Part 9 (1/2)
”Talk about game c.o.c.ks!” he began lightly. ”Ten years ago, say! you must have been a corker--regular 'Terry McGovern'.”
”Eh?” Yorke's far-away eyes stared at him vaguely. ”I was in India then. Army light-weight champion in my day. Slavin wasn't jos.h.i.+ng much at breakfast, by gum! . . . Now we're here! . . . We're a bright pair!”
He made as though to cast snow upon his head, ”Ichabod! Ichabod! our glory has departed!”
He lifted up his tenor voice, chanting the while he rocked--
”_Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, d.a.m.ned from here to Eternity, G.o.d ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!_”
Redmond flinched and raised a weakly protesting hand. ”Don't, old man!”
he implored miserably, ”don't! what's the--”
”Eh!” queried Yorke brutally--rocking--”does hurt?”
”_If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep, And all we--_”
”No! no! no! Yorkey!” George's voice rose to a cry, ”not that! . . .
quit it, old man! . . . that's one of the most terrible things Kipling ever wrote--terrible because it's so absolutely, utterly hopeless. . . .”
”Well, then!” said Yorke slowly--
”_Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?_”
”It wasn't beer,” muttered Redmond absently, ”it was whiskey. Slavic and I drank it.” With an effort he strove to arouse himself out of the despondency that he himself had fallen into.
”Listen! . . . Oh! quit that d----d rocking, Yorkey! . . . Listen now!
we've put up a mighty good sc.r.a.p against each other--we'll call that a draw--let's put up another against our--well! we'll call it our rotten luck . . . D----n it all, old man, we're not 'down an' outs' doing duty in this outfit--the best military police corps in the world! . . . Let's both of us quit squalling this eternal 'n.o.body loves me' stuff! This isn't any s...o...b..ry brotherly love or New Jerusalem business, or anything like that, either. I'm not a bloomin' missionary!” He qualified that a.s.sertion unnecessarily to prove it. ”But let's stick together and back each other up--just us two and old man Slavin--make it a sort of 'rule of three.' We can have a deuce of a good time on this detachment then! . . .”
He spoke hotly, eagerly, with boyish fervour, his soul in his eyes.
Yorke remained silent, with averted eyes. That imploring, wistful, bruised young countenance was almost more than he could stand. George, dropping on one knee beside him put a tremulous hand on the senior constable's shoulder. ”What's wrong, Yorkey?” he queried. He shook the bowed shoulder gently. ”What's made you consistently knock every third buck that's been sent here? 'till they got fed up, and transferred? . . .
They tried to put the wind up me about it at the Post. What's bitin'
you? I don't seem to get your angle at all!”
”Oh, I don't know!” Yorke coughed and spat drearily. ”Kind of rum reason, you'll think. Long story--too long--dates back. Listen then!
Ten years back, in the pride of my giddy youth, I held a Junior Sub's commission in the ---- Lancers--in India. This is just a synopsis of my case, mind! . . . Well! the regiment was lying at Rawal Pindi, and--I guess I kind of ran amuck there--got myself into a rotten _esclandre_--entirely my own fault I'll admit:
_Man is fire, and Woman is tow, And the Devil, he comes and begins to blow--_
the same old miserable business the world's fed up with. Since then seems I've kind of made a mess of things. Burke Slavin's about right--his estimate of me.” He sighed with bitter, gloomy retrospection.
”I've always had a queer, intolerant sort of temperament. If I'd lived in the days of the Indian Mutiny I guess I'd have been in 'Hodson's Horse'.” (Redmond started, remembering his curious dream.) ”He was a man after my own heart,” Yorke continued slowly, ”resourceful, slas.h.i.+ng sort of beggar . . . he ruffled it with a high hand. Bold and game as Sherman, or Paul Jones, but as ruthless as Graham of Claverhouse. He put the ever-lasting fear into the rebels of Oude--something like Cromwell did in Ireland. My old Governor served through the Mutiny--he's told me stories of him. My G.o.d!”
He drew his fur coat closer round him. ”Well!”--Redmond watched the sombre profile--”as I was saying . . . I 'muckered'. . . . Since then, with the years, I guess I've been climbing down the ladder of illusions till I'm right in the stoke-hole, and Old Nick seems to grin and whisper: 'As you were! my cas.h.i.+ered Sub.--As you were!' every time I chuck a brace and try to climb up again. How's that for a bit of cheap cynicism?”--the low, bitter laugh was not good to hear--”Man!”--the brooding eyes narrowed--”I've sure plumbed the depths--knocking around, with the right to live. Port Said, Buenos Aires, Shanghai. . . . I've certainly travelled. Some day I'll throw the book at you. Now--substance and ambition gone by the board long ago, and mighty little left of principle I guess--I am--what I am--everything except a prodigal, or a remittance-man--I never worried them at Home--that way. . . .”
He spoke with a sort of reckless earnestness that moved his hearer more than that individual cared to show. Redmond felt it was useless to offer mere conventional sympathy in a case like this. He did the next best thing possible--he remained silently attentive and let the other run on.
”You take three men now--stationed in the same detachment,” resumed Yorke wearily, ”by gum! they're thrown together mighty close when you come to think of it. It's different to the Post, where there's a crowd. Life's too short to start in explaining minutely just what that difference is.
Fact remains! . . . to get along and pull together they've got to like each other--have something in common--give and take. Otherwise the situation becomes d----d trying, and trouble soon starts in the family.”
”By what divine right I should consider myself qualified to--to--Oh! shut up, you young idiot! . . .” Redmond, forehead pressed into the speaker's shoulder, giggled hysterically in spite of himself--”Shut up! d'you hear?
or I'll knock your silly block off!”