Chapter 3

“I would give a good deal for Archie’s gusto,” he said. “My sound right
leg, for example. Or, if I couldn’t get that, I’d like Charles
Lamancha’s insatiable ambition. If you want as much as he wants, you
don’t suffer from tedium.”

Palliser-Yeates looked at the gentleman in question, the tall dark one
of the two diners. “I’m not so sure. Perhaps he has got too much too
easily. He has come on uncommon quick, you know, and, if you do that,
there’s apt to arrive a moment when you flag.”

Lord Lamancha–the title had no connection with Don Quixote and Spain,
but was the name of a shieling in a Border glen which had been the home
six centuries ago of the ancient house of Merkland–was an object of
interest to many of his countrymen. The Marquis of Liddesdale, his
father, was a hale old man who might reasonably be expected to live for
another ten years and so prevent his son’s career being compromised by a
premature removal to the House of Lords. He had a safe seat for a London
division, was a member of the Cabinet, and had a high reputation for the
matter-of-fact oratory which has replaced the pre-war grandiloquence.
People trusted him, because, in spite of his hidalgo-ish appearance, he
was believed to have that combination of candour and intelligence which
England desires in her public men. Also he was popular, for his record
in the war and the rumour of a youth spent in adventurous travel touched
the imagination of the ordinary citizen. At the moment he was being
talked of for a great Imperial post which was soon to become vacant, and
there was gossip, in the alternative, of a Ministerial readjustment
which would make him the pivot of a controversial Government. It was a
remarkable position for a man to have won in his early forties, who had
entered public life with every disadvantage of birth.

“I suppose he’s happy,” said Leithen. “But I’ve always held that there
was a chance of Charles kicking over the traces. I doubt if his ambition
is an organic part of him and not stuck on with pins. There’s a
fundamental daftness in all Merklands. I remember him at school.”

The two men finished their meal and retired to the smoking-room, where
they drank their coffee abstractedly. Each was thinking about the other,
and wondering what light the other’s case could shed on his own. The
speculation gave each a faint glimmer of comfort.

Presently the voice of Sir Archibald Roylance was heard, and that
ebullient young man flung himself down on a sofa beside Leithen, while
Lord Lamancha selected a cigar. Sir Archie settled his game leg to his
satisfaction, and filled an ancient pipe.

“Heavy weather,” he announced. “I’ve been tryin’ to cheer up old Charles
and it’s been like castin’ a fly against a thirty-mile gale. I can’t
make out what’s come over him. Here’s a deservin’ lad like me struggling
at the foot of the ladder and not cast down, and there’s Charles high up
on the top rungs as glum as an owl and declarin’ that the whole thing’s
foolishness. Shockin’ spectacle for youth.”

Lamancha, who had found an arm-chair beside Palliser-Yeates, looked at
the others and smiled wryly.

“Is that true, Charles?” Leithen asked. “Are you also feeling hipped?
Because John and I have just been confessing to each other that we’re
more fed up with everything in this gay world than we’ve ever been
before in our useful lives.”

Lamancha nodded. “I don’t know what has come over me. I couldn’t face
the House to-night, so I telephoned to Archie to come and cheer me. I
suppose I’m stale, but it’s a new kind of staleness, for I’m perfectly
fit in body, and I can’t honestly say I feel weary in mind. It’s simply
that the light has gone out of the landscape. Nothing has any savour.”

The three men had been at school together, they had been contemporaries
at the University, and close friends ever since. They had no secrets
from each other. Leithen, into whose face and voice had come a remote
hint of interest, gave a sketch of his own mood, and the diagnosis of
the eminent consultant. Archie Roylance stared blankly from one to the
other, as if some new thing had broken in upon his simple philosophy of
life.

“You fellows beat me,” he cried. “Here you are, every one of you a swell
of sorts, with everything to make you cheerful, and you’re grousin’ like
a labour battalion! You should be jolly well ashamed of yourselves. It’s
fairly temptin’ Providence. What you want is some hard exercise. Go and
sweat ten hours a day on a steep hill, and you’ll get rid of these
notions.”

“My dear Archie,” said Leithen, “your prescription is too crude. I used
to be fond enough of sport, but I wouldn’t stir a foot to catch a
sixty-pound salmon or kill a fourteen pointer. I don’t want to. I see no
fun in it. I’m _blasé_. It’s too easy.”

“Well, I’m dashed! You’re the worst spoiled chap I ever heard of, and a
nice example to democracy.” Archie spoke as if his gods had been
blasphemed.

“Democracy, anyhow, is a good example to us. I know now why workmen
strike sometimes and can’t give any reason. We’re on strike–against
our privileges.”

Archie was not listening. “Too easy, you say?” he repeated. “I call that
pretty fair conceit. I’ve seen you miss birds often enough, old fellow.”

“Nevertheless, it seems to me too easy. Everything has become too easy,
both work and play.”

“You can screw up the difficulty, you know. Try shootin’ with a twenty
bore, or fishin’ for salmon with a nine-foot rod and a dry-fly cast.”

“I don’t want to kill anything,” said Palliser-Yeates. “I don’t see the
fun of it.”

Archie was truly shocked. Then a light of reminiscence came into his
eye. “You remind me of poor old Jim Tarras,” he said thoughtfully.

There were no inquiries about Jim Tarras, so Archie volunteered further
news.

“You remember Jim? He had a little place somewhere in Moray, and spent
most of his time shootin’ in East Africa. Poor chap, he went back there
with Smuts in the war and perished of blackwater. Well, when his father
died and he came home to settle down, he found it an uncommon dull job.
So, to enliven it, he invented a new kind of sport. He knew all there
was to be known about _shikar_, and from trampin’ about the Highlands he
had a pretty accurate knowledge of the country-side. So he used to write
to the owner of a deer forest and present his compliments, and beg to
inform him that between certain dates he proposed to kill one of his
stags. When he had killed it he undertook to deliver it to the owner,
for he wasn’t a thief.”

“I call that poaching on the grand scale,” observed Palliser-Yeates.

“Wasn’t it? Most of the fellows he wrote to accepted his challenge and
told him to come and do his damnedest. Little Avington, I remember,
turned on every man and boy about the place for three nights to watch
the forest. Jim usually worked by night, you see. One or two curmudgeons
talked of the police and prosecutin’ him, but public opinion was against
them–too dashed unsportin’.”

“Did he always get his stag?” Leithen asked.