*TO THE READER*
One is informed that novels touching upon the war are no longer read.
This, if true, reduces the novelist to the following alternatives:
(1) Writing a novel of some period of the world's history antecedent to
the year nineteen-fourteen. This is undoubtedly a wide field--the
Christian era alone covers twenty centuries--but it has been cultivated
by several writers already.
(2) Writing a post-war novel in which it is assumed that the war never
happened. This would make it rather difficult to know what to do with
the graves of our dead.
(3) Writing a post-war novel about people who took no part in the war.
This would restrict one's choice of hero, heroine, and characters
generally to Certified Lunatics, Convicts in residence, and
Conscientious Objectors.
I have therefore decided to take a chance. The tale which follows is
based:
(_a_) Upon a frank admission that there has been a war.
(_b_) Upon a humble belief that the people chiefly worth writing about
in these days are those who gave body, soul--everything--to win that
war.
That explains my choice of title.
*CONTENTS*
I. The Valleys Stand so Thick with Corn
II. Rebellious Marjorie
III. Der Tag
IV. A Tryst
V. The Inevitable
VI. Solo
VII. Duet
VIII. Chorus
IX. The Book of the Words
X. Discipline! Discipline! Discipline!
XI. Enfin!
XII. Tom Birnie
XIII. Albert Clegg
XIV. Two Sparrows
XV. The Explorer
XVI. The Great Pretend
XVII. The Undefeated
XVIII. The Old Order
XIX. The Last Throw
XX. Fountain Keep
XXI. Identities
XXII. The Mills of God
XXIII. The Soul of Eric Bethune
XXIV. Through
*THE WILLING HORSE*
*CHAPTER I*
*THE VALLEYS STAND SO THICK WITH CORN*
*I*
A Sunday at Baronrigg is a chastening experience. It is not exactly a
day of wrath--though one feels that it might easily become one--but it
is a time of tribulation for people who do not want to go to church--or,
if the worst happens, prefer their religious exercises to be brief and
dilute.
But neither brevity nor dilution makes any appeal to my friend Tom
Birnie.
"I am a member," he announces, as soon as a quorum has assembled at
Sunday breakfast, "of the old Kirk of Scotland; and I propose to attend
service at Doctor Chirnside's at eleven o'clock. If any of you would
care"--he addresses a suddenly presented perspective of immaculate
partings, bald spots and permanent waves--"to accompany me, a conveyance
will leave here at ten-forty."
"Well, we can't _all_ get in, that's plain," chirps Miss Joan Dexter
hopefully. (The table is laid for fourteen.)
"The conveyance," continues the inexorable Tom, "holds twelve inside and
four out, not counting the coachman."
"It's no good, Joan, old fruit," observes Master Roy Birnie. "We keep a
pantechnicon!"
"I suppose there's not a Church of England service within reach?" asks
little Mrs. Pomeroy, rather ingeniously. "One's own Church makes an
appeal to one which no other denomination
cannot--can--adequately--doesn't it?" she concludes, a little uncertain
both of her syntax and her host. This is her first visit to Baronrigg.
"Now she's done for herself!" whispers Master Roy into my left ear.
"I agree with you. There is an Episcopal Church--Scottish Episcopal, of
course--at Fiddrie, three miles from here. I shall be happy to send you
over there this evening at half-past six. This morning, I know, you
will put up with our barbaric Northern rites!" replies Tom, with what he
imagines to be an indulgent smile. "I like to see the Baronrigg pew
full."
And full it is.
The longer I know Tom Birnie, the more I marvel that Diana Carrick
married him. That sentiment is shared by a good many people, but on
more abstract grounds than mine. Tom is a just and considerate
landlord, an adequate sportsman, and a good specimen of that class by
whose voluntary service this country gets most of its local government
done, admirably, for nothing. But there are certain things against Tom.
In the first place--to quote old Lady Christina Bethune, of
Buckholm--"no one knows who the creature is, or where he came from."
This implies nothing worse than that since Tom represents the first
generation of Birnies born in this county, his forbears must have been
born somewhere else. In other words--still quoting the same
distinguished authority--"they never existed at all." As a matter of
fact and common knowledge, Tom's grandfather was a minister of the Kirk,
somewhere in Perthshire, and his father an enormously successful member
of the Scottish Bar, who bought the derelict little estate of Strawick,
hard by here, and settled there in the late sixties with the
presumptuous, but, I think, excusable, intention of founding a family.
Naturally a family which has resided in our county for only forty-seven
years can hardly be expected to have drifted, as yet, within the range
of Lady Christina's lorgnette.
Secondly, Tom is a Radical. We are broad-minded people in this county,
and are quite indulgent to persons who disapprove of the leasehold
system (which does not obtain in Scotland), or who make excuses for the
late Mr. Gladstone, or who are inclined to criticise pheasant
preserving. That is the kind of Radicalism which we understand, and are
prepared to tolerate. That was the sort of person Tom's father was.
That is how Tom began. But of late, it must be confessed, Tom has been
going it. He supports the present Government; he is for reducing the
Army and Navy; he has recently helped to abolish our Second Chamber.
(That was no great calamity; but he and his friends have omitted to
provide us with a substitute.) He has openly applauded the efforts of a
person named George to break up the foundations of our well-tried Social
System; while the courses which he advocates with regard to the taxation
of Land Values and the treatment of loyal Ulster, surpass belief. That
is what the county has against Tom.
But I am neither a laird nor a farmer, and my indictment against Tom is
based on more personal and less venial grounds. Firstly, he is not
human. He is a calculating machine, with about as much passion as a
parish pump. Secondly, he is absolutely destitute of all sense of
humour. And yet Diana married him! Her own beautiful person exhaled
humanity and humour in equal proportions. In all her short life I never
knew her fail to understand a fellow-creature, or miss a humorous
situation. Yet she married Tom Birnie. She married Tom Birnie, and she
broke off her engagement with Eric Bethune to do it. I am a
humble-minded person, and I never professed to understand any woman--not
even my own wife, Diana's sister--but I wonder, even now, how any girl
could have resisted Eric Bethune as he was twenty years ago, or, having
got him, have relinquished him in favour of Tom Birnie. There was
something pretty big and tragic behind that broken-off engagement. My
Eve knew what it was--I suppose Diana told her about it--but when I
asked for the explanation I was tersely instructed not to be an
inquisitive old busybody. As for Eric, he never mentioned the matter to
me. He simply informed me that my services as best man would not be
required after all, and that he would be gratified if I would refrain
from asking damn silly questions. (Not that I had asked any.) Also,
that he looked to me to prevent other persons from doing so.
And now Tom Birnie is a baronet and a widower, with a son eighteen years
old, and Eric Bethune is still an eligible bachelor of forty-three. And
how he hates Tom Birnie! However, I will introduce Eric presently.
First of all, I must get our party to church.
*II*
The ancestral hereditary omnibus of the house of Baronrigg deposited us
at the kirk door at ten fifty-five precisely, and by the time that the
Reverend Doctor Chirnside's Bible and hymn-book had been set out upon
the red velvet cushion of the pulpit by a bulbous old friend of mine
named James Dunshie--an octogenarian of austere piety, an infallible
authority on dry-fly fishing, and a methodical but impervious
drinker--we were all boxed into our places in the private gallery of
Baronrigg. It is less of a gallery than a balcony, and juts out
curiously from the side of the little church, with the public gallery
running across the end wall on its right, and the minister on its left.
It recedes into a deep alcove, and at the back is a fireplace, in which
a fire is always kept burning upon wintry Sundays. The Baronrigg
pew--and, indeed, Baronrigg itself--came into the family from Diana's
side of the house: she brought them to Tom on her marriage. The pew is
rich in Carrick associations. It is reported of old Neil Carrick, the
grandfather of Diana and my Eve, that whenever he found himself
dissatisfied--a not infrequent occurrence--with the discourse of Doctor
Chirnside's predecessor, it was his habit to rise from his red rep chair
in the forefront of the gallery, retire to the back, make up the fire
with much clatter of fire-irons, and slumber peacefully before the
resulting blaze with his back to the rest of the congregation. But no
such licence was permitted to us. We sat austerely in two rows, gazing
solemnly at the blank wall opposite us, while Doctor Chirnside worked
his will upon his flock. Doctor Chirnside is a tall, silver-haired, and
pugnacious old gentleman of about seventy. He fears God, and exhibits
considerable deference towards Tom Birnie; but he regards the rest of
his congregation as dirt. (At least, that is how we feel in his
presence.) This morning he entered the pulpit precisely on the stroke
of eleven, in deference to the Laird's well-known prejudices on the
subject of punctuality--besides, I happened to know that he was coming
on to lunch at Baronrigg after service--and, having been securely locked
in by James Dunshie, adjusted his spectacles and gazed fiercely at some
late comers. Then he gave out the opening psalm.
In Craigfoot Parish Church we always sing the opening psalm
unaccompanied. It is true that we possess a small organ, but that
instrument is still regarded with such deep suspicion by some of the
older members of the congregation that we only employ it to accompany
hymns--which, as is well known, have little effect one way or the other
upon one's ultimate salvation. But we take no risks with the Psalms of
David. These are offered without meretricious trimmings of any kind,
save that furnished by the tuning-fork of Andrew Kilninver, our esteemed
auctioneer, estate agent, and precentor.
Accordingly, when Doctor Chirnside took up his psalter, the young lady
at the organ leaned back nonchalantly; Andrew Kilninver stirred
importantly in his seat, tuning-fork in hand; and the choir--highly
scented shop-girls and farmers' daughters, assisted by overheated young
men in Sunday "blacks" and choker collars--braced themselves with the
air of people upon whose shoulders the credit, and maybe redemption, of
a whole parish rests.
There is something peculiarly majestic about the manner in which Doctor
Chirnside opens his morning service. I believe that, in his view, the
unaccompanied psalm is the one relic of pure orthodoxy preserved by him
against the modern passion for hymns, organs, printed prayers, anthems,
and "brighter worship" generally. That graceless young ruffian, Roy
Birnie, gives an imitation of his performance which is celebrated
throughout the parish. It runs something like this:
"Ha-humm! Brethren, we will commence the public worrship of God, this
Lord's Day, by singing to His praise part of the Seven Hundred and
Forty-Ninth Psalm. Psalm Seven Hundred and Forty-Nine. Ha-humm! The
Church is full cold. Will Mr. John Buncle, of Sandpits, kindly rise in
his pew and adjust the open window west of him? (_Imitation of Mr. John
Buncle, petrified with confusion, adjusting the window._) We will
commence at verrse One Hundred and Seventy-Nine:
_I, like a bottle, have been_
_With Thy great maircy filled,_
_Oh, hold me up, hold Thou me up,_
_That I may not be spilled!_
And so on until the end of the Psalm. Psalm Seven Hundred and
Forty-Nine. The Seven Hundred and Forty-Ninth Psalm. _Ping_! _Ping_!
_Ping_! (_The last is supposed to be Kilninver getting to work with his
tuning-fork._) Tune, Winchester, '_I, like a bottle..._'"