Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 74
“Not at all,” I said, “he’s been telling me all about his early life in his father’s cabin on the Wabash—”
“I was afraid so,” said the young man. “Too bad. You see he wasn’t really there at all.”
“Not there!” I said.
“No. He only fancies that he was. He was brought up in New York, and has never been west of Philadelphia. In fact he has been very well to do all his life. But he found that it counted against him: it hurt him in politics. So he got into the way of talking about the Middle West and early days there, and sometimes he forgets that he wasn’t there.”
“I see,” I said.
Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” he said very cheerily,— “A delightful chat. We must have another talk over old times soon. I must tell you about my first trip over the Plains at the time when I was surveying the line of the Union Pacific. You who travel nowadays in your Pullman coaches and observation cars can have no idea—”
“Come along, uncle,” said the young man.
6. — The Last Man out of Europe
He came into the club and shook hands with me as if he hadn’t seen me for a year. In reality I had seen him only eleven months ago, and hadn’t thought of him since.
“How are you, Parkins?” I said in a guarded tone, for I saw at once that there was something special in his manner.
“Have a cig?” he said as he sat down on the edge of an arm-chair, dangling his little boot.
Any young man who calls a cigarette a “cig” I despise. “No, thanks,” I said.
“Try one,” he went on, “they’re Hungarian. They’re some I managed to bring through with me out of the war zone.”
As he said “war zone,” his face twisted up into a sort of scowl of self-importance.
I looked at Parkins more closely and I noticed that he had on some sort of foolish little coat, short in the back, and the kind of bow-tie that they wear in the Hungarian bands of the Sixth Avenue restaurants.
Then I knew what the trouble was. He was the last man out of Europe, that is to say, the latest last man. There had been about fourteen others in the club that same afternoon. In fact they were sitting all over it in Italian suits and Viennese overcoats, striking German matches on the soles of Dutch boots. These were the “war zone” men and they had just got out “in the clothes they stood up in.” Naturally they hated to change.
So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to say, and all about his adventures before he began.
“Yes,” he said, “we were caught right in the war zone. By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went through.”
With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a man musing in silence over the recollection of days of horror.
I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till he burst before I would ask him what he had been through. I knew it, anyway.
Presently he decided to go on talking.
“We were at Izzl,” he said, “in the Carpathians, Loo Jones and I. We’d just made a walking tour from Izzl to Fryzzl and back again.”
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
“Back where?”
“Back to Izzl,” I explained, “after you’d once got to Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on.”
“That was in July,” he continued. “There wasn’t a sign of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning to mobilize,” (at this word be blew a puff from his cigarette and then repeated “beginning to mobilize”) “but we thought nothing of it.”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds, but we still thought nothing of it.”
“Certainly not,” I said.
“And then we heard—”
“Yes, I know,” I said, “you heard that Italy was calling out the Trombonari, and that Germany was calling in all the Landesgeschutzshaft.”
He looked at me.
“How did you know that?” he said.
“We heard it over here,” I answered.
“Well,” he went on, “next thing we knew we heard that the Russians were at Fryzzl.”
“Great Heavens!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away. The very place we’d been at only two weeks before.”
“Think of it!” I said. “If you’d been where you were two weeks after you were there, or if the Russians had been a hundred miles away from where they were, or even if Fryzzl had been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl—”
We both shuddered.
“It was a close call,” said Parkins. “However, I said to Loo Jones, ‘Loo, it’s time to clear out.’ And then, I tell you, our trouble began. First of all we couldn’t get any money. We went to the bank at Izzl and tried to get them to give us American dollars for Hungarian paper money; we had nothing else.”
“And wouldn’t they?”
“Absolutely refused. They said they hadn’t any.”
“By George,” I exclaimed. “Isn’t war dreadful? What on earth did you do?”
“Took a chance,” said Parkins. “Went across to the railway station to buy our tickets with the Hungarian money.”
“Did you get them?” I said.
“Yes,” assented Parkins. “They said they’d sell us tickets. But they questioned us mighty closely; asked where we wanted to go to, what class we meant to travel by, how much luggage we had to register and so on. I tell you the fellow looked at us mighty closely.”
“Were you in those clothes?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Parkins, “but I guess he suspected we weren’t Hungarians. You see, we couldn’t either of us speak Hungarian. In fact we spoke nothing but English.”
“That would give him a clue,” I said.
“However,” he went on, “he was civil enough in a way. We asked when was the next train to the sea coast, and he said there wasn’t any.”
“No trains?” I repeated.
“Not to the coast. The man said the reason was because there wasn’t any railway to the coast. But he offered to sell us tickets to Vienna. We asked when the train would go and he said there wouldn’t be one for two hours. So there we were waiting on that wretched little platform, — no place to sit down, no shade, unless one went into the waiting room itself, — for two mortal hours. And even then the train was an hour and a half late!”
“An hour and a half late!” I repeated.
“Yep!” said Parkins, “that’s what things were like over there. So when we got on board the train we asked a man when it was due to get to Vienna, and he said he hadn’t the faintest idea!”
“Good heavens!”
“Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask the conductor or one of the porters. No, sir, I’ll never forget that journey through to Vienna, — nine mortal hours! Nothing to eat, not a bite, except just in the middle of the day when they managed to hitch on a dining-car for a while. And they warned everybody that the dining-car was only on for an hour and a half. Commandeered, I guess after that,” added Parkins, puffing his cigarette.
“Well,” he continued, “we got to Vienna at last. I’ll never forget the scene there, station full of people, trains coming and going, men, even women, buying tickets, big piles of luggage being shoved on trucks. It gave one a great idea of the reality of things.”
“It must have,” I said.
“Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well used up with it all. However, we determined to see it through somehow.”
“What did you do next?”
“Tried again to get money: couldn’t — they changed our Hungarian paper into Italian gold, but they refused to give us American money.”
“Hoarding it?” I hinted.
“Exactly,” said Parkins, “hoarding it all for the war. Well anyhow we got on a train for Italy and there our troubles began all over again: — train stopped at the frontier, — officials (fellows in Italian uniforms) went all through it, opening hand baggage—”
“Not hand baggage!” I gasped.
“Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened it all, or a lot of it anyway, and scribbled chalk marks over it. Yes, and worse than that, — I saw them take two fellows and sling them clear off the train, — they slung them right out on to the platform.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Heaven knows,” said Parkins,— “they said they had no tickets. In war time you know, when they’re mobilizing, they won’t let a soul ride on a train without a ticket.”
“Infernal tyranny,” I murmured.
“Isn’t it? However, we got to Genoa at last, only to find that not a single one of our trunks had come with us!”
“Confiscated?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Parkins, “the head baggage man (he wears a uniform, you know, in Italy just like a soldier) said it was because we’d forgotten to check them in Vienna. However there we were waiting for twenty-four hours with nothing but our valises.”
“Right at the station?” I asked.
“No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later. They telegraphed to Vienna for them and managed to get them through somehow, — in a baggage car, I believe.”
“And after that, I suppose, you had no more trouble.”
“Trouble,” said Parkins, “I should say we had. Couldn’t get a steamer! They said there was none sailing out of Genoa for New York for three days! All cancelled, I guess, or else rigged up as cruisers.”
“What on earth did you do?”
“Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in the hotel. Poor old Jones was pretty well collapsed! Couldn’t do anything but sleep and eat, and sit on the piazza of the hotel.”
“But you got your steamer at last?” I asked.
“Yes,” he admitted, “we got it. But I never want to go through another voyage like that again, no sir!”
“What was wrong with it?” I asked, “bad weather?”
“No, calm, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with little ripples on the water, — uncanny sort of feeling.”
“What was wrong with the voyage?”
“Oh, just the feeling of it, — everything under strict rule you know — no lights anywhere except just the electric lights, — smoking-room closed tight at eleven o’clock, — decks all washed down every night — officers up on the bridge all day looking out over the sea, — no, sir, I want no more of it. Poor old Loo Jones, I guess he’s quite used up: he can’t speak of it at all: just sits and broods, in fact I doubt...”
At this moment Parkins’s conversation was interrupted by the entry of two newcomers into the room. One of them had on a little Hungarian suit like the one Parkins wore, and was talking loudly as they came in.
“Yes,” he was saying, “we were caught there fair and square right in the war zone. We were at Izzl in the Carpathians, poor old Parkins and I—”
We looked round.
It was Loo Jones, describing his escape from Europe.
7. — The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
They were sitting face to face at a lunch table at the club so near to me that I couldn’t avoid hearing what they said. In any case they are both stout men with gurgling voices which carry.
“What Kitchener ought to do,” — Jinks was saying in a loud voice.
So I knew at once that he had the prevailing hallucination. He thought he was commanding armies in Europe.
After which I watched him show with three bits of bread and two olives and a dessert knife the way in which the German army could be destroyed.
Blinks looked at Jinks’ diagram with a stern impassive face, modelled on the Sunday supplement photogravures of Lord Kitchener.
“Your flank would be too much exposed,” he said, pointing to Jinks’ bread. He spoke with the hard taciturnity of a Joffre.
“My reserves cover it,” said Jinks, moving two pepper pots to the support of the bread.
“Mind you,” Jinks went on, “I don’t say Kitchener WILL do this: I say this is what he OUGHT to do: it’s exactly the tactics of Kuropatkin outside of Mukden and it’s precisely the same turning movement that Grant used before Richmond.”
Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand Duke Nicholoevitch quietly accepting the advice of General Ruski under heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks’ manner to a nicety.
And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has ever had any larger ideas about the history of the Civil War than what can be got from reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this is part of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly developed the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars by a sort of instinct.
They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats with their napkins and waddled heavily towards the door. I could hear them as they went talking eagerly of the need of keeping the troops in hard training. They were almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of the door, — one at a time to avoid crowding, — they were still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he would take every man in the United States up to forty- seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him to a shadow. Blinks went further. He said they should be trained hard up to fifty. He is fifty-one.
After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks always together in the club, and always carrying on the European War.
I never knew which side they were on. They seemed to be on both. One day they commanded huge armies of Russians, and there was one week when Blinks and Jinks at the head of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to overrun the whole of Western Europe. It was dreadful to watch them burning churches and monasteries and to see Jinks throw whole convents full of white robed nuns into the flames like so much waste paper.
For a time I feared they would obliterate civilization itself. Then suddenly Blinks decided that Jinks’ Cossacks were no good, not properly trained. He converted himself on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks’ army off the earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation.
In this way they moved to and fro all winter over the map of Europe, carrying death and destruction everywhere and revelling in it.
But I think I liked best the wild excitement of their naval battles.
Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine and Blinks acted the part of a first-class battleship. Jinks would pop his periscope out of the water, take a look at Blinks merely for the fraction of a second, and then, like a flash, would dive under water again and start firing his torpedoes. He explained that he carried six.
But he was never quick enough for Blinks. One glimpse of his periscope miles and miles away was enough. Blinks landed him a contact shell in the side, sunk him with all hands, and then lined his yards with men and cheered. I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles, six miles — and once — in the club billiard room just after the battle of the Falkland Islands, — he got him fair and square at ten nautical miles.
Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk. He had dived. He was two hundred feet under water quietly smiling at Blinks through his periscope. In fact the number of things that Jinks has learned to do through his periscope passes imagination.
Whenever I see him looking across at Blinks with his eyes half closed and with a baffling, quizzical expression in them, I know that he is looking at him through his periscope. Now is the time for Blinks to watch out. If he relaxes his vigilance for a moment he’ll be torpedoed as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and soda and all, through the roof of the club, while Jinks dives into the basement.
Indeed it has come about of late, I don’t know just how, that Jinks has more or less got command of the sea. A sort of tacit understanding has been reached that Blinks, whichever army he happens at the moment to command, is invincible on land. But Jinks, whether as a submarine or a battleship, controls the sea. No doubt this grew up in the natural evolution of their conversation. It makes things easier for both. Jinks even asks Blinks how many men there are in an army division, and what a sotnia of Cossacks is and what the Army Service Corps means. And Jinks in return has become a recognized expert in torpedoes and has taken to wearing a blue serge suit and referring to Lord Beresford as Charley.
But what I noticed chiefly about the war mania of Jinks and Blinks was their splendid indifference to slaughter. They had gone into the war with a grim resolution to fight it out to a finish. If Blinks thought to terrify Jinks by threatening to burn London, he little knew his man. “All right,” said Jinks, taking a fresh light for his cigar, “burn it! By doing so, you destroy, let us say, two million of my women and children? Very good. Am I injured by that? No. You merely stimulate me to recruiting.”
There was something awful in the grimness of the struggle as carried on by Blinks and Jinks.
The rights of neutrals and non-combatants, Red Cross nurses, and regimental clergymen they laughed to scorn. As for moving-picture men and newspaper correspondents, Jinks and Blinks hanged them on every tree in Belgium and Poland.
With combatants in this frame of mind the war I suppose might have lasted forever.
But it came to an end accidentally, — fortuitously, as all great wars are apt to. And by accident also, I happened to see the end of it.
It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks were coming down the steps of the club, and as they came they were speaking with some vehemence on their favourite topic.
“I tell you,” Jinks was saying, “war is a great thing. We needed it, Blinks. We were all getting too soft, too scared of suffering and pain. We wilt at a bayonet charge, we shudder at the thought of wounds. Bah!” he continued, “what does it matter if a few hundred thousands of human beings are cut to pieces. We need to get back again to the old Viking standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering—”
And as he spoke he got it.
The steps of the club were slippery with the evening’s rain, — not so slippery as the frozen lakes of East Prussia or the hills where Jinks and Blinks had been campaigning all winter, but slippery enough for a stout man whose nation has neglected his training. As Jinks waved his stick in the air to illustrate the glory of a bayonet charge, he slipped and fell sideways on the stone steps. His shin bone smacked against the edge of the stone in a way that was pretty well up to the old Viking standard of such things. Blinks with the shock of the collision fell also, — backwards on the top step, his head striking first. He lay, to all appearance, as dead as the most insignificant casualty in Servia.
