Mr. Standfast, John Buchan [best large ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Mary, as always, was neat and workmanlike in her dress; Blenkiron was magnificent in a suit of russet tweed with a pale-blue shirt and collar, and well-polished brown shoes; but Peter and Wake were in uniforms which had seen far better days, and I wore still the boots and the shapeless and ragged clothes of Joseph Zimmer, the porter from Arosa.

We appeared to forget the war, but we didn’t, for it was in the background of all our minds. Somewhere in the north there was raging a desperate fight, and its issue was the true test of our success or failure. Mary showed it by bidding me ask for news at every stopping-place. I asked gendarmes and permissionnaires, but I learned nothing. Nobody had ever heard of the battle. The upshot was that for the last hour we all fell silent, and when we reached Paris about seven o’clock my first errand was to the bookstall.

I bought a batch of evening papers, which we tried to read in the taxis that carried us to our hotel. Sure enough there was the announcement in big headlines. The enemy had attacked in great strength from south of Arras to the Oise; but everywhere he had been repulsed and held in our battle-zone. The leading articles were confident, the notes by the various military critics were almost braggart. At last the German had been driven to an offensive, and the Allies would have the opportunity they had longed for of proving their superior fighting strength. It was, said one and all, the opening of the last phase of the war.

I confess that as I read my heart sank. If the civilians were so over-confident, might not the generals have fallen into the same trap? Blenkiron alone was unperturbed. Mary said nothing, but she sat with her chin in her hands, which with her was a sure sign of deep preoccupation.

Next morning the papers could tell us little more. The main attack had been on both sides of St Quentin, and though the British had given ground it was only the outposts line that had gone. The mist had favoured the enemy, and his bombardment had been terrific, especially the gas shells. Every journal added the old old comment—that he had paid heavily for his temerity, with losses far exceeding those of the defence.

Wake appeared at breakfast in his private’s uniform. He wanted to get his railway warrant and be off at once, but when I heard that Amiens was his destination I ordered him to stay and travel with me in the afternoon. I was in uniform myself now and had taken charge of the outfit. I arranged that Blenkiron, Mary, and Peter should go on to Boulogne and sleep the night there, while Wake and I would be dropped at Amiens to await instructions.

I spent a busy morning. Once again I visited with Blenkiron the little cabinet in the Boulevard St Germain, and told in every detail our work of the past two months. Once again I sat in the low building beside the Invalides and talked to staff officers. But some of the men I had seen on the first visit were not there. The chiefs of the French Army had gone north.

We arranged for the handling of the Wild Birds, now safely in France, and sanction was given to the course I had proposed to adopt with Ivery. He and his guard were on their way to Amiens, and I would meet them there on the morrow. The great men were very complimentary to us, so complimentary that my knowledge of grammatical French ebbed away and I could only stutter in reply. That telegram sent by Blenkiron on the night of the 18th, from the information given me in the Pink Chalet, had done wonders in clearing up the situation.

But when I asked them about the battle they could tell me little. It was a very serious attack in tremendous force, but the British line was strong and the reserves were believed to be sufficient. Pétain and Foch had gone north to consult with Haig. The situation in Champagne was still obscure, but some French reserves were already moving thence to the Somme sector. One thing they did show me, the British dispositions. As I looked at the plan I saw that my old division was in the thick of the fighting.

“Where do you go now?” I was asked.

“To Amiens, and then, please God, to the battle front,” I said.

“Good fortune to you. You do not give body or mind much rest, my general.”

After that I went to the Mission Anglaise, but they had nothing beyond Haig’s communiqué and a telephone message from G.H.Q. that the critical sector was likely to be that between St Quentin and the Oise. The northern pillar of our defence, south of Arras, which they had been nervous about, had stood like a rock. That pleased me, for my old battalion of the Lennox Highlanders was there.

Crossing the Place de la Concorde, we fell in with a British staff officer of my acquaintance, who was just starting to motor back to G.H.Q. from Paris leave. He had a longer face than the people at the Invalides.

“I don’t like it, I tell you,” he said. “It’s this mist that worries me. I went down the whole line from Arras to the Oise ten days ago. It was beautifully sited, the cleverest thing you ever saw. The outpost line was mostly a chain of blobs—redoubts, you know, with machine-guns—so arranged as to bring flanking fire to bear on the advancing enemy. But mist would play the devil with that scheme, for the enemy would be past the place for flanking fire before we knew it... Oh, I know we had good warning, and had the battle-zone manned in time, but the outpost line was meant to hold out long enough to get everything behind in apple-pie order, and I can’t see but how big chunks of it must have gone in the first rush.... Mind you, we’ve banked everything on that battle-zone. It’s damned good, but if it’s gone—” He flung up his hands.

“Have we good reserves?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Have we positions prepared behind the battle-zone?”

“I didn’t notice any,” he said dryly, and was off before I could get more out of him.

“You look rattled, Dick,” said Blenkiron as we walked to the hotel.

“I seem to have got the needle. It’s silly, but I feel worse about this show than I’ve ever felt since the war started. Look at this city here. The papers take it easily, and the people are walking about as if nothing was happening. Even the soldiers aren’t worried. You may call me a fool to take it so hard, but I’ve a sense in my bones that we’re in for the bloodiest and darkest fight of our lives, and that soon Paris will be hearing the Boche guns as she did in 1914.”

“You’re a cheerful old Jeremiah. Well, I’m glad Miss Mary’s going to be in England soon. Seems to me she’s right and that this game of ours isn’t quite played out yet. I’m envying you some, for there’s a place waiting for you in the fighting line.”

“You’ve got to get home and keep people’s heads straight there. That’s the weak link in our chain and there’s a mighty lot of work before you.”

“Maybe,” he said abstractedly, with his eye on the top of the Vendome column.

The train that afternoon was packed with officers recalled from leave, and it took all the combined purchase of Blenkiron and myself to get a carriage reserved for our little party. At the last moment I opened the door to admit a warm and agitated captain of the R.F.C. in whom I recognised my friend and benefactor, Archie Roylance.

“Just when I was gettin’ nice and clean and comfy a wire comes tellin’ me to bundle back, all along of a new battle. It’s a cruel war, Sir.” The afflicted young man mopped his forehead, grinned cheerfully at Blenkiron, glanced critically at Peter, then caught sight of Mary and grew at once acutely conscious of his appearance. He smoothed his hair, adjusted his tie and became desperately sedate.

I introduced him to Peter and he promptly forgot Mary’s existence. If Peter had had any vanity in him it would have been flattered by the frank interest and admiration in the boy’s eyes. “I’m tremendously glad to see you safe back, sir. I’ve always hoped I might have a chance of meeting you. We want you badly now on the front. Lensch is gettin’ a bit uppish.”

Then his eye fell on Peter’s withered leg and he saw that he had blundered. He blushed scarlet and looked his apologies. But they weren’t needed, for it cheered Peter to meet someone who talked of the possibility of his fighting again. Soon the two were deep in technicalities, the appalling technicalities of the airman. It was no good listening to their talk, for you could make nothing of it, but it was bracing up Peter like wine. Archie gave him a minute description of Lensch’s latest doings and his new methods. He, too, had heard the rumour that Peter had mentioned to me at St Anton, of a new Boche plane, with mighty engines and stumpy wings cunningly cambered, which was a devil to climb; but no specimens had yet appeared over the line. They talked of Bali, and Rhys Davids, and Bishop, and McCudden, and all the heroes who had won their spurs since the Somme, and of the new British makes, most of which Peter had never seen and had to have explained to him.

Outside a haze had drawn over the meadows with the twilight. I pointed it out to Blenkiron.

“There’s the fog that’s doing us. This March weather is just like October, mist morning and evening. I wish to Heaven we could have some good old drenching spring rain.”

Archie was discoursing of the Shark-Gladas machine.

“I’ve always stuck to it, for it’s a marvel in its way, but it has my heart fairly broke. The General here knows its little tricks. Don’t you, sir? Whenever things get really excitin’, the engine’s apt to quit work and take a rest.”

“The whole make should be publicly burned,” I said, with gloomy recollections.

“I wouldn’t go so far, sir. The old Gladas has surprisin’ merits. On her day there’s nothing like her for pace and climbing-power, and she steers as sweet as a racin’ cutter. The trouble about her is she’s too complicated. She’s like some breeds of car—you want to be a mechanical genius to understand her.... If they’d only get her a little simpler and safer, there wouldn’t be her match in the field. I’m about the only man that has patience with her and knows her merits, but she’s often been nearly the death of me. All the same, if I were in for a big fight against some fellow like Lensch, where it was neck or nothing, I’m hanged if I wouldn’t pick the Gladas.”

Archie laughed apologetically. “The subject is banned for me in our mess. I’m the old thing’s only champion, and she’s like a mare I used to hunt that loved me so much she was always tryin’ to chew the arm off me. But I wish I could get her a fair trial from one of the big pilots. I’m only in the second class myself after all.”

We were running north of St Just when above the rattle of the train rose a curious dull sound. It came from the east, and was like the low growl of a veld thunderstorm, or a steady roll of muffled drums.

“Hark to the guns!” cried Archie. “My aunt, there’s a tidy bombardment goin’ on somewhere.”

I had been listening on and off to guns for three years. I had been present at the big preparations before Loos and the Somme and Arras, and I had come to accept the racket of artillery as something natural and inevitable like rain or sunshine. But this sound chilled me with its eeriness, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness, for I was sure that the guns had not been heard in this area since before the Marne. The noise must be travelling down the Oise valley, and I judged there was big fighting somewhere about Chauny or La Fere. That meant that the enemy was pressing hard on a huge front, for here was clearly a great effort on his extreme left wing. Unless it was our counter-attack. But somehow I didn’t think so.

I let down the window and stuck my head into the night. The fog had crept to the edge of the track, a gossamer mist through which houses and trees and cattle could be seen dim in the