Mr. Standfast
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John Buchan >> Mr. Standfast
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There was little traffic in the hamlet of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne
that night. Few cars were on the road, and the M.T. detachment,
judging from the din, seemed to be busy on a private spree. It was
about nine o'clock when we turned into the side road, and at the
entrance to it I saw a solid figure in khaki mounting guard beside
two bicycles. Something in the man's gesture, as he saluted, struck
me as familiar, but I had no time to hunt for casual memories. I left
the car just short of the bridge, and took the road which would
bring me to the terraced front of the house.
Once I turned the corner of the Chateau and saw the long
ghostly facade white in the moonlight, I felt less confident. The
eeriness of the place smote me. In that still, snowy world it loomed
up immense and mysterious with its rows of shuttered windows,
each with that air which empty houses have of concealing some
wild story. I longed to have old Peter with me, for he was the man
for this kind of escapade. I had heard that he had been removed to
Switzerland and I pictured him now in some mountain village
where the snow lay deep. I would have given anything to have had
Peter with a whole leg by my side.
I stepped on the terrace and listened. There was not a sound in
the world, not even the distant rumble of a cart. The pile towered
above me like a mausoleum, and I reflected that it must take some
nerve to burgle an empty house. It would be good enough fun to
break into a bustling dwelling and pinch the plate when the folk
were at dinner, but to burgle emptiness and silence meant a fight
with the terrors in a man's soul. It was worse in my case, for I
wasn't cheered with prospects of loot. I wanted to get inside chiefly
to soothe my conscience.
I hadn't much doubt I would find a way, for three years of war
and the frequent presence of untidy headquarters' staffs have loosened
the joints of most Picardy houses. There's generally a window
that doesn't latch or a door that doesn't bar. But I tried window after
window on the terrace without result. The heavy green sun-shutters
were down over each, and when I broke the hinges of one there was a
long bar within to hold it firm. I was beginning to think of shinning
up a rain-pipe and trying the second floor, when a shutter I had laid
hold on swung back in my hand. It had been left unfastened, and,
kicking the snow from my boots, I entered a room.
A gleam of moonlight followed me and I saw I was in a big
salon with a polished wood floor and dark lumps of furniture
swathed in sheets. I clicked the bulb at my belt, and the little circle
of light showed a place which had not been dwelt in for years. At
the far end was another door, and as I tiptoed towards it something
caught my eye on the parquet. It was a piece of fresh snow like that
which clumps on the heel of a boot. I had not brought it there.
Some other visitor had passed this way, and not long before me.
Very gently I opened the door and slipped in. In front of me was a
pile of furniture which made a kind of screen, and behind that I
halted and listened. There was somebody in the room. I heard the
sound of human breathing and soft movements; the man, whoever he
was, was at the far end from me, and though there was a dim glow of
Moon through a broken shutter I could see nothing of what he was
after. I was beginning to enjoy myself now. I knew of his presence
and he did not know of mine, and that is the sport of stalking.
An unwary movement of my hand caused the screen to creak.
Instantly the movements ceased and there was utter silence. I held
my breath, and after a second or two the tiny sounds began again. I
had a feeling, though my eyes could not assure me, that the man
before me was at work, and was using a very small shaded torch.
There was just the faintest moving shimmer on the wall beyond,
though that might come from the crack of moonlight.
Apparently he was reassured, for his movements became more
distinct. There was a jar as if a table had been pushed back. Once
more there was silence, and I heard only the intake of breath. I
have very quick ears, and to me it sounded as if the man was
rattled. The breathing was quick and anxious.
Suddenly it changed and became the ghost of a whistle - the
kind of sound one makes with the lips and teeth without ever
letting the tune break out clear. We all do it when we are preoccupied
with something - shaving, or writing letters, or reading the
newspaper. But I did not think my man was preoccupied. He was
whistling to quiet fluttering nerves.
Then I caught the air. It was 'Cherry Ripe'.
In a moment, from being hugely at my ease, I became the
nervous one. I had been playing peep-bo with the unseen, and the
tables were turned. My heart beat against my ribs like a hammer. I
shuffled my feet, and again there fell the tense silence.
'Mary,' I said - and the word seemed to explode like a bomb in
the stillness -'Mary! It's me - Dick Hannay.'
There was no answer but a sob and the sound of a timid step.
I took four paces into the darkness and caught in my arms a
trembling girl ...
Often in the last months I had pictured the kind of scene which
would be the culminating point of my life. When our work was
over and war had been forgotten, somewhere - perhaps in a green
Cotswold meadow or in a room of an old manor - I would talk
with Mary. By that time we should know each other well and I
would have lost my shyness. I would try to tell her that I loved her,
but whenever I thought of what I should say my heart sank, for I
knew I would make a fool of myself. You can't live my kind of life
for forty years wholly among men and be of any use at pretty
speeches to women. I knew I should stutter and blunder, and I
used despairingly to invent impossible situations where I might
make my love plain to her without words by some piece of
melodramatic sacrifice.
But the kind Fates had saved me the trouble. Without a syllable
save Christian names stammered in that eerie darkness we had come
to complete understanding. The fairies had been at work unseen,
and the thoughts of each of us had been moving towards the other,
till love had germinated like a seed in the dark. As I held her in my
arms I stroked her hair and murmured things which seemed to
spring out of some ancestral memory. Certainly my tongue had
never used them before, nor my mind imagined them ... By and
by she slipped her arms round my neck and with a half sob strained
towards me. She was still trembling.
'Dick,' she said, and to hear that name on her lips was the
sweetest thing I had ever known. 'Dick, is it really you? Tell me
I'm not dreaming.'
'It's me, sure enough, Mary dear. And now I have found you I
will never let you go again. But, my precious child, how on earth
did you get here?'
She disengaged herself and let her little electric torch wander
over my rough habiliments.
'You look a tremendous warrior, Dick. I have never seen you
like this before. I was in Doubting Castle and very much afraid of
Giant Despair, till you came.'
'I think I call it the Interpreter's House,' I said.
'It's the house of somebody we both know,' she went on. 'He
calls himself Bommaerts here. That was one of the two names, you
remember. I have seen him since in Paris. Oh, it is a long story and
you shall hear it all soon. I knew he came here sometimes, so I
came here too. I have been nursing for the last fortnight at the
Douvecourt Hospital only four miles away.'
'But what brought you alone at night?'
'Madness, I think. Vanity, too. You see I had found out a good
deal, and I wanted to find out the one vital thing which had
puzzled Mr Blenkiron. I told myself it was foolish, but I couldn't
keep away. And then my courage broke down, and before you
came I would have screamed at the sound of a mouse. If I hadn't
whistled I would have cried.'
'But why alone and at this hour?'
'I couldn't get off in the day. And it was safest to come alone.
You see he is in love with me, and when he heard I was coming to
Douvecourt forgot his caution and proposed to meet me here. He
said he was going on a long journey and wanted to say goodbye. If
he had found me alone - well, he would have said goodbye. If
there had been anyone with me, he would have suspected, and he
mustn't suspect me. Mr Blenkiron says that would be fatal to his
great plan. He believes I am like my aunts, and that I think him an
apostle of peace working by his own methods against the stupidity
and wickedness of all the Governments. He talks more bitterly
about Germany than about England. He had told me how he had
to disguise himself and play many parts on his mission, and of
course I have applauded him. Oh, I have had a difficult autumn.'
'Mary,' I cried, 'tell me you hate him.'
'No,' she said quietly. 'I do not hate him. I am keeping that for later.
I fear him desperately. Some day when we have broken him utterly I
will hate him, and drive all likeness of him out of my memory like an
unclean thing. But till then I won't waste energy on hate. We want to
hoard every atom of our strength for the work of beating him.'
She had won back her composure, and I turned on my light to
look at her. She was in nurses' outdoor uniform, and I thought her
eyes seemed tired. The priceless gift that had suddenly come to me
had driven out all recollection of my own errand. I thought of
Ivery only as a would-be lover of Mary, and forgot the manufacturer
from Lille who had rented his house for the partridge-shooting.
'And you, Dick,' she asked; 'is it part of a general's duties to pay
visits at night to empty houses?'
'I came to look for traces of M. Bommaerts. I, too, got on his
track from another angle, but that story must wait.'
'You observe that he has been here today?'
She pointed to some cigarette ash spilled on the table edge, and a
space on its surface cleared from dust. 'In a place like this the dust
would settle again in a few hours, and that is quite clean. I should
say he has been here just after luncheon.'
'Great Scott!' I cried, 'what a close shave! I'm in the mood at this
moment to shoot him at sight. You say you saw him in Paris and
knew his lair. Surely you had a good enough case to have him
collared.'
She shook her head. 'Mr Blenkiron - he's in Paris too - wouldn't
hear of it. He hasn't just figured the thing out yet, he says. We've
identified one of your names, but we're still in doubt about
Chelius.'
'Ah, Chelius! Yes, I see. We must get the whole business complete
before we strike. Has old Blenkiron had any luck?'
'Your guess about the "Deep-breathing" advertisement was very
clever, Dick. It was true, and it may give us Chelius. I must leave
Mr Blenkiron to tell you how. But the trouble is this. We know
something of the doings of someone who may be Chelius, but we
can't link them with Ivery. We know that Ivery is Bommaerts, and
our hope is to link Bommaerts with Chelius. That's why I came
here. I was trying to burgle this escritoire in an amateur way. It's a
bad piece of fake Empire and deserves smashing.'
I could see that Mary was eager to get my mind back to business,
and with some difficulty I clambered down from the exultant
heights. The intoxication of the thing was on me - the winter
night, the circle of light in that dreary room, the sudden coming
together of two souls from the ends of the earth, the realization of
my wildest hopes, the gilding and glorifying of all the future. But
she had always twice as much wisdom as me, and we were in the
midst of a campaign which had no use for day-dreaming. I turned
my attention to the desk.
It was a flat table with drawers, and at the back a half-circle of
more drawers with a central cupboard. I tilted it up and most of the
drawers slid out, empty of anything but dust. I forced two open
with my knife and they held empty cigar boxes. Only the cupboard
remained, and that appeared to be locked. I wedged a key from my
pocket into its keyhole, but the thing would not budge.
'It's no good,' I said. 'He wouldn't leave anything he valued in a
place like this. That sort of fellow doesn't take risks. If he wanted
to hide something there are a hundred holes in this Chateau which
would puzzle the best detective.'
'Can't you open it?' she asked. 'I've a fancy about that table. He
was sitting here this afternoon and he may be coming back.'
I solved the problem by turning up the escritoire and putting my
knee through the cupboard door. Out of it tumbled a little dark-
green attache case.
'This is getting solemn,' said Mary. 'Is it locked?'
It was, but I took my knife and cut the lock out and spilled the
contents on the table. There were some papers, a newspaper or
two, and a small bag tied with black cord. The last I opened, while
Mary looked over my shoulder. It contained a fine yellowish powder.
'Stand back,' I said harshly. 'For God's sake, stand back and
don't breathe.'
With trembling hands I tied up the bag again, rolled it in a
newspaper, and stuffed it into my pocket. For I remembered a day
near Peronne when a Boche plane had come over in the night and
had dropped little bags like this. Happily they were all collected,
and the men who found them were wise and took them off to the
nearest laboratory. They proved to be full of anthrax germs ...
I remembered how Eaucourt Sainte-Anne stood at the junction
of a dozen roads where all day long troops passed to and from the
lines. From such a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the
health of an army ...
I remembered the woman I had seen in the courtyard of this
house in the foggy dusk, and I knew now why she had worn a gas-mask.
This discovery gave me a horrid shock. I was brought down
with a crash from my high sentiment to something earthly and
devilish. I was fairly well used to Boche filthiness, but this seemed
too grim a piece of the utterly damnable. I wanted to have Ivery by
the throat and force the stuff into his body, and watch him decay
slowly into the horror he had contrived for honest men.
'Let's get out of this infernal place,' I said.
But Mary was not listening. She had picked up one of the
newspapers and was gloating over it. I looked and saw that it was
open at an advertisement of Weissmann's 'Deep-breathing' system.
'Oh, look, Dick,' she cried breathlessly.
The column of type had little dots made by a red pencil below
certain words.
'It's it,' she whispered, 'it's the cipher - I'm almost sure it's
the cipher!'
'Well, he'd be likely to know it if anyone did.'
'But don't you see it's the cipher which Chelius uses - the man in
Switzerland? Oh, I can't explain now, for it's very long, but I
think - I think - I have found out what we have all been wanting.
Chelius ...'
'Whisht!' I said. 'What's that?'
There was a queer sound from the out-of-doors as if a sudden
wind had risen in the still night.
'It's only a car on the main road,' said Mary.
'How did you get in?' I asked.
'By the broken window in the next room. I cycled out here one
morning, and walked round the place and found the broken catch.'
'Perhaps it is left open on purpose. That may be the way M.
Bommaerts visits his country home ... Let's get off, Mary, for this
place has a curse on it. It deserves fire from heaven.'
I slipped the contents of the attache case into my pockets. 'I'm
going to drive you back,' I said. 'I've got a car out there.'
'Then you must take my bicycle and my servant too. He's an old
friend of yours - one Andrew Amos.'
'Now how on earth did Andrew get over here?'
'He's one of us,' said Mary, laughing at my surprise. 'A most
useful member of our party, at present disguised as an _infirmier in
Lady Manorwater's Hospital at Douvecourt. He is learning French, and ...'
'Hush!' I whispered. 'There's someone in the next room.'
I swept her behind a stack of furniture, with my eyes glued on a
crack of light below the door. The handle turned and the shadows
raced before a big electric lamp of the kind they have in stables. I
could not see the bearer, but I guessed it was the old woman.
There was a man behind her. A brisk step sounded on the
parquet, and a figure brushed past her. It wore the horizon-blue of
a French officer, very smart, with those French riding-boots that
show the shape of the leg, and a handsome fur-lined pelisse. I
would have called him a young man, not more than thirty-five. The
face was brown and clean-shaven, the eyes bright and masterful ...
Yet he did not deceive me. I had not boasted idly to Sir Walter
when I said that there was one man alive who could never again be
mistaken by me.
I had my hand on my pistol, as I motioned Mary farther back
into the shadows. For a second I was about to shoot. I had a
perfect mark and could have put a bullet through his brain with
utter certitude. I think if I had been alone I might have fired.
Perhaps not. Anyhow now I could not do it. It seemed like potting
at a sitting rabbit. I was obliged, though he was my worst enemy,
to give him a chance, while all the while my sober senses kept
calling me a fool.
I stepped into the light.
'Hullo, Mr Ivery,' I said. 'This is an odd place to meet again!'
In his amazement he fell back a step, while his hungry eyes took
in my face. There was no mistake about the recognition. I saw
something I had seen once before in him, and that was fear. Out
went the light and he sprang for the door.
I fired in the dark, but the shot must have been too high. In the
same instant I heard him slip on the smooth parquet and the tinkle
of glass as the broken window swung open. Hastily I reflected that
his car must be at the moat end of the terrace, and that therefore to
reach it he must pass outside this very room. Seizing the damaged
escritoire, I used it as a ram, and charged the window nearest me.
The panes and shutters went with a crash, for I had driven the
thing out of its rotten frame. The next second I was on the moonlit snow.
I got a shot at him as he went over the terrace, and again I went
wide. I never was at my best with a pistol. Still I reckoned I had
got him, for the car which was waiting below must come back by
the moat to reach the highroad. But I had forgotten the great
closed park gates. Somehow or other they must have been opened,
for as soon as the car started it headed straight for the grand
avenue. I tried a couple of long-range shots after it, and one must
have damaged either Ivery or his chauffeur, for there came back a
cry of pain.
I turned in deep chagrin to find Mary beside me. She was
bubbling with laughter.
'Were you ever a cinema actor, Dick? The last two minutes have
been a really high-class performance. "Featuring Mary Lamington."
How does the jargon go?'
'I could have got him when he first entered,' I said ruefully.
'I know,' she said in a graver tone. 'Only of course you couldn't
... Besides, Mr Blenkiron doesn't want it - yet.'
She put her hand on my arm. 'Don't worry about it. It wasn't
written it should happen that way. It would have been too easy. We
have a long road to travel yet before we clip the wings of the
Wild Birds.'
'Look,' I cried. 'The fire from heaven!'
Red tongues of flame were shooting up from the out-buildings at
the farther end, the place where I had first seen the woman. Some
agreed plan must have been acted on, and Ivery was destroying all
traces of his infamous yellow powder. Even now the concierge with
her odds and ends of belongings would be slipping out to some
refuge in the village.
In the still dry night the flames rose, for the place must have been
made ready for a rapid burning. As I hurried Mary round the moat I
could see that part of the main building had caught fire. The hamlet
was awakened, and before we reached the corner of the highroad
sleepy British soldiers were hurrying towards the scene, and the
Town Major was mustering the fire brigade. I knew that Ivery had
laid his plans well, and that they hadn't a chance - that long before
dawn the Chateau of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne would be a heap of
ashes and that in a day or two the lawyers of the aged Marquise at
Biarritz would be wrangling with the insurance company.
At the corner stood Amos beside two bicycles, solid as a graven
image. He recognized me with a gap-toothed grin.
'It's a cauld night, General, but the home fires keep burnin'. I
havena seen such a cheery lowe since Dickson's mill at Gawly.'
We packed, bicycles and all, into my car with Amos wedged in
the narrow seat beside Hamilton. Recognizing a fellow countryman,
he gave thanks for the lift in the broadest Doric. 'For,' said he, 'I'm
not what you would call a practised hand wi' a velocipede, and my
feet are dinnled wi' standin' in the snaw.'
As for me, the miles to Douvecourt passed as in a blissful
moment of time. I wrapped Mary in a fur rug, and after that we did
not speak a word. I had come suddenly into a great possession and
was dazed with the joy of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mr Blenkiron Discourses on Love and War
Three days later I got my orders to report at Paris for special
service. They came none too soon, for I chafed at each hour's
delay. Every thought in my head was directed to the game which
we were playing against Ivery. He was the big enemy, compared to
whom the ordinary Boche in the trenches was innocent and friendly.
I had almost lost interest in my division, for I knew that for me the
real battle-front was not in Picardy, and that my job was not so
easy as holding a length of line. Also I longed to be at the same
work as Mary.
I remember waking up in billets the morning after the night at
the Chateau with the feeling that I had become extraordinarily rich.
I felt very humble, too, and very kindly towards all the world -
even to the Boche, though I can't say I had ever hated him very
wildly. You find hate more among journalists and politicians at
home than among fighting men. I wanted to be quiet and alone to
think, and since that was impossible I went about my work in a
happy abstraction. I tried not to look ahead, but only to live in the
present, remembering that a war was on, and that there was desperate
and dangerous business before me, and that my hopes hung on a
slender thread. Yet for all that I had sometimes to let my fancies go
free, and revel in delicious dreams.
But there was one thought that always brought me back to hard
ground, and that was Ivery. I do not think I hated anybody in the
world but him. It was his relation to Mary that stung me. He had
the insolence with all his toad-like past to make love to that clean
and radiant girl. I felt that he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and
the thought pleased me, for it helped me to put some honest
detestation into my job. Also I was going to win. Twice I had
failed, but the third time I should succeed. It had been like ranging
shots for a gun - first short, second over, and I vowed that the
third should be dead on the mark.
I was summoned to G.H.Q., where I had half an hour's talk with
the greatest British commander. I can see yet his patient, kindly
face and that steady eye which no vicissitude of fortune could
perturb. He took the biggest view, for he was statesman as well as
soldier, and knew that the whole world was one battle-field and
every man and woman among the combatant nations was in the
battle-line. So contradictory is human nature, that talk made me wish
for a moment to stay where I was. I wanted to go on serving under
that man. I realized suddenly how much I loved my work, and
when I got back to my quarters that night and saw my men
swinging in from a route march I could have howled like a dog at
leaving them. Though I say it who shouldn't, there wasn't a better
division in the Army.
One morning a few days later I picked up Mary in Amiens. I
always liked the place, for after the dirt of the Somme it was a
comfort to go there for a bath and a square meal, and it had the
noblest church that the hand of man ever built for God. It was a
clear morning when we started from the boulevard beside the
railway station; and the air smelt of washed streets and fresh coffee,
and women were going marketing and the little trams ran clanking
by, just as in any other city far from the sound of guns. There was
very little khaki or horizon-blue about, and I remember thinking
how completely Amiens had got out of the war-zone. Two months
later it was a different story.
To the end I shall count that day as one of the happiest in my
life. Spring was in the air, though the trees and fields had still their
winter colouring. A thousand good fresh scents came out of the
earth, and the larks were busy over the new furrows. I remember
that we ran up a little glen, where a stream spread into pools
among sallows, and the roadside trees were heavy with mistletoe.
On the tableland beyond the Somme valley the sun shone like
April. At Beauvais we lunched badly in an inn - badly as to food,
but there was an excellent Burgundy at two francs a bottle. Then
we slipped down through little flat-chested townships to the Seine,
and in the late afternoon passed through St Germains forest. The
wide green spaces among the trees set my fancy dwelling on that
divine English countryside where Mary and I would one day make
our home. She had been in high spirits all the journey, but when I
spoke of the Cotswolds her face grew grave.
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