Chapter II. Of Mr. John Heritage and the Difference in Points of View

Huntingtower

by John Buchan

Dickson McCunn was never to forget the first stage in that
pilgrimage. A little after midday he descended from a grimy
third-class carriage at a little station whose name I have
forgotten. In the village nearby he purchased some new-baked buns
and ginger biscuits, to which he was partial, and followed by the
shouts of urchins, who admired his pack--"Look at the auld man gaun
to the schule"--he emerged into open country. The late April noon
gleamed like a frosty morning, but the air, though tonic, was kind.
The road ran over sweeps of moorland where curlews wailed, and into
lowland pastures dotted with very white, very vocal lambs. The
young grass had the warm fragrance of new milk. As he went he
munched his buns, for he had resolved to have no plethoric midday
meal, and presently he found the burnside nook of his fancy, and
halted to smoke. On a patch of turf close to a grey stone bridge he
had out his Walton and read the chapter on "The Chavender or Chub."
The collocation of words delighted him and inspired him to verse.
"Lavender or Lub"--"Pavender or Pub"- "Gravender or Grub"--but the
monosyllables proved too vulgar for poetry. Regretfully he
desisted.

The rest of the road was as idyllic as the start. He would
tramp steadily for a mile or so and then saunter, leaning over
bridges to watch the trout in the pools, admiring from a dry-stone
dyke the unsteady gambols of new-born lambs, kicking up dust from
strips of moor-burn on the heather. Once by a fir-wood he was
privileged to surprise three lunatic hares waltzing. His cheeks
glowed with the sun; he moved in an atmosphere of pastoral, serene
and contented. When the shadows began to lengthen he arrived at the
village of Cloncae, where he proposed to lie. The inn looked dirty,
but he found a decent widow, above whose door ran the legend in
home-made lettering, "Mrs. brockie tea and Coffee," and who was
willing to give him quarters. There he supped handsomely off ham
and eggs, and dipped into a work called Covenanting Worthies, which
garnished a table decorated with sea-shells. At half-past nine
precisely he retired to bed and unhesitating sleep.

Next morning he awoke to a changed world. The sky was grey
and so low that his outlook was bounded by a cabbage garden, while a
surly wind prophesied rain. It was chilly, too, and he had his
breakfast beside the kitchen fire. Mrs. Brockie could not spare a
capital letter for her surname on the signboard, but she exalted it
in her talk. He heard of a multitude of Brockies, ascendant,
descendant, and collateral, who seemed to be in a fair way to
inherit the earth. Dickson listened sympathetically, and lingered by
the fire. He felt stiff from yesterday's exercise, and the edge was
off his spirit.

The start was not quite what he had pictured. His pack seemed
heavier, his boots tighter, and his pipe drew badly. The first
miles were all uphill, with a wind tingling his ears, and no colours
in the landscape but brown and grey. Suddenly he awoke to the fact
that he was dismal, and thrust the notion behind him. He expanded
his chest and drew in long draughts of air. He told himself that
this sharp weather was better than sunshine. He remembered that all
travellers in romances battled with mist and rain. Presently his
body recovered comfort and vigour, and his mind worked itself into
cheerfulness.

He overtook a party of tramps and fell into talk with them.
He had always had a fancy for the class, though he had never known
anything nearer it than city beggars. He pictured them as
philosophic vagabonds, full of quaint turns of speech, unconscious
Borrovians. With these samples his disillusionment was speedy. The
party was made up of a ferret-faced man with a red nose, a
draggle-tailed woman, and a child in a crazy perambulator. Their
conversation was one-sided, for it immediately resolved itself into
a whining chronicle of misfortunes and petitions for relief. It
cost him half a crown to be rid of them.

The road was alive with tramps that day. The next one did
the accosting. Hailing Mr. McCunn as "Guv'nor," he asked to be told
the way to Manchester. The objective seemed so enterprising that
Dickson was impelled to ask questions, and heard, in what appeared
to be in the accents of the Colonies, the tale of a career of
unvarying calamity. There was nothing merry or philosophic about
this adventurer. Nay, there was something menacing. He eyed his
companion's waterproof covetously, and declared that he had had one
like it which had been stolen from him the day before. Had the
place been lonely he might have contemplated highway robbery, but
they were at the entrance to a village, and the sight of a
public-house awoke his thirst. Dickson parted with him at the cost
of sixpence for a drink.

He had no more company that morning except an aged
stone-breaker whom he convoyed for half a mile. The stone-breaker
also was soured with the world. He walked with a limp, which, he
said, was due to an accident years before, when he had been run into
by "ane of thae damned velocipeeds." The word revived in Dickson
memories of his youth, and he was prepared to be friendly. But the
ancient would have none of it. He inquired morosely what he was
after, and, on being told remarked that he might have learned more
sense. "It's a daft-like thing for an auld man like you to be
traivellin' the roads. Ye maun be ill-off for a job." Questioned
as to himself, he became, as the newspapers say, "reticent," and
having reached his bing of stones, turned rudely to his duties.
"Awa' hame wi' ye," were his parting words. "It's idle scoondrels
like you that maks wark for honest folk like me."

The morning was not a success, but the strong air had given
Dickson such an appetite that he resolved to break his rule, and, on
reaching the little town of Kilchrist, he sought luncheon at the
chief hotel. There he found that which revived his spirits. A
solitary bagman shared the meal, who revealed the fact that he was
in the grocery line. There followed a well-informed and most
technical conversation. He was drawn to speak of the United Supply
Stores, Limited, of their prospects and of their predecessor, Mr.
McCunn, whom he knew well by repute but had never met. "Yon's the
clever one." he observed. "I've always said there's no longer head
in the city of Glasgow than McCunn. An old-fashioned firm, but it
has aye managed to keep up with the times. He's just retired, they
tell me, and in my opinion it's a big loss to the provision
trade...." Dickson's heart glowed within him. Here was Romance; to
be praised incognito; to enter a casual inn and find that fame had
preceded him. He warmed to the bagman, insisted on giving him a
liqueur and a cigar, and finally revealed himself. "I'm Dickson
McCunn," he said, "taking a bit holiday. If there's anything I can
do for you when I get back, just let me know." With mutual esteem
they parted.

He had need of all his good spirits, for he emerged into an
unrelenting drizzle. The environs of Kilchrist are at the best
unlovely, and in the wet they were as melancholy as a graveyard. But
the encounter with the bagman had worked wonders with Dickson, and
he strode lustily into the weather, his waterproof collar buttoned
round his chin. The road climbed to a bare moor, where lagoons had
formed in the ruts, and the mist showed on each side only a yard or
two of soaking heather. Soon he was wet; presently every part of
him--boots, body, and pack--was one vast sponge. The waterproof was
not water-proof, and the rain penetrated to his most intimate
garments. Little he cared. He felt lighter, younger, than on the
idyllic previous day. He enjoyed the buffets of the storm, and one
wet mile succeeded another to the accompaniment of Dickson's shouts
and laughter. There was no one abroad that afternoon, so he could
talk aloud to himself and repeat his favourite poems. About five in
the evening there presented himself at the Black Bull Inn at
Kirkmichael a soaked, disreputable, but most cheerful traveller.

Now the Black Bull at Kirkmichael is one of the few very good
inns left in the world. It is an old place and an hospitable, for
it has been for generations a haunt of anglers, who above all other
men understand comfort. There are always bright fires there, and
hot water, and old soft leather armchairs, and an aroma of good food
and good tobacco, and giant trout in glass cases, and pictures of
Captain Barclay of Urie walking to London and Mr. Ramsay of Barnton
winning a horse-race, and the three-volume edition of the Waverley
Novels with many volumes missing, and indeed all those things which
an inn should have. Also there used to be--there may still be-
sound vintage claret in the cellars. The Black Bull expects its
guests to arrive in every stage of dishevelment, and Dickson was
received by a cordial landlord, who offered dry garments as a matter
of course. The pack proved to have resisted the elements, and a
suit of clothes and slippers were provided by the house. Dickson,
after a glass of toddy, wallowed in a hot bath, which washed all the
stiffness out of him. He had a fire in his bedroom, beside which he
wrote the opening passages of that diary he had vowed to keep,
descanting lyrically upon the joys of ill weather. At seven o'clock,
warm and satisfied in soul, and with his body clad in raiment
several sizes too large for it, he descended to dinner.

At one end of the long table in the dining-room sat a group of
anglers. They looked jovial fellows, and Dickson would fain have
joined them; but, having been fishing all day in the Lock o' the
Threshes, they were talking their own talk, and he feared that his
admiration for Izaak Walton did not qualify him to butt into the
erudite discussions of fishermen. The landlord seemed to think
likewise, for he drew back a chair for him at the other end, where
sat a young man absorbed in a book. Dickson gave him good evening,
and got an abstracted reply. The young man supped the Black Bull's
excellent broth with one hand, and with the other turned the pages
of his volume. A glance convinced Dickson that the work was French,
a literature which did not interest him. He knew little of the
tongue and suspected it of impropriety.

Another guest entered and took the chair opposite the bookish
young man. He was also young--not more than thirty-three--and to
Dickson's eye was the kind of person he would have liked to resemble.
He was tall and free from any superfluous flesh; his face was lean,
fine-drawn, and deeply sunburnt, so that the hair above showed oddly
pale; the hands were brown and beautifully shaped, but the forearm
revealed by the loose cuffs of his shirt was as brawny as a
blacksmith's. He had rather pale blue eyes, which seemed to have
looked much at the sun, and a small moustache the colour of ripe hay.
His voice was low and pleasant, and he pronounced his words
precisely, like a foreigner.

He was very ready to talk, but in defiance of Dr. Johnson's
warning, his talk was all questions. He wanted to know everything
about the neighbourhood--who lived in what houses, what were the
distances between the towns, what harbours would admit what class of
vessel. Smiling agreeably, he put Dickson through a catechism to
which he knew none of the answers. The landlord was called in, and
proved more helpful. But on one matter he was fairly at a loss.
The catechist asked about a house called Darkwater, and was met with
a shake of the head. "I know no sic-like name in this countryside,
sir," and the catechist looked disappointed.

The 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 firstfruits," 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 lines don't
just seem to scan very well."

Mr. Heritage laughed. "Now I can place you exactly. You like
the meek rhyme and the conventional epithet. Well, I don't. The
world has passed beyond that prettiness. You want the moon
described as a Huntress or a gold disc or a flower--I say it's
oftener like a beer barrel or a cheese. You want a wealth of jolly
words and real things ruled out as unfit for poetry. I say there's
nothing unfit for poetry. Nothing, Dogson! Poetry's everywhere,
and the real thing is commoner among drabs and pot-houses and
rubbish-heaps than in your Sunday parlours. The poet's business is
to distil it out of rottenness, and show that it is all one spirit,
the thing that keeps the stars in their place....I wanted to call my
book 'Drains,' for drains are sheer poetry carrying off the excess
and discards of human life to make the fields green and the corn
ripen. But the publishers kicked. So I called it 'Whorls,' to
express my view of the exquisite involution of all things. Poetry
is the fourth dimension of the soul....Well, let's hear about your
taste in prose."

Mr. McCunn was much bewildered, and a little inclined to be
cross. He disliked being called Dogson, which seemed to him an abuse
of his etymological confidences. But his habit of politeness
held.

He explained rather haltingly his preferences in prose.

Mr. Heritage listened with wrinkled brows.

"You're even deeper in the mud than I thought," he remarked.
"You live in a world of painted laths and shadows. All this passion
for the picturesque! Trash, my dear man, like a schoolgirl's
novelette heroes. You make up romances about gipsies and sailors,
and the blackguards they call pioneers, but you know nothing about
them. If you did, you would find they had none of the gilt and
gloss you imagine. But the great things they have got in common
with all humanity you ignore. It's like--it's like sentimentalising
about a pancake because it looked like a buttercup, and all the
while not knowing that it was good to eat."

At that moment the Australian entered the room to get a light
for his pipe. He wore a motor-cyclist's overalls and appeared to be
about to take the road. He bade them good night, and it seemed to
Dickson that his face, seen in the glow of the fire, was drawn and
anxious, unlike that of the agreeable companion at dinner.

"There," said Mr. Heritage, nodding after the departing
figure. "I dare say you have been telling yourself stories about
that chap--life in the bush, stockriding and the rest of it. But
probably he's a bank-clerk from Melbourne....Your romanticism is one
vast self-delusion, and it blinds your eye to the real thing. We
have got to clear it out, and with it all the damnable humbug of the
Kelt."

Mr. McCunn, who spelt the word with a soft "C," was puzzled.
"I thought a kelt was a kind of a no-weel fish," he interposed.

But the other, in the flood-tide of his argument, ignored the
interruption. "That's the value of the war," he went on. "It has
burst up all the old conventions, and we've got to finish the
destruction before we can build. It is the same with literature and
religion, and society and politics. At them with the axe, say I. I
have no use for priests and pedants. I've no use for upper classes
and middle classes. There's only one class that matters, the plain
man, the workers, who live close to life."

"The place for you," said Dickson dryly, "is in Russia among
the Bolsheviks."

Mr. Heritage approved. "They are doing a great work in their
own fashion. We needn't imitate all their methods--they're a trifle
crude and have too many Jews among them--but they've got hold of the
right end of the stick. They seek truth and reality."

Mr. McCunn was slowly being roused.

"What brings you wandering hereaways?" he asked.

"Exercise," was the answer. "I've been kept pretty closely
tied up all winter. And I want leisure and quiet to think over
things."

"Well, there's one subject you might turn your attention to.
You'll have been educated like a gentleman?"

"Nine wasted years--five at Harrow, four at Cambridge."

"See here, then. You're daft about the working-class and have
no use for any other. But what in the name of goodness do you know
about working-men?... I come out of them myself, and have lived next
door to them all my days. Take them one way and another, they're a
decent sort, good and bad like the rest of us. But there's a wheen
daft folk that would set them up as models--close to truth and
reality, says you. It's sheer ignorance, for you're about as well
acquaint with the working-man as with King Solomon. You say I make
up fine stories about tinklers and sailor-men because I know nothing
about them. That's maybe true. But you're at the same job yourself.
You ideelise the working man, you and your kind, because you're
ignorant. You say that he's seeking for truth, when he's only
looking for a drink and a rise in wages. You tell me he's near
reality, but I tell you that his notion of reality is often just a
short working day and looking on at a footba'-match on Saturday....
And when you run down what you call the middle-classes that do
three-quarters of the world's work and keep the machine going and the
working-man in a job, then I tell you you're talking havers.
Havers!"

Mr. McCunn, having delivered his defence of the bourgeoisie,
rose abruptly and went to bed. He felt jarred and irritated. His
innocent little private domain had been badly trampled by this stray
bull of a poet. But as he lay in bed, before blowing out his
candle, he had recourse to Walton, and found a passage on which, as
on a pillow, he went peacefully to sleep:

"As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a
second pleasure entertained me; 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had
not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any
fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often
do; but she cast away all care, and sang like a nightingale; her
voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it; it was the smooth song
that was made by Kit Marlow now at least fifty years ago. And the
milkmaid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter
Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but
choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines that are
now in fashion in this critical age."