Mr. Standfast
suddenly less attractive. I hoped the war wouldn’t last much longer,
though with Russia heading straight for the devil I didn’t know how it
was going to stop very soon. I was determined to see Mary before I
left, and I had a good excuse, for I had taken my orders from her. The
prospect entranced me, and I was mooning along in a happy dream, when I
collided violently with an agitated citizen.
Then I realised that something very odd was happening.
There was a dull sound like the popping of the corks of flat soda-water
bottles. There was a humming, too, from very far up in the skies.
People in the street were either staring at the heavens or running
wildly for shelter. A motor-bus in front of me emptied its contents in
a twinkling; a taxi pulled up with a jar and the driver and fare dived
into a second-hand bookshop. It took me a moment or two to realise the
meaning of it all, and I had scarcely done this when I got a very
practical proof. A hundred yards away a bomb fell on a street island,
shivering every window-pane in a wide radius, and sending splinters of
stone flying about my head. I did what I had done a hundred times
before at the Front, and dropped flat on my face.
The man who says he doesn’t mind being bombed or shelled is either a
liar or a maniac. This London air raid seemed to me a singularly
unpleasant business. I think it was the sight of the decent civilised
life around one and the orderly streets, for what was perfectly natural
in a rubble-heap like Ypres or Arras seemed an outrage here. I remember
once being in billets in a Flanders village where I had the Maire’s
house and sat in a room upholstered in cut velvet, with wax flowers on
the mantelpiece and oil paintings of three generations on the walls.
The Boche took it into his head to shell the place with a long-range
naval gun, and I simply loathed it. It was horrible to have dust and
splinters blown into that snug, homely room, whereas if I had been in a
ruined barn I wouldn’t have given the thing two thoughts. In the same
way bombs dropping in central London seemed a grotesque indecency. I
hated to see plump citizens with wild eyes, and nursemaids with scared
children, and miserable women scuttling like rabbits in a warren.
The drone grew louder, and, looking up, I could see the enemy planes
flying in a beautiful formation, very leisurely as it seemed, with all
London at their mercy. Another bomb fell to the right, and presently
bits of our own shrapnel were clattering viciously around me. I thought
it about time to take cover, and ran shamelessly for the best place I
could see, which was a Tube station. Five minutes before the street had
been crowded; now I left behind me a desert dotted with one bus and
three empty taxicabs.
I found the Tube entrance filled with excited humanity. One stout lady
had fainted, and a nurse had become hysterical, but on the whole people
were behaving well. Oddly enough they did not seem inclined to go down
the stairs to the complete security of underground; but preferred
rather to collect where they could still get a glimpse of the upper
world, as if they were torn between fear of their lives and interest in
the spectacle. That crowd gave me a good deal of respect for my
countrymen. But several were badly rattled, and one man a little way
off, whose back was turned, kept twitching his shoulders as if he had
the colic.
I watched him curiously, and a movement of the crowd brought his face
into profile. Then I gasped with amazement, for I saw that it was
Ivery.
And yet it was not Ivery. There were the familiar nondescript features,
the blandness, the plumpness, but all, so to speak, in ruins. The man
was in a blind funk. His features seemed to be dislimning before my
eyes. He was growing sharper, finer, in a way younger, a man without
grip on himself, a shapeless creature in process of transformation. He
was being reduced to his rudiments. Under the spell of panic he was
becoming a new man.
And the crazy thing was that I knew the new man better than the old.
My hands were jammed close to my sides by the crowd; I could scarcely
turn my head, and it was not the occasion for one’s neighbours to
observe one’s expression. If it had been, mine must have been a study.
My mind was far away from air raids, back in the hot summer weather of
1914. I saw a row of villas perched on a headland above the sea. In the
garden of one of them two men were playing tennis, while I was
crouching behind an adjacent bush. One of these was a plump young man
who wore a coloured scarf round his waist and babbled of golf
handicaps.... I saw him again in the villa dining-room, wearing a
dinner-jacket, and lisping a little.... I sat opposite him at bridge, I
beheld him collared by two of Macgillivray’s men, when his comrade had
rushed for the thirty-nine steps that led to the sea.... I saw, too,
the sitting-room of my old flat in Portland Place and heard little
Scudder’s quick, anxious voice talking about the three men he feared
most on earth, one of whom lisped in his speech. I had thought that all
three had long ago been laid under the turf....
He was not looking my way, and I could devour his face in safety. There
was no shadow of doubt. I had always put him down as the most amazing
actor on earth, for had he not played the part of the First Sea Lord
and deluded that officer’s daily colleagues? But he could do far more
than any human actor, for he could take on a new personality and with
it a new appearance, and live steadily in the character as if he had
been born in it.... My mind was a blank, and I could only make blind
gropings at conclusions.... How had he escaped the death of a spy and a
murderer, for I had last seen him in the hands of justice?... Of course
he had known me from the first day in Biggleswick.... I had thought to
play with him, and he had played most cunningly and damnably with me.
In that sweating sardine-tin of refugees I shivered in the bitterness
of my chagrin.
And then I found his face turned to mine, and I knew that he recognised
me. More, I knew that he knew that I had recognised him—not as Ivery,
but as that other man. There came into his eyes a curious look of
comprehension, which for a moment overcame his funk.
I had sense enough to see that that put the final lid on it. There was
still something doing if he believed that I was blind, but if he once
thought that I knew the truth he would be through our meshes and
disappear like a fog.
My first thought was to get at him and collar him and summon everybody
to help me by denouncing him for what he was. Then I saw that that was
impossible. I was a private soldier in a borrowed uniform, and he could
easily turn the story against me. I must use surer weapons. I must get
to Bullivant and Macgillivray and set their big machine to work. Above
all I must get to Blenkiron.
I started to squeeze out of that push, for air raids now seemed far too
trivial to give a thought to. Moreover the guns had stopped, but so
sheeplike is human nature that the crowd still hung together, and it
took me a good fifteen minutes to edge my way to the open air. I found
that the trouble was over, and the street had resumed its usual
appearance. Buses and taxis were running, and voluble knots of people
were recounting their experiences. I started off for Blenkiron’s
bookshop, as the nearest harbour of refuge.
But in Piccadilly Circus I was stopped by a military policeman. He
asked my name and battalion, and I gave him them, while his suspicious
eye ran over my figure. I had no pack or rifle, and the crush in the
Tube station had not improved my appearance. I explained that I was
going back to France that evening, and he asked for my warrant. I fancy
my preoccupation made me nervous and I lied badly. I said I had left it
with my kit in the house of my married sister, but I fumbled in giving
the address. I could see that the fellow did not believe a word of it.
Just then up came an A.P.M. He was a pompous dug-out, very splendid in
his red tabs and probably bucked up at having just been under fire.
Anyhow he was out to walk in the strict path of duty.
“Tomkins!” he said. “Tomkins! We’ve got some fellow of that name on our
records. Bring him along, Wilson.”
“But, sir,” I said, “I must—I simply must meet my friend. It’s urgent
business, and I assure you I’m all right. If you don’t believe me, I’ll
take a taxi and we’ll go down to Scotland Yard and I’ll stand by what
they say.”
His brow grew dark with wrath. “What infernal nonsense is this?
Scotland Yard! What the devil has Scotland Yard to do with it? You’re
an imposter. I can see it in your face. I’ll have your depot rung up,
and you’ll be in jail in a couple of hours. I know a deserter when I
see him. Bring him along, Wilson. You know what to do if he tries to
bolt.”
I had a momentary thought of breaking away, but decided that the odds
were too much against me. Fuming with impatience, I followed the A.P.M.
to his office on the first floor in a side street. The precious minutes
were slipping past; Ivery, now thoroughly warned, was making good his
escape; and I, the sole repository of a deadly secret, was tramping in
this absurd procession.
The A.P.M. issued his orders. He gave instructions that my depot should
be rung up, and he bade Wilson remove me to what he called the
guard-room. He sat down at his desk, and busied himself with a mass of
buff dockets.
In desperation I renewed my appeal. “I implore you to telephone to Mr
Macgillivray at Scotland Yard. It’s a matter of life and death, Sir.
You’re taking a very big responsibility if you don’t.”
I had hopelessly offended his brittle dignity. “Any more of your
insolence and I’ll have you put in irons. I’ll attend to you soon
enough for your comfort. Get out of this till I send for you.”
As I looked at his foolish, irritable face I realised that I was fairly
UP against it. Short of assault and battery on everybody I was bound to
submit. I saluted respectfully and was marched away.
The hours I spent in that bare anteroom are like a nightmare in my
recollection. A sergeant was busy at a desk with more buff dockets and
an orderly waited on a stool by a telephone. I looked at my watch and
observed that it was one o’clock. Soon the slamming of a door announced
that the A.P.M. had gone to lunch. I tried conversation with the fat
sergeant, but he very soon shut me up. So I sat hunched up on the
wooden form and chewed the cud of my vexation.
I thought with bitterness of the satisfaction which had filled me in
the morning. I had fancied myself the devil of a fine fellow, and I had
been no more than a mountebank. The adventures of the past days seemed
merely childish. I had been telling lies and cutting capers over half
Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had only been
behaving like a schoolboy. On such occasions a man is rarely just to
himself, and the intensity of my self-abasement would have satisfied my
worst enemy. It didn’t console me that the futility of it all was not
my blame. I was looking for excuses. It was the facts that cried out
against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.
For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me since the first
day at Biggleswick. He had applauded my speeches and flattered me, and
advised me to go to the Clyde, laughing at me all the time. Gresson,
too, had known. Now I saw it all. He had tried to drown me between
Colonsay and Mull. It was Gresson who had set the police on me in
Morvern. The bagman Linklater had been one of Gresson’s creatures. The
only meagre consolation was that the gang had thought me dangerous
enough to attempt to murder me, and that they knew nothing about my
doings in Skye. Of that I was positive. They had marked me down, but