The House of the Four Winds

PROLOGUE-2

On the 13th of June he was still undecided, but that night his thoughts were narrowed to a happy orbit. For Alison was dining with him before her journey abroad, and together they were going on to a party which the Lamanchas were giving to the delegates to an international conference then in session in London. For one evening at least the world was about to give him all he desired.

It was a warm night, but the great room at Maurice’s was cool with fans and sunblinds, though every table was occupied. From their corner, at the foot of the shallow staircase which is the main entrance, they had an excellent view of the company. There seemed to be a great many uniforms about, and a dazzling array of orders, no doubt in view of the Lamancha function. It was easy to talk, for at Maurice’s there is no band till supper-time.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here, Jaikie,” said Alison. “It’s too extravagant. And you’re giving me far too good a dinner.”

“It’s a celebration,” was the answer. “I’ve done with Cambridge.”

“Are you sorry?”

“No. I liked it, for I like most things, but I don’t want to linger over them.”

The girl laughed merrily, and a smile slowly crept into Jaikie’s face.

“You’re quite right,” he said. “That was a priggish thing to say, but it’s true, all the same.”

“I know. I never met anyone who wasted so little time in regrets. I wish I were like you, for I want anything I like to go on for ever. Cambridge must have slipped off you like water off a duck’s back. What did you get out of it?”

“Peace to grow up. I’ve very nearly grown up now. I have discovered most of the things I can do and the things I can’t. I know the things I like and the things I don’t.”

Alison knitted her brows. “That’s not much good. So do I. The thing to find out is, what you can do best and what you like most. You told me a year ago that that was what you were after. Have you decided?”

“No,” was the glum answer. “I think I have collected the material, so to speak, but I haven’t sorted it out. I was looking to you to help me this summer in the Canonry, and now you’re bolting to Italy or somewhere.”

“Not Italy, my dear. A spot called Unnutz in the Tirol. You’re not very good at geography.”

“Mayn’t I come too?”

“No, you mayn’t. You’d simply loath it. A landscape like a picture postcard. Tennis and bumble-puppy golf and promenades, all in smart clothes. Infinite boring evenings when I have to play picquet with Papa or talk hotel French to Mamma’s friends. Besides, my family wouldn’t understand you. You haven’t been properly presented to them, and Unnutz is not the place for that. You wouldn’t be at your best there.”

Two people passed on the way to their table, a tall young man with a lean ruddy face, and a pretty young woman, whose hair was nearly as bright a thing as Alison’s. The young woman stopped.

“My dear Allie,” she cried, “I haven’t seen you for ages. Archie, it’s Cousin Allie. They tell me you’re being dragged abroad, the same as us. What’s your penitentiary? Ours is Geneva.”

“Mine’s a place in the Tirol. Any chance of our meeting?”

“There might be. Archie has a notion of dashing about, for apparently an international conference is mostly adjournments. He’s so spry on his legs since Dr Christoph took him in hand that he rather fancies himself as a mountaineer. What’s your address?”

The lady scribbled it down in a notebook which she took from her bag, nodded gaily, and followed her husband and a waiter to their own table. Alison looked after them.

“That’s the nicest couple on earth. She was Janet Raden, a sort of cousin of mine. Her husband, Archie Roylance . . .”

Jaikie interrupted.

“Great Scot! Is that Sir Archibald Roylance? I once knew him pretty well—for one day. I’ve told you about the Gorbals Diehards and Huntingtower. He was the ally we enlisted—lived at a place called the Mains of Garple. Ask Mr McCunn about him. I’ve often wondered when I should see him again, for I felt pretty certain I would—some day. He hasn’t changed much.”

“He can’t change. Sir Archie is the most imperishable thing God ever created. He’ll be a wild boy till he’s ninety. Even with Janet to steady him I consider him dangerous, especially now that he has no longer a game leg. . . . Hullo, Jaikie. We’re digging into the past to-night. Look who’s over there.”

She nodded towards a very brilliant table where some twenty people were dining, most of them in uniform. Among them was a fair young man in ordinary evening dress, without any decorations. He suddenly turned his face, recognised Alison, and, with a word of apology to the others, left his seat and came towards her. When she rose and curtsied, Jaikie had a sudden recollection.

“It is Miss Westwater, is it not?” said the young man, bowing over her hand. “My adorable preserver! I have not forgotten Prince Charlie and the Solway sands.”

He turned to Jaikie.

“And the Moltke of the campaign, too! What is the name? Wait a minute. I have it—Jaikie. What fun to see you again! Are you two by any happy chance espoused?”

“Not yet,” said Alison. “What are you doing in England, sir?”

“Holidaying. I cannot think why all the world does not holiday in England. It is the only really peaceful and pleasant place.”

“How true, sir! I have to go abroad to-morrow, and I feel like an exile.”

“Then why do you go?”

“I am summoned by neglected parents. To Unnutz, in the Tirol.”

The young man’s pleasant face grew suddenly grave.

“Unnutz. Above the Waldersee, in the Firnthal?”

“The same. Do you know it, sir?”

“I know it. I do not think it a very good place for a holiday—not this summer. But if it becomes unpleasant you can return home, for you English are always free to travel. But I should be careful in Unnutz, my dear Miss Westwater, and I should take Mr Jaikie with you as a protector.”

He shook hands and departed smiling, but he left on the two the impression of an unexpected solemnity.

“What do you suppose is worrying Prince John?” Alison asked.

“The affairs of Evallonia. You remember at Castle Gay we thought the Republic would blow up any moment and that a month or two would see Prince John on the throne. That’s two years ago and nothing has happened. Dougal is out there now looking into the situation. He may ginger them up.”

“What makes him so solemn about Unnutz? By all accounts it’s the ordinary gimcrack little foreign watering-place. He talked of it as if it were a sort of Chicago slum.”

“He is a wise man, for he said you should take me with you.”

They had reached the stage of coffee and cigarettes, and were now more free to watch their neighbours. It was a decorous assembly, in accordance with the tradition of Maurice’s, and the only gaiety seemed to be among the womenkind of Prince John’s party. The Prince’s own face was very clear in the light of an overhanging lamp, and both Alison and Jaikie found themselves watching it—its slight heaviness in repose, its quick vivacity when interested, the smile which drew half its charm from a most attractive wrinkling around the eyes.

“It is the face of a prince,” said Alison, “but not of a king—at any rate, not the kind of king that wins a throne. There’s no dynamite in it.”

“What sort of face do you give makers of revolutions?” Jaikie asked.

The girl swung round and regarded him steadily.

“Your sort,” she said. “You look so meek and good that everybody loves you. And wise, wise like an old terrier. And yet, in the two years I have known you, you have filled up your time with the craziest things. First”—she counted on her fingers—”you went off to Baffin Island to trade old rifles for walrus ivory.”

Jaikie grinned. “I made seventy-three pounds clear: I call that a success.”

“Then you walked from Cambridge to Oxford within a day and a night.”

“That was a failure. I was lame for a fortnight and couldn’t play in the Welsh match.”

“You went twice as a deck hand on a Grimsby trawler—first to Bear Island and then to the Whales’ Back. I don’t know where these places are, but they sound beastly.”

“They were. I was sick most of the time.”

“Last and worst, it was only your exams and my prayers that kept you from trying to circumnavigate Britain in a sailing canoe, when you would certainly have been drowned. What do you mean by it, Jaikie? It looks as if you were as neurotic as a Bloomsbury intellectual, though in a different way. Why this restlessness?”

“I wasn’t restless. I did it all quite calmly, on purpose.” Into Jaikie’s small face there had come an innocent seriousness.

“You see,” he went on, “when I was a small boy I was rather a hardy citizen. I’ve told you about that. Then Mr McCunn civilised me, which I badly needed. But I didn’t want it to soften me. We are living in a roughish world to-day, and it is going to get rougher, and I don’t want to think that there is any experience to which I can’t face up. I’ve been trying to keep myself tough. You see what I mean, Alison?”

“I see. It’s rather like painting the lily, you know. I wish I were going to the Canonry, for there’s a lot of things I want to have out with you. Promise to keep quiet till I come back.”

The Lamanchas’ party was so large and crowded that Alison and Jaikie found it easy to compass solitude. Once out of the current that sucked through the drawing-rooms towards the supper-room there were quiet nooks to be discovered in the big house. One such they found in an alcove, where the upper staircase ascended from the first floor, and where, at a safe distance, they could watch the procession of guests. Alison pointed out various celebrities to the interested Jaikie, and a number of relations with whom she had no desire to have closer contact. But on one of the latter she condescended to details. He was a very tall man, whose clothes, even in that well-dressed assembly, were conspicuous for their elegance. He had a neatly trimmed blond beard, and hair worn a little longer than the fashion and as wavy as a smart woman’s coiffure. They only saw his profile as he ascended the stairs, and his back as he disappeared into the main drawing-room.

“There’s another cousin of mine,” said the girl, “the queerest in all our queer clan. His name is Randal Glynde, and he has been everything in his time from cow-puncher to film star, not to mention diplomat, and various sorts of soldier, and somebody’s private secretary. The family doesn’t approve of him, for they never know what he’ll do next, but he was very nice to me when I was a little girl, and I used to have a tremendous culte for him.”

Jaikie was not listening, for he felt very depressed. This was his last hour with Alison for months, and the light had suddenly gone out of his landscape. He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of the many millions of the world’s inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.

“I can’t go to Scotland,” he said. “Blaweary is impossible, and if I went into the Canonry with you not there I’d howl.”

“Poor Jaikie!” Alison laid a hand upon his. “But it’s only another bit of the toughening you’re so fond of. I promise to write to you a great deal, and it won’t be long till the autumn. You won’t be half as lonely as I.”

“I wish I thought that,” said Jaikie, brightening a little. “I like being alone, but I don’t like being lonely. I think I’ll go abroad too.”

“Why don’t you join Mr McCunn?”

“He won’t let me. He’s doing a cure and is forbidden company.”

“Or Dougal?”

“He wouldn’t have me either. He thinks he’s on some silly kind of secret service, and he’s as mysterious about it as a sick owl. But I might go for a tramp somewhere. My finances will just run to it.”

“Hullo, here’s Ran,” said Alison. The tall man with the fair beard had drifted towards them, and was now looking down on the girl. On a closer view he appeared to be nearer forty than thirty. Jaikie noticed that he had Alison’s piercing blue eyes, with the same dancing light in them. There and then, being accustomed to rapid judgments, he felt well disposed towards the tall stranger.

“Alison dear.” Mr Glynde put his hand on the girl’s head. “I hear that your father has at last achieved gout.”

“No. It’s neuritis, which makes him much angrier. He would accept gout as a family legacy, but he dislikes unexpected visitations. I go out to him to-morrow.”

“Unnutz, isn’t it? A dreary little place. I fear you won’t enjoy it, my dear.”

“Where have you come from, Ran? We last heard of you in Russia.”

“I have been in many places since Russia.” Mr Glynde’s voice had an odd quality in it, as if he were gently communing with himself. “After a time in deep water I come up to breathe, and then go down again.”

“You’ve chosen very smart clothes to breathe in.”

“I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.”

“Have you been writing any more poetry?”

“Not a word in English, but I have written some rather charming things in mediæval Latin. I’ll send you them. It is the best tongue for a vagabond.”

Alison introduced Jaikie.

“Here’s another of your totem, Cousin Ran. You can’t corrupt him, for he is quite as mad as you.”

Mr Glynde smiled pleasantly as he shook hands, and Jaikie had an impression that his eyes were the most intelligent that he had ever seen, eyes which took in everything, and saw very deep, and had a mind behind them that did not forget. He felt too that something in his own face pleased the other, for there was friendliness behind the inquisition.

“He has just finished Cambridge, and finds himself at a loose end. He is hesitating between Scotland and a tramp on the Continent. What do you advise?”

“When you are young these decisions may be fateful things. I have always trusted to the spin of a coin. I carry with me a Greek stater which has made most of my decisions for me. What about tossing for it?”

He took from the pocket of his white waistcoat a small gold coin and handed it to Jaikie.

“It’s a lucky coin,” he said. “At least it has brought me infinite amusement. Try it.”

Jaikie had a sudden queer feeling that the occasion had become rather solemn, almost sacramental. “Heads Scotland, tails abroad,” he said and tossed. It fell tails.

“Behold,” said Mr Glynde, “your mind is made up for you. You will wander along in the white dust and drink country wine and doze in the woods, knowing that the unseen Powers are with you. Where, by the way, did you think of going? You have no preference? You have been very little abroad? How fortunate to have all Europe spread out for your choice. But I should not go too far east, Mr Galt. Keep to the comfortable west if you want peace. If you go too far east this summer, you may find that the spin of my little stater has been rather too fateful.”

As Jaikie put Alison into a taxi, he observed Mr Glynde leaving the house on foot with a companion. He had a glimpse of that companion’s face, and saw that it was Prince John of Evallonia.