Mr. Standfast - John Buchan (autobiographies to read TXT) 📗

wired ahead of me to prepare the way. Here I handed over Ivery and his guard, for I wanted them to proceed to Amiens under French supervision, well knowing that the men of that great army are not used to let slip what they once hold.

It was a morning of clear spring sunlight when we breakfasted in that little red-roofed town among vineyards with a shining river looping at our feet. The General of Division was an Algerian veteran with a brush of grizzled hair, whose eye kept wandering to a map on the wall where pins and stretched thread made a spider’s web.

“Any news from the north?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “But the attack comes soon. It will be against our army in Champagne.” With a lean finger he pointed out the enemy dispositions.

“Why not against the British?” I asked. With a knife and fork I made a right angle and put a salt dish in the centre. “That is the German concentration. They can so mass that we do not know which side of the angle they will strike till the blow falls.”

“It is true,” he replied. “But consider. For the enemy to attack towards the Somme would be to fight over many miles of an old battleground where all is still desert and every yard of which you British know. In Champagne at a bound he might enter unbroken country. It is a long and difficult road to Amiens, but not so long to Chilons. Such is the view of Petain. Does it convince you?”

“The reasoning is good. Nevertheless he will strike at Amiens, and I think he will begin today.”

He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “Nous verrons. You are obstinate, my general, like all your excellent countrymen.”

But as I left his headquarters an aide-de-camp handed him a message on a pink slip. He read it, and turned to me with a grave face.

“You have a flair, my friend. I am glad we did not wager. This morning at dawn there is great fighting around St. Quentin. Be comforted, for they will not pass. Your Marechal will hold them.”

That was the first news I had of the battle.

At Dijon according to plan I met the others. I only just caught the Paris train, and Blenkiron’s great wrists lugged me into the carriage when it was well in motion. There sat Peter, a docile figure in a carefully patched old R.F.C. uniform. Wake was reading a pile of French papers, and in a corner Mary, with her feet up on the seat, was sound asleep.

We did not talk much, for the life of the past days had been so hectic that we had no wish to recall it. Blenkiron’s face wore an air of satisfaction, and as he looked out at the sunny spring landscape he hummed his only tune. Even Wake had lost his restlessness. He had on a pair of big tortoiseshell reading glasses, and when he looked up from his newspaper and caught my eye he smiled. Mary slept like a child, delicately flushed, her breath scarcely stirring the collar of the greatcoat which was folded across her throat. I remember looking with a kind of awe at the curve of her young face and the long lashes that lay so softly on her cheek, and wondering how I had borne the anxiety of the last months. Wake raised his head from his reading, glanced at Mary and then at me, and his eyes were kind, almost affectionate. He seemed to have won peace of mind among the hills.

Only Peter was out of the picture. He was a strange, disconsolate figure, as he shifted about to ease his leg, or gazed incuriously from the window. He had shaved his beard again, but it did not make him younger, for his face was too lined and his eyes too old to change. When I spoke to him he looked towards Mary and held up a warning finger.

“I go back to England,” he whispered. “Your little mysie is going to take care of me till I am settled. We spoke of it yesterday at my cottage. I will find a lodging and be patient till the war is over. And you, Dick?”

“Oh, I rejoin my division. Thank God, this job is over. I have an easy trund now and can turn my attention to straightforward soldiering. I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be glad to think that you and Mary and Blenkiron are safe at home. What about you, Wake?”

“I go back to my Labour battalion,” he said cheerfully. “Like you, I have an easier mind.”

I shook my head. “We’ll see about that. I don’t like such sinful waste. We’ve had a bit of campaigning together and I know your quality.”

“The battalion’s quite good enough for me,” and he relapsed into a day-old Temps.

Mary had suddenly woke, and was sitting upright with her fists in her eyes like a small child. Her hand flew to her hair, and her eyes ran over us as if to see that we were all there. As she counted the four of us she seemed relieved.

“I reckon you feel refreshed, Miss Mary,” said Blenkiron. “It’s good to think that now we can sleep in peace, all of us. Pretty soon you’ll be in England and spring will be beginning, and please God it’ll be the start of a better world. Our work’s over, anyhow.”

“I wonder,” said the girl gravely. “I don’t think there’s any discharge in this war. Dick, have you news of the battle? This was the day.”

“It’s begun,” I said, and told them the little I had learned from the French General. “I’ve made a reputation as a prophet, for he thought the attack was coming in Champagne. It’s St. Quentin right enough, but I don’t know what has happened. We’ll hear in Paris.”

Mary had woke with a startled air as if she remembered her old instinct that our