The Luck of Thirteen Part 18

The Bulgars really were coming in against us, and in a day or two we were to see things.

That decided the matter. We went to the prefect's office for our pa.s.s.

Firstly, we were ushered into a room occupied by a man in khaki, whose accent betrayed that he hailed from the States. He was "something sanitary," and belonged to the American commission, so we tried again.

This time the porter took us up to a landing, said a few words into a doorway, and left us standing. As he was wandering in our vicinity, Jo tried one of her two talismans: it is the word "PREPOSTEROUS"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed explosively, and is safely calculated to stagger a foreign soul. The other is a well-known dodge. If a person bothers you, look at his boots with a pained expression. He will soon take himself off--boots and all.

The talisman worked, the pa.s.s was quickly managed, and we had but to spend our time among the shops again. We resisted the seductions of an old man with fifty knives in his belt, who reminded Jo of a horrible nightmare of her infancy.

In her dream a grandfather with a basket had come peddling. Suddenly his coat, blowing aside, revealed not a body, but a busy sewing-machine in excellent working order. In her agitation, Jo fell out of bed.

We sat consuming beer outside a cafe decked with pink flowered bushes in green boxes. One of the antique dames who cook sausages in the shadow of the cafes brought us a plate each--funny little hard things--and we bought cakes and nougat from perambulating Peter Piemen.

The station platform was like the last scene of a pantomime. Every one we had met on our journeys rushed up and shook us by the hand.

First a Belgian doctor, from Dr. Lilias Hamilton's unit in Podgoritza.

He said Mrs. G. was also in the town, and that the others were all coming shortly. Then we met a young staff officer from Uzhitze, who was noted for his bravery. The train came in and we stumbled up to it in the dark. There was a crowd of women about the steps in difficulty with heavy bags. Jan ran forward to help one. She turned round. It was a sister from Dechani. The rest turned round. It was the whole Russian mission from Dechani.

We proceeded along the corridor, and ran into two men. We mutually began to apologize.

"h.e.l.lo," we said, "how did you get here?" They were two Americans we had met in Salonika.

We got our seats and went out of the train by the other door. As we pa.s.sed the compartment we saw a familiar face. It was the little French courier.

"Quel pays," he said, bounding up. "Et les Bulgars, quoi?"

"Good Lord," said Jan. "Let's go out and get some fresh air."

The only people lacking to complete the scene were the Sirdar and Dr.

Clemow.

A doctor who had just arrived from Salonika asked us to look after four English orderlies who, new to the country, were travelling to the Red Cross mission at Vrntze. With them were two trim, short-skirted, heavy booted, Belgian nurses, who were going to a Serbian field hospital.

The train crawled. At times it was necessary to hold one's breath to see if we were moving at all. It was always possible that the Bulgars had blown up a bridge or so. One could imagine an anxious driver, his eyes fixed on the line in front, looking for Bulgarian comitaj.

The travellers were restless. Our little French courier stood in the corridor looking fiercely at the black night; his back view eloquently expressive of his opinion of the Balkans.

Later on we all slept. A frightful braying sound awoke us.

No, not Bulgars--only the band. Same band, same station, same hour, same awful incompetence.

So the princess had nothing to do with it!

Trainloads bristling with ragged soldiers pa.s.sed us--open truck-loads of them, carriage tops covered with sleeping men, some were clinging to the steps and to the buffers.

Nish station had lost its sleepy air. Every one was energetically doing everything all wrong. The four orderlies and the two Belgian sisters were minus their pa.s.sports. Some one had taken them away. These were run to earth in the station-master's office, and as the party had no idea where to go, we suggested they should come with us to the rest-house.

The first person we met there was Dr. Clemow.

"Have you got the Sirdar with you?" we asked.

He answered that he had brought Paul, the young Montenegrin interpreter, with him. The English units in Montenegro had been recalled, and he had come to Nish to try to rescind the order for his unit.

The town was at its gayest. The cloud had not yet dimmed the market.

Peasants poured in, knowing nothing of the Bulgars, little thinking that they would be flying, starving, dying, in a few weeks' time. A Chinese vendor of paper gauds had come into the town, and all the pretty girls were wearing his absurdities pinned on to their head kerchiefs. One girl was so fine and bejewelled that we photographed her, to the delight of her lover, who stood aside to let us have a good view.

A man was selling honey in the comb accompanied by his bees, which must have followed him for miles. They testified their displeasure at his selling their honey by stinging him and most of the buyers.

No one seemed to know when the train was leaving. Station-master, porters, all had a different tale. At last we decided to risk seven o'clock in the evening, and the four orderlies and ourselves, copper tray and all, bade farewell to the Belgian sisters, who had cut off their hair, and wandered across to the station. The train arrived two hours late and stood, ready to go out, guarded by tatterdemalions with guns.

"You can't get in yet," said one of them barring our way.

"Why?"

"Ne snam."

The freebooting instinct arose in us; we awaited our opportunity, dodged between two soldiers, and settled ourselves comfortably. Several officials looked in and said nothing; another came and forbade us to stay there, and pa.s.sed on. An old woman came with a broom and cleaned up. We sat on our feet to get them out of the way, somebody squirted white disinfectant on the floor, and we were left in peace.

The train started at eleven, moved as far as a siding and stayed till four. We found the four Red Cross men had only nine shillings between them. Three had stood all the way from Salonika, as during an unfortunate moment of interest in the view their seats had been appropriated by a fat Serbian officer, his wife and daughter. The fourth, a porter from Folkestone, had settled down on the floor, saying "he wasn't going to concarn himself with no voos."

They had new uniforms, yellow mackintoshes, white kit bags, and beautiful cooking apparatus, which took to pieces and served a thousand purposes.

In the chilly morning we got out at Stalatch, just too late for the Vrntze train. Luckily the station cafe was open.

The four Englishmen ordered beefsteak, but were given long lean tasteless sausages. They asked for tea and were given black Turkish coffee in tiny cups half full of grounds. We asked about the trains, and were told we should catch the one next day. We argued, and extracted the promise of a luggage train, which would soon pa.s.s.

Why is it that in Serbia they always, on principle, say, "You can't,"

after which under pressure they own, "Somehow you can"? In Montenegro they say, "Certainly you can," after which they occasionally find that "Somehow you can't."

At last the luggage train came. We sat on the step dangling our legs and peering down at the country below us.

We were again held up at Krusevatz and bearded the officials. They promised to put on a special carriage for us when the next luggage-train should come in, some time that evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIG GUN Pa.s.sING THROUGH KRUSEVATZ.]

Nothing for it but to lunch and to kill time. We watched the mountain batteries pa.s.s on their way to the Bulgarian frontier. One or two big cannon trailed by, drawn by oxen. Many horses looked wretched and half-starved.

The Englishmen built a camp fire by the rail-road. Soon tea was brewing; we drank, and chewed walnuts, stared at by crowds of patient Serbian soldiers.

We travelled with the treasurer of the district, a charming man who revelled in stories of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit establishment. The fathers had stuck to him n.o.bly until he had mixed red paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the forehead with d.a.m.natory crosses like criminals of old time. That ended his school days. He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was to search for spies, a restless man who was always feeling under the seats with his feet. Perhaps it was only cramp! The four Englishmen, cheered at the thought that their long journey was nearing its end, burst into song. The Serbs stood round listening to the melodies that were so different to their own plaintive wailings, and presently asked us to translate. We don't know if the subtleties of "Didn't want to do it," or "The little grey home in the west," were very clear in the translations, as they seemed puzzled.

Arrived at Vrntze, we found no carriages to meet us. The station-master at Krusevatz had promised to telephone, but as usual had not done it. We had to break the news to our Englishmen, who, their songs over, had naturally fallen into tired depression, and had to tell them that a three-kilometre walk was before us, and one man had better stay to look after the baggage. Carriages were telephoned for, but they would be long in coming.

They were! We arrived at the village--no carriages. We agitated. The spy searcher came out of the cafe--to which he and the "Bad Boy's Diary" man had driven--and made people run about. They said the carriages had already gone. We denied it, so they woke up the coachman.

We took the three men to the hospital and went back to sit in the cafe with our new friends and met many old ones. The local chemist cheered and promised us a present of mackintosh cotton to celebrate our return.

We had spent Easter morning in his shop eating purple eggs and drinking tea enlivened with brandy, while the choir came in and chanted beautiful Easter songs to us.

An hour rolled by, the cafe closed, our friends disappeared. We went to meet the carriages from the station; at last they arrived, with Mr. Owen half asleep amidst the kitbags.