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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 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.

      “Where on earth have you been all day, Archie?” Lamancha asked sternly.

      “I walked over to Glenraden and stayed to luncheon. They’re all hot on your side there—Bandicott too. There’s a general feelin’ that young Claybody wants takin’ down a peg.”

      “Much good that will do us. John and Wattie and I have been crawling all day round the Haripol marches. It’s pretty clear what they’ll do—you think so, Wattie?”

      “Alan Macnicol is not altogether a fule. Aye, I ken fine what they’ll dae.”

      “Clear the beasts off the ground?” Archie suggested.

      “No,” said Lamancha. “Move them into the Sanctuary, and the Sanctuary is in the very heart of the forest—between Sgurr Mor and Sgurr Dearg at the head of the Reascuill. It won’t take many men to watch it. And the mischief is that Haripol is the one forest where it can be done quite simply. It’s so infernally rough that if the deer were all over it I would back myself to get a shot with a fair chance of removing the beast, but if every stag is inside an inner corral it will be the devil’s own business to get within a thousand yards of them—let alone shift the carcass.”

      “If the wind keeps in the west,” said Wattie, “It is a manifest impossibeelity. If it was in the north there would be a verra wee sma’ chance. All other airts are hopeless. We maun just possess our souls in patience, and see what the day brings forth…I’ll awa and mak arrangements for the morn.”

      Lamancha nodded after the retreating figure.

      “He is determined to go to Muirtown to-morrow. Says you promised that he should be present when you made your first bow in public, and that he has arranged with Shapp to drive him in the Ford…But about Haripol. This idea of СКАЧАТЬ