The Desert Islander | Page 6

to give away nothing but the
bare, bald, stony fact of help--no decorations of graciousnesses and
smilings. A Russian would be a much poorer helper, but a how much
better friend."
The car ground on. Constantine turned over again and again in his mind
the matter of the fleas. The wet ochre-and-green country of South
China streamed unevenly past, the neat, complex shapes of rice fields
altering, disintegrating and re-forming, like groups in a country dance.
Abrupt horns of rock began piercing through the flat rain-striped valley,
and these, it seemed, were the heralds of a mountain range that barred
the path of the travellers, for soon cliffs towered above the road. A
village which clung to a slope at the mouth of a gorge was occupied by
soldiers. "This is where our troubles begin," said Mr. White peacefully.
The soldiers were indolent, shabby, ineffectual-looking creatures,
scarcely distinguishable from coolies, but their machine-guns,
straddling mosquito-like about the forlorn village street, looked
disagreeably wideawake and keen. Constantine felt as if his precious
heart were the cynosure of all the machine-guns' waspish glances, as
the car splashed between them. "Is this safe?" he asked. "Motoring
through a Chinese war?"
"Not particularly," smiled Mr. White. "But it's safer than neglecting
that leg of yours."
Constantine uttered a small, shrill, nervous exclamation--half a curse,
"Is a man nothing more than a leg to you?"
As he spoke, from one side of the gorge along which they were now
driving, a rifle shot cracked, like the breaking of a taut wire. Its echoes
were overtaken by the sputtering of more shots from a higher crag.
Constantine had been tensely held for just such an attack on his courage

as this--and yet he was not ready for it. His body moved instantly by
itself, without consulting his self-respect; it flung its arms round Mr.
White. The car, thus immobilized at its source of energy, swerved,
skidded, and stood still askew upon the trail. Constantine, sweating
violently, recalled his pride and reassembled his sprawling arms. Mr.
White said nothing, but he looked with a cold benevolence into
Constantine's face and shook his head slightly. Then he started the car
again and drove on in silence. There was no more firing.
"Oh, oh, I do wish you had been a little bit frightened too," said
Constantine, clenching his fists. He was too much of a desert islander
to deny his own fright, as a citizen of the tradition-ruled mainland
might have denied it. Brave or afraid, Constantine was his own creation;
he had made himself, he would stand or fall by this self that he had
made. It was indeed, in a way, more interesting to have been afraid than
to have been brave. Only, unfortunately, this exasperating benefactor of
his did not think so.
The noon-light was scarcely brighter than the light of early morning.
The unremitting rain slanted across the grey air. Trees, skies, valleys
mountains, seen through the rain-spotted windshield, were like a
distorted, stippled landscape painted by a beginner who has not yet
learned to wring living colour from his palette. However, sun or no sun,
noontime it was at last, and Mr. White, drawing his car conscientiously
to the side of the bullock-trail, as if a procession of Rolls-Royces might
be expected to pass, unpacked a neat jigsaw puzzle of a sandwich-box.
"I brought a few caviare sandwiches for you," he said gently: "I know
Russians like caviare."
"Are your sandwiches then made of Old England's Rosbif?" asked
Constantine crossly, for it seemed to him that this man used nothing but
collective nouns.
"No; of bloater paste."
They said nothing more but munched in a rather sullen silence.

Constantine had lost his desire to tell Mr. White why he had joined the
Foreign Legion--or to tell him anything else, for that matter. There was
something about Mr. White that destroyed the excitement of telling
ingenious lies--or even the common truth; and this something
Constantine resented more and more, though he was uncertain how to
define it. Mr. White leaned over the steering-wheel and covered his
eyes with his hands, for driving tired him. The caviare, and his host's
evident weariness, irritated Constantine more and more; these things
seemed like a crude insistence on his increasing obligation. "I suppose
you are tired of the very sight of me," he felt impelled to say bitterly.
"No, no," said Mr. White politely but indifferently. "Don't worry about
me. It'll all be the same a hundred years hence."
"Whether my leg is off or on--whether I die in agony or live--it will all
be the same a hundred years hence, I suppose you would say," said
Constantine, morbidly goading his companion into repeating this insult
to the priceless mystery of personality.
"My good man, I can't do more than