The Truth about Vignolles/The Truth about Vignolles
THE TRUTH
ABOUT VIGNOLLES
THE TRUTH ABOUT VIGNOLLES
IS there any better place than London on a fine May morning, and is there any better spot in it than a tuppenny seat looking out on the Row? If there is, I have yet to find it. You sit at your ease and watch the world go by; and sometimes—almost always—there arrives a friend that you have lost, the ending of a story, or the beginnings of a new one. It is Vignolles who has set me going and who has brought about these cursory reflections. Without that seat, without the Row and London on a fine May morning, I should never have known what had become of the old fellow after that last day we spent together.
At the depot, and subsequently, I had come to look on him as one of the lost ones, as one of the many who have vanished. They are so many that one more or less makes little mark. But there were circumstances about his disappearance not altogether creditable; in fact, Vignolles went to Port Said next morning—he had begged a whole day's leave—and after that we had no trace of him. Some said he was a deserter, just an ordinary deserter, and that, perhaps, he had got aboard a neutral ship, a Dutchman, for instance, or a Swede, and cleared out of it. The Camel Transport Corps isn't exactly an alluring proposition. But there were others, and, indeed, the most of us—for the old chap hadn't an enemy—who were pretty certain that Vignolles had reached Port Said all right and then come some sort of a cropper in Arab Town, the festive quarter. After these months in the desert, it seemed more than likely. Knocked on the head, or knifed, or even poisoned; the drink they sell has little relation to the label. He may have turned quarrelsome after a dose of it, and, in one way and another, he had a good deal of money on him. But here was the man himself, bronzed, lean, and gray as ever; rather more gray, for he had dyed his hair to get into the war. A man who does that isn't likely to funk it, to run away or stow away aboard a neutral boat and clear right out of it.
I had always stuck up for him and was ready to take my oath he had played the game; so I had no hesitation when at last he came strolling by—you will remember I was sitting on a tuppenny seat in the Park that fine May morning—I hadn't the least hesitation in getting up with rather a shout of welcome; and he apparently, was just as glad to see me again. He had few friends in London; he had no engagements. We finished that day together, and after that there were other meetings, and now, once in a blue moon, he writes to me.
The last day we had spent together—or, rather, it was weeks—had happened several years before that; in 1917, to be exact. Yes, in the autumn. One remembers it especially, for it was after Allenby took hold and Murray went home with our sincere good wishes; it was before we broke the Turk and pushed up to Jerusalem. Vignolles was in all that, but I wasn't; and I have put his story in one piece, though, I dare say, he told it me in several; and perhaps I've filled in gaps and dwelt a little on the peculiar characteristics of the man. For he is a character, rather a rare one, rather of the romantic sort, one of those persistent children of unrest who give our ordinary life and standards the go-by and venture on a world tour of their own.
He was a man past fifty and had always been in the thick of it. That, I imagine, was his passion, the ruling motive of his life. Most people, therefore, would call him an adventurer; the war threw up many such. They flocked home from all the corners of the earth at the great call, and Vignolles was one of them, the only one, however, whom I knew with any intimacy. He had the two South African ribbons, he had a Japanese, he would have had a Bulgarian, only just now they were the enemy, and he had two more which I can't exactly remember that finished off the row. He bore no ill-will whatsoever toward any of his numerous adversaries; indeed, like many of his kind, he often expressed a peculiar horror and detestation of war—of its cruelties, its injustice, its brutalities—though, somehow, he couldn't keep away from it. He had abandoned a tea and rubber plantation farther East to be in this one. He had sailed all the way to London, and there he had been refused at the first asking; and then he had returned to his hotel, had dyed his hair, which was prematurely gray, and gone back with a decent lie which made him eligible. He had come to us of the Camel Transport Corps by way of the Yeomanry, and he and I—we were both "old stiffs," though for the nonce disguised as subalterns—had struck up a friendship that was quick and intimate, and salted with our mutual joy in the adjutant, our lord and master, and young enough for either of us to have dandled on a paternal knee.
But to return to that last day, the day before he disappeared. We had risen at dawn as usual, we had been on parade by six, and then had ridden off to exercise our sections. After breakfast, when the camels had been scraped and cleaned and cleared of ticks, we were to lead them out to the water-troughs. One fed twice a day, but one watered only every other day, and the jaunt was always a bit of an excursion. Here in London it seems romantic, and to a tourist watching us it would have looked like something wonderfully picturesque. I can hear the click of his camera and his expressions of delight as we came by. But had he been one of us, he might have made a different song of it.
There was the depots naked in the sunlight, with its couple of wooden huts for offices, its long rows of tents, and its longer rows of camel lines, all beautifully laid out in the marshy land on the African side of the canal. Brown and baked it was, very much like Vignolles, before it joined the reed beds and the water. It was endurable by day; a hard and healthy life we led, spent mostly on our Arab ponies; but after sundown, to the flies were added the mosquitoes, and to the mosquitoes, the sand-flies. The mosquitoes were the fiercest and the most voracious I have ever known. They would eat through your drill riding-breeches, they would sting through your flannel shirt. If you played a rubber of "auction" after mess, you kept one eye on your cards and another on them; and when at nine or ten you went to bed, diving with all speed under your mosquito-net, in they came after you. Once inside, you lit a candle and hunted them, and when all seemed secure, you went to sleep. But, somehow or other, they would evade you, and when you scratched the places they made, you risked a septic sore.
At sunrise, however, all would be well again, and Vignolles and I and such other subalterns as were awaiting orders here would meet upon parade. One day's ritual was very like another, except that on every other day we watered. And then all the camels, four of five hundred of them, would march out in a long line, two by two, with an Egyptian driver to each pair. These men wore bright blue gowns—galabiahs, they call them—of the same color as the eternal blue of the sky; the camels, and Vignolles and I in khaki, were of the color of the desert; and when the whole line of us stood out in silhouette against those spacious horizons, like a frieze of blue-brown on a blue-brown background, we made a most wonderful picture. This is where the tourist would have come in with his camera.
The last morning—I remember it very well—Vignolles was peculiarly silent as we rode on together; for, out of the depot, we usually left the men and camels to their reises and bash-reises and enjoyed our freedom and the soft, clear air. Sometimes quite frankly we played the ass, putting our ponies at any obstacle we met, a jump or a hillock, or racing the little beggars over broken ground. But to-day Vignolles was absent and moody, so much so, that at last I asked him what was up.
"You and I are getting shot out; too old," he answered. "I had it from Goffin, the 'quarter,' in the orderly-room. He's rather a pal of mine. I suppose there's a push coming on and they think we won't stick it."
"And we're both as fit as fleas," was my reply. "Still, I suppose it had to come. It was bound to come some day," I added; "but they might have let us crock up decently, like men."
"The Chief's taking no chances—not this time," said Vignolles, briefly. "You and I are going down to Cairo on some garrison job—local transport—carting stores and washing for the hospitals; just the same as sitting tight at home."
"Horses, I suppose, casts and crocks like you and me. By Gad, I don't feel a day more than forty!"
"They don't give a damn about us; I wish I'd lied when I took my commission. I was fool enough to tell the truth." And then, more matter-of-fact, he pursued: "A couple of young 'uns are coming here to-morrow. They'll take all the sound camels and men away with them, and you and I, me lad, 'll be back numbers."
I felt it as much as he did but, of the two of us, I was rather the more English. "Well, I don't care," was what I answered. "If they don't want us, they don't—and there's an end of it."
"I didn't join up to live in a billet and do a garrison job in Cairo," said Vignolles, brooding. "If I can't be in it, I'm not going to be out of it." And next: "They shoved me out of the Yeomanry because they thought me too old; that's how I got into this institution. Transport isn't so bad, not in open fighting, the sort you get out here; but now they're shoving us out of that as well"; and for a full minute he dwelt on it.
I reflected for a while. The thought had often occurred to me:
"It's all right for you," I now said; "you've only got to ask, and they'll jump at you for Intelligence." To my knowledge he spoke Arabic, French, and Spanish, the first uncommonly well.
"And sit in a ruddy office. No thanks," he answered. "The Arabic's all right; it helps me with this job"; and then he turned and smiled for the first time that morning. "My late C.O. had the same idea; it was before we came out here. He introduced me to an Intelligence-wallah—a colonel. Polite way of getting rid of me. I looked at the chap and he looked at me, and we both hated the sight of each other. He was one of those Regulars that don't know their job, but he'd taken the brass hat and the wages; and he knew that I knew it and I knew that he knew I knew. No, I couldn't work under a thing like that, bluffing half his time and expecting people to carry him the rest of it; and he scooping up the credit till he got found out. No, Transport's good enough for me," he ended.
We dropped the topic till we came to the drinking-troughs. There were rows and rows of them alongside a canal. Camels take five-and-twenty minutes to fill their skins, and though they go in lean and baggy, they come out round as a barrel with their sides full of it, so you must give them room to expand and not crowd 'em. We let half of the drivers fall out at a time and take a dip in the fresh water. Some went in with a net and caught gray mullet that were leaping. Pine swimmers they were, and, though not much to look at as they plodded along with the camels, they stripped like statues—like bronze statues.
Vignolles was still brooding. I remember one curious remark he made; there was a good deal of truth in it.
"I suppose the worst day in a woman's life," he said, "is the day she realizes that men don't care a damn about her. Sooner or later it's bound to come—the day she's finished and the youth gone out of her. We two are a bit like that, getting fired and sent down to a garrison job."
After lunch we went across the canal together and saw the field cashier. We owed a mess bill and Vignolles suggested paying it. He drew the usual fiver and cashed a fat check for allowances. He must have let them run a few months or got tangled up over his transfer. When we returned we got orders to dish out a full equipment to the men, marching out state and winter scale. This kept us busy till nightfall. The Gyppoes were like children receiving presents off a Christmas tree, as they pranced about with their overcoats, their boots, their canvas water-bottles their shirts, and the rest of it. To the simple mind it was all so much treasure-trove.
At dinner Vignolles asked the adjutant whether he might take the next day in Port Said. He got his leave all right and went off bright and early; nor had I a word or a sign of him till he turned up two years later, that May morning in the Park.
He had gone off to Port Said, but we in the depot had been uncommon busy. Not that I was in it over-much. I looked on most of that day, reading my death-sentence. The two young officers had turned up, and, led by the major and the adjutant, had taken the pick of the camels. The men had been vetted and inspected, all gay in their new togs. The pack-saddles had been counted out and the coarse rope nets that go along with them and in which you sling the stuff. The forage had come in from the supply dump on the canal. It looked like business at last. Next morning they would all start out, leaving the depot empty and Vignolles and me behind. But no Vignolles appeared, and I was alone as I watched the long lines loading, the brutes down on their knees, the packs made fast across their humps, the rations slung into the nets; and next their long necks bobbing as they passed out with the drivers that had once belonged to Vignolles and to me, and Achmet the bash-reis, flitting to and fro on his hagheen. There were the two young officers in charge of it all, and Coldicott Pasha, the inspector himself, inspecting; and off they marched, out of the depot, then to Kantara Station and the bridge that crosses the canal, and then away into the Sinai desert and off to Palestine. I watched them swaying down the road—a mile of them. I had little or nothing else to do. My work was over; and though it was morning, it felt like evening, like autumn, like the end of something that had been warm and rich and strong. Yes, Vignolles was right.
I turned at last and went back slowly to the empty depot. The inspector himself was in the mess-tent—a large man, one of Kitchener's men, with all the Egyptian ribbons. He had created the corps and was its father. I remember that most of us were rather afraid of him and silent and abashed when he sat down at the head of the long table, the major, very respectful, on one side, the adjutant, all aglow, on the other. He left after lunch, and we subalterns breathed more freely. Isaacs, who did some odd job in the store-tents, took four fingers of whisky; Hamilton, the quartermaster, was pleased because the great man had spoken to him; and the subaltern with alcoholic objections, whose name I misremember, was hurt because he had been ignored. As one of the finished, the extinct, I had made myself as small as possible. It was only after the Chief had gone that somebody asked what had become of Vignolles.
He had been to Port Said, was all we knew of him.
"Humph," said the adjutant
And that, in so far as I was concerned, seemed the end of Vignolles.
In his tent the bulk of his things were nicely packed and all in order. He had left us a home-made bed, the canvas rather busted, the frame and legs quite sound, his mosquito-net, and an old uniform, as souvenirs. The mess-servants collared these. The rest, after the usual inquiry and all manner of reports and writing, was duly forwarded to his next of kin, a married sister.
Thus ended Vignolles, who had passed out of my ken, till suddenly he came strolling by that fine May morning. I, poor wretch, had gone down to Cairo, just as he had predicted, and no sooner had I been introduced to the worn-out steeds, and taken stock of the wagons, staff, and stables now in my charge, than one of those accursed mosquitoes found me out. I had a stiff dose of malaria and went home in the spring.
Not so my friend, however. But let us listen while he unfolds his own story:
"I was a B.F.," was how he began it. "I was a B.F.," he repeated. For the benefit of the uninitiate one may explain that these initials stand for a certain kind of fool. "I always am a B.F. when I follow an impulse instead of acting according to the book. And yet, by Jove, half the fun one gets in life comes out of these impulses, and most of the pain as well, I suppose! The pain does, right enough. You remember, I went off to Port Said early that morning? I called at the bank there and cashed three checks, five pounds a time and dated three consecutive days. The cashier said that was all he was allowed to do. Then I drew a fourth check for a hundred and told them to collect it in London and open a credit for me when they got the brass. I dare say all that came out at at the inquiry. Must have looked pretty dirty—but these things can't be helped when you're following an impulse instead of sticking to the rules. I rather overdid it; but I wasn't going to be out of the show. You knew that? When I'd done with the bank I had a bathe in the sea, and I lay out in the sun and thought things over. Next I went to a Greek barber's and got a fresh coat of dye jet-black; made me look ten years younger. No need to stain my face. I was well burnt, neck and all; and I'm by way of being a brunette; had a French grandfather regular old Othello—came from Arles. Next I had a darned good lunch at the club and read the papers and slept and sprawled in chairs. Then I went back to the sea-front and picked up with a Syrian girl and her mamma and stood them tea at the Casino. Mamma asked me whether I was married and told me the girl would get two thousand on her wedding-day. I liked looking at a white girl, or almost white; hadn't seen one for months and months. We talked in Arabic a little, but they preferred French—more civilized, I suppose. Papa came along presently and they asked me to visit them. The girl was round and plump and had what novel-writers call 'mysterious' eyes. The mystery is easily solved. The mystery is that there isn't any mystery. It's all in the shop-window so to speak. 'You will call?' they pressed me, and the mother said 'When?' I said that, being in the army, I couldn't quite tell, but, if they would give me their name and address, I would write. I gave them my name and then we separated. The girl was very soft and gentle, something like a dove. Mamma and Papa were fat and coarse. She ought to have left them behind when she went out hunting. They made one look ahead too much. Next I dined at the Marina," he pursued, "and there I met a Hollander I'd known out East; first officer on one of their mail-packets.
"'Who's going to win the war?' he said, when we'd got comfortable.
"'What war?' I asked; and then we talked rubber and old faces out yonder, and he said if I was sick of it he'd take me off to the Dutch Indies.
"'At your age—with your dyed hair and moustache—you're an old fool!' he said. And, by Gad, he was right! I took the last train back to Kantara, and he walked with me to the station.
"'If you'd beep a German,' he said, as we shook hands, 'you'd have come along with as and got out of it. Plenty good jobs going in Java or Sumatra.'
"I grinned at that.
"'Not me!' I said. 'So now you know who's going to win the war?' He looked at me for quite a while before he tumbled to it and laughed. Thick-headed fellows, these Dutchmen.
"At Kantara I sat out on the bank of the canal and smoked a pipe and felt very happy. You see, I'd taken my line, burnt my boats, knew exactly what I was in for. And I wasn't going to be out of it; I'd got round that corner. I enjoyed the moon, the few big stars that held their own with it, and all that ghostly splendor. The bridge was up and great ships with their searchlights blazing came and went, like ghosts of ships that once had ridden clear under the sun. I heard the train start from the station on the eastern side, the one that runs bang through the desert into Palestine. I heard it till I lost it. I heard the challenges of sentries on the other bank and fellows answering; and then, at midnight, I went back to the depot. Our watchmen were asleep as usual; they always went to sleep after the orderly officer had made his last round. You can't expect a Gyppo to keep awake unless he feels like it and these nabatchis had been on duty all day. There was nobody about. One heard the camels mutter and grumble, and one or two of you fellows were snoring. I sneaked into my tent, and when I came out again I was exactly like a driver—just an ordinary Gyppo, all complete. You remember we gave the men an entire outfit that last afternoon, marching out state, winter scale. Well, I'd kept one lot back for myself. Perhaps it was this re-equipment that gave me the idea. Ali Selim, one of my drivers, had to go short. I pinched his togs and water-bottle and blanket—the whole blooming outfit. He made a bit of a fuss, but I said 'Tamam,' and he trusted me. Ali Selim and I were rather pals; all my men and I were rather pals. Ton see, I could talk to them and understand them. They liked me in their way. You can tell that by the songs they sing as they go marching. You remember how one of them improvises a line and the others all repeat it, and there's a refrain to match which comes over and over again? They're poets in a primitive, easy way of their own. They used to sing very nice things about me to my face, and I believe they meant them. You got it, too. There was one day when you'd walked into them pretty heavily; they'd let the lines get a bit musty, and the adjutant had made a fuss and you'd passed it on—cursed and damned 'em uphill, I suppose, and tried to talk to 'em. They made a song about you that day. 'This man is a bore,' it began—that's about the gist of it in English. 'His wife deceives him and his children are another's.' I don't suppose you knew what they were yapping about; in fact, you said you liked to hear them singing as they marched. I didn't enlighten you; but I told Achmet, the bash-reis, that if they sang any more of that particular ditty they'd be flogged and that you were a noble officer who had done his duty. They all grinned and changed the subject and pretended to be sorry and repentant. You know what kids they are?"
"And Ali Selim?" I suggested, as he paused over this anecdote and smiled to himself a little as much as to me.
Vignolles resumed:
"Oh, yes. I thought you'd be interested"; and after a moment's reflection: "Well, here was I, and here was Ali Selim whose togs I'd pinched. He was a middle-aged man who'd married a young wife, a virgin. He'd found the money for that, but he hadn't found the money to have his fantasia. That's the wedding celebration, the bridal night, the drums and dancing, the feast and all the rest of it. If you marry a widow or a divorcée, she can go without; but a young girl has to have her fantasia. It costs money and the bridegroom has to pay; he's introduced to his bride and the joys of Paradise as soon as it is over. Ali Selim hadn't the money to pay for his fantasia; that's why he joined the Camel Transport. He meant to earn it with us and go back home and have his wedding-day in earnest. So far he'd only put his name to the contract and handed over the money for the bride. When his time was up, he was going back to his village to have his fantasia and moons of bliss. The old dog told me all about it. 'A virgin, high-breasted.' Being a villager, of course he'd seen her—they only wear their veils when they go into the towns.
"I'd fixed up with Achmet, the bash-reis, that Ali Selim was to be one of the picket on that particular night. I found him fast asleep in the forage-bin and dreaming of Aziza. He was a tall, dried-up old fellow, a bit like me, but, I dare say, twenty years younger. They age more rapidly than we do. I shook him awake and he came to with a start, and when he saw it was only another driver he began to be very rude. But having cursed my religion and said the worst about my father, he suddenly realized that I was his Zabet and pulled himself together.
"'You hop off to your tent, I said, 'and get your things together and come back here. Then you can go to your village and have your fantasia. Here are twenty pounds for you'; and I showed him the notes in the moonlight.
"You hop off to your tent," I said, "and get your things together and come back here"
"'Hader, Effendim,' said he, and went off. He asked no questions; it is not their way. They've been slaves, or something near it, for BO many thousands of years that they still believe in miracles.
"Ali Selim came back with his few belongings.
"'Now give me your identity disk,' I commanded. He took it off his neck and I hung it round my own. Then I handed him the twenty pounds. He smiled all over his face and stowed the money away inside his galabiah. 'Now you must go,' I said. 'If you are careful and keep away from the canal, you'll be home in a couple of days.' His village was a place called Abu Zeid, not far from Zagazig. He grinned a confident grin; he was sure he could make it. I went with him as far as the marsh on the edge of the depot. 'There are fishermen and boatmen on the water above here,' I said; 'any one of them would help you.'
"'Have no fear, Effendim,' he answered; and then he took my hand and I let him kiss it. It is their custom. 'My own father has not been to me as you have been,' he said; and the old dog meant it—I think he meant it. You know I always liked these men; they were like children"; and Vignolles, grown thoughtful, puffed away at his cigar for a long moment.
"I had no fear," he resumed. "Once clear of the depot and if he kept away from what we called the Canal Zone, Ali Selim would be all right. One Gyppo in a dirty galabiah is very like another. I went back to the lines and took his place; and next morning I fell in with the others and was given my two camels and out I marched with the rest. You may have seen me? I certainly saw you; and our young friend the adjutant pink and proud of himself. I'd taken a rise out of him at last! Made me chuckle; didn't know what a fool I was making of myself just then. It is possible that some of the Gyppoes spotted me, but to them it would be some deep white man's game, and they'd naturally keep out of it I just carried on as though I were Ali Selim. I had his kit, and the identity disk round my neck was stamped with his number, while my own was hidden away in my belt. You looked as though you had a proper old hump as we came trailing by; but, by Jove, you were the wise man and I was all kinds of a damned old fool!" And here he paused and let me see to the end how he had managed it.
"We marched to Karm, clean across the Sinai desert," he pursued, "and I stuck it all right. We only did two miles an hour, and not more of that than was good for us. I enjoyed this part of the business; perfect weather; only one sandstorm. The two young officers were pretty decent and didn't worry us except when we got in other people's way. Most of us stuck it; only three or four fell out. You ought to read the story of Napoleon's army on this same excursion; makes your flesh creep. Those who fell out were finished, worse than finished. We marched all night and slept in the middle of the day. It was clean and fresh, no flies worth mentioning, no mosquitoes, a scorpion or two every once in a while, and lots of sand-rats—jerboas, I think they call 'em—and lizards; and we saw gazelle, and there were hawks and eagles. It's an up-and-down country of sand shaped by the wind, with shifting hills and valleys, all one color of desolate brown under a sky that's blue all over. And then you're never very far from the sea; that's sapphire and emerald, with a white edge where it breaks in little waves. At night everything comes closer.
We watered at wells or off the pipe-line—they'd laid the Nile water clean through to Palestine; and there were oases with Bedouin and mangy camels and date-palms and ripe dates, at Katia and Romani and El Arish. At El Arish we got a bathe in the sea, camels and all, and it did us good. I'd got a sort of a grizzled beard by then and my own mother wouldn't have known me. We met all kinds of things on the way, and there was a wire-road. They'd put down that as well—a net of wire, five or six yards wide, pegged down on the sand the whole way through the desert. You could march, or drive a car on it, just like on a metaled road. The Londoners and the Irish came along and said all sorts of rude things to us poor devils plodding in the sand; but, I lay, we said ruder. And Anzacs and Aussies on horseback. We couldn't match what they said; big-hearted chaps, though. And the Yeomanry—my old lot. They let us alone. Gad, what wouldn't I have given to be along with them again! I looked out for my old charger, but couldn't find her. She had a nose like a lady's cheek and slim legs like a duchess.... But we'll let that go and return to the procession.
"There were Indian cavalry and the real camel corps; and some of our old oonts started getting affectionate when the ladies came along. Confounded nuisance they are when they go magnoon and throw up their heads and blow out that film-thing, and lash with their ridiculous tails. My two gentlemen behaved themselves. And so we tumbled into Rafa and out again as far as Karm; and, Jasus, but I was dead beat! I'd walked the whole breadth of Sinai and a bit over; but I'm glad I've seen it. We kicked up coins and broken pottery in some places; there must have been water and cities out there years and years ago. I'd had the sand and the sea and the stars and an air like milk, and the prologue of an immortal story; and I'd seen old Allenby dodging about in his big Rolls-Royce. He even took the trouble to look at us, and gave us a better salute than we gave him. Well, I'd had all that, and nothing much to do but admire it all.
"We'd stayed two days at Rafa, at the advanced depot, and there we were re-sorted and pooled along with a tribe of others; so that, when I went out on the last stage, I was among fresh men and animals. Not one of our old lot in the whole caboodle! We were in Palestine now, or over against it. Palestine is a green place, with trees and cactus-hedges, if one comes upon it out of the desert. But just then it was all burnt up, really. You should see it in the spring! And there were hills in the distance and the Holy Bible. It's the landscape you read of and get read to you in church or when you're a kid; and there are wells all along the sand-dunes on the edge of the sea. I think the sea-water gets filtered somehow and the salt taken out of it as it passes through the sand into the wells."
He paused for a moment here to fill a pipe, an ancient brier that he had fished out of his pocket. His cigar had come to an end, and he had declined a fresh one; and then I, seizing on the opportunity and rather curious about these fellaheen camel-men that he had so taken for granted, said: "What do the Gyppoes talk about among themselves? When they get going? I've often wondered." And, indeed, I had, as deaf and dumb myself, so to put it, I had seen these drivers squatting before their tents for hours and keeping up an eternal conversation, always dramatic, always eloquent, as though they were laying bare high secrets of state or expounding the mysteries of the universe.
Vignolles laughed.
"What we talked about, or what they talk about? Money and women mostly," he answered; "same as people do in Europe, only it's different money and different women. And then there's eating and drinking and one's relatives, and land and crops and things; but it's money and women mostly. Can't say it's always very respectable."
"And the war?" I asked next. "What it was being fought for and why? and democracy and the League of Nations?"
Vignolles laughed again.
"They didn't know and they didn't care; no business of theirs! They got their keep and so many piasters a day; that was all they thought about the war. I've met staff-officers who thought no further."
"And aeroplanes and tractors and the pipe-line and the railways, and all our other devilments—what about these?"
"Magic; magic of the unbeliever. Satan's always in league with the unbeliever, and Allah protects the faithful. The Koran makes no mention of aeroplanes, so they despise them."
"And what about their religion?" I asked. "You've just mentioned Allah and the Koran, and people are always gassing about Islam and Mahomet."
Vignolles hesitated.
"That's rather a poser," he said at last. "You see, it's a habit, a state of mind, rather than a faith. And there's not much love in it; that's where Christianity has them beat. We're always in love or about to be in love; they're not troubled that way; they get too much of it, if anything. And so they fall back on a code; it's very good for one if one sticks to it. Mahomet was something of a physician as well as a man of the world, and so he prescribes cold water and physical drill—they call it ablutions and prostrations—and fasts and continence and no alcohol, and a few prayers just to clinch matters. If he could have made the world stand still and be exactly the same in London as in Mecca, in Tokio as in the Yemen; if he could have canceled the Renaissance, the Roman Church, and the Discovery of America—I omit a dozen similar trifles—Mahomet would have been all right And if you're still living in the seventh century and the climate's pretty warm and living's cheap and sufficient, then Mahomet's a prophet. Our men were seventh-century; one or two of them were bloody-minded fanatics, especially when they quarreled about the direction of Mecca. You turn your face that way when you pray. They had a fight about it, and Ibrahim bit off the end of Khalil's nose. Most religions seem to tend in that direction if one's properly aroused"; and Vignolles ruminated, lingering for a moment, so it seemed, with his own God, the compassionate the merciful, enskied above the rancors of our little creeds.
"Well, you'd got as far as Palestine," I prompted him at last. "And what happened after that?"
"The show came off all right; you've read about it, and so have most people. And I was in it. One show's very like another, but this was rather an uncommon and romantic business. I suppose I'm one of those moths that can't keep out of the flame; and so are you, and so are most of us. I've often thought that if the Belgians and the French had just sat tight and let the Hun march on and on and on, and smoked their pipes and looked at the fools marching, even the Hun would have seen the joke at last and turned to the Kaiser, and said, 'What the hell are we doing here?' Instead of looking on and smoking their pipes, the French fought 'em. Very natural and human thing to do; I'd have done it myself. But if we were angels instead of men and women, we'd just sit tight and leave war to the fools."
"But the Turk was—something more than a fool," I ventured.
"Quite right," answered Vignolles, thoughtfully. "He's got a certain point of view. It don't square with ours; it can't live in the same street with ours. So I don't blame him as much as I blame the Hun. Nothing the Hun loves better than living in our street; can't keep him out of it. If you chuck him out at the door, in he comes by the window.
"Well, I carried on and saw the Turk take the knock," he resumed; "and as he belongs to the dark ages and I don't, I wasn't sorry for him. It was a fine sight, lots of cavalry; a good, open, honest show it was after the first hard biff. We'd have finished them off then and there instead of a year later, if we could have used the whole of our army instead of the half of it. And when we'd got 'em fairly on the run and the rains came down and slowed the pace and washed us out, so to speak, I began to feel that I was an old, old man, and that I'd have done better to have gone down to Cairo like a good boy and relieved some younger fellow, if they could have found one. I stuck it out, though. I remember two of our Gyppoes got killed by a bomb; they ought to have thrown themselves flat on their bellies instead of sprinting. There was one on the right of me and one on the left of me. I envied the poor devils. They were at peace; it was all over. One of 'em twitched a bit, but he couldn't feel anything. I envied them. And next I thought of the women in the mud Tillage on the Nile, and the children, and the howl they would set up till God comforted them. It's these people that war hits, not proud fellows like you and me.
"I stuck it out," he pursued; "and, well, we camel-drivers saved the situation. It had been difficult enough in the dry weather, when half the army had to stand by because there wasn't enough water; but when the rains came it looked as though the other half would have to shut up shop as well. The whole country had turned into a quaking bog, and all the wheeled transport went to blazes. Armies aren't like voters; they can't live on air and promises. The navy carried on along the coast, but the Horse Transport and the regimental limbers had got stuck in the sand before we started; and now the tractors, vans, and lorries were all stuck in the mud. But we camels kept it up somehow. Thousands and thousands of us there were, working in three echelons, each lot doing a stage; and though lots of the poor brutes split when they slipped up in it, and lots lay down and went to pot from sheer exhaustion, the most of us hung on. I had about fourteen different kinds of fever when we started for Jerusalem.
"We'd carried water, and we'd carried forage, and we'd carried beef and biscuit; we'd carried all sorts of truck, and now we were on ammunition. The last day I was out and about the Jacko guns had found us, and one of the camels took a direct hit and went up like a packet of fireworks. I told you I had about sixteen kinds of fever; I suppose it was that made me stand fast when the others ran. Can't expect a Gyppo to stand fast with a camel-load of eighteen-pounder shells going off like a bunch of rockets. There was the officer and me getting a move on the convoy; the camels stood like heroes and did as they were told. The officer cursed in English, and it did me good to hear him; and I suppose I cursed one better, but he must have been too busy to notice. I don't remember any more of it till I woke up in a Gyppo hospital, with a hole down one side of me and no temperature to speak of. Lord, but I was happy to be warm and cozy and well out of it!
"There was a Syrian doctor and an Armenian dresser and a Jew and lots of Copts and Moslems, and they all looked after me like angels—seemed they had special orders. I'd behaved rather decently, it appeared; and I was All Selim el Tantawi, so they said having read the number off my identity disk or some nominal roll or other, or, maybe, it's what I told 'em. And they hadn't pinched my money, either. It was all O.K. with the other disk inside my belt and the fag-end of my check-book and half-a-dozen odd papers.
"The officer looked in—the same kid who'd been in charge of that last convoy. He couldn't talk much, but he had lots of baccy and cigarettes and said there was plenty more where these came from. I felt rather a cad for letting him quaess away in Arabic; and he'd got nothing out of the show, not even a mention! I found a Gazette one day and hunted about for him; but all the office-wallahs hadn't forgotten their noble selves, you bet your boots on it!
"They let me out in the spring, and I was sent to the advanced depot. It had moved north to Ludd, somewhere between Jaffa and Jerusalem, out on the plain, with the blue sea on one side and blue hills on the other. Nothing much to do there except eat and drink and sleep. They'd a sort of infirmary for ns to get well in. I got well. It was a wonderful place, all among orange-groves in blossom; smelt like a thousand brides, and I'd just missed the almonds. There were scarlet tulips and beds of dusky iris and banks of great yellow daisies. They let us wander where we liked, and the smell of it and the sight of it made me feel new and beautiful. Most of the men sat still and basked and wouldn't go out except when there was a girl calling; but I found Bedouin camps and Jew colonies and black Jews from the Yemen. There was a Moslem bailiff in one of the farms who wanted me to marry his daughter, a widow, going cheap; and I met a woman who asked me to sell her a camel—she had twenty pounds Turkish in gold that she brought out of her bosom—and there was a Jew farmer who offered me a job of hoeing in his vineyard. And I met jackals and pi-dogs and a harlot from Surafend. It was just like living in the Bible, except for Allenby and his men and the banging of guns beyond Jaffa, and the aeroplanes that came and went, and the railway-line that had come up and the new ones they were building.
"I got as far as the sea at Jaffa and saw a street of shops again, and took a shuf at the Jewish suburb packed with Zionists. Intellectual-looking lot of blokes; too much brains and not enough beef. It'll take 'em three generations to get going. And I hopped on a lorry one fine morning and wound up into the hills and landed plumb in Jerusalem. It smelt like a 'jakes'—I think that's what Shakespeare calls it—but when you got on the Mount of Olives and looked down on the city and over to the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab, you forgot all your troubles and even forgave the Turk and how he'd failed on sanitation. I suppose Jerusalem grows on one. I couldn't give it a fair chance. They let me in at the mosque—Omar, isn't it?—a perfect place. I sat in the sun like a lizard in one corner of the big square where the women come for water and Time seems to have left off, and present, past, and future are all one. Ever read Josephus? The Old Testament's poetry and Josephus is the prose of it. They tried to kick me out of the church when I went up the hill again; but I told the priests that I was a Copt, and then it seemed to be all right. I followed a party of reverent Tommies in charge of a padre and heard all about it. They said it was 'a bit thick'; but who was I to contradict them? Religion's rather an industry up at Jerusalem, same as in Rome, same as in Mecca. When I'd done I squatted down at the comer outside the posh hotel and waited for the lorry. The crowd did one good. I've never seen anything like it; a human menagerie. Licked all the zoos. Bedouin, Australians, all sorts of Jews, Indians, West Indians, Gyppoes, and real live female Yankees dishing out money or medicine or something. I've left out priests and nuns and such like. Some came from Abyssinia and were long and black and bony. I forgot all about the lorry and had to get a lift on a Ford van. Very decent fellow in it. Intelligence, I believe. He took me as far as Ramleh, and then I walked. They called me into the office three days later and told me that my time was up and that I could go back to my home whenever I wanted; and if I liked to sign on again, they'd be glad to have me. They'd give me a reis's job and a reis's pay.
"There was a wad of money owing to Ali Selim, and I got that. He'd had my twenty pounds and done nothing for it; and he'd had the fantasia and the henna and the high-breasted virgin into the bargain, which I hadn't. Not by a long chalks! And there was my own pay, all dried up, I supposed, and me posted as missing or something worse. I've a sister—she'd hear about it—a good sort, though married to a stock-broker who dresses every night for dinner and can't talk anything but shop and golf and 'auction.' I sent her a picture post-card from Jerusalem and signed it 'Tonino.' She'd know it was from me. She's forgiven me all right, though my brother-in-law can't get over it.
"Well, I'd got a wad of money and a paper to take me home to Abu Zeid," Vignolles pursued, reverting once more to the main argument, "and a squad of us time-expireds and crocks and what-nots was marched down to the station, and back we went to Egypt in an open truck, all very friendly and rejoicing and full of plans and wickedness, and packed like herrings in a tin.
"I didn't see much, because it went dark soon after we started, but we left the scent of the orange groves behind us, and the twisted olive-trees, and the miles of barley you come to lower down. I saw all that, and then it was night and we were making for the desert. I slept through it this time instead of walking. At Kantara East we got out and were marched over the canal to Kantara West; and I could see the depot where I had started from about six months back. Hadn't changed much; the men were getting their breakfast.
They gave me a ticket to Zagazig, third-class on the State Railway, but I didn't get there. I wanted to see Cairo and the Pyramids again and the wonders of Memphis. Sakkara, they call it nowadays; it's a better period than Thebes. I went down to the stables at Kasr-el-Nll and Abu Ella and asked the drivers if they knew you—an old officer—kadim!
"'The fat one with the red face? He came and went,' they answered. So I knew you'd got out of it.
"And when I'd done with Cairo and Sakkara and the Pyramids and the two museums," Vignolles resumed, "and all the cinemas and the Mille et Un Nuits, and the theaters in Emad el Din, and refused a job at a mosque and another at a brothel, I powdered myself more than usual with Keating's and paid my bill at the hotel in Clot Bey where I'd lodged, and went off to the Fayoum; it's the only green bit of Egypt that isn't hand-made and flat-ironed. And after that I got a passage on a boat or two—or was it three?—and sailed down the Nile to all the tombs and temples. It was growing warm and oveny, but in a dirty galabiah and next to no underwear you don't feel it. I had a six-weeks' holiday that passed like a dream, doing just what I liked and sleeping mostly under stars and moonlight. The fellaheen Gyppoes are much the same as other peasantry. If they're decently governed by honest men they're like little children. When they're stirred up by agitators and priests, they see red and run amok. They treated me like a king and hardly charged for it. I only used my fists once, and that was in the tourist country; a damned guide was making rude remarks about one of our Sisters. Luxor was full of army nurses, and V.A.D.'s, and spoony officers. The girl and the major she was with both offered me money when I explained matters. Most remarkable English I used to the major and 'No, O beloved!' says I to the girl, in Arabic; and she blushed so prettily and put her money away, though she only guessed the gist of it. A fair Saxon girl she was, with straw-colored hair, long legs, pink cheeks, a throat like cream, and eyes the color of forget-me-nots. I hadn't stood face to face with one like that for ages.
"The officer grinned at me as I slunk off, and said, 'Some of these Arabs aren't bad fellows.' Lucky young dog! But he hadn't deserted. I knew that, when my time was up, I'd have to try to get hold of the money I'd banked at Port Said, and then sit tight in Arab Town till I came across another Dutchman or some Greek sea-captain who'd do anything for a price. Or else I'd have to re-engage and do a depot job till the war ended. Can't say I fancied it!
"I got back to Cairo all right and bought a ticket for as far as they'd let me go without a permit. I could have got one for nothing, but I'd money left, and I didn't want to be messed about by native officials who'd want bribes or a bint or some other species of corruption. I'd only got to go back to the depot and say I was Ali Selim el Tantawi, and I'd get a reis's job straight away and stick there or go up to Ludd. I hung about on the station platform and waited for the train. It came in all right, and while it was standing, who should turn up but the inspector himself, old Coldicott Pasha, and a little staff colonel with blue tabs and a clean-shaved face! I'd seen him up at Karm, bossing the supply people and everybody else, a clever, brainy-looking little bloke. Seemed to know what he was doing, and no frills and no fuss and no standing on his dignity. I take off my hat to him, though as a rule I'm agin' staff officers. Men go rotten in an office unless their heart's with us poor devils who do the job.
"The inspector and the staff colonel strolled up and down; and, 'There's this fellow Ali Selim. I'm getting off at Zagazig,' I heard the pasha say; and the little colonel nodded. I couldn't catch any more; but, you bet, I had pricked up my ears and was thinking. And next the Chiefs body-servant, a good-looking Gyppo, came up and said he'd put the suit-case in and would his Excellency be seated? I could follow that; and then the two big-pots nodded to one another and separated. The little chap went back to his car, and the inspector got into a first-class coach with the paper. The Gyppo servant went third-class with me. He'd got fine clothes, and thought a devil of a lot of himself being servant to a pasha. The inspector was really a high government official who'd been lent to the army, as you know.
The servant laid down the law to ns poor wretches in cotton galabiahs. He and his master were going to Zagazig on some government business, and then to Abu Zeid to do honor to an Egyptian—a brave man, a regular lion, who had killed a score of Turks—cut their ruddy heads off, dishonored their women, done all sorts of gory things. The pasha had money for this hero, five pounds, and a parchment written with his marvelous deeds. Yes, what this man had done was written down! Future generations might read it. Truly, he was the Hero of the Age! The servant had packed the pasha's leather box and put in the scroll and the paper with the money. The pasha had asked him twice whether all was in order, and he had not failed. The whole coach listened to him as he told this story. 'Twenty Turks!' they cried. 'Truly, this Egyptian is a lion!'
"'All Egyptians are lions,' said a traveling student in a silk caftan and shirt: 'they could eat up these English dogs in one mouthful if it so pleased them.'
"'By Allah, they could!' cried one young man, grown wildly excited.
"'And you, O Father?' The student had turned to me.
"'The English are lion-tamers,' I answered him. 'They have lions in their country, But they keep them on a chain and teach them to catch dogs like you. When they have caught them, the lions are commanded to let them go.'
"The student winced at this, as did three or four others among the men in trousers or caftans, but the fellaheen and the women were on my side.
"One of the women, a Bedawi with a keen eye, had the courage to say, 'By Allah, this old rig is right! The English are men and women like ourselves, and they are all lions. I have seen Kitchener Bashaw, and my belly turned to water.'... It went on like that and worse till we got to Zagazig. There I got out and walked to Abu Zeid.
"The Chief did his business in the town, and his car overtook me as we entered the village. Really, it must have been the mudir's car; he's the governor of the district. Our friend the body-servant sat proudly next the driver; and the mudir had a frock coat and a red tarboosh on his head, and an order with a blue-and-yellow ribbon. He was no end of a swell. And there was Coldicott Pasha in uniform, with his two rows of decorations, and the headman of the village, a fat old rascal with a huge stomach and silk caftan, and a low tarboosh with a big blue tassel and a white cloth wound round it—a regular old-fashioned Gyppo. I joined them, so to speak, and watched the arrival and all the ceremony.
"It was a big village, with a square and a mosque, and the population in its best clothes, and hens and donkeys and camels and water-buffalo all mixed up with everybody, and pigeons overhead; and drawn up in the center was the hero of the age, Ali Selim el Tantawi. Behind him stood a young woman with the end of her head-dress stuck into her mouth—they don't wear the veil in these outlying villages unless they're rich and important—and she was pretty enough to do without it. A pure Beddo, with a fine nose and small features, but almost black. Her I took to be the Aziza who had come to him in his dreams. But they were both of them very wide awake just now, as the ghaffirs cleared a space and everybody cried, Shut up!' His Excellency stepped forward and made a speech and handed Ali Selim his hard-won flyer and the parchment, which was read aloud to us, recounting my great deeds—I suppose they were mine—below Jerusalem.
"It was the rummiest go I've ever been in," went on Vignolles, after the gust of Homeric laughter which had shaken us both had spent itself. "'The perfection of comedy!' There was that rascal Ali Selim, accepting everything without moving so much as the tail of an eyelid; there were Aziza and the crowd, doing exactly the same; there was the omdeh, who would claim a commission on the five pounds for not giving the show away; and the innocent mudir. I believe he was innocent. But the most innocent of all, if I except the hens and donkeys and the water-buffalo, was old Coldicott Pasha himself. It was good policy to do what he was doing, and I suppose that was mainly why it was being done, a sort of propaganda act. But he went through it splendidly, with a fine, soldierly seriousness, and a touch of broad humor at the end, just as Kitchener Pasha, his bygone patron and master, himself might have done it; something about keeping the five pounds for the circumcision ceremony, when Gamila—that means the Beautiful One—had borne the lion a lion cub. Everybody laughed and yelled when he had done; in fact, under the circumstances, I'm surprised they didn't have hysterics. 'Yahia el Busha!' they cried, and they meant it. Most of them thought him a fool, like all the English. But an honest fool, which is ever so much better than being a clever rogue. They love an honest man, do these Egyptians. As one of their wisest once said to me, 'We have brains enough—too much brains. The English are fools, but they are honest; and honesty is what we need. By Allah, we need it! That is why I am for the English, and may God prosper them!'
"But Coldicott Pasha was no fool; indeed, I have often suspected that he smelt a rat, but that he was far too clever to disturb it. He let them shout and yell and he moved no muscle of his grim old face. He only smiled with his eyes as he let the crowd fawn on him and went back to his car. The mudir and the body-servant hopped in and off they drove. I followed them—thinking—thinking pretty hard.
"On the station platform at Zagazig I saw the pasha again. He had dismissed the mudir and was walking slowly up and down. It was the hour of sunset, and the train wouldn't be in till long past nine. He was alone and evidently enjoying the relief of it. The evening hour is made for solitude and meditation, and I dare say he was going over the day's events. This is where I came in.
"Like the lady in the train, my belly turned to water when I first found the simple idea of going up to him and saying, 'I'm Lieutenant Vignolles, the deserter.' But the moment after I also recalled that I was Ali Selim el Tantawi, the Lion of the Age and the rightful owner of that five pounds and parchment history.
"I bowed low and announced myself. I don't know where I found the cheek to do it, but some spring or clockwork inside of me went off with a click, and there I was.
"'Who are you?' asked the inspector.
"In perfect English I repeated what I had said; and next I produced my identity disk and slipped down my galabiah and showed him the long scar in my side. We were alone there in the twilight at the end of the empty platform, between trains and at the hour when most Gyppoes are praying or pretending. It sounds extraordinary, or would to men whose idea of a railway-station is Charing Cross, or even a country station outside a little town.
"And then, 'I'm also one of your subalterns, sir,' I said; 'Vignolles—I don't know whether you remember—'
"'So you're Vignolles?' he had cut me short.
"I admitted it.
"'And all those people were fooling me. I thought there was something queer about 'em.' He said that more to himself than he said it to me. 'Well, what can I do for you?' he asked next. 'Put you under arrest, have you court-martialed? What is it?'
"I told him how I had been ordered down to Cairo, and how I had felt as young and fit as most people, and how I had gone to Port Said and come back and turned camel-driver and bought off the true Ali Selim and gone up country with the draft. 'You were quite right, sir, and I was absolutely wrong. I was too old,' I had ended it—a nice slim sketch of how I had gone magnoon.
"He was interested and he made me fill the outlines. And so we went right through the story—the tramp across the desert, and then from Bafa to Karm with the company to which I had been posted, and how we had carried on when everything else got stack and went to pot. The old beggar encouraged me. 'Go on,' he ordered. 'I want you to go on,' he said, as keen and hot as mustard, though he hardly showed it, except by imposing his will upon my own. Of course I went on, and he heard me out to the end and jogged me and asked questions.
"'Thank you, Mr. Vignolles,' he said, when I had finished.
"And then, 'I don't mind going back,' I said, 'but I'd only be a nuisance. I couldn't stick a second show; I'm too old for it. I was too old for the last.'
"'Yes, the wet gets into one's bones at our age,' he answered, 'and we can't do without our sleep. You'd better go back to the horses. I'll send you off as soon as you 'ye got some kit.'
"We had time to spare, and as I lingered. 'You've made a proper old fool of yourself,' he remarked; and, smiling rather grimly with his cold blue eyes, 'you've made rather a fool of me, Mr. Vignolles.' It was a complete and perfect survey of the situation. And next growing almost human, 'It's the climate,' he ran on; 'most people go a bit daft in hot countries. That's what's the matter with Egypt; all of us out here are a little mad. I've had nearly forty years of it, so I ought to know,' And, dismissing me, as no doubt he had dismissed the mudir an hour ago, as he dismissed everybody he didn't want particularly: 'I'll tell Records that you've turned up again; had shell-shock—or was it sunstroke? We'll call it sunstroke. You'll come with me as far as Kantara, and then you'll go to Port Said and collect that hundred pounds you mentioned; we'll square that with the bank for you. Then you can buy a new outfit and come back to the army as a subaltern. You'll report at the Horse Transport Depot; can't have you in camels. And then you'll be sent to Saloniki; they're asking for spare officers.'
"'And there's nothing else, sir?' I don't know why I put the idiotic question, but I suppose I couldn't quite get over the fact that I was to escape without the regulation ceremonial.
"'No, there's nothing else,' the inspector answered. "You'd only make me look a worse fool than the last time, wouldn't you? And, besides you hadn't deserted.' Quite suddenly he had grown entirely kind, entirely human, his blue eyes softening as I looked into their depths. 'You took the fever and the wound,' he ended; and with a finger to his double row of ribbons, 'It's you fellows I have to thank for most of these.'"
So that was the finish of it, the truth about Vignolles. I only learnt it two years later, after he had turned up in the Park. You will remember? It was a fine May morning and I had seated myself upon a tuppenny chair to watch the world. If any of the old lot chance upon this history, it's up to them, to all of them, to spread the news.