one coat-sleeve was torn, but they had once been fashionable; his cravat was wildly disordered, but it was of fine cambric; his countenance was dirty and blood-smeared, but the features showed breeding. Mr Dott was reassured.
“Hold up, sir,” he said, giving him his arm. Then to the minister, “We must get him inbye, for this garden is no place for a dwam. Your study sofa is the bit for him.”
He was a tall youth and leaned heavily on his small companion. They were met in the passage by the housekeeper, who exclaimed shrilly, “Is’t the minister? Is’t himsel’? Whae in the world? . . . Tuts, gie me a haud o’ him. The chiel’s sick, and, gudesakes, he’s gotten an unco clour on the heid. . . . Losh, he’s awa’ wi’ it.” Sure enough the young man fainted and was carried by sturdy female arms to the lamplit study.
The minister stood by twittering gently, while the housekeeper laid the youth on the sofa, undid his neckcloth, unstrapped his pantaloons, and drew off his boots. She fetched a basin of hot water and bathed his brow, felt his pulse in the most professional manner, and shook a disapproving head.
“Nae wound to speak o’,” she announced. “Just a wheen scarts on the scalp as if a gled had pikit at him. But the lad’s sair forfochen — fair foundered. There’s been ill work somewhere this night.”
“A drop of brandy is what he needs,” said Mr Dott.
“And whaur am I to get brandy, think ye? There’s no the savour o’t in this house. There’s whisky in plenty, but whisky’s nae guid, for it wad only fever him.”
There was something ominous about the dead-white face, and the wet hair streaked over the still bleeding forehead. The sick man gave no appearance of coming to himself, but lay with his head limp and his pale lips open, and his breath seemed to be faint and difficult.
“We must get a doctor,” said Mr Dott.
“There’s nae doctor nearer than Yondermouth, and he wadna be muckle use if ye got him. He’s yin that’s no often sober. But there’s nae surgeon’s wark needit. Thae wounds are just scarts and scrapes and the bleedin’ is near stoppit. I’ve skill enough o’ medicine to ken that. If I could get a cup o’ brandy and het milk down his throat, I’se warrant he’d sleep like a bairn and be a weel man in the mornin’.”
“Then brandy must be found,” said Mr Dott. “Is there no Christian house nearby where we could beg a bottle?”
“Nane but Hungrygrain, and he’d be a bauld man that went seekin’ favours at yon door.”
“But there is an inn. I’ve heard tell of an inn.”
The housekeeper raised her head.
“Ay, there’s an inn. It’s a queer kind o’ hostel, but ye’d maybe get what ye sought.”
“Is it near?”
“Ayont the water. No above a mile. Ye’d hae to cross the plank brig at Ritterford.”
“Then I’m off to the inn. There’s a grand moon to light me, if you’ll set me on the road.”
“Ye canna miss it. There’s a path doun this side o’ the Yonder till ye come to the brig, and ayont it there’s the inn on the tap o’ the brae. Ye’ll hae to speak the landlord fair, sir, for he’s a thrawn body. I’ve kenned better men than Purdey, but I’ve kenned waur. Haste ye, for there’s nae time to loss. I’ll get the puir lad out o’ his clothes and inside one o’ the minister’s nightgowns, and into the spare bed. See, he’s comin’ to. . . . But I daurna let him sleep till he has gotten his cordial.”
The figure on the sofa stirred, its eyes opened, and a strong shudder overtook it. As Mr Dott set out on his errand it seemed to be trying to speak.
Sir Turnour Wyse did not turn his chaise up the hill track which Mr Dott had followed. His goal was the inn, and he had been advised in Berwick to cross the Yonder by what was known as the Roman Brig, and then to bend right through a firwood, to cross a strip of moor, to traverse the village of Yonder, and so find the inn a mile beyond on the hill above the stream. The directions had been given him with curious covert looks, which Sir Turnour had remarked but heeded little. He felt himself to be too far north for the manners of civilisation.
The road, once he had left the highway, proved to be vile in the extreme, and the steady downpour of rain which had begun did not add to its cheerfulness. He buttoned the high collar of his dreadnought, but the deluge trickled down his neck, and made great pools on his leather driving apron. Sir Turnour was not commonly sensitive to landscape or weather, but this place struck him as wholly abominable. The ragged fir trees looked like gibbets. When he emerged on the moor he was met by such a blast of wind and water that he could scarcely see the track, and his galloways stumbled among ruts and pot-holes. The clachan, through which he presently passed, was sodden, shabby and tumble-down, like a city slum transported to a sour upland. There was no sign of life in its street, not even a wandering dog, but he was conscious of unfriendly eyes watching him from behind dirty windows.
Sir Turnour, who that morning had been an easy master of his world, began to feel at a disadvantage, and the novel sensation affected his temper. He had come north on an errand which bored him, but which he could not shirk. No man had ever insulted him with impunity, and at whatever trouble to himself he must bring this young whipper-snapper to instant account. It was not his reputation that moved him, for that he believed to be impregnable: it was his own self-respect. He could not be comfortable in his mind while one walked unpunished who had questioned his breeding or his courage. . . . But the enterprise, which had hitherto worn the guise of a majestic punitive expedition, was now losing its dignity. He had hoped to find Belses in his own home and to bring him to book with all the decencies of good society. He had learned by secret channels that he had gone to his mistress’s Northumbrian home, and that had seemed a not unfitting venue for a settlement. But to seek him in this howling wilderness was another matter. What code of manners could obtain in such a desert? His purpose was to meet one of his own class in
the environment of that class, and not to dig out a wretched fugitive like a fox from a hole. He felt that his grand, rock-like self-sufficiency, his complete competence in life, was being imperilled. He might even be in danger of becoming ridiculous. It was an irritated and discomposed baronet that pulled up at the inn.
The place was in the last degree forbidding. It may once have been the mansion of a small laird, for its high-pitched roof and crow-step gables seemed ancient, there was a little courtyard before it, and a ruinous dovecot crowned the slope behind it. But its visage was inhospitable as seen in the driving rain. The small casements were uncurtained, there was no sign above the door, and the door did not stand wide, as a good inn-door should, to welcome the traveller. The forecourt was dirty and cumbered with rubbish, and there was at least one broken pane in each window. One detail alone was satisfactory. Flanking the house were roomy stables, which seemed to be well-cared for, and from which came the stirring of horses. A place could not be wholly comfortless where horseflesh was respected.
The first fury of the rain had ceased, and there was a break in the mist which, from the high vantage-ground of the inn, opened the upper valley. The tree-filled gorge of the stream gave place to a bare glen flanked by hills which to Sir Turnour’s lowland eyes seemed monstrous precipices. In the middle distance a house was apparent, a gaunt rambling erection set among starveling evergreens and ill-nourished firs. A gleam of sun caught its walls, but gave them no cheerfulness, and the end of a broken rainbow on the hillside gave it no colour. The place was ugly as a brickyard and cold as a tomb, and it had a character, too, which Sir Turnour was conscious of but could not define. It was ominous, and stared at him with malign eyes; on that he was clear enough, for he was accustomed to trust his intuitions and back his fancy.
The water from a gutter gathered in the eaves above the inn door and descended thence in a steady cascade, so that anyone entering ran the risk of a wetting. So Sir Turnour sat in his chaise and shouted for the landlord.
At first there was no answer. There was a fresh stamping of hooves from the stables, and what sounded like the voice of an angry man. A cow routed in some outhouse, and a clatter of pails was heard in the direction of the steading. But the weatherworn door behind its curtain of water did not open.
Again and yet again Sir Turnour shouted, and each time his voice became angrier. He was just about to descend, with his whip ready for action, when a voice spoke behind him. Someone had come up from the direction of the stream.
It was a big man, who wore corduroy breeches and a homespun coat with huge pockets. Thick blue worsted stockings enveloped his enormous calves and bulged over his stout country shoes. His rounded shoulders and the downward thrust of his shaggy head gave him the air of a dangerous bull.
“What’s the steer, mannie?” he asked.
Sir Turnour did not understand the question, but realised that it was not friendly.
“Are there no men about this god-forsaken hole?” he thundered.
“There’s me.”
“Are you the innkeeper?”
“Ye’ve said it.”
“Then what the devil do you mean by not attending to your duties? I want a stable for my horse, and rooms and fire, and food for myself and my servant. Look sharp about it.” He flung back his driving apron, and descended from the chaise.
The man did not move.
“Ye can get back into your coachie, and turn your beasts’ heads, and return the road ye came. There’s no place for ye here.”
Sir Turnour was at his ease again. Here was a surly ruffian to be brought to heel, and that was a task with which he was familiar. He divested himself of his dreadnought and his gloves, and handed them to his servant, who was standing at the galloways’ heads. Then he strolled round the chaise and confronted the innkeeper.
The latter had menace in every line of him. He advanced a step with his head thrust forward and his long arms loose for defence or attack. But when he raised his eyes and saw the other clearly, the resolution seemed to go out of his air. For what he saw was no fleshy, dandified traveller, as he had judged from the voice and the figure as it had appeared on the box seat. Sir Turnour stood on his toes as lightly as a runner, his strong clenched hands white at the knuckles, his poise easy but as charged with swift power as a thundercloud is charged with fire. The innkeeper marked the square shoulders, the corded muscles of the shapely neck, the slim flanks — above all, he marked the vigilant and scornful eye. He was himself a noted wrestler, but he knew that he could not give this man a fall, for he would never get to grips with him. The other would dance round him on those light feet, and an arm like a flail would smite him into unconsciousness. He was a bold man but no fool, and he recognised the trained fighter, no genteel amateur, but one bred in a tough school. So he surrendered at discretion and touched a damp forelock.
“No offence,” he grunted. “Ye take up a man too short, sir. What’s your honour’s will.”
Sir Turnour smiled.
“Jarvis,” he cried to his servant. “Take my baggage indoors. Kick open that door, if it is locked.” Then to the innkeeper. “My will? That you should be a little more active in your public duties, friend. I want rooms, fire and food, and civility — civility observe, for I am particular on that point. Quick with you, for your accursed sky is beginning to drip again.”
The innkeeper showed a surprising activity. He was at the door before Jarvis could assault it, opened it with a clumsy bow, and himself carried in the larger of Sir Turnour’s two valises. The travellers found themselves in a stone-flagged hall which smelt half of stable and half of taproom. Tables and settles were littered with crops, rusty and broken spurs, hawks’ jesses, medicines for hawks, hounds and horses, powder-flasks, shot-pouches and a miscellany of other litter. The landlord led them up an oaken stair, with many broken treads, to an upper hall which was chiefly remarkable for possessing a huge rug of woven rushes into which the feet sank. He flung open a door.
“There’s your parlour, my denty sir, and ayont it lies your bedchamber. Your servant will have to bed in the garret. I’ll get a fire going in a jiffy, but it’s a dry house, this o’ mine, and the roof’s tight, and it’s no ill to warm. Meat ye’ll want. What time will ye be pleased to dine?”
“Your cursed roads have given me a twist. Let us say six o’clock, sharp to the minute. What can you give me?”
He listened gravely to the landlord’s inventory of his larder, for he was one that took his meals seriously. “Faith, we shall not do so dustily. A grilled salmon steak, a cut of hill mutton, and a welsh rarebit — I have dined more scurvily in my day. Claret, no. I have no stomach for your north-country claret. If your ale is sound I will have a tankard of it, and a bottle of your best port for the good of the house. But first I must have a message sent to the house of Hungrygrain. The place is close at hand, I think?”
At the mention of Hungrygrain the landlord, who had drifted into a complaisance which was almost servility, bristled like a terrier.
“What do ye want with Hungrygrain?” he asked surlily.
“What the devil is your business what I want with Hungrygrain? Civility, my friend.” Sir Turnour’s eyes had a frosty gleam in them. “You will take a message to Squire Cranmer — that, I think, is the name — and you will say that—”
“I will take no message. No message will gang out of this place the day.”
“Oho! So that is the way the wind’s set! Listen, my man. You will take, or procure the taking of, my message, and that instantly. If you do not, I shall take it myself. But in that event I shall first of all have had the felicity to thrash you soundly and to fling you down these steep stairs of yours. Make your choice, friend. I am stiff with sitting in my chaise and I should not be averse to a little exercise.”
Once again the two men measured each other with their eyes, and once again the landlord’s conclusion was pessimistic about his chances.
“What’s your errand?” he growled.
“Yo
u will make my compliments to Squire Cranmer — the compliments of Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet, of Wood Rising Hall in the county of Norfolk, and of White’s Club — you will present my carte de visite — and you will inform him that I propose to do myself the honour of waiting upon him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. You will add that, as the matter is somewhat private, I would beg of him to say nothing of it, and not to mention my name till after our meeting. Do you follow?”
“I follow. What if the Squire will not see ye?”
“Now, what do you know of the courtesies due between gentlemen? You take too much upon you, my man.” Sir Turnour extracted a slip of pasteboard from an ivory case, and placed it in an envelope which he took from his valise.
“See that the rain does not make it pulp,” he said. “Off with you or send your trustiest man. Let me have an answer by six, and the dinner you have promised me, and we shall yet be good friends. . . . God, man, what is the trouble? The Squire is your master, and a good one by all I hear, but you seem as shy of approaching him as if he were the Devil with his tongs! Did you never take a message before from one gentleman to another?”
The landlord departed, a slovenly maid appeared with a pailful of red peats and another of birch billets; the valet Jarvis, who had been busy in the bed-chamber, assisted Sir Turnour to his toilet before the fire. His boots were drawn off, and his legs adorned with fine silk stockings, and a pair of handsome monogrammed velvet slippers. He exchanged his coat for a negligé jacket of a loud-patterned tweed, and a quilted silk dressing-gown. Water was boiled somewhere downstairs, and a basin provided wherein Sir Turnour delicately washed his hands and face. Then he lay back in a much-rubbed leather armchair, trimmed his nails with a pen-knife, and proposed to enjoy a siesta before dinner.