Chapter XVI. In Which a Princess Leaves a Dark Tower and a Provision Merchant Returns to His Family

Huntingtower

by John Buchan

The three days of storm ended in the night, and with the wild
weather there departed from the Cruives something which had weighed
on Dickson's spirits since he first saw the place. Monday--only a
week from the morning when he had conceived his plan of holiday--saw
the return of the sun and the bland airs of spring. Beyond the blue
of the yet restless waters rose dim mountains tipped with snow,
like some Mediterranean seascape. Nesting birds were busy on the
Laver banks and in the Huntingtower thickets; the village smoked
peacefully to the clear skies; even the House looked cheerful if
dishevelled. The Garple Dean was a garden of swaying larches,
linnets, and wild anemones. Assuredly, thought Dickson, there had
come a mighty change in the countryside, and he meditated a future
discourse to the Literary Society of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk on
"Natural Beauty in Relation to the Mind of Man."

It remains for the chronicler to gather up the loose ends of
his tale. There was no newspaper story with bold headlines of this
the most recent assault on the shores of Britain. Alexis
Nicholaevitch, once a Prince of Muscovy and now Mr. Alexander
Nicholson of the rising firm of Sprot and Nicholson of Melbourne,
had interest enough to prevent it. For it was clear that if Saskia
was to be saved from persecution, her enemies must disappear without
trace from the world, and no story be told of the wild venture which
was their undoing. The constabulary of Carrick and Scotland Yard
were indisposed to ask questions, under a hint from their superiors,
the more so as no serious damage had been done to the persons of His
Majesty's lieges, and no lives had been lost except by the violence
of Nature. The Procurator-Fiscal investigated the case of the
drowned men, and reported that so many foreign sailors, names and
origins unknown, had perished in attempting to return to their ship
at the Garplefoot. The Danish brig had vanished into the mist of
the northern seas. But one signal calamity the Procurator-Fiscal
had to record. The body of Loudon the factor was found on the
Monday morning below the cliffs, his neck broken by a fall. In the
darkness and confusion he must have tried to escape in that
direction, and he had chosen an impracticable road or had slipped on
the edge. It was returned as "death by misadventure," and the
Carrick Herald and the Auchenlochan Advertiser excelled themselves
in eulogy. Mr. Loudon, they said, had been widely known in the
south-west of Scotland as an able and trusted lawyer, an assiduous
public servant, and not least as a good sportsman. It was the last
trait which had led to his death, for, in his enthusiasm for wild
nature, he had been studying bird life on the cliffs of the Cruives
during the storm, and had made that fatal slip which had deprived
the shire of a wise counsellor and the best of good fellows.

The tinklers of the Garplefoot took themselves off, and where
they may now be pursuing their devious courses is unknown to the
chronicler. Dobson, too, disappeared, for he was not among the dead
from the boats. He knew the neighbourhood, and probably made his way
to some port from which he took passage to one or other of those
foreign lands which had formerly been honoured by his patronage.
Nor did all the Russians perish. Three were found skulking next
morning in the woods, starving and ignorant of any tongue but their
own, and five more came ashore much battered but alive. Alexis took
charge of the eight survivors, and arranged to pay their passage to
one of the British Dominions and to give them a start in a new life.
They were broken creatures, with the dazed look of lost animals,
and four of them had been peasants in Saskia's estates. Alexis spoke
to them in their own language. "In my grandfather's time," he said,
"you were serfs. Then there came a change, and for some time you
were free men. Now you have slipped back into being slaves
again--the worst of slaveries, for you have been the serfs of fools
and scoundrels and the black passion of your own hearts. I give you
a chance of becoming free men once more. You have the task before
you of working out your own salvation. Go, and God be with you."

Before we take leave of these companions of a single week I
would present them to you again as they appeared on a certain sunny
afternoon when the episode of Huntingtower was on the eve of closing.
First we see Saskia and Alexis walking on the thymy sward of the
cliff-top, looking out to the fretted blue of the sea. It is a
fitting place for lovers--above all for lovers who have turned the
page on a dark preface, and have before them still the long bright
volume of life. The girl has her arm linked in the man's, but as
they walk she breaks often away from him, to dart into copses, to
gather flowers, or to peer over the brink where the gulls wheel and
oyster-catchers pipe among the shingle. She is no more the tragic
muse of the past week, but a laughing child again, full of snatches
of song, her eyes bright with expectation. They talk of the new
world which lies before them, and her voice is happy. Then her brows
contract, and, as she flings herself down on a patch of young
heather, her air is thoughtful.

"I have been back among fairy tales," she says. "I do not
quite understand, Alesha. Those gallant little boys! They are
youth, and youth is always full of strangeness. Mr. Heritage! He
is youth, too, and poetry, perhaps, and a soldier's tradition. I
think I know him....But what about Dickson? He is the petit
bourgeois, the epicier, the class which the world ridicules. He is
unbelievable. The others with good fortune I might find
elsewhere--in Russia perhaps. But not Dickson."

"No," is the answer. "You will not find him in Russia. He is
what they call the middle-class, which we who were foolish used to
laugh at. But he is the stuff which above all others makes a great
people. He will endure when aristocracies crack and proletariats
crumble. In our own land we have never known him, but till we create
him our land will not be a nation."

Half a mile away on the edge of the Laver glen Dickson and
Heritage are together, Dickson placidly smoking on a tree-stump and
Heritage walking excitedly about and cutting with his stick at the
bracken. Sundry bandages and strips of sticking plaster still adorn
the Poet, but his clothes have been tidied up by Mrs. Morran, and he
has recovered something of his old precision of garb. The eyes of
both are fixed on the two figures on the cliff-top. Dickson feels
acutely uneasy. It is the first time that he has been alone with
Heritage since the arrival of Alexis shivered the Poet's dream. He
looks to see a tragic grief; to his amazement he beholds something
very like exultation.

"The trouble with you, Dogson," says Heritage, "is that you're
a bit of an anarchist. All you false romantics are. You don't see
the extraordinary beauty of the conventions which time has
consecrated. You always want novelty, you know, and the novel is
usually the ugly and rarely the true. I am for romance, but upon
the old, noble classic line."

Dickson is scarcely listening. His eyes are on the distant
lovers, and he longs to say something which will gently and
graciously express his sympathy with his friend.

"I'm afraid," he begins hesitatingly, "I'm afraid you've had a
bad blow, Mr. Heritage. You're taking it awful well, and I honour
you for it."

The Poet flings back his head. "I am reconciled," he says.
"After all 'tis better to have loved and lost,' you know. It has
been a great experience and has shown me my own heart. I love her, I
shall always love her, but I realize that she was never meant for
me. Thank God I've been able to serve her--that is all a moth can
ask of a star. I'm a better man for it, Dogson. She will be a
glorious memory, and Lord! what poetry I shall write! I give her up
joyfully, for she has found her mate. 'Let us not to the marriage
of true minds admit impediments!' The thing's too perfect to grieve
about....Look! There is romance incarnate."

He points to the figures now silhouetted against the further
sea. "How does it go, Dogson?" he cries. "'And on her lover's arm
she leant' --what next? You know the thing."

Dickson assists and Heritage declaims:

"And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist
she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went In that new
world which is the old: Across the hills, and far away Beyond
their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy
princess followed him." He repeats the last two lines twice and
draws a deep breath. "How right!" he cries. "How absolutely right!
Lord! It's astonishing how that old bird Tennyson got the
goods!"

After that Dickson leaves him and wanders among the thickets
on the edge of the Huntingtower policies above the Laver glen. He
feels childishly happy, wonderfully young, and at the same time
supernaturally wise. Sometimes he thinks the past week has been a
dream, till he touches the sticking-plaster on his brow, and finds
that his left thigh is still a mass of bruises and that his right
leg is woefully stiff. With that the past becomes very real again,
and he sees the Garple Dean in that stormy afternoon, he wrestles
again at midnight in the dark House, he stands with quaking heart by
the boats to cut off the retreat. He sees it all, but without
terror in the recollection, rather with gusto and a modest pride.
"I've surely had a remarkable time," he tells himself, and then
Romance, the goddess whom he has worshipped so long, marries that
furious week with the idyllic. He is supremely content, for he
knows that in his humble way he has not been found wanting. Once
more for him the Chavender or Chub, and long dreams among summer
hills. His mind flies to the days ahead of him, when he will go
wandering with his pack in many green places. Happy days they will
be, the prospect with which he has always charmed his mind. Yes, but
they will be different from what he had fancied, for he is another
man than the complacent little fellow who set out a week ago on his
travels. He has now assurance of himself, assurance of his faith.
Romance, he sees, is one and indivisible....

Below him by the edge of the stream he sees the encampment of
the Gorbals Die-Hards. He calls and waves a hand, and his signal is
answered. It seems to be washing day, for some scanty and tattered
raiment is drying on the sward. The band is evidently in session,
for it is sitting in a circle, deep in talk.

As he looks at the ancient tents, the humble equipment, the
ring of small shockheads, a great tenderness comes over him. The
Die-Hards are so tiny, so poor, so pitifully handicapped, and yet so
bold in their meagreness. Not one of them has had anything that
might be called a chance. Their few years have been spent in
kennels and closes, always hungry and hunted, with none to care for
them; their childish ears have been habituated to every coarseness,
their small minds filled with the desperate shifts of living.. ..And
yet, what a heavenly spark was in them! He had always thought nobly
of the soul; now he wants to get on his knees before the queer
greatness of humanity.

A figure disengages itself from the group, and Dougal makes
his way up the hill towards him. The Chieftain is not more
reputable in garb than when we first saw him, nor is he more
cheerful of countenance. He has one arm in a sling made out of his
neckerchief, and his scraggy little throat rises bare from his
voluminous shirt. All that can be said for him is that he is
appreciably cleaner. He comes to a standstill and salutes with a
special formality.

"Dougal," says Dickson, "I've been thinking. You're the
grandest lot of wee laddies I ever heard tell of, and, forbye,
you've saved my life. Now, I'm getting on in years, though you'll
admit that I'm not that dead old, and I'm not a poor man, and I
haven't chick or child to look after. None of you has ever had a
proper chance or been right fed or educated or taken care of. I've
just the one thing to say to you. From now on you're my bairns,
every one of you. You're fine laddies, and I'm going to see that
you turn into fine men. There's the stuff in you to make Generals
and Provosts--ay, and Prime Ministers, and Dod! it'll not be my
blame if it doesn't get out."

Dougal listens gravely and again salutes.

"I've brought ye a message," he says. "We've just had a
meetin' and I've to report that ye've been unanimously eleckit Chief
Die-Hard. We're a' hopin' ye'll accept."

"I accept," Dickson replies. "Proudly and gratefully I
accept."

The last scene is some days later, in a certain southern
suburb of Glasgow. Ulysses has come back to Ithaca, and is sitting
by his fireside, waiting for the return of Penelope from the Neuk
Hydropathic. There is a chill in the air, so a fire is burning in
the grate, but the laden tea-table is bright with the first blooms
of lilac. Dickson, in a new suit with a flower in his buttonhole,
looks none the worse for his travels, save that there is still
sticking-plaster on his deeply sunburnt brow. He waits impatiently
with his eye on the black marble timepiece, and he fingers something
in his pocket.

Presently the sound of wheels is heard, and the pea-hen voice
of Tibby announces the arrival of Penelope. Dickson rushes to the
door, and at the threshold welcomes his wife with a resounding kiss.
He leads her into the parlour and settles her in her own chair.

"My! but it's nice to be home again!" she says. "And
everything that comfortable. I've had a fine time, but there's no
place like your own fireside. You're looking awful well, Dickson.
But losh! What have you been doing to your head?"

"Just a small tumble. It's very near mended already. Ay,
I've had a grand walking tour, but the weather was a wee bit thrawn.
It's nice to see you back again, Mamma. Now that I'm an idle man
you and me must take a lot of jaunts together."

She beams on him as she stays herself with Tibby's scones, and
when the meal is ended, Dickson draws from his pocket a slim case.
The jewels have been restored to Saskia, but this is one of her own
which she has bestowed upon Dickson as a parting memento. He opens
the case and reveals a necklet of emeralds, any one of which is
worth half the street.

"This is a present for you," he says bashfully.

Mrs. McCunn's eyes open wide. "You're far too kind," she
gasps. "It must have cost an awful lot of money."

"It didn't cost me that much," is the truthful answer.

She fingers the trinket and then clasps it round her neck,
where the green depths of the stones glow against the black satin of
her bodice. Her eyes are moist as she looks at him. "You've been a
kind man to me," she says, and she kisses him as she has not done
since Janet's death.

She stands up and admires the necklet in the mirror. Romance
once more, thinks Dickson. That which has graced the slim throats
of princesses in far-away Courts now adorns an elderly matron in a
semi-detached villa; the jewels of the wild Nausicaa have fallen to
the housewife Penelope.

Mrs. McCunn preens herself before the glass. "I call it very
genteel," she says. "Real stylish. It might be worn by a
queen."

"I wouldn't say but it has," says Dickson.