by John Buchan
The house-party were sitting round the hall-fire when he entered. The high-roofed place, the flagged floor strewn with rugs, and the walls bright with the glow of fire on armour, gave him a boyish sense of comfort. Two men in knickerbockers were lounging on a settle, and at his entrance came forward to greet him. One was Sir Hugh Clanroyden, a follower of his own; the other he recognised as a lawyer named Durward. From the circle of women Miss Etheridge rose and welcomed him. Her mother was out, but would be back for dinner; meantime he should be shown his room. He noticed that her face was browner, her hair a little less neat, and there seemed something franker and kindlier in her smile. So in a very good humour he went to rid himself of the dust of the roads.
Durward watched him curiously, and then turned, laughing, to his companion, as the girl came back to her friends with a heightened colour in her cheeks.
‘Romeo the second,’ he said. ‘We are going to be spectators of a comedy. And yet, heaven knows! Maitland is not cast for comedy.’ The other shook his head. ‘It will never come off. I’ve known Clara Etheridge most of my life, and I would as soon think of marrying a dancing-girl to a bishop. She is a delightful person, and my very good friend, but how on earth is she ever to understand Maitland? And how on earth can he see anything in her? Besides, there’s another man.’ Durward laughed. ‘Despencer! I suppose he will be a serious rival with a woman; but imagine him Maitland’s rival in anything else! He’d break him like a rotten stick in half an hour. I like little Despencer, and I don’t care about Maitland; but all the same it is absurd to compare the two, except in love-making.’
‘Lord, it will be comic,’ and Clanroyden stretched his long legs and lay back on a cushion. The girls were still chattering beside the fire, and the twilight was fast darkening into evening.
‘You dislike Maitland?’ he asked, looking up. ‘Now, I wonder why?’
Durward smiled comically at the ceiling. ‘Oh, I know I oughtn’t to. I know he’s supposed to be a man’s man, and that it’s bad form for a man to say he dislikes him. But I’m honest enough to own to detesting him. I suppose he’s great, but he’s not great enough yet to compel one to fall down and worship him, and I hate greatness in the making. He goes through the world with his infernal arrogance and expects everybody to clear out of his way. I am told we live in an age of reason, but that fellow has burked reason. He never gives a reason for a thing he does, and if you try to argue he crushes you. He has killed good talk for ever with his confounded rudeness. All the little sophistries and conventions which make life tolerable are so much rubbish to him, and he shows it. The plague of him is that he can never make-believe. He is as hard as iron, and as fierce as the devil, and about as unpleasant. You may respect the sledge-hammer type, but it’s confoundedly dull. Why, the man has not the imagination of a rabbit, except in his description of people he dislikes. I liked him when he said that Lay den reminded him of a dissipated dove, because I disliked Layden; but when Freddy Alton played the fool and people forgave him, because he was a good sort, Maitland sent him about his business, saying he had no further use for weaklings. He is so abominably cold-blooded and implacable that everyone must fear him, and yet most people can afford to despise him. All the kind simple things of life are shut out of his knowledge. He has no nature, only a heart of stone and an iron will and a terribly subtle brain. Of course he is a great man — in a way, but at the best he is only half a man. And to think that he should have fallen in love, and be in danger of losing to Despencer! It’s enough to make one forgive him.’
Clanroyden laughed. ‘I can’t think of Despencer. It’s too absurd. But, seriously, I wish I saw Maitland well rid of this mood, married or cured. That sort of man doesn’t take things easily.’
‘It reminds one of Theocritus and the Cyclops in love. Who would have thought to see him up in this moorland place, running after a girl? He doesn’t care for sport.’
‘Do you know that he spent most of his childhood in this glen, and that he is keen about sport? He is too busy for many holidays, but he once went with Burton to the Caucasus, and Burton said the experience nearly killed him. He said that the fellow was tireless, and as mad and reckless as a boy with nothing to lose.’
‘Well, that simply bears out what I say of him. He does not understand the meaning of sport. When he gets keen about anything he pursues it as carefully and relentlessly as if it were something on the Stock Exchange. Now little Despencer is a genuine sportsman in his canary-like way. He loves the art of the thing and the being out of doors. Maitland, I don’t suppose, ever thinks whether it is a ceiling or the sky above his august head. Despencer—’
But at the moment Clanroyden uncrossed his legs, bringing his right foot down heavily upon his companion’s left. Durward looked up and saw a young man coming towards him, smiling.
The newcomer turned aside to say something to the girls round the fire, and then came and sat on an arm of the settle. He was a straight, elegant person, with a well-tanned, regular face, and very pleasant brown eyes.
‘I’ve had such an afternoon,’ he said. ‘You never saw a place like Cairnlora. It’s quite a little stone tower all alone in a fir-wood, and nothing else between the moor and the sea. It is furnished as barely as a prison, except for the chairs, which are priceless old Dutch things. Oh, and the silver at tea was the sort of thing that only Americans can buy nowadays. Mrs Etheridge is devoured with envy. But the wonder of the house is old Miss Elphinstone. She must be nearly seventy, and she looks forty-five, except for her hair. She speaks broad Scots, and she has the manners of a marquise. I would give a lot to have had Raeburn paint her. She reminded me of nothing so much as a hill-wind with her keen high-coloured old face. Yes, I have enjoyed the afternoon.’
‘Jack has got a new enthusiasm,’ said Durward. ‘I wish I were like you to have a new one once a week. By the way, Maitland has arrived at last.’
‘Really!’ said Despencer. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you something which you would never have guessed. Miss Elphinstone is Maitland’s aunt, and he was brought up a good deal at Cairnlora. He doesn’t take his manners from her, but I suppose he gets his cleverness from that side of the family. She disapproves of him strongly, so of course I had to defend him. And what do you think she said? “He has betrayed his tradition. He has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and I wish him joy of his bargain!” Nice one for your party, Hugh.’
Miss Etheridge had left the group at the fire and was standing at Despencer’s side. She listened to him with a curious air of solicitude, like an affectionate sister. At the mention of Maitland’s name Clanroyden had watched her narrowly, but her face did not change. And when Despencer asked, ‘Where is the new arrival?’ she talked of him with the utmost nonchalance.
Maitland came down to dinner, ravenously hungry and in high spirits. Nothing was changed in this house since he had stared at the pictures and imagined terrible things about the armour and broken teacups with childish impartiality. His own favourite seat was still there, where, hidden by a tapestry screen, he had quarrelled with Sylvia while their elders gossiped. This sudden flood of memories mellowed him towards the world. He was cordial to Despencer, forbore to think Durward a fool, and answered every one of Mr Etheridge’s many questions. For the first time he felt the success of his life. The old house recalled his childhood, and the sight of Clanroyden, his devoted follower, reminded him of his power. Somehow the weariful crying for the moon, which had always tortured him, was exchanged for a glow of comfort, a shade of complacency in his haggard soul... And then the sight of Clara dispelled his satisfaction.
Here in this cheerful homely party of friends he found himself out of place. On state occasions he could acquit himself with credit, for the man had a mind. He could make the world listen to him when he chose, and the choice was habitual. But now his loneliness claimed its lawful consequences, and he longed for the little friendly graces which he had so often despised. Despencer talked of scenery and weather with a tenderness to which thi
s man, who loved nature as he loved little else, was an utter stranger. This elegant and appropriate sentiment would have worried him past endurance, if Miss Clara had not shared it. It was she who told some folk-tale about the Grey Correi with the prettiest hesitancy which showed her feeling. And then the talk drifted to books and people, flitting airily about their petty world. Maitland felt himself choked by their accomplishments. Most of the subjects were ones no sane man would trouble to think of, and yet here were men talking keenly about trifles and disputing with nimble-witted cleverness on the niceties of the trivial. Feeling miserably that he was the only silent one, he plunged desperately into the stream, found himself pulled up by Despencer and deftly turned. The event gave him the feeling of having been foiled by a kitten.
Angry with the world, angrier with his own angularity, he waited for the end of the meal. Times had not changed in this house since he had been saved by Sylvia from social disgrace. But when the women left the room he found life easier. His host talked of sport, and he could tell him more about Stob Ghabhar than any keeper. Despencer, victorious at dinner, now listened like a docile pupil. Durward asked a political question, and the answer came sharp and definite. Despencer demurred gently, after his fashion. ‘Well, but surely—’ and a grimly smiling ‘What do you know about it?’ closed the discussion. The old Maitland had returned for the moment.
The night was mild and impenetrably dark, and the fall of waters close at hand sounded like a remote echo. An open hall-door showed that some of the party had gone out to the garden, and the men followed at random. A glimmer of white frocks betrayed the women on the lawn, standing by the little river which slipped by cascade and glide from the glen to the low pasture-lands. In the featureless dark there was no clue to locality. The place might have been Berkshire or a suburban garden.
Suddenly the scream of some animal came from the near thicket. The women started and asked what it was.
‘It was a hill-fox,’ said Maitland to Clara. ‘They used to keep me awake at nights on the hill. They come and bark close to your ear and give you nightmare.’
The lady shivered. ‘Thank Heaven for the indoors,’ she said. ‘Now, if I had been the daughter of one of your old Donalds of the Isles, I should have known that cry only too well. Wild nature is an excellent background, but give me civilisation in front.’
Maitland was looking into the wood. ‘You will find it creeps far into civilisation if you look for it. There is a very narrow line between the warm room and the savage out-of-doors.’
‘There are miles of luxuries,’ the girl cried, laughing. ‘People who are born in the wrong country have to hunt over half the world before they find their savagery. It is all very tame, but I love the tameness. You may call yourself primitive, Mr Maitland, but you are the most complex and modern of us all. What would Donald of the Isles have said to politics and the Stock Exchange?’
They had strolled back to the house. ‘Nevertheless I maintain my belief,’ said the man. ‘You call it miles of rampart; I call the division a line, a thread, a sheet of glass. But then, you see, you only know one side, and I only know the other.’
‘What preposterous affectation!’ the girl said, as with a pretty shiver she ran indoors. Maitland stood for a moment looking back at the darkness. Within the firelit hall, with its rugs and little tables and soft chairs, he had caught a glimpse of Despencer smoking a cigarette. As he looked towards the hills he heard the fox’s bark a second time, and then somewhere from the black distance came a hawk’s scream, hoarse, lonely, and pitiless. The thought struck him that the sad elemental world of wood and mountain was far more truly his own than this cosy and elegant civilisation. And, oddly enough, the thought pained him.
III
The day following was wet and windy, when a fire was grateful, and the hills, shrouded in grey mist, had no attractions. The party read idly in armchairs during the morning, and in the afternoon Maitland and Clanroyden went down to the stream-mouth after sea-trout. So Despencer remained to talk to Clara, and, having played many games of picquet and grown heartily tired of each other, as tea-time approached they fell to desultory comments on their friends. Maitland was beginning to interest the girl in a new way. Formerly he had been a great person who was sensible enough to admire her, but something remote and unattractive, for whom friendship (much less love) was impossible. But now she had begun to feel his power, his manhood. The way in which other men spoke of him impressed her unconsciously, and she began to ask Despencer questions which were gall and wormwood to that young man. But he answered honestly, after his fashion.
‘Isn’t he very rich?’ she asked. ‘And I suppose he lives very plainly?’
‘Rich as Croesus, and he sticks in his ugly rooms in the Albany because he never thinks enough about the thing to change. I’ve been in them once, and you never saw such a place. He’s a maniac for fresh air, so they’re large enough, but they’re littered like a stable with odds and ends of belongings. He must have several thousand books, and yet he hasn’t a decent binding among them. He hasn’t a photograph of a single soul, and only one picture, which, I believe, was his father. But you never saw such a collection of whips and spurs and bits. It smells like a harness-room, and there you find Maitland, when by any chance he is at home, working half the night and up to the eyes in papers. I don’t think the man has any expenses except food and rent, for he wears the same clothes for years. And he has given up horses.’
‘Was he fond of horses?’ Miss Clara asked.
‘Oh, you had better ask him. I really can’t tell you any more about him.’
‘But how do his friends get on with him?’
‘He has hardly any, but his acquaintances, who are all the world, say he is the one great man of the future. If you want to read what people think of him, you had better look at the “Monthly”.’
Under cover of this one ungenerous word Despencer made his escape, for he hated the business, but made it the rule of his life ‘never to crab a fellow’. Miss Clara promptly sought out the ‘Monthly’, and found twenty pages of super-fine analysis and bitter, grudging praise. She read it with interest, and then lay back in her chair and tried to fix her thoughts. It is only your unhealthy young woman who worships strength in the abstract, and the girl tried to determine whether she admired the man as a power or disliked him as a brute. She chose a compromise, and the feeling which survived was chiefly curiosity.
The result of the afternoon was that when the fishermen returned, and Maitland, in dry clothes, appeared for tea, she settled herself beside him and prepared to talk. Maitland, being healthily tired, was in an excellent temper, and he found himself enticed into what for him was a rare performance — talk about himself. They were sitting apart from the others, and, ere ever he knew, he was answering the girl’s questions with an absent-minded frankness. In a little she had drawn from him the curious history of his life, which most men knew, but never from his own lips.
‘I was at school for a year,’ he said, ‘and then my father died and our affairs went to pieces. I had to come back and go into an office, a sort of bank. I hated it, but it was good for me, for it taught me something, and my discontent made me ambitious. I had about eighty pounds a year, and I saved from that. I worked too at books incessantly, and by-and-by I got an Oxford scholarship, at an obscure college. I went up there, and found myself in a place where everyone seemed well-off, while I was a pauper. However, it didn’t trouble me much, for I had no ambition to play the fool. I only cared about two things - horses and metaphysics. I hated all games, which I thought only fit for children. I daresay it was foolish, but then you see I had had a queer upbringing. I managed to save a little money, and one vacation when I was wandering about in Norfolk, sleeping under haystacks and working in harvest-fields when my supplies ran down, I came across a farmer. He was a good fellow and a sort of sportsman, and I took a fancy to him. He had a colt to sell which I fancied more, for I saw it had blood in it. So I bought it for what seemed a huge su
m to me in those days, but I kept it at his farm and I superintended its education. I broke it myself and taught it to jump, and by-and-by in my third year I brought it to Oxford and entered for the Grind on it. People laughed at me, but I knew my own business. The little boys who rode in the thing knew nothing about horses, and not one in ten could ride; so I entered and won. It was all I wanted, for I could sell my horse then, and the fellow who rode second bought it. It was decent of him, for I asked a big figure, and I think he had an idea of doing me a kindness. I made him my private secretary the other day.’
‘You mean Lord Drapier?’ she asked.
‘Yes — Drapier. That gave me money to finish off and begin in town. Oh, and I had got a first in my schools. I knew very little about anything except metaphysics, and I never went to tutors. I suppose I knew a good deal more than the examiners in my own subject, and anyhow they felt obliged to give me my first after some grumbling. Then I came up to town with just sixty pounds in my pocket, but I had had the education of a gentleman.’
Maitland looked out of the window, and the sight of the mist-clad hills recalled him to himself. He wondered why he was telling the girl this story, and he stopped suddenly.