He found his voice, and with what resolution he could muster he demanded to know the reason of the outrage and the goal of his journey.
“It’s all right, Linklater,” said one of them. “You’ll know soon enough.”
They called him Linklater! The whole thing was a blunder. His incognito was preserved. The habit of a lifetime held, and he protested no more.
CHAPTER 3
THE BACK HOUSE OF THE GARROCH
The road to the springs of the Garroch water, a stream which never descends to the lowlands but runs its whole course in the heart of mossy hills, is for the motorist a matter of wide and devious circuits. It approaches its goal circumspectly, with an air of cautious reconnaissance. But the foot-traveller has an easier access. He can take the cart-road which runs through the heather of the Clachlands glen and across the intervening hills by the Nick of the Threshes. Beyond that he will look into the amphitheatre of the Garroch, with the loch of that name dark under the shadow of the Caldron, and the stream twining in silver links through the moss, and the white ribbon of highway, on which wheeled vehicles may move, ending in the yard of a moorland cottage.
The Blaweary car had carried Jaikie and Dougal swiftly over the first fifteen miles of their journey. At about three o’clock of the October afternoon they had reached the last green cup where the Clachlands has its source, and were leisurely climbing the hill towards the Nick. Both had ancient knapsacks on their shoulders, but it was their only point of resemblance. Dougal was clad in a new suit of rough tweed knickerbockers which did not fit him well; he had become very hot and carried his jacket on his arm, and he had no hat. Jaikie was in old flannels, for he abominated heavy raiment, and, being always more or less in training, his slender figure looked pleasantly cool and trim. Sometimes they sauntered, sometimes they strode, and now and then they halted, when Dougal had something to say. For Dougal was in the first stage of holiday, when to his closest friend he had to unburden himself of six months’ store of conversation. It was as inevitable as the heat and discomfort which must attend the first day’s walk, before his body rid itself of its sedentary heaviness. Jaikie spoke little; his fate in life was to be a listener.
It is unfair to eavesdrop on the babble of youth when its flow has been long pent up. Dougal’s ran like Ariel over land and sea, with excursions into the upper air. He had recovered his only confidant, and did not mean to spare him. Sometimes he touched upon his daily task—its languors and difficulties, the harassments of the trivial, the profound stupidity of the middle-aged. He defended hotly his politics, and drew so many fine distinctions between his creed and those of all other men, that it appeared that his party was in the loyal, compact, and portable form of his single self. Then ensued torrential confessions of faith and audacious ambition. He was not splashing—he was swimming with a clean stroke to a clear goal. With his pen and voice he was making his power felt, and in time the world would listen to him. His message? There followed a statement of ideals which was nobly eclectic. Dougal was at once nationalist and internationalist, humanitarian and man of iron, realist and poet.
They were now in the Nick of the Threshes, where, in a pad of green lawn between two heathery steeps, a well bubbled among mosses. The thirsty idealist flung himself on the ground and drank deep. He rose with his forelock dripping.
“I sometimes think you are slipping away from me, Jaikie,” he said. “You’ve changed a lot in the last two years… You live in a different kind of world from me, and every year you’re getting less and less of a Scotsman … And I’ve a notion, when I pour out my news to you and haver about myself, that you’re criticising me all the time in your own mind. Am I not right? You’re terribly polite, and you never say much, but I can feel you’re laughing at me. Kindly, maybe, but laughing all the same. You’re saying to yourself, ‘Dougal gets dafter every day. He’s no better than a savage.’”
Jaikie regarded the flushed and bedewed countenance of his friend, and the smile that broadened over his small face was not critical.
“I often think you daft, Dougal. But then I like daftness.”
“Anyway, you’ve none of it yourself. You’re the wisest man I ever met. That’s where you and I differ. I’m always burning or freezing, and you keep a nice, average, normal temperature. I take desperate likes and dislikes. You’ve something good to say about the worst scallywag, and, if you haven’t, you hold your tongue. I’m all for flinging my cap over the moon, while you keep yours snug on your head. No. No”—he quelled an anticipated protest. “It’s the same in your football. It was like that yesterday afternoon. You never run your head against a stone wall. You wait till you see your chance, and then you’re on to it like forked lightning, but you’re determined not to waste one atom of your strength.”
“That’s surely Scotch enough,” said Jaikie laughing. “I’m economical.”
“No, it’s not Scotch. We’re not an economical race. I don’t know what half-wit invented that libel. We spend ourselves—we’ve always spent ourselves—on unprofitable causes. What’s the phrase— perfervidum ingenium? There’s not much of the perfervid about you, Jaikie.”
“No?” said the other, politely interrogatory.
“No. You’ve all the pluck in creation, but it’s the considering kind. You remember how Alan Breck defined his own courage—’Just great penetration and knowledge of affairs.’ That’s yours… Not that you haven’t got the other kind too. David Balfour’s kind—’auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage.’”
“I’ve no courage,” said Jaikie. “I’m nearly always in a funk.”
“Aye, that’s how you would put it. You’ve picked up the English trick of understatement—what they call meiosis in the grammar books. I doubt you and me are very unlike. You’ll not catch me understating. I want to shout both my vices and my virtues on the house-tops… If I dislike a man I want to hit him on the head, while you’d be wondering if the fault wasn’t in yourself… If I want a thing changed I must drive at it like a young bull. If I think there’s dirty work going on I’m for starting a revolution… You don’t seem to care very much about anything, and you’re too fond of playing the devil’s advocate. There was a time… “
“I don’t think I’ve changed,” said Jaikie. “I’m a slow fellow, and I’m so desperately interested in things that I feel my way cautiously. You see, I like so much that I haven’t a great deal of time for hating. I’m not a crusader like you, Dougal.”
“I’m a poor sort of crusader,” said Dougal ruefully. “I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away. But still I’ve a good hearty stock of dislikes and they keep me from boredom. That’s the difference between us. I’m for breaking a man’s head, and I probably end by shaking hands. You begin by shaking hands … All the same, God help the man or woman or creed or party that you make up your slow mind to dislike… I’m going to make a stir in the world, but I know that I’ll never be formidable. I’m not so sure about you.”
“I don’t want to be formidable.”
“And that’s maybe just the reason why you will be—some day. But I’m serious, Jaikie. It’s a sad business if two ancient friends like you and me are starting to walk on different sides of the road. Our tracks are beginning to diverge, and, though we’re still side by side, in ten years we may be miles apart… You’re not the good Scotsman you used to be. Here am I driving myself mad with the sight of my native land running down the brae—the cities filling up with Irish, the countryside losing its folk, our law and our letters and our language as decrepit as an old wife. Damn it, man, in another half-century there will be nothing left, and we’ll be a mere disconsidered province of England… But you never bother your head