Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “Does he keep in touch with his people?”

  “Not he. That door is closed and bolted. He has never been back to Canada. He’s a naturalised American citizen. He won’t speak French unless he’s forced to, and then it’s nothing to boast of. He writes his name ‘Galliard,’ not Gaillard. He has let himself become absorbed in our atmosphere.”

  “Really absorbed?”

  “Well — that’s just the point. He has adopted the externals of our life, but I don’t know how much he’s changed inside. When he married Felicity Dasent five years ago I thought we had got him for keeps. You don’t know Mrs. Galliard?”

  Leithen shook his head. He had been asked this question now a dozen times since he landed.

  “No?” Well, I won’t waste time trying to describe her, for you’ll soon be able to judge for yourself; but I should call her a possessive personality, and she certainly annexed Francis. Oh, yes, he was desperately in love and only too willing to do what she told him. He’s a good-looking fellow, but he hadn’t bothered much about his appearance, so she groomed him up and made him the best-dressed man in New York. They’ve got a fine apartment in Park Avenue and her dinners have become social events. The Dasents are a horsey family and I doubt if Francis had ever mounted a horse until his marriage, but presently she had him out regularly with the Westbrook. He bought a country place in New Jersey and is going to start in to breed ‘chasers. Altogether she gives him a pretty full life.”

  “Children?”

  “No, not yet. A pity, for a child would have anchored Francis. I expect he has family in his blood like all his race.”

  “He never appeared to be restless, did he?” Leithen asked.

  “Not that I noticed. He seemed perfectly content. He used to work too hard and wear himself out, and every now and then have to go off for a rest. That’s the tom-fool habit we all have here. You see, he hadn’t any special tastes outside his business to make him keen about leisure. Felicity changed all that. She isn’t anything of the social climber, or ambitious for herself, but she’s mighty ambitious for her man. She brought him into all kinds of new circles, and he shines in them, too, for he has excellent brains — every kind of brains. All the gifts which made him a power in business she developed for other purposes. He was always a marvel in a business deal, for he could read other men’s minds, and he would have made a swell diplomatist. Well, she turned that gift to social uses, with the result that every type mixes well at their parties. You’ll hear as good talk at their table as you’ll get anywhere on the civilised globe. He can do everything that a Frenchman can do, or an Englishman or an American. She has made him ten times more useful to Ravelstons than before, for she has made him a kind of national figure. The Administration has taken to consulting him, and he’s one of the people that foreigners coming over here have got to see. I fancy she has politics at the back of her mind — last winter, I know, they were a good deal in Washington.”

  Bronson lit a fresh cigar.

  “All set fair, you’d say, for the big success of our day. And then suddenly one fine morning he slips out of the world like the man in Browning’s poem, and God knows what’s become of him.”

  “You know him reasonably well? Is he happy?”

  Bronson laughed. “That’s a question I couldn’t answer about my own brother. I doubt if I could answer it about myself. He is gay — that is the French blood, maybe. I doubt if he has ever had time to consider whether he is happy or not, he lives such a bustling life. There can’t be much of the introvert in Francis.”

  A man had entered the room and was engaged in turning over the magazines on one of the tables.

  “Here’s Savory,” Bronson whispered. “Let’s have him join us. He’s a rather particular friend of Francis.” He raised his voice. “Hullo, Clifford! Come and have a drink. Sir Edward wants to see you.”

  Clifford Savory, looking more like a country squire than ever in his well-cut grey flannels, deposited his long figure in an armchair and sipped the whisky-and-soda which the club servant brought him.

  “We were talking about Galliard,” Bronson said. “Sir Edward has heard a lot about him and is keen to meet him. It’s just too bad that he should be out of town at present. It seems that Francis has got a reputation across the water. What was it you wanted to ask, Sir Edward? How much of his quality comes from his French blood?”

  Savory joined his finger-tips and regarded them meditatively.

  “That’s hard to say. I don’t know enough of the French in Canada, for they’re different from the French in Europe. But I grant you that Galliard’s power is exotic — not the ordinary gifts that God has given us Americans. He can argue a case brilliantly with the most close-textured reasoning; but there are others who can do that. His real strength lies in his flair, which can’t be put down in black and white. He has an extra sense which makes him conscious of things which are still in the atmosphere — a sort of instinct of what people are going to think quite a bit ahead, not only in America, but in England and Europe. His mind is equipped with no end of sensitive antennæ. When he trusts that instinct he is never wrong, but now and then, of course, he is over-ridden by prosaic folk. If people had listened to him in ‘29 we should be better off now.”

  “That’s probably due to his race,” said Leithen. “Whenever you get a borderland where Latin and Northman meet, you get this uncanny sensitiveness.”

  “Yes,” said Savory, “and yet in other things his race doesn’t show up at all. Attachment to family and birthplace, for instance. Francis has forgotten all about his antecedents. He cares as little about his origin as Melchizedek. He is as rootless as the last-arrived Polish immigrant. He has pulled up his roots in Canada, and I do not think he is getting them down here — too restless for that.”

  “Restless?” Leithen queried.

  “Well, I mean mobile — always on the move. He is restless in another way, too. I doubt if he is satisfied by what he does, or particularly happy. A man can scarcely be if he lives in a perpetual flux.”

  6

  A figure was taking shape at the back of Leithen’s mind, a figure without material mould, but an outline of character. He was beginning to realise something of the man he had come to seek. The following afternoon, when he stood in the hall of the Galliards’ apartment in Park Avenue, he had the chance of filling in the physical details, for he was looking at a portrait of the man.

  It was one of the young Van Rouyn’s most celebrated achievements, painted two years earlier. It showed a man in riding breeches and a buff leather coat sitting on a low wall above a flower garden. His hair was a little ruffled by the wind, and one hand was repelling the advances of a terrier. Altogether an attractive detail of what should have been a “conversation piece.” Leithen looked at the picture with the liveliest interest. Galliard was very different from the conception he had formed of him. He had thought of him as a Latin type, slim and very dark, and it appeared that he was more of a Norman, with well-developed shoulders like a football player. It was a pleasant face, the brown eyes were alight with life, and the mouth was both sensitive and firm. Perhaps the jaw was a little too fine drawn, and the air of bonhomie too elaborate to be quite natural. Still, it was a face a man would instinctively trust, the face of a good comrade, and there could be no question about its supreme competence. In every line there was energy and quick decision.

  Leithen gazed at it for some time, trying to find what he had expected.

  “Do you think it a good likeness?” he asked the woman at his side.

  “It’s Francis at his best and happiest,” she answered.

  Felicity Galliard was a fair edition of her sister Barbara. She was not quite so tall or quite so slim, and with all her grace she conveyed an impression, not only of physical health, but of physical power. There was a charming athleticism about her; she had none of Barbara’s airy fragility. Her eyes were like her sister’s, a cool grey with sudden lights in them which changed their colour. She was like a bird,
always poised to fly, no easy swoop or flutter, but, if need be, a long stern flight against weather and wind.

  She led Leithen into the drawing-room. Her house was very different from the Ravelstons’, where a variety of oddments represented the tastes of many generations. It was a “period” piece, the walls panelled in a light, almost colourless wood, the scanty furniture carefully chosen, an Aubusson carpet, and hangings and chintzes of grey and old rose and silver. A Nattier over the fireplace made a centre for the exquisite harmony. It was a room without tradition or even individuality, as if its possessors had deliberately sought out something which should be non-committal, an environment which should neither reflect nor influence them.

  “You never met Francis?” she asked as she made tea. “We have been twice to Europe since we married, but only once in England, and then only for a few days. They were business trips, and he didn’t have a moment to himself.”

  Her manner was beautifully composed, with no hint of tragedy, but in her eyes Leithen read an anxiety so profound that it was beyond outward manifestation. This woman was living day and night with fear. The sight of her, and of the picture in the hall, moved him strangely. He felt that between the Galliards and the friendly eupeptic people he had been meeting there was a difference, not of degree, but of kind. There was a quality here, undependable, uncertain, dangerous perhaps, but rare and unmistakable. There had been no domestic jar — of that he was convinced. But something had happened to one of them to shatter a happy partnership. If he could discover that something he would have a clue for his quest.

  “I have never met your husband,” he said, “but I’ve heard a great deal about him, and I think I’m beginning to understand him. That picture in the hall helps, and you help. I know your sister and your uncle, and now that I’m an idle man I’ve promised to do what I can. If I’m to be of any use, Mrs. Galliard, I’m afraid I must ask you some questions. I know you’ll answer them frankly. Tell me first what happened when he went away.”

  “It was the fourth day of May, a perfect spring day. I went down to Westchester to see an old friend. I said good-bye to Francis after breakfast, and he went to the office. I came back about five o’clock and found a note from him on my writing-table. Here it is.”

  She produced from an escritoire a half-sheet of paper. Leithen read —

  Dearest, I am sick — very sick in mind. I am going away. When I am cured I will come back to you. All my love.

  “He packed a bag himself — the butler knew nothing about it. He took money with him — at least there was a large sum drawn from his account. No, he didn’t wind up things at the office. He left some big questions undecided, and his partners have had no end of trouble. He didn’t say a word to any of them, or to anybody else that I know of. He left no clue as to where he was going. Oh, of course, we could have put on detectives and found out something, but we dare not do that. Every newspaper in the land would have started a hue and cry, and there would have been a storm of gossip. As it is, nobody knows about him except his partners, and one or two friends, and Uncle Blenkiron, and Babs and you. You see he may come back any day quite well again, and I would never forgive myself if I had been neurotic and let him down.”

  Leithen thought that neurotic was the last word he would have chosen to describe this wise and resolute woman.

  “What was he like just before he left? Was there any change in his manner? Had he anything to worry him?”

  “Nothing to worry him in business. Things were going rather specially well. And, anyhow, Francis never let himself be worried by affairs. He prided himself on taking things lightly — he was always what the old folk used to call debonair. But — yes, there were little changes in him, I think. All winter he had been almost too good and gentle and yielding. He did everything I asked him without questioning, and that was not always his way. . . . Oh! and he did one funny thing. We used to go down to Florida for a fortnight after Christmas — we had a regular foursome for golf, and he liked to bask in the sun. This year he didn’t seem to care about it, and I didn’t press him, for I’m rather bored with golf, so we stayed at home. There was a good deal of snow at Combermere — that’s our New Jersey home — and Francis got himself somewhere a pair of snow-shoes and used to go for long walks alone. When he came back he would sit by the hour in the library, not dozing, but thinking. I thought it was a good way of resting and never disturbed him.”

  “You never asked what he was thinking about?”

  “No. He thought a good deal, you see. He always made leisure to think. My only worry was about his absurd modesty. He was sure of himself, but not nearly so sure as I was, and recently when people praised him and I repeated the praise he used to be almost cross. He wrote a memorandum for the Treasury about some tax scheme, and Mr. Beverley said that it was a work of genius. When I told him that, I remember he lay back in his chair and said quite bitterly, ‘Quel chien de génie!’ He never used a French phrase except when he was tired or upset. I remember the look on his face — it was as if I had really pained him. But I could find nothing to be seriously anxious about. He was perfectly fit and well.”

  “Did he see much of anybody in particular in the last weeks?”

  “I don’t think so. We always went about together, you know. He liked to talk to Mr. Jane and Mr. Savory, and they often dined with us. I think young Eric Ravelston came once or twice to the house — Walter Derwent, too, I think. But he saw far more of me than of anybody else.”

  Her face suddenly stiffened with pain.

  “Oh, Sir Edward, you don’t think that he’s dead — that he went away to die?”

  “I don’t. I haven’t any fear of that. Any conclusion of mine would be worthless at the present stage, but my impression is that Mr. Galliard’s trouble has nothing to do with his health. You and he have made a wonderful life together. Are you certain that he quite fitted into it?”

  She opened her eyes.

  “He was a huge success in it.”

  “I know. But did the success give him pleasure?”

  “I’m sure it did. At least for most of the time.”

  “Yes, but remember that it was a strange world to him. He hadn’t been brought up in it. He may have been homesick for something different.”

  “But he loved me!” she cried.

  “He loved you. And therefore he will come back to you. But it may be to a different world.”

  7

  New scenes, new faces, the interests of a new problem had given Leithen a few days of deceptive vitality. Then the reaction came, and for a long summer’s day he sat on the veranda of his hotel bedroom in body a limp wreck, but with a very active mind. He tried to piece together what he had heard of Galliard, but could reach no conclusion. A highly strung, sensitive being, with Heaven knew what strains in his ancestry, had been absorbed into a new world in which he had been brilliantly successful. And then something had snapped, or some atavistic impulse had emerged from the deeps, something strong enough to break the tie of a happy marriage. The thing was sheer mystery. He had abandoned his old world and had never shown the slightest hankering after it. What had caused this sudden satiety with success?

  Bronson Jane and Savory thought that the trouble was physical, a delicate machine overwrought and overloaded. The difficulty was that his health had always been perfect, and there was no medical adviser who could report on the condition of his nerves. His friends thought that he was probably lying hidden in some quiet sunny place, nursing himself back to vigour, with the secretiveness of a man to whom a physical breakdown was so unfamiliar that it seemed a portent, almost a crime.

  But Savory had been enlightening. Scholarly, critical, fastidious, he had spoken of Galliard, the ordinary successful financier with no special cultural background, with an accent almost of worship.

  “This country of ours,” he told Leithen, “is up against the biggest problem in her history. It is not a single question like slavery or state rights, or the control of monopolies, or any of th
e straightforward things that have made a crisis before. It is a conglomeration of problems, most of which we cannot define. We have no geographical frontier left, but we’ve an eternal frontier in our minds. Our old American society is really in dissolution. All of us have got to find a new way of life. You’re lucky in England, for you’ve been at the job for a long time and you make your revolutions so slowly and so quietly that you don’t notice them — or anybody else. Here we have to make ours against time, while we keep shouting about them at the top of our voices. Everybody and everything here has to have a new deal, and the different deals have to be fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle, or there will be an infernal confusion. We’re a great people, but we’re only by fits and starts a nation. You’re fortunate in your British Empire. You may have too few folk, and these few scattered over big spaces, but they’re all organically connected, like the separate apples on a tree. Our huge population is more like a collection of pebbles in a box. It’s only the containing walls of the box that keep them together.”

  So much for Savory’s diagnosis.

  “Francis is just the kind of fellow we need,” he went on. “He sees what’s coming. He’s the most intellectually honest creature God ever made. He has a mind which not only cuts like a scalpel, but is rich and resourceful — both critical and creative. He hasn’t any prejudices to speak of. He’s a fascinating human being and rouses no antagonisms. It looks like he has dragged his anchor at present. But if we could get him properly moored again he’s going to be a power for good in this country. We’ve got to get him back, Sir Edward — the old Francis.”

  The old Francis? Leithen had queried.

  “Well, with the old genius. But with an extra anchor down. I’ve never been quite happy about the strength of his moorings.”

  8

  Walter Derwent at first had nothing to tell him. Francis Galliard had not been interested in travel in far places. He was treasurer of his Polar Institute, but that was out of personal friendship. Francis had not much keenness in field sports either, though his wife had made him take up fox-hunting. He never went fishing, and in recent years he had not shot much, though he sometimes went after duck to Minnesota and the Virginia shore. He was not much of a bird-shot, but he was deadly with the rifle on the one occasion when Derwent had been with him after deer. . . .