Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

I got up and hunted along the shelves, and presently found a copy of Sidonius, the Plantin edition of 1609- I turned up the passage, and roughly translated it for him. He listened hungrily and made me repeat it twice.

  ‘He says a cock,’ he hesitated. ‘Is that essential?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I fancy any of the recognised ritual stuff would do.’

  ‘I am glad,’ he said simply. ‘I am afraid of blood.’

  ‘Good God, man,’ I cried out, ‘are you taking my nonsense seriously? I was only chaffing. Let old Vaunus stick to his altar!’

  He looked at me like a puzzled and rather offended dog.

  ‘Sidonius was in earnest...’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said rudely. ‘We’re in the twentieth century and not in the third. Isn’t it about time we went to bed?’

  He made no objection, and found me a candle in the hall. As I undressed I wondered into what kind of lunatic asylum I had strayed. I felt the strongest distaste for the place, and longed to go straight off to the inn; only I couldn’t make use of a man’s manuscripts and insult his hospitality. It was fairly clear to me that Dubellay was mad. He had ridden his hobby to the death of his wits and was now in its bondage. Good Lord! he had talked of his precious Vaunus as a votary talks of a god. I believed he had come to worship some figment of his half-educated fancy.

  I think I must have slept for a couple of hours. Then I woke dripping with perspiration, for the place was simply an oven. My window was as wide open as it would go, and, though it was a warm night, when I stuck my head out the air was fresh. The heat came from indoors. The room was on the first floor near the entrance and I was looking on to the overgrown lawns. The night was very dark and utterly still, but I could have sworn that I heard wind. The trees were as motionless as marble, but somewhere close at hand I heard a strong gust blowing. Also, though there was no moon, there was somewhere near me a steady glow of light; I could see the reflection of it round the end of the house. That meant that it came from the temple. What kind of saturnalia was Dubellay conducting at such an hour?

  When I drew in my head I felt that if I was to get any sleep something must be done. There could be no question about it; some fool had turned on the steam heat, for the room was a furnace. My temper was rising. There was no bell to be found, so I lit my candle and set out to find a servant.

  I tried a cast downstairs and discovered the room where we had dined. Then I explored a passage at right angles, which brought me up against a great oak door. The light showed me that it was a new door, and that there was no apparent way of opening it. I guessed that it led into the temple, and, though it fitted close and there seemed to be no keyhole, I could hear through it a sound like a rushing wind... Next I opened a door on my right and found myself in a big store cupboard. It had a funny, exotic, spicy smell, and, arranged very neatly on the floor and shelves, was a number of small sacks and coffers. Each bore a label, a square of stout paper with very black lettering. I read ‘Pro servitio Vauni’.

  I had seen them before, for my memory betrayed me if they were not the very labels that Dubellay’s servants had been attaching to the packages from the carrier’s cart that evening in the past autumn. The discovery made my suspicions an unpleasant certainty. Dubellay evidently meant the labels to read ‘For the service of Vaunus’. He was no scholar, for it was an impossible use of the word ‘servitium’, but he was very patently a madman.

  However, it was my immediate business to find some way to sleep, so I continued my quest for a servant. I followed another corridor, and discovered a second staircase. At the top of it I saw an open door and looked in. It must have been Dubellay’s, for his flannels were tumbled untidily on a chair, but Dubellay himself was not there and the bed had not been slept in.

  I suppose my irritation was greater than my alarm — though I must say I was getting a little scared — for I still pursued the evasive servant. There was another stair which apparently led to attics, and in going up it I slipped and made a great clatter. When I looked up the butler in his nightgown was staring down at me, and if ever a mortal face held fear it was his. When he saw who it was he seemed to recover a little.

  ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘for God’s sake turn off that infernal hot air. I can’t get a wink of sleep. What idiot set it going?’

  He looked at me owlishly, but he managed to find his tongue.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but there is no heating apparatus in this house.’

  There was nothing more to be said. I returned to my bedroom and it seemed to me that it had grown cooler. As I leaned out of the window, too, the mysterious wind seemed to have died away, and the glow no longer showed from beyond the corner of the house. I got into bed and slept heavily till I was roused by the appearance of my shaving water about half-past nine. There was no bathroom, so I bathed in a tin pannikin.

  It was a hazy morning which promised a day of blistering heat. When I went down to breakfast I found Dubellay in the dining-room. In the daylight he looked a very sick man, but he seemed to have taken a pull on himself, for his manner was considerably less nervy than the night before. Indeed, he appeared almost normal, and I might have reconsidered my view but for the look in his eyes.

  I told him that I proposed to sit tight all day over the manuscript, and get the thing finished. He nodded. ‘That’s all right. I’ve a lot to do myself, and I won’t disturb you.’

  ‘But first,’ I said, ‘you promised to show me your discoveries.’

  He looked at the window where the sun was shining on the laurels and on a segment of the paved court.

  ‘The light is good,’ he said - an odd remark. ‘Let us go there now. There are times and seasons for the temple.’

  He led me down the passage I had explored the previous night. The door opened not by a key but by some lever in the wall. I found myself looking suddenly at a bath of sunshine with the lake below as blue as a turquoise.

  It is not easy to describe my impressions of that place. It was unbelievably light and airy, as brilliant as an Indian colonnade in midsummer. The proportions must have been good, for the columns soared and swam, and the roof (which looked like cedar) floated as delicately as a flower on its stalk. The stone was some local limestone, which on the floor took a polish like marble. All around was a vista of sparkling water and summer woods and far blue mountains. It should have been as wholesome as the top of a hill.

  And yet I had scarcely entered before I knew that it was a prison. I am not an imaginative man, and I believe my nerves are fairly good, but I could scarcely put one foot before the other, so strong was my distaste. I felt shut off from the world, as if I were in a dungeon or on an ice-floe. And I felt, too, that though far enough from humanity, we were not alone.

  On the inner wall there were three carvings. Two were imperfect friezes sculptured in low-relief, dealing apparently with the same subject. It was a ritual procession, priests bearing branches, the ordinary dendrophori business. The faces were only half-human, and that was from no lack of skill, for the artist had been a master. The striking thing was that the branches and the hair of the hierophants were being tossed by a violent wind, and the expression of each was of a being in the last stage of endurance, shaken to the core by terror and pain.

  Between the friezes was a great roundel of a Gorgon’s head. It was not a female head, such as you commonly find, but a male head, with the viperous hair sprouting from chin and lip. It had once been coloured, and fragments of a green pigment remained in the locks. It was an awful thing, the ultimate horror of fear, the last dementia of cruelty made manifest in stone. I hurriedly averted my eyes and looked at the altar.

  That stood at the west end on a pediment with three steps. It was a beautiful piece of work, scarcely harmed by the centuries, with two words inscribed on its face - APOLL. VAUN. It was made of some foreign marble, and the hollow top was dark with ancient sacrifices. Not so ancient either, for I could have sworn that I saw there the mark of recent flame.
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  I do not suppose I was more than five minutes in the place. I wanted to get out, and Dubellay wanted to get me out. We did not speak a word till we were back in the library.

  ‘For God’s sake give it up!’ I said. ‘You’re playing with fire, Mr Dubellay. You’re driving yourself into Bedlam. Send these damned things to a museum and leave this place. Now, now, I tell you. You have no time to lose. Come down with me to the inn straight off and shut up this house.’

  He looked at me with his lip quivering like a child about to cry.

  ‘I will. I promise you I will... But not yet... After tonight.... Tomorrow I’ll do whatever you tell me... You won’t leave me?’

  ‘I won’t leave you, but what earthly good am I to you if you won’t take my advice?’

  ‘Sidonius...’ he began.

  ‘Oh, damn Sidonius! I wish I had never mentioned him. The whole thing is arrant nonsense, but it’s killing you. You’ve got it on the brain. Don’t you know you’re a sick man?’

  ‘I’m not feeling very grand. It’s so warm today. I think I’ll lie down.’

  It was no good arguing with him, for he had the appalling obstinacy of very weak things. I went off to my work in a shocking bad temper.

  The day was what it had promised to be, blisteringly hot. Before midday the sun was hidden by a coppery haze, and there was not the faintest stirring of wind. Dubellay did not appear at luncheon — it was not a meal he ever ate, the butler told me. I slogged away all the afternoon, and had pretty well finished my job by six o’clock. That would enable me to leave next morning, and I hoped to be able to persuade my host to come with me.

  The conclusion of my task put me into a better humour, and I went for a walk before dinner. It was a very close evening, for the heat haze had not lifted; the woods were as silent as a grave, not a bird spoke, and when I came out of the cover to the burnt pastures the sheep seemed too languid to graze. During my walk I prospected the environs of the house, and saw that it would be very hard to get access to the temple except by a long circuit. On one side was a mass of outbuildings, and then a high wall, and on the other the very closest and highest quickset hedge I have ever seen, which ended in a wood with savage spikes on its containing wall. I returned to my room, had a cold bath in the exiguous tub, and changed.

  Dubellay was not at dinner. The butler said that his master was feeling unwell and had gone to bed. The news pleased me, for bed was the best place for him. After that I settled myself down to a lonely evening in the library. I browsed among the shelves and found a number of rare editions which served to pass the time. I noticed that the copy of Sidonius was absent from its place.

  I think it was about ten o’clock when I went to bed, for I was unaccountably tired. I remember wondering whether I oughtn’t to go and visit Dubellay, but decided that it was better to leave him alone. I still reproach myself for that decision. I know now I ought to have taken him by force and haled him to the inn.

  Suddenly I came out of heavy sleep with a start. A human cry seemed to be ringing in the corridors of my brain. I held my breath and listened. It came again, a horrid scream of panic and torture.

  I was out of bed in a second, and only stopped to get my feet into slippers. The cry must have come from the temple. I tore downstairs expecting to hear the noise of an alarmed household. But there was no sound, and the awful cry was not repeated.

  The door in the corridor was shut, as I expected. Behind it pandemonium seemed to be loose, for there was a howling like a tempest —— and something more, a crackling like fire. I made for the front door, slipped off the chain, and found myself in the still, moonless night. Still, except for the rending gale that seemed to be raging in the house I had left.

  From what I had seen on my evening’s walk I knew that my one chance to get to the temple was by way of the quickset hedge. I thought I might manage to force a way between the end of it and the wall. I did it, at the cost of much of my raiment and my skin. Beyond was another rough lawn set with tangled shrubberies, and then a precipitous slope to the level of the lake. I scrambled along the sedgy margin, not daring to lift my eyes till I was on the temple steps.

  The place was brighter than day with a roaring blast of fire. The very air seemed to be incandescent and to have become a flaming ether. And yet there were no flames — only a burning brightness. I could not enter, for the waft from it struck my face like a scorching hand and I felt my hair singe...

  I am short-sighted, as you know, and I may have been mistaken, but this is what I think I saw. From the altar a great tongue of flame seemed to shoot upwards and lick the roof, and from its pediment ran flaming streams. In front of it lay a body - Dubellay’s - a naked body, already charred and black. There was nothing else, except that the Gorgon’s head in the wall seemed to glow like a sun in hell.

  I suppose I must have tried to enter. All I know is that I found myself staggering back, rather badly burned. I covered my eyes, and as I looked through my fingers I seemed to see the flames flowing under the wall, where there may have been lockers, or possibly another entrance. Then the great oak door suddenly shrivelled like gauze, and with a roar the fiery river poured into the house.

  I ducked myself in the lake to ease the pain, and then ran back as hard as I could by the way I had come. Dubellay, poor devil, was beyond my aid. After that I am not very clear what happened. I know that the house burned like a haystack. I found one of the men-servants on the lawn, and I think I helped to get the other down from his room by one of the rainpipes. By the time the neighbours arrived the house was ashes, and I was pretty well mother-naked. They took me to the inn and put me to bed, and I remained there till after the inquest. The coroner’s jury were puzzled, but they found it simply death by misadventure; a lot of country houses were burned that summer. There was nothing found of Dubellay; nothing remained of the house except a few blackened pillars; the altar and the sculptures were so cracked and scarred that no museum wanted them. The place has not been rebuilt, and for all I know they are there today. I am not going back to look for them.

  Nightingale finished his story and looked round his audience.

  ‘Don’t ask me for an explanation,’ he said, ‘for I haven’t any. You may believe if you like that the god Vaunus inhabited the temple which Dubellay built for him, and, when his votary grew scared and tried Sidonius’s receipt for shifting the dedication, became angry and slew him with his flaming wind. That wind seems to have been a perquisite of Vaunus. We know more about him now, for last year they dug up a temple of his in Wales.’

  ‘Lightning,’ some one suggested.

  ‘It was a quiet night, with no thunderstorm,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Isn’t the countryside volcanic?’ Peckwether asked. ‘What about pockets of natural gas or something of the kind?’

  ‘Possibly. You may please yourself in your explanation. I’m afraid I can’t help you. All I know is that I don’t propose to visit that valley again!’

  ‘What became of your Theocritus?’

  ‘Burned, like everything else. However, that didn’t worry me much. Six weeks later came the war, and I had other things to think about.’

  The Frying-pan and the Fire

  Pall Mall Magazine, 1928

  From the Bath, in its most exotic form, degenerate patrician youth passed to the coarse delights of the Circus, and thence to that parody of public duties which it was still the fashion of their class to patronise.

  Von Letterbeck: Imperial Rome

  Part I. The Frying-pan

  LAMANCHA HAD BEEN staying for the week-end at some country house, and had returned full of wrath at the way he had been made to spend his evenings. ‘I thought I hated bridge,’ he said, ‘but I almost longed for it as a change from cracking my brain and my memory to find lines from poets I had forgotten to describe people I didn’t know. I don’t like games that make me feel a congenital idiot. But there was one that rather amused me. You invented a preposterous situation and the point was to explai
n naturally how it came about. Drink, lunacy and practical joking were barred as explanations. One problem given was the Bishop of London on a camel, with a string of sea-trout round his neck, playing on a penny whistle on the Hoe at Plymouth. There was a fellow there, a Chancery K.C., who provided a perfectly sensible explanation.’

  ‘I have heard of stranger things,’ said Sandy Arbuthnot, and he winked at Burminster, who flushed and looked uncomfortable. As the rest of our eyes took the same direction the flush deepened on that round cheerful face.

  ‘It’s no good, Mike,’ said Arbuthnot. ‘We’ve been waiting months for that story of yours, and this is the place and the hour for it. We’ll take no denial.’

  ‘Confound you, Sandy, I can’t tell it. It’s too dashed silly.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. It’s full of profound philosophical lessons, and it’s sheer romance, as somebody has defined the thing — strangeness flowering from the commonplace. So pull up your socks and get going.’

  ‘I don’t know how to begin,’ said Burminster.

  ‘Well, I’ll start it for you... The scene is the railway station of Langshiels on the Scottish Borders on a certain day last summer. On the platform are various gentlemen in their best clothes with rosettes in their buttonholes — all strictly sober, it being but the third hour of the afternoon. There are also the rudiments of a brass band. Clearly a distinguished visitor is expected. The train enters the station, and from a third-class carriage descends our only Mike with a muddy face and a scratched nose. He is habited in dirty white cord breeches, shocking old butcher boots, a purple knitted waistcoat, and what I believe is called a morning coat; over all this splendour a ticky ulster - clearly not his own since it does not meet — and on his head an unspeakable bowler hat. He is welcomed by the deputation and departs, attended by the band, to a political meeting in the Town Hall. But first — I quote from the local paper - ‘The Duke, who had arrived in sporting costume, proceeded to the Station Hotel, where he rapidly changed.’ We want to know the reason of these cantrips.’