The Three Hostages quotes

A chronicle of small beer, you will say, but I was by a long chalk more interested in it than in what might be happening in Parliament or Russia or the Hindu Kush. The fact is

I was becoming such a mossback that I had almost stopped reading the papers.

Many a day The Times would remain unopened, for Mary never looked at anything but the first page to see who was dead or married.

“Oh, I’m not questioning your Calvinism.

Original sin is always there, but the meaning of civilisation was that we had got it battened down under hatches, whereas now it’s getting its head up.

But it isn’t only sin. It’s a dislocation of the mechanism of human reasoning, a general loosening of screws. Oddly enough, in spite of parrot-talk about shell-shock, the men who fought suffer less from it on the whole than other people.

“

Of course you are going to help,

” she said.

“Lord!” he cried, “how I loathe our new manners in foreign policy.

The old English way was to regard all foreigners as slightly childish and rather idiotic and ourselves as the only grownups in a kindergarten world.

That meant that we had a cool detached view and did evenhanded unsympathetic justice. But now we have got into the nursery ourselves and are bear-fighting on the floor.

I passed yards which not so long ago had been patches of market-garden, and terraces, sometime pretentious, and now sinking into slums; for

London is like the tropical bush⁠—if you don’t exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.

The streets were full of clerks and shopgirls waiting for buses, and workmen from the St. Pancras and Clerkenwell factories going home. The wind was rising, and in the untidy alleys was stirring up a noisome dust;

was, indeed, already mad, and only a slender and doubtless ill-founded confidence in me prevented him shooting himself. He was convinced that Adela Victor was dead, and that no trace of her would ever be found. “These policemen of yours—bah!” he moaned. “

Only in England can people vanish.

” He concluded, however, that he would stay alive till he had avenged her, for he believed that a good God would some day deliver her murderer into his hands.

But I saw also that they were sightless. How I knew it I do not know, for there was no physical sign of it, but my conviction was instantaneous and complete. These starlike things were turned inward.

In most blind people the eyes are like marbles, dead windows in an empty house; but⁠—how shall I describe it?⁠—these were blinds drawn in a room which was full of light and movement, stage curtains behind which some great drama was always set.

Blind though they were, they seemed to radiate an ardent vitality, to glow and flash like the soul within.

Blind though they were, they seemed to radiate an ardent vitality, to glow and flash like the soul within.

I realised that it was the most wonderful face of a woman I had ever looked on. And I realised in the same moment that I hated it, that the beauty of it was devilish, and the soul within was on fire with all the hatred of Hell.

“Hannay,” I heard Medina’s voice, “I have brought you here because I wish to present you to my mother.”

“Never, mother mine.

It is our strength that we can seem to forget and still remember.

”

“Never, mother mine. It is our strength that we can seem to forget and still remember.”

I was finding my stand on that hearthrug extraordinarily trying.

You see I had to keep perfectly rigid, for every now and then Medina would look towards me, and I knew that the woman had an ear like a hound.

But that evening, as we walked in the garden before dinner, I had another fit of longing to be free of the business and to return to my quiet life.

I realised that I had buried my heart in my pleasant acres, and the thought of how much I loved them made me almost timid.

I think Mary understood what I was feeling, for she insisted on talking about David Warcliff, and before I went to bed had worked me into that honest indignation which is the best stiffener of resolution. She went over my plans with me very carefully.

Why is it that when a man loses his memory he is so hard to find? You see it constantly in the newspapers. Even a well-known figure, if he loses his memory and wanders away, is only discovered by accident.

The reason is that the human personality is identified far less by appearance than by its habits and mind.

Loss of memory means the loss of all true marks of identification, and the physical look alters to correspond. Medina has stolen these three poor souls’ memories and set them adrift like waifs.

He shook his head. “It is far subtler than that.

Did no one ever tell you that the best way of hiding a person is to strip him of his memory?

Why is it that when a man loses his memory he is so hard to find? You see it constantly in the newspapers. Even a well-known figure, if he loses his memory and wanders away, is only discovered by accident.

“I’m trying to understand him.

You can’t fight a man unless you understand him, and in a way sympathise with him.

”

“But hate soon becomes conceit.

If you hate, you despise, and when you despise you esteem inordinately the self which despises.

This is how I look at it, but remember, I’m still in the dark and only feeling my way to an understanding.

“You never will,” said Sandy solemnly. “Don’t let’s flatter ourselves that you and I are going to down Medina. We are not.

A very wise man once said to me that in this life you could often get success, if you didn’t want victory.

In this case we’re out for success only. We want to release the hostages. Victory we can never hope for. Why, man, supposing we succeed fully, we’ll never be able to connect Medina with the thing.

He’ll advance in his glorious career, and may become Prime Minister—or Viceroy of India—what a chance the second would be for him!—and publish exquisite little poetry books, as finished and melancholy as The Shropshire Lad.

Pessimism, you know, is often a form of vanity.

”

“Malice!” he cried. “

But we are gentlemen; also we are not children.

I rejoice to see that you have survived the War. I have always wished you well, for you are a very bold and brave man.”

“

Do English farmers travel in Norway under false names?

”

I felt as if I were out on some sporting expedition and enjoyed every moment of the walk with that strung-up expectant enjoyment which one gets in any form of chase.

The torrent made wild music on our left hand, grumbling in pits and shooting over ledges with a sound like a snowslip.

There was every kind of bird about, but I had to guess at them by their sounds and size, for there was no colour in that shadowy world.

There was a sound of plunging ahead of me, then the crack of a rotten log, then the noise of a falling stone. It might be a beast, but it struck me that no wild thing would move so awkwardly.

Only human boots make that kind of clumsy slipping.

If this was somebody from Snaasen, what was he doing off the track? Could he be watching me? Well, I proposed to do a little stalking on my own account. I got down on all-fours and crawled in cover in the direction of the sound.

“See here, my lad,” I said, and I took out my pistol. “

The first man that lays a hand on you I shoot, and I don’t miss.

You’re as safe now as if you were at home. But this is no place to talk, and I’ve the devil of a lot to tell you. I’m going to take you down with me to my lodging in the valley.

Yet, as luck would have it, that aimless walk had its consequences. It was a Sunday, and on the edge of Battersea Park I encountered a forlorn little company of Salvationists conducting a service in the rain.

I stopped to listen⁠—I always do⁠—for I am the eternal average man who is bound to halt at every street show, whether it be a motor accident or a Punch and Judy.

I listened to the tail-end of an address from a fat man who looked like a reformed publican, and a few words from an earnest lady in spectacles.

The little man’s calm matter-of-factness put me on my mettle. I made sure that the street was empty, opened the iron frame, and pushed through the shop-door, closing it softly behind me.

The shop was as dark as the inside of a nut, not a crack of light coming through the closely-shuttered windows.

I felt very eerie, as I tiptoed cautiously among the rugs and tables. I listened, but there was no sound of any kind either from within or without, so I switched on my electric torch and waited breathlessly. Still no sound or movement.

“Nonsense, Barnard. He’s the living image of his mother. Get me a drink, like a good fellow.

A tankard of beer, if you have it, for I’ve a throat like a grindstone.

”

He is extraordinarily attractive—no, not attractive—seductive, and he is as cold and hard as chilled steel. You know these impressions I get of people which I can’t explain—you say they are always right. Well, I felt him almost superhuman.

He exhales ease and power like a god, but it is a god from a lost world.

I can see that, like a god too, it is souls that he covets. Ordinary human badness seems decent in comparison with that Lucifer’s pride of his. I think if I ever could commit murder it would be his life I would take.

“Melancholy!” he said. “It’s a foolish world, Hannay, and a wise man must have his moods of contempt.

Victory loses some of its salt when it is won over fools.

”

The door opened easily enough, and in his haste he took two steps forward. It swung behind him, so that he was in complete darkness, and he turned back to open it again to give him light. But it would not open.

With the shutting of that door he walked clean out of the world.

At first he was angry, and presently, when he realised his situation, a little alarmed. The place seemed to be small, it was utterly dark, and as stuffy as the inside of a safe.

Presently he found that his breathing was difficult, and that almost put him in a panic, for the dread of suffocation had always been for him the private funk from which the bravest man is not free.

To breathe was like having his face tightly jammed against a pillow.

He made an effort and controlled himself, for he realised that if he let himself become hysterical he would only suffocate the faster. …

but he had just enough reason left in him to let him take a pull on his nerves. “You must be a man,” he repeated to himself. “

Even if you have stumbled into hell, you must be a man.

”

“It is bad luck,” Mary agreed. “But, Dick, I’ve a feeling that I haven’t lost Adela Victor. I believe that somehow or other we’ll soon get in touch with her again.

You remember how children when they lose a ball sometimes send another one after it in the hope that one will find the other.

Well, we’ve sent the Marquis after Adela, and I’ve a notion we may find them both together. We always did that as children. …” She paused at the word “children” and I saw pain in her eyes. “Oh, Dick, the little boy!

“

That’s life, my dear. We’ve got to go on to the finish anyhow, trusting that luck will turn in the last ten minutes.

”

I know no word to describe how he impressed me except “wickedness.” He seemed to annihilate the world of ordinary moral standards, all the little rags of honest impulse and stumbling kindness with which we try to shelter ourselves from the winds of space.

His consuming egotism made life a bare cosmos in which his spirit scorched like a flame.

I have met bad men in my day, fellows who ought to have been quietly and summarily put out of existence, but if I had had the trying of them I would have found bits of submerged decency and stunted remnants of good feeling.

He was utterly and consumedly wicked, with no standard which could be remotely related to ordinary life. That is why, I suppose, mankind has had to invent the notion of devils.

He seemed to be always lifting the corner of a curtain and giving me peeps into a hoary mystery of iniquity older than the stars.

… I suppose that someone who had never felt his hypnotic power would have noticed very little in his talk except its audacious cleverness, and that someone wholly under his dominion would have been less impressed than me because he would have forgotten his own …

Mercot was safe, and there was a chance apparently of Turpin and Miss Victor, which must be acted upon instantly if the main date were changed. Of the little boy I had given up all hope. … But how to find the truth!

I felt like a man in a bad dream who is standing on the line with an express train approaching, and does not know how to climb back on to the platform.

Next morning Medina never left me. He took me in his car to the City, and I waited while he did his business, and then to call in Carlton House Terrace a few doors from the Victors’ house.

Mr. Empson at St. Jude’s preached such a beautiful sermon last Sunday about that. He said we must give every unforgiving minute its sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—I think he was quoting poetry.

It is terrible to think of unforgiving minutes.

”

“Outhwaite has her duties at home, and so I dare say have you, if truth was spoken. Bah! I have no patience with restless English old maids.

They say an Englishman’s house is his castle, and yet there is a plague of barren virgins always buzzing round it in the name of religion and philanthropy.

Listen to me. I will not have you in this house. I will not have you talking to Outhwaite. I will not have an idle woman spying on my private affairs.”

Bolshevism, he said, was a form of it, and he attributed the success of Bolshevism in Asia to a revival of what he called Shamanism—I think that was the word.

By his way of it the War had cracked the veneer everywhere and the real stuff was showing through.

He rejoiced in the prospect, because the old faiths were not ethical codes but mysteries of the spirit, and they gave a chance for men who had found the ancient magic.

I knew now what a Goth and a Hun meant, and what had been the temper of scourges like Attila and Timour. …

Mad, you will say. Yes, mad beyond doubt, but it was the most convincing kind of madness.

I had to fight hard by keeping my mind firm on my job, to prevent my nerve giving.

That was the kind of thing Napoleon might have said—and done—had his schemes not gone astray.

I knew I was contending with a devil, but I know also that it was a great devil.

We returned to town just in time to dress for dinner, and all my nervousness revived a hundredfold. This was the night of crisis, and I loathed having to screw myself up to emergencies late in the day.

I was in Whittingtons’ then, and we suddenly found the foundations beginning to crumble—oh yes, before the Serajevo murders. You remember Charlie Esmond’s smash—well, that was largely due to the spasm of insecurity that shook the world.

People now and then get a feeling in their bones that something bad is going to happen. And probably they are right, and it has begun to happen.

”

Palliser-Yeates did not answer at once. “It looks like it.

I admit it’s almost unthinkable, but then all wars are really unthinkable, till you’re in the middle of them.

”

Burminster looked relieved. “The next war,” he said, “will be a dashed unpleasant affair. So far as I can see there will be very few soldiers killed, but an enormous number of civilians. The safest place will be the front.

There will be such a rush to get into the army that we’ll have to have conscription to make people remain in civil life.

The embusqués will be the regulars.”

I’m told there’s still something to be done with the southern tributaries of the Amazon. Mornington, you know, believes there’s a chance of finding some of the Inca people still dwelling in the unexplored upper glens. But all the rest have gone.

Since the beginning of the century we’ve made a clean sweep of the jolly old mysteries that made the world worth living in.

We have been to both the Poles, and to Lhasa, and to the Mountains of the Moon. We haven’t got to the top of Everest yet, but we know what it is like. Mecca and Medina are as stale as Bournemouth.

I had no reply and did not expect one. I had lost all my hate for the man, and, so strangely are we made, what I mostly felt was compassion.

We are all, even the best of us, egotists and self-deceivers, and without a little comfortable make-believe to clothe us we should freeze in the outer winds.

I shuddered when I thought of the poor devil with his palace of cards about his ears and his naked soul. I felt that further triumph would be an offence against humanity.

“Don’t be an old ass. Is there any man alive, who is not a raving maniac, likely to doubt your courage?

You know perfectly well that it is sometimes a brave man’s duty to run away.

”

I had a happy and peaceful day, and found to my relief that I wasn’t worrying about the future.

The clear air and the great spaces seemed to have given me the placid fatalism of an Arab.

When I returned I was greeted by Mary with the news that Archie had got a stag, and that she had followed most of his stalk through the big telescope. Archie himself arrived just before dinner, very cheerful and loquacious.

I lay a long time amid the fern, with bees humming around me and pipits calling, and an occasional buzzard or peregrine hovering in the blue, thinking precisely the same thoughts that I used to have in France the day before a big action.

It was not exactly nervousness that I felt, but a sense that the foundations of everything had got loose, and that the world had become so insecure that I had better draw down the blinds on hoping and planning and everything, and become a log.

I was very clear in my mind that next day was going to bring the crisis.

Looking back, it all seems very confused and amateurish, for what could I hope to do, even if I had the lee side, beyond killing or wounding him? and I had a chance of that as long as I had the upper ground.

But in the excitement of the chase the mind does not take long views, and I was enthralled by the crazy sport of the thing.

I did not feel any fear, because I was not worrying about consequences.