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

close to your instructions, I cherish these two beauties as if they were my own white-headed boys. I wouldn’t for the world interfere with their comfort and liberty. I want them to go on corresponding with their friends. I want to give them every facility.”

He burst out laughing at my mystified face.

“See here, Dick. How do we want to treat the Boche? Why, to fill him up with all the cunningest lies and get him to act on them. Now here is Moxon Ivery, who has always given them good information. They trust him absolutely, and we would be fools to spoil their confidence. Only, if we can find out Moxon’s methods, we can arrange to use them ourselves and send noos in his name which isn’t quite so genooine. Every word he dispatches goes straight to the Grand High Secret General Staff, and old Hindenburg and Ludendorff put towels round their heads and cipher it out. We want to encourage them to go on doing it. We’ll arrange to send true stuff that don’t matter, so as they’ll continue to trust him, and a few selected falsehoods that’ll matter like hell. It’s a game you can’t play forever, but with luck I propose to play it long enough to confuse Fritz’s little plans.”

His face became serious and wore the air that our corps commander used to have at the big powwow before a push.

“I’m not going to give you instructions, for you’re man enough to make your own. But I can give you the general hang of the situation. You tell Ivery you’re going north to inquire into industrial disputes at first hand. That will seem to him natural and in line with your recent behaviour. He’ll tell his people that you’re a guileless colonial who feels disgruntled with Britain, and may come in useful. You’ll go to a man of mine in Glasgow, a red-hot agitator who chooses that way of doing his bit for his country. It’s a darned hard way and darned dangerous. Through him you’ll get in touch with Gresson, and you’ll keep alongside that bright citizen. Find out what he is doing, and get a chance of following him. He must never suspect you, and for that purpose you must be very near the edge of the law yourself. You go up there as an unabashed pacifist and you’ll live with folk that will turn your stomach. Maybe you’ll have to break some of these two-cent rules the British Government have invented to defend the realm, and it’s up to you not to get caught out⁠ ⁠… Remember, you’ll get no help from me. You’ve got to wise up about Gresson with the whole forces of the British State arrayed officially against you. I guess it’s a steep proposition, but you’re man enough to make good.”

As we shook hands, he added a last word. “You must take your own time, but it’s not a case for slouching. Every day that passes Ivery is sending out the worst kind of poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse the judgement of our civilians. The whole earth’s war-weary, and we’ve about reached the danger-point. There’s pretty big stakes hang on you, Dick, for things are getting mighty delicate.”

I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St. Pancras in time to have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery was at the bookstall buying an evening paper. When we got into the carriage he seized my Punch and kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the citizen turned countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent home. Everything was right⁠—his neat tweeds, his light spats, his spotted neckcloth, and his Aquascutum.

Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me eager to search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had always been a little offhand with him, for I had never much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the train⁠—the second volume of Hazlitt’s Essays, the last of my English classics⁠—and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company at Biggleswick.

“Hazlitt was the academic radical of his day,” he said. “He is always lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real thing save their breath for action.”

That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North. I said I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life at close quarters. “Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,” I said.

He was very interested and encouraging. “That’s the right way to set about it,” he said. “Where were you thinking of going?”

I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided to try Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm corner.

“Right,” he said. “I only wish I was coming with you. It’ll take you a little while to understand the language. You’ll find a good deal of senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they’ve got parrot-cries about the war as they used to have parrot-cries about their labour politics. But there’s plenty of shrewd brains and sound hearts too. You must write and tell me your conclusions.”

It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the journey. I looked at him and wished I could see into the mind at the back of that mask-like face. I counted for nothing in his eyes, not even enough for him to want