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

say. A sudden shyness possessed me. Wake must have gone through some violent cyclones of feeling before it came to this. He saw what I was thinking and laughed in his sharp, ironical way.

“Don’t flatter yourself you’ve made a convert. I think as I always thought. But I came to the conclusion that since the fates had made me a Government servant I might as well do my work somewhere less cushioned than a chair in the Home Office⁠ ⁠… Oh, no, it wasn’t a matter of principle. One kind of work’s as good as another, and I’m a better clerk than a navvy. With me it was self-indulgence: I wanted fresh air and exercise.”

I looked at him⁠—mud to the waist, and his hands all blistered and cut with unaccustomed labour. I could realize what his associates must mean to him, and how he would relish the rough tonguing of noncoms.

“You’re a confounded humbug,” I said. “Why on earth didn’t you go into an O.T.C. and come out with a commission? They’re easy enough to get.”

“You mistake my case,” he said bitterly. “I experienced no sudden conviction about the justice of the war. I stand where I always stood. I’m a noncombatant, and I wanted a change of civilian work⁠ ⁠… No, it wasn’t any idiotic tribunal sent me here. I came of my own free will, and I’m really rather enjoying myself.”

“It’s a rough job for a man like you,” I said.

“Not so rough as the fellows get in the trenches. I watched a battalion marching back today and they looked like ghosts who had been years in muddy graves. White faces and dazed eyes and leaden feet. Mine’s a cushy job. I like it best when the weather’s foul. It cheats me into thinking I’m doing my duty.”

I nodded towards a recent shell-hole. “Much of that sort of thing?”

“Now and then. We had a good dusting this morning. I can’t say I liked it at the time, but I like to look back on it. A sort of moral anodyne.”

“I wonder what on earth the rest of your lot make of you?”

“They don’t make anything. I’m not remarkable for my bonhomie. They think I’m a prig⁠—which I am. It doesn’t amuse me to talk about beer and women or listen to a gramophone or grouse about my last meal. But I’m quite content, thank you. Sometimes I get a seat in a corner of a Y.M.C.A. hut, and I’ve a book or two. My chief affliction is the padre. He was up at Keble in my time, and, as one of my colleagues puts it, wants to be ‘too bloody helpful.’⁠ ⁠… What are you doing, Hannay? I see you’re some kind of general. They’re pretty thick on the ground here.”

“I’m a sort of general. Soldiering in the Salient isn’t the softest of jobs, but I don’t believe it’s as tough as yours is for you. D’you know, Wake, I wish I had you in my brigade. Trained or untrained, you’re a dashed stouthearted fellow.”

He laughed with a trifle less acidity than usual. “Almost thou persuadest me to be combatant. No, thank you. I haven’t the courage, and besides there’s my jolly old principles. All the same I’d like to be near you. You’re a good chap, and I’ve had the honour to assist in your education⁠ ⁠… I must be getting back, or the sergeant will think I’ve bolted.”

We shook hands, and the last I saw of him was a figure saluting stiffly in the wet twilight.

The third incident was trivial enough, though momentous in its results. Just before I got the division I had a bout of malaria. We were in support in the Salient, in very uncomfortable trenches behind Wieltje, and I spent three days on my back in a dugout. Outside was a blizzard of rain, and the water now and then came down the stairs through the gas curtain and stood in pools at my bed foot. It wasn’t the merriest place to convalesce in, but I was as hard as nails at the time and by the third day I was beginning to sit up and be bored.

I read all my English papers twice and a big stack of German ones which I used to have sent up by a friend in the G.H.Q. Intelligence, who knew I liked to follow what the Boche was saying. As I dozed and ruminated in the way a man does after fever, I was struck by the tremendous display of one advertisement in the English press. It was a thing called “Gussiter’s Deep-breathing System,” which, according to its promoter, was a cure for every ill, mental, moral, or physical, that man can suffer. Politicians, generals, admirals, and music-hall artists all testified to the new life it had opened up for them. I remember wondering what these sportsmen got for their testimonies, and thinking I would write a spoof letter myself to old Gussiter.

Then I picked up the German papers, and suddenly my eye caught an advertisement of the same kind in the Frankfurter Zeitung. It was not Gussiter this time, but one Weissmann, but his game was identical⁠—“deep breathing.” The Hun style was different from the English⁠—all about the Goddess of Health, and the Nymphs of the Mountains, and two quotations from Schiller. But the principle was the same.

That made me ponder a little, and I went carefully through the whole batch. I found the advertisement in the Frankfurter and in one or two rather obscure Volkstimmes and Volkszeitungs. I found it too in Der Grosse Krieg, the official German propagandist picture-paper. They were the same all but one, and that one had a bold variation, for it contained four of the sentences used in the ordinary English advertisement.

This struck me as fishy, and I started to write a letter to Macgillivray pointing out what seemed to be a case of trading with the enemy, and advising him to