by John Buchan
‘You will not find out anything at all, at all,’ said Angus morosely. ‘For I tell ye; sir, Jimsie is right in one thing – Macnab is not a man – he is the Deevil.’
‘Then we needn’t be ashamed of being beat by him … Look here, you men. We’ve lost, but you’ve had an uncomfortable time these last twenty-four hours. And I’m going to give you what I promised you if we won out. I reckon the market price of salmon is not more than fifty cents a pound. Macnab has paid about thirty dollars a pound for this fish, so we’ve a fair margin on the deal.’
Mr Acheson Bandicott received the news with composure, if not with relief. Now he need no longer hold the correspondents at arm’s length but could summon them to his presence and enlarge on Harald Blacktooth. His father’s equanimity cast whatever balm was needed upon Junius’s wounded pride, and presently he saw nothing in the affair but comedy. His thoughts turned to Glenraden. It might be well for him to announce in person that the defences of Strathlarrig had failed.
On his way he called at the post-office where Agatha had told him that Crossby was lodging. He wanted a word with the journalist, who clearly must have been particeps criminis, and as he could offer as bribe the first full tale of Harald Blacktooth (to be unfolded before the other correspondents arrived for luncheon) he hoped to acquire a story in return. But, according to the post-mistress, Mr Crossby had gone. He had sat up most of the night writing, and, without waiting for breakfast, had paid his bill, strapped on his ruck-sack and departed on his bicycle.
Junius found the Raden family on the lawn, and with them Archie Roylance.
‘Got up early to go over my speech for tomorrow,’ the young man explained. ‘I’m gettin’ the dashed thing by heart – only way to avoid regrettable incidents. I started off down the hill repeatin’ my eloquence, and before I knew I was at Glenraden gates, so I thought I’d come in and pass the time of day … Jolly interestin’ dinner last night, Bandicott. I liked your old Professor … Any news of John Macnab?’
‘There certainly is. He has us beat to a frazzle. This morning there was a salmon on the doorstep presented with his compliments.’
The effect of this announcement was instant and stupendous. The Colonel called upon his gods. ‘Not killed fair? It’s a stark impossibility, sir. You had the water guarded like the Bank of England.’ Archie expressed like suspicions; Agatha was sad and sympathetic, Janet amused and covertly joyful.
‘I reckon it was fair enough fishing,’ Junius went on. ‘I’ve been trying to puzzle the thing out, and this is what I made of it. Macnab was in league with one of those pressmen, who started out to trespass inside the park and drew off all the watchers in pursuit, including the man at the Lang Whang. He had them hunting for about half an hour, and in that time Macnab killed his fish … He must be a dandy at the game, too, to get a salmon in that dead water … Jimsie – that’s the man who was supposed to watch the Lang Whang – returned before he could get away with the beast, so what does the fellow do but dig a bit out of the fish and leave it on the bank, while he lures Jimsie to chase him. Jimsie saw the fish and put it down to an otter, and by and by caught the man up the road. There must have been an accomplice in hiding, for when Jimsie went back to pick up the salmon it had disappeared. The fellow, who looked like a hobo, was shut up in a garage, and after dinner we let him go, for we had nothing against him, and now he is rejoicing somewhere at our simplicity … It was a mighty clever bit of work, and I’m not ashamed to be beaten by that class of artist. I hoped to get hold of the pressman and find out something, but the pressman seems to have leaked out of the landscape.’
‘Was that tramp John Macnab?’ Agatha asked in an agitated voice.
‘None other. You let him out, Miss Agatha. What was he like? I can’t get proper hold of Jimsie’s talk.’
‘Oh, I should have guessed,’ the girl lamented. ‘For, of course, I saw he was a gentleman. He was in horrible old clothes, but he had an Eton shield on his watch-chain. He seemed to be ashamed to remember it. He said he had come down in the world – through drink!’
Archie struggled hard with the emotions evoked by this description of an abstemious personage currently believed to be making an income of forty thousand pounds.
‘Then we’ve both seen him,’ Janet cried. ‘Describe him, Agatha. Was he youngish and big, and fair-haired, and sunburnt? Had he blue eyes?’
‘No-o. He wasn’t like that. He was about papa’s height, and rather slim, I think. He was very dirty and hadn’t shaved, but I should say he was sallow, and his eyes – well, they were certainly not blue.’
‘Are you certain? You only saw him in the dark.’
‘Yes, quite certain. I had a big torch which lit up his whole figure. Now I come to think of it, he had a striking face – he looked like somebody very clever – a judge perhaps. That should have made me suspicious, but I was so shocked to see such a downfall that I didn’t think about it.’
Janet looked wildly around her. ‘Then there are two John Macnabs.’
‘Angus thinks he is the Devil,’ said Junius.
‘It looks as if he were a syndicate,’ said Archie, who felt that some remark was expected of him.
‘Well, I’m not complaining,’ said Junius. ‘And now we’re off the stage, and can watch the play from the boxes. I hope you won’t be shocked, sir, but I wouldn’t break my heart if John Macnab got the goods from Haripol.’
‘By Gad, no!’ cried the Colonel. ‘ ’Pon my soul, if I could get in touch with the fellow I’d offer to help him – though he’d probably be too much of a sportsman to let me. That young Claybody wants taking down a peg or two. He’s the most insufferably assured young prig I ever met in my life.’
‘He looked the kind of chap who might turn nasty,’ Sir Archie observed.
‘How do you mean?’ Junius asked. ‘Get busy with a gun – that sort of thing?’
‘Lord, no. The Claybodys are not likely to start shootin’. But they’re as rich as Jews, and they’re capable of hirin’ prize-fighters or puttin’ a live wire round the forest. Or I’ll tell you what they might do – they might drive every beast on Haripol over the marches and keep ’em out for three days. It would wreck the ground for the season, but they wouldn’t mind that – the old man can’t get up the hills and the young ’un don’t want to.’
‘Agatha, my dear,’ said her father, ‘we ought to return the Claybody’s call. Perhaps Mr Junius would drive us over there in his car this afternoon. For, of course, you’ll stay to luncheon, Bandicott – and you, too, Roylance.’
Sir Archie stayed to luncheon; he also stayed to tea; and between these meals he went through a surprising experience. For, after the others had started for Haripol, Janet and he drifted aimlessly towards the Raden bridge and then upward through the pinewoods on the road to Carnmore. The strong sun was tempered by the flickering shade of the trees, and, as the road wound itself out of the crannies of the woods to the bare ridges, light wandering winds cooled the cheek, and, mingled with the fragrance of heather and the rooty smell of bogs, came a salty freshness from the sea. The wide landscape was as luminous as April – a bad presage for the weather, since the Haripol peaks, which in September should have been dim in a mulberry haze, stood out sharp like cameos. The two did not talk much, for they were getting beyond the stage where formal conversation is felt to be necessary. Sir Archie limped along at a round pace, which was easily matched by the girl at his side. Both would instinctively halt now and then, and survey the prospect without speaking, and both felt that these pregnant silences were bringing them very near to one another.
At last the track ran out in screes, and from a bald summit they were looking down on the first of the Carnmore corries. Janet seated herself on a mossy ledge of rock and looked back into the Raden glen, which from that altitude had the appearance of an enclosed garden. The meadows of the lower haugh lay green in the sun, the setting of pines by some freak of light was a dark and cloudy blue, and the little castle rose in the midst of the tr
ees with a startling brightness like carven marble. The picture was as exquisite and strange as an illumination in a missal.
‘Gad, what a place to live in!’ Sir Archie exclaimed.
The girl, who had been gazing at the scene with her chin in her hands, turned on him eyes which were suddenly wistful and rather sad. As contrasted with her sister’s, Janet’s face had a fine hard finish which gave it a brilliancy like an eager boy’s. But now a cloud-wrack had been drawn over the sun.
‘We’ve lived there,’ she said, ‘since Harald Blacktooth – at least papa says so. But the end is very near now. We are the last of the Radens. And that is as it should be, you know.’
‘I’m hanged if I see that,’ Sir Archie began, but the girl interrupted.
‘Yes, it is as it should be. The old life of the Highlands is going, and people like ourselves must go with it. There’s no reason why we should continue to exist. We’ve long ago lost our justification.’
‘D’you mean to say that fellows like Claybody have more right to be here?’
‘Yes. I think they have, because they’re fighters and we’re only survivals. They will disappear, too, unless they learn their lesson … You see, for a thousand years we have been going on here, and other people like us, but we only endured because we were alive. We have the usual conventional motto on our coat of arms – Pro Deo et Rege – a Heralds’ College invention. But our Gaelic motto was very different – it was “Sons of Dogs, come and I will give you flesh.” As long as we lived up to that we flourished, but as soon as we settled down and went to sleep and became rentiers we were bound to decay … My cousins at Glenaicill were just the same. Their motto was “What I have I hold,” and while they remembered it they were great people. But when they stopped holding they went out like a candle, and the last of them is now living in St Malo and a Lancashire cotton-spinner owns the place … When we had to fight hard for our possessions all the time, and give flesh to the sons of dogs who were our clan, we were strong men and women. There was a Raden with Robert Bruce – he fell with Douglas in the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre – and a Raden died beside the King at Flodden – and Radens were in everything that happened in the old days in Scotland and France. But civilisation killed them – they couldn’t adapt themselves to it. Somehow the fire went out of the blood, and they became vegetables. Their only claim was the right of property, which is no right at all.’
‘That’s what the Bolsheviks say,’ said the puzzled Sir Archie.
‘Then I’m a Bolshevik. Nobody in the world today has a right to anything which he can’t justify. That’s not politics, it’s the way nature works. Whatever you’ve got – rank or power or fame or money – you’ve got to justify it, and keep on justifying it, or go under. No law on earth can buttress up a thing which nature means to decay.’
‘D’you know that sounds to me pretty steep doctrine?’
‘No, it isn’t. It isn’t doctrine, and it isn’t politics, it’s common sense. I don’t mean that we want some silly government redistributing everybody’s property. I mean that people should realise that whatever they’ve got they hold under a perpetual challenge, and they are bound to meet that challenge. Then we’ll have living creatures instead of mummies.’
Sir Archie stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘I daresay there’s a lot in that. But what would Colonel Raden say to it?’
‘He would say I was a bandit. And yet he would probably agree with me in the end. Agatha wouldn’t, of course. She adores decay – sad old memories and lost causes and all the rest of it. She’s a sentimentalist, and she’ll marry Junius and go to America, where everybody is sentimental, and be the sweetest thing in the Western hemisphere, and live happy ever after. I’m quite different. I believe I’m kind, but I’m certainly hard-hearted. I suppose it’s Harald Blacktooth coming out.’
Janet had got off her perch, and was standing a yard from Sir Archie, her hat in her hand and the light wind ruffling her hair. The young man, who had no skill in analysing his feelings, felt obscurely that she fitted most exquisitely into the picture of rock and wood and water, that she was, in very truth, a part of his clean elemental world of the hill-tops.
‘What about yourself?’ she asked. ‘In the words of Mr Bandicott, are you going to make good?’
She asked the question with such an air of frank comradeship that Sir Archie was in no way embarrassed. Indeed he was immensely delighted.
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know … I’m a bit of a slacker. There doesn’t seem much worth doing since the war.’
‘What nonsense! You find a thousand things worth doing, but they’re not enough – and they’re not big enough. Do you mean to say you want to hang up your hat at your age and go to sleep? You need to be challenged.’
‘I expect I do,’ he murmured.
‘Well, I challenge you. You’re fit and you’re young, and you did extraordinarily well in the war, and you’ve hosts of friends, and – and – you’re well off, aren’t you?’
‘Pretty fair. You see, I had a long minority, and – oh yes, I’ve far more money than I want.’
‘There you are. I challenge you. You’re bound to justify what you’ve got. I won’t have you idling away your life till you end as the kind of lean brown old gentleman in a bowler hat that one sees at Newmarket. It’s a very nice type, but it’s not good enough for you, and I won’t have it. You must not be a dilettante pottering about with birds and a little sport and a little politics.’
Sir Archie had been preached at occasionally in his life, but never quite in this way. He was preposterously pleased and also a little solemnised.
‘I’m quite serious about politics.’
‘I wonder,’ said Janet, smiling. ‘I don’t mean scraping into Parliament, but real politics – putting the broken pieces together, you know. Papa and the rest of our class want to treat politics like another kind of property in which they have a vested interest. But it won’t do – not in the world we live in today. If you’re going to do any good you must feel the challenge and be ready to meet it. And then you must become yourself a challenger. You must be like John Macnab.’
Sir Archie stared.
‘I don’t mean that I want you to make poaching wagers like John. You can’t live in a place and play those tricks with your neighbours. But I want you to follow what Mr Bandicott would call the ‘John Macnab proposition.’ It’s so good for everybody concerned. Papa has never had so much fun out of his forest as in the days he was repelling invasion, and even Mr Junius found a new interest in the Larrig … I’m all for property, if you can defend it; but there are too many fatted calves in the world.’
Sir Archie suddenly broke into loud laughter.
‘Most people tell me I’m too mad to do much good in anything. But you say I’m not mad enough. Well, I’m all for challengin’ the fatted calves, but I don’t fancy that’s the road that leads to the Cabinet. More like the jail, with a red flag firmly clenched in my manly hand.’
The girl laughed too. ‘Papa says that the man who doesn’t give a damn for anybody can do anything he likes in the world. Most people give many damns for all kinds of foolish things. Mr Claybody, for example – his smart friends, like Lord Lamancha and the Attorney-General – what is his name? – Leithen? – and his silly little position, and his father’s new peerage. But you’re not like that. I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for the few right things and not caring a straw about the rest.’
Had anyone hinted to Sir Archie that a young woman on a Scots mountain could lecture him gravely on his future and still remain a ravishing and adorable thing he would have dismissed the suggestion with incredulity. At the back of his head he had that fear of women as something mysterious and unintelligible which belongs to a motherless and sisterless childhood, and a youth spent almost wholly in the company of men. He had immense compassion for a sex which seemed to him to have a hard patch to hoe in the world, and this pitifulness had always kept him from any con
duct which might harm a woman. His numerous fancies had been light and transient like thistledown, and his heart had been wholly unscathed. Fear that he might stumble into marriage had made him as shy as a woodcock – a fear not without grounds, for a friend had once proposed to write a book called Lives of the Hunted, with a chapter on Archie. Wherefore, his hour having come, he had cascaded into love with desperate completeness, and with the freshness of a mind unstaled by disillusion … All he knew was that a miraculous being had suddenly flooded his world with a new radiance, and was now opening doors and inviting him to dazzling prospects. He felt at once marvellously confident, and supremely humble. Never had mistress a more docile pupil.
They wandered back to the house, and Janet gave him tea in a room full of faded chintzes and Chinese-Chippendale mirrors. Then, when the sun was declining behind the Carnmore peaks, Sir Archie at last took his leave. His head was in a happy confusion, but two ideas rose above the surge – he would seize the earliest chance of asking Janet to marry him, and by all his gods he must not make a fool of himself at Muirtown. She had challenged him, and he had accepted the challenge; he must make it good before he could become in turn a challenger. It may be doubtful if Sir Archie had any very clear notions on the matter, but he was aware that he had received an inspiration, and that somehow or other everything was now to be different … First for that confounded speech. He strove to recollect the sentences which had followed each other so trippingly during his morning’s walk. But he could not concentrate his mind. Peace treaties and German reparations and the recognition of Russia flitted from him like a rapid film, to be replaced by a ‘close-up’ of a girl’s face. Besides, he wanted to sing, and when song flows to the lips consecutive thought is washed out of the brain.
In this happy and exalted mood, dedicate to great enterprises of love and service, Sir Archie entered the Crask smoking-room, to be brought heavily to earth by the sordid business of John Macnab.
Leithen was there, reading a volume of Sir Walter Scott with an air of divine detachment. Lamancha, very warm and dishevelled, was endeavouring to quench his thirst with a large whisky-and-soda; Palliser-Yeates, also the worse for wear, lay in an attitude of extreme fatigue on a sofa; Crossby, who had sought sanctuary at Crask, was busy with the newspapers which had just arrived, while Wattie Lithgow stood leaning on his crook staring into vacancy, like a clown from some stage Arcadia.