Читать книгу The Lost Trooper - Talbot Mundy - Страница 4

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WHEN we left the train in Holland the conductor, the ticketman and several passengers, including the fat one who had been made to say things in his sleep, insisted on shaking hands. It was a miserable little junction station, but that did not disturb Jeremy; as soon as the farewells were over and we had seen the embassy fellow into the return train for Berlin he took my arm and proposed that we should set out at once to explore Holland. But I demurred. I couldn’t afford in those days to wander at large—or thought I couldn’t, which comes to about the same thing.

“Something’ll turn up. It always does,” he prophesied. “Dutch money’s all right; you can spend it. It’s round and it rolls. Let’s get some.”

But I hadn’t yet learned the difference between being timorous and being cautious. I quoted the old jingle that has somehow lasted down the years as a label for the Meinheers—

“In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch

Lies in giving too little and asking too much.”

“All right,” he answered. “Come with me to Australia. Let’s try West Aus. Get some camels and find gold in the desert. Great game. Make a pile quick and settle down to a life of roving. Come on!”

I wonder what it is that makes a man deliberately decide against his inclination. There wasn’t really any reason why I shouldn’t go with Jeremy. A merrier companion couldn’t be, or a braver. He would get into trouble, of course, but chuckle his way out of it; and you don’t mind sharing any sort of difficulty with a mate who is game to lift his end of it. His optimism and my comparative caution might have made us good partners. But I had London in mind and a brace of millionaires whose profitable passion is to finance such folk as me, and Jeremy wouldn’t try London on any terms.

“Dukes, knights, lords, earls—afternoon tea in the office—wipe your feet on the mat, please—one of the Empire’s splendid sons when dividends ain’t rolling in and the bankers want a war—blooming Botany Bay Colonial when the fighting’s over! No, I’ve seen London. The king may have it! I wouldn’t fight for the Empire again, not if they offered to give me the whole damn thing for my trouble!”

He spent the best part of two days trying to lure me to Australia, recounting the delights of “humping bluey,” the romantic possibilities of pearling on shares, the carefree existence that a man might live trading cattle on the long drive down from the northern territories, and the fortunes to be made by “paddocking” in West Aus.

But that something—maybe intuition—that so many people offer to explain and no man understands, urged me elsewhere. I offered to share up with Jeremy whatever arrangement I could contrive with the men in London; but the notion seemed to be fixed in his head that making profits for anyone outside Australia was treason. I don’t say he wasn’t right. Nobody ever made it clear to me why international financiers should be allowed to weave empires on a basis of percentages for the fellows who do the work. But Jeremy couldn’t, or wouldn’t see a difference that looks clear to me between grub-staking a man on shares and criminal plutocracy. He said there was no such thing as fair play in financial circles outside Australia, and not even too much of it there. Not that he was a socialist, or a communist, or any other kind of reformer. He could sum up his philosophy and politics in about ten words: “If there’s gold in a stream, and I can pan it, what in Hell do I need a financier for? I’m the young feller that’s going to finance any operations I’m engaged in.”

I asked him what he proposed to do when he had made the pile he talked of hopefully; how would he invest it?

“I won’t,” he said, “I’ll spend it. You wait and see!”

I don’t carry my craving for independence all that far. I’ve made my little pile, and used the money of more than one financier to do it. The dollars are salted down in United States Government securities, and I figure now that the world will have to go to pieces before any man can crowd me to the wall. I’ll tell you what happened to Jeremy presently; and although my method has worked so well for me, I’m still not sure that his hasn’t suited him equally well. It’s a matter of individuality, each man to his own affairs, of which there is a lot too little nowadays.

I said good-by to Jeremy in Rotterdam, where he took passage for Australia, glorying rebelliously in the steamer’s foreign registry. He swore over the taffrail—I was going to say solemnly, but he never did anything that way—at the top of his lungs, at all events, that he would never sail again under the British flag, salute another British officer, set foot in England, or pay taxes. He also gave me a specific message to deliver to the king, wished me well rid of my financiers, and begged me to get religion and come to Australia “where God rides horseback.”

The last I saw of him on that occasion he was performing on the bridge deck as the steamer swung into the tide, juggling with three opened, but not empty, beer bottles and as many tumblers, dancing to his own tune simultaneously. And the tune that he whistled was as free from care or any real malice as his own heart. For a day or two I missed him sorely and wished I had gone with him. Then, as such things do happen in this rapid motion-picture world, he passed from mind in a new welter of business negotiations. My twin millionaires saw a chance in the prospect that I offered them; we signed up, and I went to Abyssinia, where I was able to pack up a decent competence and return them several hundred per cent on their outlay; which may be immoral, but is something I peculiarly like to do.

What with digging gold, and hunting elephants on the side, I don’t believe I thought of Jeremy Ross more than once or twice during all the time I stayed in Abyssinia, a land whose riches are kept idle under a blanket of graft that gives you all you need to occupy your mind.