A Prince of the Captivity (Unabridged). Buchan John

1913, had now turned definitely to politics. He was one of the younger men who were beginning to make their mark in the dull and docile Coalition Parliament.

      Lyson, his companion, was in uniform, for he had been engaged in the day’s procession. He was skimming an evening paper while the other ordered tea, and dispensing fragments of news.

      “Hullo!” he said, “I see Falconet is lost. No word of him for four months, and he is more than a month overdue at his base. You remember him, Kit? The long American who had a hospital at Arville? Began the war as a French airman, till he smashed himself up. He was a bit of a nuisance to us at G.H.Q.”

      “He was a bit of a nuisance to us at the War Office,” said Stannix. “I never saw a man with his temper so handy. I daresay that was due to his left arm giving him neuritis. Also he was some kind of multi-millionaire and used to getting his own way. Well I remember his lean twitching face and his eye like a moulting eagle’s. Where do you say he has got to now?”

      “That’s the puzzle. He has gone over the edge somewhere in Northern Greenland. He always made a hobby of exploring unholy corners of the earth and financed several expeditions, and he had some theory about Greenland, so, as soon as he was certain that the Allies were winning, he bolted off to have a look at it. Funny business, if you come to think of it, changing the racket of the front for the peace of an Arctic desert! And now he has gone and lost himself, and this paper says they’re talking of a relief party.”

      “We’re in for a lot of that sort of thing,” said Stannix. “There’s going to be all kinds of queer byproducts of the war. You know how after a heavy day you are sometimes too tired to sleep. Well, that is the position of a good many to-day—too tired to rest—must have some other kind of excitement—running round like sick dogs till the real crash comes. The big problem for the world is not economic but psychological—how to get men’s minds on an even keel again.”

      “I daresay that is true,” said the other. “But the odd thing is that it is not the people who had the roughest time that are the most unsettled. There was a little chap at home who was the local postman. He enlisted at the start in a Fusilier battalion and had four of the most hellish years that ever fell to the lot of man—Gallipoli and France—blown-up, buried, dysentery, trench-fever, and most varieties of wounds. To-day he is back at his old job, toddling round the villages, and you would never guess from his looks or his talk that he had been out of Dorset… Then take Adam Melfort. I suppose he had about as nerve-racking a show as anybody, but you couldn’t tell it on him. I ran across him the other day, and, except that he was fined down to whalebone and catgut, he was just the same quiet, placid, considering old bird.”

      Stannix smiled. “Funny that you should mention Adam, for he was the case I had chiefly in mind. With him it’s not so simple an affair as your postman. You see, he was in the war, but not OF it. He stood a little way apart and got a bird’s-eye view. For him it was only a spell of training for something much bigger, and now he is looking at the world like a philosopher and wondering what his real job is to be.”

      Lyson’s face kindled into interest. “Tell me about Adam. You see a lot of him, I know, and I don’t often manage to run him to ground. I’d give a good deal to get back to the old terms with him.”

      Stannix shook his head. “You never will. I can’t myself. Adam has made his choice. When he crashed, he decided that God meant him to drop out of the firing-line, and had work for him somewhere in the rear. He has gone deliberately underground, and means to stay there. That was why he was by miles the best secret-service man we had—he took to the job like a crusade, something to which he was specially called by the Almighty. He is the complete philosophic fatalist, waiting for destiny to show him his next move. He’s a lonely man, if you like, but he doesn’t mind that, for he knows that it is his strength. Every journalist is talking about the ‘brotherhood of the trenches’—a silly, rhetorical phrase, but there’s something in it—people who went through the same beastliness together did acquire a sort of common feeling. Well, Adam had no chance of that; he was as much outside it as if he had been a conchy. He has missed all the comfort one gets from a sense of companionship, but he has missed, too, the confusion of the mass-mind. He has no delusions and no sentimentalities. He is looking at our new world with clear dispassionate eyes, like a visitor from another planet. But, all the same, when he finds his predestined job it will be like the releasing of a steel spring.”

      “By Jove, that sounds like trouble for somebody. What is it to be? Russia?”

      “It might be. He talks the language, and might put a spoke in the Bolshy wheels. But he hasn’t made up his mind—at least he hadn’t last week. He has been spending recent months having a general look round.”

      “Go on. Tell me,” said Lyson. “I’m deeply interested.”

      Stannix laughed. “It was a funny business, and I saw something of it, for I had to chaperon him in most of his investigations. You see, he had lost touch a little with his kind, and he realised that he must find it again if he was to be of any use… The first thing was to meet the people who had been fighting, of whom he knew nothing at all. He saw a fairly representative lot, from the hearty fellows who had found it rather a lark and were half sorry it was over to the damaged sensitives who had a grievance against humanity. I fancy he did not get much out of any of them, and decided that it would be many a day before we could be certain what effect the war had had on our people… Then he made a tour of the serious folk—the internationalists and the social reformers. He hung about the universities to have a look at the young entry, and went into W.E.A. circles, and put in some time with a Glasgow riveter. Adam was never very communicative, so I don’t know what conclusion he came to, but he did not seem to be depressed by his experiences… Oh, and he sat out a good many debates in the House of Commons. He found them a dusty business, and used to come down from the gallery with puzzled eyes. I wanted to get some of the politicians to meet him, but he wouldn’t have it—didn’t want to hear other people’s conclusions—wanted to make his own.”

      “Can’t we get him back into the Service?” Lyson asked. “I know he has sent in his papers, but that could be arranged. There are twenty jobs on hand for which he would be the spot man.”

      “Not a chance of it. I put that to him, for it seemed to me common sense. I told him that he was a brilliant soldier and should stick to the profession for which he had been trained. No earthly use. You know that look of intelligent obstinacy which is more unshakable than the Pyramids. ‘You forget,’ he said, ‘that in the past four years I’ve had a training for other things.’”

      “A pretty desperate training,” Lyson commented.

      “Yes,” said Stannix, “that is the right word. Remember that Adam is a desperate man. There is nothing in Heaven or earth left for him to fear.”

      One night later in the summer Stannix dined with Adam Melfort at a restaurant. Thereafter they made a curious progress. First they went to a meeting of a group of serious people who were perturbed about the state of the world, and listened to a paper on the “Economics of Victory.” It was held in the drawing-room of a private house and the paper was read by a brilliant young Oxford don who had made a high reputation for his work abroad on behalf of the British Treasury… They did not wait for the discussion, but moved on to a newly-formed club, patronised mainly by ex-cavalry officers, which boasted a super-excellent American bar. There, as they drank cocktails, they listened to the gossip of youth. Stannix knew many of the members, but he did not introduce Adam. The talk was chiefly of money, for most of the young men seemed to have gone into business and precociously acquired the City jargon. They were determined to have a good time and had somehow or other to find the cash for it… Then they went to a ball, given by a celebrated hostess who was making a resolute effort to restore the pre-war gaiety. It was gay enough; dementedly gay, it seemed to Adam, as he recalled the balls where he had once danced with Camilla. The female clothes were odd, the dances were extravagant things, the music was barbarous, and the men and women seemed to be there not for amusement but for an anodyne. Adam and Stannix stood in a corner and looked on.

      “Isn’t that Meeson?” the former asked, mentioning the name of a Cabinet