4.
The Nouveau Riche was all a nouveau riche should be, big, bloated and boastful. He had been a cobbler before the war, but had made a fortune in shoe contracts. The Soldier should never have been there at all. Some friends, however, had dragged him in; and he sat looking thin, pale, and wretchedly out of place.
The Nouveau Riche was playfully emptying a bottle of champagne over a small palm tree. The manager expostulated. It was doubtful if palms, however thirsty, would appreciate the virtue of Chateau Margaux, but the Nouveau Riche waved him aside.
“Put your damned palm on the bill,” he said, “and bring me a fresh bottle.” He was proceeding to pour this, too, on the unfortunate plant when the Sick Soldier sprang up.
“I’ve had enough,” he cried, and his black eyes flashed in his white face. He wrenched the bottle from the man’s hand. “You swine, you! Where I come from there are men who would give their heart’s blood for a mouthful of that wine you’re wasting like filthy water.”
The Nouveau Riche got purple in the face; the Soldier was gripping the loose flesh of his throat and pouring the rest of the champagne over his head.
“Here you sit and swill and guzzle,” he went on, “while my comrades out there in the desert are dying from hunger and thirst. In Syria.... Yes, I come from Syria where we crawled on our bellies on the sand, crawled to the water tanks to steal a few precious drops and were shot for it like mad dogs. We buried a dead horse and dug it up a week later and ate it. Half of us died in agony, the rest are wrecks—like me. And now when I see a pig like you squandering and wasting, and think of my pals out there, suffering, starving, panting with thirst, I tell you it makes me sick.... Oh, if I only had you out there, you rotten hog....”
There seemed every prospect of a row, but the Man from Syria suddenly collapsed and his friends led him away.
“This is a beastly hole,” said Hugh abruptly. “Let’s get out of it.”
There was something hard and cynical in Mrs. Belmire’s laugh as she replied: “Why should we? I think it’s rather amusing.”