Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated) Page 16

  From the landlord at the inn I bought a suit of homespun clothes which, by good fortune, fitted Nicol; and left his soaked garments as part payment. Clad decently, he looked a great, stalwart man, though somewhat bent in the back, and with a strange craning forward of the neck, acquired, I think, from much wandering among hills. I hired a horse to take him to Edinburgh, and the two of us rode out of the yard, followed by the parting courtesies of the host.

  Of our journey to Edinburgh, I have little else to tell. We came to the town in the afternoon, and went through the streets to the port of Leith, after leaving our horses at the place arranged for. I was grieved to part from Maisie, for I had ridden her from boyhood, and she had come to know my ways wondrous well. We found a vessel to sail the next morn for Rotterdam, and bargained with the captain for our passage. When all had been settled, and we had looked our fill upon the harbour and the craft, and felt the salt of the sea on our lips, we betook ourselves to an inn, The Three Herrings, which fronted the quay, and there abode for the night.

  BOOK II. — THE LOW COUNTRIES

  I. — OF MY VOYAGE TO THE LOW COUNTRIES

  WE WERE aboard on the next morning by a little after daybreak, for the captain had forewarned me, the night before, that he purposed to catch the morning tide. To one inland- bred, the harbour of Leith was a sight to whet the curiosity. There were vessels of all kinds and sizes, little fishing smacks with brown, home-made sails, from Fife or the Lothian coast towns, great sea-going ships, many with strange, foreign names on their sides, and full of a great bustle of lading and unlading. There was such a concourse of men, too, as made the place like a continuous horse-fair. Half a dozen different tongues jabbered in my ear, of which I knew not one word, save of the French, which I could make a fair shape to speak, having learned it from Tam Todd, along with much else of good and bad. There were men in red cowls like Ayrshire weavers, and men in fur hats from the North, and dark-skinned fellows, too, from the Indies, and all this motley crew would be running up and down jabbering and shrilling like a pack of hounds. And every now and then across the uproar would come the deep voice of a Scots skipper, swearing and hectoring as if the world and all that is in it were his peculiar possession.

  But when we had cleared the Roads of Leith and were making fair way down the firth, with a good north-westerly breeze behind us, then there was a sight worth the seeing. For behind lay Leith, with its black masts and tall houses, and at the back again, Edinburgh, with its castle looming up grim and solemn, and further still, the Pentlands, ridged like a saw, running far to the westward. In front I marked the low shore of Fife, with the twin Lomonds, which you can see by climbing Caerdon, or Dollar Law, or any one of the high Tweedside hills. The channel was as blue as a summer sky, with a wintry clearness and a swell which was scarce great enough to break into billows. The Kern, for so the vessel was called, had all her sail set, and bounded gallantly on her way. It was a cheerful sight, what with the sails filling to the wind, and men passing hither and thither at work with the cordage, and the running seas keeping pace with the vessel. The morning fires were being lit in the little villages of Fife, and I could see the smoke curling upwards in a haze from every bay and neuk.

  But soon the firth was behind us, and we passed between the Bass rock and the May, out into the open sea. This I scarcely found so much to my liking. I was inland-bred, and somewhat delicate in my senses, so, soon I came to loathe the odour of fish and cookery and sea-water, which was everywhere in the vessel. Then the breeze increased to a stiff wind, and the Kern leaped and rocked among great rolling billows. At first the movement was almost pleasing, being like the motion of a horse’s gallop in a smooth field. And this leads me to think that if a boat were but small enough, so as to be more proportionate to the body of man, the rocking of it would be as pleasing as the rise and fall of a horse’s stride. But in a great, cumbrous ship, where man is but a little creature, it soon grows wearisome. We stood well out to sea, so I could but mark the bolder features of the land. Even these I soon lost sight of, for the whole earth and air began to dance woefully before my eyes. I felt a dreadful sinking, and a cold sweat began to break on my brow. I had heard of the sea-sickness, but I could not believe that it was this. This was something ten times worse, some deadly plague which Heaven had sent to stay me on my wanderings.

  I leaned over the side of the ship in a very disconsolate frame of mind. If this was all I was to get on my journey, I had better have stayed at home. I was landward-bred, and knew naught of boats, save one which Tam Todd had made as a ferry across the Tweed, and which was indeed more like a meal-chest than aught else. In it we were wont to paddle across when we were fearful of wetting our shoon. But this rolling, boisterous ship and turgid seas were strange to me, and I fear I fell monstrous sick.

  Nicol Plenderleith had disappeared almost as soon as he came aboard, and I saw him deep in converse with the sailors. When we had cleared the Forth he came back to me, as I leaned disconsolately against the bulwarks, and asked me how I did. His lean, brown face was not a whit changed by the rocking of the ship; indeed, if he had been astraddle the Saddleback in a gale he would not have been perturbed. When he saw my plight he ran below and brought brandy.

  “Here, sir, tak some o’ this. It’s tasty at a’ times, but it’s mair than tasty the noo, it’s halesome.”

  “Nicol,” I groaned, “if I never get home again, I look to you to tell the folk in Tweeddale. It’s terrible to die here of this villainous sickness, for I shall certainly die if it continues. Will it never cease?”

  “I’ve been speirin’ at the captain and by a’ accounts we’re no at the warst o’t. He says it’s juist like the backs o’ Leith. If ye win by the Fisherraw ye’ll meet your death i’ the Kettle Wynd, and, if by any chance ye’re no killed there, ye’ll be dune for i’ the Walk. He was speaking o’ the stinks o’ the place and no the folk, for they’re peaceable eneuch, puir bodies. ‘Weel,’ says he, ‘it’s the same here. It’s ill for some folk to win by the Forth, but it’s waur i’ the open sea, and when it comes to the Dutch waters, it’s fair awfu’.’ I wis. Laird, ye maunna dee.”

  This was poor consolation, and had I not formed some guess of my servant’s manners, I should have been downhearted enough; but there was a roguish twinkle in his eye, and, even as he spoke, his mouth broadened to a grin. I heard him humming the lines of an old ditty which I supposed to have some reference to my state:

  Tam o’ the Linn and a’ his bairns

  Fell into the fire in ilk ither’s airms.

  “Eh,” quoth the hinmost, “I have a het skin.”

  “It’s better below,” quo’ Tam o’ the Linn.

  But, sure enough, the captain’s prophecy did not come true. For in a little the waves grew calmer, and my sickness left me. ‘Tis true that soon we entered troubled waters once more, but I was fortified with experience, and some measure of brandy, and so could laugh defiance at the powers of the sea.

  The wind throughout our course was fair in our favour, so we made the journey in shorter time than I had dared to hope for. On the morning of the third day a dense mist shut us in so that the captain was much confused and angered. But on the wind’s rising, the fog rolled back, and we went on our way once more. Early in the afternoon we sighted the mouth of the Maas, and the tall lines of shipping which told of the entrance to Rotterdam. You may imagine that all this was very strange to me, I who had lived only among hills and rough woods, and had seen the sea but once, and that afar ofF. ‘Twas a perpetual wonder to me to see the great sails moved up and down according to the airt of the wind, and the little helm guiding the great ship. As I have said, I soon got over all sickness, and was as hale as ever, so that on the last two days of the voyage I ever look back as upon a time of great pleasure.

  But if my wonder was great in the open seas, ‘twas still greater once we had entered the Dutch river. It was all so unlike my own land that the home-sickness which travellers tell of had almost taken hold of me. There were
all manner of ships — some little coasting vessels, others, huge merchantmen which brought home the wares of the Indies and the Americas. There was such a jabbering, too, in Dutch, of which tongue I knew naught, that I longed to hear one good, intelligible word of Scots, for which cause I kept my servant near me. By and by we neared the quay, and saw the merchants’ great red storehouses standing in long line, and the streets of the city running back from the river. Here we came to an anchor. Our journey was over, and I had to bid farewell to captain and vessel and go ashore.

  It is not to be expected that I should seek to describe what is known to nigh everyone in these days when a man thinks nothing of crossing to France or Holland on any pretext or in any weather. From such, therefore, by word of mouth let he who desires it seek information; for myself, I have enough to do to write down the main acts of my life.

  One thing I noted — that the air was somewhat soft and damp, lacking, to my mind, the acrid strength of the air of Tweeddale, or even of the Lothians. But all the streets were clean swept and orderly; the folk well-groomed and well-looking; and the trees by the riverside gave a pleasant surprise to one accustomed to the grim, grey, narrow streets of the North. I made my way by the help of an inquisitive Scots tongue and the French language to a decent hostelry in the Groote Markt just opposite the statue (but lately erected) of the great Erasmus. This pleased me much, for to be near even the poor bronze figure of so great a man seemed to lend to the place an air of learning. I employed myself profitably in reading the Latin inscriptions; the others I could make no more of than the rudest ploughboy in Scotland.

  Both Nicol and I were up betimes in the morning, that we might get the coach for Leyden, which started almost from the door of our inn. I solemnly set down my testimony that the ale in that same house is the most villainous in the world, for it made us both dismal and oppressed, a trouble which did not leave us till we had taken our seats in the diligence and the horses were starting.

  Of the events of that day’s journey how shall I tell — Leyden is a day’s length from Rotterdam to the north, through a land flat as a girdle-cake. The horses were lumbering, sleepy brutes, and the driver scarce any better, for every now and again he would let them come to the walk for long distances, and then, suddenly awaking to the fact that he must get to his destination before night, get up and shout wildly, and feebly flick their backs with his whip. I had much ado to keep Nicol from trying to take the reins from his hands, and, certainly, if that firebrand had once taken them, we should have awakened the quiet countryside, and, God helping us, might even have awakened the driver. I knew nothing of the country, and heard but vaguely the names shouted out by the guard of the coach; yet, somehow or other, the name of Ryswick clung to my memory, and I remembered it well when, long after, at that place the treaty was signed which closed the war. But at that time the great duke was plain Master Churchill, and there was no thought of war between our land and France. The place was so new to my eyes that I rebelled against its persistent flatness and dull, dead water-courses; but soon I came to acknowledge a kind of prettiness in it, though ‘twas of a kind far removed from the wild loveliness of Tweedside. The well-ordered strips of trees, the poplars like sentinels around the homesteads, the red-roofed homesteads themselves, with their ricks and stables, had a homely and habitable look, and such of the folk as we saw by the roadside were as sleek and stolid as their land. I could not think of the place as a nursery of high and heroical virtues, but rather of the minor moralities of good-sense and good-nature.

  It was late in the afternoon when we came to Leyden, and rattled down the rough street to the market-place, which was the stopping-place of the coach. This was a town more comely and conformable to my eye than the greater city of Rotterdam. For here the streets were not so even, the houses not so trim, and the whole showing a greater semblance of age. There were many streams and canals crossed by broad, low bridges. It was a time of great mildness, for the season of the year. The place had all that air of battered age and historic worth which I have observed in our own city of Edinburgh. Even as I looked on it my mind was full of memories of that terrible siege, when the folk of Leyden held out so stoutly against the black Spaniards, till their king overthrew the dykes and saved the town by flooding the land.

  It was my first concern to secure lodgings, since I purposed to spend no little portion of my time here for the next two years; and, as I had been directed by my kinsman. Dr. Gilbert Burnet, I sought the house of one Cornelius Vanderdecker, who abode in a little alley off the Breedestraat. Arrived there, I found that the said Cornelius had been in a better world for some fifteen months, but that his widow, a tranquil Dutchwoman, with a temper as long as a Dutch canal, was most willing to lodge me and treat me to the best which the house could afford. We speedily made a bargain in bad French, and Nicol and I were installed in rooms in the back part of the house, overlooking a long garden, which ended in one of the streams of water which I have spoken of. It was somewhat desolate at that time, but I could see that in summer, when the straight trees were in leaf, the trim flower-beds and the close-cropped lawn would make the place exceeding pretty. I was glad of it, for I am country-bred and dearly do I love greenery and the sight of flowers.

  I delayed till the next morning, when I had got the soil of travel from my clothes and myself once more into some semblance of sprightliness, ere I went to the college to present my letters and begin my schooling. So after the morning meal, I attired myself in befitting dress and put Nicol into raiment suiting his rank and company; and set out with a light heart to that great and imposing institution, which has been the star of Europe in philosophy and all other matters of learning. I own that it was with feelings of some trepidation that I approached the place. Here had dwelt Grotius and Salmasius and the incomparable Scaliger. Here they had studied and written their immortal books; the very place was still redolent of their memories. Here, too, unless my memory deceived me, had dwelt the Frenchman, Renatus Descartes, who had first opened a way for me from the chaos of the schoolmen to the rectitude of true philosophy. I scarcely dared to enroll my unworthy name in the halls of such illustrious spirits. But I thought on my name and race, and plucked up heart thereupon to knock stoutly at the gates. A short, stout man opened to me, clad in a porter’s gown, not unlike the bedellus in the far-away college of Glasgow, but carrying in his hand a black staff, and at his belt a large bunch of keys. It came upon me to address him in French, but remembering that this was a place of learning, I concluded that Latin was the more fitting tongue, so in Latin I spoke.

  “I am a stranger,” I said, “from Scotland, bearing letters for Master Sandvoort and Master Quellinus of this place. I pray you to see if they can grant me an audience.”

  He faced round sharply, as if this were the most ordinary errand in his life, and went limping across the inner courtyard till he disappeared from view behind a massive column. He returned shortly and delivered his message in a very tolerable imitation of the language of Caesar.

  “Their worships. Master Sandvoort and Adaster Quellinus, are free from business for the present, and will see you in their chambers.” So bidding Nicol stay in the courtyard, lest he should shame me before these grave seniors (though ‘twas unlikely enough, seeing they knew no Scots), I followed the hobbling porter through the broad quadrangle, up a long staircase adorned with many statues set in niches in the wall, to a landing whence opened many doors. At one of them my guide knocked softly, and a harsh voice bade us enter. “This is Master Sandvoort,” he whispered in my ear, “and I trust he be not in one of his tantrums. See ye speak him fair, sir.”

  I found myself in a high-panelled room, filled with books, and with a table in front of a fireplace, whereat a man sat writing. He wore a skullcap of purple velvet, and the ordinary black gown of the doctor. His face was thin and hard, with lines across the brow and the heaviness below the eyes which all have who study overmuch. His hair was turning to grey, but his short, pointed beard was still black. He had v
ery shaggy eyebrows, under which his sharp eyes shone like the points of a needle. Such was Master Herman Sandvoort, professor of the Latin language in the ancient college of Leyden.

  His first question to me was in the Latin.

  “What tongue do you speak?”

  I answered that I was conversant with the English, the French, and the Latin.

  “Your letters, pray,” he asked in French, and I took them from my pocket and gave them to him.

  “Ah,” he cried, reading aloud, “you desire to study in this university, and improve your acquaintance with certain branches of letters and philosophy. So be it. My fee is five crowns for attendance at my lectures. I will not abate one tittle of it. I will have no more poor students come cringing and begging to be let off with two. So understand my terms, Master Burnette.”

  I was both angry and surprised. Who was this man to address me thus —

  “I pray you to finish the letter,” I said curtly.

  He read on for a little while, then he lifted his head and looked at me with so comical an expression that I had almost laughed. Before, his face had been greedy and cold; now it was worse, for the greed was still there, but the coldness had vanished and left in its place a sickly look of servility.

  “Pardon me, pardon me, good Master Burnette; I was in a great mistake. I had thought that you were some commoner from the North, and, God knows, we have plenty of them. I pray you forget my words. The college is most honoured by your presence, the nephew, or is it the son, of the famous Doctor Burnette. Ah, where were my eyes — the lord of much land, so says the letter, in the valley of the Tweed. Be sure, sir, that you can command all the poor learning that I have at my disposal. And if you have not already found lodging, why if you will come to my house, my wife and daughters will welcome you.”