Tatterdemalion Part 13

His yarn took the prize.

1917.

XI

THE MOTHER STONE

It was after dinner, and five elderly Englishmen were discussing the causes of the war.

"Well," said Travers, a big, fresh-coloured grey-beard, with little twinkling eyes and very slow speech, "you gentlemen know more about it than I do, but I bet you I can lay my finger on the cause of the war at any minute."

There was an instant clamour of jeering. But a man called Askew, who knew Travers well, laughed and said: "Come, let's have it!" Travers turned those twinkling little eyes of his slowly round the circle, and with heavy, hesitating modesty began:

"Well, Mr. Askew, it was in '67 or '68 that this happened to a great big feller of my acquaintance named Ray--one of those fellers, you know, that are always on the look-out to make their fortunes and never do.

This Ray was coming back south one day after a huntin' trip he'd been in what's now called Bechua.n.a.land, and he was in a pretty bad way when he walked one evenin' into the camp of one of those wanderin' Boers. That cla.s.s of Boer has disappeared now. They had no farms of their own, but just moved on with their stock and their boys; and when they came to good pasture they'd outspan and stay there till they'd cleared it out--and then trek on again. Well, this old Boer told Ray to come right in, and take a meal; and heaven knows what it was made of, for those old Boers, they'd eat the devil himself without onion sauce, and relish him.

After the meal the old Boer and Ray sat smokin' and yarnin' in the door of the tent, because in those days these wanderin' Boers used tents.

Right close by in the front, the children were playin' in the dust, a game like marbles, with three or four round stones, and they'd pitch 'em up to another stone they called the Moer-Klip, or Mother-stone--one, two, and pick up--two, three, and pick up--you know the game of marbles.

Well, the sun was settin' and presently Ray noticed this Moer-Klip that they were pitchin' 'em up to, s.h.i.+nin'; and he looked at it, and he said to the old Boer: 'What's that stone the children are playin' with?' And the old Boer looked at him and looked at the stone, and said: 'It's just a stone,' and went on smokin'.

"Well, Ray went down on his knees and picked up the stone, and weighed it in his hand. About the size of a hazel-nut it was, and looked--well, it looked like a piece of alum; but the more he looked at it, the more he thought: 'By Jove, I believe it's a diamond!'

"So he said to the old Boer: 'Where did the children get this stone?'

And the old Boer said: 'Oh! the shepherd picked it up somewhere.' And Ray said: '_Where_ did he pick it up?' And the old Boer waved his hand, and said: 'Over the Kopje, there, beyond the river. How should I know, brother?--a stone is a stone!' So Ray said: 'You let me take this stone away with me!' And the old Boer went on smokin', and he said: 'One stone's the same as another. Take it, brother!' And Ray said: 'If it's what I think, I'll give you half the price I get for it.'

"The old Boer smiled, and said: 'That's all right, brother; take it, take it!'

"The next morning Ray left this old Boer, and, when he was going, he said to him: 'Well,' he said, 'I believe this is a valuable stone!' and the old Boer smiled because he knew one stone was the same as another.

"The first place Ray came to was C--, and he went to the hotel; and in the evenin' he began talkin' about the stone, and they all laughed at him, because in those days n.o.body had heard of diamonds in South Africa.

So presently he lost his temper, and pulled out the stone and showed it round; but n.o.body thought it was a diamond, and they all laughed at him the more. Then one of the fellers said: 'If it's a diamond, it ought to cut gla.s.s.'

"Ray took the stone, and, by Jove, he cut his name on the window, and there it is--I've seen it--on the bar window of that hotel. Well, next day, you bet, he travelled straight back to where the old Boer told him the shepherd had picked up the stone, and he went to a native chief called Jointje, and said to him: 'Jointje,' he said, 'I go a journey.

While I go, you go about and send all your "boys" about, and look for all the stones that s.h.i.+ne like this one; and when I come back, if you find me plenty, I give you gun.' And Jointje said: 'That all right, Boss.'

"And Ray went down to Cape Town, and took the stone to a jeweller, and the jeweller told him it was a diamond of about 30 or 40 carats, and gave him five hundred pound for it. So he bought a waggon and a span of oxen to give to the old Boer, and went back to Jointje. The n.i.g.g.e.rs had collected skinfuls of stones of all kinds, and out of all the skinfuls Ray found three or four diamonds. So he went to work and got another feller to back him, and between them they made the Government move. The rush began, and they found that place near Kimberley; and after that they found De Beers, and after that Kimberley itself."

Travers stopped, and looked around him.

"Ray made his fortune, I suppose?"

"No, Mr. Askew; the unfortunate feller made next to nothin'. He was one of those fellers that never do any good for themselves."

"But what has all this to do with the war?"

Again Travers looked round, and more slowly than ever, said:

"Without that game of marbles, would there have been a Moer-Klip--without the Moer-Klip, would there have been a Kimberley--without Kimberley, would there have been a Rhodes--without a Rhodes, would there have been a Raid--without a Raid, would the Boers have started armin'--if the Boers hadn't armed, would there have been a Transvaal War? And if there hadn't been the Transvaal War, would there have been the incident of those two German s.h.i.+ps we held up; and all the general feelin' in Germany that gave the Kaiser the chance to start his Navy programme in 1900? And if the Germans hadn't built their Navy, would their heads have swelled till they challenged the world, and should we have had this war?"

He slowly drew a hand from his pocket, and put it on the table. On the little finger was blazing an enormous diamond.

"My father," he said, "bought it of the jeweller."

The mother-stone glittered and glowed, and the five Englishmen fixed their eyes on it in silence. Some of them had been in the Boer War, and three of them had sons in this. At last one of them said:

"Well, that's seeing G.o.d in a dew-drop with a vengeance. What about the old Boer?"

Travers's little eyes twinkled.

"Well," he said, "Ray told me the old feller just looked at him as if he thought he'd done a d.a.m.n silly thing to give him a waggon; and he nodded his old head, and said, laughin' in his beard: 'Wish you good luck, brother, with your stone.' You couldn't humbug that old Boer; he knew one stone was the same as another."

1914.

XII

POIROT AND BIDAN

A RECOLLECTION

Coming one dark December evening out of the hospital courtyard into the corridor which led to my little workroom, I was conscious of two new arrivals. There were several men round the stove, but these two were sitting apart on a bench close to my door. We used to get men in all stages of decrepitude, but I had never seen two who looked so completely under the weather. They were the extremes--in age, in colouring, in figure, in everything; and they sat there, not speaking, with every appearance of apathy and exhaustion. The one was a boy, perhaps nineteen, with a sunken, hairless, grey-white face under his peaked cap--never surely was face so grey! He sat with his long grey-blue overcoat open at the knees, and his long emaciated hands nervously rubbing each other between them. Intensely forlorn he looked, and I remember thinking: "That boy's dying!" This was Bidan.

The other's face, in just the glimpse I had of it, was as if carved out of wood, except for that something you see behind the masks of driven bullocks, deeply resentful. His cap was off, and one saw he was grey-haired; his cheeks, stretched over cheekbones solid as door-handles, were a purplish-red, his grey moustache was damp, his light blue eyes stared like a codfish's. He reminded me queerly of those Parisian _cochers_ one still sees under their s.h.i.+ning hats, wearing an expression of being your enemy. His short stocky figure was dumped stolidly as if he meant never to move again; on his thick legs and feet he wore m.u.f.flings of cloth boot, into which his patched and stained grey-blue trousers were tucked. One of his gloved hands was stretched out stiff on his knee. This was Poirot.

Two more dissimilar creatures were never blown together into our haven.

So far as I remember, they had both been in hospital about six months, and their ailments were, roughly speaking, Youth and Age. Bidan had not finished his training when his weak const.i.tution gave way under it; Poirot was a Territorial who had dug behind the Front till rheumatism claimed him for its own. Bidan, who had fair hair and rather beautiful brown eyes over which the lids could hardly keep up, came from Aix-en-Provence, in the very south; Poirot from Nancy, in the northeast. I made their acquaintance the next morning.

The cleaning of old Poirot took, literally speaking, days to accomplish.

Such an encrusted case we had never seen; nor was it possible to go, otherwise than slowly, against his prejudices. One who, unless taken exactly the right way, considered everyone leagued with Nature to get the better of him, he had reached that state when the soul sticks its toes in and refuses to budge. A coachman--in civil life--a socialist, a freethinker, a wit, he was the apex of--shall we say?--determination.

His moral being was encrusted with perversity, as his poor hands and feet with dirt. Oil was the only thing for him, and I, for one, used oil on him morally and physically, for months. He was a "character!" His left hand--which he was never tired of saying the "_majors_" had ruined ("_Ah! les cochons!_") by leaving it alone--was stiff in all its joints, so that the fingers would not bend; and the little finger of the right hand, "_le pet.i.t_," "_le coquin_," "_l'empereur_," as he would severally call it, was embellished by chalky excrescences. The old fellow had that peculiar artfulness which comes from life-long dealing with horses, and he knew exactly how far and how quickly it was advisable for him to mend in health. About the third day he made up his mind that he wished to remain with us at least until the warm weather came. For that it would be necessary--he concluded--to make a cheering amount of progress, but not too much. And this he set himself to do. He was convinced, one could see, that after Peace had been declared and compensation a.s.sured him, he would recover the use of his hand, even if "_l'empereur_" remained stiff and chalky. As a matter of fact, I think he was mistaken, and will never have a supple left hand again. But his arms were so brawny, his const.i.tution so vigorous, and his legs improved so rapidly under the necessity of taking him down into the little town for his gla.s.s, of an afternoon, that one felt he might possibly be digging again sooner than he intended.

"_Ah, les cochons!_" he would say; "while one finger does not move, they shall pay me!" He was very bitter against all "_majors_" save one, who it seemed had actually sympathised with him, and all _deputes_, who for him const.i.tuted the powers of darkness, drawing their salaries, and sitting in their chairs. ("_Ah! les chameaux!_")

Though he was several years younger than oneself, one always thought of him as "Old Poirot" indeed, he was soon called "_le grand-pere_," though no more confirmed bachelor ever inhabited the world. He was a regular "Miller of Dee," caring for n.o.body; and yet he was likeable, that humorous old stoic, who suffered from gall-stones, and bore horrible bouts of pain like a hero. In spite of all his disabilities his health and appearance soon became robust in our easy-going hospital, where no one was harried, the food excellent, and the air good. He would tell you that his father lived to eighty, and his grandfather to a hundred, both "strong men" though not so strong as his old master, the squire, of whose feats in the hunting-field he would give most staggering accounts in an argot which could only be followed by instinct. A great narrator, he would describe at length life in the town of Nancy, where, when the War broke out, he was driving a market cart, and distributing vegetables, which had made him an authority on munic.i.p.al reform. Though an incorrigible joker, his stockfish countenance would remain perfectly grave, except for an occasional hoa.r.s.e chuckle. You would have thought he had no more power of compa.s.sion than a cat, no more sensibility than a Chinese idol; but this was not so. In his wooden, shrewd, distrustful way he responded to sympathy, and was even sorry for others. I used to like very much his att.i.tude to the young "stable-companion" who had arrived with him; he had no contempt, such as he might easily have felt for so weakly a creature, but rather a real indulgence towards his feebleness. "Ah!" he would say at first; "he won't make old bones--that one!" But he seemed extremely pleased when, in a fortnight or so, he had to modify that view, for Bidan (Prosper) prospered more rapidly even than himself. That grey look was out of the boy's face within three weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he could say, with his dreadful Provencal tw.a.n.g, that he felt "_tres biang_." A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes, and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his limbs seemed almost to have lost their joints, they wambled so. He had no muscle at all. Utter anaemia had hold of all his body, and all but a corner of his French spirit. Round that unquenchable gleam of gaiety the rest of him slowly rallied. With proper food and air and freedom, he began to have a faint pink flush in his china-white cheeks; his lids no longer drooped, his limbs seemed to regain their joints, his hands ceased to swell, he complained less and less of the pains about his heart. When, of a morning, he was finished with, and "_le grand-pere_"

was having his hands done, they would engage in lively repartee--oblivious of one's presence. We began to feel that this grey ghost of a youth had been well named, after all, when they called him Prosper, so lyrical would he wax over the const.i.tution and cooking of "_bouillabaisse_,"

over the South, and the buildings of his native Aix-en-Provence. In all France you could not have found a greater contrast than those two who had come to us so under the weather; nor in all France two better instances of the way men can regain health of body and spirit in the right surroundings.

We had a tremendous fall of snow that winter, and had to dig ourselves out of it. Poirot and Bidan were of those who dug. It was amusing to watch them. Bidan dug easily, without afterthought. "_Le grand-pere_"

dug, with half an eye at least on his future; in spite of those stiff fingers he s.h.i.+fted a lot of snow, but he rested on his shovel whenever he thought you could see him--for he was full of human nature.

To see him and Bidan set off for town together! Bidan pale, and wambling a little still, but gay, with a kind of birdlike detachment; "_le grand-pere_" stocky, wooden, planting his huge feet rather wide apart and regarding his companion, the frosted trees, and the whole wide world, with his humorous stare.

Once, I regret to say, when spring was beginning to come, Bidan-Prosper returned on "_le grand-pere's_" arm with the utmost difficulty, owing to the presence within him of a liquid called Clairette de Die, no amount of which could subdue "_le grand-pere's_" power of planting one foot before the other. Bidan-Prosper arrived hilarious, revealing to the world unsuspected pa.s.sions; he awoke next morning sad, pale, penitent.