John Buchan

Castle Gay John Buchan

Fifty-eight years before the date of this tale a child was born in the school-house of thelandward parish of Kilmaclavers in the Kingdom of Fife. The schoolmaster was oneCampbell Craw, who at the age of forty-five had espoused the widow of the provost of theadjacent seaport of Partankirk, a lady his junior by a single summer. Mr Craw was a Scotsdominie of the old style, capable of sending boys direct to the middle class of Humanity atSt Andrews, one who esteemed his profession, and wore in the presence of his fellows analmost episcopal dignity. He was recognised in the parish and far beyond it as a "deepstudent," and, when questions of debate were referred to his arbitrament, he would give hisverdict with a weight of polysyllables which at once awed and convinced his hearers. Thenatural suspicion which might have attached to such profundity was countered by the factthat Mr Craw was an elder of the Free Kirk and in politics a sound Gladstonian. His wife wasa kindred spirit, but, in her, religion of a kind took the place of philosophy. She was a notedconnoisseur of sermons, who would travel miles to hear some select preacher, and hervoice had acquired something of the pulpit monotone. Her world was the Church, in whichshe hoped that her solitary child would some day be a polished pillar. The infant was baptised by the name of Thomas Carlyle, after the sage whom his fatherchiefly venerated; Mrs Craw had graciously resigned her own preference, which wasRobert Rainy, after the leader of her communion. Never was a son the object of higherexpectations or more deeply pondered plans. He had come to them unexpectedly; the lateProvost of Partankirk had left no offspring; he was at once the child of their old age, and thesole hope of their house. Both parents agreed that he must be a minister, and he spent hisearly years in an atmosphere of dedication. Some day he would be a great man, and theepisodes of his youth must be such as would impress the readers of his ultimate biography. Every letter he wrote was treasured by a fond mother. Each New Year's Day his fatherpresented him with a lengthy epistle, in the style of an evangelical Lord Chesterfield, whichput on record the schoolmaster's more recent reflections on life: a copy was carefully filedfor the future biographer. His studies were minutely regulated. At five, though he was stillshaky in English grammar, he had mastered the Greek alphabet. At eight he had begunHebrew. At nine he had read Paradise Lost, Young's Night Thoughts, and most of Mr RobertPollok's Course of Time. At eleven he had himself, to his parents' delight, begun the firstcanto of an epic on the subject of Eternity.