THE PRIDE BEFORE A FALL
The result of the election was announced in Gledsmuir on the next
Wednesday evening, and carried surprise to all save Lewis's nearer
friends. For Mr. Albert Stocks was duly returned member for the
constituency by a majority of seventy votes. The defeated candidate
received the news with great composure, addressed some good-humoured
words to the people, had a generous greeting for his opponent, and met
his committee with a smiling face. But his heart was sick within him,
and as soon as he decently might he escaped from the turmoil, found his
horse, and set off up Glenavelin for his own dwelling.
He had been defeated, and the fact, however confidently looked for,
comes with a bitter freshness to every man. He had lost a seat for his
party--that in itself was bad. But he had proved himself incompetent,
unadaptable, a stick, a pedantic incapable. A dozen stings rankled in
his soul. Alice would be justified of her suspicions. Where would his
place be now in that small imperious heart? His own people had forsaken
him for a gross and unlikely substitute, and he had been wrong in his
estimate alike of ally and enemy. Above all came that cruelest
stab--what would Wratislaw think of it? He had disgraced himself in the
eyes of his friend. He who had made a fetish of competence had
manifestly proved wanting; he who had loved to think of himself as the
bold, opportune man, had shown himself formal and hidebound.
As he passed Glenavelin among the trees the thought of Alice was a sharp
pang of regret. He could never more lift his eyes in that young and
radiant presence. He pictured the successful Stocks welcomed by her,
and words of praise for which he would have given his immortal soul,
meted out lavishly to that owl-like being. It was a dismal business,
and ruefully, but half-humorously, he caught at the paradox of his fate.
Through the swiftly failing darkness the inn of Etterick rose before
him, a place a little apart from the village street. A noise of talk
floated from the kitchen and made him halt at the door and dismount.
The place would be full of folk discussing the election, and he would go
in among them and learn the worst opinion which men might have of him.
After all, they were his own people, who had known him in his power as
they now saw him in his weakness. If he had failed he was not wholly
foolish; they knew his few redeeming virtues, and they would be
generous.
The talk stopped short as he entered, and he saw through the tobacco
reek half a dozen lengthy faces wearing the air of solemnity which the
hillman adopts in his pleasures. They were all his own herds and
keepers, save two whom he knew for foresters from Glenavelin. He was
recognized at once, and with a general nervous shuffling they began to
make room for the laird at the table. He cried a hasty greeting to all,
and sat down between a black-bearded giant, whose clothes smelt of
sheep, and a red-haired man from one of the remoter glens. The notion
of the thing pleased him, and he ordered drinks for each with a lavish
carelessness. He asked for a match for his pipe, and the man who gave
it wore a decent melancholy on his face and shook his head with unction.
"This is a bad job, Lewie," he said, using the privileged name of the
ancient servant. "Whae would have ettled sic a calaamity to happen in
your ain countryside? We a' thocht it would be a grand pioy for ye, for
ye would settle down here and hae nae mair foreign stravaigins. And
then this tailor body steps in and spoils a'. It's maist vexaatious."
"It was a good fight, and he beat me fairly; but we'll drop the matter.
I'm sick--tired of politics, Adam. If I had been a better man they
might have made a herd of me, and I should have been happy."
"Wheesht, Lewie," said the man, grinning. "A herd's job is no for the
likes o' you. But there's better wark waiting for ye than poalitics.
It's a beggar's trade after a', and far better left to bagman bodies
like yon Stocks. It's a puir thing for sac proper a man as you."
"But what can I do?" cried Lewis in despair. "I have no profession. I
am useless."
"Useless! Ye are a grand judge o' sheep and nowt, and ye ken a horse
better than ony couper. Ye can ride like a jockey and drive like a
Jehu, and there's no your equal in these parts with a gun or a
fishing-rod. Forbye, I would rather walk ae mile on the hill wi' ye
than twae, for ye gang up a brae-face like a mawkin! God! There's no a
single man's trade that ye're no brawly fitted for. And then ye've a
heap o' book-lear that folk learned ye away about England, though I
cannot speak muckle on that, no being a jidge."
Lewis grinned at the portraiture. "You do me proud. But let's talk
about serious things. You were on sheep when I came in. Get back to
them and give me your mind on Cheviots. The lamb sales promise well."
For twenty minutes the room hummed with technicalities. One man might
support the conversation on alien matters, but on sheep the humblest
found a voice: Lewis watched the ring of faces with a sharp delight.
The election had made him sick of his fellows--fellows who chattered and
wrangled and wallowed in the sentimental. But now every line of these
brown faces, the keen blue eyes, the tawny, tangled beards, and the
inimitable soft-sounding southern speech, seemed an earnest of a real
and strenuous life. He began to find a new savour in existence. The
sense of his flat incompetence left him, and he found himself speaking
heartily and laughing with zest.
"It's as I say," said the herd of the Redswirebead. "I'm getting an
auld man and a verra wise ane, and the graund owercome for the world is
just 'Pay no attention.' Ye'll has heard how the word cam' to be. It
was Jock Linklater o' the Caulds wha was glen notice to quit by the
laird, and a' the countryside was vexed to pairt wi' Jock, for he was a
popular character. But about a year after a friend meets him at
Gledsmuir merkit as crouse as ever. 'Lodsake, Jock, man, I thocht ye
were awa',' says he. 'No,' says Jock, 'no. I'm here as ye see.' 'But
how did ye manage it?' he asked. 'Fine,' says Jock. 'They sent me a
letter tellin' me I must gang; but I just payed no attention. Syne they
sent me a blue letter frae the lawyer's, but I payed no attention. Syne
the factor cam' to see me.' 'Ay, and what did ye do then, Jock?' says
he. 'Oh, I payed no attention. Syne the laird cam' himsel.' 'Ay, that
would fricht ye,' he says. 'No, no a grain,' said Jock, verra calm. 'I
just payed no attention, and here I am.'"
Lewis laughed, but the rest of the audience suffered no change of
feature. The gloaming had darkened, and the little small-paned window
was a fretted sheet of dark and lucent blue. Grateful odours of food
and drink and tobacco hung in the air, though tar and homespun and the
far-carried fragrance of peat fought stoutly for the mastery.
One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for the
night and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning,
it was the sign--and the hour--for stories of many kinds--tales of
weather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountain
realities. Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed
legends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men for
whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewis
listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, and
again by a question.
The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, who
swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head
of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorous
story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who
told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simon
o' the Heid o' the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when he
swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered
beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.
"And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the
river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin'. But I
gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel' for an hour till the water
knockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I'm a
mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless.
When a man's feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist."
"I know," said Lewis, with excitement. "I have found the same myself."
"Where?" asked the man, without rudeness.
"Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorab
hills above Abjela."
"Were ye sick when they rescued ye? I was. I had twae muscles sprung
on my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when they
laid me on the heather. Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though he
wasna touching me I began to suffocate, and yet I was ower weak to cry
out and had to thole it."
"I know. If you hang up in the void for a little and get the feeling of
great space burned on your mind, you nearly die of choking when you are
pulled up. Fancy you knowing about that."
"Have you suffered it, Maister Lewie?" said the man.
"Once. There was a gully in the Doorabs just like the Scarts o' the
Muneraw, only twenty times deeper, and there was a bridge of tree-trunks
bound with ropes across it. We all got over except one mule and a
couple of men. They were just getting off when a trunk slipped and
dangled down into the abyss with one end held up by the ropes. The poor
animal went plumb to the bottom; we heard it first thud on a jag of rock
and then, an age after, splash in the water. One of the men went with
it, but the other got his legs caught between the ropes and the tree and
managed to hang on. The poor beggar was helpless with fright; and he
squealed--great heavens! how he did squeal!"
"And what did ye dae?" asked a breathless audience.
"I went down after him. I had to, for I was his master, and besides, I
was a bit of an athlete then. I cried to him to hang on and not look
down. I clambered down the swaying trunk while my people held the ropes
at the top, and when I got near the man I saw what had happened.
"He had twisted his ankles in the fall, and though he had got them out
of the ropes, yet they hung loose and quite obviously broken. I got as
near him as I could, and leaned over, and I remember seeing through
below his armpits the blue of the stream six hundred feet down. It made
me rather sick with my job, and when I called him to pull himself up a
bit till I could grip him I thought he was helpless with the same
fright. But it turned out that I had misjudged him. He had no power in
his arms, simply the dead strength to hang on. I was in a nice fix, for
I could lower myself no farther without slipping into space. Then I
thought of a dodge. I got a good grip of the rope and let my legs
dangle down till they were level with his hands. I told him to try and
change his grip and catch my ankles. He did it, somehow or other, and
by George! the first shock of his weight nearly ended me, for he was a
heavy man. However, I managed to pull myself up a yard or two and then
I could reach down and catch his arms. We both got up somehow or other,
but it took a devilish time, and when they laid us both on the ground
and came round like fools with brandy I thought I should choke and had
scarcely strength to swear at them to get out."
The assembly had listened intently, catching its breath with a sharp
_risp_ as all outdoor folks will do when they hear of an escapade which
strikes their fancy. One man--a stranger--hammered his empty pipe-bowl
on the table in applause.
"Whae was the man, d'ye say?" he asked. "A neeger?"
Lewis laughed. "Not a nigger most certainly, though he had a brown
face."
"And ye risked your life for a black o' some kind? Man, ye must be
awfu' fond o' your fellow men. Wad ye dae the same for the likes o' us?
"Surely. For one of my own folk! But it was really a very small
thing."
"Then I have just ae thing to say," said the brown-bearded man. "I am
what ye cal a Raadical, and yestreen I recorded my vote for yon man
Stocks. He crackit a lot about the rights o' man--as man, and I was wi'
him. But I tell ye that you yoursel' have a better notion o' human
kindness than ony Stocks, and though ye're no o' my party, yet I
herewith propose a vote o' confidence in Maister Lewis Haystoun."
The health was drunk solemnly yet with gusto, and under cover of it
Lewis fled out of doors. His despondency had passed, and a fit of
fierce exhilaration had seized him. Men still swore by his name; he was
still loved by his own folk; small matter to him if a townsman had
defeated him. He was no vain talker, but a doer, a sportsman, an
adventurer. This was his true career. Let others have the applause of
excited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man's path, a man's
work, and a man's commendation.
The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in the
still weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides,
as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge shoulder the
lights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. A
sense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil from the
constraint of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozen
fragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure of
life. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful;
laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth and the open
road--all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living.
"I'll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them," he was humming aloud,
when suddenly his bridle was caught and a man's hand was at his knee.
"Lewie," cried Wratislaw, "gracious, man! have you been drinking?" And
then seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through the
stirrup leathers, and walked by the horse's side. "So that's the way
you take it, old chap? Do you know that you are a discredited and
defeated man? and yet I find you whistling like a boy. I have hopes
for you, Lewie. You have the Buoyant Heart, and with that nothing can
much matter. But, confound it! you are hours late for dinner."