I had never any doubt about the result, though Archie told me later that he went crazy with suspense. Lensch was not aware of his opponent till he was almost upon him, and I wonder if by any freak of instinct he recognized his greatest antagonist. He never fired a shot, nor did Peter … I saw the German twist and sideslip as if to baffle the fate descending upon him. I saw Peter veer over vertically and I knew that the end had come. He was there to make certain of victory and he took the only way. The machines closed, there was a crash which I felt though I could not hear it, and next second both were hurtling down, over and over, to the earth.
They fell in the river just short of the enemy lines, but I did not see them, for my eyes were blinded and I was on my knees.
After that it was all a dream. I found myself being embraced by a French General of Division, and saw the first companies of the cheerful bluecoats whom I had longed for. With them came the rain, and it was under a weeping April sky that early in the night I marched what was left of my division away from the battlefield. The enemy guns were starting to speak behind us, but I did not heed them. I knew that now there were warders at the gate, and I believed that by the grace of God that gate was barred forever.
They took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and left his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills. In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim’s Progress. It lies before me as I write, and beside it—for I was his only legatee—the little case which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.
It was from the Pilgrim’s Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple-orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale in the end not of Mr. Standfast, whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down the words as a salute and a farewell:
Then said he, “I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.”
So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
Colophon
Mr. Standfast
was published in 1919 by
John Buchan.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Michael Atkinson,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1996 by
Jo Churcher and Al Haines.
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Jungfrau, Switzerland,
a painting completed in 1855 by
Alexandre Calame.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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The first edition of this ebook was released on
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