The Collected Works of John Buchan (Illustrated). Buchan John
just been got going in the Ursuline convent. He was the most sterling little man, in ordinary life rather dry and dogmatic, with a trick of taking you up sharply which didn’t make him popular. Now he was lying very stiff and quiet in the hospital bed, and his blue eyes were solemn and pathetic like a sick dog’s.
‘There’s nothing much wrong with me,’ he said, in reply to my question. ‘A shell dropped beside me and damaged my foot. They say they’ll have to cut it off… I’ve an easier mind now you’re here, Hannay. Of course you’ll take over from Masterton. He’s a good man but not quite up to his job. Poor Fraser—you’ve heard about Fraser. He was done in at the very start. Yes, a shell. And Lefroy. If he’s alive and not too badly smashed the Hun has got a troublesome prisoner.’
He was too sick to talk, but he wouldn’t let me go.
‘The division was all right. Don’t you believe anyone who says we didn’t fight like heroes. Our outpost line held up the Hun for six hours, and only about a dozen men came back. We could have stuck it out in the battle-zone if both flanks hadn’t been turned. They got through Crabbe’s left and came down the Verey ravine, and a big wave rushed Shropshire Wood… We fought it out yard by yard and didn’t budge till we saw the Plessis dump blazing in our rear. Then it was about time to go… We haven’t many battalion commanders left. Watson, Endicot, Crawshay… ‘ He stammered out a list of gallant fellows who had gone.
‘Get back double quick, Hannay. They want you. I’m not happy about Masterton. He’s too young for the job.’ And then a nurse drove me out, and I left him speaking in the strange forced voice of great weakness.
At the foot of the staircase stood Mary.
‘I saw you go in,’ she said, ‘so I waited for you.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ I cried, ‘you should have been in Boulogne by now. What madness brought you here?’
‘They know me here and they’ve taken me on. You couldn’t expect me to stay behind. You said yourself everybody was wanted, and I’m in a Service like you. Please don’t be angry, Dick.’
I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t even extra anxious. The whole thing seemed to have been planned by fate since the creation of the world. The game we had been engaged in wasn’t finished and it was right that we should play it out together. With that feeling came a conviction, too, of ultimate victory. Somehow or sometime we should get to the end of our pilgrimage. But I remembered Mary’s forebodings about the sacrifice required. The best of us. That ruled me out, but what about her?
I caught her to my arms. ‘Goodbye, my very dearest. Don’t worry about me, for mine’s a soft job and I can look after my skin. But oh! take care of yourself, for you are all the world to me.’
She kissed me gravely like a wise child.
‘I am not afraid for you,’ she said. ‘You are going to stand in the breach, and I know—I know you will win. Remember that there is someone here whose heart is so full of pride of her man that it hasn’t room for fear.’
As I went out of the convent door I felt that once again I had been given my orders.
It did not surprise me that, when I sought out my room on an upper floor of the Hotel de France, I found Blenkiron in the corridor. He was in the best of spirits.
‘You can’t keep me out of the show, Dick,’ he said, ‘so you needn’t start arguing. Why, this is the one original chance of a lifetime for John S. Blenkiron. Our little fight at Erzerum was only a side-show, but this is a real high-class Armageddon. I guess I’ll find a way to make myself useful.’
I had no doubt he would, and I was glad he had stayed behind. But I felt it was hard on Peter to have the job of returning to England alone at such a time, like useless flotsam washed up by a flood.
‘You needn’t worry,’ said Blenkiron. ‘Peter’s not making England this trip. To the best of my knowledge he has beat it out of this township by the eastern postern. He had some talk with Sir Archibald Roylance, and presently other gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps appeared, and the upshot was that Sir Archibald hitched on to Peter’s grip and departed without saying farewell. My notion is that he’s gone to have a few words with his old friends at some flying station. Or he might have the idea of going back to England by aeroplane, and so having one last flutter before he folds his wings. Anyhow, Peter looked a mighty happy man. The last I saw he was smoking his pipe with a batch of young lads in a Flying Corps waggon and heading straight for Germany.’
CHAPTER 21
HOW AN EXILE RETURNED TO HIS OWN PEOPLE
Next morning I found the Army Commander on his way to Doullens.
‘Take over the division?’ he said. ‘Certainly. I’m afraid there isn’t much left of it. I’ll tell Carr to get through to the Corps Headquarters, when he can find them. You’ll have to nurse the remnants, for they can’t be pulled out yet—not for a day or two. Bless me, Hannay, there are parts of our line which we’re holding with a man and a boy. You’ve got to stick it out till the French take over. We’re not hanging on by our eyelids—it’s our eyelashes now.’
‘What about positions to fall back on, sir?’ I asked.
‘We’re doing our best, but we haven’t enough men to prepare them.’ He plucked open a map. ‘There we’re digging a line—and there. If we can hold that bit for two days we shall have a fair line resting on the river. But we mayn’t have time.’
Then I told him about Blenkiron, whom of course he had heard of. ‘He was one of the biggest engineers in the States, and he’s got a nailing fine eye for country. He’ll make good somehow if you let him help in the job.’
‘The very fellow,’ he said, and he wrote an order. ‘Take this to Jacks and he’ll fix up a temporary commission. Your man can find a uniform somewhere in Amiens.’
After that I went to the detail camp and found that Ivery had duly arrived.
‘The prisoner has given no trouble, sirr,’ Hamilton reported. ‘But he’s a wee thing peevish. They’re saying that the Gairmans is gettin’ on fine, and I was tellin’ him that he should be proud of his ain folk. But he wasn’t verra weel pleased.’
Three days had wrought a transformation in Ivery. That face, once so cool and capable, was now sharpened like a hunted beast’s. His imagination was preying on him and I could picture its torture. He, who had been always at the top directing the machine, was now only a cog in it. He had never in his life been anything but powerful; now he was impotent. He was in a hard, unfamiliar world, in the grip of something which he feared and didn’t understand, in the charge of men who were in no way amenable to his persuasiveness. It was like a proud and bullying manager suddenly forced to labour in a squad of navvies, and worse, for there was the gnawing physical fear of what was coming.
He made an appeal to me.
‘Do the English torture their prisoners?’ he asked. ‘You have beaten me. I own it, and I plead for mercy. I will go on my knees if you like. I am not afraid of death—in my own way.’
‘Few people are afraid of death—in their own way.’
‘Why do you degrade me? I am a gentleman.’
‘Not as we define the thing,’ I said.
His jaw dropped. ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he quavered.
‘You have been a soldier,’ I said. ‘You are going to see a little fighting—from the ranks. There will be no brutality, you will be armed if you want to defend yourself, you will have the same chance of survival as the men around you. You may have heard that your countrymen are doing well. It is even possible that they may win the battle. What was your forecast to me? Amiens in two days, Abbeville