Chapter Seven. Christmastide

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

Everything depended on whether the servant was in the hall. I had
put Stumm to sleep for a bit, but I couldn't flatter myself he would
long be quiet, and when he came to he would kick the locked door to
matchwood. I must get out of the house without a minute's delay, and
if the door was shut and the old man gone to bed I was done.

I met him at the foot of the stairs, carrying a candle.

'Your master wants me to send off an important telegram. Where
is the nearest office? There's one in the village, isn't there?' I
spoke in my best German, the first time I had used the tongue since
I crossed the frontier.

'The village is five minutes off at the foot of the avenue,' he
said. 'Will you be long, sir?'

'I'll be back in a quarter of an hour,' I said. 'Don't lock up
till I get in.'

I put on my ulster and walked out into a clear starry night. My
bag I left lying on a settle in the hall. There was nothing in it to
compromise me, but I wished I could have got a toothbrush and some
tobacco out of it.

So began one of the craziest escapades you can well imagine. I
couldn't stop to think of the future yet, but must take one step at a
time. I ran down the avenue, my feet cracking on the hard snow,
planning hard my programme for the next hour.

I found the village - half a dozen houses with one biggish place
that looked like an inn. The moon was rising, and as I approached I
saw that there was some kind of a store. A funny little two-seated
car was purring before the door, and I guessed this was also the
telegraph office.

I marched in and told my story to a stout woman with spectacles
on her nose who was talking to a young man.

'It is too late,' she shook her head. 'The Herr Burgrave knows
that well. There is no connection from here after eight o'clock. If
the matter is urgent you must go to Schwandorf.'

'How far is that?' I asked, looking for some excuse to get
decently out of the shop.

'Seven miles,' she said, 'but here is Franz and the post-wagon.
Franz, you will be glad to give the gentleman a seat beside you.'

The sheepish-looking youth muttered something which I took to be
assent, and finished off a glass of beer. From his eyes and manner
he looked as if he were half drunk.

I thanked the woman, and went out to the car, for I was in a
fever to take advantage of this unexpected bit of luck. I could hear
the post-mistress enjoining Franz not to keep the gentleman waiting,
and presently he came out and flopped into the driver's seat. We
started in a series of voluptuous curves, till his eyes got
accustomed to the darkness.

At first we made good going along the straight, broad highway
lined with woods on one side and on the other snowy fields melting
into haze. Then he began to talk, and, as he talked, he slowed down.
This by no means suited my book, and I seriously wondered whether I
should pitch him out and take charge of the thing. He was obviously
a weakling, left behind in the conscription, and I could have done it
with one hand. But by a fortunate chance I left him alone.

'That is a fine hat of yours, mein Herr,' he said. He took off
his own blue peaked cap, the uniform, I suppose, of the driver of the
post-wagon, and laid it on his knee. The night air ruffled a shock
of tow-coloured hair.

Then he calmly took my hat and clapped it on his head.

'With this thing I should be a gentleman,' he said.

I said nothing, but put on his cap and waited.

'That is a noble overcoat, mein Herr,' he went on. 'It goes
well with the hat. It is the kind of garment I have always desired
to own. In two days it will be the holy Christmas, when gifts are
given. Would that the good God sent me such a coat as yours!'

'You can try it on to see how it looks,' I said
good-humouredly.

He stopped the car with a jerk, and pulled off his blue coat.
The exchange was soon effected. He was about my height, and my
ulster fitted not so badly. I put on his overcoat, which had a big
collar that buttoned round the neck.

The idiot preened himself like a girl. Drink and vanity had
primed him for any folly. He drove so carelessly for a bit that he
nearly put us into a ditch. We passed several cottages and at the
last he slowed down.

'A friend of mine lives here,' he announced. 'Gertrud would
like to see me in the fine clothes which the most amiable Herr has
given me. Wait for me, I will not be long.' And he scrambled out of
the car and lurched into the little garden.

I took his place and moved very slowly forward. I heard the
door open and the sound of laughing and loud voices. Then it shut,
and looking back I saw that my idiot had been absorbed into the
dwelling of his Gertrud. I waited no longer, but sent the car
forward at its best speed.

Five minutes later the infernal thing began to give trouble - a
nut loose in the antiquated steering-gear. I unhooked a lamp,
examined it, and put the mischief right, but I was a quarter of an
hour doing it. The highway ran now in a thick forest and I noticed
branches going off now and then to the right. I was just thinking of
turning up one of them, for I had no anxiety to visit Schwandorf,
when I heard behind me the sound of a great car driven furiously.

I drew in to the right side - thank goodness I remembered the
rule of the road - and proceeded decorously, wondering what was going
to happen. I could hear the brakes being clamped on and the car
slowing down. Suddenly a big grey bonnet slipped past me and as I
turned my head I heard a familiar voice.

It was Stumm, looking like something that has been run over. He
had his jaw in a sling, so that I wondered if I had broken it, and
his eyes were beautifully bunged up. It was that that saved me, that
and his raging temper. The collar of the postman's coat was round my
chin, hiding my beard, and I had his cap pulled well down on my brow.
I remembered what Blenkiron had said - that the only way to deal
with the Germans was naked bluff. Mine was naked enough, for it was
all that was left to me.

'Where is the man you brought from Andersbach?' he roared, as
well as his jaw would allow him.

I pretended to be mortally scared, and spoke in the best
imitation I could manage of the postman's high cracked voice.

'He got out a mile back, Herr Burgrave,'I quavered. 'He was a
rude fellow who wanted to go to Schwandorf, and then changed his
mind.'

'Where, you fool? Say exactly where he got down or I will wring
your neck.'

'In the wood this side of Gertrud's cottage ... on the left
hand. I left him running among the trees.' I put all the terror I
knew into my pipe, and it wasn't all acting.

'He means the Henrichs' cottage, Herr Colonel,' said the
chauffeur. 'This man is courting the daughter.'

Stumm gave an order and the great car backed, and, as I looked
round, I saw it turning. Then as it gathered speed it shot forward,
and presently was lost in the shadows. I had got over the first
hurdle.

But there was no time to be lost. Stumm would meet the postman
and would be tearing after me any minute. I took the first turning,
and bucketed along a narrow woodland road. The hard ground would
show very few tracks, I thought, and I hoped the pursuit would think
I had gone on to Schwandorf. But it wouldn't do to risk it, and I
was determined very soon to get the car off the road, leave it, and
take to the forest. I took out my watch and calculated I could give
myself ten minutes.

I was very nearly caught. Presently I came on a bit of rough
heath, with a slope away from the road and here and there a patch of
black which I took to be a sandpit. Opposite one of these I slewed
the car to the edge, got out, started it again and saw it pitch
head-foremost into the darkness. There was a splash of water and
then silence. Craning over I could see nothing but murk, and the
marks at the lip where the wheels had passed. They would find my
tracks in daylight but scarcely at this time of night.

Then I ran across the road to the forest. I was only just in
time, for the echoes of the splash had hardly died away when I heard
the sound of another car. I lay flat in a hollow below a tangle of
snow- laden brambles and looked between the pine-trees at the moonlit
road. It was Stumm's car again and to my consternation it stopped
just a little short of the sandpit.

I saw an electric torch flashed, and Stumm himself got out and
examined the tracks on the highway. Thank God, they would be still
there for him to find, but had he tried half a dozen yards on he
would have seen them turn towards the sandpit. If that had happened
he would have beaten the adjacent woods and most certainly found me.
There was a third man in the car, with my hat and coat on him. That
poor devil of a postman had paid dear for his vanity.

They took a long time before they started again, and I was jolly
well relieved when they went scouring down the road. I ran deeper
into the woods till I found a track which - as I judged from the sky
which I saw in a clearing - took me nearly due west. That wasn't the
direction I wanted, so I bore off at right angles, and presently
struck another road which I crossed in a hurry. After that I got
entangled in some confounded kind of enclosure and had to climb
paling after paling of rough stakes plaited with osiers. Then came a
rise in the ground and I was on a low hill of pines which seemed to
last for miles. All the time I was going at a good pace, and before
I stopped to rest I calculated I had put six miles between me and the
sandpit.

My mind was getting a little more active now; for the first part
of the journey I had simply staggered from impulse to impulse. These
impulses had been uncommon lucky, but I couldn't go on like that for
ever. Ek sal 'n plan maak, says the old Boer when he gets into
trouble, and it was up to me now to make a plan.

As soon as I began to think I saw the desperate business I was
in for. Here was I, with nothing except what I stood up in -
including a coat and cap that weren't mine - alone in mid-winter in
the heart of South Germany. There was a man behind me looking for my
blood, and soon there would be a hue-and-cry for me up and down the
land. I had heard that the German police were pretty efficient, and I
couldn't see that I stood the slimmest chance. If they caught me
they would shoot me beyond doubt. I asked myself on what charge, and
answered, 'For knocking about a German officer.' They couldn't have
me up for espionage, for as far as I knew they had no evidence. I was
simply a Dutchman that had got riled and had run amok. But if they
cut down a cobbler for laughing at a second lieutenant - which is
what happened at Zabern - I calculated that hanging would be too good
for a man that had broken a colonel's jaw.

To make things worse my job was not to escape - though that
would have been hard enough - but to get to Constantinople, more than
a thousand miles off, and I reckoned I couldn't get there as a tramp.
I had to be sent there, and now I had flung away my chance. If I had
been a Catholic I would have said a prayer to St Teresa, for she
would have understood my troubles.

My mother used to say that when you felt down on your luck it
was a good cure to count your mercies. So I set about counting mine.
The first was that I was well started on my journey, for I couldn't
be above two score miles from the Danube. The second was that I had
Stumm's pass. I didn't see how I could use it, but there it was.
Lastly I had plenty of money - fifty-three English sovereigns and the
equivalent of three pounds in German paper which I had changed at the
hotel. Also I had squared accounts with old Stumm. That was the
biggest mercy of all.

I thought I'd better get some sleep, so I found a dryish hole
below an oak root and squeezed myself into it. The snow lay deep in
these woods and I was sopping wet up to the knees. All the same I
managed to sleep for some hours, and got up and shook myself just as
the winter's dawn was breaking through the tree tops. Breakfast was
the next thing, and I must find some sort of dwelling.

Almost at once I struck a road, a big highway running north and
south. I trotted along in the bitter morning to get my circulation
started, and presently I began to feel a little better. In a little
I saw a church spire, which meant a village. Stumm wouldn't be
likely to have got on my tracks yet, I calculated, but there was
always the chance that he had warned all the villages round by
telephone and that they might be on the look-out for me. But that
risk had to be taken, for I must have food.

it was the day before Christmas, I remembered, and people would
be holidaying. The village was quite a big place, but at this hour -
just after eight o'clock - there was nobody in the street except a
wandering dog. I chose the most unassuming shop I could find, where
a little boy was taking down the shutters - one of those general
stores where they sell everything. The boy fetched a very old woman,
who hobbled in from the back, fitting on her spectacles.

'Gruss Gott,' she said in a friendly voice, and I took off my
cap. I saw from my reflection in a saucepan that I looked moderately
respectable in spite of my night in the woods.

I told her the story of how I was walking from Schwandorf to see
my mother at an imaginary place called judenfeld, banking on the
ignorance of villagers about any place five miles from their homes.
I said my luggage had gone astray, and I hadn't time to wait for it,
since my leave was short. The old lady was sympathetic and
unsuspecting. She sold me a pound of chocolate, a box of biscuits,
the better part of a ham, two tins of sardines and a rucksack to
carry them. I also bought some soap, a comb and a cheap razor, and a
small Tourists' Guide, published by a Leipzig firm. As I was leaving
I saw what seemed like garments hanging up in the back shop, and
turned to have a look at them. They were the kind of thing that
Germans wear on their summer walking tours - long shooting capes made
of a green stuff they call loden. I bought one, and a green felt hat
and an alpenstock to keep it company. Then wishing the old woman and
her belongings a merry Christmas, I departed and took the shortest
cut out of the village. There were one or two people about now, but
they did not seem to notice me.

I went into the woods again and walked for two miles till I
halted for breakfast. I was not feeling quite so fit now, and I did
not make much of my provisions, beyond eating a biscuit and some
chocolate. I felt very thirsty and longed for hot tea. In an icy
pool I washed and with infinite agony shaved my beard. That razor
was the worst of its species, and my eyes were running all the time
with the pain of the operation. Then I took off the postman's coat
and cap, and buried them below some bushes. I was now a clean-shaven
German pedestrian with a green cape and hat, and an absurd
walking-stick with an iron-shod end - the sort of person who roams in
thousands over the Fatherland in summer, but is a rarish bird in
mid-winter.

The Tourists' Guide was a fortunate purchase, for it contained a
big map of Bavaria which gave me my bearings. I was certainly not
forty miles from the Danube - more like thirty. The road through the
village I had left would have taken me to it. I had only to walk due
south and I would reach it before night. So far as I could make out
there were long tongues of forest running down to the river, and I
resolved to keep to the woodlands. At the worst I would meet a
forester or two, and I had a good enough story for them. On the
highroad there might be awkward questions.

When I started out again I felt very stiff and the cold seemed
to be growing intense. This puzzled me, for I had not minded it much
up to now, and, being warm-blooded by nature, it never used to worry
me. A sharp winter night on the high-veld was a long sight chillier
than anything I had struck so far in Europe. But now my teeth were
chattering and the marrow seemed to be freezing in my bones.

The day had started bright and clear, but a wrack of grey clouds
soon covered the sky, and a wind from the east began to whistle. As I
stumbled along through the snowy undergrowth I kept longing for
bright warm places. I thought of those long days on the veld when
the earth was like a great yellow bowl, with white roads running to
the horizon and a tiny white farm basking in the heart of it, with
its blue dam and patches of bright green lucerne. I thought of those
baking days on the east coast, when the sea was like mother-of-pearl
and the sky one burning turquoise. But most of all I thought of warm
scented noons on trek, when one dozed in the shadow of the wagon and
sniffed the wood-smoke from the fire where the boys were cooking
dinner.

From these pleasant pictures I returned to the beastly present -
the thick snowy woods, the lowering sky, wet clothes, a hunted
present, and a dismal future. I felt miserably depressed, and I
couldn't think of any mercies to count. It struck me that I might be
falling sick.

About midday I awoke with a start to the belief that I was being
pursued. I cannot explain how or why the feeling came, except that
it is a kind of instinct that men get who have lived much in wild
countries. My senses, which had been numbed, suddenly grew keen, and
my brain began to work double quick.

I asked myself what I would do if I were Stumm, with hatred in
my heart, a broken jaw to avenge, and pretty well limitless powers.
He must have found the car in the sandpit and seen my tracks in the
wood opposite. I didn't know how good he and his men might be at
following a spoor, but I knew that any ordinary Kaffir could have
nosed it out easily. But he didn't need to do that. This was a
civilized country full of roads and railways. I must some time and
somewhere come out of the woods. He could have all the roads
watched, and the telephone would set everyone on my track within a
radius of fifty miles. Besides, he would soon pick up my trail in
the village I had visited that morning. From the map I learned that
it was called Greif, and it was likely to live up to that name with
me.

Presently I came to a rocky knoll which rose out of the forest.
Keeping well in shelter I climbed to the top and cautiously looked
around me. Away to the east I saw the vale of a river with broad
fields and church-spires. West and south the forest rolled unbroken
in a wilderness of snowy tree-tops. There was no sign of life
anywhere, not even a bird, but I knew very well that behind me in the
woods were men moving swiftly on my track, and that it was pretty
well impossible for me to get away.

There was nothing for it but to go on till I dropped or was
taken. I shaped my course south with a shade of west in it, for the
map showed me that in that direction I would soonest strike the
Danube. What I was going to do when I got there I didn't trouble to
think. I had fixed the river as my immediate goal and the future
must take care of itself.

I was now certain that I had fever on me. It was still in my
bones, as a legacy from Africa, and had come out once or twice when I
was with the battalion in Hampshire. The bouts had been short for I
had known of their coming and dosed myself. But now I had no
quinine, and it looked as if I were in for a heavy go. It made me
feel desperately wretched and stupid, and I all but blundered into
capture.

For suddenly I came on a road and was going to cross it blindly,
when a man rode slowly past on a bicycle. Luckily I was in the shade
of a clump of hollies and he was not looking my way, though he was
not three yards off. I crawled forward to reconnoitre. I saw about
half a mile of road running straight through the forest and every two
hundred yards was a bicyclist. They wore uniform and appeared to be
acting as sentries.

This could only have one meaning. Stumm had picketed all the
roads and cut me off in an angle of the woods. There was no chance
of getting across unobserved. As I lay there with my heart sinking,
I had the horrible feeling that the pursuit might be following me
from behind, and that at any moment I would be enclosed between two
fires.

For more than an hour I stayed there with my chin in the snow. I
didn't see any way out, and I was feeling so ill that I didn't seem
to care. Then my chance came suddenly out of the skies.

The wind rose, and a great gust of snow blew from the east. In
five minutes it was so thick that I couldn't see across the road. At
first I thought it a new addition to my troubles, and then very
slowly I saw the opportunity. I slipped down the bank and made ready
to cross.

I almost blundered into one of the bicyclists. He cried out and
fell off his machine, but I didn't wait to investigate. A sudden
access of strength came to me and I darted into the woods on the
farther side. I knew I would be soon swallowed from sight in the
drift, and I knew that the falling snow would hide my tracks. So I
put my best foot forward.

I must have run miles before the hot fit passed, and I stopped
from sheer bodily weakness. There was no sound except the crush of
falling snow, the wind seemed to have gone, and the place was very
solemn and quiet. But Heavens! how the snow fell! It was partly
screened by the branches, but all the same it was piling itself up
deep everywhere. My legs seemed made of lead, my head burned, and
there were fiery pains over all my body. I stumbled on blindly,
without a notion of any direction, determined only to keep going to
the last. For I knew that if I once lay down I would never rise
again.

When I was a boy I was fond of fairy tales, and most of the
stories I remembered had been about great German forests and snow and
charcoal burners and woodmen's huts. Once I had longed to see these
things, and now I was fairly in the thick of them. There had been
wolves, too, and I wondered idly if I should fall in with a pack. I
felt myself getting light-headed. I fell repeatedly and laughed
sillily every time. Once I dropped into a hole and lay for some time
at the bottom giggling. If anyone had found me then he would have
taken me for a madman. The twilight of the forest grew dimmer, but I
scarcely noticed it. Evening was falling, and soon it would be night,
a night without morning for me. My body was going on without the
direction of my brain, for my mind was filled with craziness. I was
like a drunk man who keeps running, for he knows that if he stops he
will fall, and I had a sort of bet with myself not to lie down - not
at any rate just yet. If I lay down I should feel the pain in my
head worse. Once I had ridden for five days down country with fever
on me and the flat bush trees had seemed to melt into one big mirage
and dance quadrilles before my eyes. But then I had more or less
kept my wits. Now I was fairly daft, and every minute growing
dafter.

Then the trees seemed to stop and I was walking on flat ground.
it was a clearing, and before me twinkled a little light. The change
restored me to consciousness, and suddenly I felt with horrid
intensity the fire in my head and bones and the weakness of my limbs.
I longed to sleep, and I had a notion that a place to sleep was
before me. I moved towards the light and presently saw through a
screen of snow the outline of a cottage.

I had no fear, only an intolerable longing to lie down. Very
slowly I made my way to the door and knocked. My weakness was so
great that I could hardly lift my hand.

There were voices within, and a corner of the curtain was lifted
from the window. Then the door opened and a woman stood before me, a
woman with a thin, kindly face.

'Gruss Gott,' she said, while children peeped from behind her
skirts.

'Gruss Gott,' I replied. I leaned against the door-post, and
speech forsook me.

She saw my condition. 'Come in, Sir,' she said. 'You are sick
and it is no weather for a sick man.'

I stumbled after her and stood dripping in the centre of the
little kitchen, while three wondering children stared at me. It was
a poor place, scantily furnished, but a good log-fire burned on the
hearth. The shock of warmth gave me one of those minutes of self-
possession which comes sometimes in the middle of a fever.

'I am sick, mother, and I have walked far in the storm and lost
my way. I am from Africa, where the climate is hot, and your cold
brings me fever. It will pass in a day or two if you can give me a
bed.'

'You are welcome,' she said; 'but first I will make you
coffee.'

I took off my dripping cloak, and crouched close to the hearth.
She gave me coffee - poor washy stuff, but blessedly hot. Poverty
was spelled large in everything I saw. I felt the tides of fever
beginning to overflow my brain again, and I made a great attempt to
set my affairs straight before I was overtaken. With difficulty I
took out Stumm's pass from my pocket-book.

'That is my warrant,' I said. 'I am a member of the Imperial
Secret Service and for the sake of my work I must move in the dark.
If you will permit it, mother, I will sleep till I am better, but no
one must know that I am here. If anyone comes, you must deny my
presence.'

She looked at the big seal as if it were a talisman.

'Yes, yes,' she said, 'you will have the bed in the garret and
be left in peace till you are well. We have no neighbours near, and
the storm will shut the roads. I will be silent, I and the little
ones.'

My head was beginning to swim, but I made one more effort.

'There is food in my rucksack - biscuits and ham and chocolate.
Pray take it for your use. And here is some money to buy Christmas
fare for the little ones.' And I gave her some of the German
notes.

After that my recollection becomes dim. She helped me up a
ladder to the garret, undressed me, and gave me a thick coarse
nightgown. I seem to remember that she kissed my hand, and that she
was crying. 'The good Lord has sent you,' she said. 'Now the little
ones will have their prayers answered and the Christkind will not
pass by our door.'