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

know more about him than we knew in the summer? Mary, what did Bommaerts pretend to be?”

“An Englishman.” Mary spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone, as if it were a perfectly usual thing to be made love to by a spy, and that rather soothed my annoyance. “When he asked me to marry him he proposed to take me to a country-house in Devonshire. I rather think, too, he had a place in Scotland. But of course he’s a German.”

“Ye-es,” said Blenkiron slowly, “I’ve got on to his record, and it isn’t a pretty story. It’s taken some working out, but I’ve got all the links tested now⁠ ⁠… He’s a Boche and a large-sized nobleman in his own state. Did you ever hear of the Graf von Schwabing?”

I shook my head.

“I think I have heard Uncle Charlie speak of him,” said Mary, wrinkling her brows. “He used to hunt with the Pytchley.”

“That’s the man. But he hasn’t troubled the Pytchley for the last eight years. There was a time when he was the last thing in smartness in the German court⁠—officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever⁠—all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it’s easy to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my experience don’t excel in the lighter vein. Anyway, he was William’s white-headed boy, and there wasn’t a mother with a daughter who wasn’t out gunning for Otto von Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and Noo York⁠—and in Paris, too. Ask Sir Walter about him, Dick. He says he had twice the brains of Kuhlmann, and better manners than the Austrian fellow he used to yarn about⁠ ⁠… Well, one day there came an almighty court scandal, and the bottom dropped out of the Graf’s world. It was a pretty beastly story, and I don’t gather that Schwabing was as deep in it as some others. But the trouble was that those others had to be shielded at all costs, and Schwabing was made the scapegoat. His name came out in the papers and he had to go.”

“What was the case called?” I asked.

Blenkiron mentioned a name, and I knew why the word Schwabing was familiar. I had read the story long ago in Rhodesia.

“It was some smash,” Blenkiron went on. “He was drummed out of the Guards, out of the clubs, out of the country⁠ ⁠… Now, how would you have felt, Dick, if you had been the Graf? Your life and work and happiness crossed out, and all to save a mangy princeling. ‘Bitter as hell,’ you say. Hungering for a chance to put it across the lot that had outed you? You wouldn’t rest till you had William sobbing on his knees asking your pardon, and you not thinking of granting it? That’s the way you’d feel, but that wasn’t the Graf’s way, and what’s more it isn’t the German way. He went into exile hating humanity, and with a heart all poison and snakes, but itching to get back. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because his kind of German hasn’t got any other home on this earth. Oh, yes, I know there’s stacks of good old Teutons come and squat in our little country and turn into fine Americans. You can do a lot with them if you catch them young and teach them the Declaration of Independence and make them study our Sunday papers. But you can’t deny there’s something comic in the rough about all Germans, before you’ve civilized them. They’re a pecooliar people, a darned pecooliar people, else they wouldn’t staff all the menial and indecent occupations on the globe. But that pecooliarity, which is only skin-deep in the working Boche, is in the bone of the grandee. Your German aristocracy can’t consort on terms of equality with any other Upper Ten Thousand. They swagger and bluff about the world, but they know very well that the world’s sniggering at them. They’re like a boss from Salt Creek Gully who’s made his pile and bought a dress suit and dropped into a Newport evening party. They don’t know where to put their hands or how to keep their feet still⁠ ⁠… Your copper-bottomed English nobleman has got to keep jogging himself to treat them as equals instead of sending them down to the servants’ hall. Their fine fixings are just the high light that reveals the everlasting jay. They can’t be gentlemen, because they aren’t sure of themselves. The world laughs at them, and they know it and it riles them like hell⁠ ⁠… That’s why when a Graf is booted out of the Fatherland, he’s got to creep back somehow or be a wandering Jew for the rest of time.”

Blenkiron lit another cigar and fixed me with his steady, ruminating eye.

“For eight years the man has slaved, body and soul, for the men who degraded him. He’s earned his restoration and I daresay he’s got it in his pocket. If merit was rewarded he should be covered with Iron Crosses and Red Eagles⁠ ⁠… He had a pretty good hand to start out with. He knew other countries and he was a dandy at languages. More, he had an uncommon gift for living a part. That is real genius, Dick, however much it gets up against us. Best of all he had a first-class outfit of brains. I can’t say I ever struck a better, and I’ve come across some bright citizens in my time⁠ ⁠… And now he’s going to win out, unless we get mighty busy.”

There was a knock at the door and the solid figure of Andrew Amos revealed itself.

“It’s time ye was home, Miss Mary. It chappit half-eleven as I came up the stairs. It’s comin’ on to rain, so I’ve brought an umbrelly.”

“One word,” I said. “How old is the man?”

“Just gone thirty-six,” Blenkiron replied.

I turned to Mary, who nodded. “Younger than you, Dick,” she said wickedly