Mr. Standfast | Page 3

off. I want you to spend next Thursday night as the
guest of two maiden ladies called Wymondham at Fosse Manor. You
will go down there as a lone South African visiting a sick friend. They
are hospitable souls and entertain many angels unawares.'
'And I get my orders there?'
'You get your orders, and you are under bond to obey them.' And
Bullivant and Macgillivray smiled at each other.
I was thinking hard about that odd conversation as the small Ford car,
which I had wired for to the inn, carried me away from the suburbs of
the county town into a land of rolling hills and green water-meadows. It
was a gorgeous afternoon and the blossom of early June was on every
tree. But I had no eyes for landscape and the summer, being engaged in
reprobating Bullivant and cursing my fantastic fate. I detested my new
part and looked forward to naked shame. It was bad enough for anyone
to have to pose as a pacifist, but for me, strong as a bull and as sunburnt
as a gipsy and not looking my forty years, it was a black disgrace. To
go into Germany as an anti-British Afrikander was a stoutish adventure,

but to lounge about at home talking rot was a very different-sized job.
My stomach rose at the thought of it, and I had pretty well decided to
wire to Bullivant and cry off. There are some things that no one has a
right to ask of any white man.
When I got to Isham and found poor old Blaikie I didn't feel happier.
He had been a friend of mine in Rhodesia, and after the German
South-West affair was over had come home to a Fusilier battalion,
which was in my brigade at Arras. He had been buried by a big crump
just before we got our second objective, and was dug out without a
scratch on him, but as daft as a hatter. I had heard he was mending, and
had promised his family to look him up the first chance I got. I found
him sitting on a garden seat, staring steadily before him like a lookout
at sea. He knew me all right and cheered up for a second, but very soon
he was back at his staring, and every word he uttered was like the
careful speech of a drunken man. A bird flew out of a bush, and I could
see him holding himself tight to keep from screaming. The best I could
do was to put a hand on his shoulder and stroke him as one strokes a
frightened horse. The sight of the price my old friend had paid didn't
put me in love with pacificism.
We talked of brother officers and South Africa, for I wanted to keep his
thoughts off the war, but he kept edging round to it.
'How long will the damned thing last?' he asked.
'Oh, it's practically over,' I lied cheerfully. 'No more fighting for you
and precious little for me. The Boche is done in all right... What you've
got to do, my lad, is to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four and
spend half the rest catching trout. We'll have a shot at the grouse-bird
together this autumn and we'll get some of the old gang to join us.'
Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to see
the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on. She seemed little more than a
child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a flapper.
She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her white cap
was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she arranged the
tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so merry and so

grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn, and I remember
noticing that she moved with the free grace of an athletic boy.
'Who on earth's that?' I asked Blaikie.
'That? Oh, one of the sisters,' he said listlessly. 'There are squads of
them. I can't tell one from another.'
Nothing gave me such an impression of my friend's sickness as the fact
that he should have no interest in something so fresh and jolly as that
girl. Presently my time was up and I had to go, and as I looked back I
saw him sunk in his chair again, his eyes fixed on vacancy, and his
hands gripping his knees.
The thought of him depressed me horribly. Here was I condemned to
some rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety, while the salt of the earth
like Blaikie was paying the ghastliest price. From him my thoughts
flew to old Peter Pienaar,