Читать книгу Valiant Dust - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 10

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The Section had endured life at Poste One for but a brief space, when the personality of a hitherto unnoticed comrade began to impinge upon Otho’s consciousness—a man whom the four Englishmen and their friends had noticed only as one of the party whom they generally termed “Vittorelli’s pets.” He had arrived, one day, with a mule-convoy, and had remained at the poste.

Undeniably, Sergeant-Major Vittorelli was guilty of gross favouritism, and undoubtedly this man was a prime favourite—ranking with the Corsicans themselves in Vittorelli’s esteem, and, with them, basking in the warmth of his approval—an approval that had numerous significant and practical manifestations.

Very probably the fact that the fellow had lived in Corsica, knew Ajaccio and spoke Italian, had a great deal to do with his success with Sergeant-Major Vittorelli. And not only with Sergeant-Major Vittorelli, for that invaluable and powerful patron of a worthy and deserving protégé had introduced him to the favourable notice of Major Riccoli himself.

In this exalted quarter also, the fellow had found favour, and had so far ingratiated himself that Major Riccoli had appointed him his ordonnance, orderly for duty whenever Major Riccoli sojourned at Poste One.

Here again, doubtless, the man’s knowledge of Corsica, Ajaccio, and the Italian tongue were of immense service to him in the attainment of his ambitions.

But why he, rather than the genuine Corsicans themselves, Corsicans bred and born?

And then, with a smile at his growing tendency to cynicism, Otho remembered that the man had money—for a légionnaire, quite a lot of money.

And if, in the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed is King, in the Legion’s Purgatory of Poverty, the man with a private income is Crœsus.

Not, of course, that his having money had any bearing upon his finding favour in the sight of Major Riccoli; nor, indeed, is it ready that the Sergeant-Major commanding a poste is likely to accept gifts of money from a légionnaire. No, no. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a cash-endowed “creeper,” tactful and discreet, can creep a very long way.

Lord! What petty and pitiful trifles loom large in such a life as that of a buried-alive forgotten desert-outpost.