Mr. Standfast

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'Don't let us speak of it, Dick,' she said. 'It's too happy a thing
and I feel as if it would wither if we touched it. I don't let myself
think of peace and home, for it makes me too homesick ... I think
we shall get there some day, you and I ... but it's a long road
to the Delectable Mountains, and Faithful, you know, has to die
first ... There is a price to be paid.'

The words sobered me.

'Who is our Faithful?' I asked.

'I don't know. But he was the best of the Pilgrims.'

Then, as if a veil had lifted, her mood changed, and when we
came through the suburbs of Paris and swung down the Champs
Elysees she was in a holiday humour. The lights were twinkling in
the blue January dusk, and the warm breath of the city came to
greet us. I knew little of the place, for I had visited it once only on
a four days' Paris leave, but it had seemed to me then the most
habitable of cities, and now, coming from the battle-field with
Mary by my side, it was like the happy ending of a dream.

I left her at her cousin's house near the Rue St Honore, and
deposited myself, according to instructions, at the Hotel Louis
Quinze. There I wallowed in a hot bath, and got into the civilian
clothes which had been sent on from London. They made me feel
that I had taken leave of my division for good and all this time.
Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine; and a
more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I have never seen,
for he hadn't a notion of tidiness. I could hear him grunting at his
toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and I noticed that the table was laid
for three. I went downstairs to get a paper, and on the way ran into
Launcelot Wake.

He was no longer a private in a Labour Battalion. Evening
clothes showed beneath his overcoat.
'Hullo, Wake, are you in this push too?'

'I suppose so,' he said, and his manner was not cordial. 'Anyhow
I was ordered down here. My business is to do as I am told.'

'Coming to dine?' I asked.

'No. I'm dining with some friends at the Crillon.'

Then he looked me in the face, and his eyes were hot as I first
remembered them. 'I hear I've to congratulate you, Hannay,' and
he held out a limp hand.

I never felt more antagonism in a human being.

'You don't like it?' I said, for I guessed what he meant.

'How on earth can I like it?' he cried angrily. 'Good Lord, man,
you'll murder her soul. You an ordinary, stupid, successful fellow
and she - she's the most precious thing God ever made. You can
never understand a fraction of her preciousness, but you'll clip her
wings all right. She can never fly now ...'

He poured out this hysterical stuff to me at the foot of the
staircase within hearing of an elderly French widow with a poodle.
I had no impulse to be angry, for I was far too happy.

'Don't, Wake,' I said. 'We're all too close together to quarrel.
I'm not fit to black Mary's shoes. You can't put me too low or her
too high. But I've at least the sense to know it. You couldn't want
me to be humbler than I felt.'

He shrugged his shoulders, as he went out to the street. 'Your
infernal magnanimity would break any man's temper.'

I went upstairs to find Blenkiron, washed and shaven, admiring a
pair of bright patent-leather shoes.

'Why, Dick, I've been wearying bad to see you. I was nervous you
would be blown to glory, for I've been reading awful things
about your battles in the noospapers. The war correspondents worry
me so I can't take breakfast.'

He mixed cocktails and clinked his glass on mine. 'Here's to the
young lady. I was trying to write her a pretty little sonnet, but the
darned rhymes wouldn't fit. I've gotten a heap of things to say to
you when we've finished dinner.'

Mary came in, her cheeks bright from the weather, and Blenkiron
promptly fell abashed. But she had a way to meet his shyness, for,
when he began an embarrassed speech of good wishes, she put her
arms round his neck and kissed him. Oddly enough, that set him
completely at his ease.

It was pleasant to eat off linen and china again, pleasant to see
old Blenkiron's benignant face and the way he tucked into his food,
but it was delicious for me to sit at a meal with Mary across the
table. It made me feel that she was really mine, and not a pixie that
would vanish at a word. To Blenkiron she bore herself like an
affectionate but mischievous daughter, while the desperately refined
manners that afflicted him whenever women were concerned
mellowed into something like his everyday self. They did most of
the talking, and I remember he fetched from some mysterious
hiding-place a great box of chocolates, which you could no longer
buy in Paris, and the two ate them like spoiled children. I didn't
want to talk, for it was pure happiness for me to look on. I loved
to watch her, when the servants had gone, with her elbows on the
table like a schoolboy, her crisp gold hair a little rumpled, cracking
walnuts with gusto, like some child who has been allowed down
from the nursery for dessert and means to make the most of it.

With his first cigar Blenkiron got to business.

'You want to know about the staff-work we've been busy on at
home. Well, it's finished now, thanks to you, Dick. We weren't
getting on very fast till you took to peroosing the press on your
sick-bed and dropped us that hint about the "Deep-breathing" ads.'

'Then there was something in it?' I asked.

'There was black hell in it. There wasn't any Gussiter, but there
was a mighty fine little syndicate of crooks with old man Gresson
at the back of them. First thing, I started out to get the cipher. It
took some looking for, but there's no cipher on earth can't be got
hold of somehow if you know it's there, and in this case we were
helped a lot by the return messages in the German papers. It
was bad stuff when we read it, and explained the darned leakages in
important noos we've been up against. At first I figured to keep the
thing going and turn Gussiter into a corporation with John S.
Blenkiron as president. But it wouldn't do, for at the first hint Of
tampering with their communications the whole bunch got skeery
and sent out SOS signals. So we tenderly plucked the flowers.'

'Gresson, too?' I asked.

He nodded. 'I guess your seafaring companion's now under the
sod. We had collected enough evidence to hang him ten times over
... But that was the least of it. For your little old cipher, Dick,
gave us a line on Ivery.'

I asked how, and Blenkiron told me the story. He had about a
dozen cross-bearings proving that the organization of the 'Deep-
breathing' game had its headquarters in Switzerland. He suspected
Ivery from the first, but the man had vanished out of his ken, so he
started working from the other end, and instead of trying to deduce
the Swiss business from Ivery he tried to deduce Ivery from the
Swiss business. He went to Berne and made a conspicuous public
fool of himself for several weeks. He called himself an agent of the
American propaganda there, and took some advertising space in
the press and put in spread-eagle announcements of his mission,
with the result that the Swiss Government threatened to turn him
out of the country if he tampered that amount with their neutrality.
He also wrote a lot of rot in the Geneva newspapers, which he paid
to have printed, explaining how he was a pacifist, and was going to
convert Germany to peace by 'inspirational advertisement of pure-
minded war aims'. All this was in keeping with his English
reputation, and he wanted to make himself a bait for Ivery.

But Ivery did not rise to the fly, and though he had a dozen
agents working for him on the quiet he could never hear of the
name Chelius. That was, he reckoned, a very private and particular
name among the Wild Birds. However, he got to know a good deal
about the Swiss end of the 'Deep-breathing' business. That took
some doing and cost a lot of money. His best people were a girl
who posed as a mannequin in a milliner's shop in Lyons and a
concierge in a big hotel at St Moritz. His most important discovery
was that there was a second cipher in the return messages sent from
Switzerland, different from the one that the Gussiter lot used in
England. He got this cipher, but though he could read it he couldn't
make anything out of it. He concluded that it was a very secret
means of communication between the inner circle of the Wild
Birds, and that Ivery must be at the back of it ... But he was still a
long way from finding out anything that mattered.

Then the whole situation changed, for Mary got in touch with
Ivery. I must say she behaved like a shameless minx, for she kept
on writing to him to an address he had once given her in Paris, and
suddenly she got an answer. She was in Paris herself, helping to run
one of the railway canteens, and staying with her French cousins,
the de Mezieres. One day he came to see her. That showed the
boldness of the man, and his cleverness, for the whole secret police
of France were after him and they never got within sight or sound.
Yet here he was coming openly in the afternoon to have tea with an
English girl. It showed another thing, which made me blaspheme.
A man so resolute and single-hearted in his job must have been
pretty badly in love to take a risk like that.

He came, and he called himself the Capitaine Bommaerts, with a
transport job on the staff of the French G.Q.G. He was on the staff
right enough too. Mary said that when she heard that name she
nearly fell down. He was quite frank with her, and she with him.
They are both peacemakers, ready to break the laws of any land for
the sake of a great ideal. Goodness knows what stuff they talked
together. Mary said she would blush to think of it till her dying
day, and I gathered that on her side it was a mixture of Launcelot
Wake at his most pedantic and schoolgirl silliness.

He came again, and they met often, unbeknown to the decorous
Madame de Mezieres. They walked together in the Bois de
Boulogne, and once, with a beating heart, she motored with him to
Auteuil for luncheon. He spoke of his house in Picardy, and there
were moments, I gathered, when he became the declared lover, to
be rebuffed with a hoydenish shyness. Presently the pace became
too hot, and after some anguished arguments with Bullivant on the
long-distance telephone she went off to Douvecourt to Lady Manorwater's
hospital. She went there to escape from him, but mainly, I
think, to have a look - trembling in every limb, mind you - at the
Chateau of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne.

I had only to think of Mary to know just what Joan of Arc was.
No man ever born could have done that kind of thing. It wasn't
recklessness. It was sheer calculating courage.

Then Blenkiron took up the tale. The newspaper we found that
Christmas Eve in the Chateau was of tremendous importance, for
Bommaerts had pricked out in the advertisement the very special
second cipher of the Wild Birds. That proved that Ivery was at the
back of the Swiss business. But Blenkiron made doubly sure.

'I considered the time had come,' he said, 'to pay high for
valuable noos, so I sold the enemy a very pretty de-vice. If you ever
gave your mind to ciphers and illicit correspondence, Dick, you
would know that the one kind of document you can't write on in
invisible ink is a coated paper, the kind they use in the weeklies
to print photographs of leading actresses and the stately homes of
England. Anything wet that touches it corrugates the surface a
little, and you can tell with a microscope if someone's been playing
at it. Well, we had the good fortune to discover just how to get
over that little difficulty - how to write on glazed paper with a
quill so as the cutest analyst couldn't spot it, and likewise how to
detect the writing. I decided to sacrifice that invention, casting my
bread upon the waters and looking for a good-sized bakery in
return ... I had it sold to the enemy. The job wanted delicate
handling, but the tenth man from me - he was an Austrian Jew -
did the deal and scooped fifty thousand dollars out of it. Then I
lay low to watch how my friend would use the de-vice, and I didn't
wait long.'

He took from his pocket a folded sheet of _L'Illustration. Over a
photogravure plate ran some words in a large sprawling hand, as if
written with a brush.

'That page when I got it yesterday,' he said, 'was an unassuming
picture of General Petain presenting military medals. There wasn't
a scratch or a ripple on its surface. But I got busy with it, and see
there!'
He pointed out two names. The writing was a set of key-words
we did not know, but two names stood out which I knew too well.
They were 'Bommaerts' and 'Chelius'.

'My God!' I cried, 'that's uncanny. It only shows that if you
chew long enough - - .'

'Dick,' said Mary, 'you mustn't say that again. At the best it's an
ugly metaphor, and you're making it a platitude.'

'Who is Ivery anyhow?' I asked. 'Do you know more about him
than we knew in the summer? Mary, what did Bommaerts pretend to be?'

'An Englishman.' Mary spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone, as
if it were a perfectly usual thing to be made love to by a spy, and
that rather soothed my annoyance. 'When he asked me to marry
him he proposed to take me to a country-house in Devonshire. I
rather think, too, he had a place in Scotland. But of course
he's a German.'

'Ye-es,' said Blenkiron slowly, 'I've got on to his record, and it
isn't a pretty story. It's taken some working out, but I've got all the
links tested now ... He's a Boche and a large-sized nobleman in his
own state. Did you ever hear of the Graf von Schwabing?'

I shook my head.

'I think I have heard Uncle Charlie speak of him,' said Mary,
wrinkling her brows. 'He used to hunt with the Pytchley.'

'That's the man. But he hasn't troubled the Pytchley for the last
eight years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness
in the German court - officer in the Guards, ancient family,
rich, darned clever - all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy
to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the
Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the
Germans, who in my experience don't excel in the lighter vein.
Anyway, he was William's white-headed boy, and there wasn't a
mother with a daughter who wasn't out gunning for Otto von
Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and Noo York -
and in Paris, too. Ask Sir Walter about him, Dick. He says he had
twice the brains of Kuhlmann, and better manners than the Austrian
fellow he used to yarn about ... Well, one day there came an
almighty court scandal, and the bottom dropped out of the Graf's
World. It was a pretty beastly story, and I don't gather that SchwabIng
was as deep in it as some others. But the trouble was that those
others had to be shielded at all costs, and Schwabing was made the
scapegoat. His name came out in the papers and he had to go .'

'What was the case called?' I asked.

Blenkiron mentioned a name, and I knew why the word SchwabIng
was familiar. I had read the story long ago in Rhodesia.

'It was some smash,' Blenkiron went on. 'He was drummed out
of the Guards, out of the clubs, out of the country ... Now, how
would you have felt, Dick, if you had been the Graf? Your life and
work and happiness crossed out, and all to save a mangy princeling.
"Bitter as hell," you say. Hungering for a chance to put it across
the lot that had outed you? You wouldn't rest till you had William
sobbing on his knees asking your pardon, and you not thinking of
granting it? That's the way you'd feel, but that wasn't the Graf's
way, and what's more it isn't the German way. He went into exile
hating humanity, and with a heart all poison and snakes, but itching
to get back. And I'll tell you why. It's because his kind of German
hasn't got any other home on this earth. Oh, yes, I know there's
stacks of good old Teutons come and squat in our little country
and turn into fine Americans. You can do a lot with them if you
catch them young and teach them the Declaration of Independence
and make them study our Sunday papers. But you can't deny
there's something comic in the rough about all Germans, before
you've civilized them. They're a pecooliar people, a darned pecooliar
people, else they wouldn't staff all the menial and indecent occupations
on the globe. But that pecooliarity, which is only skin-deep in
the working Boche, is in the bone of the grandee. Your German
aristocracy can't consort on terms of equality with any other Upper
Ten Thousand. They swagger and bluff about the world, but they
know very well that the world's sniggering at them. They're like a
boss from Salt Creek Gully who's made his pile and bought a dress
suit and dropped into a Newport evening party. They don't know
where to put their hands or how to keep their feet still ... Your
copper-bottomed English nobleman has got to keep jogging himself
to treat them as equals instead of sending them down to the servants'
hall. Their fine fixings are just the high light that reveals the
everlasting jay. They can't be gentlemen, because they aren't sure
of themselves. The world laughs at them, and they know it and it
riles them like hell ... That's why when a Graf is booted out of the
Fatherland, he's got to creep back somehow or be a wandering Jew
for the rest of time.'

Blenkiron lit another cigar and fixed me with his steady,
ruminating eye.

'For eight years the man has slaved, body and soul, for the men
who degraded him. He's earned his restoration and I daresay he's
got it in his pocket. If merit was rewarded he should be covered
with Iron Crosses and Red Eagles ... He had a pretty good hand
to start out with. He knew other countries and he was a dandy at
languages. More, he had an uncommon gift for living a part. That
is real genius, Dick, however much it gets up against us. Best of all
he had a first-class outfit of brains. I can't say I ever struck a better,
and I've come across some bright citizens in my time ... And now
he's going to win out, unless we get mighty busy.'

There was a knock at the door and the solid figure of Andrew
Amos revealed itself.

'It's time ye was home, Miss Mary. It chappit half-eleven as I
came up the stairs. It's comin' on to rain, so I've brought an umbrelly.'

'One word,' I said. 'How old is the man?'

'Just gone thirty-six,' Blenkiron replied.

I turned to Mary, who nodded. 'Younger than you, Dick,' she
said wickedly as she got into her big Jaeger coat.

'I'm going to see you home,' I said.
'Not allowed. You've had quite enough of my society for one
day. Andrew's on escort duty tonight.'

Blenkiron looked after her as the door closed.

'I reckon you've got the best girl in the world.'
'Ivery thinks the same,' I said grimly, for my detestation of the
man who had made love to Mary fairly choked me.

'You can see why. Here's this degenerate coming out of his
rotten class, all pampered and petted and satiated with the easy
pleasures of life. He has seen nothing of women except the bad
kind and the overfed specimens of his own country. I hate being
impolite about females, but I've always considered the German
variety uncommon like cows. He has had desperate years of intrigue
and danger, and consorting with every kind of scallawag.
Remember, he's a big man and a poet, with a brain and an imagination
that takes every grade without changing gears. Suddenly he meets
something that is as fresh and lovely as a spring flower, and has
wits too, and the steeliest courage, and yet is all youth and gaiety.
It's a new experience for him, a kind of revelation, and he's big enough
to value her as she should be valued ... No, Dick, I can understand
you getting cross, but I reckon it an item to the man's credit.'

'It's his blind spot all the same,' I said.

'His blind spot,' Blenkiron repeated solemnly, 'and, please God,
we're going to remember that.'

Next morning in miserable sloppy weather Blenkiron carted me
about Paris. We climbed five sets of stairs to a flat away up in
Montmartre, where I was talked to by a fat man with spectacles and
a slow voice and told various things that deeply concerned me.
Then I went to a room in the Boulevard St Germain, with a little
cabinet opening off it, where I was shown papers and maps and
some figures on a sheet of paper that made me open my eyes. We
lunched in a modest cafe tucked away behind the Palais Royal, and
our companions were two Alsatians who spoke German better than
a Boche and had no names - only numbers. In the afternoon I went
to a low building beside the Invalides and saw many generals,
including more than one whose features were familiar in two
hemispheres. I told them everything about myself, and I was examined
like a convict, and all particulars about my appearance and manner
of speech written down in a book. That was to prepare the way for
me, in case of need, among the vast army of those who work
underground and know their chief but do not know each other.

The rain cleared before night, and Blenkiron and I walked back
to the hotel through that lemon-coloured dusk that you get in a
French winter. We passed a company of American soldiers, and
Blenkiron had to stop and stare. I could see that he was stiff with
pride, though he wouldn't show it.

'What d'you think of that bunch?' he asked.

'First-rate stuff,' I said.

'The men are all right,' he drawled critically. 'But some of the
officer-boys are a bit puffy. They want fining down.'
'They'll get it soon enough, honest fellows. You don't keep your
weight long in this war.'

'Say, Dick,' he said shyly, 'what do you truly think of our
Americans? You've seen a lot of them, and I'd value your views.'
His tone was that of a bashful author asking for an opinion on his
first book.

'I'll tell you what I think. You're constructing a great middle-
class army, and that's the most formidable fighting machine on
earth. This kind of war doesn't want the Berserker so much as the
quiet fellow with a trained mind and a lot to fight for. The American
ranks are filled with all sorts, from cow-punchers to college boys,
but mostly with decent lads that have good prospects in life
before them and are fighting because they feel they're bound to,
not because they like it. It was the same stock that pulled through
your Civil War. We have a middle-class division, too - Scottish
Territorials, mostly clerks and shopmen and engineers and farmers'
sons. When I first struck them my only crab was that the officers
weren't much better than the men. It's still true, but the men are
super-excellent, and consequently so are the officers. That division
gets top marks in the Boche calendar for sheer fighting devilment
... And, please God, that's what your American army's going to
be. You can wash out the old idea of a regiment of scallawags
commanded by dukes. That was right enough, maybe, in the days
when you hurrooshed into battle waving a banner, but it don't do
with high explosives and a couple of million men on each side and
a battle front of five hundred miles. The hero of this war is the
plain man out of the middle class, who wants to get back to his
home and is going to use all the brains and grit he possesses to
finish the job soon.'

'That sounds about right,' said Blenkiron reflectively. 'It pleases
me some, for you've maybe guessed that I respect the British Army
quite a little. Which part of it do you put top?'
'All of it's good. The French are keen judges and they give front
place to the Scots and the Australians. For myself I think the
backbone of the Army is the old-fashioned English county regiments
that hardly ever get into the papers Though I don't
know, if I had to pick, but I'd take the South Africans. There's
only a brigade of them, but they're hell's delight in a battle. But
then you'll say I'm prejudiced.'

'Well,' drawled Blenkiron, you're a mighty Empire anyhow.
I've sojourned up and down it and I can't guess how the old-time
highbrows in your little island came to put it together. But I'll let
you into a secret, Dick. I read this morning in a noospaper that
there was a natural affinity between Americans and the men of the
British Dominions. Take it from me, there isn't - at least not with
this American. I don't understand them one little bit. When I see
your lean, tall Australians with the sun at the back of their eyes, I'm
looking at men from another planet. Outside you and Peter, I never
got to fathom a South African. The Canadians live over the fence
from us, but you mix up a Canuck with a Yank in your remarks
and you'll get a bat in the eye ... But most of us Americans have
gotten a grip on your Old Country. You'll find us mighty respectful
to other parts of your Empire, but we say anything we damn well
please about England. You see, we know her that well and like her
that well, we can be free with her.

'It's like,' he concluded as we reached the hotel, 'it's like a lot of
boys that are getting on in the world and are a bit jealous and
stand-offish with each other. But they're all at home with the old
man who used to warm them up with a hickory cane, even though
sometimes in their haste they call him a stand-patter.'

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