Mr. Standfast
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