THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ I see him stand up an’ clasp his hand to his breast. I thought at first he was shot, but as he began lookin’ around, left an’ right searchin’ the ground, I knew he’d lost somethin’ — an’ guessed it was the locket.

      “‘He stood up with the bullets whistlin’ round him, his eyes travellin’ over the ground — an’ then he collapsed!

      “‘Shot stone dead, he was….

      “‘We buried him at the foot of the hill… an’ we never found the locket.’”

      Nobby stopped here and blew his nose vigorously.

      “There are times,” he said, “when I think of Heilbron, an’ the kopje outside the town, an’ a grey-faced young officer, searchin’, searchin’, searchin’ for ever an’ ever for that locket he lost. An’ when I think of him I want to cry.”

23. Sacrifice

       Table of Contents

      According to a man’s environments so his life is, so his tragedies are, and his end will be.

      To be mauled by a lion is an extraordinary and painful experience that comes to very few of us. Yet it is the common lot of the menagerie attendant. So with the soldier, whether living here in peaceful England or going about his duty in Bombay, Karachi, or some like place, his life, shaped by environment, is full of that incident which makes for tragedy.

      There are conditions of life so colourless, so even, that the slightest deviation from the smooth and normal flow of existence stands out as a landmark to be looked back upon and discussed for a score of years.

      The sedate Government office, with its days made up of returns, dockets, references and cross-references, remembers vividly that remarkable day in ‘83 when young Swink upset the red ink over the Public Works ledger — Swink himself, now a stout veteran of forty-four, will reconstruct the scene for you. At the vicarage at Bascombe-cum-Marsh, how often do they talk of that memorable Sunday when the dear Bishop drank a wine-glassful of vinegar under the impression that it was Château Lafayette?

      In a thousand peaceful homes, the extraordinary happening that is retailed through the ages is very small potatoes, indeed, and well may their worthy occupants shake their heads doubtingly when I talk of the abnormalities of army life. For death in terrible guise is on calling terms with the regiment. He comes, not in conscious majesty, as one who knows that panic will grip the heart of all who observe him, but apologetically, rather like a man slighted.

      When we, in the army, with stately march and bowed head, follow the laden gun-carriage to the little military cemetery, and come back merrily, with the band playing unseemly tunes, you call us “callous,” and are a little shocked, but the explanation is this: we are teaching the young recruits that this grisly monster is not so terrible a fellow; not one to be shivered over or shuddered at, but one to be treated with a certain amount of goodnatured contempt.

      “When we was stationed in England,” said Smithy, apropos, “an’ when we was on manoeuvres, we pitched a camp one Saturday near a little village, an’ the Colonel got the local parson to come along an’ chew the mop on Sunday. He was a nice young feller, but he’d never seen real solders before, an’ it worried him. By all accounts he sat up half the night makin’ up his sermon, an’ then he come along an’ preached about what fine soldiers the ancient Israelites was, an’ how we ought to be like ‘em. An’ he sez that when we was killed, an’ if we happened to have time to think the matter over, we should realize that it was all for a good cause, an’ take it in good part.

      “When the sermon was over, an’ we was dismissed, he walked round the camp talkin’ to the men. Of course, everybody was polite. It was ‘yessir,’ an’ ‘no, sir,’ an’ Nobby, who’s one of the best, even went so far as to promise to call round at the church that night. But what was surprisin’ about this parson was he would talk about dyin’, an’ accordin’ to him, a chap ought to use all his spare time to sit down quietly by hisself an’ say, ‘Well, here’s another day nearer the grave.’ It was a comic idea, but it didn’t catch on.

      “Now, there’s lots of fellers in the world who think like him, that to be good you’ve got to have a dial as long as a wet week, an’ that the surest sign of badness is gladness.

      “It’s a wrong idea, an’ the proof is this that the best man that ever wore a uniform was the happiest — and that man was Father John Stronard, C.F.*

      [* C.F. — Chaplain to the Forces.]

      “The first time I ever saw Father John was in Aldershot in ‘94. He ran a soldiers’ home in North Camp, an’ was one of those fellers with a thin, refined face, that had ‘Priest’ written all over him. He wasn’t an R.C., for all that. He was Church, very High Church, so some of the chaps said, an’ wore little medals on his watch chain. But high or low, he was the whitest kind of white man that ever lived. He was friends with all the other chaplains — that’s the best sign. Friends with ’em all, from Father O’Leary to Mr. Stemm, the Baptist lay preacher. He’d got no fads, he smoked a big fat pipe all day, an’ was ready to put on the gloves with any feller that thought he had the beatin’ of him. He never threw religion at you, but when a man acted the goat, you’d see that man go miles out of his way to avoid Father John.

      “Fellers trusted him an’ told him things. There was a wild devil in Ours called Cross. Cross by name and crook by nature. There wasn’t a decent-minded man of Ours who would have anything to do with him. It wasn’t that his language was bad — it was worse than that. After he started swearin’ you felt that the room ought to be disinfected.

      “One day on the ranges, firin’ our annual course, we was usin’ a new cartridge, ‘Mark 10.’

      “Nobby was lyin’ alongside of me, an’ was passin’ sarcastic remarks about the markers.

      “He fired a round, an’ got an ‘outer’; then he tried to pull back the breech block.

      “‘Hullo,’ sez Nobby, she’s jammed.’

      “It took him nigh on five minutes to get the exploded cartridge out, then he whistled, got up, an’ walked to the officer in charge.

      “‘Beg pardon, sir,’ sez Nobby, ‘see this?’

      “He held up the cartridge.

      “The officer-boy, who hadn’t been from Sandhurst a week or so, frowned most terrible, an’ sez, ‘What’s wrong with it?’

      “‘It’s split all up the side, sir,’ Nobby sez, ‘an’ this is the second time it’s happened — the cartridges are defective!’

      “If the officer-boy had known cow-heel from tripe he’d have called up the officer in charge, who was at another part of the range, but bein’ only a kid at the game, an’ not wishin’ to take advice from a private, he sez, very stern: —

      “‘Go back to your place, me man, an’ don’t talk nonsense.’

      “So Nobby came back an’ lay down.

      “By an’ by, the Colour-sergeant come up. ‘Why aren’t you firing, Clark?’ he sez, an’ Nobby told him.

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