Читать книгу The House of Adventure - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Brent was convalescent, and as his strength returned, his restlessness returned with it. He was allowed out in the hospital grounds, where he trudged about with the idea of getting himself fit, and feeling like an animal in a cage, and always afraid of meeting some disastrously inopportune friend. He had glimpses of Charleroi, that black and gray mining town with its slag-heaps and smoke and its air of shabby sumptuousness. There were women in Charleroi, swarthy little Belgian women, shops full of luxurious things at luxurious prices, the glitter of jewellery, the glare of electric light, Belgian flags, trams, red wine, pavements where a man could loiter and catch the smell of fleur-de-trèfle in a woman’s clothes. Charleroi made one think of the sallow face, the lowering cloth cap, and the sexual swagger of an apache.

“Escape” was written on Brent’s heart; and he had staged the first act of the adventure at Charleroi. He knew that the day of his discharge was drawing near, and he might expect to find himself handed to some casual R.T.O. who would pass him down the line to his base-depôt, and Brent had decided that he must vanish before such a thing could happen. He did not want to go back to England. He was thoroughly determined that he would never recross the Channel.

Early in January he received the final stimulus that shocked him into immediate action. He was wandering about the hospital grounds when he saw a little officer with a florid and familiar face limping down the path between the plane trees. Brent was caught off his guard. He stared, and then swung round on one heel, but the officer boy stopped.

“Hallo; isn’t it Brent?—You were in my platoon?”

Brent had to face it out.

“So I was, sir.”

“I got knocked out just before the retreat. What happened to you?”

“Prisoner,” said Brent.

“Been sick, have you?”

“Flue, sir, and pneumonia. I’m all right now. I expect to be discharged in a day or two.”

The officer boy shook Brent’s hand, feeling himself half a civilian and on the edge of demobilization. Besides, Brent had always been a gentlemanly chap.

“Well, good luck.”

“Good luck to you, sir,” said Brent.

That incident gave the necessary flick to his decision. Men who were ripe for discharge were allowed out on pass into Charleroi, and Brent got his pass that evening; it was dated for the following day. The N.C.O. in charge of the convalescent “wing” was a far more human person than the yellow-haired nurse.

So Paul Brent went down into Charleroi on a grey January morning, with the thrill of an adventure in his blood. He had scrounged a couple of tins of bully beef and a pocketful of biscuits, his reserve ration for the road. “Escape” was in the air. The trams clanged it, the shops were ready to help in the conspiracy: the crowded streets made Brent think of a dirty, commercialized but fascinating Baghdad. He began to feel himself part of this continental crowd and no English soldier numbered and labelled for an immediate return to some niche in that damned temple of Monotony, the Industrialism of England. He was a little Haroun al Raschid wandering as he pleased in this city of adventure.

Brent’s first business was to change that German money, for it would be no use to him on the road. He found a jeweller and goldsmith’s that was also a Bureau de Change, and they took a thousand of his German marks and gave him French notes in exchange. Brent thought it wise to spread the transaction over a varied surface. He tried a Belgian bank, and came out with six hundred francs in French paper. A second Bureau de Change converted the bulk of the remainder. Then Brent went shopping.

The first thing that he bought was a carpet-bag with black leather handles, and he bought it at a little shop in a shabby side street. This magasin sold workmen’s clothes.

A fat Belgian woman, with a moustache and overflowing cheeks and chin, showed some surprise when he asked the price of a pair of brown velvet trousers.

Brent laughed, and became confidential.

“We make what we call a stage-play, madame, a concert of varieties. The war is over; it is necessary for us to be amused.”

“Clothes are very dear, monsieur.”

“We English have plenty of money. At home—now—in England—what would you think I am?”

Madame scrutinized him with little black eyes half hidden between bladders of fat.

“Tiens!—how should I know?”

“I own three cotton mills and fifty houses. But in the war I was just this.”

She became very ready to oblige him, and Brent asked her advice.

“I am to be an apache, madame. A pair of velveteen breeches.—What next?”

“A cloth cap, monsieur.”

“Yes.”

“And a coat—a black coat, and a scarf to go round your neck.”

“Excellent. I will do it thoroughly and have a foreign shirt, also a leather belt.”

He packed the things into the carpet-bag, paid madame and asked to be allowed to leave the bag there behind the counter.

“I will return later.”

“Certainly, monsieur.”

Brent had brought a pack with him, and he had other things to buy, details of the adventure that he had worked out while he was lying sick in bed and seeing pictures on the ceiling. The list included matches, a few candles, some tinned food, cigarettes, a pair of civilian boots, a woollen vest, soap, a sponge, a comb, and six inches of tri-colour ribbon. He had a meal at an obscure restaurant, and the meal included a bottle of red wine that cost him thirty francs. He drank to the health of the adventure.

A winter dusk was falling over Charleroi when Brent returned to the shop where he had left his bag. The wine had made him merry, and he wasted ten minutes in a gallant little gossip with the lady of the flowing chin. It would be unwise to appear to be in a hurry; your true artist is never furtive nor a sloven in his manners.

“Au revoir, madame.”

“Au revoir, monsieur l’apache.”

Brent laughed.

“I’ll try the costume to-night and see how the boys like it.”

He went boldly through Charleroi, carrying that carpet-bag for all the world to see—but avoiding street corners where he might meet some inquisitive military policeman. The bag and its contents were explainable, but the explanation might prove embarrassing when the hospital authorities reported him missing. He came without adventure to the western outskirts of Charleroi, still warm with that good red wine. A few stars winked at him between the houses, and above the dark slag-heaps and the still darker hills.

In the lane at the back of a railway embankment, a lane that appeared to end in all the cabbage patches of a miners’ suburb, Brent found the “green room” of his dreams. It was a tin shed or shelter with no door, where someone had once stored vegetables and tools. Brent took possession, lit one of his candles, and carried out a rapid change. He discarded everything English save his greatcoat, socks and boots.

There was a big ditch at the back of the shed, full of sooty-looking water. Brent crammed his tunic, trousers, puttees, shirt and cap into his pack, added two heavy stones, and sank the whole caboodle in the ditch. Returning to the hut he completed the metamorphosis by threading the bit of tri-colour ribbon into his buttonhole and tying it in a bow. An old rake handle provided him with a stick. He ran the end of it through the handles of the carpet-bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, and launched out into the unknown.