A Prince of the Captivity (Unabridged). Buchan John
covered mainly in a loping trot, which took them back along the ridge of the Downs till they looked down upon the Warriners’ house. Adam calculated that they had done nearly thirty miles, but he realised that the day had not been meant as a mere test of bodily endurance. Those queer visits had had a purpose, and he guessed what it was. To his delight it seemed to him that his companion was flagging a little—at any rate the edge was off his keenness—while he himself had got his second wind.
He found a large tea-party at the Warriners’. “I’m going to cut it,” Frank said, “but you must show yourself. You look all right. You’ve kept amazingly tidy.” Adam obeyed, for he thought he understood the reason.
He could have drunk pints, but he was only given one small cup of weak tea. But he had a full dose of conversation. It appeared to be the special purpose of everyone to talk to him. He had to listen to schemes of hospital work from local ladies, and to amateur military speculations from an old Yeomanry colonel. A Bishop discussed with him the ethics of the war, and a parliamentary candidate had much to say about the party truce. He felt hot, very thirsty, and rather drowsy, but he collected his wits, for he saw that his host’s eye was continually fixed on him. The elder Warriner managed to add himself to any group where Adam talked, and it appeared that he was adroitly trying to draw him out.
“You have been drinking in the peace of England,” the Bishop told him. “To-day will be a cool oasis to remember in the feverish months before you.”
When the guests had gone and he was left with his host, the rosy country squire seemed to have changed to somebody shrewd and authoritative.
“We shall be alone to-night,” he said, “for Frank has gone back to camp. You acquitted yourself well, Mr More. Frank is pretty nearly all out, and he is harder than most people. I daresay you realise the purpose of to-day’s performance. In the game you are entering physical fitness is not enough. A man must have full control of his wits, and be able to use them when his bodily vitality is low. The mind must have the upper hand of the carcass, and not be drugged by exertion into apathy. You appear to fill the bill… Now you’ll want a bath before dinner.
“By the way,” he added, “there’s one thing you may like to know. We won’t talk about the past, but long ago at school I fagged for your father.”
Adam’s next visit was of a different kind. Slowly there had been growing in his mind the comforting reflection that he might be of use to the world, since other people seemed to take pains to assess his capacities. He recognised that the tests were only superficial—what could anyone learn of a man’s powers from a few experiments?—but that they should have been considered worth while increased his confidence. So when he was sent down to spend a day with a certain Theophilus Scrope in a little market-town in Northamptonshire he speculated on what might next be put to the proof. Certain branches of his knowledge had been probed, and his bodily strength, but no one had attempted to assay his mental powers or the quality of his nerves. The latter, he believed, would now be the subject, and he thought of Mr Scrope as a mixture of psychologist and physician.
Mr Scrope was neither. He was a small elderly man with a Chinese cast of face, who wore a skull-cap, and sat with a tartan plaid round his shoulders, though the weather was warm. He had a dreamy eye, and a voice hoarse with age and endless cigarettes. At first his talk meandered about several continents. It appeared that he had spent much of his life in the East, and he entertained Adam with fantastic tales of the Tibetan frontier. His experiences seemed to have impressed themselves on his face, for he had the air of a wise and ancient Lama. He was fond of quoting proverbs from native languages, and now and then he would deliver oracles of his own, looking sideways under his heavy eyelids to see how they were received.
Adam spent a confused morning, sitting in a little garden heavy with the scents of autumn flowers. Mr Scrope seemed to have a genius for the discursive. But gradually it appeared that his reminiscences were directed to one point especially, the everlasting temperamental differences of East and West. His chief instance was the virtue of courage. The East, he said, which did not fear the hereafter, was apathetic towards the mere fact of death, but it had not the same fortitude about life. It was capable of infinite sacrifice but not of infinite effort—it was apt to fling in its hand too soon, and relapse upon passivity. The West, when it had conquered the fear of death, demanded a full price for any sacrifice. Rightly, said the old man, since man’s first duty was towards life.
Then they went indoors to luncheon, which was a modest meal of eggs, cheese and vegetables. After that his host must sleep for an hour, and Adam was left alone to his reflections in a chair on the veranda… He was beginning to see some purpose in the talk of this ancient, who looked like a Buddhist holy man. Mr Scrope must have been informed about his case, and realised that he was dealing with one who had nothing to lose. The moral of his talk was that desperation was valueless by itself and must be subordinated to a purpose. A man’s life was an asset which must be shrewdly bargained for. Adam wondered why he had been sent down into Northamptonshire to hear this platitude.
But when the old man appeared he changed his view. For Mr Scrope, refreshed by sleep, became a shrewd inquisitor, and probed with a lancet Adam’s innermost heart. Never had he dreamed that he could so expose his secret thoughts to any man. More, he had his own beliefs made clear to himself, for what had been only vague inclinations crystallised under this treatment into convictions. His companion was no longer a whimsical old gentleman with the garrulity of age, but a sage with an uncanny insight into his own private perplexities. Duty was expounded as a thing both terrible and sweet, transcending life and death, a bridge over the abyss to immortality. But it required the service of all of a man’s being, and no half-gods must cumber its altar. Adam felt himself strangely stirred; stoicism was not his mood now, but exaltation. “He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life shall find it,” the other quoted. “That is not enough,” he added. “He that findeth his soul shall lose it—that is the greater commandment. You must be prepared to sacrifice much that you think honourable and of good report if you would fulfil the whole Law.”
There was a kindly gleam in his dim old eyes as he bade his guest good-bye. “You have the root of the matter, I think,” were his last words. “You will make your soul, as the priests say, and if you do that you have won, whatever happens—yes, whatever happens.” It seemed almost a benediction.
After that Adam was sent back to the City of London. There he was no longer received in the dingy waiting-room, but in Macandrew’s own sanctum, a place to which the road was even more intricate. He realised, though he had had no word from Ritson, that his services had been accepted.
For weeks he worked hard under the tuition of a very different Macandrew. His instruction was of the most detailed and practical kind. From plans and books he studied a certain area of Flanders, and was compelled to draw map after map and endure endless cross-examinations till his tutor was satisfied. He was made to learn minutely the routine of the country life. “You will work on a farm,” he was told, “but as you will have come from the town you must have urban knowledge, too, and that I will provide.” It was provided at immense length, for his master was not easily satisfied. “There is nothing too small to be unimportant,” Macandrew said. “It is the very little things that make the difference.” He had to commit to memory curious pieces of slang and patois and learn how to interweave them naturally with his talk. Disguises, too; there were afternoons when Adam had to masquerade in impossible clothes and be taught how to live up to them, and to acquire the art of giving himself by small changes a different face. His special part was kept always before his mind. “You must think yourself into it,” he was told, “and imagine that you have never been otherwise. That is the only real disguise.”
Then there was the whole complicated business of cyphers and codes. These must be subtle and yet simple, for Adam must carry them in his head. He had to practise his powers of memory, and was surprised to find how they developed with exercise. And he was told of certain people who were key-people, the pivots of the intelligence system in which he would serve. This was the most difficult business of all, for these persons would take on many forms, and it was necessary to have certain marks of identification and passports to their confidence. Adam was almost in despair at the mass of knowledge, vital knowledge, which he must