Читать книгу The Road South - Roderick Stuart Kennedy - Страница 10

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When Captain Todd had been stopped in the village street by a sedate young beauty and interrogated about the disposal of Brian Mackell, his conscience had pricked him. He had reassured her and hurried on to catch the others, thinking that it was lucky the battalion had been held up, or he might have left his only patient behind.

"Funny how all these women fall for a doctor," Thomas remarked as Todd fell into step.

Wells looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Don't let that one die on you, Doc. One per village is plenty!"

Todd looked at him thoughtfully. Curious sense of humour the fellow had. It was hard to know if he enjoyed bruising people's sensibilities, or if he were merely dumb. His gibes seemed a bit too consistently unpleasant for the latter. Still, it wasn't worth snubbing him; he hurt himself most in the end.

"If my other patient dies," he pointed out equably, "your platoon will be a man short, Wells."

"Is that where we stopped to put Mackell, last night?"

"Sure," said Wentworth. "Don't you remember that extraordinary little row of villas? They looked bad enough at night, but in daylight they're a wart! Why in hell should anybody want to stick a bunch of cramped little Upper Tooting atrocities in a place like this, with miles of empty downs to spare?"

"Builder's speculation," grunted Scimold. "Same everywhere. Same in Winnipeg. Sir James told me. Very disgusted."

"That's no excuse. Lady Brador said the fellow was hoping to make a summer resort out of the place. They had a landslide some years ago, and part of the old village went into the sea. They had to put up some new cottages for the fishermen, and some builder thought he'd turn the place into another Cromer,—but those cramped little eyesores would kill Monte Carlo!"

"Here's the Bull Inn," announced Major Baxter.

Thomas smiled. "No mistaking that. They don't cramp the pubs, in this country, anyhow!"

While the others joined in the bustle around the inn doors, Todd walked over and sat down on a stone below the signpost in the centre of the crossroads. There was a little island of coarse grass there, and he could see far down all four roads which met at Caster End.

The village was the same kind of mixture which he had seen in varying proportions in most parts of England which the battalion had visited. The old and the new. But here the new was rather uglier than the average, and there seemed less reason for it,—except that landslide.

The narrow road on his left, damp and muddy in spite of the pale sun and cloudless, gray-blue sky, led down to what must be the old village. He could just see the tops of a few dark cottages. The downs swept steeply up from each side of it to their highest point, a headland on the right, which seemed to end in a knife edge where the cliff had slipped to the undermining of the ceaseless waves.

In the angle of the road to the old village and the road south stood the Bull, large, square, blatant with unweathered red bricks and vivid green paint.

Behind him, the road down which they had marched last night was bare and lowly hedged. There were a few wind-modelled trees and three cottages of an earlier generation than the Bull. The farthest he recognized. It was there that Dorothy Brador had waited to call him to old Mary's deathbed.

Inland, on his right, the road which began at the old village by the shore, curved quietly out of sight among larger trees grouped about a farmhouse and dark gray barns. The land sloped away from the sea, for the high downs of Caster Head only came to their lowest level about a mile inland. There, far beyond the farmhouse and the trees, he could see the ground rising again, always with more and more trees and hedged fields. It was a striking contrast to the wind-swept downs and village of Caster End.

The village itself stretched along the road south. If there had been more trees to mitigate it, it would not have been quite so bad. But trees did not seem to flourish under the constant North Sea gales, and the village, considering what it was, looked indecently naked! Particularly incongruous was that row of undetached villas with their slate roofs, ugly gables outlined with cast-iron filigree, grained yellow doors, strips of garden so narrow as to be useless, and along the front of the whole row a two-foot brick wall with more cast-iron fencing on top of it.

Scimold had talked about Winnipeg, but he doubted if there was anything there quite so cramped,—with quite so much open space to making cramping unnecessary. There were shortsighted, grasping builders everywhere, but Winnipeg or Toronto or Montreal were at least cities, with expensive land and convenience of transportation to be considered.

The closest analogy he could think of were the typical new farmhouses of his own district,—and they were the same in every prosperous farming community in Canada. Those red-brick, gabled, filigree-decorated houses which had replaced the frame and log farmsteads of earlier days were as discordant with their own countryside as these villas with the open downs. Probably both had much the same excuse—cheapness in building and heating—though he had yet to find an English house that could be considered heated!

But at the bottom of it—everywhere—was poor education. People didn't know beauty from ugliness, harmony from discord. They didn't know that there was pleasure to be gained by seeing beautiful things, so naturally they wouldn't pay for it.

The shops opposite the villas were of the same nature, except for Nathaniel Runke's Sail Loft. Todd felt grateful to Nathaniel for his oasis of weathered brick and tarred board.

He rose and threw away his cigarette. Standing, he could see farther past the village houses to where the road south rose gently over the lower slopes of Caster Head, cool, and clean, and pale yellow between the olive grasslands. In that road at least man had blended his work with nature.

He smiled with mild irony as he strolled across the road to the Bull. The Bull was built for blending man with beer, and if there had ever been any validity in the ridiculous definition that beauty is the perfect adaptation of an object to its use, the Bull Inn would have been rarely beautiful! For it was so admirably fitted for its purpose that even the irruption of a thousand new devotees of blending, and the necessities of an Orderly Room, had not only failed to disclose a flaw, but had revealed the true genius of the builder.

Like the commonplace man who, in the crisis of a battle discovers unsuspected reservoirs of heroism, the Bull had come into its own with this first wave of war sweeping up to its doors. And it was those doors—the pluralness of them—which were the key to its greatness.

At one end, discreetly concealed from the front, was a door direct into the Public Bar,—the main blending room of the establishment. Through it any N.C.O. or man of the 2nd Montreal Rifles could make his entrance and—more important still—his exit, unembarrassed by the critical eyes of officers and gentlemen of Westmount Boulevard.

It is true that another door led from the Public Bar to the central hallway, but the far-sighted builder had departed from tradition and fashioned it of honest pine throughout, instead of partly glass. George Albert Summers, a Licensed Victualler worthy of his premises, had shown his knowledge of basic military principles by locking that door and putting the key in the green vase on his mantelpiece. Thus there was no internal communication between the Saloon Bar and the rest of the Inn, except behind the counter.

The main door, under the great sign of the Bull in front, led into a central hallway, on the right of which was the locked door, and farther toward the back an opening which led behind the bar. Exactly opposite that opening was one of the doors into the "Snuggery." The other opened into a long passage running at right angles to the main entrance hallway, and opposite it was the Private Bar. There were several other doors farther along, but the only one which ever concerned the Montreal Rifles was the second on the right, next to the Snuggery, which gave on to a small room of undesignated purpose.

Such details may seem insignificant, but were not so to the officers and men who were to remember the Bull for the rest of their military lives as the only IDEAL Regimental Headquarters they were to discover this side of a high explosive shell.

For this happy memory George Albert Summers must receive much credit. It was he who tactfully but insistently suggested the allotment of these rooms and doors, in spite of Regimental Sergeant Majors, Adjutants, and Colonels with a passion for giving short, sharp, military orders in abrupt voices, and a determination to get everything in somewhere, somehow,—IMMEDIATELY, and look lively, please!—and a habit of arranging everything at right angles to everything else, with a sigh of relief and a satisfied stroking of small moustaches.

When he had seen the military machine exemplifying itself by unpacking of C. Company's typewriter within easy range of a comparatively clumsy froth blower such as old Jem Wavertree, George Albert Summers, aided by a quiet orderly corporal, had made his own arrangements while the higher ranks were giving short, sharp, military orders elsewhere.

The orderly room impedimenta were shifted to the Snuggery, and the Saloon Bar thenceforth belonged to the men of the Regiment and the village.

The Snuggery thus became the Orderly Room; and an Orderly Room with one door opening exactly opposite the bar, and another elsewhere for official purposes, admittedly is well designed.

The room of Hitherto Undesignated Purpose was now designated the Colonel's Office, with a door into the Orderly Room and another into the passage,—an excellent arrangement, as any Colonel will agree.

The Private Bar, on the other hand, underwent practically no change of status, and became the Officers' Mess.

The excellence of the general arrangement can now be understood. The men could take their drinks undisturbed by critical eyes. The orderly room staff, who have a dry job and yet must be at the beck of the Colonel, were located to satisfy both requirements. The Colonel had them under his eye without being under theirs. Lesser officers could walk boldly through the main entrance to the Orderly Room, or the Colonel—or elsewhere—and no onlooker could know which. And from every room there was unrestricted, unobtrusive access to the bar.

When Captain Todd joined the throng in the Orderly Room, they were just realizing their advantages. Even the less fortunately billeted officers were becoming reconciled. Captain Bastable of A. Company himself was not very bitter, although he and his officers were quartered in the Eastern Arms, a mere pub down in the old village, the owner of which combined his licensed victualling with fish warehousing without drawing any fine distinctions.

"If it wasn't for this place," Bastable remarked to Todd, wiping the froth off his moustache, "I'd have a word or two to say to Blaikie on this billeting business! You fellows in a ducal mansion, and us in a fishy pub! That's a fine system!

"Is there any word from the seats of the mighty about a move yet, Colonel?"

"Nothing, Bastable. The Brigadier's just as much in the dark as the rest of us. He thinks that some little hitch has occurred—probably over at the Front—and the clogging-up process always grows the farther back it gets, so I shouldn't be surprised if we were here a week." He looked around the Private Bar, and through to his private office. "And we could be clogged in worse places, too," he added.

Bastable smiled sadly at Lieutenant Praed of No. 1 Platoon, another of the guests of the Eastern Arms. "Well, we'll have to do the best we can. If we can come here early enough and leave late enough, I guess we can sleep without smelling the fish, but it'll be a strain on the Bull's beer supply!"

Colonel Markey rose and picked up his riding-crop. He smiled drily as he looked at the cheerful group. "I must try and arrange a programme which will obviate such a danger," he said as he went out.

Todd laughed as he saw several pewters suddenly stop in mid-air, while their owners digested the implications of the Colonel's remark. "You were asking for it, Bastable!"

Captain Bastable's pewter finished its interrupted journey. "Oh, well! He'd have done it anyway. We all know the Colonel. He'll be reasonable." There was more hope than confidence in his voice as he watched the tall, immaculately-uniformed figure disappear.

Colonel Erasmus Darwin Markey, a wholesale grocer by trade, looked and dressed rather more like an officer of the Life Guards than any whom that famous regiment could have produced. He was the only officer in the battalion who had seen service in France, having been seriously wounded as second in command of the 1st Battalion. When he had taken command of the newly-formed 2nd Battalion, his left arm had been in a sling, which, when it was discarded, revealed the absence of three fingers and much of the rest of his hand.

He was of the opinion, not uncommon among commanding officers, that he was the best soldier in the Regiment. But he held another and less orthodox belief equally firmly,—that every man in it could be brought to his own pitch of efficiency by intelligent discipline, training, and HARD WORK. The first opinion was sincerely subscribed to by every man under him. The second would have been questioned if it had not been proven by many minor miracles. Not the least of these was to be the record of the Regiment during its stay in Caster End, where, in spite of the perfection of the Bull's arrangements, not a single drunk appeared on the charge sheet.

After the rest of the officers had streamed off to the nine o'clock parade, Todd strolled into the Colonel's office to see if there was anything to do.

He admired Colonel Markey even more than the others, partly because the Colonel's mental and physical qualities were those which, in theory, he would have liked most to possess, partly because, as Medical Officer, he was privy to things deeper than the magnificent externals of Erasmus Darwin Markey's figure and uniform.

There was an intimate and unexpressed understanding between the two men. Only Todd knew that the shattered hand was the least of the Colonel's disabilities. Only Todd guessed that the Colonel's immaculate array was for a purpose closely akin to that of the dress suit which some white men are said to don each evening in their jungle homes.

Colonel Markey's peace time rank in the Montreal Rifles had precluded any but the most casual medical examination on the outbreak of war; but it was largely due to Todd's near-perjury that he had been allowed to return.

So there was a firm, unspoken conspiracy between the two men, to cheat the quiet disease which had marked the Colonel for its quarry years ago. If his doctor were skillful and his fate kind, Colonel Markey should lie, gallant and bloody, in the red earth, and not on the pallid obscenity of an undertaker's slab.

But apart from this, Todd was anxious to be of use to Colonel Markey. He was the only officer unaffected by the constant drive toward perfection, and the duty of attending a thousand healthy men was so light that he felt something of a sham. Any extra duty which he could extract from the Colonel or Adjutant was a sop to his illogically uneasy conscience.

But today there was nothing. However, he had one patient to visit, anyhow. That would save the morning from complete emptiness. He hitched the strap of his case over his shoulder and walked slowly down the village street, still amused at its incongruity.

There was a red-brick shop which might have been lifted from any suburb in the English-speaking world, except that the stiffly displayed "Gent's Haberdashery" was here subordinated to a sombre array of sou'westers, oilskins, and coarse, blue jerseys.

He went in to enquire where his patient was billeted, for those villas all looked alike. The shop was empty, but he was in no hurry to make his presence known. There was a comfortable familiarity about the inside of that shop. He speculated on national characteristics as expressed in shops, wondering if Russia or Spain were dotted with little shops selling exactly the same lines as this, or if it was merely that the nation of shopkeepers had managed to impress its characteristic on every country which shared any trace of its traditions.

No two places could be less similar than this East Anglian village, and the North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where Labrador and Quebec met in isolated settlements of French Canadians and Indians, with a sparse leavening of Scotch. Yet he had been in many stores along that coast with exactly the same selection of collars, ties, shirts, and hats, displayed in exactly the same way. The work-clothes themselves differed only in their adaptation to different climates. But these rubber boots were as foreign to the sickly yellow Oxford shoes beside them, as were the sealskin boots of Seven Islands; the familiar, pearly-gray Homburg hat was as alien to the sou'wester of Caster End as it was to Hudson Bay Company's leather, fur-lined cap.

A pinafored child interrupted his reflections by appearing in a doorway behind the counter and sucking its finger at him attentively. It returned as silently as it had come, conveying the news, and a solidly-built woman came out, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair was gray and very thin, and so tightly drawn back and twisted into a minute button, that the scalp seemed stretched like a drum, and the eyebrows pulled upwards in an expression of permanent enquiry.

She smiled, but it was not sufficient to counteract the rigid discipline of the button, and her eyebrows remained raised. "Yes, sir," she answered. "That'll be Miss Page, the Minister's daughter at Number Five. I heard as how the Vicar had put a wounded soldier with them. John was wondering how they'd all make out together."

"You think it will not be an entirely happy family?"

"Not rightly that, sir; but they keeps themselves to themselves, if you know what I mean. The Minister, he's writing a big book, they say, but he don't seem properly awake when he comes out of it some'ow. It must be six years come Whitsun' they've lived here, and I don't think I've spoke to 'im more than a bob o' the 'ead since he come!"

"Well, I don't think Mackell will worry about that much, Mrs. ——?"

"'Cobbin', sir," she suggested, with a quick motion which could only be the "bob o' the 'ead."

"Oh yes, Mrs. Cobbin; I was only thinking that even if Mr. Page isn't the most genial host, his daughter seems quite capable of making an injured soldier contented with his billet."

Mrs. Cobbin stared over his head at some very distant spot. "You'd think so, wouldn't you, sir?"

Todd felt that he was snubbed, and the subject dismissed forever, or even longer. But he was to learn better. Mrs. Cobbin, aided by her eyebrows, had a genius for indicating silently that a remark was impinging on matters too delicate for discussion, that the speaker was mistaken in his suppositions, that she, Mrs. Cobbin, knew much better, if she had been willing to tell all she knew, and that the subject must be dropped IMMEDIATELY.

Any famous hostess might have envied her that talent, but it was rather wasted on Mrs. Cobbin. With her it was merely an exercise of art for art's sake. Like an actress with a particularly brilliant mannerism, who drags it into every character, however inappropriately, Mrs. Cobbin just had to put on her little act,—invariably followed by as full and intimate a monologue on the annihilated subject as her hearer would listen to.

"Yes, you'd think so," she went on, after exactly the right pause to give effect to her art without giving her audience time to take it literally and leave. "Especially if as how he's seriously injured."

"I don't quite see—," began Todd.

She leaned over the counter, resting on a brawny elbow. "Nursing, yes—p'rhaps, I can't rightly say. Sociability, no,—that I can say. And I do know what the young fellows like, though I say it meself,—'specially soldiers, having two in the army of me own, and Billy in the Navy this ten years. Sticks and stones ain't good enough,—not permanent, and quite right too. Six years, now, and not even a smile—not what I'd call a smile—for any of 'em. Not even my Billy that's a Petty Officer, or young Bert Summers that'll have the Bull when his father goes. Of course, they're gentry—in a way—but it ain't natural, sir—and they don't spend like it."

She stooped forward. "D'you know, sir—"

Todd, foreseeing more confidences, broke in, "It's very good of you to tell me all this, Mrs. Cobbin. You're an acute observer, and any information affecting my patient is useful. I'm the Medical Officer, you know, and I ought to have been attending to this young man before now. Thanks very much for your assistance." He saluted smilingly, and went out.

Mrs. Cobbin, after another bob o' the 'ead, resumed her position with her elbow on the counter, and looked after him, pleased and gratified. "A real gentleman, that, Canadian or not!"

The door of Number Five opened so promptly to his ring, that he wondered if Mackell's foot was causing anxiety. The serene reserve of the girl as she ushered him down the passage relieved him, and Mackell, sitting in the parlour armchair, looked as cheerful and healthy as any doctor could desire.

"Don't get up. No discipline here,—except what Miss Page chooses to impose." He glanced at her with a friendly smile. It seemed impossible that such an exceptionally beautiful girl should be as chilly as Mrs. Cobbin had implied. But he met only the ghost of an answering smile. Nor did she move from the position she had taken after she had shown him in, standing erect, but graceful, her hands hanging lightly clasped in front of her, and watching the scene with the reserved interest of a lovely portrait.

The failure of his mild joke made him professionally business-like. "Let me have a look at the foot, Mackell," he said, putting his case on the table. "This stool will do. And now if you would let me have an old towel, Miss Page, or a bathmat, or something like that, and a basin of warm water, if you don't mind."

He hardly expected to need them, but felt a certain satisfaction in insisting on his military and medical pound of flesh. A billet was a billet, and if these people resented it, they would have to learn better. A girl with a face like that ought to have a generous spirit to match. Anything else would show extremely bad management on the part of Providence, and the girl would get away with murder! Miss Page had put his back up!

But she had gone to get what he asked, with complete alacrity, and returned swiftly with the towel and a basin of about two gallons capacity. It was difficult not to smile when he saw it.

"We'll hope it hasn't developed quite as seriously as that," he remarked to Mackell, taking the foot between his strong hands and pressing firmly up and down. "If it hadn't been for the caulk we wouldn't have had any cut at all. It's more of an abrasion than anything. There may be a bone cracked, but probably only a sprain. You'll be able to march before we get orders, I daresay."

Brian looked down at his foot knowingly. "It looks to me like a compound fracture of the Middle Cuneiform, sir."

Todd raised his head in quick surprise, and met Brian's grin. "Oh ho! An anatomist, eh? But a sloppy diagnosis, Mackell, very sloppy. And it'll look just like a modest blister to me, when we get marching orders!

"And where did you learn about Middle Cuneiforms?"

"I was taking second year medicine at McGill, when I enlisted, sir."

"Well, well! A re-union, eh! Curious! I was learning the bones of the foot at McGill,—it must be eighteen years ago. You should have started earlier, Mackell, then you might have been riding a horse and breaking people's feet yourself."

He strapped the foot carefully and tightly. "Well, you know enough to look after this, anyhow. It'll be nothing if you just keep that foot off the ground; otherwise you may have trouble later with your arch.

"Look, I'm taping round the cut. I'll put a little dressing on that, and just as precaution—"

An idea struck him. He would see if he couldn't bring this aloof young lady off her pedestal. He had no right, but she wouldn't know that. "—just as a precaution," he went on, "you might re-dress it in the evening. Just as well not to take any chance of infection seeing that they haven't issued us any anti-T. serum yet."

He stood up, grunting doubtfully. "Hum! A bit difficult to get at, eh?" He looked at Joan. "I'm sure Miss Page would be only too pleased to attend to the dressing part of it, if I show—"

"Not a chance, sir. I can manage it as easy as—"

Todd, still watching Joan Page, was surprised to see her brows knit suddenly. It was not at all the kind of frown he had expected, but a significant, speaking frown, clearly designed for Mackell,—and clearly understood by him, for his protest stopped abruptly.

It was interesting. He continued his directions, watching them unobtrusively. "No, you'd better not try stooping, Mackell. You're no acrobat! As likely as not you'd end with that foot on the floor. However, if Miss Page doesn't feel able—"

She broke in before his intentional pause had begun. "Of course I do, Doctor. I was watching to see exactly what you did. And I went to the first-aid classes that Doctor Beringer had, though it didn't seem much use. I'll do it exactly as you did."

Brian was looking sheepish at the fuss about his modest abrasion. "But—" he began.

"Please, Brian! Remember your promise."

He subsided into uneasy silence. Todd looked at them. Evidently his psychology had been muddy! No resentment here! None of Mrs. Cobbin's haughty aloofness!

Joan explained, "He promised to ask for anything he needed, Doctor, and that ought to mean letting me do anything he needs, oughtn't it?"

"Certainly it ought! Very sensible of you to make him promise, too, Miss Page,—and very kind of you. That dressing's really not very important, but it would be safer done,—for a couple of days anyhow."

This time she gave him something more than the ghost of a smile,—for backing her up, no doubt. That smile explained the exceptional state of discipline to which she had reduced Mackell so quickly. He had little doubt now that his instructions would be obeyed, and he addressed the last one to her. "The really important thing, Miss Page, is that he should not put that foot on the ground. Even if a bone is cracked it will heal easily and stay in place naturally, but only if it's not disturbed."

"I'll see that everything is done exactly as you say, Doctor," she repeated earnestly. "I'll go right over now to Doctor Beringer's. He has a pair of crutches, I know, that he would lend us."

Brian grinned sheepishly; Joan smiled consolingly; Captain Todd chuckled and hitched his case over his shoulder. "Fine idea, Miss Page. And don't let him beg off! It's just as hard to walk on one leg, whether the other is amputated or sprained."

He strolled down the street, cheerful with the sympathy which had grown in him for his patient and nurse. That McGill boy was a nice fellow, and he was certainly billeted in clover! In fact both McGill boys had fallen into pleasant places!

He was looking forward to the evening with satisfaction, when he heard his name called.