Midwinter: Certain Travellers in Old England

by John Buchan

The rum made his companion drowsy, and as they continued on the road he ceased to groan, and at the next halting-place did not stare at him with plaintive hang-dog eyes. As for Alastair he found that his mind had changed again and that all his resolution was fluid.

His hatred of the pursued was ebbing, indeed had almost vanished, for with the sense of fatality which was growing upon him he saw the man as no better than a pawn; a thing as impersonal as sticks and stones. All the actors of the piece—Kyd, Norreys, the Spoonbills, Edom, the sullen Johnson, grew in his picture small and stiff like marionettes, and Claudia alone had the warmth of life. Once more she filled the stage of his memory, but it was not the russet and pearl of her and her witching eyes that held him now, but a tragic muse who appealed from the brink of chasms. She implored his pity on all she loved, on the casket where she had hid her heart.

With a start he recognised that this casket was no other than Sir John Norreys.

He might shatter it and rescue the heart, but how would the precious thing fare in the shattering? Her eyes rose before him with their infinite surrender. Was Johnson right and was she of the race of women that give once in life and then utterly and for ever? If so, his errand was not to succour, but to slay. His sword would not cut the bonds of youth and innocence, it would pierce their heart.

He forced his mind to reconstruct the three occasions when she had faced him—not for his delectation, but to satisfy a new-born anxiety. He saw her at Flambury, a girl afire with zeal and daring, sexless as a child, and yet always in her sweet stumbling phrases harping on her dear Sir John. He saw her in the Brown Room at the Sleeping Deer, a tender muse of memories, but imperious towards dishonour, one whose slim grace might be brittle but would not bend. Last he saw her set up in the great bed at Brightwell, one arm round the neck of Duchess Kitty, the other stretched towards him in that woman's appeal which had held him from Derby and the path of duty.

There is that in hard riding and hard weather which refines a man's spirit, purging it of its grosser humours. The passion of the small hours had gone utterly from Alastair, and instead his soul was filled with a tempestuous affection, not of a lover but of a kinsman and protector. The child must at all costs be sheltered from sorrow, and if she pined for her toy it must be found for her, its cracks mended and its paint refurbished. His mood was now the same as Johnson's, his resolution the same. He felt an odd pleasure in this access of tenderness, but he was conscious, too, that the pleasure was like a thin drift of flowers over dark mires of longing and sorrow. For his world had been tumbled down, and all the castles he had built. He had always been homeless, but now he was a thousandfold more an outlaw, for the one thing on earth he desired was behind him and not before him, and he was fleeing from hope.

In the afternoon the rain descended again and the road passed over a wide heath, which had been blackened by some autumn fire so that the shores of its leaden pools were like charcoal, and skeleton coverts shook their charred branches in the wind. The scene was a desolation, but he viewed it with calm eyes, for a strange peace was creeping into his soul. He turned in the saddle, and saw six yards behind him Johnson jogging wearily along, his heavy shoulders bowed and his eyes fixed dully on his horse's neck. The man must be near the limits of his strength, he thought. . . . Once again he had one of his sudden premonitions. Sir John Norreys was close at hand, for he had not yet stopped for a meal and he had now been on the road for twelve hours. The conviction grew upon him, and made him urge his tired beast to a better pace. Somewhere just in front was the meeting-place where the ordeal was appointed which should decree the fate of two souls. . . .

The drizzle changed into half a gale, and scouring blasts shut out the landscape. There came a moment's clearing, and lo! before him lay a bare space in the heath, where another road entered from the west to join the highway. At their meeting, set in a grove of hornbeams, stood an inn.

It was a small place, ancient, long and low, and the signboard could not be read in the dim weather. But beneath it, new-painted, was an open eye. He checked his horse, and turned to the door, for he knew with utter certainty that he had reached his destination.

He dropped from the saddle, and since there was no stable-lad in sight, he tied the reins to a ring in the wall. Then he pushed open the door and descended a step into the inn kitchen. A man was busy about the hearth, a grizzled elderly fellow in leathern small-clothes. In front of the fire a fine coat hung drying on two chairs, and a pair of sodden boots steamed beside the log basket.