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The World Under The War2
He had no very clear idea of what sort of people he might come upon in this country. It was, he knew, America. Americans he had always understood were the citizens of a great and powerful nation, dry and humorous in their manner, addicted to the use of the bowie-knife and revolver, and in the habit of talking through the nose like Norfolkshire, and saying "allow" and "reckon" and "calculate," after the manner of the people who live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. Also they were very rich, had rocking-chairs, and put their feet at unusual altitudes, and they chewed tobacco, gum, and other substances, with untiring industry. Commingled with them were cowboys, Red Indians, and comic, respectful niggers. This he had learnt from the fiction in his public library. Beyond that he had learnt very little. He was not surprised therefore when he met armed men.
He decided to abandon the shattered flying-machine. He wandered through the trees for some time, and then struck a road that seemed to his urban English eyes to be remarkably wide but not properly "made." Neither hedge nor ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated it from the woods, and it went in that long easy curve which distinguishes the tracks of an open continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun under his arm, a man in a soft black hat, a blue blouse, and black trousers, and with a broad round-fat face quite innocent of goatee. This person regarded him askance and heard him speak with a start.
"Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?" asked Bert.
The man regarded him, and more particularly his rubber boots, with sinister suspicion. Then he replied in a strange outlandish tongue that was, as a matter of fact, Czech. He ended suddenly at the sight of Bert`s blank face with "Don`t spik English."
"Oh!" said Bert. He reflected gravely for a moment, and then went his way.
"Thenks," he, said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for a moment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave it up, and went on also with a depressed countenance.
Presently Bert came to a big wooden house standing casually among the trees. It looked a bleak, bare box of a house to him, no creeper grew on it, no hedge nor wall nor fence parted it off from the woods about it. He stopped before the steps that led up to the door, perhaps thirty yards away. The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to the door and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and regarded him. It was a huge heavy-jawed dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it, wore a spike-studded collar. It did not bark nor approach him, it just bristled quietly and emitted a single sound like a short, deep cough.
Bert hesitated and went on.
He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among the trees. "If I `aven`t been and lef` that kitten," he said.
Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through the trees to get a better look at him and coughed that well-bred cough again. Bert resumed the road.
"She`ll do all right," he said.... "She`ll catch things.
"She`ll do all right," he said presently, without conviction. But if it had not been for the black dog, he would have gone back.
When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through the woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk, adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes and dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a baby, but at the sight of Bert she got up and went inside, and he heard her bolting the door. Then a boy appeared among the pig-stys, but he would not understand Bert`s hail.
"I suppose it is America!" said Bert.
The houses became more frequent down the road, and he passed two other extremely wild and dirty-looking men without addressing them. One carried a gun and the other a hatchet, and they scrutinised him and his cudgel scornfully. Then he struck a cross-road with a mono-rail at its side, and there was a notice board at the comer with "Wait here for the cars." "That`s all right, any`ow," said Bert. "Wonder `ow long I should `ave to wait?" It occurred to him that in the present disturbed state of the country the service might be interrupted, and as there seemed more houses to the right than the left he turned to the right. He passed an old negro. "`Ullo!" said Bert. "Goo` morning!"
"Good day, sah!" said the old negro, in a voice of almost incredible richness.
"What`s the name of this place?" asked Bert.
"Tanooda, sah!" said the negro.
"Thenks!" said Bert.
"Thank YOU, sah!" said the negro, overwhelmingly.
Bert came to houses of the same detached, unwalled, wooden type, but adorned now with enamelled advertisements partly in English and partly in Esperanto. Then he came to what he concluded was a grocer`s shop. It was the first house that professed the hospitality of an open door, and from within came a strangely familiar sound. "Gaw!" he said searching in his pockets. "Why! I `aven`t wanted money for free weeks! I wonder if I--Grubb `ad most of it. Ah!" He produced a handful of coins and regarded it; three pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. "That`s all right," he said, forgetting a very obvious consideration.
He approached the door, and as he did so a compactly built, grey-faced man in shirt sleeves appeared in it and scrutinised him and his cudgel. "Mornin`," said Bert. "Can I get anything to eat `r drink in this shop?"
The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in clear, good American. "This, sir, is not A shop, it is A store."
"Oh!" said Bert, and then, "Well, can I get anything to eat?"
"You can," said the American in a tone of confident encouragement, and led the way inside.
The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill standards extremely roomy, well lit, and unencumbered. There was a long counter to the left of him, with drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged behind it, a number of chairs, several tables, and two spittoons to the right, various barrels, cheeses, and bacon up the vista, and beyond, a large archway leading to more space. A little group of men was assembled round one of the tables, and a woman of perhaps five-and-thirty leant with her elbows on the counter. All the men were armed with rifles, and the barrel of a gun peeped above the counter. They were all listening idly, inattentively, to a cheap, metallic-toned gramophone that occupied a table near at hand. From its brazen throat came words that gave Bert a qualm of homesickness, that brought back in his memory a sunlit beach, a group of children, red-painted bicycles, Grubb, and an approaching balloon:--
"Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins Now?"
A heavy-necked man in a straw hat, who was chewing something, stopped the machine with a touch, and they all,turned their eyes on Bert. And all their eyes were tired eyes.
"Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?" said the proprietor.
"He kin have what he likes?" said the woman at the counter, without moving, "right up from a cracker to a square meal." She struggled with a yawn, after the manner of one who has been up all night.
"I want a meal," said Bert, "but I `aven`t very much money. I don` want to give mor`n a shillin`."
"Mor`n a WHAT?" said the proprietor, sharply.
"Mor`n a shillin`," said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisation coming into his mind.
"Yes," said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtly bearing. "But what in hell is a shilling?"
"He means a quarter," said a wise-looking, lank young man in riding gaiters.
Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. "That`s a shilling," he said.
"He calls A store A shop," said the proprietor, "and he wants A meal for A shilling. May I ask you, sir, what part of America you hail from?"
Bert replaced the shilling,in his pocket as he spoke, "Niagara," he said.
"And when did you leave Niagara?"
"`Bout an hour ago."
"Well," said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to the others. "Well!"
They asked various questions simultaneously.
Bert selected one or two for reply. "You see," he said, "I been with the German air-fleet. I got caught up by them, sort of by accident, and brought over here."
"From England?"
"Yes--from England. Way of Germany. I was in a great battle with them Asiatics, and I got lef` on a little island between the Falls."
"Goat Island?"
"I don` know what it was called. But any`ow I found a flying-machine and made a sort of fly with it and got here."
Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. "Where`s the flying-machine?"they asked; "outside?"
"It`s back in the woods here--`bout arf a mile away."
"Is it good?" said a thick-lipped man with a scar.
"I come down rather a smash--."
Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wanted him to take them to the flying-machine at once.
"Look `ere," said Bert, "I`ll show you--only I `aven`t `ad anything to eat since yestiday--except mineral water."
A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long lean legs in riding gaiters and a bandolier, who had hitherto not spoken, intervened now on his behalf in a note of confident authority. "That`s aw right," he said. "Give him a feed, Mr. Logan--from me. I want to hear more of that story of his. We`ll see his machine afterwards. If you ask me, I should say it`s a remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here. I guess we requisition that flying-machine--if we find it--,for local defence."
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