Huntingtower quotes

He took off the lid and picked up three small oddments of ivory—a priest with a beard, a tiny soldier and a draught-ox. Putting the three in a triangle, he balanced the jade box on them.

“Look, Saskia! If you were living inside that box you would think it very secure. You would note the thickness of the walls and the hardness of the stone, and you would dream away in a peaceful green dusk. But all the time it would be held up by trifles⁠—brittle trifles.”

She shook her head. “You do not understand. You cannot understand. We are a very old and strong people with roots deep, deep in the earth.”

Now he felt that he had stolen a march on Time.

He had fallen heir, thus late, to a fortune in unpurchasable leisure.

He began to dress himself in the sombre clothes in which he had been accustomed for thirty-five years and more to go down to the shop in Mearns Street.

… the thought of the Neuk Hydropathic, or more likely the thin clean scent of the daffodils with which Tibby had decked the table, but long ere breakfast was finished the Great Plan had ceased to be an airy vision and become a sober well-masoned structure.

Mr. McCunn⁠—I may confess it at the start⁠—was an incurable romantic.

He had had a humdrum life since the day when he had first entered his uncle’s shop with the hope of some day succeeding that honest grocer; and his feet had never strayed a yard from his sober rut.

It was new, but it was also decaying. The creepers had fallen from the walls, the pilasters on the terrace were tumbling down, lichen and moss were on the doorsteps.

Shuttered, silent, abandoned, it stood like a harsh memento mori of human hopes.

Dickson had never before been affected by an inanimate thing with so strong a sense of disquiet. He had pictured an old stone tower on a bright headland; he found instead this raw thing among trees.

Dickson had never before been affected by an inanimate thing with so strong a sense of disquiet. He had pictured an old stone tower on a bright headland; he found instead this raw thing among trees.

The decadence of the brand-new repels as something against nature, and this new thing was decadent.

But there was a mysterious life in it, for though not a chimney smoked, it seemed to enshrine a personality and to wear a sinister aura. He felt a lively distaste, which was almost fear.

Dougal seemed to be searching for adequate words. “She is …” he began. Then a popular song gave him inspiration.

“She’s pure as the lully in the dell!”

In no way discomposed by Heritage’s fierce interrogatory air, he continued: “She’s either foreign or English, for she couldn’t understand what I said, and I could make nothing o’ her clippit tongue. But I could see she had been greetin’.

There was a delicate pallor in the cheeks, and the face bore signs of suffering and care, possibly even of hunger; but for all that there was youth there, eternal and triumphant!

Not youth such as he had known it, but youth with all history behind it, youth with centuries of command in its blood and the world’s treasures of beauty and pride in its ancestry.

Strange, he thought, that a thing so fine should be so masterful. He felt abashed in every inch of him.

It is beyond my skill, being all unlearned in the game of psychoanalysis, to explain how this thing happened. I concern myself only with facts.

Suddenly the pretty veil of self-satisfaction was rent from top to bottom, and Dickson saw a figure of himself within, a smug leaden little figure which simpered and preened itself and was hollow as a rotten nut.

And he hated it.

He reflected that it must be very difficult to miss with a pistol if you fired it at, say, three yards, and if there was to be shooting that would be his range.

Mr. McCunn had stumbled on the precious truth that the best way to be rid of quaking knees is to keep a busy mind.

He crossed the ridge of the plateau and looked down on the Garple glen. There were the lights of Dalquharter—or rather a single light, for the inhabitants went early to bed. His intention was to seek quarters with Mrs.

“What the hell d’ ye mean?” he cried. “Ye’re a spy, are ye? Ye fat little fool, for two cents I’d wring your neck.”

Now it is an odd trait of certain mild people that a suspicion of threat, a hint of bullying, will rouse some unsuspected obstinacy deep down in their souls.

The insolence of the man’s speech woke a quiet but efficient little devil in Dickson.

He was an even wilder figure than usual, for his bare legs were mud to the knees, his kilt and shirt clung sopping to his body, and, having lost his hat, his wet hair was plastered over his eyes.

Mrs. Morran said, not unkindly, that he looked “like a wull-cat glowerin’ through a whin buss.”

“How are you, Dougal?” Dickson asked genially. “Is the peace of nature smoothing out the creases in your poor little soul?”

Then suddenly a moving body collided with him. He jumped a step back and then stood at attention, “Is that you, Dobson?” a voice asked.

Now behold the occasional advantage of a nickname.

Dickson thought he was being addressed as “Dogson” after the Poet’s fashion. Had he dreamed it was Léon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows and so missed a piece of vital news.

Thomas ye ken already; ye’ll no fickle Thomas Yownie. But don’t be mistook about Wee Jaikie. He’s terrible fond of greetin’, but it’s no fright with him but excitement. It’s just a habit he’s gotten.

When ye see Jaikie begin to greet, ye may be sure that Jaikie’s gettin’ dangerous.

”

and he was now engaged in tramping the world with a fairytale Princess. I blush to confess that of each of his doings he was unashamedly proud, and thirsted for many more in the same line.

“Gosh, but I’m seeing life,” was his unregenerate conclusion.

Without sight or sound of a human being, they descended to the Laver, climbed again by the cart track, and passed the deserted West Lodge and inn to the village. It was almost full dawn when the three stood in Mrs. Morran’s kitchen.

Amazingly pretty she looked in Dickson’s eyes, but with a different kind of prettiness. The sense of fragility had fled, and he saw how nobly built she was for all her exquisiteness.

She looked like a queen, he thought, but a queen to go gipsying through the world with.

“Ay, they’re some o’ Elspeth’s things, rale guid furthy claes,” said Mrs. Morran complacently. “And the shoon are what she used to gang about the byres wi’ when she was in the Castlewham dairy.

Today that is true about criminals. After a war evil passions are loosed, and, since Russia is broken, in her they can make their headquarters. … It is not Bolshevism, the theory, you need fear, for that is a weak and dying thing.

It is crime, which today finds its seat in my country, but is not only Russian. It has no fatherland. It is as old as human nature and as wide as the earth.

”

“Tell me yours first,” Dickson essayed to stutter between spasms of nausea.

“My name is Alexander Nicholson,” was the answer.

“Then you’re no’ the man.” It was a cry of wrath and despair.

“This is a pretty rotten show for you,” he told her. “It strikes me as a rather unpleasant brand of nightmare.”

“I have been living with nightmares for three years,” she said wearily.

He cast his eyes round the room. “I think the Kennedys were mad to build this confounded barrack. I’ve always disliked it, and old Quentin hadn’t any use for it either. Cold, cheerless, raw monstrosity! It hasn’t been a very giddy place for you, Princess.”

With a yell Dougal went down the stairs. The boy saluted him, and they gravely shook hands.

It was the meeting of Wellington and Blücher.

The Chieftain’s voice shrilled in triumph, but there was a break in it. The glory was almost too great to be borne.

“Five laddies, a middle-aged man and an auld wife,” he cried. “Dod, it’s pretty hopeless. It’s like the thing in the Bible about the weak things of the world trying to confound the strong.”

“The Bible’s whiles richt,” Mrs. Morran answered drily. “Come on, for there’s no time to lose.”

The door opened again to admit the figure of Wee Jaikie. There were no tears in his eyes, and his face was very white.

Then Thomas Yownie spoke. So far he had been silent, but under his tangled thatch of hair, his mind had been busy. Jaikie’s report seemed to bring him to a decision.

“It’s gey dark,” he said, “and it’s gettin’ darker.”

There was that in his voice which promised something, and Dickson listened.

The Gorbals Die-Hards had gone into action.

Dull prose is no medium to tell of that wild adventure.

The sober sequence of the military historian is out of place in recording deeds that knew not sequence or sobriety. Were I a bard, I would cast this tale in excited verse, with a lilt which would catch the speed of the reality.

It was the leader, the arch-enemy, the man whose escape must at all costs be stopped. Perhaps he had the Princess with him, thus snatching victory from apparent defeat. In any case he must be tackled, and a fierce anxiety gripped his heart.

“Aye finish a job,” he told himself

, and peered up into the darkness of the cliffs, wondering just how he should set about it, for except in the last few days he had never engaged in combat with a fellow-creature.