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

nowadays with fine talk. There’s hardly a man in public life with a proper edge to his mind. They keep blazing away about ideals and principles, when all they’re seeking is just to win seats at the next election, and meantime folk stand hoasting at the street-corners with no chance of a job. This country, Mr Tibbets, is suffering from nobility of language and ignobility of practice. There’s far too much damned uplift abroad, and far too little common sense. In the old days, when folk stuck closer to the Bible, there was the fear of hell-fire to remind them that faith without works was dead.”

      Dickson said much more, for it was one of his favourite topics. He expanded on the modern lack of reverence for the things that mattered and the abject veneration for trash. He declared that the public mind had been over-lubricated, that discipline and logic were out of fashion, and that the prophets as a fraternity had taken to prophesying smooth things. He just checked himself in time, remembering where he was, for he almost instanced Mr Craw as a chief sinner.

      Tibbets scribbled busily, gulped down his cup of now lukewarm tea, and rose to go. He had got an interview which was the chief professional triumph of his career. The Knockraw car was still at his disposal. He could be in Portaway in time to write out his story and send it by the mail which reached London at 4.30 a.m. and so catch the later editions of his paper. Meantime he would telephone to his chief and prepare him for the thunderbolt.

      He bowed over Dickson’s hand. “I am honoured to have met you, sir. I can only hope that it is a privilege which may be repeated.”

      Dickson sought out Dougal and Barbon in the smoking-room. “Yon’s a pleasant-spoken fellow,” he said. “I made it all right about Knockraw, and sent him away as crouse as a piper. We had a fine crack, and he wrote down what I said in a wee book. I suppose I’ve been interviewed, and that’s the first time in my life.”

      A sudden suspicion awoke in Dougal’s eye.

      “What kind of thing did you give him?” he asked.

      Dickson sketched the main lines of his conversation, and Dougal’s questions became more peremptory till he had extracted all of Tibbets’s interrogatories and Dickson’s answers. Then he lay back in his chair and laughed.

      “He left in a hurry, you say. No wonder. He has a story that will keep the Wire busy for a fortnight… No, no, you’re not to blame. It’s my fault that I never guessed what might happen. Tibbets is a proud man to-night. He took you for Craw, and he’s got in his pocket the first interview that Craw ever gave to mortal man… We’re in the soup this time, right enough, for you’ve made the body blaspheme every idol he worships.”

      CHAPTER 12

       PORTAWAY — THE GREEN TREE

       Table of Contents

      The eight miles to Portaway were taken by the travellers at a leisurely pace, so that it was noon before they came in sight of the Canonry’s capital. There had been some frost in the night, and, when they started, rime had lain on the stiffened ruts of the road and the wayside grasses. Presently the sun burned it up, and the shorn meadows and berry-laden hedges drowsed under a sky like June. The way, after they had left the Knockraw moors, was mostly through lowlands—fat farms with full stackyards, and woods loud with the salutes of pheasants. Now and then at a high place they stopped to look back to the blue huddle of the great uplands.

      “Castle Gay lies yonder.” Jaikie directed his companion’s eyes. “Yon’s the Castle Hill.”

      Mr Craw viewed the prospect with interest. His home had hitherto been for him a place without environment, like a walled suburban paradise where a city man seeks his repose. He had enjoyed its park and gardens, but he had had no thought of their setting. Now he was realising that it was only a little piece of a vast and delectable countryside. He had come down from bleak hills into meadows, and by contrast the meadows seemed a blessed arcady… His mind was filled with pleasant and fruitful thoughts. The essence of living lay in its contrasts. The garden redoubled its charm if it marched with heather; the wilderness could be a delight if it came as a relief from a world too fatted and supine… Did not the secret of happiness lie in the true consciousness of environment? Castle Gay was nothing if the thought of it was confined to its park walls. The mind must cultivate a wide orbit, an exact orientation, for the relief from trouble lay in the realisation of that trouble’s narrow limits. Optimism, a manly optimism, depended only upon the radius of the encircling soul. He had a recollection of Browning: “Somewhere in the distance Heaven is blue above Mountains where sleep the unsunn’d tarns.”… On this theme he saw some eloquent articles ahead of him.

      He was also feeling very well. Autumn scents had never come to his nostrils with such aromatic sharpness. The gold and sulphur and russet of the woods had never seemed so marvellous a pageant. He understood that his walks had hitherto, for so many years, been taken with muffled senses—the consequence of hot rooms, too frequent meals, too heavy a sequence of little indoor duties. To-day he was feeling the joys of a discoverer. Or was it re- discovery? By the time they had come to the beginnings of Portaway he was growing hungry, and in the narrow street of the Eastgate, as it dropped to the Callowa bridge, they passed a baker’s shop. He stared at the window and sniffed the odour from the doorway with an acuteness of recollection which was almost painful. In the window was a heap of newly-baked biscuits, the kind called “butter biscuits,” which are still made in old-fashioned shops in old- fashioned Scots towns. He remembered them in his childhood—how he would flatten his nose of a Saturday against a baker’s window in Partankirk, when he had spent his weekly penny, and his soul hungered for these biscuits’ delicate crumbly richness… He must find a way to return to this shop, and for auld lang syne taste a butter biscuit again.

      Jaikie’s mind on that morning walk had been differently engaged. He was trying to find a clue through the fog of suspicions which the sight of Sigismund Allins had roused in him. Allins was a confidential secretary of Mr Craw. He was also a gambler, and a man who bragged of his power with the Craw Press. Allins was, therefore, in all likelihood a dweller in the vicinity of Queer Street. If he had money troubles—and what more likely?— he would try to use his purchase with Craw to help him through. But how? Jaikie had a notion that Mr Craw would not be very tolerant towards Allins’s kind of troubles.

      Allins had gone off on holiday before the present crisis began, and was not expected back for another fortnight. He had obviously nothing to do with the persecution of Craw by the journalists—there was no profit for him that way. But what about the Evallonians? They had known enough of Craw’s ways and had had sufficient power to get his papers to print the announcement of his going abroad. Barbon had assumed that they had an efficient intelligence service. Was it not more likely that they had bought Allins? Why should Allins not be—for a consideration—on their side?

      But in that case why had he returned prematurely from his holiday? The wise course, having got his fee, was to stay away till the Evallonians had done their business, in order that he might be free from any charge of complicity. But he had returned secretly by a roundabout road. He could have gone direct to Portaway, for the train which had deposited him at Gledmouth stopped also at that station. He wanted to be in the neighbourhood, unsuspected, to watch developments. It was a bold course and a dangerous. There must be some compelling motive behind it.

      Jaikie questioned Mr Craw about Allins, and got vague answers, for his companion’s thoughts were on higher things. Allins had been recommended to him by some business friends; his people were well known in the city; he had been private secretary to Lord Wassell; he was a valuable man, because he went a great deal into society, unlike Barbon, and could always find out what people were talking about. He had been with him two years. Yes, most useful and diplomatic and an excellent linguist. He had often accompanied him abroad, where he seemed to know everybody. Did Barbon like him? Certainly. They were a happy family, with no jealousies, for each had his appointed business. Well off? Apparently. He had a substantial salary, but must spend a good deal beyond it. Undoubtedly he had private means. No, Allins had nothing to do with the management of the papers. He was not seriously interested in politics or literature.