Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan John

anomaly might have been redeemed by the expression; good-humour would have invested it with an air of agreeable farce. But there was no friendliness in the man’s face. It was set like a judge’s in a stony impassiveness.

      “May we walk up to the House?” Heritage asked. “We are here for a night and should like to have a look at it.”

      The man advanced a step. He had either a bad cold, or a voice comparable in size to his features.

      “There’s no entrance here,” he said huskily. “I have strict orders.”

      “Oh, come now,” said Heritage. “It can do nobody any harm if you let us in for half an hour.”

      The man advanced another step.

      “You shall not come in. Go away from here. Go away, I tell you. It is private.” The words spoken by the small mouth in the small voice had a kind of childish ferocity.

      The travellers turned their back on him and continued their way.

      “Sich a curmudgeon!” Dickson commented. His face had flushed, for he was susceptible to rudeness. “Did you notice? That man’s a foreigner.”

      “He’s a brute,” said Heritage. “But I’m not going to be done in by that class of lad. There can be no gates on the sea side, so we’ll work round that way, for I won’t sleep till I’ve seen the place.”

      Presently the trees grew thinner, and the road plunged through thickets of hazel till it came to a sudden stop in a field. There the cover ceased wholly, and below them lay the glen of the Laver. Steep green banks descended to a stream which swept in coils of gold into the eye of the sunset. A little farther down the channel broadened, the slopes fell back a little, and a tongue of glittering sea ran up to meet the hill waters. The Laver is a gentle stream after it leaves its cradle heights, a stream of clear pools and long bright shallows, winding by moorland steadings and upland meadows; but in its last half-mile it goes mad, and imitates its childhood when it tumbled over granite shelves. Down in that green place the crystal water gushed and frolicked as if determined on one hour of rapturous life before joining the sedater sea.

      Heritage flung himself on the turf.

      “This is a good place! Ye gods, what a good place! Dogson, aren’t you glad you came? I think everything’s bewitched to-night. That village is bewitched, and that old woman’s tea. Good white magic! And that foul innkeeper and that brigand at the gate. Black magic! And now here is the home of all enchantment—’island valley of Avilion’—’waters that listen for lovers’—all the rest of it!”

      Dickson observed and marvelled.

      “I can’t make you out, Mr. Heritage. You were saying last night you were a great democrat, and yet you were objecting to yon laddies camping on the moor. And you very near bit the neb off me when I said I liked Tennyson. And now… ” Mr. McCunn’s command of language was inadequate to describe the transformation.

      “You’re a precise, pragmatical Scot,” was the answer. “Hang it, man, don’t remind me that I’m inconsistent. I’ve a poet’s licence to play the fool, and if you don’t understand me, I don’t in the least understand myself. All I know is that I’m feeling young and jolly, and that it’s the Spring.”

      Mr. Heritage was assuredly in a strange mood. He began to whistle with a far-away look in his eye.

      “Do you know what that is?” he asked suddenly.

      Dickson, who could not detect any tune, said “No.”

      “It’s an aria from a Russian opera that came out just before the war. I’ve forgotten the name of the fellow who wrote it. Jolly thing, isn’t it? I always remind myself of it when I’m in this mood, for it is linked with the greatest experience of my life. You said, I think, that you had never been in love?”

      Dickson replied in the native fashion. “Have you?” he asked.

      “I have, and I am—been for two years. I was down with my battalion on the Italian front early in 1918, and because I could speak the language they hoicked me out and sent me to Rome on a liaison job. It was Easter time and fine weather, and, being glad to get out of the trenches, I was pretty well pleased with myself and enjoying life. In the place where I stayed there was a girl. She was a Russian, a princess of a great family, but a refugee, and of course as poor as sin. I remember how badly dressed she was among all the well-to-do Romans. But, my God, what a beauty! There was never anything in the world like her. She was little more than a child, and she used to sing that air in the morning as she went down the stairs. They sent me back to the front before I had a chance of getting to know her, but she used to give me little timid good mornings, and her voice and eyes were like an angel’s. I’m over my head in love, but it’s hopeless, quite hopeless. I shall never see her again.”

      “I’m sure I’m honoured by your confidence,” said Dickson reverently.

      The Poet, who seemed to draw exhilaration from the memory of his sorrows, arose and fetched him a clout on the back. “Don’t talk of confidence, as if you were a reporter,” he said. “What about that House? If we’re to see it before the dark comes we’d better hustle.”

      The green slopes on their left, as they ran seaward, were clothed towards their summit with a tangle of broom and light scrub. The two forced their way through it, and found to their surprise that on this side there were no defences of the Huntingtower demesne. Along the crest ran a path which had once been gravelled and trimmed. Beyond, through a thicket of laurels and rhododendrons, they came on a long unkempt aisle of grass, which seemed to be one of those side avenues often found in connection with old Scots dwellings. Keeping along this they reached a grove of beech and holly through which showed a dim shape of masonry. By a common impulse they moved stealthily, crouching in cover, till at the far side of the wood they found a sunk fence and looked over an acre or two of what had once been lawn and flower-beds to the front of the mansion.

      The outline of the building was clearly silhouetted against the glowing west, but since they were looking at the east face the detail was all in shadow. But, dim as it was, the sight was enough to give Dickson the surprise of his life. He had expected something old and baronial. But this was new, raw and new, not twenty years built. Some madness had prompted its creator to set up a replica of a Tudor house in a countryside where the thing was unheard of. All the tricks were there—oriel windows, lozenged panes, high twisted chimney stacks; the very stone was red, as if to imitate the mellow brick of some ancient Kentish manor. It was new, but it was also decaying. The creepers had fallen from the walls, the pilasters on the terrace were tumbling down, lichen and moss were on the doorsteps. Shuttered, silent, abandoned, it stood like a harsh memento mori of human hopes.

      Dickson had never before been affected by an inanimate thing with so strong a sense of disquiet. He had pictured an old stone tower on a bright headland; he found instead this raw thing among trees. The decadence of the brand-new repels as something against nature, and this new thing was decadent. But there was a mysterious life in it, for though not a chimney smoked, it seemed to enshrine a personality and to wear a sinister aura. He felt a lively distaste, which was almost fear. He wanted to get far away from it as fast as possible. The sun, now sinking very low, sent up rays which kindled the crests of a group of firs to the left of the front door.

      He had the absurd fancy that they were torches flaming before a bier.

      It was well that the two had moved quietly and kept in shadow. Footsteps fell on their ears, on the path which threaded the lawn just beyond the sunk-fence. It was the keeper of the West Lodge and he carried something on his back, but both that and his face were indistinct in the half-light.

      Other footsteps were heard, coming from the other side of the lawn. A man’s shod feet rang on the stone of a flagged path, and from their irregular fall it was plain that he was lame. The two men met near the door, and spoke together. Then they separated, and moved one down each side of the house. To the two watchers they had the air of a patrol, or of warders pacing the corridors of a prison.

      “Let’s get out of this,” said Dickson, and turned