SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

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 to-day 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?”

      “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 to-day. 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 conduct 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, dedicated to great enterprises of love and service, Sir Archie entered the Crask smoking-room, to be brought heavily to earth