Part 41 (1/2)
”Not a watery grave, Brooker,” came from the Chief, with an irrepressible chuckle--”a syrupy one. And--have I your word of honour that this is a non-alcoholic beverage?”
”Sir, to be candid with you, I won't deny but what it might contain a certain proportion of brandy. And the nights in the trench being particularly cold and myself const.i.tutionally liable to chill ... I--I find a drop now and then a comfort, sir.”
”Ah, and have you any more of this kind of comfort at your place of business or elsewhere?”
”Why--why ...” the Alderman faltered, ”there might be a little keg, sir, in the shop, under the desk in the counting-house.”
”Requisitioned, Mr. Brooker, as a Government store. You may feel more chilly without it; you'll certainly sleep more lightly. As far as I can see, it has been more useful outside of you than ever it was in. And--the safety of this town depends on the cool heads of the defenders who man the trenches. A fuddled man behind a gun is worse than no man to me.”
The voice rang hard and clear as a gong. ”I'm no teetotaller. Abstinence is the rule I enforce, by precept and example. While men are men they'll drink strong liquor. But as long as they are not fool-men and brute-men, they can be trusted not to lap when they're on duty. Those I find untrustworthy I mark down, and they will be dealt with rigorously. You understand me, Brooker? You look as if you did. You've had a narrow squeak. Be thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs has come of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your duty.”
W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the resuscitated Brooker flying rags of sanguine stain. Then the stern face of the Chief broke up in laughter. The crinkled-up eyes ran over with tears of mirth.
”Lord, that fellow will be the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh--how old Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that round, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with the sentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech....” He wiped his br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes. ”Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him on guard--you remember that lovely affair?--he's registered a vow to impress me with his gallantry and devotion, or die in the attempt. He's the most admirably unconscious humbug I've ever yet met. Sands his sugar and brown-papers his teas philanthropically, for the good of the public, and denounces men who put in Old Squareface and whisky-pegs, as he fuddles himself with his loquat brandy after shop-hours in the sitting-room back of the store. But let us be thankful that Providence has sent Brooker on a special mission to play Pantaloon in this grimmish little interlude of ours. For we'll want every sc.r.a.p of Comic Relief we can get by-and-by, Saxham, if the other one doesn't turn up--say by the middle of January.”
”I understand, sir.” Saxham, to whom this man's face was as a book well loved, read in it that the Commissariat was caving. ”There has been another Boer cattle-raid?”
The face that was turned to his own in reply had suddenly grown deeply-lined and haggard. ”There has been a lot of cattle-shooting.
Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was always quite a favourite game with Brounckers. But his gunners. .h.i.t oftener than they used to. And the Government forage won't hold out for ever.” He patted the brown Waler, who p.r.i.c.ked his sagacious ears and threw up his handsome bluntish head in acknowledgment of his master's caress. ”Presently we shall be killing our mounts to save their lives--and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep life in men--and in children and women.... The devil of it is, Saxham, that there are such a lot of women.”
”And seventy-five out of a hundred of them stayed out of pure curiosity,”
came grimly from Saxham.
”To see what a siege would be like. Well, poor souls, they know now! You were going over to the Women's Laager. I'll walk with you, and say my say as I go. I'm on my way to Nordenfeldt Fort West. Something has gone wrong with the telephone-wire between there and Staff headquarters, and I can't get anything through but Volapuk or Esperanto. And those happen to be two of the languages I haven't studied.” The dry, humorous smile curved the reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty gra.s.s, waited outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far. They were fastened upon a tall black figure and a less tall and more slender white figure that were by this time halfway upon their perilous journey across the patch of veld, bare and scorched by h.e.l.lish fires, and ploughed by shrapnel ball into the furrows whence Death had reaped his harvest day by day.
”There goes one of the women we couldn't have done without,” commented his companion, wheeling his bicycle beside Saxham, leading the brown Waler.
”It is the Mother-Superior,” Saxham said, ”with her ward, Miss Mildare.”
”Ah! My invariable reply to Beauvayse--you know my junior A.D.C., who daily clamours for an introduction to Miss Mildare--is, that I have not yet had one myself, though at the outset of affairs I encountered the young lady under rather trying circ.u.mstances, in which she showed plenty of pluck. I thought I had told you. No? Well, it was one morning on the Recreation Ground. The School was out walking, a trio of nuns in charge, and some Dutch loafers mobbed them--threatened to lay hands on the Sisters--and Miss Mildare stood up in defence--head up, eyes blazing, a slim, tawny-haired young lioness ready to spring. And Beauvayse was with me, and ever since then has been dead-set upon making her acquaintance.”
Saxham's blood warmed to the picture. But he said, and his tone was not pleasant: ”Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a few minutes ago.”
”Did he? Well, I hope disillusion was not the outcome of realisation. Up to the present”--the humorous, keen eyes were wrinkled at the corners--”all the boy's swans have been geese, some of 'em the sable kind.”
Saxham answered stiffly: ”I should say that in this case the swan decidedly predominates.”
The other whistled a bar of his pleasant little tune before he spoke again. ”It is a capital thing for Beauvayse, being shut up here, out of the way of women.”
”Are there no women in Gueldersdorp?”
”None of the kind Beauvayse's canoe is given to capsizing on.” The line in his senior's cheek flickered with a hinted smile. ”None of the kind that run after him, lie in wait for him, buzz round him like wasps about a honey-bowl. I've developed muscle getting the boy out of amatory sc.r.a.pes, with the Society octopus, with the Garrison husband-hunter, with the professional man-eater, theatrical or music-hall; and the latest, most inexpressible She, is always the loveliest woman in the world. Queer world!”
”A d.a.m.ned queer world!” agreed Saxham.
”I'd prefer to call it a blessed queer one, because, with all its chaotic, weltering incongruities--there's a Carlyleism for you--I love it! I couldn't live without loving it and laughing at it, any more than Beauvayse could get on _minus_ an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged d.u.c.h.ess--quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot c.o.c.katoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the Jollity in June--is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the exact t.i.tle of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a Princ.i.p.al Boy, and a Chorus in long skirts.”
Saxham admitted with a cynical twitch of the mouth:
”There's nothing so short as a long skirt--properly managed.”