Mr. Standfast, John Buchan [ebook pdf reader for pc .txt] 📗

and we must fling our imaginations forward to catch up with him. His strength is his unexpectedness, you know, and we won’t beat him by plodding only. I believe the wildest course is the wisest, for it’s the most likely to intersect his⁠ ⁠… Who’s the poet among us?”

“Peter,” I said. “But he’s pinned down with a game leg in Germany. All the same we must rope him in.”

By this time we had all cheered up, for it is wonderful what a tonic there is in a prospect of action. The butler brought in tea, which it was Bullivant’s habit to drink after dinner. To me it seemed fantastic to watch a slip of a girl pouring it out for two grizzled and distinguished servants of the State and one battered soldier⁠—as decorous a family party as you would ask to see⁠—and to reflect that all four were engaged in an enterprise where men’s lives must be reckoned at less than thistledown.

After that we went upstairs to a noble Georgian drawing-room and Mary played to us. I don’t care two straws for music from an instrument⁠—unless it be the pipes or a regimental band⁠—but I dearly love the human voice. But she would not sing, for singing to her, I fancy, was something that did not come at will, but flowed only like a bird’s note when the mood favoured. I did not want it either. I was content to let “Cherry Ripe” be the one song linked with her in my memory.

It was Macgillivray who brought us back to business.

“I wish to Heaven there was one habit of mind we could definitely attach to him and to no one else.” (At this moment “He” had only one meaning for us.)

“You can’t do nothing with his mind,” Blenkiron drawled. “You can’t loose the bands of Orion, as the Bible says, or hold Leviathan with a hook. I reckoned I could and made a mighty close study of his de-vices. But the darned cuss wouldn’t stay put. I thought I had tied him down to the double bluff, and he went and played the triple bluff on me. There’s nothing doing that line.”

A memory of Peter recurred to me.

“What about the ‘blind spot’?” I asked, and I told them old Peter’s pet theory. “Every man that God made has his weak spot somewhere, some flaw in his character which leaves a dull patch in his brain. We’ve got to find that out, and I think I’ve made a beginning.”

Macgillivray in a sharp voice asked my meaning.

“He’s in a funk⁠ ⁠… of something. Oh, I don’t mean he’s a coward. A man in his trade wants the nerve of a buffalo. He could give us all points in courage. What I mean is that he’s not clean white all through. There are yellow streaks somewhere in him⁠ ⁠… I’ve given a good deal of thought to this courage business, for I haven’t got a great deal of it myself. Not like Peter, I mean. I’ve got heaps of soft places in me. I’m afraid of being drowned for one thing, or of getting my eyes shot out. Ivery’s afraid of bombs⁠—at any rate he’s afraid of bombs in a big city. I once read a book which talked about a thing called agoraphobia. Perhaps it’s that⁠ ⁠… Now if we know that weak spot it helps us in our work. There are some places he won’t go to, and there are some things he can’t do⁠—not well, anyway. I reckon that’s useful.”

“Ye-es,” said Macgillivray. “Perhaps it’s not what you’d call a burning and a shining light.”

“There’s another chink in his armour,” I went on. “There’s one person in the world he can never practise his transformations on, and that’s me. I shall always know him again, though he appeared as Sir Douglas Haig. I can’t explain why, but I’ve got a feel in my bones about it. I didn’t recognize him before, for I thought he was dead, and the nerve in my brain which should have been looking for him wasn’t working. But I’m on my guard now, and that nerve’s functioning at full power. Whenever and wherever and howsoever we meet again on the face of the earth, it will be ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’ between him and me.”

“That is better,” said Macgillivray. “If we have any luck, Hannay, it won’t be long till we pull you out of His Majesty’s Forces.”

Mary got up from the piano and resumed her old perch on the arm of Sir Walter’s chair.

“There’s another blind spot which you haven’t mentioned.” It was a cool evening, but I noticed that her cheeks had suddenly flushed.

“Last week Mr. Ivery asked me to marry him,” she said.

XII I Become a Combatant Once More

I returned to France on 13 September, and took over my old brigade on the 19th of the same month. We were shoved in at the Polygon Wood on the 26th, and after four days got so badly mauled that we were brought out to refit. On 7 October, very much to my surprise, I was given command of a division and was on the fringes of the Ypres fighting during the first days of November. From that front we were hurried down to Cambrai in support, but came in only for the last backwash of that singular battle. We held a bit of the St. Quentin sector till just before Christmas, when we had a spell of rest in billets, which endured, so far as I was concerned, till the beginning of January, when I was sent off on the errand which I shall presently relate.

That is a brief summary of my military record in the latter part of 1917. I am not going to enlarge on the fighting. Except for the days of the Polygon Wood it was neither very severe nor very distinguished, and you will find it in the history books. What I have to tell of here is my own personal quest, for