“What in the world’s up?” Philip Dugdale asked Philip Dugdale, and got no answer.
It wasn’t a very easy business getting Anton into the car—the slosh of mud everywhere; the debris of the bank; and a regular entanglement of broken and twisted branches. They got him on to the back seat at last, a dead weight that had never moved as they shifted it. Then—
“I suppose there’s room to turn here,” said Dugdale rather doubtfully.
“You don’t need to turn. We’re going on.”
Dugdale stared.
“Aren’t you going to take him back to his people, Major?”
“I’m going to take him to my house.” Manning got in at the back as he spoke. He settled himself to steady the unconscious figure. “Get in and drive for all you’re worth!” And Dugdale obeyed.
It was a very odd drive. Manning sat on the back seat with one arm about Anton Blum. Every now and then the heavy head with its mass of wet hair came against his shoulder. He hardly noticed it. When they shaved another car whose tail-light had gone out, he did not notice it at all. Neither Dugdale’s exclamation nor the swerve and lurch of the car reached him; his mind was entirely preoccupied with the amazing thing that had happened.
This was a half-witted German peasant. His name was Anton Blum. He had come to help them shift a tree. He had got knocked on the head. Then he had looked at him, Manning, and laughed and said “Hullo, Monkey!” But he was the half-witted German peasant called Anton Blum. And he was dumb—the woman had said that he was dumb. And he had laughed and said “Hullo, Monkey!”
When the car stopped, Manning woke up with a jerk. He was out on the wet pavement and in the house, shouting for Brooks, almost before the engine stopped running.
Brooks incontinently dropped the coat he was brushing and ran.
“The Major, ’e fair lifted the roof. ‘Brooks,’ ’e shouts, and I give you me word some of the plaster drops down from the ceiling.” He confided the whole incident very frankly to Mrs Manning’s maid next day. “Well, I took and dropped everything and run. And when I got down, there was ’im and Mr Dugdale, and the car sopping wet, and a ’ulking, great ’Un on the back seat. Well, miss, you could ’ave knocked me down with a gasper, straight you could.”
“Lor!” said the maid. She was a middle-aged person, but not on that account averse to flirtation. “Lor! To think of us missing it, which we shouldn’t have done if Mrs Manning had kept to her day. But there, that’s a thing she’s never done in her life, and not likely to start now.”
Brooks resumed with a frown. Miss Possiter was an audience, and the sooner she tumbled to the fact the better. He hadn’t the slightest desire to listen to her or to hear her opinions: he wanted to talk. He talked.
“Straight, you might have knocked me down. There was the Major ’opping about like the monkey they calls ’im, and making faces fit to bust ’isself, and damning us all into ’eaps because we wasn’t quick enough. ‘’Ere,’ ’e says, ‘carry ’im upstairs!’ ’e says. And then, there was ’im, and me, and Mr Dugdale a-carrying that great, ’ulking ’Un up the stairs and into the spare bedroom. And I thinks to myself ’arf-way up that it was a good thing Mrs Manning wasn’t ’ome to see the wet a-pouring down on the carpets, and the Major’s boots fair caked with mud. Weighed about a ton the chap did, and you could ’ave wrung a river out of ’im. ‘Get ’is clothes off ’im and get ’im to bed. And send for Major O’Neill,’ says the Major. ‘Get O’Neill on the telephone and tell ’im to come round at once and wait ’ere till I come back, because I wants to see ’im most pertickler!’ ’e says to Mr Dugdale. Mr Dugdale, ’e looks as if ’e thought the Major ’ad gone batty. ‘Where are you a-going of, Major?’ ’e says; and the Major fair bites ’is ’ead off. ‘Don’t you let O’Neill go till I get back!’ ’e says when ’e couldn’t go on without repeating of ’imself. And then ’e bangs the door, and off ’e goes in the car. And Mr Dugdale, ’e goes to the telephone.”
IV
Anna Blum sat in the warm kitchen with her Bible open on her knee. Josef had gone to bed; and when Josef went to bed it was her custom to sit down and read a psalm. She had taken off her wet skirt and hung it over a chair to dry. A second chair was almost hidden in the folds of her cloak, a strange relic of the early nineties. The material had once been a gay plaid, and the garment itself a so-called golf-cape. Now the colours were all gone away to a dull, uneven drab.
Divested of cloak and skirt, Anna appeared in an old red flannel petticoat, very neatly mended, and a cross-over shawl of faded brown wool, which had been her grandmother’s. She sat close up to the lamp with its tin reflector and read her psalm to the end.
Anton was late. He should have been back a long time since. The officers must have been mistaken in the distance. But if they took Anton too far along the road, perhaps he would get confused and not find his way back.
Anna jerked her head up and listened, then spoke aloud:
“Na, Anna—art a fool. Ja gewiss!”
She began to read the psalm over again; but half-way through she was listening.
“A hen with one chick, and a woman with one child—and if he is not my own son it is all the same. Mina lies there with her baby, and she thinks that I do not know what is in her heart, because I have never borne a child.” She drew the back of her hand quickly across her eyes and stared down at the printed page. The letters swam in a dazzle of tears, and Anna called herself a fool again.
She was afraid. It all came back to that—she was afraid. Nothing to be afraid of; but she was afraid. The room seemed to be filled with her fear.
She read once more to the end of the psalm, and closed the book. As she laid it on the table, she heard at last what she had been straining her ears for—the sound of a footstep. She had left the window unshuttered, and ran now to the door, throwing it wide open so that the light should stream out in welcome.
As she stood on the threshold looking out, the first doubt came to her. She could hear the footsteps coming nearer. But—Anton walked more heavily than that; often he dragged his feet. This was a lighter, quicker step, the step of a different man. She drew back, and as she did so, some one came round the bend of the path into the light from the open door.
It wasn’t Anton—she had known that it would not be Anton. It was one of the English officers who had taken Anton away. And that meant that something had happened.
Major Manning came up to the door, and found himself face to face with the woman he had come to find. She was silhouetted against the lighted room, and she spoke at once, breathlessly:
“Anton—mein Herr, what is it—why have you come—where is Anton?” Then, as Major Manning stepped across the threshold and the light showed his darkly frowning face, she said with a sickening catch in her voice, “Is he dead?”
“No, no—of course not.”
Manning was really shocked. He had not expected—no one could have expected—any particular intensity of feeling over a dumb, half-witted creature, or——He refused to follow out that train of thought.
“What is it, then?” said Anna, her hand on the door. There was a shade of defiance in her tone.
“It’s nothing—nothing to frighten you at all. A branch caught him on the head, and I took him on to my house to have the cut attended to.”
“Why did you not bring him home?”
“I took him to my own house. I thought he ought to be attended to. And—I want to talk to you.”
Anna’s hand tightened on the door.
“Is he badly hurt?”
“No, he’s only stunned—and a cut on the forehead. He’s at my house. You’ve nothing to be frightened about. But I want to speak to you.”
Anna collected herself. She shut the door. Her whole manner changed.
“Gnädiger Herr must forgive me. I was frightened.”
She went to the hearth, caught up her wet things, and pulled forward Josef’s chair. Manning looked at it, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the wooden chair fr
om which she had taken her cloak, bestriding it and resting his arms on the back.
“Sit down, please.”
Anna came back to her seat by the lamp. Manning looked at her over the back of the chair, frowning deeply. Now that he was here, he didn’t know how to begin. The whole thing was unbelievable, absolutely. He saw Anna reach across the Bible at her elbow and pick up a half-knitted sock which lay on the table beyond it. He watched her settle the needles and begin to knit, all very quietly. No, he really did not know how to begin.
After a moment Anna lifted steady blue eyes to his.
“You wished to speak to me, mein Herr?”
“Yes,” said Manning. “I did—about your nephew. He is your nephew?”
Anna nodded.
“Yes, certainly—my nephew, Anton Blum.”
“And your name?”
“Anna Blum, widow, born Müller. Anton is the son of my husband’s elder brother, Ludwig Blum.”
“And he is dumb?” Manning shot the question at her.
“Ach ja. Since he was wounded he is dumb.”
“Only since he was wounded?”
“Yes, mein Herr.”
“How long ago?”
She let the knitting fall on her knees, and began to reckon on her fingers.
“It is eight—nine—nearly ten years—a long time.”
Manning got up, crossed the room, and stood by the table. The lamp was between him and Anna now. When she spoke she must face the light. He pushed the lamp back a little to get it out of his eyes, and asked suddenly:
“Does he know English?”
Anna’s eyes were on her knitting. He saw a line come in her forehead, just between the brows.
“English?” she asked, and then looked up with a puzzled expression. “He does not know very much at all. He understands what a child would understand. I speak to him as one speaks to a child.”
Manning leaned on the table, his little eyes intent on her face.
“But before he was wounded—did he know any English before he was wounded?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “I only saw him twice before the war came. He was a forester on a big estate, and one of the sons was certainly married to an Englishwoman or an American. Anton spoke of it; he said there was an English groom—I remember that. It is possible that he learnt some words—I cannot tell.”
She spoke in a quiet, considering manner above the gentle click of the needles. She did not look at Major Manning until she said “I cannot tell.” It was on the last word that she lifted her eyes in a gaze of pure perplexity.
“Why do you ask that, mein Herr?”
“Because,” said Manning, “when I went to pick him up, I thought that he spoke; and I thought that he spoke English.”
Anna’s face hardly changed, A faint shade of sadness crossed it. She bent her head and said:
“Ach so,” And then, “Once—twice before, when he has been ill, it has happened like that—he has spoken as a man speaks in his sleep; and afterwards he has been dumb again. The last time was four years ago.”
Manning stood up straight.
“I suppose you’ve got all his papers—his discharge—all that sort of thing?”
“Ja gewiss,” said Anna. “Would you like to see them, mein Herr?”
“Yes, I should.”
Anna rose at once.
“They are upstairs,” she said. And Manning waited whilst she went out of the door and up the narrow stair beyond.
Every sound was audible. He could hear her open a door and come into the room above the kitchen. He could hear the jingle of keys. He could hear her move a box and throw the lid back. In a minute she came down the stairs and into the kitchen. In a quiet, deliberate manner she laid out on the table under the lamp a metal disc and a couple of papers.
Manning picked up the disc first and saw Anton Blum’s name on it, his regimental number, and the name of a regiment. He kept it in his hand and took up the papers—a birth certificate setting forth that Anton Blum was the son of Ludwig Blum, Bauer, and Elsa his wife, geborene Platt, etc., the date being July the 1st, 1894; and Anton Blum’s discharge certificate, the reason for the said discharge being given as: “Dumbness and mental deficiency resulting from wounds.”
Manning folded the papers, laid them carefully on the table, and put the identity disc down on the top of them. He did not know what to say to this quiet, friendly woman. To attempt to explain was an impossibility. But, having come so far in the direction of making a fool of himself, he meant to see it out to the bitter end.
“Your brother—Josef Müller is your brother, I believe—can I see him?”
“Yes, he is my brother. He has gone to bed, but——” She hesitated a little—“if you like, I will call him.”
“No, I’ll go up.”
And go up he did, preceded by Anna and a lighted candle. At Josef’s door he took the candle from her, banged on the panel, and went in, to find Josef snoring. It was not very easy to wake him; Josef, once asleep, was accustomed to sleep for ten hours at the least. He woke reluctantly to the very astonishing presence of an English officer who wanted to ask him questions about Anton. Drowsiness would certainly have passed into rage but for the timely recollection of what good customers the English were. To quarrel with them was certainly to cut one’s own hand off. Josef loved his sleep; but he loved his pocket better still. He answered Manning’s questions very readily, and certainly left the impression of having nothing in the world to conceal. Anton was his sister Anna’s nephew, and an ill-conditioned, worthless lump into the bargain. Only Josef’s good heart induced him to give the fellow food and shelter. Work? Oh, yes, he worked. But from beginning to end he was certainly more trouble than he was worth.
Manning went down the stair with the conviction that he had made a fool of himself—a first-class, out-size sort of fool.
V
Major O’Neill looked up from cold beef and pickles as the dining-room door opened and his host came in.
“Hullo, Monkey!” he said, “Come and feed. I expect you want something. Where in the world have you been?”
Manning came up to the table, poured himself out a long drink, drank most of it at a draught, and sat down.
“Well, what do you make of the fellow?”
O’Neill was carving. He raised his eyebrows a little, and said coolly,
“There’s nothing to make of him—had a crack on the head, and he’s sleeping it off. And why, in the name of all that’s unreasonable, you wanted to bring him here——” He broke off, pushed a plate of beef across the table, and added meaningly, “Just as well for you Mrs Manning’s not back. Her spare room is likely to want a good deal more patching up than that fellow’s head. Good Lord, Monkey, what possessed you?”
Manning finished his drink, put his elbows on the table, and produced the ferocious scowl which always meant that he was thinking hard.
“Look here, O’Neill, you’ve known me for getting on twenty years.” He paused, and then rapped out, “Am I the sort of man who has hallucinations?”
“I don’t know,” said O’Neill thoughtfully. “Anyone may have an hallucination. As a matter of fact everyone does. You go to sleep, and you dream——”
“I don’t dream.”
“Lucky man!”
Manning rapped the table sharply.
“I’m not ragging. I want your opinion. Am I the sort of man who imagines things?”
O’Neill’s rather quizzical manner altered. “No, you’re not. What is it?”
“I’m going to tell you—seal of professional secrecy and all that.”
“Of course.”
“That fellow in there—of course you think I’m crazy to have brought him here and to have dragged you in to attend to him. I suppose Dugdale told you how we picked him up?”
“Dugdale said you’d commandeered the village idiot to help shift a tree.”
Manning nodded.
“That was about the size of it. He’s a half-wi
tted peasant, and he’s dumb into the bargain. We shifted the tree, and then some more of the bank fell, and he got knocked out. I went to pick him up, and I turned my torch on his face to see what the damage was.”
O’Neill stared. Manning’s voice, Manning’s face suggested an extraordinary sense of strain. He wondered—and then Manning pushed back his chair with a jerk and stood up.
“Well?” said O’Neill.
Manning walked to the window and back before he answered.
“It sounds crazy,” he said.
“What sounds crazy?”
“The whole thing. He—he opened his eyes, and the next thing I knew, he had hold of my wrist, turning it, you know, so as to throw the light on my face; and then he laughed—O’Neill, I swear he laughed—and he said, ‘Hullo, Monkey! That was a bit of a crump—wasn’t it?’”
O’Neill gave a long, soft whistle. Manning sat down and pulled his chair up to the table. He’d got it off his chest; the relief was amazing. He began to attack his plate of cold beef without troubling about O’Neill’s scrutiny. After a moment O’Neill said,
“He spoke English?”
Manning nodded; his mouth was full.
“He called you Monkey? You’re sure?”
“He said ‘Hullo, Monkey! That was a bit of a crump—wasn’t it?’—just like that.”
O’Neill knitted his brows, and ran a hand through his fair, thin hair.
“It’s incredible!”
Just for a fleeting instant Monkey Manning grinned.
“That’s what I’ve been saying to myself ever since—quite a pleasant change to hear someone else say it.”
“It’s incredible!” said O’Neill again. “Who’d you got with you? If he’d heard someone call you Monkey, he might have just parroted it.”
“I hadn’t anyone with me except young Dugdale; and subalterns don’t call me Monkey—not to my face anyway. The parrot theory’s no good, old man—nor any other theory either. I’ve just come back from seeing his people. Devoted aunt—pleasant, honest-looking creature who showed me all his papers; and an uncle whom I’d have liked to kick—regular surly brute who talked as if the poor chap was an inconvenient animal, though I don’t mind betting he’s been getting about three men’s work out of him.”
The Amazing Chance Page 2