by John Buchan
ENVOI
Down in the deep-cut glen it had been almost dark, for the wooded hills rose steeply above the track. But when the horses had struggled up the last stony patch of moraine and reached the open uplands the riders found a clear amber twilight. And when they had passed the cleft called the Wolf’s Throat, they saw a great prospect to the west of forest and mountain with the sun setting between two peaks, a landscape still alight with delicate, fading colours. Overhead the evening star twinkled in a sky of palest amethyst. Involuntarily they halted.
Alison pointed to lights a mile down the farther slope.
“There are the cars with the baggage,” she said, “and the grooms to take the horses back. We can get to our inn in an hour. You are safe, Dickson, for we are across the frontier. Let’s stop here for supper, and have our last look at Evallonia.”
Mr McCunn descended heavily from his horse.
“Ay, I’m safe,” he said. “And to-morrow there will be a telegram from France saying I’m dead. Well, that’s the end of an auld song.” He kicked vigorously to ease his cramped legs, and while Dougal and Sir Archie took the food from the saddle-bags and the two women spread a tablecloth on a flat rock, he looked down the ravine to the dim purple hollow which was the country they had left.
Jaikie’s last word to Dougal at Melina had been an injunction to make the end crown the work. “Be sure and have a proper finish,” he had told him. “You know what he is. Let him think he’s in desperate danger till he’s over the border. He would break his heart if he thought that he was out of the game too soon.” So Dougal had been insistent with Prince Odalchini. “You owe Mr McCunn more than you can ever repay, and it isn’t much that I ask. He must believe that Juventus is after him to bring him back. Get him off to-night, and keep up the pretence that it’s deadly secret. Horses — that’s the thing that will please his romantic soul.”
So Dickson had all day been secluded in the House of the Four Winds, his meals had been brought him by Dougal, and Peter Wappit had stood sentry outside his chamber door. As the afternoon wore on his earlier composure had been shot with restlessness, and he watched the sun decline with an anxious eye. But his spirits had recovered when he found himself hoisted upon an aged mare of Prince Odalchini’s, which was warranted quiet, and saw the others booted and spurred. He had felt himself living a moment of high drama, and to be embraced and kissed on both cheeks by Prince Odalchini had seemed the right kind of farewell. The ride through secluded forest paths had been unpleasant, for he had only once been on a horse in his life before, and Archie bustled them along to keep up the illusion of a perilous flight. Dougal, no horseman himself, could do nothing to help him, but Alison rode by his side, and now and again led his beast when he found it necessary to cling with both hands to the saddle.
But once they were in the mountain cleft comfort had returned, for now the pace was easy and he had leisure for his thoughts. He realised that for days he had been living with fear. “You’re not a brave man,” he told himself. “The thing about you is that you’re too much of a coward to admit that you’re afraid. You let yourself in for daft things because your imagination carries you away, and then for weeks on end your knees knock together. . . . But it’s worth it — you know it’s worth it, you old epicurean,” he added, “for the sake of the relief when it’s over.” He realised that he was about to enjoy the peace of soul which he had known long ago at Huntingtower on the morning after the fight.
But this time there was more than peace. He cast an eye over his shoulder down the wooded gorge — all was quiet — he had escaped from his pursuers. The great adventure had succeeded. Far ahead beyond the tree-tops he saw the cleft of the Wolf’s Throat sharp against the sunset. In half an hour the frontier would be passed. His spirit was exalted. He remembered something he had read — in Stevenson, he thought — where a sedentary man had been ravished by a dream of galloping through a midnight pass at the head of cavalry with a burning valley behind him. Well, he was a sedentary man, and he was not dreaming an adventure, but in the heart of one. Never had his wildest fancies envisaged anything like this. He had been a king, acclaimed by shouting mobs. He had kept a throne warm for a friend, and now he was vanishing into the darkness, an honourable fugitive, a willing exile. He was the first grocer in all history that had been a Pretender to a Crown. The clack of hooves on stone, the jingling of bits, the echo of falling water were like strong wine. He did not sing aloud, for he was afraid of alarming his horse, but he crooned to himself snatches of spirited songs. “March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale” was one, and “Jock o’ Hazeldean” was another.
* * * * *
Even on that hill-top the summer night was mild, and the fern was warm, baked by long hours of sun. The little company felt the spell of the mountain quiet after a week of alarums, and ate their supper in silence. Dickson munched a sandwich with his face turned east. He was the first to speak.
“Jaikie’s down there,” he said. “I wonder what will become of Jaikie? He’s a quiet laddie, but he’s the dour one when he’s made up his mind. Then he’s like a stone loosed from a catapult. But I’ve no fear for Jaikie now he has you to look after him.” He turned to beam upon Alison and stroked her arm.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” said the girl. “We talked a lot about it in the summer. He went on a walking-tour to think things out and discover what he wanted most.”
“Well, he has found that out,” said Dickson genially. “It’s you, Miss Alison. Jaikie’s my bairn, and now I’ve got another in yourself. I’m proud of my family. Dougal there is already a force for mischief in Europe.”
Dougal grinned. “I wonder what Mr Craw will say about all this. He’ll be over the moon about it, and he’ll think that he and his papers are chiefly responsible. Humbug! There are whiles when I’m sick of my job. They talk about the power of the Press, and it is powerful enough in ordinary times. The same with big finance. But let a thing like Juventus come along, and the Press and the stock exchange are no more than penny whistles. It’s the Idea that wins every time — the Idea with brains and guts behind it.”
“Youth,” said Janet. “Yes, youth is the force in the world to-day, for it isn’t tired and it can hope. But you have forgotten Mr McCunn. He made the success of Juventus possible, for he found it its leader. It’s a pity the story can’t be told, for he deserves a statue in Melina as the Great Peacemaker.”
“It’s the same thing,” said Dougal. “He’s youth.”
“In two months’ time I’ll be sixty-three,” said Dickson.
“What does that matter? I tell you you’re young. Compared to you Jaikie and I are old, done men. And you’re the most formidable kind of youth, for you’ve humour, and that’s what youth never has. Jaikie has a little maybe, but nothing to you, and I haven’t a scrap myself. I’ll be a bigger man than Craw ever was, for I haven’t his failings. And Jaikie will be a big man, too, though I’m not just sure in what way. But though I become a multimillionaire and Jaikie a prime minister, we will neither of us ever be half the man that Mr McCunn is. It was a blessed day for me when I first fell in with him.”
“Deary me,” said Dickson. “That’s a grand testimonial, but I don’t deserve it. I have a fair business mind, and I try to apply it — that’s all. It was the Gorbals Die-hards that made me. Eight years ago I retired from the shop, and I was a timid elderly body. The Die-hards learned me not to be afraid.”
“You don’t know what fear is,” said Dougal.
“And they made me feel young again.”
“You could never be anything but young.”
“You’re wrong. I’m both timid and old — the best you can say of me is that, though I’m afraid, I’m never black-afraid, and though I’m old, I’m not dead-old.”
“That’s the best that could be said about any mortal man,” said Archie solemnly. “What are you going to do now? After this game of king-making, won’t Carrick be a bit dull?”
“I’m going back to Blaweary,
” said Dickson, “to count my mercies, for I’m a well man again. I’m going to catch a wheen salmon, and potter about my bits of fields, and read my books, and sit by my fireside. And to the last day of my life I’ll be happy, thinking of the grand things I’ve seen and the grand places I’ve been in. Ay, and the grand friends I’ve known — the best of all.”
“I think you are chiefly a poet,” said Alison.
Dickson did not reply for a moment. He looked at her tenderly and seemed to be pondering a new truth.
“Me!” he said. “I wish I was, but I could never string two verses together.”
THE END
THE ISLAND OF SHE EP
The 1936 novel The Island of Sheep is the final of five novels in the Richard Hannay series. The plot takes place some twelve years later on from The Three Hostages, the last novel. Hannay, now in his fifties, is summoned by an old oath to protect the son of a man he once knew, who is also heir to the secret of a great treasure. During his adventures, Hannay obtains help from Sandy Arbuthnot, who is now Lord Clanroyden, and featured in three other Buchan novels: Greenmantle, The Three Hostages and The Courts of the Morning. The action takes place in England, Scotland and on the Island of Sheep, which, according to Buchan, is in ‘the Norlands’ and serves as an evident model for the Faroe Islands.
The first edition
CONTENTS
PART I. Fosse
CHAPTER I. Lost Gods
CHAPTER II. Hanham Flats
CHAPTER III. The Tablet of Jade
CHAPTER IV. Haraldsen
CHAPTER V. Haraldsen’s Son
CHAPTER VI. Sundry Doings at Fosse
CHAPTER VII. Lord Clanroyden Intervenes
PART II. Laverlaw
CHAPTER VIII. Sanctuary
CHAPTER IX. Lochinvar
CHAPTER X. The Dog Samr
CHAPTER XI. We Shift our Base
PART III. The Island of Sheep
CHAPTER XII. Hulda’s Folk
CHAPTER XIII. Marine Biology
CHAPTER XIV. The Ways of the Pink-Foot
CHAPTER XV. Transformation by Fire
CHAPTER XVI. The Riddle of the Tablet
TO
J.N.S.B.
WHO KNOWS THE NORLANDS AND THE WAYS OF THE WILD GEESE
PART I. Fosse
CHAPTER I. Lost Gods
I have never believed, as some people do, in omens and forewarnings, for the dramatic things in my life have generally come upon me as suddenly as a tropical thunderstorm. But I have observed that in a queer way I have been sometimes prepared for them by my mind drifting into an unexpected mood. I would remember something I had not thought of for years, or start without reason an unusual line of thought. That was what happened to me on an October evening when I got into the train at Victoria.
That afternoon I had done what for me was a rare thing, and attended a debate in the House of Commons. Lamancha was to make a full-dress speech, and Lamancha on such an occasion is worth hearing. But it was not my friend’s eloquence that filled my mind or his deadly handling of interruptions, but a reply which the Colonial Secretary gave to a question before the debate began. A name can sometimes be like a scent or a tune, a key to long-buried memories. When old Melbury spoke the word ‘Lombard,’ my thoughts were set racing down dim alleys of the past. He quoted a memorandum written years ago and incorporated in the report of a certain Commission; ‘A very able memorandum,’ he called it, ‘by a certain Mr. Lombard,’ which contained the point he wished to make. Able! I should think it was. And the writer! To be described as ‘a certain Mr. Lombard’ showed how completely the man I once knew had dropped out of the world’s ken.
I did not do justice to Lamancha’s speech, for I thought of Lombard all through it. I thought of him in my taxi going to the station, and, when I had found my compartment, his face came between me and the pages of my evening paper. I had not thought much about him for years, but now Melbury’s chance quotation had started a set of pictures which flitted like a film series before my eyes. I saw Lombard as I had last seen him, dressed a little differently from to-day, a little fuller in the face than we lean kine who have survived the War, with eyes not blurred from motoring, and voice not high-pitched like ours to override the din of our environment. I saw his smile, the odd quick lift of his chin — and I realized that I was growing old and had left some wonderful things behind me.
The compartment filled up with City men going home to their comfortable southern suburbs. They all had evening papers, and some had morning papers to finish. Most of them appeared to make this journey regularly, for they knew each other, and exchanged market gossip or commented on public affairs. A friendly confidential party; and I sat in my corner looking out of the window at another landscape than what some poet has called ‘smoky dwarf houses,’ and seeing a young man’s face which was very different from theirs.
Lombard had come out to East Africa as secretary to a Government Commission, a Commission which he very soon manipulated as he pleased. I met him there when I was sent up on a prospecting job. He was very young then, not more than twenty-five, and he was in his first years at the Bar. He had been at one of the lesser public schools and at Cambridge, had been a good scholar, and was as full as he could hold of books. I remembered our first meeting in a cold camp on the Uasin Gishu plateau, when he quoted and translated a Greek line about the bitter little wind before dawn. But he never paraded his learning, for his desire was to be in complete harmony with his surroundings, and to look very much the pioneer. Those were the old days in East Africa, before the ‘Happy Valley’ and the remittance man and settlers who wanted self-government, and people’s hopes were high. He was full of the heroes of the past, like Roddy Owen and Vandeleur and the Portals, and, except that he was a poor horseman, he had something in common with them. With his light figure and bleached fair hair and brown skin he looked the very model of the adventurous Englishman. I thought that there might be a touch of the Jew in his ancestry — something high-coloured and foreign at any rate, for he was more expansive and quickly fired than the rest of us. But on the whole he was as English as a Hampshire water-meadow. . . .
The compartment was blue with pipe-smoke. My companions were talking about rock-gardens. The man in the corner opposite me was apparently an authority on the subject, and he had much to say about different firms of nursery gardeners. He was blond, plump, and baldish, and had a pleasant voice whose tones woke a recollection which I could not fix. I thought that I had probably seen him at some company meeting. . . .
My mind went back to Lombard. I remembered how we had sat on a rock one evening looking over the trough of Equatoria, and, as the sun crimsoned the distant olive-green forests, he had told me his ambitions. In those days the after-glow of Cecil Rhodes’s spell still lay on Africa, and men could dream dreams. Lombard’s were majestic. ‘I have got my inspiration,’ he told me. His old hankerings after legal or literary or political success at home had gone. He had found a new and masterful purpose.
It was a very young man’s talk. I was about his own age, but I had knocked about a bit and saw its crudity. Yet it most deeply impressed me. There were fire and poetry in it, and there was also a pleasant shrewdness. He had had his ‘call’ and was hastening to answer it. Henceforth his life was to be dedicated to one end, the building up of a British Equatoria, with the highlands of the East and South as the white man’s base. It was to be both white man’s and black man’s country, a new kingdom of Prester John. It was to link up South Africa with Egypt and the Sudan, and thereby complete Rhodes’s plan. It was to be a magnet to attract our youth and a settlement ground for our surplus population. It was to carry with it a spiritual renaissance for England. ‘When I think,’ he cried, ‘of the stuffy life at home! We must bring air into it, and instead of a blind alley give ‘em open country. . . .’
The talk in the compartment was now of golf. Matches were being fixed up for the following Sunday. My vis-à-vis had evidently some repute as a golfer, and was d
escribing how he had managed to lower his handicap. Golf ‘shop’ is to me the most dismal thing on earth, and I shut my ears to it. ‘So I took my mashie, you know, my little mashie’ — the words seemed to have all the stuffiness of which Lombard had complained. Here in perfection was the smug suburban life from which he had revolted. My thoughts went back to that hilltop three thousand miles and thirty years away. . . .
All of us at that time had talked a little grandiloquently, but with Lombard it was less a rhapsody than a passionate confession of faith. He was not quite certain about the next step in his own career. He had been offered a post on the staff of the Governor of X — , which might be a good jumping-off ground. There was the business side, too. He had the chance of going into the firm of Y — , which was about to spend large sums on African development. Money was important, he said, and cited Rhodes and Beit. He had not made up his mind, but ways and means did not greatly trouble him. His goal was so clear that he would find a road to it.
I do not think that I have ever had a stronger impression of a consuming purpose. Here was one who would never be content to settle among the fatted calves of the world. He might fail, but he would fail superbly.
‘Some day,’ I said, ‘there will be a new British Dominion, and it will be called Lombardy. You have the right sort of name for Empire-making.’
I spoke quite seriously, and he took it seriously.
‘Yes, I have thought of that,’ he said, ‘but it would have to be Lombardia.’
That was not the last time I saw him, for a year later he came down to Rhodesia, again on Government business, and we went through a rather odd experience together. But it was that hour in the African twilight that stuck in my memory. Here was a man dedicated to a crusade, ready to bend every power of mind and body to a high ambition, and to sacrifice all the softer things of life. I had felt myself in the presence of a young knight-errant, gravely entering upon his vows of service. . . .