John Buchan

Mr. Standfast John Buchan

UP on the high veld our rivers are apt to be strings of pools linked by muddy trickles-themost stagnant kind of watercourse you would look for in a day's journey. But presentlythey reach the edge of the plateau and are tossed down into the flats in noble ravines, androll thereafter in full and sounding currents to the sea. So with the story I am telling. Itbegan in smooth reaches, as idle as a mill-pond; yet the day soon came when I was in thegrip of a torrent, flung breathless from rock to rock by a destiny which I could not control. But for the present I was in a backwater, no less than the Garden City of Biggleswick, whereMr Cornelius Brand, a South African gentleman visiting England on holiday, lodged in a pairof rooms in the cottage of Mr Tancred Jimson. The house-or 'home' as they preferred to name it at Biggleswick-was one of some twohundred others which ringed a pleasant Midland common. It was badly built and oddlyfurnished; the bed was too short, the windows did not fit, the doors did not stay shut; but itwas as clean as soap and water and scrubbing could make it. The three-quarters of an acreof garden were mainly devoted to the culture of potatoes, though under the parlourwindow Mrs Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs, and lines of lank sunflowersfringed the path that led to the front door. It was Mrs Jimson who received me as Idescended from the station fly-a large red woman with hair bleached by constantexposure to weather, clad in a gown which, both in shape and material, seemed to havebeen modelled on a chintz curtain. She was a good kindly soul, and as proud as Punch ofher house.'We follow the simple life here, Mr Brand, ' she said. 'You must take us as you find us.'I assured her that I asked for nothing better, and as I unpacked in my fresh little bedroomwith a west wind blowing in at the window I considered that I had seen worse quarters. I had bought in London a considerable number of books, for I thought that, as I would havetime on my hands, I might as well do something about my education. They were mostlyEnglish classics, whose names I knew but which I had never read, and they were all in alittle flat-backed series at a shilling apiece. I arranged them on top of a chest of drawers, but I kept the Pilgrim's Progress beside my bed, for that was one of my working tools and Ihad got to get it by hear