JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ through the shrubberies on the north side of the House and the side avenue beyond which the ground fell to the Laver glen. On their right the House rose like a dark cloud, but Dickson had lost his terror of it. There were three angry men inside it, he remembered: long let them stay there. He marvelled at his mood, and also rejoiced, for his worst fear had always been that he might prove a coward. Now he was puzzled to think how he could ever be frightened again, for his one object was to succeed, and in that absorption fear seemed to him merely a waste of time. “It all comes of treating the thing as a business proposition,” he told himself.

      But there was far more in his heart than this sober resolution. He was intoxicated with the resurgence of youth and felt a rapture of audacity which he never remembered in his decorous boyhood. “I haven’t been doing badly for an old man,” he reflected with glee. What, oh what had become of the pillar of commerce, the man who might have been a bailie had he sought municipal honours, the elder in the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, the instructor of literary young men? In the past three days he had levanted with jewels which had once been an Emperor’s and certainly were not his; he had burglariously entered and made free of a strange house; he had played hide-and-seek at the risk of his neck and had wrestled in the dark with a foreign miscreant; he had shot at an eminent solicitor with intent to kill; and he was now engaged in tramping the world with a fairytale Princess. I blush to confess that of each of his doings he was unashamedly proud, and thirsted for many more in the same line. “Gosh, but I’m seeing life,” was his unregenerate conclusion.

      Without sight or sound of a human being, they descended to the Laver, climbed again by the cart track, and passed the deserted West Lodge and inn to the village. It was almost full dawn when the three stood in Mrs. Morran’s kitchen.

      “I’ve brought you two ladies, Auntie Phemie,” said Dickson.

      They made an odd group in that cheerful place, where the new-lit fire was crackling in the big grate—the wet undignified form of Dickson, unshaven of cheek and chin and disreputable in garb; the shrouded figure of Cousin Eugenie, who had sunk into the arm-chair and closed her eyes; the slim girl, into whose face the weather had whipped a glow like blossom; and the hostess, with her petticoats kilted and an ancient mutch on her head.

      Mrs. Morran looked once at Saskia, and then did a thing which she had not done since her girlhood. She curtseyed.

      “I’m proud to see ye here, Mem. Off wi’ your things, and I’ll get ye dry claes, Losh, ye’re fair soppin’ And your shoon! Ye maun change your feet… Dickson! Awa’ up to the loft, and dinna you stir till I give ye a cry. The leddies will change by the fire. And You, Mem”—this to Cousin Eugenie—”the place for you’s your bed. I’ll kinnle a fire ben the hoose in a jiffey. And syne ye’ll have breakfast—ye’ll hae a cup o’ tea wi’ me now, for the kettle’s just on the boil. Awa’ wi’ ye. Dickson,” and she stamped her foot.

      Dickson departed, and in the loft washed his face, and smoked a pipe on the edge of the bed, watching the mist eddying up the village street. From below rose the sounds of hospitable bustle, and when after some twenty minutes’ vigil he descended, he found Saskia toasting stockinged toes by the fire in the great arm-chair, and Mrs. Morran setting the table.

      “Auntie Phemie, hearken to me. We’ve taken on too big a job for two men and six laddies, and help we’ve got to get, and that this very morning. D’you mind the big white house away up near the hills ayont the station and east of the Ayr road? It looked like a gentleman’s shooting lodge. I was thinking of trying there. Mercy!”

      The exclamation was wrung from him by his eyes settling on Saskia and noting her apparel. Gone were her thin foreign clothes, and in their place she wore a heavy tweed skirt cut very short, and thick homespun stockings, which had been made for some one with larger feet than hers. A pair of the coarse low-heeled shoes which country folk wear in the farmyard stood warming by the hearth. She still had her russet jumper, but round her neck hung a grey wool scarf, of the kind known as a “Comforter.” Amazingly pretty she looked in Dickson’s eyes, but with a different kind of prettiness. The sense of fragility had fled, and he saw how nobly built she was for all her exquisiteness. She looked like a queen, he thought, but a queen to go gipsying through the world with.

      “Ay, they’re some o’ Elspeth’s things, rale guid furthy claes,” said Mrs. Morran complacently. “And the shoon are what she used to gang about the byres wi’ when she was in the Castlewham dairy. The leddy was tellin’ me she was for trampin’ the hills, and thae things will keep her dry and warm… I ken the hoose ye mean. They ca’ it the Mains of Garple. And I ken the man that bides in it. He’s yin Sir Erchibald Roylance. English, but his mither was a Dalziel. I’m no weel acquaint wi’ his forbears, but I’m weel eneuch acquaint wi’ Sir Erchie, and ‘better a guid coo than a coo o’ a guid kind,’ as my mither used to say. He used to be an awfu’ wild callont, a freend o’ puir Maister Quentin, and up to ony deevilry. But they tell me he’s a quieter lad since the war, as sair lamed by fa’in oot o’ an airyplane.”

      “Will he be at the Mains just now?” Dickson asked.

      “I wadna wonder. He has a muckle place in England, but he aye used to come here in the back-end for the shootin’ and in April for birds. He’s clean daft about birds. He’ll be out a’ day at the craig watchin’ solans, or lyin’ a’ mornin’ i’ the moss lookin’ at bog-blitters.”

      “Will he help, think you?”

      “I’ll wager he’ll help. Onyway it’s your best chance, and better a wee bush than nae beild. Now, sit in to your breakfast.”

      It was a merry meal. Mrs. Morran dispensed tea and gnomic wisdom. Saskia ate heartily, speaking little, but once or twice laying her hand softly on her hostess’s gnarled fingers. Dickson was in such spirits that he gobbled shamelessly, being both hungry and hurried, and he spoke of the still unconquered enemy with ease and disrespect, so that Mrs. Morran was moved to observe that there was “naething sae bauld as a blind mear.” But when in a sudden return of modesty he belittled his usefulness and talked sombrely of his mature years he was told that he “wad never be auld wi’ sae muckle honesty.” Indeed it was very clear that Mrs. Morran approved of her nephew. They did not linger over breakfast, for both were impatient to be on the road. Mrs. Morran assisted Saskia to put on Elspeth’s shoes. “‘Even a young fit finds comfort in an auld bauchle,’ as my mother, honest woman, used to say.” Dickson’s waterproof was restored to him, and for Saskia an old raincoat belonging to the son in South Africa was discovered, which fitted her better. “Siccan weather,” said the hostess, as she opened the door to let in a swirl of wind. “The deil’s aye kind to his ain. Haste ye back, Mem, and be sure I’ll tak’ guid care o’ your leddy cousin.”

      The proper way to the Mains of Garple was either by the station and the Ayr road, or by the Auchenlochan highway, branching off half a mile beyond the Garple bridge. But Dickson, who had been studying the map and fancied himself as a pathfinder, chose the direct route across the Long Muir as being at once shorter and more sequestered. With the dawn the wind had risen again, but it had shifted towards the north-west and was many degrees colder. The mist was furling on the hills like sails, the rain had ceased, and out at sea the eye covered a mile or two of wild water. The moor was drenching wet, and the peat bogs were brimming with inky pools, so that soon the travellers were soaked to the knees. Dickson had no fear of pursuit, for he calculated that Dobson and his friends, even if they had got out, would be busy looking for the truants in the vicinity of the House and would presently be engaged with the old Tower. But he realized, too, that speed on his errand was vital, for at any moment the Unknown might arrive from the sea.

      So he kept up a good pace, half-running, half-striding, till they had passed the railway, and he found himself gasping with a stitch in his side, and compelled to rest in the lee of what had once been a sheepfold. Saskia amazed him. She СКАЧАТЬ