Читать книгу Private Selby - Edgar Wallace - Страница 10

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WHILE Mr. Oxstead, steel bands upon his wrists, alternately cursed and implored his captors, Dick, in the room above, stood explaining his position to a group of excited soldiers. The Brown Lady leant motionless against the wall with a white face and lips closed tightly, watching him with eyes that did not leave his face. Later, Dick led his lady forth into the drizzling rain, and hand in hand they walked away, neither speaking.

It was a dream walk, the exact incidents of which Dick cannot remember to this day. Only he knows that he was finding a place of asylum for the Brown Lady, and that by his side walked two jubilant men in scarlet tunics, who talked all the time.

One was a man with face like teak, with grey-blue eyes that twinkled—not like Laddo's twinkled. The other was shorter and stouter, with an absurd little moustache waxed to a point.

"Shorty," said the tall man admiringly, "where did you learn it?"

"Learn what?" asked Shorty complacently.

"That rib hook—it was fine!" He turned to Dick. "Did you notice it?" But Dick was beyond noticing the trivialities of life. If he noticed anything, it was that the little hand in his was warm and damp.

"Shorty got that arm of his to work in a most wonderful way," rhapsodized the tall man.

The little man swelled his chest and fingered his moustache.

"Nothin' worth speakin' about," he said modestly.

"Kosh!" said the big man enthusiastically, "an' over went the feller with the pipeclay dial; kosh! an' down went another!" He stopped as the party reached Waterloo Road.

"You're a swaddy, ain't you?" he asked of a sudden, and Dick started guiltily.

"No," he confessed, and the tall man shook his head reprovingly. As for the short man, he became apoplectic in his righteous wrath.

"Then what the dooce did you mean?" he demanded with great fierceness." What the dooce did you mean by a-callin' on the Rochesters?"

"Half a mo'," conciliated the tall soldier. "He's a fair terror, is old Shorty," he chuckled, "it's a word an' a blow with him."

"It's false pretences," said Shorty, and scowled terribly.

"If you ain't a soldier," said Long—for, strangely enough, this was the tall soldier's name—"we've made a slight mistake. Thought you was an officer's servant in your master's kit."

"Civilians pretending to be soldiers!" grumbled Shorty ominously.

Then Dick found his voice. "I am sorry—I am not a soldier—yet. To-morrow I shall offer myself, and if they'll have me—"

"Some queer things are blowin' into the Army," commented Shorty, with bitterness, "an' I don't see why you shouldn't come in, if the wind's high enough."

"Shorty's a bit annoyed," explained the tall apologist. He looked imploringly at the girl as though begging her to find excuse for his pugnacious friend.

"Annoyed!" interrupted Shorty more fiercely than ever. "Didn't he lead me to believe that he was a Rochester bloke? Didn't I break in the door?"

"Young Harvey did," corrected the other soothingly.

"Didn't I give the feller that was on the stairs a push on the neck?"

"I did," admitted "Long" Long.

"Didn't I dash into the room an' see a chap tryin' to choke this chap, an' didn't I cop him a welt?"

"Somebody did I know, Shorty," soothed his friend. "And I dessay it was you right enough."

Shorty waggled his head impatiently.

"It's enough to make a man give up fightin'," he said bitterly. "What's the good of a feller bein' a champion—who's that?" He looked round suddenly.

A soldier was crossing the road; he was evidently happy. Whatever disappointments, regrets or remorse the world held for others, he was obviously satisfied with life as he found it. He announced the fact loudly in a ribald chorus, faulty as to scansion, but pregnant with philosophy.

"What's the good of kicking up a row If you've got no work to do... If you can't get work you can't get the sack..."

"Bill Blake," announced the tall man approvingly, "an' if there's a military policeman in the vicinity we look like being pinched."

Shorty suddenly became active. He turned to the pair and extended a podgy hand.

"Well, good night," he said with some haste, "all's well that ends well—so long."

"Wait a bit, Shorty," begged the other, "wait for old Bill Blake."

"Never mind about Bill Blake," said Shorty hurriedly, "he's a chap I don't—"

Nevertheless, he waited irresolutely till the musical gentleman came up.

He would have passed on, but at sight of the little man, obviously ill at ease, he stopped dead.

"Shorty?" he said exultantly.

Shorty coughed—an embarrassed cough.

"Shorty, the prize fighter!" said Bill Blake, with an extravagant gesture. "Shorty, the twenty-four-stone under-nine-an'-over-ninety champion of the Rochesters."

He removed his belt with great deliberation.

"I've been waitin' to meet you out, Shorty," he said courteously, "ever since that mem'rable day, as dear old Shakespeare says. I heard tell that you was makin' statements about me bein' a third-class shot."

"A joke's a joke, William," said Shorty, who had suddenly gone pale.

"Although," continued Mr. Blake, loosening the top button of his tunic, " although the support of a widdered mother an' a father more often unemployed than not, I'm goin' to risk—"

It may be that he had not seen the Brown Lady, for she had stood all this time in the shadow. As his good-humoured eyes fell on her, his flow of irony ceased, and he stammered and blushed.

"Excuse me, miss," he said awkwardly, "the fact is "—he buttoned up his tunic and clipped his belt about his waist—"the fact is," he went on laboriously, "a little joke—Shorty bein' " His speech ended in a sandy delta of incoherence.

It was Long who made the position plain.

"Goin' to enlist, are you?" Bill eyed Dick Selby curiously.

"Want a braided jacket and a long sword, I'll bet."

Dick shook his head with a smile.

"Want a pair of spurs to clink, an' a long-faced horse to clean, don't you?"

"I hardly know what I want," said Dick ruefully.

"Army Service Corps, him," suggested Long with gloom. "Clark's section's got no spurs, but plenty of money; 'transports' get no money, but whips and spurs and tight-fittin' trousis."

"The cavalry," began the truculent Shorty.

"You shut up," said Mr. Blake, and Shorty smiled feebly.

"What about the artillery?" Bill Blake suggested, "lots of braid, busby, sword and two horses."

"Stables at five a.m.," said Long gloomily, "whilst the foot crusher is sleepin' very slothful."

Dick was a little bewildered at the turn the conversation had taken. He looked at the Brown Lady, but received no encouragement. He did not know that these daring infantry men were testing a future comrade. Testing him with temptation, suppressing their undying faith in the arm of the service; crushing down their sinful pride, that the victory might be more complete. He was—though they themselves did not know it—the novice standing before the High Altar, the colour and joy of life faithfully depicted for him by a dispassionate bishop, so that he might know to the fullest extent the attraction of the life he was foregoing.

"Medical staff's all right," said Bill dreamily; "quiet kit, cherry facin's, little red cross, an' ten shillings a week clear—a gentlemanly corps." But Dick shook his head.

"Engineers—velvet facin's an' all," Blake went on thoughtfully, "or ordnance corps with broad stripes down your trousis."

"No," said Dick. He began to understand the play.

"No?" repeated Bill; "well, there's only one other thing "—there was a simulation of regret in his tones—" that's the foot sloggers. The red coats an' ammunition boots; the marchin', sweatin', toilin' infantry."

Dick did not speak.

"They're all much of a muchness," said the disparaging Blake, "some have kilts, and some have busbies. Some are red, an' a few are green—which looks black. There's a certain corps "—he chose his words carefully, but spoke with an affectation of indifference—"a certain corps by the name of the Rochesters, commonly called the 'Dancing Second' owing to the 2nd Battalion changing step when marchin' past—a curious 'abit. There's no row-mance about us—them, I mean. Everyday soldiers, they are, but there was a time when the old Rochesters was the celebrated corps in the service."

He paused.

"It's a good corps, with a good O.C., but not such a good O.C. as it used to have."

Dick heard a quiet sob at his side. Great tears were rolling down the face of the Brown Lady.

"Once," said Private Blake reminiscently, "there was a little kid that commanded our battalion. Colonel's daughter she was—he was a perisher by all accounts and got chucked out of the service. But this little nipper used to be 'O.C.' in the old days—'Officer Commandin', d'ye see? Used to walk about the parade as if she owned the bloomin' army."

"She did." Long's voice was gruff.

"That's why they sometimes call us 'The Nursemaids,'" Blake continued, "but she's gone—"

"Gone, gone, gone," whispered the Brown Lady, and the men looked their amazement.

"Excuse me, miss," said Blake, and peered into her face. Then he stepped back with a cry.

"By the Lord!" he whispered, "O.C.!"

And he stiffened to attention and saluted, as years ago the Rochesters were wont to salute, half in fun, half in earnest, a little mite of a girl that walked the barrack square at Poona.