A Prince of the Captivity (Unabridged). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ spent a confused morning, sitting in a little garden heavy with the scents of autumn flowers. Mr Scrope seemed to have a genius for the discursive. But gradually it appeared that his reminiscences were directed to one point especially, the everlasting temperamental differences of East and West. His chief instance was the virtue of courage. The East, he said, which did not fear the hereafter, was apathetic towards the mere fact of death, but it had not the same fortitude about life. It was capable of infinite sacrifice but not of infinite effort—it was apt to fling in its hand too soon, and relapse upon passivity. The West, when it had conquered the fear of death, demanded a full price for any sacrifice. Rightly, said the old man, since man’s first duty was towards life.

      Then they went indoors to luncheon, which was a modest meal of eggs, cheese and vegetables. After that his host must sleep for an hour, and Adam was left alone to his reflections in a chair on the veranda… He was beginning to see some purpose in the talk of this ancient, who looked like a Buddhist holy man. Mr Scrope must have been informed about his case, and realised that he was dealing with one who had nothing to lose. The moral of his talk was that desperation was valueless by itself and must be subordinated to a purpose. A man’s life was an asset which must be shrewdly bargained for. Adam wondered why he had been sent down into Northamptonshire to hear this platitude.

      But when the old man appeared he changed his view. For Mr Scrope, refreshed by sleep, became a shrewd inquisitor, and probed with a lancet Adam’s innermost heart. Never had he dreamed that he could so expose his secret thoughts to any man. More, he had his own beliefs made clear to himself, for what had been only vague inclinations crystallised under this treatment into convictions. His companion was no longer a whimsical old gentleman with the garrulity of age, but a sage with an uncanny insight into his own private perplexities. Duty was expounded as a thing both terrible and sweet, transcending life and death, a bridge over the abyss to immortality. But it required the service of all of a man’s being, and no half-gods must cumber its altar. Adam felt himself strangely stirred; stoicism was not his mood now, but exaltation. “He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life shall find it,” the other quoted. “That is not enough,” he added. “He that findeth his soul shall lose it—that is the greater commandment. You must be prepared to sacrifice much that you think honourable and of good report if you would fulfil the whole Law.”

      There was a kindly gleam in his dim old eyes as he bade his guest good-bye. “You have the root of the matter, I think,” were his last words. “You will make your soul, as the priests say, and if you do that you have won, whatever happens—yes, whatever happens.” It seemed almost a benediction.

      After that Adam was sent back to the City of London. There he was no longer received in the dingy waiting-room, but in Macandrew’s own sanctum, a place to which the road was even more intricate. He realised, though he had had no word from Ritson, that his services had been accepted.

      For weeks he worked hard under the tuition of a very different Macandrew. His instruction was of the most detailed and practical kind. From plans and books he studied a certain area of Flanders, and was compelled to draw map after map and endure endless cross-examinations till his tutor was satisfied. He was made to learn minutely the routine of the country life. “You will work on a farm,” he was told, “but as you will have come from the town you must have urban knowledge, too, and that I will provide.” It was provided at immense length, for his master was not easily satisfied. “There is nothing too small to be unimportant,” Macandrew said. “It is the very little things that make the difference.” He had to commit to memory curious pieces of slang and patois and learn how to interweave them naturally with his talk. Disguises, too; there were afternoons when Adam had to masquerade in impossible clothes and be taught how to live up to them, and to acquire the art of giving himself by small changes a different face. His special part was kept always before his mind. “You must think yourself into it,” he was told, “and imagine that you have never been otherwise. That is the only real disguise.”

      Then there was the whole complicated business of cyphers and codes. These must be subtle and yet simple, for Adam must carry them in his head. He had to practise his powers of memory, and was surprised to find how they developed with exercise. And he was told of certain people who were key-people, the pivots of the intelligence system in which he would serve. This was the most difficult business of all, for these persons would take on many forms, and it was necessary to have certain marks of identification and passports to their confidence. Adam was almost in despair at the mass of knowledge, vital knowledge, which he must keep always in the background of his mind. “It is altogether necessary,” said Macandrew. “You are a quick learner and will not fail. The clues are intricate because the facts are intricate. There is no simple key to complex things.”

      As the weeks passed Adam had moments of impatience. “There will be peace before I am ready,” he complained, and was told, “Not so. The war will be very long.”

      A new Macandrew had revealed himself, a man confident and eager and untiring, but one who still kept his eyes lowered when he spoke. Adam often wondered what was in those eyes. It appeared that his real name was Meyer, and that he was a Belgian Jew, who had long foreseen the war and had made many preparations. Adam discovered one day the motive for his devotion to the British cause. The man was an ardent Zionist, and the mainspring of his life was his dream of a reconstituted Israel. He believed that this could not come about except as a consequence of a great war, which should break down the traditional frontiers of Europe, and that Britain was the agent destined by God to lead his people out of the wilderness. He would not speak much on the subject, but it was the only one which made him raise his eyes and look Adam in the face, and then Adam read in them the purpose which makes saints and martyrs.

      When they parted at last he gave Adam a tiny amulet of silver and ebony, shaped like a blunt cross. “You will wear that, please—people will think it a peasant charm—it may be useful when we meet, for I am not quick at faces… Assuredly we shall meet. Are we not both working for the peace and felicity of Jerusalem?”

      Chapter 7

       Table of Contents

      In the second week of January, in the year 1915, those who passed the untidy farm of the Widow Raus might have seen a new figure busy about the steading. When the neighbours enquired his name they were told that he was the Widow’s nephew Jules—Jules Broecker, the only child of Marie, her dead sister. The Widow was volubly communicative. The poor Jules had no near kinsfolk but her, and she could not leave him alone in Brussels, for he was simpler than other folk—and she meaningly tapped her forehead. He would be useful about the farm, for he was a strong lad, and would have his bite and sup and a bed to lie on in these bad times as long as she was above ground. Madame Raus was a short plump woman with grey hair neatly parted in the middle and plastered down with grease. Out of doors—and she was mostly out of doors—she wore a man’s cap to keep her head tidy. She had a name for closeness, and she was the soul of discretion, for she did not grumble like most people at the high-handed ways of the local German Commandant. She has no proper feelings, that one, her neighbours said, and they looked on her with cold eyes as being apathetic about her country’s wrongs. But the Widow had had an only son who never returned from the Yser, and she did not forget.

      Jules Broecker appeared suddenly one morning at the farm, having come on foot from Brussels, his little trunk of bullock-hide following him in a farm-cart. When summoned before the Commandant he had his papers in good order, his certificate of residence in the city, his permission to leave, and the visé on it stamped by the officer at Nivelles. The neighbours knew all about him, for they remembered Marie Broecker and had heard of her simpleton son. But no one had met him on the Brussels road—which was natural, for he came not from Brussels but from the south, having been landed from an aeroplane in a field twenty miles off during the darkness of a January night.

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