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

pistol at his face. Also we’ve got to find him first. We reckon he’s in Switzerland, but that is a state with quite a lot of diversified scenery to lose a man in⁠ ⁠… Still I guess we’ll find him. But it’s the kind of business to plan out as carefully as a battle. I’m going back to Berne on my old stunt to boss the show, and I’m giving the orders. You’re an obedient child, Dick, so I don’t reckon on any trouble that way.”

Then Blenkiron did an ominous thing. He pulled up a little table and started to lay out Patience cards. Since his duodenum was cured he seemed to have dropped that habit, and from his resuming it I gathered that his mind was uneasy. I can see that scene as if it were yesterday⁠—the French colonel in an armchair smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder, and Blenkiron sitting primly on the edge of a yellow silk ottoman, dealing his cards and looking guiltily towards me.

“You’ll have Peter for company,” he said. “Peter’s a sad man, but he has a great heart, and he’s been mighty useful to me already. They’re going to move him to England very soon. The authorities are afraid of him, for he’s apt to talk wild, his health having made him peevish about the British. But there’s a deal of red-tape in the world, and the orders for his repatriation are slow in coming.” The speaker winked very slowly and deliberately with his left eye.

I asked if I was to be with Peter, much cheered at the prospect.

“Why, yes. You and Peter are the collateral in the deal. But the big game’s not with you.”

I had a presentiment of something coming, something anxious and unpleasant.

“Is Mary in it?” I asked.

He nodded and seemed to pull himself together for an explanation.

“See here, Dick. Our main job is to get Ivery back to Allied soil where we can handle him. And there’s just the one magnet that can fetch him back. You aren’t going to deny that.”

I felt my face getting very red, and that ugly hammer began beating in my forehead. Two grave, patient eyes met my glare.

“I’m damned if I’ll allow it!” I cried. “I’ve some right to a say in the thing. I won’t have Mary made a decoy. It’s too infernally degrading.”

“It isn’t pretty, but war isn’t pretty, and nothing we do is pretty. I’d have blushed like a rose when I was young and innocent to imagine the things I’ve put my hand to in the last three years. But have you any other way, Dick? I’m not proud, and I’ll scrap the plan if you can show me another⁠ ⁠… Night after night I’ve hammered the thing out, and I can’t hit on a better⁠ ⁠… Heigh-ho, Dick, this isn’t like you,” and he grinned ruefully. “You’re making yourself a fine argument in favour of celibacy⁠—in time of war, anyhow. What is it the poet sings?⁠—

‘White hands cling to the bridle rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel.’ ”

I was as angry as sin, but I felt all the time I had no case. Blenkiron stopped his game of Patience, sending the cards flying over the carpet, and straddled on the hearthrug.

“You’re never going to be a piker. What’s dooty, if you won’t carry it to the other side of Hell? What’s the use of yapping about your country if you’re going to keep anything back when she calls for it? What’s the good of meaning to win the war if you don’t put every cent you’ve got on your stake? You’ll make me think you’re like the jacks in your English novels that chuck in their hand and say it’s up to God, and call that ‘seeing it through’⁠ ⁠… No, Dick, that kind of dooty don’t deserve a blessing. You dursn’t keep back anything if you want to save your soul.

“Besides,” he went on, “what a girl it is! She can’t scare and she can’t soil. She’s white-hot youth and innocence, and she’d take no more harm than clean steel from a muck-heap.”

I knew I was badly in the wrong, but my pride was all raw.

“I’m not going to agree till I’ve talked to Mary.”

“But Miss Mary has consented,” he said gently. “She made the plan.”

Next day, in clear blue weather that might have been May, I drove Mary down to Fontainebleau. We lunched in the inn by the bridge and walked into the forest. I hadn’t slept much, for I was tortured by what I thought was anxiety for her, but which was in truth jealousy of Ivery. I don’t think that I would have minded her risking her life, for that was part of the game we were both in, but I jibbed at the notion of Ivery coming near her again. I told myself it was honourable pride, but I knew deep down in me that it was jealousy.

I asked her if she had accepted Blenkiron’s plan, and she turned mischievous eyes on me.

“I knew I should have a scene with you, Dick. I told Mr. Blenkiron so⁠ ⁠… Of course I agreed. I’m not even very much afraid of it. I’m a member of the team, you know, and I must play up to my form. I can’t do a man’s work, so all the more reason why I should tackle the thing I can do.”

“But,” I stammered, “it’s such a⁠ ⁠… such a degrading business for a child like you. I can’t bear⁠ ⁠… It makes me hot to think of it.”

Her reply was merry laughter.

“You’re an old Ottoman, Dick. You haven’t doubled Cape Turk yet, and I don’t believe you’re round Seraglio Point. Why, women aren’t the brittle things men used to think them. They never were, and the war has made them like whipcord. Bless you, my dear, we’re the tougher sex now. We’ve had to wait and endure, and we’ve been so beaten on the anvil of patience that we’ve lost all our megrims.”

She