by John Buchan
“Not the great thing. But we cannot expect the spectacular thing, we who work in the shadows.”
“I stand corrected.” Scrope withdrew his hand from his companion’s shoulder, and sat farther back in his chair from where he could see Adam’s face clearly in the glow of a neighbouring lamp.
“Yes,” he said. “You are a formidable fellow, Melfort. You are the rational fanatic — the practical mystic — the unselfish careerist — any blend of contradictories you please. . . . You should have been a preacher. You might have been a second John Wesley, riding on his old white horse throughout England preparing the day of the Lord.”
“I have no gospel to preach. My business is to find the man who has.”
“Oh yes, I know. I agree. . . . All the same, you are a leader, though you may pretend only to follow. For before you follow you will have to create your leader.”
Scrope flung himself back in his chair, and looked at Adam from under wrinkled brows.
“You say you have no gospel? Man, you have the gospel which the world needs to-day, and that is, how to get comfort. What said old Solomon?—’Behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter.’ . . . Do not be afraid, my son. I may not live to see it, but every atom of your training will be called into play before you die. You are right to stick to the shadows, but I think that before the end you will be forced out into the sunlight. You may yet enter Jerusalem by the side of Raymond.”
The party at the next table were leaving. Mr Warren Creevey was putting a cloak about a pretty woman’s shoulders, and his rich voice, thick as if it came through layers of chalk, was elevated in some species of banter.
Without raising his chin from his breast Scrope nodded in his direction.
“But I think that first you will have left that paynim skewered on your lance.”
Falconet was raging about London. A year’s seclusion from the world seemed to have released a thousand steel springs in his body and mind. He lectured to the Royal Geographical Society on his discoveries in North Greenland, which were of some importance, but he kept to his bargain, and so minimised the hardships of his journey that he had no need to bring in Adam’s name. But what filled his days and encroached on his nights was a series of consultations with every type of man — financier, merchant, journalist, politician — on the organisation which he meant to set up in his own country. It was characteristic of Falconet that in an enterprise he began by seeking advice from all and sundry, and ended by following strictly his own notions.
Adam’s words at the end of the Greenland journey had sunk deep into his mind. The hope of a broken world was to find men big enough to mend it. Quality, human quality, was the crying need, and just as the war had revealed surprising virtues in unlikely places, so this quality must not be sought for only in the old grooves. He gave a dinner at a flat which he had taken in St James’s Street, and to it he summoned Stannix and Adam.
“I’ve seen your wise man,” he told Stannix. “Had two hours with him on Monday and an hour yesterday. He impressed me considerably, but I couldn’t quite place him. Say, what’s his record? He looks as if he had been a lot about the globe.”
“It would be hard to say exactly,” Stannix replied, “for Scrope has always been something of a mystery man. He began, I believe, as a famous Oriental scholar and a professor at Cambridge. Then he had a call, and went out to India on his own account as some kind of missionary. He led a queer life, if all tales be true, on the Sikkim frontier, and became our chief authority on Tibet — he accompanied Younghusband’s 1903 expedition. After that he disappeared for years, during which he is believed to have been wandering about the world. . . . No, I don’t think he has written anything since his Cambridge days. He amasses knowledge, but he gives it out sparingly. . . . When he returned to England he somehow or other got in touch with the Government, and the War Office especially thought the world of him. He was by way of being a sick man and never left his country retreat. Then during the war he picked up amazingly, and now he looks a generation younger. I fancy he can’t be more than sixty-eight. He is the most knowledgeable creature alive, for if he doesn’t know a thing himself he knows how to find out about it. You press a button and get immediate results. But his wisdom is greater than his knowledge. I don’t know anyone whose judgment I’d sooner trust about men or things.”
Falconet listened intently.
“I admit all that. Anyone with half an eye-could see it. Where he falls down is that he isn’t interested in organisation. He is like an oracle in a cave that gives sound advice but doesn’t trouble about seeing it carried out. He agrees with our view, Adam’s and mine, but he isn’t worrying about what to do next. Now that man Creevey—”
Falconet broke off to expound his own plans. “Organisation is nine-tenths of the fight,” he proclaimed, “I’m going to start a great machine for the inquisition of genius.” He produced from a pocket of his dinner-jacket a formidable sheaf of papers. “See here,” he said as he spread them on the table. “First we have the geographical lay-out. I’m going to have informal committees up and down the land to consider likely cases. No advertising, you understand — all the work must be private and underground — but I shall have on these committees just the people who will made good sleuths. Then here is my system of checking-up on their reports. We can’t afford to make mistakes, so I’ve got this elaborate arrangement for getting cross-bearings — the schools, the universities, the bankers, the business folk, and a lot of shrewd private citizens. . . . So, when we get a likely case, it will be sifted and winnowed, and before we bank on it we’ll be certain that it’s the best-grade wheat.”
Falconet’s dark hawk-like face was flushed with enthusiasm.
“Here’s the kind of thing I figure on. There’s a lad on a farm in Nebraska who has mathematical genius. Well, he won’t be allowed to drift into a third-class bank or a second-class job in a school — we’ll give him a chance to beat Einstein. Another is a natural-born leader of men. That kind of fellow is apt to become an agitator and end in gaol, but we’ll see that he gets a field where his talent won’t be cramped and perverted. . . . We’ll cast our net wide over all sorts of talent — art and literature and philosophy and science and every kind of practical gift, but it’s the last I’m specially thinking about. I want to spot the men who might be leaders — in business, politics, I don’t care what — for it’s leaders we’re sick for the lack of. We’ve got to see that our Miltons don’t remain mute and inglorious, but above all that our Hampdens are not left to rot on a village green.”
“Is the real Hampden ever left to rot?” Stannix asked.
“You bet your life he is. It’s only one in a hundred that gets his feet out of the clay. And in these days it’s only going to be one in a thousand, unless we lend a hand.
“It’s a question of organisation,” Falconet continued. “We have all the parts of a fine excavating and sifting machine if we can assemble them. That’s going to be my business till I cross Jordan — to see that the best man gets his chance.”
“It will cost a lot of money.”
“I have money to burn. I’ve been spending nothing for two years, and God knows how my pile has been mounting up. This is a darned lot better way of getting quit of it than founding dud libraries or paying hordes of dingy fellows to cut up frogs. . . . Say, Adam, you’ll need some cash. I’m sticking to my own country, but you’ll need the same kind of machine here. Remember what I told you. I expect you to draw on me for all you want.”
“I don’t think I shall want much,” said Adam. “I have a little of my own, and it may be enough.”
“But that’s idiocy,” said Falconet fiercely. “You can’t do anything without a machine. Take it from me, that’s sound, though old man Scrope doesn’t understand it. And a good machine costs a hell of a lot.”
“But I’m different from you. You’re a big man in the public eye, and y
ou can do things on the grand scale. I must keep in the background.”
“Well, if that isn’t the darnedest nonsense! I’m speaking seriously, Adam. I count myself your best friend — at any rate you are mine — and Stannix here is another. You’ve got to forget all that’s by and gone. The prison business, as all the world knows, was an infernal blunder, and it’s been washed out by what happened since. Weren’t you restored to your regiment with full honours? You did a hundred men’s jobs in the war, and if people had been allowed to know about it you’d have been as famous as Lawrence — the Arabian fellow, I mean. In Greenland you were the largest scale hero, but your infernal modesty wouldn’t let me breathe a word about it. What’s the sense of it all? You could do the job you’re out for a million times better if every man and woman in England had your picture in their album.”
Adam shook his head.
“I’m afraid that is impossible. You see, I know best where my usefulness comes in.”
“That you don’t, and you won’t get any sane man to agree with you. Creevey . . .” Falconet stopped.
“Creevey?” Stannix asked. “Do you mean Warren Creevey?” There was a sharp note in his voice.
“That’s the man. About the brightest citizen I’ve struck on these shores. Mailsetter put me on to him, and he has helped me some. I never met a fellow with such a lightning brain. He understands organisation, if you like. If you throw out a notion he has a scheme ready for carrying it out before you have finished your sentence. He’d be worth half a million dollars salary to any big concern. They tell me he’s a pretty successful business man anyway. Well, Creevey takes my view about Adam.”
“But Creevey knows nothing about him — never heard of him — never met him,” said Stannix. His face wore an air of mystified apprehension.
“Oh yes, he does. I can’t remember how Adam’s name came up, and of course I gave nothing away — about Greenland and the other thing. But he seemed to know a lot about him and to be very interested. . . .”
The door bell rang, and Falconet looked a little shy.
“Speak of the Devil! I expect that’s our friend. I asked him to come round this evening. You know him, Stannix, don’t you? I want to introduce him to Adam.”
The man who followed Falconet’s servant looked different from the crouching, sparkling figure, set among appreciative women, whom Adam had seen at the restaurant. Creevey wore a dark morning suit, and explained that he had been sitting on a currency committee at the Treasury till eight-thirty. He had snatched a mouthful of dinner at his club, but he accepted a glass of Falconet’s old brandy and a cigar.
It was strange how he seemed to take up space in the room. He in no way asserted himself. The thick chalky voice was low-pitched, the forward thrust of the jaw was rather enquiring than aggressive, and the dark glowing eyes were friendly enough. He talked brilliantly about common things — the last news of the Europe-Australia flight, the obstructiveness of M. Poincaré, Mr Shaw’s latest mammoth drama, and — with a compliment to Stannix — the level of debate in the new Parliament. He seemed to take the measure of his company, and effortlessly to dominate it.
Yet he did not put it at its ease. Stannix was coldly polite, and his haggard face was set hard. Falconet, anxious to be showman to this phoenix and at the same time detecting Stannix’s dislike, was patently unhappy. Only Adam seemed oblivious of the strain. He looked at Creevey’s blunt mobile features, agreeable because of the extreme intelligence that lit them up from behind, and his fathomless eyes, and they seemed to cast him into a trance. His face had the air of one in mazes of curious dreams.
That night Stannix wrote in his diary:
“I have seen in the body two anti-types — Warren Creevey and Adam Melfort. I believe they were conscious of it too, for Creevey has been making enquiries about Adam, and Adam to-night sat fascinated, as if a snake’s eyes were fixed on him. A queer contrast — the one all grossness and genius, the other with his ‘flesh refined to flame.’ I thought of other antitypes in history — Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Cæsar, Lorenzo and Savonarola, Napoleon and Wellington — but none seemed quite to make a parallel: Ormuzd and Ahriman were the nearest. . . .
“Of one thing I am certain. That meeting in Falconet’s flat had fate behind it. To-night two remarkable men for the first time saw each his eternal enemy.”
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
I
Adam’s first sight of Utlaw was on a dry-fly stream on the Warwick and Gloucester borders.
He had been down for a week-end to stay with Kenneth Armine, who had been at school with him, and on the Saturday morning he went out to remove a few grayling from Armine’s little river. It was a quiet November day, windless and very mild. Early frosts and the gales of late October had stripped the leafage from the coverts and yellowed the water-side meadows, but the woods had not yet taken on their winter umbers and steel-greys and the only colour was in the patches of fresh-turned plough. It was a moment in the year which Adam loved, when the world seemed to rest for a little before beginning its slow germinal movement towards spring.
To take the soft-mouthed grayling on a dry-fly needs a good eye and a deft hand. Fishing the shallow stickles with a long line, Adam had failed to satisfy himself, and he was in the fisherman’s mood of complete absorption when, turning a corner, he was aware of another angler on the water. He waded ashore, intending to begin again at a point some distance upstream. As he passed the other he stopped for a moment to watch him. He was a young man with a shock of untidy fair hair, who had an old-fashioned wicker creel slung on his back. He was fishing earnestly but clumsily the tail of a deep pool — a good place for a trout in June, but not for a grayling in November. He turned and cried out a greeting. “Done anything?” he asked. “A few,” said Adam. “Good for you. I can’t stir a fin.” The voice was attractive and the half-turned face was merry.
An hour later the sun came out and Adam sat himself on a ridge of dry moss to eat his sandwiches. Presently he was joined by the other fisherman, who came whistling up the bank. He was a young man who might be thirty, but no more. He was of the middle size, square-shouldered and thickly made, and his shock head was massive and well-shaped. He wore a tattered trench waterproof and what looked like ancient trench-boots, and his walk revealed a slight limp. He had wide-set friendly grey eyes, which scanned Adam sharply and seemed to approve of him.
“May I lunch beside you?” he asked, and again Adam noted the charm of his voice. The accent was the soft slur of the west midlands.
He peered inside the fishing-bag which lay on the moss.
“Great Scott! You’ve a dozen beauties, and I’ve nothing to show for my morning. I raised several, but they wouldn’t take hold. Not nippy enough at the striking, I expect. But what does it matter on a day like this? It’s enough to be alive.” He inhaled a long breath of the soft air, and then fell to work vigorously on a packet of bread and cheese. Clearly he was lame, for when he sat down he stretched out his left leg stiffly. His fishing paraphernalia was not elaborate, for, besides the old wicker basket, he had a cheap rod with an antiquated type of reel.
He had nothing to drink with him, so Adam handed him over the bottle of beer with which Armine’s butler had provided him. The young man required some pressing, and only accepted it on the donor’s assurance that he never drank at meals and did not want to carry the beastly thing home.
“I say, this is fine,” he exclaimed after a long draught. “Bass tastes its best out of doors. This reminds me of my first drink after Bourlon Wood — about the same time of the year as this, and much the same weather. It’s funny to think that that was only three years ago. Were you on the Western Front?”
“I didn’t fight in the War.”
The grey eyes, regarding Adam’s lean fitness, had a shadow of surprise in them.
“Lucky for you! I got a bit too much of it, but mercifully the worst was a crocked leg. I can still enjoy life, not like the poor devils who have gas in th
eir lungs or damaged guts. It must be rotten to come out to a place like this and get no good of it because of your vile body. Thank God, that isn’t my way of it. I don’t often get a day in the country, but when I do it makes me daft. If I hadn’t a game leg I could dance a jig. . . . No, I’m not much of a fisherman, though I love it. I get few chances on a stream like this — mostly bait-fishing in the Canal or an odd day after perch on one of the Club reservoirs. You must be a dab at the game. Do you live hereabouts?”
Adam told him that he lived in London, but that his job took him a good deal about the country. He could see that his companion set him down as a commercial traveller.
“I do a bit of moving about too,” he said. “But not in places where you can catch fish. I come from Birkpool, and my beat is a score or two grimy villages round about it. I’m not complaining, for I’m after bigger things than fish, but I thank Heaven that there are still places like this in the world. When things get too beastly, I think about a bend of a river with a wooded hill above and a meadow between.”
Adam felt oddly attracted to this expansive young man. There was such frank gusto in his enjoyment, and his eyes looked out on the world with so much candour and purpose.
“I’m going to help you to catch a few grayling,” he said. “You mustn’t go home with an empty creel.”
So till the dusk fell the other was given his first lesson in the mysteries of the dry-fly. Adam made him take his own rod and instructed him how to cast the tiny midge on a long line, how to recognise the gentle sucking rises, and how to strike with a firm but delicate hand. The young man proved an apt pupil, for he had excellent eyesight and a quick wrist. By the end of the afternoon he had half a dozen fragrant fish of his own catching.
“I must be off to catch my train back,” he said, as he reeled in regretfully. “You’re staying the night at the pub? Lucky dog! What does a rod like that cost? I must save up my pennies for one, for this old weaver’s beam of mine is no earthly . . . I wish you’d tell me your name. Milford? Mine’s Utlaw — Joe Utlaw. I’m district organiser for the Associated Metal-workers — not a sinecure these days I can tell you. Look me up the next time your round takes you to Birkpool. Here’s my office address, and also my private digs.” He tore a leaf from a notebook and scribbled something on it.
