How an Exile Returned to His Own People Next morning I found the Army Commander on his way to Doullens.
'Take over the division?' he said. 'Certainly. I'm afraid there isn't much left of it. I'll tell Carr to get through to the Corps Headquarters, when he can find them. You'll have to nurse the remnants, for they can't be pulled out yet - not for a day or two. Bless me, Hannay, there are parts of our line which we're holding with a man and a boy. You've got to stick it out till the French take over.
We're not hanging on by our eyelids - it's our eyelashes now.'
'What about positions to fall back on, sir?' I asked.
'We're doing our best, but we haven't enough men to prepare them.' He plucked open a map. 'There we're digging a line - and there. If we can hold that bit for two days we shall have a fair line resting on the river. But we mayn't have time.'
Then I told him about Blenkiron, whom of course he had heard of. 'He was one of the biggest engineers in the States, and he's got a nailing fine eye for country. He'll make good somehow if you let him help in the job.'
'The very fellow,' he said, and he wrote an order. 'Take this to Jacks and he'll fix up a temporary commission. Your man can find a uniform somewhere in Amiens.'
After that I went to the detail camp and found that Ivery had duly arrived.
'The prisoner has given no trouble, sirr,' Hamilton reported.
'But he's a wee thing peevish. They're saying that the Gairmans is gettin' on fine, and I was tellin' him that he should be proud of his ain folk. But he wasn't verra weel pleased.'
Three days had wrought a transformation in Ivery. That face, once so cool and capable, was now sharpened like a hunted beast's.
His imagination was preying on him and I could picture its torture.
He, who had been always at the top directing the machine, was now only a cog in it. He had never in his life been anything but powerful; now he was impotent. He was in a hard, unfamiliar world, in the grip of something which he feared and didn't understand, in the charge of men who were in no way amenable to his persuasiveness. It was like a proud and bullying manager suddenly forced to labour in a squad of navvies, and worse, for there was the gnawing physical fear of what was coming.
He made an appeal to me.
'Do the English torture their prisoners?' he asked. 'You have beaten me. I own it, and I plead for mercy. I will go on my knees if you like. I am not afraid of death - in my own way.'
'Few people are afraid of death - in their own way.'
'Why do you degrade me? I am a gentleman.'
'Not as we define the thing,' I said.
His jaw dropped. 'What are you going to do with me?' he quavered.
'You have been a soldier,' I said. 'You are going to see a little fighting - from the ranks. There will be no brutality, you will be armed if you want to defend yourself, you will have the same chance of survival as the men around you. You may have heard that your countrymen are doing well. It is even possible that they may win the battle. What was your forecast to me? Amiens in two days, Abbeville in three. Well, you are a little behind scheduled time, but still you are prospering. You told me that you were the chief architect of all this, and you are going to be given the chance of seeing it, perhaps of sharing in it - from the other side. Does it not appeal to your sense of justice?'
He groaned and turned away. I had no more pity for him than Iwould have had for a black mamba that had killed my friend and was now caught to a cleft tree. Nor, oddly enough, had Wake. If we had shot Ivery outright at St Anton, I am certain that Wake would have called us murderers. Now he was in complete agreement.
His passionate hatred of war made him rejoice that a chief contriver of war should be made to share in its terrors.
'He tried to talk me over this morning,' he told me. 'Claimed he was on my side and said the kind of thing I used to say last year. It made me rather ashamed of some of my past performances to hear that scoundrel imitating them ... By the way, Hannay, what are you going to do with me?'
'You're coming on my staff. You're a stout fellow and I can't do without you.'
'Remember I won't fight.'
'You won't be asked to. We're trying to stem the tide which wants to roll to the sea. You know how the Boche behaves in occupied country, and Mary's in Amiens.'
At that news he shut his lips.
'Still -'he began.
still" I said. 'I don't ask you to forfeit one of your blessed principles. You needn't fire a shot. But I want a man to carry orders for me, for we haven't a line any more, only a lot of blobs like quicksilver. I want a clever man for the job and a brave one, and I know that you're not afraid.'
'No,' he said. 'I don't think I am - much. Well. I'm content!'
