THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace
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rearin’.
“The officer was comin’ very slowly, with his head bent down as though he was lookin’ for somethin’ on the ground. Now an’ again he’d stop, an’ look left an’ right, but always on the ground.
“‘What’s he lost? ‘ I sez in a low voice.
“He didn’t seem to notice us, though we stood out clear enough in the moonlight, an’ I brought my rifle to the port.
“‘Halt! Who comes there?’ I sez, but he took no notice.
“Nearer an’ nearer he came, his eyes bent on the ground, an’ I challenged again
“‘Halt! Who comes there?’
“Then he looked up, an’ I saw that I was talkin’ to a dead man!
“It was the face of a man who was dead: a grey face with a little red mark just above his right eye.
“I staggered back; then, as the yeoman put spurs to his horse, an’ went clatterin’ an’ blunderin’ down the other side of the hill, I caught hold of his stirrup-leather an’ run with him….
“The other fellers of the guard said I’d been moonstruck, an’ the corporal of the guard smelt me breath, but none of ’em took the trouble to go up the kopje and investigate.
“Next mornin’, when the guard was relieved, I was sent for to orderly room.
“‘I understand you saw a ghost, Clark?’ sez the Colonel.
“‘Yes, sir,’ I sez, an’ told ‘im all about it.
“Now the rum thing was that the Colonel didn’t laugh. He listened very quietly, noddin’ his head, an’ sayin’ nothin. When I finished he sez: —
“‘This is all true, you have been tellin’ me?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ I sez, ‘I’m willin’ to take me oath.’
“He said no more, an’ I went back to me tent.
“The fellers didn’t half roast me. Even Smithy called me a liar, an’ ‘Nobby’s ghost’ was the talk of the camp for weeks.
“After the war was over, we was ordered home.
“I forget the name of the ship we came home on, but I think it was the ‘Drayton Grange.’ We brought home a lot of ‘details,’ Engineers, Army Service Corps, an’ two squadrons of the 22nd Hussars.
“After we’d all settled down an’ got to know one another, we used to have little bow-wows on the fo’c’sle head, an’ spent a lot of time tellin’ one another what gallant fellers we’d been.
“There was a Hussar chap named Paul.
“‘The most curious thing I’ve ever seen,’ he sez one afternoon, when we were all gassin’, ‘was the taking of Hussar Kop — any of you chaps know it, it’s near Heilbron?’
“There was a bit of a laugh when he said this, an’ the chaps all looked at me.
“‘We had a young officer,’ sez the Hussar, ‘Lieutenant Enden, his name was — a regular boy. He was engaged to a young lady in Canterbury, an’ I’ve never seen a feller so much in love in me life. Used to carry her picture in a little gold locket round his neck. I’ve seen him, when he thought nobody was lookin’, take it out, an’ have a dekko.
“‘Well, about this fight I was speakin’ of. The Boers held the kopje, an’ two squadrons of Ours was sent to dislodge ‘em. There wasn’t such a number of the enemy on the kop that we couldn’t tackle ‘em.
“‘We galloped up to the foot of the hill an’ dismounted under the cover of a little ridge, an’ then we began to go up, takin’ cover as best we could.
“‘Lieutenant Enden was leadin’ us, crouchin’ behind such rocks as he could find, an’ dodgin’ from boulder to boulder.
“‘Suddenly 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
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