"Coachman, are you free?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then long live liberty."
Very young subalterns with romantic notions may waste good beer-money
on foreign phrase-books and get themselves enravelled in hopeless
international tangles, but not old Atkins. The English soldier in
Italy will speak what he has always spoken with complete success in
Poperinghe, Amiens, Cairo, Salonika, Dar-es-Salaam, Bagdad and
Jerusalem, to wit, English.
But to return to our train. At nightfall we left the fairy coast
behind, its smiling _signorinas_, flags, flowers and fruit, and
swarmed up a pile of perpendicular scenery from summer to winter.
During a halt in the midst of moonlit snows our carriage door was
opened and we beheld outside an Italian officer, who saluted and gave
us an exhibition of his native tongue at rapid fire.
"He's referring to us," said the Babe. "Answer him, somebody; tell
him we're on his side and all that."
"_Viva l' Italia_," William exclaimed promptly.
The Italian countered with a "Viva l'Inghilterra" and swept on with
his monologue.
"Seems to want something," said Albert Edward. "Wonder if Cæsar is
too technical for him."
"Read him something from _The English Soldier in Italy_," I suggested.
The Babe thumbed feverishly through the handbook. "'Let us get in;
the guard has already cried'--No, that won't do. 'Give me a walk and
return ticket, please'--That won't do either. 'Yes, I have a trunk
and a carpet-bag'--Oh, this is absurd." He cast the book from him.
At that moment the engine hooted, the trucks gave a preliminary buck
and started to jolt forward. The Italian sprang upon the running
board and, clinging to the hand-rail, continued to declaim
emotionally through the window. William became alarmed. "This chap
has something on his mind. Perhaps he's trying to tell us that a
bridge has blown up, or that the train is moving without a movement
order, or the chauffeur is drunk. For Heaven's sake somebody do
something--quick!"
Thereupon Babel broke loose, each of us in his panic blazing off in
the foreign language which came easiest to his tongue.
William called for a bath in Arabic. The Babe demanded champagne in
French. Albert Edward declined _mensa_, while I, by the luckiest
chance, struck a language which the Italian recognised with a glad
yelp. In a moment explanations were over and I had swung him into
the carriage and slammed the door.
The new-comer was a lieutenant of mountain artillery. He was
returning from leave, had confided himself to the care of a Railway
Transport Officer, had in consequence missed every regular train and
wanted a lift to the next junction. That was all. I then set about
to make him as comfortable as possible, wrapping him in one of the
Babe's blankets and giving him his maiden drink of whisky out of
William's First Field Dressing. With tears streaming down his cheeks
he vented his admiration of the British national beverage.
In return he introduced me to the Italian national smoke, an endless
cigar to be sucked up through a straw. Between violent spasms I
implored the name and address of the maker. We were both very
perfect gentlemen.
We then prattled about the War; he boasting about the terrific depths
of snow in which he did his battling, while I boasted about the
Flanders mud. We broke about even on that bout. He gained a bit on
mountain batteries, but I got it all back, and more, on tanks. He
had never seen one, so I had it all my own way. Our tanks, after I
had finished with them, could do pretty nearly anything except knit.
Defeated in the field, he turned home to Rome for something to boast
about. I should see St. Peter's, he said. It was magnificent, and
the Roman art treasures unsurpassable.
I replied that our cathedral at Westminster was far newer, and that
the art in our National Cold Storage had cost an average of £5473
19s. 154d. per square foot. Could he beat it?
That knocked him out of his stride for a moment, but he struggled
back with some remark about seeing his Coliseum by moonlight.
I replied that at ours we had modern electric light, Murphy and Mack,
Vesta Tilley and the Bioscope.
Whether he would have recovered from that I know not, for at this
moment the lights of the junction twinkled in at the frosted windows
and he took his departure, first promising to call in at our Mess and
suffer some more whisky if in return I would crawl up his mountain
and meet the chamois and edelweiss.
Later on, as I was making up my bed for the night, Albert Edward
poked his head out of the cocoon of horse-blankets in which he had
wound himself.
"By the way, what ungodly jargon were you and that Italian champing
together so sociably?"
"German," I whispered; "but for the Lord's sake don't tell anybody."