Mr. Standfast
afternoon it simply got tired and sat down in the middle of a moor and
reflected for an hour. I stuck my head out of the window now and then,
and smelt the rooty fragrance of bogs, and when we halted on a bridge I
watched the trout in the pools of the brown river. Then I slept and
smoked alternately, and began to get furiously hungry.
Once I woke to hear the soldiers discussing the war. There was an
argument between a lance-corporal in the Camerons and a sapper private
about some trivial incident on the Somme.
“I tell ye I was there,” said the Cameron. “We were relievin’ the Black
Watch, and Fritz was shelling the road, and we didna get up to the line
till one o’clock in the mornin’. Frae Frickout Circus to the south end
o’ the High Wood is every bit o’ five mile.”
“Not abune three,” said the sapper dogmatically.
“Man, I’ve trampit it.”
“Same here. I took up wire every nicht for a week.”
The Cameron looked moodily round the company. “I wish there was anither
man here that kent the place. He wad bear me out. These boys are no
good, for they didna join till later. I tell ye it’s five mile.”
“Three,” said the sapper.
Tempers were rising, for each of the disputants felt his veracity
assailed. It was too hot for a quarrel and I was so drowsy that I was
heedless.
“Shut up, you fools,” I said. “The distance is six kilometres, so
you’re both wrong.”
My tone was so familiar to the men that it stopped the wrangle, but it
was not the tone of a publisher’s traveller. Mr Linklater cocked his
ears.
“What’s a kilometre, Mr McCaskie?” he asked blandly.
“Multiply by five and divide by eight and you get the miles.”
I was on my guard now, and told a long story of a nephew who had been
killed on the Somme, and how I had corresponded with the War Office
about his case. “Besides,” I said, “I’m a great student o’ the
newspapers, and I’ve read all the books about the war. It’s a difficult
time this for us all, and if you can take a serious interest in the
campaign it helps a lot. I mean working out the places on the map and
reading Haig’s dispatches.”
“Just so,” he said dryly, and I thought he watched me with an odd look
in his eyes.
A fresh idea possessed me. This man had been in Gresson’s company, he
knew German, he was obviously something very different from what he
professed to be. What if he were in the employ of our own Secret
Service? I had appeared out of the void at the Kyle, and I had made but
a poor appearance as a bagman, showing no knowledge of my own trade. I
was in an area interdicted to the ordinary public; and he had good
reason to keep an eye on my movements. He was going south, and so was
I; clearly we must somehow part company.
“We change at Muirtown, don’t we?” I asked. “When does the train for
the south leave?”
He consulted a pocket timetable. “Ten-thirty-three. There’s generally
four hours to wait, for we’re due in at six-fifteen. But this auld
hearse will be lucky if it’s in by nine.”
His forecast was correct. We rumbled out of the hills into haughlands
and caught a glimpse of the North Sea. Then we were hung up while a
long goods train passed down the line. It was almost dark when at last
we crawled into Muirtown station and disgorged our load of hot and
weary soldiery.
I bade an ostentatious farewell to Linklater. “Very pleased to have met
you. I’ll see you later on the Edinburgh train. I’m for a walk to
stretch my legs, and a bite o’ supper.” I was very determined that the
ten-thirty for the south should leave without me.
My notion was to get a bed and a meal in some secluded inn, and walk
out next morning and pick up a slow train down the line. Linklater had
disappeared towards the guard’s van to find his luggage, and the
soldiers were sitting on their packs with that air of being utterly and
finally lost and neglected which characterises the British fighting-man
on a journey. I gave up my ticket and, since I had come off a northern
train, walked unhindered into the town.
It was market night, and the streets were crowded. Blue-jackets from
the Fleet, country-folk in to shop, and every kind of military detail
thronged the pavements. Fish-hawkers were crying their wares, and there
was a tatterdemalion piper making the night hideous at a corner. I took
a tortuous route and finally fixed on a modest-looking public-house in
a back street. When I inquired for a room I could find no one in
authority, but a slatternly girl informed me that there was one vacant
bed, and that I could have ham and eggs in the bar. So, after hitting
my head violently against a cross-beam, I stumbled down some steps and
entered a frowsty little place smelling of spilt beer and stale
tobacco.
The promised ham and eggs proved impossible—there were no eggs to be
had in Muirtown that night—but I was given cold mutton and a pint of
indifferent ale. There was nobody in the place but two farmers drinking
hot whisky and water and discussing with sombre interest the rise in
the price of feeding-stuffs. I ate my supper, and was just preparing to
find the whereabouts of my bedroom when through the street door there
entered a dozen soldiers.
In a second the quiet place became a babel. The men were strictly
sober; but they were in that temper of friendliness which demands a
libation of some kind. One was prepared to stand treat; he was the
leader of the lot, and it was to celebrate the end of his leave that he
was entertaining his pals. From where I sat I could not see him, but
his voice was dominant. “What’s your fancy, jock? Beer for you, Andra?
A pint and a dram for me. This is better than vongblong and vongrooge,
Davie. Man, when I’m sittin’ in those estamints, as they ca’ them, I
often long for a guid Scots public.”
The voice was familiar. I shifted my seat to get a view of the speaker,
and then I hastily drew back. It was the Scots Fusilier I had clipped
on the jaw in defending Gresson after the Glasgow meeting.
But by a strange fatality he had caught sight of me.
“Whae’s that i’ the corner?” he cried, leaving the bar to stare at me.
Now it is a queer thing, but if you have once fought with a man, though
only for a few seconds, you remember his face, and the scrap in Glasgow
had been under a lamp. The jock recognised me well enough.
“By God!” he cried, “if this is no a bit o’ luck! Boys, here’s the man
I feucht wi’ in Glesca. Ye mind I telled ye about it. He laid me oot,
and it’s my turn to do the same wi’ him. I had a notion I was gaun to
mak’ a nicht o’t. There’s naebody can hit Geordie Hamilton without
Geordie gettin’ his ain back some day. Get up, man, for I’m gaun to
knock the heid off ye.”
I duly got up, and with the best composure I could muster looked him in
the face.
“You’re mistaken, my friend. I never clapped eyes on you before, and I
never was in Glasgow in my life.”
“That’s a damned lee,” said the Fusilier. “Ye’re the man, and if ye’re
no, ye’re like enough him to need a hidin’!”
“Confound your nonsense!” I said. “I’ve no quarrel with you, and I’ve
better things to do than be scrapping with a stranger in a
public-house.”
“Have ye sae? Well, I’ll learn ye better. I’m gaun to hit ye, and then
ye’ll hae to fecht whether ye want it or no. Tam, haud my jacket, and
see that my drink’s no skailed.”
This was an infernal nuisance, for a row here would bring in the
police, and my dubious position would be laid bare. I thought of
putting up a fight, for I was certain I could lay out the jock a second
time, but the worst of that was that I did not know where the thing
would end. I might have to fight the lot of them, and that meant a
noble public shindy. I did my best to speak my opponent fair. I said we
were all good friends and offered to stand drinks for the party. But
the Fusilier’s blood was up and he was spoiling for a row, ably abetted
by his comrades. He had his tunic off now and was stamping in front of
me with doubled fists.
I did the best thing I could think of in the circumstances. My seat was
close to the steps which led to the other part of the inn. I grabbed my
hat, darted up them, and before they realised what I was doing had
bolted the door behind me. I could hear pandemonium break loose in the
bar.
I slipped down a dark passage to another which ran at right angles to
it, and which seemed to connect the street door of the inn itself with
the back premises. I could hear voices in the little hall, and that
stopped me short.
One of them was Linklater’s, but he was not talking as Linklater had
talked. He was speaking educated English. I heard another with a Scots
accent, which I took to be the landlord’s, and a third which sounded
like some superior sort of constable’s, very prompt and official. I
heard one phrase, too, from Linklater—“He calls himself McCaskie.” Then
they stopped, for the turmoil from the bar had reached the front door.
The Fusilier and his friends were looking for me by the other entrance.
The attention of the men in the hall was distracted, and that gave me a
chance. There was nothing for it but the back door. I slipped through
it into a courtyard and almost tumbled over a tub of water. I planted
the thing so that anyone coming that way would fall over it. A door led
me into an empty stable, and from that into a lane. It was all absurdly
easy, but as I started down the lane I heard a mighty row and the sound
of angry voices. Someone had gone into the tub and I hoped it was
Linklater. I had taken a liking to the Fusilier jock.
There was the beginning of a moon somewhere, but that lane was very
dark. I ran to the left, for on the right it looked like a
_cul-de-sac_. This brought me into a quiet road of two-storied cottages
which showed at one end the lights of a street. So I took the other
way, for I wasn’t going to have the whole population of Muirtown on the
hue-and-cry after me. I came into a country lane, and I also came into
the van of the pursuit, which must have taken a short cut. They shouted
when they saw me, but I had a small start, and legged it down that road
in the belief that I was making for open country.
That was where I was wrong. The road took me round to the other side of
the town, and just when I was beginning to think I had a fair chance I
saw before me the lights of a signal-box and a little to the left of it
the lights of the station. In half an hour’s time the Edinburgh train
would be leaving, but I had made that impossible. Behind me I could
hear the pursuers, giving tongue like hound puppies, for they had
attracted some pretty drunken gentlemen to their party. I was badly
puzzled where to turn, when I noticed outside the station a long line
of blurred lights, which could only mean a train with the carriage
blinds down. It had an engine attached and seemed to be waiting for the
addition of a couple of trucks to start. It was a wild chance, but the
only one I saw. I scrambled across a piece of waste ground, climbed an
embankment and found myself on the metals. I ducked under the couplings
and got on the far side of the train, away from the enemy.
Then simultaneously two things happened. I heard the yells of my
pursuers a dozen yards off, and the train jolted into motion. I jumped
on the footboard, and looked into an open window. The compartment was
packed with troops, six a side and two men sitting on the floor, and
the door was locked. I dived headforemost through the window and landed
on the neck of a weary warrior who had just dropped off to sleep.
While I was falling I made up my mind on my conduct. I must be
intoxicated, for I knew the infinite sympathy of the British soldier
towards those thus overtaken. They pulled me to my feet, and the man I
had descended on rubbed his skull and blasphemously demanded
explanations.