Mr. Standfast

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They hadn't much use for books, except some Russian ones, and
I acquired merit in their eyes for having read Leprous Souls. If you
talked to them about that divine countryside, you found they didn't
give a rap for it and had never been a mile beyond the village.
But they admired greatly the sombre effect of a train going into
Marylebone station on a rainy day.

But it was the men who interested me most. Aronson, the
novelist, proved on acquaintance the worst kind of blighter. He
considered himself a genius whom it was the duty of the country to
support, and he sponged on his wretched relatives and anyone who
would lend him money. He was always babbling about his sins, and
pretty squalid they were. I should like to have flung him among a
few good old-fashioned full-blooded sinners of my acquaintance;
they would have scared him considerably. He told me that he
sought 'reality' and 'life' and 'truth', but it was hard to see how he
could know much about them, for he spent half the day in bed
smoking cheap cigarettes, and the rest sunning himself in the
admiration of half-witted girls. The creature was tuberculous in mind
and body, and the only novel of his I read, pretty well turned my
stomach. Mr Aronson's strong point was jokes about the war. If he
heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was even doing
war work his merriment knew no bounds. My fingers used to itch
to box the little wretch's ears.

Letchford was a different pair of shoes. He was some kind of a
man, to begin with, and had an excellent brain and the worst
manners conceivable. He contradicted everything you said, and
looked out for an argument as other people look for their dinner.
He was a double-engined, high-speed pacificist, because he was the
kind of cantankerous fellow who must always be in a minority. if
Britain had stood out of the war he would have been a raving
militarist, but since she was in it he had got to find reasons why she
was wrong. And jolly good reasons they were, too. I couldn't have
met his arguments if I had wanted to, so I sat docilely at his feet.
The world was all crooked for Letchford, and God had created him
with two left hands. But the fellow had merits. He had a couple of
jolly children whom he adored, and he would walk miles with me
on a Sunday, and spout poetry about the beauty and greatness of
England. He was forty-five; if he had been thirty and in my battalion
I could have made a soldier out of him.

There were dozens more whose names I have forgotten, but they
had one common characteristic. They were puffed up with spiritual
pride, and I used to amuse myself with finding their originals in the
_Pilgrim's _Progress. When I tried to judge them by the standard of
old Peter, they fell woefully short. They shut out the war from
their lives, some out of funk, some out of pure levity of mind, and
some because they were really convinced that the thing was all
wrong. I think I grew rather popular in my role of the seeker after
truth, the honest colonial who was against the war by instinct and
was looking for instruction in the matter. They regarded me as a
convert from an alien world of action which they secretly dreaded,
though they affected to despise it. Anyhow they talked to me very
freely, and before long I had all the pacifist arguments by heart. I
made out that there were three schools. One objected to war
altogether, and this had few adherents except Aronson and Weekes,
C.O., now languishing in Dartmoor. The second thought that the
Allies' cause was tainted, and that Britain had contributed as much
as Germany to the catastrophe. This included all the adherents of
the L.D.A. - or League of Democrats against Aggression - a very
proud body. The third and much the largest, which embraced
everybody else, held that we had fought long enough and that the
business could now be settled by negotiation, since Germany had
learned her lesson. I was myself a modest member of the last
school, but I was gradually working my way up to the second, and
I hoped with luck to qualify for the first. My acquaintances
approved my progress. Letchford said I had a core of fanaticism in
my slow nature, and that I would end by waving the red flag.

Spiritual pride and vanity, as I have said, were at the bottom of
most of them, and, try as I might, I could find nothing very dangerous
in it all. This vexed me, for I began to wonder if the mission
which I had embarked on so solemnly were not going to be a
fiasco. Sometimes they worried me beyond endurance. When the
news of Messines came nobody took the slightest interest, while I
was aching to tooth every detail of the great fight. And when they
talked on military affairs, as Letchford and others did sometimes, it
was difficult to keep from sending them all to the devil, for their
amateur cocksureness would have riled job. One had got to batten
down the recollection of our fellows out there who were sweating
blood to keep these fools snug. Yet I found it impossible to be
angry with them for long, they were so babyishly innocent. Indeed,
I couldn't help liking them, and finding a sort of quality in them. I
had spent three years among soldiers, and the British regular, great
follow that he is, has his faults. His discipline makes him in a funk
of red-tape and any kind of superior authority. Now these people
were quite honest and in a perverted way courageous. Letchford
was, at any rate. I could no more have done what he did and got
hunted off platforms by the crowd and hooted at by women in the
streets than I could have written his leading articles.

All the same I was rather low about my job. Barring the episode
of the ransacking of my effects the first night, I had not a suspicion
of a clue or a hint of any mystery. The place and the people were as
open and bright as a Y.M.C.A. hut. But one day I got a solid wad
of comfort. In a corner of Letchford's paper, the _Critic, I found a
letter which was one of the steepest pieces of invective I had ever
met with. The writer gave tongue like a beagle pup about the
prostitution, as he called it, of American republicanism to the vices
of European aristocracies. He declared that Senator La Follette was
a much-misunderstood patriot, seeing that he alone spoke for the
toiling millions who had no other friend. He was mad with President
Wilson, and he prophesied a great awakening when Uncle
Sam got up against John Bull in Europe and found out the kind of
standpatter he was. The letter was signed 'John S. Blenkiron' and
dated 'London, 3 July-'

The thought that Blenkiron was in England put a new
complexion on my business. I reckoned I would see him soon, for he
wasn't the man to stand still in his tracks. He had taken up the role
he had played before he left in December 1915, and very right too,
for not more than half a dozen people knew of the Erzerum affair,
and to the British public he was only the man who had been fired
out of the Savoy for talking treason. I had felt a bit lonely before,
but now somewhere within the four corners of the island the best
companion God ever made was writing nonsense with his tongue
in his old cheek.

There was an institution in Biggleswick which deserves mention.
On the south of the common, near the station, stood a red-brick
building called the Moot Hall, which was a kind of church for the
very undevout population. Undevout in the ordinary sense, I mean,
for I had already counted twenty-seven varieties of religious
conviction, including three Buddhists, a Celestial Hierarch, five Latter-
day Saints, and about ten varieties of Mystic whose names I could never
remember. The hall had been the gift of the publisher I have
spoken of, and twice a week it was used for lectures and debates.
The place was managed by a committee and was surprisingly popular,
for it gave all the bubbling intellects a chance of airing their
views. When you asked where somebody was and were told he was
'at Moot,' the answer was spoken in the respectful tone in which
you would mention a sacrament.

I went there regularly and got my mind broadened to cracking
point. We had all the stars of the New Movements. We had Doctor
Chirk, who lectured on 'God', which, as far as I could make out,
was a new name he had invented for himself. There was a woman,
a terrible woman, who had come back from Russia with what she
called a 'message of healing'. And to my joy, one night there was a
great buck nigger who had a lot to say about 'Africa for the
Africans'. I had a few words with him in Sesutu afterwards, and
rather spoiled his visit. Some of the people were extraordinarily
good, especially one jolly old fellow who talked about English folk
songs and dances, and wanted us to set up a Maypole. In the
debates which generally followed I began to join, very coyly at
first, but presently with some confidence. If my time at Biggleswick
did nothing else it taught me to argue on my feet.

The first big effort I made was on a full-dress occasion, when
Launcelot Wake came down to speak. Mr Ivery was in the chair -
the first I had seen of him - a plump middle-aged man, with a
colourless face and nondescript features. I was not interested in him
till he began to talk, and then I sat bolt upright and took notice.
For he was the genuine silver-tongue, the sentences flowing from
his mouth as smooth as butter and as neatly dovetailed as a parquet
floor. He had a sort of man-of-the-world manner, treating his
opponents with condescending geniality, deprecating all passion
and exaggeration and making you feel that his urbane statement
must be right, for if he had wanted he could have put the case so
much higher. I watched him, fascinated, studying his face carefully;
and the thing that struck me was that there was nothing in it -
nothing, that is to say, to lay hold on. It was simply nondescript,
so almightily commonplace that that very fact made it rather
remarkable.

Wake was speaking of the revelations of the Sukhomhnov trial
in Russia, which showed that Germany had not been responsible
for the war. He was jolly good at the job, and put as clear an
argument as a first-class lawyer. I had been sweating away at the
subject and had all the ordinary case at my fingers' ends, so when I
got a chance of speaking I gave them a long harangue, with some
good quotations I had cribbed out of the _Vossische _Zeitung, which
Letchford lent me. I felt it was up to me to be extra violent, for I
wanted to establish my character with Wake, seeing that he was a
friend of Mary and Mary would know that I was playing the game.
I got tremendously applauded, far more than the chief speaker, and
after the meeting Wake came up to me with his hot eyes, and
wrung my hand. 'You're coming on well, Brand,' he said, and then
he introduced me to Mr Ivery. 'Here's a second and a better
Smuts,' he said.

Ivery made me walk a bit of the road home with him. 'I am
struck by your grip on these difficult problems, Mr Brand,' he told
me. 'There is much I can tell you, and you may be of great value to
our cause.' He asked me a lot of questions about my past, which I
answered with easy mendacity. Before we parted he made me
promise to come one night to supper.

Next day I got a glimpse of Mary, and to my vexation she cut
me dead. She was walking with a flock of bare-headed girls, all
chattering hard, and though she saw me quite plainly she turned
away her eyes. I had been waiting for my cue, so I did not lift my
hat, but passed on as if we were strangers. I reckoned it was part of
the game, but that trifling thing annoyed me, and I spent a
morose evening.

The following day I saw her again, this time talking sedately
with Mr Ivery, and dressed in a very pretty summer gown, and
a broad-brimmed straw hat with flowers in it. This time she stopped
with a bright smile and held out her hand. 'Mr Brand, isn't it?'
she asked with a pretty hesitation. And then, turning to her
companion - 'This is Mr Brand. He stayed with us last month
in Gloucestershire.'

Mr Ivery announced that he and I were already acquainted. Seen
in broad daylight he was a very personable fellow, somewhere
between forty-five and fifty, with a middle-aged figure and a
curiously young face. I noticed that there were hardly any lines on it,
and it was rather that of a very wise child than that of a man. He
had a pleasant smile which made his jaw and cheeks expand like
indiarubber. 'You are coming to sup with me, Mr Brand,' he cried
after me. 'On Tuesday after Moot. I have already written.' He
whisked Mary away from me, and I had to content myself with
contemplating her figure till it disappeared round a bend of the road.

Next day in London I found a letter from Peter. He had been
very solemn of late, and very reminiscent of old days now that he
concluded his active life was over. But this time he was in a
different mood. '_I _think,' he wrote, '__that you and I will meet again soon,
my old friend. Do you remember when we went after the big black-maned
lion in the Rooirand and couldn't get on his track, and then one morning
we woke up and said we would get him today? - and we did, but he
very near got you first. I've had a feel these last days that we're
both going down into the Valley to meet with Apolyon, and that the
devil will give us a bad time, but anyhow we'll be _together.'

I had the same kind of feel myself, though I didn't see how
Peter and I were going to meet, unless I went out to the Front
again and got put in the bag and sent to the same Boche prison.
But I had an instinct that my time in Biggleswick was drawing to a
close, and that presently I would be in rougher quarters. I felt quite
affectionate towards the place, and took all my favourite walks, and
drank my own health in the brew of the village inns, with a
consciousness of saying goodbye. Also I made haste to finish my
English classics, for I concluded I wouldn't have much time in the
future for miscellaneous reading.

The Tuesday came, and in the evening I set out rather late for
the Moot Hall, for I had been getting into decent clothes after a
long, hot stride. When I reached the place it was pretty well packed,
and I could only find a seat on the back benches. There on the
platform was Ivery, and beside him sat a figure that thrilled every
inch of me with affection and a wild anticipation. 'I have now the
privilege,' said the chairman, 'of introducing to you the speaker
whom we so warmly welcome, our fearless and indefatigable American
friend, Mr Blenkiron.'

It was the old Blenkiron, but almightily changed. His stoutness
had gone, and he was as lean as Abraham Lincoln. Instead of a
puffy face, his cheek-bones and jaw stood out hard and sharp, and
in place of his former pasty colour his complexion had the clear
glow of health. I saw now that he was a splendid figure of a man,
and when he got to his feet every movement had the suppleness of
an athlete in training. In that moment I realized that my serious
business had now begun. My senses suddenly seemed quicker, my
nerves tenser, my brain more active. The big game had started, and
he and I were playing it together.

I watched him with strained attention. It was a funny speech,
stuffed with extravagance and vehemence, not very well argued and
terribly discursive. His main point was that Germany was now in a
fine democratic mood and might well be admitted into a brotherly
partnership - that indeed she had never been in any other mood,
but had been forced into violence by the plots of her enemies.
Much of it, I should have thought, was in stark defiance of the
Defence of the Realm Acts, but if any wise Scotland Yard officer
had listened to it he would probably have considered it harmless
because of its contradictions. It was full of a fierce earnestness, and
it was full of humour - long-drawn American metaphors at which
that most critical audience roared with laughter. But it was not the
kind of thing that they were accustomed to, and I could fancy what
Wake would have said of it. The conviction grew upon me that
Blenkiron was deliberately trying to prove himself an honest idiot.
If so, it was a huge success. He produced on one the impression of
the type of sentimental revolutionary who ruthlessly knifes his
opponent and then weeps and prays over his tomb.

just at the end he seemed to pull himself together and to try a
little argument. He made a great point of the Austrian socialists
going to Stockholm, going freely and with their Government's
assent, from a country which its critics called an autocracy, while
the democratic western peoples held back. 'I admit I haven't any
real water-tight proof,' he said, 'but I will bet my bottom dollar
that the influence which moved the Austrian Government to allow
this embassy of freedom was the influence of Germany herself. And
that is the land from which the Allied Pharisees draw in their skirts
lest their garments be defiled!'

He sat down amid a good deal of applause, for his audience had
not been bored, though I could see that some of them thought his
praise of Germany a bit steep. It was all right in Biggleswick to
prove Britain in the wrong, but it was a slightly different thing to
extol the enemy. I was puzzled about his last point, for it was not
of a piece with the rest of his discourse, and I was trying to guess at
his purpose. The chairman referred to it in his concluding remarks.
'I am in a position,' he said, 'to bear out all that the lecturer has
said. I can go further. I can assure him on the best authority that
his surmise is correct, and that Vienna's decision to send delegates
to Stockholm was largely dictated by representations from Berlin. I
am given to understand that the fact has in the last few days been
admitted in the Austrian Press.'

A vote of thanks was carried, and then I found myself shaking
hands with Ivery while Blenkiron stood a yard off, talking to one
of the Misses Weekes. The next moment I was being introduced.

'Mr Brand, very pleased to meet you,' said the voice I knew so
well. 'Mr Ivery has been telling me about you, and I guess we've
got something to say to each other. We're both from noo countries,
and we've got to teach the old nations a little horse-sense.'

Mr Ivery's car - the only one left in the neighbourhood - carried
us to his villa, and presently we were seated in a brightly-lit dining-
room. It was not a pretty house, but it had the luxury of an
expensive hotel, and the supper we had was as good as any London
restaurant. Gone were the old days of fish and toast and boiled
milk. Blenkiron squared his shoulders and showed himself a
noble trencherman.

'A year ago,' he told our host, 'I was the meanest kind of
dyspeptic. I had the love of righteousness in my heart, but I had the
devil in my stomach. Then I heard stories about the Robson
Brothers, the star surgeons way out west in White Springs,
Nebraska. They were reckoned the neatest hands in the world at
carving up a man and removing devilments from his intestines.
Now, sir, I've always fought pretty shy of surgeons, for I considered
that our Maker never intended His handiwork to be reconstructed
like a bankrupt Dago railway. But by that time I was feeling so
almighty wretched that I could have paid a man to put a bullet
through my head. "There's no other way," I said to myself. "Either
you forget your religion and your miserable cowardice and get cut
up, or it's you for the Golden Shore." So I set my teeth and
journeyed to White Springs, and the Brothers had a look at my
duodenum. They saw that the darned thing wouldn't do, so they
sidetracked it and made a noo route for my noo-trition traffic. It
was the cunningest piece of surgery since the Lord took a rib out of
the side of our First Parent. They've got a mighty fine way of
charging, too, for they take five per cent of a man's income, and it's
all one to them whether he's a Meat King or a clerk on twenty
dollars a week. I can tell you I took some trouble to be a very rich
man last year.'

All through the meal I sat in a kind of stupor. I was trying to
assimilate the new Blenkiron, and drinking in the comfort of his
heavenly drawl, and I was puzzling my head about Ivery. I had a
ridiculous notion that I had seen him before, but, delve as I might
into my memory, I couldn't place him. He was the incarnation of
the commonplace, a comfortable middle-class sentimentalist, who
patronized pacificism out of vanity, but was very careful not to dip
his hands too far. He was always damping down Blenkiron's
volcanic utterances. 'Of course, as you know, the other side have
an argument which I find rather hard to meet ...' 'I can
sympathize with patriotism, and even with jingoism, in certain
moods, but I always come back to this difficulty.' 'Our opponents are
not ill-meaning so much as ill-judging,' - these were the sort
of sentences he kept throwing in. And he was full of quotations
from private conversations he had had with every sort of person -
including members of the Government. I remember that he expressed
great admiration for Mr Balfour.

Of all that talk, I only recalled one thing clearly, and I recalled it
because Blenkiron seemed to collect his wits and try to argue, just
as he had done at the end of his lecture. He was speaking about a
story he had heard from someone, who had heard it from someone
else, that Austria in the last week of July 1914 had accepted Russia's
proposal to hold her hand and negotiate, and that the Kaiser had
sent a message to the Tsar saying he agreed. According to his story
this telegram had been received in Petrograd, and had been re-
written, like Bismarck's Ems telegram, before it reached the
Emperor. He expressed his disbelief in the yarn. 'I reckon if it had
been true,' he said, 'we'd have had the right text out long ago.
They'd have kept a copy in Berlin. All the same I did hear a sort of
rumour that some kind of message of that sort was published in a
German paper.'

Mr Ivery looked wise. 'You are right,' he said. 'I happen to
know that it has been published. You will find it in the
_Wieser _Zeitung.'

'You don't say?' he said admiringly. 'I wish I could read the old
tombstone language. But if I could they wouldn't let me have the papers.'

'Oh yes they would.' Mr Ivery laughed pleasantly. 'England has
still a good share of freedom. Any respectable person can get a
permit to import the enemy press. I'm not considered quite
respectable, for the authorities have a narrow definition of
patriotism, but happily I have respectable friends.'

Blenkiron was staying the night, and I took my leave as the clock
struck twelve. They both came into the hall to see me off, and, as I
was helping myself to a drink, and my host was looking for my hat
and stick, I suddenly heard Blenkiron's whisper in my ear. 'London
... the day after tomorrow,' he said. Then he took a formal farewell.
'Mr Brand, it's been an honour for me, as an American citizen, to
make your acquaintance, sir. I will consider myself fortunate if we
have an early reunion. I am stopping at Claridge's Ho-tel, and I
hope to be privileged to receive you there.'

CHAPTER THREE
The Reflections of a Cured Dyspeptic

Thirty-five hours later I found myself in my rooms in Westminster.
I thought there might be a message for me there, for I didn't
propose to go and call openly on Blenkiron at Claridge's till I had
his instructions. But there was no message - only a line from Peter,
saying he had hopes of being sent to Switzerland. That made me
realize that he must be pretty badly broken up.

Presently the telephone bell rang. It was Blenkiron who spoke.
'Go down and have a talk with your brokers about the War Loan.
Arrive there about twelve o'clock and don't go upstairs till you
have met a friend. You'd better have a quick luncheon at your club,
and then come to Traill's bookshop in the Haymarket at two. You
can get back to Biggleswick by the 5.16.'

I did as I was bid, and twenty minutes later, having travelled by
Underground, for I couldn't raise a taxi, I approached the block of
chambers in Leadenhall Street where dwelt the respected firm who
managed my investments. It was still a few minutes before noon,
and as I slowed down a familiar figure came out of the bank next door.

Ivery beamed recognition. 'Up for the day, Mr Brand?' he asked.
'I have to see my brokers,' I said, 'read the South African
papers in my club, and get back by the 5.16. Any chance of
your company?'

'Why, yes - that's my train. _Au _revoir. We meet at the station.'
He bustled off, looking very smart with his neat clothes and a rose
in his button-hole.

I lunched impatiently, and at two was turning over some new
books in Traill's shop with an eye on the street-door behind me. It
seemed a public place for an assignation. I had begun to dip into a
big illustrated book on flower-gardens when an assistant came up.
'The manager's compliments, sir, and he thinks there are some old
works of travel upstairs that might interest you.' I followed him
obediently to an upper floor lined with every kind of volume and
with tables littered with maps and engravings. 'This way, sir,' he
said, and opened a door in the wall concealed by bogus book-
backs. I found myself in a little study, and Blenkiron sitting in an
armchair smoking.

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