The Watcher by the Threshold. Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
read: “There be many who spend their days in evil and wine-bibbing, in lusting and cheating, who think to mend while yet there is time; but the opportunity is to them for ever awanting, and they go down open-mouthed to the great fire.”
‘“Psa,” I cried, “some wretched preaching book, I will have none of them. Good wine will be better than bad theology.” So I sat down once more at the table.
‘“You’re a clever man, Mr Duncan,” he says, “and a well-read one. I commend your spirit in breaking away from the bands of the kirk and the college, though your father was so thrawn against you.”
‘“Enough of that,” I said, “though I don’t know who telled you;” I was angry to hear my father spoken of, as though the grieving him was a thing to be proud of.
‘“Oh, as you please,” he says; “I was just going to say that I commended your spirit in sticking the knife into the man in the Pleasaunce, the time you had to hide for a month about the backs o’ Leith.”
‘“How do you ken that,” I asked hotly, “you’ve heard more about me than ought to be repeated, let me tell you.”
‘“Don’t be angry,” he said sweetly; “I like you well for these things, and you mind the lassie in Athole that was so fond of you. You treated her well, did you not?”
‘I made no answer, being too much surprised at his knowledge of things which I thought none knew but myself.
‘“Oh yes, Mr Duncan. I could tell you what you were doing today, how you cheated Jock Gallowa out of six pounds, and sold a horse to the farmer of Haypath that was scarce fit to carry him home. And I know what you are meaning to do the morn at Glesca, and I wish you well of it.”
‘“I think you must be the Devil,” I said blankly.
‘“The same, at your service,” said he, still smiling.
‘I looked at him in terror, and even as I looked I kenned by something in his eyes and the twitch of his lips that he was speaking the truth.
‘“And what place is this, you …” I stammered.
‘“Call me Mr S.,” he says gently, “and enjoy your stay while you are here and don’t concern yourself about the lawing.”
‘“The lawing!” I cried in astonishment, “and is this a house of public entertainment?”
‘“To be sure, else how is a poor man to live?”
‘“Name it,” said I, “and I will pay and be gone.”
‘“Well,” said he, “I make it a habit to give a man his choice. In your case it will be your wealth or your chances hereafter, in plain English your flock or your—”
‘“My immortal soul,” I gasped.
‘“Your soul,” said Mr S., bowing, “though I think you call it by too flattering an adjective.”
‘“You damned thief,” I roared, “you would entice a man into your accursed house and then strip him bare.”
‘“Hold hard,” said he, “don’t let us spoil our good fellowship by incivilities. And, mind you, I took you to witness to begin with that you sat down of your own accord.”
‘“So you did,” said I, and could say no more.
‘“Come, come,” he says, “don’t take it so bad. You may keep all your gear and yet part from here in safety. You’ve but to sign your name, which is no hard task to a college-bred man, and go on living as you live just now to the end. And let me tell you, Mr Duncan Stewart, that you should take it as a great obligement that I am willing to take your bit soul instead of fifty sheep. There’s no many would value it so high.”
‘“Maybe no, maybe no,” I said sadly, “but it’s all I have. D’ye no see that if I gave it up, there would be no chance left of mending? And I’m sure I do not want your company to all eternity.”
‘“Faith, that’s uncivil,” he says; “I was just about to say that we had had a very pleasant evening.”
‘I sat back in my chair very down-hearted. I must leave this place as poor as a kirk-mouse, and begin again with little but the clothes on my back. I was strongly tempted to sign the bit paper thing and have done with it all, but somehow I could not bring myself to do it. So at last I says to him: “Well, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll give you my sheep, sorry though I be to lose them, and I hope I may never come near this place again as long as I live.”
‘“On the contrary,” he said, “I hope often to have the pleasure of your company. And seeing that you’ve paid well for your lodging, I hope you’ll make the best of it. Don’t be sparing on the drink.”
‘I looked hard at him for a second. “You’ve an ill name, and an ill trade, but you’re no a bad sort yoursel, and, do you ken, I like you.”
‘“I’m much obliged to you for the character,” says he, “and I’ll take your hand on’t.”
‘So I filled up my glass and we set to, and such an evening I never mind of. We never got fou, but just in a fine good temper and very entertaining. The stories we telled and the jokes we cracked are still a kind of memory with me, though I could not come over one of them. And then, when I got sleepy, I was shown to the brawest bedroom, all hung with pictures and looking-glasses, and with bedclothes of the finest linen and a coverlet of silk. I bade Mr S. good-night, and my head was scarce on the pillow ere I was sound asleep.
‘When I awoke the sun was just newly risen, and the frost of a September morning was on my clothes. I was lying among green braes with nothing near me but crying whaups and heathery hills, and my two dogs running round about and howling as they were mad.’
When Buchan was ennobled in 1935 he considered as a tide Lord Manorwater, the name he gives one of the characters in this story about the clash between a Tory farmer and his Radical ploughman. The story, included in Grey Weather (1899), appeared in Chambers Magazine in May 1896 and the following month in the Boston magazine, The Living Age. In the magazine versions the town at the centre of the events was called Marchthorn but in the book was changed to Gledsmuir, a name Buchan used in a number of subsequent stories.
The farmer of Clachlands was a Tory, stern and unbending. It was the tradition of his family, from his grandfather, who had been land-steward to Lord Manorwater, down to his father, who had once seconded a vote of confidence in the sitting member. Such traditions, he felt, were not to be lightly despised; things might change, empires might wax and wane, but his obligation continued; a sort of perverted noblesse oblige was the farmer’s watchword in life; and by dint of much energy and bad language, he lived up to it.
As fate would have it, the Clachlands ploughman was a Radical of Radicals. He had imbibed his opinions early in life from a speaker on the green of Gledsmuir, and ever since, by the help of a weekly penny paper and an odd volume of Gladstone’s speeches, had continued his education. Such opinions in a conservative countryside carry with them a reputation for either abnormal cleverness or abnormal folly. The fact that he was a keen fisher, a famed singer of songs, and the best judge of horses in the place, caused the verdict of his neighbours to incline to the former, and he passed for something of an oracle among his fellows. The blacksmith, who was the critic of the neighbourhood, summed up his character in a few words. ‘Him,’ said he, in a tone of mingled dislike and admiration, ‘him! He would sweer white was black the morn, and dod! he would prove it tae.’
It so happened in the early summer, when the land was green and the trout plashed in the river, that Her Majesty’s Government saw fit to appeal to an intelligent