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

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m dashed! You’re the worst spoiled chap I ever heard of, and a nice example to democracy.” Archie spoke as if his gods had been blasphemed.

      “Democracy, anyhow, is a good example to us. I know now why workmen strike sometimes and can’t give any reason. We’re on strike—against our privileges.”

      Archie was not listening. “Too easy, you say?” he repeated. “I call that pretty fair conceit. I’ve seen you miss birds often enough, old fellow.”

      “Nevertheless, it seems to me too easy. Everything has become too easy, both work and play.”

      “You can screw up the difficulty, you know. Try shootin’ with a twenty bore, or fishin’ for salmon with a nine-foot rod and a dry-fly cast.”

      “I don’t want to kill anything,” said Palliser-Yeates. “I don’t see the fun of it.”

      Archie was truly shocked. Then a light of reminiscence came into his eye. “You remind me of poor old Jim Tarras,” he said thoughtfully.

      There were no inquiries about Jim Tarras, so Archie volunteered further news.

      “You remember Jim? He had a little place somewhere in Moray, and spent most of his time shootin’ in East Africa. Poor chap, he went back there with Smuts in the war and perished of blackwater. Well, when his father died and he came home to settle down, he found it an uncommon dull job. So, to enliven it, he invented a new kind of sport. He knew all there was to be known about Shikar, and from trampin’ about the Highlands he had a pretty accurate knowledge of the country-side. So he used to write to the owner of a deer forest and present his compliments, and beg to inform him that between certain dates he proposed to kill one of his stags. When he had killed it he undertook to deliver it to the owner, for he wasn’t a thief.”

      “I call that poaching on the grand scale,” observed Palliser-Yeates.

      “Wasn’t it? Most of the fellows he wrote to accepted his challenge and told him to come and do his damnedest. Little Avington, I remember, turned on every man and boy about the place for three nights to watch the forest. Jim usually worked at night, you see. One or two curmudgeons talked of the police and prosecutin’ him, but public opinion was against them—too dashed unsportin’.”

      “Did he always get his stag?” Leithen asked.

      “In-var-iably, and got it off the ground and delivered it to the owner, for that was the rule of the game. Sometimes he had a precious near squeak, and Avington, who was going off his head at the time, tried to pot him—shot a gillie in the leg too. But Jim always won out. I should think he was the best Shikari God ever made.”

      “Is that true, Archie?” Lamancha’s voice had a magisterial tone.

      “True—as—true. I know all about it, far Wattie Lithgow, who was Jim’s man, is with me now. He and his wife keep house for me at Crask. Jim never took but the one man with him, and that was Wattie, and he made him just about as cunning an old dodger as himself.”

      Leithen yawned. “What sort of a place is Crask?” he inquired.

      “Tiny little place. No fishin’ except some hill lochs and only rough shootin’. I take it for the birds. Most marvellous nestin’ ground in Britain barrin’ some of the Outer Islands. I don’t know why it should be, but it is. Something to do with the Gulf Stream, maybe. Anyhow, I’ve got the greenshank breedin’ regularly and the red-throated diver, and half a dozen rare duck. It’s a marvellous stoppin’ place in spring too, for birds goin’ north.”

      “Are you much there?”

      “Generally in April, and always from the middle of August till the middle of October. You see, it’s about the only place I know where you can do exactly as you like. The house is stuck away up on a long slope of moor, and you see the road for a mile from the windows, so you’ve plenty of time to take to the hills if anybody comes to worry you. I roost there with old Sime, my butler, and the two Lithgows, and put up a pal now and then who likes the life. It’s the jolliest bit of the year for me.”

      “Have you any neighbours?”

      “Heaps, but they don’t trouble me much. Crask’s the earthenware pot among the brazen vessels—mighty hard to get to and nothing to see when you get there. So the brazen vessels keep to themselves.”

      Lamancha went to a shelf of books above a writing-table and returned with an atlas. “Who are your brazen vessels?” he asked.

      “Well, my brassiest is old Claybody at Haripol—that’s four miles off across the hill.”

      “Bit of a swine, isn’t he?” said Leithen.

      “Oh, no. He’s rather a good old bird himself. Don’t care so much for his family. Then there’s Glenraden t’other side of the Larrig”—he indicated a point on the map which Lamancha was studying—“with a real old Highland grandee living in it—Alastair Raden—commanded the Scots Guards, I believe, in the year One. Family as old as the Flood and very poor, but just manage to hang on. He’s the last Raden that will live there, but that doesn’t matter so much as he has no son—only a brace of daughters. Then, of course, there’s the show place, Strathlarrig—horrible great house as large as a factory, but wonderful fine salmon-fishin’. Some Americans have got it this year—Boston or Philadelphia, I don’t remember which—very rich and said to be rather high-brow. There’s a son, I believe.”

      Lamancha closed the atlas.

      “Do you know any of these people, Archie?” he asked.

      “Only the Claybody’s—very slightly. I stayed with them in Suffolk for a covert shoot two years ago. The Radens have been to call on me, but I was out. The Bandicotts—that’s the Americans—are new this year.

      “Is the sport good?”

      “The very best. Haripol is about the steepest and most sportin’ forest in the Highlands, and Glenraden is nearly as good. There’s no forest at Strathlarrig, but, as I’ve told you, amazin’ good salmon fishin’. For a west coast river, I should put the Larrig only second to the Laxford.”

      Lamancha consulted the atlas again and appeared to ponder. Then he lifted his head, and his long face, which had a certain heaviness and sullenness in repose, was now lit by a smile which made it handsomer and younger.

      “Could you have me at Crask this autumn?” he asked. “My wife has to go to Aix for a cure and I have no plans after the House rises.”

      “I should jolly well think so,” cried Archie. “There’s heaps of room in the old house, and I promise you I’ll make you comfortable. Look here, you fellows! Why shouldn’t all three of you come? I can get in a couple of extra maids from Inverlarrig.”

      “Excellent idea,” said Lamancha. “But you mustn’t bother about the maids. I’ll bring my own man, and we’ll have a male establishment, except for Mrs. Lithgow…By the way, I suppose you can count on Mrs. Lithgow?”

      “How do you mean, ‘count’?” asked Archie, rather puzzled. Then a difficulty struck him. “But wouldn’t you be bored? I can’t show you much in the way of sport, and you’re not naturalists like me. It’s a quiet life, you know.”

      “I shouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ