CHAPTER I

The Wicket-Gate

I spent one-third of my journey looking out of the window of a

first-class carriage, the next in a local motor-car following the

course of a trout stream in a shallow valley, and the last tramping

over a ridge of downland through great beech-woods to my quarters for

the night. In the first part I was in an infamous temper; in the second

I was worried and mystified; but the cool twilight of the third stage

calmed and heartened me, and I reached the gates of Fosse Manor with a

mighty appetite and a quiet mind.

As we slipped up the Thames valley on the smooth Great Western line I

had reflected ruefully on the thorns in the path of duty. For more than

a year I had never been out of khaki, except the months I spent in

hospital. They gave me my battalion before the Somme, and I came out of

that weary battle after the first big September fighting with a crack

in my head and a D.S.O. I had received a C.B. for the Erzerum business,

so what with these and my Matabele and South African medals and the

Legion of Honour, I had a chest like the High Priest’s breastplate. I

rejoined in January, and got a brigade on the eve of Arras. There we

had a star turn, and took about as many prisoners as we put infantry

over the top. After that we were hauled out for a month, and

subsequently planted in a bad bit on the Scarpe with a hint that we

would soon be used for a big push. Then suddenly I was ordered home to

report to the War Office, and passed on by them to Bullivant and his

merry men. So here I was sitting in a railway carriage in a grey tweed

suit, with a neat new suitcase on the rack labelled C.B. The initials

stood for Cornelius Brand, for that was my name now. And an old boy in

the corner was asking me questions and wondering audibly why I wasn’t

fighting, while a young blood of a second lieutenant with a wound

stripe was eyeing me with scorn.

The old chap was one of the cross-examining type, and after he had

borrowed my matches he set to work to find out all about me. He was a

tremendous fire-eater, and a bit of a pessimist about our slow progress

in the west. I told him I came from South Africa and was a mining

engineer.

“Been fighting with Botha?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not the fighting kind.”

The second lieutenant screwed up his nose.

“Is there no conscription in South Africa?”

“Thank God there isn’t,” I said, and the old fellow begged permission

to tell me a lot of unpalatable things. I knew his kind and didn’t give

much for it. He was the sort who, if he had been under fifty, would

have crawled on his belly to his tribunal to get exempted, but being

over age was able to pose as a patriot. But I didn’t like the second

lieutenant’s grin, for he seemed a good class of lad. I looked steadily

out of the window for the rest of the way, and wasn’t sorry when I got

to my station.

I had had the queerest interview with Bullivant and Macgillivray. They

asked me first if I was willing to serve again in the old game, and I

said I was. I felt as bitter as sin, for I had got fixed in the

military groove, and had made good there. Here was I—a brigadier and

still under forty, and with another year of the war there was no saying

where I might end. I had started out without any ambition, only a great

wish to see the business finished. But now I had acquired a

professional interest in the thing, I had a nailing good brigade, and I

had got the hang of our new kind of war as well as any fellow from

Sandhurst and Camberley. They were asking me to scrap all I had learned

and start again in a new job. I had to agree, for discipline’s

discipline, but I could have knocked their heads together in my

vexation.

What was worse they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me anything about what

they wanted me for. It was the old game of running me in blinkers. They

asked me to take it on trust and put myself unreservedly in their

hands. I would get my instructions later, they said.

I asked if it was important.

Bullivant narrowed his eyes. “If it weren’t, do you suppose we could

have wrung an active brigadier out of the War Office? As it was, it was

like drawing teeth.”

“Is it risky?” was my next question.

“In the long run—damnably,” was the answer.

“And you can’t tell me anything more?”

“Nothing as yet. You’ll get your instructions soon enough. You know

both of us, Hannay, and you know we wouldn’t waste the time of a good

man on folly. We are going to ask you for something which will make a

big call on your patriotism. It will be a difficult and arduous task,

and it may be a very grim one before you get to the end of it, but we

believe you can do it, and that no one else can.... You know us pretty

well. Will you let us judge for you?”

I looked at Bullivant’s shrewd, kind old face and Macgillivray’s steady

eyes. These men were my friends and wouldn’t play with me.

“All right,” I said. “I’m willing. What’s the first step?”

“Get out of uniform and forget you ever were a soldier. Change your

name. Your old one, Cornelis Brandt, will do, but you’d better spell it

‘Brand’ this time. Remember that you are an engineer just back from

South Africa, and that you don’t care a rush about the war. You can’t

understand what all the fools are fighting about, and you think we

might have peace at once by a little friendly business talk. You

needn’t be pro-German—if you like you can be rather severe on the Hun.

But you must be in deadly earnest about a speedy peace.”

I expect the corners of my mouth fell, for Bullivant burst out

laughing.

“Hang it all, man, it’s not so difficult. I feel sometimes inclined to

argue that way myself, when my dinner doesn’t agree with me. It’s not

so hard as to wander round the Fatherland abusing Britain, which was

your last job.”

“I’m ready,” I said. “But I want to do one errand on my own first. I

must see a fellow in my brigade who is in a shell-shock hospital in the

Cotswolds. Isham’s the name of the place.”

The two men exchanged glances. “This looks like fate,” said Bullivant.

“By all means go to Isham. The place where your work begins is only a

couple of miles off. I want you to spend next Thursday night as the

guest of two maiden ladies called Wymondham at Fosse Manor. You will go

down there as a lone South African visiting a sick friend. They are

hospitable souls and entertain many angels unawares.”

“And I get my orders there?”

“You get your orders, and you are under bond to obey them.” And

Bullivant and Macgillivray smiled at each other.

I was thinking hard about that odd conversation as the small Ford car,

which I had wired for to the inn, carried me away from the suburbs of

the county town into a land of rolling hills and green water-meadows.

It was a gorgeous afternoon and the blossom of early June was on every

tree. But I had no eyes for landscape and the summer, being engaged in

reprobating Bullivant and cursing my fantastic fate. I detested my new

part and looked forward to naked shame. It was bad enough for anyone to

have to pose as a pacifist, but for me, strong as a bull and as

sunburnt as a gipsy and not looking my forty years, it was a black

disgrace. To go into Germany as an anti-British Afrikander was a

stoutish adventure, but to lounge about at home talking rot was a very

different-sized job. My stomach rose at the thought of it, and I had

pretty well decided to wire to Bullivant and cry off. There are some

things that no one has a right to ask of any white man.

When I got to Isham and found poor old Blaikie I didn’t feel happier.

He had been a friend of mine in Rhodesia, and after the German

South-West affair was over had come home to a Fusilier battalion, which

was in my brigade at Arras. He had been buried by a big crump just

before we got our second objective, and was dug out without a scratch

on him, but as daft as a hatter. I had heard he was mending, and had

promised his family to look him up the first chance I got. I found him

sitting on a garden seat, staring steadily before him like a lookout at

sea. He knew me all right and cheered up for a second, but very soon he

was back at his staring, and every word he uttered was like the careful

speech of a drunken man. A bird flew out of a bush, and I could see him

holding himself tight to keep from screaming. The best I could do was

to put a hand on his shoulder and stroke him as one strokes a

frightened horse. The sight of the price my old friend had paid didn’t

put me in love with pacificism.

We talked of brother officers and South Africa, for I wanted to keep

his thoughts off the war, but he kept edging round to it.

“How long will the damned thing last?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s practically over,” I lied cheerfully. “No more fighting for

you and precious little for me. The Boche is done in all right.... What

you’ve got to do, my lad, is to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four

and spend half the rest catching trout. We’ll have a shot at the

grouse-bird together this autumn and we’ll get some of the old gang to

join us.”

Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to see

the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on. She seemed little more than

a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a

flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her

white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she

arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so

merry and so grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn,

and I remember noticing that she moved with the free grace of an

athletic boy.

“Who on earth’s that?” I asked Blaikie.

“That? Oh, one of the sisters,” he said listlessly. “There are squads

of them. I can’t tell one from another.”

Nothing gave me such an impression of my friend’s sickness as the fact

that he should have no interest in something so fresh and jolly as that

girl. Presently my time was up and I had to go, and as I looked back I

saw him sunk in his chair again, his eyes fixed on vacancy, and his

hands gripping his knees.

The thought of him depressed me horribly. Here was I condemned to some

rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety, while the salt of the earth

like Blaikie was paying the ghastliest price. From him my thoughts flew

to old Peter Pienaar, and I sat down on a roadside wall and read his

last letter. It nearly made me howl. Peter, you must know, had shaved

his beard and joined the Royal Flying Corps the summer before when we

got back from the Greenmantle affair. That was the only kind of reward

he wanted, and, though he was absurdly over age, the authorities

allowed it. They were wise not to stickle about rules, for Peter’s

eyesight and nerve were as good as those of any boy of twenty. I knew

he would do well, but I was not prepared for his immediately blazing

success. He got his pilot’s certificate in record time and went out to

France; and presently even we foot-sloggers, busy shifting ground

before the Somme, began to hear rumours of his doings. He developed a

perfect genius for air-fighting. There were plenty better trick-flyers,

and plenty who knew more about the science of the game, but there was

no one with quite Peter’s genius for an actual scrap. He was as full of

dodges a couple of miles up in the sky as he had been among the rocks

of the Berg. He apparently knew how to hide in the empty air as

cleverly as in the long grass of the Lebombo Flats. Amazing yarns began

to circulate among the infantry about this new airman, who could take

cover below one plane of an enemy squadron while all the rest were

looking for him. I remember talking about him with the South Africans

when we were out resting next door to them after the bloody Delville

Wood business. The day before we had seen a good battle in the clouds

when the Boche plane had crashed, and a Transvaal machine-gun officer

brought the report that the British airman had been Pienaar. “Well

done, the old _takhaar!_” he cried, and started to yarn about Peter’s

methods. It appeared that Peter had a theory that every man has a blind

spot, and that he knew just how to find that blind spot in the world of

air. The best cover, he maintained, was not in cloud or a wisp of fog,

but in the unseeing patch in the eye of your enemy. I recognised that

talk for the real thing. It was on a par with Peter’s doctrine of

“atmosphere” and “the double bluff” and all the other principles that

his queer old mind had cogitated out of his rackety life.

By the end of August that year Peter’s was about the best-known figure

in the Flying Corps. If the reports had mentioned names he would have

been a national hero, but he was only “Lieutenant Blank,” and the

newspapers, which expatiated on his deeds, had to praise the Service

and not the man. That was right enough, for half the magic of our

Flying Corps was its freedom from advertisement. But the British Army

knew all about him, and the men in the trenches used to discuss him as

if he were a crack football-player. There was a very big German airman

called Lensch, one of the Albatross heroes, who about the end of August

claimed to have destroyed thirty-two Allied machines. Peter had then

only seventeen planes to his credit, but he was rapidly increasing his

score. Lensch was a mighty man of valour and a good sportsman after his

fashion. He was amazingly quick at manœuvring his machine in the actual

fight, but Peter was supposed to be better at forcing the kind of fight

he wanted. Lensch, if you like, was the tactician and Peter the

strategist. Anyhow the two were out to get each other. There were

plenty of fellows who saw the campaign as a struggle not between Hun

and Briton, but between Lensch and Pienaar.

The 15th September came, and I got knocked out and went to hospital.

When I was fit to read the papers again and receive letters, I found to

my consternation that Peter had been downed. It happened at the end of

October when the southwest gales badly handicapped our airwork. When

our bombing or reconnaissance jobs behind the enemy lines were

completed, instead of being able to glide back into safety, we had to

fight our way home slowly against a head-wind exposed to Archies and

Hun planes. Somewhere east of Bapaume on a return journey Peter fell in

with Lensch—at least the German Press gave Lensch the credit. His

petrol tank was shot to bits and he was forced to descend in a wood

near Morchies. “The celebrated British airman, Pinner,” in the words of

the German _communiqué_, was made prisoner.

I had no letter from him till the beginning of the New Year, when I was

preparing to return to France. It was a very contented letter. He

seemed to have been fairly well treated, though he had always a low

standard of what he expected from the world in the way of comfort. I

inferred that his captors had not identified in the brilliant airman

the Dutch miscreant who a year before had broken out of a German jail.

He had discovered the pleasures of reading and had perfected himself in

an art which he had once practised indifferently. Somehow or other he

had got a _Pilgrim’s Progress_, from which he seemed to extract

enormous pleasure. And then at the end, quite casually, he mentioned

that he had been badly wounded and that his left leg would never be

much use again.

After that I got frequent letters, and I wrote to him every week and

sent him every kind of parcel I could think of. His letters used to

make me both ashamed and happy. I had always banked on old Peter, and

here he was behaving like an early Christian martyr—never a word of

complaint, and just as cheery as if it were a winter morning on the

high veld and we were off to ride down springbok. I knew what the loss

of a leg must mean to him, for bodily fitness had always been his

pride. The rest of life must have unrolled itself before him very drab

and dusty to the grave. But he wrote as if he were on the top of his

form and kept commiserating me on the discomforts of my job. The

picture of that patient, gentle old fellow, hobbling about his compound

and puzzling over his _Pilgrim’s Progress_, a cripple for life after

five months of blazing glory, would have stiffened the back of a

jellyfish.

This last letter was horribly touching, for summer had come and the

smell of the woods behind his prison reminded Peter of a place in the

Woodbush, and one could read in every sentence the ache of exile. I sat

on that stone wall and considered how trifling were the crumpled leaves

in my bed of life compared with the thorns Peter and Blaikie had to lie

on. I thought of Sandy far off in Mesopotamia, and old Blenkiron

groaning with dyspepsia somewhere in America, and I considered that

they were the kind of fellows who did their jobs without complaining.

The result was that when I got up to go on I had recovered a manlier

temper. I wasn’t going to shame my friends or pick and choose my duty.

I would trust myself to Providence, for, as Blenkiron used to say,

Providence was all right if you gave him a chance.

It was not only Peter’s letter that steadied and calmed me. Isham stood

high up in a fold of the hills away from the main valley, and the road

I was taking brought me over the ridge and back to the stream-side. I

climbed through great beechwoods, which seemed in the twilight like

some green place far below the sea, and then over a short stretch of

hill pasture to the rim of the vale. All about me were little fields

enclosed with walls of grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were

dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman

Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and

skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its

water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village

settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with

a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter

of small birds and the night wind in the tops of the beeches.

In that moment I had a kind of revelation. I had a vision of what I had

been fighting for, what we all were fighting for. It was peace, deep

and holy and ancient, peace older than the oldest wars, peace which

would endure when all our swords were hammered into ploughshares. It

was more; for in that hour England first took hold of me. Before my

country had been South Africa, and when I thought of home it had been

the wide sun-steeped spaces of the veld or some scented glen of the

Berg. But now I realised that I had a new home. I understood what a

precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly and

comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The freedom of an acre of

her soil was cheaply bought by the blood of the best of us. I knew what

it meant to be a poet, though for the life of me I could not have made

a line of verse. For in that hour I had a prospect as if from a hilltop

which made all the present troubles of the road seem of no account. I

saw not only victory after war, but a new and happier world after

victory, when I should inherit something of this English peace and wrap

myself in it till the end of my days.

Very humbly and quietly, like a man walking through a cathedral, I went

down the hill to the Manor lodge, and came to a door in an old

red-brick façade, smothered in magnolias which smelt like hot lemons in

the June dusk. The car from the inn had brought on my baggage, and

presently I was dressing in a room which looked out on a water-garden.

For the first time for more than a year I put on a starched shirt and a

dinner-jacket, and as I dressed I could have sung from pure

lightheartedness. I was in for some arduous job, and sometime that

evening in that place I should get my marching orders. Someone would

arrive—perhaps Bullivant—and read me the riddle. But whatever it was, I

was ready for it, for my whole being had found a new purpose. Living in

the trenches, you are apt to get your horizon narrowed down to the

front line of enemy barbed wire on one side and the nearest rest

billets on the other. But now I seemed to see beyond the fog to a happy

country.

High-pitched voices greeted my ears as I came down the broad staircase,

voices which scarcely accorded with the panelled walls and the austere

family portraits; and when I found my hostesses in the hall I thought

their looks still less in keeping with the house. Both ladies were on

the wrong side of forty, but their dress was that of young girls. Miss

Doria Wymondham was tall and thin with a mass of nondescript pale hair

confined by a black velvet fillet. Miss Claire Wymondham was shorter

and plumper and had done her best by ill-applied cosmetics to make

herself look like a foreign _demi-mondaine_. They greeted me with the

friendly casualness which I had long ago discovered was the right

English manner towards your guests; as if they had just strolled in and

billeted themselves, and you were quite glad to see them but mustn’t be

asked to trouble yourself further. The next second they were cooing

like pigeons round a picture which a young man was holding up in the

lamplight.

He was a tallish, lean fellow of round about thirty years, wearing grey

flannels and shoes dusty from the country roads. His thin face was

sallow as if from living indoors, and he had rather more hair on his

head than most of us. In the glow of the lamp his features were very

clear, and I examined them with interest, for, remember, I was

expecting a stranger to give me orders. He had a long, rather strong

chin and an obstinate mouth with peevish lines about its corners. But

the remarkable feature was his eyes. I can best describe them by saying

that they looked hot—not fierce or angry, but so restless that they

seemed to ache physically and to want sponging with cold water.

They finished their talk about the picture—which was couched in a

jargon of which I did not understand one word—and Miss Doria turned to

me and the young man.

“My cousin Launcelot Wake—Mr Brand.”

We nodded stiffly and Mr Wake’s hand went up to smooth his hair in a

self-conscious gesture.

“Has Barnard announced dinner? By the way, where is Mary?”

“She came in five minutes ago and I sent her to change,” said Miss

Claire. “I won’t have her spoiling the evening with that horrid

uniform. She may masquerade as she likes out-of-doors, but this house

is for civilised people.”

The butler appeared and mumbled something. “Come along,” cried Miss

Doria, “for I’m sure you are starving, Mr Brand. And Launcelot has

bicycled ten miles.”

The dining-room was very unlike the hall. The panelling had been

stripped off, and the walls and ceiling were covered with a dead-black

satiny paper on which hung the most monstrous pictures in large

dull-gold frames. I could only see them dimly, but they seemed to be a

mere riot of ugly colour. The young man nodded towards them. “I see you

have got the Dégousses hung at last,” he said.

“How exquisite they are!” cried Miss Claire. “How subtle and candid and

brave! Doria and I warm our souls at their flame.”

Some aromatic wood had been burned in the room, and there was a queer

sickly scent about. Everything in that place was strained and uneasy

and abnormal—the candle shades on the table, the mass of faked china

fruit in the centre dish, the gaudy hangings and the nightmarish walls.

But the food was magnificent. It was the best dinner I had eaten since

1914.

“Tell me, Mr Brand,” said Miss Doria, her long white face propped on a

much-beringed hand. “You are one of us? You are in revolt against this

crazy war?”

“Why, yes,” I said, remembering my part. “I think a little common-sense

would settle it right away.”

“With a little common-sense it would never have started,” said Mr Wake.

“Launcelot’s a C.O., you know,” said Miss Doria.

I did not know, for he did not look any kind of soldier.... I was just

about to ask him what he commanded, when I remembered that the letters

stood also for “Conscientious Objector,” and stopped in time.

At that moment someone slipped into the vacant seat on my right hand. I

turned and saw the V.A.D. girl who had brought tea to Blaikie that

afternoon at the hospital.

“He was exempted by his Department,” the lady went on, “for he’s a

Civil Servant, and so he never had a chance of testifying in court, but

no one has done better work for our cause. He is on the committee of

the L.D.A., and questions have been asked about him in Parliament.”

The man was not quite comfortable at this biography. He glanced

nervously at me and was going to begin some kind of explanation, when

Miss Doria cut him short. “Remember our rule, Launcelot. No turgid war

controversy within these walls.”

I agreed with her. The war had seemed closely knit to the summer

landscape for all its peace, and to the noble old chambers of the

Manor. But in that demented modish dining-room it was shriekingly

incongruous.

Then they spoke of other things. Mostly of pictures or common friends,

and a little of books. They paid no heed to me, which was fortunate,

for I know nothing about these matters and didn’t understand half the

language. But once Miss Doria tried to bring me in. They were talking

about some Russian novel—a name like _Leprous Souls_—and she asked me

if I had read it. By a curious chance I had. It had drifted somehow

into our dug-out on the Scarpe, and after we had all stuck in the

second chapter it had disappeared in the mud to which it naturally

belonged. The lady praised its “poignancy” and “grave beauty.” I

assented and congratulated myself on my second escape—for if the

question had been put to me I should have described it as God-forgotten

twaddle.

I turned to the girl, who welcomed me with a smile. I had thought her

pretty in her V.A.D. dress, but now, in a filmy black gown and with her

hair no longer hidden by a cap, she was the most ravishing thing you

ever saw. And I observed something else. There was more than good looks

in her young face. Her broad, low brow and her laughing eyes were

amazingly intelligent. She had an uncanny power of making her eyes go

suddenly grave and deep, like a glittering river narrowing into a pool.

“We shall never be introduced,” she said, “so let me reveal myself. I’m

Mary Lamington and these are my aunts.... Did you really like _Leprous

Souls?_”

It was easy enough to talk to her. And oddly enough her mere presence

took away the oppression I had felt in that room. For she belonged to

the out-of-doors and to the old house and to the world at large. She

belonged to the war, and to that happier world beyond it—a world which

must be won by going through the struggle and not by shirking it, like

those two silly ladies.

I could see Wake’s eyes often on the girl, while he boomed and

oraculated and the Misses Wymondham prattled. Presently the

conversation seemed to leave the flowery paths of art and to verge

perilously near forbidden topics. He began to abuse our generals in the

field. I could not choose but listen. Miss Lamington’s brows were

slightly bent, as if in disapproval, and my own temper began to rise.

He had every kind of idiotic criticism—incompetence, faint-heartedness,

corruption. Where he got the stuff I can’t imagine, for the most

grousing Tommy, with his leave stopped, never put together such

balderdash. Worst of all he asked me to agree with him.

It took all my sense of discipline. “I don’t know much about the

subject,” I said, “but out in South Africa I did hear that the British

leading was the weak point. I expect there’s a good deal in what you

say.”

It may have been fancy, but the girl at my side seemed to whisper “Well

done!”

Wake and I did not remain long behind before joining the ladies; I

purposely cut it short, for I was in mortal fear lest I should lose my

temper and spoil everything. I stood up with my back against the

mantelpiece for as long as a man may smoke a cigarette, and I let him

yarn to me, while I looked steadily at his face. By this time I was

very clear that Wake was not the fellow to give me my instructions. He

wasn’t playing a game. He was a perfectly honest crank, but not a

fanatic, for he wasn’t sure of himself. He had somehow lost his

self-respect and was trying to argue himself back into it. He had

considerable brains, for the reasons he gave for differing from most of

his countrymen were good so far as they went. I shouldn’t have cared to

take him on in public argument. If you had told me about such a fellow

a week before I should have been sick at the thought of him. But now I

didn’t dislike him. I was bored by him and I was also tremendously

sorry for him. You could see he was as restless as a hen.

When we went back to the hall he announced that he must get on the

road, and commandeered Miss Lamington to help him find his bicycle. It

appeared he was staying at an inn a dozen miles off for a couple of

days’ fishing, and the news somehow made me like him better. Presently

the ladies of the house departed to bed for their beauty sleep and I

was left to my own devices.

For some time I sat smoking in the hall wondering when the messenger

would arrive. It was getting late and there seemed to be no preparation

in the house to receive anybody. The butler came in with a tray of

drinks and I asked him if he expected another guest that night.

“I ’adn’t ’eard of it, sir,” was his answer. “There ’asn’t been a

telegram that I know of, and I ’ave received no instructions.”

I lit my pipe and sat for twenty minutes reading a weekly paper. Then I

got up and looked at the family portraits. The moon coming through the

lattice invited me out-of-doors as a cure for my anxiety. It was after

eleven o’clock, and I was still without any knowledge of my next step.

It is a maddening business to be screwed up for an unpleasant job and

to have the wheels of the confounded thing tarry.

Outside the house beyond a flagged terrace the lawn fell away, white in

the moonshine, to the edge of the stream, which here had expanded into

a miniature lake. By the water’s edge was a little formal garden with

grey stone parapets which now gleamed like dusky marble. Great wafts of

scent rose from it, for the lilacs were scarcely over and the may was

in full blossom. Out from the shade of it came suddenly a voice like a

nightingale.

It was singing the old song “Cherry Ripe”, a common enough thing which

I had chiefly known from barrel-organs. But heard in the scented

moonlight it seemed to hold all the lingering magic of an elder England

and of this hallowed countryside. I stepped inside the garden bounds

and saw the head of the girl Mary.

She was conscious of my presence, for she turned towards me.

“I was coming to look for you,” she said, “now that the house is quiet.

I have something to say to you, General Hannay.”

She knew my name and must be somehow in the business. The thought

entranced me.

“Thank God I can speak to you freely,” I cried. “Who and what are

you—living in that house in that kind of company?”

“My good aunts!” She laughed softly. “They talk a great deal about

their souls, but they really mean their nerves. Why, they are what you

call my camouflage, and a very good one too.”

“And that cadaverous young prig?”

“Poor Launcelot! Yes—camouflage too—perhaps something a little more.

You must not judge him too harshly.”

“But ... but—” I did not know how to put it, and stammered in my

eagerness. “How can I tell that you are the right person for me to

speak to? You see I am under orders, and I have got none about you.”

“I will give you proof,” she said. “Three days ago Sir Walter Bullivant

and Mr Macgillivray told you to come here tonight and to wait here for

further instructions. You met them in the little smoking-room at the

back of the Rota Club. You were bidden take the name of Cornelius

Brand, and turn yourself from a successful general into a pacifist

South African engineer. Is that correct?”

“Perfectly.”

“You have been restless all evening looking for the messenger to give

you these instructions. Set your mind at ease. No messenger is coming.

You will get your orders from me.”

“I could not take them from a more welcome source,” I said.

“Very prettily put. If you want further credentials I can tell you much

about your own doings in the past three years. I can explain to you who

don’t need the explanation, every step in the business of the Black

Stone. I think I could draw a pretty accurate map of your journey to

Erzerum. You have a letter from Peter Pienaar in your pocket—I can tell

you its contents. Are you willing to trust me?”

“With all my heart,” I said.

“Good. Then my first order will try you pretty hard. For I have no

orders to give you except to bid you go and steep yourself in a

particular kind of life. Your first duty is to get ‘atmosphere’, as

your friend Peter used to say. Oh, I will tell you where to go and how

to behave. But I can’t bid you _do_ anything, only live idly with open

eyes and ears till you have got the ‘feel’ of the situation.”

She stopped and laid a hand on my arm.

“It won’t be easy. It would madden me, and it will be a far heavier

burden for a man like you. You have got to sink down deep into the life

of the half-baked, the people whom this war hasn’t touched or has

touched in the wrong way, the people who split hairs all day and are

engrossed in what you and I would call selfish little fads. Yes. People

like my aunts and Launcelot, only for the most part in a different

social grade. You won’t live in an old manor like this, but among

gimcrack little ‘arty’ houses. You will hear everything you regard as

sacred laughed at and condemned, and every kind of nauseous folly

acclaimed, and you must hold your tongue and pretend to agree. You will

have nothing in the world to do except to let the life soak into you,

and, as I have said, keep your eyes and ears open.”

“But you must give me some clue as to what I should be looking for?”

“My orders are to give you none. Our chiefs—yours and mine—want you to

go where you are going without any kind of _parti pris_. Remember we

are still in the intelligence stage of the affair. The time hasn’t yet

come for a plan of campaign, and still less for action.”

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Is it a really big thing we’re after?”

“A—really—big—thing,” she said slowly and very gravely. “You and I and

some hundred others are hunting the most dangerous man in all the

world. Till we succeed everything that Britain does is crippled. If we

fail or succeed too late the Allies may never win the victory which is

their right. I will tell you one thing to cheer you. It is in some sort

a race against time, so your purgatory won’t endure too long.”

I was bound to obey, and she knew it, for she took my willingness for

granted.

From a little gold satchel she selected a tiny box, and opening it

extracted a thing like a purple wafer with a white St Andrew’s Cross on

it.

“What kind of watch have you? Ah, a hunter. Paste that inside the lid.

Some day you may be called on to show it.... One other thing. Buy

tomorrow a copy of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and get it by heart. You

will receive letters and messages some day and the style of our friends

is apt to be reminiscent of John Bunyan.... The car will be at the door

tomorrow to catch the ten-thirty, and I will give you the address of

the rooms that have been taken for you.... Beyond that I have nothing

to say, except to beg you to play the part well and keep your temper.

You behaved very nicely at dinner.”

I asked one last question as we said good night in the hall. “Shall I

see you again?”

“Soon, and often,” was the answer. “Remember we are colleagues.”

I went upstairs feeling extraordinarily comforted. I had a perfectly

beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all glorified and coloured

with the thought of the girl who had sung “Cherry Ripe” in the garden.

I commended the wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of

his intermediary, for I’m hanged if I would have taken such orders from

anyone else.