JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated). Buchan John
literary young man said nothing, but ate trout abstractedly, one eye on his book. The fish had been caught by the anglers in the Loch o’ the Threshes, and phrases describing their capture floated from the other end of the table. The young man had a second helping, and then refused the excellent hill mutton that followed, contenting himself with cheese. Not so Dickson and the catechist. They ate everything that was set before them, topping up with a glass of port. Then the latter, who had been talking illuminatingly about Spain, rose, bowed, and left the table, leaving Dickson, who liked to linger over his meals, to the society of the ichthyophagous student.
He nodded towards the book. “Interesting?” he asked.
The young man shook his head and displayed the name on the cover. “Anatole France. I used to be crazy about him, but now he seems rather a back number.” Then he glanced towards the just-vacated chair. “Australian,” he said.
“How d’you know?”
“Can’t mistake them. There’s nothing else so lean and fine produced on the globe to-day. I was next door to them at Pozieres and saw them fight. Lord! Such men! Now and then you had a freak, but most looked like Phoebus Apollo.”
Dickson gazed with a new respect at his neighbour, for he had not associated him with battle-fields. During the war he had been a fervent patriot, but, though he had never heard a shot himself, so many of his friends’ sons and nephews, not to mention cousins of his own, had seen service, that he had come to regard the experience as commonplace. Lions in Africa and bandits in Mexico seemed to him novel and romantic things, but not trenches and airplanes which were the whole world’s property. But he could scarcely fit his neighbour into even his haziest picture of war. The young man was tall and a little round-shouldered; he had short-sighted, rather prominent brown eyes, untidy black hair and dark eyebrows which came near to meeting. He wore a knickerbocker suit of bluish-grey tweed, a pale blue shirt, a pale blue collar, and a dark blue tie—a symphony of colour which seemed too elaborately considered to be quite natural. Dickson had set him down as an artist or a newspaper correspondent, objects to him of lively interest. But now the classification must be reconsidered.
“So you were in the war,” he said encouragingly.
“Four blasted years,” was the savage reply. “And I never want to hear the name of the beastly thing again.”
“You said he was an Australian,” said Dickson, casting back. “But I thought Australians had a queer accent, like the English.”
“They’ve all kind of accents, but you can never mistake their voice. It’s got the sun in it. Canadians have got grinding ice in theirs, and Virginians have got butter. So have the Irish. In Britain there are no voices, only speaking-tubes. It isn’t safe to judge men by their accent only. You yourself I take to be Scotch, but for all I know you may be a senator from Chicago or a Boer General.”
“I’m from Glasgow. My name’s Dickson McCunn.” He had a faint hope that the announcement might affect the other as it had affected the bagman at Kilchrist.
“Golly, what a name!” exclaimed the young man rudely.
Dickson was nettled. “It’s very old Highland,” he said. “It means the son of a dog.”
“Which—Christian name or surname?” Then the young man appeared to think he had gone too far, for he smiled pleasantly. “And a very good name too. Mine is prosaic by comparison. They call me John Heritage.”
“That,” said Dickson, mollified, “is like a name out of a book. With that name by rights you should be a poet.”
Gloom settled on the young man’s countenance. “It’s a dashed sight too poetic. It’s like Edwin Arnold and Alfred Austin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Great poets have vulgar monosyllables for names, like Keats. The new Shakespeare when he comes along will probably be called Grubb or Jubber, if he isn’t Jones. With a name like yours I might have a chance. You should be the poet.”
“I’m very fond of reading,” said Dickson modestly.
A slow smile crumpled Mr. Heritage’s face. “There’s a fire in the smoking-room,” he observed as he rose. “We’d better bag the armchairs before these fishing louts take them.” Dickson followed obediently. This was the kind of chance acquaintance for whom he had hoped, and he was prepared to make the most of him.
The fire burned bright in the little dusky smoking-room, lighted by one oil-lamp. Mr. Heritage flung himself into a chair, stretched his long legs, and lit a pipe.
“You like reading?” he asked. “What sort? Any use for poetry?”
“Plenty,” said Dickson. “I’ve aye been fond of learning it up and repeating it to myself when I had nothing to do. In church and waiting on trains, like. It used to be Tennyson, but now it’s more Browning. I can say a lot of Browning.”
The other screwed his face into an expression of disgust. “I know the stuff. ‘Damask cheeks and dewy sister eyelids.’ Or else the Ercles vein—’God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.’ No good, Mr. McCunn. All back numbers. Poetry’s not a thing of pretty round phrases or noisy invocations. It’s life itself, with the tang of the raw world in it—not a sweetmeat for middle-class women in parlours.”
“Are you a poet, Mr. Heritage?”
“No, Dogson, I’m a paper-maker.”
This was a new view to Mr. McCunn. “I just once knew a paper-maker,” he observed reflectively, “They called him Tosh. He drank a bit.”
“Well, I don’t drink,” said the other. “I’m a paper-maker, but that’s for my bread and butter. Some day for my own sake I may be a poet.”
“Have you published anything?”
The eager admiration in Dickson’s tone gratified Mr. Heritage. He drew from his pocket a slim book. “My first fruits,” he said, rather shyly.
Dickson received it with reverence. It was a small volume in grey paper boards with a white label on the back, and it was lettered: Whorls - John Heritage’s Book. He turned the pages and read a little. “It’s a nice wee book,” he observed at length.
“Good God, if you call it nice, I must have failed pretty badly,” was the irritated answer.
Dickson read more deeply and was puzzled. It seemed worse than the worst of Browning to understand. He found one poem about a garden entitled “Revue.”
“Crimson and resonant clangs the dawn,”
said the poet. Then he went on to describe noonday:
“Sunflowers, tall Grenadiers, ogle the roses’ short-skirted ballet.
The fumes of dark sweet wine hidden in frail petals
Madden the drunkard bees… “
This seemed to him an odd way to look at things, and he boggled over a phrase about an “epicene lily.” Then came evening: “The painted gauze of the stars flutters in a fold of twilight crape,” sang Mr. Heritage; and again, “The moon’s pale leprosy sloughs the fields.”
Dickson turned to other verses which apparently enshrined the writer’s memory of the trenches. They were largely compounded of oaths, and rather horrible, lingering lovingly over sights and smells which every one is aware of, but most people contrive to forget. He did not like them. Finally he skimmed a poem about a lady who turned into a bird. The evolution was described with intimate anatomical details which scared the honest reader.
He kept his eyes on the book, for he did not know what to say. The trick seemed to be to describe nature in metaphors mostly drawn from music-halls and haberdashers’ shops, and, when at a loss, to fall to cursing. He thought it frankly very bad, and he laboured to find words which would combine politeness and honesty.
“Well?” said the poet.
“There’s a lot of fine things here, but—but the