Greenmantle | Page 4

no prouder man on earth than Richard Hannay when he took his Lennox
Highlanders over the parapets on that glorious and bloody 25th day of September. Loos
was no picnic, and we had had some ugly bits of scrapping before that, but the worst bit
of the campaign I had seen was a tea-party to the show I had been in with Bullivant
before the war started. [Major Hannay's narrative of this affair has been published under
the title of The Thirty-nine Steps.]
The sight of his name on a telegram form seemed to change all my outlook on life. I had
been hoping for the command of the battalion, and looking forward to being in at the
finish with Brother Boche. But this message jerked my thoughts on to a new road. There
might be other things in the war than straightforward fighting. Why on earth should the
Foreign Office want to see an obscure Major of the New Army, and want to see him in
double-quick time?
'I'm going up to town by the ten train,' I announced; 'I'll be back in time for dinner.'
'Try my tailor,' said Sandy. 'He's got a very nice taste in red tabs. You can use my name.'
An idea struck me. 'You're pretty well all right now. If I wire for you, will you pack your
own kit and mine and join me?'
'Right-o! I'll accept a job on your staff if they give you a corps. If so be as you come
down tonight, be a good chap and bring a barrel of oysters from Sweeting's.'
I travelled up to London in a regular November drizzle, which cleared up about
Wimbledon to watery sunshine. I never could stand London during the war. It seemed to
have lost its bearings and broken out into all manner of badges and uniforms which did
not fit in with my notion of it. One felt the war more in its streets than in the field, or
rather one felt the confusion of war without feeling the purpose. I dare say it was all right;

but since August 1914 I never spent a day in town without coming home depressed to my
boots.
I took a taxi and drove straight to the Foreign Office. Sir Walter did not keep me waiting
long. But when his secretary took me to his room I would not have recognized the man I
had known eighteen months before.
His big frame seemed to have dropped flesh and there was a stoop in the square shoulders.
His face had lost its rosiness and was red in patches, like that of a man who gets too little
fresh air. His hair was much greyer and very thin about the temples, and there were lines
of overwork below the eyes. But the eyes were the same as before, keen and kindly and
shrewd, and there was no change in the firm set of the jaw.
'We must on no account be disturbed for the next hour,' he told his secretary. When the
young man had gone he went across to both doors and turned the keys in them.
'Well, Major Hannay,' he said, flinging himself into a chair beside the fire. 'How do you
like soldiering?'
'Right enough,' I said, 'though this isn't just the kind of war I would have picked myself.
It's a comfortless, bloody business. But we've got the measure of the old Boche now, and
it's dogged as does it. I count on getting back to the front in a week or two.'
'Will you get the battalion?' he asked. He seemed to have followed my doings pretty
closely.
'I believe I've a good chance. I'm not in this show for honour and glory, though. I want to
do the best I can, but I wish to heaven it was over. All I think of is coming out of it with a
whole skin.'
He laughed. 'You do yourself an injustice. What about the forward observation post at the
Lone Tree? You forgot about the whole skin then.'
I felt myself getting red. 'That was all rot,' I said, 'and I can't think who told you about it. I
hated the job, but I had to do it to prevent my subalterns going to glory. They were a lot
of fire-eating young lunatics. If I had sent one of them he'd have gone on his knees to
Providence and asked for trouble.'
Sir Walter was still grinning.
'I'm not questioning your caution. You have the rudiments of it, or our friends of the
Black Stone would have gathered you in at our last merry meeting. I would question it as
little as your courage. What exercises my mind is whether it is best employed in the
trenches.'
'Is the