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1、【国外文学】Greenmantle绿斗篷To Caroline Grosvenor During the past year, in the intervals of an active life, I have amused myself with constructing this tale. It has been scribbled in every kind of odd place and momentin England and abroad, during long journeys, in half-hours between graver tasks; and it bea
2、rs, I fear, the mark of its gipsy begetting. But it has amused me to write, and I shall be well repaid if it amuses youand a few othersto read. Let no man or woman call its events improbable. The war has driven that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest realism. Things unim
3、agined before happen daily to our friends by sea and land. The one chance in a thousand is habitually taken, and as often as not succeeds. Coincidence, like some new Briareus, stretches a hundred long arms hourly across the earth. Some day, when the full history is writtensober history with ample do
4、cumentsthe poor romancer will give up business and fall to reading Miss Austen in a hermitage. The characters of the tale, if you think hard, you will recall. Sandy you know well. That great spirit was last heard of at Basra, where he occupies the post that once was Harry Bullivants. Richard Hannay
5、is where he longed to be, commanding his battalion on the ugliest bit of front in the West. Mr John S. Blenkiron, full of honour and wholly cured of dyspepsia, has returned to the States, after vainly endeavouring to take Peter with him. As for Peter, he has attained the height of his ambition. He h
6、as shaved his beard and joined the Flying Corps.CHAPTER I. A Mission is Proposed I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivants telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was in the same case,
7、 was hunting for the marmalade. I flung him the flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled. “Hullo, Dick, youve got the battalion. Or maybe its a staff billet. Youll be a blighted brass-hat, coming it heavy over the hard-working regimental officer. And to think of the language you
8、ve wasted on brass-hats in your time!” I sat and thought for a bit, for the name “Bullivant carried me back eighteen months to the hot summer before the war. I had not seen the man since, though I had read about him in the papers. For more than a year I had been a busy battalion officer, with no oth
9、er thought than to hammer a lot of raw stuff into good soldiers. I had succeeded pretty well, and there was no prouder man on earth than Richard Hannay when he took his Lennox Highlanders over the parapets on that glorious and bloody 25th day of September. Loos was no picnic, and we had had some ugl
10、y bits of scrapping before that, but the worst bit of the campaign I had seen was a tea-party to the show I had been in with Bullivant before the war started. Major Hannays narrative of this affair has been published under the title of The Thirty-nine Steps. The sight of his name on a telegram form
11、seemed to change all my outlook on life. I had been hoping for the command of the battalion, and looking forward to being in at the finish with Brother Boche. But this message jerked my thoughts on to a new road. There might be other things in the war than straightforward fighting. Why on earth shou
12、ld the Foreign Office want to see an obscure Major of the New Army, and want to see him in double-quick time? “Im going up to town by the ten train,” I announced; “Ill be back in time for dinner.” “Try my tailor,” said Sandy. “Hes got a very nice taste in red tabs. You can use my name.” An idea stru
13、ck me. “Youre pretty well all right now. If I wire for you, will you pack your own kit and mine and join me?” “Right-o! Ill accept a job on your staff if they give you a corps. If so be as you come down tonight, be a good chap and bring a barrel of oysters from Sweetings.” I travelled up to London i
14、n a regular November drizzle, which cleared up about Wimbledon to watery sunshine. I never could stand London during the war. It seemed to have lost its bearings and broken out into all manner of badges and uniforms which did not fit in with my notion of it. One felt the war more in its streets than
15、 in the field, or rather one felt the confusion of war without feeling the purpose. I dare say it was all right; but since August 1914 I never spent a day in town without coming home depressed to my boots. I took a taxi and drove straight to the Foreign Office. Sir Walter did not keep me waiting lon
16、g. But when his secretary took me to his room I would not have recognized the man I had known eighteen months before. His big frame seemed to have dropped flesh and there was a stoop in the square shoulders. His face had lost its rosiness and was red in patches, like that of a man who gets too littl
17、e fresh air. His hair was much greyer and very thin about the temples, and there were lines of overwork below the eyes. But the eyes were the same as before, keen and kindly and shrewd, and there was no change in the firm set of the jaw. “We must on no account be disturbed for the next hour,” he tol
18、d his secretary. When the young man had gone he went across to both doors and turned the keys in them. “Well, Major Hannay,” he said, flinging himself into a chair beside the fire. “How do you like soldiering?” “Right enough,” I said, “though this isnt just the kind of war I would have picked myself
19、. Its a comfortless, bloody business. But weve got the measure of the old Boche now, and its dogged as does it. I count on getting back to the front in a week or two.” “Will you get the battalion?” he asked. He seemed to have followed my doings pretty closely. “I believe Ive a good chance. Im not in
20、 this show for honour and glory, though. I want to do the best I can, but I wish to heaven it was over. All I think of is coming out of it with a whole skin.” He laughed. “You do yourself an injustice. What about the forward observation post at the Lone Tree? You forgot about the whole skin then.” I
21、 felt myself getting red. “That was all rot,” I said, “and I cant think who told you about it. I hated the job, but I had to do it to prevent my subalterns going to glory. They were a lot of fire-eating young lunatics. If I had sent one of them hed have gone on his knees to Providence and asked for
22、trouble.” Sir Walter was still grinning. “Im not questioning your caution. You have the rudiments of it, or our friends of the Black Stone would have gathered you in at our last merry meeting. I would question it as little as your courage. What exercises my mind is whether it is best employed in the
23、 trenches.” “Is the War Office dissatisfied with me?” I asked sharply. “They are profoundly satisfied. They propose to give you command of your battalion. Presently, if you escape a stray bullet, you will no doubt be a Brigadier. It is a wonderful war for youth and brains. But . I take it you are in
24、 this business to serve your country, Hannay?” “I reckon I am,” I said. “I am certainly not in it for my health.” He looked at my leg, where the doctors had dug out the shrapnel fragments, and smiled quizzically. “Pretty fit again?” he asked. “Tough as a sjambok. I thrive on the racket and eat and s
25、leep like a schoolboy.” He got up and stood with his back to the fire, his eyes staring abstractedly out of the window at the wintry park. “It is a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt. But there are others who can play it, for soldiering today asks for the average rather than the except
26、ion in human nature. It is like a big machine where the parts are standardized. You are fighting, not because you are short of a job, but because you want to help England. How if you could help her better than by commanding a battalionor a brigadeor, if it comes to that, a division? How if there is
27、a thing which you alone can do? Not some embusque business in an office, but a thing compared to which your fight at Loos was a Sunday-school picnic. You are not afraid of danger? Well, in this job you would not be fighting with an army around you, but alone. You are fond of tackling difficulties? W
28、ell, I can give you a task which will try all your powers. Have you anything to say?” My heart was beginning to thump uncomfortably. Sir Walter was not the man to pitch a case too high. “I am a soldier,” I said, “and under orders.” “True; but what I am about to propose does not come by any conceivab
29、le stretch within the scope of a soldiers duties. I shall perfectly understand if you decline. You will be acting as I should act myselfas any sane man would. I would not press you for worlds. If you wish it, I will not even make the proposal, but let you go here and now, and wish you good luck with
30、 your battalion. I do not wish to perplex a good soldier with impossible decisions.” This piqued me and put me on my mettle. “I am not going to run away before the guns fire. Let me hear what you propose.” Sir Walter crossed to a cabinet, unlocked it with a key from his chain, and took a piece of pa
31、per from a drawer. It looked like an ordinary half-sheet of note-paper. “I take it,” he said, “that your travels have not extended to the East.” “No,” I said, “barring a shooting trip in East Africa.” “Have you by any chance been following the present campaign there?” “Ive read the newspapers pretty
32、 regularly since I went to hospital. Ive got some pals in the Mesopotamia show, and of course Im keen to know what is going to happen at Gallipoli and Salonika. I gather that Egypt is pretty safe.” “If you will give me your attention for ten minutes I will supplement your newspaper reading.” Sir Wal
33、ter lay back in an arm-chair and spoke to the ceiling. It was the best story, the clearest and the fullest, I had ever got of any bit of the war. He told me just how and why and when Turkey had left the rails. I heard about her grievances over our seizure of her ironclads, of the mischief the coming
34、 of the Goeben had wrought, of Enver and his precious Committee and the way they had got a cinch on the old Turk. When he had spoken for a bit, he began to question me. “You are an intelligent fellow, and you will ask how a Polish adventurer, meaning Enver, and a collection of Jews and gipsies shoul
35、d have got control of a proud race. The ordinary man will tell you that it was German organization backed up with German money and German arms. You will inquire again how, since Turkey is primarily a religious power, Islam has played so small a part in it all. The Sheikh-ul-Islam is neglected, and t
36、hough the Kaiser proclaims a Holy War and calls himself Hadji Mohammed Guilliamo, and says the Hohenzollerns are descended from the Prophet, that seems to have fallen pretty flat. The ordinary man again will answer that Islam in Turkey is becoming a back number, and that Krupp guns are the new gods.
37、 YetI dont know. I do not quite believe in Islam becoming a back number.” “Look at it in another way,” he went on. “If it were Enver and Germany alone dragging Turkey into a European war for purposes that no Turk cared a rush about, we might expect to find the regular army obedient, and Constantinop
38、le. But in the provinces, where Islam is strong, there would be trouble. Many of us counted on that. But we have been disappointed. The Syrian army is as fanatical as the hordes of the Mahdi. The Senussi have taken a hand in the game. The Persian Moslems are threatening trouble. There is a dry wind
39、blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark. And that wind is blowing towards the Indian border. Whence comes that wind, think you?” Sir Walter had lowered his voice and was speaking very slow and distinct. I could hear the rain dripping from the eaves of the window, and far off
40、 the hoot of taxis in Whitehall. “Have you an explanation, Hannay?” he asked again. “It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought,” I said. “I fancy religion is the only thing to knit up such a scattered empire.” “You are right,” he said. “You must be right. We have laughed at
41、 the Holy War, the jehad that old Von der Goltz prophesied. But I believe that stupid old man with the big spectacles was right. There is a jehad preparing. The question is, How?” “Im hanged if I know,” I said; “but Ill bet it wont be done by a pack of stout German officers in pickelhaubes. I fancy
42、you cant manufacture Holy Wars out of Krupp guns alone and a few staff officers and a battle cruiser with her boilers burst.” “Agreed. They are not fools, however much we try to persuade ourselves of the contrary. But supposing they had got some tremendous sacred sanctionsome holy thing, some book o
43、r gospel or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with th
44、e Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which will madden the remotest Moslem peasant with dreams of Paradise? What then, my friend?” “Then there will be hell let loose in those parts pretty soon.” “Hell which may spread. Beyond Persia, remembe
45、r, lies India.” “You keep to suppositions. How much do you know?” I asked. “Very little, except the fact. But the fact is beyond dispute. I have reports from agents everywherepedlars in South Russia, Afghan horse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, pilgrims on the road to Mecca, sheikhs in North Africa, sa
46、ilors on the Black Sea coasters, sheep-skinned Mongols, Hindu fakirs, Greek traders in the Gulf, as well as respectable Consuls who use cyphers. They tell the same story. The East is waiting for a revelation. It has been promised one. Some starman, prophecy, or trinketis coming out of the West. The
47、Germans know, and that is the card with which they are going to astonish the world.” “And the mission you spoke of for me is to go and find out?” He nodded gravely. “That is the crazy and impossible mission.” “Tell me one thing, Sir Walter,” I said. “I know it is the fashion in this country if a man
48、 has a special knowledge to set him to some job exactly the opposite. I know all about Damaraland, but instead of being put on Bothas staff, as I applied to be, I was kept in Hampshire mud till the campaign in German South West Africa was over. I know a man who could pass as an Arab, but do you thin
49、k they would send him to the East? They left him in my battaliona lucky thing for me, for he saved my life at Loos. I know the fashion, but isnt this just carrying it a bit too far? There must be thousands of men who have spent years in the East and talk any language. Theyre the fellows for this job. I never