The Wages of Virtue Part 2

"Yes, I must do it," replied the doctor without hesitation, as the other paused.

"But why?" urged Strong. "I'm absolutely certain that if M----, er--that is--this chap--could have his faculties for a minute he would tell you not to do it.... You'll take him from a sort of negative happiness to the most positive and acute unhappiness, and you'll simply blast the lives of his wife and the most excellent chap she's married.... She waited a year after this chap 'died' in--er--that last Polar expedition--as was supposed.... Think of the poor little kid too.... And there's estates and a ti---- so on...."

"No good, Strong. My duty in the matter is perfectly clear, and it is to the sick man, as such."

"Well, you'll do a d.a.m.ned cruel thing ... er--sorry, old chap, I mean _do_ think it over a bit and look at it from the point of view of the unfortunate lady, the second husband, and the child.... And of the chap himself.... By G.o.d! He won't thank you."

"I look at it from the point of view of the doctor and I'm not out for thanks," was the reply.

"Is that your last word, Williams?"

"It is. I have here a man mentally maimed, mangled and suffering. My first and only duty is to heal him, and I shall do it."

"Right O!" replied Strong, who knew that further words would be useless.

He knew that his friend's intelligence was clear as crystal and his will as firm, and that he accepted no other guide than his own conscience....

As the three men sat in the moonlight that night, after dinner, Captain Strong was an uncomfortable man. That tragedy must find a place in the human comedy he was well aware. It had its uses like the comic relief--but for human tragedy, undilute, black, harsh, and dreadful, he had no taste. He s.h.i.+vered. The pretty little comedy of Lord Huntingten and Sir Montague and Lady Merline, of two years ago, had greatly amused and deeply interested him. This tragedy of the same three people was unmitigated horror.... Poor Lady Merline! He conjured up her beautiful face with the wonderful eyes, the rose-leaf complexion, the glorious hair, the tender, lovely mouth--and saw the life and beauty wiped from it as she read, or heard, the ghastly news ... bigamy ...

illegitimacy....

The doctor's "bearer" came to take the patient to bed. He was a remarkable man who had started life as a ward-boy in Madras. He it was who had cut the half-witted white man's hair, shaved his beard and dressed him in his master's spare clothes. When the patient was asleep that night, he was going to endeavour to shave the top of his head without waking him, for he was to be operated on, in the morning....

"Yes, I fully understand and I give you my solemn promise, Strong," said the doctor as the two men rose to go in, that night. "The moment the man is sane I will tell him that he is not to tell me his name, nor anything else until he has heard what I have to say. I will then break it to him--using my own discretion as to how and when--that he was reported dead, that his will was proved, that his widow wore mourning for a year and then married again, and had a son a year later.... I undertake that he shall not leave this house, _knowing that_, unless he is in the fullest possession of his faculties and able to realise with the utmost clearness _all_ the bearings of the case and _all_ the consequences following his resumption of ident.i.ty. And I'll let him hide here for just as long as he cares to conceal himself--if he wishes to remain 'dead' for a time."

"Yes ... And as I can't possibly stay till he recovers, nor, in fact, over to-morrow without gross dereliction of duty, I will leave a letter for you to give him at the earliest safe moment.... I'll tell him that I am the only living soul who knows his name as well as his secret.

He'll understand that no one else will know this--from me."

As he sat on the side of his bed that night, Captain Strong remarked unto his soul, "Well--one thing--if I know Monty Merline as well as I think, 'Sir Montague Merline' died two years ago, whatever happens....

And yet I can't imagine Monty committing suicide, somehow. He's a chap with a conscience as well as the soul of chivalry.... Poor, poor, old Monty Merline!..."

THE WAGES OF VIRTUE

CHAPTER I

SOAP AND SIR MONTAGUE MERLINE

Sir Montague Merline, second-cla.s.s private soldier of the First Battalion of the Foreign Legion of France, paused to straighten his back, to pa.s.s his bronzed forearm across his white forehead, and to put his sc.r.a.p of soap into his mouth--the only safe receptacle for the precious morsel, the tiny cake issued once a month by Madame La Republique to the Legionary for all his was.h.i.+ng purposes. When one's income is precisely one halfpenny a day (paid when it has totalled up to the sum of twopence halfpenny), one does not waste much, nor risk the loss of valuable property; and to lay a piece of soap upon the concrete of _Le Cercle d'Enfer_ reservoir, is not so much to risk the loss of it as to lose it, when one is surrounded by gentlemen of the Foreign Legion. Let me not be misunderstood, nor supposed to be casting aspersions upon the said gentlemen, but their need for soap is urgent, their income is one halfpenny a day, and soap is of the things with which one may "decorate oneself" without contravening the law of the Legion. To steal is to steal, mark you (and to deserve, and probably to get, a bayonet through the offending hand, pinning it to the bench or table), but to borrow certain specified articles permanently and without permission is merely, in the curious slang of the Legion, "to decorate oneself."

Contrary to what the uninitiated might suppose, _Le Cercle d'Enfer_--the Circle of h.e.l.l--is not a dry, but a very wet place, it being, in point of fact, the _lavabo_ where the Legionaries of the French Foreign Legion stationed in Algeria at Sidi-bel-Abbes, daily wash their white fatigue uniforms and occasionally their underclothing.

Oh, that _Cercle d'Enfer_! I hated it more than I hated the _peloton des hommes punis, salle de police, cellules_, the "Breakfast of the Legion," the awful heat, monotony, flies, Bedouins; the solitude, hunger, and thirst of outpost stations in the south; I hated it more than I hated _astiquage_, _la boite_, the _chaussettes russes_, hospital, the terrible desert marches, sewer-cleaning fatigues, or that villainous and vindictive ruffian of a _cafard_-smitten _caporal_ who systematically did his very able best to kill me. Oh, that accursed _Cercle d'Enfer_, and the heart-breaking labour of was.h.i.+ng a filthy alfa-fibre suit (stained perhaps with rifle-oil) in cold water, and without soap!

Only the other day, as I lay somnolent in a long chair in the verandah of the Charmingest Woman (she lives in India), I heard the regular _flop, flop, flop_ of wet clothes, beaten by a distant _dhobi_ upon a slab of stone, and at the same moment I smelt wet concrete as the _mali_ watered the maidenhair fern on the steps leading from Her verandah to the garden. Odours call up memories far more distinctly and readily than do other sense-impressions, and the faint smell of wet concrete, aided as it was by the faintly audible sound of wet blows, brought most vividly before my mind's eye a detailed picture of that well-named Temple of Hygiea, the "Circle of h.e.l.l." Sleeping, waking, and partly sleeping, partly waking, I saw it all again; saw Sir Montague Merline, who called himself John Bull; saw Hiram Cyrus Milton, known as The Bucking Bronco; saw "Reginald Rupert"; the infamous Luigi Rivoli; the unspeakable Edouard Malvin; the marvellous Mad Gra.s.shopper, whose name no one knew; the truly religious Hans Djoolte; the Russian twins, calling themselves Mikhail and Feodor Kyrilovitch Malekov; the terrible Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker, and all the rest of them. And finally, waking with an actual and perceptible taste of soap in my mouth, I wished my worst enemy were in the _Cercle d'Enfer_, soapless, and with much rifle-oil, dust, leather marks and wine stains on his once-white uniform--and then I thought of Carmelita and determined to write this book.

For Carmelita deserves a monument (and so does John Bull), however humble.... To continue....

Sir Montague Merline did not put his precious morsel of soap into his pocket, for the excellent reason that there was no pocket to the single exiguous garment he was at the moment wearing--a useful piece of material which in its time played many parts, and knew the service of duster, towel, turban, tablecloth, polis.h.i.+ng pad, tea-cloth, house-flannel, ap.r.o.n, handkerchief, neckerchief, curtain, serviette, holder, fly-slayer, water-strainer, punkah, and, at the moment, nether garment. Having _cached_ his soup and having observed "_Peste!_" as he savoured its flavour, he proceeded to pommel, punch, and slap upon the concrete, the greyish-white tunic and breeches, and the cotton vest and s.h.i.+rt which he had generously soaped before the hungry eyes of numerous soapless but oathful fellow-labourers, who less successfully sought that virtue which, in the Legion, is certainly next to, but far ahead of, mere G.o.dliness.

In due course, Sir Montague Merline rinsed his garments in the reservoir, wrung them out, bore them to the nearest clothes-line, hung them out to dry, and sat himself down in their shadow to stare at them unwaveringly until dried by the fierce sun--the ancient enemy, for the moment an unwilling friend. To watch them unwaveringly and intently because he knew that the turning of his head for ten seconds might mean their complete and final disappearance--for, like soap, articles of uniform are on the list of things with which a Legionary may "decorate"

himself, if he can, without incurring the odium of public opinion. (He may steal any article of equipment, clothing, kit, accoutrement, or general utility, but his patron saint help him and Le Bon Dieu be merciful to him, if he be caught stealing tobacco, wine, food, or money.)

Becoming aware of the presence of Monsieur le Legionnaire Edouard Malvin, Sir Montague Merline increased the vigilance of his scrutiny of his pendent property, for ce cher Edouard was of pick-pockets the very prince and magician; of those who could steal the teeth from a Jew while he sneezed and would steal the scalp from their grandmamma while she objected.

"Ohe! Jean Boule, lend me thy soap," besought this stout and dapper little Austrian, who for some reason pretended to be a Belgian from the Congo. "This cursed alfa-fibre gets dirtier the more you wash it in this cursed water," and he smiled a greasy and ingratiating grin.

Without for one second averting his steady stare from his clothes, the Englishman slowly removed the soap from his mouth, expectorated, remarked "_Peaudezebie_,"[#] and took no further notice of the quaint figure which stood by his side, clad only in ancient red Zouave breeches and the ingratiating smile.

[#] An emphatic negative.

"Name of a Name! Name of the Name of a Pipe! Name of the Name of a Dirty Little Furry Red Monkey!" observed Monsieur le Legionnaire Edouard Malvin as he turned to slouch away, twirling the dripping grey-white tunic.

"Meaning me?" asked Sir Montague, replacing the soap in its safe repository and preparing to rise.

"But no! But not in the least, old cabbage. Thou hast the _cafard_.

Mais oui, tu as le cafard," replied the Belgian and quickened his retreat.

No, the grey Jean Boule, so old, so young, doyen of Legionnaires, so quick, strong, skilful and enduring at _la boxe_, was not the man to cross at any time, and least of all when he had _le cafard_, that terrible Legion madness that all Legionaries know; the madness that drives them to the cells, to gaol, to the Zephyrs, to the firing-party by the open grave; or to desertion and death in the desert. The grey Jean Boule had been a Zephyr of the Penal Battalions once, already, for killing a man, and Monsieur Malvin, although a Legionary of the Foreign Legion, did not wish to die. No, not while Carmelita and Madame la Cantiniere lived and loved and sold the good Algiers wine at three-halfpence a bottle.... No, bon sang de sort!

M. le Legionnaire Malvin returned to the dense ring of labouring perspiring washers, and edged in behind a gigantic German and a short, broad, burly Alsatian, capitalists as joint proprietors of a fine cake of soap.

Sacre nom de nom de bon Dieu de Dieu de sort! Dull-witted German pigs might leave their soap unguarded for a moment, and, if they did not, might be induced to wring some soapy water from their little pile of was.h.i.+ng, upon the obstinately greasy tunic of the good M. Malvin.

Legionnaire Hans Schnitzel, late of Berlin, rinsed his was.h.i.+ng in clean water, wrung it, and took it to the nearest drying line. Legionnaire Alphonse Dupont, late of Alsace, placed his soap in the pocket of the dirty white fatigue-uniform which he wore, and which he would wash as soon as he had finished the present job. Immediately, Legionnaire Edouard Malvin transferred the soap from the side pocket of the tunic of the unconscious Legionnaire Alphonse Dupont to that of his own red breeches, and straightway begged the loan of it.

"_Merde!_" replied Dupont. "Nombril de Belzeb.u.t.t! I will lend it thee _peaudezebie_. Why should I lend thee soap, _vieux degoulant_? Go decorate thyself, _sale cochon_. Besides 'tis not mine to lend."

"And that is very true," agreed M. Malvin, and sauntered toward Schnitzel, who stood phlegmatically guarding his drying clothes. In his hand was an object which caused the eyebrows of the good M. Malvin to arch and rise, and his mouth to water--nothing less than an actual, real and genuine scrubbing-brush, beautiful in its bristliness. Then righteous anger filled his soul.

"Saligaud!" he hissed. "These pigs of filthy Germans! Soap _and_ a brush. Sacripants! Ils me degoutant a la fin."

As he regarded the stolid German with increasing envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, and cast about in his quick and cunning mind for means of relieving him of the coveted brush, a sudden roar of wrath and grief from his Alsatian partner, Dupont, sent Schnitzel running to join that unfortunate man in fierce and impartial denunciations of his left-hand and right-hand neighbours, who were thieves, pigs, brigands, dogs, Arabs, and utterly _merdant_ and _merdable_. Bursting into the fray, Herr Schnitzel found them, in addition, _bloedsinnig_ and _dummkopf_ in that they could not produce cakes of soap from empty mouths.

As the rage of the bereaved warriors increased, more and more Pomeranian and Alsatian patois invaded the wonderful Legion-French, a French which is not of Paris, nor of anywhere else in the world save La Legion. As Dupont fell upon a laughing Italian with a cry of "Ah! zut! Sacre grimacier," Schnitzel spluttered and roared at a huge slow-moving American who regarded him with a look of pitying but not unkindly contempt....

"Why do the 'eathen rage furious _to_gether and _im_agine a vain thing?"

he enquired in a slow drawl of the excited "furriner," adding "Ain't yew some _schafs-kopf_, sonny!" and, as the big German began to whirl his arms in the windmill fas.h.i.+on peculiar to the non-boxing foreigner who meditates a.s.sault and battery, continued--

"Now yew stop _zanking_ and playing _versteckens_ with me, yew pie-faced Squarehead, and be _schnell_ about it, or yew'll git my goat, see?

_Vous obtiendrez mon chevre_, yew perambulating _prachtvoll bierhatte_,"

and he coolly turned his back upon the infuriated German with a polite, if laborious, "Guten tag, mein Freund."

Mr. Hiram Cyrus Milton (late of Texas, California, the Yukon, and the "main drag" generally of the wild and woolly West) was exceeding proud of his linguistic knowledge and skill. It may be remarked, en pa.s.sant, that his friends were even prouder of it.