Sergeant Nelson of the Guards by Gerald Kersh Read Free Book Online Page B

Pict, Scot—it all soaked in. And you see it here, blended into a type, yet distinguishable in its separate elements … fermenting into Thurstan, mellowing into Dale—blood of the stolid Shorrocks, blood of the light John Johnson—blood of the cold English, the mad English—rough as Usquebaugh, smooth as Mead—strong red liquor!
    *
    Most of us are stolid and reserved, shy of strangers and of the sound of our own voices.
    But there is a dark fire under the crust, and a hard current under the ice of the poker-faced Englishman. The expressionless Englishman,mouse-whiskered and talking at the ends of his teeth and greeting his best-beloved friend with a curt “Hallo,” demanding mutton chops and strong tea of the luxurious restaurateur of the Hermitage, yet drinking like a Russian, duelling like a Hungarian, gambling like a Chinaman, or swearing like a Croat if the occasion demanded it, was always a little mad and curiously colourful to the amazed peoples of the Continent when he went on tour.
    Heavy and immobile, or high-strung and variable blond; enigmatic black; mercurial red; or primary blond, red, and black ground into the prevalent common nondescript brown—in these men there is a strange wayward will. Dash of ferocious Britain, spot of aromatic Asia, jigger of crazy Celt, splash of gentle and murderous Saxon, tinge of iron Roman, shot of haughty Norman, drip of fierce Norse—the elements, even when they are blended to neutrality, give birth to something queerly individual. You can imagine the baffled astonishment of Napoleon , when Wellington, in Spain, imported some hounds and rode after local foxes in the blue coat of the Salisbury Hunt … grown men, tough soldiers, but serious gentlemen, mon vieux, dozens of them, all riding belly-to-earth after a species of vermin, blowing shrill notes out of a little brass trumpet! And these same gents, with the dead-faced shopkeepers who followed them and took it all for granted, were the rock against which the Irresistible broke itself.
    Fou! … Wahnsinnig! … Loco! —quite crazy, demented, nuts—mad Englishman! Methodical in his eccentricity; cool to man and openly affectionate only to dogs and horses; stirred to applause or catcalls by nothing in the world but the struggles of twenty-two men with a ball; seemingly more engrossed in the defence of three stumps and a pair of bails against a five-and-a-half-ounce ball, than in the defence of an Empire against barbarism; prone to forget everything in his eagerness to ascertain that one horse can run faster than eight others; regulating all combat by rules as of sport; unassuming as a mole and arrogant as a lion; an islander of islanders, regarding his salty wet rock as a universe, and the universe as too foreign for serious consideration;looking upon himself, in a strange land, as the one Briton in a world of gibbering aliens; blindly despising and blindly tolerating all outlandish things; incredibly blundering into chaos and fantastically blundering out of it; conspicuously inconspicuous; insanely cheerful; bland as a fat man in an asylum who thinks he’s the Buddha; and maddeningly calm … always bewilderingly calm.
    Calm. What looks calmer than a flywheel at top speed? What is calmer than the heart of a whirlwind?
    Men like this sailed on the Birkenhead. It is a simple story. They had a pride of birth far deeper than any sentiment born of false reasoning or well-hammered propaganda. The Birkenhead struck a submerged reef. Think of the thing as a scene in a film: the night, the stars, the heaving, shining sea. Then the crash, long and grinding. Furniture goes mad: immovable things fall and movables fly. Women scream. You catch a glimpse of men’s faces in the vague half-dark: black gaps of shouting mouths, pale teeth. Then the list of the gutted ship and the swinging out of the boats. There is barely enough space in the lifeboats for the women and children, and the Birkenhead is sinking damnably fast.
    There are