Huntingtower

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER II

  OF MR. JOHN HERITAGE AND THE DIFFERENCE IN POINTS OF VIEW

  Dickson McCunn was never to forget the first stage in that pilgrimage. Alittle after midday he descended from a grimy third-class carriage at alittle station whose name I have forgotten. In the village near-by hepurchased some new-baked buns and ginger biscuits, to which he waspartial, and followed by the shouts of urchins, who admired hispack--"Look at the auld man gaun to the schule"--he emerged into opencountry. The late April noon gleamed like a frosty morning, but the air,though tonic, was kind. The road ran over sweeps of moorland wherecurlews wailed, and into lowland pastures dotted with very white, veryvocal lambs. The young grass had the warm fragrance of new milk. As hewent he munched his buns, for he had resolved to have no plethoricmidday meal, and presently he found the burnside nook of his fancy, andhalted to smoke. On a patch of turf close to a grey stone bridge he hadout his Walton and read the chapter on "The Chavender or Chub." Thecollocation of words delighted him and inspired him to verse. "Lavenderor Lub"--"Pavender or Pub"--"Gravender or Grub"--but the monosyllablesproved too vulgar for poetry. Regretfully he desisted.

  The rest of the road was as idyllic as the start. He would trampsteadily for a mile or so and then saunter, leaning over bridges towatch the trout in the pools, admiring from a dry-stone dyke theunsteady gambols of new-born lambs, kicking up dust from strips ofmoor-burn on the heather. Once by a fir-wood he was privileged tosurprise three lunatic hares waltzing. His cheeks glowed with the sun;he moved in an atmosphere of pastoral, serene and contented. When theshadows began to lengthen he arrived at the village of Cloncae, where heproposed to lie. The inn looked dirty, but he found a decent widow,above whose door ran the legend in home-made lettering, "Mrs. brockietea and Coffee," and who was willing to give him quarters. There hesupped handsomely off ham and eggs, and dipped into a work called_Covenanting Worthies_, which garnished a table decorated withsea-shells. At half-past nine precisely he retired to bed andunhesitating sleep.

  Next morning he awoke to a changed world. The sky was grey and so lowthat his outlook was bounded by a cabbage garden, while a surly windprophesied rain. It was chilly, too, and he had his breakfast beside thekitchen fire. Mrs. Brockie could not spare a capital letter for hersurname on the signboard, but she exalted it in her talk. He heard of amultitude of Brockies, ascendant, descendant and collateral, who seemedto be in a fair way to inherit the earth. Dickson listenedsympathetically, and lingered by the fire. He felt stiff fromyesterday's exercise, and the edge was off his spirit.

  The start was not quite what he had pictured. His pack seemed heavier,his boots tighter, and his pipe drew badly. The first miles were alluphill, with a wind tingling his ears, and no colours in the landscapebut brown and grey. Suddenly he awoke to the fact that he was dismal,and thrust the notion behind him. He expanded his chest and drew in longdraughts of air. He told himself that this sharp weather was better thansunshine. He remembered that all travellers in romances battled withmist and rain. Presently his body recovered comfort and vigour, and hismind worked itself into cheerfulness.

  He overtook a party of tramps and fell into talk with them. He hadalways had a fancy for the class, though he had never known anythingnearer it than city beggars. He pictured them as philosophic vagabonds,full of quaint turns of speech, unconscious Borrovians. With thesesamples his disillusionment was speedy. The party was made up of aferret-faced man with a red nose, a draggle-tailed woman, and a child ina crazy perambulator. Their conversation was one-sided, for itimmediately resolved itself into a whining chronicle of misfortunes andpetitions for relief. It cost him half a crown to be rid of them.

  The road was alive with tramps that day. The next one did the accosting.Hailing Mr. McCunn as "Guv'nor," he asked to be told the way toManchester. The objective seemed so enterprising that Dickson wasimpelled to ask questions, and heard, in what appeared to be in theaccents of the Colonies, the tale of a career of unvarying calamity.There was nothing merry or philosophic about this adventurer. Nay, therewas something menacing. He eyed his companion's waterproof covetously,and declared that he had had one like it which had been stolen from himthe day before. Had the place been lonely he might have contemplatedhighway robbery, but they were at the entrance to a village, and thesight of a public-house awoke his thirst. Dickson parted with him at thecost of sixpence for a drink.

  He had no more company that morning except an aged stone-breaker whom heconvoyed for half a mile. The stone-breaker also was soured with theworld. He walked with a limp, which, he said, was due to an accidentyears before, when he had been run into by "ane o' thae damnedvelocipeeds." The word revived in Dickson memories of his youth, and hewas prepared to be friendly. But the ancient would have none of it. Heinquired morosely what he was after, and, on being told, remarked thathe might have learned more sense. "It's a daft-like thing for an auldman like you to be traivellin' the roads. Ye maun be ill-off for a job."Questioned as to himself he became, as the newspapers say, "reticent,"and having reached his bing of stones, turned rudely to his duties."Awa' hame wi' ye," were his parting words. "It's idle scoondrels likeyou that maks wark for honest folk like me."

  The morning was not a success, but the strong air had given Dickson suchan appetite that he resolved to break his rule, and, on reaching thelittle town of Kilchrist, he sought luncheon at the chief hotel. Therehe found that which revived his spirits. A solitary bagman shared themeal, who revealed the fact that he was in the grocery line. Therefollowed a well-informed and most technical conversation. He was drawnto speak of the United Supply Stores, Limited, of their prospects and oftheir predecessor, Mr. McCunn, whom he knew well by repute but had nevermet. "Yon's the clever one," he observed. "I've always said there's nolonger head in the city of Glasgow than McCunn. An old-fashioned firm,but it has aye managed to keep up with the times. He's just retired,they tell me, and in my opinion it's a big loss to the provisiontrade...." Dickson's heart glowed within him. Here was Romance; to bepraised incognito; to enter a casual inn and find that fame had precededhim. He warmed to the bagman, insisted on giving him a liqueur and acigar, and finally revealed himself. "I'm Dickson McCunn," he said,"taking a bit holiday. If there's anything I can do for you when I getback, just let me know." With mutual esteem they parted.

  He had need of all his good spirits, for he emerged into an unrelentingdrizzle. The environs of Kilchrist are at the best unlovely, and in thewet they were as melancholy as a graveyard. But the encounter with thebagman had worked wonders with Dickson, and he strode lustily into theweather, his waterproof collar buttoned round his chin. The road climbedto a bare moor, where lagoons had formed in the ruts, and the mistshowed on each side only a yard or two of soaking heather. Soon he waswet; presently every part of him, boots, body and pack, was one vastsponge. The waterproof was not water-proof, and the rain penetrated tohis most intimate garments. Little he cared. He felt lighter, younger,than on the idyllic previous day. He enjoyed the buffets of the storm,and one wet mile succeeded another to the accompaniment of Dickson'sshouts and laughter. There was no one abroad that afternoon, so he couldtalk aloud to himself and repeat his favourite poems. About five in theevening there presented himself at the Black Bull Inn at Kirkmichael asoaked, disreputable, but most cheerful traveller.

  Now the Black Bull at Kirkmichael is one of the few very good inns leftin the world. It is an old place and an hospitable, for it has been forgenerations a haunt of anglers, who above all other men understandcomfort. There are always bright fires there, and hot water, and oldsoft leather armchairs, and an aroma of good food and good tobacco, andgiant trout in glass cases, and pictures of Captain Barclay of Uriewalking to London, and Mr. Ramsay of Barnton winning a horse-race, andthe three-volume edition of the Waverley Novels with many volumesmissing, and indeed all those things which an inn should have. Alsothere used to be--there may still be--sound vintage claret in thecellars. The Black Bull expects its guests to arrive in every stage ofdishevelment, and Dickson was received by a cordial
landlord, whooffered dry garments as a matter of course. The pack proved to haveresisted the elements, and a suit of clothes and slippers were providedby the house. Dickson, after a glass of toddy, wallowed in a hot bath,which washed all the stiffness out of him. He had a fire in his bedroom,beside which he wrote the opening passages of that diary he had vowed tokeep, descanting lyrically upon the joys of ill weather. At seveno'clock, warm and satisfied in soul, and with his body clad in raimentseveral sizes too large for it, he descended to dinner.

  At one end of the long table in the dining-room sat a group of anglers.They looked jovial fellows, and Dickson would fain have joined them;but, having been fishing all day in the Loch o' the Threshes, they weretalking their own talk, and he feared that his admiration for IzaakWalton did not qualify him to butt into the erudite discussions offishermen. The landlord seemed to think likewise, for he drew back achair for him at the other end, where sat a young man absorbed in abook. Dickson gave him good evening and got an abstracted reply. Theyoung man supped the Black Bull's excellent broth with one hand, andwith the other turned the pages of his volume. A glance convincedDickson that the work was French, a literature which did not interesthim. He knew little of the tongue and suspected it of impropriety.

  Another guest entered and took the chair opposite the bookish young man.He was also young--not more than thirty-three--and to Dickson's eye, wasthe kind of person he would have liked to resemble. He was tall andfree from any superfluous flesh; his face was lean, fine-drawn anddeeply sunburnt so that the hair above showed oddly pale; the hands werebrown and beautifully shaped, but the forearm revealed by the loosecuffs of his shirt was as brawny as a blacksmith's. He had rather paleblue eyes, which seemed to have looked much at the sun, and a smallmoustache the colour of ripe hay. His voice was low and pleasant, and hepronounced his words precisely, like a foreigner.

  He was very ready to talk, but in defiance of Dr. Johnson's warning, histalk was all questions. He wanted to know everything about theneighbourhood--who lived in what houses, what were the distances betweenthe towns, what harbours would admit what class of vessel. Smilingagreeably, he put Dickson through a catechism to which he knew none ofthe answers. The landlord was called in, and proved more helpful. But onone matter he was fairly at a loss. The catechist asked about a housecalled Darkwater, and was met with a shake of the head. "I know nosic-like name in this countryside, sir," and the catechist lookeddisappointed.

  The literary young man said nothing, but ate trout abstractedly, one eyeon his book. The fish had been caught by the anglers in the Loch o' theThreshes, and phrases describing their capture floated from the otherend of the table. The young man had a second helping, and then refusedthe excellent hill mutton that followed, contenting himself with cheese.Not so Dickson and the catechist. They ate everything that was setbefore them, topping up with a glass of port. Then the latter, who hadbeen talking illuminatingly about Spain, rose, bowed and left the table,leaving Dickson, who liked to linger over his meals, to the society ofthe ichthyophagous student.

  He nodded towards the book. "Interesting?" he asked.

  The young man shook his head and displayed the name on the cover."Anatole France. I used to be crazy about him, but now he seems rather aback number." Then he glanced towards the just-vacated chair."Australian," he said.

  "How d'you know?"

  "Can't mistake them. There's nothing else so lean and fine produced onthe globe to-day. I was next door to them at Pozieres and saw themfight. Lord! Such men! Now and then you had a freak, but most lookedlike Phoebus Apollo."

  Dickson gazed with a new respect at his neighbour, for he had notassociated him with battle-fields. During the war he had been a ferventpatriot, but, though he had never heard a shot himself, so many of hisfriends' sons and nephews, not to mention cousins of his own, had seenservice, that he had come to regard the experience as commonplace. Lionsin Africa and bandits in Mexico seemed to him novel and romantic things,but not trenches and airplanes which were the whole world's property.But he could scarcely fit his neighbour into even his haziest picture ofwar. The young man was tall and a little round-shouldered; he hadshort-sighted, rather prominent brown eyes, untidy black hair and darkeyebrows which came near to meeting. He wore a knickerbocker suit ofbluish-grey tweed, a pale blue shirt, a pale blue collar and a dark bluetie--a symphony of colour which seemed too elaborately considered to bequite natural. Dickson had set him down as an artist or a newspapercorrespondent, objects to him of lively interest. But now theclassification must be reconsidered.

  "So you were in the war," he said encouragingly.

  "Four blasted years," was the savage reply. "And I never want to hearthe name of the beastly thing again."

  "You said he was an Australian," said Dickson, casting back. "But Ithought Australians had a queer accent, like the English."

  "They've all kind of accents, but you can never mistake their voice.It's got the sun in it. Canadians have got grinding ice in theirs, andVirginians have got butter. So have the Irish. In Britain there are novoices, only speaking tubes. It isn't safe to judge men by their accentonly. You yourself I take to be Scotch, but for all I know you may be asenator from Chicago or a Boer General."

  "I'm from Glasgow. My name's Dickson McCunn." He had a faint hope thatthe announcement might affect the other as it had affected the bagman atKilchrist.

  "Golly, what a name!" exclaimed the young man rudely.

  Dickson was nettled. "It's very old Highland," he said. "It means theson of a dog."

  "Which--Christian name or surname?" Then the young man appeared to thinkhe had gone too far, for he smiled pleasantly. "And a very good nametoo. Mine is prosaic by comparison. They call me John Heritage."

  "That," said Dickson, mollified, "is like a name out of a book. Withthat name by rights you should be a poet."

  Gloom settled on the young man's countenance. "It's a dashed sight toopoetic. It's like Edwin Arnold and Alfred Austin and Dante GabrielRossetti. Great poets have vulgar monosyllables for names, like Keats.The new Shakespeare when he comes along will probably be called Grubb orJubber, if he isn't Jones. With a name like yours I might have a chance._You_ should be the poet."

  "I'm very fond of reading," said Dickson modestly.

  A slow smile crumpled Mr. Heritage's face. "There's a fire in thesmoking-room," he observed as he rose. "We'd better bag the armchairsbefore these fishing louts take them." Dickson followed obediently. Thiswas the kind of chance acquaintance for whom he had hoped, and he wasprepared to make the most of him.

  The fire burned bright in the little dusky smoking-room, lighted by oneoil-lamp. Mr. Heritage flung himself into a chair, stretched his longlegs and lit a pipe.

  "You like reading?" he asked. "What sort? Any use for poetry?"

  "Plenty," said Dickson. "I've aye been fond of learning it up andrepeating it to myself when I had nothing to do. In church and waitingon trains, like. It used to be Tennyson, but now it's more Browning. Ican say a lot of Browning."

  The other screwed his face into an expression of disgust. "I know thestuff. 'Damask cheeks and dewy sister eyelids.' Or else the Erclesvein--'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.' No good, Mr.McCunn. All back numbers. Poetry's not a thing of pretty round phrasesor noisy invocations. It's life itself, with the tang of the raw worldin it--not a sweetmeat for middle-class women in parlours."

  "Are you a poet, Mr. Heritage?"

  "No, Dogson, I'm a paper-maker."

  This was a new view to Mr. McCunn. "I just once knew a paper-maker," heobserved reflectively. "They called him Tosh. He drank a bit."

  "Well, I don't drink," said the other. "I'm a paper-maker, but that'sfor my bread and butter. Some day for my own sake I may be a poet."

  "Have you published anything?"

  The eager admiration in Dickson's tone gratified Mr. Heritage. He drewfrom his pocket a slim book. "My firstfruits," he said, rather shyly.

  Dickson received it with reverence. It was a small volume in grey paperboards with
a white label on the back, and it was lettered:"_Whorls--John Heritage's Book_." He turned the pages and read a little."It's a nice wee book," he observed at length.

  "Good God, if you call it nice, I must have failed pretty badly," wasthe irritated answer.

  Dickson read more deeply and was puzzled. It seemed worse than the worstof Browning to understand. He found one poem about a garden entitled"Revue." "Crimson and resonant clangs the dawn," said the poet. Then hewent on to describe noonday:

  "Sunflowers, tall Grenadiers, ogle the roses' short-skirted ballet. The fumes of dark sweet wine hidden in frail petals Madden the drunkard bees."

  This seemed to him an odd way to look at things, and he boggled over aphrase about an "epicene lily." Then came evening: "The painted gauze ofthe stars flutters in a fold of twilight crape," sang Mr. Heritage; andagain, "The moon's pale leprosy sloughs the fields."

  Dickson turned to other verses which apparently enshrined the writer'smemory of the trenches. They were largely compounded of oaths, andrather horrible, lingering lovingly over sights and smells which everyone is aware of, but most people contrive to forget. He did not likethem. Finally he skimmed a poem about a lady who turned into a bird. Theevolution was described with intimate anatomical details which scaredthe honest reader.

  He kept his eyes on the book for he did not know what to say. The trickseemed to be to describe nature in metaphors mostly drawn frommusic-halls and haberdashers' shops, and, when at a loss, to fall tocursing. He thought it frankly very bad, and he laboured to find wordswhich would combine politeness and honesty.

  "Well?" said the poet.

  "There's a lot of fine things here, but--but the lines don't just seemto scan very well."

  Mr. Heritage laughed. "Now I can place you exactly. You like the meekrhyme and the conventional epithet. Well, I don't. The world has passedbeyond that prettiness. You want the moon described as a Huntress or agold disc or a flower--I say it's oftener like a beer barrel or acheese. You want a wealth of jolly words and real things ruled out asunfit for poetry. I say there's nothing unfit for poetry. Nothing,Dogson! Poetry's everywhere, and the real thing is commoner among drabsand pot-houses and rubbish heaps than in your Sunday parlours. Thepoet's business is to distil it out of rottenness, and show that it isall one spirit, the thing that keeps the stars in their place.... Iwanted to call my book '_Drains_,' for drains are sheer poetry, carryingoff the excess and discards of human life to make the fields green andthe corn ripen. But the publishers kicked. So I called it '_Whorls_,' toexpress my view of the exquisite involution of all things. Poetry is thefourth dimension of the soul.... Well, let's hear about your taste inprose."

  Mr. McCunn was much bewildered, and a little inclined to be cross. Hedisliked being called Dogson, which seemed to him an abuse of hisetymological confidences. But his habit of politeness held.

  He explained rather haltingly his preferences in prose.

  Mr. Heritage listened with wrinkled brows.

  "You're even deeper in the mud than I thought," he remarked. "You livein a world of painted laths and shadows. All this passion for thepicturesque! Trash, my dear man, like a schoolgirl's novelette heroes.You make up romances about gipsies and sailors and the blackguards theycall pioneers, but you know nothing about them. If you did, you wouldfind they had none of the gilt and gloss you imagine. But the greatthings they have got in common with all humanity you ignore. It'slike--it's like sentimentalising about a pancake because it looked likea buttercup, and all the while not knowing that it was good to eat."

  At that moment the Australian entered the room to get a light for hispipe. He wore a motor-cyclist's overalls and appeared to be about totake the road. He bade them good night and it seemed to Dickson that hisface, seen in the glow of the fire, was drawn and anxious, unlike thatof the agreeable companion at dinner.

  "There," said Mr. Heritage, nodding after the departing figure. "I daresay you have been telling yourself stories about that chap--life in thebush, stock-riding and the rest of it. But probably he's a bank-clerkfrom Melbourne.... Your romanticism is one vast self-delusion and itblinds your eye to the real thing. We have got to clear it out and withit all the damnable humbug of the Kelt."

  Mr. McCunn, who spelt the word with a soft "C," was puzzled. "I thoughta kelt was a kind of a no-weel fish," he interposed.

  But the other, in the flood-tide of his argument, ignored theinterruption. "That's the value of the war," he went on. "It has burstup all the old conventions, and we've got to finish the destructionbefore we can build. It is the same with literature and religion andsociety and politics. At them with the axe, say I. I have no use forpriests and pedants. I've no use for upper classes and middle classes.There's only one class that matters, the plain man, the workers, wholive close to life."

  "The place for you," said Dickson dryly, "is in Russia among theBolsheviks."

  Mr. Heritage approved. "They are doing a great work in their ownfashion. We needn't imitate all their methods--they're a trifle crudeand have too many Jews among them--but they've got hold of the right endof the stick. They seek truth and reality."

  Mr. McCunn was slowly being roused.

  "What brings you wandering hereaways?" he asked.

  "Exercise," was the answer. "I've been kept pretty closely tied up allwinter. And I want leisure and quiet to think over things."

  "Well, there's one subject you might turn your attention to. You'll havebeen educated like a gentleman?"

  "Nine wasted years--five at Harrow, four at Cambridge."

  "See here, then. You're daft about the working-class and have no use forany other. But what in the name of goodness do you know aboutworking-men?... I come out of them myself, and have lived next door tothem all my days. Take them one way and another, they're a decent sort,good and bad like the rest of us. But there's a wheen daft folk thatwould set them up as models--close to truth and reality, says you. It'ssheer ignorance, for you're about as well acquaint with the working-manas with King Solomon. You say I make up fine stories about tinklers andsailor-men because I know nothing about them. That's maybe true. Butyou're at the same job yourself. You ideelise the working-man, you andyour kind, because you're ignorant. You say that he's seeking for truth,when he's only looking for a drink and a rise in wages. You tell me he'snear reality, but I tell you that his notion of reality is often just ashort working day and looking on at a footba'-match on Saturday.... Andwhen you run down what you call the middle-classes that dothree-quarters of the world's work and keep the machine going and theworking man in a job, then I tell you you're talking havers. Havers!"

  Mr. McCunn, having delivered his defence of the bourgeoisie, roseabruptly and went to bed. He felt jarred and irritated. His innocentlittle private domain had been badly trampled by this stray bull of apoet. But as he lay in bed, before blowing out his candle, he hadrecourse to Walton, and found a passage on which, as on a pillow, hewent peacefully to sleep:

  "As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me; 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all care, and sang like a nightingale; her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it; it was the smooth song that was made by _Kit Marlow_ now at least fifty years ago. And the milkmaid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by _Sir Walter Raleigh_ in his younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."