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

the former. “The scoondrel has stole Tam’s bicycle, and he didna tak the Glendonan road, but the road to Gledmouth, and that’s maistly doun hill. This lassie was bicyclin’ back frae her mither’s, and at the foot o’ the Kirklaw brae she seen something by the roadside. She seen it was a bicycle, and she kent it for Tam’s bicycle, and it was a’ bashed to bits. The body maun hae run into the brig.”

      “How far off?” Jaikie asked.

      “The better pairt o’ fower miles. Na, ye’ll no make up on him. Yon’s the soupple blagyird, and he’ll be hidin’ in a Gledmouth close long or ye gat near him. Wae’s me for Tam’s guid new bicycle that cost ten pund last Martinmas.”

      “Is it much damaged?” Jaikie asked the girl.

      “Dung a’ to smithers,” was the answer. “The front wheel’s the shape o’ a peesweep’s egg, and the handle-bars are like a coo’s horn.”

      “Heard ye ever the like?” Mrs Johnston lamented. “And the pollis will never get him, and if they did he wad gang to jyle, but he couldna pay the price o’ the bicycle. It’s an unco blow, for Tam has nae siller to spare.”

      It is to Mr Craw’s credit that he did not think only of the bearing of this disaster on his own affairs.

      “I am very sorry for the misfortune,” he told his hostess. “At the moment I am travelling light and have little money. But I am not without means, and I will see that you receive the sum of ten pounds within a week.”

      He was met by a solemn stare. Certainly with his borrowed trousers, much stained collar, and draggled tie (for Jaikie had forgotten to bring from Castle Gay these minor adornments), he did not look like a moneyed man. “Thenk ye kindly,” she said, but it was obvious that she put no trust in his promise.

      Breakfast was an uncomfortable meal, hurriedly served, for Mrs Johnston was busy upstairs, preparing for the emergence of her husband from his sick room. Beside Jaikie sat Woolworth, his new purchase, very hungry, but not yet certain how far he dared to presume. He pirouetted about on his lengthy hind legs, and then slapped Jaikie’s arm with an urgent paw. Jaikie prepared for him a substantial meal of scraps, which was devoured in a twinkling. “I wonder when that beast last saw food,” he observed.

      Then he borrowed an old dishcloth and a piece of soap, and retired with Woolworth to the pump. When Mr Craw joined them the terrier, shivering violently, and with a face of woe, had been thoroughly scrubbed, and now was having his thick fleece combed with a gap-toothed instrument which Jaikie had discovered in the stable. Followed a drastic dressing down with a broken brush, while Jaikie made the same hissing sounds that had accompanied his towelling of Mr Craw the previous evening. Jaikie had said no word of plans at breakfast. He seemed to be waiting for his companion to make the first comment on a shattering miscarriage.

      “I cannot go to London in these clothes,” said Mr Craw, looking down at the well-worn grey breeks.

      Jaikie’s eyes left Woolworth and regarded him critically. He was certainly a different figure from the spruce gentleman who, twenty-four hours ago, had left the Back House of the Garroch. He was not aggressively disreputable, but the combination of trousers, blue jacket, and dirty collar made him look like a jobbing carpenter, or a motor mechanic from some provincial garage. The discordant element in the picture was his face, which belied his garb, for it was the face of a man accustomed to deference, mildly arrogant, complacent for all the trouble in his eyes. Such a face never belonged to a mechanic. Jaikie, puzzled to find a name for the apparition, decided that Mr Craw had become like the kind of man who spoke on Sunday in Hyde Park, a politician from the pavement. He remembered a Communist orator in Glasgow who had had something of the same air.

      “I can’t get to Castle Gay without a bicycle, and be back in time,” was all he said.

      “That means postponing still further my journey to London,” said Mr Craw. The curious thing was that he did not say it dolefully. Something had changed in him this morning. His tone was resigned, almost philosophic. A sound sleep after a day of hard exercise had given him a novel sense of physical well-being. He had just eaten, with a hearty appetite, a very plain breakfast, at which his chef would have shuddered. The tonic air of the upland morning put vigour into his blood. He was accustomed to start his day with a hot bath, and emerge from warm rooms with his senses a little dulled. This morning he had had no bath of any kind, yet he felt cleaner than usual, and his eyes and nostrils and ears seemed to be uncommonly awake. He had good long-distance sight, so he discarded his spectacles, which for the moment were useless, and observed with interest the links of the two flooded streams with some stray cocks of moorland hay bobbing on their current… There were golden plover whistling on the hill behind the inn; he heard them with a certain delight in the fitness of their wild call to that desert… He sniffed the odour of wet heather and flood water and peat reek—and something else, homely and pleasant, which recalled very distant memories. That was, of course, the smell of cows; he had forgotten that cows smelt so agreeably.

      “Have you anything to propose?” he asked in a tone which was quite amiable.

      Jaikie looked up sharply, and saw that in his companion’s face which he had not seen before, and scarcely expected.

      “I doubt there’s nothing for it but to make our way round the butt-end of the hills towards Portaway. That will bring us near Castle Gay, and I’ll find a chance to see Dougal and Barbon and get some money… It’s at least twenty-seven miles to Portaway, but we needn’t get there to-night. I know most of the herds, and we can easily find a place to stop at when we get tired. It’s a grand day for the hills.”

      “Very well,” said Mr Craw, and his tone was rather of contentment than of resignation.

      They paid their modest bill, and put a luncheon of scones and cheese in their packs, one of which Mr Craw insisted on shouldering. He reiterated his promise to pay for the bicycle, and Mrs Johnston, assured of his good will if not of his means, shook his hand. The voice of the convalescent husband cut short their leave-takings, and their last recollection of the place was a confused noise within, caused by that husband, with many appeals to his Maker, beginning a cautious descent of the stairs.

      Almost at once they left the Gledmouth highway and turned up a green loaning, an old drove-road which zigzagged along the face of a heather hill. Woolworth at first trotted docilely at Jaikie’s heels, but soon, lured by various luscious scents, he took to investigating the environs. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the firmament was the palest blue, infinitely clear, with a quality of light which made the lowlands to the south and east seem like some background in an Italian primitive. There was little sound but the scrunch of their boots on the patches of scree, and a great crying of birds, but from very far away came an echo of bells, ringing to kirk in some distant clachan. Except for an occasional summons to Woolworth Jaikie spoke no word, for he was not much given to speech. Mr Craw, too, was silent. He was thinking his own thoughts.

      He was thinking about Death, an odd subject for a shining morning. At the back of his mind he had a great fear of death, against which the consolations were void of that robust philosophy which he preached in public. His fear took a curious shape. He had made for himself a rich environment of money and houses and servants and prestige. So long as he lived he was on a pinnacle above the crowd, secure from all common ills. But when he died he would be no more than a tramp in a ditch. He would be carried out naked from his cosy shelter to lie in the cold earth, and his soul—he believed in the soul—would go shivering into the infinite spaces. Mr Craw had often rebuked himself for thinking in such materialist terms of the ultimate mystery, but whatever his reason might say his fancy kept painting the same picture. Stripped cold and bare! The terror of it haunted him, and sometimes he would lie awake at night and grapple with it… He felt that men who led a hard life, the poor man with famine at his threshold, the sailor on the sea, the soldier in the trench, must think of death with more complacency. They had less to lose, there was less to strip from them before the chilly journeying… Sometimes he had wished that he could be like them. If he could only endure discomfort and want for a little—only feel that the gap was narrower between his cosseted life and the cold clay and the outer winds!… Now he had a feeling that he was