Читать книгу The Lost Trooper - Talbot Mundy - Страница 5

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NOW skip a number of years. The end of 1913 found me still in Abyssinia endeavoring with varying success to protect my financiers’ investment. But in January, 1916, I got out at last and headed down the Nile for Cairo, where, after a deal of arguing, the military let me have a room at one of the two big hotels. Some of you don’t need telling what those places were like in war-time. The Mount Nelson in Cape Town during the Boer War was a kindergarten to it. The notice at the front door, “Out of Bounds to all Enlisted Men,” summed up the situation. You couldn’t breathe for brass hats, or do a thing without being told you mustn’t; and all the things you mustn’t do were being done right and left by everyone who had a relative at the War Office or a good-looking wife who entertained.

I tried for a while to horn in somewhere and be useful; but you couldn’t get near Allenby or Lawrence or any man who was really responsible. The rest were willing to have you know that the ground whereon they stood was holy; in fact, you had to concede that point before they’d talk to you at all. Thereafter, whatever you wanted to know was an official secret, but you were usually allowed to pay for drinks.

It petered down finally to the alternative of going home, or taking a hand along with the Levantines in profiteer contracts for army supplies, which is a trade I don’t take to readily. So I decided it wasn’t my war, put my name down on the waiting list for a passage to the States, and waited. There are worse places to wait in, once you’re definitely a spectator and don’t care who cheats whom, or why. And while I waited I ran into Jeremy Ross again. It was no surprize to see him once more in British uniform. Peter the Apostle set the example of protesting and then swallowing the protest. Jeremy erred in first-class company, and appeared to thrive on it. But he was sinning, too, against the army regulations, which is much worse, as well as likelier to bring instant punishment. Within ten paces of that notice by the hotel door, directly facing it, he, Jeremy Ross, a sergeant with the worsted chevrons on his sleeve, sat drinking whisky-and-soda at a table between two palms on the front veranda, in full view of any righteous personage who might pass.

It was scandalous, outrageous, subversive of all social order—more dangerous, I dare say, than trading with the enemy or spying for the other side. So I went and sat down on the chair in front of him, and ordered the Nubian waiter to charge the drinks to me, having a notion in the back of my head that for the second time I was going to steer Jeremy out of a scrape.

Well, glad to see me was no word for it. Some men blaze out like the sun from behind a cloud when they meet a friend, and Jeremy was one of them. He couldn’t have made more noise if he had struck it lucky in the gold-fields of West Australia, where men don’t celebrate in whispers; and he tried to tell me all his adventures since we parted in one long sentence. But he couldn’t crowd it in or talk sense for high spirits.

He was perfectly sober and looked handsomer than ever in his broad-brimmed felt hat with the black cock’s feather; moreover, he was as full as usual of disrespect for possible consequences and bubbling with amusement at the discomfort of one or two officers not far away, whose business it didn’t happen to be to substitute for the provost marshal. They were as indignant as ruffled turkeycocks, and I remarked on it.

“On edge, ain’t they,” laughed Jeremy. “But we Australians have made a bit of a rep for ourselves. You’ll notice none of them’ll interfere until somebody comes who’s big enough to give them Hell for letting dirt like me sit in the sight of nabobs. Crikey! I could tell you tales about what’s happened up there in Palestine when the staff tried to what they call discipline us chaps that would make you gasp. We’ve done most of the hard fighting; that’s all right; that’s what we’re here for. But they haven’t got us feeding out of their jeweled hands exactly. Listen to this.”

And he told me tale after tale that never got into the papers about how the Australians had left their mark on the General Staff as well as on the Turks and Germans. Maybe he exaggerated, but I dare say not. I know what those fellows did and did not do in South Africa, and there were more of them on this occasion, farther from home and possessed of even less respect than formerly for swank, eye-wash, and petty tyranny.

The inevitable happened at the end of half an hour. A staff major came out of the hotel, who thought more of the line between enlistment and commission than of that great gulf reported to be fixed between heaven and the other place. He marched straight up and demanded to know what Jeremy thought he was doing there. “He’s my guest,” I answered, before Jeremy could get a word in. “You can find out, if you care to, that whatever he has had to drink is charged to me.”

But all that did was to include me in the class of undesirables. I was told I had sinned more grievously than Jeremy, and that I would be turned out of the hotel if I didn’t mend my ways. He demanded my name. I offered to exchange cards, which he refused; so I advised him to mend his manners, if he thought that could be done without any risk to his health, and he went off in a towering rage in search of the provost marshal.

I was fully determined by that time to stick it out and see the affair through with Jeremy. It wouldn’t have been the slightest use for either of us to clear out, for there was a provost sergeant watching us from over the way, who would simply have arrested Jeremy out of hand. I suppose the only reason why the staff-major hadn’t ordered him to do that anyhow was his ambition to include me in the picnic, and anyone less than a full-blown marshal with the correct stars on his shoulder and the proper badge might shake down a windfall of enforced apologies, and all that disagreeable kind of thing, for an assault on an American civilian. And Jeremy was simply in his element. It was a long time before the provost marshal came, and he passed it calling full attention to his crime, laughing, chuckling, cracking jokes, and describing for my benefit the comforts of the desert bull-pen out by the Pyramids, where he assured me I should be locked up along with him.

Then came one of those dusky magicians who produce day-old chickens out of a tarboosh on hotel verandas, and we watched him for about ten minutes, until Jeremy grew scornful of such amateurish stunts and elected to give the fellow a lesson. But it wasn’t all professional pride; he wanted, too, to show me what a mastery he had of Arabic, which he must have learned in about a year in between terrific bouts of fighting.

“Picked it up, haven’t I?” he said over his shoulder between one superb trick and the next. There were officers all around us now, ignoring military caste for the sake of being mystified. A subaltern brought the pool balls from the billiard table, and Jeremy made them crawl all over his arms as if they were bewitched; the Egyptian was pushed into the background, and slunk away disgruntled.

An officer came along with a fox-terrier; Jeremy took the dog on his knee—he has a way with animals that makes them instant friends and turned on his ventriloquism, making the pup give Arabic answers to his remarks in English.

“Wish Grim was here,” he said to me when he paused to swallow a drink and light a cigaret.

“Who’s Grim?”

“One of you Yanks. First-class fellow. Working under Lawrence over in Arabia. I tried to get a transfer to his show damned free and easy— independent—no airs—just the kind of job I like. Grim was willing, but nothing came of it; some brass hat got jealous, I suppose; nobody loves an Australian. If Grim was here now I’d show him a thing or two. He’d apply for me quick, and have his own way about it. Grim’s a bird—quiet chap nearly all the time, but game to tell a full-blown general to go to as soon as look at him. You ought to meet Grim. Watch this.”

But watching him was no use; you couldn’t tell how he did it. He spun twenty coins of different sizes on the table and palmed the lot with one swipe of his hand. You could hear them click into place on top of one another, but half a second later when he opened his hand it was empty. It looked logical and easy after that when he produced them, with his other hand, out of the pup’s mouth.

Then came the provost marshal, whose profession is to spoil sport and put the lid on entertainment. He had been brought away from an afternoon bridge-party, and was in a corresponding frame of mind—didn’t know me—didn’t want to know me—hadn’t time to listen to me—ordered Jeremy under arrest at once—and threatened to arrest me in the bargain if I had any more to say.

So I saw a way to help Jeremy once more out of a military entanglement and said a great deal fervently. But I was careful what I said and the provost marshal wasn’t. An officer in uniform, who has the law and regulations on his side, simply can’t afford to be abusive to a civilian who isn’t scared. There never was a military regulation yet devised that couldn’t be off-set somehow, as the Belgians proved to Von Bissing.

He did exactly what I hoped he would do in the end—ordered me put out of the hotel, added one or two remarks about my nationality, called me a slacker because I wasn’t in uniform, and strode away fuming.

Meanwhile, Jeremy had been marched off in disgrace, even so looking not at all dejected. His black cock’s feather danced along jauntily; and even the provost sergeant couldn’t keep the guard from laughing at his jokes.

“Try your Embassy again!” he shouted to me from the street. But the U.S. doesn’t keep an embassy in Cairo, and a consulgeneral has his limitations; our consul might have made it all right for me, but couldn’t help Jeremy. Bankers are the boys, when they’re your friends; and you can’t live several years in Abyssinia, making money for other people, without being on good terms with a Cairo banker.

There was a man of millions, whose head office was in London, who had instructions from my financial twins to do anything he could for me at any time. I found him in his office, and the rest was easy, although it did take a day or two. He sent for my effects from the hotel and put me up in his private house at Ramleh, pending a settlement.

There was nothing that I wanted—not even an apology. The provost marshal hadn’t gone an inch beyond his rights in having me turned out of the hotel; and as for bad language, I’m no schoolgirl; I’ve listened to a lot of it, and used some too. But—well, you know the difference between men, whose troubles are their own affair and serve ’em right, and the other sort, whose part you’ll take whether they deserve punishment or not? I’d have stood by Jeremy if he’d committed murder.

The solution was all the easier because my banker acquaintance had social notions and didn’t like that provost marshal’s manners; and you may believe it or not, but when a war is on, and the army, and army contractors need money every day, he who deals in cash across the counter has more influence than any ten ambassadors.

THREE DAYS AFTER the incident I went down, armed with an official pass, to the Australian camp near the Pyramids to see Jeremy, and found him in a barbed-wire enclosure in the hot sun digging a nice square hole in the sand under the eyes of a sergeant-major.

They had reduced him to the ranks for absence without leave, but weren’t content with that. A theory was being tried just then that drasticism was the only physic for Australians; so, for having dared to sit and drink in a hotel reserved for the higher caste, he was sentenced to dig ten holes, each to be exactly ten feet square and ten deep, in yielding sand and afterward fill them up again. He was still in the first hole when I found him; and because my pass expressly stated that I might talk to him alone the sergeant-major had to withdraw out of earshot.

Jeremy didn’t say much at first. He smoothed the side of the hole with his shovel, grinned at me, patted another rough place, and presently expressed his judgment of the British Empire. “I hope the Hottentots get London,” he said. “I’d like to see an army of our Australian Aborigines looting the Bank of England. And the thing to do with the Royal Family is to put ’em in cages and send ’em on tour with the circus. The fall of Rome was a penny squib to what I hope happens to England, and I’d help anyone except the Kaiser who had sense enough to take a crack at it. No use helping the Kaiser; he hasn’t got guts; besides, if he won, he’d be worse, supposing that’s possible. But to think I volunteered—just think of it! Me that belonged to the regiment that won the Boer War and took oath to see the whole British Empire into Hell before we’d ever fight for that crowd again! But what’s the use of talking? Wait till I get out of uniform, and see. That’s all!”

I helped him out of the hole, gave him cigarets, and we sat down on the sand together, facing.

“How about that fellow Grim you told me about?” said I.

“Would you care to join him?”

“Wouldn’t I! Grim is for Feisul, and so am I. But it can’t be done. They keep Australians for the fighting and fatigues. They’re using Feisul the same way—ditch him soon as the war’s won—wait and see.”

“I can’t get your rank restored,” I said.

“Don’t try,” he answered. “I’d stuff the chevrons down the throat of the first British officer I met!”

“But I know a man who can get you transferred to Akaba under Grim,” I went on.

“Then you’re my enemy!”

“How so?”

“For not having done it already.”

So I got his promise not to fall foul of any regulations, nor of any man—not even a sergeant-major until he should set foot in Arabia; and with that understanding I returned to my banker, who by that time had set three club committees by the ears and had cabled London and the U.S.A. Financiers don’t stop short of taking pains when they pursue vendettas.

The cables weren’t working very well, and it was another week —Jeremy had dug more than half his holes—before the General Staff began to realize my nuisance value. I received an official call from a major, who knew nothing of what had taken place, but supposed he could straighten the matter out over a couple of cigars. He began by saying he thought it very decent of me not to have complained to the consul-general.

But I followed the banker’s instructions carefully and the major left with the impression that the least I wanted was the degradation of the provost marshal to the ranks, together with personal apologies from all concerned to almost everybody in America. The banker, who was present during the interview, dropped hints at intervals about my financial connections.

The General Staff was busy and worried, and in no mood to pause in its stride for the sake of a provost marshal’s dignity. Somebody higher up told him sharply that he must straighten the tangle out himself at once, or take the consequences; so he took the only course left to him and sent one of his assistants to ask for an appointment for his chief.

On the banker’s advice, I wasn’t in. But the door was open between the two rooms; the banker did the talking and I listened. “You know what these Americans are—pig-headed men. Once they’re set on a course they’re hard to turn. This man is a pretty good fellow, but he’s no man’s fool to be pacified with a perfunctory apology.”

“What does he want, then? Does he expect the provost to walk here on foot with peas in his boots and call out Peccavi through the back door? He’s crazy if he expects a man like Colonel Gootch to come and grovel to him.”

“I don’t think it would amuse him in the least to see anybody grovel.”

“Well, what does he want?”

“An apology, of course. He was publicly insulted; he’s entitled to an apology in public, and as a guest in my house I’d expect him to demand at least that. But he wants more. As a practical man he demands some practical proof of regret and of willingness to make amends.”

“Good Lord! You mean money?”

“Of course I don’t, nor does he. You know better than that. At the time of the insult he had an Australian with him—Sergeant Jeremy Ross by name—an old friend whom he’d met that afternoon for the first time in ten years. It seems the Australian was the cause of all the trouble—out of bounds at my friend’s invitation in a place reserved for officers. The Australian was very severely punished as well as reduced to the ranks, and my friend feels badly about it.”

“Good God! D’you mean he expects Gootch to go and kiss the sergeant on both cheeks and beg his pardon?”

“Hardly But you may tell Provost Marshal Gootch privately from me that if he cared to arrange that Australian’s transfer to Akaba for special duty under Captain Grim, there’s no doubt I could persuade my friend to accept an apology in this room and let the whole matter drop.”

“But Colonel Gootch hasn’t anything to do with transfers.”

“He has influence. Let him use it. You’d better make it clear to Colonel Gootch that he’ll have me to deal with unless he does the right thing pretty quickly. I have business at headquarters tomorrow noon. It might be best for all concerned if I could say at that time that the air is clear again. I’ve heard of bigger men than Gootch being transferred to less agreeable duties.”

“Well, I’ll tell him.”

“Put it bluntly. will you? Tell him you talked with me.” Gootch understood the situation and got busy. Napoleon may have told the truth about the British in that famous remark of his; maybe he spoke collectively; but I can certify that one highhanded colonel, at all events, knew when he was beaten. Jeremy was excused from digging holes that afternoon, and his transfer to Akaba was arranged the same evening.

The apology to me, too, left nothing to be desired; it began by being stiff and throaty, but ended in armchairs with whisky-and-soda. In fact, I rather think Gootch and I were on good terms before he left: it was his suggestion that I might like to travel with Jeremy as far as Port Said, and he provided me a pass that came pretty near to being the key of Egypt.

So I traveled in a troop-train through a hot night, listening to Jeremy’s accounts of what had happened to him in the years between. It seemed he had even been a police-court magistrate, and had done almost everything else from trading horses down to conjuring in small towns with a traveling vaudeville troupe. But he thought that none of the things that he had done were half as inexplicably marvelous as my getting him that transfer for special duty under James Schuyler Grim the American, and he swore friendship forever on the strength of it.

This time he waved good-by with his cock’s-plume hat from the deck of a decrepit tug in the Suez Canal, and his last words were of jubilantly roared advice to me to get attached to Grim’s command in some way.

“Grim’s the real thing,” he shouted. “Come along and see life!”

At the last glimpse I had he was dancing on the tug’s poop, laughing and making friends with everyone on board. He had promised to write, but of course he didn’t, and the letters I wrote to him were all returned eventually marked “undelivered for reason stated.” The fact that the reason wasn’t stated hardly shed much light on Jeremy’s career.

However, I received news of him almost simultaneously with those undelivered but carefully censored returned letters of mine. My banker friend in Cairo wrote to me after I got back to the States, enclosing a clipping from an official list of casualties. It read:

Trooper Jeremy Wallace Ross.

—th Australian Light Horse.

On special duty Akaba. Missing.

I wrote in vain for further details. Nothing seemed to be known about him, and although the authorities were courteous and apparently took great pains to find out for me, “presumably dead” was the final official verdict. So I wished I hadn’t engineered his transfer to Akaba, and more or less forgot him once again.