The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

by Rudyard Kipling




CONTENTS

VOLUME I DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES
Prelude
General Summary
Army Headquarters
Study of an Elevation, in Indian Ink
A Legend of the Foreign Office
The Story of Uriah
The Post that Fitted
Public Waste
Delilah
What Happened
Pink Dominoes
The Man Who Could Write
Municipal
A Code of Morals
The Last Department

OTHER VERSES
Recessional
The Vampire
To the Unknown Goddess
The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin
La Nuit Blanche
My Rival
The Lovers' Litany
A Ballad of Burial
Divided Destinies
The Masque of Plenty
The Mare's Nest
Possibilities
Christmas in India
Pagett, M. P.

The Song of the Women
A Ballad of Jakko Hill
The Plea of the Simla Dancers
Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House
"As the Bell Clinks"
An Old Song
Certain Maxims of Hafiz
The Grave of the Hundred Head
The Moon of Other Days
The Overland Mail
What the People Said
The Undertaker's Horse
The Fall of Jock Gillespie
Arithmetic on the Frontier
One Viceroy Resigns
The Betrothed
A Tale of Two Cities

VOLUME II BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS

BALLADS
The Ballad of East and West
The Last Suttee
The Ballad of the King's Mercy
The Ballad of the King's Jest
The Ballad of Boh Da Thone
The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief
The Rhyme of the Three Captains
The Ballad of the "Clampherdown"
The Ballad of the "Bolivar"
The English Flag
Cleared
An Imperial Rescript
Tomlinson
Danny Deever
Tommy
Fuazy-Wuzzv
Soldier, Soldier
Screw-Guns
Gunga Din
Oonts
Loot
"Snarleyow"
The Widow at Windsor
Belts
The Young British Soldier
Mandalay
Troopin'

Ford O'Kabul River
Route-Marchin'

VOLUME III  THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW AND OTHER
GHOST STORIES

The Phantom 'Rickshaw
My Own True Ghost Story
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
The Man Who Would Be King
"The Finest Story in The World"

VOLUME IV UNDER THE DEODARS

The Education of Otis Yeere
At the Pit's Mouth
A Wayside Comedy
The Hill of Illusion
A Second-rate Woman
Only a Subaltern
In the Matter of a Private
The Enlightenments of Pagett. M. P.

VOLUME V PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS

Lispeth
Three And-an Extra
Thrown Away
Miss Voughal's Sais
"Yoked With an Unbeliever"
False Dawn
The Rescue of Pluffles
Cupid's Arrows
His Chance in Life
Watches of The Night
The Other Man
Consequences
The Conversion of Aurellan McGoggin
A Germ-destroyer
Kidnapped
The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly
In The House of Suddhoo
His Wedded Wife
The Broken-link Handicap
Bevond The Pale
In Error
A Bank Fraud
Tods' Amendment
In The Pride of His Youth
Pig
The Rout of The White Hussars
The Bronckhorst Divorce-case
Venus Annodomini
The Bisara of Pooree
A Friend's Friend
The Gate of The Hundred Sorrows
The Story of Muhammad Din
On The Strength of a Likeness
Wressley of The Foreign Office
By Word of Mouth
To Fe Filed For Reference
The Last Relief
Bitters Neat
Haunted Subalterns

VOLUME VI  THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

VOLUME VII  THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS

Preface
Poor Dear Mamma
The World Without
The Tents of Kedar
With Any Amazement
The Garden of Eden
Fatima
The Valley of the Shadow
The Swelling of Jordan

VOLUME VIII  from MINE OWN PEOPLE

Bimi
Namgay Doola
The Recrudescence Of Imray
Moti Guj-Mutineer




VOLUME I  DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER
VERSES

I have eaten your bread and salt,
   I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched be-side,
   And the lives that ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share
   In vigil or toil or ease,-
One joy or woe that I did not know,
   Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
   For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise-but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

GENERAL SUMMARY

WE are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
   India's prehistoric clay;
Whoso drew the longest bow,
Ran his brother down, you know,
   As we run men down to-day.

"Dowb," the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
   On the lake or in the cave,
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry others slew,
   Died-and took the finest grave.

When they scratched the reindeer-bone.
Some one made the sketch his own,
   Filched it from the artist-then,
Even in those early days,
Won a simple Viceroy's praise
   Through the toil of other men.

Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage
Favoritism governed kissage,
Even as it does in this age.

Wbo shall doubt the secret hid
Under Cheops' pyramid
Was that the contractor did
   Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph's sudden rise
To Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size
   On King Pharoab's swart Civilians?

Thus, the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything
   New or never said before.

As it was in the beginning,
Is to-day official sinning,
   And shall be forevermore.

ARMY HEADQUARTERS

Old is the song that I sing-
   Old as my unpaid bills-
Old as the chicken that kitmutgars bring
Men at dik-bungalows-old as the Hills.

AHASUERUS JENKINS of the "Operatic Own"
Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.

His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer;
He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.

He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day,
He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way,
His method of saluting was the joy of all beholders,
But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his shoulders.

He took two months to Simla when the year was at the spring,
And underneath the deodars eternally did sing.

He warbled like a bulbul, but particularly at
Cornelia Agrippina who was musical and fat.

She controlled a humble husband, who, in turn, controlled a Dept.,
Where Cornelia Agrippina's human singing-birds were kept
From April to October on a plump retaining fee,
Supplied, of course, per mensem, by the Indian Treasury.

Comelia used to sing with him, and Jenkins used to play;
He praised unblushingly her notes, for he was false as they:
So when the winds of April turned the budding roses brown,
Cornelia told her husband: 'Tom, you mustn't send him down."

They haled him from his regiment which didn't much regret him;
They found for him an office-stool, and on that stool they set him,
To play with maps and catalogues three idle hours a day,
And draw his plump retaining fee-which means his double pay.

Now, ever after dinner, when the coffeecups are brought,
Ahasuerus waileth o'er the grand pianoforte;
And, thanks to fair Cornelia, his fame hath waxen great,
And Ahasuerus Jenkins is a power in the State.

STUDY OF AN ELEVATION, IN INDIAN INK

This ditty is a string of lies.
But-how the deuce did Gubbins rise?

POTIPHAR GUBBINS, C. E.,
Stands at the top of the tree;
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
To the hoisting of Potiphar G.

Potiphar Gubbins, C. E.,
Is seven years junior to Me;
Each bridge that he makes he either buckles or breaks,
And his work is as rough as he.

Potiphar Gubbins, C. E.,
Is coarse as a chimpanzee;
And I can't understand why you gave
him your hand, Lovely Mehitabel Lee.

Potiphar Gubbins, C. E.,
Is dear to the Powers that Be;
For They bow and They smile in an affable style
Which is seldom accorded to Me.

Potiphar Gubbins, C. E.,
Is certain as certain can be
Of a highly-paid post which is claimed by a host
Of seniors-including Me.

Careless and lazy is he,
Greatly inferior to Me.

What is the spell that you manage so well,
Commonplace Potiphar G.?

Lovely Mehitabel Lee.

Let me inquire of thee,
Should I have riz to what Potiphar is,
Hadst thou been mated to me?

A Legend

This is the reason why Rustum Beg,
Rajah of Kolazai,
Drinketh the "simpkin" and brandy peg,
Maketh the money to fly,
Vexeth a Government, tender and kind,
Also-but this is a detail-blind.

RUSTUM BEG of Kolazai-slightly back-ward native state
Lusted for a C. S. I.,-so began to sanitate.

Built a Jail and Hospital-nearly built a City drain-
Till his faithful subjects all thought their Ruler was insane.

Strange departures made he then-yea,
Departments stranger still,
Half a dozen Englishmen helped the Rajah with a will,
Talked of noble aims and high, hinted of a future fine
For the state of Kolazai, on a strictly Western line.

Rajab Rustum held his peace;
lowered octroi dues a half;
Organized a State Police; purified the. Civil Staff;
Settled cess and tax afresh in a very liberal way;
Cuttemptations of the flesh-also cut the Bukhshi's pay;

Roused his Secretariat to a fine Mahratta fury,
Bya Hookum hinting at supervision of dasturi;
Turned the State of Kolazai very nearly upside-down;
When the end of May was nigh, waited his achievement crown.

When the Birthday Honors came.
Sad to state and sad to see,
Stood against the Rajah's name nothing more than C. I. E.!

*         *         *         *         *        *         *

Things were lively for a week in the State of Kolazai.

Even now the people speak of that time regretfully.

How he disendowed the Jail-stopped at once the City drain;
Turned to beauty fair and frail-got his senses back again;
Doubled taxes, cesses, all; cleared away each new-built thana;
Turned the two-lakh Hospital into a superb Zenana;

Heaped upon the Bukhshi Sahib wealth and honors manifold;
Clad himself in Eastern garb-squeezed his people as of old.

Happy, happy Kolazai!  Never more  will Rustum Beg
Play to catch the Viceroy's eye. He prefers the "simpkin" peg.

THE STORY OF URIAH
"Now there were two men in one city;
the one rich and the other poor."

JACK BARRETT went to Quetta
   Because they told him to.

He left his wife at Simla
   On three-fourths his monthly screw:
Jack Barrett died at Quetta
   Ere the next month's pay he drew.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta.
   He didn't understand reason of his transfer
From the pleasant mountain-land:
   The season was September,
And it killed him out of hand.

   Jack Barrett went to Quetta,
And there gave up the ghost,
   Attempting two men's duty
In that very healthy post;
   And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.

Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta
   Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn't be astonished
   If now his spirit knows
The reason of his transfer
   From the Himalayan snows.

And, when the Last Great Bugle Call
   Adown the Hurnal throbs,
When the last grim joke is entered
   In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again
   Their victims to the air,
I shouldn't like to be the man
   Who sent Jack Barrett there.

THE POST THAT FITTED

    Though tangled and twisted the course of true love
            This ditty explains,
    No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve
            If the Lover has brains.

Ere the seamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.

Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished
quarters --
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's
daughters.

Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.

So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay
side.

Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry --
As the artless Sleary put it: -- "Just the thing for me and Carrie."

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin -- impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.

[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: --
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]

Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour -- always in the Boffkins' sight.

Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.

Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy, --
Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ, --
Wired three short words to Carrie -- took his ticket, packed his kit
--
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read -- and laughed until she wept
--
Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept." . . .

Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits.

PUBLIC WASTE

  Walpole talks of "a man and his price."
        List to a ditty queer --
  The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
        Resident-Engineer,
  Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,
  By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.

By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of
State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he
must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge
is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and
South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed -- important the posts which
he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his
mouth.

Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still --
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge --
Never clanked sword by his side -- Vauban he knew not nor drill --
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through
the "College."

Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of "Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels."

Letters not seldom they wrote him, "having the honour to state,"
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.

Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,

"Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and
Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine" -- these were the terms of the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (lon may Their Highnesses thrive!)
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;

Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo
State Line
(The wich was on mile and one furlong -- a guaranteed
twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his
age!

DELILAH

We have another viceroy now, -- those days are dead and done
Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.

Delilah Aberyswith was a lady -- not too young --
With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue,
With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,
And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.

By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power,
Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour;
And many little secrets, of the half-official kind,
Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind.

She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne,
Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one.

He wrote for certain papers, which, as everybody knows,
Is worse than serving in a shop or scaring off the crows.

He praised her "queenly beauty" first; and, later on, he hinted
At the "vastness of her intellect" with compliment unstinted.

He went with her a-riding, and his love for her was such
That he lent her all his horses and -- she galled them very much.

One day, THEY brewed a secret of a fine financial sort;
It related to Appointments, to a Man and a Report.

'Twas almost wortth the keeping, -- only seven people knew it --
And Gunne rose up to seek the truth and patiently ensue it.

It was a Viceroy's Secret, but -- perhaps the wine was red --
Perhaps an Aged Concillor had lost his aged head --
Perhaps Delilah's eyes were bright -- Delilah's whispers sweet --
The Aged Member told her what 'twere treason to repeat.

Ulysses went a-riding, and they talked of love and flowers;
Ulysses went a-calling, and he called for several hours;
Ulysses went a-waltzing, and Delilah helped him dance --
Ulysses let the waltzes go, and waited for his chance.

The summer sun was setting, and the summer air was still,
The couple went a-walking in the shade of Summer Hill.

The wasteful sunset faded out in turkis-green and gold,
Ulysses pleaded softly, and . . . that bad Delilah told!

Next morn, a startled Empire learnt the all-important news;
Next week, the Aged Councillor was shaking in his shoes.

Next month, I met Delilah and she did not show the least
Hesitation in affirming that Ulysses was a "beast."

            *   *   *   *   *

We have another Viceroy now, those days are dead and done --
Off, Delilah Aberyswith and most mean Ulysses Gunne!

WHAT HAPPENED

Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazaar,
Owner of a native press, "Barrishter-at-Lar,"
Waited on the Government with a claim to wear
Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair.

Then the Indian Government winked a wicked wink,
Said to Chunder Mookerjee: "Stick to pen and ink.

They are safer implements, but, if you insist,
We will let you carry arms wheresoe'er you list."

Hurree Chunder Mookerjee sought the gunsmith and
Bought the tubes of Lancaster, Ballard, Dean, and Bland,
Bought a shiny bowie-knife, bought a town-made sword,
Jingled like a carriage-horse when he went abroad.

But the Indian Government, always keen to please,
Also gave permission to horrid men like these --
Yar Mahommed Yusufzai, down to kill or steal,
Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer, Tantia the Bhil;

Killar Khan the Marri chief, Jowar Singh the Sikh,
Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat, Abdul Huq Rafiq --
He was a Wahabi; last, little Boh Hla-oo
Took advantage of the Act -- took a Snider too.

They were unenlightened men, Ballard knew them not.

They procured their swords and guns chiefly on the spot;
And the lore of centuries, plus a hundred fights,
Made them slow to disregard one another's rights.

With a unanimity dear to patriot hearts
All those hairy gentlemen out of foreign parts
Said: "The good old days are back -- let us go to war!"
Swaggered down the Grand Trunk Road into Bow Bazaar,

Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail;
Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail;
Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee
As he ground the butcher-knife of the Khyberee.

Jowar Singh the Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace,
Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place,
While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered
Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard.

What became of Mookerjee? Smoothly, who can say?
Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way,
Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute.

But the belts of all of them simply bulge with loot.

What became of Ballard's guns? Afghans black and grubby
Sell them for their silver weight to the men of Pubbi;
And the shiny bowie-knife and the town-made sword are
Hanging in a Marri camp just across the Border.

What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar
Prodding Siva's sacred bull down the Bow Bazaar.

Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh -- question land and sea --
Ask the Indian Congressmen -- only don't ask me!

PINK DOMINOES

They are fools who kiss and tell" --
  Wisely has the poet sung.

Man may hold all sorts of posts
  If he'll only hold his tongue.

Jenny and Me were engaged, you see,
  On the eve of the Fancy Ball;
So a kiss or two was nothing to you
  Or any one else at all.

Menny would go in a domino --
  Pretty and pink but warm;
While I attended, clad in a splendid
  Austrian uniform.

Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged
  Early that afternoon,
At Number Four to waltz no more,
  But to sit in the dusk and spoon.

I with you to see that Jenny and Me
  Had barely exchanged our troth;
So a kiss or two was strictly due
  By, from, and between us both.

When Three was over, an eager lover,
  I fled to the gloom outside;
And a Domino came out also
  Whom I took for my future bride.

That is to say, in a casual way,
  I slipped my arm around her;
With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you),
  And ready to kiss I found her.

She turned her head and the name she said
  Was certainly not my own;
But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek
  She fled and left me alone.

Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame
  She'd doffed her domino;
And I had embraced an alien waist --
  But I did not tell her so.

Next morn I knew that there were two
  Dominoes pink, and one
Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian Vouse,
  Our big Political gun.

Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold,
  And her eye was a blue cerulean;
And the name she said when she turned her head
  Was not in the least like "Julian."

THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE

Shun -- shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink
  Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't;
Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink
  Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't.

There may be silver in the "blue-black" -- all
I know of is the iron and the gall.

Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure -- is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.
Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
Till an Indian paper found that he could write:
Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark,
When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.
Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,
In that Indian paper -- made his seniors squirm,
Quated office scandals, wrote the tactless truth --

Was there ever known a more misguided youth?
When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,
Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;
When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,
Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:

Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,
Till he found promotion didn't come to him;
Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,
And his many Districts curiously hot.

Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win,
Boanerges Blitzen didn't care to pin:
Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right --
Boanerges Blitzen put it down to "spite";

Languished in a District desolate and dry;
Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by;
Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

That was seven years ago -- and he still is there!

MUNICIPAL

        "Why is my District death-rate low?"
          Said Binks of Hezabad.

        "Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
          "My own peculiar fad.

        "I learnt a lesson once, It ran
        "Thus," quoth that most veracious man: --

It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,
So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,
Till he Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;
And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,
And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,
To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear --
Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and
despair,
Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

Heard it trumpet on my shoulder -- tried to crawl a little higher --
Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up,
with mire;
And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze,
While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey
Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.

Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.

They flushed that four-foot drain-head and -- it never choked
again!

You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,
Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.

I believe in well-flushed culverts. . . .

                                  This is why the death-rate's small;
And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all.

A CODE OF MORALS

         Lest you should think this story true
         I merely mention I
         Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most
         Unmitigated misstatement.

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.

At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the
way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.

They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt --
So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they
learnt --

"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General
swore.

"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'

"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the
hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: --
"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man."

[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --

But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General's private life.

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.

And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): --
"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.

But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

THE LAST DEPARTMENT

 Twelve hundred million men are spread
About this Earth, and I and You
Wonder, when You and I are dead,
"What will those luckless millions do?"

None whole or clean, " we cry, "or free from stain
Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain
  The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,
Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.

Fear, Favour, or Affection -- what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
  I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";

When leave, long overdue, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity
  Becomes our furlough, and the marigold
Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury

Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,
Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,
  No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,
Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.

And One, long since a pillar of the Court,
As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;
  And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops
Is subject-matter of his own Report.

These be the glorious ends whereto we pass --
Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;
  And He shall see the mallie steals the slab
For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.

A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight,
A draught of water, or a horse's firght --
  The droning of the fat Sheristadar
Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night

For you or Me. Do those who live decline
The step that offers, or their work resign?
  Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine.

OTHER VERSES

RECESSIONAL
(A Victorian Ode)

God of our fathers, known of old --
  Lord of our far-flung battle line --
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
  Dominion over palm and pine --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies --
  The Captains and the Kings depart --
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
  An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away --
  On dune and headland sinks the fire --
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
  Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe --
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
  Or lesser breeds without the Law --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
  In reeking tube and iron shard --
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
  And guarding calls not Thee to guard.

For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
                              Amen.


THE VAMPIRE
The verses -- as suggested by the painting by Philip Burne Jones,
first exhibited at the new gallery in London in 1897.

A fool there was and he mad his prayer
  (Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair
  (Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
  And the work of our head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
  And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
  (Even as you and I!)
Honor and faith and a sure intent
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
  (Even as you and I!)

Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
  And the excellent things we planned,
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know she never knew why)
  And did not understand.

The fool we stripped to his foolish hide
  (Even as you and I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside --
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died --
  (Even as you and I!)

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
  That stings like a white hot brand.

It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she could never know why)
  And never could understand.


TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS

Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out
from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking
and blind?
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your
kind?

Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in
the West,
Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart
in my breast?

Will you stay in the Plains till September -- my passion as warm as
the day?
Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the
thermantidotes play?

When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser
lights I pursue,
And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay
"thirteen-two";

When the peg and the pig-skin shall please not; when I buy me
Calcutta-build clothes;
When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses; foreswearing the swearing
of oaths ;

As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of
my friends;
When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the
bachelor ends.

Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow -- as of old on Mars Hill
whey they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar -- so I, a young Pagan, have
praised

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me
be true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written
to you.

The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin
[Allowing for the difference 'twixt prose and rhymed exaggeration,
this ought to reproduce the sense of what Sir A-- told the nation
sometime ago, when the Government struck from our incomes two
per cent.]

Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
  So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.

Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues --
Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use,
  Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal --
Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse!

Pay -- and I promise by the Dust of Spring,
Retrenchment.  If my promises can bring
  Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousandfold --
By Allah! I will promise Anything!

Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before
I sore -- but did I mean it when I swore?
  And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills,
And so the Little Less became Much More.

Whether a Boileaugunge or Babylon,
I know not how the wretched Thing is done,
  The Items of Receipt grow surely small;
The Items of Expense mount one by one.

I cannot help it. What have I to do
With One and Five, or Four, or Three, or Two?
  Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please,
Or Statesmen call me foolish -- Heed not you.

Behold, I promise -- Anything You will.

Behold, I greet you with an empty Till --
  Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Charity
Seek not the Reason of the Dearth, but fill.

For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain
Of Knowledge? Would it ease you of your Pain
  To know the tangled Threads of Revenue,
I ravel deeper in a hopeless Skein?

"Who hath not Prudence" -- what was it I said,
Of Her who paints her Eyes and tires Her Head,
  And gibes and mocks and People in the Street,
And fawns upon them for Her thriftless Bread?

Accursed is She of Eve's daughters -- She
Hath cast off Prudence, and Her End shall be
  Destruction . . . Brethren, of your Bounty
Some portion of your daily Bread to Me.

LA NUIT BLANCHE

  A much-discerning Public hold
    The Singer generally sings
  And prints and sells his past for gold.

  Whatever I may here disclaim,
    The very clever folk I sing to
    Will most indubitably cling to
  Their pet delusion, just the same.

I had seen, as the dawn was breaking
  And I staggered to my rest,
Tari Devi softly shaking
  From the Cart Road to the crest.

I had seen the spurs of Jakko
  Heave and quiver, swell and sink.

Was it Earthquake or tobacco,
  Day of Doom, or Night of Drink?

In the full, fresh fragrant morning
  I observed a camel crawl,
Laws of gravitation scorning,
  On the ceiling and the wall;
Then I watched a fender walking,
  And I heard grey leeches sing,
And a red-hot monkey talking
  Did not seem the proper thing.

Then a Creature, skinned and crimson,
  Ran about the floor and cried,
And they said that I had the "jims" on,
  And they dosed me with bromide,
And they locked me in my bedroom --
  Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse --
Though I said: "To give my head room
  You had best unroof the house."

But my words were all unheeded,
  Though I told the grave M.D.

That the treatment really needed
  Was a dip in open sea
That was lapping just below me,
  Smooth as silver, white as snow,
And it took three men to throw me
  When I found I could not go.

Half the night I watched the Heavens
  Fizz like '81 champagne --
Fly to sixes and to sevens,
  Wheel and thunder back again;
And when all was peace and order
  Save one planet nailed askew,
Much I wept because my warder
  Would not let me sit it true.

After frenzied hours of wating,
  When the Earth and Skies were dumb,
Pealed an awful voice dictating
  An interminable sum,
Changing to a tangle story --
  "What she said you said I said" --
Till the Moon arose in glory,
  And I found her . . . in my head;

Then a Face came, blind and weeping,
  And It couldn't wipe its eyes,
And It muttered I was keeping
  Back the moonlight from the skies;
So I patted it for pity,
  But it whistled shrill with wrath,
And a huge black Devil City
  Poured its peoples on my path.

So I fled with steps uncertain
  On a thousand-year long race,
But the bellying of the curtain
  Kept me always in one place;
While the tumult rose and maddened
  To the roar of Earth on fire,
Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened
  To a whisper tense as wire.

In tolerable stillness
  Rose one little, little star,
And it chuckled at my illness,
  And it mocked me from afar;
And its breathren came and eyed me,
  Called the Universe to aid,
Till I lay, with naught to hide me,
  'Neath' the Scorn of All Things Made.

Dun and saffron, robed and splendid,
  Broke the solemn, pitying Day,
And I knew my pains were ended,
  And I turned and tried to pray;
But my speech was shattered wholly,
  And I wept as children weep.

Till the dawn-wind, softly, slowly,
  Brought to burning eyelids sleep.

MY RIVAL

I go to concert, party, ball --
  What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
  And strive to look at ease.

The incense that is mine by right
  They burn before her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
  And She is forty-nine.

I cannot check my girlish blush,
  My color comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
  And sometimes to my nose.

But She is white where white should be,
  And red where red should shine.

The blush that flies at seventeen
  Is fixed at forty-nine.

I wish I had Her constant cheek;
  I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
  Not quite the proper thing.

I'm very gauche and very shy,
  Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen
  While She is forty-nine.

The young men come, the young men go
  Each pink and white and neat,
She's older than their mothers, but
  They grovel at Her feet.

They walk beside Her 'rickshaw wheels --
  None ever walk by mine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
  And She is foty-nine.

She rides with half a dozen men,
  (She calls them "boys" and "mashers")
I trot along the Mall alone;
  My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
  And vainly I repine
From ten to two A.M. Ah me!
  Would I were forty-nine!

She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,"
  And "sweet retiring maid."
I'm always at the back, I know,
  She puts me in the shade.

She introduces me to men,
  "Cast" lovers, I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
  Nineteen to foty-nine.

But even She must older grow
  And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on forever so
  At concerts, balls and plays.

One ray of priceless hope I see
  Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
  When I am forty-nine.

THE LOVERS' LITANY

Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.

  Sing, for Faith and Hope are high --
  None so true as you and I --
  Sing the Lovers' Litany:
  "Love like ours can never die!"

Eyes of black -- a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.

  Cross that rules the Southern Sky!
  Stars that sweep and wheel and fly,
  Hear the Lovers' Litany:
  Love like ours can never die!"

Eyes of brown -- a dusy plain
Split and parched with heat of June,
Flying hoof and tightened rein,
Hearts that beat the old, old tune.

  Side by side the horses fly,
  Frame we now the old reply
  Of the Lovers' Litany:
  "Love like ours can never die!"

Eyes of blue -- the Simla Hills
Silvered with the moonlight hoar;
Pleading of the waltz that thrills,
Dies and echoes round Benmore.

  "Mabel," "Officers," "Good-bye,"
  Glamour, wine, and witchery --
  On my soul's sincerity,
  "Love like ours can never die!"

Maidens of your charity,
Pity my most luckless state.

Four times Cipid's debtor I --
Bankrupt in quadruplicate.

  Yet, despite this evil case,
  And a maiden showed me grace,
  Four-and-forty times would I
  Sing the Lovers' Litany:
  "Love like ours can never die!"

A BALLAD OF BURIAL
("Saint Proxed's ever was the Church for peace")

If down here I chance to die,
  Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
  To the Hills for old sake's sake,
Pack me very thoroughly
  In the ice that used to slake
Pegs I drank when I was dry --
  This observe for old sake's sake.

To the railway station hie,
  There a single ticket take
For Umballa -- goods-train -- I
  Shall not mind delay or shake.

I shall rest contentedly
  Spite of clamor coolies make;
Thus in state and dignity
  Send me up for old sake's sake.

Next the sleepy Babu wake,
  Book a Kalka van "for four."
Few, I think, will care to make
  Journeys with me any more
As they used to do of yore.

  I shall need a "special" break --
Thing I never took before --
  Get me one for old sake's sake.

After that -- arrangements make.

  No hotel will take me in,
And a bullock's back would break
  'Neath the teak and leaden skin
Tonga ropes are frail and thin,
  Or, did I a back-seat take,
In a tonga I might spin, --
  Do your best for old sake's sake.

After that -- your work is done.

  Recollect a Padre must
Mourn the dear departed one --
  Throw the ashes and the dust.

Don't go down at once. I trust
  You will find excuse to "snake
Three days' casual on the bust."
  Get your fun for old sake's sake.

I could never stand the Plains.

  Think of blazing June and May
Think of those September rains
  Yearly till the Judgment Day!
I should never rest in peace,
  I should sweat and lie awake.

Rail me then, on my decease,
  To the Hills for old sake's sake.

DIVIDED DESTINIES

It was an artless Bandar, and he danced upon a pine,
And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might
dine,
And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke,
I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamt that Bandar spoke.

He said: "O man of many clothes! Sad crawler on the Hills!
Observe, I know not Ranken's shop, nor Ranken's monthly bills;
I take no heed to trousers or the coats that you call dress;
Nor am I plagued with little cards for little drinks at Mess.

"I steal the bunnia's grain at morn, at noon and eventide,
(For he is fat and I am spare), I roam the mountain side,
I follow no man's carriage, and no, never in my life
Have I flirted at Peliti's with another Bandar's wife.

"O man of futile fopperies -- unnecessary wraps;
I own no ponies in the hills, I drive no tall-wheeled traps;
I buy me not twelve-button gloves, 'short-sixes' eke, or rings,
Nor do I waste at Hamilton's my wealth on 'pretty things.'

"I quarrel with my wife at home, we never fight abroad;
But Mrs. B. has grasped the fact I am her only lord.

I never heard of fever -- dumps nor debts depress my soul;
And I pity and despise you!" Here he pouched my breakfast-roll.

His hide was very mangy, and his face was very red,
And ever and anon he scratched with energy his head.

His manners were not always nice, but how my spirit cried
To be an artless Bandar loose upon the mountain side!

So I answered: "Gentle Bandar, and inscrutable Decree
Makes thee a gleesome fleasome Thou, and me a wretched Me.

Go! Depart in peace, my brother, to thy home amid the pine;
Yet forget not once a mortal wished to change his lot for thine."

THE MASQUE OF PLENTY
Argument. -- The Indian Government being minded
to discover the economic condition of their lands, sent a
Committee to
inquire into it; and saw that it was good.

Scene. -- The wooded heights of Simla. The Incarnation of
the Government of India in the raiment of the Angel of Plenty
signs, to pianoforte accompaniment: --

"How sweet is the shepherd's sweet life!
  From the dawn to the even he strays --
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.

  (adagio dim.) Filled with praise!"

(largendo con sp.) Now this is the position,
                  Go make an inquisition
                  Into their real condition
                    As swiftly as ye may.

              (p) Ay, paint our swarthy billions
                  The richest of vermillions
                  Ere two well-led cotillions
                    Have danced themselves away.

Turkish Patrol, as able and intelligent Investigators wind
                down the Himalayas: --

What is the state of the Nation? What is its occupation?
Hi! get along, get along, get along -- lend us the information!
(dim.) Census the byle and the yabu -- capture a first-class Babu,
  Set him to file Gazetteers -- Gazetteers . . .

                (ff) What is the state of the Nation, etc., etc.

Interlude, from Nowhere in Particular, to stringed and Oriental
instruments.

Our cattle reel beneath the yoke they bear --
  The earth is iron and the skies are brass --
And faint with fervour of the flaming air
  The languid hours pass.

The well is dry beneath the village tree --
  The young wheat withers ere it reach a span,
And belts of blinding sand show cruelly
  Where once the river ran.

Pray, brothers, pray, but to no earthly King --
  Lift up your hands above the blighted grain,
Look westward -- if they please, the Gods shall bring
  Their mercy with the rain.

Look westward -- bears the blue no brown cloud-bank?
  Nay, it is written -- wherefore should we fly?
On our own field and by our cattle's flank
  Lie down, lie down to die!

                        Semi-Chorus

        By the plumed heads of Kings
                        Waving high,
        Where the tall corn springs
                        O'er the dead.

        If they rust or rot we die,
        If they ripen we are fed.

        Very mighty is the power of our Kings!

Triumphal return to Simla of the Investigators, attired after
  the manner of Dionysus, leading a pet tiger-cub in wreaths
  of rhubarb-leaves, symbolical of India under medical treatment.

  They sing: --

We have seen, we have written -- behold it, the proof of our
manifold toil!
In their hosts they assembled and told it -- the tale of the Sons of
the Soil.

We have said of the Sickness -- "Where is it?" -- and of Death -- "It
is far from our ken," --
We have paid a particular visit to the affluent children of men.

We have trodden the mart and the well-curb -- we hae stooped to
the bield and the byre;
And the King may the forces of Hell curb for the People have all
they desire!

        Castanets and step-dance: --

Oh, the dom and the mag and the thakur and the thag,
  And the nat and the brinjaree,
And the bunnia and the ryot are as happy and as quiet
And as plump as they can be!

Yes, the jain and the jat in his stucco-fronted hut,
  And the bounding bazugar,
By the favour of the King, are as fat as anything,
  They are -- they are -- they are!

Recitative, Government of India, with white satin wings
    and electro-plated harp: --

How beautiful upon the Mountains -- in peace reclining,
Thus to be assured that our people are unanimously dining.

And though there are places not so blessed as others in naural
advantages, which, after all, was
only to be expected,
Proud and glad are we to congratulate you upon the work you have
thus ably effected.

(Cres.) How be-ewtiful upon the Mountains!

Hired Band,  brasses only, full chorus: --

        God bless the Squire
        And all his rich relations
        Who teach us poor people
        We eat our proper rations --
                We eat our proper rations,
                In spite of inundations,
                Malarial exhalations,
                And casual starvations,
        We have, we have, they say we have --
        We have our proper rations!

Chorus of the Crystallised Facts

        Before the beginning of years
        There came to the rule of the State
        Men with a pair of shears,
        Men with an Estimate --
        Strachey with Muir for leaven,
        Lytton with locks that fell,
        Ripon fooling with Heaven,
        And Temple riding like H--ll!
        And the bigots took in hand
        Cess and the falling of rain,
        And the measure of sifted sand
        The dealer puts in the grain --
        Imports by land and sea,
        To uttermost decimal worth,
        And registration -- free --
        In the houses of death and of birth.

        And fashioned with pens and paper,
        And fashioned in black and white,
        With Life for a flickering taper
        And Death for a blazing light --
        With the Armed and the Civil Power,
        That his strength might endure for a span --
        From Adam's Bridge to Peshawur,
        The Much Administered Man.

        In the towns of the North and the East,
        They gathered as unto rule,
        They bade him starve his priest
        And send his children to school.

        Railways and roads they wrought,
        For the needs of the soil within;
        A time to squabble in court,
        A time to bear and to grin.

        And gave him peace in his ways,
        Jails -- and Police to fight,
        Justice -- at length of days,
        And Right -- and Might in the Right.

        His speech is of mortgaged bedding,
        On his kine he borrows yet,
        At his heart is his daughter's wedding,
        In his eye foreknowledged of debt.

        He eats and hath indigestion,
        He toils and he may not stop;
        His life is a long-drawn question
        Between a crop and a crop.

THE MARE'S NEST

Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
  Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
  Was very, very bad indeed.

He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept
  The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
  Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay
Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.

She was so good, she made hime worse;
  (Some women are like this, I think;)
He taught her parrot how to curse,
  Her Assam monkey how to drink.

He vexed her righteous soul until
She went up, and he went down hill.

Then came the crisis, strange to say,
  Which turned a good wife to a better.

A telegraphic peon, one day,
  Brought her -- now, had it been a letter
For Belial Machiavelli, I
Know Jane would just have let it lie.

But 'twas a telegram instead,
  Marked "urgent," and her duty plain
To open it. Jane Austen read:
  "Your Lilly's got a cough again.

Can't understand why she is kept
At your expense." Jane Austen wept.

It was a misdirected wire.

  Her husband was at Shaitanpore.

She spread her anger, hot as fire,
  Through six thin foreign sheets or more.

Sent off that letter, wrote another
To her solicitor -- and mother.

Then Belial Machiavelli saw
  Her error and, I trust, his own,
Wired to the minion of the Law,
  And traveled wifeward -- not alone.

For Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay --
Came in a horse-box all the way.

There was a scene -- a weep or two --
  With many kisses. Austen Jane
Rode Lilly all the season through,
  And never opened wires again.

She races now with Belial. This
Is very sad, but so it is.

POSSIBILITIES

Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
  A fortnight fully to be missed,
  Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.

His place forgets him; other men
  Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.

  His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,

Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
  Our mundance revel on the height,
  Shall watch each flashing 'rickshaw-light
Sweep on to dinner, dance, and play.

Benmore shall woo him to the ball
  With lighted rooms and braying band;
  And he shall hear and understand
"Dream Faces" better than us all.

For, think you, as the vapours flee
  Across Sanjaolie after rain,
  His soul may climb the hill again
To each of field of victory.

Unseen, who women held so dear,
  The strong man's yearning to his kind
  Shall shake at most the window-blind,
Or dull awhile the card-room's cheer.

In his own place of power unkown,
  His Light o' Love another's flame,
And he and alien and alone!

Yet may he meet with many a friend --
  Shrewd shadows, lingering long unseen
  Among us when "God save the Queen"
Shows even "extras" have an end.

And, when we leave the heated room,
  And, when at four the lights expire,
  The crew shall gather round the fire
And mock our laughter in the gloom;

Talk as we talked, and they ere death --
  Flirt wanly, dance in ghostly-wise,
  With ghosts of tunes for melodies,
And vanish at the morning's breath.


CHRISTMAS IN INDIA

Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
  As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
  That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.

    Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the
byway!
      Oh the clammy fog that hovers
    And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet
berry --
      What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
  As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or
caring,
  To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.

    Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly --
      Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
    With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
      And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us --
  As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.

They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they
love us,
  And forget us till another year be gone!
    Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless,
aching!
      Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
    Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it.

      Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it,
    And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together --
  As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.

  That drags us back how'er so far we roam.

    Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered
raiment --
      India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.

    If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
      The door is hut -- we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus --
  As the conches from the temple scream and bray.

With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before
us,
  Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
    Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and
neighbors,
      And be merry as the custom of our caste;
    For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
      We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

PAGETT, M.P.

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where eath tooth-point goes.

The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.

Pagett, M.P., was a liar, and a fluent liar therewith --
He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth";
Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November,
And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay till September.

March came in with the koil. Pagett was cool and gay,
Called me a "bloated Brahmin," talked of my "princely pay."
March went out with the roses. "Where is your heat?" said he.

"Coming," said I to Pagett, "Skittles!" said Pagett, M.P.

April began with the punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat, --
Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat.

He grew speckled and mumpy-hammered, I grieve to say,
Aryan brothers who fanned him, in an illiberal way.

May set in with a dust-storm, -- Pagett went down with the sun.

All the delights of the season tickled him one by one.

Imprimis -- ten day's "liver" -- due to his drinking beer;
Later, a dose of fever --slight, but he called it severe.

Dysent'ry touched him in June, after the Chota Bursat --
Lowered his portly person -- made him yearn to depart.

He didn't call me a "Brahmin," or "bloated," or "overpaid,"
But seemed to think it a wonder that any one stayed.

July was a trifle unhealthy, -- Pagett was ill with fear.

'Called it the "Cholera Morbus," hinted that life was dear.

He babbled of "Eastern Exile," and mentioned his home with tears;
But I haven't seen my children for close upon seven years.

We reached a hundred and twenty once in the Court at noon,
(I've mentioned Pagett was portly) Pagett, went off in a swoon.

That was an end to the business; Pagett, the perjured, fled
With a practical, working knowledge of "Solar Myths" in his head.

And I laughed as I drove from the station, but the mirth died out on
my lips
As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their "Eastern
trips,"
And the sneers of the traveled idiots who duly misgovern the land,
And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into my hand.

THE SONG OF THE WOMEN

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
  The walls are high, and she is very far.

How shall the woman's message reach unto her
  Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
    Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
    Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
  Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
  Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.

    Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing --
    "I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
  But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
  That she forget us not in after years;
    For we have seen the light, and it were grievous
    To dim that dawning if our lady leave us.

By life that ebbed with none to stanch the failing
  By Love's sad harvest garnered in the spring,
When Love in ignorance wept unavailing
  O'er young buds dead before their blossoming;
    By all the grey owl watched, the pale moon viewed,
    In past grim years, declare our gratitude!

By hands uplifted to the Gods that heard not,
  By fits that found no favor in their sight,
By faces bent above the babe that stirred not,
  By nameless horrors of the stifling night;
    By ills foredone, by peace her toils discover,
    Bid Earth be good beneath and Heaven above her!

If she have sent her servants in our pain
  If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword;
If she have given back our sick again.

  And to the breast the wakling lips restored,
    Is it a little thing that she has wrought?
    Then Life and Death and Motherhood be nought.

Go forth, O wind, our message on thy wings,
  And they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed,
In reed-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings,
  Who have been helpen by ther in their need.

    All spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat
    Shall be a tasselled floorcloth to thy feet.

Haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest!
  Loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea
Proclaim the blessing, mainfold, confessed.

  Of those in darkness by her hand set free.

    Then very softly to her presence move,
    And whisper: "Lady, lo, they know and love!"

A BALLAD OF JAKKO HILL

One moment bid the horses wait,
  Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
  You climbed a year ago with me.

Love came upon us suddenly
  And loosed -- an idle hour to kill --
A headless, armless armory
  That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait
  Through Time and to Eternity!
Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate
  With more than Godlike constancy
I cut the date upon a tree --
  Here stand the clumsy figures still:
"10-7-85, A.D."
  Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,
  And until Death fidelity!
Whose horse is waiting at your gate?
  Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?
No Saint's, I swear; and -- let me see
  To-night what names your programme fill --
We drift asunder merrily,
  As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

                L'ENVOI.

Princess, behold our ancient state
  Has clean departed; and we see
'Twas Idleness we took for Fate
  That bound light bonds on you and me.

Amen! Here ends the comedy
  Where it began in all good will;
Since Love and Leave together flee
  As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

THE PLEA OF THE SIMLA DANCERS

    Too late, alas! the song
    To remedy the wrong; --
The rooms are taken from us, swept and
      garnished for their fate.

    But these tear-besprinkled pages
    Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it --
      too late, alas! too late!

"What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"
  Was there no room save only in Benmore
For docket, duftar, and for office drudge,
  That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?
Must babus do their work on polished teak?
  Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill?
Was there no other cheaper house to seek?
  You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill.

We never harmed you! Innocent our guise,
  Dainty our shining feet, our voices low;
And we revolved to divers melodies,
  And we were happy but a year ago.

To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles --
  That beamed upon us through the deodars --
Is wan with gazing on official files,
  And desecrating desks disgust the stars.

Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights --
  Nay! by the witchery of flying feet --
Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights --
  By all things merry, musical, and meet --
By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes --
  By wailing waltz -- by reckless gallop's strain --
By dim verandas and by soft replies,
  Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

Or -- hearken to the curse we lay on you!
  The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain,
And murmurs of past merriment pursue
  Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain;
And when you count your poor Provincial millions,
  The only figures that your pen shall frame
Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions
  Danced out in tumult long before you came.

Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates,
  "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse,
Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates
  Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use.

And all the long verandas, eloquent
  With echoes of a score of Simla years,
Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment --
  Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.

So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,
  So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought,
And ever in your ears a phantom Band
  Shall blare away the staid official thought.

Wherefore -- and ere this awful curse he spoken,
  Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,
And give -- ere dancing cease and hearts be broken --
  Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

THE BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARDING-HOUSE

        That night, when through the mooring-chains
            The wide-eyed corpse rolled free,
          To blunder down by Garden Reach
            And rot at Kedgeree,
          The tale the Hughli told the shoal
            The lean shoal told to me.

'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,
  Where sailor-men reside,
And there were men of all the ports
  From Mississip to Clyde,
And regally they spat and smoked,
  And fearsomely they lied.

They lied about the purple Sea
  That gave them scanty bread,
They lied about the Earth beneath,
  The Heavens overhead,
For they had looked too often on
  Black rum when that was red.

They told their tales of wreck and wrong,
  Of shame and lust and fraud,
They backed their toughest statements with
  The Brimstone of the Lord,
And crackling oaths went to and fro
  Across the fist-banged board.

And there was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
  Bull-throated, bare of arm,
Who carried on his hairy chest
  The maid Ultruda's charm --
The little silver crucifix
  That keeps a man from harm.

And there was Jake Withouth-the-Ears,
  And Pamba the Malay,
And Carboy Gin the Guinea cook,
  And Luz from Vigo Bay,
And Honest Jack who sold them slops
  And harvested their pay.

And there was Salem Hardieker,
  A lean Bostonian he --
Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn,
  Yank, Dane, and Portuguee,
At Fultah Fisher's boarding-house
  The rested from the sea.

Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks,
  Collinga knew her fame,
From Tarnau in Galicia
  To Juan Bazaar she came,
To eat the bread of infamy
  And take the wage of shame.

She held a dozen men to heel --
  Rich spoil of war was hers,
In hose and gown and ring and chain,
  From twenty mariners,
And, by Port Law, that week, men called
  her Salem Hardieker's.

But seamen learnt -- what landsmen know --
  That neither gifts nor gain
Can hold a winking Light o' Love
  Or Fancy's flight restrain,
When Anne of Austria rolled her eyes
  On Hans the blue-eyed Dane.

Since Life is strife, and strife means knife,
  From Howrah to the Bay,
And he may die before the dawn
  Who liquored out the day,
In Fultah Fisher's boarding-house
  We woo while yet we may.

But cold was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
  Bull-throated, bare of arm,
And laughter shook the chest beneath
  The maid Ultruda's charm --
The little silver crucifix
  That keeps a man from harm.

"You speak to Salem Hardieker;
  "You was his girl, I know.

"I ship mineselfs to-morrow, see,
  "Und round the Skaw we go,
"South, down the Cattegat, by Hjelm,
  "To Besser in Saro."

When love rejected turns to hate,
  All ill betide the man.

"You speak to Salem Hardieker" --
  She spoke as woman can.

A scream -- a sob -- "He called me -- names!"
  And then the fray began.

An oath from Salem Hardieker,
  A shriek upon the stairs,
A dance of shadows on the wall,
  A knife-thrust unawares --
And Hans came down, as cattle drop,
  Across the broken chairs.

*     *      *        *       *       *

In Anne of Austria's trembling hands
  The weary head fell low: --
"I ship mineselfs to-morrow, straight
  "For Besser in Saro;
"Und there Ultruda comes to me
  "At Easter, und I go

"South, down the Cattegat -- What's here?
  "There -- are -- no -- lights -- to guide!"
The mutter ceased, the spirit passed,
  And Anne of Austria cried
In Fultah Fisher's boarding-house
  When Hans the mighty died.

Thus slew they Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
  Bull-throated, bare of arm,
But Anne of Austria looted first
  The maid Ultruda's charm --
The little silver crucifix
  That keeps a man from harm.

AS THE BELL CLINKS

As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from
afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.

That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.

Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the second changin-station,
Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar
Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato,
Played on either pony's saddle by the clacking tonga-bar --
Played with human speech, I fancied, by the jigging, jolting bar.

"She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild
unreason
Such tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star,
When she whispered, something sadly: 'I -- we feel your going
badly!'"
"And you let the chance escape you?" rapped the rattling
tonga-bar.

"What a chance and what an idiot!" clicked the vicious tonga-bar.

Heart of man -- oh, heart of putty! Had I gone by Kakahutti,
On the old Hill-road and rutty, I had 'scaped that fatal car.

But his fortune each must bide by, so I watched the milestones
slide by,
To "You call on Her to-morrow!" -- fugue with cymbals by the bar
--
You must call on Her to-morrow!" -- post-horn gallop by the bar.

Yet a further stage my goal on -- we were whirling down to Solon,
With a double lurch and roll on, best foot foremost, ganz und gar --
"She was very sweet," I hinted. "If a kiss had been imprinted?" --
"'Would ha' saved a world of trouble!" clashed the busy tonga-bar.

"'Been accepted or rejected!" banged and clanged the tonga-bar.

Then a notion wild and daring, 'spite the income tax's paring,
And a hasty thought of sharing -- less than many incomes are,
Made me put a question private, you can guess what I would drive
at.

"You must work the sum to prove it," clanked the careless
tonga-bar.

"Simple Rule of Two will prove it," litled back the tonga-bar.

It was under Khyraghaut I muse. "Suppose the maid be haughty --
(There are lovers rich -- and roty) -- wait some wealthy Avatar?
Answer monitor untiring, 'twixt the ponies twain perspiring!"
"Faint heart never won fair lady," creaked the straining tonga-bar.

"Can I tell you ere you ask Her?" pounded slow the tonga-bar.

Last, the Tara Devi turning showed the lights of Simla burning,
Lit my little lazy yearning to a fiercer flame by far.

As below the Mall we jingled, through my very heart it tingled --
Did the iterated order of the threshing tonga-bar --
Truy your luck -- you can't do better!" twanged the loosened
tongar-bar.

AN OLD SONG

So long as 'neath the Kalka hills
  The tonga-horn shall ring,
So long as down the Solon dip
  The hard-held ponies swing,
So long as Tara Devi sees
  The lights of Simla town,
So long as Pleasure calls us up,
  Or Duty drivese us down,
    If you love me as I love you
    What pair so happy as we two?

So long as Aces take the King,
  Or backers take the bet,
So long as debt leads men to wed,
  Or marriage leads to debt,
So long as little luncheons, Love,
  And scandal hold their vogue,
While there is sport at Annandale
  Or whisky at Jutogh,
    If you love me as I love you
    What knife can cut our love in two?

So long as down the rocking floor
  The raving polka spins,
So long as Kitchen Lancers spur
  The maddened violins,
So long as through the whirling smoke
  We hear the oft-told tale --
"Twelve hundred in the Lotteries,"
  And Whatshername for sale?
    If you love me as I love you
    We'll play the game and win it too.

So long as Lust or Lucre tempt
  Straight riders from the course,
So long as with each drink we pour
  Black brewage of Remorse,
So long as those unloaded guns
  We keep beside the bed,
Blow off, by obvious accident,
  The lucky owner's head,
    If you love me as I love you
    What can Life kill of Death undo?

So long as Death 'twixt dance and dance
  Chills best and bravest blood,
And drops the reckless rider down
  The rotten, rain-soaked khud,
So long as rumours from the North
  Make loving wives afraid,
So long as Burma takes the boy
  Or typhoid kills the maid,
    If you love me as I love you
    What knife can cut our love in two?

By all that lights our daily life
  Or works our lifelong woe,
From Boileaugunge to Simla Downs
  And those grim glades below,
Where, heedless of the flying hoof
  And clamour overhead,
Sleep, with the grey langur for guard
  Our very scornful Dead,
    If you love me as I love you
    All Earth is servant to us two!

By Docket, Billetdoux, and File,
  By Mountain, Cliff, and Fir,
By Fan and Sword and Office-box,
  By Corset, Plume, and Spur
By Riot, Revel, Waltz, and War,
  By Women, Work, and Bills,
By all the life that fizzes in
  The everlasting Hills,
    If you love me as I love you
    What pair so happy as we two?

CERTAIN MAXIMS OF HAFIZ

                                I.

If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say?
"Lo! She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me to-day!"

                                II.

Yea, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
If he borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent. per anuum.

                                III.

Blister we not for bursati? So when the heart is vexed,
The pain of one maiden's refusal is drowned in the pain of the
next.

                                IV.

The temper of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's
tune --
Which of the three will you trust at the end of an Indian June?

                                 V.

Who are the rulers of Ind -- to whom shall we bow the knee?
Make your peace with the women, and men will make you L. G.

                                 VI.

Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash?
  Does grass clothe a new-built wall?
Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?

                                 VII.

If She grow suddenly gracious -- reflect. Is it all for thee?
The black-buck is stalked through the bullock, and Man through
jealousy.

                                 VIII.

Seek not for favor of women. So shall you find it indeed.

Does not the boar break cover just when you're lighting a weed?

                                  IX.
If He play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and
gold,
Take his money, my son, praising Allah. The kid was ordained to
be sold.

                                   X.

With a "weed" amoung men or horses verily this is the best,
That you work him in office or dog-cart lightly -- but give him no
rest.

                                   XI.

Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and
carriage;
But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thorn-bit of
Marriage.

                                   XII.

As the thriless gold of the babul, so is the gold that we spend
On a derby Sweep, or our neighbor's wife, or the horse that we buy
from a friend.

                                   XIII.

The ways of man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame
To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling or racing that
same.

                                    XIV.

In public Her face turneth to thee, and pleasant Her smile when ye
meet.

It is ill. The cold rocks of El-Gidar smile thus on the waves at their
feet.

In public Her face is averted, with anger She nameth thy name.

It is well. Was there ever a loser content with the loss of the game?

                                     XV.

If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips are sealed,
And the Brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret
revealed.

If She have written a letter, delay not an instant, but burn it.

Tear it to pieces, O Fool, and the wind to her mate shall return it!
If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear,
Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.

                                     XVI.
My Son, if a maiden deny thee and scufflingly bid thee give o'er,

Yet lip meets with lip at the last word -- get out!
  She has been there before.

They are pecked on the ear and the chin and the nose who are
lacking in lore.

                                     XVII.

If we fall in the race, though we win, the hoff-slide is scarred on
the course.

Though Allah and Earth pardon Sin, remaineth forever Remorse.

                                     XVIII.

"By all I am misunderstood!" if the Matron shall say, or the Maid:
"Alas! I do not understand," my son, be thou nowise afraid.

In vain in the sight of the Bird is the net of the Fowler displayed.

                                       XIX.

My son, if I, Hafiz, the father, take hold of thy knees in my pain,
Demanding thy name on stamped paper, one day or one hour --
refrain.

Are the links of thy fetters so light that thou cravest another man's
chain?

THE GRAVE OF THE HUNDERED HEAD

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
  Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
  A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
  Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
  Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
  Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
  And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
  Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
  Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
  As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,
  A blanket over his face --
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
  The men of an alien race --
They made a samadh in his honor,
  A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,
  They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
  Should go to his God in state;
With fifty file of Burman
  To open him Heaven's gate.

The men of the First Shikaris
  Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
  The village of Pabengmay --
A jingal covered the clearing,
  Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
  Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
  Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
  With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris
  Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
  On to the howling crew.

The Jemadar's flanking-party
  Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,
  Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
  Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shickaris
  Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket
  Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village --
  The village of Pabengmay,
And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
  Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies
  High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
  Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
  Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
  Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
  The head of his son below,
With the sword and the peacock-banner
  That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
  Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris --
  The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
  Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
  A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
  And Sniders squibbed no more;
    For he Burmans said
    That a kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads five score.

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
  Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
  A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
  Who tells how the work was done.

THE MOON OF OTHER DAYS

Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
  When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch -- alas! --
  Another evening die.

Blood-red behind the sere ferash
  She rises through the haze.

Sainted Diana! can that be
  The Moon of Other Days?

Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
  Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
  The Moon of August shone,
When arm in arm we wandered long
  Through Putney's evening haze,
And Hammersmith was Heaven beneath
  The moon of Other Days?

But Wandle's stream is Sutlej now,
  And Putney's evening haze
The dust that half a hundered kine
  Before my window raise.

Unkempt, unclean, athwart the mist
  The seething city looms,
In place of Putney's golden gorse
  The sickly babul blooms.

Glare down, old Hecate, through the dust,
  And bid the pie-dog yell,
Draw from the drain its typhoid-term,
  From each bazaar its smell;
Yea, suck the fever from the tank
  And sap my strength therewith:
Thank Heaven, you show a smiling face
  To little Kitty Smith!

THE OVERLAND MAIL
(Foot-Service to the Hills)

In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
  O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.

The woods are astir at the close of the day --
  We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.

Let the robber retreat -- let the tiger turn tail --
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!

With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
  He turns to the foot-path that heads up the hill --
The bags on his back and a cloth round his chin,
  And, tucked in his waist-belt, the Post Office bill:
"Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
Per runnger, two bags of the Overland Mail."

Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.

  Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.

Does the tempest cry "Halt"? What are tempests to him?
  The Service admits not a "but" or and "if."
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
  From level to upland, from upland to crest,
From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
  Fly the soft sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.

From rail to ravine -- to the peak from the vale --
Up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail.

There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road --
  A jingle of bells on the foot-path below --
There's a scuffle above in the monkey's abode --
  The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow.

For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail:
"In the name of the Empress the Overland Mail!"

WHAT THE PEOPLE SAID
June 21st, 1887

By the well, where the bullocks go
Silent and blind and slow --
By the field where the young corn dies
In the face of the sultry skies,
They have heard, as the dull Earth hears
The voice of the wind of an hour,
The sound of the Great Queen's voice:
"My God hath given me years,
Hath granted dominion and power:
And I bid you, O Land, rejoice."

And the ploughman settles the share
More deep in the grudging clod;
For he saith: "The wheat is my care,
And the rest is the will of God.

He sent the Mahratta spear
As He sendeth the rain,
And the Mlech, in the fated year,
Broke the spear in twain.

And was broken in turn. Who knows
How our Lords make strife?
It is good that the young wheat grows,
For the bread is Life."

Then, far and near, as the twilight drew,
Hissed up to the scornful dark
Great serpents, blazing, of red and blue,
That rose and faded, and rose anew.

That the Land might wonder and mark
"To-day is a day of days," they said,
"Make merry, O People, all!"
And the Ploughman listened and bowed his head:
"To-day and to-morrow God's will," he said,
As he trimmed the lamps on the wall.

"He sendeth us years that are good,
As He sendeth the dearth,
He giveth to each man his food,
Or Her food to the Earth.

Our Kings and our Queens are afar --
On their peoples be peace --
God bringeth the rain to the Bar,
That our cattle increase."

And the Ploughman settled the share
More deep in the sun-dried clod:
"Mogul Mahratta, and Mlech from the North,
And White Queen over the Seas --
God raiseth them up and driveth them forth
As the dust of the ploughshare flies in the breeze;
But the wheat and the cattle are all my care,
And the rest is the will of God."

THE UNDERTAKER'S HORSE
"To-tschin-shu is condemned to death.

How can he drink tea with the Executioner?"
Japanese Proverb.

The eldest son bestrides him,
And the pretty daughter rides him,
And I meet him oft o' mornings on the Course;
And there kindles in my bosom
An emotion chill and gruesome
As I canter past the Undertaker's Horse.

Neither shies he nor is restive,
But a hideously suggestive
Trot, professional and placid, he affects;
And the cadence of his hoof-beats
To my mind this grim reproof beats: --
"Mend your pace, my friend, I'm coming. Who's the next?"

Ah! stud-bred of ill-omen,
I have watched the strongest go -- men
Of pith and might and muscle -- at your heels,
Down the plantain-bordered highway,
(Heaven send it ne'er be my way!)
In a lacquered box and jetty upon wheels.

Answer, sombre beast and dreary,
Where is Brown, the young, the cheery,
Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force?
You were at that last dread dak
We must cover at a walk,
Bring them back to me, O Undertaker's Horse!

With your mane unhogged and flowing,
And your curious way of going,
And that businesslike black crimping of your tail,
E'en with Beauty on your back, Sir,
Pacing as a lady's hack, Sir,
What wonder when I meet you I turn pale?

It may be you wait your time, Beast,
Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast --
Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass --
Follow after with the others,
Where some dusky heathen smothers
Us with marigolds in lieu of English grass.

Or, perchance, in years to follow,
I shall watch your plump sides hollow,
See Carnifex (gone lame) become a corse --
See old age at last o'erpower you,
And the Station Pack devour you,
I shall chuckle then, O Undertaker's Horse!

But to insult, jibe, and quest, I've
Still the hideously suggestive
Trot that hammers out the unrelenting text,
And I hear it hard behind me
In what place soe'er I find me: --
"'Sure to catch you sooner or later. Who's the next?"

THE FALL OF JOCK GILLESPIE

This fell when dinner-time was done --
  'Twixt the first an' the second rub --
That oor mon Jock cam' hame again
  To his rooms ahist the Club.

An' syne he laughed, an' syne he sang,
  An' syne we thocht him fou,
An' syne he trumped his partner's trick,
  An' garred his partner rue.

Then up and spake an elder mon,
  That held the Spade its Ace --
God save the lad! Whence comes the licht
  "That wimples on his face?"

An' Jock he sniggered, an' Jock he smiled,
  An' ower the card-brim wunk: --
"I'm a' too fresh fra' the stirrup-peg,
  "May be that I am drunk."

"There's whusky brewed in Galashils
  "An' L. L. L. forbye;
"But never liquor lit the lowe
  "That keeks fra' oot your eye.

"There's a third o' hair on your dress-coat breast,
  "Aboon the heart a wee?"
"Oh! that is fra' the lang-haired Skye
  "That slobbers ower me."

"Oh! lang-haired Skyes are lovin' beasts,
  "An' terrier dogs are fair,
"But never yet was terrier born,
  "Wi' ell-lang gowden hair!

"There's a smirch o' pouther on your breast,
  "Below the left lappel?"
"Oh! that is fra' my auld cigar,
  "Whenas the stump-end fell."

"Mon Jock, ye smoke the Trichi coarse,
  "For ye are short o' cash,
"An' best Havanas Couldna leave
  "Sae white an' pure an ash.

"This nicht ye stopped a story braid,
  "An' stopped it wi' a curse.

"Last nicht ye told that tale yoursel' --
  "An' capped it wi' a worse!

"Oh! we're no fou! Oh! we're no fou!
  "But plainly we can ken
"Ye're fallin', fallin' fra the band
  "O' cantie single men!"

An' it fell when sirris-shaws were sere,
  An' the nichts were lang and mirk,
In braw new breeks, wi' a gowden ring,
  Or Jocke gaed to the Kirk!

ARITHMETIC ON THE FRONTIER

A great and glorious thing it is
  To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
  Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
  On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
  Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --
  A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
  Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
  No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
  Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
  Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
  Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
  The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
  To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap -- alas! as we are dear.

THE BETROTHED
"You must choose between me and your cigar."
        -- BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at -- Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must
pass.

There's peace in a Larranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away --

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown --
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty -- grey and dour and old --
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar --

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket --
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the
socket!

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a while.

Here is a mild Manila -- there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion -- bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counsellors cunning and silent -- comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths
withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of
my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stums that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and
Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the
mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider anew --
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba -- I hold to my first-sworn vows.

If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
    On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
    Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
    Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
    In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
    Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
    Made impure,
By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swamp
    Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
    Don't agree.

Once, two hundered years ago, the trader came
    Meek and tame.

Where his timid foot first halted, there he stayed,
    Till mere trade
Grew to Empire, and he sent his armies forth
    South and North
Till the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
    Was his own.

Thus the midday halt of Charnock -- more's the pity!
    Grew a City.

As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed,
    So it spread --
Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built
    On the silt --
Palace, byre, hovel -- poverty and pride --
    Side by side;
And, above the packed and pestilential town,
    Death looked down.

But the Rulers in that City by the Sea
    Turned to flee --
Fled, with each returning spring-tide from its ills
    To the Hills.

From the clammy fogs of morning, from the blaze
    Of old days,
From the sickness of the noontide, from the heat,
    Beat retreat;
For the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
    Was their own.

But the Merchant risked the perils of the Plain
    For his gain.

Now the resting-place of Charnock, 'neath the palms,
    Asks an alms,
And the burden of its lamentation is, Briefly, this:
"Because for certain months, we boil and stew,
    So should you.

Cast the Viceroy and his Council, to perspire
    In our fire!"
And for answer to the argument, in vain
    We explain
That an amateur Saint Lawrence cannot fry:
    "All must fry!"
That the Merchant risks the perils of the Plain
    For gain.

Nor can Rulers rule a house that men grow rich in,
    From its kitchen.

Let the Babu drop inflammatory hints
  In his prints;
And mature -- consistent soul -- his plan for stealing
  To Darjeeling:
Let the Merchant seek, who makes his silver pile,
    England's isle;
Let the City Charnock pitched on -- evil day!
    Go Her way.

Though the argosies of Asia at Her doors
    Heap their stores,
Though Her enterprise and energy secure
    Income sure,
Though "out-station orders punctually obeyed"
  Swell Her trade --
Still, for rule, administration, and the rest,
    Simla's best.

The End

VOLUME II BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS

BALLADS

THE BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST

     Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet,
     Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment
Seat;
     But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
     When two strong men stand face to face,
       tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the
day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.

Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
"Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?"
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar:
"If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his
pickets are.

At dusk he harries the Abazai -- at dawn he is into Bonair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue
of Jagai.

But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with
Kamal's men.

There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn
between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen."
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell
  and the head of the gallows-tree.

The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat --
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.

He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of
Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol
crack.

He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went
wide.

"Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said.  "Show now if ye can ride."
It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dustdevils go,
The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.

The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above,
But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays
with a glove.

There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn
between,
And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen.

They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up
the dawn,
The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a
new-roused fawn.

The dun he fell at a water-course -- in a woful heap fell he,
And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.

He has knocked the pistol out of his hand -- small room was there
to strive,
"'Twas only by favour of mine," quoth he, "ye rode so long alive:
There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of
tree,
But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his
knee.

If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low,
The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row:
If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high,
The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not
fly."
Lightly answered the Colonel's son:  "Do good to bird and beast,
But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a
feast.

If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away,
Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could
pay.

They will feed their horse on the standing crop,
  their men on the garnered grain,
The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are
slain.

But if thou thinkest the price be fair, -- thy brethren wait to sup,
The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn, -- howl, dog, and call them
up!
And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!"
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.

"No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf
meet.

May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with
Death?"
Lightly answered the Colonel's son:  "I hold by the blood of my
clan:
Take up the mare for my father's gift -- by God, she has carried a
man!"
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his
breast;
"We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth the
younger best.

So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain."
The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end,
"Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he;
  "will ye take the mate from a friend?"
"A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk of a
limb.

Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!"
With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a
mountain-crest --
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in
rest.

"Now here is thy master," Kamal said, "who leads a troop of the
Guides,
And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.

Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
Thy life is his -- thy fate it is to guard him with thy head.

So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are
thine,
And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the
Border-line,
And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power --
Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in
Peshawur."

They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they
found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened
bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and
fresh-cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous
Names of God.

The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun,
And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth
but one.

And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew
clear --
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the
mountaineer.

"Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son.

  "Put up the steel at your sides!
Last night ye had struck at a Border thief --
  to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!"

     Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet,
     Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment
Seat;
     But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
     When two strong men stand face to face,
       tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

THE LAST SHUTTEE

     Not many years ago a King died in one of the Rajpoot States.

     His wives, disregarding the orders of the English against Suttee,
     would have broken out of the palace had not the gates been
barred.

     But one of them, disguised as the King's favourite dancing-girl,
     passed through the line of guards and reached the pyre.  There,
     her courage failing, she prayed her cousin, a baron of the court,
     to kill her.  This he did, not knowing who she was.


Udai Chand lay sick to death
    In his hold by Gungra hill.

All night we heard the death-gongs ring
For the soul of the dying Rajpoot King,
All night beat up from the women's wing
    A cry that we could not still.


All night the barons came and went,
    The lords of the outer guard:
All night the cressets glimmered pale
On Ulwar sabre and Tonk jezail,
Mewar headstall and Marwar mail,
    That clinked in the palace yard.


In the Golden room on the palace roof
    All night he fought for air:
And there was sobbing behind the screen,
Rustle and whisper of women unseen,
And the hungry eyes of the Boondi Queen
    On the death she might not share.


He passed at dawn -- the death-fire leaped
    From ridge to river-head,
From the Malwa plains to the Abu scars:
And wail upon wail went up to the stars
Behind the grim zenana-bars,
    When they knew that the King was dead.


The dumb priest knelt to tie his mouth
    And robe him for the pyre.

The Boondi Queen beneath us cried:
"See, now, that we die as our mothers died
In the bridal-bed by our master's side!
    Out, women! -- to the fire!"

We drove the great gates home apace:
    White hands were on the sill:
But ere the rush of the unseen feet
Had reached the turn to the open street,
The bars shot down, the guard-drum beat --
    We held the dovecot still.


A face looked down in the gathering day,
    And laughing spoke from the wall:
"Oh]/e, they mourn here:  let me by --
Azizun, the  Lucknow nautch-girl, I!
When the house is rotten, the rats must fly,
    And I seek another thrall.


"For I ruled the King as ne'er did Queen, --
    To-night the Queens rule me!
Guard them safely, but let me go,
Or ever they pay the debt they owe
In scourge and torture!"  She leaped below,
    And the grim guard watched her flee.


They knew that the King had spent his soul
    On a North-bred dancing-girl:
That he prayed to a flat-nosed Lucknow god,
And kissed the ground where her feet had trod,
And doomed to death at her drunken nod,
    And swore by her lightest curl.


We bore the King to his fathers' place,
    Where the tombs of the Sun-born stand:
Where the gray apes swing, and the peacocks preen
On fretted pillar and jewelled screen,
And the wild boar couch in the house of the Queen
    On the drift of the desert sand.


The herald read his titles forth,
    We set the logs aglow:
"Friend of the English, free from fear,
Baron of Luni to Jeysulmeer,
Lord of the Desert of Bikaneer,
    King of the Jungle, -- go!"

All night the red flame stabbed the sky
    With wavering wind-tossed spears:
And out of a shattered temple crept
A woman who veiled her head and wept,
And called on the King -- but the great King slept,
    And turned not for her tears.


Small thought had he to mark the strife --
    Cold fear with hot desire --
When thrice she leaped from the leaping flame,
And thrice she beat her breast for shame,
And thrice like a wounded dove she came
    And moaned about the fire.


One watched, a bow-shot from the blaze,
    The silent streets between,
Who had stood by the King in sport and fray,
To blade in ambush or boar at bay,
And he was a baron old and gray,
    And kin to the Boondi Queen.


He said:  "O shameless, put aside
    The veil upon thy brow!
Who held the King and all his land
To the wanton will of a harlot's hand!
Will the white ash rise from the blistered brand?
    Stoop down, and call him now!"

Then she:  "By the faith of my tarnished soul,
    All things I did not well,
I had hoped to clear ere the fire died,
And lay me down by my master's side
To rule in Heaven his only bride,
    While the others howl in Hell.


"But I have felt the fire's breath,
    And hard it is to die!
Yet if I may pray a Rajpoot lord
To sully the steel of a Thakur's sword
With base-born blood of a trade abhorred," --
    And the Thakur answered, "Ay."

He drew and struck:  the straight blade drank
    The life beneath the breast.

"I had looked for the Queen to face the flame,
But the harlot dies for the Rajpoot dame --
Sister of mine, pass, free from shame,
    Pass with thy King to rest!"

The black log crashed above the white:
    The little flames and lean,
Red as slaughter and blue as steel,
That whistled and fluttered from head to heel,
Leaped up anew, for they found their meal
    On the heart of -- the Boondi Queen!

THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S MERCY

          Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.

          His mercy fills the Khyber hills -- his grace is manifold;
          He has taken toll of the North and the South --
            his glory reacheth far,
          And they tell the tale of his charity from Balkh to Kandahar.


Before the old Peshawur Gate, where Kurd and Kaffir meet,
The Governor of Kabul dealt the Justice of the Street,
And that was strait as running noose and swift as plunging knife,
Tho' he who held the longer purse might hold the longer life.


There was a hound of Hindustan had struck a Euzufzai,
Wherefore they spat upon his face and led him out to die.

It chanced the King went forth that hour when throat was bared to
knife;
The Kaffir grovelled under-hoof and clamoured for his life.


Then said the King:  "Have hope, O friend!  Yea, Death disgraced
is hard;
Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard,
Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith,
And he was honoured of the King -- the which is salt to Death;
And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains,
And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins;
And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could
bind,
The King would make him butcher to a yelping cur of Hind.


"Strike!" said the King.  "King's blood art thou --
  his death shall be his pride!"
Then louder, that the crowd might catch:  "Fear not -- his arms are
tied!"
Yar Khan drew clear the Khyber knife, and struck, and sheathed
again.

"O man, thy will is done," quoth he; "a King this dog hath slain."

          Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, to the North and the
South is sold.

          The North and the South shall open their mouth
            to a Ghilzai flag unrolled,
          When the big guns speak to the Khyber peak, and his
dog-Heratis fly:
          Ye have heard the song -- How long?  How long?
            Wolves of the Abazai!

That night before the watch was set, when all the streets were
clear,
The Governor of Kabul spoke:  "My King, hast thou no fear?
Thou knowest -- thou hast heard," -- his speech died at his master's
face.

And grimly said the Afghan King:  "I rule the Afghan race.

My path is mine -- see thou to thine -- to-night upon thy bed
Think who there be in Kabul now that clamour for thy head."

That night when all the gates were shut to City and to throne,
Within a little garden-house the King lay down alone.

Before the sinking of the moon, which is the Night of Night,
Yar Khan came softly to the King to make his honour white.

The children of the town had mocked beneath his horse's hoofs,
The harlots of the town had hailed him "butcher!" from their roofs.

But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell,
The King behind his shoulder spake:  "Dead man, thou dost not
well!
'Tis ill to jest with Kings by day and seek a boon by night;
And that thou bearest in thy hand is all too sharp to write.

But three days hence, if God be good, and if thy strength remain,
Thou shalt demand one boon of me and bless me in thy pain.

For I am merciful to all, and most of all to thee.

My butcher of the shambles, rest -- no knife hast thou for me!"

          Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief,
            holds hard by the South and the North;
          But the Ghilzai knows, ere the melting snows,
            when the swollen banks break forth,
          When the red-coats crawl to the sungar wall,
            and his Usbeg lances fail:
          Ye have heard the song -- How long?  How long?
            Wolves of the Zuka Kheyl!

They stoned him in the rubbish-field when dawn was in the sky,
According to the written word, "See that he do not die."

They stoned him till the stones were piled above him on the plain,
And those the labouring limbs displaced they tumbled back again.


One watched beside the dreary mound that veiled the battered
thing,
And him the King with laughter called the Herald of the King.


It was upon the second night, the night of Ramazan,
The watcher leaning earthward heard the message of Yar Khan.

From shattered breast through shrivelled lips broke forth the
rattling breath,
"Creature of God, deliver me from agony of Death."

They sought the King among his girls, and risked their lives
thereby:
"Protector of the Pitiful, give orders that he die!"

"Bid him endure until the day," a lagging answer came;
"The night is short, and he can pray and learn to bless my name."

Before the dawn three times he spoke, and on the day once more:
"Creature of God, deliver me, and bless the King therefor!"

They shot him at the morning prayer, to ease him of his pain,
And when he heard the matchlocks clink, he blessed the King
again.


Which thing the singers made a song for all the world to sing,
So that the Outer Seas may know the mercy of the King.


          Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told,
          He has opened his mouth to the North and the South,
            they have stuffed his mouth with gold.

          Ye know the truth of his tender ruth -- and sweet his favours
are:
          Ye have heard the song -- How long?  How long?
            from Balkh to Kandahar.

THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S JEST

When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.

Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
As the snowbound trade of the North comes down
To the market-square of Peshawur town.


In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill,
A kafila camped at the foot of the hill.

Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose,
And tent-peg answered to  hammer-nose;
And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,
Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;
And the bubbling camels beside the load
Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;
And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,
Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale;
And the tribesmen bellowed to hasten the food;
And the camp-fires twinkled by Fort Jumrood;
And there fled on the wings of the gathering dusk
A savour of camels and carpets and musk,
A murmur of voices, a reek of smoke,
To tell us the trade of the Khyber woke.


The lid of the flesh-pot chattered high,
The knives were whetted and -- then came I
To Mahbub Ali the muleteer,
Patching his bridles and counting his gear,
Crammed with the gossip of half a year.

But Mahbub Ali the kindly said,
"Better is speech when the belly is fed."
So we plunged the hand to the mid-wrist deep
In a cinnamon stew of the fat-tailed sheep,
And he who never hath tasted the food,
By Allah! he knoweth not bad from good.


We cleansed our beards of the mutton-grease,
We lay on the mats and were filled with peace,
And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south,
With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth.

Four things greater than all things are, --
Women and Horses and Power and War.

We spake of them all, but the last the most,
For I sought a word of a Russian post,
Of a shifty promise, an unsheathed sword
And a gray-coat guard on the Helmund ford.

Then Mahbub Ali lowered his eyes
In the fashion of one who is weaving lies.

Quoth he:  "Of the Russians who can say?
When the night is gathering all is gray.

But we look that the gloom of the night shall die
In the morning flush of a blood-red sky.

Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise
To warn a King of his enemies?
We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

That unsought counsel is cursed of God
Attesteth the story of Wali Dad.


"His sire was leaky of tongue and pen,
His dam was a clucking Khuttuck hen;
And the colt bred close to the vice of each,
For he carried the curse of an unstanched speech.

Therewith madness -- so that he sought
The favour of kings at the Kabul court;
And travelled, in hope of honour, far
To the line where the gray-coat squadrons are.

There have I journeyed too -- but I
Saw naught, said naught, and -- did not die!
He harked to rumour, and snatched at a breath
Of `this one knoweth' and `that one saith', --
Legends that ran from mouth to mouth
Of a gray-coat coming, and sack of the South.

These have I also heard -- they pass
With each new spring and the winter grass.


"Hot-foot southward, forgotten of God,
Back to the city ran Wali Dad,
Even to Kabul -- in full durbar
The King held talk with his Chief in War.

Into the press of the crowd he broke,
And what he had heard of the coming spoke.


"Then Gholam Hyder, the Red Chief, smiled,
As a mother might on a babbling child;
But those who would laugh restrained their breath,
When the face of the King showed dark as death.

Evil it is in full durbar
To cry to a ruler of gathering war!
Slowly he led to a peach-tree small,
That grew by a cleft of the city wall.

And he said to the boy:  `They shall praise thy zeal
So long as the red spurt follows the steel.

And the Russ is upon us even now?
Great is thy prudence -- await them, thou.

Watch from the tree.  Thou art young and strong,
Surely thy vigil is not for long.

The Russ is upon us, thy clamour ran?
Surely an hour shall bring their van.

Wait and watch.  When the host is near,
Shout aloud that my men may hear.'


"Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise
To warn a King of his enemies?
A guard was set that he might not flee --
A score of bayonets ringed the tree.

The peach-bloom fell in showers of snow,
When he shook at his death as he looked below.

By the power of God, who alone is great,
Till the seventh day he fought with his fate.

Then madness took him, and men declare
He mowed in the branches as ape and bear,
And last as a sloth, ere his body failed,
And he hung as a bat in the forks, and wailed,
And sleep the cord of his hands untied,
And he fell, and was caught on the points and died.


"Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise
To warn a King of his enemies?
We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

Of the gray-coat coming who can say?
When the night is gathering all is gray.

Two things greater than all things are,
The first is Love, and the second War.

And since we know not how War may prove,
Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love!"

THE BALLAD OF BOH DA THONE

          This is the ballad of Boh Da Thone,
          Erst a Pretender to Theebaw's throne,
          Who harried the district of Alalone:
          How he met with his fate and the V.P.P.

          At the hand of Harendra Mukerji,
          Senior Gomashta, G.B.T.


Boh Da Thone was a warrior bold:
His sword and his Snider were bossed with gold,

And the Peacock Banner his henchmen bore
Was stiff with bullion, but stiffer with gore.


He shot at the strong and he slashed at the weak
From the Salween scrub to the Chindwin teak:

He crucified noble, he sacrificed mean,
He filled old ladies with kerosene:

While over the water the papers cried,
"The patriot fights for his countryside!"

But little they cared for the Native Press,
The worn white soldiers in Khaki dress,

Who tramped through the jungle and camped in the byre,
Who died in the swamp and were tombed in the mire,

Who gave up their lives, at the Queen's Command,
For the Pride of their Race and the Peace of the Land.


Now, first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
Was Captain O'Neil of the "Black Tyrone",

And his was a Company, seventy strong,
Who hustled that dissolute Chief along.


There were lads from Galway and Louth and Meath
Who went to their death with a joke in their teeth,

And worshipped with fluency, fervour, and zeal
The mud on the boot-heels of "Crook" O'Neil.


But ever a blight on their labours lay,
And ever their quarry would vanish away,

Till the sun-dried boys of the Black Tyrone
Took a brotherly interest in Boh Da Thone:

And, sooth, if pursuit in possession ends,
The Boh and his trackers were best of friends.


The word of a scout -- a march by night --
A rush through the mist -- a scattering fight --

A volley from cover -- a corpse in the clearing --
The glimpse of a loin-cloth and heavy jade earring --

The flare of a village -- the tally of slain --
And. . .the Boh was abroad "on the raid" again!

They cursed their luck, as the Irish will,
They gave him credit for cunning and skill,

They buried their dead, they bolted their beef,
And started anew on the track of the thief

Till, in place of the "Kalends of Greece", men said,
"When Crook and his darlings come back with the head."

They had hunted the Boh from the hills to the plain --
He doubled and broke for the hills again:

They had crippled his power for rapine and raid,
They had routed him out of his pet stockade,

And at last, they came, when the Day Star tired,
To a camp deserted -- a village fired.


A black cross blistered the Morning-gold,
And the body upon it was stark and cold.


The wind of the dawn went merrily past,
The high grass bowed her plumes to the blast.


And out of the grass, on a sudden, broke
A spirtle of fire, a whorl of smoke --

And Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone
Was blessed with a slug in the ulnar-bone --
The gift of his enemy Boh Da Thone.


(Now a slug that is hammered from telegraph-wire
Is a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire.)

     .    .    .    .    .


The shot-wound festered -- as shot-wounds may
In a steaming barrack at Mandalay.


The left arm throbbed, and the Captain swore,
"I'd like to be after the Boh once more!"

The fever held him -- the Captain said,
"I'd give a hundred to look at his head!"

The Hospital punkahs creaked and whirred,
But Babu Harendra (Gomashta) heard.


He thought of the cane-brake, green and dank,
That girdled his home by the Dacca tank.


He thought of his wife and his High School son,
He thought -- but abandoned the thought -- of a gun.


His sleep was broken by visions dread
Of a shining Boh with a silver head.


He kept his counsel and went his way,
And swindled the cartmen of half their pay.


     .    .    .    .    .


And the months went on, as the worst must do,
And the Boh returned to the raid anew.


But the Captain had quitted the long-drawn strife,
And in far Simoorie had taken a wife.


And she was a damsel of delicate mould,
With hair like the sunshine and heart of gold,

And little she knew the arms that embraced
Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist:

And little she knew that the loving lips
Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse,

And the eye that lit at her lightest breath
Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death.


(For these be matters a man would hide,
As a general rule, from an innocent Bride.)

And little the Captain thought of the past,
And, of all men, Babu Harendra last.


*    *     *    *    *    *

But slow, in the sludge of the Kathun road,
The Government Bullock Train toted its load.


Speckless and spotless and shining with -ghee-,
In the rearmost cart sat the Babu-jee.


And ever a phantom before him fled
Of a scowling Boh with a silver head.


Then the lead-cart stuck, though the coolies slaved,
And the cartmen flogged and the escort raved;

And out of the jungle, with yells and squeals,
Pranced Boh Da Thone, and his gang at his heels!

Then belching blunderbuss answered back
The Snider's snarl and the carbine's crack,

And the blithe revolver began to sing
To the blade that twanged on the locking-ring,

And the brown flesh blued where the bay'net kissed,
As the steel shot back with a wrench and a twist,

And the great white bullocks with onyx eyes
Watched the souls of the dead arise,

And over the smoke of the fusillade
The Peacock Banner staggered and swayed.


Oh, gayest of scrimmages man may see
Is a well-worked rush on the G.B.T.!

The Babu shook at the horrible sight,
And girded his ponderous loins for flight,

But Fate had ordained that the Boh should start
On a lone-hand raid of the rearmost cart,

And out of that cart, with a bellow of woe,
The Babu fell -- flat on the top of the Boh!

For years had Harendra served the State,
To the growth of his purse and the girth of his -p]^et-.


There were twenty stone, as the tally-man knows,
On the broad of the chest of this best of Bohs.


And twenty stone from a height discharged
Are bad for a Boh with a spleen enlarged.


Oh, short was the struggle -- severe was the shock --
He dropped like a bullock -- he lay like a block;

And the Babu above him, convulsed with fear,
Heard the labouring life-breath hissed out in his ear.


And thus in a fashion undignified
The princely pest of the Chindwin died.


     .    .    .    .    .


Turn now to Simoorie where, lapped in his ease,
The Captain is petting the Bride on his knees,

Where the -whit- of the bullet, the wounded man's scream
Are mixed as the mist of some devilish dream --

Forgotten, forgotten the sweat of the shambles
Where the hill-daisy blooms and the gray monkey gambols,

From the sword-belt set free and released from the steel,
The Peace of the Lord is with Captain O'Neil.


     .    .    .    .    .


Up the hill to Simoorie -- most patient of drudges --
The bags on his shoulder, the mail-runner trudges.


"For Captain O'Neil, -Sahib-.  One hundred and ten
Rupees to collect on delivery."
                                 Then

(Their breakfast was stopped while the screw-jack and hammer
Tore waxcloth, split teak-wood, and chipped out the dammer;)

Open-eyed, open-mouthed, on the napery's snow,
With a crash and a thud, rolled -- the Head of the Boh!

And gummed to the scalp was a letter which ran: --
               "IN FIELDING FORCE SERVICE.

                    -Encampment-,
th Jan.


"Dear Sir, -- I have honour to send, -as you said-,
For final approval (see under) Boh's Head;

"Was took by myself in most bloody affair.

By High Education brought pressure to bear.


"Now violate Liberty, time being bad,
To mail V.P.P. (rupees hundred)  Please add

"Whatever Your Honour can pass.  Price of Blood
Much cheap at one hundred, and children want food;

"So trusting Your Honour will somewhat retain
True love and affection for Govt. Bullock Train,

"And show awful kindness to satisfy me,
        I am,
            Graceful Master,
                          Your
                            H. MUKERJI."

     .    .    .    .    .


As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake's power,
As the smoker's eye fills at the opium hour,

As a horse reaches up to the manger above,
As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love,

From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow,
The Captain bent down to the Head of the Boh.


And e'en as he looked on the Thing where It lay
'Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins' array,

The freed mind fled back to the long-ago days --
The hand-to-hand scuffle -- the smoke and the blaze --

The forced march at night and the quick rush at dawn --
The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn --

The stench of the marshes -- the raw, piercing smell
When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell --

The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood
Where the black crosses hung o'er the Kuttamow flood.


As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide
The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,

Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year,
When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.


As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water,
In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter,

And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life
Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife.


For she who had held him so long could not hold him --
Though a four-month Eternity should have controlled him --

But watched the twin Terror -- the head turned to head --
The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red --

The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to
Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to.


But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing,
And muttered aloud, "So you kept that jade earring!"

Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend,
"Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end."

     .    .    .    .    .


The visions departed, and Shame followed Passion: --
"He took what I said in this horrible fashion,

"-I'll- write to Harendra!"  With language unsainted
The Captain came back to the Bride. . .who had fainted.


     .    .    .    .    .


And this is a fiction?  No.  Go to Simoorie
And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri,

A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin --
She's always about on the Mall of a mornin' --

And you'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced,
This:  -Gules- upon -argent-, a Boh's Head, -erased!-

THE LAMENT OF THE BORDER CATTLE THIEF

O woe is me for the merry life
 I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
 That weeps at Shalimar.


They have taken away my long jezail,
 My shield and sabre fine,
And heaved me into the Central jail
 For lifting of the kine.


The steer may low within the byre,
 The Jat may tend his grain,
But there'll be neither loot nor fire
 Till I come back again.


And God have mercy on the Jat
 When once my fetters fall,
And Heaven defend the farmer's hut
 When I am loosed from thrall.


It's woe to bend the stubborn back
 Above the grinching quern,
It's woe to hear the leg-bar clack
 And jingle when I turn!

But for the sorrow and the shame,
 The brand on me and mine,
I'll pay you back in leaping flame
 And loss of the butchered kine.


For every cow I spared before
 In charity set free,
If I may reach my hold once more
 I'll reive an honest three.


For every time I raised the low
 That scared the dusty plain,
By sword and cord, by torch and tow
 I'll light the land with twain!

Ride hard, ride hard to Abazai,
 Young -Sahib- with the yellow hair --
Lie close, lie close as khuttucks lie,
 Fat herds below Bonair!

The one I'll shoot at twilight-tide,
 At dawn I'll drive the other;
The black shall mourn for hoof and hide,
 The white man for his brother.


'Tis war, red war, I'll give you then,
 War till my sinews fail;
For the wrong you have done to a chief of men,
 And a thief of the Zukka Kheyl.


And if I fall to your hand afresh
 I give you leave for the sin,
That you cram my throat with the foul pig's flesh,
 And swing me in the skin!

THE RHYME OF THE THREE CAPTAINS

     This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the
notorious
     Paul Jones, the American pirate.  It is founded on fact.



   . . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains
lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet -- the bravest of them all.

Their good guns guarded their great gray sides
  that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.

Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a
Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the
Eastern seas.

Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.

"I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the
Law ye boast
If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian
coast?
Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in
a bunk,
We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.

There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the
weight he bore,
And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the
Nore.

He would not fly the Rovers' flag -- the bloody or the black,
But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.

He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew -- he swore it was
only a loan;
But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of
my own.

He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green
unripened pine;
He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
He has taken my grinning heathen gods -- and what should he want
o' these?
My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his
boats;
He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg
oats.

I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he
lied.

Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own
yard-arm;
I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with
a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking
dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with
the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side,
  and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo
  that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown,
  where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's
claws!
He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
For he carries the taint of a musky ship -- the reek of the slaver's
dhow!"
The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and
cold,
And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted
hold,
And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to
scuttle-butt: --
"Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth
were cut.

Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth
thus:
He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has
boarded us.

We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar -- we know that his
price is fair,
And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off
Finisterre.

And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than
you,
We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold
him true."
The skipper called to the tall taffrail: -- "And what is that to me?
Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three?
Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o'
the Line?
He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as
mine.

There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in,
But we do not steal the niggers' meal, for that is a nigger's sin.

Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his
wheel?
Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers?
  'Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?"
The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,
For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.

But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began:
--
"We have heard a tale of a -- foreign sail, but he is a
merchantman."
The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn
Spoon: --
"'Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!"
By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air: --
"We have sold our spars to the merchantman -- we know that his
price is fair."
The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm:
--
"They ha' rigged him a Joseph's jury-coat to keep his honour
warm."
The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.

Masthead -- masthead, the signal sped by the line o' the British
craft;
The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and
laughed: --
"It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all -- we'll out to the seas again --
Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his
grapnel-chain.

It's fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea,
  and the swing of the unbought brine --
We'll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o'
the Line:
Till we come as a ship o' the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the
sheer,
Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer;
Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty,
Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.

Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam -- we stand on the
outward tack,
We are paid in the coin of the white man's trade --
  the bezant is hard, ay, and black.

The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the
Orang-Laut
How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a
Christian port;
How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great
Captains there
Shall dip their flag to a slaver's rag -- to show that his trade is fair!"

The Ballad Of The Clampherdown"

It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-
 Would sweep the Channel clean,
Wherefore she kept her hatches close
When the merry Channel chops arose,
 To save the bleached marine.


She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
 And a great stern-gun beside;
They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
They racked their stays and stanchions free
 In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.


It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-,
 Fell in with a cruiser light
That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
And a pair o' heels wherewith to run
 From the grip of a close-fought fight.


She opened fire at seven miles --
 As ye shoot at a bobbing cork --
And once she fired and twice she fired,
Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
 That lolls upon the stalk.


"Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
 The deck-beams break below,
'Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
And botch the shattered plates again."
 And he answered, "Make it so."

She opened fire within the mile --
 As ye shoot at the flying duck --
And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,
With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue,
 And the great stern-turret stuck.


"Captain, the turret fills with steam,
 The feed-pipes burst below --
You can hear the hiss of the helpless ram,
You can hear the twisted runners jam."
 And he answered, "Turn and go!"

It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-,
 And grimly did she roll;
Swung round to take the cruiser's fire
As the White Whale faces the Thresher's ire
 When they war by the frozen Pole.


"Captain, the shells are falling fast,
 And faster still fall we;
And it is not meet for English stock
To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock
 The death they cannot see."

"Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B.,
 We drift upon her beam;
We dare not ram, for she can run;
And dare ye fire another gun,
 And die in the peeling steam?"

It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-
 That carried an armour-belt;
But fifty feet at stern and bow
Lay bare as the paunch of the purser's sow,
 To the hail of the -Nordenfeldt-.


"Captain, they hack us through and through;
 The chilled steel bolts are swift!
We have emptied the bunkers in open sea,
Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be."
 And he answered, "Let her drift."

It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-,
 Swung round upon the tide,
Her two dumb guns glared south and north,
And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth,
 And she ground the cruiser's side.


"Captain, they cry, the fight is done,
 They bid you send your sword."
And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow.

They have asked for the steel.  They shall have it now;
 Out cutlasses and board!"

It was our war-ship -Clampherdown-
 Spewed up four hundred men;
And the scalded stokers yelped delight,
As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight
 Stamp o'er their steel-walled pen.


They cleared the cruiser end to end,
 From conning-tower to hold.

They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet;
They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet,
 As it was in the days of old.


It was the sinking -Clampherdown-
 Heaved up her battered side --
And carried a million pounds in steel,
To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel,
 And the scour of the Channel tide.


It was the crew of the -Clampherdown-
 Stood out to sweep the sea,
On a cruiser won from an ancient foe,
As it was in the days of long ago,
 And as it still shall be.

THE BALLAD OF THE "BOLIVAR"

     Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
     Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
     Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away --
     We that took the -Bolivar- out across the Bay!

We put out from Sunderland loaded down with rails;
 We put back to Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted;
We put out from Sunderland -- met the winter gales --
 Seven days and seven nights to the Start we drifted.

    Racketing her rivets loose, smoke-stack white as snow,
    All the coals adrift adeck, half the rails below,
    Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray --
    Out we took the -Bolivar-, out across the Bay!

One by one the Lights came up, winked and let us by;
 Mile by mile we waddled on, coal and fo'c'sle short;
Met a blow that laid us down, heard a bulkhead fly;
 Left the -Wolf- behind us with a two-foot list to port.

    Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul;
    Clanging like a smithy-shop after every roll;
    Just a funnel and a mast lurching through the spray --
    So we threshed the -Bolivar- out across the Bay!

'Felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she'd break;
 Wondered every time she raced if she'd stand the shock;
Heard the seas like drunken men pounding at her strake;
 Hoped the Lord 'ud keep his thumb on the plummer-block.

    Banged against the iron decks, bilges choked with coal;
    Flayed and frozen foot and hand, sick of heart and soul;
    Last we prayed she'd buck herself into judgment Day --
    Hi! we cursed the -Bolivar- knocking round the Bay!

O her nose flung up to sky, groaning to be still --
 Up and down and back we went, never time for breath;
Then the money paid at Lloyd's caught her by the heel,
 And the stars ran round and round dancin' at our death.

    Aching for an hour's sleep, dozing off between;
    'Heard the rotten rivets draw when she took it green;
    'Watched the compass chase its tail like a cat at play --
    That was on the -Bolivar-, south across the Bay.


Once we saw between the squalls, lyin' head to swell --
 Mad with work and weariness, wishin' they was we --
Some damned Liner's lights go by like a long hotel;
 Cheered her from the -Bolivar- swampin' in the sea.

    Then a grayback cleared us out, then the skipper laughed;
    "Boys, the wheel has gone to Hell -- rig the winches aft!
    Yoke the kicking rudder-head -- get her under way!"
    So we steered her, pulley-haul, out across the Bay!

Just a pack o' rotten plates puttied up with tar,
In we came, an' time enough, 'cross Bilbao Bar.

    Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we
    Euchred God Almighty's storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea!

     Seven men from all the world, back to town again,
     Rollin' down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
     Seven men from out of Hell.  Ain't the owners gay,
     'Cause we took the "Bolivar" safe across the Bay?

THE ENGLISH FLAG

     Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
     remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
     when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
     and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY
PAPERS.


Winds of the World, give answer!  They are whimpering to and fro
--
And what should they know of England who only England know?
--
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English
Flag!

Must we borrow a clout from the Boer -- to plaster anew with dirt?
An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.

What is the Flag of England?  Winds of the World, declare!

The North Wind blew: -- "From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards
go;
I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
And the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.


"I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit
passed.


"The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
What is the Flag of England?  Ye have but my bergs to dare,
Ye have but my drifts to conquer.  Go forth, for it is there!"

The South Wind sighed: -- "From the Virgins my mid-sea course
was ta'en
Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed
breakers croon
Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.


"Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
I waked the palms to laughter -- I tossed the scud in the breeze --
Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.


"I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the
Horn;
I have chased it north to the Lizard -- ribboned and rolled and torn;
I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.


"My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.

What is the Flag of England?  Ye have but my reefs to dare,
Ye have but my seas to furrow.  Go forth, for it is there!"

The East Wind roared: -- "From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I
come,
And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.

Look -- look well to your shipping!  By the breath of my mad
typhoon
I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at
Kowloon!

"The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
I raped your richest roadstead -- I plundered Singapore!
I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.


"Never the lotus closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake
--
Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid --
Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.


"The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows,
The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.

What is the Flag of England?  Ye have but my sun to dare,
Ye have but my sands to travel.  Go forth, for it is there!"

The West Wind called: -- "In squadrons the thoughtless galleons
fly
That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.

They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my
wrath.


"I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole,
They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll,
For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to
death.


"But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.


"The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it -- the frozen dews have
kissed --
The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.

What is the Flag of England?  Ye have but my breath to dare,
Ye have but my waves to conquer.  Go forth, for it is there!"

"CLEARED"
(In Memory of a Commission)

HELP for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit burt,
Help  for  an  honorable  clan  sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, O listen to my song,
The honorable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.

Their noble names were mentioned-
O the burning black disgrace!-
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,

And "coruscating innocence" the learned Judges gave it.

Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's
knife,
The honorable gentlemen deplored the loss of life;
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burk and shirk and
snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!

Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like phoenixes from Phoenix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas-give word to Erin now,
Her honorable gentlemen are cleared-and this is how:

They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with council's best advice,
But-sure it keeps their honor white- the learned Court believes
They never gave a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.

They ever told the ramping crowd to card a woman's hide,
They never marked a man for death-what fault of theirs he died?-
They only said "intimidate," and talked and went away-
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they!

Their sin it was that fed the fire-small blame to them that heard
The "bhoys" get drunk on rhetoric, and madden at the word-
They knew whom they were talking at, if they were Irish too,
The gentlemen that lied in Court. they knew and well thev knew.

They only took the Judas-gold from Fenians out of jail,
They only fawned for dollars on the blood-dyed Clan-na-Gael.

If black is black or white is white, ill black and white it's down,
Tbey're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.

"Cleared," honorable gentlemen.  Be thankful it's no more:
The widow's curse is on your house, the dead are at your door.

Dn you the shame of open shame, on you from North to South
The band of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.

"Less black than we were painted"?-Faith, no word of black was
said;
Ihe lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red.

It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff,
And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe it off.

Hold up those hands of innocence-go, scare your sheep, together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old
bell-weather;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!

"The charge is old"?-As old as Cain-as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments, have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke the words that sped the shot-the curse be on you all.

"Our friends believe"? Of course they do-as sheltered women may;
But have they seen the shrieking soul ripped from the quivering
clay?
They I-If their own front door is shut, they'll swear the whole
world's warm;
What do they know of dread of death or hanging fear of harm?

The secret half a country keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the "bhoys" have heard your talk-what do they know of
these?

But you-you know-ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's
low.

Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!

My soul!  I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are
cleared.

Cleared-you that "lost" the League accounts-go, guard our honor
still,
Go, help to make our country's laws that broke God's laws at will-
One band stuck out behind the back, to signal "strike again";
The other on your dress-shirt front to show your heart is dane,

If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
You're only traitors to the Queen and but rebels to the Crown
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends:
We are not ruled by murderers, only-by their friends,

AN IMPERIAL RESCRIPT

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be
set.


The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West
they drew --
Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe.

And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown
from the soil,
And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil.


And the young King said: -- "I have found it, the road to the rest ye
seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall halt for the
weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the
line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of brotherhood --
sign!"

The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed thereby,
And a wail went up from the peoples: -- "Ay, sign -- give rest, for
we die!"
A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was cramped to
scrawl,
When -- the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran clear through the
council-hall.


And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her plain --
Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.

And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light of the vision
woke;
And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee delegate
spoke: --

"There's a girl in Jersey City who works on the telephone;
We're going to hitch our horses and dig for a house of our own,
With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through to the
top;
And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I drop."

And an English delegate thundered: -- "The weak an' the lame be
blowed!
I've a berth in the Sou'-West workshops, a home in the
Wandsworth Road;
And till the 'sociation has footed my buryin' bill,
I work for the kids an' the missus.  Pull up?  I be damned if I will!"

And over the German benches the bearded whisper ran: --
"Lager, der girls und der dollars, dey makes or dey breaks a man.

If Schmitt haf collared der dollars, he collars der girl deremit;
But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der girl from
Schmitt."

They passed one resolution: -- "Your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the
curse of Eve.

But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen,
We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen."

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held --
The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was
belled,
The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands,
The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of
Their Hands.

TOMLINSON

Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky
Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and
cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the
keys.

"Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die --
The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!"
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed
bone.

"O I have a friend on earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide,
And well would he answer all for me if he were by my side."
-- "For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair,
But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
Though we called your friend from his bed this night,
  he could not speak for you,
For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there,
For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was
bare:
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life.

"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me,
And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in
Muscovy."
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the
path,
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath.

"Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said,
  "and the tale is yet to run:
By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer -- what ha'
ye done?"
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate
before: --
"O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard
men say,
And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway."
-- "Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack!
  Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate;
There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin
Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair
within;
Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to
run,
And. . .the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you,
Tomlinson!"

     .    .    .    .    .


The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of
Hell:
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with
pain,
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again:
They may hold their path, they may leave their path,
  with never a soul to mark,
They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease
  in the Scorn of the Outer Dark.

The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the
bone,
And he yearned to the flare of Hell-Gate
  there as the light of his own hearth-stone.

The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions
drew,
But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him
through.

"Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?" said he,
"That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me?
I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn,
For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was
born.

Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high
The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die."
And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light;
And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet
The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat.

"O I had a love on earth," said he, "that kissed me to my fall,
And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all."
-- "All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair,
But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she
would not run,
For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!"
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life: --
"Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of
the Grave,
And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me
brave."
The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool: --
"Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a
brain-sick fool?
I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolthead jest ye did
That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a
grid."
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace,
For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked
Space.

"Nay, this I ha' heard," quo'  Tomlinson, "and this was noised
abroad,
And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead
French lord."
-- "Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack!
  and the tale begins afresh --
Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye
  or the sinful lust of the flesh?"
Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered, "Let me in --
For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly
sin."
The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high:
"Did ye read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said,
"Ay!"
The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran,
And he said:  "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the
guise of a man:
Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth:
There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of earth."
Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad,
As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard.

And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
And they said:  "The soul that he got from God he has bartered
clean away.

We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a
chattering wind
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him
to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own."
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and
low: --
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.

Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place,
My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face;
They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host,
And -- I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless
ghost."
The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the
flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good
name: --
"Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry:
Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson
said, "Ay!"
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from
care: --
"Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said,
  "but the roots of sin are there,
And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone.

But sinful pride has rule inside -- and mightier than my own.

Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his priest and
whore:
Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.

Ye are neither spirit nor spirk," he said; "ye are neither book nor
brute --
Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.

I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again.

Get hence, the hearse is at your door -- the grim black stallions
wait --
They bear your clay to place to-day.  Speed, lest ye come too late!
Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed -- go back with an open eye,
And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one
--
And. . .the God that you took from a printed book be with you,
Tomlinson!"

BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS

 Dedication

     To T. A.

         I have made for you a song,
         And it may be right or wrong,
     But only you can tell me if it's true;
         I have tried for to explain
         Both your pleasure and your pain,
     And, Thomas, here's my best respects to you!

         O there'll surely come a day
         When they'll give you all your pay,
     And treat you as a Christian ought to do;
         So, until that day comes round,
         Heaven keep you safe and sound,
     And, Thomas, here's my best respects to you!
R. K.

DANNY DEEVER

"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.

"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.

"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.

"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.

    For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March
play,
    The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;
    They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
    An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.


"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-Parade.

"It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold", the Colour-Sergeant said.

"What makes that front-rank man fall down?" said Files-on-Parade.

"A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun", the Colour-Sergeant said.

    They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round,
    They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground;
    An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound --
    O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!

"'Is cot was right-'and cot to mine", said Files-on-Parade.

"'E's sleepin' out an' far to-night", the Colour-Sergeant said.

"I've drunk 'is beer a score o' times", said Files-on-Parade.

"'E's drinkin' bitter beer alone", the Colour-Sergeant said.

    They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im to 'is place,
    For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' -- you must look 'im in the face;
    Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,
    While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.


"What's that so black agin' the sun?" said Files-on-Parade.

"It's Danny fightin' 'ard for life", the Colour-Sergeant said.

"What's that that whimpers over'ead?" said Files-on-Parade.

"It's Danny's soul that's passin' now", the Colour-Sergeant said.

    For they're done with Danny Deever, you can 'ear the quickstep
play,
    The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
    Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer
to-day,
    After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

TOMMY

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
    O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
    But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to
play,
    The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
    O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.


I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
    For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait
outside";
    But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
    The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
    O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.


Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

    Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer
soul?"
    But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
    The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
    O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.


We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
    While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall
be'ind",
    But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the
wind,
    There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
    O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the
wind.


You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

    For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the
brute!"
    But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
    An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
    An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

FUZZY-WUZZY
(Soudan Expeditionary Force)

We've fought with many men acrost the seas,
  An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not:
The Paythan an' the Zulu an' Burmese;
  But the Fuzzy was the finest o' the lot.

We never got a ha'porth's change of 'im:
  'E squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses,
'E cut our sentries up at Suakim,
  An' 'e played the cat an' banjo with our forces.

    So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;
    You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;
    We gives you your certificate, an' if you want it signed
    We'll come an' 'ave a romp with you whenever you're inclined.


We took our chanst among the Khyber 'ills,
  The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
  An' a Zulu impi dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
  Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say,
  But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us 'oller.

    Then 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' the missis and the kid;
    Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did.

    We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;
    But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.


'E 'asn't got no papers of 'is own,
  'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill 'e's shown
  In usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords:
When 'e's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush
  With 'is coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear,
An 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
  Will last an 'ealthy Tommy for a year.

    So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' your friends which are no
more,
    If we 'adn't lost some messmates we would 'elp you to deplore;
    But give an' take's the gospel, an' we'll call the bargain fair,
    For if you 'ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square!

'E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,
  An', before we know, 'e's 'ackin' at our 'ead;
'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive,
  An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead.

'E's a daisy, 'e's a ducky, 'e's a lamb!
  'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree,
'E's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn
  For a Regiment o' British Infantree!
    So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;
    You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;
    An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air --
    You big black boundin' beggar -- for you broke a British square!

SOLDIER, SOLDIER

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
Why don't you march with my true love?"
"We're fresh from off the ship an' 'e's maybe give the slip,
An' you'd best go look for a new love."
    New love!  True love!
    Best go look for a new love,
    The dead they cannot rise, an' you'd better dry your eyes,
    An' you'd best go look for a new love.


"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
What did you see o' my true love?"
"I seed 'im serve the Queen in a suit o' rifle-green,
An' you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
Did ye see no more o' my true love?"
"I seed 'im runnin' by when the shots begun to fly --
But you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
Did aught take 'arm to my true love?"
"I couldn't see the fight, for the smoke it lay so white --
An' you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
I'll up an' tend to my true love!"
"'E's lying on the dead with a bullet through 'is 'ead,
An' you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
I'll down an' die with my true love!"
"The pit we dug'll 'ide 'im an' the twenty men beside 'im --
An' you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
Do you bring no sign from my true love?"
"I bring a lock of 'air that 'e allus used to wear,
An' you'd best go look for a new love."

"Soldier, soldier come from the wars,
O then I know it's true I've lost my true love!"
"An' I tell you truth again -- when you've lost the feel o' pain
You'd best take me for your true love."
    True love!  New love!
    Best take 'im for a new love,
    The dead they cannot rise, an' you'd better dry your eyes,
    An' you'd best take 'im for your true love.

SCREW-GUNS

Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army
          that handles the dear little pets -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns -- the screw-guns they all love
you!
    So when we call round with a few guns,
              o' course you will know what to do -- hoo! hoo!
    Jest send in your Chief an' surrender --
              it's worse if you fights or you runs:
    You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
              but you don't get away from the guns!

They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes
where they ain't:
We'd climb up the side of a sign-board an' trust to the stick o' the
paint:
We've chivied the Naga an' Looshai, we've give the Afreedeeman
fits,
For we fancies ourselves at two thousand,
          we guns that are built in two bits -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns . . .


If a man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to
behave;
If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is
grave.

You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin'
or fuss.

D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns?
          By God, you must lather with us -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns . . .


The eagles is screamin' around us, the river's a-moanin' below,
We're clear o' the pine an' the oak-scrub,
          we're out on the rocks an' the snow,
An' the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries away to the
plains
The rattle an' stamp o' the lead-mules --
          the jinglety-jink o' the chains -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns . . .


There's a wheel on the Horns o' the Mornin',
          an' a wheel on the edge o' the Pit,
An' a drop into nothin' beneath you as straight as a beggar can spit:
With the sweat runnin' out o' your shirt-sleeves,
          an' the sun off the snow in your face,
An' 'arf o' the men on the drag-ropes
          to hold the old gun in 'er place -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns . . .


Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I climbs in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule.

The monkey can say what our road was --
          the wild-goat 'e knows where we passed.

Stand easy, you long-eared old darlin's!
          Out drag-ropes!  With shrapnel!  Hold fast -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
    For you all love the screw-guns -- the screw-guns they all love
you!
    So when we take tea with a few guns,
              o' course you will know what to do -- hoo! hoo!
    Jest send in your Chief an' surrender --
              it's worse if you fights or you runs:
    You may hide in the caves, they'll be only your graves,
              but you can't get away from the guns!

GUNGA DIN

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.

Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.

      He was "Din! Din! Din!
  You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
      Hi! slippery hitherao!
      Water, get it!  Panee lao!1
  You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.

When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!"2
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.

      It was "Din! Din! Din!
  You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
      You put some juldee3 in it
      Or I'll marrow you this minute4
  If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.

If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.

With 'is mussick,5 on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
      It was "Din! Din! Din!"
  With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.

      When the cartridges ran out,
      You could hear the front-files shout,
  "Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I shan't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.

I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.

'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green:
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.

      It was "Din! Din! Din!
  'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen;
      'E's chawin' up the ground,
      An' 'e's kickin' all around:
  For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!"

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.

'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.

So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone --
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
      Yes, Din! Din! Din!
  You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
      Though I've belted you and flayed you,
      By the livin' Gawd that made you,
  You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

1Bring water swiftly.
2Mr Atkins' equivalent for "O Brother."
3Hit you.
4bBe quick.
5Water skin.

OONTS
(Northern India Transport Train)

Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes 'im to perspire?
It isn't standin' up to charge nor lyin' down to fire;
But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' road
For the commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load.

    O the oont,1 O the oont, O the commissariat oont!
     With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes;
    We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt,
     An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks.


Wot makes the rear-guard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in,
An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?
It ain't the chanst o' being rushed by Paythans from the 'ills,
It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is bloomin' frills!
    O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy scary oont!
     A-trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm!
    We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front,
     An' when we've saved 'is bloomin' life 'e chaws our bloomin'
arm.


The 'orse 'e knows above a bit, the bullock's but a fool,
The elephant's a gentleman, the battery-mule's a mule;
But the commissariat cam-u-el, when all is said an' done,
'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan-child in one.

    O the oont, O the oont, O the Gawd-forsaken oont!
     The lumpy-'umpy 'ummin'-bird a-singin' where 'e lies,
    'E's blocked the whole division from the rear-guard to the front,
     An' when we get him up again -- the beggar goes an' dies!

'E'll gall an' chafe an' lame an' fight -- 'e smells most awful vile;
'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile;
'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through,
An' when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two.

    O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin', droppin' oont!
     When 'is long legs give from under an' 'is meltin' eye is dim,
    The tribes is up be'ind us, and the tribes is out in front --
     It ain't no jam for Tommy, but it's kites an' crows for 'im.


So when the cruel march is done, an' when the roads is blind,
An' when we sees the camp in front an' 'ears the shots be'ind,
Ho! then we strips 'is saddle off, and all 'is woes is past:
'E thinks on us that used 'im so, and gets revenge at last.

    O the oont, O the oont, O the floatin', bloatin' oont!
     The late lamented camel in the water-cut 'e lies;
    We keeps a mile be'ind 'im an' we keeps a mile in front,
     But 'e gets into the drinkin'-casks, and then o' course we dies.

1Camel-oo ispronounced like u in "bull," but by Mr. Atkins to
rhyme with "front."

LOOT

If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
 If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
 You will understand this little song o' mine.

But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
 For the same with English morals does not suit.

    (Cornet:  Toot! toot!)
W'y, they call a man a robber if 'e stuffs 'is marchin' clobber
 With the --
(Chorus)  Loo! loo!  Lulu! lulu!  Loo! loo!  Loot! loot! loot!
               Ow the loot!
               Bloomin' loot!
            That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!
             It's the same with dogs an' men,
             If you'd make 'em come again
            Clap 'em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot!
    (ff)  Whoopee!  Tear 'im, puppy!  Loo! loo! Lulu!  Loot! loot!
loot!

If you've knocked a nigger edgeways when 'e's thrustin' for your
life,
 You must leave 'im very careful where 'e fell;
An' may thank your stars an' gaiters if you didn't feel 'is knife
 That you ain't told off to bury 'im as well.

Then the sweatin' Tommies wonder as they spade the beggars
under
 Why lootin' should be entered as a crime;
So if my song you'll 'ear, I will learn you plain an' clear
 'Ow to pay yourself for fightin' overtime.

(Chorus)  With the loot, . . .


Now remember when you're 'acking round a gilded Burma god
 That 'is eyes is very often precious stones;
An' if you treat a nigger to a dose o' cleanin'-rod
 'E's like to show you everything 'e owns.

When 'e won't prodooce no more, pour some water on the floor
 Where you 'ear it answer 'ollow to the boot
    (Cornet:  Toot! toot!) --
When the ground begins to sink, shove your baynick down the
chink,
 An' you're sure to touch the --
(Chorus)  Loo! loo!  Lulu!   Loot! loot! loot!
               Ow the loot! . . .


When from 'ouse to 'ouse you're 'unting, you must always work in
pairs --
 It 'alves the gain, but safer you will find --
For a single man gets bottled on them twisty-wisty stairs,
 An' a woman comes and clobs 'im from be'ind.

When you've turned 'em inside out, an' it seems beyond a doubt
 As if there weren't enough to dust a flute
    (Cornet:  Toot! toot!) --
Before you sling your 'ook, at the 'ousetops take a look,
 For it's underneath the tiles they 'ide the loot.

(Chorus)  Ow the loot! . . .


You can mostly square a Sergint an' a Quartermaster too,
 If you only take the proper way to go;
I could never keep my pickin's, but I've learned you all I knew --
 An' don't you never say I told you so.

An' now I'll bid good-bye, for I'm gettin' rather dry,
 An' I see another tunin' up to toot
    (Cornet:  Toot! toot!) --
So 'ere's good-luck to those that wears the Widow's clo'es,
 An' the Devil send 'em all they want o' loot!
(Chorus)     Yes, the loot,
               Bloomin' loot!
            In the tunic an' the mess-tin an' the boot!
             It's the same with dogs an' men,
             If you'd make 'em come again
   (fff)  Whoop 'em forward with a Loo! loo!  Lulu!  Loot! loot!
loot!
            Heeya!  Sick 'im, puppy!  Loo! loo!  Lulu!  Loot! loot! loot!

'SNARLEYOW'

This 'appened in a battle to a batt'ry of the corps
Which is first among the women an' amazin' first in war;
An' what the bloomin' battle was I don't remember now,
But Two's off-lead 'e answered to the name o' Snarleyow.

    Down in the Infantry, nobody cares;
    Down in the Cavalry, Colonel 'e swears;
    But down in the lead with the wheel at the flog
    Turns the bold Bombardier to a little whipped dog!

They was movin' into action, they was needed very sore,
To learn a little schoolin' to a native army corps,
They 'ad nipped against an uphill, they was tuckin' down the brow,
When a tricky, trundlin' roundshot give the knock to Snarleyow.


They cut 'im loose an' left 'im -- 'e was almost tore in two --
But he tried to follow after as a well-trained 'orse should do;
'E went an' fouled the limber, an' the Driver's Brother squeals:
"Pull up, pull up for Snarleyow -- 'is head's between 'is 'eels!"

The Driver 'umped 'is shoulder, for the wheels was goin' round,
An' there ain't no "Stop, conductor!" when a batt'ry's changin'
ground;
Sez 'e:  "I broke the beggar in, an' very sad I feels,
But I couldn't pull up, not for you -- your 'ead between your 'eels!"

'E 'adn't 'ardly spoke the word, before a droppin' shell
A little right the batt'ry an' between the sections fell;
An' when the smoke 'ad cleared away, before the limber wheels,
There lay the Driver's Brother with 'is 'ead between 'is 'eels.


Then sez the Driver's Brother, an' 'is words was very plain,
"For Gawd's own sake get over me, an' put me out o' pain."
They saw 'is wounds was mortial, an' they judged that it was best,
So they took an' drove the limber straight across 'is back an' chest.


The Driver 'e give nothin' 'cept a little coughin' grunt,
But 'e swung 'is 'orses 'andsome when it came to "Action Front!"
An' if one wheel was juicy, you may lay your Monday head
'Twas juicier for the niggers when the case begun to spread.


The moril of this story, it is plainly to be seen:
You 'avn't got no families when servin' of the Queen --
You 'avn't got no brothers, fathers, sisters, wives, or sons --
If you want to win your battles take an' work your bloomin' guns!
    Down in the Infantry, nobody cares;
    Down in the Cavalry, Colonel 'e swears;
    But down in the lead with the wheel at the flog
    Turns the bold Bombardier to a little whipped dog!

THE WIDOW AT WINDSOR

'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
 With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome,
 An' she pays us poor beggars in red.

    (Ow, poor beggars in red!)
There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,
 There's 'er mark on the medical stores --
An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind
 That takes us to various wars.

    (Poor beggars! -- barbarious wars!)
       Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor,
        An' 'ere's to the stores an' the guns,
       The men an' the 'orses what makes up the forces
        O' Missis Victorier's sons.

       (Poor beggars! Victorier's sons!)

Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,
 For 'alf o' Creation she owns:
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,
 An' we've salted it down with our bones.

    (Poor beggars! -- it's blue with our bones!)
Hands off o' the sons o' the Widow,
 Hands off o' the goods in 'er shop,
For the Kings must come down an' the Emperors frown
 When the Widow at Windsor says "Stop"!
    (Poor beggars! -- we're sent to say "Stop"!)
       Then 'ere's to the Lodge o' the Widow,
        From the Pole to the Tropics it runs --
       To the Lodge that we tile with the rank an' the file,
        An' open in form with the guns.

       (Poor beggars! -- it's always they guns!)

We 'ave 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor,
 It's safest to let 'er alone:
For 'er sentries we stand by the sea an' the land
 Wherever the bugles are blown.

    (Poor beggars! -- an' don't we get blown!)
Take 'old o' the Wings o' the Mornin',
 An' flop round the earth till you're dead;
But you won't get away from the tune that they play
 To the bloomin' old rag over'ead.

    (Poor beggars! -- it's 'ot over'ead!)
       Then 'ere's to the sons o' the Widow,
        Wherever, 'owever they roam.

       'Ere's all they desire, an' if they require
        A speedy return to their 'ome.

       (Poor beggars! -- they'll never see 'ome!)

BELTS

There was a row in Silver Street that's near to Dublin Quay,
Between an Irish regiment an' English cavalree;
It started at Revelly an' it lasted on till dark:
The first man dropped at Harrison's, the last forninst the Park.

    For it was: -- "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's one for you!"
    An' it was "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's done for you!"
    O buckle an' tongue
    Was the song that we sung
    From Harrison's down to the Park!

There was a row in Silver Street -- the regiments was out,
They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!"
That drew them like a hornet's nest -- we met them good an' large,
The English at the double an' the Irish at the charge.

    Then it was: -- "Belts . . .


There was a row in Silver Street -- an' I was in it too;
We passed the time o' day, an' then the belts went whirraru!
I misremember what occurred, but subsequint the storm
A Freeman's Journal Supplemint was all my uniform.

    O it was: -- "Belts . . .


There was a row in Silver Street -- they sent the Polis there,
The English were too drunk to know, the Irish didn't care;
But when they grew impertinint we simultaneous rose,
Till half o' them was Liffey mud an' half was tatthered clo'es.

    For it was: -- "Belts . . .


There was a row in Silver Street -- it might ha' raged till now,
But some one drew his side-arm clear, an' nobody knew how;
'Twas Hogan took the point an' dropped; we saw the red blood run:
An' so we all was murderers that started out in fun.

    While it was: -- "Belts . . .


There was a row in Silver Street -- but that put down the shine,
Wid each man whisperin' to his next:  "'Twas never work o' mine!"
We went away like beaten dogs, an' down the street we bore him,
The poor dumb corpse that couldn't tell the bhoys were sorry for
him.

    When it was: -- "Belts . . .


There was a row in Silver Street -- it isn't over yet,
For half of us are under guard wid punishments to get;
'Tis all a merricle to me as in the Clink I lie:
There was a row in Silver Street -- begod, I wonder why!
    But it was: -- "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's one for you!"
    An' it was "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's done for you!"
    O buckle an' tongue
    Was the song that we sung
    From Harrison's down to the Park!

THE YOUNG BRITISH SOLDIER

When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
   Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.

      Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
      Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
      Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
         So-oldier of the Queen!

Now all you recruities what's drafted to-day,
You shut up your rag-box an' 'ark to my lay,
An' I'll sing you a soldier as far as I may:
   A soldier what's fit for a soldier.

      Fit, fit, fit for a soldier . . .


First mind you steer clear o' the grog-sellers' huts,
For they sell you Fixed Bay'nets that rots out your guts --
Ay, drink that 'ud eat the live steel from your butts --
   An' it's bad for the young British soldier.

      Bad, bad, bad for the soldier . . .


When the cholera comes -- as it will past a doubt --
Keep out of the wet and don't go on the shout,
For the sickness gets in as the liquor dies out,
   An' it crumples the young British soldier.

      Crum-, crum-, crumples the soldier . . .


But the worst o' your foes is the sun over'ead:
You must wear your 'elmet for all that is said:
If 'e finds you uncovered 'e'll knock you down dead,
   An' you'll die like a fool of a soldier.

      Fool, fool, fool of a soldier . . .


If you're cast for fatigue by a sergeant unkind,
Don't grouse like a woman nor crack on nor blind;
Be handy and civil, and then you will find
   That it's beer for the young British soldier.

      Beer, beer, beer for the soldier . . .


Now, if you must marry, take care she is old --
A troop-sergeant's widow's the nicest I'm told,
For beauty won't help if your rations is cold,
   Nor love ain't enough for a soldier.

      'Nough, 'nough, 'nough for a soldier . . .


If the wife should go wrong with a comrade, be loath
To shoot when you catch 'em -- you'll swing, on my oath! --
Make 'im take 'er and keep 'er:  that's Hell for them both,
   An' you're shut o' the curse of a soldier.

      Curse, curse, curse of a soldier . . .


When first under fire an' you're wishful to duck,
Don't look nor take 'eed at the man that is struck,
Be thankful you're livin', and trust to your luck
   And march to your front like a soldier.

      Front, front, front like a soldier . . .


When 'arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch;
She's human as you are -- you treat her as sich,
   An' she'll fight for the young British soldier.

      Fight, fight, fight for the soldier . . .


When shakin' their bustles like ladies so fine,
The guns o' the enemy wheel into line,
Shoot low at the limbers an' don't mind the shine,
   For noise never startles the soldier.

      Start-, start-, startles the soldier . . .


If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
   And wait for supports like a soldier.

      Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .


When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
   An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
         So-oldier of the Queen!

MANDALAY

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to
Mandalay!"
    Come you back to Mandalay,
    Where the old Flotilla lay:
    Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to
Mandalay?
    On the road to Mandalay,
    Where the flyin'-fishes play,
    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's
Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
    Bloomin' idol made o'mud --
    Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd --
    Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
    On the road to Mandalay . . .


When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!"
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin' my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.

    Elephints a-pilin' teak
    In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
    Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
    On the road to Mandalay . . .


But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."
    No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
    But them spicy garlic smells,
    An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
    On the road to Mandalay . . .


I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
    Beefy face an' grubby 'and --
    Law! wot do they understand?
    I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
    On the road to Mandalay . . .


Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a
thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
    On the road to Mandalay,
    Where the old Flotilla lay,
    With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
    On the road to Mandalay,
    Where the flyin'-fishes play,
    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

TROOPIN'
(Our Army in the East)

Troopin', troopin', troopin' to the sea:
'Ere's September come again -- the six-year men are free.

O leave the dead be'ind us, for they cannot come away
To where the ship's a-coalin' up that takes us 'ome to-day.

   We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
    Our ship is at the shore,
   An' you must pack your 'aversack,
    For we won't come back no more.

   Ho, don't you grieve for me,
    My lovely Mary-Ann,
   For I'll marry you yit on a fourp'ny bit
    As a time-expired man.


The Malabar's in 'arbour with the Jumner at 'er tail,
An' the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders for to sail.

Ho! the weary waitin' when on Khyber 'ills we lay,
But the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders 'ome to-day.


They'll turn us out at Portsmouth wharf in cold an' wet an' rain,
All wearin' Injian cotton kit, but we will not complain;
They'll kill us of pneumonia -- for that's their little way --
But damn the chills and fever, men, we're goin' 'ome to-day!

Troopin', troopin', winter's round again!
See the new draf's pourin' in for the old campaign;
Ho, you poor recruities, but you've got to earn your pay --
What's the last from Lunnon, lads?  We're goin' there to-day.


Troopin', troopin', give another cheer --
'Ere's to English women an' a quart of English beer.

The Colonel an' the regiment an' all who've got to stay,
Gawd's mercy strike 'em gentle -- Whoop! we're goin' 'ome to-day.

    We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
     Our ship is at the shore,
    An' you must pack your 'aversack,
     For we won't come back no more.

    Ho, don't you grieve for me,
     My lovely Mary-Ann,
    For I'll marry you yit on a fourp'ny bit
     As a time-expired man.

FORD O' KABUL RIVER

Kabul town's by Kabul river --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
There I lef' my mate for ever,
 Wet an' drippin' by the ford.

    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    There's the river up and brimmin', an' there's 'arf a squadron
swimmin'

     'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.


Kabul town's a blasted place --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Strewth I sha'n't forget 'is face
 Wet an' drippin' by the ford!
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an' they will surely guide
you
     'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.


Kabul town is sun and dust --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' sooner drownded fust
 'Stead of 'im beside the ford.

    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    You can 'ear the 'orses threshin', you can 'ear the men
a-splashin',
     'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.


Kabul town was ours to take --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' left it for 'is sake --
 'Im that left me by the ford.

    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    It's none so bloomin' dry there; ain't you never comin' nigh there,
     'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark?

Kabul town'll go to hell --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Fore I see him 'live an' well --
 'Im the best beside the ford.

    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    Gawd 'elp 'em if they blunder, for their boots'll pull 'em under,
     By the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.


Turn your 'orse from Kabul town --
 Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Im an' 'arf my troop is down,
 Down an' drownded by the ford.

    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
     Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    There's the river low an' fallin', but it ain't no use o' callin'

     'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

ROUTE MARCHIN'

We're marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains,
A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
    With its best foot first
    And the road a-sliding past,
    An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
    While the Big Drum says,
    With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!" --
    "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?"
Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see,
There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree,
An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,
An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind.

    While it's best foot first, . . .


At half-past five's Revelly, an' our tents they down must come,
Like a lot of button mushrooms when you pick 'em up at 'ome.

But it's over in a minute, an' at six the column starts,
While the women and the kiddies sit an' shiver in the carts.

    An' it's best foot first, . . .


Oh, then it's open order, an' we lights our pipes an' sings,
An' we talks about our rations an' a lot of other things,
An' we thinks o' friends in England, an' we wonders what they're at,
An' 'ow they would admire for to hear us sling the bat.1

    An' it's best foot first, . . .

It's none so bad o' Sunday, when you're lyin' at your ease,
To watch the kites a-wheelin' round them feather-'eaded trees,
For although there ain't no women, yet there ain't no barrick-yards,
So the orficers goes shootin' an' the men they plays at cards.

    Till it's best foot first, . . .


So 'ark an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore,
There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore;
An' if your 'eels are blistered an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell,
You drop some tallow in your socks an' that will make 'em well.

    For it's best foot first, . . .


We're marchin' on relief over Injia's coral strand,
Eight 'undred fightin' Englishmen, the Colonel, and the Band;
Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,
There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;
    With its best foot first
    And the road a-sliding past,
    An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last;
    While the Big Drum says,
    With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!" --
    "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?"2

1Thomas's first and firmest conviction is that he is a profound
Orientalist and a fluent speaker of Hindustani.  As a matter of
fact, he depends largely on the sign-language.
2Why don't you get on

The end

VOLUME III THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW AND OTHER
GHOST STORIES

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.

-Evening Hymn.

ONE of the few advantages that India has over England is a great
Knowability.  After five years' service a man is directly or
indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his
Province, all the Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries,
and some fifteen hundred other people of the non-official caste.  In
ten years his knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of
twenty he knows, or knows something about, every Englishman in
the Empire, and may travel anywhere and everywhere without
paying hotel-bills.

Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right, have, even
within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the
less to-day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear
nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world
is very, very kind and helpful.

Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of Kumaon some fifteen
years ago. He meant to stay two nights, but was knocked down by
rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized Polder's
establishment, stopped Polder's work, and nearly died in Polder's
bedroom. Polder behaves as though he had been placed under
eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a
box of presents and toys.  It is the same everywhere. The men who
do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you
are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your
character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, will work
themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or into
serious trouble.

Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a
hospital on his private account-an arrangement of loose boxes for
Incurables, his friend called it-but it was really a sort of fitting-up
shed for craft that had been damaged by stress of weather.  The
weather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is
always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission
to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down
and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.

Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable
prescription to all his patients is, "lie low, go slow, and keep cool."
He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance
of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay,
who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course,
the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that
there was a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark
World came through and pressed him to death.  "Pansay went off
the handle," says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at
Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to
Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the
Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to
brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & 0. flirtation. He
certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly broke
off the engagement. Then he took a feverish chill and all that
nonsense about ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness,
kept it alight, and killed him poor devil.  Write him off to the
System-one man to take the work of two and a half men."

I do not believe this.  I used to sit up with Pansay sometimes when
Heatherlegh was called out to patients, and I happened to be within
claim. The man would make me most unhappy by describing in a
low, even voice, the procession that was always passing at the
bottom of his bed. He had a sick man's command of language.

When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the whole
affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to
ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they
are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door.  And this
also is Literature.

He was in a high fever while he was writing,  and  the  blood-and-
thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him.  Two
months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the
fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned
Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing
at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he
died, and this is his version of the affair, dated 1885:

My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not
improbable that I shall get both ere long-rest that neither the
red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change
of air far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can
give me.  In the meantime I am resolved to stay where I am; and,
in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world into my
confidence.  You shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of
my malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man
born of woman on this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.

Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the
drop-bolts are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as
it may appear, demands at least attention.  That it will ever receive
credence I utterly disbelieve. Two months ago I should have
scouted as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the like.
Two months ago I was the happiest man in India. Today, from
Peshawur to the sea, there is no one more wretched.  My doctor
and I are the only two who know this. His explanation is, that my
brain, digestion, and eyesight are all slightly affected; giving rise
to my frequent and persistent "delusions."  Delusions, indeed!  I
call him a fool; but he attends me still with the same unwearied
smile, the same bland professional manner, the same neatly
trimmed red whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am an
ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid.  But you shall judge for
your-selves.

Three years ago it was my fortune my great misfortune to sail from
Gravesend to Bombay, on return from long leave, with one Agnes
Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on the Bombay side. It does
not in the least concern you to know what manner of woman she
was.  Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had
ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love
with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission
now without one particle of vanity. In matters of this sort there is
always one who gives and another who accepts.  From the first day
of our ill-omened attachment, I was conscious  that  Agnes's
passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and-if I may use the
expression-a purer sentiment than mine.  Whether she recognized
the fact then, I do not know. Afterward it was bitterly plain to both
of us.

Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, we went our
respective ways, to meet no more for the next three or four
months, when my leave and her love took us both to Simla. There
we spent the season together; and there my fire of straw burned
itself out to a pitiful end with the closing year.  I attempt no
excuse. I make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given up much
for my sake, and was prepared to give up all.  From my own lips,
in August, 1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence, tired
of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine
women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as I wearied of
them;  seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged
themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation 'with other men. Mrs.

Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither my openly
expressed aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I
garnished our interviews had the least effect.

"Jack, darling!" was her one eternal cuckoo cry: "I'm sure it's all a
mistake -a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some
day. Please forgive me, Jack, dear."

I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge transformed my
pity into passive endurance, and, eventually, into blind hat~the
same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man to savagely stamp
on the spider he has but half killed. And with this hate in my
bosom the season of 1882 came to an end.

Next year we met again at Simla-she with her monotonous face
and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in
every fibre of my frame. Several times I could not avoid meeting
her alone; and on each occasion her words were identically the
same.  Still the unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake"; and
still the hope of eventually "making friends." I might have seen
had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive.  She
grew more wan and thin month by month.  You will agree with
me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to
despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly.  I maintain that
she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black,
fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might
have been a little kinder to her.  But that really is a "delusion."  I
could not have continued pretending to love her when I didn't;
could I?  It would have been unfair to us both.

Last year we met again-on the same terms as before.  The same
weary appeal, and the same curt answers from my lips.  At least I
would make her see how wholly wrong and hopeless were her
attempts at resuming the old relationship.  As the season wore on,
we fell apart-that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I
had other and more absorbing interests to attend to. When I think it
over quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884 seems a confused
nightmare wherein light and shade were fantastically intermingled
-my courtship of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes, doubts, and
fears; our long rides together; my trembling avowal of attachment;
her reply; and now and again a vision of a white face flitting by in
the 'rickshaw with the black and white liveries I once watched for
so earnestly; the wave of Mrs. Wessington's gloved hand; and,
when she met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome
monotony of her appeal.  I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly,
heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my hatred for
Agnes.  In August Kitty and I were engaged. The next day I met
those accursed "magpie" jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and,
moved by some passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs.

Wessington everything. She knew it already.

"So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear." Then, without a moment's
pause -"I'm sure it's all a mistake-a hideous mistake. We shall be as
good friends some day, Jack, as we ever were."

My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying
woman before me like the blow of' a whip. "Please forgive me,
Jack; I didn't mean to make you angry; but it's true, it's true!"

And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely.  I turned away and
left her to finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a
moment or two, that I had been an unutterably mean hound. I
looked back, and saw that she had turned her 'rickshaw with the
idea, I suppose, of overtaking me.

The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory.

The rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the
sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven
cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and
white liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and
Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden head stood out clearly.
She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning
hack exhausted against the 'rickshaw cushions.  I turned my horse
up a bypath near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and literally ran away.
Once I fancied I heard a faint call of "Jack!" This may have been
imagination. I never stopped to verify it. Ten minutes later I came
across Kitty on horseback; and, in the delight of a long ride with
her, forgot all about the interview.

A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the inexpressible burden
of her existence was removed from my life.  I went Plainsward
perfectly happy.  Before three months were over I had forgotten all
about her, except that at times the discovery of some of her old
letters reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship.  By
January I had disinterred what was left of our correspondence from
among my scattered belongings and had burned it.  At the
beginning of April of this year, 1885, I was at Simla-semi-deserted
Simla-once more, and was deep in lover's talks and walks with
Kitty.  It was decided that we should be married at the end of June.
You will understand, therefore, that, loving Kitty as I did, I am not
saying too much when I pronounce myself to have been, at that
time, the happiest man in India.

Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I noticed their flight.

Then, aroused to the sense of what was proper among mortals
circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to Kitty that an
engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as
an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Hamilton's to
be measured for one. Up to that moment, I give you my word, we
had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we
accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885.  Remember
that-whatever my doctor may say to the contrary-I was then in
perfect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind and an absolute
tranquil spirit.  Kitty and I entered Hamilton's shop together, and
there, regardless of the order of affairs, I measured Kitty for the
ring in the presence of the amused assistant.  The ring was a
sapphire with two diamonds.  We then rode out down the slope
that leads to the Combermere Bridge and Peliti's shop.

While my Waler was cautiously feeling his way over the loose
shale, and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side-while all
Simla, that is to say as much of it as had then come from the
Plains, was grouped round the Reading-room and Peliti's
veranda,-I was aware that some one, apparently at a vast distance,
was calling me by my Christian name. It struck me that I had heard
the voice before, but when and where I could not at once
determine. In the short space it took to cover the road between the
path from Hamilton's shop and the first plank of the Comber-mere
Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have
committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it
must have been singing in my ears.  Immediately opposite Peliti's
shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four jharnpanies in
"magpie" livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar 'rickshaw.
In a moment my mind flew back to the previous season and Mrs.

Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust.  Was it not
enough that the woman was dead and done with, without her black
and white servitors reappearing to spoil the day's happiness?
Whoever employed them now I thought I would call upon, and ask
as a personal favor to change her Jhampanies' livery.  I would hire
the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from off their
backs. It is impossible to say here what a flood of undesirable
memories their presence evoked.

"Kitty," I cried, "there are poor Mrs. Wessington's  jhampanies
turned  up again!  I wonder who has them now?"

Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last season, and had
always been interested in the sickly woman.

"What?  Where?" she asked.  "I can't see them anywhere."

Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw
himself directly in front of the advancing 'rickshaw.  I had scarcely
time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror,
horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had
been thin air.

"What's the matter?" cried Kitty; "what made you call out so
foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don't want all creation to know
about it. There was lots of space between the mule and the
veranda; and, if you think I can't ride

-There!"

Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a
hand-gallop in the direction of the Bandstand; fully expecting, as
she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was
the matter?  Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or
that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob,
and turned round. The 'rickshaw had turned too, and now stood
immediately facing me, near the left railing of the Comber-mere
Bridge.

"Jack!  Jack, darling!" (There was no mistake about the words this
time: they rang through my brain as if they had been shouted in my
ear.) "It's some hideous mistake, I'm sure. Please forgive me, jack,
and let's be friends again."

The 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as I hope and pray
daily for the death I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-Wessington,
handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed on her breast.

How long I stared motionless I do not know.  Finally, I was
aroused by my ysce taking the Waler's bridle and asking whether I
was ill. From the horrible to the commonplace is but a step. I
tumbled off my horse and dashed, half fainting, into Peliti's for a
glass of cherry-brandy.  There two or three couples were gathered
round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their
trivialities were more comforting to me just then than the
consolations of religion could have been. I plunged into the midst
of the conversation at once; chatted, laughed, and jested with a
face (when I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn
as that of a corpse.  Three or four mem noticed my condition; and,
evidently setting it down to the results of over-many pegs,
charitably endeavoured to draw me apart from the rest of the
loungers. But I refused to be led away. I wanted the company of
my kind-as a child rushes into the midst of the dinner-party after a
fright in the dark. I must have talked for about ten minutes or so,
though it seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's clear
voice outside inquiring for me.  In another minute she had entered
the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally in
my duties. Something in my face stopped her.

"Why, Jack," she cried, "what have you been doing? What has
happened? Are you ill?"  Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that
the sun had been a little too much for me. It was close upon five
o'clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and the sun had been hidden
all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were out of my
mouth: attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed
Kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my
acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the
score of my feeling faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving
Kitty to finish the ride by herself.

In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter.

Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal
Civilian in the year of grace, 1885, presumably sane, certainly
healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart's side by the
apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight
months ago.  These were facts that I could not blink.  Nothing was
further from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington
when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop.  Nothing was more utterly
commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was
broad daylight.  The road was full of people; and yet here, look
you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of
Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the
grave.

Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope
that some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the
carriage and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and
again I went round this treadmill of thought; and again and again
gave up baffled and in despair.  The voice was as inexplicable as
the apparition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it all
to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in her arms
defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw.  "After all," I
argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in itself enough to prove
the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see ghosts of men and
women, but surely never of

coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd  Fancy the ghost
of a hill-man!"

Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to
overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon.  My
Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal apology was
necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering
over a falsehood, that I had been attacked with sudden palpitation
of the heart-the result of indigestion.  This eminently practical
solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with
the shadow of my first lie dividing us.

Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko.  With my
nerves still unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested
against the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the
Boileaugunge road - anything rather than the Jakko round. Kitty
was angry and a little hurt: so I yielded from fear of provoking
further misunderstanding, and we set out together toward Chota
Simla.  We walked a greater part of the way, and, according to our
custom, cantered from a mile or so below the Convent to the
stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched
horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as
we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs.

Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road
bore witness to our oldtime walks and talks.  The bowlders were
full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents
giggled and chuck led unseen over the shameful story; and the
wind in my ears chanted the iniquity aloud.

As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call the Ladies'

Mile the Horror was awaiting me.  No other 'rickshaw was in
sight-only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-
paneled carriage, and the golden head of the woman within-all
apparently just as I had left them eight months and one fortnight
ago!  For an instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw-we
were so marvelously sympathetic in all things.  Her next words
undeceived me-'~Not a soul in sight! Come along, Jack, and I'll
race you to the Reservoir buildings!"  Her wiry little Arab was off
like a bird, my Waler following close behind, and in this order we
dashed under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards
of the 'rickshaw.  I pulled my Waler and fell back a little.  The
'rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the
Arab passed through it, my horse following. "Jack! Jack dear!
Pease forgive me," rang with a wail in my ears, and, after an
interval:-"It's a mistake, a hideous mistake!"

I spurred my horse like a man possessed.  When I turned my head
at the Reservoir works, the black and white liveries were still
waiting-patiently waiting-under the grey hillside, and the wind
brought me a mocking echo of the words I had just heard. Kitty
bantered me a good deal on my silence throughout the remainder
of the ride.  I had been talking up till then wildly and at random.

To save my life I could not speak afterward naturally, and from
Sanjowlie to the Church wisely held my tongue.

I was to dine with the Mannerings that night, and had barely time
to canter home to dress. On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard
two men talking together in the dusk.-"It's a curious thing," said
one, "how completely all trace of it disappeared. You know my
wife was insanely fond of the woman ('never could see anything in
her myself), and wanted me to pick up her old 'rickshaw and
coolies if they were to be got for love or money.  Morbid sort of
fancy I call it; but I've got to do what the Memsahib tells me.

Would you believe that the man she hired it from tells me that all
four of the men-they were brothers-died of cholera on the way to
Hardwar, poor devils, and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the
man himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Memsakib's
'rickshaw. 'Spoiled his luck.  Queer notion, wasn't it?  Fancy poor
little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one's luck except her own!" I
laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as I uttered
it.  So there were ghosts of 'rickshaws after all, and ghostly
employments in the other world! How much did Mrs. Wessington
give her men? What were their hours? Where did they go?

And for visible answer to my last question I saw the infernal Thing
blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short
cuts unknown to ordinary coolies.  I laughed aloud a second time
and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going
mad.  Mad to a certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that
I reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely
wished Mrs. Wessington "Good-evening."  Her answer was one I
knew only too well.  I listened to the end; and replied that I had
heard it all before, but should be delighted if she had anything
further to say. Some malignant devil stronger than I must have
entered into me that evening, for I have a dim recollection of
talking the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the Thing
in front of me.

"Mad as a hatter, poor devil-or drunk.  Max, try and get him to
come home."

Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington's voice! The two men had
overheard me speaking to the empty air, and had returned to look
after me.  They were very kind and considerate, and from their
words evidently gathered that I was extremely drunk. I thanked
them confusedly and cantered away to my hotel, there changed,
and arrived at the Mannerings' ten minutes late.  I pleaded the
darkness of the night as an excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for my
unlover-like tardiness; and sat down.

The conversation had already become general; and under cover of
it, I was addressing some tender small talk to my sweetheart when
I was aware that at the further end of the table a short red-
whiskered man was describing, with much broidery, his encounter
with a mad unknown that evening.

A few sentences convinced me that he was repeating the incident
of half an hour ago. In the middle of the story he looked round for
applause, as professional story-tellers do, caught my eye, and
straightway collapsed.  There was a moment's awkward silence,
and the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect that
he had "forgotten the

rest," thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good story~teller which
he had built up for six seasons past. I blessed him from the bottom
of my heart, and-went on with my fish.

In the fulness of time that dinner came to an end; and with genuine
regret I tore myself away from Kitty-as certain as I was of my own
existence that It would be waiting for me outside the door. The
red-whiskered man, who had been introduced to me as Doctor
Heatherlegh, of Simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as
our roads lay together. I accepted his offer with gratitude.

My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in readiness in the Mall,
and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted
head-lamp.  The red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a
manner that showed he bad been thinking over it all dinner time.

"I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this
evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question
wrenched an answer from me before I was aware.

"That!." said I, pointing to It.

"That may be either D. T. or Eyes for aught I know.  Now you
don't liquor. I saw as much at dinner, so it can't be D. T.  There's
nothing whatever where you're pointing, though you're sweating
and trembling with fright like a scared pony.  Therefore, I
conclude that it's Eyes. And I ought to understand all about them.
Come along home with me. I'm on the Blessington lower road."

To my intense delight the 'rickshaw instead of waiting for us kept
about twenty yards ahead-and this, too whether we walked, trotted,
or cantered. In the course of that long night ride I had told my
companion almost as much as I have told you here.

"Well, you've spoiled one of the best tales I've ever laid tongue to,"
said he, "but I'll forgive you for the sake of what you've gone
through.  Now come home and do what I tell you; and when I've
cured you, young man, let this be a lesson to you to steer clear of
women and indigestible food till the day of your death."

The 'rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-whiskered friend
seemed to derive great pleasure from my account of its exact
whereabouts.

"Eyes, Pansay-all Eyes, Brain, and Stomach.  And the greatest of
these three is Stomach. You've too much conceited Brain, too little
Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes.  Get your Stomach
straight and the rest follows. And all that's French for a liver pill.

I'll take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're too
interesting a phenomenon to be passed over."

By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Blessington lower
road and the 'rickshaw came to a dead stop under a pine-clad,
over-hanging shale cliff.  Instinctively I halted too, giving my
reason. Heatherlegh rapped out an oath.

'Now, if you think I'm going to spend a cold night on the hillside
for the sake of a stomach-cum-Brain-cum-Eye illusion . . . Lord,
ha' mercy!  What's that?"

There was a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front
of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the
cliff-side-pines., undergrowth, and all-slid down into the road
below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and
tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then
fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash.  Our two
horses stood motionless and sweating with fear. As soon as the
rattle of falling earth and stone had subsided, my companion
muttered:-"Man, if we'd gone forward we should have been ten
feet deep in our graves by now. 'There are more things in heaven
and earth.' . . . Come home, Pansay, and thank God.  I want a peg
badly."

We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr.

Heatherlegh's house shortly after midnight.

His attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and
for a week I never left his sight.  Many a time in the course of that
week did I bless the good-fortune which had thrown me in contact
with Simla's best and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew
lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and
more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh's "spectral illusion"
theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach.  I wrote to Kitty,
telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept
me indoors for a few days; and that I should be recovered before
she had time to regret my absence.

Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of
liver pills, cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk
or at early dawn-for, as he sagely observed:-"A man with a
sprained ankle doesn't walk a dozen miles a day, and your young
woman might be wondering if she saw you."

At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse,
and strict injunction' as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh
dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken charge of me. Here is
his parting benediction:-"Man, I can certify to your mental cure,
and that's as much as to say I've cured most of your bodily
ailments.  Now, get your 'traps out of this as soon as you can; and
be off to make love to Miss Kitty."

I was endeavoring to express my thanks for his kindness.  He cut
me short.

"Don't think I did this because I like you. I gather that you've
behaved like a blackguard all through.  But, all the same, you re a
phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard.
No!"-checking me a second time"not a rupee please. Go out and
see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again.  I'll
give you a lakh for each time you see it."

Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings'  drawing-room  with
Kitty-drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the
fore-knowledge that I should never more be troubled with Its
hideous presence.  Strong in the sense of my new-found security, I
proposed a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.

Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality and mere
animal spirits, as I did on the afternoon of the 30th of April.  Kitty
was delighted at the change in my appearance, and complimented
me on it in her delightfully frank and outspoken manner.  We left
the Mannerings' house together, laughing and talking, and cantered
along the Chota Simla road as of old.

I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and there make my
assurance doubly sure. The horses did their best, but seemed all
too slow to my impatient mind.  Kitty was astonished at my
boisterousness.  "Why, Jack!" she cried at last, "you are behaving
like a child. What are you doing?"

We were just below the Convent, and from sheer wantonness I was
making my Waler plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it
with the loop of my riding-whip.

"Doing?"  I  answered;  "nothing, dear.  That's just it.  If you'd been
doing nothing for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous as I."

"'Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth,
Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth,
Lord of the senses five.'"

My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the
corner above the Convent; and a few yards further on could see
across to Sanjowlie. In the centre of the level road stood the black
and white liveries, the yellow-paneled  'rickshaw,  and  Mrs.

Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I
believe must have said something.  The next thing I knew was that
I was lying face downward on the road with Kitty kneeling above
me in tears.

"Has it gone, child I" I gasped. Kitty only wept more bitterly.

"Has what gone, Jack dear? what does it all mean? There must be a
mistake somewhere, Jack.  A hideous mistake."  Her last words
brought me to my feet-mad-raving for the time being.

"Yes, there is a mistake somewhere," I repeated, "a hideous
mistake.  Come and look at It."

I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty by the wrist along the
road up to where It stood, and implored her for pity's sake to speak
to It; to tell It that we were betrothed; that neither Death nor Hell
could break the tie between us; and Kitty only knows how much
more to the same effect.  Now and again I appealed passionately to
the Terror in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to
release me from a torture that was killing me. As I talked I suppose
I must have told Kitty of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington,
for I saw her listen intently with white face and blazing eyes.

"Thank you, Mr. Pansay," she said, "that's quite enough. Syce
ghora lao."

The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with
the recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught
hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive.  My
answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth
to eye, and a word or two of farewell that even now I cannot write
down. So I judged, and judged rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I
staggered back to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was cut and
bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip had raised a livid blue
wheal on it. I had no self-respect. Just then, Heatherlegh, who must
have been following Kitty and me at a distance, cantered up.

"Doctor," I said, pointing to my face, "here's Miss Mannering's
signature to my order of dismissal and . . . I'll thank you for that
lakh as soon as convenient."

Heatherlegh's face, even in my abject misery, moved me to
laughter.

"I'll stake my professional reputation"

-he began. "Don't be a fool," I whispered.  "I've lost my life's
happiness and you'd better take me home."

As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then I lost all knowledge of
what was passing.  The crest of Jakko seemed to heave and roll
like the crest of a cloud and fall in upon me.

Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that is to say) I was aware that
I was lying in Heatherlegh's room as weak as a little child.
Heatherlegh was watching me intently from behind the papers on
his writing-table.  His first words were not encouraging; but I was
too far spent to be much moved by them.

"Here's Miss Kitty has sent back your letters. You corresponded a
good deal, you young people. Here's a packet that looks like a ring,
and a cheerful sort of a note from Mannering Papa, which I've
taken the liberty of reading and burning.  The old gentleman's not
pleased with you."

"And Kitty?" I asked, dully.

"Rather more drawn than her father from what she says. By the
same token you must have been letting out any number of queer
reminiscences just be. fore I met you.  'Says that a man who would
have behaved to a woman as you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to
kill himself out of sheer pity for his kind.  She's a hot-headed little
virago, your mash.  'Will have it too that you were suffering from
D. T. when that row on the Jakko road turned up. 'Says she'll die
before she ever speaks to you again."

I groaned and turned over to the other side.

"Now you've got your choice, my friend.  This engagement has to
be broken off; and the Mannerings don't want to be too hard on
you.  Was it broken through D. T. or epileptic fits? Sorry I can't
offer you a better exchange unless you'd prefer hereditary insanity.
Say the word and I'll tell 'em it~s fits.  All Simla knows about that
scene on the Ladies' Mile.  Come! I'll give you five minutes to
think over it."

During those five minutes I believe that I explored thoroughly the
lowest circles of the Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on
earth. And at the same time I myself was watching myself faltering
through the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair.  I
wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might have wondered,
which dreadful alternative I should adopt. Presently I heard myself
answering in a voice that I hardly recognized,-"They're
confoundedly  particular

about morality in these parts. Give 'em fits, Heatherlegh, and my
love. Now let me sleep a bit longer."

Then my two selves joined, and it was only I (half crazed,
devil-driven I) that tossed in my bed, tracing step by step the
history of the past month.

"But I am in Simla," I kept repeating to myself. "I, Jack Pansay, am
in Simla and there are no ghosts here. It's unreasonable of that
woman to pretend there are.  Why couldn't Agnes have left me
alone?  I never did her any harm.  It might just as well have been
me as Agnes. Only I'd never have come hack on purpose to kill
her. Why can't I be left alone-left alone and happy?"

It was high noon when I first awoke:

and the sun was low in the sky before I slept-slept as the tortured
criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to feel further pain.

Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh told me in the
morning that he had received an answer from Mr. Mannering, and
that, thanks to his (Heatherlegh's)  friendly  offices,  the story of
my affliction had traveled through the length and breadth of Simla,
where I was on all sides much pitied.

"And that's rather more than you deserve, '  he  concluded,
pleasantly, "though the Lord knows you've been going through a
pretty severe mill. Never mind; we'll cure you yet, you perverse
phenomenon."

I declined firmly to be cured. "You've been much too good to me
already, old man," said I; "but I don't think I need trouble you
further."

In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could do would
lighten the burden that had been laid upon me.

With that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless, impotent
rebellion against the unreasonableness of it all. There were scores
of men no better than I whose punishments had at least been
reserved for another world; and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly
unfair that I alone should have been singled out for so hideous a
fate. This mood would in time give place to another where it
seemed that the 'rickshaw and I were the only realities in a world
of shadows; that Kitty was a ghost; that Mannering, Heatherlegh,
and all the other men and women I knew were all ghosts; and the
great, grey hills themselves but vain shadows devised to torture
me. From mood to mood I tossed backward and forward for seven
weary days; my body growing daily stronger and strong-er, until
the bedroom looking-glass told me that I had returned to everyday
life, and was as other men once more. Curiously enough my face
showed no signs of the struggle I had gone through. It was pale
indeed, but as expression-less and commonplace as ever. I had
expected some permanent alteration-visible evidence of the
disease that was eating me away.  I found nothing.

On the 15th of May, I left Heatherlegh's house at eleven o'clock in
the morning; and the instinct of the bachelor drove me to the Club.
There I found that every man knew my story as told by
Heatherlegh, and was, in clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and
attentive.  Nevertheless I recognized that for the rest of my natural
life I should be among but not of my fellows; and I envied very
bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on the Mall below.  I lunched
at the Club, and at four o'clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall
in the vague hope of meeting Kitty.  Close to the Band-stand the
black and white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs. Wessington's
old appeal at my side.  I had been expecting this ever since I came
out; and was only surprised at her delay.  The phantom 'rickshaw
and I went side by side along the Chota Simla road in silence.
Close to the bazar, Kitty and a man on horseback overtook and
passed us. For any sign she gave I might have been a dog in the
road. She did not even pay me the compliment of quickening her
pace; though the rainy afternoon had served for an excuse.

So Kitty and her companion, and I and my ghostly Light-o'-Love,
crept round Jakko in couples. The road was streaming with water;
the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks below, and the air
was full of fine, driving rain. Two or three times I found myself
saying to myself almost aloud:"I'm Jack Pan-say on leave at
Simla~at Simla! Everyday, ordinary Simla.  I mustn't forget that-I
mustn't forget that."  Then I would try to recollect some of the
gossip I had heard at the Club: the prices of So-and-So's
horses-anything, in fact, that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian
world I knew so well. I even repeated the multiplication-table
rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of
my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have prevented my
hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time.

Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and entered the l~
vel road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was
left alone with Mrs. Wessington. "Agnes," said I, "will you put
back your hood and tell me what it all means?" The hood dropped
noiselessly, and I was face to face with my dead and buried
mistress. She was wearing the dress in which I had last seen her
alive; carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand; and the
same cardcase in her left.  (A woman eight months dead with a
cardcase!)  I had to pin myself down to the multiplication-table,
and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road, to assure
myself that that at least was real.

"Agnes," I repeated, "for pity's sake tell me what it all means."
Mrs. Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the
head I used to know so well, and spoke.

If my story had not already so madly overleaped the hounds of all
human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no
one-no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of
justification of my conduct-will believe me, I will go on.  Mrs.

Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road
to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might
walk by the side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in
conversation. The second and most tormenting of my moods of
sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the Prince in
Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts."
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and
we two joined the crowd of homeward-hound folk.  As I saw them
then it seemed that they were the shadows-impalpable,   fantastic
shadows-that divided  for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass
through. What we said during the course of that weird interview I
cannot-indeed, I dare not-tell.  Heatherlegh's comment would have
been a short laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing a
brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." It was a ghastly and yet in some
indefinable way a marvelously dear experience.  Could it be
possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a second time
the woman I had killed by my own neglect and cruelty?

I met Kitty on the homeward road-a shadow among shadows.

If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their
order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience
would he exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after
evening the ghostly 'rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla
together. Wherever I went there the four black and white liveries
followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the
Theatre I found them amid the crowd or yelling jhampanies;
outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of whist; at the
Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and in broad
daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the
'rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood
and iron. More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself front
warning some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More
than once I have walked down the Mall deep in conversation with
Mrs. Wessington to the unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.

Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the "fit"
theory had been discarded in favor of insanity. However, I made
no change in my mode of life.  I called, rode, and dined out as
freely as ever.  I had a passion for the society of my kind which I
had never felt before; I hungered to be among the realities of life;
and at the same time I felt vaguely unhappy when I had been
separated too long from my ghostly companion. It would be almost
impossible  to  describe  my  varying moods from the 15th of May
up to to-day.

The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind
fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew,
moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every
day. My only anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as
might be.  Alternately I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched
her outrageous flirtations with my successor-to speak more
accurately, my successors-with amused interest. She was as much
out of my life as I was out of hers.  By day I wandered with Mrs.

Wessington almost content.  By night I implored Heaven to let me
return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying
moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and
the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one
poor soul to its grave.

*    *    *    *    *    *      *      *      *
August 27.-Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance
on me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an
application for sick leave. An application to escape the company
of a phantom! A request that the Government would graciously
permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going
to England.  Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost
hysterical laughter.  I told him that I should await the end quietly
at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far off. Believe me that I
dread its advent more than any word can say; and I torture myself
nightly with a thousand speculations as to the manner of my death.

Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentleman should
die; or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched
from me to take its place forever and ever by the side of that
ghastly phantasm?  Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the
next world, or shall I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to her
side through all eternity?  Shall we two hover over the scene of our
lives till the end of Time? As the day of my death draws nearer,
the intense horror that all living flesh feels toward escaped spirits
from beyond the grave grows more and more powerful.  It is an
awful thing to go down quick among the dead with scarcely
one-half of your life completed.  It is a thousand times more awful
to wait as I do in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable
terror.  Pity me, at least on the score of my "delusion," for I
know you will never believe what I have written here  Yet as
surely as ever a man was done to death by the Powers of Darkness
I am that man.

In justice, too, pity her.  For as surely as ever woman was killed by
man, I killed Mrs. Wessington. And the last portion of my
punishment is ever now upon me.

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

As I came through the Desert thus it was--
As I came through the Desert.

                        The City of Dreadful Night.

Somewhere in the Other World, where there are books and
pictures and plays and shop windows to look at, and thousands of
men who spend their lives in building up all four, lives a
gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people;
and his name is Mr. Walter Besant.  But he will insist upon
treating his ghosts  he has published half a workshopful of them--
with levity.  He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some
cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms.  You may treat
anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but
you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly an
Indian one.

There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold,
pobby corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler
passes.  Then they drop upon his neck and remain.  There are also
terrible ghosts of women who have died in child-bed.  These
wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a
village, and call seductively.  But to answer their call is death in
this world and the next.  Their feet are turned backward that all
sober men may recognize them.  There are ghosts of little children
who have been thrown into wells.  These haunt well curbs and the
fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the
wrist and beg to be taken up and carried.  These and the corpse
ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack
Sahibs.  No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to
have frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have
scared the life out of both white and black.

Nearly every other Station owns a ghost.  There are said to be two
at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree
dak-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of
a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-
watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her
houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible
horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now
that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful
one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open
without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not
with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come
to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will
willingly rent; and there is something--not fever--wrong with a big
bungalow in Allahabad.  The older Provinces simply bristle with
haunted houses, and march phantom armies along their main
thoroughfares.

Some of the dak-bungalows on the Grand Trunk Road have handy
little cemeteries in their compound--witnesses to the "changes and
chances of this mortal life" in the days when men drove from
Calcutta to the Northwest.  These bungalows are objectionable
places to put up in.  They are generally very old, always dirty,
while the khansamah is as ancient as the bungalow.  He either
chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances of age.  In both
moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers to some
Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he
was in that Sahib's service not a khansamah in the Province could
touch him.  Then he jabbers and mows and trembles and fidgets
among the dishes, and you repent of your irritation.

In these dak-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and
when found, they should be made a note of.  Not long ago it was
my business to live in dak-bungalows.  I never inhabited the same
house for three nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed.
I lived in Government-built ones with red brick walls and rail
ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an
excited snake at the threshold to give welcome.  I lived in
"converted" ones--old houses officiating as dak-bungalows--where
nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for
dinner.  I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew
through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as
through a broken pane.  I lived in dak-bungalows where the last
entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months old, and where they
slashed off the curry-kid's head with a sword.  It was my good luck
to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and
deserters flying from British Regiments, to drunken loafers who
threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good
fortune just to escape a maternity case.  Seeing that a fair
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dak-
bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts.  A ghost that
would voluntarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be mad of
course; but so many men have died mad in dak-bungalows that
there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts.

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two
of them.  Up till that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's
method of handling them, as shown in "The Strange Case of Mr.

Lucraft and Other Stories."  I am now in the Opposition.

We will call the bungalow Katmal dak-bungalow.  But THAT was
the smallest part of the horror.  A man with a sensitive hide has no
right to sleep in dak-bungalows.  He should marry.  Katmal dak-
bungalow was old and rotten and unrepaired.  The floor was of
worn brick, the walls were filthy, and the windows were nearly
black with grime.  It stood on a bypath largely used by native Sub-
Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but real
Sahibs were rare.  The khansamah, who was nearly bent double
with old age, said so.

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of
the land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a
noise like the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside.
The khansamah completely lost his head on my arrival.  He had
served a Sahib once.  Did I know that Sahib?  He gave me the
name of a well-known man who has been buried for more than a
quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype of
that man in his prehistoric youth.  I had seen a steel engraving of
him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs a month before,
and I felt ancient beyond telling.

The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me food.  He did
not go through the pretense of calling it "khana"--man's victuals.
He said "ratub," and that means, among other things, "grub"--dog's
rations.  There was no insult in his choice of the term.  He had
forgotten the other word, I suppose.

While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled
myself down, after exploring the dak-bungalow.  There were three
rooms, beside my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving
into the other through dingy white doors fastened with long iron
bars. The bungalow was a very solid one, but the partition walls of
the rooms were almost jerry-built in their flimsiness.  Every step or
bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the other three, and
every footfall came back tremulously from the far walls.  For this
reason I shut the door.  There were no lamps--only candles in long
glass shades.  An oil wick was set in the bathroom.

For bleak, unadulterated misery that dak-bungalow was the worst
of the many that I had ever set foot in.  There was no fireplace, and
the windows would not open; so a brazier of charcoal would have
been useless.  The rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and
moaned round the house, and the toddy palms rattled and roared.

Half a dozen jackals went through the compound singing, and a
hyena stood afar off and mocked them.  A hyena would convince a
Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead--the worst sort of Dead.
Then came the ratub--a curious meal, half native and half English
in composition--with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair
about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles
playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains.
It was just the sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of
every single one of his past sins, and of all the others that he
intended to commit if he lived.

Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy.  The lamp in the
bath-room threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the
wind was beginning to talk nonsense.

Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking I heard the
regular--"Let--us--take--and--heave--him--over" grunt of doolie-
bearers in the compound.  First one doolie came in, then a second,
and then a third.  I heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and
the shutter in front of my door shook.  "That's some one trying to
come in," I said.  But no one spoke, and I persuaded myself that it
was the gusty wind.  The shutter of the room next to mine was
attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened.  "That's some
Sub-Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his friends with
him.  Now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour."

But there were no voices and no footsteps.  No one was putting his
luggage into the next room.  The door shut, and I thanked
Providence that I was to be left in peace.  But I was curious to
know where the doolies had gone.  I got out of bed and looked into
the darkness.  There was never a sign of a doolie.  Just as I was
getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no
man in his senses can possibly mistake--the whir of a billiard ball
down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for
break.  No other sound is like it.  A minute afterwards there was
another whir, and I got into bed.  I was not frightened--indeed I
was not.  I was very curious to know what had become of the
doolies.  I jumped into bed for that reason.

Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon and my hair sat
up.  It is a mistake to say that hair stands up.  The skin of the head
tightens and you can feel a faint, prickly, bristling all over the
scalp.  That is the hair sitting up.

There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have
been made by one thing--a billiard ball.  I argued the matter out at
great length with myself; and the more I argued the less probable it
seemed that one bed, one table, and two chairs--all the furniture of
the room next to mine--could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a
game of billiards.  After another cannon, a three- cushion one to
judge by the whir, I argued no more.  I had found my ghost and
would have given worlds to have escaped from that dak-
bungalow.  I listened, and with each listen the game grew clearer.

There was whir on whir and click on click.  Sometimes there was a
double click and a whir and another click.  Beyond any sort of
doubt, people were playing billiards in the next room.  And the
next room was not big enough to hold a billiard table!

Between the pauses of the wind I heard the game go forward--
stroke after stroke.  I tried to believe that I could not hear voices;
but that attempt was a failure.

Do you know what fear is?  Not ordinary fear of insult, injury or
death, but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot
see--fear that dries the inside of the mouth and half of the throat--
fear that makes you sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in
order to keep the uvula at work?  This is a fine Fear--a great
cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated.  The very
improbability of billiards in a dak-bungalow proved the reality of
the thing.  No man--drunk or sober--could imagine a game at
billiards, or invent the spitting crack of a "screw-cannon."

A severe course of dak-bungalows has this disadvantage--it breeds
infinite credulity.  If a man said to a confirmed dak-bungalow-
haunter:--"There is a corpse in the next room, and there's a mad
girl in the next but one, and the woman and man on that camel
have just eloped from a place sixty miles away," the hearer would
not disbelieve because he would know that nothing is too wild,
grotesque, or horrible to happen in a dak-bungalow.

This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts.  A rational person
fresh from his own house would have turned on his side and slept.
I did not.  So surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the
scores of things in the bed because the bulk of my blood was in my
heart, so surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at billiards
played in the echoing room behind the iron-barred door. My
dominant fear was that the players might want a marker.  It was an
absurd fear; because creatures who could play in the dark would
be above such superfluities.  I only know that that was my terror;
and it was real.

After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged.  I
slept because I was dead tired.  Otherwise I should have preferred
to have kept awake.  Not for everything in Asia would I have
dropped the door-bar and peered into the dark of the next room.

When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and
wisely, and inquired for the means of departure.

"By the way, khansamah," I said, "what were those three doolies
doing in my compound in the night?"

"There were no doolies," said the khansamah.

I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the
open door.  I was immensely brave.  I would, at that hour, have
played Black Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down
below.

"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow?" I asked.

"No," said the khansamah.  "Ten or twenty years ago, I have
forgotten how long, it was a billiard room."

"A how much?"

"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway.  I was
khansamah then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs
lived, and I used to come across with brandy-shrab.  These three
rooms were all one, and they held a big table on which the Sahibs
played every evening.  But the Sahibs are all dead now, and the
Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."

"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs?"

"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and
always angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--
'Mangal Khan, brandy-pani do,' and I filled the glass, and he bent
over the table to strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit
the table, and his spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs
and I myself--ran to lift him he was dead.  I helped to carry him
out.  Aha, he was a strong Sahib!  But he is dead and I, old Mangal
Khan, am still living, by your favor."

That was more than enough!  I had my ghost--a firsthand,
authenticated article.  I would write to the Society for Psychical
Research--I would paralyze the Empire with the news!  But I
would, first of all, put eighty miles of assessed crop land between
myself and that dak-bungalow before nightfall.  The Society might
send their regular agent to investigate later on.

I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down
the facts of the case.  As I smoked I heard the game begin again,--
with a miss in balk this time, for the whir was a short one.

The door was open and I could see into the room.  Click--c1ick!
That was a cannon.  I entered the room without fear, for there was
sunlight within and a fresh breeze without.  The unseen game was
going on at a tremendous rate.  And well it might, when a restless
little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and
a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the
window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls!  Impossible to
mistake the whir of a ball over the slate!  But I was to be excused.
Even when I shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously
like that of a fast game.

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.

"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste!  No wonder the
Presence was disturbed and is speckled.  Three sets of doolie-
bearers came to the bungalow late last night when I was sleeping
outside, and said that it was their custom to rest in the rooms set
apart for the English people!  What honor has the khansamah?
They tried to enter, but I told them to go.  No wonder, if these
Oorias have been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted.  It is
shame, and the work of a dirty man!"

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two
annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten
them with the big green umbrella whose use I could never before
divine. But Kadir Baksh has no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the khansamah, but as he promptly
lost his head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long
conversation, in the course of which he put the fat Engineer-
Sahib's tragic death in three separate stations--two of them fifty
miles away.  The third shift was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib
died while driving a dogcart.

If I had encouraged him the khansamah would have wandered all
through Bengal with his corpse.

I did not go away as soon as I intended.  I stayed for the night,
while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt
played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up."  Then the wind ran out
and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one
genuine, hall-marked ghost story.

Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made anything
out of it.

That was the bitterest thought of all!

THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES

Alive or dead-there is no other way.

-Native Proverb.

THERE is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale.
Jukes by accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to
exist, though he is the only Englishman who has been there. A
somewhat similar institution used to flourish on the outskirts of
Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into the heart of
Bikanir, which is in the heart of the Great Indian Desert, you shall
come across not a village but a town where the Dead who did not
die but may not live have established their headquarters. And,
since it is perfectly true that in the same Desert is a wonderful city
where all the rich money lenders  retreat after they have made their
fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the
strong hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in
the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and
buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory
and Minton tiles and mother-n'-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale
should not be true.  He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans
and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not
take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. He could earn more by
doing his legitimate work. He never varies the tale in the telling,
and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the
disrespectful treatment he received.  He wrote this quite
straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it up in places
and introduced Moral Reflections, thus:

In the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of fever. My work
necessitated my being in camp for some months between
Pakpattan and Muharakpur-a desolate sandy stretch of country as
every one who has had the misfortune to go there may know. My
coolies were neither more nor less exasperating than other gangs,
and my work demanded sufficient attention to keep me from
moping, had I been inclined to so unmanly a weakness.

On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little feverish. There was a
full moon at the time, and, in consequence, every dog near my tent
was baying it.  The brutes assembled in twos and threes and drove
me frantic. A few days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed
singer and suspended his carcass in terrorem about fifty yards from
my tent-door.  But his friends fell upon, fought for, and ultimately
devoured the body; and, as it seemed to me, sang their hymns of
thanksgiving afterward with renewed energy.

The light-heartedness which accompanies fever acts differently on
different men.  My irritation gave way, after a short time, to a
fixed determination to slaughter one huge black and white beast
who had been foremost in song and first in flight throughout the
evening. Thanks to a shaking hand and a giddy head I had already
missed him twice with both barrels of my shot-gun, when it struck
me that my best plan would be to ride him down in the open and
finish him off with a hog-spear. This, of course, was merely the
semi-delirious notion of a fever patient; but I remember that it
struck me at the time as being eminently practical and feasible.

I therefore ordered my groom to saddle Pornic and bring him
round quietly to the rear of my tent. When the pony was ready, I
stood at his head prepared to mount and dash out as soon as the
dog should again lift up his voice. Pornic, by the way, had not been
out of his pickets for a couple of days; the night air was crisp and
chilly; and I was armed with a specially long and sharp pair of
persuaders with which I had been rousing a sluggish cob that
afternoon. You will easily believe, then, that when he was let go he
went quickly. In one moment, for the brute bolted as straight as a
die, the tent was left far behind, and we were flying over the
smooth sandy soil at racing speed.

In another we had passed the wretched dog, and I had almost
forgotten why it was that I had taken the horse and hogspear.

The delirium of fever and the excitement of rapid motion through
the air must have taken away the remnant of my senses.  I have a
faint recollection of standing upright in my stirrups, and of
brandishing my hog-spear at the great white Moon that looked
down so calmly on my mad gallop; and of shout-log challenges to
the camel-thorn bushes as they whizzed past.  Once or twice I
believe, I swayed forward on Pornic's neck, and literally hung on
by my spurs

-as the marks next morning showed.

The wretched beast went forward like a thing possessed, over what
seemed to be a limitless expanse of moonlit sand.  Next, I
remember, the ground rose suddenly in front of us, and as we
topped the ascent I saw the waters of the Sutlej shining like a
silver bar below. Then Pornic blundered heavily on his nose, and
we rolled together down some unseen slope.

I must have lost consciousness, for when I recovered I was lying
on my stomach in a heap of soft white sand, and the dawn was
beginning to break dimly over the edge of the slope down which I
had fallen.  As the light grew stronger I saw that I was at the
bottom of a horse-shoe shaped crater of sand, opening on one side
directly on to the shoals of the Sutlej.  My fever had altogether left
me, and, with the exception of a slight dizziness in the head, I felt
no had effects from the fall over night.

Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was naturally a good
deal exhausted, but had not hurt himself in the least.  His saddle, a
favorite polo one was much knocked about, and had been twisted
under his belly.  It took me some time to put him to rights, and in
the meantime I had ample opportunities of observing the spot into
which I had so foolishly dropped.

At  the  risk  of being  considered tedious, I must describe it at
length: inasmuch as an accurate mental picture of its peculiarities
will be of material assistance in enabling the reader to understand
what follows.

Imagine then, as I have said before, a horseshoe-shaped crater of
sand with steeply graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high.
(The slope, I fancy, must have been about  65 degrees.)  This crater
enclosed a level piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at
its broadest part, with a crude well in the centre. Round the bottom
of the crater, about three feet from the level of the ground proper,
ran a series of eighty-three semi-circular ovoid, square, and
multilateral holes, all about three feet at the mouth.  Each hole on
inspection showed that it was carefully shored internally with
drift-wood and bamboos, and over the mouth a wooden drip-board
projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet.  No sign of
life was visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening stench
pervaded the entire amphitheatre-a stench fouler than any which
my wanderings in Indian villages have introduced me to.

Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious as I to get back to
camp, I rode round the base of the horseshoe to find some place
whence an exit would be practicable.  The inhabitants, whoever
they might be, had not thought fit to put in an appearance, so I was
left to my own devices.  My first attempt to "rush" Pornic up the
steep sand-banks showed me that I had fallen into a trap exactly on
the same model as that which the ant-lion sets for its prey. At each
step the shifting sand poured down from above in tons, and rattled
on the drip-boards of the holes like small shot.  A couple of
ineffectual charges sent us both rolling down to the bottom, half
choked with the torrents of sand; and I was constrained to turn my
attention to the river-bank.

Here everything seemed easy enough. The sand hills ran down to
the river edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and
shallows across which I could gallop Pornic, and find my way back
to terra firma by turning sharply to the right or left.  As I led Pornic
over the sands I was startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the
river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a sharp "whit"
close to Pornic's head.

There was no mistaking the nature of the missile-a regulation
Martini-Henry "picket."  About five hundred yards away a
country-boat was anchored in midstream; and a jet of smoke
drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me
whence the delicate attention had come. Was ever a respectable
gentleman in such an impasse?  The treacherous sand slope
allowed no escape from a spot which I had visited most
involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal
for a bombardment from some insane native in a boat. I'm afraid
that I lost my temper very much indeed.

Another bullet reminded me that I had better save my breath to
cool my porridge; and I retreated hastily up the sands and back to
the horseshoe, where I saw that the noise of the rifle had drawn
sixty-five human beings from the badger-holes which I had up till
that point supposed to be untenanted.  I found myself in the midst
of a crowd of spectators-about forty men, twenty women, and one
child who could not have been more than five years old. They were
all scantily clothed in that salmon-colored cloth which one
associates with Hindu mendicants, and, at first sight, gave me the
impression of a band of loathsome fakirs.  The filth and
repulsiveness of the assembly were beyond all description, and I
shuddered to think what their life in the badger-holes must be.

Even in these days, when local self government has destroyed the
greater part of a native's respect for a Sahib, I have been
accustomed to a certain amount of civility from my inferiors, and
on approaching the crowd naturally expected that there would be
some recognition of my presence. As a matter of fact there was;
but it was by no means what I had looked for.

The ragged crew actually laughed at me-such laughter I hope I may
never hear  again.   They  cackled,  yelled, whistled, and howled as
I walked into their midst;  some of them literally throwing
themselves down on the ground in convulsions of unholy mirth.  In
a moment I had let go Pornic's head, and. irritated beyond
expression at the morning's adventure, commenced cuffing those
nearest to me with all the force I could. The wretches dropped
under my blows like nine-pins, and the laughter gave place to
wails for mercy; while those yet untouched clasped me round the
knees, imploring me in all sorts of uncouth tongues to spare them.

In the tumult, and just when I was feeling very much ashamed of
myself for having thus easily given way to my temper, a thin, high
voice murmured in English from behind my shoulder:-"Sahib!
Sahib!  Do you not know me? Sahib, it is Gunga Dass, the
telegraph-master."

I spun round quickly and faced the speaker.

Gunga Dass, (I have, of course, no hesitation in mentioning the
man's real name) I had known four years before as a Deccanee
Brahmin loaned by the Pun-jab Government to one of the Khalsia
States.  He was in charge of a branch telegraph-office there, and
when I had last  met  him  was  a  jovial,  full-stomached, portly
Government servant with a marvelous capacity for making had
puns  in  English-a  peculiarity which made me remember him
long after I had forgotten his services to me in his official capacity.
It is seldom that a Hindu makes English puns.

Now, however, the man was changed beyond all recognition.
Caste-mark, stomach, slate-colored continuations, and unctuous
speech were all gone.  I looked at a withered skeleton, turban-less
and almost naked, with long matted hair and deep-set codfish-eyes.

But for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek-the result of an
accident for which I was responsible I should never have known
him.  But it was indubitably Gunga Dass, and-for this I was
thank-full-an English-speaking native who might at least tell me
the meaning of all that I had gone through that day.

The crowd retreated to some distance as I turned toward the
miserable figure, and ordered him to show me some method of
escaping from the crate?. He held a freshly plucked crow in his
hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of
sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a
fire there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies, and driftwood burn
quickly; and I derived much consolation from the fact that he lit
them with an ordinary sulphur-match.  When they were in a bright
glow, and the crow was nearly spitted in front thereof, Gunga Dass
began without a word of preamble:

"There are only two kinds of men, Sar.  The alive and the dead.
When you are dead you are dead, but when you are alive you live."
(Here the crow demanded his attention for an instant as it twirled
before the fire in danger of being burned to a cinder.) "If you die at
home and do not die when you come to the ghat to be burned you
come here."

The nature of the reeking village was made plain now, and all that
I had known or read of the grotesque and the horrible paled before
the fact just communicated by the ex-Brabmin.  Sixteen years ago,
when I first landed in Bombay, I had been told by a wandering
Armenian of the existence, somewhere in India, of a place to
which such Hindus as had the misfortune to recover from trance or
catalepsy were conveyed and kept, and I recollect laughing heartily
at what I was then pleased to consider a traveler's tale.

Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's
Hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants,  and  the
sallow-faced  Armenian, rose up in my mind as vividly as a
photograph, and I burst into a loud fit of laughter. The contrast was
too absurd!

Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean  bird,  watched  me
curiously. Hindus seldom laugh, and his surroundings were not
such as to move Gunga Dass to any undue excess of hilarity. He
removed the crow solemnly from the wooden spit and as solemnly
devoured it. Then he continued his story, which I give in his own
words:

"In epidemics of the cholera you are carried to be burned almost
before you are dead. When you come to the riverside the cold air,
perhaps, makes you alive, and then, if you are only little alive, mud
is put on your nose and mouth and you die conclusively. If you are
rather more alive, more mud is put; but if you are too lively they
let you go and take you away.  I was too lively, and made
protestation with anger against the indignities that they endeavored
to press upon me. In those days I was Brahmin and proud man.

Now I am dead man and eat"-here he eyed the well-gnawed breast
bone with the first sign of emotion that I had seen in him since we
met-"crows, and other things.  They took me from my sheets when
they saw that I was too lively and gave me medicines for one
week, and I survived successfully. Then they sent me by rail from
my place to Okara Station, with a man to take care of me; and at
Okara Station we met two other men, and they conducted we three

on camels, in the night, from Okara Station to this place, and they
propelled me from the top to the bottom, and the other two
succeeded, and I have been here ever since two and a half years.

Once I was Brahmin and proud man, and now I eat crows."

"There is no way of getting out?"

"None of what kind at all. When I first came I made experiments
frequently and all the others also, but we have always succumbed
to the sand which is precipitated upon our heads."

"But surely," I broke in at this point, "the river-front is open, and it
is worth while dodging the bullets; while at night"-I had already
matured a rough plan of escape which a natural instinct of
selfishness forbade me sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however,
divined my unspoken thought almost as soon as it was formed;
and, to my intense astonishment, gave vent to a long low chuckle
of derision-the laughter, be it Understood, of a superior or at least
of an equal.

'~You will not"-he had dropped the Sir completely after his
opening sentence-"make any escape that way.  But you can try. I
have tried. Once only."

The sensation of nameless terror and abject fear which I had in
vain attempted to strive against overmastered me completely.  My
long fast-it was now close upon ten o'clock, and I had eaten
nothing since tiffin on the previous day-combined with the violent
and unnatural agitation of the ride had exhausted me, and I verily
believe that, for a few minutes, I acted as one mad. I hurled myself
against the pitiless sand-slope  I ran round the base of the crater,
blaspheming and praying by turns.  I crawled out among the
sedges of the river-front, only to be driven back each time in an
agony of nervous dread by the rifle-bullets which cut up the sand
round me-for I dared not face the death of a mad dog among that
hideous crowd-and finally fell, spent and raving, at the curb of the
well. No one bad taken the slightest notion of an exhibition which
makes me blush hotly even when I think of it now.

Two or three men trod on my panting body as they drew water, but
they were evidently used to this sort of thing, and had no time to
waste upon me.  The situation was humiliating. Gunga Dass,
indeed, when he had banked the embers of his fire with sand, was
at some pains to throw half a cupful of fetid water over my head,
an attention for which I could have fallen on my knees and
thanked him, but he was laughing all the while in the same
mirthless, wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to force
the shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose condition, I lay till noon.

Then, being only a man after all, I felt hungry, and intimated as
much to Gunga Dass, whom I had begun to regard as my natural
protector. Following the impulse of the outer world when dealing
with natives, I put my hand into my pocket and drew out four
annas. The absurdity of the gift struck me at once, and I was about
to replace the money.

Gunga Dass, however, was of a different opinion. "Give me the
money," said he; '~all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill
you!"  All this as if it were the most natural thing in the world!

A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to guard the contents of his
pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of
differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me
comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might
eventually escape from the crater. I gave him all the money in my
possession, Rs. 9-8-5-nine rupees eight annas and five pie-for I
always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp.  Gunga
Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin
cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he
looked round to assure himself that no one had observed us.

"Now I will give you something to eat," said he.

What pleasure the possession of my money could have afforded
him I am unable to say; but inasmuch as it did give him evident
delight I was not sorry that I had parted with it so readily, for I had
no doubt that he would have had me killed if I had refused.  One
does not protest against the vagaries of a den of wild beasts; and
my companions were lower than any beasts. While I devoured
what Gunga Dass had provided, a coarse chapatti and a cupful of
the foul well-water,  the people showed not the faintest sign of
curiosity-that curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule, in an Indian
village.

I could even fancy that they despised me. At all events they treated
me with the most chilling indifference, and Gunga Dass was nearly
as bad.  I plied him with questions about the terrible village, and
received extremely unsatisfactory answers.  So far as I could
gather, it had been in existence from time immemorial-whence I
concluded that it was at least a century old-and during that time no
one had ever been known ti escape from it.  [I had to control
myself here with both hands, lest the blind terror should lay hold
of me a second time and drive me raving round the crater.]  Gunga
Dass took a malicious  pleasure in emphasizing this point and in
watching me wince. Nothing that I could do would induce him to
tell me who the mysterious "They" were.

"It is so ordered," he would reply, "and I do not yet know any one
who has disobeyed the orders."

"Only wait till my servants find that I am missing," I retorted, "and
I promise you that this place shall be cleared off the face of the
earth, and I'll give you a lesson in civility, too, my friend."

"Your servants would be torn in pieces before they came near this
place; and, besides, you are dead, my dear friend.  It is not your
fault, of course, but none the less you are dead and buried."

At irregular intervals supplies of food, I was told, were dropped
down from the land side into the amphitheatre, and the inhabitants
fought for them like wild beasts.  When a man felt his death
coming on he retreated to his lair and died there.  The body was
sometimes dragged out of the hole and thrown on to the sand, or
allowed to rot where it lay

The phrase "thrown on to the sand" caught my attention, and I
asked Gunga Dass whether this sort of thing was not likely to
breed a pestilence.

"That." said he. with another of his wheezy chuckles, "you may see
for yourself subsequently. You will have much time to make
observations."

Whereat, to his great  delight, I winced once more and hastily
continued the conversation :-"And how do you live here from day
to day?  What do you do?"  The question elicited exactly the same
answer as before coupled with the information that "this place is
like your European heaven; there is neither marrying nor giving in
marriage."

Gunga Dass had been educated at a Mission School, and, as he
himself admitted, had he only changed his religion '~like a wise
man," might have avoided the living grave which was now his
portion. But as long as I was with him I fancy he was happy.

Here was a Sahib, a representative of the dominant race, helpless
as a child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbors.  In
a deliberate lazy way he set himself to torture me as a schoolboy
would devote a rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies of an
impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow might glue himself
comfortably to the neck of a rabbit.  The burden of his
conversation was that there was no escape 'of no kind whatever,"
and that I should stay here till I died and was "thrown on to the
sand."  If it were possible to forejudge the conversation of the
Damned on the advent of a new soul in their abode, I should say
that they would speak as Gunga Dass did to me throughout that
long afternoon.  I was powerless to protest or answer; all my
energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror
that threatened to overwhelm me again and again.  I can compare
the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the
overpowering nausea of the Channel passage-only my agony was
of the spirit and infinitely more terrible.

As the day wore on, the inhabitants began to appear in full strength
to catch the rays of the afternoon sun, which were now sloping in
at the mouth of the crater. They assembled in little knots, and
talked among themselves without even throwing a glance in my
direction. About four o'clock, as far as I could judge Gunga Dass
rose and dived into his lair for a moment, emerging with a live
crow in his hands. The wretched bird was in a most draggled and
deplorable condition, but seemed to be in no way afraid of its
master,  Advancing cautiously to the river front, Gunga Dass
stepped from tussock to tussock until he had reached a smooth
patch of sand directly in the line of the boat's fire.  The occupants
of the boat took no notice.  Here he stopped, and, with a couple of
dexterous turns of the wrist, pegged the bird on its back with
outstretched wings.  As was only natural, the crow began to shriek
at once and beat the air with its claws.  In a few seconds the
clamor had attracted the attention of a bevy of wild crows on a
shoal a few hundred yards away, where they were discussing
something that looked like a corpse. Half a dozen crows flew over
at once to see what was going on, and also, as it proved, to attack
the pinioned bird.  Gunga Dass, who had lain down on a tussock,
motioned to me to be quiet, though I fancy this was U needless
precaution.  In a moment,

and before I could see how it happened, a wild crow, who had
grappled with the shrieking and helpless bird, was entangled in the
latter's claws, swiftly disengaged by Gunga Dass, and pegged down
beside its companion in adversity. Curiosity, it seemed,
overpowered the rest of the flock, and almost before Gunga Dass
and I had time to withdraw to the tussock, two more captives were
struggling in the upturned claws of the decoys.  So the chase-if I
can give it so dignified a name-continued until Gunga Dass had
captured seven crows.  Five of them he throttled at once, reserving
two for further operations another day.  I was a good deal
impressed by this, to me, novel method of securing food, and
complimented Gunga Dass on his skill.

"It is nothing to do," said he. "Tomorrow you must do it for me.
You are stronger than I am."

This calm assumption of superiority Upset me not a little, and I
answered peremptorily;~"Indeed, you old ruffian! What do you
think I have given you money for?"

"Very well," was the unmoved reply. "Perhaps not to-morrow, nor
the day after, nor subsequently; but in the end, and for many years,
you will catch crows and eat crows, and you will thank your
European God that you have crows to catch and eat."

I could have cheerfully strangled him for this; but judged it best
under the circumstances to smother my resentment.  An hour later
I was eating one of the crows; and, as Gunga Dass had said,
thanking my God that I had a crow to eat.  Never as long as I live
shall I forget that evening meal.  The whole population were
squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their dens, huddled
over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes.  Death, having once laid
his hand upon these men and forborne to strike, seemed to stand
aloof from them now; for most of our company were old men, bent
and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all
appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and
talked-God only knows what they found to discuss-in low equable
tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which
natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an
access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning
would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and
imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep slope until,
baffled and bleeding, he fell back on the platform incapable of
moving a limb. The others would never even raise their eyes when
this happened, as men too well aware of the futility of their
fellows' attempts and wearied with their useless repetition. I saw
four such outbursts in the course of the evening.

Gunga  Dass  took  an  eminently business-like view of my
situation, and while we were dining-I can afford to laugh at the
recollection now, but it was painful enough at the time-
propounded the terms on which he would consent to "do" for me.
My nine rupees eight annas, he argued, at the rate of three annas a
day, would provide me with food for fifty-one days, or about seven
weeks; that is to say, he would be willing to cater for me for that
length of time.  At the end of it I was to look after myself.  For a
further  consideration-videlicet  my boots-he would be willing to
allow me to occupy the den next to his own, and would supply me
with as much dried grass for bedding as he could spare.

"Very well, Gunga Dass," I replied; "to the first terms I cheerfully
agree, but, as there is nothing on earth to prevent my killing you as
you sit here and taking everything that you have" (I thought of the
two invaluable crows at the time), "I flatly refuse to give you my
boots and shall take whichever den I please."

The stroke was a bold one, and I was glad when I saw that it had
succeeded. Gunga Dass changed his tone immediately, and
disavowed all intention of asking for my boots.  At the time it did
not strike me as at all strange that I, a Civil Engineer, a man of
thirteen years' standing in the Service, and, I trust, an average
Englishman, should thus calmly threaten murder and violence
against the man who had, for a consideration it is true, taken me
under his wing.  I had left the world, it seemed, for centuries. I was
as certain then as I am now of my own existence, that in the
accursed settlement there was no law save that of the strongest;
that the living dead men had thrown behind them every canon of
the world which had cast them out; and that I had to depend for my
own life on my strength and vigilance alone. The crew of the
ill-fated Mignonette are the only men who would understand my
frame of mind.  "At present," I argued to myself, "I am strong and
a match for six of these wretches. It is imperatively necessary that
I should, for my own sake, keep both health and strength until the
hour of my release comes- if it ever does."

Fortified with these resolutions, I ate and drank as much as I could,
and made Gunga Dass understand that I intended to be his master,
and that the least sign of insubordination on his part would be
visited with the only punishment I had it in my power to
inflict-sudden and violent death.  Shortly after this I went to bed.

That is to say, Gunga Dass gave me a double armful of dried bents
which I thrust down the mouth of the lair to the right of his, and
followed myself, feet foremost; the hole running about nine feet
into the sand with a slight downward inclination, and being neatly
shored with timbers. From my den, which faced the river-front, I
was able to watch the waters of the Sutlej flowing past under the
light of a young moon and compose myself to sleep as best I
might.

The horrors of that night I shall never forget.  My den was nearly
as narrow as a coffin, and the sides had been worn smooth and
greasy by the contact of innumerable naked bodies, added to which
it smelled abominably. Sleep was altogether out of question to one
in my excited frame of mind. As the night wore on, it seemed that
the entire amphitheatre was filled with legions of unclean devils
that, trooping up from the shoals below, mocked the unfortunates
in their lairs.

Personally I am not of an imaginative temperament,-very few
Engineers are, -but on that occasion I was as completely prostrated
with nervous terror as any woman.  After half an hour or so,
however, I was able once more to calmly review my chances of
escape.  Any exit by the steep sand walls was, of course,
impracticable. I had been thoroughly convinced of this some time
before.  It was possible, just possible, that I might, in the uncertain
moonlight, safely run the gauntlet of the rifle shots.  The place was
so full of terror for me that I was prepared to undergo any risk in
leaving it.  Imagine my delight, then, when after creeping stealthily
to the river-front I found that the infernal boat was not there. My
freedom lay before me in the next few steps!

By walking out to the first shallow pool that lay at the foot of the
projecting left horn of the horseshoe, I could wade across, turn the
flank of the crater, and make my way inland. Without  a  moment's
hesitation  I marched briskly past the tussocks where Gunga Dass
had snared the crows, and out in the direction of the smooth white
sand beyond.  My first step from the tufts of dried grass showed
me how utterly futile was any hope of escape; for, as I put my foot
down, I felt an indescribable drawing, sucking motion of the sand
below.  Another moment and my leg was swallowed up nearly to
the knee. In the moonlight the whole surface of the sand seemed to
be shaken with devilish delight at my disappointment.  I struggled
clear, sweating with terror and exertion, back to the tussocks
behind me and fell on my face.

My only means of escape from the semicircle was protected with a
quicksand!

How long I lay I have not the faintest idea; but I was roused at last
by the malevolent chuckle of Gunga Dass at my ear   "I would
advise you, Protector of the Poor" (the ruffian was speaking
English) "to return to your house.  It is unhealthy to lie down here.
Moreover, when the boat returns, you will most certainly be rifled
at." He stood over me in the dim light of the dawn, chuckling and
laughing to himself.  Suppressing my first impulse to catch the
man by the neck and throw him on to the quicksand, I rose sullenly
and followed him to the platform below the burrows.

Suddenly, and futilley as I thought while I spoke, I asked -"Gunga
Dass, what is the good of the boat if I can't get out anyhow?" I
recollect that even in my deepest trouble I had been speculating
vaguely on the waste of am-munition in guarding an already well
protected foreshore.

Gunga Dass laughed again and made answer:-"They have the boat
only ir, daytime.  It is for the reason that there is a way.  I hope we
shall have the pleasure of your company for much longer time. It is
a pleasant spot when you have been here some years and eaten
roast crow long enough."

I staggered, numbed and helpless, toward the fetid burrow allotted
to me, and fell asleep. An hour or so later I was awakened by a
piercing scream-the shrill, high-pitched scream of a horse in pain.
Those who have once heard that will never forget the sound. I
found some little difficulty in scrambling out of the burrow.  When
I was in the open, I saw Pornic, my poor old Pornic, lying dead on
the sandy soil. How they had killed him I cannot guess.   Gunga
Dass explained  that horse  was  better  than  crow,  and "greatest
good of greatest number is political maxim. We are now Republic,
Mister Jukes, and you are entitled to a fair share of the beast.  If
you like, we will pass a vote of thanks.  Shall I propose?"

Yes, we were a Republic indeed!  A Republic of wild beasts
penned at the bottom of a pit, to eat and fight and sleep till we
died. I attempted no protest of any kind, but sat down and stared at
the hideous sight in front of me.  In less time almost than it takes
me to write this, Pornic's body was divided, in some unclear way
or other; the men and women had dragged the fragments on to the
platform and were preparing their normal meal.  Gunga Dass
cooked mine.  The almost irresistible impulse to fly at the sand
walls until I was wearied laid hold of me afresh, and I had to
struggle against it with all my might. Gunga Dass was offensively
jocular till I told him that if he addressed another remark of any
kind whatever to me I should strangle him where he sat.  This
silenced him till silence became insupportable, and I bade him say
something.

"You will live here till you die like the other Feringhi," he said,
coolly, watching me over the fragment of gristle that he was
gnawing.

"What  other  Sahib,  you  swine? Speak at once, and don't stop to
tell me a lie."

"He is over there," answered Gunga Dass, pointing to a
burrow-mouth about four doors ta the left of my own. "You can
see for yourself.  He died in the burrow as you will die, and I will
die, and as all these men and women and the one child will also
die."

"For pity's sake tell me all you know about him. Who was he?
When did he come, and when did he die?"

This appeal was a weak step on my part.  Gunga Dass only leered
and replied:-"I will not-unless you give me something first."

Then I recollected where I was, and struck the man between the
eyes, partially stunning him.  He stepped down from the platform
at once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping and attempting to
embrace my feet, led me round to the burrow which he had
indicated.

"I know nothing whatever about the gentleman.  Your God be my
witness that I do not.  He was as anxious to escape as you were,
and he was shot from the boat, though we all did all things te
prevent him from attempting. He was shot here."  Gunga Dass laid
his hand on his lean stomach and bowed to the earth.

"Well, and what then?  Go on!"

"And then-and then, Your Honor, we carried him in to his house
and gave him water, and put wet cloths on the wound, and he laid
down in his house and gave up the ghost."

"In how long?  In how long?"

"About half an hour, after he received his wound. I call Vishnu to
witness," yelled the wretched man, "that I did everything for him.
Everything which was possible, that I did!"

He threw himself down on the ground and clasped my ankles.  But
I had my doubts about Gunga Dass's benevolence, and kicked him
off as he lay protesting.

"I believe you robbed him of everything he had.  But I can find out
in a minute or two.  How long was the Sahib he'~?"

"Nearly a year and a half. I think he must have gone mad. But hear
me swear Protector of the Poor!  Won't Your Honor hear me swear
that I never touched an article that belonged to him? What is Your
Worship going to do?"

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and had hauled him on to the
platform opposite the deserted burrow.  As I did so I thought of my
wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable misery among all these
horrors for eighteen months, and the final agony of dying like a rat
in a hole,  with  a  bullet-wound  in  the stomach.  Gunga Dass
fancied I was going to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of
the population, in the plethora that follows a full flesh meal,
watched us without stirring.

"Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, "and fetch it out."

I was feeling sick and faint with horror now.  Gunga Dass nearly
rolled off the platform and howled aloud.

"But I am Brahmin, Sahib-a high-caste Brahmin. By your soul, by
your father's soul, do not make me do this thing!"

"Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and my father's soul, in you
go!"  I said, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his head
into the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest of him in, and, sitting
down, covered my face with my hands.

At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then
Gunga Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself;
then a soft thud-and I uncovered my eyes.

The dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its keeping into a
yellow-brown mummy. I told Gunga Dass to stand off while I
examined it.
The body-clad in an olive-green hunting-suit much stained and
worn, with leather pads on the shoulders-was that of a man
between thirty and forty, above middle height, with light, sandy
hair, long mustache, and a rough unkempt beard.  The left canine
of the upper jaw was missing, and a portion of the lobe of the right
ear was gone.  On the second finger of the left hand was a ring-a
shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might
have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right
hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn
and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had
picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the
body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these.  I give the
full list in the hope that it may lead to the identification of the
unfortunate man:

1. Bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the edge; much worn and
blackened; bound with string at the crew.

2. Two patent-lever keys; wards of both broken.

3. Tortoise-shell-handled  penknife, silver or nickel. name-plate,
marked with monogram "B.K."

4.  Envelope, postmark Undecipherable, bearing a Victorian
stamp, addressed to "Miss Mon-" (rest illegible) -"ham"-"nt."

5. Imitation crocodile-skin notebook with pencil.   First  forty-five
pages blank; four and a half illegible; fifteen others filled with
private memoranda relating chiefly to three persons-a Mrs.L.

Singleton, abbreviated several times to "Lot Single," "Mrs. S.

May," and "Garmison," referred to in places as "Jerry" or "Jack."

6.Handle of small-sized hunting-knife.  Blade snapped short.
Buck's horn, diamond cut, with swivel and ring on the butt;
fragment of cotton cord attached.

It must not be supposed that I inventoried all these things on the
spot as fully as I have here written them down. The notebook first
attracted my attention, and I put it in my pocket with a view of
studying it later on.

The rest of the articles I conveyed to my burrow for safety's sake,
and there being a methodical man, I inventoried them.  I then
returned to the corpse and ordered Gunga Dass to help me to carry
it out to the river-front.  While we were engaged in this, the
exploded shell of an old brown cartridge dropped out of one of the
pockets and rolled at my feet. Gunga Dass had not seen it; and I
fell to thinking that a man does not carry exploded cartridge-cases,
especially "browns," which will not bear loading twice, about with
him when shooting.  In other words, that cartridge-case had been
fired inside the crater.  Consequently there must be a gun
somewhere.  I was on the verge of asking Gunga Dass, but checked
myself, knowing that he would lie. We laid the body down on the
edge of the quicksand by the tussocks. It was my intention to push
it out and let it be swallowed up-the only possible mode of burial
that I could think of.  I ordered Gunga Dass to go away.

Then I gingerly put the corpse. out on the quicksand. In doing so.

it was lying face downward, I tore the frail and rotten khaki
shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the back. I have
already told you that the dry sand had, as it were, mummified the
body.  A moment's glance showed that the gaping hole had been
caused by a gun-shot wound; the gun must have been fired with
the muzzle almost touching the back.  The shooting-coat, being
intact, had been drawn over the body after death, which must have
been instantaneous.  The secret of the poor wretch's death was
plain to me in a flash.  Some one of the crater, presumably Gunga
Dass, must have shot him with his own gun--the gun that fitted the
brown cartridges.  He had never attempted to escape in the face of
the rifle-fire from the boat.

I pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it sink from sight literally
in a few seconds. I shuddered as I watched. In a dazed,
half-conscious way I turned to peruse the notebook. A stained and
discolored slip of paper bad been inserted between the binding and
the back, and dropped out as I opened the pages.  This is what it
contained:-"Four out from crow-clump: three left; nine out; two
right; three back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven out; one
left; nine back; two right; six back; four right; seven back."  The
paper had been burned and charred at the edges.  What it meant I
could not understand.  I sat down on the dried bents turning it over
and over between my fingers, until I was aware of Gunga Dass
standing immediately behind me with glowing eyes and
outstretched hands.

"Have you got it?" he panted. "Will

you not let me lank at it also? I swear that I will return it."

"Got  what?   Return  what?" asked.

"That which you have in your hands. It will help us both." He
stretched out his long, bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness.

"I could never find it," he continued. "He had secreted it about his
person. Therefore I shot him, but nevertheless I was unable to
obtain it."

Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about the
rifle-bullet.  I received  the  information  perfectly calmly.
Morality is blunted by consorting with the Dead who are alive.

"What on  earth are you  raving about? What is it you want me to
give you?"

"The piece of paper in the notebook. It will help us both. Oh, you
fool! You fool!  Can you not see what it will do for us? We shall
escape!"

His voice rose almost to a scream, and he danced with excitement
before me. I own I was moved at the chance of my getting away.

"Don't skip!  Explain yourself. Do you mean to say that this slip of
paper will help us? What does it mean?"

"Read it aloud!  Read it aloud!  I beg and I pray you to read it
aloud."

I did so.  Gunga Dass listened delightedly, and drew an irregular
line in the sand with his fingers.

"See now!  It was the length of his gun-barrels without the stock.  I
have those barrels.  Four gun-barrels out from the place where I
caught crows Straight out; do you follow me? Then three left-Ah!
how well I remember when that man worked it out night after
night  Then nine out, and so on. Out is always straight before
you across the quicksand.  He told me so before I killed him."

'~But if you knew all this why didn't you get out before?"

"I did not know it. He told me that he was working it out a year
and a half ago, and how he was working it out night after night
when the boat bad gone away, and he could get out near ~be
quicksand safely. Then he said that we would get away together.
But I was afraid that he would leave me behind one night when he
had worked it all out, and so I shot him.  Besides, it is not
advisable that the men who once get in here should escape.  Only
I, and I am a Brahmin."

The prospect of escape had brought Gunga Dass's caste back to
him.  He stood up, walked about and gesticulated violently.
Eventually I managed to make him talk soberly, and he told me
how this Englishman had spent six months night after night in
exploring, inch by inch, the passage across the quicksand; how he
had declared it to be simplicity itself up to within about twenty
yards of the river bank after turning the flank of the left horn of the
horseshoe.  This much he had evidently not completed when
Gunga Dass shot him with his own gun.

In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of escape I recollect
shaking hands effusively with Gunga Dass, after we had decided
that we were to make an attempt to get away that very night. It was
weary work waiting throughout the afternoon.

About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge, when the Moon had just
risen above the lip of the crater, Gunga Dass made a move for his
burrow to bring out the gun-barrels whereby to measure our path.
All the other wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long
ago.  The guardian boat drifted downstream some hours before,
and we were utterly alone by the crow-clump. Gunga Dass, while
carrying the gun-barrels, let slip the piece of paper which was to be
our guide.  I stooped down hastily to recover it, and, as I did so, I
was aware that the diabolical Brahmin was aiming a violent blow
at the back of my head with the gun-barrels.  It was too late to turn
round.  I must have received the blow somewhere on the nape of
my neck. A hundred thousand fiery stars danced before my eyes,
and I fell forwards senseless at the edge of, the quicksand.

When I recovered consciousness, the Moon was going down, and I
was sensible of intolerable pain in the back of my head. Gunga
Dass had disappeared and my mouth was full of blood. I lay down
again and prayed that I might die without more ado.  Then the
unreasoning fury which I had before mentioned, laid hold upon
me, and I staggered inland toward the walls of the crater.  It
seemed that some one was calling to me in a whisper-"Sahib!
Sahib! Sahib!" exactly as my bearer used to call me in the morning
I fancied that I was delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet.
Then I looked up and saw a head peering down into the
amphitheatre-the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy, who attended to
my collies. As soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his
hand and showed a rope.  I motioned. staggering to and fro for the
while, that he should throw it down.  It was a couple of leather
punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at one end. I slipped
the loop over my head and under my arms; heard Dunnoo urge
something forward; was conscious that I was being dragged, face
downward, up the steep sand slope, and the next instant found
myself choked and half fainting on the sand hills overlooking the
crater.  Dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the moonlight, implored
me not to stay but to get back to my tent at once.

It seems that he had tracked Pornic's footprints fourteen miles
across the sands to the crater; had returned and told my servants,
who flatly refused to meddle with any one, white or black, once
fallen into the hideous Village of  the Dead; whereupon Dunnoo
had taken one of my ponies and a couple of punkah-ropes, returned
to the crater, and hauled me out as I have described.

To cut a long story short, Dunnoo is now my personal servant on a
gold mohur a month-a sum which I still think far too little for the
services he has rendered.  Nothing on earth will induce me to go
near that devilish snot again, or to reveal its whereabouts more
clearly than I have done.  Of Gunga Dass I have never found a
trace, nor do I wish to do.  My sole motive in giving this to be
published is the hope that some one may possibly identify, from
the details and the inventory which I have given above, the corpse
of the man in the olive-green hunting-suit.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not
easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again
under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out
whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince,
though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a
veritable King, and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom--
army, law-courts, revenue, and policy all complete. But, to-day, I
greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go
hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway-train upon the road
to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget,
which necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half
as dear as First-Class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful
indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the
population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native,
which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is
amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from
refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the
roadside water. This is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken
out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly
looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when the big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves
entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the
time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but
with an educated taste for whisky. He told tales of things he had
seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which
he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for
a few days' food.

"If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more
than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't
seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven
hundred millions," said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I
was disposed to agree with him.

We talked politics,--the politics of Loaferdom that sees things
from the under side where the lath and plaster is not smoothed
off,--and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted
to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, the turning-
off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel
westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he
wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in
the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a
wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury,
there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help
him in any way.

"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on
tick," said my friend, "but that'd mean inquiries for you and for me,
and I've got my hands full these days. Did you say you were
travelling back along this line within any days?"

"Within ten," I said.

"Can't you make it eight?" said he. "Mine is rather urgent
business."

"I can send your telegrams within ten days if that will serve you," I
said.

"I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him, now I think of it. It's this
way. He leaves Delhi on the 23rd for Bombay. That means he'll be
running through Ajmir about the night of the 23rd."

"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.

"Well and good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction
to get into Jodhpore territory,--you must do that,--and he'll be
coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th
by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time?
'T won't be inconveniencing you, because I know that there's
precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States--
even though you pretend to be correspondent of the
'Backwoodsman.' "

"Have you ever tried that trick?" I asked.

"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get
escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into
them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word o' mouth
to tell him what's come to me, or else he won't know where to go. I
would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of
Central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to
him, 'He has gone South for the week.' He'll know what that
means. He's a big man with a red beard, and a great swell he is.

You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage
round him in a Second-class apartment. But don't you be afraid.

Slip down the window and say, 'He has gone South for the week,'

and he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by
two days. I ask you as a stranger--going to the West," he said, with
emphasis.

"Where have you come from?" said I.

"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him
the message on the Square--for the sake of my Mother as well as
your own."

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of
their mothers; but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent,
I saw fit to agree.

"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I asked you
to do it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
Second- class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man
asleep in it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next
station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I
want."

"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of
your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't
try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of
the 'Backwoodsman.' There's a real one knocking about here, and it
might lead to trouble."

"Thank you," said he, simply; "and when will the swine be gone? I
can't starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of
the Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give
him a jump."

"What did he do to his father's widow, then?"

"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she
hung from a beam. I found that out myself, and I'm the only man
that would dare going into the State to get hush-money for it.

They'll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I
went on the loot there. But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction
my message?"

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers
and bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I
had never met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and
generally die with great suddenness. The Native States have a
wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light
on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to
choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their
mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that
nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native
States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one
end of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth,
full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the
Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-
Raschid. When I left the train I did business with divers Kings, and
in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I
wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and Politicals,
drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out
upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made
of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the same
rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as
I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar
Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed
railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a
short halt at Marwar. She arrived just as I got in, and I had just
time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was
only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and
looked down upon a flaming-red beard, half covered by a railway-
rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs.

He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps.

It was a great and shining face.

"Tickets again?" said he.

"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week.

He has gone South for the week!"

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes.

"He has gone South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just
like his impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything?
'Cause I won't."

"He didn't," I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights
die out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was
blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train--not an
Intermediate carriage this time--and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept
it as a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of
having done my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not
do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of
newspapers, and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-
trap States of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves
into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe
them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be
interested in deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later
informed, in having them headed back from the Degumber
borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned to an office where there
were no Kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a
newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable
sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission
ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his
duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back slum of a
perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been overpassed
for command sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten,
twelve, or twenty- four leading articles on Seniority versus
Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have not been
permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse, and swear
at a brother missionary under special patronage of the editorial
We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they
cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New
Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent
punka-pulling machines, carriage couplings, and unbreakable
swords and axletrees call with specifications in their pockets and
hours at their disposal; tea companies enter and elaborate their
prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of ball committees
clamour to have the glories of their last dance more fully
described; strange ladies rustle in and say, "I want a hundred lady's
cards printed at once, please," which is manifestly part of an
Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the
Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as
a proof- reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing
madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires
are saying, "You're another," and Mister Gladstone is calling down
brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black
copyboys are whining, "kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh" ("Copy wanted"), like
tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as Modred's shield.

But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
when none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by
inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just
above reading-light, and the press-machines are red-hot to touch,
and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the
Hill-stations or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a
tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men
and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly heat covers
you with a garment, and you sit down and write: "A slight increase
of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The
outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the
energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an
end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death," etc.

Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and
reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the
Empires and the Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as
before, and the Foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to
come out once in twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-
stations in the middle of their amusements say, "Good gracious!
why can't the paper be sparkling? I'm sure there's plenty going on
up here."

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say,
"must be experienced to be appreciated."

It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper
began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which
is to say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This
was a great convenience, for immediately after the paper was put
to bed the dawn would lower the thermometer from 96 degrees to
almost 84 degrees for half an hour, and in that chill--you have no
idea how cold is 84 degrees on the grass until you begin to pray for
it--a very tired man could get off to sleep ere the heat roused him.

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed
alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was
going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was
important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be
held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the
telegram.

It was a pitchy-black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and
the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among
the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels.

Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the
dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was
only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the
office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the
night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked
compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for
water. The thing that was keeping us back, whatever it was, would
not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and
the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its
finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered
whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man,
or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the
delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat
and worry to make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to
three o-clock and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three
times to see that all was in order, before I said the word that would
set them off, I could have shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front
of me. The first one said, "It's him!" The second said, "So it is!"
And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared,
and mopped their foreheads. "We seed there was a light burning
across the road, and we were sleeping in that ditch there for
coolness, and I said to my friend here, 'The office is open. Let's
come along and speak to him as turned us back from Degumber
State,' " said the smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in
the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of
Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one
or the beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble
with loafers. "What do you want?" I asked.

"Half an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable, in the office,"
said the red-bearded man. "We'd like some drink,--the Contrack
doesn't begin yet, Peachey, so you needn't look,--but what we
really want is advice. We don't want money. We ask you as a
favour, because we found out you did us a bad turn about
Degumber State."

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on
the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's
something like," said he. "This was the proper shop to come to.

Now, Sir, let me introduce you to Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's
him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about
our professions the better, for we have been most things in our
time--soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader,
street-preacher, and correspondents of the 'Backwoodsman' when
we thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I.

Look at us first, and see that's sure. It will save you cutting into my
talk. We'll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light
up."

I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them
each a tepid whisky-and-soda.

"Well and good," said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth
from his moustache. "Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over
India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers,
petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't
big enough for such as us."

They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's beard seemed
to fill half the room and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as
they sat on the big table. Carnehan continued: "The country isn't
half worked out because they that governs it won't let you touch it.

They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't lift
a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that,
without all the Government saying, 'Leave it alone, and let us
govern.' Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away
to some other place where a man isn't crowded and can come to
his own. We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are
afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that.

Therefore we are going away to be Kings."

"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.

"Yes, of course," I said. "You've been tramping in the sun, and it's
a very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion?
Come to-morrow."

"Neither drunk nor sunstruck," said Dravot. "We have slept over
the notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and
we have decided that there is only one place now in the world that
two strong men can Sar-a-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my
reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more
than three hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty
heathen idols there, and we'll be the thirty-third and fourth. It's a
mountaineous country, the women of those parts are very
beautiful."

"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan.

"Neither Women nor Liqu-or, Daniel."

"And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and
they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows
how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts
and say to any King we find, 'D' you want to vanquish your foes?'

and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better
than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his
Throne and establish a Dy-nasty."

"You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the
Border," I said. "You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to
that country. It's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers,
and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter
brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything."

"That's more like," said Carnehan. "If you could think us a little
more mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to
know about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown
maps. We want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your
books." He turned to the bookcases.

"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.

"A little," said Dravot, sweetly. "As big a map as you have got,
even if it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you've got.

We can read, though we aren't very educated."

I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India and
two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica," and the men consulted them.

"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak,
Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Robert's Army.

We'll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann
territory. Then we get among the hills--fourteen thousand feet--
fifteen thousand --it will be cold work there, but it don't look very
far on the map."

I handed him Wood on the "Sources of the Oxus." Carnehan was
deep in the "Encyclopaedia."

"They're a mixed lot," said Dravot, reflectively; "and it won't help
us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more
they'll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang.

H'mm!"

"But all the information about the country is as sketchy and
inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it
really. Here's the file of the 'United Services' Institute.' Read what
Bellew says."

"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're a stinkin' lot of
heathens, but this book here says they think they're related to us
English."

I smoked while the men poured over Raverty, Wood, the maps,
and the "Encyclopaedia."

"There is no use your waiting," said Dravot, politely. "It's about
four o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock if you want to sleep,
and we won't steal any of the papers. Don't you sit up. We're two
harmless lunatics, and if you come to-morrow evening down to the
Serai we'll say good-bye to you."

"You are two fools," I answered. "You'll be turned back at the
Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you
want any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help
you to the chance of work next week."

"Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you," said
Dravot. "It isn't so easy being a King as it looks. When we've got
our Kingdom in going order we'll let you know, and you can come
up and help us govern it."

"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?" said Carnehan,
with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of notepaper
on which was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as
a curiosity.

  This Contracx between me and you persuing witnesseth in
  the name of God--Amen and so forth.

    (One)     That me and you will settle this matter
              together; i.e., to be Kings of Kafiristan.

    (Two)     That you and me will not, while this
              matter is being settled, look at any
              Liquor, nor any Woman, black, white,
              or brown, so as to get mixed up with
              one or the other harmful.

    (Three)   That we conduct ourselves with Dignity
              and Discretion, and if one of us gets
              into trouble the other will stay by him.

       Signed by you and me this day.

              Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

              Daniel Dravot.

              Both Gentlemen at Large.

"There was no need for the last article," said Carnehan, blushing
modestly; "but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that
loafers are,--we are loafers, Dan, until we get out of India,--and do
you think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in
earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life
worth having."

"You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try
this idiotic adventure. Don't set the office on fire," I said, "and go
away before nine o'clock."

I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back
of the "Contrack." "Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,"
were their parting words.

The Kumharsen Serai is the great foursquare sink of humanity
where the strings of camels and horses from the North load and
unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia may be found there,
and most of the folk of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there
meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy
ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy- cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed
sheep, and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get many strange
things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down to see whether my
friends intended to keep their word or were lying there drunk.

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me,
gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his
servant bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two
were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai
watched them with shrieks of laughter.

"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me. "He is going up to
Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honour or
have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been
behaving madly ever since."

"The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-
cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell future events."

"Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been
cut up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!"
grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose
goods had been diverted into the hands of other robbers just across
the Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the
bazaar. "Ohe, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?"

"From Roum have I come," shouted the priest, waving his
whirligig; "from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils
across the sea! O thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan
on pigs, dogs, and perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to
the North to sell charms that are never still to the Amir? The
camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives
shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men who give me
place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the King of
the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection
of Pir Khan be upon his labours!" He spread out the skirts of his
gabardine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.

"There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days,
Huzrut," said the Eusufzai trader. "My camels go therewith. Do
thou also go and bring us good luck."

"I will go even now!" shouted the priest. "I will depart upon my
winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir
Khan," he yelled to his servant, "drive out the camels, but let me
first mount my own."

He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to
me, cried, "Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I
will sell thee a charm--an amulet that shall make thee King of
Kafiristan."

Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out
of the Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.

"What d' you think o' that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk
their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome
servant. 'T isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the
country for fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on
to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see
if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan.

Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor'! Put your hand under the
camelbags and tell me what you feel."

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.

"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot, placidly. "Twenty of 'em and
ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud
dolls."

"Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" I said. "A
Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans."

"Fifteen hundred rupees of capital--every rupee we could beg,
borrow, or steal--are invested on these two camels," said Dravot.

"We won't get caught. We're going through the Khaiber with a
regular caravan. Who'd touch a poor mad priest?"

"Have you got everything you want?" I asked, overcome with
astonishment.

"Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a momento of your kindness,
Brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar.

Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is." I slipped a
small charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the
priest.

"Good-bye," said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously. "It's the last
time we'll shake hands with an Englishman these many days.

Shake hands with him, Carnehan," he cried, as the second camel
passed me.

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed
away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye
could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai
proved that they were complete to the native mind. There was just
the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to
wander through Afghanistan without detection. But, beyond, they
would find death-- certain and awful death.

Ten days later a native correspondent, giving me the news of the
day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with: "There has been
much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is
going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets
which he ascribes as great charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara.

He passed through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second
Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased
because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows
bring good fortune."

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for
them, but that night a real King died in Europe, and demanded an
obituary notice.


The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and
again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed
again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third
summer there fell a hot night, a night issue, and a strained waiting
for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world,
exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the
past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some
of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that was
all the difference.

I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene
as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than
it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At
three o'clock I cried, "Print off," and turned to go, when there crept
to my chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his
head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one
over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or
crawled--this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by
name, crying that he was come back. "Can you give me a drink?"
he whimpered. "For the Lord's sake, give me a drink!"

I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain,
and I turned up the lamp.

"Don't you know me?" he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he
turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to the
light.

I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met
over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I
could not tell where.

"I don't know you," I said, handing him the whisky. "What can I do
for you?"

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the
suffocating heat.

"I've come back," he repeated; "and I was the King of Kafiristan--
me and Dravot--crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it-
-you setting there and giving us the books. I am Peachey,--Peachey
Taliaferro Carnehan,--and you've been setting here ever since--O
Lord!"

I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings
accordingly.

"It's true," said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which
were wrapped in rags--"true as gospel. Kings we were, with
crowns upon our heads--me and Dravot--poor Dan--oh, poor, poor
Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged of him!"

"Take the whisky," I said, "and take your own time. Tell me all you
can recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across
the Border on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you
his servant. Do you remember that?"

"I ain't mad--yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I
remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to
pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes and don't say anything."

I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He
dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It
was twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged,
red, diamond-shaped scar.

"No, don't look there. Look at me," said Carnehan. "That comes
afterward, but for the Lord's sake don't distrack me. We left with
that caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse
the people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the
evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners--cooking
their dinners, and . . . what did they do then? They lit little fires
with sparks that went into Dravot's beard, and we all laughed--fit
to die. Little red fires they was, going into Dravot's big red beard--
so funny." His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.

"You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan," I said, at a
venture, "after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you
turned off to try to get into Kafiristan."

"No, we didn't, neither. What are you talking about? We turned off
before Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they
wasn't good enough for our two camels--mine and Dravot's. When
we left the caravan, Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too,
and said we would be heathen, because the Kafirs didn't allow
Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed betwixt and
between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor
expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and slung a
sheepskin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. He
shaved mine too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like
a heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country, and our
camels couldn't go along any more because of the mountains. They
were tall and black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild
goats --there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains,
they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they
are, and don't let you sleep at night."

"Take some more whisky," I said, very slowly. "What did you and
Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go no farther because of
the rough roads that led into Kafiristan?"

"What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro
Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He
died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey,
turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can
sell to the Amir. No; they was two for three ha'pence, those
whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. . . . And then
these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot, 'For the
Lord's sake let's get out of this before our heads are chopped off,'

and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not
having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the
boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along
driving four mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing,
'Sell me four mules.' Says the first man, 'If you are rich enough to
buy, you are rich enough to rob;' but before ever he could put his
hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the
other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the
rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward
into those bitter-cold mountaineous parts, and never a road broader
than the back of your hand."

He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember
the nature of the country through which he had journeyed.

"I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it
might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how
Dravot died. The country was mountaineous and the mules were
most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They
went up and up, and down and down, and that other party,
Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud,
for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot
says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't worth being King, and
whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed for ten
cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains,
and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having
anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes,
and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.

"Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing
twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus.

They was fair men--fairer than you or me--with yellow hair and
remarkable well built. Says Dravot, unpacking the guns, 'This is
the beginning of the business. We'll fight for the ten men,' and with
that he fires two rifles at the twenty men, and drops one of them at
two hundred yards from the rock where he was sitting. The other
men began to run, but Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes
picking them off at all ranges, up and down the valley. Then we
goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they
fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads,
and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks
them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to
make them friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes
to carry, and waves his hand for all the world as though he was
King already. They takes the boxes and him across the valley and
up the hill into a pine wood on the top, where there was half a
dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest--a fellow they
call Imbra--and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his
nose respectfuly with his own nose, patting him on the head, and
nods his head, and says, 'That's all right. I'm in the know too, and
these old jimjams are my friends.' Then he opens his mouth and
points down it, and when the first man brings him food, he says,
'No;' and when the second man brings him food, he says 'no;' but
when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him
food, he says, 'Yes;' very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how
he came to our first village without any trouble, just as though we
had tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those
damned rope-bridges, you see, and--you couldn't expect a man to
laugh much after that?"

"Take some more whisky and go on," I said. "That was the first
village you came into. How did you get to be King?"

"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot he was the King, and a
handsome man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all.

Him and the other party stayed in that village, and every morning
Dravot sat by the side of old Imbra, and the people came and
worshipped. That was Dravot's order. Then a lot of men came into
the valley, and Carnehan Dravot picks them off with the rifles
before they knew where they was, and runs down into the valley
and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as the
first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and
Dravot says, 'Now what is the trouble between you two villages?'

and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was
carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and
counts up the dead--eight there was. For each dead man Dravot
pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a
whirligig, and 'That's all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan
takes the big boss of each village by the arm, and walks them
down the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a
spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both
sides of the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like
the devil and all, and Dravot says, 'Go and dig the land, and be
fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they didn't
understand. Then we asks the names of things in their lingo--bread
and water and fire and idols and such; and Dravot leads the priest
of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge
the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.

"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet
as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints
and told Dravot in dumb-show what it was about. 'That's just the
beginning,' says Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan
picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle
and form fours and advance in line; and they was very pleased to
do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe
and his baccy-pouch, and leaves one at one village and one at the
other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next
valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there, and
Carnehan says, 'Send 'em to the old valley to plant,' and takes 'em
there and gives 'em some land that wasn't took before. They were a
poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid before letting 'em into the
new Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they
settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot, who had
got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountaineous.

There was no people there, and the Army got afraid; so Dravot
shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a
village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to be
killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks, for they had
matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest, and I stays there
alone with two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill; and a
thundering big Chief comes across the snow with kettledrums and
horns twanging, because he heard there was a new God kicking
about. Carnehan sights for the brown of the men half a mile across
the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the
Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and shake
hands with me and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes alone
first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms
about, same as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief
was, and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the
Chief, and asks him in dumb- show if he had an enemy he hated. 'I
have,' says the chief. So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men,
and sets the two of the Army to show them drill, and at the end of
two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So
he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a
mountain, and the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it;
we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took
that village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat, and says,
'Occupy till I come;' which was scriptural. By way of a reminder,
when me and the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops
a bullet near him standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat
on their faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot wherever he be by
land or by sea."

At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted: "How
could you write a letter up yonder?"

"The letter?--oh!--the letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes,
please. It was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the way of it
from a blind beggar in the Punjab."

I remember that there had once come to the office a blind man
with a knotted twig, and a piece of string which he wound round
the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the
lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up.

He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried
to teach me his method, but I could not understand.

"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan, "and told him to come
back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle;
and then I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were
working. They called the village we took along with the Chief,
Bashkai, and the first village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-
Heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about
land to show me, and some men from another village had been
firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for that village, and
fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used all the
cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who had been
away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet.

"One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns,
and Dan Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of
hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing, a great gold
crown on his head. 'My Gord, Carnehan,' says Daniel, 'this is a
tremenjus business, and we've got the whole country as far as it's
worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and
you're my younger brother and a God too! It's the biggest thing
we've ever seen. I've been marching and fighting for six weeks
with the Army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has
come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I've got the key of the
whole show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you! I told 'em
to make two of 'em at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the
rock like suet in mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked
out of the cliffs, and there's garnets in the sands of the river, and
here's a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the
priests and, here, take your crown.'

"One of the men opens a black hair bag, and I slips the crown on.

It was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory.

Hammered gold it was--five pounds weight, like a hoop of a barrel.

" 'Peachey,' says Dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. The
Craft's the trick, so help me!' and he brings forward that same
Chief that I left at Bashkai--Billy Fish we called him afterward,
because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at
Mach on the Bolan in the old days. 'Shake hands with him,' says
Dravot; and I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave
me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the Fellow-craft
Grip. He answers all right, and I tried the Master's Grip, but that
was a slip. 'A Fellow-craft he is!' I says to Dan. 'Does he know the
word?' 'He does,' says Dan, 'and all the priests know. It's a miracle!
The Chiefs and the priests can work a Fellow-craft Lodge in a way
that's very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, but
they don't know the Third Degree, and they've come to find out. It's
Gord's Truth. I've known these long years that the Afghans knew
up to the Fellow-craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a
Grand Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third Degree I
will open, and we'll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of the
villages.'

" 'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant
from any one; and you know we never held office in any Lodge.'

" 'It's a master stroke o' policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie on a down grade. We can't
stop to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at
my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall
be. Billet these men on the villages, and see that we run up a
Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for a Lodge-
room. The women must make aprons as you show them. I'll hold a
levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.'

"I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see
what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests'

families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron
the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white
hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the
Master's chair, and little stones for the officer's chairs, and painted
the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to
make things regular.

"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big
bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of
Alexander, and Passed Grand Masters in the Craft, and was come
to make Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace
and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come
round to shake hands, and they were so hairy and white and fair it
was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them names
according as they was like men we had known in India--Billy Fish,
Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was Bazaar-master when I was
at Mhow, and so on, and so on.

"The most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night. One of the
old priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I
knew we'd have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what the
men knew. The old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the
village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron
that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a
howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's
all up now,' I says. 'That comes of meddling with the Craft without
warrant!' Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took
and tilted over the Grand Master's chair--which was to say, the
stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to
clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other
priests the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's apron, cut into
the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was
there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet and kisses
'em. 'Luck again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge, to me; 'they say
it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of.

We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a
gavel and says, 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own
right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand Master
of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o' the
country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!' At that he
puts on his crown and I puts on mine,--I was doing Senior
Warden,--and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was an
amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two
degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back
to them. After that Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy-
-high priests and Chiefs of far- off villages. Billy Fish was the first,
and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any
way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't raise
more than ten of the biggest men, because we didn't want to make
the Degree common. And they was clamouring to be raised.

" 'In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another
Communication and see how you are working.' Then he asks them
about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against
the other, and were sick and tired of it. And when they wasn't
doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans. 'You can
fight those when they come into our country,' says Dravot. 'Tell off
every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two
hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be
shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that
you won't cheat me, because you're white people--sons of
Alexander--and not like common black Mohammedans. You are
my people, and, by God,' says he, running off into English at the
end, 'I'll make a damned fine Nation of you, or I'll die in the
making!'

"I can't tell all we did for the next six months, because Dravot did
a lot I couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way
I never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now
and again go out with some of the Army and see what the other
villages were doing, and make 'em throw rope bridges across the
ravines which cut up the country horrid. Dravot was very kind to
me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood pulling
that bloody red beard of his with both fists I knew he was thinking
plans I could not advise about, and I just waited for orders.

"But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They
were afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the
best of friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could
come across the hills with a complaint, and Dravot would hear him
out fair, and call four priests together and say what was to be done.

He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from
Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum,--it was like enough to
his real name,--and hold councils with 'em when there was any
fighting to be done in small villages. That was his Council of War,
and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora was his
Privy Council. Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men
and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the
Ghorband country to buy those hand- made Martini rifles, that
come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the
Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of
their mouths for turquoises.

"I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the
pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the
regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people,
we got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good
Kohat Jezails that'll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-
loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what
I had, and distributed 'em among the men that the Chiefs sent in to
me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the
old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five
hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to
hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made
guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-
shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when
the winter was coming on.

" 'I won't make a Nation,' says he. 'I'll make an Empire! These men
aren't niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes--look at their
mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their
own houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and
they've grown to be English. I'll take a census in the spring if the
priests don't get frightened. There must be a fair two million of 'em
in these hills. The villages are full o' little children. Two million
people-- two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men--and all
English! They only want the rifles and a little drilling. Two
hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on Russia's right
flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man,' he says, chewing his
beard in great hunks, 'we shall be Emperors--Emperors of the
Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I'll treat with the
Viceroy on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me twelve picked
English--twelve that I know of--to help us govern a bit. There's
Mackray, Serjeant Pensioner at Segowli-- many's the good dinner
he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the
Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hundreds that I could lay my
hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me; I'll send a
man through in the spring for those men, and I'll write for a
dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I've done as Grand
Master. That--and all the Sniders that'll be thrown out when the
native troops in India take up the Martini. They'll be worn smooth,
but they'll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred
thousand Sniders run through the Amir's country in driblets,--I'd be
content with twenty thousand in one year,--and we'd be an Empire.

When everything was shipshape I'd hand over the crown--this
crown I'm wearing now--to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she'd
say, "Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot." Oh, it's big! It's big, I tell you!
But there's so much to be done in every place--Bashkai, Khawak,
Shu, and everywhere else.'

" 'What is it?' I says. 'There are no more men coming in to be
drilled this autumn. Look at those fat black clouds. They're
bringing the snow.'

" 'It isn't that,' says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my
shoulder; 'and I don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no
other living man would have followed me and made me what I am
as you have done. You're a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and
the people know you; but--it's a big country, and somehow you
can't help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped.'

" 'Go to your blasted priests, then!' I said, and I was sorry when I
made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so
superior, when I'd drilled all the men and done all he told me.

" 'Don't let's quarrel, Peachey,' says Daniel, without cursing. 'You're
a King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can't you
see, Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now--three or four of
'em, that we can scatter about for our Deputies. It's a hugeous great
State, and I can't always tell the right thing to do, and I haven't
time for all I want to do, and here's the winter coming on and all.'

He put half his beard into his mouth, all red like the gold of his
crown.

" 'I'm sorry, Daniel,' says I. 'I've done all I could. I've drilled the
men and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and I've
brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband--but I know what
you're driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.'

" 'There's another thing too,' says Dravot, walking up and down.

'The winter's coming, and these people won't be giving much
trouble, and if they do we can't move about. I want a wife.'

" 'For Gord's sake leave the women alone!' I says. 'We've both got
all the work we can, though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack,
and keep clear o' women.'"

 " 'The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and
Kings we have been these months past,' says Dravot, weighing his
crown in his hand. 'You go get a wife too, Peachey--a nice,
strappin', plump girl that'll keep you warm in the winter. They're
prettier than English girls, and we can take the pick of 'em. Boil
'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll come out like chicken
and ham.'

" 'Don't tempt me!' I says. 'I will not have any dealings with a
woman, not till we are a dam' side more settled than we are now.

I've been doing the work o' two men, and you've been doing the
work of three. Let's lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better
tobacco from Afghan country and run in some good liquor; and no
women.'"

" 'Who's talking o' women?' says Dravot. 'I said wife--a Queen to
breed a King's son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe,
that'll make them your blood-brothers, and that'll lie by your side
and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs.

That's what I want.'

" 'Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai
when I was a plate-layer?' says I. 'A fat lot o' good she was to me.

She taught me the lingo and one or two other things; but what
happened? She ran away with the Station-master's servant and half
my month's pay. Then she turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a
half-caste, and had the impidence to say I was her husband--all
among the drivers in the running-shed too!'

" 'We've done with that,' says Dravot; 'these women are whiter than
you or me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.'

" 'For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not,' I says. 'It'll only bring us
harm. The Bible says that Kings ain't to waste their strength on
women, 'specially when they've got a new raw Kingdom to work
over.'

" 'For the last time of answering, I will,' said Dravot, and he went
away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil, the sun
being on his crown and beard and all.

"But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it
before the Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said
that he'd better ask the girls. Dravot damned them all round.

'What's wrong with me?' he shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. 'Am
I a dog, or am I not enough of a man for your wenches? Haven't I
put the shadow of my hand over this country? Who stopped the last
Afghan raid?' It was me really, but Dravot was too angry to
remember. 'Who bought your guns? Who repaired the bridges?
Who's the Grand Master of the sign cut in the stone?' says he, and
he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in Lodge,
and at Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish said
nothing, and no more did the others. 'Keep your hair on, Dan,' said
I, 'and ask the girls. That's how it's done at Home, and these people
are quite English.'

" 'The marriage of the King is a matter of State,' says Dan, in a
white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against
his better mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others
sat still, looking at the ground.

" 'Billy Fish,' says I to the Chief of Bashkai, 'what's the difficulty
here? A straight answer to a true friend.'

" 'You know,' says Billy Fish. 'How should a man tell you who
knows everything? How can daughters of men marry Gods or
Devils? It's not proper.'

"I remembered something like that in the Bible; but, if after seeing
us as long as they had, they still believed we were Gods, it wasn't
for me to undeceive them.

" 'A God can do anything,' says I. 'If the King is fond of a girl he'll
not let her die.' 'She'll have to,' said Billy Fish. 'There are all sorts
of Gods and Devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl
marries one of them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two
know the Mark cut in the stone. Only the Gods know that. We
thought you were men till you showed the sign of the Master.'

"I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine
secrets of a Master Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All
that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-
way down the hill, and I heard the girl crying fit to die. One of the
priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.

" 'I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says Dan. 'I don't want to
interfere with your customs, but I'll take my own wife.' 'The girl's a
little bit afraid,' says the priest. 'She thinks she's going to die, and
they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.'

" 'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you
with the butt of a gun so you'll never want to be heartened again.'

He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than
half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the
morning. I wasn't any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings
with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a crowned King
twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got up very early in the
morning while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the priests talking
together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they
looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.

" 'What is up, Fish?' I say to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up
in his furs and looking splendid to behold.

" 'I can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can make the King drop all
this nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and
yourself a great service.'

" 'That I do believe,' says I. 'But sure, you know, Billy, as well as
me, having fought against and for us, that the King and me are
nothing more than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever
made. Nothing more, I do assure you.'

" 'That may be,' says Billy Fish, 'and yet I should be sorry if it was.'

He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks.

'King,' says he, 'be you man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-
day. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me.

We'll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.'

" A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white
except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the
north. Dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his
arms and stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.

" 'For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I, in a whisper; 'Billy Fish
here says that there will be a row.'

" 'A row among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey,
you're a fool not to get a wife too. Where's the girl?' says he, with a
voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. 'Call up all the Chiefs and
priests, and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.'

"There was no need to call any one. They were all there leaning on
their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine
wood. A lot of priests went down to the little temple to bring up
the girl, and the horns blew fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish
saunters round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind
him stood his twenty men with matchlocks--not a man of them
under six feet. I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty
men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping
wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises, but white as
death, and looking back every minute at the priests.

" 'She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 'What's to be afraid of,
lass? Come and kiss me.' He puts his arm round her. She shuts her
eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of
Dan's flaming-red beard.

" 'The slut's bitten me!' says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and,
sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his
matchlock men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags
him into the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo,
'Neither God nor Devil, but a man!' I was all taken aback, for a
priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind began firing into the
Bashkai men.

" 'God A'mighty!' says Dan, 'what is the meaning o' this?'

" 'Come back! Come away!' says Billy Fish. 'Ruin and Mutiny is
the matter. We'll break for Bashkai if we can.'

"I tried to give some sort of orders to my men,--the men o' the
regular Army,--but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of 'em
with an English Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The
valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was
shrieking, 'Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!' The Bashkai
troops stuck to Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks
wasn't half as good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them
dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy;
and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him running out at the
crowd.

" 'We can't stand,' says Billy Fish. 'Make a run for it down the
valley! The whole place is against us.' The matchlock-men ran, and
we went down the valley in spite of Dravot. He was swearing
horrible and crying out that he was a King. The priests rolled great
stones on us, and the regular Army fired hard, and there wasn't
more than six men, not counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that
came down to the bottom of the valley alive.

"Then they stopped firing, and the horns in the temple blew again.

'Come away--for Gord's sake come away!' says Billy Fish. 'They'll
send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I
can protect you there, but I can't do anything now."

"My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that
hour. He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for
walking back alone and killing the priests with his bare hands;
which he could have done. 'An Emperor am I,' says Daniel, 'and
next year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.'

" 'All right, Dan,' says I; 'but come along now while there's time.'

" 'It's your fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your Army better.

There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know--you damned
engine- driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He
sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue
to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness
that brought the smash.

" 'I'm sorry, Dan,' says I, 'but there's no accounting for natives. This
business is our Fifty-seven. Maybe we'll make something out of it
yet, when we've got to Bashkai.'

" 'Let's get to Bashkai, then,' says Dan, 'and, by God, when I come
back here again I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a
blanket left!'

"We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up
and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to
himself.

" 'There's no hope o' getting clear,' said Billy Fish. 'The priests have
sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why
didn't you stick on as Gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead
man,' says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and
begins to pray to his Gods.

"Next morning we was in a cruel bad country--all up and down, no
level ground at all, and no food, either. The six Bashkai men
looked at Billy Fish hungry-way as if they wanted to ask
something, but they never said a word. At noon we came to the top
of a flat mountain all covered with snow, and when we climbed up
into it, behold, there was an Army in position waiting in the
middle!

" 'The runners have been very quick,' says Billy Fish, with a little
bit of a laugh. 'They are waiting for us.'

"Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a
chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to
his senses. He looks across the snow at the Army, and sees the
rifles that we had brought into the country.

" 'We're done for,' says he. 'They are Englishmen, these people,--
and it's my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back,
Billy Fish, and take your men away; you've done what you could,
and now cut for it. Carnehan,' says he, 'shake hands with me and go
along with Billy, Maybe they won't kill you. I'll go and meet 'em
alone. It's me that did it! Me, the King!'

" 'Go!' says I. 'Go to Hell, Dan! I'm with you here. Billy Fish, you
clear out, and we two will meet those folk.'

" 'I'm a Chief,' says Billy Fish, quite quiet. 'I stay with you. My men
can go.'

"The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word, but ran off,
and Dan and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums
were drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold--awful
cold. I've got that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump
of it there."

The punka-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were
blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face
and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was
shivering, and I feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face,
took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said, "What
happened after that?"

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

"What was you pleased to say?" whined Carnehan. "They took
them without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow,
not though the King knocked down the first man that set hand on
him--not though old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown
of 'em. Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They
just closed up tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There was a
man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his
throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the King kicks up the
bloody snow and says, 'We've had a dashed fine run for our money.

What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you,
Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No,
he didn't, neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o' one
of those cunning rope bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to
a rope bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may
have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your
eyes!' says the King. 'D' you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?'

He turns to Peachey-- Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've
brought you to this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your
happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late
Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me,
Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey. 'Fully and freely do I forgive you,
Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes,
looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the
middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut you beggars,' he shouts;
and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round,
twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck
the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the gold
crown close beside.

"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-
trees? They crucified him, Sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They
used wooden pegs for his hands and feet; but he didn't die. He
hung there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and
said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him down--
poor old Peachey that hadn't done them any harm--that hadn't done
them any--"

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the
back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten
minutes.

"They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they
said he was more of a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then
they turned him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and
Peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite
safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and said, 'Come along,
Peachey. It's a big thing we're doing.' The mountains they danced
at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on Peachey's head, but
Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came along bent double. He
never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's head. They
gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to
come again; and though the crown was pure gold and Peachey was
starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You know Dravot,
Sir! You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him
now!"

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a
black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook
therefrom on to my table--the dried, withered head of Daniel
Dravot! The morning sun, that had long been paling the lamps,
struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy
circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed
tenderly on the battered temples.

"You be'old now," said Carnehan, "the Emperor in his 'abit as he
lived --the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor
old Daniel that was a monarch once!"

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognised the
head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I
attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take
away the whisky, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a
King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the
Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you
get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs--in the south--at
Marwar."

He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the
Deputy Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to
go down the blinding-hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling
along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering
dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was
not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the
houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head from right
to left:

      "The Son of Man goes forth to war,
            A golden crown to gain;
       His blood-red banner streams afar--
            Who follows in His train?"

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage
and drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to
the Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me,
whom he did not in the least recognise, and I left him singing it to
the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of
the Asylum.

"He was admitted suffering from sunstroke. He died early
yesterday morning," said the Superintendent. "Is it true that he was
half an hour bareheaded in the sun at midday?"

"Yes," said I; "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon
him by any chance when he died?"

"Not to my knowledge," said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

"THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD"

"O' ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave."
-W. E. Henley.

His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother
who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming
into the City every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old
and suffered from aspirations.  I met him in a public
billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name,
and he called the marker "Bulls-eyes." Charley explained, a little
nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since
looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the
young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.

That was our first step toward better acquaintance.  He would call
on me sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London
with his fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a
young man must, he told me of his aspirations, which were all
literary.  He desired to make himself an undying name chiefly
through verse, though he was not above sending stories of love and
death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot journals.  It was my fate to sit
still while Charlie read me poems of many hundred lines, and
bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the world.  My
reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations and
troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden.

Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the
first opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things
honorable, but, at the same time, was curiously careful to let me
see that he knew his way about the world as befitted a bank clerk
on twenty-five  shillings  a week.   He rhymed "dove" with "love"
and "moon" with "June," and devoutly believed that they had never
so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays he filled
up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on,
seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it
already done, and turned to me for applause.

I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I
know that his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand.
This he told me almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he
was ravaging my bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to
speak the truth as to his chances of "writing something really great,
you know." Maybe I encouraged him too much, for, one night, he
called on me, his eyes flaming with excitement, and said
breathlessly:

"Do you mind-can you let me stay here and write all this evening?
I won't interrupt you, I won't really.  There's no place for me to
write in at my mother's."

"What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was.

"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story
that was ever written.  Do let me write it out here.  It's suck a
notion!"

There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly
thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour
the pen scratched without stopping.  Then  Charlie  sighed  and
tugged his hair.  The scratching grew slower, there were more
erasures, and at last ceased.  The finest story in the world would
not come forth.

"It looks such awful rot now" he said, mournfully.  "And yet it
seemed so good when I was thinking about it. ~~hat's wrong?"

I could not dishearten him by saying the truth.  So I answered:
"Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing."

"Yes I do-except when I look at this stuff.  Ugh!"

"Read me what you've done," I said. He read, and it was wondrous
bad and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a
little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he
would be.

"It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously.

"I hate cutting my things down.  I don't think you could alter a
word here without spoiling the sense.  It reads better aloud than
when I was writing it."

"Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a
numerous class.  Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week."

"I want to do it at once.  What do you think of it?"

"How can I judge from a half-written tale?  Tell me the story as it
lies in your head."

Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his
ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the
written word. I looked at him, and wondering whether it were
possible, that he did not know the originality, the power of the
notion that had come in his way?  It was distinctly a Notion among
notions.  Men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe
as excellent and practicable.  But Charlie babbled on serenely,
interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible
sentences that he purposed to use.  I heard him out to the end.  It
would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands,
when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done
indeed; but, oh so much!

"What do you think?" he said, at last. "I fancy I shall call it 'The
Story of a Ship.'"

"I think the idea's pretty good; but you won't he able to handle it
for ever so long. Now I"-"Would it be of any use to you?

Would you care to take it? I should be proud," said Charlie,
promptly.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless,
hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a
woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the
man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his
hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths.  And Charlie did all
these things. Still it was necessary to salve my conscience before I
possessed myself of Charlie's thoughts.

"Let's make a bargain.  I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said.

Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.

"Oh, that's impossible.  Between two pals, you know, if I may call
you so, and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the
notion if it's any use to you. I've heaps more."

He had-none knew this better than I

-but they were the notions of other men.

"Look at it as a matter of business-between men of the world," I
returned. "Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books.
Business is business, and you may be sure I shouldn't give that
price unless"-"Oh, if you put it that way," said Charlie, visibly
moved by the thought of the books.  The bargain was clinched
with an agreement that he should at un> stated intervals come to
me with all the notions that he possessed, should have a table of
his own to write at, and unquestioned right to inflict upon me all
his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, "Now tell me how
you came by this idea."

"It came by itself."  Charlie's eyes opened a little.

"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must
have read before somewhere."

"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here,
and on Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day.
There's nothing wrong about the hero, is there?"

"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly.  You say that your
hero went pirating. How did he live?"

"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you
about."

"What sort of ship?"

"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the
oar-holes and the men row sitting up to their knees in water.  Then
there's a bench running down between the two lines of oars and an
overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the
men work."

"How do you know that?"

"It's in the table.  There's a rope running overhead, looped to the
upper deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls.

When the overseer misses the rope once and falls among the
rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it.
He's chained to his oar of course-the hero."

'~How is he chained?"

"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on,
and a sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar.

He's on the lower deck where the worst men are ent, and the only
light comes from the hatchways and through the oar-holes.  Can't
you imagine the sunlight just squeezing through between the
handle and the hole and wobbling about as the ship moves?"

"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it."

"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me.  The long
oars on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench,
the lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember
it's quite dark on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad.

When a man dies at his oar on that deck he isn't thrown overboard,
but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the oar-hole in little
pieces."

"Why?" I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as
the tone of command in which it was flung out.

"To save trouble and to frighten the others.  It needs two overseers
to drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the
lower deck oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and
try to pull up the benches by all standing up together in their
chains."

"You've a most provident imagination.  Where have you been
reading about galleys and galley-slaves?"

"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance.
But, perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."

He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I
wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands
with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute
assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure,
riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a
desperate dance through revolt against the overseas, to command
of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom on
an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted with
my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other
men, that these might teach him how to write.  I had the
consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of
purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.

When next he came to me he was drunk-royally drunk on many
poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his
words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in
quotations.  Most of all was he drunk with Longfellow.

"Isn't it splendid?  Isn't it superb?" he  cried,  after  hasty  greetings.

"Listen to this-

"'Would~t thou,'  so the helmsman answered,
'Know the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.'

By gum!

"'Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.'"

be repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and
forgetting me. "But I can understand it too," he said to himself. "I
don't know how to thank you for that fiver.  And this; listen-

"'I remember the black wharves and the ships
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.'

I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it."

"You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea.  Have you ever seen
it?"

"When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live
in Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,

'When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox.'"

He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion
that was shaking himself.

"When that storm comes," he continued, "I think that all the oars in
the ship that I was talking about get broken, and  the  rowers  have
their  chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way,
have you done anything with that notion of mine yet?"

"No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the
world you re so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know
nothing of ships."

"I don't know.  It's as real as anything to me until I try to write it
down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had
loaned me 'Treasure Island'; and I made up a a whole lot of new
things to go into the story."

"What sort of things?"

"About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine
in a skin bag, passed from bench to bench."

"Was the ship built so long ago as that?"

"As what?  I don't know whether it was long ago or not.  It's only a
notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I
bother you with talking about it?"

"Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?"

"Yes, but it's nonsense."  Charlie flushed a little.

"Never mind; let's hear about it."

"Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of
bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men
might be supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their
handcuffs.  It seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It is so real
to me, y'know."

"Have you the paper on you?"

"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it?  It's only a lot of
scratches.  All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the
book on the front page."

"I'll attend to those details.  Show me what your men wrote."

He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper,  with  a  single
line  of scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.

"What is it supposed to mean in English?" I said.

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired.' It's great
nonsence," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real
people to me.  Do do something to the notion soon; I should like
to  see it written and printed."

"But  all  you've  told  me would make a long book."

"Make it then.  You've only to sit down and write it out."

"Give me a little time.  Have you any more notions?"

"Not just now.  I'm reading all the books I've bought.  They're
splendid."

When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the
inscription upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both
hands, to make certain that it was not coming off or turning round.

Then  .  .  . but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my
rooms and finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door
marked Private in a corridor of the British Museum.  All I
demanded, as politely as possible, was "the Greek antiquity man."
The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and
it became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices
inside the gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch
put an end to my search by holding the note-paper between finger
and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.

"What does this mean? H'mm," said he.  "So far as I can ascertain
it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"-here
he glared at me with intention-"of an extremely illiterate-ah-
person." He read slowly from the paper, "Pollock, Erckman,
Tauchnitz, Henniker"- four names familiar to me.

"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean-the gist
of the thing?" I asked.

"I have been-many times-overcome with weariness in this
particular employment.  That is the meaning."  He returned me the
paper, and I fled without a word of thanks, explanation, or
apology.

I might have been excused for forgetting much.  To me of all men
had been given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the
world, nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told
by himself.  Small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to
Charlie. The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each
successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and
Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never
man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time
began.  Above all he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge
sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for
bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound
commercial education does not include Greek. He would supply
m~here I capered among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in
their battered faces-with material to make my tale sur~so sure that
the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fict~on. And
I-I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally true. 1,-I
alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing.

Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me
and took steps in my direction.

It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there
was no difficulty.  But I had forgotten those accursed books of
poetry. He came to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged
phonograph-drunk on Byron, Shelley, or Keats.  Knowing now
what the boy had been in his past lives, and desperately anxious
not to lose one word of his babble, I could not hide from him my
respect and interest.  He misconstrued both into respect for the
present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was
to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to
breaking point by reciting poetry-not his own now, but that of
others.  I wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of
mankind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they
had drawn Charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would,
later, spur him to imitate them; but I choked down my impatience
until the first flood of enthusiasm should have spent itself and the
boy returned to his dreams.

"What's the use of my telling you what I think, when these chaps
wrote things for the angels to read?" he growled, one evening.
"Why don't you write something like theirs?"

"I don't think you're treating me quite fairly," I said, speaking under
strong restraint.

"I've given you the story," he said, shortly replunging into "Lara."

"But I want the details."

"The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a
galley? They're quite easy. You can just make

em up yourself.  Turn up the gas a little, I want to go on reading."

I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing
stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only
know what Charlie did not know that he knew.  But since the
doors were shut behind me I could only wait his youthful pleasure
and strive to keep him in good temper. One minute's want of guard
might spoil a priceless revelation: now and again he would toss his
books aside-he kept them in my rooms, for his mother would have
been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them-and
launched into his sea dreams. Again I cursed all the poets of
England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid,
colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the result as
delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the
muttered song through a City telephone in the busiest part of the
day.

He talked of the galley-his own galley had he but known it-with
illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos."  He pointed the
experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and
threw in deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and
"Manfred," expecting me to use them all. Only when the talk
turned on Longfellow were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I
knew that Charlie was speaking the truth as he remembered it.

"What do you think of this?" I said one evening, as soon as I
understood the medium in which his memory worked best, and,
before he could expostulate read him the whole of "The Sag  of
King Olaf!"

He listened open-mouthed, flushed his hands drumming on the
back of the sofa where he lay, till I came to the Songs of Emar
Tamberskelver and the verse:

"Emar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered: 'That was Norway breaking
'Neath thy hand, O King.'"

He gasped with pure delight of sound.

"That's better than Byron, a little," I ventured.

"Better? Why it's true! How could he have known?"

I went back and repeated:

"'What was that?' said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
'Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.'"

"How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip
out and go z-zzp all along the line? Why only the other night.  .  .  .

But go back please and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again."

"No, I'm tired.  Let's talk.  What happened the other night?"

"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I
was drowned in a fight.  You see we ran alongside another ship in
harbor. The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it
up. You know where I always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly
at first, under a fine English fear of being laughed at.

"No.  That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning
to beat.

"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper
deck. There were four of us at the oar, all chained. I remember
watching the water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the
row began.  Then we closed up on the other ship, and all their
fighting men jumped over our bulwarks, and my bench broke and I
was pinned down with the three other fellows on top of me, and
the big oar jammed across our backs."

"Well?" Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the
wall behind my chair.

"I don't know how we fought.  The men were trampling all over
my back, and I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side-tied to
their oars, you know-began to yell and back water.  I could hear
the water sizzle, and we spun round like a cockchafer and I knew,
lying where I was, that there was a galley coming up bow-on, to
ram us on the left side. I could just lift up my head and see her sail
over the bulwarks. We wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was
too late.  We could only turn a little bit because the galley on our
right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving. Then,
by gum! there was a crash!  Our left oars began to break as the
other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them.

Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck-planking, but
first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and came down
again close to my head."

"How was that managed?"

"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their
own oarholes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks
below.  Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted
sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their
hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck-arrows,
and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and
up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head
round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks,
and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on
the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke."

"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did
it look like?" I had my reasons for asking. A man of my
acquaintance had once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea,
and had seen the water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the
deck.

"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay
there for years," said Charlie.

Exactly!  The other man had said:

"It looked like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks, and I
thought it was never going to break." He had paid everything
except the bare life for this little valueless piece of knowledge, and
I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and take his
knowledge at second hand.  But Charlie, the bank-clerk, on
twenty-five shillings a week, he who bad never been out of sight of
a London omnibus, knew it all.  It was no consolation to me that
once in his lives he had been forced to die for his gains.  I also
must have died scores of times, but hebina me, because I could
have used my knowledge, the doors were shut.

"And then?"  I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.

"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit
astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many
fights, because I told my next man so when the row began.  But
that cad of an overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains
and give us a chance.  He always said that we'd all he set free after
a battle, but we never were; We never were."  Charlie shook his
head mournfully.

"What a scoundrel!"

"I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and
sometimes we were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water.  I
can taste that salt-water still.''

"Now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was
fought."

"I didn't dream about that. I know it was a harbor, though; becabse
we were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the
stone under water was covered with wood to prevent our ram
getting chipped when the tide made us rock."

"That's curious. Our hero commanded the galley? Didn't he?"

"Didn't he just!  He stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un.
He was the man who killed the overseer."

"But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you?"

"I can't make that fit quite," he said with a puzzled look.  "The
galley must have gone down with all hands and yet I fancy that the
hero went on living afterward. Perhaps he climbed into the
attacking ship.  I wouldn't see that, of course.  I was dead, you
know."

He shivered slightly and protested that he could remember no
more.

I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in
ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately
introduced him to Mortimer Collins's "Transmigration," and gave
him a sketch of the plot before he opened the pages.

"What rot it all is!" he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "I don't
understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King,
and the rest of it.  Chuck me the Longfellow again."

I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember
of his description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to
time for confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without
raising his eyes from the book, as assuredly as though all his
knowledge lay before flint on the printed page.  I spoke under the
normal key of my voice that the current might not be broken, and I
know that he was not aware of what he was saying, for his
thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.

"Charlie," I asked, "when the rowers on the galleys mutinied how
did they kill their overseers?"

"Tore up the benches and brained 'em. That happened when a
heavy sea was running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped
from the centre plank and fell among the rowers. They choked him
to death against the side of the ship with their chained hands quite
quietly, and it was too dark for the other overseer to see what had
happened.  When he asked, he was pulled down too and choked,
and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with the
pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they
howled!"

"And what happened after that?"

"I don't know. The hero went away-red hair and red beard and all.

That was after he had captured our galley, I think"

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with
his left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

"You never told me he was redheaded before, or that he captured
your galley," I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly.  "He came
from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for
rowers-riot slaves, but free men.   Afterward-years  and  years
afterward-news came from another ship, or else he came back"-His
lips moved in silence.  He was rapturously retasting some poem
before him.

"Where had he been, then?"  I was almost whispering that the
sentence might come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain
was working on my behalf.

"To the Beaches-the Long and

Wonderful Beaches!" was the reply, after a minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.

"Yes,  to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion
"And I too saw"- The voice failed.

"Do you know what you have said?" I shouted, incautiously.

He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. "No!" he snapped. "I wish
you'd let a chap go on reading. Hark to this:

"'But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
'Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word.

"'And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
"Behold this walrus tooth."

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over
the shop never knowing where they'd fetch the land!  Hah!"

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only he sensible for a minute or two
I'll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."

"Umph!   Longfellow  wrote  that poem. I don't care about writing
things any more.  I want to read."  He was thoroughly out of tune
now, and raging over my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house
guarded by a child-an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-
bones-on whose favor depends the gift of the key, and you will
imagine one-half my torment.  Till that evening Charlie had
spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences of a
Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in books, he
had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of Thorfin
Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or
tenth century.  The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own
death he had described.  But this was a much more startling plunge
into the past.  Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen
lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand
years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was
that Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in
the world to clear it up.  I could only wait and watch, but I went to
bed that night full of the wildest imaginings.  There was nothing
that was not possible if Charlie's detestable memory only held
good.

I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been
written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of
America, myself the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's
mercy, and so long as there was a three-and-six-penny Bohn
volume within his reach Charlie would not tell.  I dared not curse
him openly; I hardly dared jog his memory, for I was dealing with
the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the mouth of
a boy of today; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change of
tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to
speak the truth.

I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it
was in Gracechurch Street with a billbook chained to his waist.

Business took him over London Bridge and I accompanied him.
He was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it.

As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at a steamer'

unloading great slabs of white and bro""n marble.  A barge drifted
under the steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that barge bellowed.

Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an
unknown and-though he would not have believed this-a much
shrewder man.  He flung out his arm across the parapet of the
bridge, and laughing very loudly, said:

"When they heard our bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!"

I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had
disappeared under the bows of the steamer before I answered.

"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?"

"Never heard of 'em before.  They sound like a new kind of
seagull. What a chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "I
have to go to the cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder.  Will
you wait for me and we can lunch somewhere together?  I've a
notion for a poem."

"No, thanks.  I'm off.  You're sure you know nothing about
Skroelings?"

"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap."  He
nodded and disappeared in the crowd.

Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's  galleys
came  to  Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown
land called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode
Island, the Skroelings-and the Lord He knows who these may or
may not have been-came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away
because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which
Thorfin had brought with him in the ships.  But what in the world
could a Greek slave know of that affair?  I wandered up and down
among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I
considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed
certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment.  If
I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life
of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen-half a dozen
several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning
of the world!

Then I walked round the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and
unapproachable until all men were as wise as myself. That would
be something, but manlike I was ungrateful.  It seemed bitterly
unfair that Charlie's memory should fail me when I needed it most.

Great Powers above-I looked up at them through the fog smoke-
did the Lords of Life and Death know what this meant to me?
Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind; that comes from
One, and is shared by one alone.  I would be content-remembering
Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation, -with the mere
right to tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the
light literature of the day.  If Charlie were permitted full
recollection for one hour-for sixty short minutes -of existences that
had extended over a thousand years-I would forego all profit and
honor from all that I should make of his speech.  I would take no
share in the commotion that would follow throughout the
particular corner of the earth that calls itself "the world." The thing
should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make other men
believe that they had written it.  They would hire bull-hided
self-advertising Englishmen  to  bellow  it  abroad. Preachers
would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was
new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind.
Every Orientalist in Europe would patronize it discursively with
Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible women would invent unclean
variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters.
Churches and religions would war over it.  Between the hailing
and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the
doctrine of the True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and
the New Era"; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers
shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the
tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred-two hundred-a thousand
years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the
story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the
western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than
the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition
and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it seemed
altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I
would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know,
let me write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth,
and I would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice.  Five
minutes after the last line was written I would destroy it all. But I
must be allowed to write it with absolute certainty.

There was no answer.  The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster
caught my eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent
to lure Charlie into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and
whether, if he were under his power, he would speak of his past
lives.  If he did, and if people believed him . . . but Charlie would
be frightened and flustered, or made conceited by the interviews.
In either case he would begin to lie, through fear or vanity. He was
safest in my own hands.

"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my
elbow, and turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a
young Bengali law student,  called Grish Chunder, whose father
had sent him to England to become civilized.  The old man was a
retired native official, and on an income of five pounds a month
contrived to allow his son two hundred pounds a year, and the run
of his teeth in a city where he could pretend to be the cadet of a
royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian bureaucrats who
ground the faces of the poor.

Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with
scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves.
But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian
Government paid for his university education, and he contributed
cheap sedition to Sachi Durpan, and intrigued with the wives of his
schoolmates.

"That  is  very  funny  and  very foolish," he said, nodding at the
poster. "I am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come
too?"

I walked with him for some time. "You 'are not well," he said.
"What is there in your mind?  You do not talk."

"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God,
haven't vou?"

"Oah, yes, here!  But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women
will anoint idols."

"And bang up tulsi and feast the purohit, and take you back into
caste again and make a good khuttrj of you again, you advanced
social Free-thinker. And you'll eat desi food, and like it all, from
the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."

"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly.
"Once a Hindu-always a Hindu.  But I like to know what the
English think they know."

"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale
to you."

I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder
put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward
naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could
never have been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding
from time to time, and then came up to my rooms where I finished
the tale.

"Beshak," he said, philosophically. "Lekin darwaza band hai.
(Without doubt, but the door is shut.)  I have heard of this
remembering of previous existences among my people.  It is of
course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an Englishman-a
cow-fed Malechk-an outcast.  By Jove, that is most peculiar!"

"Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day.
Let's think the thing over.  The boy remembers his incarnations."

"Does he know that?" said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging h's
legs as he sat on my table.  He was speaking in English now.

"He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did?  Go
on!"

"There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will
say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you
prosecute for libel."

"Let's leave that out of the question entirely.  Is there any chance of
his being made to speak?"

"There is a chance. Osh, yess! But if he spoke it would mean that
all this world would end now-instanto- fall down on your head.
These things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is
shut."

"Not a ghost of a chance?"

"How can there be?  You are a Christi-an, and it is forbidden to
eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die.
How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does
not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not
afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be
kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God! you
English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the
balances of power, and making commotions.  It would not be
good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and
he will call it dreams.  Then he will forget altogether.  When I
passed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in  the
cram-book  on  Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know."

"This seems to be an exception to the rule."

"There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as
others, but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of
yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered
all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the
bank another hour.  He would be what you called sack because he
was mad, and they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. You
can see that, my friend."

"Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him.  His name need
never ap~ pear in the story."

"Ah! I see.  That story will never be written. You can try."

"I am going to."

"For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?"

"No.  For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be
all."

"Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is
a very pretty story now.  As they say, Let it go on that-I mean at
that.   Be quick; he will not last long."

"How do you mean?"

"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."

"Hasn't he though!" I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.

"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes;
bus-hogya-all up'  I know. There are millions of women here.
Housemaids, for in-stance."

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid.

And yet nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

"Yes-also pretty girls-cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his
house.  One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure
all this nonsense. or else"-

"Or else what?  Remember he does not know that he knows."

"I know that.  Or else, if nothing happens he will become
immersed in the trade and the financial speculations like the rest.

It must be so. You can see that it must be so. But the woman will
come first, I think."

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously.
He had been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I
could see that he had come over for a long talk; most probably
with poems in his pockets. Charlie's poems were very wearying,
but sometimes they led him to talk about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had
any one with you."

"I am going," said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he de. parted.

"That is your man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak
all you wish.  That is rot-bosh.  But he would be most good to
make to see things.  Suppose now we pretend that it was only
play"-I had never seen Grish Chunder so excited-"and pour the
ink-pool into his hand.  Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he
could see anything that a man could see. Let me get the ink and the
camphor. He is a seer and he will tell us very many things."

"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your Gods
and devils."

"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when
he wakes up.  You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before."

"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd
better go, Grish Chunder."

He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing
away my only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no
peering of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help
me do that.  But I recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and
sympathized with it.

'~What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned
to him. "Well, look here, I've just done a poem; dil it instead of
playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"

"Let me read it to myself."

"Then you miss the proper expression.  Besides, you always make
my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong.

"Read it aloud, then.  You're like the rest of 'em."

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the
average of his verses. He had been reading his book faithfully, but
he was not pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow
undiluted with Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line;  Charlie
parrying every objection and correction with:

"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."

Charlie was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's
that?" I said.

"Oh that's not poetry 't all.  It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I
made it a sort of a blank verse instead."

Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails
were low.

Will you never let us go?

We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard
quickly when you were beaten back by the foe,

The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing
songs, but we were below,

We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we
were idle for we still swung to and fro.

Will you never let us go?

The salt made the oar handles like sharkskin; our knees were cut to
the bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and
our lips were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we
could not row.

Will you never let us go?

But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water
runs along thr oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after
us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up
the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho!

Will you never let us go?"

"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they
might sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish
that story and give me some of the profits?"

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your
hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now.

You're so hazy in your notions."

"I only want to give you the general notion of it-the knocking
about from place to place and the fighting and all

"THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD"183

~hat.  Can't you fill in the rest your-self?  Make the hero save a girl
on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something."

'You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went
through some few adventures before he married."

"Well then, make him a very artful card-a low sort of man-a sort of
political man who went about making treaties and breaking them-a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting
began."

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

"I couldn't have.  Make him black-haired of course.  You've no
imagination."

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which
the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled
to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right.  You're the man with imagination.  A black-haired
chap in a decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship-like a big boat."

This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you
said so yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship.  That was open, or half decked because. By
Jove you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired
chap.  Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one
with painted sails."

Surely, I thought he would remember now that he had served in
two galleys at least-in a three-decked Greek one under the
black-haired "political man," and again in a Viking's open
sea-serpent under the man "red as a red bear" who went to
Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

"Why, 'of course,' Charlie?" said I. "I don't know. Are you making
fun of me?"

The current was broken for the time being.  I took up a notebook
and pre tended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I
said after a pause.  "The way that you've brought out the character
of the hero is simply wonderful."

"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush.  "I often tell
myself that there's more in me than my m~than people think."

"There's an enormous amount in you."

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank
Clerks to Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize?"

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow: perhaps it would be
better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."

"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that.  Tit-Bits would publish my
name and address if I win.  What are you grinning at? They
wou'd."

"I know it.  Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my
notes about our story."

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put
back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of
the Argo-had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin
Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested in guinea
competitions.  Remembering what Grish Chunder had said I
laughed aloud.  The Lords of Life and Death would never allow
Charlie  Mears  to  speak with  full knowledge of his pasts, and I
must even piece out what he had told me with my own poor
inventions while Charlie wrote of the ways of bank-clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net
result was not cheering.  I read them a second time.  There was
nothing that might not have been compiled at second-hand from
other  people's  books-except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the
harbor.  The adventures of a Viking bad been written many times
before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and
though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy
of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years
hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish
Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that
might trouble or make easy the minds of men.  Though I was
convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation
followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few
weeks.  My moods varied with the March sunlight and flying
clouds.  By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived
that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby.  In the wet,
windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but
would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted
piece of Wardour Street work at the end. Then I blessed  Charlie in
many ways-though it was no fault of his.  He seemed to be busy
with prize competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the
weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and
the buds swelled in their sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of
what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in his
voice.  I hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met;
but Charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from
which money was to be made.

"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," be said,
with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature.  I assumed
that it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking
up the curious nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

"When the thing's done we'll talk about it.  I can't make anything of
it at present. Red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult."

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't
understand what you find so difficult.  It's all as clean as mud to
me," he replied.  A jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took
light and whistled softly.  "Suppose we take the red-haired hero's
adventures first, from the time that he came south to my galley and
captured it and sailed to the Beaches."

I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie.  I was out of reach of
pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break
the current. The  gas-jet  puffed  and  whinnied, Charlie's voice
dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sail. mg of
an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen
under the curve of the one sail evening aftet evening when the
galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and
"we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth Charlie. He
spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods,
where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under
the pines.  Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley,
swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and
threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange
gods whom they bad offended. Then they ate sea-weed when their
provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the
red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year
spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a
wind that never failed carried them back so safely that they all
slept at night.  This and much more Charlie told.  Sometimes the
voice fell so low that I could not catch the words, though every
nerve was on the strain.  He spoke of their leader, the red-haired
man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them
and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it
was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each
floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us,' said
Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars."

The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled
down with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate.  Charlie ceased
speaking, and I said no word.

"By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at
the fire till I'm dizzy.  What was I going to say.

"Something about the galley."

"I remember now.  It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it?"

"It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now.  I've, I've an
appointment." And he left me.

Had my eyes not been held I might have know that that broken
muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears.  But I
thought it the prelude to fuller revelation.  At last and at last I
should cheat the Lords of Life and Death!

When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture.  He
was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light,
and his lips a little parted.

"I've done a poem," he said; and then quickly: "it's the best I've
ever done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the
window.

I groaned inwardly.  It would be the work of half an hour to
criticise-that is to say praise-the poem sufficiently to please
Charlie.  Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding
his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and
choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is
what I read:

"The day is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where be bends the wood as seemeth good,
And the sapling to his will!
Riot O wind; there is that in my blood
That would not have thee still!

"She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky:
Grey sea, she is mine alone I
Let the sullen boulders bear my cry,
And rejoice tho' they be but stone!

'Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,
Make merry! 'Tis bard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the bind tbat tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing."

"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at
my heart.  Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

"Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad;
I am victor. Greet me O Sun,
Dominant master and absolute lord
Over the soul of one!"

"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently
laid a photograph on the paper-the photograph of a girl with a
curly head, and a foolish slack mouth.

"Isn't it-isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love.  "I didn't know; I
didn't think-it came like a thunderclap."

"Yes.  It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

"My God-she-she loves mel" He sat down repeating the last words
to himself.  I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders
already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and bow
he had loved in his past lives.

"What will your mother say?"  I asked, cheerfully.

"I don't care a damn what she says."

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should,
properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list.  I
told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must
have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness
and beauty of Eve.  Incidentally I learned that She was a
tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had
told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed
by a man before.

Charlie spoke on, and on, and on; while I, separated from him by
thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things.  Now
I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so
carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first
wooings.  Were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants
in a hundred years.

"Now, about that galley-story," 1 said, still more cheerfully, in a
pause in the rush of the speech.

Charlie looked up as though he had been hit.  "The galley-what
galley? Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't
know how serious it is!"

Grish Chunder was right.  Charlie had tasted the love of woman
that kills remembrance, and the finest story' in the world would
never be written.

VOLUME IV UNDER THE DEODARS

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

I

In the pleasant orchard-closes
"God bless all our gains," say we;
Put "~1ay God bless all our losses,"
Better suits with our degree.
-The Lost Bower.


THIS is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that
it might be an instructive tale
to put into print for the benefit of the younger generation. The
younger generation does not want
instruction, being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen
to it.  None the less, here
begins the story where every right-minded story should begin, that
is to say at Simla, where all
things begin and many come to an evil end.

The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder
and not retrieving it.  Men are
licensed to stumble, but a clever woman's mistake is outside the
regular course of Nature and
Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only
infallible thing in this world,
except Government Paper of the '70 issue, bearing interest at four
and a half per cent.  Yet, we
have to remember that six consecutive days of rebearsing the
leading part of The Feilen A'~ge~,
at the New Gaiety Theatre where the plaster is not yet properly
dry, might have brought about an
unhingement of spirits which, again, might have led to
eccentricities.

Mrs. Hauksbee came to "The Foundry" to tiffin with Mrs.
Mallowe, her

13"
one bosom friend, for she was in nn sense "a woman's woman."
And it was a woman's tiffin, the
door shut to all the world; and they both talked chiflons, which is
French for Mysteries.

"I've enjoyed an interval of sanity," Mrs. Flauksbee announced,
after tiffin was over and the two
were comfortably settled in the little writing-room that opened out
of Mrs. Mallowe's bedroom.

"My dear girl, what has he done?" said Mrs. Mallowe, sweetly.  It
is noticeable that ladies of a
certain age call each other "dear girl," just as commissioners of
twenty-eight years' standing
address their equals in the Civil List as "my boy."

"There's no he in the case. Who am I that an imaginary man should
be always credited to me?
Am I an Apache?'1

"No, dear, but somebody's scalp is generally drying at your
wigwam-door. Soaking, rather."

This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in the habit of
riding all across Simla in the
Rains, to call on Mrs. Hauksbee. That lady laughed.

"For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told me off to The
Mussuck. Hsh!  Don't laugh.
One of my most devoted admirers. When the duff came
-some one really ought to teach them to make pudding at
Tyrconnel-The Mussuck was at liberty
to attend to me."

"Sweet soul!  I know his appetite," said Mrs. Mallowe. "Did he, oh
did he, begin his wooing?"

188
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


"By a special mercy of Providence, no.  He explained his
importance as a Pillar of the Empire.  I
didn't laugh."

"Lucy, I don't believe you."

"Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side. Well, as I was
saying, The Mussuck dilated."

"I think I can see him doing it," said Mrs. Mallowe, pensively,
scratching her fox-terrier's ears.

"I was properly impressed.   Most properly. I yawned openly.
'Strict supervision, and play them
off one against the other,' said The Mussuck, shoveling down his
ice by tureen/uls, I assure you.
'That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government.'"

Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily.  "And what did you say?"

"Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet? I said: 'So I have
observed in my dealings with
you.'  The Mussuck swelled with pride. He is coming to call on me
to-morrow. The Hawley Boy
is coming too."

"'Strict supervision and play them off one against the other.  That,
Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret
of our Government.' And I dare say if we could get to The
Mussuck's heart, we should find that
he considers himself a man of the world."

"As he is of the other two things.  I like The Mussuck, and I won't
have you call him names. He
amuses me."

"He has reformed you, too, by what appears.  Explain the interval
of sanity, and hit Tim on the
nose with the paper-cutter, please.  That dog is too fond of sugar.
Do you take milk in yours?"

"No, thanks.  Folly, I'm wearied of this life.  It's hollow."

"Turn religious, then.  I always said that Rome would be your
fate."

"Only exchanging half a dozen attach~ in red for one and in black,
and if I fasted, the wrinkles
would come, and never, never go. Has it ever struck you, dear, that
I'm getting old?"

"Thanks for your courtesy.  I'll return it. Ye-es we are both not
exactly
-how shall I put it?"

"What we have been.  'I feel it in my hones,' as Mrs. Crossley says.
Polly, I've wasted my life."

"As how?"

"Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power before I die."

"Be a Power then.  You've wits enough for anything-and beauty?"

Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon
straight at her hostess.  "Polly, if you
heap compliments on me like this, I
shall cease to believe that you're a
woman.  Tell me how I am to be a
Power."

"Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating and sllmmest
man in Asia, and he'll tell you
anything and everything you please."

"Bother The Mussuck!  I mean an intellectual Power~not a
gas-power. Polly, I'm going to start a
salon."

Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her head on her
hand. "Hear the words of the
Preacher, the son of Baruch," she said.

"Will you talk sensibly?"

"I will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a mistake."

"I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I
couldn't explain away afterward."

"Going to make a mistake," went on Mrs. Mallowe, composedly.
"It is im

ThE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE
180

possible to start a salon in Simla.  A bar would be much more to
the point."

"Perhaps, but why?  It seems so easy

"Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever women are there
in Simla?"

"Myself and yourself," said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a moment's
hesitation.

"Modest  woman!   Mrs.  Feardon would thank you for that.  And
how many clever men?"

"Oh - er - hundreds,"  said  Mrs. Hauksbee, vaguely.

"What a fatal blunder!  Not one. They are all bespoke of the
Government. Take my husband, for
instance. Jack was a clever man, though I say so who shouldn't.
Government has eaten him up.
All his ideas and powers of conversation-he really used to be a
good talker, even to his wife, in
the old days-are taken from him by this
-this kitchen-sink of a Government. That's the case with every man
up here who is at work. I
don't suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse
the rest of his gang; and all our
men-folk here are gilded convicts."

"But there are scores -"I know what you're going to say.
Scores of idle men up on leave.  I admit it, but they are all of two
objectionable sets,  The
Civilian who'd be de]ightful if he had the military man's
knowledge of the world and style, and
the military man who'd be adorable if lie had the Civilian's
culture."

"Detestable word!  Have Civilians culehaw?  I never studied the
breed deeply."

"Don't make fun of Jack's service. Yes.  They're like the teapoys in
the
Lakka Bazar-good material but not polished.  They can't help
themselves, poor dears.  A Civilian
only begins to be tolerable after he has knocked about the world
for fifteen years."

"And a military man?"

"When he has had the same amount of service.  The young of both
species are horrible.  You
would have scores of them in your salon."

"I would notl" said Mrs. Hauksbee, fiercely.  "I would tell the
'bearer to darwaza band them. I'd
put their own colonels and commissioners at the door to turn them
away.  I'd give them to the
Topsham girl to play with."

"The Topsham girl would be grateful for the gift.  But to go back
to the salon.  Allowing that you
had gathered all your men and women together, what would you
do with them?  Make them
talk?  They would all with one accord begin to flirt. Your salon
would become a glorified
Peliti's-a 'Scandal Point' by lamplight."

"There's a certain amount of wisdom in that view."

"There's all the wisdom in the world in it.  Surely, twelve Simla
seasons ought to have taught you
that you can't focus anything in India; and a salon, to be any good
at all, must be permanent. In
two seasons your roomful would be scattered all over Asia.  We
are only little bits of dirt on the
hillsides-here one day and blown down the khud the next. We have
lost the art of talking-at least
our men have.  We have no cohesion"-"George Eliot in the flesh,"
interpolated Mrs. Hauksbee,
wickedly.

"And collectively, my dear scoffer, we, men and women alike,
have ao influence.

100
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

Come into the veranda and look at the Mall!"

The two looked down on the now rapidly filling road, for all Simla
was abroad to steal a stroll
between a shower and a ~og.

"How do you propose to fix that river?  Look! There's The
Mussuck-head of goodness knows
what.  He is a power in the land, though he does eat like a
costermonger.  There's Colonel Blone,
and General Grucher, and Sir Dugald Delane, and Sir Henry
Haughton, and Mr. Jellalatty.  All
Heads of Departments, and all powerful."

"And all my fervent admirers," said Mrs. Hauksbee, piously.  "Sir
Henry Haughton raves about
me. But go on."

"One by one, these men are worth something.  Collectively, they're
just a mob of Anglo-Indians.
Who cares for what Anglo-Indians say?  Your salon won't weld the
Departments together and
make you mistress of India, dear. And these creatures won't talk
administrative 'shop' in a
crowd-your salon-because they are so afraid of the men in the
lower ranks overhearing it.  They
have forgotten what of Literature and Art they ever knew, and the
women"-"Can't talk about
anything except the
last Gymkhana, or the sins of their last nurse.  I was calling on
Mrs. Derwills this morning."

"You admit that? They can talk to the subalterns though, and the
subalterns can talk to them.
Your salon would suit their views admirably, if you ~espected the
religious prejudices of the
country and provided plenty of kala 'uggahs."

"Plenty of kala juggahs. Oh my poor
little idea! Kala juggal's in a salon! But who made you so awfully
clever?"

"P"rhaps I've tried myself; or perhaps I know a woman who has. I
have preached and expounded
the whole matter and the conclusion thereof"

"You needn't go on.   'Is Vanity.' Polly, I thank you.  These vermin
-. Mrs. Hauksbee waved her
hand from the veranda to two men in the crowd below who had
raised their hats to her
-"these vermin shall not rejoice in a new Scandal Point or an extra
Peliti's. I will abandon the
notion of a salon. It did seem so tempting, though.  But what shall
I do?  I must do something."

"Why?  Are not Abana and Pharphar"-"Jack has made you nearly
as bad
as himself! I want to, of course.  I'm tired of everything and
everybody, froin a moonlight picnic
at Seepee to the blandishments of The Mussuck."

"Yes-that comes, too, sooner or later, Have you nerve enough to
make your bow yet?"

Mrs. Hauksbee's mouth shut grimly. Then she laughed.  "I think I
see myself doing it.  Big pink
placards on the Mall: 'Mrs. Hauksbee!  Positively her last
appearance on any stage!  This is to
give notice!'  No more dances; no more rides; no more luncheons;
no more theatricals with
supper to follow; no more sparring with one's dearest, dearest
friend; no more fencing with an
inconvenient man who hasn't wit enough to clothe what he's
pleased to call his sentiments in
passable speech; no more parading of The Mussuck while Mrs.
Tarkass calls all round Simla,
spreading horrible stories about me?  No more

ThE EDUCATION OF OTIS VEERE
191

of anything that is thoroughly wearyin~, abominable and
detestable, but, all the same, makes life
worth the having. Yes!  I see it all!  Don't interrupt, Polly, I'm
inspired. A mauve and white
striped 'cloud' round my excellent shoulders, a seat in the fifth row
of the Gaiety, and both horses
sold. Delightful vision! A comfortable armchair, situated in three
different draughts, at every
ballroom; and nice, large, sensible shoes for all the couples to
stumble over as they go into the
veranda! Then at supper. Can't you imagine the scene? The greedy
mob gone away. Reluctant
subaltern, pink all over like a newly-powdered baby,-they really
ought to tan subalterns before
they are exported, ?olly-sent back by the hostess to do his duty.
Slouches up to me across the
room, tugging at a glove two sizes too large for him-I hate a man
who wears gloves like
overcoats-and trying to look as if he'd thought of it from the first.
'May I ah-have the pleasure 'of
takin' you 'nt' supper?'  Then I get up with a hungry smile. Just like
this."

"Lucy, how can you be so absurd?"

"And sweep out on his arm.  So! After supper I shall go away
early, you know, because I shall be
afraid of catching cold.  No one will look for by 'rickshaw.  Mine,
so please you!  I shall stand,
always with that mauve and white 'cloud' over my head, while the
wet ~oaks into my dear, old,
venerable feet and Tom swears and shouts for the mem-sahib's
gharri. Then home to bed at
half-past eleven!  Truly excellent lif~helped out by the visits of the
l'adri, just fresh from burying
somebody down below there." She pointed through the pines,
toward the Cemetery, and

continued with vigorous dramatic gesture-"Listen!  I see it
all~own, down
even to the stays!  Such stays!  Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red
flannel-or list is it?-that they put
into the tops of those fearful things.  I can draw you a picture of
them."

"Lucy, for Heaven's sake, don't go waving your arms about in that
idiotic manner!  Recollect,
every one can see you from the Mall."

"Let them see!  They'll think I am rehearsing for The Fallen AngeL
Look! There's The Mussuck.
How badly he rides. There!"

She blew a kiss to the venerable Indian administrator with infinite
grace.

"Now,"  she  continued,  "he'll  be chaffed about that at the Club in
the delicate manner those
brutes of rnen affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about
it-softening the details for fear of
shocking me.  That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious
thoughts of recommending him to
throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present
frame of mind he would obey
me. Happy, happy child."

"Never again," said Mrs. Mallowe, with an affectation of
indignation, "shall you tiffin here! 'Lu
cindy, your behavior is scand'lus.'

"All your fault," retorted Mrs. Hauksbee, "for suggesting such a
thing as my abdication.  No!
Jamais-nevaire!  I will act, dance, ride, frivol, talk scandal, dine
out, and appropriate the
legitimate captives of any woman I choose until I d-r-r-rop or a
better woman than I put~ me to
shame before all Simla,-and it's dust and ashes in my mouth while
I'm doing it!"

192
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


Sl'~ ~wept i~o the drawing-room, Mrs. Mallowe followed and put
an arm round her waist.

"I'm not!" said Mrs. Hauksbee, defiantly, rummaging for her
handkerchief. "I've been dining out
the last ten nights, and rehearsing in the afternoon. You'd be tired
yourself. It's only because I'm
tired."

Mrs. Mallowe did not offer Mrs. Hauksbee any pity or ask ner to
lie down, but gave her another
cup of tea, and went on with the talk.

"I've been through that too, dear," she said.

"I remember," said Mrs. Hauksbee, a gleam of fun on her face.  "In
'84 wasn't it? You went out a
great deal less next season."

Mrs. Mallowe smiled in a superior and Sphinx4ike fashion.

"I became an Influence," said she.

"Good gracious, child, you didn't join the Theosophists and kiss
Buddha's big toe, did you? I
tried to get into their set once, but they cast me out for a
skeptic-without a chance of improving
my poor little mind, too."

"No, I didn't Theosophilander. Jack says"-"Never mind Jack. What
a husband
says is known before.  What did you do?"

"I made a lasting impression."

"So have I-for four months.  But that didn't console me in the least.
I hated the man. Wifl you
stop smiling in that inscrutable way and tell me what you mean?"

Mrs. Mallowe told.
* * * * * *

"And-you-mean~to~say that it is absolutely Platonic on both
sides?"

"Absolutely, or I should never have taken it up."

"And his last promotion was due to you?"

Mrs. Mallowe nodded.

"And you warned him against the Topsham girl?"

Another nod.

"And told him of Sir Dugald Delane's private memo about him?"

A third nod.

"Why?"

"What a question to ask a woman! Because it amused me at first.  I
am proud of my property
now.  If I live he shall continue to be successful. Yes, I will put
him upon the straight road to
Knighthood, and everything else that a man values.  The rest
depends upon himself."

"Polly, you are a most extraordinary woman."

"Not in the least. I'm concentrated, that's all.  You diffuse yourself,
dear; and though all Simla
knows your skill in managing a team"-"Can't you choose a prettier
word?" "Team, of half a
dozen, from The Mussuck to the Hawley Boy, you gain nothing by
it. Not even amusement."

"And you?"

"Try my recipe. Take a man, not a boy, mind, but an almost
mature, unattached man, and be this
guide, philosopher, and friend. You'll find it the most interesting
occupation that you ever
embarked on.  It can be done-you needn't look like that-because
I've done it."

"There's an element of risk about it that makes the notion
attractive.  I'll get such a man and say
to him, 'Now, understand that there must be no flirta
THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

193

tion. Do exactly what I tell you, profit by niy instruction and
counsels, and all will yet be well.' Is
that the idea?"

"More or less," said Mrs. Mallowe with an unfathomable smile.
"But be ~ure he understands."

II


Dribhle-dribble-trickle~trickle

What a lot of raw dust!

My dollie's had an accident

And out came all the sawdust!

-Nursery Rhyme.


So Mrs. Hauksbee, in "The Foundry" which overlooks Simla Mall,
sat at the feet of Mrs.
Mallowe and gathered wisdom.  The end of the Conference was
the Great Idea upon which Mrs.
Hauksbee so plumed herself.

"I warn you," said Mrs. Mallowe, beginning to repent of her
suggestion, "that the matter is not
half so easy as it looks.  Any woman-even the Top-sham girl-can
catch a man, but very, very few
know how to manage him when caught."

"My child," was the answer, "I've been a female St. Simon Stylites
lookmg down upon men for
thes~these years past. Ask The Mussuck whether I can manage
them."

Mrs. Hauksbee departed humming, "I'll go to him and say to him in
manner  most  ironical."
Mrs. Mallowe laughed to herself. Then she grew suddenly sober.
"I wonder whether I've done
well in advising that amusement? Lucy's a clever woman, but a
thought too careless."

A week later, the two met at a Monday Pop.  "Well?" sa.'d Mrs.
Mallowe.

"I've caught him!" said Mrs. Hauks
bee; her eyes were dancing with merriment.

"Who is it, mad woman?  I'm sorry I ever spoke to you about it."

"Look between the pillars.  In the third row; fourth from the end.
You can see his face now.
Look!"

"Otis Yeere!  Of all the improbable and impossible people!  I don't
believ~ you."

"Hsh!  Wait till Mrs. Tarkass begins murdering Milton Wellings;
and I'll tell you all about it.
S-s-ss! That woman 5 voice always reminds me of an Underground
train coming into Earl's
Court with the breaks on. Now listen. It is really Otis Yeere."

"So I see, but does it follow that he is your property?"

"He is! By right of trove. I found him, lonely and unbefriended, the
very next night after our talk,
at the Dugald Delane's burra-khana. I liked his eyes, and I talked to
him. Next day he called.
Next day we went for a ride together, and to-day he's tied to my
'rickshaw-wheels hand and foot.
You'll see when the concert's over.  He doesn't know I'm here yet."

"Thank goodness you haven't chosen a boy. What are you going to
do with him, assuming that
you've got him?"

"Assuming, indeed! Does a woman-do I-ever make a mistake in
that sort of thing? First"-Mrs.
Hauksbee ticked off the items ostentatiously on her little gloved
fingers-"First, my dear, I shall
dress him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace, and he
wears a dressshirt like a
crumpled sheet of the Pioneer.  Secondly, after I have made him
presentable, ~ ,~hall form his
manners-his morals are above reproach."

1Q4
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


"You seem to ~a"e discovered a great deal about him considering
the shortness of your
acquaintance."

"Surely you ought to know that the first proof a man gives of his
interest in a woman is by
talking to her about his own sweet self. If the woman listens
without yawning, he begins to like
her. If she flatters the animal's vanity, he ends by adoring her."

"In some cases."

"Never mind the exceptions. I know which one you are thinking of.
Thirdly, and lastly, after he
is polished and made pretty, I shall, as you said, be his guide,
philosopher and friend, and he
shall become a success-as great a success as your friend.  I always
wondered how that man got
on.  Did The Mussuck come to you with the Civil List and,
dropping on one kne~no, two knees,
a' la Gibbon-hand it to you and say, 'Adorable angel, choose your
friend's a~ pointment'?"

"Lucy, your long experiences of the Military Department bave
demoralized you. One doesn't do
that sort of thing on the Civil Side."

"No disrespect meant to Jack's Service, my dear.  I only asked for
information. Give me three
months, and see what changes I shall work in my prey."

"Go your own way since you must. But I'm sorry that I was weak
enough ~o suggest the
amusement."

'I am all discretion, and may be trusted to an in-fin4te extent,' "
quoted Mrs. Hauksbee from The
Fallen Angel; d'nd the conversation ceased with Mrs. Tarkass's
last, long-drawn war-whoop.

Her bitterest enemies-and she had many-could hardly accuse Mrs.
Hauksbee of wasting her tim~
Otis Yzere
was one of those wandering "dumb' characters, foredoomed
through life to be nobody's property.
Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service, spent, for the
most part, in undesirable
Districts, had given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring
confidence. Old enough to
have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers on the
immature 'Stunt imaginary
Commissioner-ships and Stars, and sends him into the collar with
coltish earnestness and
abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress
he had made, and thank
Providence that under the conditions of the day he had come even
so far, he stood upon the
dead-centre of his career. And when a man stands still, he feels the
slightest impulse from
without.  Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should be, for the first
part of his service, one of the
rank and file who are ground up in the wheels of the
Administration; losing heart and soul, and
mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces manual
power in the working of the
Empire, there must always be this percentage-must always be the
men who are used up,
expended, in the mere mechanical routine.  For these promotion is
far off and the mil?grind of
every day very instant.  The Secretariats know them only by name;
they are not the picked men
of the Districts with Divisions and Collectorates awaiting them.
They are simply the rank and
file-the food for fever-sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock
the honor of being the plinth
on which the State rests.  The older ones have lost their
aspirations; the younger are putting
theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to endure patiently until the
THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

l0-~

learned what manner 0œ life he had led in what she vaguely called
"those awful cholera
districts"; learned too, but this knowledge came later, what manner
of life he had purposed to
lead and what dreams he had dreamed i. the year of grace '77,
before the reality had knocked the
heart out of him. Very pleasant are the shady bridle-paths round
Prospect Hill for the telling of
such confidences.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Hauksbce to Mrs. Mallowe. "Not yet. I must
wait until the man is properly
dressed, at least. Great Heavens, is it possible that he doesn't know
what an honor it is to be
taken up by Me!"

Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of her failings.

"Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!" murmured Mrs. Mallowe, with her
sweetest smile, to Otis. "Oh
you men, you men! Here are our Punjabis growling because you've
monopolized the nicest
woman in Simla.  They'll tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day,
Mr. Yeere."

Mrs. Mallowe rattled down-hill, having satisfied herself, by a
glance through the fringe of her
sunshade, of the effect of her words.

The shot went home.  Of a surety Otis Yeere was somebody in this
bewildering whirl of
Simla-had monopolixed the nicest woman in it and the Punjabis
were growling.  The notion
justified a mild glow of vanity.  He had never looked upon his
acquaintance with Mrs. Hauksbee
as a matter for general interest.

The knowledge of envy was a pleas-ant feeling to the man of no
account. It was intensified later
in the day when a luncher at the Club said, spitetully, "~Vell, for a
debilitated Ditcher, Yecre,
"ud uf the day.  Twelve years in the rank and file, men say, will
sap the hearts of the bravest and
dull the wits of the most keen.

Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months; drifting, in
the hope of a little masculine
society, into Simla. When his leave was over he would return to
his swampy, sour-green,
undermanned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native
Doctor, the native Magistrate,
the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-kempt City, and the
undisguised insolence of the
Municipality that babbled away the lives of men.  Life was cheap
however.  The soil spawned
humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness
of one season was filled to
overflowing by the fecundity of the next.  Otis was 'infeignedly
thankful to lay down his work
for a little while and escape from the seething, whining, weakly
hive, impotent to help itself, but
strong in its power to cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunken~eyed
man who, by official irony was
said to be "in charge" of it.

*  *  * *
*

"I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal.  They come up here
sometimes.  But I didn't
know that there were men-dowds, too."

Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere that his clothes
wore the mark of the ages. It
will be seen that his friendship with Mrs. Hauksbee had made
great strides.

As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy as when he is
talking about himself.  From
Otis Yeere's lips Mrs. Hauksbee, before long, learned everything
that she wished to know about
the subject of her experiment:

[96
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

you are going it. Hasn't any kind friend told you that she's the most
dangerous woman in Simla?"

Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh when, would his new
clothes be ready? He descended
into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee, coming over the
Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw,
looked down upon him approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself
as if

were a man, instead of a piece of furniture,-and," she screwed up
her eyes to see the better
through the sunlight-"he is a man when he holds himself like that.
Oh blessed Conceit, what
should we be without you?"

With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis
Yeere discovered that he could
enter a room without breaking into a gentle perspiration-could
cross one, even to talk to Mrs.
Hauksbee, as though rooms were meant to be crossed.  He was for
the first time in nine years
proud of himself, and contented with his life, satisfied with his
new clothes, and rejoicing in the
friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Conceit is what the poor fellow wants," she said in confidence to
Mrs. Mallowe.  "I believe they
must use Civilians to plough the fields with in Lower Bengals. You
see I have to begin from the
very beginning-haven't I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he
is immensely improved since
I took him in hand.  Only give me a little more time and he won't
know himself."

Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what he had been.
One of his own rank and file
put the matter brutally when he asked Yeere, in reference to
nothing, "And who has been making
"ou a Membet of Council, lately? You
carry the side of half a dozen of 'em."

"I-I'm awf'ly sorry. I didn't mean it, you know," said Yeere,
apologetically.

"There'll be no holding you," continued the old stager, grimly.
"Climb down, Otis-climb down,
and get all that beastly affectation knocked out of you with fever!
Three thousand a month
wouldn't support it."

Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauksbee.  He had come to
look upon her as his Mother
Confessor.

"And you apologized!" she said. "Oh, shame!  I hate a man who
apologizes. Never apologize for
what your friend called 'side.' Never! It's a man's business to be
insolent and overbearing until he
meets with a stronger.  Now, you bad boy, listen to me."

Simply and straightforwardly, as the 'rickshaw loitered round
Jakko, Mrs. Hauksbee preached to
Otis Yeere the Great Gospel of Conceit, illustrating it with living
pictures encountered during
their Sunday afternoon stroll.

"Good gracious!" she ended, with the personal argument, "you'll
apologize next for being my
attache""

"Never!" said Otis Yeere.  "That's another thing altogether. I shall
always be"-"What's  coming?"
thought Mrs.
Hauksbee.

"Proud of that," said Otis.

"Safe for the present," she said to herself.

"But I'm afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshurun, you know.
When he waxed fat, then he
kicked.  It's the having no worry on one's mind and the Hill air, I
suppose."

"Hill air, indeed!" said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself.  "He'd have been
hiding

T~ EDUCATION OF OTIS VEERE
107


in the Club till the last day of his leave, if I hadn't discovered him."
And aloud-"Why shouldn't
you be? You have

every right to." "I! Why?"

"Oh, hundreds of things.  I'm not going to waste this lovely
afternoon by explaining; but I know
you have. What was that heap of manuscript you showed me about
the grammar of the
aboriginal

what's their names?"

"G'œllals. A piece of nonsense. I've far too much work to do to
bother over Gullals now. You
should see my District.  Come down with your husband some day
and I'll show you round. Such
a lovely place in the Rains!  A sheet of water with the
railway-embankment and the snakes
sticking out, and, in the summer, green flies and green squash. The
people would die of fear if
you shook a dogwhip at 'em.  But they know you're forbidden to do
that, so they conspire to
make your life a burden to you. My District's worked by some man
at Darjiling, on the strength
of u native pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place!"

Otis Yeere laughed bitterly.

"There's not the least necessity that you should stay in it. Why do
you?"

"Because I must.  How'm I to get out of it?"

"How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren't so many people
on the road, I'd like to box
your ears.  Ask, my dear boy, ask!  Look, There is young Hexarly
with six years' service and half
your talents.  He asked for what he wanted, and he got it.  See,
down by the Convent!  There's
MeAr
thurson who has come to his present position by asking-sheer,
downright asking-after he had
pushed himself out of the rank and file.  One man is as good as
another in your servie~believe
me.  I've seen Simla for more seasons than I care to think about.
Do you suppose men are chosen
for appointments because of their special fitness bejorehand? You
have all passed a high
test-what do you call it?-in the beginning, and, except for the few
who have gone altogether to
the had, you can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek,
call it insolence, call it
anything you like, but ask! Men argue-yes, I know what men
say-that a man, by the mere
audacity of his request, inust have some good in him. A weak man
doesn't say: 'Give me this and
that.' He whines 'Why haven't I been given this and that?'  If you
were in the Army, I should say
learn to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes.  As it
is-ask! You belong to a Service
that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at
twenty minutes' notice, and
yet you hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy green district
where you admit you are not
master.  Drop the Bengal Government altogether.  Even Darjilmg
is a little out-of-the-way hole.
I was there once, and the rents were extortionate. Assert yourself.
Get the Government of India
to take you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a
grand chance if he can trust
himself.  Go somewhere!  Do something!  You have twice the wits
and three times the presence
of the men up here, and, and"-Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath:
then contin'ted-
A98
"VORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

"and in any way you look at it, you ought to. You who could go so
far!"

"T don't know," said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected
eloquence. "1 haven't such a
good opinion of myself."

It was not strictly Platonic, hut it was Policy.  Mrs. Hauksbee laid
her hand lightly upon the
ungloved paw that rested on the turn~d-backed 'rickshaw hood,
and, looking the man full in the
face, said tenderly, almost too tenderly, 'I believe in you if you
mistrust yourself. Is that enough,
my friend?"

"It is enough," answered Otis, very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dramas that he had
dreamed eight years ago, but
through them all ran, as sheet-lightning through golden cloud, the
light of Mrs. Hauksbce's violet
eyes.

Curious and impcnetrable are the mazes of Simla life-the only
existence in this desolate land
worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among men and women,
in the pauses between dance,
play and Gymkhana, that Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit
light of self-confidence in his
eyes, had "done something decent" in the wilds whence he came.
He had brought an erring
Municipality to reason, appropriated the funds on his own
responsibility, and saved the lives of
hundreds,  He knew more about the Gullals than any living man.
Had a vast knowledge of the
aboriginal tribes; was, in spite of his juniority, the greatest
authority on the a~original Gullals.
No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The 'lussuek,
who had been calling on Mrs.
~aukshee, and prided himself upon pick-
mg people's brains, explained they were a tribe of ferocious
hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim,
whose friendship even the Great Indian Empire would find it
worth her while to secure. Now we
know that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS notes of
six years' standing on the
same Gullals. He had told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the
fever their negligence had
bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagel~ angry at
the desolation in his charge, he
had once damned the collective eyes of his "intelligent local
board" for a set of haramzadas.
Which act of "brutal and tyrannous oppression" won him a
Reprimand Royal from the Bengat
Government; hut in the anecdote as amended for Northern
consumption we find no record of
this.  Hence we ~re forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee edited
his reminiscences before
sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she wel~ knew, to exaggerate
good or evil.  And Otis Yeere
bore himself as befitted the hero of many tales.

"You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study.  Talk
now, and talk your brightest
and best," said Mrs. Haukshee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a ma~ who has the counsel of a
woman of or above the world to
back him.  So lon~ as he keeps his head, he can meet both sexes
on equal ground-an advantag6
never intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and
Woman on another, in sign
that neither should knov' more than a very little of the other'a h'fe.
Such a man goes far, or, the
counsel being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world
seeks the reason.

Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee who,

ThE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE
190

again, had all Mrs. Mallowe's wisdom at her disposal, proud of
himself and, in the end, believing
in himself because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for
any fortune that might befall,
certain that it would be good. He would fight for his own hand,
and intended that this second
struggle should lead to better issue than the first helpless surrender
of the bewildered 'Stunt.

What might have happened, it is impossible to say.  This
lamentable thing befell, bred directly
by a statement of Mrs. Hauksbee that she would spend the next
season in Darjiling.

"Are you certain of that?" said Otis Veere.

"Quite. We're writing about a house ~iow.

Otis Yeere "stopped d~ad," as Mrs. Hauksbee put it in discussing
the relapse with Mrs. Mallowe.

'~He has behaved," she said, angrily, 'just like Captain Kerrington's
pony-only Otis is a donkey-at
the last Gymichana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on
another step. Polly, my man's going
to disappoint me.  What shall I do?"

As a rul~, Mrs. Mallowe does not a~ prove of staring, but on this
occasion she opened her eyes
to the utmost.

"You have managed cleverly so far," ,he said  "Speak to him, and
ask him what he means."

'I will-at to~night's dance."

"N~o, not at a dance," said Mrs. Mallowe, cautiously.  "Men are
never ~themselves quite at
dances. Better wait 'ill to-morrow morning."

"Nonsense.  If he's going to 'vert in this insane way, there isn't a
day to ~se. Are you gaing?  No?
Then sit
up for me, there's a dear. I shan't stay longer than supper under any
circumstances."

Mr~. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long and
earnestly into the fire, and
sometimes smiling to herself.
*  * *
*

"Oh! oh! oh!  The man's an idiot! A raving, positive idiot!  I'm
sorry I ever saw him!"

Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe's house, at midnight,
almost in tears.

"What in the world has happened?" said Mrs. Mallowe, but her
eyes showed that she had
guessed an answer.

"Happened!  Everything has happened!  He was there. I went to
him and said, 'Now, what does
this nonsense mean?' Don't laugh, dear, I can't bear

it.
But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a square, and I sat it
out with him and wanted an
explanation, and he said- Oh! I haven't patience with such idiots!
You know what I said about
going to Darjiling next year? It doesn't matter to me where I go. I'd
have changed the Station and
lost the rent to have saved this. He said, in so many words, that he
wasn't going to try to work up
any more, because-because he would be shifted into a province
away from Darjiling, and his
own District, where these creatures are, is within a day's
journey"-"Ah-hh!" said Mrs. Mallowe,
in a
tone of one who has successfully tracked an obscure word through
a large dictionary.

"Did you ever hear of anything so mad-so absurd? And he had the
ball at his feet. He had only to
kick it!  I

200
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

would have made him anything! Anything in the wide world.  He
could have gone to the world's
end. I would have helped him.  I made him, didn't I, Polly?  Didn't
I create that man? Doesn't he
owe everything to me? And to reward me, just when everything
was nicely arranged, by this
lunacy that spoiled everything!"

"Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly."

"Oh, Polly, don't laugh at me!  I give men up from this hour.  I
could have killed him then and
there. What right had this man-this Thing I had picked out of his
filthy paddy-fields-to make love
to me?"

"He did that, did he?"

"He did.  I don't remember half he said, I was so angry.  Oh, hut
such a funny thing happened!  I
can't help laughing at it now, though I felt nearly ready to cry with
rage. He raved and I
stormed-I'm afraid we must have made an awful noise in our kala
juggah. Protect my character,
dear, if it's all over Simla by to-morrow-and then he bobbed
forward in the middle of this
insanity-I firmly believe the man's demented-and kissed me!"

"Morals above reproach," purred Mrs. Mallowe.

"So they wer~so they are! It was the most absurd kiss.  I don't
believe he'd ever kissed a woman
in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy,
pecking dab, just on the end of
the chin-here."  Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin
with her fan. "Then, of course, I
was juriously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman, and I
was sorry I'd ever met him,
and so on. He was
crushed so easily that I couldn't be very angry.  Then I came away
straight to you."


"Was this before or after supper?"

"Oh! before-oceans before. Isn't it perfectly disgusting?"

"Let me think. I withhold judgment till to-morrow.  Morning
brings counsel."

But morning brought only a servant with a dainty bouquet of
Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee
to wear at the dance at Viceregal Lodge that night.

"He doesn't seem to be very penitent," said Mrs. Mallowe. "What's
th,'. billet-doux in the
centre?"

Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly folded note,-another
accomplishment that she had taught
Otis,-read it, and groaned tragically.

"Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry!  Is it his own, do you
think? Oh, that I ever built my
hopes on such a maudlin idiot!"

"No.  It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and, in view of the facts
of the case, as Jack says,
uncommonly well chosen. Listen-"'Sweet thou has trod on a heart,


Pass! There's a world full of men And women as fair as thou art,

Must do such things now and thefl


"'Thou only hast stepped unaware-Malice not one can impute;


And why should a heart have been there,


In the way of a fair woman 5 foot?'


"I didn't-I didn't-I didn't! "-said Mrs. Hauksbee, angrily, her eyes
filling with tears; "there was no
malice at al~ Oh, it's too vexatious!"

201
AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

"You've misunderstood the compliment," said Mrs. Mallowe.  "He
clears you completely
and-ahem-1 should think by this, that he has cleared completely
too.  My experience of men is
that when they begin to quote poetry, they are going to flit. Like
swans singing before they die,
you know."

'Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way."

"Do I?"  Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I should say that
you've done a certain amount
of damage to his heart."

"Oh, you never can tell about a man said Mrs. Hauksbee.


At the Pit's Mouth

Men say it was a stolen tid~


The Lord that sent it he knows all, But in mine ear will aye abide


The message that the bells let fall, And awesome bells they were
to me, That in the dark rang,
"Enderby."


-Jean Ingelow.


ONCE upon a time there was a man and his Wife and a Tertium
Quid.

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest.  The Man
should have looked after his
Wife, who should have avoided the Tertium Quid, who, again,
should have married a wife of his
own, after clean and open flirtations, to which nobody can possibly
object, round Jakko or
Observatory Hill. When you see a young man with his pony in a
white lather, and his hat on the
back of his head flying down-hill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a
girl who will he properly
surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of that young man,
and  wish  him  Staff
Appointments, and take an interest in his welfare, and, as the
proper time comes, give them
sugar-tongs or side-saddlei according to your means and
generosity.

The Tertium Quid flew down-hill on
horseback, but it was to meet the Man's Wife; and when he flew
up-hill it was for the same end.
The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend
on dresses and
four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive luxuries of that
kind. He worked very hard, and
sent her a letter or a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily,
and said that she was longing
for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used to lean over
her shoulder and laugh as she
wrote the notes.  Then the two would ride to the Post Office
together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
any man who has not spent at
least ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on
circumstantial evidence. which is the most
untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others
which need not appear, I decline to
state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in
the relations between the
Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you
must form your own opinion, it
was the Man's Wife's fault.  She was kittenish in her manners,
wearing generally an air of

AT THE PIT'S MOUTh
201


"You've misunderstood the compliment," said Mrs. Mallowe.  "He
clears you completely
and-ahem-I should think by this, that he has cleared completely
too.  My experience of men is
that when they begin to quote poetry, they are going to flit. Like
swans sing'ng before they die,
you know."

'Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way."

"Do I?"  Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I should say that
you've done a certain amount
of damage to his heart."

"Oh, you never can tell about a man!" said Mrs. Hauksbee.



At the Pit's Mouth

Men say it was a stolen tid~


The Lord that sent it he knows all, But in mine ear will aye abide


The message that the bells let fall, And awesome bells they were
to me, That in the dark rang,
"Enderby."

-Jean Ingelaw~


ONCE upon a time there was a man and his Wife and a Tertium
Quid.

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest.  The Man
should have looked after his
Wife, who should have avoided the Tertiuin Quid, who, again,
should have married a wife of his
own, after clean and open flirtations, to which nobody can possibly
object, round Jakko or
Observatory Hill. When you see a young man with his pony in a
white lather, and his hat on the
back of his head flying down-hill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a
girl who will he properly
surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of that young man,
and  wish  him  Staff
Appointments, and take an interest in his welfare, and, as the
proper time comes, give them
sugar-tongs or side-saddle~ according to your means and
generosity.


The Tertium Quid flew down-hill on
horseback, but it was to meet the Man's Wife; and when he flew
up-hill it was for the same end.
The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend
on dresses and
four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive luxuries of that
kind. He worked very hard, and
sent her a letter or a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily,
and said that she was longing
for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used to lean over
her shoulder and laugh as she
wrote the notes.  Then the two would ride to the Post Office
together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
any man who has not spent at
least ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on
circumstantial evidence. which is the most
untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others
which need not appear, I decline to
state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in
the relations between the
Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid.  If there was, and hereon you
must form your own opinion, it
was the Man's Wife's fault.  She was kittenish in her manners,
wearing generally an air of

201
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

œoft and fluffy innocence.  But she was deidlily learned and
evil-instructed; and, now and again,
when the mask dropped, men saw this, snuduered and~almost
drew back.  Men are occasionally
parucular, and the least particular men are always the most
exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of tearing friendships.  Certain
attachments ~icli have set and
crystallized through half a dozen seasons acquire almost the
sanctity of the marriage bond, and
are revered as such.  Again, certain attachments equally old, and,
to all appearance, equally
venerable, never seem to win any recognized official status; while
a chance-sprung acquaintance
now two months born, steps into the place which by right belongs
to the ~enior.  There is no law
reducible to print which regulates these affairs.

Some people have a gjft which secures them infinite teleration,
and others have not. The Man's
Wife had not. If she looked over the garden wall, for in-stance,
women taxed her with stealing
their husbands. She complained pathetically that she was not
allowed to choose her own friends.
When she put up her big white muff to her lips, and gazed over it
and under her eyebrows at you
as ~he said this thing, you felt that she had been infamously
misjudged, and that all the other
women's instincts were all wrong; which was absurd. She was not
allowed to own the Tertium
Quid in peace; and was so strangely constructed that she would not
have enjoyed peace had she
been so permitted.  She preferred some semblance of intrigue to
cloak even her most
cornmonpiace actions.

Afte~ two months of riding, first
round Jakko, then Elysium, then Sum mer Hill, then Observatory
Hill, thep. under Jutogh, and
lastly up and down the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the
dusk, she said to the Tertium
Quid, '~Frank, people say we are too much together, and people
are so horrid."

The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid
people were unworthy of the
consideration oi nice people.

"But they have done more than talk
-they have written-written to my hubby-I'm sure of it," said the
Man's Wife, and she pulled a
letter from her husband out of her saddle-pocket an~ gave it to the
Tertium Quid.

It was an honest letter, written b~ an honest man, then stewing in
th~ Plains on two hundred
rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundre~ and fifty),
and in a silk banian and cotton
trousers.  It is said that, perhaps, she had no thought of the
unwisdom of allowing her name to be
so generally coupled with the Tertium Quid's; that she was too
much of a child to understand the
dangers of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the last man
in the world to interfere
jealously with her little amusements and interests, but that it would
be better were she to drop
the Tertium Quid quietly and for her husband's sake. The letter
was sweetened with many pretty
little pet names, and it amused the Tertium Quid considerably. He
and She laughed over it, so
that you, fifty yards away, could see their shoulders shaking while
the horses slouched along side
by side.

Their conversation was not worth reporting.  The upshot of it was
that,

AT THE PIT'la, MOUTh
203

next day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid
together. They had both gone down
to the Cemetery, whiob, as a rule, is only visited officially by the
inhabitants of Simla.

A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding,
and the coffin creaking as it
swings between the bearer~, is one of the most depressing things
on this earth, particularly when
the procession passes under the wet, dank dip beneath the
Rockcliffe Hotel, where the sun is
shut out and all the bill streams are wailing and weeping together
as they go down the valleys

Occasionally folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are
transferred so often that, at the
end of the second year, the Dead have no friends-only
acquaintances who are far too busy
amusing themsel"es up the hill to attend to old partners.  The idea
of using a Cemetery as a
rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man would have said
simply "Let people talk. We'll
go down the Mall."  A woman is made differently, especially if she
be such a woman as the
Man's Wife.  She and the Tertium Quid enjoyed each other's
society among the graves of men
and women whom they had known and danced with aforetime.

They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to
the left of the lower end,
where there is a dip in the ground and where the occupied graves
stop short and the ready-made
ones are not ready. Each well-regulated India Cemetery keeps half
a dozen graves permanently
open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear.  In the Hills
these are more usually baby's
,'ize, because children who come up
weakened and sick from the Plains often succumb to the effects of
the Rains in the Hills or get
pneumonia from their ayahs taking them through damp
pine-woods after the sun has set.  In
Cantonments, of course, the man's size is more in request; these
arrangements varying with the
climate and population.

One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid had just
arrived in the Cemetery, they saw
some coolies breaking ground. They had marked out a full-size
grave, and the Tertium Quid
asked them whether any Sahib was sick. They said that they did
not know; but it was an order
that they should dig a Sahib's grave.

"Work away," said the Tertium Quid, "and let's see how it's done."

The coolies worked away, and the Man's Wife and the Tertium
Quid watched and talked for a
couple of hours while the grave was being deepened Then a coolie,
taking the earth in blan. kets
as it was thrown up, jumped over the grave.

"That'~ queer," said the Tertium Quid. "Where's my ulster?"

"What's queer?" said the Man's Wife.

"I have got a chill down my back
just as if a goose had walked over my grave."

'Why do you look at the thing, then?" said the Mm's Wife.  "Let us
go."

The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave, and stared
without answering for a space. Then
he said, dropping a pebble down, "It is nas'y~and cold; horribly
cold. I don't think I shail come to
the Cemetery any more.  I don't think grave-digging is cheerful."

The two talked and agreed that th~

204
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIFLI~G

Cemetery was depressing.  They also arranged for a ride next day
out from the Cemetery through
the Mashobra Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, because all the world
was going to a garden-party at
Viceregal Lodge, and all the people of Mashobra would go too.

Corning up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid's horse tried to
bolt u~ hill, being tired with
standing so long, and managed to strain a hack sinew.

"I shall have to take the mare totriorrow," said the Tertium Quid,
"and she will stand nothing
heavier than a snaffie."

They made their arrangements to meet in the Cemetery, after
allowing all the Mashobra people
time to pass into Simla.  That night it rained heavily, and next day,
when the Tertium Quid came
to the trysting-place, he saw that the new grave had a foot of water
in it, the ground being a
tough and sour clay.

"'Jove! That looks beastly," said the Tertiurn Quid.  "Fancy being
boarded up and dropped into
that well!"

They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing with the snaffle
and picking her way as though
she were shod with satin, and the sun shining divinely. The road
below Mashobra to Fagoo is
officially styled the Himalayan-Thibet Road; but in spite of its
name it is not much more than six
feet wide in most places, and the drop into the valley below must
be anything between one and
two thousand feet.

"Now we're going to Thibet," said the Man's Wife merrily, as the
horses drew near to Fagoo. She
was riding on the cliff-side.

"Into Thihet," said the Tertium Quid,
"ever so far from people who say horrid things, and hubbies who
write stupid letters. With
you-to the end of the world!"

A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner, and the mare
went wide to avoid
him-forefeet in and haunches out, as a sensible mare should go.

"To the world's end," said the Man's Wife, and looked unspeakable
things over her near shoulder
at the Tertium Quid.

He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smfle froze stiff as it
were on his face, and changed to
a nervous grin-the sort of grin men wear when they are not quite
easy in their saddles. The mare
seemed to be sinking by the stem, and her nostrils cracked while
she was trying to realize what
was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the
drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet
Road, and it was giving way under hen "What are you doing?" said
the Man's Wife. The Tertium
Quid gave no answen  He grinned nervously and set his spurs into
the mare, who rapped with her
forefeet on the road, and the struggle began.  The Man's Wife
screamed, "Oh, Frank, get off!"

But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle-his face blue and
white-and he looked into the
Man's Wife's eyes.  Then the Man's Wife clutched at the mare's
head and caught her by the nose
instead of the bridle.  The brute threw up her head and went down
with a scream, the Tertium
Quid upon her, and the nervous grin still set on his face.

The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinMe of little stones and loose
earth falling off the roadway,
and the sliding roar
A WAYSIDE COMEDY

205

of the man and horse going down. Then everything was quiet, and
she called on Frank to leave
his mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He was
underneath the mare, nine hundred feet
below, spoiling a patch of Indian corn.

As the revellers came hack from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of
the evening, they met a
temporarily insane woman, on a temporarily mad horse, swinging
round the corners, with her
eyes and her mouth open, and her head like the head of the
Medusa. She was
stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle,
a limp heap, and put on the
bank to explain herself.  This wasted twenty minutes, and then she
was sent home in a lady's
'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her hands picking at her
riding-gloves.

She was in bed through the following three days, which were
rainy; so she missed attending the
funeral of the Tertium Quid, who was lowered into eighteen inches
of water, instead of the
twelve to which he had first objected.



A Waysicte Comedy

Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the
misery

of man is great upon him.-
-Eccies. viii. 6.


FATE and the Government of India have turned the Station of
Kashima into a prison; and,
because there is no help for the poor souls who are now lying there
in torment, I write this story,
praying that the Government of India may be moved to scatter the
European population to the
four winds.

Kashima is bound on all sides by the rock-tipped circle of the
Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is
ablaze with roses in Summer, the roses die and the hot winds blow
from the hills; in Autumn, the
white mists from the ihils cover the place as with water, and in
Winter the frosts nip everything
young and tender to earth-level.  There is but one view in
Kashima-a stretch of perfectly flat
pasture and plough-land, running up to the grey-blue scrub of the
Dosebri hills.

There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the
tigers have been long since
hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come
once a year.  Narkarra-one
hundred and forty-three miles by road-is the nearest station to
Kashima. But Kashima never goes
to Narkarra, where there are at least twelve English people.  It
stays within the circle of the
Dosebri hills.

All Kasbima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to do harm;
but all Kashima knows that
she, and she alone, brought about their pain.

Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurrell know this.
They are the English
population of Kashima, if we except Major Vansuythen, who is of
no importance whatever, and
Mrs. Vansuythen, who is the most important of all.

You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws
weaken

200
WORK~ OF RUDYARD KIPLING

in a small and hidden community where there is no public opinion.
When a man is absolutely
alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways.
The risk is multiplied by every
addition to th~ population up to twelve
-the Jury-number.  After that, fear and consequent restraint begin,
and human action becomes
less grotesquely jerky.

There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen arrived.
She was a charming woman,
every one said so everywhere; and she charmed every one.  In spite
of this, or, perhaps, because
of this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and
he was Major Vansuythen. Had
she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been intelligible
to Kashima. But she was a fair
woman, with very still grey eyes, the color of a lake just before the
light of the sun touches it.
No man who had seen those eyes, could, later on, explain what
fashion of woman she was to
look upon.  The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was
"not had looking, but spoiled
by pretending to be so grave."  And yet her gravity was natural  It
was not her habit to smile.
She merely went through life, looking at those who passed; and the
~omen objected while the
men fell down and worshipped.

She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to
Kashima; but Major Vansuythen
cannot understand why Mrs. Boulte does not drop in to afternoon
tea at least three times a week.
"When there are only two women in one Station, they ought to see
a great deal of each other,"
says Major Vansuythen.

Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out of those
far-away places  where  there is
society and amusement, Kurrell had discovered that Mrs. Boulte
was the one woman in the
world  for him  and-you  dare not blame them.  Kashima was as
out of the world as Heaven or
the Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept their secret well.
Boulte had no concern in the
matter.  He was in camp for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard,
heavy man, and neither Mrs.
Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him.  They had  all Kashima and each
other for their very, very own;
and Kashima was the Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte
returned from his wanderings
he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call him "old
fellow," and the three would dine
together.  Kashima was happy then when the judgment of God
seemed almost as distant as
Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea.  But the
Government sent Major Vansuythen to
Kashima, and with him came his wife.

The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert
island. When a stranger is cast
away there, all hands go down to the shore to make him welcome.
Kashima assembled at the
masonry platform close to the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for
the Vansuythcns.   That
ceremony  was reckoned a formal call, and made them free of the
Station, its rights and
privileges. When the Vansuythens were settled down, they gave a
tiny housewarming to all
Kashima; and that made Kashima free of their house, according to
the immemorial usage of the
Station.

Then the Rains came, when no one

A WAYSIDE COMEDY
207

could go into camp, and the Narkarra
Road was washed away by the Kasun
River, and in the cup-like pastures of
Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep.
The clouds dropped down from the
Dosehri hills and covered everything.

At the end of the Rains, Boulte's manner toward his wife changed
and became  demonstratively
affectionate. They had been married twelve years, and the change
startled Mrs. Boulte, who
hated her husband with the hate of a woman who has met with
nothing but kindness from her
mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, had done him a great
wrong.  Moreover, she had her awn
trouble to fight with-her watch 0 keep over her own property,
Kurrell. For two months the Rains
had hidden the Dosebri hills and many other things besides; but
when they lifted, they showed
Mrs.  Boulte that her man among men, her Ted-for she called him
Ted in the old days when
Boulte was out of earshot-was slipping the links of the allegiance.

"The Vansuythen Woman has taken him," Mrs. Boulte said to
herself; and when Boulte was
away, wept over her belief, in the face of the over-vehement
blandishments  of  Ted.   Sorrow  in
Kashima is as fortunate as Love, because there is nothing to
weaken it save the flight of Time.
Mrs. Boulte had never breathed her suspicion to Kurrell because
she was not certain; and her
nature led her to be very certain before she took steps in any
direction.  That is why she behaved
as she did.

Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the
door-posts of the drawing-room,
chewing his moustache.  Mrs. Boulte was putting some
flowers into a vase.  There is a pretence of civilization even in
Kashima.

"Little woman," said Boulte, quietly, "do you care for me?"

"Immensely," said she, with a laugh. "Can you ask ~?"

"But I'm serious," said Boulte. "Do you care for me?"

Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly.  "Do
you want an honest answer?"

"Ye-es, I've asked for it."

Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, eve~ voice for five minutes, very
distinctly, that there might be no
misunderstanding her meaning.  When Samson broke the pillars of
Gaza, he did a little thing,
and one not to be compared to the  deliberate  pulling  down  of  a
woman 5 homestead about
her own ears. There was no Wise female friend to advise Mrs.
Boulte, the singularly cautious
wife, to hold her hand.  She struck at Boulte's heart, because her
own was sick with suspicion of
Kurrell, and worn out with the long strain of watching  alone
through  the  Rains. There was no
plan or purpose in her speaking.  The sentences made themselves;
and  Boulte listened leaning
against the door-post with his hands in his pockets.  When all was
over, and Mrs. Boulte began
to breathe through her nose before breaking out into tears, he
laughed and stared straight in front
of him at the Dosebri hills.

"Is that all?" be said.  "Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know."

"What are you going to do?" said the woman, between her sobs.

"Do!  Nothing.  What should I do? Kill Kurrell or send you Home,
or apply for leave to get a
divorce?  It'~

20a
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

two days' dok into Narkarra."  He laughed again and went on:  "I'll
tell you what you can do.
You can ask Kurrell  to  dinner  to-morrow-no, on Thursday, that
will allow you time to
pack~and you can holt with him. I give you my word I won't
follow."

He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte
sat till the moonlight streaked
the floor, thinking and thinking and thinking.  She had done her
best upon the spur of the
moment to pull the house down; but it would not fall.  Moreover,
she could not understand her
husband, and she was afraid.  Then the folly of her useless
truthfulness struck her, and she was
ashamed to write to Kurrell, say]ng: "I have gone mad and told
everything. My husband says that
I am free to elope with you.  Get a ddk for Thursday, and we will
fly after dinner." There was a
cold-bloodedness about that procedure which did not appeal to
her.  So she sat still in her own
house and thought.

At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn
and haggard, and the woman
was touched at his distress.  As the evening wore on, she muttered
some expression of sorrow,
something approaching to contrition.  Boulte came out of a brown
study and said, "Oh, that!  I
wasn't thinking about that. By the way, what does Kurrell say to
the elopement?"

"I haven't seen him," said Mrs. Boulte.  "Good God! is that all?"

But Boulte was not listening, and her sentence ended in a gulp.

The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did
not appear, and the new life that
she, in the
five minutes' madness of the previous evening, had hoped to build
out of the ruins of the old,
seemed to be no nearer.

Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in
the veranda, and went out.  The
morning wore through, and at midday the tension became
unendurable.  Mrs. Boulte could not
cry.  She had finished her crying in the night, and now she did not
want to be left alone. Perhaps
the Vansoythen woman would talk to her; and, since talking opens
the heart, perhaps there might
be some comfort to be found in her company. She was the only
other woman in the Station.

In Kasbima there are no regular calling-hours.  Every one can drop
in upon every one else at
pleasure.  Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked  across  to
the Vansoythen's house to
borrow ]ast week's Queen. The two compounds touched, and
in-stead of going up the drive, she
crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house
from the back.  As she passed
through the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that
cloaked the drawing-room door, her
husband's voice, saying-"But on my Honor!  On my Soul
and Honor, I tell you she doesn't care for me.  She told me so last
night.  I would have told you
then if Vansuythen hadn't been with you.  If it is for her sake that
you'll have nothing to say to
me, you can make your mind easy. It's Kurrell'

"What?" said Mrs. Vansoythen, with an hysterical little laugh.
"Kurrell! Oh, it can't be.  You two
must have made some horrible mistake.  Perhaps you-you lost your
temper, or misun
A WAYSIDE COMEDY

209
derstood, or something.  Things can't be as wrong as you say."

Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man's
pleading, and was desperately trying
to keep him to a side-issue.

"There must be some mistake," she insisted, "and it can be all put
right again."

Boulte laughed grimly.

"It can't be Captain Kurrell!  He told me that he had never taken
the least-the least interest in
your wife, Mr. Boulte.  Oh, do listen!  He said he had not.  He
swore he had not," said Mrs.
Vansuythen.

The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a
little, thin woman with big
rings round her eyes.  Mrs. Vansuytben stood up with a gasp.

"What was that you said?" asked Mrs. Boulte.  "Never mind that
man. What did Ted say to you?
What did he say to you?  What did he say to you?"

Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the
trouble of her questioner.

"He said-I can't remember exactly what he said-but I understood
him to say-that is-But, really,
Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange question?"

"Will you tell me what he said?" repeated Mrs. Boulte.  Even a
tiger will fly before a bear robbed
of her whelps, and Mrs. Vansuythen was only an ordinarily good
woman.  She began in a sort of
desperation: "Well, he said that he never cared for you at all, and,
of course, there was not the
least reason why he should have, and-and-that was all."

"You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was that true?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Vansuythen, very softly.

Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell
forward fainting.

"What did I tell you?" said Boulte, as though the conversation had
been unbroken.  "You can see
for yourself She cares for him."  The light began to break into his
dull mind, and he went
on-"And h~what was he saying to you?"

But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for explanations or
impassioned protestations,  was
kneeling  over  Mrs. Boulte.

"Oh, you brute!" she cried.  "Are all men like this? Help me to get
her into my room-and her face
is cut against the table. Oh, will you be quiet, and help me to carry
her?  I hate you, and I hate
Captain Kurrell.  Lift her up carefully and now-go!  Go away!"

Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Vansuythen's bedroom and
departed before the storm of that
lady's wrath and disgust, impenitent and burning with jealousy.
Kurrell had been making love to
Mrs. Vansuythen-would do Vansuytben as great a wrong as he had
done Boulte, who caught
himself considering  whether  Mrs.  Vansuythen would faint if she
discovered that the man she
loved had foresworn her.

In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along
the road and pulled up with a
cheery, "Goodmornin'.  'Been mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual,
eh?  Bad thing for a sober,
married man, that. What will Mr~ Boulte say?"

210
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


Boulte raised his head and said, slowly, "Oh, you liar!"  Kurrell's
face changed.  "What's that?"
he asked, quickly.

"Nothing much," said Boulte.  "Has my wife told you that you two
are free to go off whenever
you please?  She has been good enough to explain the situation to
me.  You've been a true friend
to  me,  Kurrell-old  man-haven't you?"

Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
about being willing to give
"satisfaction." But his interest in the woman was dead, had died
out in the Rains, and, mentally,
he was abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have
been so easy to have broken off
the thing gently and by degrees, and now he was saddled
with-Boulte '5 voice recalled him.

"'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and
I'm pretty sure you'd get none
from killing me."

Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
wrongs, Boulte added-"'Seems
rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the woman,
now you've got her.  You've
been a true friend to her too, haven't you?"

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond
him.

"What do you mean?" he said.

Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner:  'My wife
came over to Mrs. Vansuythen's
just now; and it seems you'd been telling Mrs. Vansuythen that
you'd never cared for Emma.  I
suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuytben to do with
you, or you with her?  Try to speak the truth for once in a way."

Kurrell  took  the  double  insult without wincing, and replied by
another question: "Go on.
What happened?"

"Emma fainted," said Boulte, simply.

"But, look here, what had you been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?"

Kurrell laughed.  Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made
havoc of his plans; and he could
at least retaliate by hurting the man in whose eyes he was
humiliated and shown dishonorable.

"Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for?  I suppose I
said pretty much what you've
said, unless I'm a good deal mistaken."

"I spoke the truth," said Boulte, again more to himself than
Kurrell. "Emma told me she hated
me.  She has no right in me."

"No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know.  And what
did Mrs. Vansuythen say after
you had laid your disengaged heart at her feet?"

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

"I don't think that matters," Boulte replied; "and it doesn't concern
you."

"But it does!  I tell you it does" began Kurrell, shamelessly.

The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips.
Kurrell was silent for an instant,
and then he, too, laughed-laughed long and loudly, rocking in his
saddle.  It was an unpleasant
sound-the mirthless mirth of these men on the long, white line of
the Narkarra  Road.   There
were  no strangers in Kashima, or they might have thought that
captivity within the

A WAYSIDE COMEDY
211

Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad.  The
laughter ~nded abruptly, and
Kurrell was the first to speak.

"Well, what are you going to do?"

Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills.  "Nothing," said he,
quietly; "what's the use?  It's too
ghastly for anything. We must let the old life go
on.
I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't go on calling you
names forever. Besides
which, I don't feel that I'm much better.  We can't get out of this
place. What is there to do?"

Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply.
The injured husband took up the
wondrous tale.

"Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don't
care what you do."

He walked forward and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him.
Kurrell did not ride on either to
see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs. Vansuythen.  He sat in his saddle and
thought, while his pony grazed by
the roadside.

The whir of  approaching wheels roused him.  Mrs. Vansuythen
was driving home Mrs. Boulte,
white and wan, with a cut on her forehead.

"Stop, please," said Mrs. Boulte "I want to speak to Ted."

Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte leaned forward,
putting her hand upon the
splash-hoard of the dog-cart, Kurrel] spoke.

"I've  seen  your  husband,  Mrs. Boulte.

There was no necessity for any further explanation.  The man's
eyes were fixed, not upon Mrs.
Boulte, but
her companion.  Mrs. Boulte saw the look.

"Speak to him!" she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side.
"Oh, speak to him!  Tell him
what you told me just now. Tell him you hate him. Tell him you
hate him!"

She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the sais, impassive, went
forward to hold the horse.
Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and dropped the reins. She wished
to be no party to such unholy
explanations.

"I've nothing to do with it," she began, coldly; but Mrs. Boulte's
sobs overcame her, and she
addressed herself to the man. "I don't know what I am to say,
Captain Kurrell. I don't know what
I can call you. I think you've-you've behaved abominably, and she
has cut her forehead terribly
against the table."

"It doesn't hurt.  It isn't anything," said Mrs. Boulte feebly. "That
doesn't matter.  Tell him what
you told me. Say you don't care for him. Oh, Ted, ~von't you
believe her?"

"Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were-that you were
fond of her once upon a
time," went on Mrs. Vansuythen.

"Well!" said Kurrell brutally.  "It seems to me that Mrs. Boulte had
better be fond of her own
husband first."

"Stop!" said Mrs. Vansuythen. "Hear me first.  I don't care-I don't
want to know anything about
you and Mrs. Boulte; but I want you to know that I hate you, that I
think you are a cur, and that
I'll never, never speak to you again.  Oh, I don't dare to say what I
think of you, you-man!"

~24
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

~outhl  I ordered the Hawley Boy, as 'ae valued my patronage, not
to call. The first person I
stumble over-literally stumble over-in her poky, dark, jittle
drawing-room is, of course, the
flawley Boy.  She kept us waiting ten rninutes, and then emerged
as though ~he had been tipped
out of the dirtyrIothes basket.  You know my way, dear, when I am
all put out.  I was Superior,
crrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes to Heaven, and had heard of
nothing-'dropped my eyes on
the carpet and 'really didn't know'-'played witn my cardcase and
'supposed so.' The Hawley Boy
giggled like a girl, and I had to freeze him with scowls between the
sentences."

"And she?"

"She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and managed to convey
the impression that she was
suffering from stomach-ache, at the very least. It was all I could do
not to ask after her
symptoms.  When I rose she grunted just ~ke a buffalo in the
water-too lazy to move."

"Are you certain?'-"Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer
l.~iness, nothing else-or her garments were only constructed for
sitting down
in.
I stayed for a quarter of an hour trying to penetrate the gloom, to
guess what her surroundings
were like, while she stuck out her tongue."

"Lu-cy !'~

"Well-I'll  withdraw  the  tongue,
though I'm sure if she didn't do it when
I was in the room, she did the minute
I was outside. At any rate, she l~y in
a lump and grunted.  Ask the Hawley
Boy, dear.  I bel~evc the grunts were
m~ant for sentences. but she spoke so
indistinctly that I can't swear to it."

"You are incorrigible, simply."

"I am not!  Treat me civilly, give me peace with honor, don't put
the only available seat facing
the window, and a child may eat jam in my lap before Church. But
I resent being grunted at.
Wouldn't you?  Do you suppose that she communicates her views
on life and love to The
Dancing Master in a set of modulated 'Grmphs'?"

"You attach too much importance to The Dancing Master."

"He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost cordial at the
sight of him. He smiled
greasily, and moved about that darkened dog-kennel in a
suspiciously familiar way."

"Don't be uncharitable. Any sin but that I'll forgive."

"Listen to the voice of History.  I am only describing what I saw.
He entered, the heap on the
sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy and I came away
together. He is disillusionea, but I
felt it my duty to lecture him severely for going there.  And that's
all."

"Now  for Pity's  sake leave the wretched creature and The
Dancing Master alone. They never
did you any harm."

"No harm?  To dress as an example and a stumbling-block for half
Simla, and then to find this
Person who is dressed by the hand of God-not that I wish to
disparage Him for a moment, but
you know the tikka dhurzie way He attires those lilies of the
field-this Person draws the eyes of
men-and some of them nice men? It's almost enough ~o make one
di~card clothing.  I told the
Hawley Boy so."

212
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


"I want to speak to Ted," moaned Mrs. Boulte, but the dog-cart
rattled on, and Kurrell was left
on the road, shamed, and boiling with wrath against Mrs. Boulte.

He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to her own
house, and, she being freed from
the embarrassment of Mrs. Boulte's presence, learned for the
second time her opinion of himself
and his actions.

In the evenings, it was the wont of all Kashima to meet at the
platform on the Narkarra Road, to
drink tea, and discuss the trivialities of the day. Major Vansuythen
and his wife found
themselves alone at the gathering-place for almost the first time in
their remembrance; and the
cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife's remarkably reasonable
suggestion that the rest of the
Station might be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two
bungalows and unearthing the
population.

"Sitting in the twilight!" said he, with great indignation to the
Boultes. That'll never do! Hang it
all, we're one family here! You must come out, and so must
Kurrell.   I'll make  him  bring his
banjo." So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good
digestion over guilty consciences
that all Kashima did turn out, even down to the banjo; and the
Major embraced the company in
one expansive grin. As he grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her
eyes for an instant and looked at
all Kashima.  Her meaning was clear.  Major Vansuythen would
never know anything.  He was
to be the outsider in that happy family whose cage was the Dosehri
hills.

"You're singing villainously out of
tune, Kurrell," said the Major, truthfully.  "Pass me that banjo."

And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out and all
Kashima went to dinner.

*
*
*
*
*


That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima-the life that
Mrs. Boulte made when her
tongue was loosened in the twilight.

Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since be insists
upon keeping up a burdensome
geniality, she has been compelled to break her vow of not speaking
to  Kurrell.   This  speech,
which must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and
interest, serves admirably to
keep alive the flame of jealousy and dull hatred in Boulte's bosom,
as it awakens the same
passions in his wife's heart.  Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen
because she has taken Ted from
her, and, in some curious fashion, hates her because Mrs.
Vansuythen-and here the wife's eyes
see far more clearly than the husband's-detests Ted.  And Ted
-that gallant captain and honorable man-knows now that it is
possible to hate a woman once
loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her forever with blows.
Above all, is he shocked that
Mrs. Boulte cannot see the error of her ways.

Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all friendship.
Boulte has put their relationship
on a most satisfactory footing.

"You're a blackguard," he says to Kurrell, "and I've lost any
self-respect I may ever have had; but
when you're

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
223

liter you saw her walking with The Dancing Master-an hour later
you met her here at the
Library."

"Still with The Dancing Master, remember."

"Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of
that should you imagine"-"I
imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that
The Dancing Master is
attracted to The Dowd because he is objectionable in every way
and she in every other. If I know
the man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at
present."

"She is twenty years younger than he."

"Poor wretch! And, in the end, after ke has posed and swaggered
and lied-he has a mouth under
that ragged moustache simply made for lies-he will be rewarded
according to his merits."

"I wonder what those really are," said Mrs. Mallowe.

But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to he shelf of the new books,
was humming softly: "What
shall he have who killed the Deer!"  She was a lady of unfettered
speech.

One month later, she announced her otention of calling upon Mrs.
Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee
and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning wrappers, and there was a
great peace in the land.

"I should go as I was," said Mrs. Mallowe. "It would be a delicate
compliment to her style."

Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

"Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I
should put on this robe, after all
the others, to show
her what a morning wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her.  As
it is, I shall go in the
dove-colored-sweet emblem of youth and innocenc~and shall put
on my new gloves."

"If you really are going, dirty tan would be too good; and you know
that dove-color spots with
the rain."

"I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one
cannot expect very much
from a woman who puts a lace tucker into her habit."

"Just Heavens!  When did she do that?"

"Yesterday-riding with The Dancing Master.  I met them at the
back of Jakko, and the rain had
made the lace lie down.  To complete the effect, she was wearing
an unclean terai with the
elastic under her chin. I felt almost too well content to take the
trouble to despise her."

"The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?"

"Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did?
He stared in the rudest way,
and just when I thought he had seen the elastic, he said, 'There's
something very taking about that
face.' I rebuked him on the spot. I don't approve of boys being
taken by faces."

"Other than your own.  I shouldn't be in the least surprised if the
Hawley Boy immediately went
to call."

"I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and
his wife when she comes up.
I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent and the Delville woman
together."

Mrs. Haukshee departed and, at the end of an hour, returned
slightly flushed.

"There is no limit to the treachery of

THE HILL OF ILLUSION
213

with me, I can feel certain that you are not with Mrs. Vansuythen,
or making Emma miserable."

Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him.  Sometimes
they are away for three days
together, and then the Major insists upon his wife going over to sit
with Mrs, Boulte; although
Mrs. Vansuythen has repeatedly de. dared that she prefers her
husband's company to any in the
world.  From the way in which she clings to him, she would
certainly seem to be speaking the
truth.

But of course, as the Major says, "in a little Station we must all be
friendly."



The Hill of Illusion
What rendered vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled,
And bade between their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

-Matthew Arnold.


HE.  Tell your 'hampanis not to hurry so, dear. They forget I'm
fresh from the Plains.

SHE.  Sure proof that I have not been going out with any one. Yes,
they are an untrained crew.
Where do we go?

HE. As usual-to the world's end. No, Jakko.

SHE.  Have your pony led after you, then. It's a long ound.

HE.  And for the last time, thank Heaven!

SHE.  Do you mean that still?  I didn't dare to write to you about
it-all these months.

HE.  Mean it! I've been shaping my affairs to that end since
Autumn. What makes you speak as
though it had occurred to you for the first time?

SHE. I! Oh! I don't know. I've had long enough to think, too.

HE.  And you've changed your mind?

SHE.  No. You ought to know that I
am a miracle of constancy. What are your-arrangements?

HE.  Ours, Sweetheart, please.

SHE.  Ours, be it then.  My poor boy, how the prickly heat has
marked your forehead!  Have you
ever tried sulphate of copper in water?

HE. It'll go away in a day or twa up here.  The arrangements are
simple enough. Tonga in the
early morning-reach Kalka at twelve-Umballa at seven-down,
straight by night train, to Bombay,
and then the steamer of the 21st for Rome.  That's my idea.  The
Continent  and  Sweden-a
ten-week honeymoon.

SHE.  Ssh! Don't talk of it in that way. It makes me afraid.  Guy,
how long have we two been
insane?

HE. Seve~ months and fourteen days, I forget the odd hours
exactly, but I'll think.

SHE. I only wanted to see if you remembered.  Who are those two
on the Blessington Road?

HE.  Eabrey and the Penner woman. What do they matter to us?
Tell me everything that you've
been doing and saying and thinking

222
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

said Mrs. Mallowe. "He will be a sufficient punishment for her.
What a common voice she has!"

Mrs. Delville's voice was not pretty, her carriage was even less
lovely, and her raiment was
strikingly neglected. All these things Mrs. Mallowe noticed over
the top of a magazine.

"Now what is there in her?" said Mrs. Hauksbee.  "Do you see
what I meant about the clothes
falling off? If I were a man I would perish sooner than be seen
with that rag-bag.  And yet, she
has good eyes, but~h!"

"What is it?"

"She doesn't know how to use them! On my Honor, she does not.
Look! Oh look!  Untidiness I
can endure, but ignorance never! The woman's a fool."

"Hsh!  She'll hear you."

"All the women in Simla are fools. She'll think I mean some one
else. Now she's going out. What
a thoroughly objectionable couple she and The Dancing Master
make! Which reminds me. Do
you suppose they'll ever dance together?"

"Wait and see. I don't envy her the conversation of The Dancing
Master-loathly man! His wife
ought to be up here before long."

"Do you know anything about him?"

"Only what he told me.  It may be a11 a fiction. He married a girl
bred in the country, I think,
and, being an honorable, chivalrous soul, told me that he repented
his bargain and sent her to her
mother as often as possibl~a person who has lived in the Doon
since the memory of man and
goes to Mussoorie when other people go Home. The wife is with
her at present. So he says."

'~Babies?'~

"One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him
for it. He thought he was being
epigrammatic and brilliant."

"That is a vice peculiar to men.  I dislike him because he is
generally in the wake of some girl,
disappointing the Eligibles.  He will persecute May Holt no more,
unless I am much mistaken."

"No.  I think Mrs. Delville may oc cupy his attention for a while."

"Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?"

"Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy.  Wherefore I
tell you. Don't you know that
type of man?"

"Not intimately, thank goodness! As
a general rule, when a man begins to
abuse his wife to me, I find that the
Lord gives me wherewith to answer him
according to his folly; and we part with
a coolness between us. I laugh."

"I'm different.  I've no sense  of humor."

"Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I
care to think about.  A
well-educated sense of Humor will save a woman when Religion,
Training, and Home
influences fail; and we may all need salvation sometimes."

"Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humor?"

"Her dress bewrays her. How can a Thing who wears a supplement
under her left arm have any
notion of the fitness of things-much less their folly? If she discards
The Dancing Maste! after
having once seen him dance, I may respect her.  Otherwise"

"But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear?  You
saw the woman at Peliti's-half
an hour

214
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING


SHE.  Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great deal. I've
hardly been out at all.

Ha.  That was wrong of you. You haven't been moping?

SHE.  Not very much.  Can you wonder that I'm disinclined for
amuse-ment?

HE.  Frankly, I do. Where was the difficulty?

SHE.  In this only. The more people 1 know and the more I'm
known here, the wider spread will
be the news of the crash when it comes. I don't like that.

HE.  Nonsense. We shall be out of it.

SHE.  You think so?

HE.  I'm sure of it, if there is any power in steam or horse-flesh to
carry us away. Ha! ha!

Sira. And the fun of the situation comes in-where, my Larcelot?

lia.  Nowhere, Guinevere.  I was only thinking of something.

SHE. They say men have a keener sense of humor than women.
Now I was thinking of the
scandal.

HE.   Don't think of anything so ugly.  We shall be beyond it.

SHE.  It will be there all the same-~ the mouths of
Simla-telegraphed over India, and talked of at
the dinners

-and when He goes out they will stare at Him and see how He
takes it.  And we shall be dead,
Guy dear-dead and cast into the outer darkness where there is-HE.
Love at least.  Isn't that

enough?

SHE. I have said so.

HE. And you think so still?

SHE.  What do you think?

Ha.  What have I done?  It means qua] ruin to me, as the world
reckons
it~outcasting, the loss of my appointment, the breaking of my life's
work. I pay my price.

SHE.  And are you so much above the world that you can afford to
pay it? Am I?

Ha. My Divinity-what else?

SHE. A very ordinary woman I'ni afraid, but, so far, respectable.
How'd you do, Mrs.
Middleditch?  Your husband?  I think he's riding down to
Annandale with Colonel Statters.  Yes,
isn't it divine after the rain?-Guy, how long am I to be allowed to
how to Mrs. Middleditch? Till
the 17th?

HE.  Frowsy Scotchwoman? What is the use of bringing her into
the discussion? You were
saying?

SHE.  Nothing. Have you ever seen a man hanged?

HE.  Yes. Once.

SHE.  What was it for?

HE. Murder, of course.

SHE.  Murder. Is that so great a sin after all? I wonder how he felt
before the drop fell.

HE. I don't think he felt much. What a gruesome little woman it is
this evening!  You're
shivering.  Put on youi cape, dear.

SHE.  I think I will. Oh! Look at the mist  coming over  Saniaoli;
and  I thought we should have
sunshine on the Ladies' Mile! Let's turn back.

HE.  What's the good?  There's a cloud on Elysium Hill, and that
means it's foggy all down the
Mall. We'll go
on.
It'll blow away before we get to the Convent, perhaps.  'Jove!  It is
chilly.

SHE.  You feel it, fresh from below. Put on your ulster. What do
you think of my ca~e?
A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

221
took more exercise and a more intelligent interest in your
neighbors you would"-"Be as much
loved as Mrs. Hauksbee.  You're a darling in many ways and I like
you-you are not a woman's
woman-but why do you trouble your-self about mere human
beings?"

"Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be
horribly dull, men and women are
the most fascinating things in the whole wide world, lazy one.  I
am interested in The Dowd-I am
interested in The Dancing Master
-I am interested in the Hawley Boy-and I am interested in you."

"Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property."

"Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out
of him. When he is slightly
more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever
the authorities think fit to exact
from him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think,
and"-here she waved her hands
airily-" 'whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath joined together let no man put
asunder.' That's all."

"And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious
detrimental in Simla, and earned
the undying hatred of Mamma Holt, what will you do with me,
Dispenser of the Destinies of the
Universe?"

Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of the fire, and,
chin in hand, gazed long and
steadfastly at Mrs. Mallowe.

"I do not know," she said, shaking her head, "what I shall do with
you, dear. It's obviously
impossible to marry you to some one else-your husband would
object and the experiment might
not be
successful after all. I think I shall be gin by preventing you
from-what is it?
-'sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring in the sun.'"

"Don't! I don't like your quotations. They are so rude.  Go to the
Library and bring me new
books."

"While you sleep? Nol If you don't come with me, I shall spread
your newest frock on my
'rickshaw-bow, and when any one asks me what I am doing, I shall
say that I am going to
Phelps's to get it let out. I shall take care that Mrs. MacNamara
sees me.  Put your things on,
there's a good girl."

Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went off to the
Library, where they found Mrs.
Delville and the man who went by the nickname of The Dancing
Master.  By that time Mrs
Mallowe was awake and eloquent.

"That is the Creature!" said Mrs. Hauksbee, with the air of one
pointing out a slug in the road.

"No," said Mrs. Mallowe.  "The man is the Creature.  Ugh!
Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought
you were coming to tea this evening."

"Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?" answered The Dancing
Master. "I understood . . . I
fancied .
I'm so sorry . . . How very unfortunate!" -

But Mrs. Mallowe had passad on.

"For the practiced equivocator you said he was," murmured Mrs.
Hauksbee, "he strikes me as a
failure. Now wherefore should he have preferred a walk with The
Dowd to tea with us?  Elective
affinities, I suppose-both grubby. Polly, I'd never forgive that
woman as long as the world rolls."

"I forgive every woman eve'-ything,"

THE HILL OF ILLUSION
215


HE.  Never ask a man his opinion of a woman's dress when he is
desperately and abjectly in love
with the wearer. Let me ~ook.  Like everything else of yours it's
perfect.  Where did you get it
from?

SHE.  He gave it me, on Wednesday
-our wedding-day, you know.

HE. The Deuce He did! He's growing generous in his old age.
D'you like all that frilly, bunchy
stuff at the throat? I don't.

SHE. Don't you?


Kind Sir, 0' your courtesy,


As you go by the town, Sir, 'Pray you 0' your love for me,


Buy me a russet gown, Sir.


HE.  I won't say:  "Keek into the draw-well, Janet, Janet." Only
wait a little, darling, and you
shall be stocked with russet gowns and everything else.

SHE. And when the frocks wear out, you'll get me new ones-and
everything else?

HE. Assuredly.

SHE. I wonder!

HE. Look here, Sweetheart, I didn't spend two days and two nights
in the train to hear you
wonder. I thought we'd settled all that at Shaifazebat.

SHE (dreamily).  At Shaifazehat? Does the Station go on still?
That was ages and ages ago.  It
must be crumbling to pieces.  All except the Amirtollah kutcha
road. I don't believe tha~ could
crumble till the Day of Judgment.

Ha. You think so?  What is the mood now?

SHE. I can't tell.  How cold it is! Tœt us get on ~uickly.

Ha. Better walk a little. Stop your
jkampa"is and get out.  What's the matter with you this evening,
dear?

SHE. Nothing. You must grow accustomed to my ways.  If I'm
boring you I can go home.  Here's
Ca~ tam  Congleton coming, I dare say he'll be willing to escort
me.

Ha. Goose! Between us, too! Damn Captain Congleton!

SHE.  Chivalrous Knight. Is it your habit to swear much in talking?
It jars a little, and you might
swear at me.

Ha.  My angel! I didn't know what I was saying; and you changed
so quickly that I couldn't
follow.  I'll apologize in dust and ashes.

SHE.  There'll be enough of those later on-Good-night, Captain
Congleton.  Going to the
singing-quadrilles already? What dances am I giving you next
week? No! You must have written
them down wrong. Five and Seven, I said.  If you've made a
mistake, I certainly don't intend to
suffer for it. You must alter your programme.

Ha. I thought you told me that you bad not been going out much
this season?

SHE. Quite true, but when I do I dance with Captain Congleton.
He dances very nicely.

HE. And sit out with him, I suppose?

SHE. Yes. Have you any objection? Shall I stand under the
chandelier in future?

HE. What does he talk to you about? SHE. What do men talk about
when they sit out?

Ha. Ugh! Don't! Well now I'm up, you must dispense with the
fascinating Congleton for a while.
I don't like laim.
~2O
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

the attraction that a dowd has for a certain type of man. I expected
to see her walk out of her
clothes-until I looked at her eyes."

"Hooks and eyes, surely," drawled Mrs. Mallowe.

"Don't be clever, Polly.  You make my head ache. And round this
hayrick stood a crowd of
men-a positive crowd!"

"Perhaps they also expected"-"Polly, don't be Rabelaisian!" Mrs.
Mallowe curled herself up
comfortably on the sofa, and turned her attention to the sweets.
She and Mrs. Hauksbee shared
the same house at Simla; and these things befell two seasons after
the matter of Otis Yeere,
which has been already recorded.

Mrs.  Hauksbee  stepped into  the veranda and looked down upon
the Mall,  her  forehead
puckered  with thought.

"Hab!" said Mrs. Hauksbee, shortly. "Indeed!"

"What is it?" said Mrs. Mallowe, sleepily.

"That dowd and The Dancing Master
-to whom I object."

"Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of
reprobate and romantic
tendencies, and tries to be a friend of mine."

"Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling by nature, and
I should imagine that this
animal-how terrible her bonnet looks from above is specially
clingsome."

"She is welcome to The Dancing
Master so far as I am concerned.  I
never could take an interest  in a
monotonous liar.  The frustrated aim
of his life is to persuade people that he is a bachelor."

"0-oh!  I think I've met that sort of man before. And isn't he?"

"No.  He confided that to me a few days ago.  Ugh!  Some men
ought to he killed."

"What happened then?"

"He posed as the horror of horrors-a misunderstood man. Heaven
knows the femme incomprise
is sad enough and bad enough-but the other thing!"

"And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face. Men seldom
confide in me.  How is it they
come to you?"

"For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the past.
Protect me from men with
confidences!"

"And yet you encourage them?"

"What can I do? They talk. I listen, and they vow that I am
sympathetic. I know I always profess
astonishment even when the plot is-of the most old possible."

"Yes.  Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to
talk, whereas women's
confidences are full of reservations and fibs, except"-"When they
go mad and babble of the
Unutterabilities after a week's ac quaintance.  Really, if you come
to consider, we know a great
deal more men than of our own sex."

"And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it.
They say we are trying to hide
something."

"They are generally doing that on their own account. Alas! These
chocolates pall upon me, and I
haven't eaten more than a dozen. I think I shall go to sleep."

"Then you'll get fat. dear. If you

216
WORKS Of RUDYARD KIPLING


SHE.  (a!ter a pause). Do you know what you have said?

HE. 'Can't say that I do exactly. I'm not in the best of tempers.

Sitin.  So I see,-and feel.  My true and faithful lover, where is your
"eternal constancy,"
"unalterable trust," and "reverent devotion"? I remember those
phrases; you seem to have
forgotten them. I mention a man's name-HE. A good deal more
than that.

SHE. Well, speak to him about a dance-perhaps the last dance that
I shall ever dance in my life
before I,-before I go away; and you at once distrust and insult me.

HE. I never said a word.

SHE. How much did you imply? Guy, '5 this amount of confidence
to be our stock to start the
new life on?

HE.  No, of course not.  I didn't mean that.  On my word of honor,
I didn't. Let it pass, dear.
Please let it pass.

SHE. This onc~yes-and a second time, and again and again, all
through the years when I shall be
unable to resent it. You want too much, my Lancelot, and,-you
know too much.

Hp.  How do you mean?

SItE. That is a part of the punishment.  There cannot be perfect
trust between us.

HE. In Heaven's name, why not?

SHE.  Hush!  The Other Place is quite enough. Ask yourself.

HE.  I don't follow.

SHE. You trust me so implicitly that when I look at another man-
Never mind, Guy. Have you
ever made love to a gi4-a good girl?

HE.  Something of the sort. Centu
ries ago-in the Dark Ages, before I ever met you, dear.

SHE. Tell me what you said to her.

HE. What does a man say to a girl? I've forgotten.

SHE.  I remember. He tells her that he trusts her and worships the
ground she walks on, and that
he'll love and honor and protect her till her dying day; and so she
marries in that belief.  At least,
I speak of one girl who was not protected.

HE. Well, and then?

SHE. And then, Guy, and then, that girl needs ten times the love
and trust and honor-yes,
honor-that was enough when she was only a mere wife if-if-the
other life she chooses to lead is
to be made even bearable. Do you understand?

HE. Even bearable!  It'll he Paradi se.

SHE. Ah! Can you give me all I've asked for-not now, nor a few
months later, but when you
begin to think of what you might have done if you had kept your
own appointment and your
caste her~when you begin to look upon me as a drag and a burden?
I shall want it most, then,
Guy, for there will be no one in the wide world but you.

HE. You're a little over-tired tonight, Sweetheart, and you're taking
a stage view of the situation.
After the necessary business in the Courts, the road is clear
to-SHE.  "The holy state of
matrimony!" Ha! ha! ha!

HE. Ssh! Don't laugh in that horrible way!

SHE. I-I c-c-c-can't help it!  Isn't it too absurd! Ah! Ha! ha! ha!
Guy,

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
219

myself to talk this evening. May I call to-morrow?

SHE. Yes. No! Oh, give me time! rhe day after. I get into my
'rickshaw here and meet Him at
Peliti's.  You ride.

HE.  I'll go on to Peliti's too. I think
I want a drink.  My world's knocked
about my ears and the stars are falling.
Who are those brutes howling in the
Old Library?

SHE. They're rehearsing the singingquadrilles for the Fancy Ball.
Can't you hear Mrs. Buzgago's
voice?  She has a solo.  It's quite a new idea. Listen.

Mm. BUzGAGO (in the Old Library, con. molt. exp.).

See saw! MargeryDaw!

Sold her bed to lie upon straw.

Wasn't she a silly slut

To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?


Captain Congleton,  I'm going to alter that to "flirt." It sound
better.

HE.  No, I've changed my mind about the drink. Good-night, ~ttle
lady. I shall see you
to-morrow?

SHE.  Ye-es.  Good-night,  Guy. Don't be angry with me.

HE. Angry!  You know I trust you absolutely. Good-night and-God
bless you!

(Three seconds later. Alone.) Hmm! I'd give something to discover
wLether there's another man
at the back of all this.



A ~ond-Rate Woman

fuga, volvitur rota,


On
we drift; where looms the dim port?

~9ne
Two Three Four Five contrihute their quota:


Something ir gained if one caught but the import,
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

-Ma~ter Hugues of Sare-Gotha.


"DRESSED! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in her life.
She stood in the middle of her
room while her ayah
-no, her husband-it must have been a nian-threw her clothes at her.
She then did her hair with
her fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the bed. I
know she did, as well as if I had
assisted at the orgie. Who is she?" said Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Don't!" said Mrs. Mallowe, feebly.
"You make my head ache. I'm miserable to-day.  Stay me with
fondants, comfort me with
chocolates, for I am-Did you bring anything from Peliti's?"

"Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets when you
have answered them.  Who and
what is the creature?  There were at least half a dozen men round
her, and she appeared to be
going to sleep in their midst."

"Delville,"  said  Mrs.  Mallowe, "'Shady' Delville, to distinguish
her from Mrs. Jim of that ilk.
She dances as untidily as she dresses, I believe, and her husband is
somewhere in Madras. Go
and ca~l, if you are so interested."

'~What have I to do with Shigramitish women?  She merely caught
my attention for a minute,
and I wondered at

THE HILL OF ILLUSION
217

~op me quick or I shall-i-i-laugh till we get to the Church.

HE.  For goodness' sake, stop! Don't make an exhibition of
yourself.  What is the matter with
you?

SHE.  N-nothing.  I'm better now. HE.  That's all right.  One
moment, dear. There's a little wisp
of hair got loose from behind your right ear and it's straggling over
your cheek. So!

SHE. Thank'oo. I'm 'fraid my hat's on one side, too.

~IE  What do you wear these huge dagger bonnet-skewers for?
They're big enough to kill a man
with.

SHE.  Oh! Don't kill me, though. ~~u're sticking it into my head!
Let me do it. You men are so
clumsy.

HE. Have you had many opportunities of comparing us-in this sort
of work?

SHE.  Guy, what is my name?

HE.  Eh!  I don't follow.

SHE.  Here's my cardcase. Can y~u read?

HE. Yes.  Well?

SHE.  Well, that answers your question. You know the other man 5
name. An'. I sufficiently
humbled, or would you like to ask me if there is any one else?

HE. I see now. My darling, I never meant that for an instant. I was
only joking.  There!  Lucky
there's no one on the road. They'd be scandalized.

SHE.  They'll be more scandalized before the end.

HE.  Do-on't!  I don't like you to talk in that way.

SHE. Unreasonable man! Who asked me to face the situation and
accept it?
-Tell me, do I look like Mrs. Penner? Do I look like a naughty
woman? Swear I don't! Give me
your word of honor,
my honorable friend, that I'm not like Mrs. Buzgago.  That's the
way she stands, with her hands
clasped at the back of her head. D'you like that?

HE. Don't be affected.

SHE.  I'm not.  I'm Mrs. Buzgago. Listen!


Pendant une anne' toute entiere

Le regiment n'a pas r'naru.

Au Ministere de la u,uerre

On le r'porta comme perdu.


On se r'noncait a' r'trouver sa trace,

Q uand un matin subitement,

On le vit r'paraitre sur la ~ace,

L'Colonel toujours en avant.

That's the way she rolls her r's. Am I like her?

HE.  No, but I object when you go on like an actress and sing stuff
of that kind. Where in the
world did you pick up the Chanson du Colonel?  It isn't a
drawing-room song. It isn't proper.

SHE.  Mrs. Buzgago taught it me. She is both drawing-room and
propel, and in another month
she'll shut hei drawing-room to me, and thank God sh~ isn't as
improper as I am.  Oh, Guy, Guy!
I wish I was like seme womeu and had no scruples about-what is ic
Keene says?-"Wearing a
corpse's hair and being false to the bread they eat."

HE.  I am only a man of limited in telligence, and just now, very
bewildered.  When you have
quite finished flashing through all your moods tell me, and I'll try
to understand the last one.

SHE.  Moods, Guy!  I haven't any. I'm sixteen years old and you're
just twenty, and you've been
waiting for two hours outside the school in the cold. And now I've
met you, and now we'r~

218
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

walking home together. Does that suit you, My Imperial Majesty?

HE.  No. We aren't children. Why can't y~u be rational?

SHE  He asks me that when I'm going to ommit suicide for hi~
sake, and, and-I don't want to be
French and rave about my mother, but have I ever told you that I
have a mother, and a brother
who was my pet before I married?  He's married now.  Can't you
imagine the pleasure that the
news of the elopement will give him?  Have you any people at
Home, Guy, to be pleased with
your performances?

HE. One or two.  One can't make omelets without breaking eggs.

SHE (slowly). I don't see the necessity-HE. Hah!  What do you
mean? SHE.  Shall I speak the
truth? HE. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as well.

SHE.  Guy, I'm afraid.

HE.  I thought we'd settled all that. What of?

SHE. Of you.

HE.  Oh, damn it all! The old business! This is too had!

SHE.  Of you.

HE. And what now?

SHE.  What do you think of me?

HE.  Beside the question altogether. What do you intend to do?

SHE.  I daren't risk it.  I'm afraid. If I could only cheat-HE.  A in
Buzgago?  No, thanks.
That's the one point on which I have any notion of Honor.  I won't
eat his salt and steal too.  I'll
loot openly or not at all.

SHE.  I never meant anything else.

HE.  Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be willing to
come?

SHE.  It's not pretence, Guy. I am afraid.

HE.  Please explain.

SHE.  It can't last, Guy.  It can't last.  You'll get angry, and then
you'll swear, and then you'll get
jealous, and then you'll mistrust me-you do noaeand you yourself
will be the best reason for
doubting. And I-what shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs.
Buzgago found out-no better than
any one. And you'll know that.  Oh, Guy, can't you see?

HE. I see that you are desperately unreasonable, little woman.

SHE.  There!  The moment I begin to object, you get angry.  What
wilJ you do when I am only
your property-stoleii property?  It can't be, Guy.  It can't he!  I
thought it could, but it can't. You'll
get tired of me.

HE.  I tell you I shall not.  Won't anything make you understand
that?

SHE.  There, can't you see?  If you speak to me like that now,
you'll call me horrible names later,
if I don't do everything as you like. And if you were cruel to me,
Guy, where should I go-where
should I go?  I can't trust you. Oh! I can't trust you!

HE.  I suppose I ought to say that I can trust you. I've ample reason.

SHE. Please don't, dear. It hurts as much as if you hit me.

HE. It isn't exactly pleasant for me. SHE.  I can't help it. I wish I
were dead!  I can't trust you, and
I don't trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!

HE. Too late now. I don't understand you-I won't-and I can't trust

218
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

walking home together. Does that suit you, My Imperial Majesty?

HE.  No. We aren't children. Why can't y~u be rational?

SHE  He asks me that when I'm going to ommit suicide for his
sake, and, and-I don't want to be
French and rave about my mother, but have I ever told you that I
have a mother, and a brother
who was my pet before I married?  He's married now.  Can't you
imagine the pleasure that the
news of the elopement will give him?  Have you any people at
Home, Guy, to be pleased with
your performances?

HE.  One or two.  One can't make omelets without breaking eggs.

SHE (slowly). I don't see the necessity-HE. Hah! What do you
mean? SHE.  Shall I speak the
truth? HE. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as well.

SHE.  Guy, I'm afraid.

HE.  I thought we'd settled all that. What of?

SHE. Of you.

HE.  Oh, damn it all! The old business!  This is too bad!

SHE.  Of you.

HE. And what now?

SHE. What do you think of me?

HE.  Beside the question altogether. What do you intend to do?

SHE. I daren't risk it.  I'm afraid. If I could only cheat-HE.  A in
Buzgago?  No, thanks.
That's the one point on which I have any notion of Honor. I won't
eat his salt and steal too.  I'll
loot openly or not at all.

SHE. I never meant anything else.

HF  Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be willing to
come?

SHE. It's not pretence, Guy.  I am afraid.

HE.  Please explain.

SHE.  It can't last, Guy.  It can't last.  You'll get angry, and then
you'll swear, and then you'll get
jealous, and then you'll mistrust me-you do noaeand you yourself
will be the best reason for
doubting. And I-what shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs.
Buzgago found out-no better than
any one. And you'll know that.  Oh, Guy, can't you see?

HE. I see that you are desperat~y unreasonable, little woman.

SHE.  There!  The moment I begin to object, you get angry.  What
will you do when I am only
your property-stolen property?  It can't be, Guy.  It can't be!  I
thought it could, but it can't. You'll
get tired of me.

HE.  I tell you I shall not.  Won't anything make you understand
that?

SHE.  There, can't you see?  If you speak to me like that now,
you'll call me horrible names later,
if I don't do everything as you like. And if you were cruel to me,
Guy, where should I gewhere
should I go?  I can't trust you. Oh! I can't trust you!

HE. I suppose I ought to say that I can trust you. I've ample reason.

SHE. Please don't, dear. It hurts as much as if you hit me.

HE.  It isn't exactly pleasant for me. SHE.  I can't help it. I wish I
were dead!  I can't trust you,
and I don't trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!

HE. Too late now. I don't understand you-I won't-and I can't trust

THE HILL OF ILLUSION
217

stop me quick or I shall-l-l-laugh till we get to the Church.

HE.  for goodness' sake, stop! Don't make an exhibition of
yourself. What is the matter with you?

SHE.  N-nothing. I'm better now.

HE.  That's all right.  One moment, dear.  There's a little wisp of
hair got loose from behind your
right ear and it's straggling over your cheek. So!

SHE. Thank'oo. I'm 'fraid my hat's on one side, too.

~IE.  What do you wear these huge dagger bonnet-skewers for?
They're big enough to kill a man
with.

SHE.  Oh! Don't kill me, though. ~~u're sticking it into my head!
Let me do it.  You men are so
cl"msy.

HE.  Have you had many opportunities of comparing us-in this sort
of work?

SHE.  Guy, what is my name?

HE.  Eh!  I don't follow.

SHE.  Here's my cardcase. Can y~u read?

HE. Yes.  Well?

SHE.  Well, that answers your question.  You know the other man
5 name. Am I sufficiently
humbled, or would you like to ask me if there is any one else?

HE.  I see now. My darling, I never meant that for an instant.  I
was only joking.  There!  Lucky
there's no one on the road. They'd be scandalized.

SHE.  They'll be more scandalized before the end.

HE.  Do-on't!  I don't like you to talk in that way.

SHE.  Unreasonable man! Who asked me to face the situation and
accept it? -Tell me, do I look
like Mrs. Penner? Do I look like a naughty woman? Swear I don't!
Give me your word of honor,
my honorable friend, that I'm not like Mrs. Buzgago.  That's the
way she stands, with her hands
clasped at the back of her head. D'you like that?

HE. Don't be affected.

SHE.  I'm not.  I'm Mrs. Buzgago. Listen!

Pendant une anne' toute entiere
Le regiment n'a pas r'paru.
Au Ministere de la "OCrrC
On le r'porta comme perdu.
On se r'noncait a' r'trouver sa trace,
Quand un matin suhitement,
On le vit r'paraitre sur la place,
L'Colonel toujours en avant.

That's the way she rolls her r's. Am I like her?

HE.  No, but I object when you go on like an actress and sing stuff
of that kind. Where in the
world did you pick up the Chanson du Colonel?  It isn't a
drawing-room song. It isn't proper.

SHE.  Mrs. Buzgago taught it me. She is both drawing-room and
proper, and in another month
she'll shut he,' drawing-room to me, and thank God she isn't as
improper as I am.  Oh, Guy; Guy!
I wish I was like seme womeu and had no scruples about-what is
i~ Keene says?-'~Wearing a
corpse's hai~ and being false to the bread they eat."

HE.  I am only a man of limited in' telligence, and just now, very
bewildered.  When you have
quite finished flashing through all your moods tell me, and I'll try
to understand the last one.

SHE.  Moods, Guy!  I haven't any. I'm sixteen years old and you're
just twenty, and you've been
waiting for two hours outside the school in the cold. And now I've
met you, and now we're
walking home together. Does that suit you, My Imperial
Majesty?+++
     HE.  No. We aren't children. Why can't you be rational?

SHE  He asks me that when I'm going to sommit suicide for his
sake, and, and-I don't want to be
French and rave about my mother, but have I ever told you that I
have a mother, and a brother
who was my pet before I married?  He's married now.  Can't you
imagine the pleasure that the
news of the elopement will give him?  Have you any people at
Home, Guy, to be pleased with
your performances?

HE. One or two.  One can't make omelets without breaking eggs.

SHE (slowly). I don't see the necessity-HE. HahI What do you
mean? SHE.  Shall I speak the
truth? HE. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as well.

SHE.  Guy, I'm afraid.

HE.  I thought we'd settled all that. What of?

SHE. Of you.

HE.  Oh, damn it all! The old business! This is too bad!

SHE.  Of you.


HE. And what now?

SHE. What do you think of me?

HE.  Beside the question altogether. What do you intend to do?

SHE. I daren't risk it.  I'm afraid. If I could only cheat-HE.  A Ia
Buzgago?  No, thanks.
That's the one point on which I have any notion of Honor. I won't
eat his salt and steal too.  I'll
loot openly or not at all.

SHE. I never meant anything else.

HE. Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be willing to
come?

SHE. It's not pretence, Guy. I am afraid.

HE. Please explain.

SHE.  It can't last, Guy.  It can't last. You'll get angry, and then
you'll swear, and then you'll get
jealous, and then you'll mistrust me-you do no~ and you yourself
wfll be the best reason for
doubting. And I-what shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs.
Buzgago found out-no better than
any one. And you'll know that. Oh, Guy, can't you see?

HE. I see that you are desperately unreasonable, little woman.

SHE.  There!  The moment I begin to object, you get angry.  What
will you do when I am only
your property-stolen property? It can't be, Guy. It can't be!  I
thought it could, but it can't. You'll
get tired of me.

HE.  I tell you I shall not.  Won't anything make you understand
that?

SHE.  There, can't you see? If you speak to me like that now, you'll
call me horrible names later,
if I don't do everything as you like. And if you were cruel to me,
Guy, where should I go~ where
should I go? I can't trust you. Oh! I can't trust you!

HE. I suppose I ought to say that I can trust you. I've ample reason.

SHE, Please don't, dean It hurts as much as if you hit me.

HE.  It isn't exactly pleasant for me. SHE. I can't help it. I wish I
were dead!  I can't trust you, and
I don't trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die away and be forgotten!

HE. Too late now.  I don't understand you-I won't-and I can't trust

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
219

myself to talk this evening. May I call to-morrow?

SHE. Yes. No! Oh, give me time! ihe day after. I get into my
'rickshaw here and meet Him at
Peliti's.  You ride.

HE. I'll go on to Peliti's too. I think
I want a drink.  My world's knocked
about my ears and the stars are falling.
Who are those brutes howling in the
Old Library?

SHE. Tbey're rehearsing the singingquadrilles for the Fancy Ball.
Can't you bear Mrs. Buzgago's
voice?  She has a solo.  It's quite a new idea. Listen.

MRS. BUZOAGO (in the Old Library, con. molt. exp.).

See saw! MargeryDaw!

Sold her bed to lie upon straw.

Wasn't she a silly slut

To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?


Captain  Congleton,  I'm going to alter that to "flirt." It sound
better.

HE.  No, I've changed my mind about the drink. Good-night, ~ttle
lady. I shall see you
to-morrow?

SHE.  Y~es.  Good-night,  Guy. Don't be angry with me.

HE. Angry!  You know I trust you absolutely. Good-night and-God
bless you!

(Three seconds later. Alone.) Hmm! I'd give something to discover
wkether there's another man
at the back of all this.



A ~ond-Rate Woman
lls~ fuga, volvitur rota,


On
we drift; where looms the dim port?

~ne
Two Three Four Five contribute their quota


Something i gained if one caught but the import,
~how it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

-~Iaster Hugues of Soxe-Go~ha.


"DRESSED! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in her life.
She stood in the middle of her
room while her ayah
-no, her husband-it must have been a atan-threw her clothes at her.
She then did her hair with
her fingers, and subbed her bonnet in the flue under the bed. I
know she did, as well as if I had
assisted at the orgie. Who is she?" said Mrs. Hauksbee.

"Don't!" said Mrs. Mallowe, feebly.
"You make my head ache. I'm miser-able to-day.  Stay me with
fondants, comfort me with
chocolates, for I am-Did you bring anything from Peliti's?"

"Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets when you
have answered them.  Who and
what is the creature?  There were at least half a dozen men round
her, and she appeared to be
going to sleep in their midst."

"Delville,"  said  Mrs.  Mallowe, "'Shady' Delville, to distinguish
her from Mrs. Jim of that ilk.
She dances as untidily as she dresses, I believe, and her husband is
somewhere in Madras. Go
and ca~, if you are so interested."

"What have I to do with Shigramitish women?  She merely caught
my attention for a minute, and
I wondered at
~2O
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

the attraction that a dowd has for a certain type of man. I expected
to see her walk out of her
clothes-until I looked at her eyes."

"Hooks and eyes, surely," drawled Mrs. Mallowe.

"Don't be clever, Polly.  You make my head ache. And round this
hayrick stood a crowd of
men-a positive crowd!"

"Perhaps they also expected"-"Polly, don't be Rabelaisian!"

Mrs. Mallowe curled herself up comfortably on the sofa, and
turned her attention to the sweets.
She and Mrs. Hauksbee shared the same house at Simla; and these
things befell two seasons
after the matter of Otis Yeere, which has been already recorded.

Mrs. Hauksbee stepped into the veranda and looked down upon the
Mall,  her  forehead
puckered  with thought.

"Hah!" said Mrs. Hauksbee, shortly. "Indeed!"

"What is it?" said Mrs. Mallowe, sleepily.

"That dowd and The Dancing Master
-to whom I object."

"Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged gentleman, of
reprobate and romantic
tendencies, and tries to be a friend of mine."

"Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling by nature, and
I should imagine that this
ani1nal-how terrible her bonnet looks from above !-is specially
clingsome."

"She is welcome to The Dancing
Master so far as I am concerned.  I
never could take an interest  in a
monotonous liar.  The frustrated aim
of his life is to persuade people that he is a bachelor."

"0-oh!  I think I've met that sort of man before. And isn't he?"

"No. He confided that to me a few days ago.  Ugh!  Some men
ought to he killed."

"What happened then?"

"He posed as the horror of horrors-a misunderstood man. Heaven
knows the femme incomfrise is
sad enough and had enough-but the other thing!"

"And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face.  Men seldom
confide in me.  How is it they
come to you?"

"For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the past.
Protect me from men with
confidences!"

"And yet you encourage them?"

"What can I do? They talk. I listen, and they vow that I am
sympathetic. I know I always profess
astonishment even when the plot is-of the most old possible."

"Yes.  Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are once allowed to
talk, whereas women's
confidences are full of reservations and fibs, except"-"When they
go mad and babble of
the Unutterabilities after a week's acquaintance.  Really, if you
come to consider, we know a
great deal more of men than of our own sex."

"And the extraordinary thing is that men will never believe it.
They say we are trying to hide
something."

"They are generally doing that on their own account. Alas! These
chocolates pall upon me, and I
haven't eaten more than a dozen. I think I shall go to sleep."

"Then you'll get fat. dear. If yov

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
221

took more e~ercise and a more intelligent interest in your
neighbors you would~'-"Be as much
loved as Mrs. Hauksbee.  You're a darling in many ways and I like
you-you are not a woman's
woman-but why do you trouble your-self about mere human
beings?"

"Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure would be
horribly dull, men and women are
the most fascinating things in the whole wide world, lazy one.  I
am interested in The Dowd-I am
interested in The Dancing Master
-I am interested in the Hawley Boy-and I am interested in you."

"Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your property."

"Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out
of him. When he is slightly
more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever
the authorities think fit to exact
from him, I shall select a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think,
and"-here she waved her hands
airily-" 'whom Mrs. Itauksbee bath joined together let no man put
asunder.' That's all."

"And when you have yoked May Holt with the most notorious
detrimental in Simla, and earned
the undying hatred of Mamma Holt, what will you do with me,
Dispenser of the Destinies of the
Universe?"

Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of the fire, and,
chin in band, gazed long and
steadfastly at Mrs. Mallowe.

'I do not know," she said, shaking her head, "whot I shall do with
you, dear. It's obviously
impossible to marry you to some one els~your husband would
object and the experiment might
not be
successful after all. I think I shall be-gin by preventing you
from-what is it?
-'sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring in the sun.'"

"Don't! I don't like your quotations. They are so rude.  Go to the
Library and bring me new
books."

"While you sleep? Nol If you don't come with me, I shall spread
your newest frock on my
'rickshaw-bow, and when any one asks me what I am doing, I shall
say that I am going to
Phelps's to get it let out. I shall take care that ~irs. MacNamara
sees me.  Put your things on,
there's a good girl."

Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went off to the
Library, where they found Mrs.
Delville and the man who went by the nickname of The Dancing
Master.  By that time Mrs
Mallowe was awake and eloquent.

"That is the Creature!" said Mrs Hauksbee, with the air of one
pointing out a slug in the road.

"No," said Mrs. Mallowe.  "The man is the Creature.  Ugh!
Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought
you were coming to tea this evening."

"Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?" answered The Dancing
Master. "I understood . - . I
fancied .
I'm so sorry .    How very unfortunate!" .

But Mrs. Mallowe had pass~d on.

"For the practiced equivocator you said he was," murmured Mrs.
Hauksbee, "he strikes me as a
failure. Now wherefore should he have preferred a walk with The
Dowd to tea with us?  Elective
affinities, I suppos~both grubby. Polly, I'd never forgive that
woman as long as the world rolls."

"I forgive every woman eve"ything,"

222
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

said Mrs. Mallowe. "He will be a sufficient punishment for her.
What a common voice she has!"

Mrs. Delville's voice was not pretty, her carriage was even less
lovely, and her raiment was
strikingly neglected. All these things Mrs. Mallowe noticed over
the top of a magazine.

"Now what is there in her?" said Mrs. Hauksbee. "Do you see what
I meant about the clothes
falling off? If I were a man I would perish sooner than be seen
with that rag-bag.  And yet, she
has good eyes, but~h!"

"What is it?"

"She doesn't know how to use them! On my Honor, she does not.
Look! Oh look!  Untidiness I
can endure, but ignor~1ce never! The woman's a fool."

"Hsh!  She'll hear you."

"All the women in Simla are fools. She'll think I mean some one
else. Now she's going o~t. What
a thoroughly objectionable couple she and The Dancing Master
make! Which reminds me. Do
you suppose they'll ever dance together?"

"Wait and see. I don't envy ber the conversation of The Dancing
Master-loathly man~ His wife
ought to be up here before long."

"Do you know anything about him?"

"Only what he told me.  It may be a11 a fiction. He married a girl
bred in the country, I think,
and, being an honorable, chivalrous soul, told me that he repented
his bargain and sent her to her
mother as often as possible'~a person who has lived in the Doon
since the memory of man and
goes to Mussoorie when other people go Home. The wife is with
her at present. So he says."

'Babies?'

"One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting way. I hated him
for it. He thought he was being
epigrammatic and brilliant."

"That is a vice peculiar to men.  I dislike him because he is
generally in the wake of some girl,
disappointing the Eligibles. He will persecute May Holt no more,
unless I am much mistaken."

"No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while."

"Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?"

"Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I
tell you. Don't you know that
type of man?"

"Not intimately, thank goodness! As
a general rule, when a man begins to
abuse his wife to me, I find that the
Lord gives me wherewith to answer him
according to his folly; and we part with
a coolness between us. I laugh."

"I'm different.  I've no sense  of humor."

"Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I
care to think about. A
well-educated sense of Humor will save a woman when Religion,
Training, and Home
influences fail; and we may all need salvation sometimes."

"Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humor?"

"Her dress bewrays her. How can a Thing who wears a supplement
under her left arm have any
notion of the fitness of things-much less their folly? If she discards
The Dancing Maste~ after
having once seen him dance, I may respect her,  Otherwise -"But
are we not both assuming a
great deal too much, dear?  You sa" the woman at Peliti's-half an
hour

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
223

liter you saw her walking with The Dancing Master-an hour later
you met her here at the
Library."

"Still with The Dancing Master, remember."

"Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of
that should you imagine"-"I
imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that
The Dancing Master is
attracted to The Dowd because he is objectionable in every way
and she in every other. If I know
the man as you have described him, he holds his wife in slavery at
present."

"She is twenty years younger than he."

"Poor wretch! And, in the end, after le has posed and swaggered
and lied-he has a mouth under
that ragged moustache simply made for lies-he will be rswarded
according to his merits."

"I wonder what those really are," said Mrs. Mallowe.

But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to 'he shelf of the new books,
was humming softly: "What
shall he have who killed the Deer!"  She was a lady of unfettered
speech.

One month later, she announced her intention of calling upon Mrs.
Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee
and Mrs. Mallowe were in morning wrappers, and there was a
great peace in the land.

"I should go as I was," said Mrs. Mallowe. "It would be a delicate
compliment to her style."

Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

"Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these doors, I
should put on this robe, after all
the others, to show
her what a morning wrapper ought to be. It might enliven her.  As
it is, I shall go in the
dove-colored-sweet emblem of youth and innocence~and shall put
on my new gloves."

"If you really are going, dirty tau would be too good; and you know
that dove-color spots with
the rain."

"I care not. I may make her envious. At least I shall try, though one
cannot expect very much
from a woman who puts a lace tucker into her habit."

"Just Heavens!  When did she do that?"

"Yesterday-riding with The Dancing Master.  I met them at the
back of Jakko, and the rain had
made the lace lie down.  To complete the effect, she was wearing
an unclean terai with the
elastic under her chin. I felt almost too well content to take the
trouble to despise her."

"The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did he think?"

"Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like him if he did?
He stared in the rudest way,
and just when I thought he had seen the elastic, he said, 'There's
something very taking about that
face.' I rebuked him on the spot. I don't approve of boys being
taken by faces."

"Other than your own.  I shouldn't be in the least surprised if the
Hawley Boy immediately went
to call."

"I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and
his wife when she comes up.
I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent and the Delville woman
together."

Mrs. Hauksbee departed and, at the end of an hour, returned
slightly flushed.

"There is no limit to the treachery of

124
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

t'outh!  I ordered the Hawley Boy, as 'se valued my patronage, not
to call. The first person I
stumble over-literally stumble over-in her poky, dark, jittle
drawing-room is, of course, the
ilawley Boy.  She kept us waiting ten ruinutes, and then emerged
as though ~e had been tipped
out of the dirtyr.lothes basket.  You know my way, dear, when I
am all put out.  I was Superior,
crrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes to Heaven, and had heard of
nothing-'dropped my eyes on
the carpet and 'really didn't know'-'played wita my cardcase and
'supposed so.' The Hawley Boy
giggled like a girl, and I had to freeze him with scowls between the
sentences."

"And she?"

"She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and managed to convey
the impression that she was
suffering from stomach-ache, at the very least. It was aH I could do
not to ask after her
symptoms.  When I rose she grunted just like a buffalo in the
water-too lazy to move."

"Are you certain?"-"Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer
laziness, nothing else-or her garments were only constructed for
sitting down
in.  I stayed for a quarter of an hour trying to penetrate the gloom,
to guess what her
surroundings were like, while she stuck out her tongue."

'~Lu~cy!"

"Well-I'll  withdraw  the  tongue,
though I'm ~ure if she didn't do it when
I was in the room, she did the minute
I was outside. At any rate, she lay in
a lump and grunted.  Ask the Hawley
Boy, dear.  I believe the grunts were
meant for sentences. but she spoke so
indistinctly that I can't swear to it."

"You are incorrigible, simply."

"I am not!  Treat me civilly, give me peace with honor, don't put
the only available seat facing
the window, and a child may eat jam in my lap before Church. But
I resent being grunted at.
Wouldn't you?  Do you suppose that she communicates her views
on life and love to The
Dancing Master in a set of modulated 'Grmphs'?"

"You attach too much importance to The Dancing Master."

"He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost cordial at the
sight of him. He smiled
greasily, and moved about that darkened dog-kennel in a
suspiciously familiar way."

"Don't be uncharitable. Any sin but that I'll forgive."

"Listen to the voice of History.  I am only describing what I saw.
He entered, the heap on the
sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy and I came away
together. He is disillusioned, hut I
felt it my duty to lecture him severely for going there.  And that's
all."

'~Now  for Pity's  sake leave the wretched creature and The
Dancing Master alone. They never
did you any harm."

"No harm?  To dress ~s an example ~nd a stumbling-block for half
Simla, and then to find this
Person who is dressed by the hand of God-not that I wish to
disparage Him for a moment, but
you know the tikka dhurzie way He attires those lilies of the
field-this Person draws the eyes of
men-and some of them nice men?  It's almost enough ~o make one
discard clothing.  I tohI the
Hawley Boy so."

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
22~


"And what did that sweet youth do?"

"Turned shell-pink and looked across the far blue hills like a
distressed cherub. Am I talking
wildly, Polly? Let me say my say, and I shall be calm. Otherwise I
may go abroad and disturb
Simla with a few original reflections. Excepting always your own
sweet self, there isn't a single
woman in the land who understands me when I am-what's the
word?"

"Tete-Fa7~e," suggested Mrs. Mallowe.

"Exactly! And now let us have tiffin.  The demands of Socie~y are
~xhausting, and as Mrs.
Delville says"-Here Mrs. Hauksbee, to the horror of the
khU.motgars, lapsed into a series of
grunts, while Mrs. Mallowe stared in lazy surprise.

'God gie us a gude conceit of oorselves,'" said Mrs. Hauksbee,
piously, returning to her natural
speech.  "Now, in any other woman tha  would have been vulgar. I
am consumed with curiosity
to see Mrs. Bent. I expect complications."

"Woman of one idea," said Mrs. Mallowe, shortly; "all
complications are a~ old as the hills! I
have lived through or near all~ll-ALL!"

"And yet do not understand that mcii and women never behave
twice ~like. I am old who was
young-if ever I put my head in your lap, you dear, big sceptic, you
will learn that my parting is
gauz~but never, no never have I lost my interest in men and
women. Polly, I shall see this
business Out to the bitter end."

"I am going to sleep," said Mrs. Mallowe, calmly.  "I never
interfere with men or women unless I
am compelled,"
and she retired with dignity to her own room.

Mrs. Hauksbee's curiosity was not long left ungratified, for Mrs.
Bent came up to Simla a fe~
days after the  conversation  faithfully  reported above, and
pervaded the Mall by her husband's
side.

"Behold!"  said  Mrs.  Hauksbee, thoughtfully rubbing her nose.
"That is the last link of the
chain, if we omit the husband of the Delville, whoever he may be.
Let me consider.  The Bents
and the Delvilles inhabit the same hotel; and the Delville is
detested by the Waddy-do you know
the Waddy?
-who is almost as big a dowd.  The Waddy also abominates the
male Bent, for which, if her other
sins do not weigh too heavily, she will ev~tually go to Heaven."

"Don't be irreverent,"  said  Mrs. Mallowe. "I like Mrs. Bent's
face."

"I am discussing the Waddy," returned Mrs. Hauksbee, loftily.
"The Waddy will take the female
Bent apart, atter  having  borrowed-yes !~everything that she can,
from hairpins to babies'
bottles. Such, my dear, is life in a hotel.  Tlic Waddy will tell the
female Bent facts and fictions
about The Dancing Master and The Dowd."

"Lucy, I should like you better if you were not always looking into
people's back-bed-rooms."

"Aiiybody can look into their front drawing-rooms; and remember
whatever I do, and whatever I
look, I never talk
-as the Waddy will. Let us hope that The Dancing Master's greasy
smile and manner of the
pedagogue will soften the heart of that cow, his wife.  If mouths
speak truth, I should think that

226
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

little Mrs. Bent could get very angry on occasion.

"But what reason has she for being angry?"

"What reason! The Dancing Master in himself is a reason. How
does it go? 'If in his life some
trivial errors fall, Look in his face and you'll believe them all~' I
am prepared to credit any evil of
The Dancing Master, because I hate him so. And The Dowd is so
disgustingly badly
dressed"-"That she, too, is capable of e~ery
iniquity?  I always prefer to believe the best of everybody. It saves
so much trouble."

"Very good. I prefer to believe the "orst.  It saves useless
expenditure of sympathy. And you may
be quite certain that the Waddy believes with me."

Mrs. Mallowe sighed and made no answer.

The conversation was holden after dinner while Mrs. Hauksbee
was dressing for a dance.

"I am too tired to go," pleaded Mrs. Mallowe, and Mrs. Hauksbee
left her in peace till two in the
morning, when she was aware of emphatic knocking at her door.

"Don't be very angry, dear," said Mrs. Hauksbee. "My idiot of an
ayah has gone home, and, as I
hope to sleep to-night, there isn't a soul in the place to unlace me."

"Oh, this is too bad!" said Mrs. Mallowe sulkily.

"'Can't help it.  I'm a lone, lorn grass-widow, dear, but I will not
sleep in my stays. And such
news, too!  Oh, do unlace me, there's a darling!  The Dowd-The
Dancing Master-I and the
Hawley Boy- You know the Nortb veranda?"

"How can I do anything if you spin round like this?" protested Mrs.
Mallowe, fumbling with the
knot of the laces.

"Oh, I forget. I must tell my tale without the aid of your eyes. Do
you know you've lovely eyes,
dear?  Well to begin with, I took the Hawley Boy to a kalo'
juggak."

"Did he want much taking?"

"Lots! There was an arrangement of loose-boxes in kanats, and she
was in the next one talking to
him."

"Which? How? Explain."

"You know what I mean-The Dow(1 and The Dancing Master.  We
could hear every word and
we listened shamelessly-'specially the Hawley Boy. Polly, I quite
love that woman!"

"This is interesting.  There!  Now turn round. What happened?"

"One moment.  Ah-h!  Blessed relief. I've been looking forward to
taking them off for the last
half-hour-which is ominous at my time of life. But, as I was
saying, we listened and heard The
Dowd drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid
or a blue-blooded
Aide-de-Camp. 'Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond 0' me,' she
said, and The Dancing Master
owned it was so in language that nearly made me i"  The Dowd
reflected foi a while. Then we
heard her say, 'Look he-ere, Mister Bent, why are you such an
aw-ful liar?' I nearly exploded
while The Dancing Master denied the charge. It seems that he
never told her he wa." a married
man."

"I said he wouldn't."

'~And she had taken this to heart, o,~

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
22S


"And what did that sweet youth do?"

"Turned shell-pink and looked across the far blue hills like a
distressed cherub. Am I talking
wildly, Polly? Let me say my say, and I shall be calm. Otherwise I
may go abroad and disturb
;5imla with a few original reflections. Excepting always your own
sweet self, there isn't a single
woman in the land who understands me when I am-what's the
word?"

"Tete-F~e~," suggested Mrs. MalLowe.

"Exactly! And now let us have tiffin.  The demands of Society are
exhausting, and as Mrs.
Delville says"-Here Mrs. Hauksbee, to the horror of the
khitmatgars, lapsed into a series of
grunts, while Mrs. Mallowe stared in lazy surprise.

'God gie us a gude conceit of oorselves,' " said Mrs. Hauksbee,
piously, returning to her natural
speech. ".Now, in any other woman tha would have been vulgar. I
am consuroed with curiosity
to see Mrs. Bent. I expect complications."

"Woman of one idea," said Mrs. Mallowe, shortly; "all
complications are a~ old as the hills! I
have lived through or near all~li-ALL?"

"And yet do not understand that mcii and worren never behave
twice ~like. I am old who was
young-if ever I put my head in your lap, you dear, big sceptic, you
will learn that my parting is
gaua~but never, no never have I lost my interest in men and
women. Polly, I shall see this
business Out to the bitter end."

"I am going to sleep," said Mrs. Mallowe, calmly.  "I never
interfere with men or women unless I
am compelled,"
and she retired with dignity to her own room.

Mrs. Hauksbee's curiosity was not long left ungratified, for Mrs.
Bent came up to Simla a few
days after the  conversation  faithfully reported above, and
pervaded the Mall by her husband's
side.

"Behold!"  said  Mrs.  Hauksbee, thoughtfully rubbing her nose.
"That is the last link of the
chain, if we omit the husband of the Delville, whoever he may be.
Let me consider.  The Bents
and the Delvilles inhabit the same hotel; and the Delville is
detested by the Waddy-do you know
the Waddy?
-who is almost as big a dowd.  The Waddy also abominates the
male Bent, for which, if her other
sins do not weigh too heavily, she will eve~tually go to Heaven."

"Don't be irrrverent," said Mrs. Mall3we. "I like Mrs. Bent's face."

"I am discussing the Waddy," returned Mrs. Hauksbee, loftily.
"The Waddy will take the female
Bent apart, atter having  borrowed-yes -everything that she can,
from hairpins to babies' bottles.
Such, my dear, is life in a hotel.  The Waddy will tell the female
Bent facts and fictions about
The Dancing Master and The Dowd."

"Lucy, I should like you better if you were not always looking into
people's back-bed-rooms."

"Aiiybody can look into their front drawing-rooms; and remember
whatever I do, and whatever I
look, I never talk
-as the Waddy will. Let us hope that The Dancing Master's greasy
smile and manner of the
pedagogue will soften the heart of that cow, his wife.  If mouths
speak truth, I should think that

226
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

little Mrs. Bent could get very angry on occasion."

"But what reason has she for being angry?"

"What reason! The Dancing Master in himself is a reason. How
does it go? 'If in his life some
trivial errors fall, Look in his face and you'll believe them all.' I am
prepared to credit any evil of
The Dancing Master, because I hate him so. And The Dowd is so
disgustingly badly
dressed"-"That she, too, is capable of e~ery
iniquity?  I always prefer to believe the best of everybody. It saves
so much trouble."

"Very good. I prefer to believe the Worst.  It saves useless
expenditure of sympathy. And you
may be quite certain that the Waddy believes with me."

Mrs. Mallowe sighed and made no answer.

The conversation was holden after dinner while Mrs. Hauksbee
was dressing for a dance.

"I am too tired to go," pleaded Mrs. Mallowe, and Mrs. Hauksbee
left her in peace till two in the
morning, when she was aware of emphatic knocking at her door.

"Don't be very angry, dear," said Mrs. Hauksbee. "My idiot of an
ayah has gone home, and, as I
hope to sleep to-night, there isn't a soul in the place to unlace me."

"Oh this is too bad!" said Mrs. Mallowe sulkily.

"'Can't help it.  I'm a lone, lorn grass-widow, dear, but I will not
sleep in my stays. And such
news, too!  Oh, do unlace me, there's a darling!  The Dowd-The
Dancing Master-I and the
Ilawley Boy- You know the North veranda?"

"How can I do anything if you spin round like this?" protested Mrs.
Mallowe, fumbling with the
knot of the laces.

"Oh, I forget.  I must tell my tale without the aid of your eyes. Do
you know you've lovely eyes,
dear?  Well to begin with, I took the Hawley Boy to a kalo juggah."

"Did he want much taking?"

"Lots! There was an arrangement of loose-boxes in kanats, and she
was in the next one talking to
him."

"Which? How? Explain."

"You know what I mean-The Dow(1 and The Dancing Master.  We
could hear every word and
we listened shamelessly~' specially the Hawley Boy. Polly, I quite
love that woman!"

"This is interesting.  There!  No~ turn round. What happened?"

"One moment. Ah-h!  Blessed reJief. I've been looking forward to
takmg them off for the last
half-hour-which is ominous at my time of life. But, as I was
saying, we listened and heard The
Dowd drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid
or a blue-blooded
Aide-de-Camp. 'Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond 0' me,' she
said, and The Dancing Master
owned it was so in language that nearly made me ~V  The Dowd
reflected foi a while. Then ~e
heard her say, 'Look he-ere, Mister Bent, why are you such an
aw-ful liar?' I nearly exploded
while The Dancing Master denied the charge. It seems that he
never told her he wa.~ a married
man."

'~I said he wouldn't."

"And she had taken this to heart, o~

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
22~

~ersonal  grounds,  I  suppose.  She drawled along for five
minutes, reproaching him with his
perfidy and grew quite motherly. 'Now you've got a nice little wife
of your own-you have,' she
said. 'She's ten times too good for a fat old man like you, and, look
he-ere, you never told me a
word about her, and I've been thinkin' about it a good deal, and I
think you're a liar.' Wasn't that
delicious?  The Dancing Master maundered and raved till the
Hawley Boy suggested that he
should burst in and heat him.  His voice runs up into an
impassioned squeak when he is afraid.
The Dowd must be an extraordinary woman. She explained that
had he been a bachelor she
might not have objected to his devotion; but since he was a
married man and the father of a very
nice baby, she considered him a hypocrite, and this she repeated
twice. She wound up her drawl
with: 'An I'm tellin' you this because your wife is angry with me,
an' I hate quarrellin' with any
other woman, an' I like your wife. You know how you have
behaved for the last six weeks. You
shouldn't have done it, indeed you shouldn't. You're too old an' fat.'
Can't you imagine how The
Dancmg Master would wince at that! 'Now go away,' she said.  'I
don't want to tell you what I
think of you, because I think you are not nice. I'll stay he-ere till
the next dance begins.'  Did you
think that the creature had so much in her?"

"I never studied her as closely as you did.  It sounds unnatural.
What happened?"

"The Dancing Master attempted blandishment, reproof, jocularity,
and the style of the Lord High
Warden, and I
had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She
grunted at the end of each
sentence and, in the end he went away swearing to himself, quite
like a man in a novel. He
looked more objectionable than ever. I laughed. I love that
woman-in spite of her clothes.  And
now I'm going to bed. What do you think of it?"

"I sha'n't begin to think till the morning," said Mrs. Mallowe,
yawning "Perhaps she spoke the
truth. They do fly into it by accident sometimes."

Mrs. Hauksbee's account of her eavesdropping was an ornate one
but trutliful in the main.  For
reasons best known to herself, Mrs. "Shady" Delville had turned
upon Mr Bent and rent him
limb from limb, casting him away limp and disconcerted ere she
withdrew the light of her eyes
from him permanently. Being a man of resource, and anything but
pleased in that he had been
called both old and fat1 he gave Mrs. Bent to understand that he
had, during her absence in the
Doon1 been the victim of unceasing persecution at the hands of
Mrs. Delville, and he told the
tale so often and with such eloquence that he ended in believing it,
while his wife marvelled at
the manners and customs of "some women." When the situation
showed signs of languishing,
Mrs. Waddy was always on hand to wake the smouldering fires of
suspicion in Mrs. Bent's
bosom and to contribute generally to the peace and comfort of the
hotel. Mr. Bent's life was not
a happy one, for if Mrs. Waddy's story were true, he was, argued
his wife, untrustworthy to the
last degree.  If his own statement was true, his charms of manner
and conversation were so

128
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

great that he needed constant surveillance.  And he received it, till
he repented genuinely of his
marriage and neglected his personal appearance. Mrs. Delville
alone in the hotel was unchanged.
She removed her chair some six paces toward the head of the
table, and occasionally in the
twilight ventured on timid overtures of friendship to Mrs. Bent,
which were repulsed.

"She does it for my sake," hinted the Virtuous Bent.

"A dangerous and designing woman," purred Mrs. Waddy.

Worst of all, every other hotel in Simla was full!

*
*
*
*
*
*

"Polly, are you afraid of diphtheria?"

"Of nothing in the world except smallpox. Diphtheria kills, but it
doesn't disfigure. Why do you
ask?"

"Because th~ Bent baby has got it, and the whole hotel is upside
down in consequence. The
Waddy has 'set her five young on the rail' and fled.  The Dancing
Master fears for his precious
throat, and that miserable little woman, his wife, has no notion of
what ought to be done.  She
wanted to put it into a mustard bath-for croup!"

"Where did you learn all this?"

"Just now, on the Mall. Dr. Howlen told me.  The Manager of the
hotel is abusing the Bents, and
the Bents are abusing the manager. They are a feckless couple."

"Well. What's on your mind?"

"This; and I know it's a grave thing to ask. Would you seriously
object to my bringing the child
over here, with its mother?"

"On the most strict understanding
that we see nothing of The Dancing Master."

"He will be only too glad to stay away.  Polly, you're an angel.  The
woman really is at her wits'
end."

"And you know nothing about her. careless, and would hold her up
to public scorn if it gave you
a minute's amusement.  Therefore you risk your life for the sake of
her brat. No, Loo I'm not the
angel. I shall keep to my rooms and avoid her.  But do as you
pleas~only tell me why you do it."

Mrs. Hauksbee's eyes softened; she looked out of the window and
back into Mrs. Mallowe's face.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Hauksbee, simply.

"You dear!"

"Polly !-and for aught you knew you might have taken my fringe
off. Never do that again without
warning.  Now we'll get the rooms ready. I don't suppose I shall be
allowed to circulate in society
for a month."

"And I also. Thank goodness I shall at last get all the sleep I want."

Much to Mrs. Bent's surprise she and the baby were brought over
to the house almost before she
knew where she was. Bent was devoutly and undisguisedly
thankful, for he was afraid of the
infection, and also hoped that a few weeks in the hotel alone with
Mrs. Del. ville might lead to
explanations.  Mrs. Bent had thrown her jealousy to the winds in
her fear for her child's life.

"We can give you good milk," sai~ Mrs. Hauksbee to her, "and our
house is much nearer to the
Doctor's than th,'. hotel, and you won't feel as though you were
living in a hostile camp Where is
the dear Mrs. Waddy?  Sh~

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
22~

seemed to be a particular friend of yours."

"They've all left me," said Mrs. Bent, bitterly. "Mrs. Waddy went
first. She said I ought to be
ashamed of myself for introducing diseases there, and I am sure it
wasn't my fault that little
Dora"-"How nice!" cooed Mrs. Hauksbee.
"The Waddy is an infectious disease herself-'more quickly caught
than the plague and the taker
runs presently mad.' I lived next door to her at the Elysium, three
years ago. Now see, you won't
give us the least trouble, and I've ornamented all the house with
sheets soaked in carbolic.  It
smells comforting, doesn't it? Remember I'm always m call, and
my ayah's at your service when
yours goes to her meals and-and
-if you cry I'll never forgive you."

Dora Bent occupied her mother's unprofitable attention through the
day and the night. The
Doctor called thrice in the twenty-four hours, and the house reeked
with the smell of the Condy's
Fluid, chlorine-water, and carbolic acid washes. Mrs. Mallowe
kept to her own rooms-she
considered that she had made sufficient concessions in the cause
of humanity-and Mrs.
Hauksbee was more esteemed by the Doctor as a help in the
sick-room than the half-distraught
mother.

"I know nothing of illness," said Mrs. Hauksbee to the Doctor.
"Only tell me what to do, and I'll
do it."

"Keep that crazy woman from kissing the child, and let her have as
little to do with the nursing
as you possibly can," said the Doctor; "I'd turn her out of the
sick-room, but that I honestly
believe she'd die of anxiety. She is less
than no good, and I depend on you and the ayahs, remember."

Mrs. Hauksbee accepted the responsibility, though it painted olive
hollows under her eyes and
forced her to her oldest dresses. Mrs. Bent clung to her with more
than childlike faith.

"I know you'll, make Dora well, won't you?" she said at least
twenty times a day; and twenty
times a day Mrs. Hauksbee answered valiantly, "Of course I will."

But Dora did not improve, and the Doctor seemed to be always in
th~ house.

"There's some danger of the thing taking a bad turn," he said; "I'll
comc over between three and
four in tha morning to-morrow."

"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Hauksbee. "He never told me what the
turn would be!  My education
has been horribly neglected; and I have only this foolish
mother-woman to fall back upon."

The night wore through slowly, and Mrs. Hauksbee dozed in a
chair by the fire. There was a
dance at the Viceregal Lodge, and she dreamed of it till she was
aware of Mrs. Bent's anxious
eyes staring into her own.

"Wake up!  Wake up!  Do something!"  cried  Mrs.  Bent,
piteously. "Dora's choking to death!
Do you mean to let her die?"

Mrs. Hauksbee jumped to her feet and bent over the bed. The child
was fighting for breath,
while the mother wrung her hands despairing.

"Gh, what can I do? What can you do? She won't stay still! I can't
hokI her.  Why didn't the
Doctor say this

230
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

was coming?" screamed Mrs. Bent. "Won't you help me? She's
dying!"

'~I-I've never seen a child die before!" stammered Mrs. Hauksbee,
feebly, and then-let none
blame her weak-ness after the strain of long watching-she broke
down, and covered her face
with her hands.  The ayahs on the threshold snored peacefully.

There was a rattle of 'rickshaw wheels below, the clash of an
openirig door, a heavy step on the
stairs, and Mrs. Delville entered to find Mrs. Bent screaming for
the Doctor as she ran round the
room.  Mrs. Hauksbee, her hands to her ears, and her face buried in
the chintz of a chair, was
quivering with pain at each cry from the bed, and murmuring,
"Thank God, I never bore a child!
Oh! thank God, I never bore a child!"

Mrs. Delville looked at the bed for an instant, took Mrs. Bent by
the shoulders, and said, quietly,
"Get me some caustic. Be quick."

The mother obeyed mechanically. Mrs. Delville had thrown
herself down by the side of the child
and was opening its mouth.

"Oh, you're killing her!" cried Mrs. Bent.  "Wh-.re's the Doctor!
Leave her alone!"

Mrs. Delville made no reply for a minute, but busied herself with
the child.

"Now the caustic, and hold a lamp behind my .',houlder.  Will you
do as you are told?  The
acid-bottle, if you don't know what I mean," she said.

A second time Mrs. Delville bent over the child. Mrs. Haukshee,
her face still hidden, sobbed
and -hivered.  One of
the ayahs staggered sleepily into the room, yawning: "Doctor Sahib
come."

Mrs. Delville turned her head.

"You're only just in time," she said. "It was chokin' her when I
came in, an' I've burned it."

"There was no sign of the membrane getting to the air-passages
after the last steaming. It was the
general weakness, I feared," said the Doctor half to himself, and he
whispered as he looked.
"You've done what I should have bee', afraid to do without
consultation."

"She was dyin'," said Mrs. Delvilie, under her breath.  "Can you do
any-thin'? What a mercy it
was I went to the dance!"

Mrs. Hauksbee raised her head.

"Is it all over?" she gasped.  "I'm useless-I'm worse than useless!
What are you doing here?"

She stared at Mrs. Delville, and Mrs. Bent, realizing for the first
time who was the Goddess from
the Machine. stared also.

Then Mrs. Delville made explanation, putting on a dirty long glove
and smoothing a crumpled
and ill-fitting ball-dress.

"I was at the dance, an' the Doctor was tellin' me about your baby
bein' so
ill.
So I came away early, an' your door was open, an' I-I~lost my boy
this way six months ago, an'
I've been tryin' to forget it ever since, an' I~I-am very sorry for
intrudin' an' anythin' that has
happened."

Mrs. Bent was putting out the Doctor's eye with a lamp as he
stooped over Dora.

"Take it away," said the Doctor. "I think the child will do, thanks
to you, Mrs. Delville. I should
have come ta~

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN
231

late, but, I assure you"-he was addressing himself to Mrs.
Delville-"I bad not the faintest reason
to expect this.  The membrane must have grown like a mushroom.
Will one of you help me,
please?"

He had reason for the last senfence. Mrs. Hauksbee had thrown
herself into Mrs. Delville's arms,
where she was weeping bitterly, and Mrs. Bent was
unpicturesquely mixcd up with both, ~hile
from the tangle came the sound of many sobs and much
promiscuous kissing.

"Good gracious!  I've spoilt all your beautiful roses!" said Mrs.
Hauksbee, lifting her head from
the lump of crushed gum and calico atrocities on Mrs. Delville's
shoulder and hurrying to the
Doctor.

Mrs. Delville picked up her shawl, and slouched out of the room,
mopping her eyes with the
glove that she had not put on.

"I always said she was more than a woman," sobbed Mrs.
Hauksbee, hysterically, "and that
proves it!"

*
*
*
*
*
*

Six weeks later, Mrs. Bent and Dora had returned to the hotel.
Mrs. Hauksbee had come out of
the Valley of Humiliati~, had ceased to reproach herself for her
collapse in an hour of need, and
was even beginning to direct the affairs of the world as before.

"So nobody died, and everything went ~ff as it should, and I kissed
The Dowd, Polly. I feel so
old. Does it show in my face?"

"Kisses don't as a rule, do they? Of ~ourse you know what the
result of The
Dowd's providential arrival has been."

"They ought to build her a statu~ only no sculptor dare copy those
skirts."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Mallowe, quietly. "She has found another reward.
The Dancing Master has been
smirking through Simla giving every one to understand that she
came becauœe of her undying
love for him-for him-to save his child, and all Simla naturally
believes this."

"But Mrs. Bent"-"Mrs. Bent believes it more than any
one else. She won't speak to The Dowd now.  Isn't The Dancing
Master an angel?"

Mrs. Hauksbee lifted up her voice and raged till bedtime.  The
doors of the two rooms stood
open.

"Polly," said a voice from the darkness, "what did that
American-heiress-globe-trotter girl say
last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a
corner?  Some absurd adjective
that made the man who picked her up explode."

"'Paltry,'"  said  Mrs.  Mallowe. "Through her nos~like this-'Ha-ow
pahltry!'"

"Exactly," said the voice.  "Ha-ow pahltry it all is!"

"Which?"

"Everything.  Babies,  Diphtheria, Mrs. Bent and The Dancing
Master, I whooping in a chair, and
The Dowd dropping in from the clouds. I wonder what the motive
was~ll the motives."


"What do you think?"

"Don't ask me. Go to sleep."
O~ly a S~attern

- . - Not only to enforce by command but to encourage by example
the energetic discharge of
duty and the steady endurance of the difficulties and privations
inseparable  from  Military
Service.~Bengal Army Regulations.


THEY made Bobby Wick pass an examination at Sandhurst. He
was a gentleman before he was
gazetted, so, when the Empress announced that "Gentleman-Cadet
Robert Hanna Wick" was
posted as Second Lieutenant to the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Kram
Bokhar, he became an
officer and a gentleman, which is an enviable thing; and there was
joy in the house of Wick
where Mamma Wick and all the little ~Ticks fell upon their knees
and offered incense to Bobby
by virtue of his achievements.

Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, holding authority
over three millions of men in
the Chota-Buldana Division, building great works for the good of
the land, and doing his best to
make two blades of grass grow where there was but one before.
Of course, nobody knew
anything about this in the little English village where he was just
'old Mr. Wick" and had
forgotten that he was a Companion of the Order of the Star of
India.

He patted Bobby on the shoulder and said:  "Well done, my boy!"

There followed, while the uniform was being prepared, an interval
of pure delight, during which
Bobby took brevet-rank as a "man" at the women~swamped
tennis-parties and tea-fights of the
vil

lage, and, I dare say, had his joining. time been extended, would
have fallen in love with several
girls at once. Little country villages at Home are very full of nice
girls, because all the young
men come out to India to make their fortunes.


"India," said Papa Wick, "is the place.  I've had thirty years of it
and, begad, I'd like to go back
again. When you joi~n the Tail Twisters you'l) he among friends,
if every one hasn't forgotten
Wick of Chota-Buldana, and a lot of people will be kind to you for
our sakes.  The mother will
tell you more about outfit than I can, but remember this. Stick to
your Regiment, Bohhy~stick to
your Regiment. You'll see men all round you going into the Staff
Corps, and doing every
possible sort of duty but regimental, and you may be tempted to
follow suit.  Now so long as you
keep within your allowance, and I haven't stinted you there, stick
to the Line, the whole Line and
nothing but the Line.  Be careful how you back another young
fool's bill, and if you fall in love
with a woman twenty years older than yourself, don't tell me about
it, that's all."


With these counsels, and many others equally valuable, did Papa
Wick fortify Bobby ere that last
awful night at Portsmouth when the Officers' Quarters held more
inmates than were provided for
by the Regulations, and the liberty-men of t~e ships fell foul of the
drafts for India, and the battle
raged from the Dockyard Gates even to the slums of
232

ONLY A SUBALTERN
233

Longport, while the drabs of Fratton came down and scratched the
faces of the Queen's Officers.

Bobby Wick, with an ugly bruise on his freckled nose, a sick and
shaky detachment to
manoeuvre inship and the comfort of fifty scornful females to
attend to, had no time to feel
homesick till the Malabar reached mid-Channel, when he doubled
his emotions with a little
guard-visiting and a great many other matters.

The Tail Twisters were a most particujar Regiment.  Those who
knew them least said that they
were eaten up with '~side." But their reserve and their internal
arrangements generally were
merely protective diplomacy. Some five years before, the Colonel
commanding had looked into
the fourteen fearless eyes of seven plump and juicy subalterns who
had all applied to enter the
Staff Corps, and had asked them why the three stars should he, a
colonel of the Line, command a
dashed nursery for double-dashed bottle-suckers who put on
condemned tin spurs and rode
qualified mokes at the hiatused heads of forsaken Black
Regiments. He was a rude man and a
terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures [with the half-butt
as an engine of public
opinion] till the rumor went abroad that young men who used the
Tail Twisters as a crutch to the
Staff Corps, had many and varied trials to endure.  However. a
regiment had just as much right
to its own secrets as a woman.

When Bobby came up from Deolali and took his place among the
Tail Twisters, it was gently
hut firmly borne in upon him that the Regiment was his father and
his mother and his
indissolubly wedded wife, and that there was no crime under the
canopy of heaven blacker than
that of bringing shame on the Regiment, which was the
best-shooting, best-drilled, best set-up,
bravest, most illustrious, and in all respects most desirable
Regiment within the compass of the
Seven Seas.  He was taught the legends of the Mess Plate from the
great grinning Golden Gods
that had come out of the Summer Palace in Pekin to the
silver-mounted markhorhorn snuff-mull
presented by the last C. 0. [he who spake to the seven subaltems].
And every one of those
legends told him of battles fought at long odds, without fear as
without support; of hospitality
catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and steady as
the fighting-line; of honor won
by hard roads for honor's sake; and of instant and unquestioning
devotion to the Regiment~the
Regiment that claims the lives of all and lives forever.

More than once, too, he came officially into contact with the
Regimental colors, which looked
like the lining of a bricklayer's hat on the end of a chewed stick.
Bobby did not kneel and
worship them, because British subalterns are not constructed in
that manner. Indeed, he
condemned them for their weight at the very moment tnat they
were filling with awe and other
more noble sentiments.

But best of all was the occasion when he moved with the Tail
Twisters, in review order at the
breaking of a November day.  Allowing for duty-men and sick, the
Regiment was one thousand
and eighty strong, and Bobby belonged to them; for was be not a
Sub-

234
WOR~S OF RUDYARD KIPLING

altern of the Line- ~he whole Line and nothing but the Line-as the
tramp of two thousand one
hundred and sixty sturdy ammunition boots attested.  He would not
have changed places with
Deighton of the Horse Battery, whirling by in a pillar of cloud to a
chorus of "Strong right!
Strong left!" or Hogan-Yale of the White Hussars, leadmg his
squadron for all it was worth, with
the price of horseshoes thrown in; or "Tick" Boileau, trying to live
up to his fierce blue and gold
turban while the  wasps  of  the  Bengal  Cavalry stretched to a
gallop in the wake of the long,
lollopping Walers of the White Hussars.

They fought through the clear cool day, and Bobby felt a little
thrill run down his spine when he
heard the tinkletinkle-tinkle of the empty cartridge-cases hopping
from the breech-blocks after
the roar of the volleys; for he knew that be should live to hear that
sound in action. The review
ended in a glorious chase across the plain-batteries thundering
after cavalry to the huge disgust
of the White Hussars, and the Tyneside Tail Twisters hunting a
Sikh Regiment, till the lean lathy
Singhs panted with exhaustion. Bobby was dusty and dripping long
before noon, but his
enthusiasm was merely focused-not diminished.

He returned to 5it at the feet of Revere, his "skipper," that is to say,
the Captain of his Company,
and to be instructed in the dark art and mystery of managing men,
which is a very large part of
the Profession of Arms.

"If you haven't a taste that way," said Revere, between his puffs of
his cheroot. "you'll never he
able to get
the hang of it, but remember Bobby, 'tisn't the best drill, though
drill is nearly everything, that
hauls a Regiment through Hell and out on the other side. It's the
man who knows how to handle
men-goat-men, swine-men, dog-men, and so on."

"Dormer, for instance," said Bobby. "I think he comes under the
head of fool-men.  He mopes
like a sick owl."

"That's where you make your mistake, my son.  Dormer isn't a fool
yet, but he's a dashed dirty
soldier, and his room corporal makes fun of his socks before
kit-inspection.  Dormer,  being
two-thirds pure brute, goes into a corner and growls."

"How do you know?" said Bobby, admiringly.

"Because a Company commander has to know these
things-because, if he does not know, he may
have crim~ay, murder-brewing under his very nose and yet not see
that it's there. Dormer is
being badgered out of his mind-big as he is-and he hasn't intellect
enough to resent it.  He's taken
to quiet boozing and, Bobby, when the butt of a room goes on the
drink, or takes to moping by
himself, measures are necessary to pull him out of himself."

"What measures?  'Man can't run round coddling his men forever."

"No.  The men would precious soon show him that he was not
wanted. You've got to"-Here the
Color-sergeant entered with some papers; Bobby reflected for a
while as Revere looked through
the Company forms.

"Does Dormer do anything, Sergeant?" Bobby asked, with the air
of

ONLY A SUBALTERN
235

one continuing an interrupted conversation.

"No, sir. Does 'is dooty like a hortomato," said the Sergeant, wbo
delighted in long words. "A
dirty soldier, and 'e's under full stoppages for new kit.  It's covered
with scales, sir."

"Scales? What scales?"

"Fish-scales, sir.  'E's always pokin' in the mud by the river an'
a-cleanin' them muchly- fish with
'is thumbs." Revere was still absorbed in the Company papers, and
the Sergeant, who was sternly
fond of Bobby, continued,-'E generally goes down there when 'e's
got 'is skinful, beggin' youi
pardon, sir, an' they do say that the more lush

in-he-briated 'e is, the more fish 'e catches. They call 'i~ the
Looney Fish-monger in the Comp'ny,
sir."

Revere signed the last paper and the Sergeant retreated.

"It's a filthy amusement," sighed Bobby to himself. Then aloud to
Revere:  "Are you really
worried about Dormer?"

"A little.  You see he's never mad enough to send to a hospital, or
drunk enough to run in, but at
any minute he may flare up, brooding and sulking as he does. He
resents any interest being
shown in him, and the only time I took him out shooting he all but
shot me by accident."

"I fish," said Bobby, with a wry face. "I hire a country-boat and go
down the river from Thursday
to Sunday, and the amiable Dormer goes with me-if you can spare
us both."

"You blazing young fool!" said Revere, but his heart was full of
much more pleasant words.

Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with
Private Dormer for mate, dropped down the river on Thursday
morning-the Private at the bow,
the Subaltern at the helm.  The Private glared uneasily at the
Subaltern, who respected the
reserve of the Private.

After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and said-"Beg
y'pardon, sir, but was you ever
on the Durh'm Canal?"

"No," said Bobby Wick. "Come and have some tiffin."

They ate in ~ilence. As the evening fell, Private Dormer broke
forth, speaking to himself-"Hi
was on the Durh'm Canal, jes'
such a night, come next week twelve month, a-trailin' of my toes in
the water."  He smoked and
said no more till bedtime.

The witchery of the dawn turned the grey river-reaches to purple,
gold, and opal; and it was as
though the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendors of a new
heaven.

Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the
glory below and around.

"Well-damn-my eyes!" said Private Dormer, in an awed whisper.
"This 'ere is like a bloomin'
gallantry-show!" For the rest of the day he was dumb, but achieved
an ensanguined filthiness
through the cleaning of big fish.

The boat returned on Saturday evefling. Dormer had been
struggling with speech since noon  As
the lines and luggage were being disembarked, he found tongue.

"Beg y'pardon~ sir," he said, "but would you-would you mm'
shakin' 'ands with me, sir?"

"Of cnurse not," said Bobby, and he

236
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

shook accordingly. Dormer returned to barracks and Bobby to
mess.

"He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think," said Bobby.
"My aunt, but he's a filthy sort
of animal!  Have you ever seen him clean 'them, muchlyfish with
'is thumbs'?"

"Anyhow," said Revere, three weeks later, "he's doing his best to
keep his things clean."

When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for
Hill leave, and to his surprise
and delight secured three months.

"As good a boy as I want," said Revere, the admiring skipper.

"The best of the batch," said the Adjutant to the Colonel. "Keep
back that young skrim-shanker
Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up."

So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of
gorgeous raiment.

'Son of Wick-old Wick of ChotaBuldana?  Ask him to dinner,
dear," said the aged men.

"What a nice boy!" said the matrons and the maids.

"First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri-ippmg!" said Bobby Wick, and
ordered new white cord breeches
on the strength of it.

"We're in a had way," wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two
months. "Since you left, the
Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it-two
hundred in hospital, about a hundred
in cells-drinking to keep off fever
-and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the outside.
There's rather more sickness in
the out-villages than I care for, hut then I'm so blistered with
Erickly-heat that I'm eady to hang
my-
self. What's the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up
there?  Not serious, I hope?  You're
over~young to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel
will turf you out of that in
double-quick time if you attempt it."

It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a
much more to be respected
Commandant. The sick ness in the out-villages spr~ad, the Bazar
was put out of bounds, and
then came the news that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The
message flashed to the  Hill
stations.-"Cbolera~Leave stopped-Officers recalled."  Alas, for the
white gloves in the neatly
soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to
he, the loves half spoken, and
the debts unpaid!  Without demur and without question, fast as
tongue could fly or pony gallop,
hack to their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were
hastening to their weddings,
fled the subalterns.

Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal
Lodge where he had-but only
the Haverley girl knows what Bobby had said or how many waltzes
he had claimed for the next
ball.  Six in the morning saw Bobby at the Tonga Office in the
drenchmg rain, the whirl of the
last waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication due neither to wine
nor waltzing in his brain.

"Good man!" shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery, through the
mists. "Whar you raise dat
tonga? I'm coming with you.  Ow!  But I've had a head and a half.
I didn't sit out all night.  They
say the Battery's awful bad," and he hummed dolorously-

ONLY A SUBALTERN
23~

'~eave the what at the what's-its-name, Leave the flock without
shelter, Leave the corpse
uninterred, Leave the bride at the altar!


"My faith!  It'll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this
journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on,
Coachwanl"

On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers
discussing the latest news from the
stricken cantonment, and it was here that Bobby learned the real
condition of the Tail 'œwisters.

"They went into camp," said an elderly Major recalled from the
whist-tables at Mussoorie to a
sickly Native Regiment, "they went into camp with two hundred
and ten sick in carts. Two
hundred and ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so
many ghosts with sore eyes. A
Madras Regiment could have walked through 'em."

"But they were as fit as he-damned when I left them!" said Bobby.

"Then you'd better make them as fit as be-damned when you
rejoin," said the Major, brutally.

Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed windowpane
as the train lumbered across
the sodden Doab, and prayed for the health of the Tyneside Tail
Twisters. Naini Tal had sent
down her contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the
Dalhousie Road staggered into
Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their strength; while from
cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta
Mail whirled up the last straggler of the little army that was to
fight a fight, ip which was neither
medal nor honor for the winning, against an enemy none other
than "the sickness that destroyeth
in the noonday."

And as each man reported himself, he said:  "This is a bad
business," and went about his own
forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery in the cantonment was
under canvas, the sickness
bearing them company.

Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters'
temporary mess, and Revere could
have fallen on the boy's neck for the joy of seeing that ugly,
wholesome phix once more.

"Keep 'em amused and interested," said Revere. "They went on the
drink, poor fools, after the
first two cases, and there was no improvement. Oh, it's good to
have you back, Bobby!  Porkiss
is a-never mind."

Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary
mess dinner, and contributed to
the general gloom by nearly weeping over the condition of his
beloved Battery.  Porkiss so far
forgot h!mself as to insinuate that the presence of the officers
could do no earthly good, and that
the best thing would be to send the entire Regiment into hospital
and "let the doctors look after
them."  Porkiss was demoralized with fear, nor was his peace of
mind restored when Revere said
coldly:
"Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that's your way of
thinking. Any public school could
send us fifty good men in your place, but it takes time, time,
Porkiss, and money, and a certain
amount of trouble, to make a Regiment. 'S'pose you're the person
we go into camp for, eh?"

Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear
which a drenching in the rain did
not allay, and, two days later, quitted this world for another where,
men do fondly hope,

238
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

allowances are made for the weaknesses of the flesh. The
Regimental Sergeant-Major looked
wearily across the Sergeants' Mess tent when the news was
announced.

"There goes the worst of them," he said.  "It'll take the best, and
then, please God, it'll stop." The
Sergeants were silent till one said: "It couldn't be him!" and all
knew of whom Travis was
thinking.

Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
rebuking. mildly, as is
consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted:
haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break
in the weather, and bidding
them be of good cheer for their trouble was nearly at an end;
scuttling on his dun pony round the
outskirts of the camp and heading back men who, with the innate
perversity of British soldier's,
were always wandering into infected villages, or drinking  deeply
from  rain-flooded marshes;
comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than
once tending the dying who had
no friends-the men without "townies"; organizing, with banjos and
burned cork, Sing-songs
which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and
generally, as he explained, "~aying
the giddy garden-goat all round."

"You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment
of enthusiasm.  "How the
devil do you keep it up?"

Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the
breast-pocket of
~s coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters
which perhaps accounted for
the power that p05-
sessed the boy. A letter came to Bobb~ every other day. The
spelling was not above reproach,
but the sentiments must have been most satisfactory, for on receipt
Bobby's eyes softened
marvelously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for a
while ere, shaking his
cropped head, he charged into his work.

By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and
the Tail Twisters counted in
their ranks some rough diamonds indeed, was a mystery to both
skipper and C. 0., who learned
from the regimental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in
request in the hospital tents
than the Reverend John Emery.

"The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?" said
the Colonel, who did his dail}
round and ordered the men to get well with a hardness that did not
cover his bitter grief.

"A little, sir," said Bobby.

"Shouldn't go there too often if I were you. They say it's not
contagious, but there's no use in
running unnecessary risks.  We can't afford to have you down,
y'know."

Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-runner
plashed his way out to the
camp with mailbags, for the rain was falling in torrents.  Bobby
received a letter, bore it off to
his tent, and, the programme for the next week's Sing-song being
satisfactorily disposed of, sat
down to answer it.  For an hour the unhandy pen toiled over the
paper, and where sentiment rose
to more than normal tide-level Bobby Wick stuck out his tongue
and breathed heavily.  He was
not used to letter-writing.

ONLY A SUBALThRN
230


"Beg y'pardon, sir," said a voice at the tent door; "but Dormer's
'orrid bad, sir, an' they've taken
him orf, sir.

"Damn Private Dormer and you too!" said Bobby Wick running the
blotter over the half-finished
letter.  "Tell him I'll come in the morning."

'E's awful bad, sir," said the voice, hesitatingly.  There was an
undecided squelching of heavy
boots.

"Well?" said Bobby, impatiently.

"Excusin' 'imself before an' for takin' the liberty, 'e says it would be
a comfort for to assist 'im,
sir, if"-"Tattoo lao! Get my pony!  Here, come in out of the rain till
I'm ready. 'Vhat blasted
nuisances you are! That's brandy.  Drink some; you want it. Hang
on to my stirrup and tell me if I
go mo fast."

Strengthened by a four-finger "nip" which he swallowed without a
wink, the Hospital Orderly
kept up with the slipping, mud-stained, and very disgusted pony as
it shambled to the hospital
tent.

Private Dormer was certainly " 'orrid bad." He had all but reached
the stage of collapse and was
not pleasant to look upon.

"What's this, Dormer?" said Bobby, bending over the man. "You're
not going out this time.
You've got to come fishin~ with me once or twice more yet."

The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said,-"Beg
y'pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now,
but would you mm' 'oldin' my 'and, sir?"

Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy cold hand closed on
his own like a vice, forcing a
lady's ring which was on the little finger de~p into the
flesh.  Bobby Set his lips and waited, the water dripping from the
hem of his trousers. An hour
passed and the grasp of the hand did not relax, nor did the
expression on the drawn face change.
Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with the left hand,
his right arm was numbed to
the elbow, and resigned himself to a night of pain.

Dawn showed a very white-faced Sub altern sitting on the side of a
sick man's cot, and a Doctor
in the doorway using language unfit for publication.

"Have you been here all night, you young ass?" said the Doctor.

"There or thereabouts," said Bobby, ruefully. "He's frozen on to
me."

Dormer's mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed.
The clinging band opened,
and Bobby's arm fell useless at his side.

"He'll do," said the Doctor, quietly. "It must have been a to~s-up
all througb the night. 'Think
you're to be congratulated on this case."

"Oh, bosh!" said Bobby.  "I thought the man had gone out long
ag~only
only I didn't care to take my hand away.  Rub my arm down, there's
a good chap. What a grip the
brute has! I'm chilled to the marrow!" He passed out of the tent
shivering.

Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by
strong waters.  Four days later,
he sat on the side of his cot and said to the patients mildly:  "I'd 'a'
liken to 'a' spoken to 'im-so I
should."

But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter-he had the
most persistent correspondent
of any man in camp~and was even then about to write that the
sickness had abated. and in

240
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

another week at the outside would be gone.  He did not intend to
say that the chill of a sick man's
hand seemed to nave struck into the heart whose capacities for
affection he dwelt on at such
length.  He did intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the
forthcoming Sing-song
whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on
many other matters which do not
concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight
feverish headache which made
him dull and unresponsive at mess.

"You are overdoing it, Bobby," said his skipper.  "'Might give the
rest of us credit of doing a
little work.  You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled into
one. Take it easy."

"I will," said Bobby.  "I'm feeling done up, somehow." Revere
looked at him anxiously and said
nothing.

There was a flickering of lanterns ab3ut the camp that night, and a
rumor that brought men out
of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of
doolie-bearers and the rush of a
galloping horse.

"Wot's up?" asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the
answer-"Wick, 'e's down."

They brought the news to Revere and he groaned.  "Any one but
Bobby and I shouldn't have
cared!  The Sergeant-Major was right."

"Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from
the doolie. "Not going out this
journey."  Then with an air of supreme conviction-"I can't, you
see."

"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had
hastened over
from the mess where he had been dining.

He and the Regimental  Surgeon fought together with Death for
the life of Bobby Wick. Their
work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a blue-grey
dressing-gown who stared in horror at
the bed and cried-"Oh, my Gawd.  It can't be 'im!" until an
indignant Hospital Orderly whisked
him away.

If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby
would have been saved.  As it
was, he made a fight of three days, and the Surgeon-Major's brow
uncreased.  "We'll save him
yet," he said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the
Captain, had a very youthful
heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud.

"Not going out this journey," whispered Bobby Wick, gallantly, at
the end of the third day.

"Bravo!" said the Surgeon-Major. "That's the way to look at it,
Bobby."

As evening fell a grey shade gathered round Bobby's mouth, and he
turned his face to the tent
wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned.

"I'm awfully tired," said Bobby, very faintly.  "What's the use of
bothering me with medicine?
I~on't-want-it. Let me alone."

The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift
away on the easy tide of Death.

"It's no good," said the SurgeonMajor. "He doesn't want to live.
He's meeting it, poor child." And
he blew his nose.

Half a mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to
the Sing.

IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
241

song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger.
The clash of the brass and the
wail of the horns reached Bobby's ears.


Is there a single joy or pain,

That I should never kno~ow?

You do not ~ove me, 'tis in vain,

Bid me good-bye and go!


An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy's face, and he
tried to shake his head.

The  Surgeon-Major  bent  down-"What is it?  Bobby?"-"Not that
waltz," muttered Bobby.
"That's our own-our very ownest own.
Mummy dear."

With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early
next morning.

Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went into
Bobby's tent to write a letter
to Papa Wick which should bow the white head of the
ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the
keenest sorrow of his life.  Bobby's little store of papers lay in
confusion on the table, and among
them a half-finished letter.  The last sentence ran:
"So you see, darling, there is really no fear, because as long as I
know you care for me and I care
for you, nothing can touch me."

Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out, his eyes
were redder than ever.

*
*
*
*
*
*


Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not
unfamiliar tune.  Private
Conklin was a convalescent and should have been tenderly treated.

"Ho!" said Private Conklin. "There's another bloomin' orf'cer
da~d."

The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a
smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a
blue-grey bedgown was regarding him with deep disfavor.

"You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf'cer?-bloomin'
orf'cer? I'll learn you to
misname the likes of 'im. Hangel! Bloomin' Hangel! That's wot 'e
is!"

And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the
punishment that he did not even
order Private Dormer back to his cot.



In the Matter of a Private
Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier's life for me! Shout, boys, shout! for it
makes you

jolly and free.

-The Ramrod Corps.


PEOPLE who have seen, say that one of the quaintest spectacles of
human frailty is an outbreak
of hysterics in a girls' school. It starts without warning, generally
on a hot afternoon among the
elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control.
Then she throws up her head, and
cries, "Honk, honk, honk," like a wild goose, and tears mix with
the laughter.  If the n,istres. be
wise she will rap out sometl~ng severc at this point 0 check
matters. If she be tender-hearted,
and send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in

i42
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

favor of another girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself
collapsing. Thus Lhe trouble
spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth
of a boys' school rocking and
whooping together.   Given a week of warm weather, two stately
promenades per diem, a heavy
mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of
nagging from the teachers,
and a few other things, some amazing effects develop.  At least
this is what folk say who have
had experience.

Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a
British Infantry Regiment would be
justly shocked at any comparison being made between their
respective charges.  But it is a fact
that, under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked
up into ditthering, rippling
hysteria.  He does not weep, but he shows his trouble
unmistakably, and the consequences get
into the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a
Martini from ~ Snider say:
"Take away the brute's ammunition!"

Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
virtuous people, nemands that
he shall have his am-munition to his hand. He doesn't wear silk
stockings, and he really ought to
he supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his
opinions; but, for all that, he is a
great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national
honor" one day, and "a brutal and
licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he
looks upon you with suspicion.
There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have
theories to work off on him; and
nobody understands Thomas except
Thomas, and he does not always kno~ what is the matter with
himself.

That is the prologue.  This is the story:

Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi
M'Kenna, whose history is well known
in the regiment and elsewhere. He had his Colonel's permission,
and, being popular with the
men, every arrangement had been made to give the wedding what
Private Ortheris called
"eeklar."  It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the
wedding, Slane was going up to the
Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that the
affair would he only a
hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was
meagre.  Miss M'Kenna did not
care so much.  The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her
wedding-dress, and she was very
busy.  Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in
barracks. All the rest were
more or less miserable.

And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work
was over at eight in the morning,
and for the rest of the day they could lie on their backs and smoke
Canteen-plug and swear at the
punkab-coolies. They enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle
of the day, and then threw
themselves down on their cot~ and sweated and slept till it was
cool enough to go out with their
"towny," whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words,
and the Adjective, and whose
views on every conceivable question they had heard many times
before.

There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance
Room with the second-hand
papers in it; but

IN ThE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
243

a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a
temperature of 960 or 980 in the
shade, running up sometimes to 1030 at midnight.  Very few men,
even though they get a
pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can
continue drinkmg for six
hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole
regiment went to his funeral
because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the
excitement of fever or cholera.
The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow
of the barrack creeping
across the blinding white dust.  That was a gay life.

They lounged about cantonments-it was too hot for any sort of
game, and almost too hot for
vice-and fuddled themselves in the evening, and filled themselves
to distension with the healthy
nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the
less exercise they took and
more explosive they grew.  Then tempers began to wear away, and
men fell a-brooding over
insults real or imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of.  The
tone of the repartees
changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: "I'll knock your
silly face in," men grew
laboriously p0lite and hinted that the cantonments were not big
enough for themselves and their
enemy, and that there would he more space for one of the two in
another place.

It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of
+,he case is that Losson had
for a long time been worrying Simmons in an aimless way. It gave
him occupation. The two had
their cots side by side, and would
sometimes  spend  a  long  afternoon swearing at each other; but
Simmons was afraid of Losson
and dared not challenge him to a fight.  He thought over the words
in the hot still nights, and half
the hate he felt toward Losson be vented on the wretched
punkahcoolie.

Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little cage,
and lowered the cage into the
cool darkness of a well, and sat on the well-curb, shouting bad
language down to the parrot. He
taught it to say:  "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and
several other things entirely
unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook like a
jelly when the parrot had the
sentence correctly.  Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all
the room were laughing at
him-the parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it
looked so human when it
chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of
the cot, and ask the parrot what
it thought of Simmons.  The parrot would answer:
"Simmons, ye so-oor."  "Good boy," Losson used to say, scratching
the parrot's head; "ye 'ear
that, Sim?" And Simmons used to turn over on his stomach and
make answer:  "I 'ear. Take 'eed
you don't 'ear something one of these days."

In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of blind
rage came upon Simmonr and
held him till he trembled all over, while he thought in how many
different ways he would slay
Losson.  Sometimes he would picture himself trampling the life
out of the man, with heavy
ammunition-boots, and at others smashing in his face with

244
WORKS OF RUDYARD KiPLING

the butt, and at oth~r~ jumping on his shoulders and dragging the
head back till the necKbone
cracked.  Then his mouth would feel hot and fevered, and he
would reach out for another sup of
the beer in tue pannikin.

But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with
him longest was one connected
with the great roll of fat under Losson's right ear.  He noticed it
first on a moonlight night, and
thereafter it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of
fat. A man could get his hand
upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he could place the
muzzle of a rifle on it and blow
away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and
contented and well-to-do,  when
he, Simmons, was the butt of the room, Some day, perhaps, he
would show those who laughed at
the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as the rest, and
held a man's life in the crook
of his forefinger.  When Losson snored, Simmons hated him more
bitterly than ever.  Why
should Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay awake
hour after hour, tossing and
turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing into his right
side and his head throbbing
and aching after Canteen?  He thought over this for many nights,
and the world became
unprofitable to him.  He even blunted his naturally fine appetite
with beer and tobacco; and all
the while the parrot talked at and made a mock of him.

The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than
before. A Sergeant's wife died
of heat-apoplexy in the night, and the rumor ran abroad
that it was cholera.  Men rejoiced openly, hoping that it would
spread and send them into camp.
But that was a false alarm.

It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the
deep double verandas for
"Last Posts," when Simmons went to the box at the foot of his bed,
took aut his pipe, and
slammed the lid down with a bang that echoed through the
deserted barrack like the crack of a
rifle.  Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice;
but their nerves were fretted to
fiddle-strings. They jumped up, and three or four clattered into the
barrack-room only to find
Simmons kneeling by his box.

"Owl It's you, is it?" they said and laughed  foolishly.   "We t h 0 u
g h t 'twas"-Simmons rose
slowly.  If th~ accident had so shaken his fellows, what would not
the reality do?

"You thought it was-did you? And what makes you think?" he said,
iashmg himself into madness
as he went on; "to Hell with your thinking, ye dirty spies."

"Simmons, ye so-oor," chuckled the parrot in the veranda, sleepily,
recognizing a well-known
voice. Now that was absolutely all.

The tension snapped.  Simmons fell back on the arm-rack
deliberately,-the men were at the far
end of the room,-and took out his rifle and packet of ammunition.
"Don't go ~laying the goat,
Sim!"  said Losson.  "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his
voice.  Another man stooped,
slipped his boot and hurled it at Simmon's head.  The prompt
answer was a shot

IN ThE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
243

a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a
temperature of 960 or 980 in the
shade, running up sometimes to 1030 at midnight.  Very few men,
even though they get a
pannikin of fiat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can
continue drinkmg for six
hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole
regiment went to his funeral
because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the
excitement of fever or cholera.
The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow
of the barrack creeping
across the blinding white dust.  That was a gay life.

They lounged about cantonments-it was too hot for any sort of
game, and almost too hot for
vic~and fuddled themselves in the evening, and filled themselves
to distension with the healthy
nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the
less exercise they took and
more explosive they grew.  Then tempers began to wear away, and
men fell a-brooding over
insults real or imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of.  The
tone of the repartees
changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: "I'll knock your
silly face in," men grew
laboriously p0lite and hinted that the cantonments were not big
enough for themselves and their
enemy, and that there would be more space for one of the two in
another place.

It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of
the case is that Losson had for
a long time been worrying Simmons in an aimless way. It gave
him occupation. The two had
their cots side by side, and would
sometimes  spend  a  long  afternoon swearing at each other; but
Simmons was afraid of Losson
and dared not challenge him to a fight.  He thought over the words
in the hot still nights, and half
the hate he felt toward Losson he vented on the wretched
punkahcoolie.

Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little cage,
and lowered the cage into the
cool darkness of a well, and sat on the well-curb, shouting bad
language down to the parrot. He
taught it to say:  "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and
several other things entirely
unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook like a
jelly when the parrot had the
sentence correctly.  Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all
the room were laughing at
him-the parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it
looked so human when it
chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of
the cot, and ask the parrot what
it thought of Simmons.  The parrot would answer:
"Simmons, ye so-oor."  "Good boy," Losson used to say, scratching
the parrot's head; "ye 'ear
that, Sim?" And Simmons used to turn over on his stomach and
make answer:  "I 'ear. Take 'eed
you don't 'ear something one of these days."

In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of blind
rage came upon Simmoor and
held him till he trembled all over, while he thought in how many
different ways he would slay
Losson.  Sometimes he would picture himself trampling the life
out of the man, with heavy
ammunition-boots, and at others smashing in his face with

244
WORKS OF RUDYARD KiPLING

the butt, and at otheri jumping on his shoulders and dragging the
head back til~ the necKbone
cracked.  Then his mouth would feel hot and fevered, and he
would reach out for another sup of
the beer in tile pannikin.

But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with
him longest was one connected
with the great roll of fat under Losson's right ear.  He noticed it
first on a moonlight night, and
thereafter it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of
fat. A man could get his hand
upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he could place the
muzzle of a rifle on it and blow
away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and
contented  and well-to-do,
when he, Simmons, was the butt of the room. Some day, perhaps,
he would show those who
laughed at the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as
the rest, and held a man's life
in the crook of his forefinger.  When Losson snored, Simmons
hated him more bitterly than ever.
Why should Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay
awake hour after hour, tossing
and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing into his
right side and his head
throbbing and aching after Canteen?  He thought over this for
many nights, and the world
became unprofitable to him.  He even blunted his naturally fine
appetite with beer and tobacco;
and all the while the parrot talked at and made a mock of him.

The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than
before. A Sergeant's wife died
of heat-apoplexy in the night, and the mmor ran abroad
that it was cholera.  Men rejoiced openly, hoping that it would
spread and send them into camp.
But that was a false alarm.

It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the
deep double verandas for
"Last Posts," when Simmons went to the box at the foot of his bed,
took ~ut his pipe, and
slammed the lid down with a bang that echoed through the
deserted barrack like the crack of a
rifle.  Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice;
but their nerves were fretted to
fiddle-strings. They jumped up, and three or four clattered into the
barrack-room only to find
Simmons kneeling by his box.

"Owl It's you, is it?" they said and laughed  foolishly.  "We t h 0 u
g h t 'twas"-Simmons rose
slowly.  If the accident had so shaken his fellows, what would not
the reality do?

"You thought it was-did you? And what makes you think?" he said,
jashmg himself into madness
as he went on; "to Hell with your thinking, ye dirty spies."

"Simmons, ye so-oor," chuckled the parrot in the veranda, sleepily,
recognizing a well-known
voice. Now that was absolutely all.

The tension snapped.  Simmons fell back on the arm-rack
deliberately,-the men were at the far
end of the room,-and took out his rifle and packet of ammunition.
"Don't go nlaying the goat,
Sim!"  said Losson.  "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his
voice.  Another man stooped,
slipped his boot and hurled it at Simmon's head.  The prompt
answer was a shot

IN ThE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
245

which, fired at random, found its billet in Losson's throat. Losson
fell forward without a word,
and the others scattered.

"You thought it was!" yelled Simmons.  "You're drivin' me to it!  I
tell you you're drivin' me to it!
Get up, Losson, an' don't lie shammin' there-you an' your blasted
parrit that druv me to it!"

But there was an unaffected reality ibout Losson's pose that
showed Simmons what he had done.
The men were still clamoring n the veranda. Simmons
appropriated two more packets of
ammunition and ran into the moonlight, muttering:  "I'll make a
night of it. Thirty roun's, an' the
last for myself. Take you that, you dogs!"

He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on
the veranda, but the bullet flew
high, and landed in the brickwork with a vicious phant that made
some of the younger ones turn
pale. It is, as musketry theorists observe, one thing to fire and
another to be fired at.

Then the instinct of the chase flared up.  The news spread from
barrack to barrack, and the men
doubled out intent on the capture of Simmons, the wild beast, who
was heading for the Cavalry
parade-ground, stopping now and again to send back a shot and a
Lurse in the direction of his
pursuers.

"I'll learn you to spy on me!" he shouted;  "I'll learn you to give me
dorg's names!  Come on the
'ole lot 0' you!  Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B.!"-he turned
toward the Infantry Mess and
shook his rifle-"you think yourself the devil of a man-but I tell 'jou
that if you Put your ugly old
car-
cass outside 0' that door, I'll make you the poorest-lookin' man in
the army. Come  out,  Colonel
John  Anthony Deever, C.B.!  Come out and see me practiss on the
rainge.  I'm the crack shot of
the 'ole bloomin' battalion." In proof of which statement Simmons
fired at the lighted windows
of the mes~house.

"Private Simmons, E Comp'ny, on the Cavalry p'rade-ground, Sir,
with thirty rounds," said a
Sergeant breathlessly to the Colonel.  "Shootin' right and lef', Sir.
Shot Private Losson What's to
be done, Sir?"

Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B., sallied out, only to be saluted
by s spurt of dust at his feet.

"Pull up!" said the Second in Command; "I don't want my step in
that way, Colon~l.  He's as
dangerous as a mad dog."

"Shoot him like one, then," said the Colonel, bitterly, "if he won't
take his chance, My regiment,
too!  If it had been the Towheads I could have under stood."

Private Simmons had occupied a strong position near a well on the
edge of the parade-ground,
and was defying the regiment to come on.  The regiment was not
anxious to comply, for there is
small honor i:1 being shot by a fellow-private.  Only Corporal
Slane, rifle in band, threw himself
down on the ground, and wormed his way toward the well.

"Don't shoot," said he to the men round him; "like as not you'll hit
me. I'll catch the beggar,
livin'."

Simmons ceased shouting for a while, and the noise of trap-wheels
could be heard across the
plain.  Major Oldyn~.

246
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

Commanding the Horse Battery, was coming back from a dinner in
the Civil Lines; was driving
after his u-ual custom-that is to say, as fast as the horse could go.

"A orf'cer!  A blooming spangled orf'cer," shrieked Simmons; "I'll
make a scarecrow of that
orf'cer!" The trap stopped.

"What's this?" demanded the Major of Gunners.  "You there, drop
your rifle."

"Why, it's Jerry Blazes!  I ain't got no quarrel with you, Jerry
Blazes. Pass frien', an' all's well!"

But Jerry Blazes had not the faintest intention of passing a
dangerous murderer.  He was, as his
adoring Battery swore  long  and  fervently,  without knowledge of
fear, and they were surely the
best judges, for Jerry Blazes, it was notorious, had done his
possible to kill a man each time the
Battery went out.

He walked toward Simmons, with the intention of rushing him,
and knocking him down.

"Don't make me do it, Sir," said Simmons; "I ain't got nothing agin
you. Ah! you would?"-the
Major broke into a run-"Take that then!"

The Major dropped with a bullet through his shoulder, and
Simmons stood over him. He had lost
the satisfaction of killing Losson in the desired way: hut here was a
helpless body to his hand.
Should be slip in another cartridge, and blow off the head, or with
the butt smash in the white
face? He stopped to consider, and a cry went up from the far side
of the parade-ground: "He's
killed Jerry Blazes!" But in the shelter of the well-pillars Simmons
was safe except when he
stepped
out to fire.  "I'll blow yer 'andsome 'ead off, Jerry Blazes," said
Simmons, reflectively.  "Six an'
three is nine an one is ten, an' that leaves me another nineteen, an'
one for myself."  He tugged at
the string of the second packet  of  ammunition.   Corporal Slane
crawled out of the shadow of a
bank into the moonlight.

"I see you!" said Simmons.  "Come a bit furder on an' I'll do for
you."

"I'm comm'," said Corporal Slane, briefly; "you've done a bad day's
work, Sim.  Come out 'ere an'
come back with me."

"Come to,"-laugbed Simmons, sending a cartridge home with his
thumb. '~Not before I've settled
you an' Jerry Blazes."

The Corporal was lying at full length in the dust of the
parade-ground, a rifle under him.  Some
of the less-cautious men in the distance shouted:
"Shoot 'im! Shoot 'im, Slane !"

"You move 'and or foot, Slane," said Simmons, "an' I'll kick Jerry
Blazes' 'ead in, and shoot you
after."

"I ain't movin'," said the Corporal, raising his head; "you daren't 'it
a man on 'is legs. Let go 0'
Jerry Blazes an' come out 0' that with your fistes. Come an' 'it me.
You daren't, you bloomin'
dog-shooter!"

"I dare."

"You lie, you man-sticker.  You sneakin', Sheeny butcher, you lie.
See there!"  Slane kicked the
rifle away, and stood up in the peril of his life. "Come on, now!"

The temptation was more than Simmons could resist, for the
Corporal in his white clothes
offered a perfect mark.

"Don't misname me," shouted Sim
j

IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
247

mons, firing as he spoke.  The shot missed, and the shooter, blind
with rage, threw his rifle down
and rushed at Slane from the protection of the well. Within
striking distance, he kicked savagely
at Slane's stomach, but the weedy Corporal knew something of
Simmons's weakness, and knew,
too, the deadly guard for that kick.  Bowing forward and drawing
up his right leg till the heel of
the right foot was set some three inches above the inside of the left
knee-cap, he met the blow
standing on one leg~exactly as Gonds stand when they
meditate-and ready for the fall that would
follow. There was an oath, the Corporal fell over his own left as
shinbone met shinbone, and the
Private collapsed, his right leg broken an inch above the ankle.

"'Pity you don't know that guard, Sim," said Slane, spitting out the
dust as he rose.  Then raising
his voic~ "Come an' take him orf.  I've bruk 'is leg."  This was not
strictly true, for the Private
had accomplished his own downfall, since it is the special merit of
that leg-guard that the harder
the kick the greater the kicker's discomfiture.

Slane walked to Jerry Blazes and hung over him with ostentatious
anxiety,  while  Simmons,
weeping with pain, was carried away.  " 'Ope you ain't 'urt badly,
Sir," said Slane.  The Major
had fainted, and there was an ugly, ragged hole through the top of
his arm.  Slane knelt down
and murmured. "S'elp me, I believe 'e's dead. Well, if that ain't my
blooming luck all over!"

But the Major was destined to lead
his Battery afield for many a long day with unshaken nerve. He
was removed, and nursed and
petted into convalescence, while the Battery discussed the wisdom
of capturing Simmons, and
blowing him from a gun. They idolized their Major, and his
reappearance on parade brought
about a scene nowhere provided for in the Army Regulations.

Great, too, was the glory that fell to Slane's share. The Gunners
would have made him drunk
thrice a day for at least a fortnight. Even the Colonel of his own
regiment complimented him
upon his coolness, and the local paper called him a hero.  These
things did not puff him up.
When the Major offered him money and thanks, the virtuous
Corporal took the one and put aside
the other.  But he had a request to make and prefaced it with many
a "Beg y'pardon, Sir." Could
the Major see his way to letting the SlaneM'Kenna wedding be
adorned by the presence of four
Battery horses to pull a hired barouche?  The Major could, and so
could the Battery.  Excessively
so. It was a gorgeous wedding.

*
*
*
*
*
*


"Wot did I do it for?" said Corporal Slane.  "For the 'orses 0'
course. Jhansi ain't a beauty to look
at, but I wasn't goin' to 'ave a hired turn-out. Jerry Blazes?  If I
'adn't 'a' wanted something, Sim
might ha' blowed Jerry Blazes' blooming 'ead into Hirish stew for
aught I'd 'a' cared."

And they hanged Private Simmons-hanged him as high as Haman
in hollow square of the
regiment; and the Colonel said it was Drink; and the Chaplain

248
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

was sure it was the Devil; and Simmons fancied it was both, but he
didn't know, and only hoped
his fate would be a warning to his companions; and half a dozen
"intelligent publicists" wrote six
beautiful leading articles on
"'The Prevalenc~  of Crime in the Army."

But not a soul thought of comparing the "bloody-minded
Simmons" to the squawking, gaping
schoolgirl with which this story opens.



The Enlighte~me~ts of Pagett, M.R

"Because half a dozen grasshoppers onder a fern make the field
ring with their importunate
chink while thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow
of the British oak, chew the
cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the
noise are the only inhabitants of
the field-that, of course, they are many in number~r that, after all,
they are other than the little,
shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects
of the hour."-Burke:
"Reflections on the Revolution in France."


THEY were sitting in the veranda of "the splendid palace of an
Indian Pro-Consul"; surrounded
by all the glory and mystery of the immemorial East. In plain
English it was a one-storied,
ten-roomed, whitewashed, mud-roofed bungalow, set in a dry
garden of dusty tamarisk trees and
divided from the road by a low mud wall. The green parrots
screamed overhead as they flew in
battalions to the river for their morning drink.  Beyond the wall,
clouds of fine dust showed
where the cattle and goats of the city were passing afield to graze.
The remorseless white light of
the winter sunshine of Northern India lay upon everything and
improved nothing, from the
whining Peisian-wheel by the lawn-tennis court to the long perspec
tive of level road and the blue, domed tombs of Mohammedan
saints just visible above the trees.

"A Happy New Year," said Orde to his guest.  "It's the first you've
ever spent out of England, isn't
it?"

"Yes.  'Happy New Year,"  said Pagett, smiling at the sunshine.
"What a divine cl~mat~ you
have here!  Just think of the brown cold fog hanging over London
now!"  And he rubbed his
hands.

It was more than twenty years since he had last seen Orde, his
schoolmate, and their paths in the
world had divided early.  The one had quitted college to become a
cog-wheel in the machinery
of the great Indian Government; the other more blessed with
goods, had been whirled into a
similar position in the English scheme. Three successive elections
had not affected Pagett's
position with a loyal constituency, and he had grown insensibly to
regard himself in some sort as
a pillar of the Empire, whose real worth would be known later
on. After a few years of conscientious attendance at many
divisions, after newspaper battles
innumerable and the publication  of  interminable
correspondence, and more hasty oratory than


THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
24~

in his calmer moments he cared to think upon, it occurred to him,
as it had occurred to many of
his fellows in Parliament, that a tour to India would enable him to
sweep a larger lyre and
addre3s himself to the problems of Impenal administration with a
firmer hand. Accepting,
therefore, a general invitation extended to him by Orde some years
before, Pagett bad taken ship
to Karachi, and only over-night had been received with joy by the
Deputy-Commissioner of
Amara.  They had sat late, discussing the changes and chances of
twenty years, recalling the
names of the dead, and weighing the futures of the living, as is the
custom of men meeting after
intervals of action.

Next morning they smoked the after breakfast pipe in the veranda,
still regarding each other
curiously, Pagett, in a light grey frock-coat and garments much too
thin for the time of the year,
and a puggried sun-hat carefully and wonderfully made.  Orde in a
shooting coat, riding
breeches, brown cowhide boots with spurs, and a battered flax
helmet.  He had ridden some
miles in the early morning to inspect a doubtful river dam.  The
men's faces differed as much as
their attire.  Orde's worn and wrinkled around the eyes, and
grizzled at the temples, was the
harder and more square of the two, and it was with something like
envy that the owner looked at
the comfortable outlines of Pagett's blandly receptive countenance,
the clear skin, the untroubled
eye, and the mobile, clean-shaved lips.

"And this is India!" said Pagett for the twentieth time staring long
and intently at the grey
feathering of tbe tamarisks.

"One portion of India only. It's vcry much like this for 300 miles in
every direction.  By the way,
now that you have rested a littl~I wouldn't ask the old question
befor~what d'you think of the
country?"

'Tis the most pervasive country that ever yet was seen.  I acquired
several pounds of your country
coming up from Karachi. The air is heavy with it, and for miles
and miles along that distressful
eternity of rail there's no horizon to show where air and earth
separate."

"Yes.  It isn't easy to see truly or far in India.  But you had a decent
passage out, hadn't you?"

"Very good on the whole.  Your Anglo-Indian may be
unsympathetic about one's political views;
but he has reduced ship life to a science."

"The Anglo-Indian is a political orphan, and if he's wise he won't
be in a hurry to be adopted by
your party grandmothers. But how were your companions,
unsympathetic?"

"Well, there was a man called Dawlishe,  a  judge  somewhere  in
this country it seems, and a
capital partner at whist by the way, and when I wanted to talk to
him about the progress of India
in a political sense (Orde hid a grin, which might or might not
have been sympathetic), the
National Congress movement, and other things in which, as a
Member of Parliament, I'm of
course interested, he shifted the subject, and when I once cornered
him, he looked me calmly in
the eye, and said:
'That's all Tommy rot. Come and have a game at Bull.' You may
laugh; but that isn't the way to
treat a great and important question; and, knowing who I was.
well. I thought it rather rude,

250
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

don't you know; and yet Dawlishe is a thoroughly good fellow."

"Yes; he's a friend of mine, and one of the straightest men I know.
I suppose, like many
Anglo-Indians, he felt it was hopeless to give you any just idea of
any Indian question without
the documents before you, and in this case the documents you
want are the country and the
people."

"Precisely.  That was why I came straight to you, bringing an open
mind to bear on things. I'm
anxious to know what popular feeling in India is really like
y'know, now that it has wakened into
political life.  The National Congress, in spite of Dawlishe, must
have caused great excitement
among the masses?"

"On the contrary, nothing could be more tranquil than the state of
popular feeling; and as to
excitement, the people would as soon be excited over the 'Rule of
Three' as over the Congress."

"Excuse me, Orde, but do you think you are a fair judge? Isn't the
official Anglo-Indian naturally
jealous of any external influences that might move the masses, and
so much opposed to liberal
ideas, truly liberal ideas, that he can scarcely be expected to regard
a popular movement with
fairness?"

"What  did  Dawlishe  say  about Tommy Rot?  Think a moment,
old man.  You and I were
brought up together; taught by the same tutors, read the same
books, lived the same life, and new
languages, and work among new races; while you, more fortunate,
remain at home.  Why should
I change iny mind~ur mind-because I change my sky?  Why should
I and the few
hundred Englishmen in my service become unreasonable,
prejudiced fossils, while you and your
newer friends alone remain bright and open-minded?  You surely
don't fancy civilians are
members of a Primrose League?"

"Of course not, but the mere posi tion of an English official gives
him a point of view which
cannot but bias his mind on this question."  Pagett moved his knee
up and down a little uneasily
as he spoke.

"That sounds plausible enough, but, like more plausible notions on
Indian matters, I believe it's a
mistake. You'll find when you come to consult the unofficial
Briton that our fault, as a class
-I speak of the civilian now-is rather to magnify the progress that
has been made toward liberal
institutions. It is of English origin, such as it is, and the stress of
our work since the Mutiny-only
thirty years ag~has been in that direction. No, I think you will get
no fairer or more dispassionate
view of the Congress business than such men as I can give you.
But I may as well say at once
that those who know most of India, from the inside, are inclined to
wonder at the noise our
scarcely begun experiment makes in England."

"But surely the gathering together of Congress delegates is of itself
a new thing."

"There's nothing new under the sun When Europe was a jungle
half Asia flocked to the canonical
conferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the people have
gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak,
and Benares in immense numbers. A great meeting, what you call
a mass meeting, is really one
of the ~dest and most popular of Indian institutions
THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.

251

in this topsy~turvy land, and though they have been employed in
clerical work for generations
they have no practical knowledge of affairs.  A ship's clerk is a
useful person, but he i~ scarcely
the captain; and an orderly room writer, however smart he may be,
is not the ~olonel.  You see,
the writer class in India has never till now aspired to anything like
command.  It wasn't allowed
to.  The Indian gentleman, for thousands of years past, has
resembled Victor Hugo's noble:



'Un vrai sire
Chatelain
Laisse ecrire
Le vilain.
Sa main digne
Quand il signe
Egratigne

Le velin.'

And the little egratignures he most likes to make have been scored
pretty deeply by the sword."

"But this is childish and mediaeval nonsense!"

"Precisely; and from your, or rather our, point of view the pen is
mightier than the sword.  In this
country it's otherwise. The fault lies in our Indian balances, not yet
adjusted to civilized weights
and measures."

"Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural
aspirations and wishes of the people
at large, though it may not exactly lead them, and, in spite of all
you say, Orde, I defy you to find
a really sound English Radical who would not sympathize with
those aspirations."

Pagett spoke with some warmth, and he had scarcely ceased when
a weU
In the case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that
the priests of the altar are
British, not Buddhist, Jam or Brabmanical, and that the whole
thing is a British contrivance kept
alive by the efforts of Messrs. Hume, Eardley, Norton, and Dighy."

"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement?"

"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the
word? This seems to he more
factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal about it; try it
by the touchstone of
subscriptions, a coarse but fairly trustworthy criterion, and there is
scarcely the color of money
in it. The delegates write from England that tney are out of pocket
for working expenses, railway
fares, and stationery~the mere pasteboard and scaffolding of their
show.  It is, in fact, collapsing
from mere financial inanition."

"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps,
too poor to subscribe, are
mentally and morally moved by the agitation," Pagett insisted.

"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement
is the work of a limited class,
a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin described it' when
compared with the people proper,
h~it still a very interesting class, seeing that it is of our own
creation.  It is composed almost
entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have received
an English education."

"Surely that's a very important class. Its members must be the
ordained leaders of popular
thought."

"Anywhere - else  they  might  be leaders, but they have no social
weight

2~2
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

appointed dog-cart turned into the compound gates, and Orde rose
saying:

"Here is Edwards, the Master of the Lodge I neglect so diligently,
come to talk about accounts, I
suppose."

As the vehicle drove up under the porch Pagett also rose, saying
with the trained effusion born of
much practice:

"But this is also my friend, my old and valued friend Edwards.  I'm
delighted to see you. I knew
you were in India, but not exactly where."

"Then it isn't accounts, Mr. Edwards," said Orde, cheerily.

"Why, no, sir; I heard Mr. Pagett was coming, and as our works
were closed for the New Year I
thought I would drive over and see him."

"A very happy thought.  Mr. Ed-wards, you may not know, Orde,
was a leading member of our
Radical Club at Switebton when I was beginning p0litical life, and
I owe much to his exertions.
There's no pleasure like meeting an old friend, except, perhaps,
making a new one. I suppose,
Mr. Edwards, you stick to the good old cause?"

"Well, you see, sir, things are different out here. There's precious
little one can find to say
against the Government, which was the main of our talk at home,
and them that do say things are
not the sort 0' people a man who respects himself would like to be
mixed up with.  There are no
politics, in a manner of speaking, in India. It's all work."

"Surely you are mistaken, my good friend.  Why I have come all
the way from England just to
see the working of this great National movement."

"I don't know where you're going to find the nation as moves to
begin with,
and then you'll be hard put to it to find what they are moving
about.  It's like this, sir," said
Edwards, who had not quite relished being called "my good
friend."  "They haven't g~t any
grievanc~nothing to hit with, don't you see, sir; and then there's not
much to hit against, because
the Government is more like a kind of general Providence,
directing an old-established state of
things, than that at home, where there's something new thrown
down for us to fight about every
three months."

"You are probably, in your workshops, full of Er~g'ish mechanics,
out of the way of learning
what the masses think."

"I don't know so much about that. There are four of us English
foremen, and between seven and
eight hundred native  fitters,  smiths,   carpenters, painters, and
such like."

"And they are full of the Congress, of course?"

"Never hear a wnrd of it from year's end to year's end, and I speak
the talk too.  But I wanted to
ask how things are going on at home-old Tyler and Brown and the
rest?"

"We will speak of them presently, but your account of the
indifference of your men surprises me
almost as much as your own.  I fear you are a backslider from the
good old doctrine, Ed wards."
Pagett spoke as one who mourned the death of a near relative.

"Not a bit, Sir, but I should be if ~ took up with a parcel of baboos,
pleaders, and schoolboys, as
never did a day's work in their lives, and couldn't if they tried. And
if you was to poll us English
railway men, mechanics, tradespeople, and the like of that all
THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.

253
up and down the country from Peshawur to Calcutta, you would
find us mostly in a tale together.
And yet yo'J know we're the same English you pay some respect to
at home at 'lection time, and
we have the pull o' knowing something about it."

"This is very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and
perhaps you will kindly show
me the railway works, and we will talk things over at leisure.  And
about all old friends and old
times," added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of
disappointment in the mechanic's
face.

Nodding briefly to Orde, Edwards mounted his dog-cart and drove
off.

"It's very disappointing," said the
Member to Orde, who, while his friend
discoursed with Edwards, had been
looking over a bundle of sketches drawn
~n grey paper in purple ink, brought
~o him by a Chuprassee.

"Don't let it trouble you, old chap," 'said Orde, sympathetically.
"Look here ~ moment, here are
some sketches by the man who made the carved wood screen you
admired so much in the
dining-room, and wanted a copy of, and the artist himself is here
too."

"A native?" said Pagett.

"Of course," was the reply, "Bishen Siagh is his name, and he has
two brothers to help him.
When there is an important job to do, the three go 'ato partnership,
but they spend most of their
time and all their money in litigation over an inheritance, and I'm
afraid they are getting
involved,  Thoroughbred Sikhs of the old rock, obstinate, touchy,
bigoted, and cunning, but good
men for all that. Here is Bishen
Singn -shall we ask him about the Congress?"

But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had
never heard of it, and he
listened with a puzzled face and obviously feigned interest to
Orde's account of its aims and
objects, finally shaking his vast white turban with great
significance when he learned that it was
promoted by certam  pleaders named by Orde, and by educated
natives.  He began with labored
respect to explain how he was a poor man with no concern in such
matters, which were all under
the control of God, but presently broke out of Urdu into familiar
Punjabi, the mere sound of
which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as
he denounced the wearers of
white coats, the jugglers with words who filched his field from
him, the men whose backs were
never bowed in honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the
Bengali.  He and one of his
brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there had Bengali
carpenters given to them as
assistants.

"Those  carpenters!"  said  Bishen Singh.  "Black apes were more
efficient workmates, and as for
th~ Bengali babu
-tchick!"  The guttural click needed no interpretation, but Orde
translated the rest, while Pagett
gazed with in.. terest at the wood-carver.

"He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali,"
said the
M.P.

"Yes, it's very sad that for ages outside Bengal there should he so
bitter a prejudice.  Pride of
race, which also means race-hatred, is the plague and curse of
India and it spreads far," Orde

25~
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

pointed with his riding-whip to the large map of India on the
veranda wall.

"See! I begin with the North," said he. "There's the Afghan, and, as
a highlander, he despises all
the dwellers in Hindoostan-with the exception of the Sikh, whom
he hates as cordially as the
Sikh hates him.  The Hindu loathes  Sikh and Afghan, and the
Rajput-that's  a  little  lower  down
across this yellow blot of desert-has a strong objection, to put it
mildly, to the Maratha who, by
the way, poisonously hates the Afghan. Let's go North a minute.
The Sindhi hates everybody I've
mentioned. Very good, we'll take less warlike races.  The
cultivator of Northern India domineers
over the man in the next province, and the Behari of the Northwest
ridicules the Bengali. They
are all at one on that point. I'm giving you merely the roughest
possible outlines of the facts, of
course."

Bishen Singh, his clean cut nostrils still quivering, watched the
large sweep of the whip as it
traveled from the frontier, through Sindh, the Punjab and
Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of
the Jumna

"Hate~ternal and inextinguishable hate," concluded Orde, flicking
the lash of the whip across the
large map from East to West as he sat down.  "Remember
Canning's  advice  to  Lord Granville,
'Never write or speak of Indian things without looking at a map.'"

Pagett opened his eyes, Orde resumed.  "And the race-hatred is
only a part of it.  What's really
the matter with Bisben Singh is class-hatred, which, unfortunately,
is even more intense and
more widely spread. That's one of the little drawbacks of caste,
which some of your recent
English writers find an impeccable system."

The wood-carver was glad to be recalled to the business of his
craft, and his eyes shone as he
received instruc~ tions for a carved wooden doorway for Pagett,
which he promised ~hould be
splendidly executed and despatched to England in six months.  It is
an irrelevant detail, but in
spite of Orde's reminders, fourteen months elapsed before the work
was finished.  Business over,
Bishen Singh hung about, reluctant to take his leave, and at last
joining his hands and
approaching Orde with bated breath and whispering hum. bleness,
said he had a petition to
make. Orde's face suddenly lost all trace of expression.  "Speak on,
Bishen Singh," said he, and
the carver in a whining tone explained that his case against his
brothers was fixed for hearing b&
fore  a native  judge  and-here he dropped his voice still lower tid
he was summarily stopped by
Orde, who sternly pointed to the gate with an emphatic Begone!

Bishen Singh, showing but little sign of discomposure, salaamed
respectfully to the friends and
departed.

Pagett looked inq~ry;  Orde with complete recovery of his usual
urbanity, replied:  "It's nothing,
only the old story, he wants his case to be tried by an English
judge-they all do that-but when he
began to hint that the other side were in improper relations with
the native judge I had to shut
him up. Gunga Ram, the man he wanted to make insinuations
about, may not be very bright; but
he's as honest as day-

THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
255

light on the bench.  But that's just what one can't get a native to
believe."

"Do you really mean to say these people prefer to have their cases
tried by English judges?"

'Why, certainly."

Pagett  drew a  long breath.  "I ~idn't know that before."  At this
point a phaeton entered the
compound, and Orde rose with "Confound it, there's old Rasul Ah
Khan come to pay one of his
tiresome duty calls.  I'm afraid we shall never get through our little
Congress discussion."

Pagett was an aimost silent spectator of the grave formalities of a
visit paid by a punctilious  old
Mahommedan gentleman to an Indian official; and was much
impressed by the distinction of
manner and fine appearance of the Mohammedan landholder.
When the exhange of polite
banalities came to a pause, he expressed a wish to learn the courtly
visitor's opinion of the
National Congress.

Orde  reluctantly  interpreted,  and with a smile which even
Mohammedan politeness could not
save from bitter scorn, Rasul Ah Khan intimated that he knew
nothing about it and cared still
less. It was a kind of talk encouraged by the Government for some
mysterious purpose of its
own, and for his own part he wondered and held his peace.

Pagett was far from satisfied with this, and wished to have the old
gentleman's opinion on the
propriety of managing all Indian affairs on the basis of an elective
system.

Orde did his best to explain, but it was plain the visitor was bored
and bewilder~d.  Frankly, he
didn't think much of committees; they had a Mu-
nicipal Committee at Lahore and had elected a menial servant, an
orderly, as a member.  He had
been informed of this on good authority, and after that, committees
had ceased to interest him.
But all was according to the rule of Government, and, please God,
it was all for the best.

"What an old fossil it is!" cried Pagett, as Orde returned from
seeing his guest to the door; "just
like some old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain. What does he really
think of the Congress after all,
and of the elective system?"

"Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election
is a fine system; but you can
scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the mast mas terful and
powerful minority in the country, to
contemplate their own extinction with joy.  The worst of it is that
he and his co-religionists, who
are many, and the landed proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are
frightened and put out by this
electiop business and by the importance we have bestowed on
lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the
like, who have, up to now, been in abject submission to them.
They say little, hut after all they
are the most important fagots in the great bundle of communities,
and all the glib bunkum in the
world would not pay for their estrangement.  They have controlled
the land."

"But I am assured that experience of local self-gov~rnment in your
municipalities has been most
satisfactory, and when once the principle is accepted in your
centres, don't you know, it is bound
to spread, and these ~mportant--ah'm
people of yours would learn it like the rest. I see no difficulty at
all," and the smooth lips closed
with the complacent

256
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

snap habitual to Pagett, M.P., the "man of cheerful yesterdays and
confident to-morrows."

Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.

'~Tbe privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn
from scores of municipalities,
others have had to be summarily suppressed, and, outside the
Presidency towns, the actual work
done has been badly performed.  This is of less moment, perhaps-it
only sends up the local
death-rates-than the fact that the public interest in municipal
elections, never very strong, has
waned, and is waning, in spite of careful nursing on the part of
Government servants."

"Can you explain this lack of interest?" said Pagett, putting aside
the rest of Orde's remarks.

'~You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every
thousand af our population
can spell.  Then they are infinitely more interested in religion and
caste questions than in any
sort of politics.  When the business of mere existence is over, their
minds are occupied  by a
series  of  interests, pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like,
based on centuries of tradition
and usage.  You, perhaps, find it hard to conceive of people
absolutely devoid of curiosity, to
whom the book, the daily paper, and the printed speech are
unknown, and you would describe
their life as blank.  That's a profound mistake. You are in another
land, another century, down on
the bed-rock of society, where the family merely, and not the
community, is all-important.  The
average Oriental cannot be brought to look beyond his clan.  His
life, too, is naore complete and
self-sufficing, and
less sordid and low-thoughted than you might imagine.  It is
bovine and slow in some respects,
but it is never empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before
the horse, and to forget that it
is the man that is elemental, not the book.


'The corn and the cattle are all my care, And the rest is the will of
God.'

Why should such folk look up from their immemorially appointed
round of duty and interests to
meddle with the unknown and fuss with voting-papers. How would
you, atop of all your interests
care to conduct even one-tenth of your life according to the
manners and customs of the
Papuans, let's say? That's what it comes to."

"But if they won't take the trouble to vote, why do you anticipate
that Mohammedans,
proprietors, and the rest would be crushed by majorities of them?"

Again Pagett disregarded the closing sentence.

"Because,  though the landholders would not move a finger on any
purely political question, they
could be raised in dangerous excitement by religious hatreds.
Already the first note of this has
been sounded by the people who are trying to get up an agitation
on the cow-killing question,
and every year there is trouble over the Mohammedan Muharrum
processions.

"But who looks after the popular rights, being thus unrepresented?"

"The Government of Hcr Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, in
which, if the Congress
promoters are to be believed, the people have an implicit trust; for
the Congress circular,
specially pre

THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
257

pared for rustic comprehension, says the movement is 'for the
remission of tax, the advancement
of Hindnstan, and the strengthening of the British Govemment.'
This paper is headed in large
letters-'MAV THE PROSPEEITY OF TH~ EMPIRE OF INDIA
ENDURE."'

"Really!" said Pagett, "that shows some cleverness.  But there are
things better worth imi'ation in
our Englisb methods of-er-political statement than this sort of
amiable fraud."

"Anyhow," resumed Orde, "you perceive that not a word is said
about elections and the elective
principle, and the reticence of the Congress promoters here shows
they are wise in their
generation."

"But the elective principle must triumph in the end, and the little
difficulties you seem to
anticipate would give way on the introduction of a well-balanced
scheme, capable of indefinite
extension."

"But is it possible to devise a scheme which, always assuming that
the people took any interest
in it, without enormous expense, ruinous dislocation of the
administ:ation and danger to the
public peace, can satisfy the aspirations of Mr. Hume and his
following, and yet safeguard the
interests of the Mahommedans, the landed and wealthy classes, the
Conservative Hindus, the
Eurasians,  Parsees,  Sikhs,  Rajputs, native Christians, domiciled
Europeans and others, who are
each important and powerful in their way?"

Pagett's attention, however, was diverted to the gate, where a
group of cultivators stood in
apparent hesitation.

"Here are the twelve Apostles, hy
Jove -come straight out of Raffaele's cartoons," said the M.P., with
the fresh appreciation of a
newcomer.

Orde, loth to be interrupted, turned impatiently toward the
villagers, and their leader, handing
his long staff to one of his companions, advanced to the house.

"It is old Jelbo, the Lumherdar, or head-man of Pind Sharkot, and a
very' intelligent man for a
villager."

The Jat farmer had removed his shoes and stood smiling on the
edge of the veranda. His strongly
marked features glowed with russet bronze, and his bright eyes
gleamed under deeply set brows,
contracted by lifelong exposure to sunshine.  His beard and
moustache streaked with grey swept
from bold cliffs of brow and cheek in the large sweeps one sees
drawn by Michael Angelo, and
strands of long black hair mingled with the irregularly piled
wreaths and folds of his turban.  The
drapery of stout blue cotton cloth thrown over his broad shoulders
and girt round his narrow
loins, hung from his tall form in broadly sculptured folds, and ~e
would have made a superb
model for an artist in search of a patriarch.

Orde greeted him cordially, and after a polite pause the
countryman started off with a long story
told with impressive earnestness.  Orde listened and smiled,
interrupting  the  speaker at '~mes
to argue and reason with him in a tone which Pagett could hear
was kindly, and finally checking
the flux of words was about to dismiss him, when Pagett suggested
that he should be asked about
the National Congress.

But Jelloc had never heard of it.

258
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

He was a poor man and such things, by the favor of his Honor, did
not concern him.

"What's the matter with your big friend  that he was  so terribly in
earnest?" asked Pagett, when
he had left.

"Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next
village, who have had smallpox
and cattle plague pretty badly, and by the help of a wizard, a
currier, and several pigs have
passed it on to his own village.  'Wants to know if they can't be run
in for this awful crime. It
seems they made a dreadful charivari at the village boundary,
threw a quantity of spell-bearing
objects over the border, a buffalo's skull and other things; then
branded a chamur-what you
would call a currier-on his hinder parts and drove him and a
number of pigs over into JelIno's
village. Jelbo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard
directing these proceedings,
who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, rattle-killing,
perjury and murder, but would
prefer to have him punished for bewitching them and inflicting
small-pox."

"And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?"

"Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some
ground of complaint  against
those  Sansis.   I as~ed if he would likc a native superintendent of
police with some men to make
inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather
worse than smallpox and
criminal tribes put together."

"Crimin~ tribes-er-I don't quite understand," said Paget~

"We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack
anti-British days became robbers, in
various kind. and preye~ on the people.  They are being restrained
and reclaimed little by little,
and in time will become uscfu; citizens, but they still cherish
hereditar~ traditions of crime, and
are a difficul lot to deal with.  By the way wh~; about the political
rights of these folk under your
schemes?  The country people call them vermin, but I sup-pose
they would be electors with th~
rest."

"Nonsens~speaal provision would be made for them in a
well-considered electoral scheme, and
they would doubtless be treated with fitting severity," said Pagett,
with a magisterial air.

"Severity, yes-but whether it would be fitting is doubtful. Even
those poor devils have rights,
and, after all, they only practice what they have been taught."

"But criminals, Ordel"

"Yes,  criminals  with  codes  and rituals of crime, gods and
godlings of crime, and a hundred
songs and sayings in praise of it. Puzzling, isn't it?"

"It's simply dreadful.  They ought to be put down at once.  Are
there many of them?"

"Not more than about sixty thousand in this province, for many of
the trlbes broadly described as
criminal are really vagabond and crimlnal only on occasion, while
others are being settled and
reclaimed. They are of great antiquity, a legacy from the past, the
golden, glorious Aryan past of
Max Muller, Birdwood and the rest of your spindrif~
philosophers."

An orderly brought a card to Orde


THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
2SQ

who took it with a movement of irritation at the interruption, and
banded it to Pagett; a large
card with a ruled border in red ink, and in the centre in schoolboy
copper plate, Mr. Dma Nath.
"Give salaam," said the civilian, and there entered in haste a
slender youth, clad in a closely
fitting coat of grey homespun, tight trousers, patent-leather shoes,
and a small black velvet cap.
His thin cheek twitched, and his eyes wandered restlessly, for the
young man was evidently
nervous and uncomfortable, though striving to assume a free and
easy air.

"Your honor may perhaps remember me," he said in Englisb, and
Orde scanned him keenly.

"I know your face somehow.  You belonged to the Shershah
district I think, when I was in charge
there?"

"Yes, Sir, my father is writer at Shershah, and your honor gave me
a prize when I was first in the
Middle School examination five years ago.  Since then I have
prosecuted my studies, and I am
now second year's student in the Mission College~"

"Of course: you are Kedar Nath's son
-the boy who said he liked geography better than play or sugar
cakes, and I didn't believe you.
How is your father getting on?"

"He is well, and he sends his salaam, but his circumstances are
depressed, and be also is down
on his luck."

"You learn English idiom". at the Mission College, it seems."

"Yes, sir, they are the best idioms, and my father ordered me to ask
your honor to say a word for
him to the present incumbent  of your honor's shoes, the latchet of
which he is not
worthy to open, and who knows not Joseph; for things are different
at Sher shah now, and my
father wants promotion."

"Your father is a good man, and I will do what I can for him."

At this point a telegram was handed to Orde, who, after glancing at
it, said he must leave his
young friend whom he introduced to Pagett, "a member of the
English House of Commons who
wishes to learn about India."

Orde bad scarcely retired with his telegram when Pagett began:

"Perhaps you can tell me something of the National Congress
movement?"

"Sir, it is the greatest movement of modern times, and one in
which all edvcated men like us
must join. All our students are for the Congress."

"Excepting, I suppose, Mahommedans, and the Christians?" said
Pagett, quick to use his recent
instruction.

"These are some mere exceptions to the universal rule."

"But the people outside the College, the working classes, the
agriculturists; your father and
mother, for instance."

"My mother," said the young man, with a visible effort to bring
himself to pronounce the word,
"has no ideas, and my father is not agriculturist, nor working class;
he is of the Kayeth caste; but
he had not the advantage of a collegiate education, and he does not
know much of the Congress.
It is a movement for the educated young-man"
-connecting adjective and noun in a sort of vocal hyphen.

"Ah, yes," said Pagett, feeling he was a little off the rails, "and
what are the benefits you expect
to gain by it?"

"Oh, sir, everything.  England owes

260
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

its greatness to Parliamentary institutions, and we should at once
gain the same high position in
scale of nations. Sir, we wish to have the sciences, the arts, the
manufactures, the industrial
factories, with steam engines, and other motive powers and public
meetings, and debates.
Already we have a debating club in connection with the college,
and elect a Mr. Speaker.  Sir,
the progress must come. You also are a Member of Parliament and
worship the great Lord
Ripon," said the youth, breathlessly, and his black eyes flashed as
he finished his commaless
sentences.

"Well," said Pagett, drily, "it has not vet occurred to me to worship
his Lord-ship, although I
believe he is a very worthy man, and I am not sure that England
owes quite all the things you
name to the House of Commons. You see, my young friend, the
growth of a nation like ours is
slow, subject to many influences, and if you have read your history
aright"-"Sir. I know it all-all!
Norman

Conquest, Magna Charta, Runnymede,
Reformation,  Tudors,  Stuarts,  Mr.
Milton and Mr. Burke, and I have read
something of Mr. Herbert Spencer and

Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' Reynolds'

Mysteries of the Court,' and"-~)agett felt lite one who had pulled
the string of a shower-bath unawares, and hastened to stop the
torrent with a qtlestion as to what
particular grievances of the people of India the attention of an
elected assembly should be first
directed.  But young Mr. Dma Nath was slow to particularize.
There were many, very many
demanding consideration.  Mr. Pagett would like to hear of one or
two typical examples.
The Repeal of the Arms Act was at last named, and the student
learned for the first time that a
license was necessary before an Englishman could carry a gun in
England. Then natives of India
ought to be allowed to become Volunteer Riflemen if they chose,
and the absolute equality of
the Oriental with his European fellow-subject in civil status should
be proclaimed on principle,
and the Indian Army should be considerably reduced.  The student
was not, however, prepared
with answers to Mr. Pagett's mildest questions on these points, and
he returned to vague
generalities, leaving the M.P. so much impressed with the crudity
of his views that he was glad
on Orde's return to say good-bye to his "very interesting" young
friend.

"What do you think of young India?" asked Orde.

"Curious, very curious-and callow."

"And yet," the civilian replied, "one can scarcely help
sympathizing with him for his mere
youth's sake.  The young orators of the Oxford Union arrived at the
same  conclusions  and
showed doubtless just the same enthusiasm. If there were any
political analogy between  India
and  England,  if  the thousand races of this Empire were one, if
there were any chance even of
their learning to speak one language, if, in short, India were a
Utopia of the debating-room, and
not a real land, this kind of talk might be worth listening to, but it
is all based on false analogy
and ignorance of the facts."

"But he is a native and knows the facts."

"He is a sort of English schoolboy, but married three years, and the
father


THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
26.

of two weaklings, and knows less than most English schoolboys.
You saw all he is and knows,
and such ideas as he has acquired are directly hostile to the most
cherished convictions of the
vast majority of the people."

"But what does he mean by saying he is a student of a mission
college? Is he a Christian?"

"He meant just what he said, and he is not a Christian, nor ever
will he be. Good people in
America, Scotland and England, most of whom would never
dream of collegiate education for
their own sons, are pinching themselves to bestow it in pure waste
on Indian youths.  Their
scheme is an oblique, subterranean attack on heathenism; the
theory being that with the jam of
secular education, leading to a University degree, the pill of moral
or religious instruction may
he coaxed down the heathen gullet."

"But does it succeed; do they make converts?"

"They make no converts, for the subtle Oriental swallows the jam
and rejects the pill; but the
mere example of the sober, righteous, and godly lives of the
principals and professors who are
most excellent and devoted men, must have a certain moral value.
Yet, as Lord Lansdowne
pointed out the other day, the market is dangerously overstocked
with graduates of our
Universities who look for employment in the  administration.   An
immense number are
employed, but year by year the college mills grind out increasing
lists of youths foredoomed to
failure and  disappointment, and meanwhile, trade. manufactures.
and the industrial
arts are neglected, and in fact regarded with contempt by our new
literary mandarins in posse."

"But  our  young  friend  said  he wanted steam-engines and
factories," said Pagett.

"Yes, he would like to direct such concerns.  He wants to begin at
the top, for manual labor is
held to be discreditable, and he would never defile his hands by
the apprenticeship which the
architects, engineers, and manufacturers of England cheerfully
undergo; and he would be aghast
to learn that the leading names of industrial enterprise in England
belonged a generation or two
since, or now belong, to men who wrought with their own hands.
And, though he talks glibly of
manufacturers, he refuses to see that the Indian manufacturer of
the future will be the despised
workman of the present. It was proposed, for example, a few
weeks ago, that a certain
municipality in this province should establish an elementary
technical school for the sons of
workmen. The stress of the opposition to the plan came from a
pleader who owed all he had to a
college education bestowed on him gratis by Government and
missions. You would have fancied
some fine old crusted Tory squire of the last generation was
speaking. 'These people,' he said,
'want no education, for they learn their trades from their fathers,
and to teach a workman's son
the elements of mathematics and physical science would give him
ideas above his business.
They must be kept in their place, and it was idle to imagine that
there was any science in wood
or iron work.'  And he carried his point. But the Indian workman
will rise in

202
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

the social scale in spite of the new literary caste."

"In England we have scarcely begun to realize that there is an
industrial class in this country, yet,
I suppose, the example of men, like Edwards for instance, must
tell," said Pagett, thoughtfully.

"That you shouldn't know much about it is natural enough, for
there are but few sources of
information. India in this, as in other respects, is like a badly kept
ledger-not written up to date.
And men like Edwards are, in reality, missionaries, who by precept
and example are teaching
more lessons than they know. Only a few, however, of their
crowds of subordinates seem to care
to try to emulate them, and aim at individual advancement; the rest
drop into the ancient Indian
caste gr('ove."

"How do you mean?" asked ~ "Well, it is found that the new
railway and factory workmen, the
fitter, the smith, the engine-driver, and the rest are already forming
separate hereditary castes.
You may notice this down at Jamalpur in Bengal, one of the oldest
railway centres; and at other
places, and in other industries, they are following the same
inexorable Indian law."

"Which means?"~ueried Pagett.

"It means that the rooted habit of the people is to gather in small
self-contained, self-sufficing
family groups with no thought or care for any interests but their
own-a habit which is scarcely
compatible with the right acceptation of the elective principle."

"Yet you must admit, Orde, that though our young friend was not
able to expound tbe f~ith that
is in him, your Indian army is too big."

"Not nearly big enough for its main purpose.  And, as a side issue,
there are certain powerful
minorities of fighting folk whose interests an Asiatic Government
is bound to consider.  Arms is
as much a means of livelihood as civil employ under Government
and law. And it would be a
heavy strain on British bayonets to hold down Sikhs, Jats, Bilochis,
Rohillas, Rajputs, Bhils,
Dogras, Pahtans, and Gurkbas to abide by the decisions of a
numerical majority opposed to their
interests. Leave the 'numerical majority' to itself without the
British bayonets-a flock of sheep
might as reasonably hope to manage a troop of collies."

"This  complaint  about  excessive growth of the army is akin to
another contention of the
Congress party. They protest against the malversation of the whole
of the moneys raised by
additional taxes as a Famine Insurance Fund to  other  purposes.
You  must  be aware that this
special Famine Fund has all been spent on frontier roads and
defences and strategic railway
schemes as a protection against Russia."

"But  there was  never a  special famine fund raised by special
taxation and put by as in a box.
No sane administrator would dream of such a thing. In a time of
prosperity a finance minister,
rejoicing in a margin, proposed to annually apply a million and a
half to the construction of
railways and canals for the protection of districts liable to scarcity,
and to the reduction of the
annual loans for public works. But times were not always
prosperous, and the finance minister
had to choose whether be would bang up the insurance scheme for
a year or impose fresh

THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
263

taxation.  When a farmer hasn't got the little surplus he I]oped to
have for buying a new wagon
and draining a low-lying field corner, you don't accuse him of
m~versation, if he spends what he
has on the necessary work of the rest of his farm."

A clatter of hoofs was heard, and Orde looked up with vexation,
but his brow cleared as a
horseman halted under the porch.

"HelIn, Orde! just looked in to ask if you are coming to polo on
Tuesday:
we want you badly to help to crumple up the Krab Bokbar team."

Orde explained that he had to go out into the District, and while
the visitor complained that
though good men wouldn't play, duffers were always keen, and
that his side would probalny be
beaten, Pagett rose to look at his n~ount, a red, lathered Biloch
mare, with a curious lyre4ike
incurving of the ears.  "Quite a little thoroughbred in all other
respects," said the M.P., and Orde
presented Mr. Reginald Burke, Manager of the Siad and Sialkote
Bank to his friend.

"Yes, she's as good as they make 'em, and she's all the female I
possess and spoiled in
consequence, aren't you, old girl?" said Burke, patting the mare's
glossy neck as she backed and
plunged.

"Mr. Pagett," said Orde, "has been asking me about the Congress.
What is your opinion?"  Burke
turned to the M. P. with a frank smile.

"Well, if it's all the same to you, sir, I should say, Damn the
Congress, but then I'm no politician,
but only a business man."

"You find it a tiresome subject?"

"Yes, it's all that, and worse than
that, for this kind of agitation is anything but wholesome for the
country."

"How do you mean?"

"It would be a long job to explain, and Sara here won't stand, but
you know how sensitive ca~ital
is, and how timid investors are.  All this sort of rot is likely to
frighten them, and we can't afford
to frighten them. The passengers aboard an Ocean steamer don't
feel reassured when the ship's
way is stopped, and they hear the workmen's hammers tinkering at
the engines down below. The
old Ark's going on all right as she is, and only wants quiet and
room to move. Them's my
sentiments, and those of some other people who have to do with
money and business."

"Then you are a thick-and-thin supporter of the Government as it
is."

"Why, no!  The Indian Government is much too timid with its
money-like an old maiden aunt of
mine-always in a funk about her investments. They don't spend
half enough on railways for
instance, and they are slow in a general way, and ought to be made
to sit up in all that concerns
the encouragement of private enterprise, and coaxing out into use
the millions of capital that lie
dormant in the country."

The mare was dancing with impatience, and Burke was evidently
anxious to be off, so the men
wished him good-bye.

"Who is your genial friend who condemns both Congress and
Government in a breath?" asked
Pagett, with an amused smile.

"Just now he is Reggie Burke, keener on polo than on anything
else, but if you go to the Sind and
Sialkote Bank to-morrow you would find Mr. Reginald

264
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

Burke a very capable man of business, known and liked by an
immense constituency North and
South of this."

"Do you think he is right about the Government's want of
enterpnse?"

"I should hesitate to say. Better consult the merchants and
chambers of commerce in Cawnpore,
Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. But though these bodies would
like, as Reggie puts it, to make
Government sit up, it is an elementary consideration in governing
a country like India, which
must be administered for the benefit of the people at large, that the
counsels of those who resort
to it for the sake of making money should be judiciously weighed
and not allowed to overpower
the rest. They are welcome guests here, as a matter of course, but it
has been found best to
restrain their influence.  Thus the rights of plantation laborers,
factory operatives, and the like,
have been protected, and the capitalist, eager to get on, has not
always regarded Government
action with favor.  It is quite conceivable that under an elective
system the commercial
communities of the great towns might find means to secure
majorities on labor questions and on
financial matters."

"They would act at least with intelligence and consideration."

"Intelligence, yes; but as to consideration, who at the present
moment most bitterly resents the
tender solicitude of Lancashire for the welfare and protection of
the Indian factory operative?
English and native capitalists running cotton mills and factories."

"But is the solicitude of Lancashire in this matter entirely
disinterested?"

"It is no b~~siness of mine to say. I
merely indicate an example of how a powerful  commercial
interest  might hamper a
Government intent in the first place on the larger interests of
humanity."

Orde broke off to listen a moment. "There's Dr. Lathrop talking to
my wife in the
drawing-room," said he.

"Surely not; that's a lady's voice, and if my ears don't deceive me,
an American."

"Exactly, Dr. Eva McCreery La.. throp, chief of the new Women's
Hos~ pital here, and a very
good fellow forbye.  Good-morning, Doctor," he said, as a graceful
figure came out on the
veranda, "you seem to be in trouble. I hope Mrs. Orde was able to
help you."

"Your wife is real kind and good, ] always come to her when I'm in
a fix but I fear it's more than
comforting ~ want."

"You work too hard and wear yourself out," said Orde, kindly.
"Let me introduce my friend, Mr.
Pagett, just fresh from home, and anxious to learn his India.  You
could tell him something of
that more important half of which a mere man knows so little."

"Perhaps I could if I'd any heart to do it, but I'm in trouble, I've lost
a case, a case that was  doing
well, through nothing in the world but inattention on the part of a
nurse I had begun to trust. And
when I spoke only a small piece of my mind she collapsed in a
whining heap on the floor.  It is
hopeless."

The men were silent, for the blue eyes of the lady doctor were dim.
Recovering herself she
looked up with a smile, half sad, half humorous, "And I


THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P.
265

am in a whining heap, too; but what phase of Indian life are you
particularly interested in, sir?"

"Mr. Pagett intends to study the p0litical aspect of things and the
possibility of bestowing
electoral institutions on the people."

"Wouldn't it be as much to the purpose to bestow point-lace collars
on them?  They need many
things more urgently than votes.  Why it's like giving a bread-pill
for a broken leg."

"Er-I  don't  quite  follow,"  said Pagett, uneasily.

"Well, what's the matter with this country is not in the least
political, but an all round
entanglement of physical, social, and moral evils and corruptions,
all more or less due to the
unnatural treatment of women. You can't gather figs from thistles,
and so long as the system of
infant marriage, the prohibition of the remarriage of widows, the
lifelong imprisonment of wives
and mothers in a worse than penal confinement, and the
withholding from them of any kind of
education or treatment as rational beings continues, the country
can't advance a step.  Half of it
is morally dead, and worse than dead, and that's just the half from
which we have a right to look
for the best impulses.   It's  right  here where  the trouble is, and
not in any political
con~iderations whatsoever."

"But do they marry so early?" said Pagett, vaguely.

"The  average  age is  seven, but thousands are married still earlier.
One result is that girls of
twelve and thirteen have to bear the burden of wifehood and
motherhood, and, as might be
expected, the rate of mortality both for
mothers and children is terrible.  Pauperism, domestic
unhappiness, and a low state of health are
only a few of the consequences of this.  Then, when, as frequently
happens, the boy-husband
dies prematurely, his widow is condemned to worse than death.
She may not re-marry, must live
a secluded and despised life, a life so unnatural that she sometimes
prefers suicide; more often
she goes astray. You don't know in England what such words as
'infant-marriage, baby-wife,
girl-mother, and virgin-widow' mean; but they mean unspeakable
horrors here."

"Well, but the advanced political party here will surely make it
their business to advocate social
reforms as well as political ones," said Pagett.

"Very surely they will do no such thing," said the lady doctor,
emphatically. "I u~ish I could
make you understand. Why, even of the funds devoted to the
Marchioness of Dufferin's
organization for medical aid to the women of India, it was said in
print and in speech, that they
would be better spent on more college scholarships for men. And
in all the advanced parties'
talk-God forg~ve them-and in all their programmes, they carefully
avoid all such subjects. They
will talk about the protection of the cow, for that's an ancient
superstition-they can all
understand that; but the protection of the women is a new and
dangerous idea." She turned to
Pagett impulsively:

"You are a member of the English Parliament. Can you do
nothing? The foundations of their life
are rotten-utterly and bestially rotten.  I could tell your wife things
that I couldn't tell you.  I
know the bf~the inner life

266
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

that belongs to the native, and I know nothing else; and believe me
you might as well try to grow
golden-rod in a mushroom-pit as to make anything of a people that
are born and reared as
thes~these things 're.  The 'men talk of their rights and privileges.  I
have seen the women that
bear these very men, and again-may God forgive the men!"

Pagett's eyes opened with a large wonder.  Dr. Lathrop rose
tempestuously.

"I must be off to lecture," said she, "and I'm sorry that I can't show
you my hospitals; but you had
better believe, sir, that it's more necessary for India than all the
elections in creation."

"That's a woman with a mission, and no mistake," said Pagett, after
a pause.

"Yes; she believes in her work, and so do I," said Orde.  "I've a
notion that in the end it will be
found that the most helpful work done for India in this generation
was wrought by Lady Dufferin
in drawing attention-what work that was, by the way, even with
her husband's great name to
back it
to the needs of women here. In effect, native habits and beliefs are
an organized conspiracy
against the laws of health and happy hf~but there is some dawning
of hope now."

"How d' you account for the general ~differencc, then?"

"I suppose it's due in part to their fatalism and their utter
indifference to all human suffering.
How much do you imagine the great province of the Pun-jab with
over twenty million people
and half a score rich towns has contributed to the mainten~nce of
civil dispen
saries last year? About seven thousand rupees."

"That's seven hundred pounds," said Pagett, quickly.

"I wish it was," replied Orde; "but anyway, it's an absurdly
inadequate sum, and shows one of the
blank sides of Oriental character."

Pagett was silent for a long time. The question of direct and
personal pain did not lie within his
researches.  He pre ferred to discuss the weightier matters of the
law, and contented himself with
murmuring: "They'll do better later on." Then, with a rush,
returning to his first thought:

"But, my dear Orde, if it's merely a class movement of a local and
temporary character, how d'
you account for Bradlaugh, who is at least a man of sense taking it
up?"

"I know nothing of the champion of the New Brahmins but what I
see in the papers.  I suppose
there is something tempting in being hailed by a large assemblage
as the representative of the
aspirations of two hundred and fifty millions of people.  Such a
man looks 'through all the
roaring and the wreaths,' and does not reflect that it is a false
perspective, which, as a matter of
fact, hides the real complex and manifold India from his gaze.  He
can scarcely be expected to
distinguish between the ambitions of a new oligarchy and the real
wants of the people of whom
he knows nothing. But it's strange that a professed Radical should
come to be the chosen
advocate of a movement which has for its aim the revival of an
ancient tyranny. Shows how even
Radicalism  can  fall  into  academic grooves and miss the
essential truths of
THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PAGETT, M.P

267
its own creed.  Believe me, Pagett, to deal with India you want
first-hand knowledge and
experience.  I wish he would come and live here for a couple of
years or so."

"Is not this rather an ad ho~'inem style of argument?"

"Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought
not to go further and weigh the
whole character and quality and upbringing of the man.  You must
admit that the monumental
complacency with which he trotted out his ingenious little
Constitution for India showed a
strange want of imagination and the sense of humor."

"No, I don't quite admit it," said Pagett.

"Well, you know him and I don't, but that's how it strikes a
stranger."  He turned on his heel and
paced the veranda thoughtfully. "And, after all, the burden of the
actual, daily unromantic toil
falls on the shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He
enjoys all the privileges of
recommendation without responsibility, and we-well, perhaps,
when you've seen a little more of
India you'll understand.  To begin with, our death rate's five times
higher than yours-I speak now
for the
brutal bureaucrat-and we work on the refuse of worked-out cities
and exhausted civilizations,
among the bones of the dead."

Pagett laughed.  "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde."

"Is it?  Let's see," said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara,
striding into the sunshine toward a
half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the man's hoe, and went
to a rain-scarped bank at the
bottom of the garden.

"Come here, Pagett," he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil.  After
three strokes there rolled from
under the blade of the hoe the half of a clanking skeleton that
settled at Pagett's feet in an
unseemly jumble of bones.  The M.P. drew back.

"Our houses are built on cemeteries," said Orde. "There are scores
of thousands of graves within
ten miles."

Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a
man who has but little to do
with the dead. "India's a very curious place," said he, after a pause.

"Ah? You'll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch,"
said Orde.

VOLUME V PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS

LISPETH.

Look, you have cast out Love!  What Gods are these
  You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three?  Not so!
  To my own Gods I go.

It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.

THE CONVERT.

She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife.
One
year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their
only poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side;
so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to
the Mission to be baptized.  The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her
Elizabeth, and "Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo
and Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the
wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarth.  This was after the reign of
the Moravian missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten
her title of "Mistress of the Northern Hills."

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her
own people would have done as much for her under any
circumstances,
I do not know; but she grew very lovely.  When a Hill girl grows
lovely, she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look
upon.  Lispeth had a Greek face--one of those faces people paint so
often, and see so seldom.  She was of a pale, ivory color and, for
her race, extremely tall.  Also, she possessed eyes that were
wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in the abominable print-
cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her on the hill-
side unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the
Romans going out to slay.

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when
she reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls.  Her own people
hated
her because she had, they said, become a memsahib and washed
herself daily; and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with
her.  Somehow, one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten in
her shoes, to clean plates and dishes.  So she played with the
Chaplain's children and took classes in the Sunday School, and
read
all the books in the house, and grew more and more beautiful, like
the Princesses in fairy tales.  The Chaplain's wife said that the
girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something
"genteel."  But Lispeth did not want to take service.  She was very
happy where she was.

When travellers--there were not many in those years--came to
Kotgarth, Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear
they might take her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the
unknown world.

One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth
went out for a walk.  She did not walk in the manner of English
ladies--a mile and a half out, and a ride back again.  She covered
between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all
about and about, between Kotgarth and Narkunda.  This time she
came
back at full dusk, stepping down the breakneck descent into
Kotgarth with something heavy in her arms.  The Chaplain's wife
was
dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing hard
and
very exhausted with her burden.  Lispeth put it down on the sofa,
and said simply:

"This is my husband.  I found him on the Bagi Road.  He has hurt
himself.  We will nurse him, and when he is well, your husband
shall marry him to me."

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her
matrimonial
views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror.  However, the
man on the sofa needed attention first.  He was a young
Englishman,
and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged.
Lispeth
said she had found him down the khud, so she had brought him in.

He was breathing queerly and was unconscious.

He was put to bed and tended by the Chaplain, who knew
something of
medicine; and Lispeth waited outside the door in case she could be
useful.  She explained to the Chaplain that this was the man she
meant to marry; and the Chaplain and his wife lectured her
severely
on the impropriety of her conduct.  Lispeth listened quietly, and
repeated her first proposition.  It takes a great deal of
Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as
falling in love at first sight.  Lispeth, having found the man she
worshipped, did not see why she should keep silent as to her
choice.  She had no intention of being sent away, either.  She was
going to nurse that Englishman until he was well enough to marry
her.  This was her little programme.

After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman
recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and
Lispeth--especially Lispeth--for their kindness.  He was a
traveller in the East, he said--they never talked about "globe-
trotters" in those days, when the P. & O. fleet was young and
small--and had come from Dehra Dun to hunt for plants and
butterflies among the Simla hills.  No one at Simla, therefore,
knew anything about him.  He fancied he must have fallen over the
cliff while stalking a fern on a rotten tree-trunk, and that his
coolies must have stolen his baggage and fled.  He thought he
would
go back to Simla when he was a little stronger.  He desired no
more
mountaineering.

He made small haste to go away, and recovered his strength
slowly.

Lispeth objected to being advised either by the Chaplain or his
wife; so the latter spoke to the Englishman, and told him how
matters stood in Lispeth's heart.  He laughed a good deal, and said
it was very pretty and romantic, a perfect idyl of the Himalayas;
but, as he was engaged to a girl at Home, he fancied that nothing
would happen.  Certainly he would behave with discretion.  He did
that.  Still he found it very pleasant to talk to Lispeth, and walk
with Lispeth, and say nice things to her, and call her pet names
while he was getting strong enough to go away.  It meant nothing
at
all to him, and everything in the world to Lispeth.  She was very
happy while the fortnight lasted, because she had found a man to
love.

Being a savage by birth, she took no trouble to hide her feelings,
and the Englishman was amused.  When he went away, Lispeth
walked
with him, up the Hill as far as Narkunda, very troubled and very
miserable.  The Chaplain' s wife, being a good Christian and
disliking anything in the shape of fuss or scandal--Lispeth was
beyond her management entirely--had told the Englishman to tell
Lispeth that he was coming back to marry her.  "She is but a child,
you know, and, I fear, at heart a heathen," said the Chaplain's
wife.  So all the twelve miles up the hill the Englishman, with his
arm around Lispeth's waist, was assuring the girl that he would
come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him promise over and
over
again.  She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed out of
sight along the Muttiani path.

Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarth again, and said to
the Chaplain's wife: "He will come back and marry me.  He has
gone
to his own people to tell them so."  And the Chaplain's wife
soothed Lispeth and said: "He will come back."  At the end of two
months, Lispeth grew impatient, and was told that the Englishman
had gone over the seas to England.  She knew where England was,
because she had read little geography primers; but, of course, she
had no conception of the nature of the sea, being a Hill girl.

There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the House.  Lispeth
had
played with it when she was a child.  She unearthed it again, and
put it together of evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to
imagine where her Englishman was.  As she had no ideas of
distance
or steamboats, her notions were somewhat erroneous.  It would not
have made the least difference had she been perfectly correct; for
the Englishman had no intention of coming back to marry a Hill
girl.  He forgot all about her by the time he was butterfly-hunting
in Assam.  He wrote a book on the East afterwards.  Lispeth's
name
did not appear.

At the end of three months, Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to
Narkunda to see if her Englishman was coming along the road.  It
gave her comfort, and the Chaplain's wife, finding her happier,
thought that she was getting over her "barbarous and most
indelicate folly."  A little later the walks ceased to help Lispeth
and her temper grew very bad.  The Chaplain's wife thought this a
profitable time to let her know the real state of affairs--that the
Englishman had only promised his love to keep her quiet--that he
had never meant anything, and that it was "wrong and improper" of
Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of a
superior clay, besides being promised in marriage to a girl of his
own people.  Lispeth said that all this was clearly impossible,
because he had said he loved her, and the Chaplain's wife had,
with
her own lips, asserted that the Englishman was coming back.

"How can what he and you said be untrue?" asked Lispeth.

"We said it as an excuse to keep you quiet, child," said the
Chaplain's wife.

"Then you have lied to me," said Lispeth, "you and he?"

The Chaplain's wife bowed her head, and said nothing.  Lispeth
was
silent, too for a little time; then she went out down the valley,
and returned in the dress of a Hill girl--infamously dirty, but
without the nose and ear rings.  She had her hair braided into the
long pig-tail, helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear.

"I am going back to my own people," said she.  "You have killed
Lispeth.  There is only left old Jadeh's daughter--the daughter of
a pahari and the servant of Tarka Devi.  You are all liars, you
English."

By the time that the Chaplain's wife had recovered from the shock
of the announcement that Lispeth had 'verted to her mother's gods,
the girl had gone; and she never came back.

She took to her own unclean people savagely, as if to make up the
arrears of the life she had stepped out of; and, in a little time,
she married a wood-cutter who beat her, after the manner of
paharis, and her beauty faded soon.

"There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the
heathen," said the Chaplain's wife, "and I believe that Lispeth was
always at heart an infidel."  Seeing she had been taken into the
Church of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement
does not do credit to the Chaplain's wife.

Lispeth was a very old woman when she died.  She always had a
perfect command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk,
could sometimes be induced to tell the story of her first love-
affair.

It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so
like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of the
Kotgarth Mission."

THREE AND--AN EXTRA.

"When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with
sticks but with gram."
Punjabi Proverb.

After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a
little one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by
both parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the
current.

In the case of the Cusack-Bremmils this reaction did not set in
till the third year after the wedding.  Bremmil was hard to hold at
the best of times; but he was a beautiful husband until the baby
died and Mrs. Bremmil wore black, and grew thin, and mourned as
if
the bottom of the universe had fallen out.  Perhaps Bremmil ought
to have comforted her.  He tried to do so, I think; but the more he
comforted the more Mrs. Bremmil grieved, and, consequently, the
more uncomfortable Bremmil grew.  The fact was that they both
needed a tonic.  And they got it.  Mrs. Bremmil can afford to laugh
now, but it was no laughing matter to her at the time.

You see, Mrs. Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she
existed was fair chance of trouble.  At Simla her bye-name was the
"Stormy Petrel."  She had won that title five times to my own
certain knowledge.  She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny,
woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest
manners in the world.  You had only to mention her name at
afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call
her--well--NOT blessed.  She was clever, witty, brilliant, and
sparkling beyond most of her kind; but possessed of many devils
of
malice and mischievousness.  She could be nice, though, even to
her
own sex.  But that is another story.

Bremmil went off at score after the baby's death and the general
discomfort that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him.  She
took
no pleasure in hiding her captives.  She annexed him publicly, and
saw that the public saw it.  He rode with her, and walked with her,
and talked with her, and picnicked with her, and tiffined at
Peliti's with her, till people put up their eyebrows and said:
"Shocking!"  Mrs. Bremmil stayed at home turning over the dead
baby's frocks and crying into the empty cradle.  She did not care
to do anything else.  But some eight dear, affectionate lady-
friends explained the situation at length to her in case she should
miss the cream of it.  Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly, and thanked
them for their good offices.  She was not as clever as Mrs.

Hauksbee, but she was no fool.  She kept her own counsel, and did
not speak to Bremmil of what she had heard.  This is worth
remembering.  Speaking to, or crying over, a husband never did
any
good yet.

When Bremmil was at home, which was not often, he was more
affectionate than usual; and that showed his hand.  The affection
was forced partly to soothe his own conscience and partly to
soothe
Mrs. Bremmil.  It failed in both regards.

Then "the A.-D.-C. in Waiting was commanded by Their
Excellencies,
Lord and Lady Lytton, to invite Mr. and Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil to
Peterhoff on July 26th at 9.30 P. M."--"Dancing" in the bottom-
left-hand corner.

"I can't go," said Mrs. Bremmil, "it is too soon after poor little
Florrie . . . but it need not stop you, Tom."

She meant what she said then, and Bremmil said that he would go
just to put in an appearance.  Here he spoke the thing which was
not; and Mrs. Bremmil knew it.  She guessed--a woman's guess is
much more accurate than a man's certainty--that he had meant to
go
from the first, and with Mrs. Hauksbee.  She sat down to think, and
the outcome of her thoughts was that the memory of a dead child
was
worth considerably less than the affections of a living husband.

She made her plan and staked her all upon it.  In that hour she
discovered that she knew Tom Bremmil thoroughly, and this
knowledge
she acted on.

"Tom," said she, "I shall be dining out at the Longmores' on the
evening of the 26th.  You'd better dine at the club."

This saved Bremmil from making an excuse to get away and dine
with
Mrs. Hauksbee, so he was grateful, and felt small and mean at the
same time--which was wholesome.  Bremmil left the house at five
for
a ride.  About half-past five in the evening a large leather-
covered basket came in from Phelps' for Mrs. Bremmil.  She was a
woman who knew how to dress; and she had not spent a week on
designing that dress and having it gored, and hemmed, and
herring-
boned, and tucked and rucked (or whatever the terms are) for
nothing.  It was a gorgeous dress--slight mourning.  I can't
describe it, but it was what The Queen calls "a creation"--a thing
that hit you straight between the eyes and made you gasp.  She had
not much heart for what she was going to do; but as she glanced at
the long mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had
never looked so well in her life.  She was a large blonde and, when
she chose, carried herself superbly.

After the dinner at the Longmores, she went on to the dance--a
little late--and encountered Bremmil with Mrs. Hauksbee on his
arm.

That made her flush, and as the men crowded round her for dances
she looked magnificent.  She filled up all her dances except three,
and those she left blank.  Mrs. Hauksbee caught her eye once; and
she knew it was war--real war--between them.  She started
handicapped in the struggle, for she had ordered Bremmil about
just
the least little bit in the world too much; and he was beginning to
resent it.  Moreover, he had never seen his wife look so lovely.

He stared at her from doorways, and glared at her from passages as
she went about with her partners; and the more he stared, the more
taken was he.  He could scarcely believe that this was the woman
with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who used to weep over
the eggs at breakfast.

Mrs. Hauksbee did her best to hold him in play, but, after two
dances, he crossed over to his wife and asked for a dance.

"I'm afraid you've come too late, MISTER Bremmil," she said,
with
her eyes twinkling.

Then he begged her to give him a dance, and, as a great favor, she
allowed him the fifth waltz.  Luckily s  stood vacant on his
programme.  They danced it together, and there was a little flutter
round the room.  Bremmil had a sort of notion that his wife could
dance, but he never knew she danced so divinely.  At the end of
that waltz he asked for another--as a favor, not as a right; and
Mrs. Bremmil said: "Show me your programme, dear!"  He showed
it as
a naughty little schoolboy hands up contraband sweets to a master.

There was a fair sprinkling of "H" on it besides "H" at supper.

Mrs. Bremmil said nothing, but she smiled contemptuously, ran
her
pencil through 7 and 9--two "H's"--and returned the card with her
own name written above--a pet name that only she and her
husband
used.  Then she shook her finger at him, and said, laughing: "Oh,
you silly, SILLY boy!"

Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and--she owned as much--felt that she
had
the worst of it.  Bremmil accepted 7 and 9 gratefully.  They danced
7, and sat out 9 in one of the little tents.  What Bremmil said and
what Mrs. Bremmil said is no concern of any one's.

When the band struck up "The Roast Beef of Old England," the
two
went out into the verandah, and Bremmil began looking for his
wife's dandy (this was before 'rickshaw days) while she went into
the cloak-room.  Mrs. Hauksbee came up and said: "You take me
in to
supper, I think, Mr. Bremmil."  Bremmil turned red and looked
foolish.  "Ah--h'm!  I'm going home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee.
I
think there has been a little mistake."  Being a man, he spoke as
though Mrs. Hauksbee were entirely responsible.

Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloak-room in a swansdown cloak
with a
white "cloud" round her head.  She looked radiant; and she had a
right to.

The couple went off in the darkness together, Bremmil riding very
close to the dandy.

Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me--she looked a trifle faded and
jaded
in the lamplight: "Take my word for it, the silliest woman can
manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage
a
fool."

Then we went in to supper.

THROWN AWAY.

"And some are sulky, while some will plunge
  [So ho!  Steady!  Stand still, you!]
Some you must gentle, and some you must lunge.

  [There!  There!  Who wants to kill you?]
Some--there are losses in every trade--
Will break their hearts ere bitted and made,
Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard,
And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard."
Toolungala Stockyard Chorus.

To rear a boy under what parents call the "sheltered life system"
is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not
wise.  Unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass
through many unnecessary troubles; and may, possibly, come to
extreme grief simply from ignorance of the proper proportions of
things.

Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked
boot.  He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that
blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he
argues
that soap and boots are not wholesome.  Any old dog about the
house
will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears.  Being
young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a
well-mannered
little beast with a chastened appetite.  If he had been kept away
from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity
full-grown and with developed teeth, just consider how fearfully
sick and thrashed he would be!  Apply that motion to the
"sheltered
life," and see how it works.  It does not sound pretty, but it is
the better of two evils.

There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the
"sheltered
life" theory; and the theory killed him dead.  He stayed with his
people all his days, from the hour he was born till the hour he
went into Sandhurst nearly at the top of the list.  He was
beautifully taught in all that wins marks by a private tutor, and
carried the extra weight of "never having given his parents an
hour's anxiety in his life."  What he learnt at Sandhurst beyond
the regular routine is of no great consequence.  He looked about
him, and he found soap and blacking, so to speak, very good.  He
ate a little, and came out of Sandhurst not so high as he went in.

Them there was an interval and a scene with his people, who
expected much from him.  Next a year of living "unspotted from
the
world" in a third-rate depot battalion where all the juniors were
children, and all the seniors old women; and lastly he came out to
India, where he was cut off from the support of his parents, and
had no one to fall back on in time of trouble except himself.

Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take
things too seriously--the midday sun always excepted.  Too much
work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too
much
assorted vice or too much drink.  Flirtation does not matter
because every one is being transferred and either you or she leave
the Station, and never return.  Good work does not matter, because
a man is judged by his worst output and another man takes all the
credit of his best as a rule.  Bad work does not matter, because
other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India
than
anywhere else.  Amusements do not matter, because you must
repeat
them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most
amusements only mean trying to win another person's money.

Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and
if you die another man takes over your place and your office in the
eight hours between death and burial.  Nothing matters except
Home
furlough and acting allowances, and these only because they are
scarce.  This is a slack, kutcha country where all men work with
imperfect instruments; and the wisest thing is to take no one and
nothing in earnest, but to escape as soon as ever you can to some
place where amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the
having.

But this Boy--the tale is as old as the Hills--came out, and took
all things seriously.  He was pretty and was petted.  He took the
pettings seriously, and fretted over women not worth saddling a
pony to call upon.  He found his new free life in India very good.

It DOES look attractive in the beginning, from a Subaltern's point
of view--all ponies, partners, dancing, and so on.  He tasted it as
the puppy tastes the soap.  Only he came late to the eating, with a
growing set of teeth.  He had no sense of balance--just like the
puppy--and could not understand why he was not treated with the
consideration he received under his father's roof.  This hurt his
feelings.

He quarrelled with other boys, and, being sensitive to the marrow,
remembered these quarrels, and they excited him.  He found whist,
and gymkhanas, and things of that kind (meant to amuse one after
office) good; but he took them seriously too, just as he took the
"head" that followed after drink.  He lost his money over whist and
gymkhanas because they were new to him.

He took his losses seriously, and wasted as much energy and
interest over a two-goldmohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with
their manes hogged, as if it had been the Derby.  One-half of this
came from inexperience--much as the puppy squabbles with the
corner
of the hearth-rug--and the other half from the dizziness bred by
stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a
livelier one.  No one told him about the soap and the blacking
because an average man takes it for granted that an average man is
ordinarily careful in regard to them.  It was pitiful to watch The
Boy knocking himself to pieces, as an over-handled colt falls down
and cuts himself when he gets away from the groom.

This unbridled license in amusements not worth the trouble of
breaking line for, much less rioting over, endured for six months--
all through one cold weather--and then we thought that the heat
and
the knowledge of having lost his money and health and lamed his
horses would sober The Boy down, and he would stand steady.  In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this would have happened.  You
can see the principle working in any Indian Station.  But this
particular case fell through because The Boy was sensitive and
took
things seriously--as I may have said some seven times before.  Of
course, we couldn't tell how his excesses struck him personally.

They were nothing very heart-breaking or above the average.  He
might be crippled for life financially, and want a little nursing.

Still the memory of his performances would wither away in one
hot
weather, and the shroff would help him to tide over the money
troubles.  But he must have taken another view altogether and have
believed himself ruined beyond redemption.  His Colonel talked to
him severely when the cold weather ended.  That made him more
wretched than ever; and it was only an ordinary "Colonel's
wigging!"

What follows is a curious instance of the fashion in which we are
all linked together and made responsible for one another.  THE
thing that kicked the beam in The Boy's mind was a remark that a
woman made when he was talking to her.  There is no use in
repeating it, for it was only a cruel little sentence, rapped out
before thinking, that made him flush to the roots of his hair.  He
kept himself to himself for three days, and then put in for two
days' leave to go shooting near a Canal Engineer's Rest House
about
thirty miles out.  He got his leave, and that night at Mess was
noisier and more offensive than ever.  He said that he was "going
to shoot big game, and left at half-past ten o'clock in an ekka.

Partridge--which was the only thing a man could get near the Rest
House--is not big game; so every one laughed.

Next morning one of the Majors came in from short leave, and
heard
that The Boy had gone out to shoot "big game."  The Major had
taken
an interest in The Boy, and had, more than once, tried to check
him
in the cold weather.  The Major put up his eyebrows when he
heard
of the expedition and went to The Boy's room, where he
rummaged.

Presently he came out and found me leaving cards on the Mess.

There was no one else in the ante-room.

He said: "The Boy has gone out shooting.  DOES a man shoot tetur
with a revolver and a writing-case?"

I said: "Nonsense, Major!" for I saw what was in his mind.

He said: "Nonsense or nonsense, I'm going to the Canal now--at
once.  I don't feel easy."

Then he thought for a minute, and said: "Can you lie?"

"You know best," I answered.  "It's my profession."

"Very well," said the Major; "you must come out with me now--at
once--in an ekka to the Canal to shoot black-buck.  Go and put on
shikar-kit--quick--and drive here with a gun."

The Major was a masterful man; and I knew that he would not give
orders for nothing.  So I obeyed, and on return found the Major
packed up in an ekka--gun-cases and food slung below--all ready
for
a shooting-trip.

He dismissed the driver and drove himself.  We jogged along
quietly
while in the station; but as soon as we got to the dusty road
across the plains, he made that pony fly.  A country-bred can do
nearly anything at a pinch.  We covered the thirty miles in under
three hours, but the poor brute was nearly dead.

Once I said: "What's the blazing hurry, Major?"

He said, quietly: "The Boy has been alone, by himself, for--one,
two, five--fourteen hours now!  I tell you, I don't feel easy."

This uneasiness spread itself to me, and I helped to beat the pony.

When we came to the Canal Engineer's Rest House the Major
called
for The Boy's servant; but there was no answer.  Then we went up
to
the house, calling for The Boy by name; but there was no answer.

"Oh, he's out shooting," said I.

Just then I saw through one of the windows a little hurricane-lamp
burning.  This was at four in the afternoon.  We both stopped dead
in the verandah, holding our breath to catch every sound; and we
heard, inside the room, the "brr--brr--brr" of a multitude of
flies.  The Major said nothing, but he took off his helmet and we
entered very softly.

The Boy was dead on the charpoy in the centre of the bare, lime-
washed room.  He had shot his head nearly to pieces with his
revolver.  The gun-cases were still strapped, so was the bedding,
and on the table lay The Boy's writing-case with photographs.  He
had gone away to die like a poisoned rat!

The Major said to himself softly: "Poor Boy!  Poor, POOR devil!"
Then he turned away from the bed and said: "I want your help in
this business."

Knowing The Boy was dead by his own hand, I saw exactly what
that
help would be, so I passed over to the table, took a chair, lit a
cheroot, and began to go through the writing-case; the Major
looking over my shoulder and repeating to himself: "We came too
late!--Like a rat in a hole!--Poor, POOR devil!"

The Boy must have spent half the night in writing to his people,
and to his Colonel, and to a girl at Home; and as soon as he had
finished, must have shot himself, for he had been dead a long time
when we came in.

I read all that he had written, and passed over each sheet to the
Major as I finished it.

We saw from his accounts how very seriously he had taken
everything.  He wrote about "disgrace which he was unable to
bear"--
"indelible shame"--"criminal folly"--"wasted life," and so on;
besides a lot of private things to his Father and Mother too much
too sacred to put into print.  The letter to the girl at Home was
the most pitiful of all; and I choked as I read it.  The Major made
no attempt to keep dry-eyed.  I respected him for that.  He read
and rocked himself to and fro, and simply cried like a woman
without caring to hide it.  The letters were so dreary and hopeless
and touching.  We forgot all about The Boy's follies, and only
thought of the poor Thing on the charpoy and the scrawled sheets
in
our hands.  It was utterly impossible to let the letters go Home.

They would have broken his Father's heart and killed his Mother
after killing her belief in her son.

At last the Major dried his eyes openly, and said: "Nice sort of
thing to spring on an English family!  What shall we do?"

I said, knowing what the Major had brought me but for: "The Boy
died of cholera.  We were with him at the time.  We can't commit
ourselves to half-measures.  Come along."

Then began one of the most grimy comic scenes I have ever taken
part in--the concoction of a big, written lie, bolstered with
evidence, to soothe The Boy's people at Home.  I began the rough
draft of a letter, the Major throwing in hints here and there while
he gathered up all the stuff that The Boy had written and burnt it
in the fireplace.  It was a hot, still evening when we began, and
the lamp burned very badly.  In due course I got the draft to my
satisfaction, setting forth how The Boy was the pattern of all
virtues, beloved by his regiment, with every promise of a great
career before him, and so on; how we had helped him through the
sickness--it was no time for little lies, you will understand--and
how he had died without pain.  I choked while I was putting down
these things and thinking of the poor people who would read them.

Then I laughed at the grotesqueness of the affair, and the laughter
mixed itself up with the choke--and the Major said that we both
wanted drinks.

I am afraid to say how much whiskey we drank before the letter
was
finished.  It had not the least effect on us.  Then we took off The
Boy's watch, locket, and rings.

Lastly, the Major said: "We must send a lock of hair too.  A
woman
values that."

But there were reasons why we could not find a lock fit to send.

The Boy was black-haired, and so was the Major, luckily.  I cut off
a piece of the Major's hair above the temple with a knife, and put
it into the packet we were making.  The laughing-fit and the
chokes
got hold of me again, and I had to stop.  The Major was nearly as
bad; and we both knew that the worst part of the work was to
come.

We sealed up the packet, photographs, locket, seals, ring, letter,
and lock of hair with The Boy's sealing-wax and The Boy's seal.

Then the Major said: "For God's sake let's get outside--away from
the room--and think!"

We went outside, and walked on the banks of the Canal for an
hour,
eating and drinking what we had with us, until the moon rose.  I
know now exactly how a murderer feels.  Finally, we forced
ourselves back to the room with the lamp and the Other Thing in
it,
and began to take up the next piece of work.  I am not going to
write about this.  It was too horrible.  We burned the bedstead and
dropped the ashes into the Canal; we took up the matting of the
room and treated that in the same way.  I went off to a village and
borrowed two big hoes--I did not want the villagers to help--while
the Major arranged--the other matters.  It took us four hours' hard
work to make the grave.  As we worked, we argued out whether it
was
right to say as much as we remembered of the Burial of the Dead.

We compromised things by saying the Lord's Prayer with a private
unofficial prayer for the peace of the soul of The Boy.  Then we
filled in the grave and went into the verandah--not the house--to
lie down to sleep.  We were dead-tired.

When we woke the Major said, wearily: "We can't go back till to-
morrow.  We must give him a decent time to die in.  He died early
THIS morning, remember.  That seems more natural."  So the
Major
must have been lying awake all the time, thinking.

I said: "Then why didn't we bring the body back to the
cantonments?"

The Major thought for a minute:--"Because the people bolted when
they heard of the cholera.  And the ekka has gone!"

That was strictly true.  We had forgotten all about the ekka-pony,
and he had gone home.

So, we were left there alone, all that stifling day, in the Canal
Rest House, testing and re-testing our story of The Boy's death to
see if it was weak at any point.  A native turned up in the
afternoon, but we said that a Sahib was dead of cholera, and he ran
away.  As the dusk gathered, the Major told me all his fears about
The Boy, and awful stories of suicide or nearly-carried-out
suicide--tales that made one's hair crisp.  He said that he himself
had once gone into the same Valley of the Shadow as the Boy,
when
he was young and new to the country; so he understood how things
fought together in The Boy's poor jumbled head.  He also said that
youngsters, in their repentant moments, consider their sins much
more serious and ineffaceable than they really are.  We talked
together all through the evening, and rehearsed the story of the
death of The Boy.  As soon as the moon was up, and The Boy,
theoretically, just buried, we struck across country for the
Station.  We walked from eight till six o'clock in the morning; but
though we were dead-tired, we did not forget to go to The Boy's
room and put away his revolver with the proper amount of
cartridges
in the pouch.  Also to set his writing-case on the table.  We found
the Colonel and reported the death, feeling more like murderers
than ever.  Then we went to bed and slept the clock round; for
there was no more in us.

The tale had credence as long as was necessary, for every one
forgot about The Boy before a fortnight was over.  Many people,
however, found time to say that the Major had behaved
scandalously
in not bringing in the body for a regimental funeral.  The saddest
thing of all was a letter from The Boy's mother to the Major and
me--with big inky blisters all over the sheet.  She wrote the
sweetest possible things about our great kindness, and the
obligation she would be under to us as long as she lived.

All things considered, she WAS under an obligation; but not
exactly
as she meant.

MISS YOUGHAL'S SAIS.

When Man and Woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?
Mahomedan Proverb.

Some people say that there is no romance in India.  Those people
are wrong.  Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for
us.

Sometimes more.

Strickland was in the Police, and people did not understand him;
so
they said he was a doubtful sort of man and passed by on the other
side.  Strickland had himself to thank for this.  He held the
extraordinary theory that a Policeman in India should try to know
as much about the natives as the natives themselves.  Now, in the
whole of Upper India, there is only ONE man who can pass for
Hindu
or Mohammedan, chamar or faquir, as he pleases.  He is feared
and
respected by the natives from the Ghor Kathri to the Jamma
Musjid;
and he is supposed to have the gift of invisibility and executive
control over many Devils.  But what good has this done him with
the
Government?  None in the world.  He has never got Simla for his
charge; and his name is almost unknown to Englishmen.

Strickland was foolish enough to take that man for his model; and,
following out his absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no
respectable man would think of exploring--all among the native
riff-raff.  He educated himself in this peculiar way for seven
years, and people could not appreciate it.  He was perpetually
"going Fantee" among the natives, which, of course, no man with
any
sense believes in.  He was initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad
once, when he was on leave; he knew the Lizard-Song of the
Sansis,
and the Halli-Hukk dance, which is a religious can-can of a
startling kind.  When a man knows who dances the Halli-Hukk,
and
how, and when, and where, he knows something to be proud of.
He
has gone deeper than the skin.  But Strickland was not proud,
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the
Death Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had
mastered
the thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-
thief alone near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of
a
Border mosque and conducted service in the manner of a Sunni
Mollah.

His crowning achievement was spending eleven days as a faquir in
the gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and there picking up the
threads of the great Nasiban Murder Case.  But people said, justly
enough: "Why on earth can't Strickland sit in his office and write
up his diary, and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up
the incapacity of his seniors?"  So the Nasiban Murder Case did
him
no good departmentally; but, after his first feeling of wrath, he
returned to his outlandish custom of prying into native life.  By
the way, when a man once acquires a taste for this particular
amusement, it abides with him all his days.  It is the most
fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted.  Where other
men
took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what he
called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the
time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up
for a
while.  He was a quiet, dark young fellow--spare, black-eyes--and,
when he was not thinking of something else, a very interesting
companion.  Strickland on Native Progress as he had seen it was
worth hearing.  Natives hated Strickland; but they were afraid of
him.  He knew too much.

When the Youghals came into the station, Strickland--very
gravely,
as he did everything--fell in love with Miss Youghal; and she,
after a while, fell in love with him because she could not
understand him.  Then Strickland told the parents; but Mrs.
Youghal
said she was not going to throw her daughter into the worst paid
Department in the Empire, and old Youghal said, in so many
words,
that he mistrusted Strickland's ways and works, and would thank
him
not to speak or write to his daughter any more.  "Very well," said
Strickland, for he did not wish to make his lady-love's life a
burden.  After one long talk with Miss Youghal he dropped the
business entirely.

The Youghals went up to Simla in April.

In July, Strickland secured three months' leave on "urgent private
affairs."  He locked up his house--though not a native in the
Providence would wittingly have touched "Estreekin Sahib's" gear
for the world--and went down to see a friend of his, an old dyer,
at Tarn Taran.

Here all trace of him was lost, until a sais met me on the Simla
Mall with this extraordinary note:

"Dear old man,

Please give bearer a box of cheroots--Supers, No. I, for
preference.  They are freshest at the Club.  I'll repay when I
reappear; but at present I'm out of Society.

Yours,

E. STRICKLAND."

I ordered two boxes, and handed them over to the sais with my
love.

That sais was Strickland, and he was in old Youghal's employ,
attached to Miss Youghal's Arab.  The poor fellow was suffering
for
an English smoke, and knew that whatever happened I should hold
my
tongue till the business was over.

Later on, Mrs. Youghal, who was wrapped up in her servants,
began
talking at houses where she called of her paragon among
saises--the
man who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick
flowers for the breakfast-table, and who blacked--actually
BLACKED--
the hoofs of his horse like a London coachman!  The turnout of
Miss Youghal's Arab was a wonder and a delight.  Strickland--
Dulloo, I mean--found his reward in the pretty things that Miss
Youghal said to him when she went out riding.  Her parents were
pleased to find she had forgotten all her foolishness for young
Strickland and said she was a good girl.

Strickland vows that the two months of his service were the most
rigid mental discipline he has ever gone through.  Quite apart from
the little fact that the wife of one of his fellow-saises fell in
love with him and then tried to poison him with arsenic because he
would have nothing to do with her, he had to school himself into
keeping quiet when Miss Youghal went out riding with some man
who
tried to flirt with her, and he was forced to trot behind carrying
the blanket and hearing every word!  Also, he had to keep his
temper when he was slanged in "Benmore" porch by a policeman--
especially once when he was abused by a Naik he had himself
recruited from Isser Jang village--or, worse still, when a young
subaltern called him a pig for not making way quickly enough.

But the life had its compensations.  He obtained great insight into
the ways and thefts of saises--enough, he says, to have summarily
convicted half the chamar population of the Punjab if he had been
on business.  He became one of the leading players at knuckle-
bones, which all jhampanis and many saises play while they are
waiting outside the Government House or the Gaiety Theatre of
nights; he learned to smoke tobacco that was three-fourths
cowdung;
and he heard the wisdom of the grizzled Jemadar of the
Government
House saises, whose words are valuable.  He saw many things
which
amused him; and he states, on honor, that no man can appreciate
Simla properly, till he has seen it from the sais's point of view.

He also says that, if he chose to write all he saw, his head would
be broken in several places.

Strickland's account of the agony he endured on wet nights,
hearing
the music and seeing the lights in "Benmore," with his toes
tingling for a waltz and his head in a horse-blanket, is rather
amusing.  One of these days, Strickland is going to write a little
book on his experiences.  That book will be worth buying; and
even
more, worth suppressing.

Thus, he served faithfully as Jacob served for Rachel; and his
leave was nearly at an end when the explosion came.  He had
really
done his best to keep his temper in the hearing of the flirtations
I have mentioned; but he broke down at last.  An old and very
distinguished General took Miss Youghal for a ride, and began that
specially offensive "you're-only-a-little-girl" sort of flirtation--
most difficult for a woman to turn aside deftly, and most
maddening to listen to.  Miss Youghal was shaking with fear at the
things he said in the hearing of her sais.  Dulloo--Strickland--
stood it as long as he could.  Then he caught hold of the General's
bridle, and, in most fluent English, invited him to step off and be
heaved over the cliff.  Next minute Miss Youghal began crying;
and
Strickland saw that he had hopelessly given himself away, and
everything was over.

The General nearly had a fit, while Miss Youghal was sobbing out
the story of the disguise and the engagement that wasn't recognized
by the parents.  Strickland was furiously angry with himself and
more angry with the General for forcing his hand; so he said
nothing, but held the horse's head and prepared to thrash the
General as some sort of satisfaction, but when the General had
thoroughly grasped the story, and knew who Strickland was, he
began
to puff and blow in the saddle, and nearly rolled off with
laughing.  He said Strickland deserved a V. C., if it were only for
putting on a sais's blanket.  Then he called himself names, and
vowed that he deserved a thrashing, but he was too old to take it
from Strickland.  Then he complimented Miss Youghal on her
lover.

The scandal of the business never struck him; for he was a nice old
man, with a weakness for flirtations.  Then he laughed again, and
said that old Youghal was a fool.  Strickland let go of the cob's
head, and suggested that the General had better help them, if that
was his opinion.  Strickland knew Youghal's weakness for men
with
titles and letters after their names and high official position.

"It's rather like a forty-minute farce," said the General, "but
begad, I WILL help, if it's only to escape that tremendous
thrashing I deserved.  Go along to your home, my sais-Policeman,
and change into decent kit, and I'll attack Mr. Youghal.  Miss
Youghal, may I ask you to canter home and wait?

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

About seven minutes later, there was a wild hurroosh at the Club.

A sais, with a blanket and head-rope, was asking all the men he
knew: "For Heaven's sake lend me decent clothes!"  As the men
did
not recognize him, there were some peculiar scenes before
Strickland could get a hot bath, with soda in it, in one room, a
shirt here, a collar there, a pair of trousers elsewhere, and so
on.  He galloped off, with half the Club wardrobe on his back, and
an utter stranger's pony under him, to the house of old Youghal.

The General, arrayed in purple and fine linen, was before him.

What the General had said Strickland never knew, but Youghal
received Strickland with moderate civility; and Mrs. Youghal,
touched by the devotion of the transformed Dulloo, was almost
kind.

The General beamed, and chuckled, and Miss Youghal came in,
and
almost before old Youghal knew where he was, the parental
consent
had been wrenched out and Strickland had departed with Miss
Youghal
to the Telegraph Office to wire for his kit.  The final
embarrassment was when an utter stranger attacked him on the
Mall
and asked for the stolen pony.

So, in the end, Strickland and Miss Youghal were married, on the
strict understanding that Strickland should drop his old ways, and
stick to Departmental routine, which pays best and leads to Simla.

Strickland was far too fond of his wife, just then, to break his
word, but it was a sore trial to him; for the streets and the
bazars, and the sounds in them, were full of meaning to Strickland,
and these called to him to come back and take up his wanderings
and
his discoveries.  Some day, I will tell you how he broke his
promise to help a friend.  That was long since, and he has, by this
time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar.  He is
forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the
signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would
master, he must always continue to learn.

But he fills in his Departmental returns beautifully.

YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.

I am dying for you, and you are dying for another.
Punjabi Proverb.

When the Gravesend tender left the P. & 0. steamer for Bombay
and
went back to catch the train to Town, there were many people in it
crying.  But the one who wept most, and most openly was Miss
Agnes
Laiter.  She had reason to cry, because the only man she ever
loved--or ever could love, so she said--was going out to India; and
India, as every one knows, is divided equally between jungle,
tigers, cobras, cholera, and sepoys.

Phil Garron, leaning over the side of the steamer in the rain, felt
very unhappy too; but he did not cry.  He was sent out to "tea."
What "tea" meant he had not the vaguest idea, but fancied that he
would have to ride on a prancing horse over hills covered with tea-
vines, and draw a sumptuous salary for doing so; and he was very
grateful to his uncle for getting him the berth.  He was really
going to reform all his slack, shiftless ways, save a large
proportion of his magnificent salary yearly, and, in a very short
time, return to marry Agnes Laiter.  Phil Garron had been lying
loose on his friends' hands for three years, and, as he had nothing
to do, he naturally fell in love.  He was very nice; but he was not
strong in his views and opinions and principles, and though he
never came to actual grief his friends were thankful when he said
good-bye, and went out to this mysterious "tea" business near
Darjiling.  They said:--"God bless you, dear boy!  Let us never see
your face again,"--or at least that was what Phil was given to
understand.

When he sailed, he was very full of a great plan to prove himself
several hundred times better than any one had given him credit
for--
to work like a horse, and triumphantly marry Agnes Laiter.  He had
many good points besides his good looks; his only fault being that
he was weak, the least little bit in the world weak.  He had as
much notion of economy as the Morning Sun; and yet you could
not
lay your hand on any one item, and say: "Herein Phil Garron is
extravagant or reckless."  Nor could you point out any particular
vice in his character; but he was "unsatisfactory" and as workable
as putty.

Agnes Laiter went about her duties at home--her family objected to
the engagement--with red eyes, while Phil was sailing to
Darjiling--
"a port on the Bengal Ocean," as his mother used to tell her
friends.  He was popular enough on board ship, made many
acquaintances and a moderately large liquor bill, and sent off huge
letters to Agnes Laiter at each port.  Then he fell to work on this
plantation, somewhere between Darjiling and Kangra, and, though
the
salary and the horse and the work were not quite all he had
fancied, he succeeded fairly well, and gave himself much
unnecessary credit for his perseverance.

In the course of time, as he settled more into collar, and his work
grew fixed before him, the face of Agnes Laiter went out of his
mind and only came when he was at leisure, which was not often.
He
would forget all about her for a fortnight, and remember her with a
start, like a school-boy who has forgotten to learn his lesson.

She did not forget Phil, because she was of the kind that never
forgets.  Only, another man--a really desirable young man--
presented himself before Mrs. Laiter; and the chance of a marriage
with Phil was as far off as ever; and his letters were so
unsatisfactory; and there was a certain amount of domestic
pressure
brought to bear on the girl; and the young man really was an
eligible person as incomes go; and the end of all things was that
Agnes married him, and wrote a tempestuous whirlwind of a letter
to
Phil in the wilds of Darjiling, and said she should never know a
happy moment all the rest of her life.  Which was a true prophecy.

Phil got that letter, and held himself ill-treated.  This was two
years after he had come out; but by dint of thinking fixedly of
Agnes Laiter, and looking at her photograph, and patting himself
on
the back for being one of the most constant lovers in history, and
warming to the work as he went on, he really fancied that he had
been very hardly used.  He sat down and wrote one final letter--a
really pathetic "world without end, amen," epistle; explaining how
he would be true to Eternity, and that all women were very much
alike, and he would hide his broken heart, etc., etc.; but if, at
any future time, etc., etc., he could afford to wait, etc., etc.,
unchanged affections, etc., etc., return to her old love, etc.,
etc., for eight closely-written pages.  From an artistic point of
view, it was very neat work, but an ordinary Philistine, who knew
the state of Phil's real feelings--not the ones he rose to as he
went on writing--would have called it the thoroughly mean and
selfish work of a thoroughly mean and selfish, weak man.  But this
verdict would have been incorrect.  Phil paid for the postage, and
felt every word he had written for at least two days and a half.

It was the last flicker before the light went out.

That letter made Agnes Laiter very unhappy, and she cried and put
it away in her desk, and became Mrs. Somebody Else for the good
of
her family.  Which is the first duty of every Christian maid.

Phil went his ways, and thought no more of his letter, except as an
artist thinks of a neatly touched-in sketch.  His ways were not
bad, but they were not altogether good until they brought him
across Dunmaya, the daughter of a Rajput ex-Subadar-Major of
our
Native Army.  The girl had a strain of Hill blood in her, and, like
the Hill women, was not a purdah nashin.  Where Phil met her, or
how he heard of her, does not matter.  She was a good girl and
handsome, and, in her way, very clever and shrewd; though, of
course, a little hard.  It is to be remembered that Phil was living
very comfortably, denying himself no small luxury, never putting
by
an anna, very satisfied with himself and his good intentions, was
dropping all his English correspondents one by one, and beginning
more and more to look upon this land as his home.  Some men fall
this way; and they are of no use afterwards.  The climate where he
was stationed was good, and it really did not seem to him that
there was anything to go Home for.

He did what many planters have done before him--that is to say, he
made up his mind to marry a Hill girl and settle down.  He was
seven and twenty then, with a long life before him, but no spirit
to go through with it.  So he married Dunmaya by the forms of the
English Church, and some fellow-planters said he was a fool, and
some said he was a wise man.  Dunmaya was a thoroughly honest
girl,
and, in spite of her reverence for an Englishman, had a reasonable
estimate of her husband's weaknesses.  She managed him tenderly,
and became, in less than a year, a very passable imitation of an
English lady in dress and carriage.  [It is curious to think that a
Hill man, after a lifetime's education, is a Hill man still; but a
Hill woman can in six months master most of the ways of her
English
sisters.  There was a coolie woman once.  But that is another
story.]  Dunmaya dressed by preference in black and yellow, and
looked well.

Meantime the letter lay in Agnes's desk, and now and again she
would think of poor resolute hard-working Phil among the cobras
and
tigers of Darjiling, toiling in the vain hope that she might come
back to him.  Her husband was worth ten Phils, except that he had
rheumatism of the heart.  Three years after he was married--and
after he had tried Nice and Algeria for his complaint--he went to
Bombay, where he died, and set Agnes free.  Being a devout
woman,
she looked on his death and the place of it, as a direct
interposition of Providence, and when she had recovered from the
shock, she took out and reread Phil's letter with the "etc., etc.,"
and the big dashes, and the little dashes, and kissed it several
times.  No one knew her in Bombay; she had her husband's
income,
which was a large one, and Phil was close at hand.  It was wrong
and improper, of course, but she decided, as heroines do in novels,
to find her old lover, to offer him her hand and her gold, and with
him spend the rest of her life in some spot far from unsympathetic
souls.  She sat for two months, alone in Watson's Hotel,
elaborating this decision, and the picture was a pretty one.  Then
she set out in search of Phil Garron, Assistant on a tea plantation
with a more than usually unpronounceable name.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

She found him.  She spent a month over it,, for his plantation was
not in the Darjiling district at all, but nearer Kangra.  Phil was
very little altered, and Dunmaya was very nice to her.

Now the particular sin and shame of the whole business is that
Phil, who really is not worth thinking of twice, was and is loved
by Dunmaya, and more than loved by Agnes, the whole of whose
life
he seems to have spoilt.

Worst of all, Dunmaya is making a decent man of him; and he will
be
ultimately saved from perdition through her training.

Which is manifestly unfair.

FALSE DAWN.

To-night God knows what thing shall tide,
  The Earth is racked and faint--
Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed;
And we, who from the Earth were made,
  Thrill with our Mother's pain.

                           In Durance.

No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; though women
may sometimes whisper it to one another after a dance, when they
are putting up their hair for the night and comparing lists of
victims.  A man, of course, cannot assist at these functions.  So
the tale must be told from the outside--in the dark--all wrong.

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments
reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later
on.  Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will
find that you do yourself harm.

Saumarez knew this when he made up his mind to propose to the
elder
Miss Copleigh.  Saumarez was a strange man, with few merits, so
far
as men could see, though he was popular with women, and carried
enough conceit to stock a Viceroy's Council and leave a little over
for the Commander-in-Chief's Staff.  He was a Civilian.  Very
many
women took an interest in Saumarez, perhaps, because his manner
to
them was offensive.  If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset
of your acquaintance, he may not love you, but he will take a deep
interest in your movements ever afterwards.  The elder Miss
Copleigh was nice, plump, winning and pretty.  The younger was
not
so pretty, and, from men disregarding the hint set forth above, her
style was repellant and unattractive.  Both girls had, practically,
the same figure, and there was a strong likeness between them in
look and voice; though no one could doubt for an instant which
was
the nicer of the two.

Saumarez made up his mind, as soon as they came into the station
from Behar, to marry the elder one.  At least, we all made sure
that he would, which comes to the same thing.  She was two and
twenty, and he was thirty-three, with pay and allowances of nearly
fourteen hundred rupees a month.  So the match, as we arranged it,
was in every way a good one.  Saumarez was his name, and
summary
was his nature, as a man once said.  Having drafted his Resolution,
he formed a Select Committee of One to sit upon it, and resolved
to
take his time.  In our unpleasant slang, the Copleigh girls "hunted
in couples."  That is to say, you could do nothing with one without
the other.  They were very loving sisters; but their mutual
affection was sometimes inconvenient.  Saumarez held the
balance-
hair true between them, and none but himself could have said to
which side his heart inclined; though every one guessed.  He rode
with them a good deal and danced with them, but he never
succeeded
in detaching them from each other for any length of time.

Women said that the two girls kept together through deep mistrust,
each fearing that the other would steal a march on her.  But that
has nothing to do with a man.  Saumarez was silent for good or
bad,
and as business-likely attentive as he could be, having due regard
to his work and his polo.  Beyond doubt both girls were fond of
him.

As the hot weather drew nearer, and Saumarez made no sign,
women
said that you could see their trouble in the eyes of the girls--
that they were looking strained, anxious, and irritable.  Men are
quite blind in these matters unless they have more of the woman
than the man in their composition, in which case it does not matter
what they say or think.  I maintain it was the hot April days that
took the color out of the Copleigh girls' cheeks.  They should have
been sent to the Hills early.  No one--man or woman--feels an
angel
when the hot weather is approaching.  The younger sister grew
more
cynical--not to say acid--in her ways; and the winningness of the
elder wore thin.  There was more effort in it.

Now the Station wherein all these things happened was, though not
a
little one, off the line of rail, and suffered through want of
attention.  There were no gardens or bands or amusements worth
speaking of, and it was nearly a day's journey to come into Lahore
for a dance.  People were grateful for small things to interest
them.

About the beginning of May, and just before the final exodus of
Hill-goers, when the weather was very hot and there were not more
than twenty people in the Station, Saumarez gave a moonlight
riding-picnic at an old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the
river.  It was a "Noah's Ark" picnic; and there was to be the usual
arrangement of quarter-mile intervals between each couple, on
account of the dust.  Six couples came altogether, including
chaperons.  Moonlight picnics are useful just at the very end of
the season, before all the girls go away to the Hills.  They lead
to understandings, and should be encouraged by chaperones;
especially those whose girls look sweetish in riding habits.  I
knew a case once.  But that is another story.  That picnic was
called the "Great Pop Picnic," because every one knew Saumarez
would propose then to the eldest Miss Copleigh; and, beside his
affair, there was another which might possibly come to happiness.

The social atmosphere was heavily charged and wanted clearing.

We met at the parade-ground at ten: the night was fearfully hot.

The horses sweated even at walking-pace, but anything was better
than sitting still in our own dark houses.  When we moved off
under
the full moon we were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez
rode with the Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the
procession, wondering with whom Saumarez would ride home.
Every
one was happy and contented; but we all felt that things were
going
to happen.  We rode slowly: and it was nearly midnight before we
reached the old tomb, facing the ruined tank, in the decayed
gardens where we were going to eat and drink.  I was late in
coming
up; and before I went into the garden, I saw that the horizon to
the north carried a faint, dun-colored feather.  But no one would
have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment as
this picnic--and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.

We gathered by the tank.  Some one had brought out a
banjo--which
is a most sentimental instrument--and three or four of us sang.

You must not laugh at this.  Our amusements in out-of-the-way
Stations are very few indeed.  Then we talked in groups or
together, lying under the trees, with the sun-baked roses dropping
their petals on our feet, until supper was ready.  It was a
beautiful supper, as cold and as iced as you could wish; and we
stayed long over it.

I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter; but nobody
seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind
began lashing the orange-trees with a sound like the noise of the
sea.  Before we knew where we were, the dust-storm was on us,
and
everything was roaring, whirling darkness.  The supper-table was
blown bodily into the tank.  We were afraid of staying anywhere
near the old tomb for fear it might be blown down.  So we felt our
way to the orange-trees where the horses were picketed and waited
for the storm to blow over.  Then the little light that was left
vanished, and you could not see your hand before your face.  The
air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed of the river, that
filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and coated
eyebrows
and moustaches.  It was one of the worst dust-storms of the year.

We were all huddled together close to the trembling horses, with
the thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting like
water from a sluice, all ways at once.  There was no danger, of
course, unless the horses broke loose.  I was standing with my
head
downward and my hands over my mouth, hearing the trees
thrashing
each other.  I could not see who was next me till the flashes came.

Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss
Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of me.  I recognized the
eldest Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet,
and
the younger had not.  All the electricity in the air had gone into
my body and I was quivering and tingling from head to
foot--exactly
as a corn shoots and tingles before rain.  It was a grand storm.

The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and pitching it to
leeward in great heaps; and the heat beat up from the ground like
the heat of the Day of Judgment.

The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard a
despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly
and softly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind:
"O my God!"  Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my
arms,
saying: "Where is my horse?  Get my horse.  I want to go home.  I
WANT to go home.  Take me home."

I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened
her; so I said there was no danger, but she must wait till the
storm blew over.  She answered: "It is not THAT!  It is not THAT!
I want to go home!  O take me away from here!"

I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her
brush past me and go away.  It was too dark to see where.  Then
the
whole sky was split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end
of the world were coming, and all the women shrieked.

Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and
heard Saumarez bellowing in my ear.  Through the rattling of the
trees and howling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once,
but at last I heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one!  What
shall I do?"  Saumarez had no occasion to make this confidence to
me.  I was never a friend of his, nor am I now; but I fancy neither
of us were ourselves just then.  He was shaking as he stood with
excitement, and I was feeling queer all over with the electricity.

I could not think of anything to say except:--"More fool you for
proposing in a dust-storm."  But I did not see how that would
improve the mistake.

Then he shouted: "Where's Edith--Edith Copleigh?"  Edith was the
youngest sister.  I answered out of my astonishment:--"What do
you
want with HER?"  Would you believe it, for the next two minutes,
he
and I were shouting at each other like maniacs--he vowing that it
was the youngest sister he had meant to propose to all along, and I
telling him till my throat was hoarse that he must have made a
mistake!  I can't account for this except, again, by the fact that
we were neither of us ourselves.  Everything seemed to me like a
bad dream--from the stamping of the horses in the darkness to
Saumarez telling me the story of his loving Edith Copleigh since
the first.  He was still clawing my shoulder and begging me to tell
him where Edith Copleigh was, when another lull came and
brought
light with it, and we saw the dust-cloud forming on the plain in
front of us.  So we knew the worst was over.  The moon was low
down, and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes
about an hour before the real one.  But the light was very faint,
and the dun cloud roared like a bull.  I wondered where Edith
Copleigh had gone; and as I was wondering I saw three things
together:  First Maud Copleigh's face come smiling out of the
darkness and move towards Saumarez, who was standing by me.  I
heard the girl whisper, "George," and slide her arm through the
arm
that was not clawing my shoulder, and I saw that look on her face
which only comes once or twice in a lifetime-when a woman is
perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous-
colored fire and the Earth turns into cloud because she loves and
is loved.  At the same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard
Maud
Copleigh's voice, and fifty yards away from the clump of orange-
trees I saw a brown holland habit getting upon a horse.

It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so
quick
to meddle with what did not concern me.  Saumarez was moving
off to
the habit; but I pushed him back and said:--"Stop here and explain.

I'll fetch her back!" and I ran out to get at my own horse.  I had
a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done
decently and in order, and that Saumarez's first care was to wipe
the happy look out of Maud Copleigh's face.  All the time I was
linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he would do it.

I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly
on some pretence or another.  But she galloped away as soon as
she
saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in earnest.  She called
back over her shoulder--"Go away!  I'm going home.  Oh, go
away!"
two or three times; but my business was to catch her first, and
argue later.  The ride just fitted in with the rest of the evil
dream.  The ground was very bad, and now and again we rushed
through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in the skirts of the
flying storm.  There was a burning hot wind blowing that brought
up
a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light
and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain, flickered
the brown holland habit on the gray horse.  She headed for the
Station at first.  Then she wheeled round and set off for the river
through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig
over.  In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over
such
a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the
lightning crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit
in my nostrils.  I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and
lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and
caught us both, and drove us downwind like pieces of paper.

I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the
horse-hoofs
and the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon
through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and
years,
and I was literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my
gaiters when the gray stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up
dead lame.  My brute was used up altogether.  Edith Copleigh was
in
a sad state, plastered with dust, her helmet off, and crying
bitterly.  "Why can't you let me alone?" she said.  "I only wanted
to get away and go home.  Oh, PLEASE let me go!"

"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh.  Saumarez
has
something to say to you."

It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss
Copleigh; and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my
horse, I could not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had
told
me.  I thought he could do that better himself.  All her pretence
about being tired and wanting to go home broke down, and she
rocked
herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind
blew her black hair to leeward.  I am not going to repeat what she
said, because she was utterly unstrung.

This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh.  Here was I,
almost an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez
loved her and she was to come back to hear him say so!  I believe I
made myself understood, for she gathered the gray together and
made
him hobble somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm
went thundering down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm
rain
fell.  I found out that she had been standing close to Saumarez
when he proposed to her sister and had wanted to go home and cry
in
peace, as an English girl should.  She dabbled her eyes with her
pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of
sheer lightness of heart and hysteria.  That was perfectly
unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the
place.  All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez
and
I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of
this misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.

When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that
followed the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had
gone
away.  They were waiting for our return.  Saumarez most of all.

His face was white and drawn.  As Miss Copleigh and I limped up,
he
came forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from her
saddle, he kissed her before all the picnic.  It was like a scene
in a theatre, and the likeness was heightened by all the dust-
white, ghostly-looking men and women under the orange-trees,
clapping their hands, as if they were watching a play--at
Saumarez's choice.  I never knew anything so un-English in my
life.

Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would
come
out to look for us, and WOULD I be good enough to ride home
with
Maud Copleigh?  Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.

So, we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two;
Saumarez walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding
his
horse.

The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt
we were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women
and
that the "Great Pop Picnic" was a thing altogether apart and out of
the world--never to happen again.  It had gone with the dust-storm
and the tingle in the hot air.

I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went
in for a bath and some sleep.

There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never be
written . . . . unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.

THE RESCUE OF PLUFFLES.

Thus, for a season, they fought it fair--
  She and his cousin May--
Tactful, talented, debonnaire,
  Decorous foes were they;
But never can battle of man compare
  With merciless feminine fray.

                       Two and One.

Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex.  Here is a story
to prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.

Pluffles was a subaltern in the "Unmentionables."  He was callow,
even for a subaltern.  He was callow all over--like a canary that
had not finished fledging itself.  The worst of it was he had three
times as much money as was good for him; Pluffles' Papa being a
rich man and Pluffles being the only son.  Pluffles' Mamma adored
him.  She was only a little less callow than Pluffles and she
believed everything he said.

Pluffles' weakness was not believing what people said.  He
preferred what he called "trusting to his own judgment."  He had as
much judgment as he had seat or hands; and this preference
tumbled
him into trouble once or twice.  But the biggest trouble Pluffles
ever manufactured came about at Simla--some years ago, when he
was
four-and-twenty.

He began by trusting to his own judgment, as usual, and the result
was that, after a time, he was bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver's
'rickshaw wheels.

There was nothing good about Mrs. Reiver, unless it was her dress.

She was bad from her hair--which started life on a Brittany's
girl's head--to her boot-heels, which were two and three-eighth
inches high.  She was not honestly mischievous like Mrs.
Hauksbee;
she was wicked in a business-like way.

There was never any scandal--she had not generous impulses
enough
for that.  She was the exception which proved the rule that Anglo-
Indian ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at Home.

She spent her life in proving that rule.

Mrs. Hauksbee and she hated each other fervently.  They heard far
too much to clash; but the things they said of each other were
startling--not to say original.  Mrs. Hauksbee was honest--honest
as her own front teeth--and, but for her love of mischief, would
have been a woman's woman.  There was no honesty about Mrs.
Reiver;
nothing but selfishness.  And at the beginning of the season, poor
little Pluffles fell a prey to her.  She laid herself out to that
end, and who was Pluffles, to resist?  He went on trusting to his
judgment, and he got judged.

I have seen Hayes argue with a tough horse--I have seen a tonga-
driver coerce a stubborn pony--I have seen a riotous setter broken
to gun by a hard keeper--but the breaking-in of Pluffles of the
"Unmentionables" was beyond all these.  He learned to fetch and
carry like a dog, and to wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs.

Reiver.  He learned to keep appointments which Mrs. Reiver had
no
intention of keeping.  He learned to take thankfully dances which
Mrs. Reiver had no intention of giving him.  He learned to shiver
for an hour and a quarter on the windward side of Elysium while
Mrs. Reiver was making up her mind to come for a ride.  He
learned
to hunt for a 'rickshaw, in a light dress-suit under a pelting
rain, and to walk by the side of that 'rickshaw when he had found
it.  He learned what it was to be spoken to like a coolie and
ordered about like a cook.  He learned all this and many other
things besides.  And he paid for his schooling.

Perhaps, in some hazy way, he fancied that it was fine and
impressive, that it gave him a status among men, and was
altogether
the thing to do.  It was nobody's business to warn Pluffles that he
was unwise.  The pace that season was too good to inquire; and
meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work.

Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment
when
he heard how things were going.  But Pluffles had got himself
engaged to a girl in England the last time he went home; and if
there was one thing more than another which the Colonel detested,
it was a married subaltern.  He chuckled when he heard of the
education of Pluffles, and said it was "good training for the boy."
But it was not good training in the least.  It led him into
spending money beyond his means, which were good: above that,
the
education spoilt an average boy and made it a tenth-rate man of an
objectionable kind.  He wandered into a bad set, and his little
bill at Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion.  She played her game
alone, knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for
the sake of a girl she had never seen.  Pluffles' fiancee was to
come out, under the chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be
married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was
time to interfere.  A man who rides much knows exactly what a
horse
is going to do next before he does it.  In the same way, a woman of
Mrs. Hauksbee's experience knows accurately how a boy will
behave
under certain circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with
one
of Mrs. Reiver's stamp.  She said that, sooner or later, little
Pluffles would break off that engagement for nothing at all--simply
to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who, in return, would keep him at her feet
and in her service just so long as she found it worth her while.

She said she knew the signs of these things.  If she did not, no
one else could.

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the guns of the
enemy; just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried away Bremmil under
Mrs.

Hauksbee's eyes.

This particular engagement lasted seven weeks--we called it the
Seven Weeks' War--and was fought out inch by inch on both sides.
A
detailed account would fill a book, and would be incomplete then.

Any one who knows about these things can fit in the details for
himself.  It was a superb fight--there will never be another like
it as long as Jakko stands--and Pluffles was the prize of victory.

People said shameful things about Mrs. Hauksbee.  They did not
know
what she was playing for.  Mrs. Reiver fought, partly because
Pluffles was useful to her, but mainly because she hated Mrs.

Hauksbee, and the matter was a trial of strength between them.  No
one knows what Pluffles thought.  He had not many ideas at the
best
of times, and the few he possessed made him conceited.  Mrs.

Hauksbee said:--"The boy must be caught; and the only way of
catching him is by treating him well."

So she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long
as the issue was doubtful.  Little by little, Pluffles fell away
from his old allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom he
was
made much of.  He was never sent on out-post duty after
'rickshaws
any more, nor was he given dances which never came off, nor
were
the drains on his purse continued.  Mrs. Hauksbee held him on the
snaffle; and after his treatment at Mrs. Reiver's hands, he
appreciated the change.

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about himself, and made
him
talk about her own merits.  Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and
won
his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at
Home, speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a "piece of
boyish
folly."  This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon,
and discoursing in what he considered a gay and fascinating style.

Mrs. Hauksbee had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and
blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby Majors.

At a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to
that lady's character.  Some men say more.  She began to talk to
Pluffles after the manner of a mother, and as if there had been
three hundred years, instead of fifteen, between them.  She spoke
with a sort of throaty quaver in her voice which had a soothing
effect, though what she said was anything but soothing.  She
pointed out the exceeding folly, not to say meanness, of Pluffles'

conduct, and the smallness of his views.  Then he stammered
something about "trusting to his own judgment as a man of the
world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next.  It
would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other
woman;
but in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only
made him feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some
superior kind of church.  Little by little, very softly and
pleasantly, she began taking the conceit out of Pluffles, as you
take the ribs out of an umbrella before re-covering it.  She told
him what she thought of him and his judgment and his knowledge
of
the world; and how his performances had made him ridiculous to
other people; and how it was his intention make love to herself if
she gave him the chance.  Then she said that marriage would be
the
making of him; and drew a pretty little picture--all rose and opal--
of the Mrs. Pluffles of the future going through life relying on
the "judgment" and "knowledge of the world" of a husband who
had
nothing to reproach himself with.  How she reconciled these two
statements she alone knew.  But they did not strike Pluffles as
conflicting.

Hers was a perfect little homily--much better than any clergyman
could have given--and it ended with touching allusions to Pluffles'

Mamma and Papa, and the wisdom of taking his bride Home.

Then she sent Pluffles out for a walk, to think over what she had
said.  Pluffles left, blowing his nose very hard and holding
himself very straight.  Mrs. Hauksbee laughed.

What Pluffles had intended to do in the matter of the engagement
only Mrs. Reiver knew, and she kept her own counsel to her death.

She would have liked it spoiled as a compliment, I fancy.

Pluffles enjoyed many talks with Mrs. Hauksbee during the next
few
days.  They were all to the same end, and they helped Pluffles in
the path of Virtue.

Mrs. Hauksbee wanted to keep him under her wing to the last.

Therefore she discountenanced his going down to Bombay to get
married.  "Goodness only knows what might happen by the way!"
she
said.  "Pluffles is cursed with the curse of Reuben, and India is
no fit place for him!"

In the end, the fiancee arrived with her aunt; and Pluffles, having
reduced his affairs to some sort of order--here again Mrs.
Hauksbee
helped him--was married.

Mrs. Hauksbee gave a sigh of relief when both the "I wills" had
been said, and went her way.

Pluffies took her advice about going Home.  He left the Service,
and is now raising speckled cattle inside green painted fences
somewhere at Home.  I believe he does this very judiciously.  He
would have come to extreme grief out here.

For these reasons if any one says anything more than usually nasty
about Mrs. Hauksbee, tell him the story of the Rescue of Pluffles.

CUPID'S ARROWS.

Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,
By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;
Log in the reh-grass, hidden and alone;
Bund where the earth-rat's mounds are strown:
Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals;
Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels,
Jump if you dare on a steed untried--
Safer it is to go wide--go wide!
Hark, from in front where the best men ride:--
"Pull to the off, boys!  Wide!  Go wide!"

                            The Peora Hunt.

Once upon a time there lived at Simla a very pretty girl, the
daughter of a poor but honest District and Sessions Judge.  She
was
a good girl, but could not help knowing her power and using it.

Her Mamma was very anxious about her daughter's future, as all
good
Mammas should be.

When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor and has the right of
wearing open-work jam-tart jewels in gold and enamel on his
clothes, and of going through a door before every one except a
Member of Council, a Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is
worth
marrying.  At least, that is what ladies say.  There was a
Commissioner in Simla, in those days, who was, and wore, and
did,
all I have said.  He was a plain man--an ugly man--the ugliest man
in Asia, with two exceptions.  His was a face to dream about and
try to carve on a pipe-head afterwards.  His name was Saggott--
Barr-Saggott--Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow.

Departmentally, he was one of the best men the Government of
India
owned.  Socially, he was like a blandishing gorilla.

When he turned his attentions to Miss Beighton, I believe that Mrs.

Beighton wept with delight at the reward Providence had sent her
in
her old age.

Mr. Beighton held his tongue.  He was an easy-going man.

Now a Commissioner is very rich.  His pay is beyond the dreams
of
avarice--is so enormous that he can afford to save and scrape in a
way that would almost discredit a Member of Council.  Most
Commissioners are mean; but Barr-Saggott was an exception.  He
entertained royally; he horsed himself well; he gave dances; he
was
a power in the land; and he behaved as such.

Consider that everything I am writing of took place in an almost
pre-historic era in the history of British India.  Some folk may
remember the years before lawn-tennis was born when we all
played
croquet.  There were seasons before that, if you will believe me,
when even croquet had not been invented, and archery--which was
revived in England in 1844--was as great a pest as lawn-tennis is
now.  People talked learnedly about "holding" and "loosing,"
"steles," "reflexed bows," "56-pound bows," "backed" or "self-yew
bows," as we talk about "rallies," "volleys," "smashes," "returns,"
and "16-ounce rackets."

Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies' distance--60 yards, that
is--and was acknowledged the best lady archer in Simla.  Men
called
her "Diana of Tara-Devi."

Barr-Saggott paid her great attention; and, as I have said, the
heart of her mother was uplifted in consequence.  Kitty Beighton
took matters more calmly.  It was pleasant to be singled out by a
Commissioner with letters after his name, and to fill the hearts of
other girls with bad feelings.  But there was no denying the fact
that Barr-Saggott was phenomenally ugly; and all his attempts to
adorn himself only made him more grotesque.  He was not
christened
"The Langur"--which means gray ape--for nothing.  It was
pleasant,
Kitty thought, to have him at her feet, but it was better to escape
from him and ride with the graceless Cubbon--the man in a
Dragoon
Regiment at Umballa--the boy with a handsome face, and no
prospects.  Kitty liked Cubbon more than a little.  He never
pretended for a moment the he was anything less than head over
heels in love with her; for he was an honest boy.  So Kitty fled,
now and again, from the stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the
company of young Cubbon, and was scolded by her Mamma in
consequence.  "But, Mother," she said, "Mr. Saggot is such--such
a--
is so FEARFULLY ugly, you know!"

"My dear," said Mrs. Beighton, piously, "we cannot be other than
an
all-ruling Providence has made us.  Besides, you will take
precedence of your own Mother, you know!  Think of that and be
reasonable."

Then Kitty put up her little chin and said irreverent things about
precedence, and Commissioners, and matrimony.  Mr. Beighton
rubbed
the top of his head; for he was an easy-going man.

Late in the season, when he judged that the time was ripe, Barr-
Saggott developed a plan which did great credit to his
administrative powers.  He arranged an archery tournament for
ladies, with a most sumptuous diamond-studded bracelet as prize.

He drew up his terms skilfully, and every one saw that the bracelet
was a gift to Miss Beighton; the acceptance carrying with it the
hand and the heart of Commissioner Barr-Saggott.  The terms were
a
St. Leonard's Round--thirty-six shots at sixty yards--under the
rules of the Simla Toxophilite Society.

All Simla was invited.  There were beautifully arranged tea-tables
under the deodars at Annandale, where the Grand Stand is now;
and,
alone in its glory, winking in the sun, sat the diamond bracelet in
a blue velvet case.  Miss Beighton was anxious--almost too
anxious
to compete.  On the appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down to
Annandale to witness the Judgment of Paris turned upside down.

Kitty rode with young Cubbon, and it was easy to see that the boy
was troubled in his mind.  He must be held innocent of everything
that followed.  Kitty was pale and nervous, and looked long at the
bracelet.  Barr-Saggott was gorgeously dressed, even more nervous
than Kitty, and more hideous than ever.

Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as befitted the mother of a
potential Commissioneress, and the shooting began; all the world
standing in a semicircle as the ladies came out one after the
other.

Nothing is so tedious as an archery competition.  They shot, and
they shot, and they kept on shooting, till the sun left the valley,
and little breezes got up in the deodars, and people waited for
Miss Beighton to shoot and win.  Cubbon was at one horn of the
semicircle round the shooters, and Barr-Saggott at the other.  Miss
Beighton was last on the list.  The scoring had been weak, and the
bracelet, PLUS Commissioner Barr-Saggott, was hers to a
certainty.

The Commissioner strung her bow with his own sacred hands.  She
stepped forward, looked at the bracelet, and her first arrow went
true to a hair--full into the heart of the "gold"--counting nine
points.

Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and his Devil prompted
Barr-
Saggott to smile.  Now horses used to shy when Barr-Saggott
smiled.

Kitty saw that smile.  She looked to her left-front, gave an almost
imperceptible nod to Cubbon, and went on shooting.

I wish I could describe the scene that followed.  It was out of the
ordinary and most improper.  Miss Kitty fitted her arrows with
immense deliberation, so that every one might see what she was
doing.  She was a perfect shot; and her 46-pound bow suited her to
a nicety.  She pinned the wooden legs of the target with great care
four successive times.  She pinned the wooden top of the target
once, and all the ladies looked at each other.  Then she began
some
fancy shooting at the white, which, if you hit it, counts exactly
one point.  She put five arrows into the white.  It was wonderful
archery; but, seeing that her business was to make "golds" and win
the bracelet, Barr-Saggott turned a delicate green like young
water-grass.  Next, she shot over the target twice, then wide to
the left twice--always with the same deliberation--while a chilly
hush fell over the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her
handkerchief.  Then Kitty shot at the ground in front of the
target, and split several arrows.  Then she made a red--or seven
points--just to show what she could do if she liked, and finished
up her amazing performance with some more fancy shooting at the
target-supports.  Here is her score as it was picked off:--

              Gold.  Red.  Blue.  Black.  White.  Total Hits.   Total
Score
Miss Beighton   1     1      0      0       5          7          21

Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven
into his legs instead of the target's, and the deep stillness was
broken by a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a
shrill voice of triumph: "Then I'VE won!"

Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence
of the people.  No training could help her through such a
disappointment.  Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and
went back to her place, while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend
that he enjoyed snapping the bracelet on the snubby girl's raw, red
wrist.  It was an awkward scene--most awkward.  Every one tried
to
depart in a body and leave Kitty to the mercy of her Mamma.

But Cubbon took her away instead, and--the rest isn't worth
printing.

HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.

Then a pile of heads be laid--
  Thirty thousand heaped on high--
All to please the Kafir maid,
  Where the Oxus ripples by.

    Grimly spake Atulla Khan:--
  "Love hath made this thing a Man."

                     Oatta's Story.

If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists,
past Trades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever
knew in your respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line
where the last drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black
sets in.  It would be easier to talk to a new made Duchess on the
spur of the moment than to the Borderline folk without violating
some of their conventions or hurting their feelings.  The Black and
the White mix very quaintly in their ways.  Sometimes the White
shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride--which is Pride of Race
run crooked--and sometimes the Black in still fiercer abasement
and
humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable
impulses to crime.  One of these days, this people--understand they
are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated
Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and then we shall
know how they live and what they feel.  In the meantime, any
stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or
inference.

Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some
children who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse
could come out.  The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse
and inattentive.  It never struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own
life to lead and her own affairs to worry over, and that these
affairs were the most important things in the world to Miss Vezzis.

Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning.  Miss Vezzis was
as black as a boot, and to our standard of taste, hideously ugly.

She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and when she lost
her
temper with the children, she abused them in the language of the
Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese, and part
Native.  She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she
preferred being called "Miss Vezzis."

Every Sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see her
Mamma, who lived, for the most part, on an old cane chair in a
greasy tussur-silk dressing-gown and a big rabbit-warren of a
house
full of Vezzises, Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gansalveses, and
a floating population of loafers; besides fragments of the day's
bazar, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor,
petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter
crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster images of
the Virgin, and hats without crowns.  Miss Vezzis drew twenty
rupees a month for acting as nurse, and she squabbled weekly with
her Mamma as to the percentage to be given towards
housekeeping.

When the quarrel was over, Michele D'Cruze used to shamble
across
the low mud wall of the compound and make love to Miss Vezzis
after
the fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged about with much
ceremony.  Michele was a poor, sickly weed and very black; but he
had his pride.  He would not be seen smoking a huqa for anything;
and he looked down on natives as only a man with seven-eighths
native blood in his veins can.  The Vezzis Family had their pride
too.  They traced their descent from a mythical plate-layer who
had
worked on the Sone Bridge when railways were new in India, and
they
valued their English origin.  Michele was a Telegraph Signaller on
Rs. 35 a month.  The fact that he was in Government employ made
Mrs. Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings of his ancestors.

There was a compromising legend--Dom Anna the tailor brought it
from Poonani--that a black Jew of Cochin had once married into
the
D'Cruze family; while it was an open secret that an uncle of Mrs.

D'Cruze was at that very time doing menial work, connected with
cooking, for a Club in Southern India!  He sent Mrs D'Cruze seven
rupees eight annas a month; but she felt the disgrace to the family
very keenly all the same.

However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis brought
herself to overlook these blemishes and gave her consent to the
marriage of her daughter with Michele, on condition that Michele
should have at least fifty rupees a month to start married life
upon.  This wonderful prudence must have been a lingering touch
of
the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshire blood; for across the
Borderline people take a pride in marrying when they please--not
when they can.

Having regard to his departmental prospects, Miss Vezzis might as
well have asked Michele to go away and come back with the Moon
in
his pocket.  But Michele was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and
that helped him to endure.  He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass
one
Sunday, and after Mass, walking home through the hot stale dust
with her hand in his, he swore by several Saints, whose names
would
not interest you, never to forget Miss Vezzis; and she swore by her
Honor and the Saints--the oath runs rather curiously; "In nomine
Sanctissimae--" (whatever the name of the she-Saint is) and so
forth, ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss on the left
cheek, and a kiss on the mouth--never to forget Michele.

Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis dropped
tears
upon the window-sash of the "Intermediate" compartment as he
left
the Station.

If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see a long line
skirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras.  Michele was
ordered
to Tibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this line, to send
messages on from Berhampur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss
Vezzis and his chances of getting fifty rupees a month out of
office hours.  He had the noise of the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali
Babu for company; nothing more.  He sent foolish letters, with
crosses tucked inside the flaps of the envelopes, to Miss Vezzis.

When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his chance
came.

Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of Our
Authority are always before a native he is as incapable as a child
of understanding what authority means, or where is the danger of
disobeying it.  Tibasu was a forgotten little place with a few
Orissa Mohamedans in it.  These, hearing nothing of the Collector-
Sahib for some time, and heartily despising the Hindu Sub-Judge,
arranged to start a little Mohurrum riot of their own.  But the
Hindus turned out and broke their heads; when, finding
lawlessness
pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans together raised an aimless sort
of
Donnybrook just to see how far they could go.  They looted each
other's shops, and paid off private grudges in the regular way.  It
was a nasty little riot, but not worth putting in the newspapers.

Michele was working in his office when he heard the sound that a
man never forgets all his life--the "ah-yah" of an angry crowd.

[When that sound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick,
droning ut, the man who hears it had better go away if he is
alone.]  The Native Police Inspector ran in and told Michele that
the town was in an uproar and coming to wreck the Telegraph
Office.

The Babu put on his cap and quietly dropped out of the window;
while the Police Inspector, afraid, but obeying the old race-
instinct which recognizes a drop of White blood as far as it can be
diluted, said:--"What orders does the Sahib give?"

The "Sahib" decided Michele.  Though horribly frightened, he felt
that, for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial
uncle in his pedigree, was the only representative of English
authority in the place.  Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the
fifty rupees, and took the situation on himself.  There were seven
native policemen in Tibasu, and four crazy smooth-bore muskets
among them.  All the men were gray with fear, but not beyond
leading.  Michele dropped the key of the telegraph instrument, and
went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob.  As the
shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and
fired; the men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.

The whole crowd--curs to the backbone--yelled and ran; leaving
one
man dead, and another dying in the road.  Michele was sweating
with
fear, but he kept his weakness under, and went down into the town,
past the house where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself.  The
streets were empty.  Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for
the mob had been taken at the right time.

Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message to
Chicacola asking for help.  Before an answer came, he received a
deputation of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge
said his actions generally were "unconstitional," and trying to
bully him.  But the heart of Michele D'Cruze was big and white in
his breast, because of his love for Miss Vezzis, the nurse-girl,
and because he had tasted for the first time Responsibility and
Success.  Those two make an intoxicating drink, and have ruined
more men than ever has Whiskey.  Michele answered that the Sub-
Judge might say what he pleased, but, until the Assistant Collector
came, the Telegraph Signaller was the Government of India in
Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be held accountable for
further rioting.  Then they bowed their heads and said: "Show
mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back in great fear; each
accusing the other of having begun the rioting.

Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,
Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the
Assistant
Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu.  But, in the presence
of this young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more
and more into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended,
with the strain on the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears,
bred by sorrow that he had killed a man, shame that he could not
feel as uplifted as he had felt through the night, and childish
anger that his tongue could not do justice to his great deeds.  It
was the White drop in Michele's veins dying out, though he did not
know it.

But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schooled those
men
of Tibasu, and had conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellent
official turned green, he found time to draught an official letter
describing the conduct of Michele.  Which letter filtered through
the Proper Channels, and ended in the transfer of Michele up-
country once more, on the Imperial salary of sixty-six rupees a
month.

So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and
ancientry;
and now there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the
verandahs of the Central Telegraph Office.

But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves were to be
his reward Michele could never, never repeat what he did at
Tibasu
for the sake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl.

Which proves that, when a man does good work out of all
proportion
to his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back
of the virtue.

The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.

WATCHES OF THE NIGHT.

What is in the Brahmin's books that is in the Brahmin's heart.
Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world.
Hindu Proverb.

This began in a practical joke; but it has gone far enough now, and
is getting serious.

Platte, the Subaltern, being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a
plain leather guard.

The Colonel had a Waterbury watch also, and for guard, the lip-
strap of a curb-chain.  Lip-straps make the best watch guards.

They are strong and short.  Between a lip-strap and an ordinary
leather guard there is no great difference; between one Waterbury
watch and another there is none at all.  Every one in the station
knew the Colonel's lip-strap.  He was not a horsey man, but he
liked people to believe he had been on once; and he wove fantastic
stories of the hunting-bridle to which this particular lip-strap
had belonged.  Otherwise he was painfully religious.

Platte and the Colonel were dressing at the Club--both late for
their engagements, and both in a hurry.  That was Kismet.  The
two
watches were on a shelf below the looking-glass--guards hanging
down.  That was carelessness.  Platte changed first, snatched a
watch, looked in the glass, settled his tie, and ran.  Forty
seconds later, the Colonel did exactly the same thing; each man
taking the other's watch.

You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply
suspicious.  They seem--for purely religious purposes, of course--
to know more about iniquity than the Unregenerate.  Perhaps they
were specially bad before they became converted!  At any rate, in
the imputation of things evil, and in putting the worst
construction on things innocent, a certain type of good people may
be trusted to surpass all others.  The Colonel and his Wife were of
that type.  But the Colonel's Wife was the worst.  She
manufactured
the Station scandal, and--TALKED TO HER AYAH!  Nothing
more need be
said.  The Colonel's Wife broke up the Laplace's home.  The
Colonel's Wife stopped the Ferris-Haughtrey engagement.  The
Colonel's Wife induced young Buxton to keep his wife down in the
Plains through the first year of the marriage.  Whereby little Mrs.

Buxton died, and the baby with her.  These things will be
remembered against the Colonel's Wife so long as there is a
regiment in the country.

But to come back to the Colonel and Platte.  They went their
several ways from the dressing-room.  The Colonel dined with two
Chaplains, while Platte went to a bachelor-party, and whist to
follow.

Mark how things happen!  If Platte's sais had put the new saddle-
pad on the mare, the butts of the territs would not have worked
through the worn leather, and the old pad into the mare's withers,
when she was coming home at two o'clock in the morning.  She
would
not have reared, bolted, fallen into a ditch, upset the cart, and
sent Platte flying over an aloe-hedge on to Mrs. Larkyn's well-kept
lawn; and this tale would never have been written.  But the mare
did all these things, and while Platte was rolling over and over on
the turf, like a shot rabbit, the watch and guard flew from his
waistcoat--as an Infantry Major's sword hops out of the scabbard
when they are firing a feu de joie--and rolled and rolled in the
moonlight, till it stopped under a window.

Platte stuffed his handkerchief under the pad, put the cart
straight, and went home.

Mark again how Kismet works!  This would not happen once in a
hundred years.  Towards the end of his dinner with the two
Chaplains, the Colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the
table to look at some Mission Reports.  The bar of the watch-guard
worked through the buttonhole, and the watch--Platte's watch--slid
quietly on to the carpet.  Where the bearer found it next morning
and kept it.

Then the Colonel went home to the wife of his bosom; but the
driver
of the carriage was drunk and lost his way.  So the Colonel
returned at an unseemly hour and his excuses were not accepted.
If
the Colonel's Wife had been an ordinary "vessel of wrath
appointed
for destruction," she would have known that when a man stays
away
on purpose, his excuse is always sound and original.  The very
baldness of the Colonel's explanation proved its truth.

See once more the workings of Kismet!  The Colonel's watch
which
came with Platte hurriedly on to Mrs. Larkyn's lawn, chose to stop
just under Mrs. Larkyn's window, where she saw it early in the
morning, recognized it, and picked it up.  She had heard the crash
of Platte's cart at two o'clock that morning, and his voice calling
the mare names.  She knew Platte and liked him.  That day she
showed him the watch and heard his story.  He put his head on one
side, winked and said:--"How disgusting!  Shocking old man! with
his religious training, too!  I should send the watch to the
Colonel's Wife and ask for explanations."

Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces--whom she had
known when Laplace and his wife believed in each other--and
answered:--"I will send it.  I think it will do her good.  But
remember, we must NEVER tell her the truth."

Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel's possession,
and thought that the return of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a
soothing note from Mrs. Larkyn, would merely create a small
trouble
for a few minutes.  Mrs. Larkyn knew better.  She knew that any
poison dropped would find good holding-ground in the heart of the
Colonel's Wife.

The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on the Colonel's
calling-hours, were sent over to the Colonel's Wife, who wept in
her own room and took counsel with herself.

If there was one woman under Heaven whom the Colonel's Wife
hated
with holy fervor, it was Mrs. Larkyn.  Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous
lady, and called the Colonel's Wife "old cat."  The Colonel's Wife
said that somebody in Revelations was remarkably like Mrs.
Larkyn.

She mentioned other Scripture people as well.  From the Old
Testament.  [But the Colonel's Wife was the only person who
cared
or dared to say anything against Mrs. Larkyn.  Every one else
accepted her as an amusing, honest little body.]  Wherefore, to
believe that her husband had been shedding watches under that
"Thing's" window at ungodly hours, coupled with the fact of his
late arrival on the previous night, was . . . . .

At this point she rose up and sought her husband.  He denied
everything except the ownership of the watch.  She besought him,
for his Soul's sake, to speak the truth.  He denied afresh, with
two bad words.  Then a stony silence held the Colonel's Wife,
while
a man could draw his breath five times.

The speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours.  It was
made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age
and
sunken cheeks; deep mistrust born of the text that says even little
babies' hearts are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of
Mrs. Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the Colonel's Wife's
upbringing.

Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped Waterbury,
ticking
away in the palm of her shaking, withered hand.  At that hour, I
think, the Colonel's Wife realized a little of the restless
suspicions she had injected into old Laplace's mind, a little of
poor Miss Haughtrey's misery, and some of the canker that ate into
Buxton's heart as he watched his wife dying before his eyes.  The
Colonel stammered and tried to explain.  Then he remembered that
his watch had disappeared; and the mystery grew greater.  The
Colonel's Wife talked and prayed by turns till she was tired, and
went away to devise means for "chastening the stubborn heart of
her
husband."  Which translated, means, in our slang, "tail-twisting."

You see, being deeply impressed with the doctrine of Original Sin,
she could not believe in the face of appearances.  She knew too
much, and jumped to the wildest conclusions.

But it was good for her.  It spoilt her life, as she had spoilt the
life of the Laplaces.  She had lost her faith in the Colonel, and--
here the creed-suspicion came in--he might, she argued, have erred
many times, before a merciful Providence, at the hands of so
unworthy an instrument as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt.

He was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate.  This may sound too
sudden a revulsion for a long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable
fact that, if a man or woman makes a practice of, and takes a
delight in, believing and spreading evil of people indifferent to
him or her, he or she will end in believing evil of folk very near
and dear.  You may think, also, that the mere incident of the watch
was too small and trivial to raise this misunderstanding.  It is
another aged fact that, in life as well as racing, all the worst
accidents happen at little ditches and cut-down fences.  In the
same way, you sometimes see a woman who would have made a
Joan of
Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces
over all the mean worry of housekeeping.  But that is another
story.

Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it
insisted so strongly on the villainy of men.  Remembering what
she
had done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-
farthing attempts she made to hide it from the Station.  But the
Station knew and laughed heartlessly; for they had heard the story
of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs. Larkyn's lips.

Once or twice Platte said to Mrs. Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel
had not cleared himself:--"This thing has gone far enough.  I move
we tell the Colonel's Wife how it happened."  Mrs. Larkyn shut her
lips and shook her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must
bear her punishment as best she could.  Now Mrs. Larkyn was a
frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected deep hate.
So
Platte took no action, and came to believe gradually, from the
Colonel's silence, that the Colonel must have "run off the line"
somewhere that night, and, therefore, preferred to stand sentence
on the lesser count of rambling into other people's compounds out
of calling hours.  Platte forgot about the watch business after a
while, and moved down-country with his regiment.  Mrs. Larkyn
went
home when her husband's tour of Indian service expired.  She
never
forgot.

But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too
far.  The mistrust and the tragedy of it--which we outsiders cannot
see and do not believe in--are killing the Colonel's Wife, and are
making the Colonel wretched.  If either of them read this story,
they can depend upon its being a fairly true account of the case,
and can "kiss and make friends."

Shakespeare alludes to the pleasure of watching an Engineer being
shelled by his own Battery.  Now this shows that poets should not
write about what they do not understand.  Any one could have told
him that Sappers and Gunners are perfectly different branches of
the Service.  But, if you correct the sentence, and substitute
Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the same.

THE OTHER MAN.

When the earth was sick and the skies were gray,
  And the woods were rotted with rain,
The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
  To visit his love again.
Old Ballad.

Far back in the "seventies," before they had built any Public
Offices at Simla, and the broad road round Jakko lived in a
pigeon-
hole in the P. W. D. hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey marry
Colonel Schriederling.  He could not have been MUCH more than
thirty-five years her senior; and, as he lived on two hundred
rupees a month and had money of his own, he was well off.  He
belonged to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from
lung
complaints.  In the hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat-
apoplexy; but it never quite killed him.

Understand, I do not blame Schriederling.  He was a good husband
according to his lights, and his temper only failed him when he
was
being nursed.  Which was some seventeen days in each month.  He
was
almost generous to his wife about money matters, and that, for
him,
was a concession.  Still Mrs. Schreiderling was not happy.  They
married her when she was this side of twenty and had given all her
poor little heart to another man.  I have forgotten his name, but
we will call him the Other Man.  He had no money and no
prospects.

He was not even good-looking; and I think he was in the
Commissariat or Transport.  But, in spite of all these things, she
loved him very madly; and there was some sort of an engagement
between the two when Schreiderling appeared and told Mrs.
Gaurey
that he wished to marry her daughter.  Then the other engagement
was broken off--washed away by Mrs. Gaurey's tears, for that lady
governed her house by weeping over disobedience to her authority
and the lack of reverence she received in her old age.  The
daughter did not take after her mother.  She never cried.  Not even
at the wedding.

The Other Man bore his loss quietly, and was transferred to as bad
a station as he could find.  Perhaps the climate consoled him.  He
suffered from intermittent fever, and that may have distracted him
from his other trouble.  He was weak about the heart also.  Both
ways.  One of the valves was affected, and the fever made it worse.

This showed itself later on.

Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took to being
ill.

She did not pine away like people in story books, but she seemed
to
pick up every form of illness that went about a station, from
simple fever upwards.  She was never more than ordinarily pretty
at
the best of times; and the illness made her ugly.  Schreiderling
said so.  He prided himself on speaking his mind.

When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and
went back to the lairs of his bachelordom.  She used to trot up and
down Simla Mall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat
well on the back of her head, and a shocking bad saddle under her.

Schreiderling's generosity stopped at the horse.  He said that any
saddle would do for a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling.
She
never was asked to dance, because she did not dance well; and she
was so dull and uninteresting, that her box very seldom had any
cards in it.  Schreiderling said that if he had known that she was
going to be such a scare-crow after her marriage, he would never
have married her.  He always prided himself on speaking his mind,
did Schreiderling!

He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment.

Then she revived a little, but she never recovered her looks.  I
found out at the Club that the Other Man is coming up sick--very
sick--on an off chance of recovery.  The fever and the heart-valves
had nearly killed him.  She knew that, too, and she knew--what I
had no interest in knowing--when he was coming up.  I suppose he
wrote to tell her.  They had not seen each other since a month
before the wedding.  And here comes the unpleasant part of the
story.

A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one
evening.  Mrs. Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the
Mall all the afternoon in the rain.  Coming up along the Cart-road,
a tonga passed me, and my pony, tired with standing so long, set
off at a canter.  Just by the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs.

Schreiderling, dripping from head to foot, was waiting for the
tonga.  I turned up-hill, as the tonga was no affair of mine; and
just then she began to shriek.  I went back at once and saw, under
the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling kneeling in the wet
road
by the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaming hideously.

Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.

Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on
the awning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and
moustache,
was the Other Man--dead.  The sixty-mile up-hill jolt had been too
much for his valve, I suppose.  The tonga-driver said:--"The Sahib
died two stages out of Solon.  Therefore, I tied him with a rope,
lest he should fall out by the way, and so came to Simla.  Will the
Sahib give me bukshish?  IT," pointing to the Other Man, "should
have given one rupee."

The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he enjoyed the
joke of his arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, in the mud, began to
groan.  There was no one except us four in the office and it was
raining heavily.  The first thing was to take Mrs. Schreiderling
home, and the second was to prevent her name from being mixed
up
with the affair.  The tonga-driver received five rupees to find a
bazar 'rickshaw for Mrs. Schreiderling.  He was to tell the tonga
Babu afterwards of the Other Man, and the Babu was to make such
arrangements as seemed best.

Mrs. Schreiderling was carried into the shed out of the rain, and
for three-quarters of an hour we two waited for the 'rickshaw.  The
Other Man was left exactly as he had arrived.  Mrs. Schreiderling
would do everything but cry, which might have helped her.  She
tried to scream as soon as her senses came back, and then she
began
praying for the Other Man's soul.  Had she not been as honest as
the day, she would have prayed for her own soul too.  I waited to
hear her do this, but she did not.  Then I tried to get some of the
mud off her habit.  Lastly, the 'rickshaw came, and I got her away--
parrtly by force.  It was a terrible business from beginning to
end; but most of all when the 'rickshaw had to squeeze between the
wall and the tonga, and she saw by the lamp-light that thin, yellow
hand grasping the awning-stanchion.

She was taken home just as every one was going to a dance at
Viceregal Lodge--"Peterhoff" it was then--and the doctor found
that
she had fallen from her horse, that I had picked her up at the back
of Jakko, and really deserved great credit for the prompt manner in
which I had secured medical aid.  She did not die--men of
Schreiderling's stamp marry women who don't die easily.  They
live
and grow ugly.

She never told of her one meeting, since her marriage, with the
Other Man; and, when the chill and cough following the exposure
of
that evening, allowed her abroad, she never by word or sign
alluded
to having met me by the Tonga Office.  Perhaps she never knew.

She used to trot up and down the Mall, on that shocking bad
saddle,
looking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner
every
minute.  Two years afterward, she went Home, and died--at
Bournemouth, I think.

Schreiderling, when he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about
"my
poor dear wife."  He always set great store on speaking his mind,
did Schreiderling!

CONSEQUENCES.

Rosicrucian subtleties
In the Orient had rise;
Ye may find their teachers still
Under Jacatala's Hill.

Seek ye Bombast Paracelsus,
Read what Flood the Seeker tells us
Of the Dominant that runs
Through the cycles of the Suns--
Read my story last and see
Luna at her apogee.

There are yearly appointments, and two-yearly appointments, and
five-yearly appointments at Simla, and there are, or used to be,
permanent appointments, whereon you stayed up for the term of
your
natural life and secured red cheeks and a nice income.  Of course,
you could descend in the cold weather; for Simla is rather dull
then.

Tarrion came from goodness knows where--all away and away in
some
forsaken part of Central India, where they call Pachmari a
"Sanitarium," and drive behind trotting bullocks, I believe.  He
belonged to a regiment; but what he really wanted to do was to
escape from his regiment and live in Simla forever and ever.  He
had no preference for anything in particular, beyond a good horse
and a nice partner.  He thought he could do everything well; which
is a beautiful belief when you hold it with all your heart.  He was
clever in many ways, and good to look at, and always made people
round him comfortable--even in Central India.

So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever and amusing,
he
gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive
everything
but stupidity.  Once he did her great service by changing the date
on an invitation-card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished
to
attend, but couldn't because she had quarrelled with the A.-D.-C.,
who took care, being a mean man, to invite her to a small dance on
the 6th instead of the big Ball of the 26th.  It was a very clever
piece of forgery; and when Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C.
her
invitation-card, and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his
vendettas, he really thought he had made a mistake; and--which
was
wise--realized that it was no use to fight with Mrs. Hauksbee.  She
was grateful to Tarrion and asked what she could do for him.  He
said simply: "I'm a Freelance up here on leave, and on the lookout
for what I can loot.  I haven't a square inch of interest in all
Simla.  My name isn't known to any man with an appointment in
his
gift, and I want an appointment--a good, sound, pukka one.  I
believe you can do anything you turn yourself to do.  Will you help
me?"  Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed the last of
her riding-whip through her lips, as was her custom when thinking.

Then her eyes sparkled, and she said:--"I will;" and she shook
hands on it.  Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this great
woman, took no further thought of the business at all.  Except to
wonder what sort of an appointment he would win.

Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the Heads of
Departments and Members of Council she knew, and the more she
thought the more she laughed, because her heart was in the game
and
it amused her.  Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of
the appointments.  There are some beautiful appointments in the
Civil List.  Eventually, she decided that, though Tarrion was too
good for the Political Department, she had better begin by trying
to get him in there.  What were her own plans to this end, does not
matter in the least, for Luck or Fate played into her hands, and
she had nothing to do but to watch the course of events and take
the credit of them.

All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through the
"Diplomatic Secrecy" craze.  It wears off in time; but they all
catch it in the beginning, because they are new to the country.

The particular Viceroy who was suffering from the complaint just
then--this was a long time ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came
from
Canada, or Lord Ripon from the bosom of the English Church--had
it
very badly; and the result was that men who were new to keeping
official secrets went about looking unhappy; and the Viceroy
plumed
himself on the way in which he had instilled notions of reticence
into his Staff.

Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom of
committing
what they do to printed papers.  These papers deal with all sorts
of things--from the payment of Rs. 200 to a "secret service"
native, up to rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of
Native
States, and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them
to put their houses in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or
filling offenders with pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of
that kind.  Of course, these things could never be made public,
because Native Princes never err officially, and their States are,
officially, as well administered as Our territories.  Also, the
private allowances to various queer people are not exactly matters
to put into newspapers, though they give quaint reading
sometimes.

When the Supreme Government is at Simla, these papers are
prepared
there, and go round to the people who ought to see them in office-
boxes or by post.  The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy
quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent
despotism like Ours should never allow even little things, such as
appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper
time.  He was always remarkable for his principles.

There was a very important batch of papers in preparation at that
time.  It had to travel from one end of Simla to the other by hand.

It was not put into an official envelope, but a large, square,
pale-pink one; the matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper.  It
was addressed to "The Head Clerk, etc., etc."  Now, between "The
Head Clerk, etc., etc.," and "Mrs. Hauksbee" and a flourish, is no
very great difference if the address be written in a very bad hand,
as this was.  The chaprassi who took the envelope was not more of
an idiot than most chaprassis.  He merely forgot where this most
unofficial cover was to be delivered, and so asked the first
Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding down to
Annandale in a great hurry.  The Englishman hardly looked, said:
"Hauksbee Sahib ki Mem," and went on.  So did the chaprasss,
because that letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his
work over.  There was no book to sign; he thrust the letter into
Mrs. Hauksbee's bearer's hands and went off to smoke with a
friend.

Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting some cut-out pattern things in
flimsy
paper from a friend.  As soon as she got the big square packet,
therefore, she said, "Oh, the DEAR creature!" and tore it open with
a paper-knife, and all the MS. enclosures tumbled out on the floor.

Mrs. Hauksbee began reading.  I have said the batch was rather
important.  That is quite enough for you to know.  It referred to
some correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a
native
chief and two dozen other things.  Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she
read, for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great
Indian Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and paint,
and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid man.  And Mrs.

Hauksbee was a clever woman.  She was a little afraid at first, and
felt as if she had laid hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and
did not quite know what to do with it.  There were remarks and
initials at the side of the papers; and some of the remarks were
rather more severe than the papers.  The initials belonged to men
who are all dead or gone now; but they were great in their day.

Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought calmly as she read.  Then the
value of her trove struck her, and she cast about for the best
method of using it.  Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read
through
all the papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had
come
by them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the greatest woman on
earth.

Which I believe was true, or nearly so.

"The honest course is always the best," said Tarrion after an hour
and a half of study and conversation.  "All things considered, the
Intelligence Branch is about my form.  Either that or the Foreign
Office.  I go to lay siege to the High Gods in their Temples."

He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head
of a strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest
man that the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an
appointment at Simla on a good salary.  The compound insolence
of
this amused the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the
moment, he listened to the proposals of the audacious Tarrion.

"You have, I presume, some special qualifications, besides the gift
of self-assertion, for the claims you put forwards?" said the
Strong Man.  "That, Sir," said Tarrion, "is for you to judge."
Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of the
more
important notes in the papers--slowly and one by one as a man
drops
chlorodyne into a glass.  When he had reached the peremptory
order--
and it WAS a peremptory order--the Strong Man was troubled.

Tarrion wound up:--"And I fancy that special knowledge of this
kind
is at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign
Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a distingushed officer's
wife."  That hit the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to
the Foreign Office had been by black favor, and he knew it.  "I'll
see what I can do for you," said the Strong Man.  "Many thanks,"
said Tarrion.  Then he left, and the Strong Man departed to see
how
the appointment was to be blocked.

     .    .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and
much telegraphing.  The appointment was not a very important
one,
carrying only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the
Viceroy said, it was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had
to be maintained, and it was more than likely that a boy so well
supplied with special information would be worth translating.  So
they translated him.  They must have suspected him, though he
protested that his information was due to singular talents of his
own.  Now, much of this story, including the after-history of the
missing envelope, you must fill in for yourself, because there are
reasons why it cannot be written.  If you do not know about things
Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in, and you will say
it is impossible.

What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him
was:--"So,
this is the boy who 'rusked' the Government of India, is it?
Recollect, Sir, that is not done TWICE."  So he must have known
something.

What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--"If
Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I
should be Viceroy of India in twenty years."

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with
tears in his eyes, was first:--"I told you so!" and next, to
herself:--"What fools men are!"

THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.

Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.

But, once in a way, there will come a day
When the colt must be taught to feel
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
  and the sting of the rowelled steel.

                               Life's Handicap.

This is not a tale exactly.  It is a Tract; and I am immensely
proud of it.  Making a Tract is a Feat.

Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--
least of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's
throats.  The Government sends out weird Civilians now and
again;
but McGoggin was the queerest exported for a long time.  He was
clever--brilliantly clever--but his clevereness worked the wrong
way.  Instead of keeping to the study of the vernaculars, he had
read some books written by a man called Comte, I think, and a
man
called Spencer, and a Professor Clifford.  [You will find these
books in the Library.]  They deal with people's insides from the
point of view of men who have no stomachs.  There was no order
against his reading them; but his Mamma should have smacked
him.

They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with a
rarefied religion over and above his work.  It was not much of a
creed.  It only proved that men had no souls, and there was no God
and no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the
good of Humanity.

One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful
than giving an order was obeying it.  At least, that was what
McGoggin said; but I suspect he had misread his primers.

I do not say a word against this creed.  It was made up in Town,
where there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all
shut in by the fog.  Naturally, a man grows to think that there is
no one higher than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of
Works made everything.  But in this country, where you really see
humanity--raw, brown, naked humanity--with nothing between it
and
the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth
underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come
back to
simpler theories.  Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in
proving that there is no one in particular at the head of affairs.

For this reason.  The Deputy is above the Assistant, the
Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above
the
Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of
the Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress.  If the
Empress be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for
her to be responsible to--the entire system of Our administration
must be wrong.  Which is manifestly impossible.  At Home men
are to
be excused.  They are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually
"beany."  When you take a gross, 'beany" horse to exercise, he
slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't see the horns.

But the bit is there just the same.  Men do not get "beany" in
India.  The climate and the work are against playing bricks with
words.

If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the
endings in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his
grandfathers on both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the
preaching strain came out in his mind.  He wanted every one at the
Club to see that they had no souls too, and to help him to
eliminate his Creator.  As a good many men told him, HE
undoubtedly
had no soul, because he was so young, but it did not follow that
his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether there was
another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
this.  "But that is not the point--that is not the point!" Aurelian
used to say.  Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to
go to any particular place he might believe in.  They christened
him the "Blastoderm"--he said he came from a family of that name
somewhere, in the pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter,
strove to choke him dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at
the
Club; besides being an offence to the older men.  His Deputy
Commissioner, who was working on the Frontier when Aurelian
was
rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that, for a clever boy, Aurelian
was a very big idiot.  And, you know, if he had gone on with his
work, he would have been caught up to the Secretariat in a few
years.  He was just the type that goes there--all head, no physique
and a hundred theories.  Not a soul was interested in McGoggin's
soul.  He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's.  His
business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead
of devastating the Club with "isms."

He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
trying to better it.  That was the fault of his creed.  It made men
too responsible and left too much to their honor.  You can
sometimes ride an old horse in a halter; but never a colt.

McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of
his year.  He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-
rupee cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause
of Humanity.  At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and
fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his
ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
that he was overdoing it.  No man can toil eighteen annas in the
rupee in June without suffering.  But McGoggin was still
intellectually "beany" and proud of himself and his powers, and he
would take no hint.  He worked nine hours a day steadily.

"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam."  McGoggin was a little chap.

One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been
meant
to embellish a Tract.

It was just before the Rains.  We were sitting in the verandah in
the dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue
clouds would let down and bring the cool.  Very, very far away,
there was a faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains
breaking
over the river.  One of the men heard it, got out of his chair,
listened, and said, naturally enough:--"Thank God!"

Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why?  I assure
you it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric
phenomena of the simplest kind.  Why you should, therefore,
return
thanks to a Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"

"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and
throw
me over the Pioneer.  We know all about your figments."  The
Blastoderm reached out to the table, took up one paper, and
jumped
as if something had stung him.  Then he handed the paper over.

"As I was saying," he went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes.  I mean--"

"Hi!  Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile
Advertiser."

The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled.  But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains.

We were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his
chair
and was fighting with his speech.  Then he said, still more
slowly:--

"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red oak--amenable--cause--
retaining--shuttlecock--alone."

"Blastoderm's drunk," said one man.  But the Blastoderm was not
drunk.  He looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began
motioning
with his hands in the half light as the clouds closed overhead.

Then--with a scream:--

"What is it?--Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"

But his speech seemed to freeze in him, and--just as the lightning
shot two tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the
rain fell in quivering sheets--the Blastoderm was struck dumb.  He
stood pawing and champing like a hard-held horse, and his eyes
were
full of terror.

The Doctor came over in three minutes, and heard the story.  "It's
aphasia," he said.  "Take him to his room.  I KNEW the smash
would
come."  We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to
his quarters, and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to
make
him sleep.

Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like
all the arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only
once before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a
case.  I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but
this sudden dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm
himself
might have said, due to "perfectly natural causes."

"He'll have to take leave after this," said the Doctor.  "He won't
be fit for work for another three months.  No; it isn't insanity or
anything like it.  It's only complete loss of control over the
speech and memory.  I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet,
though."

Two days later, the Blastoderm found his tongue again.  The first
question he asked was: "What was it?"  The Doctor enlightened
him.

"But I can't understand it!" said the Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane;
but I can't be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can
I?"

"Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it,"
said the Doctor.

"But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm.  "It was my
OWN mind and memory."

"I can't help it," said the Doctor; "there are a good many things
you can't understand; and, by the time you have put in my length of
service, you'll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in
this world."

The stroke cowed the Blastoderm.  He could not understand it.  He
went into the Hills in fear and trembling, wondering whether he
would be permitted to reach the end of any sentence he began.

This gave him a wholesome feeling of mistrust.  The legitimate
explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to
satisfy him.  Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother
wipes the milky lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly
afraid.

So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come
across
Aurelian McGoggin laying down the law on things Human--he
doesn't
seem to know as much as he used to about things Divine--put your
forefinger on your lip for a moment, and see what happens.

Don't blame me if he throws a glass at your head!

A GERM DESTROYER.

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
  When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.

As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of
State in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for
you.

This tale is a justifiable exception.

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new
Viceroy;
and each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private
Secretary, who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate
ordains.  Fate looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big
and so helpless.

There was a Viceroy once, who brought out with him a turbulent
Private Secretary--a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid
passion for work.  This Secretary was called Wonder--John Fennil
Wonder.  The Viceroy possessed no name--nothing but a string of
counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them.  He said, in
confidence, that he was the electro-plated figurehead of a golden
administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way
Wonder's
attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province
into his own hands.  "When we are all cherubims together," said
His
Excellency once, my dear, good friend Wonder will head the
conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers or stealing
Peter's keys.  THEN I shall report him."

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's
officiousness, other people said unpleasant things.  Maybe the
Members of Council began it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that
there was "too much Wonder, and too little Viceroy," in that
regime.  Wonder was always quoting "His Excellency."  It was
"His
Excellency this," "His Excellency that," "In the opinion of His
Excellency," and so on.  The Viceroy smiled; but he did not heed.

He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his "dear, good
Wonder," they might be induced to leave the "Immemorial East" in
peace.

"No wise man has a policy," said the Viceroy.  "A Policy is the
blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen.  I am not the
former, and I do not believe in the latter."

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an
Insurance Policy.  Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--
"Lie low."

That season, came up to Simla one of these crazy people with only
a
single idea.  These are the men who make things move; but they
are
not nice to talk to.  This man's name was Mellish, and he had lived
for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying
cholera.  He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as
it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of
trees like a wool-flake.  The germ could be rendered sterile, he
said, by "Mellish's Own Invincible Fumigatory"--a heavy violet-
black powder--"the result of fifteen years' scientific
investigation, Sir!"

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly,
especially about "conspiracies of monopolists;" they beat upon the
table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their
inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by
the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the
Hospital Assistants in the Empire.  I forget exactly how he proved
it, but it had something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and
what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the
Viceroy--
"Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir."  So
Mellish
went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his
trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the
invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you
chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras.  He was a six-
thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never "married."
They "contracted alliances."  He himself was not paid.  He
"received emoluments," and his journeys about the country were
"tours of observation."  His business was to stir up the people in
Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench in a pond--and the
people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and
gasp:--
"This is Enlightenment and progress.  Isn't it fine!"  Then they
gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting
rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy."  That was
one of his perquisites.  The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe
except that he was "one of those middle-class deities who seem
necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-
classes," and that, in all probability, he had "suggested,
designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in
Madras."  Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had
experience of the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.

Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe and Mellish's was E. S. Mellish,
and they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that
looks after the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should
blunder
and drop the final "e;" that the Chaprassi should help him, and
that the note which ran: "Dear Mr. Mellish.--Can you set aside
your
other engagements and lunch with us at two to-morrow?  His
Excellency has an hour at your disposal then," should be given to
Mellish with the Fumigatory.  He nearly wept with pride and
delight, and at the appointed hour cantered off to Peterhoff, a big
paper-bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail pockets.  He had
his chance, and he meant to make the most of it.  Mellishe of
Madras had been so portentously solemn about his "conference,"
that
Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin--no A.-D. C.'s, no
Wonder,
no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he feared being
left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe of
Madras.

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy.  On the contrary, he
amused
him.  Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his
Fumigatory, and talked at random until tiffin was over and His
Excellency asked him to smoke.  The Viceroy was pleased with
Mellish
because he did not talk "shop."

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man;
beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years'

"scientific labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the
excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him
between
half-shut eyes and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but
it is an original animal."  Mellish's hair was standing on end with
excitement, and he stammered.  He began groping in his coat-tails
and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had
tipped
a bagful of his powder into the big silver ash-tray.

"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish.  "Y' Excellency shall
judge for yourself!  Absolutely infallible, on my honor."

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which
began
to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-
colored smoke.  In five seconds the room was filled with a most
pungent and sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the
trap of your windpipe and shut it.  The powder then hissed and
fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till
you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp.  Mellish, however,
was
used to it.

"Nitrate of strontia," he shouted; "baryta, bone-meal, etcetera!
Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch.  Not a germ could
live--
not a germ, Y' Excellency!"

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the
stairs, while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive.  Red Lancers came
in, and the Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came in, and
mace-
bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the
smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the
windows,
and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing
across
the gardens.  No one could enter the room where Mellish was
lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that unspeakable powder had
burned
itself out.

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C., rushed through the
rolling clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall.  The Viceroy was
prostrate with laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at
Mellish, who was shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.

"Glorious!  Glorious!" sobbed his Excellency.  "Not a germ, as you
justly observe, could exist!  I can swear it.  A magnificent
success!"

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught
the
real Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply
shocked
at the scene.  But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that
Wonder would presently depart.  Mellish with the Fumigatory was
also
pleased, for he felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical "Ring."

     .     .     .     .      .     .     .     .     .

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the
trouble, and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with
the
powder" went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder
unhappy by their remarks.

But His Excellency told the tale once too often--for Wonder.  As
he
meant to do.  It was at a Seepee Picnic.  Wonder was sitting just
behind the Viceroy.

"And I really thought for a moment," wound up His Excellency,
"that
my dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the
throne!"

Every one laughed; but there was a delicate subtinkle in the
Viceroy's tone which Wonder understood.  He found that his health
was giving way; and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented
him
with a flaming "character" for use at Home among big people.

"My fault entirely," said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a
twinkling in his eye.  "My inconsistency must always have been
distasteful to such a masterly man."

KIDNAPPED.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken any way you please, is bad,
And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
No decent soul would think of visiting.

You cannot stop the tide; but now and then,
You may arrest some rash adventurer
Who--h'm--will hardly thank you for your pains.

                           Vibart's Moralities.

We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant-marriage is
very shocking and the consequences are sometimes peculiar; but,
nevertheless, the Hindu notion--which is the Continental notion--
which is the aboriginal notion--of arranging marriages irrespective
of the personal inclinations of the married, is sound.  Think for a
minute, and you will see that it must be so; unless, of course, you
believe in "affinities."  In which case you had better not read this
tale.  How can a man who has never married; who cannot be
trusted to
pick up at sight a moderately sound horse; whose head is hot and
upset with visions of domestic felicity, go about the choosing of a
wife?  He cannot see straight or think straight if he tries; and the
same disadvantages exist in the case of a girl's fancies.  But when
mature, married and discreet people arrange a match between a
boy
and a girl, they do it sensibly, with a view to the future, and the
young couple live happily ever afterwards.  As everybody knows.

Properly speaking, Government should establish a Matrimonial
Department, efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge
of the Chief Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in
the
shape of a love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in
the courtyard.  All marriages should be made through the
Department,
which might be subordinate to the Educational Department, under
the
same penalty as that attaching to the transfer of land without a
stamped document.  But Government won't take suggestions.  It
pretends that it is too busy.  However, I will put my notion on
record, and explain the example that illustrates the theory.

Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer
in his own Department--a man with a career before him and,
possibly,
a K. C. G. E. at the end of it.  All his superiors spoke well of
him, because he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the
proper times.  There are to-day only eleven men in India who
possess
this secret; and they have all, with one exception, attained great
honor and enormous incomes.

This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his
years by far.  Which always carries its own punishment.  Had a
Subaltern, or a Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life
and has no care for to-morrow, done what he tried to do not a soul
would have cared.  But when Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous,
economical, quiet, hard-working, young Peythroppe--fell, there
was a
flutter through five Departments.

The manner of his fall was in this way.  He met a Miss Castries--
d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the d' for
administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically that he worked.  Understand clearly that there was
not
a breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--not a shadow
of
a breath.  She was good and very lovely--possessed what innocent
people at home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-black
hair growing low down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak,"
and
big violet eyes under eyebrows as black and as straight as the
borders of a Gazette Extraordinary when a big man dies.
But--but--
but--.  Well, she was a VERY sweet girl and very pious, but for
many
reasons she was "impossible."  Quite so.  All good Mammas know
what
"impossible" means.  It was obviously absurd that Peythroppe
should
marry her.  The little opal-tinted onyx at the base of her finger-
nails said this as plainly as print.  Further, marriage with Miss
Castries meant marriage with several other Castries--Honorary
Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries, her Mamma,
and
all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes ranging
from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and
connections
again.

It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a
Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a
Deputy Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance
with the Castries.  It would have weighted his after-career less--
even under a Government which never forgets and NEVER
forgives.

Everybody saw this but Peythroppe.  He was going to marry Miss
Castries, he was--being of age and drawing a good income--and
woe
betide the house that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie
Saulez Peythroppe with the deference due to her husband's rank.

That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove
him
frantic.

These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men.  There was a
case once--but I will tell you of that later on.  You cannot account
for the mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one
about the Place wherein marriages are made.  Peythroppe was
burningly anxious to put a millstone round his neck at the outset of
his career and argument had not the least effect on him.  He was
going to marry Miss Castries, and the business was his own
business.

He would thank you to keep your advice to yourself.  With a man
in
this condition, mere words only fix him in his purpose.  Of course
he cannot see that marriage out here does not concern the
individual
but the Government he serves.

Do you remember Mrs. Hauksbee--the most wonderful woman in
India?
She saved Pluffles from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment
in
the Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-
Bremmil.  She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe,
and
her brain struck out the plan that saved him.  She had the wisdom
of
the Serpent, the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of
the Child, and the triple intuition of the Woman.  Never--no,
never--
as long as a tonga buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-
riding at the back of Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as
Mrs. Hauksbee.  She attended the consultation of Three Men on
Peythroppe's case; and she stood up with the lash of her
riding-whip
between her lips and spake.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the
Gazette of India came in.  Peythroppe found to his surprise that he
had been gazetted a month's leave.  Don't ask me how this was
managed.  I believe firmly that if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order,
the
whole Great Indian Administration would stand on its head.

The Three Men had also a month's leave each.  Peythroppe put the
Gazette down and said bad words.  Then there came from the
compound
the soft "pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed
that don't bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.

After that I don't know what happened.  This much is certain.

Peythroppe disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long
foot-rest
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters.  Also
a
bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.

Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in
Rajputana
with the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.

At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days'

extension of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the
house
of Castries.  The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom
never came; and the D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their
voices and mocked Honorary Lieutenant Castries as one who had
been
basely imposed upon.  Mrs. Hauksbee went to the wedding, and
was
much astonished when Peythroppe did not appear.  After seven
weeks,
Peythroppe and the Three Men returned from Rajputana.
Peythroppe
was in hard, tough condition, rather white, and more self-contained
than ever.

One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, cause by the kick of a
gun.  Twelve-bores kick rather curiously.

Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of
his
perfidious son-in-law to be.  He said things--vulgar and
"impossible" things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below
the
"Honorary," and I fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened.  Anyhow,
he
held his peace till the end; when he spoke briefly.  Honorary
Lieutenant Castries asked for a "peg" before he went away to die
or
bring a suit for breach of promise.

Miss Castries was a very good girl.  She said that she would have
no
breach of promise suits.  She said that, if she was not a lady, she
was refined enough to know that ladies kept their broken hearts to
themselves; and, as she ruled her parents, nothing happened.  Later
on, she married a most respectable and gentlemanly person.  He
travelled for an enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a
good husband should be.

So Peythroppe came to his right mind again, and did much good
work,
and was honored by all who knew him.  One of these days he will
marry; but he will marry a sweet pink-and-white maiden, on the
Government House List, with a little money and some influential
connections, as every wise man should.  And he will never, all his
life, tell her what happened during the seven weeks of his
shooting-
tour in Rajputana.

But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might
have been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial
Department,
under the control of the Director General of Education, but
corresponding direct with the Viceroy.

THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY.

"'I've forgotten the countersign,' sez 'e.

'Oh!  You 'aye, 'ave you?' sez I.

'But I'm the Colonel,' sez 'e.

'Oh!  You are, are you?' sez I.  'Colonel nor no Colonel, you waits
'ere till I'm relieved, an' the Sarjint reports on your ugly old
mug.  Coop!' sez I.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

An' s'help me soul, 'twas the Colonel after all!  But I was a
recruity then."

                  The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris.

IF there was one thing on which Golightly prided himself more
than
another, it was looking like "an Officer and a gentleman."  He said
it was for the honor of the Service that he attired himself so
elaborately; but those who knew him best said that it was just
personal vanity.  There was no harm about Golightly--not an
ounce.

He recognized a horse when he saw one, and could do more than
fill a
cantle.  He played a very fair game at billiards, and was a sound
man at the whist-table.  Everyone liked him; and nobody ever
dreamed
of seeing him handcuffed on a station platform as a deserter.  But
this sad thing happened.

He was going down from Dalhousie, at the end of his leave--riding
down.  He had cut his leave as fine as he dared, and wanted to
come
down in a hurry.

It was fairly warm at Dalhousie, and knowing what to expect
below,
he descended in a new khaki suit--tight fitting--of a delicate
olive-green; a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a snowy white
solah helmet.  He prided himself on looking neat even when he
was
riding post.  He did look neat, and he was so deeply concerned
about
his appearance before he started that he quite forgot to take
anything but some small change with him.  He left all his notes at
the hotel.  His servants had gone down the road before him, to be
ready in waiting at Pathankote with a change of gear.  That was
what
he called travelling in "light marching-order."  He was proud of his
faculty of organization--what we call bundobust.

Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain--not a mere
hill-
shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour.  Golightly
bustled
on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella.  The dust on the
roads
turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal.  So did
Golightly's
khaki gaiters.  But he kept on steadily and tried to think how
pleasant the coolth was.

His next pony was rather a brute at starting, and Golightly's hands
being slippery with the rain, contrived to get rid of Golightly at a
corner.  He chased the animal, caught it, and went ahead briskly.

The spill had not improved his clothes or his temper, and he had
lost one spur.  He kept the other one employed.  By the time that
stage was ended, the pony had had as much exercise as he wanted,
and, in spite of the rain, Golightly was sweating freely.  At the
end of another miserable half-hour, Golightly found the world
disappear before his eyes in clammy pulp.  The rain had turned the
pith of his huge and snowy solah-topee into an evil-smelling
dough,
and it had closed on his head like a half-opened mushroom.  Also
the
green lining was beginning to run.

Golightly did not say anything worth recording here.  He tore off
and squeezed up as much of the brim as was in his eyes and
ploughed
on.  The back of the helmet was flapping on his neck and the sides
stuck to his ears, but the leather band and green lining kept things
roughly together, so that the hat did not actually melt away where
it flapped.

Presently, the pulp and the green stuff made a sort of slimy mildew
which ran over Golightly in several directions--down his back and
bosom for choice.  The khaki color ran too--it was really
shockingly
bad dye--and sections of Golightly were brown, and patches were
violet, and contours were ochre, and streaks were ruddy red, and
blotches were nearly white, according to the nature and
peculiarities of the dye.  When he took out his handkerchief to
wipe
his face and the green of the hat-lining and the purple stuff that
had soaked through on to his neck from the tie became thoroughly
mixed, the effect was amazing.

Near Dhar the rain stopped and the evening sun came out and
dried
him up slightly.  It fixed the colors, too.  Three miles from
Pathankote the last pony fell dead lame, and Golightly was forced
to
walk.  He pushed on into Pathankote to find his servants.  He did
not know then that his khitmatgar had stopped by the roadside to
get
drunk, and would come on the next day saying that he had sprained
his ankle.  When he got into Pathankote, he couldn't find his
servants, his boots were stiff and ropy with mud, and there were
large quantities of dirt about his body.  The blue tie had run as
much as the khaki.  So he took it off with the collar and threw it
away.  Then he said something about servants generally and tried
to
get a peg.  He paid eight annas for the drink, and this revealed to
him that he had only six annas more in his pocket--or in the world
as he stood at that hour.

He went to the Station-Master to negotiate for a first-class ticket
to Khasa, where he was stationed.  The booking-clerk said
something
to the Station-Master, the Station-Master said something to the
Telegraph Clerk, and the three looked at him with curiosity.  They
asked him to wait for half-an-hour, while they telegraphed to
Umritsar for authority.  So he waited, and four constables came
and
grouped themselves picturesquely round him.  Just as he was
preparing to ask them to go away, the Station-Master said that he
would give the Sahib a ticket to Umritsar, if the Sahib would
kindly
come inside the booking-office.  Golightly stepped inside, and the
next thing he knew was that a constable was attached to each of
his
legs and arms, while the Station-Master was trying to cram a
mailbag
over his head.

There was a very fair scuffle all round the booking-office, and
Golightly received a nasty cut over his eye through falling against
a table.  But the constables were too much for him, and they and
the
Station-Master handcuffed him securely.  As soon as the mail-bag
was
slipped, he began expressing his opinions, and the head-constable
said:--"Without doubt this is the soldier-Englishman we required.

Listen to the abuse!"  Then Golightly asked the Station-Master
what
the this and the that the proceedings meant.  The Station-Master
told him he was "Private John Binkle of the ---- Regiment, 5 ft. 9
in., fair hair, gray eyes, and a dissipated appearance, no marks on
the body," who had deserted a fortnight ago.  Golightly began
explaining at great length; and the more he explained the less the
Station-Master believed him.  He said that no Lieutenant could
look
such a ruffian as did Golightly, and that his instructions were to
send his capture under proper escort to Umritsar.  Golightly was
feeling very damp and uncomfortable, and the language he used
was
not fit for publication, even in an expurgated form.  The four
constables saw him safe to Umritsar in an "intermediate"
compartment, and he spent the four-hour journey in abusing them
as
fluently as his knowledge of the vernaculars allowed.

At Umritsar he was bundled out on the platform into the arms of a
Corporal and two men of the ---- Regiment.  Golightly drew
himself
up and tried to carry off matters jauntily.  He did not feel too
jaunty in handcuffs, with four constables behind him, and the
blood
from the cut on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek.  The
Corporal was not jocular either.  Golightly got as far as--"This is
a very absurd mistake, my men," when the Corporal told him to
"stow
his lip" and come along.  Golightly did not want to come along.
He
desired to stop and explain.  He explained very well indeed, until
the Corporal cut in with:--"YOU a orficer!  It's the like o' YOU as
brings disgrace on the likes of US.  Bloom-in' fine orficer you are!
I know your regiment.  The Rogue's March is the quickstep where
you
come from.  You're a black shame to the Service."

Golightly kept his temper, and began explaining all over again
from
the beginning.  Then he was marched out of the rain into the
refreshment-room and told not to make a qualified fool of himself.

The men were going to run him up to Fort Govindghar.  And
"running
up" is a performance almost as undignified as the Frog March.

Golightly was nearly hysterical with rage and the chill and the
mistake and the handcuffs and the headache that the cut on his
forehead had given him.  He really laid himself out to express what
was in his mind.  When he had quite finished and his throat was
feeling dry, one of the men said:--"I've 'eard a few beggars in the
click blind, stiff and crack on a bit; but I've never 'eard any one
to touch this 'ere 'orficer.'"  They were not angry with him.  They
rather admired him.  They had some beer at the refreshment-room,
and
offered Golightly some too, because he had "swore won'erful."
They
asked him to tell them all about the adventures of Private John
Binkle while he was loose on the countryside; and that made
Golightly wilder than ever.  If he had kept his wits about him he
would have kept quiet until an officer came; but he attempted to
run.

Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your back hurts a great
deal, and rotten, rain-soaked khaki tears easily when two men are
jerking at your collar.

Golightly rose from the floor feeling very sick and giddy, with his
shirt ripped open all down his breast and nearly all down his back.

He yielded to his luck, and at that point the down-train from
Lahore
came in carrying one of Golightly's Majors.

This is the Major's evidence in full:--

"There was the sound of a scuffle in the second-class refreshment-
room, so I went in and saw the most villainous loafer that I ever
set eyes on.  His boots and breeches were plastered with mud and
beer-stains.  He wore a muddy-white dunghill sort of thing on his
head, and it hung down in slips on his shoulders, which were a
good
deal scratched.  He was half in and half out of a shirt as nearly in
two pieces as it could be, and he was begging the guard to look at
the name on the tail of it.  As he had rucked the shirt all over his
head, I couldn't at first see who he was, but I fancied that he was
a man in the first stage of D. T. from the way he swore while he
wrestled with his rags.  When he turned round, and I had made
allowance for a lump as big as a pork-pie over one eye, and some
green war-paint on the face, and some violet stripes round the
neck,
I saw that it was Golightly.  He was very glad to see me," said the
Major, "and he hoped I would not tell the Mess about it.  I didn't,
but you can if you like, now that Golightly has gone Home."

Golightly spent the greater part of that summer in trying to get the
Corporal and the two soldiers tried by Court-Martial for arresting
an "officer and a gentleman."  They were, of course, very sorry for
their error.  But the tale leaked into the regimental canteen, and
thence ran about the Province.

THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO

A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
  And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
  Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.

             From the Dusk to the Dawn.

The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two-storied, with
four carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof.  You may
recognize it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five of
Diamonds on the whitewash between the upper windows.
Bhagwan Dass,
the bunnia, and a man who says he gets his living by seal-cutting,
live in the lower story with a troop of wives, servants, friends,
and retainers.  The two upper rooms used to be occupied by Janoo
and
Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was stolen from an
Englishman's house and given to Janoo by a soldier.  To-day, only
Janoo lives in the upper rooms.  Suddhoo sleeps on the roof
generally, except when he sleeps in the street.  He used to go to
Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities
near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a real mud roof.

Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son
who
secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of
head-messenger to
a big firm in the Station.  Suddhoo says that God will make me a
Lieutenant-Governor one of these days.  I daresay his prophecy
will
come true.  He is very, very old, with white hair and no teeth worth
showing, and he has outlived his wits--outlived nearly everything
except his fondness for his son at Peshawar.  Janoo and Azizun are
Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more
or
less honorable profession; but Azizun has since married a medical
student from the North-West and has settled down to a most
respectable life somewhere near Bareilly.  Bhagwan Dass is an
extortionate and an adulterator.  He is very rich.  The man who is
supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very poor.

This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal
tenants in the house of Suddhoo.  Then there is Me, of course; but
I
am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things.  So I
do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever.  The man who pretended to cut seals was
the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except
Janoo.  She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old
Suddhoo
was troubled.  The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and
made capital out of it.  He was abreast of the times.  He got a
friend in Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.

And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted
to
see me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that
I should be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of
Suddhoo
if I went to him.  I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo
was then, that he might have sent something better than an ekka,
which jolted fearfully, to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to
the City on a muggy April evening.  The ekka did not run quickly.

It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit
Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the Fort.  Here was Suddhoo
and
he said that, by reason of my condescension, it was absolutely
certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while my hair
was
yet black.  Then we talked about the weather and the state of my
health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri
Bagh, under the stars.

Suddhoo came to the point at last.  He said that Janoo had told him
that there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was
feared that magic might one day kill the Empress of India.  I didn't
know anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that
something interesting was going to happen.  I said that so far from
magic being discouraged by the Government it was highly
commended.

The greatest officials of the State practiced it themselves.  (If
the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't know what is.)  Then,
to encourage him further, I said that, if there was any jadoo afoot,
I had not the least objection to giving it my countenance and
sanction, and to seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as
distinguished from the unclean jadoo which kills folk.  It took a
long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had
asked me to come for.  Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that
the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind;
that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in Peshawar
more
quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news was always
corroborated by the letters.  Further, that he had told Suddhoo how
a great danger was threatening his son, which could be removed by
clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment.  I began to see how
the
land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo in
the Western line, and would go to his house to see that everything
was done decently and in order.  We set off together; and on the
way
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred
and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost
two hundred more.  Which was cheap, he said, considering the
greatness of his son's danger; but I do not think he meant it.

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we
arrived.  I could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's
shop-front, as if some one were groaning his soul out.  Suddhoo
shook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me that
the jadoo had begun.  Janoo and Azizun met us at the stair-head,
and
told us that the jadoo-work was coming off in their rooms, because
there was more space there.  Janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn
of mind.  She whispered that the jadoo was an invention to get
money
out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place
when he died.  Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old age.
He
kept walking up and down the room in the half light, repeating his
son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if the
seal-cutter
ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord.

Janoo pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved
bow-
windows.  The boards were up, and the rooms were only lit by one
tiny lamp.  There was no chance of my being seen if I stayed still.

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the
staircase.  That was the seal-cutter.  He stopped outside the door
as the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told
Suddhoo to blow out the lamp.  This left the place in jet darkness,
except for the red glow from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo
and Azizun.  The seal-cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw
himself down on the floor and groan.  Azizun caught her breath,
and
Janoo backed to one of the beds with a shudder.  There was a clink
of something metallic, and then shot up a pale blue-green flame
near
the ground.  The light was just enough to show Azizun, pressed
against one corner of the room with the terrier between her knees;
Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on the
bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.

I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter.  He was
stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his
middle, and a steel bangle on each ankle.  This was not awe-
inspiring.  It was the face of the man that turned me cold.  It was
blue-gray in the first place.  In the second, the eyes were rolled
back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third,
the face was the face of a demon--a ghoul--anything you please
except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the day-time over
his turning-lathe downstairs.  He was lying on his stomach, with
his
arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown
down
pinioned.  His head and neck were the only parts of him off the
floor.  They were nearly at right angles to the body, like the head
of a cobra at spring.  It was ghastly.  In the centre of the room,
on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale
blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light.  Round
that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times.  How
he did it I do not know.  I could see the muscles ripple along his
spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion.

The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow
curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles.  Janoo from the bed
was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before
her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into
his white beard, was crying to himself.  The horror of it was that
the creeping, crawly thing made no sound--only crawled!  And,
remember, this lasted for ten minutes, while the terrier whined,
and
Azizun shuddered, and Janoo gasped, and Suddhoo cried.

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like
a thermantidote paddle.  Luckily, the seal-cutter betrayed himself
by his most impressive trick and made me calm again.  After he
had
finished that unspeakable triple crawl, he stretched his head away
from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from
his nostrils.  Now, I knew how fire-spouting is done--I can do it
myself--so I felt at ease.  The business was a fraud.  If he had
only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect, goodness
knows what I might not have thought.  Both the girls shrieked at
the
jet of fire and the head dropped, chin down, on the floor with a
thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms trussed.

There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-
green flame died down.  Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets,
while Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her
arms.  Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and
she
slid it across the floor with her foot.  Directly above the body and
on the wall, were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper
frames, of the Queen and the Prince of Wales.  They looked down
on
the performance, and, to my thinking, seemed to heighten the
grotesqueness of it all.

Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned
over
and rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay
stomach up.  There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like
the noise a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in
the centre revived.

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
shaved scalp.  It was worse, being so very sudden, than the
crawling
exhibition.  We had no time to say anything before it began to
speak.

Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized
dying
man, and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that
head's voice.

There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a
sort of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the
timbre of a bell.  It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for
several minutes before I got rid of my cold sweat.  Then the
blessed
solution struck me.  I looked at the body lying near the doorway,
and saw, just where the hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders,
a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing,
twitching away steadily.  The whole thing was a careful
reproduction
of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimes and the
voice
was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one
could
wish to hear.  All this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against
the side of the basin, and speaking.  It told Suddhoo, on his face
again whining, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness
up to the evening of that very night.  I always shall respect the
seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar
telegrams.  It went on to say that skilled doctors were night and
day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the
head in the basin, were doubled.

Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in.  To ask
for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have
used when he rose from the dead, is absurd.  Janoo, who is really a
woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did.  I heard
her say "Asli nahin!  Fareib!" scornfully under her breath; and just
as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped
talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges.  Then
Janoo
struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-
cutter were gone.  Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining
to
any one who cared to listen, that, if his chances of eternal
salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two hundred
rupees.  Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner; while Janoo
sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the
probabilities
of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up."

I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but
her argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always
demanding gifts is no true magic," said she.  "My mother told me
that the only potent love-spells are those which are told you for
love.  This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil.  I dare not tell,
do anything, or get anything done, because I am in debt to
Bhagwan
Dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a heavy anklet.  I must get
my food from his shop.  The seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan
Dass, and he would poison my food.  A fool's jadoo has been going
on
for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night.  The
seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and mantras before.  He
never
showed us anything like this till to-night.  Azizun is a fool, and
will be a pur dahnashin soon.  Suddhoo has lost his strength and
his
wits.  See now!  I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many rupees
while
he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he is
spending
everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-
cutter!"

Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the
business?  Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall
refund.  The whole thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless."

"Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo.  "He has lived on the roofs
these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat.  He brought
you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the
Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago.  He worships the dust off
the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden
him
to go and see his son.  What does Suddhoo know of your laws or
the
lightning-post?  I have to watch his money going day by day to that
lying beast below."

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with
vexation;
while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and
Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Now the case stands thus.  Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open
to
the charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining
money
under false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the
Indian Penal Code.  I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I
cannot inform the Police.  What witnesses would support my
statements?  Janoo refuses flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman
somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this big India of ours.  I cannot
again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter;
for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but
this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand
and
foot by her debt to the bunnia.  Suddhoo is an old dotard; and
whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise.  His son is well now; but
Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by
whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life.  Janoo watches
daily the money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken
by
the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something
happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of
cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May.  And
thus
I shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.

HIS WEDDED WIFE.

Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
That ask:--"Art thou the man?"  We hunted Cain,
Some centuries ago, across the world,
That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
To-day.

                         Vibart's Moralities.

Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or
beetles, turning if you tread on them too severely.  The safest plan
is never to tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern
from
Home, with his buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red
of sappy English beef in his cheeks.  This is the story of the worm
that turned.  For the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus
Ramsay Faizanne, "The Worm," although he really was an
exceedingly
pretty boy, without a hair on his face, and with a waist like a
girl's when he came out to the Second "Shikarris" and was made
unhappy in several ways.  The "Shikarris" are a high-caste
regiment,
and you must be able to do things well--play a banjo or ride more
than a little, or sing, or act--to get on with them.

The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips
out
of gate-posts with his trap.  Even that became monotonous after a
time.  He objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of
tune, kept very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and
sisters
at Home.  Four of these five things were vices which the
"Shikarris"
objected to and set themselves to eradicate.  Every one knows how
subalterns are, by brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to
be ferocious.  It is good and wholesome, and does no one any
harm,
unless tempers are lost; and then there is trouble.  There was a man
once--but that is another story.

The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore
everything
without winking.  He was so good and so anxious to learn, and
flushed so pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left
to his own devices by every one except the Senior Subaltern, who
continued to make life a burden to The Worm.  The Senior
Subaltern
meant no harm; but his chaff was coarse, and he didn't quite
understand where to stop.  He had been waiting too long for his
company; and that always sours a man.  Also he was in love,
which
made him worse.

One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who
never
existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to
The Worm purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the
Mess
all about it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet,
ladylike voice: "That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a
month's pay to a month's pay when you get your step, that I work a
sell on you that you'll remember for the rest of your days, and the
Regiment after you when you're dead or broke."  The Worm wasn't
angry in the least, and the rest of the Mess shouted.  Then the
Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm from the boots upwards,
and down
again, and said, "Done, Baby."  The Worm took the rest of the
Mess
to witness that the bet had been taken, and retired into a book with
a sweet smile.

Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The
Worm,
who began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on.
I
have said that the Senior Subaltern was in love.  The curious thing
is that a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern.  Though the
Colonel said awful things, and the Majors snorted, and married
Captains looked unutterable wisdom, and the juniors scoffed,
those
two were engaged.

The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company
and his
acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm.
The
girl was a pretty girl, and had money of her own.  She does not
come
into this story at all.

One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except
The Worm, who had gone to his own room to write Home letters,
were
sitting on the platform outside the Mess House.  The Band had
finished playing, but no one wanted to go in.  And the Captains'

wives were there also.  The folly of a man in love is unlimited.

The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the
girl he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring approval, while
the men yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and
a
tired, faint voice lifted itself:

"Where's my husband?"

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the
"Shikarris;" but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they
had been shot.  Three of them were married men.  Perhaps they
were
afraid that their wives had come from Home unbeknownst.  The
fourth
said that he had acted on the impulse of the moment.  He
explained
this afterwards.

Then the voice cried:--"Oh, Lionel!"  Lionel was the Senior
Subaltern's name.  A woman came into the little circle of light by
the candles on the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark
where the Senior Subaltern was, and sobbing.  We rose to our feet,
feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the
worst.  In this bad, small world of ours, one knows so little of the
life of the next man--which, after all, is entirely his own concern--
that one is not surprised when a crash comes.  Anything might turn
up any day for any one.  Perhaps the Senior Subaltern had been
trapped in his youth.  Men are crippled that way occasionally.  We
didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains' wives were as
anxious as we.  If he HAD been trapped, he was to be excused; for
the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes, and gray travelling
dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full of
tears.  She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a
running sob in it pitiful to hear.  As soon as the Senior Subaltern
stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and called him "my
darling," and said she could not bear waiting alone in England, and
his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the end of
the world, and would he forgive her.  This did not sound quite like
a lady's way of speaking.  It was too demonstrative.

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under
their eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set
like the Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke
for a while.

Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir?" and the woman
sobbed afresh.  The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the
arms
round his neck, but he gasped out:--"It's a d----d lie!  I never had a
wife in my life!"  "Don't swear," said the Colonel.  "Come into the
Mess.  We must sift this clear somehow," and he sighed to himself,
for he believed in his "Shikarris," did the Colonel.

We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we
saw how beautiful the woman was.  She stood up in the middle of
us
all, sometimes choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then
holding out her arms to the Senior Subaltern.  It was like the
fourth act of a tragedy.  She told us how the Senior Subaltern had
married her when he was Home on leave eighteen months before;
and
she seemed to know all that we knew, and more too, of his people
and
his past life.  He was white and ashy gray, trying now and again to
break into the torrent of her words; and we, noting how lovely she
was and what a criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast of the
worst
kind.  We felt sorry for him, though.

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his
wife.  Nor will he.  It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark,
unannounced, into our dull lives.  The Captains' wives stood back;
but their eyes were alight, and you could see that they had already
convicted and sentenced the Senior Subaltern.  The Colonel
seemed
five years older.  One Major was shading his eyes with his hand
and
watching the woman from underneath it.  Another was chewing his
moustache and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play.
Full
in the open space in the centre, by the whist-tables, the Senior
Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas.  I remember all this as
clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.  I remember the
look
of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face.  It was rather like seeing
a man hanged; but much more interesting.  Finally, the woman
wound
up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F. M. in
tattoo on his left shoulder.  We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter.  But one of the Bachelor
Majors said very politely:--"I presume that your marriage
certificate would be more to the purpose?"

That roused the woman.  She stood up and sneered at the Senior
Subaltern for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all
the rest.  Then she wept, and then she pulled a paper from her
breast, saying imperially:--"Take that!  And let my husband--my
lawfully wedded husband--read it aloud--if he dare!"

There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took
the
paper.  We were wondering as we stared, whether there was
anything
against any one of us that might turn up later on.  The Senior
Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper,
he broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the
woman:--
"You young blackguard!"

But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
written:--"This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior
Subaltern is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by
the Mess attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in
the lawful currency of the India Empire."

Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him,
betwixt and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge
dress, etc., on the bed.  He came over as he was, and the
"Shikarris" shouted till the Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they
might have a share of the fun.  I think we were all, except the
Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little disappointed that the
scandal had come to nothing.  But that is human nature.  There
could
be no two words about The Worm's acting.  It leaned as near to a
nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can.  When most of
the
Subalterns sat upon him with sofa-cushions to find out why he had
not said that acting was his strong point, he answered very
quietly:--"I don't think you ever asked me.  I used to act at Home
with my sisters."  But no acting with girls could account for The
Worm's display that night.  Personally, I think it was in bad taste.

Besides being dangerous.  There is no sort of use in playing with
fire, even for fun.

The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic
Club;
and, when the Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did at
once, The Worm sank the money in scenery and dresses.  He was a
good
Worm; and the "Shikarris" are proud of him.  The only drawback
is
that he has been christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern;" and as there
are now two Mrs. Senior Subalterns in the Station, this is
sometimes
confusing to strangers.

Later on, I will tell you of a case something like, this, but with
all the jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble.

THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.

While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
While horses are horses to train and to race,
Then women and wine take a second place
        For me--for me--
          While a short "ten-three"
Has a field to squander or fence to face!

                               Song of the G. R.

There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than
pulling his head off in the straight.  Some men forget this.

Understand clearly that all racing is rotten--as everything
connected with losing money must be.  Out here, in addition to its
inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham;
looking pretty on paper only.  Every one knows every one else far
too well for business purposes.  How on earth can you rack and
harry
and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and
live in the same Station with him?  He says, "on the Monday
following," "I can't settle just yet."  "You say, "All right, old
man," and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
a two-thousand rupee debt.  Any way you look at it, Indian racing
is
immoral, and expensively immoral.  Which is much worse.  If a
man
wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a
subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a
brace of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies
with
hogged manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab
because she has a kink in her flag.  Racing leads to the shroff
quicker than anything else.  But if you have no conscience and no
sentiments, and good hands, and some knowledge of pace, and ten
years' experience of horses, and several thousand rupees a month, I
believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay your shoeing-
bills.

Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g., 15.13.8--coarse, loose,
mule-
like ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--
and the queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle?  He was
of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the
Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a head to make up freight, and sold raw and
out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275.  People who lost money
on
him called him a "brumby;" but if ever any horse had Harpoon's
shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles was that horse.  Two
miles
was his own particular distance.  He trained himself, ran himself,
and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him
hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off.  He objected to
dictation.  Two or three of his owners did not understand this, and
lost money in consequence.  At last he was bought by a man who
discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles
only, would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.

This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest
thing a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on
sitting still.  When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles
devastated the country.  No weight could stop him at his own
distance; and The fame of Shackles spread from Ajmir in the
South,
to Chedputter in the North.  There was no horse like Shackles, so
long as he was allowed to do his work in his own way.  But he was
beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough to make
angels weep.

At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn
into the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-
mounds enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow.  The big end of the
funnel
is not six feet from the railings on the off-side.  The astounding
peculiarity of the course is that, if you stand at one particular
place, about half a mile away, inside the course, and speak at an
ordinary pitch, your voice just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds
and makes a curious whining echo there.  A man discovered this
one
morning by accident while out training with a friend.  He marked
the
place to stand and speak from with a couple of bricks, and he kept
his knowledge to himself.  EVERY peculiarity of a course is worth
remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the
elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps to suit their own stables.

This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering
seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch.  The mare was, as a delicate
tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for
short, Regula Baddun.

Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his
nerves had been shaken.  He began his career by riding jump-races
in
Melbourne, where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of
the
jockeys who came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will
recollect it--of the Maribyrnong Plate.  The walls were colonial
ramparts--logs of jarrak spiked into masonry--with wings as strong
as Church buttresses.  Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or
fall.  He couldn't run out.  In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses
were jammed at the second wall.  Red Hat, leading, fell this side,
and threw out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the
space
between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking
shambles.  Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very
badly
hurt, and Brunt was among the three.  He told the story of the
Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how
Whalley on
Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm
done
for!" and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had
crushed the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell
of men and horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-
races and Australia together.  Regula Baddun's owner knew that
story
by heart.  Brunt never varied it in the telling.  He had no
education.

Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his
owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and
humble the pride of his owner."  The Districts rose against
Shackles
and sent up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do
his mile in 1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry
regiment who knew how to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the
75th;
Bobolink, the pride of Peshawar; and many others.

They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to
smash Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and
the
Fund gave eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the
course for all horses."  Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the
race with regard to Shackles only.  So long as you don't bury him
under weight-cloths, I don't mind.  Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I
throw in my mare to fret Ousel.  Six furlongs is Regula's distance,
and she will then lie down and die.  So also will Ousel, for his
jockey doesn't understand a waiting race."  Now, this was a lie, for
Regula had been in work for two months at Dehra, and her chances
were good, always supposing that Shackles broke a
blood-vessel--OR
BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.

The plunging in the lotteries was fine.  They filled eight thousand-
rupee lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in
the
Pioneer said that "favoritism was divided."  In plain English, the
various contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the
Handicappers had done their work well.  The Honorary Secretary
shouted himself hoarse through the din; and the smoke of the
cheroots was like the smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like
the rattle of small-arm fire.

Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner
cantered
out on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where
two bricks had been thrown.  He faced towards the brick-mounds
at
the lower end of the course and waited.

The story of the running is in the Pioneer.  At the end of the first
mile, Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to
get round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight
before the others knew he had got away.  Brunt was sitting still,
perfectly happy, listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs
behind, and knowing that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would
draw one deep breath and go up the last half-mile like the "Flying
Dutchman."  As Shackles went short to take the turn and came
abreast
of the brick-mound, Brunt heard, above the noise of the wind in
his
ears, a whining, wailing voice on the offside, saying:--"God ha'

mercy, I'm done for!"  In one stride, Brunt saw the whole seething
smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him, started in his saddle
and
gave a yell of terror.  The start brought the heels into Shackles'

side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings.  He couldn't stop
dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards, and
then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a shaking,
terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
race
with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard a
bad
third.  Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong.  Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by
the
two bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the
stand.  He had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.

It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance.  It broke nearly
all
the men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.

He went down to interview Brunt.  The boy lay, livid and gasping
with fright, where he had tumbled off.  The sin of losing the race
never seemed to strike him.  All he knew was that Whalley had
"called" him, that the "call" was a warning; and, were he cut in two
for it, he would never get up again.  His nerve had gone altogether,
and he only asked his master to give him a good thrashing, and let
him go.  He was fit for nothing, he said.  He got his dismissal, and
crept up to the paddock, white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees
giving way under him.  People said nasty things in the paddock;
but
Brunt never heeded.  He changed into tweeds, took his stick and
went
down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering over and
over again:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!"  To the best of my
knowledge and belief he spoke the truth.

So now you know how the Broken-Link Handicap was run and
won.  Of
course you don't believe it.  You would credit anything about
Russia's designs on India, or the recommendations of the Currency
Commission; but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can
stand!

BEYOND THE PALE.

"Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed.  I went in search of
love and lost myself."
Hindu Proverb.

A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and
breed.  Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black.

Then, whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--
neither sudden, alien, nor unexpected.

This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe
limits of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.

He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in
the
second.  He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will
never do so again.

Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee,
lies Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one
grated window.  At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the
walls on either side of the Gully are without windows.  Neither
Suchet Singh nor Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk
looking
into the world.  If Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he
would
have been a happier man to-day, and little Biessa would have been
able to knead her own bread.  Her room looked out through the
grated
window into the narrow dark Gully where the sun never came and
where
the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime.  She was a widow, about
fifteen years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send
her a lover; for she did not approve of living alone.

One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's
Gully
on an aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes,
stumbled over a big heap of cattle food.

Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
from behind the grated window.  It was a pretty little laugh, and
Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and
whispered
that verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:

  Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
      or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
  If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
      being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?

There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind
the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth
verse:

  Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
    Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
  They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
      to the North.

  There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.

  Call to the bowman to make ready--

The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir
Nath's
Gully, wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love
Song
of Har Dyal" so neatly.

Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw
a
packet into his dog-cart.  In the packet was the half of a broken
glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms.  That packet was a letter--not
a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.

Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said.  No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters.  But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to
puzzle them out.

A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over;
because, when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on
her
wrists.  Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass.

The flower of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write,"
or
"danger," according to the other things with it.  One cardamom
means
"jealousy;" but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter,
it loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a
number
indicating time, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also,
place.  The message ran then:--"A widow dhak flower and
bhusa--at
eleven o'clock."  The pinch of bhusa enlightened Trejago.  He
saw--
this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge--that the
bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had
fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the message must come from
the
person behind the grating; she being a widow.  So the message ran
then:--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of bhusa,
desires
you to come at eleven o'clock."

Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed.  He
knew that men in the East do not make love under windows at
eleven
in the forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in
advance.

So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad
in a boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman.  Directly the
gongs in the City made the hour, the little voice behind the grating
took up "The Love Song of Har Dyal" at the verse where the
Panthan
girl calls upon Har Dyal to return.  The song is really pretty in
the Vernacular.  In English you miss the wail of it.  It runs
something like this:--

     Alone upon the housetops, to the North
       I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
     The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

     Below my feet the still bazar is laid
       Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
     The camels and the captives of thy raid,
       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

     My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
       And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
     My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
       Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered:--"I am here."

Bisesa was good to look upon.

That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a
double
life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not
all a dream.  Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the
object-letter had detached the heavy grating from the brick-work
of
the wall; so that the window slid inside, leaving only a square of
raw masonry, into which an active man might climb.

In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work,
or put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the
Station; wondering how long they would know him if they knew of
poor
little Bisesa.  At night, when all the City was still, came the walk
under the evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's
bustee, the quick turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping
cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the
deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door
of
the bare little room that Durga Charan allotted to his sister's
daughter.  Who or what Durga Charan was, Trejago never
inquired; and
why in the world he was not discovered and knifed never occurred
to
him till his madness was over, and Bisesa . . .  But this comes
later.

Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago.  She was as ignorant as a
bird; and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside
world that had reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as
much as her lisping attempts to pronounce his
name--"Christopher."
The first syllable was always more than she could manage, and she
made funny little gestures with her rose-leaf hands, as one
throwing
the name away, and then, kneeling before Trejago, asked him,
exactly
as an Englishwoman would do, if he were sure he loved her.
Trejago
swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world.
Which
was true.

After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life
compelled Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his
acquaintance.  You may take it for a fact that anything of this kind
is not only noticed and discussed by a man's own race, but by some
hundred and fifty natives as well.  Trejago had to walk with this
lady and talk to her at the Band-stand, and once or twice to drive
with her; never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his
dearer out-of-the-way life.  But the news flew, in the usual
mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till Bisesa's duenna
heard
of it and told Bisesa.  The child was so troubled that she did the
household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's wife in
consequence.

A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation.  She
understood no gradations and spoke openly.  Trejago laughed and
Bisesa stamped her little feet--little feet, light as marigold
flowers, that could lie in the palm of a man's one hand.

Much that is written about "Oriental passion and impulsiveness" is
exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true;
and when an Englishman finds that little, it is quite as startling
as any passion in his own proper life.  Bisesa raged and stormed,
and finally threatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once
drop the alien Memsahib who had come between them.  Trejago
tried to
explain, and to show her that she did not understand these things
from a Western standpoint.  Bisesa drew herself up, and said
simply:

"I do not.  I know only this--it is not good that I should have made
you dearer than my own heart to me, Sahib.  You are an
Englishman.

I am only a black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint--
"and the widow of a black man."

Then she sobbed and said: "But on my soul and my Mother's soul, I
love you.  There shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to
me."

Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she
seemed quite unreasonably disturbed.  Nothing would satisfy her
save
that all relations between them should end.  He was to go away at
once.  And he went.  As he dropped out at the window, she kissed
his
forehead twice, and he walked away wondering.

A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa.

Trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough,
went down to Amir Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three
weeks, hoping that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would
be answered.  He was not disappointed.

There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into
Amir
Nath's Gully, and struck the grating, which was drawn away as he
knocked.  From the black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the
moonlight.  Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the
stumps were nearly healed.

Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed,
some one
in the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife,
sword or spear--thrust at Trejago in his boorka.  The stroke missed
his body, but cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he
limped slightly from the wound for the rest of his days.

The grating went into its place.  There was no sign whatever from
inside the house--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall,
and the blackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind.

The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a
madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near
the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his boorka and
went
home bareheaded.

What the tragedy was--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless
despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and
she tortured to tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and
what
became of Bisesa--Trejago does not know to this day.  Something
horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been
comes upon Trejago in the night now and again, and keeps him
company
till the morning.  One special feature of the case is that he does
not know where lies the front of Durga Charan's house.  It may
open
on to a courtyard common to two or more houses, or it may lie
behind
any one of the gates of Jitha Megji's bustee.  Trejago cannot tell.

He cannot get Bisesa--poor little Bisesa--back again.  He has lost
her in the City, where each man's house is as guarded and as
unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into Amir
Nath's
Gully has been walled up.

But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent
sort of man.

There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness,
caused by a riding-strain, in the right leg.

IN ERROR.

They burnt a corpse upon the sand--
    The light shone out afar;
  It guided home the plunging boats
    That beat from Zanzibar.

  Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise.

    Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!

                        Salsette Boat-Song.

There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk
more
often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who
drinks secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never
seen to drink.

This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it.

Moriarty's case was that exception.

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put
him
quite by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk
to and a great deal of work to do.  He did his work well in the four
years he was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and
solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and
worn and haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make
him.

You know the saying that a man who has been alone in the jungle
for
more than a year is never quite sane all his life after.  People
credited Moriarty's queerness of manner and moody ways to the
solitude, and said it showed how Government spoilt the futures of
its best men.  Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very god
reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line.  But he knew, every night
of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation
with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little nips of liqueurs, and
filth of that kind.  He had a sound constitution and a great brain,
or else he would have broken down and died like a sick camel in
the
district, as better men have done before him.

Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the
desert;
and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant.  That season,
Mrs. Reiver--perhaps you will remember her--was in the height of
her
power, and many men lay under her yoke.  Everything bad that
could
be said has already been said about Mrs. Reiver, in another tale.

Moriarty was heavily-built and handsome, very quiet and
nervously
anxious to please his neighbors when he wasn't sunk in a brown
study.  He started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to
without warning; and, when you watched him drinking his glass of
water at dinner, you could see the hand shake a little.  But all
this was put down to nervousness, and the quiet, steady, "sip-sip-
sip, fill and sip-sip-sip, again," that went on in his own room when
he was by himself, was never known.  Which was miraculous,
seeing
how everything in a man's private life is public property out here.

Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver's set, because they were
not his sort, but into the power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in
front of her and made a goddess of her.  This was due to his
coming
fresh out of the jungle to a big town.  He could not scale things
properly or see who was what.

Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he said she was stately
and
dignified.  Because she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly,
he said she was reserved and shy.  Mrs. Reiver shy!  Because she
was
unworthy of honor or reverence from any one, he reverenced her
from
a distance and dowered her with all the virtues in the Bible and
most of those in Shakespeare.

This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous when a pony
cantered behind him, used to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver,
blushing with pleasure when she threw a word or two his way.  His
admiration was strictly platonic: even other women saw and
admitted
this.  He did not move out in Simla, so he heard nothing against his
idol: which was satisfactory.  Mrs. Reiver took no special notice of
him, beyond seeing that he was added to her list of admirers, and
going for a walk with him now and then, just to show that he was
her
property, claimable as such.  Moriarty must have done most of the
talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn't talk much to a man of his stamp;
and the little she said could not have been profitable.  What
Moriarty believed in, as he had good reason to, was Mrs. Reiver's
influence over him, and, in that belief, set himself seriously to
try to do away with the vice that only he himself knew of.

His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been
peculiar, but he never described them.  Sometimes he would hold
off
from everything except water for a week.  Then, on a rainy night,
when no one had asked him out to dinner, and there was a big fire
in
his room, and everything comfortable, he would sit down and
make a
big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, planning big
schemes of reformation meanwhile, until he threw himself on his
bed
hopelessly drunk.  He suffered next morning.

One night, the big crash came.  He was troubled in his own mind
over
his attempts to make himself "worthy of the friendship" of Mrs.

Reiver.  The past ten days had been very bad ones, and the end of
it
all was that he received the arrears of two and three-quarter years
of sipping in one attack of delirium tremens of the subdued kind;
beginning with suicidal depression, going on to fits and starts and
hysteria, and ending with downright raving.  As he sat in a chair in
front of the fire, or walked up and down the room picking a
handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really
thought
of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the
most
part; though he ravelled some P. W. D. accounts into the same
skein
of thought.  He talked, and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper
to himself, and there was no stopping him.  He seemed to know
that
there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself
together
and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of
control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his
troubles.  It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of
all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his
heart.  Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one
who was in the room between ten-thirty that night and
two-forty-five
next morning.

From what he said, one gathered how immense an influence Mrs.
Reiver
held over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse.  His
whisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were
very
instructive as showing the errors of his estimates.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances were
pitying
him for the bad attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down,
Moriarty swore a big oath to himself and went abroad again with
Mrs.

Reiver till the end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and
deferential way as an angel from heaven.  Later on he took to
riding--not hacking, but honest riding--which was good proof that
he
was improving, and you could slam doors behind him without his
jumping to his feet with a gasp.  That, again, was hopeful.

How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning,
nobody
knows.  He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a
man
who has drank heavily can do.  He took his peg and wine at dinner,
but he never drank alone, and never let what he drank have the
least
hold on him.

Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great trouble, and how
the "influence of a pure honest woman, and an angel as well" had
saved him.  When the man--startled at anything good being laid to
Mrs. Reiver's door--laughed, it cost him Moriarty's friendship.

Moriarty, who is married now to a woman ten thousand times
better
than Mrs. Reiver--a woman who believes that there is no man on
earth
as good and clever as her husband--will go down to his grave
vowing
and protesting that Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in both
worlds.

That she knew anything of Moriarty's weakness nobody believed
for a
moment.  That she would have cut him dead, thrown him over, and
acquainted all her friends with her discovery, if she had known of
it, nobody who knew her doubted for an instant.

Moriarty thought her something she never was, and in that belief
saved himself.  Which was just as good as though she had been
everything that he had imagined.

But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have to the credit
of Moriarty's salvation, when her day of reckoning comes?

A BANK FRAUD.

He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
  He purchased raiment and forebore to pay;
He struck a trusting junior with a horse,
  And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way.

Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside
  To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied.

THE MESS ROOM.

If Reggie Burke were in India now, he would resent this tale being
told; but as he is in Hong-Kong and won't see it, the telling is
safe.  He was the man who worked the big fraud on the Sind and
Sialkote Bank.  He was manager of an up-country Branch, and a
sound
practical man with a large experience of native loan and insurance
work.  He could combine the frivolities of ordinary life with his
work, and yet do well.  Reggie Burke rode anything that would let
him get up, danced as neatly as he rode, and was wanted for every
sort of amusement in the Station.

As he said himself, and as many men found out rather to their
surprise, there were two Burkes, both very much at your service.

"Reggie Burke," between four and ten, ready for anything from a
hot-
weather gymkhana to a riding-picnic; and, between ten and four,
"Mr.

Reginald Burke, Manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank."
You
might play polo with him one afternoon and hear him express his
opinions when a man crossed; and you might call on him next
morning
to raise a two-thousand rupee loan on a five hundred pound
insurance-policy, eighty pounds paid in premiums.  He would
recognize you, but you would have some trouble in recognizing
him.

The Directors of the Bank--it had its headquarters in Calcutta and
its General Manager's word carried weight with the Government--
picked their men well.  They had tested Reggie up to a fairly
severe
breaking-strain.  They trusted him just as much as Directors ever
trust Managers.  You must see for yourself whether their trust was
misplaced.

Reggie's Branch was in a big Station, and worked with the usual
staff--one Manager, one Accountant, both English, a Cashier, and
a
horde of native clerks; besides the Police patrol at nights outside.

The bulk of its work, for it was in a thriving district, was hoondi
and accommodation of all kinds.  A fool has no grip of this sort of
business; and a clever man who does not go about among his
clients,
and know more than a little of their affairs, is worse than a fool.

Reggie was young-looking, clean-shaved, with a twinkle in his eye,
and a head that nothing short of a gallon of the Gunners' Madeira
could make any impression on.

One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that the Directors
had shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the
Accountant line.  He was perfectly correct.  Mr. Silas Riley,
Accountant, was a MOST curious animal--a long, gawky,
rawboned
Yorkshireman, full of the savage self-conceit that blossom's only
in
the best county in England.  Arrogance was a mild word for the
mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley.  He had worked himself up, after
seven years, to a Cashier's position in a Huddersfield Bank; and all
his experience lay among the factories of the North.  Perhaps he
would have done better on the Bombay side, where they are happy
with
one-half per cent. profits, and money is cheap.  He was useless for
Upper India and a wheat Province, where a man wants a large head
and
a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance-
sheet.

He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to
the
country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from
Home work.  Like most clever self-made men, he had much
simplicity
in his nature; and, somehow or other, had construed the ordinarily
polite terms of his letter of engagement into a belief that the
Directors had chosen him on account of his special and brilliant
talents, and that they set great store by him.  This notion grew and
crystallized; thus adding to his natural North-country conceit.

Further, he was delicate, suffered from some trouble in his chest,
and was short in his temper.

You will admit that Reggie had reason to call his new Accountant
a
Natural Curiosity.  The two men failed to hit it off at all.  Riley
considered Reggie a wild, feather-headed idiot, given to Heaven
only
knew what dissipation in low places called "Messes," and totally
unfit for the serious and solemn vocation of banking.  He could
never get over Reggie's look of youth and "you-be-damned" air;
and
he couldn't understand Reggie's friends--clean-built, careless men
in the Army--who rode over to big Sunday breakfasts at the Bank,
and
told sultry stories till Riley got up and left the room.  Riley was
always showing Reggie how the business ought to be conducted,
and
Reggie had more than once to remind him that seven years' limited
experience between Huddersfield and Beverly did not qualify a
man to
steer a big up-country business.  Then Riley sulked and referred to
himself as a pillar of the Bank and a cherished friend of the
Directors, and Reggie tore his hair.  If a man's English
subordinates fail him in this country, he comes to a hard time
indeed, for native help has strict limitations.  In the winter Riley
went sick for weeks at a time with his lung complaint, and this
threw more work on Reggie.  But he preferred it to the everlasting
friction when Riley was well.

One of the Travelling Inspectors of the Bank discovered these
collapses and reported them to the Directors.  Now Riley had been
foisted on the Bank by an M. P., who wanted the support of Riley's
father, who, again, was anxious to get his son out to a warmer
climate because of those lungs.  The M. P. had an interest in the
Bank; but one of the Directors wanted to advance a nominee of his
own; and, after Riley's father had died, he made the rest of the
Board see that an Accountant who was sick for half the year, had
better give place to a healthy man.  If Riley had known the real
story of his appointment, he might have behaved better; but
knowing
nothing, his stretches of sickness alternated with restless,
persistent, meddling irritation of Reggie, and all the hundred ways
in which conceit in a subordinate situation can find play.  Reggie
used to call him striking and hair-curling names behind his back as
a relief to his own feelings; but he never abused him to his face,
because he said: "Riley is such a frail beast that half of his
loathsome conceit is due to pains in the chest."

Late one April, Riley went very sick indeed.  The doctor punched
him
and thumped him, and told him he would be better before long.
Then
the doctor went to Reggie and said:--"Do you know how sick your
Accountant is?"  "No!" said Reggie--"The worse the better,
confound
him!  He's a clacking nuisance when he's well.  I'll let you take
away the Bank Safe if you can drug him silent for this
hot-weather."

But the doctor did not laugh--"Man, I'm not joking," he said.  "I'll
give him another three months in his bed and a week or so more to
die in.  On my honor and reputation that's all the grace he has in
this world.  Consumption has hold of him to the marrow."

Reggie's face changed at once into the face of "Mr. Reginald
Burke,"
and he answered:--"What can I do?"

"Nothing," said the doctor.  "For all practical purposes the man is
dead already.  Keep him quiet and cheerful and tell him he's going
to recover.  That's all.  I'll look after him to the end, of
course."

The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down to open the evening
mail.

His first letter was one from the Directors, intimating for his
information that Mr. Riley was to resign, under a month's notice,
by
the terms of his agreement, telling Reggie that their letter to
Riley would follow and advising Reggie of the coming of a new
Accountant, a man whom Reggie knew and liked.

Reggie lit a cheroot, and, before he had finished smoking, he had
sketched the outline of a fraud.  He put away--"burked"--the
Directors letter, and went in to talk to Riley, who was as
ungracious as usual, and fretting himself over the way the bank
would run during his illness.  He never thought of the extra work
on
Reggie's shoulders, but solely of the damage to his own prospects
of
advancement.  Then Reggie assured him that everything would be
well,
and that he, Reggie, would confer with Riley daily on the
management
of the Bank.  Riley was a little soothed, but he hinted in as many
words that he did not think much of Reggie's business capacity.

Reggie was humble.  And he had letters in his desk from the
Directors that a Gilbarte or a Hardie might have been proud of!

The days passed in the big darkened house, and the Directors'
letter
of dismissal to Riley came and was put away by Reggie, who,
every
evening, brought the books to Riley's room, and showed him what
had
been going forward, while Riley snarled.  Reggie did his best to
make statements pleasing to Riley, but the Accountant was sure
that
the Bank was going to rack and ruin without him.  In June, as the
lying in bed told on his spirit, he asked whether his absence had
been noted by the Directors, and Reggie said that they had written
most sympathetic letters, hoping that he would be able to resume
his
valuable services before long.  He showed Riley the letters: and
Riley said that the Directors ought to have written to him direct.

A few days later, Reggie opened Riley's mail in the half-light of
the room, and gave him the sheet--not the envelope--of a letter to
Riley from the Directors.  Riley said he would thank Reggie not to
interfere with his private papers, specially as Reggie knew he was
too weak to open his own letters.  Reggie apologized.

Then Riley's mood changed, and he lectured Reggie on his evil
ways:
his horses and his bad friends.  "Of course, lying here on my back,
Mr. Burke, I can't keep you straight; but when I'm well, I DO hope
you'll pay some heed to my words."  Reggie, who had dropped
polo,
and dinners, and tennis, and all to attend to Riley, said that he
was penitent and settled Riley's head on the pillow and heard him
fret and contradict in hard, dry, hacking whispers, without a sign
of impatience.  This at the end of a heavy day's office work, doing
double duty, in the latter half of June.

When the new Accountant came, Reggie told him the facts of the
case,
and announced to Riley that he had a guest staying with him.
Riley
said that he might have had more consideration than to entertain
his
"doubtful friends" at such a time.  Reggie made Carron, the new
Accountant, sleep at the Club in consequence.  Carron's arrival
took
some of the heavy work off his shoulders, and he had time to
attend
to Riley's exactions--to explain, soothe, invent, and settle and
resettle the poor wretch in bed, and to forge complimentary letters
from Calcutta.  At the end of the first month, Riley wished to send
some money home to his mother.  Reggie sent the draft.  At the
end
of the second month, Riley's salary came in just the same.  Reggie
paid it out of his own pocket; and, with it, wrote Riley a beautiful
letter from the Directors.

Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of his life burnt
unsteadily.  Now and then he would be cheerful and confident
about
the future, sketching plans for going Home and seeing his mother.

Reggie listened patiently when the office work was over, and
encouraged him.

At other times Riley insisted on Reggie's reading the Bible and
grim
"Methody" tracts to him.  Out of these tracts he pointed morals
directed at his Manager.  But he always found time to worry
Reggie
about the working of the Bank, and to show him where the weak
points
lay.

This in-door, sick-room life and constant strains wore Reggie
down a
good deal, and shook his nerves, and lowered his billiard-play by
forty points.  But the business of the Bank, and the business of the
sick-room, had to go on, though the glass was 116 degrees in the
shade.

At the end of the third month, Riley was sinking fast, and had
begun
to realize that he was very sick.  But the conceit that made him
worry Reggie, kept him from believing the worst.  "He wants some
sort of mental stimulant if he is to drag on," said the doctor.

"Keep him interested in life if you care about his living."  So
Riley, contrary to all the laws of business and the finance,
received a 25-per-cent, rise of salary from the Directors.  The
"mental stimulant" succeeded beautifully.  Riley was happy and
cheerful, and, as is often the case in consumption, healthiest in
mind when the body was weakest.  He lingered for a full month,
snarling and fretting about the Bank, talking of the future, hearing
the Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and wondering when he
would
be able to move abroad.

But at the end of September, one mercilessly hot evening, he rose
up
in his bed with a little gasp, and said quickly to Reggie:--"Mr.

Burke, I am going to die.  I know it in myself.  My chest is all
hollow inside, and there's nothing to breathe with.  To the best of
my knowledge I have done nowt"--he was returning to the talk of
his
boyhood--"to lie heavy on my conscience.  God be thanked, I have
been preserved from the grosser forms of sin; and I counsel YOU,
Mr.

Burke . . . ."

Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped over him.

"Send my salary for September to my mother. . . . done great
things
with the Bank if I had been spared . . . . mistaken policy . . . .

no fault of mine."

Then he turned his face to the wall and died.

Reggie drew the sheet over Its face, and went out into the
verandah,
with his last "mental stimulant"--a letter of condolence and
sympathy from the Directors--unused in his pocket.

"If I'd been only ten minutes earlier," thought Reggie, "I might
have heartened him up to pull through another day."

TOD'S AMENDMENT.

The World hath set its heavy yoke
Upon the old white-bearded folk
  Who strive to please the King.

God's mercy is upon the young,
God's wisdom in the baby tongue
  That fears not anything.
The Parable of Chajju Bhagat.

Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, and every
one in
Simla knew Tods.  Most men had saved him from death on
occasions.

He was beyond his ayah's control altogether, and perilled his life
daily to find out what would happen if you pulled a Mountain
Battery
mule's tail.  He was an utterly fearless young Pagan, about six
years old, and the only baby who ever broke the holy calm of the
supreme Legislative Council.

It happened this way: Tods' pet kid got loose, and fled up the hill,
off the Boileaugunge Road, Tods after it, until it burst into the
Viceregal Lodge lawn, then attached to "Peterhoff."  The Council
were sitting at the time, and the windows were open because it was
warm.  The Red Lancer in the porch told Tods to go away; but
Tods
knew the Red Lancer and most of the Members of Council
personally.

Moreover, he had firm hold of the kid's collar, and was being
dragged all across the flower-beds.  "Give my salaam to the long
Councillor Sahib, and ask him to help me take Moti back!" gasped
Tods.  The Council heard the noise through the open windows;
and,
after an interval, was seen the shocking spectacle of a Legal
Member
and a Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct patronage of a
Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and very dirty boy
in a
sailor's suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a lively and
rebellious kid.  They headed it off down the path to the Mall, and
Tods went home in triumph and told his Mamma that ALL the
Councillor
Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moti.  Whereat his Mamma
smacked Tods for interfering with the administration of the
Empire;
but Tods met the Legal Member the next day, and told him in
confidence that if the Legal Member ever wanted to catch a goat,
he,
Tods, would give him all the help in his power.  "Thank you,
Tods,"
said the Legal Member.

Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half as many
saises.

He saluted them all as "O Brother."  It never entered his head that
any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the
buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath.  The working
of
that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from
the
dhoby to the dog-boy.  Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit
from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-
mates should look down on him.

So Tods had honor in the land from Boileaugunge to Chota Simla,
and
ruled justly according to his lights.  Of course, he spoke Urdu, but
he had also mastered many queer side-speeches like the chotee
bolee
of the women, and held grave converse with shopkeepers and Hill-
coolies alike.  He was precocious for his age, and his mixing with
natives had taught him some of the more bitter truths of life; the
meanness and the sordidness of it.  He used, over his bread and
milk, to deliver solemn and serious aphorisms, translated from the
vernacular into the English, that made his Mamma jump and vow
that
Tods MUST go home next hot weather.

Just when Tods was in the bloom of his power, the Supreme
Legislature were hacking out a Bill, for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a
revision of the then Act, smaller than the Punjab Land Bill, but
affecting a few hundred thousand people none the less.  The Legal
Member had built, and bolstered, and embroidered, and amended
that
Bill, till it looked beautiful on paper.  Then the Council began to
settle what they called the "minor details."  As if any Englishman
legislating for natives knows enough to know which are the minor
and
which are the major points, from the native point of view, of any
measure!  That Bill was a triumph of "safe guarding the interests
of
the tenant."  One clause provided that land should not be leased on
longer terms than five years at a stretch; because, if the landlord
had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, he would squeeze
the
very life out of him.  The notion was to keep up a stream of
independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and
ethnologically and politically the notion was correct.  The only
drawback was that it was altogether wrong.  A native's life in India
implies the life of his son.  Wherefore, you cannot legislate for
one generation at a time.  You must consider the next from the
native point of view.  Curiously enough, the native now and then,
and in Northern India more particularly, hates being over-protected
against himself.  There was a Naga village once, where they lived
on
dead AND buried Commissariat mules . . . .  But that is another
story.

For many reasons, to be explained later, the people concerned
objected to the Bill.  The Native Member in Council knew as
much
about Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross.  He had said in
Calcutta that "the Bill was entirely in accord with the desires of
that large and important class, the cultivators;" and so on, and so
on.  The Legal Member's knowledge of natives was limited to
English-
speaking Durbaris, and his own red chaprassis, the Sub-Montane
Tracts concerned no one in particular, the Deputy Commissioners
were
a good deal too driven to make representations, and the measure
was
one which dealt with small landholders only.  Nevertheless, the
Legal Member prayed that it might be correct, for he was a
nervously
conscientious man.  He did not know that no man can tell what
natives think unless he mixes with them with the varnish off.  And
not always then.  But he did the best he knew.  And the measure
came
up to the Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods
patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played
with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and listened,
as a child listens to all the stray talk about this new freak of the
Lat Sahib's.

One day there was a dinner-party, at the house of Tods' Mamma,
and
the Legal Member came.  Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till
he
heard the bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee.  Then he
paddled out in his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night-
suit, and took refuge by the side of his father, knowing that he
would not be sent back.  "See the miseries of having a family!"
said
Tods' father, giving Tods three prunes, some water in a glass that
had been used for claret, and telling him to sit still.  Tods sucked
the prunes slowly, knowing that he would have to go when they
were
finished, and sipped the pink water like a man of the world, as he
listened to the conversation.  Presently, the Legal Member, talking
"shop," to the Head of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full
name--"The Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment."
Tods
caught the one native word, and lifting up his small voice said:--
"Oh, I know ALL about that!  Has it been murramutted yet,
Councillor
Sahib?"

"How much?" said the Legal Member.

"Murramutted--mended.--Put theek, you know--made nice to
please
Ditta Mull!"

The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to Tods.

"What do you know about Ryotwari, little man?" he said.

"I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know ALL about it.  Ditta
Mull, and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and--oh, lakhs of my friends
tell me about it in the bazars when I talk to them."

"Oh, they do--do they?  What do they say, Tods?"

Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing-gown and
said:--
"I must fink."

The Legal Member waited patiently.  Then Tods, with infinite
compassion:

"You don't speak my talk, do you, Councillor Sahib?"

"No; I am sorry to say I do not," said the Legal' Member.

"Very well," said Tods.  "I must fink in English."

He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very
slowly,
translating in his mind from the vernacular to English, as many
Anglo-Indian children do.  You must remember that the Legal
Member
helped him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was not
equal to
the sustained flight of oratory that follows.

"Ditta Mull says:--'This thing is the talk of a child, and was made
up by fools.'  But I don't think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib,"
said Todds, hastily.  "You caught my goat.  This is what Ditta Mull
says:--'I am not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child?
I can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good.  If I am
a fool, the sin is upon my own head.  For five years I take my
ground for which I have saved money, and a wife I take too, and a
little son is born.'  Ditta Mull has one daughter now, but he SAYS
he will have a son, soon.  And he says: 'At the end of five years,
by this new bundobust, I must go.  If I do not go, I must get fresh
seals and takkus-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the
harvest, and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but to go
twice
is Jehannum.'  That is QUITE true," explained Tods, gravely.  "All
my friends say so.  And Ditta Mull says:--'Always fresh takkus and
paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts every five
years or else the landlord makes me go.  Why do I want to go?  Am
I
fool?  If I am a fool and do not know, after forty years, good land
when I see it, let me die!  But if the new bundobust says for
FIFTEEN years, then it is good and wise.  My little son is a man,
and I am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, paying
only once for the takkus-stamps on the papers, and his little son is
born, and at the end of fifteen years is a man too.  But what profit
is there in five years and fresh papers?  Nothing but dikh, trouble,
dikh.  We are not young men who take these lands, but old
ones--not
jais, but tradesmen with a little money--and for fifteen years we
shall have peace.  Nor are we children that the Sirkar should treat
us so."

Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening.  The
Legal Member said to Tods: "Is that all?"

"All I can remember," said Tods.  "But you should see Ditta Mull's
big monkey.  It's just like a Councillor Sahib."

"Tods!  Go to bed," said his father.

Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed.

The Legal Member brought his hand down on the table with a
crash--
"By Jove!" said the Legal Member, "I believe the boy is right.  The
short tenure IS the weak point."

He left early, thinking over what Tods had said.  Now, it was
obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play with a bunnia's
monkey, by way of getting understanding; but he did better.  He
made
inquiries, always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not
the hybrid, University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and,
little by little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure
concerned most intimately to give in their views, which squared
very
closely with Tods' evidence.

So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was
filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent
very
little except the Orders they carry on their bosoms.  But he put the
thought from him as illiberal.  He was a most Liberal Man.

After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got
the Bill recast in the tenure clause, and if Tods' Mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of
fruit and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that
crowded
the verandah.  Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees
before the Viceroy in popular estimation.  But for the little life
of him Tods could not understand why.

In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft
of the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and,
opposite
the twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by
the
Legal Member, are the words "Tods' Amendment."

IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.

"Stopped in the straight when the race was his own!
Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone!"
"Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden,
What did he carry and how was he ridden?
Maybe they used him too much at the start;
Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart."
Life's Handicap.

When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on
the
Senior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all
the jest left out.  This is that tale:

Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by
landlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so
nearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was
just the least little bit in the world below it.  This happened a
month before he came out to India, and five days after his one-and-
twentieth birthday.  The girl was nineteen--six years older than
Dicky in the things of this world, that is to say--and, for the
time, twice as foolish as he.

Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing more fatally
easy than marriage before the Registrar.  The ceremony costs less
than fifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking into a pawn-
shop.  After the declarations of residence have been put in, four
minutes will cover the rest of the proceedings--fees, attestation,
and all.  Then the Registrar slides the blotting-pad over the names,
and says grimly, with his pen between his teeth:--"Now you're man
and wife;" and the couple walk out into the street, feeling as if
something were horribly illegal somewhere.

But that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his undoing just as
thoroughly as the "long as ye both shall live" curse from the altar-
rails, with the bridesmaids giggling behind, and "The Voice that
breathed o'er Eden" lifting the roof off.  In this manner was Dicky
Hatt kidnapped, and he considered it vastly fine, for he had
received an appointment in India which carried a magnificent
salary
from the Home point of view.  The marriage was to be kept secret
for
a year.  Then Mrs. Dicky Hatt was to come out and the rest of life
was to be a glorious golden mist.  That was how they sketched it
under the Addison Road Station lamps; and, after one short month,
came Gravesend and Dicky steaming out to his new life, and the
girl
crying in a thirty-shillings a week bed-and-living room, in a back
street off Montpelier Square near the Knightsbridge Barracks.

But the country that Dicky came to was a hard land, where "men"
of
twenty-one were reckoned very small boys indeed, and life was
expensive.  The salary that loomed so large six thousand miles
away
did not go far.  Particularly when Dicky divided it by two, and
remitted more than the fair half, at 1-6, to Montpelier Square.  One
hundred and thirty-five rupees out of three hundred and thirty is
not much to live on; but it was absurd to suppose that Mrs. Hatt
could exist forever on the 20 pounds held back by Dicky, from his
outfit allowance.  Dicky saw this, and remitted at once; always
remembering that Rs. 700 were to be paid, twelve months later, for
a
first-class passage out for a lady.  When you add to these trifling
details the natural instincts of a boy beginning a new life in a new
country and longing to go about and enjoy himself, and the
necessity
for grappling with strange work--which, properly speaking, should
take up a boy's undivided attention--you will see that Dicky started
handicapped.  He saw it himself for a breath or two; but he did not
guess the full beauty of his future.

As the hot weather began, the shackles settled on him and ate into
his flesh.  First would come letters--big, crossed, seven sheet
letters--from his wife, telling him how she longed to see him, and
what a Heaven upon earth would be their property when they met.

Then some boy of the chummery wherein Dicky lodged would
pound on
the door of his bare little room, and tell him to come out and look
at a pony--the very thing to suit him.  Dicky could not afford
ponies.  He had to explain this.  Dicky could not afford living in
the chummery, modest as it was.  He had to explain this before he
moved to a single room next the office where he worked all day.
He
kept house on a green oil-cloth table-cover, one chair, one
charpoy,
one photograph, one tooth-glass, very strong and thick, a seven-
rupee eight-anna filter, and messing by contract at thirty-seven
rupees a month.  Which last item was extortion.  He had no
punkah,
for a punkah costs fifteen rupees a month; but he slept on the roof
of the office with all his wife's letters under his pillow.  Now and
again he was asked out to dinner where he got both a punkah and
an
iced drink.  But this was seldom, for people objected to
recognizing
a boy who had evidently the instincts of a Scotch tallow-chandler,
and who lived in such a nasty fashion.  Dicky could not subscribe
to
any amusement, so he found no amusement except the pleasure of
turning over his Bank-book and reading what it said about "loans
on
approved security."  That cost nothing.  He remitted through a
Bombay Bank, by the way, and the Station knew nothing of his
private
affairs.

Every month he sent Home all he could possibly spare for his
wife--
and for another reason which was expected to explain itself shortly
and would require more money.

About this time, Dicky was overtaken with the nervous, haunting
fear
that besets married men when they are out of sorts.  He had no
pension to look to.  What if he should die suddenly, and leave his
wife unprovided for?  The thought used to lay hold of him in the
still, hot nights on the roof, till the shaking of his heart made
him think that he was going to die then and there of heart-disease.

Now this is a frame of mind which no boy has a right to know.  It
is
a strong man's trouble; but, coming when it did, it nearly drove
poor punkah-less, perspiring Dicky Hatt mad.  He could tell no one
about it.

A certain amount of "screw" is as necessary for a man as for a
billiard-ball.  It makes them both do wonderful things.  Dicky
needed money badly, and he worked for it like a horse.  But,
naturally, the men who owned him knew that a boy can live very
comfortably on a certain income--pay in India is a matter of age,
not merit, you see, and if their particular boy wished to work like
two boys, Business forbid that they should stop him!  But Business
forbid that they should give him an increase of pay at his present
ridiculously immature age!  So Dicky won certain rises of salary--
ample for a boy--not enough for a wife and child--certainly too
little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he and Mrs. Hatt
had
discussed so lightly once upon a time.  And with this he was forced
to be content.

Somehow, all his money seemed to fade away in Home drafts and
the
crushing Exchange, and the tone of the Home letters changed and
grew
querulous.  "Why wouldn't Dicky have his wife and the baby out?
Surely he had a salary--a fine salary--and it was too bad of him to
enjoy himself in India.  But would he--could he--make the next
draft
a little more elastic?"  Here followed a list of baby's kit, as long
as a Parsee's bill.  Then Dicky, whose heart yearned to his wife and
the little son he had never seen--which, again, is a feeling no boy
is entitled to--enlarged the draft and wrote queer half-boy, half-
man letters, saying that life was not so enjoyable after all and
would the little wife wait yet a little longer?  But the little
wife, however much she approved of money, objected to waiting,
and
there was a strange, hard sort of ring in her letters that Dicky
didn't understand.  How could he, poor boy?

Later on still--just as Dicky had been told--apropos of another
youngster who had "made a fool of himself," as the saying is--that
matrimony would not only ruin his further chances of
advancement,
but would lose him his present appointment--came the news that
the
baby, his own little, little son, had died, and, behind this, forty
lines of an angry woman's scrawl, saying that death might have
been
averted if certain things, all costing money, had been done, or if
the mother and the baby had been with Dicky.  The letter struck at
Dicky's naked heart; but, not being officially entitled to a baby,
he could show no sign of trouble.

How Dicky won through the next four months, and what hope he
kept
alight to force him into his work, no one dare say.  He pounded on,
the seven-hundred-rupee passage as far away as ever, and his style
of living unchanged, except when he launched into a new filter.

There was the strain of his office-work, and the strain of his
remittances, and the knowledge of his boy's death, which touched
the
boy more, perhaps, than it would have touched a man; and, beyond
all, the enduring strain of his daily life.  Gray-headed seniors,
who approved of his thrift and his fashion of denying himself
everything pleasant, reminded him of the old saw that says:

     "If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art,
      He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart."

And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every trouble that a
man
is permitted to know, had to laugh and agree; with the last line of
his balanced Bank-book jingling in his head day and night.

But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end.  There
arrived
a letter from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others if
Dicky had only known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone
with a handsomer man than you."  It was a rather curious
production,
without stops, something like this:--"She was not going to wait
forever and the baby was dead and Dicky was only a boy and he
would
never set eyes on her again and why hadn't he waved his
handkerchief
to her when he left Gravesend and God was her judge she was a
wicked
woman but Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India and this
other
man loved the ground she trod on and would Dicky ever forgive
her
for she would never forgive Dicky; and there was no address to
write
to."

Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky
discovered exactly how an injured husband feels--again, not at all
the knowledge to which a boy is entitled--for his mind went back
to
his wife as he remembered her in the thirty-shilling "suite" in
Montpelier Square, when the dawn of his last morning in England
was
breaking, and she was crying in the bed.  Whereat he rolled about
on
his bed and bit his fingers.  He never stopped to think whether, if
he had met Mrs. Hatt after those two years, he would have
discovered
that he and she had grown quite different and new persons.  This,
theoretically, he ought to have done.  He spent the night after the
English Mail came in rather severe pain.

Next morning, Dicky Hatt felt disinclined to work.  He argued that
he had missed the pleasure of youth.  He was tired, and he had
tasted all the sorrow in life before three-and-twenty.  His Honor
was gone--that was the man; and now he, too, would go to the
Devil--
that was the boy in him.  So he put his head down on the green oil-
cloth table-cover, and wept before resigning his post, and all it
offered.

But the reward of his services came.  He was given three days to
reconsider himself, and the Head of the establishment, after some
telegraphings, said that it was a most unusual step, but, in view of
the ability that Mr. Hatt had displayed at such and such a time, at
such and such junctures, he was in a position to offer him an
infinitely superior post--first on probation, and later, in the
natural course of things, on confirmation.  "And how much does
the
post carry?" said Dicky.  "Six hundred and fifty rupees," said the
Head slowly, expecting to see the young man sink with gratitude
and
joy.

And it came then!  The seven hundred rupee passage, and enough
to
have saved the wife, and the little son, and to have allowed of
assured and open marriage, came then.  Dicky burst into a roar of
laughter--laughter he could not check--nasty, jangling merriment
that seemed as if it would go on forever.  When he had recovered
himself he said, quite seriously:--"I'm tired of work.  I'm an old
man now.  It's about time I retired.  And I will."

"The boy's mad!" said the Head.

I think he was right; but Dicky Hatt never reappeared to settle the
question.

PIG.

Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather
  Ride, follow the fox if you can!
But, for pleasure and profit together,
  Allow me the hunting of Man,--
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
  To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.

                             The Old Shikarri.

I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a
twist in his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by
whom
Nafferton was nearly slain.  There may have been other causes of
offence; the horse was the official stalking-horse.  Nafferton was
very angry; but Pinecoffin laughed and said that he had never
guaranteed the beast's manners.  Nafferton laughed, too, though he
vowed that he would write off his fall against Pinecoffin if he
waited five years.  Now, a Dalesman from beyond Skipton will
forgive
an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a South Devon man is
as soft as a Dartmoor bog.  You can see from their names that
Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin.  He was a peculiar
man, and his notions of humor were cruel.  He taught me a new
and
fascinating form of shikar.  He hounded Pinecoffin from
Mithankot to
Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the
Punjab, a
large province and in places remarkably dry.  He said that he had
no
intention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups,"
in
the shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making
their
lives a burden to them.

Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special
work
after their first hot weather in the country.  The boys with
digestions hope to write their names large on the Frontier and
struggle for dreary places like Bannu and Kohat.  The bilious ones
climb into the Secretariat.  Which is very bad for the liver.

Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins
or Persian poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find
that
the smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and
calls them to "develop the resources of the Province."  These men
are enthusiasts.  Pinecoffin belonged to their class.  He knew a
great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and temporary
wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too much
rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil.  All the
Pinecoffins come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took
back her own again.  Unfortunately--most unfortunately for
Pinecoffin--he was a Civilian, as well as a farmer.  Nafferton
watched him, and thought about the horse.  Nafferton said:--"See
me
chase that boy till he drops!"  I said:--"You can't get your knife
into an Assistant Commissioner."  Nafferton told me that I did not
understand the administration of the Province.

Our Government is rather peculiar.  It gushes on the agricultural
and general information side, and will supply a moderately
respectable man with all sorts of "economic statistics," if he
speaks to it prettily.  For instance, you are interested in gold-
washing in the sands of the Sutlej.  You pull the string, and find
that it wakes up half a dozen Departments, and finally
communicates,
say, with a friend of yours in the Telegraph, who once wrote some
notes on the customs of the gold-washers when he was on
construction-work in their part of the Empire.  He may or may not
be
pleased at being ordered to write out everything he knows for your
benefit.  This depends on his temperament.  The bigger man you
are,
the more information and the greater trouble can you raise.

Nafferton was not a big man; but he had the reputation of being
very
earnest."  An "earnest" man can do much with a Government.
There
was an earnest man who once nearly wrecked . . . but all India
knows
THAT story.  I am not sure what real "earnestness" is.  A very fair
imitation can be manufactured by neglecting to dress decently, by
mooning about in a dreamy, misty sort of way, by taking
office-work
home after staying in office till seven, and by receiving crowds of
native gentlemen on Sundays.  That is one sort of "earnestness."

Nafferton cast about for a peg whereon to hang his earnestness,
and
for a string that would communicate with Pinecoffin.  He found
both.

They were Pig.  Nafferton became an earnest inquirer after Pig.
He
informed the Government that he had a scheme whereby a very
large
percentage of the British Army in India could be fed, at a very
large saving, on Pig.  Then he hinted that Pinecoffin might supply
him with the "varied information necessary to the proper inception
of the scheme."  So the Government wrote on the back of the
letter:--
"Instruct Mr. Pinecoffin to furnish Mr. Nafferton with any
information in his power."  Government is very prone to writing
things on the backs of letters which, later, lead to trouble and
confusion.

Nafferton had not the faintest interest in Pig, but he knew that
Pinecoffin would flounce into the trap.  Pinecoffin was delighted
at
being consulted about Pig.  The Indian Pig is not exactly an
important factor in agricultural life; but Nafferton explained to
Pinecoffin that there was room for improvement, and
corresponded
direct with that young man.

You may think that there is not much to be evolved from Pig.  It all
depends how you set to work.  Pinecoffin being a Civilian and
wishing to do things thoroughly, began with an essay on the
Primitive Pig, the Mythology of the Pig, and the Dravidian Pig.

Nafferton filed that information--twenty-seven foolscap
sheets--and
wanted to know about the distribution of the Pig in the Punjab, and
how it stood the Plains in the hot weather.  From this point
onwards, remember that I am giving you only the barest outlines of
the affair--the guy-ropes, as it were, of the web that Nafferton
spun round Pinecoffin.

Pinecoffin made a colored Pig-population map, and collected
observations on the comparative longevity of the Pig (a) in the sub-
montane tracts of the Himalayas, and (b) in the Rechna Doab.

Nafferton filed that, and asked what sort of people looked after
Pig.  This started an ethnological excursus on swineherds, and
drew
from Pinecoffin long tables showing the proportion per thousand
of
the caste in the Derajat.  Nafferton filed that bundle, and
explained that the figures which he wanted referred to the Cis-
Sutlej states, where he understood that Pigs were very fine and
large, and where he proposed to start a Piggery.  By this time,
Government had quite forgotten their instructions to Mr.
Pinecoffin.

They were like the gentlemen, in Keats' poem, who turned
well-oiled
wheels to skin other people.  But Pinecoffin was just entering into
the spirit of the Pig-hunt, as Nafferton well knew he would do.  He
had a fair amount of work of his own to clear away; but he sat up
of
nights reducing Pig to five places of decimals for the honor of his
Service.  He was not going to appear ignorant of so easy a subject
as Pig.

Then Government sent him on special duty to Kohat, to "inquire
into"
the big-seven-foot, iron-shod spades of that District.  People had
been killing each other with those peaceful tools; and Government
wished to know "whether a modified form of agricultural
implement
could not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced
among the agricultural population without needlessly or unduly
exasperating the existing religious sentiments of the peasantry."

Between those spades and Nafferton's Pig, Pinecoffin was rather
heavily burdened.

Nafferton now began to take up "(a) The food-supply of the
indigenous Pig, with a view to the improvement of its capacities as
a flesh-former.  (b) The acclimatization of the exotic Pig,
maintaining its distinctive peculiarities."  Pinecoffin replied
exhaustively that the exotic Pig would become merged in the
indigenous type; and quoted horse-breeding statistics to prove this.

The side-issue was debated, at great length on Pinecoffin's side,
till Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong, and moved the
previous question.  When Pinecoffin had quite written himself out
about flesh-formers, and fibrins, and glucose and the nitrogenous
constituents of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised the question of
expense.  By this time Pinecoffin, who had been transferred from
Kohat, had developed a Pig theory of his own, which he stated in
thirty-three folio pages--all carefully filed by Nafferton.  Who
asked for more.

These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the
potential Piggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own
views.  But Nafferton bombarded him with letters on "the Imperial
aspect of the scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork,
and thereby calculated to give offence to the Mahomedan
population
of Upper India."  He guessed that Pinecoffin would want some
broad,
free-hand work after his niggling, stippling, decimal details.

Pinecoffin handled the latest development of the case in masterly
style, and proved that no "popular ebullition of excitement was to
be apprehended."  Nafferton said that there was nothing like
Civilian insight in matters of this kind, and lured him up a bye-
path--"the possible profits to accrue to the Government from the
sale of hog-bristles."  There is an extensive literature of hog-
bristles, and the shoe, brush, and colorman's trades recognize more
varieties of bristles than you would think possible.  After
Pinecoffin had wondered a little at Nafferton's rage for
information, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one pages, on
"Products
of the Pig."  This led him, under Nafferton's tender handling,
straight to the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin for
saddles--and thence to the tanners.  Pinecoffin wrote that
pomegranate-seed was the best cure for hog-skin, and
suggested--for
the past fourteen months had wearied him--that Nafferton should
"raise his pigs before he tanned them."

Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question.

How could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did
in the West and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics
of its oriental congener?"  Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had
forgotten what he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied
that he was about to reopen the entire question.  He was too far
involved in the hideous tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment,
he
wrote:--"Consult my first letter."  Which related to the Dravidian
Pig.  As a matter of fact, Pinecoffin had still to reach the
acclimatization stage; having gone off on a side-issue on the
merging of types.

THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries!  He complained to
the
Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded
to
me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative
industry, and the flippancy with which my requests for information
are treated by a gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments
should
at lest have taught him the primary differences between the
Dravidian and the Berkshire variety of the genus Sus.  If I am to
understand that the letter to which he refers me contains his
serious views on the acclimatization of a valuable, though possibly
uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled to believe," etc.,
etc.

There was a new man at the head of the Department of
Castigation.

The wretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for
the
Country, and not the Country for the Service, and that he had
better
begin to supply information about Pigs.

Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that
could be written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.

Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on
the Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in
full.  The essay was rather highflown; but if the Editor had seen
the stacks of paper, in Pinecoffin's handwriting, on Nafferton's
table, he would not have been so sarcastic about the "nebulous
discursiveness and blatant self-sufficiency of the modern
Competition-wallah, and his utter inability to grasp the practical
issues of a practical question."  Many friends cut out these remarks
and sent them to Pinecoffin.

I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft stock.  This
last stroke frightened and shook him.  He could not understand it;
but he felt he had been, somehow, shamelessly betrayed by
Nafferton.

He realized that he had wrapped himself up in the Pigskin without
need, and that he could not well set himself right with his
Government.  All his acquaintances asked after his "nebulous
discursiveness" or his "blatant self-sufficiency," and this made him
miserable.

He took a train and went to Nafferton, whom he had not seen since
the Pig business began.  He also took the cutting from the paper,
and blustered feebly and called Nafferton names, and then died
down
to a watery, weak protest of the "I-say-it's-too-bad-you-know"
order.

Nafferton was very sympathetic.

"I'm afraid I've given you a good deal of trouble, haven't I?" said
he.

"Trouble!" whimpered Pinecoffin; "I don't mind the trouble so
much,
though that was bad enough; but what I resent is this showing up in
print.  It will stick to me like a burr all through my service.  And
I DID do my best for your interminable swine.  It's too bad of you,
on my soul it is!"

"I don't know," said Nafferton; "have you ever been stuck with a
horse?  It isn't the money I mind, though that is bad enough; but
what I resent is the chaff that follows, especially from the boy who
stuck me.  But I think we'll cry quite now."

Pinecoffin found nothing to say save bad words; and Nafferton
smiled
ever so sweetly, and asked him to dinner.

THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS.

It was not in the open fight
  We threw away the sword,
But in the lonely watching
  In the darkness by the ford.

The waters lapped, the night-wind blew,
Full-armed the Fear was born and grew,
And we were flying ere we knew
  From panic in the night.

                     Beoni Bar.

Some people hold that an English Cavalry regiment cannot run.
This
is a mistake.  I have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabres
flying over the face of the country in abject terror--have seen the
best Regiment that ever drew bridle, wiped off the Army List for
the
space of two hours.  If you repeat this tale to the White Hussars
they will, in all probability, treat you severely.  They are not
proud of the incident.

You may know the White Hussars by their "side," which is greater
than that of all the Cavalry Regiments on the roster.  If this is
not a sufficient mark, you may know them by their old brandy.  It
has been sixty years in the Mess and is worth going far to taste.

Ask for the "McGaire" old brandy, and see that you get it.  If the
Mess Sergeant thinks that you are uneducated, and that the genuine
article will be lost on you, he will treat you accordingly.  He is a
good man.  But, when you are at Mess, you must never talk to your
hosts about forced marches or long-distance rides.  The Mess are
very sensitive; and, if they think that you are laughing at them,
will tell you so.

As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colonel's fault.  He was a
new man, and he ought never to have taken the Command.  He
said that
the Regiment was not smart enough.  This to the White Hussars,
who
knew they could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and
over
any Foot on the face of the earth!  That insult was the first cause
of offence.

Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse--the Drum-Horse of the
White
Hussars!  Perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he
had
committed.  I will try to make it clear.  The soul of the Regiment
lives in the Drum-Horse, who carries the silver kettle-drums.  He is
nearly always a big piebald Waler.  That is a point of honor; and a
Regiment will spend anything you please on a piebald.  He is
beyond
the ordinary laws of casting.  His work is very light, and he only
manoeuvres at a foot-pace.  Wherefore, so long as he can step out
and look handsome, his well-being is assured.  He knows more
about
the Regiment than the Adjutant, and could not make a mistake if
he
tried.

The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was only eighteen years
old, and
perfectly equal to his duties.  He had at least six years' more work
in him, and carried himself with all the pomp and dignity of a
Drum-
Major of the Guards.  The Regiment had paid Rs. 1,200 for him.

But the Colonel said that he must go, and he was cast in due form
and replaced by a washy, bay beast as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-
neck, rat-tail, and cow-hocks.  The Drummer detested that animal,
and the best of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the
whites of their eyes at the very sight of him.  They knew him for an
upstart and no gentleman.  I fancy that the Colonel's ideas of
smartness extended to the Band, and that he wanted to make it
take
part in the regular parade movements.  A Cavalry Band is a sacred
thing.  It only turns out for Commanding Officers' parades, and the
Band Master is one degree more important than the Colonel.  He is
a
High Priest and the "Keel Row" is his holy song.  The "Keel Row"
is
the Cavalry Trot; and the man who has never heard that tune
rising,
high and shrill, above the rattle of the Regiment going past the
saluting-base, has something yet to hear and understand.

When the Colonel cast the Drum-horse of the White Hussars, there
was
nearly a mutiny.

The officers were angry, the Regiment were furious, and the
Bandsman
swore--like troopers.  The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to
auction--public auction--to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put
into a cart!  It was worse than exposing the inner life of the
Regiment to the whole world, or selling the Mess Plate to a Jew--a
black Jew.

The Colonel was a mean man and a bully.  He knew what the
Regiment
thought about his action; and, when the troopers offered to buy the
Drum-Horse, he said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden
by
the Regulations.

But one of the Subalterns--Hogan-Yale, an Irishman--bought the
Drum-
Horse for Rs. 160 at the sale; and the Colonel was wroth.  Yale
professed repentance--he was unnaturally submissive--and said
that,
as he had only made the purchase to save the horse from possible
ill-treatment and starvation, he would now shoot him and end the
business.  This appeared to soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the
Drum-Horse disposed of.  He felt that he had made a mistake, and
could not of course acknowledge it.  Meantime, the presence of the
Drum-Horse was an annoyance to him.

Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three cheroots, and
his friend, Martyn; and they all left the Mess together.  Yale and
Martyn conferred for two hours in Yale's quarters; but only the
bull-terrier who keeps watch over Yale's boot-trees knows what
they
said.  A horse, hooded and sheeted to his ears, left Yale's stables
and was taken, very unwillingly, into the Civil Lines.  Yale's
groom
went with him.  Two men broke into the Regimental Theatre and
took
several paint-pots and some large scenery brushes.  Then night fell
over the Cantonments, and there was a noise as of a horse kicking
his loose-box to pieces in Yale's stables.  Yale had a big, old,
white Waler trap-horse.

The next day was a Thursday, and the men, hearing that Yale was
going to shoot the Drum-Horse in the evening, determined to give
the
beast a regular regimental funeral--a finer one than they would
have
given the Colonel had he died just then.  They got a bullock-cart
and some sacking, and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body,
under sacking, was carried out to the place where the anthrax cases
were cremated; two-thirds of the Regiment followed.  There was
no
Band, but they all sang "The Place where the old Horse died" as
something respectful and appropriate to the occasion.  When the
corpse was dumped into the grave and the men began throwing
down
armfuls of roses to cover it, the Farrier-Sergeant ripped out an
oath and said aloud:--"Why, it ain't the Drum-Horse any more than
it's me!"  The Troop-Sergeant-Majors asked him whether he had
left
his head in the Canteen.  The Farrier-Sergeant said that he knew
the
Drum-Horse's feet as well as he knew his own; but he was silenced
when he saw the regimental number burnt in on the poor stiff,
upturned near-fore.

Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars buried; the
Farrier-
Sergeant grumbling.  The sacking that covered the corpse was
smeared
in places with black paint; and the Farrier-Sergeant drew attention
to this fact.  But the Troop-Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him
severely on the shin, and told him that he was undoubtedly drunk.

On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought revenge
on
the White Hussars.  Unfortunately, being at that time temporarily
in
Command of the Station, he ordered a Brigade field-day.  He said
that he wished to make the regiment "sweat for their damned
insolence," and he carried out his notion thoroughly.  That Monday
was one of the hardest days in the memory of the White Hussars.

They were thrown against a skeleton-enemy, and pushed forward,
and
withdrawn, and dismounted, and "scientifically handled" in every
possible fashion over dusty country, till they sweated profusely.

Their only amusement came late in the day, when they fell upon
the
battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two mile's.  This was a
personal question, and most of the troopers had money on the
event;
the Gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the White
Hussars.  They were wrong.  A march-past concluded the
campaign, and
when the Regiment got back to their Lines, the men were coated
with
dirt from spur to chin-strap.

The White Hussars have one great and peculiar privilege.  They
won
it at Fontenoy, I think.

Many Regiments possess special rights, such as wearing collars
with
undress uniform, or a bow of ribbon between the shoulders, or red
and white roses in their helmets on certain days of the year.  Some
rights are connected with regimental saints, and some with
regimental successes.  All are valued highly; but none so highly as
the right of the White Hussars to have the Band playing when their
horses are being watered in the Lines.  Only one tune is played.

and that tune never varies.  I don't know its real name, but the
White Hussars call it:--"Take me to London again."  It sound's very
pretty.  The Regiment would sooner be struck off the roster than
forego their distinction.

After the "dismiss" was sounded, the officers rode off home to
prepare for stables; and the men filed into the lines, riding easy.

That is to say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their
helmets, and began to joke or to swear as the humor took them; the
more careful slipping off and easing girths and curbs.  A good
trooper values his mount exactly as much as he values himself, and
believes, or should believe, that the two together are irresistible
where women or men, girl's or gun's, are concerned.

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order:--"Water horses," and the
Regiment loafed off to the squadron-troughs, which were in rear of
the stables and between these and the barracks.  There were four
huge troughs, one for each squadron, arranged en echelon, so that
the whole Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked.  But it
lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while the Band played.

The band struck up as the squadrons filed off the troughs and the
men slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other.

The sun was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the
road to the Civil Lines seemed to run straight into the sun's eye.

There was a little dot on the road.  It grew and grew till it showed
as a horse, with a sort of gridiron thing on his back.  The red
cloud glared through the bars of the gridiron.  Some of the troopers
shaded their eyes with their hands and said:--"What the mischief as
that there 'orse got on 'im!"

In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul--horse and
man--
in the Regiment knew, and saw, heading straight towards the
Band,
the dead Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!

On his withers banged and bumped the kettle-drums draped in
crape,
and on his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bare-headed
skeleton.

The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.

Then some one in E troop--men said it was the
Troop-Sergeant-Major--
swung his horse round and yelled.  No one can account exactly for
what happened afterwards; but it seems that, at least, one man in
each troop set an example of panic, and the rest followed like
sheep.  The horses that had barely put their muzzles into the
trough's reared and capered; but, as soon as the Band broke, which
it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong
distant,
all hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede--quite
different from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade,
or the rough horse-play of watering in camp--made them only
more
terrified.  They felt that the men on their backs were afraid of
something.  When horses once know THAT, all is over except the
butchery.

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere, and
everywhere--like spit quicksilver.  It was a most extraordinary
spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and
the carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses
on.  Men were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the
Band which was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had
fallen
forward and seemed to be spurring for a wager.

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink.  Most of the
officers were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was
preparing
to go down to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the
Troop-Sergeant Majors.  When "Take me to London again"
stopped,
after twenty bars, every one in the Mess said:--"What on earth has
happened?"  A minute later, they heard unmilitary noises, and saw,
far across the plain, the White Hussars scattered, and broken, and
flying.

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the
Regiment had risen against him or was unanimously drunk.  The
Band,
a disorganized mob, tore past, and at it's heels labored the Drum-
Horse--the dead and buried Drum-Horse--with the jolting,
clattering
skeleton.  Hogan-Yale whispered softly to Martyn:--"No wire will
stand that treatment," and the Band, which had doubled like a hare,
came back again.  But the rest of the Regiment was gone, was
rioting
all over the Province, for the dusk had shut in and each man was
howling to his neighbor that the Drum-Horse was on his flank.

Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule.  They can, on
emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen stone on their
backs.  As the troopers found out.

How long this panic lasted I cannot say.  I believe that when the
moon rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and
threes and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much
ashamed of themselves.  Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at
his
treatment by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up
to the Mess verandah-steps for bread.  No one liked to run; but no
one cared to go forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid
hold of the skeleton's foot.  The Band had halted some distance
away, and now came back slowly.  The Colonel called it,
individually
and collectively, every evil name that occurred to him at the time;
for he had set his hand on the bosom of the Drum-Horse and found
flesh and blood.  Then he beat the kettle-drums with his clenched
fist, and discovered that they were but made of silvered paper and
bamboo.  Next, still swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of
the saddle, but found that it had been wired into the cantle.  The
sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the skeleton's pelvis and
his knee in the old Drum-Horse's stomach, was striking.  Not to say
amusing.  He worried the thing off in a minute or two, and threw it
down on the ground, saying to the Band:--"Here, you curs, that's
what you're afraid of."  The skeleton did not look pretty in the
twilight.  The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began
to
chuckle and choke.  "Shall I take it away, sir?" said the Band-
Sergeant.  "Yes," said the Colonel, "take it to Hell, and ride there
yourselves!"

The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-
bow, and led off to the stables.  Then the Colonel began to make
inquiries for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used
was
wonderful.  He would disband the Regiment--he would
court-martial
every soul in it--he would not command such a set of rabble, and
so
on, and so on.  As the men dropped in, his language grew wilder,
until at last it exceeded the utmost limits of free speech allowed
even to a Colonel of Horse.

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory
retirement
from the service as a necessity when all was discovered.  Martyn
was
the weaker man of the two, Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and
remarked, firstly, that he was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that
he was as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical
resurrection
of the Drum-Horse.

"My instructions," said Yale, with a singularly sweet smile, "were
that the Drum-Horse should be sent back as impressively as
possible.

I ask you, AM I responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him
back
in such a manner as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of
Her Majesty's Cavalry?"

Martyn said:--"you are a great man and will in time become a
General; but I'd give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this
affair."

Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale.  The
Second-in-Command led
the Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the
subalterns of the white Hussars were accustomed to play poker of
nights; and there, after many oaths on the Colonel's part, they
talked together in low tones.  I fancy that the Second-in-Command
must have represented the scare as the work of some trooper
whom it
would be hopeless to detect; and I know that he dwelt upon the sin
and the shame of making a public laughingstock of the scare.

"They will call us," said the Second-in-Command, who had really
a
fine imagination, "they will call us the 'Fly-by-Nights'; they will
call us the 'Ghost Hunters'; they will nickname us from one end of
the Army list to the other.  All the explanations in the world won't
make outsiders understand that the officers were away when the
panic
began.  For the honor of the Regiment and for your own sake keep
this thing quiet."

The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down
was
not so difficult as might be imagined.  He was made to see, gently
and by degrees, that it was obviously impossible to court-martial
the whole Regiment, and equally impossible to proceed against
any
subaltern who, in his belief, had any concern in the hoax.

"But the beast's alive!  He's never been shot at all!" shouted the
Colonel.  "It's flat, flagrant disobedience!  I've known a man broke
for less, d----d sight less.  They're mocking me, I tell you, Mutman!
They're mocking me!"

Once more, the Second-in-Command set himself to sooth the
Colonel,
and wrestled with him for half-an-hour.  At the end of that time,
the Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself.  The situation
was
rather novel tell to him; but he was not a man to be put out by
circumstances.  He saluted and said: "Regiment all come back,
Sir."
Then, to propitiate the Colonel:--"An' none of the horses any the
worse, Sir."

The Colonel only snorted and answered:--"You'd better tuck the
men
into their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in
the night."  The Sergeant withdrew.

His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, and, further, he
felt slightly ashamed of the language he had been using.  The
Second-in-Command worried him again, and the two sat talking
far
into the night.

Next day but one, there was a Commanding Officer's parade, and
the
Colonel harangued the White Hussars vigorously.  The pith of his
speech was that, since the Drum-Horse in his old age had proved
himself capable of cutting up the Whole Regiment, he should
return
to his post of pride at the head of the band, BUT the Regiment
were
a set of ruffians with bad consciences.

The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about
them
into the air, and when the parade was over, they cheered the
Colonel
till they couldn't speak.  No cheers were put up for Lieutenant
Hogan-Yale, who smiled very sweetly in the background.

Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unofficially:--"These
little things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect
discipline."

"But I went back on my word," said the Colonel.

"Never mind," said the Second-in-Command.  "The White Hussars
will
follow you anywhere from to-day.  Regiment's are just like
women.

They will do anything for trinketry."

A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary letter from
some
one who signed himself "Secretary Charity and Zeal, 3709, E. C.,"
and asked for "the return of our skeleton which we have reason to
believe is in your possession."

"Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?" said Hogan-
Yale.

"Beg your pardon, Sir," said the Band-Sergeant, "but the skeleton
is
with me, an' I'll return it if you'll pay the carriage into the
Civil Lines.  There's a coffin with it, Sir."

Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band-Sergeant,
saying:--"Write the date on the skull, will you?"

If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date
on the skeleton.  But don't mention the matter to the White
Hussars.

I happen to know something about it, because I prepared the
Drum-
Horse for his resurrection.  He did not take kindly to the skeleton
at all.

THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE.

In the daytime, when she moved about me,
  In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,--
I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence.

Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her--
  Would to God that she or I had died!
Confessions.

There was a man called Bronckhorst--a three-cornered,
middle-aged
man in the Army--gray as a badger, and, some people said, with a
touch of country-blood in him.  That, however, cannot be proved.

Mrs. Bronckhorst was not exactly young, though fifteen years
younger
than her husband.  She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy
eyelids, over weak eyes, and hair that turned red or yellow as the
lights fell on it.

Bronckhorst was not nice in any way.  He had no respect for the
pretty public and private lies that make life a little less nasty
than it is.  His manner towards his wife was coarse.  There are
many
things--including actual assault with the clenched fist--that a wife
will endure; but seldom a wife can bear--as Mrs. Bronckhorst
bore--
with a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light of her
weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gayety, her dresses,
her queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her husband
when she knows that she is not what she has been, and--worst of
all--
the love that she spends on her children.  That particular sort of
heavy-handed jest was specially dear to Bronckhorst.  I suppose
that
he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm, in the honeymoon,
when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short, and
so
go to the other extreme to express their feelings.  A similar
impulse make's a man say:--"Hutt, you old beast!" when a favorite
horse nuzzles his coat-front.  Unluckily, when the reaction of
marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the tenderness
having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say.  But
Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her "teddy," as she called him.

Perhaps that was why he objected to her.  Perhaps--this is only a
theory to account for his infamous behavior later on--he gave way
to
the queer savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a
husband twenty years' married, when he sees, across the table, the
same face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing
it, so must he continue to sit until day of its death or his own.

Most men and all women know the spasm.  It only lasts for three
breaths as a rule, must be a "throw-back" to times when men and
women were rather worse than they are now, and is too unpleasant
to
be discussed.

Dinner at the Bronckhorst's was an infliction few men cared to
undergo.  Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made
his
wife wince.  When their little boy came in at dessert, Bronckhorst
used to give him half a glass of wine, and naturally enough, the
poor little mite got first riotous, next miserable, and was removed
screaming.  Bronckhorst asked if that was the way Teddy usually
behaved, and whether Mrs. Bronckhorst could not spare some of
her
time to teach the "little beggar decency."  Mrs. Bronckhorst, who
loved the boy more than her own life, tried not to cry--her spirit
seemed to have been broken by her marriage.  Lastly, Bronckhorst
used to say:--"There!  That'll do, that'll do.  For God's sake try
to behave like a rational woman.  Go into the drawing-room."
Mrs.

Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all off with a smile; and
the guest of the evening would feel angry and uncomfortable.

After three years of this cheerful life--for Mrs. Bronckhorst had no
woman-friends to talk to--the Station was startled by the news that
Bronckhorst had instituted proceedings ON THE CRIMINAL
COUNT,
against a man called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive
to Mrs. Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in public.  The
utter
want of reserve with which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonor
helped us to know that the evidence against Biel would be entirely
circumstantial and native.  There were no letters; but Bronckhorst
said openly that he would rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel
superintending the manufacture of carpets in the Central Jail.  Mrs.

Bronckhorst kept entirely to her house, and let charitable folks say
what they pleased.  Opinions were divided.  Some two-thirds of
the
Station jumped at once to the conclusion that Biel was guilty; but a
dozen men who knew and liked him held by him.  Biel was furious
and
surprised.  He denied the whole thing, and vowed that he would
thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life.  No jury, we knew,
could convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a
land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all
complete for fifty-four rupees; but Biel did not care to scrape
through by the benefit of a doubt.  He wanted the whole thing
cleared: but as he said one night:--"He can prove anything with
servants' evidence, and I've only my bare word."  This was about a
month before the case came on; and beyond agreeing with Biel, we
could do little.  All that we could be sure of was that the native
evidence would be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest
of his service; for when a native begins perjury he perjures himself
thoroughly.  He does not boggle over details.

Some genius at the end of the table whereat the affair was being
talked over, said:--"Look here!  I don't believe lawyers are any
good.  Get a man to wire to Strickland, and beg him to come down
and
pull us through."

Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line.  He
had
not long been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the
telegram a chance of return to the old detective work that his soul
lusted after, and next night he came in and heard our story.  He
finished his pipe and said oracularly:--we must get at the evidence.

Oorya bearer, Mussalman khit and methraniayah, I suppose, are
the
pillars of the charge.  I am on in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm
getting rusty in my talk."

He rose and went into Biel's bedroom where his trunk had been
put,
and shut the door.  An hour later, we heard him say:--"I hadn't the
heart to part with my old makeups when I married.  Will this do?"
There was a lothely faquir salaaming in the doorway.

"Now lend me fifty rupees," said Strickland, "and give me your
Words
of Honor that you won't tell my Wife."

He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table
drank his health.  What he did only he himself knows.  A faquir
hung
about Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days.  Then a mehter
appeared, and when Biel heard of HIM, he said that Strickland was
an
angel full-fledged.  Whether the mehter made love to Janki, Mrs.

Bronckhorst's ayah, is a question which concerns Strickland
exclusively.

He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly:--"You
spoke the truth, Biel.  The whole business is put up from beginning
to end.  Jove!  It almost astonishes ME!  That Bronckhorst-beast
isn't fit to live."

There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said:--"How are you
going to
prove it?  You can't say that you've been trespassing on
Bronckhorst's compound in disguise!"

"No," said Strickland.  "Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to
get up something strong about 'inherent improbabilities' and
'discrepancies of evidence.'  He won't have to speak, but it will
make him happy.  I'M going to run this business."

Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would
happen.  They trusted Strickland as men trust quiet men.  When
the
case came off the Court was crowded.  Strickland hung about in
the
verandah of the Court, till he met the Mohammedan khitmatgar.
Then
he murmured a faquir's blessing in his ear, and asked him how his
second wife did.  The man spun round, and, as he looked into the
eyes of "Estreeken Sahib," his jaw dropped.  You must remember
that
before Strickland was married, he was, as I have told you already,
a
power among natives.  Strickland whispered a rather coarse
vernacular proverb to the effect that he was abreast of all that was
going on, and went into the Court armed with a gut trainer's-whip.

The Mohammedan was the first witness and Strickland beamed
upon him
from the back of the Court.  The man moistened his lips with his
tongue and, in his abject fear of "Estreeken Sahib" the faquir, went
back on every detail of his evidence--said he was a poor man and
God
was his witness that he had forgotten every thing that Bronckhorst
Sahib had told him to say.  Between his terror of Strickland, the
Judge, and Bronckhorst he collapsed, weeping.

Then began the panic among the witnesses.  Janki, the ayah,
leering
chastely behind her veil, turned gray, and the bearer left the
Court.  He said that his Mamma was dying and that it was not
wholesome for any man to lie unthriftily in the presence of
"Estreeken Sahib."

Biel said politely to Bronckhorst:--"Your witnesses don't seem to
work.  Haven't you any forged letters to produce?"  But
Bronckhorst
was swaying to and fro in his chair, and there was a dead pause
after Biel had been called to order.

Bronckhorst's Counsel saw the look on his client's face, and
without
more ado, pitched his papers on the little green baize table, and
mumbled something about having been misinformed.  The whole
Court
applauded wildly, like soldiers at a theatre, and the Judge began to
say what he thought.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Biel came out of the place, and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's-
whip in the verandah.  Ten minutes later, Biel was cutting
Bronckhorst into ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly and
without scandal.  What was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a
carriage; and his wife wept over it and nursed it into a man again.

Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up the counter-charge
against Bronckhorst of fabricating false evidence, Mrs.
Bronckhorst,
with her faint watery smile, said that there had been a mistake, but
it wasn't her Teddy's fault altogether.  She would wait till her
Teddy came back to her.  Perhaps he had grown tired of her, or she
had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn't cut her any more,
and perhaps the mothers would let their children play with "little
Teddy" again.  He was so lonely.  Then the Station invited Mrs.

Bronckhorst everywhere, until Bronckhorst was fit to appear in
public, when he went Home and took his wife with him.
According to
the latest advices, her Teddy did "come back to her," and they are
moderately happy.  Though, of course, he can never forgive her the
thrashing that she was the indirect means of getting for him.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

What Biel wants to know is:--"Why didn't I press home the charge
against the Bronckhorst-brute, and have him run in?"

What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is:--"How DID my husband
bring
such a lovely, lovely Waler from your Station?  I know ALL his
money-affairs; and I'm CERTAIN he didn't BUY it."

What I want to know is:--How do women like Mrs. Bronckhorst
come to
marry men like Bronckhorst?"

And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the three.

VENUS ANNODOMINI.

And the years went on as the years must do;
But our great Diana was always new--
Fresh, and blooming, and blonde, and fair,
With azure eyes and with aureate hair;
And all the folk, as they came or went,
Offered her praise to her heart's content.

                         Diana of Ephesus.

She had nothing to do with Number Eighteen in the Braccio
Nuovo of
the Vatican, between Visconti's Ceres and the God of the Nile.
She
was purely an Indian deity--an Anglo-Indian deity, that is to say--
and we called her THE Venus Annodomini, to distinguish her
from
other Annodominis of the same everlasting order.  There was a
legend
among the Hills that she had once been young; but no living man
was
prepared to come forward and say boldly that the legend was true.

Men rode up to Simla, and stayed, and went away and made their
name
and did their life's work, and returned again to find the Venus
Annodomini exactly as they had left her.  She was as immutable as
the Hills.  But not quite so green.  All that a girl of eighteen
could do in the way of riding, walking, dancing, picnicking and
over-exertion generally, the Venus Annodomini did, and showed
no
sign of fatigue or trace of weariness.  Besides perpetual youth, she
had discovered, men said, the secret of perpetual health; and her
fame spread about the land.  From a mere woman, she grew to be
an
Institution, insomuch that no young man could be said to be
properly
formed, who had not, at some time or another, worshipped at the
shrine of the Venus Annodomini.  There was no one like her,
though
there were many imitations.  Six years in her eyes were no more
than
six months to ordinary women; and ten made less visible
impression
on her than does a week's fever on an ordinary woman.  Every one
adored her, and in return she was pleasant and courteous to nearly
every one.  Youth had been a habit of hers for so long, that she
could not part with it--never realized, in fact, the necessity of
parting with it--and took for her more chosen associates young
people.

Among the worshippers of the Venus Annodomini was young
Gayerson.

"Very Young" Gayerson, he was called to distinguish him from his
father "Young" Gayerson, a Bengal Civilian, who affected the
customs--as he had the heart--of youth.  "Very Young" Gayerson
was
not content to worship placidly and for form's sake, as the other
young men did, or to accept a ride or a dance, or a talk from the
Venus Annodomini in a properly humble and thankful spirit.  He
was
exacting, and, therefore, the Venus Annodomini repressed him.
He
worried himself nearly sick in a futile sort of way over her; and
his devotion and earnestness made him appear either shy or
boisterous or rude, as his mood might vary, by the side of the older
men who, with him, bowed before the Venus Annodomini.  She
was sorry
for him.  He reminded her of a lad who, three-and-twenty years
ago,
had professed a boundless devotion for her, and for whom in
return
she had felt something more than a week's weakness.  But that lad
had fallen away and married another woman less than a year after
he
had worshipped her; and the Venus Annodomini had almost--not
quite--
forgotten his name.  "Very Young" Gayerson had the same big
blue
eyes and the same way of pouting his underlip when he was
excited or
troubled.  But the Venus Annodomini checked him sternly none
the
less.  Too much zeal was a thing that she did not approve of;
preferring instead, a tempered and sober tenderness.

"Very Young" Gayerson was miserable, and took no trouble to
conceal
his wretchedness.  He was in the Army--a Line regiment I think,
but
am not certain--and, since his face was a looking-glass and his
forehead an open book, by reason of his innocence, his brothers in
arms made his life a burden to him and embittered his naturally
sweet disposition.  No one except "Very Young" Gayerson, and he
never told his views, knew how old "Very Young" Gayerson
believed
the Venus Annodomini to be.  Perhaps he thought her five and
twenty,
or perhaps she told him that she was this age.  "Very Young"
Gayerson would have forded the Gugger in flood to carry her
lightest
word, and had implicit faith in her.  Every one liked him, and
every
one was sorry when they saw him so bound a slave of the Venus
Annodomini.  Every one, too, admitted that it was not her fault; for
the Venus Annodomini differed from Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs.
Reiver in
this particular--she never moved a finger to attract any one; but,
like Ninon de l'Enclos, all men were attracted to her.  One could
admire and respect Mrs. Hauksbee, despise and avoid Mrs. Reiver,
but
one was forced to adore the Venus Annodomini.

"Very Young" Gayerson's papa held a Division or a Collectorate or
something administrative in a particularly unpleasant part of
Bengal--full of Babus who edited newspapers proving that
"Young"
Gayerson was a "Nero" and a "Scylla" and a "Charybdis"; and, in
addition to the Babus, there was a good deal of dysentery and
cholera abroad for nine months of the year.  "Young" Gayerson--he
was about five and forty--rather liked Babus, they amused him, but
he objects to dysentery, and when he could get away, went to
Darjilling for the most part.  This particular season he fancied
that he would come up to Simla, and see his boy.  The boy was not
altogether pleased.  He told the Venus Annodomini that his father
was coming up, and she flushed a little and said that she should be
delighted to make his acquaintance.  Then she looked long and
thoughtfully at "Very Young" Gayerson; because she was very,
very
sorry for him, and he was a very, very big idiot.

"My daughter is coming out in a fortnight, Mr. Gayerson," she
said.

"Your WHAT?" said he.

"Daughter," said the Venus Annodomini.  "She's been out for a
year
at Home already, and I want her to see a little of India.  She is
nineteen and a very sensible, nice girl I believe."

"Very Young" Gayerson, who was a short twenty-two years old,
nearly
fell out of his chair with astonishment; for he had persisted in
believing, against all belief, in the youth of the Venus
Annodomini.

She, with her back to the curtained window, watched the effect of
her sentences and smiled.

"Very Young" Gayerson's papa came up twelve days later, and had
not
been in Simla four and twenty hours, before two men, old
acquaintances of his, had told him how "Very Young" Gayerson
had
been conducting himself.

"Young" Gayerson laughed a good deal, and inquired who the
Venus
Annodomini might be.  Which proves that he had been living in
Bengal
where nobody knows anything except the rate of Exchange.  Then
he
said "boys will be boys," and spoke to his son about the matter.

"Very Young" Gayerson said that he felt wretched and unhappy;
and
"Young" Gayerson said that he repented of having helped to bring
a
fool into the world.  He suggested that his son had better cut his
leave short and go down to his duties.  This led to an unfilial
answer, and relations were strained, until "Young" Gayerson
denmanded that they should call on the Venus Annodomini.  "Very
Young" Gayerson went with his papa, feeling, somehow,
uncomfortable
and small.

The Venus Annodomini received them graciously and "Young"
Gayerson
said:--"By Jove!  It's Kitty!"  "Very Young" Gayerson would have
listened for an explanation, if his time had not been taken up with
trying to talk to a large, handsome, quiet, well-dressed girl--
introduced to him by the Venus Annodomini as her daughter.  She
was
far older in manners, style and repose than "Very Young"
Gayerson;
and, as he realized this thing, he felt sick.

Presently, he heard the Venus Annodomini saying:--"Do you know
that
your son is one of my most devoted admirers?"

"I don't wonder," said "Young" Gayerson.  Here he raised his
voice:--
"He follows his father's footsteps.  Didn't I worship the ground
you trod on, ever so long ago, Kitty--and you haven't changed since
then.  How strange it all seems!"

"Very Young" Gayerson said nothing.  His conversation with the
daughter of the Venus Annodomini was, through the rest of the
call,
fragmentary and disjointed.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

"At five, to-morrow then," said the Venus Annodomini.  "And
mind you
are punctual."

"At five punctual," said "Young" Gayerson.  "You can lend your
old
father a horse I dare say, youngster, can't you?  I'm going for a
ride tomorrow afternoon."

"Certainly," said "Very Young" Gayerson.  "I am going down
to-morrow
morning.  My ponies are at your service, Sir."

The Venus Annodomini looked at him across the half-light of the
room, and her big gray eyes filled with moisture.  She rose and
shook hands with him.

"Good-bye, Tom," whispered the Venus Annodomini.

THE BISARA OF POOREE.

Little Blind Fish, thou art marvellous wise,
Little Blind Fish, who put out thy eyes?
Open thine ears while I whisper my wish--
Bring me a lover, thou little Blind Fish.

                 The Charm of the Bisara.

Some natives say that it came from the other side of Kulu, where
the
eleven-inch Temple Sapphire is.  Others that it was made at the
Devil-Shrine of Ao-Chung in Thibet, was stolen by a Kafir, from
him
by a Gurkha, from him again by a Lahouli, from him by a
khitmatgar,
and by this latter sold to an Englishman, so all its virtue was
lost: because, to work properly, the Bisara of Pooree must be
stolen--with bloodshed if possible, but, at any rate, stolen.

These stories of the coming into India are all false.  It was made
at Pooree ages since--the manner of its making would fill a small
book--was stolen by one of the Temple dancing-girls there, for her
own purposes, and then passed on from hand to hand, steadily
northward, till it reached Hanla: always bearing the same
name--the
Bisara of Pooree.  In shape it is a tiny, square box of silver,
studded outside with eight small balas-rubies.  Inside the box,
which opens with a spring, is a little eyeless fish, carved from
some sort of dark, shiny nut and wrapped in a shred of faded gold-
cloth.  That is the Bisara of Pooree, and it were better for a man
to take a king cobra in his hand than to touch the Bisara of Pooree.

All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with except in
India where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff
that people call "civilization."  Any man who knows about the
Bisara
of Pooree will tell you what its powers are--always supposing that
it has been honestly stolen.  It is the only regularly working,
trustworthy love-charm in the country, with one exception.

[The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the Nizam's Horse,
at a place called Tuprani, due north of Hyderabad.]  This can be
depended upon for a fact.  Some one else may explain it.

If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or found, it turns
against its owner in three years, and leads to ruin or death.  This
is another fact which you may explain when you have time.

Meanwhile, you can laugh at it.  At present, the Bisara is safe on
an ekka-pony's neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off
the Evil-eye.  If the ekka-driver ever finds it, and wears it, or
gives it to his wife, I am sorry for him.

A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, owned it at Theog in
1884.  It came into Simla from the north before Churton's
khitmatgar
bought it, and sold it, for three times its silver-value, to
Churton, who collected curiosities.  The servant knew no more
what
he had bought than the master; but a man looking over Churton's
collection of curiosities--Churton was an Assistant Commissioner
by
the way--saw and held his tongue.  He was an Englishman; but
knew
how to believe.  Which shows that he was different from most
Englishmen.  He knew that it was dangerous to have any share in
the
little box when working or dormant; for unsought Love is a terrible
gift.

Pack--"Grubby" Pack, as we used to call him--was, in every way, a
nasty little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake.
He
was three inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong.  And
the sword was a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one.  Nobody liked him,
and, I suppose, it was his wizenedness and worthlessness that
made
him fall so hopelessly in love with Miss Hollis, who was good and
sweet, and five foot seven in her tennis shoes.  He was not content
with falling in love quietly, but brought all the strength of his
miserable little nature into the business.  If he had not been so
objectionable, one might have pitied him.  He vapored, and fretted,
and fumed, and trotted up and down, and tried to make himself
pleasing in Miss Hollis's big, quiet, gray eyes, and failed.  It was
one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in this country
where
we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on one side,
without the faintest possibility of return.  Miss Hollis looked on
Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road.  He had no
prospects beyond Captain's pay, and no wits to help that out by one
anna.  In a large-sized man, love like his would have been
touching.

In a good man it would have been grand.  He being what he was, it
was only a nuisance.

You will believe this much.  What you will not believe, is what
follows: Churton, and The Man who Knew that the Bisara was,
were
lunching at the Simla Club together.  Churton was complaining of
life in general.  His best mare had rolled out of stable down the
hill and had broken her back; his decisions were being reversed by
the upper Courts, more than an Assistant Commissioner of eight
years' standing has a right to expect; he knew liver and fever, and,
for weeks past, had felt out of sorts.  Altogether, he was disgusted
and disheartened.

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world knows, in two
sections, with an arch-arrangement dividing them.  Come in, turn
to
your own left, take the table under the window, and you cannot see
any one who has come in, turning to the right, and taken a table on
the right side of the arch.  Curiously enough, every word that you
say can be heard, not only by the other diner, but by the servants
beyond the screen through which they bring dinner.  This is worth
knowing: an echoing-room is a trap to be forewarned against.

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man who Knew
told
Churton the story of the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length
than I have told it to you in this place; winding up with the
suggestion that Churton might as well throw the little box down
the
hill and see whether all his troubles would go with it.  In ordinary
ears, English ears, the tale was only an interesting bit of folk-
lore.  Churton laughed, said that he felt better for his tiffin, and
went out.  Pack had been tiffining by himself to the right of the
arch, and had heard everything.  He was nearly mad with his
absurd
infatuation for Miss Hollis that all Simla had been laughing about.

It is a curious thing that, when a man hates or loves beyond reason,
he is ready to go beyond reason to gratify his feelings.  Which he
would not do for money or power merely.  Depend upon it,
Solomon
would never have built altars to Ashtaroth and all those ladies with
queer names, if there had not been trouble of some kind in his
zenana, and nowhere else.  But this is beside the story.  The facts
of the case are these: Pack called on Churton next day when
Churton
was out, left his card, and STOLE the Bisara of Pooree from its
place under the clock on the mantelpiece!  Stole it like the thief
he was by nature.  Three days later, all Simla was electrified by
the news that Miss Hollis had accepted Pack--the shrivelled rat,
Pack!  Do you desire clearer evidence than this?  The Bisara of
Pooree had been stolen, and it worked as it had always done when
won
by foul means.

There are three or four times in a man's life-when he is justified
in meddling with other people's affairs to play Providence.

The Man who Knew felt that he WAS justified; but believing and
acting on a belief are quite different things.  The insolent
satisfaction of Pack as he ambled by the side of Miss Hollis, and
Churton's striking release from liver, as soon as the Bisara of
Pooree had gone, decided the Man.  He explained to Churton and
Churton laughed, because he was not brought up to believe that
men
on the Government House List steal--at least little things.  But the
miraculous acceptance by Miss Hollis of that tailor, Pack, decided
him to take steps on suspicion.  He vowed that he only wanted to
find out where his ruby-studded silver box had vanished to.  You
cannot accuse a man on the Government House List of stealing.
And
if you rifle his room you are a thief yourself.  Churton, prompted
by The Man who Knew, decided on burglary.  If he found nothing
in
Pack's room . . . . but it is not nice to think of what would have
happened in that case.

Pack went to a dance at Benmore--Benmore WAS Benmore in
those days,
and not an office--and danced fifteen waltzes out of twenty-two
with
Miss Hollis.  Churton and The Man took all the keys that they
could
lay hands on, and went to Pack's room in the hotel, certain that his
servants would be away.  Pack was a cheap soul.  He had not
purchased a decent cash-box to keep his papers in, but one of those
native imitations that you buy for ten rupees.  It opened to any
sort of key, and there at the bottom, under Pack's Insurance Policy,
lay the Bisara of Pooree!

Churton called Pack names, put the Bisara of Pooree in his pocket,
and went to the dance with The Man.  At least, he came in time for
supper, and saw the beginning of the end in Miss Hollis's eyes.
She
was hysterical after supper, and was taken away by her Mamma.

At the dance, with the abominable Bisara in his pocket, Churton
twisted his foot on one of the steps leading down to the old Rink,
and had to be sent home in a rickshaw, grumbling.  He did not
believe in the Bisara of Pooree any the more for this manifestation,
but he sought out Pack and called him some ugly names; and
"thief"
was the mildest of them.  Pack took the names with the nervous
smile
of a little man who wants both soul and body to resent an insult,
and went his way.  There was no public scandal.

A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis.

There had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said.

So he went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if
he
lives to be a Colonel.

Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of
Pooree
as a gift.  The Man took it, went down to the Cart Road at once,
found an ekka pony with a blue head-necklace, fastened the Bisara
of
Pooree inside the necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked
Heaven that he was rid of a danger.  Remember, in case you ever
find
it, that you must not destroy the Bisara of Pooree.  I have not time
to explain why just now, but the power lies in the little wooden
fish.  Mister Gubernatis or Max Muller could tell you more about
it
than I.

You will say that all this story is made up.  Very well.  If ever
you come across a little silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of
an inch long by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown wooden
fish,
wrapped in gold cloth, inside it, keep it.  Keep it for three years,
and then you will discover for yourself whether my story is true or
false.

Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you
had not killed yourself in the beginning.

THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS.

"If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious?"
Opium Smoker's Proverb.

This is no work of mine.  My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-
caste, spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks
before
he died; and I took it down from his mouth as he answered my
questions so:--

It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'

quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the
Mosque of Wazir Khan.  I don't mind telling any one this much,
but I
defy him to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows
the
City.  You might even go through the very gully it stands in a
hundred times, and be none the wiser.  We used to call the gully,
"the Gully of the Black Smoke," but its native name is altogether
different of course.  A loaded donkey couldn't pass between the
walls; and, at one point, just before you reach the Gate, a bulged
house-front makes people go along all sideways.

It isn't really a gate though.  It's a house.  Old Fung-Tching had
it first five years ago.  He was a boot-maker in Calcutta.  They say
that he murdered his wife there when he was drunk.  That was why
he
dropped bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead.  Later on,
he
came up north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get
your smoke in peace and quiet.  Mind you, it was a pukka,
respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering
chandoo-khanas, that you can find all over the City.  No; the old
man knew his business thoroughly, and he was most clean for a
Chinaman.  He was a one-eyed little chap, not much more than
five
feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone.  All the same, he
was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen.  Never
seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day
and
night, night and day, was a caution.  I've been at it five years,
and I can do my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a
child to Fung-Tching that way.  All the same, the old man was
keen
on his money, very keen; and that's what I can't understand.  I
heard he saved a good deal before he died, but his nephew has got
all that now; and the old man's gone back to China to be buried.

He kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as
neat as a new pin.  In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss--
almost as ugly as Fung-Tching--and there were always sticks
burning
under his nose; but you never smelt 'em when the pipes were going
thick.  Opposite the Joss was Fung-Tching's coffin.  He had spent a
good deal of his savings on that, and whenever a new man came to
the
Gate he was always introduced to it.  It was lacquered black, with
red and gold writings on it, and I've heard that Fung-Tching
brought
it out all the way from China.  I don't know whether that's true or
not, but I know that, if I came first in the evening, I used to
spread my mat just at the foot of it.  It was a quiet corner you
see, and a sort of breeze from the gully came in at the window now
and then.  Besides the mats, there was no other furniture in the
room--only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and
purple with age and polish.

Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place "The Gate of a
Hundred Sorrows."  (He was the only Chinaman I know who used
bad-
sounding fancy names.  Most of them are flowery.  As you'll see in
Calcutta.)  We used to find that out for ourselves.  Nothing grows
on you so much, if you're white, as the Black Smoke.  A yellow
man
is made different.  Opium doesn't tell on him scarcely at all; but
white and black suffer a good deal.  Of course, there are some
people that the Smoke doesn't touch any more than tobacco would
at
first.  They just doze a bit, as one would fall asleep naturally,
and next morning they are almost fit for work.  Now, I was one of
that sort when I began, but I've been at it for five years pretty
steadily, and its different now.  There was an old aunt of mine,
down Agra way, and she left me a little at her death.  About sixty
rupees a month secured.  Sixty isn't much.  I can recollect a time,
seems hundreds and hundreds of years ago, that I was getting my
three hundred a month, and pickings, when I was working on a big
timber contract in Calcutta.

I didn't stick to that work for long.  The Black Smoke does not
allow of much other business; and even though I am very little
affected by it, as men go, I couldn't do a day's work now to save
my
life.  After all, sixty rupees is what I want.  When old Fung-Tching
was alive he used to draw the money for me, give me about half of
it
to live on (I eat very little), and the rest he kept himself.  I was
free of the Gate at any time of the day and night, and could smoke
and sleep there when I liked, so I didn't care.  I know the old man
made a good thing out of it; but that's no matter.  Nothing matters,
much to me; and, besides, the money always came fresh and fresh
each
month.

There was ten of us met at the Gate when the place was first
opened.

Me, and two Baboos from a Government Office somewhere in
Anarkulli,
but they got the sack and couldn't pay (no man who has to work in
the daylight can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight
on); a Chinaman that was Fung-Tching's nephew; a bazar-woman
that
had got a lot of money somehow; an English
loafer--Mac-Somebody I
think, but I have forgotten--that smoked heaps, but never seemed
to
pay anything (they said he had saved Fung-Tching's life at some
trial in Calcutta when he was a barrister): another Eurasian, like
myself, from Madras; a half-caste woman, and a couple of men
who
said they had come from the North.  I think they must have been
Persians or Afghans or something.  There are not more than five of
us living now, but we come regular.  I don't know what happened
to
the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died after six months of the
Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles and nose-ring for
himself.  But I'm not certain.  The Englishman, he drank as well as
smoked, and he dropped off.  One of the Persians got killed in a
row
at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air.

They found him dead at the bottom of it.  So, you see, there is only
me, the Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the
Memsahib
(she used to live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of
the Persians.  The Memsahib looks very old now.  I think she was
a
young woman when the Gate was opened; but we are all old for
the
matter of that.  Hundreds and hundreds of years old.  It is very
hard to keep count of time in the Gate, and besides, time doesn't
matter to me.  I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every month.

A very, very long while ago, when I used to be getting three
hundred
and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on a big timber-contract at
Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts.  But she's dead now.  People said
that I killed her by taking to the Black Smoke.  Perhaps I did, but
it's so long since it doesn't matter.  Sometimes when I first came
to the Gate, I used to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and
done with long ago, and I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh
every
month, and am quite happy.  Not DRUNK happy, you know, but
always
quiet and soothed and contented.

How did I take to it?  It began at Calcutta.  I used to try it in my
own house, just to see what it was like.  I never went very far, but
I think my wife must have died then.  Anyhow, I found myself
here,
and got to know Fung-Tching.  I don't remember rightly how that
came
about; but he told me of the Gate and I used to go there, and,
somehow, I have never got away from it since.  Mind you, though,
the
Gate was a respectable place in Fung-Tching's time where you
could
be comfortable, and not at all like the chandoo-khanas where the
niggers go.  No; it was clean and quiet, and not crowded.  Of
course, there were others beside us ten and the man; but we always
had a mat apiece with a wadded woollen head-piece, all covered
with
black and red dragons and things; just like a coffin in the corner.

At the end of one's third pipe the dragons used to move about and
fight.  I've watched 'em, many and many a night through.  I used to
regulate my Smoke that way, and now it takes a dozen pipes to
make
'em stir.  Besides, they are all torn and dirty, like the mats, and
old Fung-Tching is dead.  He died a couple of years ago, and gave
me
the pipe I always use now--a silver one, with queer beasts crawling
up and down the receiver-bottle below the cup.  Before that, I
think, I used a big bamboo stem with a copper cup, a very small
one,
and a green jade mouthpiece.  It was a little thicker than a
walking-stick stem, and smoked sweet, very sweet.  The bamboo
seemed
to suck up the smoke.  Silver doesn't, and I've got to clean it out
now and then, that's a great deal of trouble, but I smoke it for the
old man's sake.  He must have made a good thing out of me, but he
always gave me clean mats and pillows, and the best stuff you
could
get anywhere.

When he died, his nephew Tsin-ling took up the Gate, and he
called
it the "Temple of the Three Possessions;" but we old ones speak of
it as the "Hundred Sorrows," all the same.  The nephew does things
very shabbily, and I think the Memsahib must help him.  She lives
with him; same as she used to do with the old man.  The two let in
all sorts of low people, niggers and all, and the Black Smoke isn't
as good as it used to be.  I've found burnt bran in my pipe over and
over again.  The old man would have died if that had happened in
his
time.  Besides, the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn
and cut at the edges.  The coffin has gone--gone to China again--
with the old man and two ounces of smoke inside it, in case he
should want 'em on the way.

The Joss doesn't get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used
to; that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death.  He's all brown,
too, and no one ever attends to him.  That's the Memsahib's work, I
know; because, when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him,
she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning
very slowly, the Joss wouldn't know the difference.  So now we've
got the sticks mixed with a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour
longer to burn, and smell stinky.  Let alone the smell of the room
by itself.  No business can get on if they try that sort of thing.

The Joss doesn't like it.  I can see that.  Late at night,
sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue and green and
red--just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive; and he
rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.

I don't know why I don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a
little room of my own in the bazar.  Most like, Tsin-ling would kill
me if I went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's
so much trouble, and I've grown to be very fond of the Gate.  It's
not much to look at.  Not what it was in the old man's time, but I
couldn't leave it.  I've seen so many come in and out.  And I've
seen so many die here on the mats that I should be afraid of dying
in the open now.  I've seen some things that people would call
strange enough; but nothing is strange when you're on the Black
Smoke, except the Black Smoke.  And if it was, it wouldn't matter.

Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his people, and never
got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and such.  But
the
nephew isn't half so careful.  He tells everywhere that he keeps a
"first-chop" house.  Never tries to get men in quietly, and make
them comfortable like Fung-Tching did.  That's why the Gate is
getting a little bit more known than it used to be.  Among the
niggers of course.  The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter
of that, a mixed skin into the place.  He has to keep us three of
course--me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian.  We're
fixtures.

But he wouldn't give us credit for a pipeful--not for anything.

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate.  The Persian and
the Madras man are terrible shaky now.  They've got a boy to light
their pipes for them.  I always do that myself.  Most like, I shall
see them carried out before me.  I don't think I shall ever outlive
the Memsahib or Tsin-ling.  Women last longer than men at the
Black-
Smoke, and Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him,
though he DOES smoke cheap stuff.  The bazar-woman knew
when she was
going two days before her time; and SHE died on a clean mat with
a
nicely wadded pillow, and the old man hung up her pipe just above
the Joss.  He was always fond of her, I fancy.  But he took her
bangles just the same.

I should like to die like the bazar-woman--on a clean, cool mat
with
a pipe of good stuff between my lips.  When I feel I'm going, I
shall ask Tsin-ling for them, and he can draw my sixty rupees a
month, fresh and fresh, as long as he pleases, and watch the black
and red dragons have their last big fight together; and then . . . .

Well, it doesn't matter.  Nothing matters much to me--only I
wished
Tsin-ling wouldn't put bran into the Black Smoke.

THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN.

"Who is the happy man?  He that sees in his own house at home
little
children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying."

                      Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted.  It
stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din,
khitmatgar, was cleaning for me.

"Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din,
deferentially.

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was
a
polo-ball to a khitmatgar?

"By Your Honor's favor, I have a little son.  He has seen this ball,
and desires it to play with.  I do not want it for myself."

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of
wanting to
play with polo-balls.  He carried out the battered thing into the
verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a
patter
of small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the
ground.  Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door
to secure his treasure.  But how had he managed to see that polo-
ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual,
I
was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump
figure
in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way
down the tubby stomach.  It wandered round the room, thumb in
mouth,
crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures.  Undoubtedly
this was the "little son."

He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply
absorbed
in his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway.  I
stepped into the room and startled him nearly into a fit.  He sat
down on the ground with a gasp.  His eyes opened, and his mouth
followed suit.  I knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a
long, dry howl which reached the servants' quarters far more
quickly
than any command of mine had ever done.  In ten seconds Imam
Din was
in the dining-room.  Then despairing sobs arose, and I returned to
find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner who was using most
of his
shirt as a handkerchief.

"This boy," said Imam Din, judicially, "is a budmash, a big
budmash.

He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior."
Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to
myself
from Imam Din.

"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib is not angry, and take him
away."  Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who
had
now gathered all his shirt round his neck, string-wise, and the yell
subsided into a sob.  The two set off for the door.  "His name,"
said Imam Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is
Muhammad Din, and he is a budmash."  Freed from present
danger,
Muhammad Din turned round, in his father's arms, and said
gravely:--
"It is true that my name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a
budmash.  I am a MAN!"

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din.
Never again
did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the
compound, we greeted each other with much state, though our
conversation was confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side and
"Salaam Muhammad Din" from mine.  Daily on my return from
office,
the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from
the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid;
and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be
slurred over or given unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions.  He used to trot about
the
compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious
errands
of his own.  One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far
down
the ground.  He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six
shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it.  Outside that
circle again, was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick
alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by
a
little bank of dust.  The bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea
for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby
and did not much disfigure my garden.

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work
then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden
brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew,
marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into
confusion past all hope of mending.  Next morning I came upon
Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had
wrought.

Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with
him
for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish using bad
language the while.  Muhammad Din labored for an hour at
effacing
every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with
a tearful apologetic face that he said, "Talaam Tahib," when I
came
home from the office.  A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din
informing Muhammad Din that by my singular favor he was
permitted to
disport himself as he pleased.  Whereat the child took heart and
fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse
the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his
humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always
fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by
the
bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and
feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls--always alone and always
crooning to himself.

A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of
his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build
something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it.  Nor
was I disappointed.  He meditated for the better part of an hour,
and his crooning rose to a jubilant song.  Then he began tracing in
dust.  It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was
two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan.  But the palace
was
never completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-
drive, and no "Talaam Tahib" to welcome my return.  I had grown
accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me.  Next
day,
Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever
and needed quinine.  He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left
Imam Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it,
I
met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din,
accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in
a
white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din.

ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS.

If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care
that you do not fall in.
Hindu Proverb.

Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things
that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his
career, is an unrequited attachment.  It makes him feel important
and business-like, and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a
touch of liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn over
his lost love, and be very happy in a tender, twilight fashion.

Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him.  It was
four years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it.

She had married and had many cares of her own.  In the beginning,
she had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything
more
than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in
his welfare."  This startlingly new and original remark gave
Hannasyde something to think over for two years; and his own
vanity
filled in the other twenty-four months.  Hannasyde was quite
different from Phil Garron, but, none the less, had several points
in common with that far too lucky man.

He kept his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a
well-smoked
pipe--for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the
using.  It brought him happily through the Simla season.
Hannasyde
was not lovely.  There was a crudity in his manners, and a
roughness
in the way in which he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not
attract the other sex to him.  Even if he had cast about for their
favor, which he did not.  He kept his wounded heart all to himself
for a while.

Then trouble came to him.  All who go to Simla, know the slope
from
the Telegraph to the Public Works Office.  Hannasyde was loafing
up
the hill, one September morning between calling hours, when a
'rickshaw came down in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living,
breathing image of the girl who had made him so happily unhappy.

Hannasyde leaned against the railing and gasped.  He wanted to
run
downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went
forward with most of his blood in his temples.  It was impossible,
for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl
he had known.  She was, he discovered later, the wife of a man
from
Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place, and she
had
come up to Simla early in the season for the good of her health.

She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of
the season; and in all likelihood would never return to Simla again,
her proper Hill-station being Ootacamund.  That night, Hannasyde,
raw and savage from the raking up of all old feelings, took counsel
with himself for one measured hour.  What he decided upon was
this;
and you must decide for yourself how much genuine affection for
the
old love, and how much a very natural inclination to go abroad and
enjoy himself, affected the decision.  Mrs. Landys-Haggert would
never in all human likelihood cross his path again.  So whatever he
did didn't much matter.  She was marvellously like the girl who
"took a deep interest" and the rest of the formula.  All things
considered, it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of Mrs.

Landys-Haggert, and for a little time--only a very little time--to
make believe that he was with Alice Chisane again.  Every one is
more or less mad on one point.  Hannasyde's particular monomania
was
his old love, Alice Chisane.

He made it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the
introduction prospered.  He also made it his business to see as
much
as he could of that lady.  When a man is in earnest as to
interviews, the facilities which Simla offers are startling.  There
are garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons
at Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides
rides and walks, which are matters of private arrangement.

Hannasyde had started with the intention of seeing a likeness, and
he ended by doing much more.  He wanted to be deceived, he
meant to
be deceived, and he deceived himself very thoroughly.  Not only
were
the face and figure, the face and figure of Alice Chisane, but the
voice and lower tones were exactly the same, and so were the turns
of speech; and the little mannerisms, that every woman has, of gait
and gesticulation, were absolutely and identically the same.  The
turn of the head was the same; the tired look in the eyes at the end
of a long walk was the same; the sloop and wrench over the saddle
to
hold in a pulling horse was the same; and once, most marvellous
of
all, Mrs. Landys-Haggert singing to herself in the next room, while
Hannasyde was waiting to take her for a ride, hummed, note for
note,
with a throaty quiver of the voice in the second line:--"Poor
Wandering One!" exactly as Alice Chisane had hummed it for
Hannasyde
in the dusk of an English drawing-room.  In the actual woman
herself--in the soul of her--there was not the least likeness; she
and Alice Chisane being cast in different moulds.  But all that
Hannasyde wanted to know and see and think about, was this
maddening
and perplexing likeness of face and voice and manner.  He was
bent
on making a fool of himself that way; and he was in no sort
disappointed.

Open and obvious devotion from any sort of man is always
pleasant to
any sort of woman; but Mrs. Landys-Haggert, being a woman of
the
world, could make nothing of Hannasyde's admiration.

He would take any amount of trouble--he was a selfish man
habitually--to meet and forestall, if possible, her wishes.

Anything she told him to do was law; and he was, there could be
no
doubting it, fond of her company so long as she talked to him, and
kept on talking about trivialities.  But when she launched into
expression of her personal views and her wrongs, those small
social
differences that make the spice of Simla life, Hannasyde was
neither
pleased nor interested.  He didn't want to know anything about
Mrs.

Landys-Haggert, or her experiences in the past--she had travelled
nearly all over the world, and could talk cleverly--he wanted the
likeness of Alice Chisane before his eyes and her voice in his ears.

Anything outside that, reminding him of another personality jarred,
and he showed that it did.

Under the new Post Office, one evening, Mrs. Landys-Haggert
turned
on him, and spoke her mind shortly and without warning.  "Mr.

Hannasyde," said she, "will you be good enough to explain why
you
have appointed yourself my special cavalier servente?  I don't
understand it.  But I am perfectly certain, somehow or other, that
you don't care the least little bit in the world for ME."  This
seems to support, by the way, the theory that no man can act or tell
lies to a woman without being found out.  Hannasyde was taken
off
his guard.  His defence never was a strong one, because he was
always thinking of himself, and he blurted out, before he knew
what
he was saying, this inexpedient answer:--"No more I do."

The queerness of the situation and the reply, made Mrs. Landys-
Haggert laugh.  Then it all came out; and at the end of Hannasyde's
lucid explanation, Mrs. Haggert said, with the least little touch of
scorn in her voice:--"So I'm to act as the lay-figure for you to
hang the rags of your tattered affections on, am I?"

Hannasyde didn't see what answer was required, and he devoted
himself generally and vaguely to the praise of Alice Chisane,
which
was unsatisfactory.  Now it is to be thoroughly made clear that
Mrs.

Haggert had not the shadow of a ghost of an interest in Hannasyde.

Only . . . . only no woman likes being made love through instead of
to--specially on behalf of a musty divinity of four years' standing.

Hannasyde did not see that he had made any very particular
exhibition of himself.  He was glad to find a sympathetic soul in
the arid wastes of Simla.

When the season ended, Hannasyde went down to his own place
and Mrs.

Haggert to hers.  "It was like making love to a ghost," said
Hannasyde to himself, "and it doesn't matter; and now I'll get to my
work."  But he found himself thinking steadily of the Haggert-
Chisane ghost; and he could not be certain whether it was Haggert
or
Chisane that made up the greater part of the pretty phantom.

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

He got understanding a month later.

A peculiar point of this peculiar country is the way in which a
heartless Government transfers men from one end of the Empire to
the
other.  You can never be sure of getting rid of a friend or an enemy
till he or she dies.  There was a case once--but that's another
story.

Haggert's Department ordered him up from Dindigul to the
Frontier at
two days' notice, and he went through, losing money at every step,
from Dindigul to his station.  He dropped Mrs. Haggert at
Lucknow,
to stay with some friends there, to take part in a big ball at the
Chutter Munzil, and to come on when he had made the new home
a
little comfortable.  Lucknow was Hannasyde's station, and Mrs.

Haggert stayed a week there.  Hannasyde went to meet her.  And
the
train came in, he discovered which he had been thinking of for the
past month.  The unwisdom of his conduct also struck him.  The
Lucknow week, with two dances, and an unlimited quantity of
rides
together, clinched matters; and Hannasyde found himself pacing
this
circle of thought:--He adored Alice Chisane--at least he HAD
adored
her.  AND he admired Mrs. Landys-Haggert because she was like
Alice
Chisane.  BUT Mrs. Landys-Haggert was not in the least like Alice
Chisane, being a thousand times more adorable.  NOW Alice
Chisane
was "the bride of another," and so was Mrs. Landys-Haggert, and a
good and honest wife too.  THEREFORE, he, Hannasyde, was . . . .

here he called himself several hard names, and wished that he had
been wise in the beginning.

Whether Mrs. Landys-Haggert saw what was going on in his mind,
she
alone knows.  He seemed to take an unqualified interest in
everything connected with herself, as distinguished from the Alice-
Chisane likeness, and he said one or two things which, if Alice
Chisane had been still betrothed to him, could scarcely have been
excused, even on the grounds of the likeness.  But Mrs. Haggert
turned the remarks aside, and spent a long time in making
Hannasyde
see what a comfort and a pleasure she had been to him because of
her
strange resemblance to his old love.  Hannasyde groaned in his
saddle and said, "Yes, indeed," and busied himself with
preparations
for her departure to the Frontier, feeling very small and miserable.

The last day of her stay at Lucknow came, and Hannasyde saw her
off
at the Railway Station.  She was very grateful for his kindness and
the trouble he had taken, and smiled pleasantly and
sympathetically
as one who knew the Alice-Chisane reason of that kindness.  And
Hannasyde abused the coolies with the luggage, and hustled the
people on the platform, and prayed that the roof might fall in and
slay him.

As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert leaned out of
the
window to say goodbye:--"On second thoughts au revoir, Mr.

Hannasyde.  I go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you
in
Town."

Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and adoringly:--"I
hope to Heaven I shall never see your face again!"

And Mrs. Haggert understood.

WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE.

I closed and drew for my love's sake,
  That now is false to me,
And I slew the Riever of Tarrant Moss,
  And set Dumeny free.

And ever they give me praise and gold,
  And ever I moan my loss,
For I struck the blow for my false love's sake,
  And not for the men at the Moss.

                              Tarrant Moss.

One of the many curses of our life out here is the want of
atmosphere in the painter's sense.  There are no half-tints worth
noticing.  Men stand out all crude and raw, with nothing to tone
them down, and nothing to scale them against.  They do their
work,
and grow to think that there is nothing but their work, and nothing
like their work, and that they are the real pivots on which the
administration turns.  Here is an instance of this feeling.  A half-
caste clerk was ruling forms in a Pay Office.  He said to me:--"Do
you know what would happen if I added or took away one single
line
on this sheet?"  Then, with the air of a conspirator:--"It would
disorganize the whole of the Treasury payments throughout the
whole
of the Presidency Circle!  Think of that?"

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own
particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and
kill
themselves.  But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when
the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils
through a district of five thousand square miles.

There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had
grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by
irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
backwards, in his sleep.  What he did with his stored knowledge
only
the Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news
abroad.  This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth,
in
those days, to say:--"Wressley knows more about the Central
Indian
States than any living man."  If you did not say this, you were
considered one of mean undertanding.

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-
tribal complications across the Border is of more use; but in
Wressley's time, much attention was paid to the Central Indian
States.  They were called "foci" and "factors," and all manner of
imposing names.

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily.  When
Wressley
lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
of
Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were
"assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political
contingencies."  In most big undertakings, one or two men do the
work while the rest sit near and talk till the ripe decorations
begin to fall.

Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm,
and, to
keep him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he
was
made much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was.

He did not require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but
what
he received confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite
so absolutely and imperatively necessary to the stability of India
as Wressley of the Foreign Office.  There might be other good
men,
but the known, honored and trusted man among men was Wressley
of the
Foreign Office.  We had a Viceroy in those days who knew exactly
when to "gentle" a fractious big man and to hearten up a collar-
galled little one, and so keep all his team level.  He conveyed to
Wressley the impression which I have just set down; and even
tough
men are apt to be disorganized by a Viceroy's praise.  There was a
case once--but that is another story.

All India knew Wressley's name and office--it was in Thacker and
Spink's Directory--but who he was personally, or what he did, or
what his special merits were, not fifty men knew or cared.  His
work
filled all his time, and he found no leisure to cultivate
acquaintances beyond those of dead Rajput chiefs with Ahir blots
in
their 'scutcheons.  Wressley would have made a very good Clerk in
the Herald's College had he not been a Bengal Civilian.

Upon a day, between office and office, great trouble came to
Wressley--overwhelmed him, knocked him down, and left him
gasping as
though he had been a little school-boy.  Without reason, against
prudence, and at a moment's notice, he fell in love with a
frivolous, golden-haired girl who used to tear about Simla Mall on
a
high, rough waler, with a blue velvet jockey-cap crammed over her
eyes.  Her name was Venner--Tillie Venner--and she was
delightful.

She took Wressley's heart at a hand-gallop, and Wressley found
that
it was not good for man to live alone; even with half the Foreign
Office Records in his presses.

Then Simla laughed, for Wressley in love was slightly ridiculous.

He did his best to interest the girl in himself--that is to say, his
work--and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear
interested in what, behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's
Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily.  She did not understand one
little thing about them, but she acted as if she did.  Men have
married on that sort of error before now.

Providence, however, had care of Wressley.  He was immensely
struck
with Miss Venner's intelligence.  He would have been more
impressed
had he heard her private and confidential accounts of his calls.  He
held peculiar notions as to the wooing of girls.  He said that the
best work of a man's career should be laid reverently at their feet.

Ruskin writes something like this somewhere, I think; but in
ordinary life a few kisses are better and save time.

About a month after he had lost his heart to Miss Venner, and had
been doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his
"Native Rule in Central India" struck Wressley and filled him with
joy.  It was, as he sketched it, a great thing--the work of his
life--a really comprehensive survey of a most fascinating subject--
to be written with all the special and laboriously acquired
knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office--a gift fit for an
Empress.

He told Miss Venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped,
on
his return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance.  Would
she wait?  Certainly she would.  Wressley drew seventeen hundred
rupees a month.  She would wait a year for that.  Her mamma
would
help her to wait.

So Wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents,
about a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to
Central India with his notion hot in his head.  He began his book in
the land he was writing of.  Too much official correspondence had
made him a frigid workman, and he must have guessed that he
needed
the white light of local color on his palette.  This is a dangerous
paint for amateurs to play with.

Heavens, how that man worked!  He caught his Rajahs, analyzed
his
Rajahs, and traced them up into the mists of Time and beyond,
with
their queens and their concubines.  He dated and cross-dated,
pedigreed and triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove,
strung, sorted, selected, inferred, calendared and counter-
calendared for ten hours a day.  And, because this sudden and new
light of Love was upon him, he turned those dry bones of history
and
dirty records of misdeeds into things to weep or to laugh over as he
pleased.  His heart and soul were at the end of his pen, and they
got into the link.  He was dowered with sympathy, insight, humor
and
style for two hundred and thirty days and nights; and his book was
a
Book.  He had his vast special knowledge with him, so to speak;
but
the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry and the power of
the output, were beyond all special knowledge.  But I doubt
whether
he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may have lost
some happiness.  He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for himself.

Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.

Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in India where
every one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven,
by
the women who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to
take
up points alone.  A good man once started, goes forward; but an
average man, so soon as the woman loses interest in his success as
a
tribute to her power, comes back to the battalion and is no more
heard of.

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, blushing and
stammering, presented it to Miss Venner.  She read a little of it.

I give her review verbatim:--"Oh, your book?  It's all about those
how-wid Wajahs.  I didn't understand it."

     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,--I am not
exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl.  All that he could
say feebly was:--"But, but it's my magnum opus!  The work of my
life."  Miss Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but
she
knew that Captain Kerrington had won three races at the last
Gymkhana.  Wressley didn't press her to wait for him any longer.
He
had sense enough for that.

Then came the reaction after the year's strain, and Wressley went
back to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling,
gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would have been dear at
three
hundred rupees a month.  He abided by Miss Venner's review.
Which
proves that the inspiration in the book was purely temporary and
unconnected with himself.  Nevertheless, he had no right to sink,
in
a hill-tarn, five packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense
from
Bombay, of the best book of Indian history ever written.

When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I was turning
over his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of "Native
Rule in Central India"--the copy that Miss Venner could not
understand.  I read it, sitting on his mule-trucks, as long as the
light lasted, and offered him his own price for it.  He looked over
my shoulder for a few pages and said to himself drearily:--"Now,
how
in the world did I come to write such damned good stuff as that?"
Then to me:--"Take it and keep it.  Write one of your
penny-farthing
yarns about its birth.  Perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may
have been ordained to that end."

Which, knowing what Wressley of the Foreign Office was once,
struck
me as about the bitterest thing that I had ever heard a man say of
his own work.

BY WORD OF MOUTH.

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
  A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
  I shall but love you more,
Who from Death's house returning, give me still
  One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
Shadow Houses.

This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are
made, and
where the bounds of the Possible are put down.  I have lived long
enough in this country to know that it is best to know nothing, and
can only write the story as it happened.

Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him
"Dormouse," because he was a round little, sleepy little man.  He
was a good Doctor and never quarrelled with any one, not even
with
our Deputy Commissioner, who had the manners of a bargee and
the
tact of a horse.  He married a girl as round and as sleepy-looking
as himself.  She was a Miss Hillardyce, daughter of "Squash"
Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief's daughter by
mistake.  But that is another story.

A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there
is
nothing to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three
years.  This is a delightful country for married folk who are
wrapped up in one another.  They can live absolutely alone and
without interruption--just as the Dormice did.  These two little
people retired from the world after their marriage, and were very
happy.  They were forced, of course, to give occasional dinners,
but
they made no friends hereby, and the Station went its own way and
forgot them; only saying, occasionally, that Dormouse was the best
of good fellows, though dull.  A Civil Surgeon who never quarrels
is
a rarity, appreciated as such.

Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of
all
in India, where we are few in the land, and very much dependent
on
each other's kind offices.  Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself
from the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an
epidemic of typhoid broke out in the Station in the heart of the
cold weather, and his wife went down.  He was a shy little man,
and
five days were wasted before he realized that Mrs. Dumoise was
burning with something worse than simple fever, and three days
more
passed before he ventured to call on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer's
wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.  Nearly every household
in India knows that Doctors are very helpless in typhoid.  The
battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses, minute
by
minute and degree by degree.  Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise's
ears
for what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to
look after the poor girl.  We had seven cases of typhoid in the
Station that winter and, as the average of death is about one in
every five cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose
somebody.  But all did their best.  The women sat up nursing the
women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who were
down,
and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and
brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in triumph.  But,
just
when we thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to
celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in
a week and the Station went to the funeral.  Dumoise broke down
utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away.

After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to
be
comforted.  He did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he
should go on leave, and the other men of his own Service told him
so.  Dumoise was very thankful for the suggestion--he was
thankful
for anything in those days--and went to Chini on a walking-tour.

Chini is some twenty marches from Simla, in the heart of the Hills,
and the scenery is good if you are in trouble.  You pass through
big, still deodar-forests, and under big, still cliffs, and over
big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's breasts; and the
wind
across the grass, and the rain among the deodars
says:--"Hush--hush--
hush."  So little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to wear down
his
grief with a full-plate camera, and a rifle.  He took also a useless
bearer, because the man had been his wife's favorite servant.  He
was idle and a thief, but Dumoise trusted everything to him.

On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bagi,
through
the Forest Reserve which is on the spur of Mount Huttoo.  Some
men
who have travelled more than a little say that the march from
Kotegarh to Bagi is one of the finest in creation.  It runs through
dark wet forest, and ends suddenly in bleak, nipped hill-side and
black rocks.  Bagi dak-bungalow is open to all the winds and is
bitterly cold.  Few people go to Bagi.  Perhaps that was the reason
why Dumoise went there.  He halted at seven in the evening, and
his
bearer went down the hill-side to the village to engage coolies for
the next day's march.  The sun had set, and the night-winds were
beginning to croon among the rocks.  Dumoise leaned on the
railing
of the verandah, waiting for his bearer to return.  The man came
back almost immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a
rate
that Dumoise fancied he must have crossed a bear.  He was
running as
hard as he could up the face of the hill.

But there was no bear to account for his terror.  He raced to the
verandah and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his
face iron-gray.  Then he gurgled:--"I have seen the Memsahib!  I
have seen the Memsahib!"

"Where?" said Dumoise.

"Down there, walking on the road to the village.  She was in a blue
dress, and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said:--'Ram Dass,
give my salaams to the Sahib, and tell him that I shall meet him
next month at Nuddea.'  Then I ran away, because I was afraid."

What Dumoise said or did I do not know.  Ram Dass declares that
he
said nothing, but walked up and down the verandah all the cold
night, waiting for the Memsahib to come up the hill and stretching
out his arms into the dark like a madman.  But no Memsahib came,
and, next day, he went on to Simla cross-questioning the bearer
every hour.

Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise and that
she
had lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had
faithfully repeated to Dumoise.  To this statement Ram Dass
adhered.

He did not know where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea,
and
would most certainly never go to Nuddea; even though his pay
were
doubled.

Nuddea is in Bengal, and has nothing whatever to do with a doctor
serving in the Punjab.  It must be more than twelve hundred miles
from Meridki.

Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to
Meridki
there to take over charge from the man who had been officiating
for
him during his tour.  There were some Dispensary accounts to be
explained, and some recent orders of the Surgeon-General to be
noted, and, altogether, the taking-over was a full day's work.  In
the evening, Dumoise told his locum tenens, who was an old friend
of
his bachelor days, what had happened at Bagi; and the man said
that
Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin while he was about
it.

At that moment a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from
Simla,
ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at
once to Nuddea on special duty.  There was a nasty outbreak of
cholera at Nuddea, and the Bengal Government, being
shorthanded, as
usual, had borrowed a Surgeon from the Punjab.

Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said:--"Well?"

The other Doctor said nothing.  It was all that he could say.

Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on
his way
from Bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard the first news of
the impending transfer.

He tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words,
but Dumoise stopped him with:--"If I had desired THAT, I should
never have come back from Chini.  I was shooting there.  I wish to
live, for I have things to do . . . . but I shall not be sorry."

The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight, to pack
up Dumoise's just opened trunks.  Ram Dass entered with the
lamps.

"Where is the Sahib going?" he asked.

"To Nuddea," said Dumoise, softly.

Ram Dass clawed Dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not
to go.

Ram Dass wept and howled till he was turned out of the room.
Then
he wrapped up all his belongings and came back to ask for a
character.  He was not going to Nuddea to see his Sahib die, and,
perhaps to die himself.

So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea
alone; the
other Doctor bidding him good-bye as one under sentence of
death.

Eleven days later, he had joined his Memsahib; and the Bengal
Government had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that
epidemic
at Nuddea.  The first importation lay dead in Chooadanga Dak-
Bungalow.

TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE.

By the hoof of the Wild Goat up-tossed
From the Cliff where She lay in the Sun,
       Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost;
So She fell from the light of the Sun,
       And alone.

Now the fall was ordained from the first,
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
       But the Stone
Knows only Her life is accursed,
As She sinks in the depths of the Tarn,
       And alone.

Oh, Thou who has builded the world
Oh, Thou who hast lighted the Sun!
Oh, Thou who hast darkened the Tarn!
      Judge Thou
The Sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the Goat from the light of the Sun,
As She sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
      Even now--even now--even now!

From the Unpublished Papers of McIntosh Jellaludin.

     "Say, is it dawn, is it dusk in thy Bower,
      Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
      Oh be it night--be it--"

Here he fell over a little camel-colt that was sleeping in the Serai
where the horse-traders and the best of the blackguards from
Central
Asia live; and, because he was very drunk indeed and the night
was
dark, he could not rise again till I helped him.  That was the
beginning of my acquaintance with McIntosh Jellaludin.  When a
loafer, and drunk, sings The Song of the Bower, he must be worth
cultivating.  He got off the camel's back and said, rather thickly:--
"I--I--I'm a bit screwed, but a dip in Loggerhead will put me right
again; and I say, have you spoken to Symonds about the mare's
knees?"

Now Loggerhead was six thousand weary miles away from us,
close to
Mesopotamia, where you mustn't fish and poaching is impossible,
and
Charley Symonds' stable a half mile further across the paddocks.
It
was strange to hear all the old names, on a May night, among the
horses and camels of the Sultan Caravanserai.  Then the man
seemed
to remember himself and sober down at the same time.  He leaned
against the camel and pointed to a corner of the Serai where a
lamp
was burning:--

"I live there," said he, "and I should be extremely obliged if you
would be good enough to help my mutinous feet thither; for I am
more
than usually drunk--most--most phenomenally tight.  But not in
respect to my head.  'My brain cries out against'--how does it go?
But my head rides on the--rolls on the dung-hill I should have said,
and controls the qualm."

I helped him through the gangs of tethered horses and he collapsed
on the edge of the verandah in front of the line of native quarters.

"Thanks--a thousand thanks!  O Moon and little, little Stars!  To
think that a man should so shamelessly . . . .  Infamous liquor,
too.  Ovid in exile drank no worse.  Better.  It was frozen.  Alas!
I had no ice.  Good-night.  I would introduce you to my wife were I
sober--or she civilized."

A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began
calling the man names; so I went away.  He was the most
interesting
loafer that I had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later
on, he became a friend of mine.  He was a tall, well-built, fair man
fearfully shaken with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the
thirty-five which, he said, was his real age.  When a man begins to
sink in India, and is not sent Home by his friends as soon as may
be, he falls very low from a respectable point of view.  By the time
that he changes his creed, as did McIntosh, he is past redemption.

In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three Sahibs,
generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or Mussulman, and
who
live more or less as such.  But it is not often that you can get to
know them.  As McIntosh himself used to say:--"If I change my
religion for my stomach's sake, I do not seek to become a martyr to
missionaries, nor am I anxious for notoriety."

At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned me.  "Remember
this.

I am not an object for charity.  I require neither your money, your
food, nor your cast-off raiment.  I am that rare animal, a self-
supporting drunkard.  If you choose, I will smoke with you, for the
tobacco of the bazars does not, I admit, suit my palate; and I will
borrow any books which you may not specially value.  It is more
than
likely that I shall sell them for bottles of excessively filthy
country-liquors.  In return, you shall share such hospitality as my
house affords.  Here is a charpoy on which two can sit, and it is
possible that there may, from time to time, be food in that platter.

Drink, unfortunately, you will find on the premises at any hour:
and
thus I make you welcome to all my poor establishments."

I was admitted to the McIntosh household--I and my good tobacco.

But nothing else.  Unluckily, one cannot visit a loafer in the Serai
by day.  Friends buying horses would not understand it.

Consequently, I was obliged to see McIntosh after dark.  He
laughed
at this, and said simply:--"You are perfectly right.  When I enjoyed
a position in society, rather higher than yours, I should have done
exactly the same thing, Good Heavens!  I was once"--he spoke as
though he had fallen from the Command of a Regiment--"an
Oxford
Man!"  This accounted for the reference to Charley Symonds'
stable.

"You," said McIntosh, slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, to
outward appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for
strong drinks.  On the whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of
the two.  Yet I am not certain.  You are--forgive my saying so even
while I am smoking your excellent tobacco--painfully ignorant of
many things."

We were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he owned
no chairs, watching the horses being watered for the night, while
the native woman was preparing dinner.  I did not like being
patronized by a loafer, but I was his guest for the time being,
though he owned only one very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of
trousers made out of gunny-bags.  He took the pipe out of his
mouth,
and went on judicially:--"All things considered, I doubt whether
you
are the luckier.  I do not refer to your extremely limited classical
attainments, or your excruciating quantities, but to your gross
ignorance of matters more immediately under your notice.  That
for
instance."--He pointed to a woman cleaning a samovar near the
well
in the centre of the Serai.  She was flicking the water out of the
spout in regular cadenced jerks.

"There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars.  If you knew why
she
was doing her work in that particular fashion, you would know
what
the Spanish Monk meant when he said--

     'I the Trinity illustrate,
        Drinking watered orange-pulp--
      In three sips the Aryan frustrate,
        While he drains his at one gulp.--'

and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes.
However,
Mrs. McIntosh has prepared dinner.  Let us come and eat after the
fashion of the people of the country--of whom, by the way, you
know
nothing."

The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us.  This was
wrong.  The wife should always wait until the husband has eaten.

McIntosh Jellaludin apologized, saying:--

"It is an English prejudice which I have not been able to overcome;
and she loves me.  Why, I have never been able to understand.  I
fore-gathered with her at Jullundur, three years ago, and she has
remained with me ever since.  I believe her to be moral, and know
her to be skilled in cookery."

He patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly.
She
was not pretty to look at.

McIntosh never told me what position he had held before his fall.

He was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman.  When drunk, he
was
rather more of the first than the second.  He used to get drunk
about once a week for two days.  On those occasions the native
woman
tended him while he raved in all tongues except his own.  One day,
indeed, he began reciting Atalanta in Calydon, and went through it
to the end, beating time to the swing of the verse with a bedstead-
leg.  But he did most of his ravings in Greek or German.  The
man's
mind was a perfect rag-bag of useless things.  Once, when he was
beginning to get sober, he told me that I was the only rational
being in the Inferno into which he had descended--a Virgil in the
Shades, he said--and that, in return for my tobacco, he would,
before he died, give me the materials of a new Inferno that should
make me greater than Dante.  Then he fell asleep on a
horse-blanket
and woke up quite calm.

"Man," said he, "when you have reached the uttermost depths of
degradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to
you of no consequence.  Last night, my soul was among the gods;
but
I make no doubt that my bestial body was writhing down here in
the
garbage."

"You were abominably drunk if that's what you mean," I said.

"I WAS drunk--filthy drunk.  I who am the son of a man with
whom you
have no concern--I who was once Fellow of a College whose
buttery-
hatch you have not seen.  I was loathsomely drunk.  But consider
how
lightly I am touched.  It is nothing to me.  Less than nothing; for
I do not even feel the headache which should be my portion.  Now,
in
a higher life, how ghastly would have been my punishment, how
bitter
my repentance!  Believe me, my friend with the neglected
education,
the highest is as the lowest--always supposing each degree
extreme."

He turned round on the blanket, put his head between his fists and
continued:--

"On the Soul which I have lost and on the Conscience which I have
killed, I tell you that I CANNOT feel!  I am as the gods, knowing
good and evil, but untouched by either.  Is this enviable or is it
not?"

When a man has lost the warning of "next morning's head," he
must be
in a bad state, I answered, looking at McIntosh on the blanket, with
his hair over his eyes and his lips blue-white, that I did not think
the insensibility good enough.

"For pity's sake, don't say that!  I tell you, it IS good and most
enviable.  Think of my consolations!"

"Have you so many, then, McIntosh?"

"Certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which is essentially the
weapon
of a cultured man, are crude.  First, my attainments, my classical
and literary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate
drinking--
which reminds me that before my soul went to the Gods last night,
I
sold the Pickering Horace you so kindly lent me.  Ditta Mull the
Clothesman has it.  It fetched ten annas, and may be redeemed for
a
rupee--but still infinitely superior to yours.  Secondly, the
abiding affection of Mrs. McIntosh, best of wives.  Thirdly, a
monument, more enduring than brass, which I have built up in the
seven years of my degradation."

He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water.

He was very shaky and sick.

He referred several times to his "treasure"--some great possession
that he owned--but I held this to be the raving of drink.  He was as
poor and as proud as he could be.  His manner was not pleasant,
but
he knew enough about the natives, among whom seven years of his
life
had been spent, to make his acquaintance worth having.  He used
actually to laugh at Strickland as an ignorant man--"ignorant West
and East"--he said.  His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford
Man
of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true--I
did not know enough to check his statements--and, secondly, that
he
"had his hand on the pulse of native life"--which was a fact.  As an
Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his
education about.  As a Mahommedan faquir--as McIntosh
Jellaludin--he
was all that I wanted for my own ends.  He smoked several pounds
of
my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth
knowing;
but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the cold
weather
came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin alpaca-
coat.  He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, and
that he was not going into hospital.  He had lived like a beast and
he would die rationally, like a man.

As a matter of fact, he died of pneumonia; and on the night of his
death sent over a grubby note asking me to come and help him to
die.

The native woman was weeping by the side of the bed.  McIntosh,
wrapped in a cotton cloth, was too weak to resent a fur coat being
thrown over him.  He was very active as far as his mind was
concerned, and his eyes were blazing.  When he had abused the
Doctor
who came with me so foully that the indignant old fellow left, he
cursed me for a few minutes and calmed down.

Then he told his wife to fetch out "The Book" from a hole in the
wall.  She brought out a big bundle, wrapped in the tail of a
petticoat, of old sheets of miscellaneous note-paper, all numbered
and covered with fine cramped writing.  McIntosh ploughed his
hand
through the rubbish and stirred it up lovingly.

"This," he said, "is my work--the Book of McIntosh Jellaludin,
showing what he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and
others; being also an account of the life and sins and death of
Mother Maturin.  What Mirza Murad Ali Beg's book is to all other
books on native life, will my work be to Mirza Murad Ali Beg's!"

This, as will be conceded by any one who knows Mirza Ali Beg's
book,
was a sweeping statement.  The papers did not look specially
valuable; but McIntosh handled them as if they were
currency-notes.

Then he said slowly:--"In despite the many weaknesses of your
education, you have been good to me.  I will speak of your tobacco
when I reach the Gods.  I owe you much thanks for many
kindnesses.

But I abominate indebtedness.  For this reason I bequeath to you
now
the monument more enduring than brass--my one book--rude and
imperfect in parts, but oh, how rare in others!  I wonder if you
will understand it.  It is a gift more honorable than . . .  Bah!
where is my brain rambling to?  You will mutilate it horribly.  You
will knock out the gems you call 'Latin quotations,' you Philistine,
and you will butcher the style to carve into your own jerky jargon;
but you cannot destroy the whole of it.  I bequeath it to you.

Ethel . . .  My brain again! . .  Mrs. McIntosh, bear witness that I
give the sahib all these papers.  They would be of no use to you,
Heart of my heart; and I lay it upon you," he turned to me here,
"that you do not let my book die in its present form.  It is yours
unconditionally--the story of McIntosh Jellaludin, which is NOT
the
story of McIntosh Jellaludin, but of a greater man than he, and of a
far greater woman.  Listen now!  I am neither mad nor drunk!
That
book will make you famous."

I said, "thank you," as the native woman put the bundle into my
arms.

"My only baby!" said McIntosh with a smile.  He was sinking fast,
but he continued to talk as long as breath remained.  I waited for
the end: knowing that, in six cases out of ten the dying man calls
for his mother.  He turned on his side and said:--

"Say how it came into your possession.  No one will believe you,
but
my name, at least, will live.  You will treat it brutally, I know
you will.  Some of it must go; the public are fools and prudish
fools.  I was their servant once.  But do your mangling gently--very
gently.  It is a great work, and I have paid for it in seven years'

damnation."

His voice stopped for ten or twelve breaths, and then he began
mumbling a prayer of some kind in Greek.  The native woman
cried
very bitterly.  Lastly, he rose in bed and said, as loudly as
slowly:--"Not guilty, my Lord!"

Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he died.  The native
woman ran into the Serai among the horses and screamed and beat
her
breasts; for she had loved him.

Perhaps his last sentence in life told what McIntosh had once gone
through; but, saving the big bundle of old sheets in the cloth,
there was nothing in his room to say who or what he had been.

The papers were in a hopeless muddle.

Strickland helped me to sort them, and he said that the writer was
either an extreme liar or a most wonderful person.  He thought the
former.  One of these days, you may be able to judge for yourself.

The bundle needed much expurgation and was full of Greek
nonsense,
at the head of the chapters, which has all been cut out.

If the things are ever published some one may perhaps remember
this
story, now printed as a safeguard to prove that McIntosh Jellaludin
and not I myself wrote the Book of Mother Maturin.

I don't want the Giant's Robe to come true in my case.

VOLUME VI  THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

CHAPTER I

 So we settled it all when the storm was done
 As comf'y as comf'y could be;
 And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
 Because I was only three;
 And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot,
 Because he was five and a man;
 And that's how it all began, my dears,
 And that's how it all began.
--Big Barn Stories.

 'WHAT do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to
have it,
 you know,' said Maisie.

 'Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,' Dick answered,
without
 hesitation. 'Have you got the cartridges?'

 "Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do
pin-fire
 cartridges go off of their own accord?'

 'Don't know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry
 them.'

 "I'm not afraid.' Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her
pocket
 and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire
revolver-

 The children had discovered that their lives would be unendurable
 without pistol-practice. After much forethought and self-denial,
Dick
 had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price of a badly
constructed
 Belgian revolver. Maisie could only contribute half a crown to the
 syndicate for the purchase of a hundred cartridges. 'You can save
better
 than I can, Dick,' she explained; 'I like nice things to eat, and it
 doesn't matter to you. Besides, boys ought to do these things.'

 Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and made
the
 purchase, which the children were then on their way to test.
Revolvers
 did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as decreed for them by
the
 guardian who was incorrectly supposed to stand in the place of a
mother
 to these two orphans. Dick had been under her care for six years,
during
 which time she had made her profit of the allowances supposed to
be
 expended on his clothes, and, partly through thoughtlessness,
partly
 through a natural desire to pain,--she was a widow of some years
anxious
 to marry again,--had made his days burdensome on his young
shoulders-

 Where he had looked for love, she gave him first aversion and
then hate-

 Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave
him
 ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering of
her
 small house she devoted to what she called the home-training of
Dick
 Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own
intelligence
 and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her in this matter.
At
 such times as she herself was not personally displeased with Dick,
she
 left him to understand that he had a heavy account to settle with
his
 Creator; wherefore Dick learned to loathe his God as intensely as
he
 loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind
for the
 young. Since she chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, but an
 economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the least
 unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only
 plausible, that might make his life a little easier. The treatment
 taught him at least the power of living alone,--a power that was of
 service to him when he went to a public school and the boys
laughed at
 his clothes, which were poor in quality and much mended. In the
holidays
 he returned to the teachings of Mrs. Jennett, and, that the chain of
 discipline might not be weakened by association with the world,
was
 generally beaten, on one account or another, before he had been
twelve
 hours under her roof-

 The autumn of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a
 long-haired, gray-eyed little atom, as self-contained as himself,
who
 moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks spoke
only to
 the goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and lived in the
 back-garden. Mrs. Jennett objected to the goat on the grounds that
he
 was un-Christian,--which he certainly was. 'Then,' said the atom,
 choosing her words very deliberately, 'I shall write to my
 lawyer-peoples and tell them that you are a very bad woman.
Amomma is
 mine, mine, mine!' Mrs. Jennett made a movement to the hall,
where
 certain umbrellas and canes stood in a rack. The atom understood
as
 clearly as Dick what this meant. 'I have been beaten before,' she
said,
 still in the same passionless voice; 'I have been beaten worse than
you
 can ever beat me. If you beat me I shall write to my
lawyer-peoples and
 tell them that you do not give me enough to eat. I am not afraid of
 you.' Mrs. Jennett did not go into the hall, and the atom, after a
pause
 to assure herself that all danger of war was past, went out, to weep
 bitterly on Amomma's neck-

 Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted her
 profoundly, for he feared that she might interfere with the small
 liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she
volunteered
 no friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps. Long before
the
 holidays were over, the stress of punishment shared in common
drove the
 children together, if it were only to play into each other's hands as
 they prepared lies for Mrs. Jennett's use. When Dick returned to
school,
 Maisie whispered, 'Now I shall be all alone to take care of myself;
 but,' and she nodded her head bravely, 'I can do it. You promised
to
 send Amomma a grass collar. Send it soon.' A week later she
asked for
 that collar by return of post, and wa not pleased when she learned
that
 it took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she
forgot
 to thank him for it-

 Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had
grown into
 a lanky hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad clothes.
Not for
 a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the
 average canings of a public school--Dick fell under punishment
about
 three times a month--filled him with contempt for her powers.
'She
 doesn't hurt,' he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion,
'and
 she is kinder to you after she has whacked me.' Dick shambled
through
 the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys
of the
 school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would
hit them,
 cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than
once try
 to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. 'We are
both
 miserable as it is,' said she. 'What is the use of trying to make
things
 worse? Let's find things to do, and forget things.'

 The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used
on the
 muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the
bathing-machines and
 pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran
out
 nearly two miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks,
touched
 by the sun, sent up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in
the
 afternoon when Dick and Maisie arrived on their ground,
Amomma trotting
 patiently behind them-

 'Mf!' said Maisie, sniffing the air. 'I wonder what makes the sea so
 smelly? I don't like it!'

 'You never like anything that isn't made just for you,' said Dick
 bluntly. 'Give me the cartridges, and I'll try first shot. How far
does
 one of these little revolvers carry?'

 'Oh, half a mile,' said Maisie, promptly. 'At least it makes an awful
 noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I don't like those jagged
 stick-up things on the rim. Dick, do be careful.'

 'All right. I know how to load. I'll fire at the breakwater out there.'

 He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a
spurt of
 mud to the right of the wood-wreathed piles-

 'Throws high and to the right. You try, Maisie. Mind, it's loaded
all
 round.'

 Maisie took the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of the
mud,
 her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and left eye screwed
up-

 Dick sat down on a tuft of bank and laughed. Amomma returned
very
 cautiously. He was accustomed to strange experiences in his
afternoon
 walks, and, finding the cartridge-box unguarded, made
investigations
 with his nose. Maisie fired, but could not see where the bullet
went-

 'I think it hit the post,' she said, shading her eyes and looking out
 across the sailless sea-

 'I know it has gone out to the Marazion Bell-buoy,' said Dick, with
a
 chuckle. 'Fire low and to the left; then perhaps you'll get it. Oh,
look
 at Amomma!--he's eating the cartridges!'

 Maisie turned, the revolver in her hand, just in time to see
Amomma
 scampering away from the pebbles Dick threw after him. Nothing
is sacred
 to a billy-goat. Being well fed and the adored of his mistress,
Amomma
 had naturally swallowed two loaded pin-fire cartridges. Maisie
hurried
 up to assure herself that Dick had not miscounted the tale-

 'Yes, he's eaten two.'

 'Horrid little beast! Then they'll joggle about inside him and blow
up,
 and serve him right. . . . Oh, Dick! have I killed you?'

 Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie
could
 not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking smoke
separated
 her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone
off in
 his face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees
beside
 him, crying, 'Dick, you aren't hurt, are you? I didn't mean it.'

 'Of course you didn't, said Dick, coming out of the smoke and
wiping his
 cheek. 'But you nearly blinded me. That powder stuff stings
awfully.' A
 neat little splash of gray led on a stone showed where the bullet
had
 gone. Maisie began to whimper-

 'Don't,' said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself. 'I'm not
a
 bit hurt.'

 'No, but I might have killed you,' protested Maisie, the corners of
her
 mouth drooping. 'What should I have done then?'

 'Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.' Dick grinned at the thought;
then,
 softening, 'Please don't worry about it. Besides, we are wasting
time-

 We've got to get back to tea. I'll take the revolver for a bit.'

 Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick's
 indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the
pistol,
 restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick
methodically
 bombarded the breakwater. 'Got it at last!' he exclaimed, as a lock
of
 weed flew from the wood-

 'Let me try,' said Maisie, imperiously. 'I'm all right now.'

 They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook itself
 to pieces, and Amomma the outcast--because he might blow up at
any
 moment--browsed in the background and wondered why stones
were thrown at
 him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool which
was
 commanded by the seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat
down
 together before this new target-

 'Next holidays,' said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver
kicked
 wildly in his hand, 'we'll get another pistol,--central fire,--that will
 carry farther.'

 'There won't b any next holidays for me,' said Maisie. 'I'm going
away.'


 'Where to?'

 'I don't know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I've
got to
 be educated somewhere,--in France, perhaps,--I don't know where;
but I
 shall be glad to go away.'

 'I shan't like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie,
 is it really true you're going? Then these holidays will be the last I
 shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I
 wish----'

 The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking
 grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow
sea-poppy
 nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats and
the
 milk-white sea beyond-

 'I wish,' she said, after a pause, 'that I could see you again
sometime-

 You wish that, too?'

 'Yes, but it would have been better if--if--you had--shot straight
over
 there--down by the breakwater.'

 Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the boy
who
 only ten days before had decorated Amomma's horns with
cut-paper
 ham-frills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among the
public
 ways! Then she dropped her eyes: this was not the boy-

 'Don't be stupid,' she said reprovingly, and with swift instinct
 attacked the side-issue. 'How selfish you are! Just think what I
should
 have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I'm quite miserable
 enough already.'

 'Why? Because you're going away from Mrs. Jennett?'

 'No.'

 'From me, then?'

 No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He felt,
though
 he did not know, all that the past four years had been to him, and
this
 the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put his feelings in
words-


 'I don't know,' she said. 'I suppose it is.'

 'Maisie, you must know. I'm not supposing.'

 'Let's go home,' said Maisie, weakly-

 But Dick was not minded to retreat-

 'I can't say things,' he pleaded, 'and I'm awfully sorry for teasing
you
 about Amomma the other day. It's all different now, Maisie, can't
you
 see? And you might have told me that you were going, instead of
leaving
 me to find out.'

 'You didn't. I did tell. Oh, Dick, what's the use of worrying?'

 'There isn't any; but we've been together years and years, and I
didn't
 know how much I cared.'

 'I don't believe you ever did care.'

 'No, I didn't; but I do,--I care awfully now, Maisie,' he
 gulped,--'Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.'

 'I do, indeed I do; but it won't be any use.'

 'Why?'

 'Because I am going away.'

 'Yes, but if you promise before you go. Only say--will you?' A
second
 'darling' came to his lips more easily than the first. There were few
 endearments in Dick's home or school life; he had to find them by
 instinct. Dick caught the little hand blackened with the escaped
gas of
 the revolver-

 'I promise,' she said solemnly; 'but if I care there is no need for
 promising.'

 'And do you care?' For the first time in the past few minutes their
eyes
 met and spoke for them who had no skill in speech. . . -

 'Oh, Dick, don't! Please don't! It was all right when we said
 good-morning; but now it's all different!' Amomma looked on
from afar-

 He had seen his property quarrel frequently, but he had never seen
 kisses exchanged before. The yellow sea-poppy was wiser, and
nodded its
 head approvingly. Considered as a kiss, that was a failure, but
since it
 was the first, other than those demanded by duty, in all the world
that
 either had ever given or taken, it opened to them new worlds, and
every
 one of them glorious, so that they were lifted above the
consideration
 of any worlds at all, especially those in which tea is necessary,
and
 sat still, holding each other's hands and saying not a word-

 'You can't forget now,' said Dick, at last. There was that on his
cheek
 that stung more than gunpowder-

 'I shouldn't have forgotten anyhow,' said Maisie, and they looked
at
 each other and saw that each was changed from the companion of
an hour
 ago to a wonder and a mystery they could not understand. The sun
began
 to set, and a night-wind thrashed along the bents of the foreshore-

 'We shall be awfully late for tea,' said Maisie. 'Let's go home.'

 'Let's use the rest of the cartridges first,' said Dick; and he helped
 Maisie down the slope of the fort to the sea,--a descent that she
was
 quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie
took the
 grimy hand. Dick bent forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand
away, and
 Dick blushed-

 'It's very pretty,' he said-

 'Pooh!' said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity. She
stood
 close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired
over
 the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was
 protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far
across
 the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned into a wrathful
red
 disc. The light held Dick's attention for a moment, and as he
raised his
 revolver there fell upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in
that
 he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for him for
an
 indefinite length of time till such date as---- A gust of the growing
 wind drove the girl's long black hair across his face as she stood
with
 her hand on his shoulder calling Amomma 'a little beast,' and for a
 moment he was in the dark,--a darkness that stung. The bullet
went
 singing out to the empty sea-

 'Spoilt my aim,' said he, shaking his head. 'There aren't any more
 cartridges; we shall have to run home.' But they did not run. They
 walked very slowly, arm in arm. And it was a matter of
indifference to
 them whether the neglected Amomma with two pin-fire cartridges
in his
 inside blew up or trotted beside them; for they had come into a
golden
 heritage and were disposing of it with all the wisdom of all their
 years-

 'And I shall be----' quoth Dick, valiantly. Then he checked himself:
'I
 don't know what I shall be. I don't seem to be able to pass any
exams,
 but I can make awful caricatures of the masters. Ho! Ho!'

 'Be an artist, then,' said Maisie. 'You're always laughing at my
trying
 to draw; and it will do you good.'

 'I'll never laugh at anything you do,' he answered. 'I'll be an artist,
 and I'll do things.'

 'Artists always want money, don't they?'

 'I've got a hundred and twenty pounds a year of my own. My
guardians
 tell me I'm to have it when I come of age. That will be enough to
begin
 with.'

 'Ah, I'm rich,' said Maisie. 'I've got three hundred a year all my
own
 when I'm twenty-one. That's why Mrs. Jennett is kinder to me than
she is
 to you. I wish, though, that I had somebody that belonged to
me,--just a
 father or a mother.'

 'You belong to me,' said Dick, 'for ever and ever.'

 'Yes, we belong--for ever. It's very nice.' She squeezed his arm.
The
 kindly darkness hid them both, and, emboldened because he could
only
 just see the profile of Maisie's cheek with the long lashes veiling
the
 gray eyes, Dick at the front door delivered himself of the words he
had
 been boggling over for the last two hours-

 'And I--love you, Maisie,' he said, in a whisper that seemed to him
to
 ring across the world,--the world that he would to-morrow or the
next
 day set out to conquer-

 There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be reported,
when
 Mrs. Jennett would have fallen upon him, first for disgraceful
 unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself with a
forbidden
 weapon-

 'I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,' said Dick, when
the
 powder-pocked cheek could no longer be hidden, 'but if you think
you're
 going to lick me you're wrong. You are never going to touch me
again-

 Sit down and give me my tea. You can't cheat us out of that,
anyhow.'

 Mrs. Jennett gasped and became livid. Maisie said nothing, but
 encouraged Dick with her eyes, and he behaved abominably all
that
 evening. Mrs. Jennett prophesied an immediate judgment of
Providence and
 a descent into Tophet later, but Dick walked in Paradise and
would not
 hear. Only when he was going to bed Mrs. Jennett recovered and
asserted
 herself. He had bidden Maisie good-night with down-dropped
eyes and from
 a distance-

 'If you aren't a gentleman you might try to behave like one,' said
Mrs-

 Jennett, spitefully. 'You've been quarrelling with Maisie again.'

 This meant that the usual good-night kiss had been omitted.
Maisie,
 white to the lips, thrust her cheek forward with a fine air of
 indifference, and was duly pecked by Dick, who tramped out of
the room
 red as fire. That night he dreamed a wild dream. He had won all
the
 world and brought it to Maisie in a cartridge-box, but she turned it
 over with her foot, and, instead of saying 'Thank you,' cried--

 'Where is the grass collar you promised for Amomma? Oh, how
selfish you
 are!'

CHAPTER II

Then we brought the lances down, then the bugles blew,
When we went to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two,
Ridin', ridin', ridin', two an' two,
Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra,
All the way to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two.
--Barrack-Room Ballad.

'I'M NOT angry with the British public, but I wish we had a few
thousand of them scattered among these rooks. They wouldn't be
in such
a hurry to get at their morning papers then. Can't you imagine the
regulation householder--Lover of Justice, Constant Reader,
Paterfamilias, and all that lot--frizzling on hot gravel?'

'With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips. Has any
man
here a needle? I've got a piece of sugar-sack.'

'I'll lend you a packing-needle for six square inches of it then. Both
my
knees are worn through.'

'Why not six square acres, while you're about it? But lend me the
needle,
and I'll see what I can do with the selvage. I don't think there's
enough to
protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is. What are you
doing
with that everlasting sketch-book of yours, Dick?'

'Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,' said
Dick,
gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely worn
riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the
most
obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the vastness of
the void
developed itself.

'Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails
for
that whale-boat.'

A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself
into
exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The
man of
the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray
flannel
shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over
the
sketch.

Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was
dotted
with English soldiery of half a dozen corps, bathing or washing
their
clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags,
and
flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the
whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a
regimental
carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient
allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched gaping
seams of
the boat herself.

'First the bloomin' rudder snaps,' said he to the world in general;
'then
the mast goes; an' then, s' 'help me, when she can't do nothin' else,
she
opens 'erself out like a cock-eyes Chinese lotus.'

'Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are,' said the
tailor,
without looking up. 'Dick, I wonder when I shall see a decent shop
again.'

There was no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile
as it
raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a rock-ridge
half a
mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river
would
drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable
scent
of Nile mud in the air told that the stream was falling and the next
few
miles would be no light thing for the whale-boats to overpass. The
desert
ran down almost to the banks, where, among gray, red, and black
hillocks, a camel-corps was encamped. No man dared even for a
day lose
touch of the slow-moving boats; there had been no fighting for
weeks
past, and throughout all that time the Nile had never spared them.
Rapid
had followed rapid, rock rock, and island-group island-group, till
the
rank and file had long since lost all count of direction and very
nearly of
time. They were moving somewhere, they did not know why, to do
something, they did not know what. Before them lay the Nile, and
at the
other end of it was one Gordon, fighting for the dear life, in a town
called
Khartoum. There were columns of British troops in the desert, or
in one
of the many deserts; there were yet more columns waiting to
embark on
the river; there were fresh drafts waiting at Assioot and Assuan;
there
were lies and rumours running over the face of the hopeless land
from
Suakin to the Sixth Cataract, and men supposed generally that
there
must be some one in authority to direct the general scheme of the
many
movements. The duty of that particular river-column was to keep
the
whale-boats afloat in the water, to avoid trampling on the villagers'
crops
when the gangs 'tracked' the boats with lines thrown from
midstream, to
get as much sleep and food as was possible, and, above all, to
press on
without delay in the teeth of the churning Nile.

With the soldiers sweated and toiled the correspondents of the
newspapers, and they were almost as ignorant as their companions.
But
it was above all things necessary that England at breakfast should
be
amused and thrilled and interested, whether Gordon lived or died,
or
half the British army went to pieces in the sands. The Soudan
campaign
was a picturesque one, and lent itself to vivid word-painting. Now
and
again a 'Special' managed to get slain,--which was not altogether a
disadvantage to the paper that employed him,--and more often the
hand-to-hand nature of the fighting allowed of miraculous escapes
which
were worth telegraphing home at eighteenpence the word. There
were
many correspondents with many corps and columns,--from the
veterans
who had followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo
in '82,
what time Arabi Pasha called himself king, who had seen the first
miserable work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up
nightly and
the scrub swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked into the
business at
the end of a telegraph-wire to take the places of their betters killed
or
invalided.

Among the seniors--those who knew every shift and change in the
perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest
Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could
talk a
telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of a
newly
appointed staff-officer when press regulations became
burdensome--was
the man in the flannel shirt, the black-browed Torpenhow. He
represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the campaign, as he
had
represented it in the Egyptian war, and elsewhere. The syndicate
did not
concern itself greatly with criticisms of attack and the like. It
supplied
the masses, and all it demanded was picturesqueness and
abundance of
detail; for there is more joy in England over a soldier who
insubordinately steps out of square to rescue a comrade than over
twenty
generals slaving even to baldness at the gross details of transport
and
commissariat.

He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a
recently
abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a clump
of
shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.

'What are you for?' said Torpenhow. The greeting of the
correspondent
is that of the commercial traveller on the road.

'My own hand,' said the young man, without looking up. 'Have you
any
tobacco?'

Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had
looked
at it said, 'What's your business here?'

'Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I'm supposed to be doing
something
down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else I'm in charge of
the
condenser on one of the water-ships. I've forgotten which.'

'You've cheek enough to build a redoubt with,' said Torpenhow,
and took
stock of the new acquaintance. 'Do you always draw like that?'

The young man produced more sketches. 'Row on a Chinese
pig-boat,'

said he, sententiously, showing them one after another.--'Chief
mate
dirked by a comprador.--Junk ashore off Hakodate.--Somali
muleteer
being flogged.--Star-shelled bursting over camp at
Berbera.--Slave-dhow
being chased round Tajurrah Bah.--Soldier lying dead in the
moonlight
outside Suakin.--throat cut by Fuzzies.'

'H'm!' said Torpenhow, 'can't say I care for Verestchagin-and-water
myself, but there's no accounting for tastes. Doing anything now,
are
you?'

'No. I'm amusing myself here.'

Torpenhow looked at the sketches again, and nodded. 'Yes, you're
right
to take your first chance when you can get it.'

He rode away swiftly through the Gate of the Two War-Ships,
rattled
across the causeway into the town, and wired to his syndicate, 'Got
man
here, picture-work. Good and cheap. Shall I arrange? Will do
letterpress
with sketches.'

The man on the redoubt sat swinging his legs and murmuring, 'I
knew
the chance would come, sooner or later. By Gad, they'll have to
sweat for
it if I come through this business alive!'

In the evening Torpenhow was able to announce to his friend that
the
Central Southern Agency was willing to take him on trial, paying
expenses for three months. 'And, by the way, what's your name?'
said
Torpenhow.

'Heldar. Do they give me a free hand?'

'They've taken you on chance. You must justify the choice. You'd
better
stick to me. I'm going up-country with a column, and I'll do what I
can
for you. Give me some of your sketches taken here, and I'll send
'em
along.' To himself he said, 'That's the best bargain the Central
southern
has ever made; and they got me cheaply enough.'

So it came to pass that, after some purchase of horse-flesh and
arrangements financial and political, Dick was made free of the
New and
Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all possess the
inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and getting as
much
for it as Providence and their owners shall please. To these things
are
added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech
that
neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in
question,
the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a
bullock,
the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all
circumstances. But many die before they attain to this degree, and
the
past-masters in the craft appear for the most part in dress-clothes
when
they are in England, and thus their glory is hidden from the
multitude.

Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to lead
him,
and between the two they managed to accomplish some work that
almost
satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under
its
influence the two were drawn ver closely together, for they ate
from the
same dish, they shared the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie
of all,
their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make
gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the
Second
Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed
himself of
some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded by a
confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a
careful
duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who
said
that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an
excellent
descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was
Torpenhow who--but the tale of their adventures, together and
apart,
from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would
fill
many books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in
deadly
fear of being shot by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with
baggage-camels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence
under
blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had
floundered on the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in
which they
had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her
bottom-planks.

Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were
bringing up the remainder of the column.

'Yes,' said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his
over-long-neglected gear, 'it has been a beautiful business.'

'The patch or the campaign?' said Dick. 'Don't think much of
either,
myself.'

'You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't
you?
and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite satisfied with
my
breeches.' He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the
manner
of a clown.

'It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T.
Government
Bullock Train. That's a sack from India.'

'It's my initials,--Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on
purpose.

What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?' Torpenhow
shaded his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.

A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their
arms
and accoutrements.

'"Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,"' remarked Dick, calmly.

'D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners
copy
it. That scrub's alive with enemy.'

The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to
them, and
a hoarse shouting down the river showed that the remainder of the
column had wind of the trouble and was hastening to take share in
it. As
swiftly as a reach of still water is crisped by the wind, the
rock-strewn
ridges and scrub-topped hills were troubled and alive with armed
men.

Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time, to shout
and
gesticulate joyously. One man even delivered himself of a long
story. The
camel-corps did not fire. They were only too glad of a little
breathing-space, until some sort of square could be formed. The
men on
the sand-bank ran to their side; and the whale-boats, as they toiled
up
within shouting distance, were thrust into the nearest bank and
emptied
of all save the sick and a few men to guard them. The Arab orator
ceased
his outcries, and his friends howled.

'They look like the Mahdi's men,' said Torpenhow, elbowing
himself into
the crush of the square; 'but what thousands of 'em there are! The
tribes
hereabout aren't against us, I know.'

'Then the Mahdi's taken another town,' said Dick, 'and set all these
yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us your glass.'

'Our scouts should have told us of this. We've been trapped,' said a
subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry up,
you
men!'

There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves
panting
against the sides of the square, for they had good reason to know
that
whoso was left outside when the fighting began would very
probably die
in an extremely unpleasant fashion. The little
hundred-and-fifty-pound
camel-guns posted at one corner of the square opened the ball as
the
square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of
rising
ground. All had fought in this manner many times before, and
there was
no novelty in the entertainment; always the same hot and stifling
formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of
the
enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of
hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken
only by
the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to
purse. They
had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and the
square
slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then came
the
attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that
it is
impossible for troops in close order to attack against
breech-loading fire.

A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen
led,
but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and
armed
with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where
there is
always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was
the
weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled
them
as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst,
most
like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when
the
train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the
opportune
moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No civilised
troops in
the world could have endured the hell through which they came,
the
living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at their heels,
the
wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fell--a torrent
black as
the sliding water above a mill-dam--full on the right flank of the
square.

Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky
overhead
went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated
ground ant
the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing
interest, for
men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things,
counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen
pebble and
branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For
aught the
men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the
square at
once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of them, to
bayonet
in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag down
the
slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging
gun-butt.

Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress
grew
unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the
attack was
repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest
side
of the square. There was a rush from without, the short
hough-hough of
the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse, followed by thirty or
forty
others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right flank of the
square sucked in after them, and the other sides sent help. The
wounded,
who knew that they had but a few hours more to live, caught at the
enemy's feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a
discarded
rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the
square.

Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across
his
helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked
face
which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that
Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to
'collar
low,' and was turning over and over with his captive, feeling for
the
man's eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a
helmetless soldier fired over Dick's shoulder: the flying grains of
powder
stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by instinct.
The
representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had shaken
himself
clear of his enemy, and rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The
Arab,
both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched up his
spear
and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick's
revolver. Dick fired twice, and the man dropped limply. His
upturned
face lacked one eye. The musketry-fire redoubled, but cheers
mingled
with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were flying. If the heart
of the
square were shambles, the ground beyond was a butcher's shop.
Dick
thrust his way forward between the maddened men. The remnant
of the
enemy were retiring, as the few--the very few--English cavalry
rode
down the laggards.

Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab spear
cast aside
in the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and beyond this again the
illimitable dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and
turned
it into a red disc. Some one behind him was saying, 'Ah, get away,
you
brute!' Dick raised his revolver and pointed towards the desert. His
eye
was held by the red spash in the distance, and the clamour about
him
seemed to die down to a very far-away whisper, like the whisper of
a
level sea. There was the revolver and the red light. . . . and the
voice of
some one scaring something away, exactly as had fallen
somewhere
before,--a darkness that stung. He fired at random, and the bullet
went
out across the desert as he muttered, 'Spoilt my aim. There aren't
any
more cartridges. We shall have to run home.' He put his hand to his
head
and brought it away covered with blood.

'Old man, you're cut rather badly,' said Torpenhow. 'I owe you
something for this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can't be
ill
here.'

Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the
whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the
sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was
dead,--was
dead,--was dead,--that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile
outside
the city, and that of all their crews there remained not one; and
Khartoum was dead,--was dead,--was dead!
But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called
aloud to
the restless Nile for Maisie,--and again Maisie!
'Behold a phenomenon,' said Torpenhow, rearranging the blanket.
'Here
is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of one
woman
only. And I've seen a good deal of delirium, too.--Dick, here's
some fizzy
drink.'

'Thank you, Maisie,' said Dick.

CHAPTER III

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers.
 A Dutch Picture. Longfellow

THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick's broken head had been some
months
ended and mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had paid
Dick a
certain sum on account for work done, which work they were
careful to
assure him was not altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the
letter into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the draft in the same town, and
bade
a warm farewell to Torpenhow at the station.

'I am going to lie up for a while and rest,' said Torpenhow. 'I don't
know
where I shall live in London, but if God brings us to meet, we shall
meet.

Are you starying here on the off-chance of another row? There will
be
none till the Southern Soudan is reoccupied by our troops. Mark
that.

Good-bye; bless you; come back when your money's spent; and
give me
your address.'

Dick loitered in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, and Port
Said,--especially
Port Said. There is iniquity in many parts of the world, and vice in
all,
but the concentrated essence of all the iniquities and all the vices
in all
the continents finds itself at Port Said. And through the heart of
that
sand-bordered hell, where the mirage flickers day long above the
Bitter
Lake, move, if you will only wait, most of the men and women you
have
known in this life. Dick established himself in quarters more
riotous than
respectable. He spent his evenings on the quay, and boarded many
ships,
and saw very many friends,--gracious Englishwomen with whom
he had
talked not too wisely in the veranda of Shepherd's Hotel, hurrying
war
correspondents, skippers of the contract troop-ships employed in
the
campaign, army officers by the score, and others of less reputable
trades.

He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and
the
advantage of seeing his subjects under the influence of strong
excitement,
at the gaming-tables, saloons, dancing-hells, and elsewhere. For
recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal, the blazing
sands,
the procession of shipping, and the white hospitals where the
English
soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and white and colour
all that
Providence sent him, and when that supply was ended sought
about for
fresh material. It was a fascinating employment, but it ran away
with his
money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred and twenty
pounds to
which he was entitled yearly. 'Now I shall have to work and
starve!'

thought he, and was addressing himself to this new fate when a
mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow in England, which
said,
'Come back, quick; you have caught on. Come.'

A large smile overspread his face. 'So soon! that's a good hearing,'
said
he to himself. 'There will be an orgy to-night. I'll stand or fall by
my
luck. Faith, it's time it came!' He deposited half of his funds in the
hands
of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and
ordered
himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was
shaking with
drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically--
'Monsieur needs a chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will
sketch;
Monsieur amuses himself strangely.'

Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. 'I
understand,' he quavered. 'We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an
artist,
as I have been.' Dick nodded. 'In the end,' said Binat, with gravity,
'Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.' And
he
laughed.

'You must come to the dance, too,' said Dick; 'I shall want you.'

'For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for
my
degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a
devil. Or
at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.' The excellent
Binat began
to kick and scream.

'All things are for sale in Port Said,' said Madame. 'If my husband
comes
it will be so much more. Eh, 'how you call--'alf a sovereign.'

The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a
walled
courtyard at the back of Madame Binat's house. The lady herself,
in
faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders,
played
the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked
Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps.
Binat sat
upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of
the
dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that
took the
place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick took him
by the
chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat
looked
over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against
the
wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to
smell, and
the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground.
Then he
shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly
at his
elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was once an artist, even I!'
Dick
showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed. 'Will you
take
that away with you and show all the world that it is I,--Binat?' He
moaned and wept.

'Monsieur has paid for all,' said Madame. 'To the pleasure of
seeing
Monsieur again.'

The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to
the
nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. 'If the luck
holds, it's
an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.' He placed his money
picturesquely
about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did. The luck
held.

Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he
went
down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed
cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in
his
pocket than he cared to think about.

A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold;
for
summer was in England.

'It's a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn't the knack of altering much,'
Dick
thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. 'Now, what must
I
do?'

The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long
lightless
streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. 'Oh, you rabbit-hutches!'
said
he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached
residences. 'Do
you know what you've got to do later on? You have to supply me
with
men-servants and maid-servants,'--here he smacked his lips,--'and
the
peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I'll clothes and boots, and
presently
I will return and trample on you.' He stepped forward
energetically; he
saw that one of his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to
make
investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. 'All right,' he said.

'That's another nick in the score. I'll jostle you later on.'

Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop
with the
certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with
only
fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks,
and
lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were
almost
audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go to
bed at
all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern
Syndicate
for Torpenhow's address, and got it, with the intimation that there
was
still some money waiting for him.

'How much?' said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.

'Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to
you,
of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle
accounts
monthly.'

'If I show that I want anything now, I'm lost,' he said to himself.
'All I
need I'll take later on.' Then, aloud, 'It's hardly worth while; and I'm
going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and
I'll see
about it.'

'But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your
connection with us?'

Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the
speaker
keenly. 'That man means something,' he said. 'I'll do no business
till I've
seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming.' So he departed,
making no
promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was the
seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with awful
distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!
It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to
exist for
twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the
experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven
shillings
a week for his lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a
day for
food and drink. Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of
his
craft; he had been without them too long. Half a day's
investigations and
comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and
mashed
potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages
once or
twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with
mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are
impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and,
going,
forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep's head, which is not as
cheap
as it looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to
sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself entirely
to
mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his
inside. Then he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought
regretfully
of money thrown away in times past. There are few things more
edifying
unto Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and Dick in his few
walks
abroad,--he did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could
not be
satisfied--found himself dividing mankind into two classes,--those
who
looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who
looked
otherwise. 'I never knew what I had to learn about the human face
before,' he thought; and, as a reward for his humility, Providence
caused
a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick fed that night to leave
half
eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took it,--would have fought all
the
world for its possession,--and it cheered him.

The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with
impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to
Torpenhow's address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all
along the
corridors of the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and
Dick
burst into his room, to be received with a hug which nearly
cracked his
ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him tot he light and spoke of twenty
different things in the same breath.

'But you're looking tucked up,' he concluded.

'Got anything to eat?' said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.

'I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to
sausages?'

'No, anything but sausages! Torp, I've been starving on that
accursed
horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.'

'Now, what lunacy has been your latest?'

Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he
opened
his coat; there was no waistcoat below. 'I ran it fine, awfully fine,
but
I've just scraped through.'

'You haven't much sense, but you've got a backbone, anyhow. Eat,
and
talk afterwards.' Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he
could
gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he
smoked as
men smoke who for three weeks have been deprived of good
tobacco.

'Ouf!' said he. 'That's heavenly! Well?'

'Why in the world didn't you come to me?'

'Couldn't; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a
sort of
superstition that this temporary starvation--that's what it was, and
it
hurt--would bring me luck later. It's over and done with now, and
none
of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What's the
exact
state of affairs as regards myself?'

'You had my wire? You've caught on here. People like your work
immensely. I don't know why, but they do. They say you have a
fresh
touch and a new way of drawing things. And, because they're
chiefly
home-bred English, they say you have insight. You're wanted by
half a
dozen papers; you're wanted to illustrate books.'

Dick grunted scornfully.

'You're wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to
the
dealers. They seem to think the money sunk in you is a good
investment.

Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the
public?'

'They're a remarkably sensible people.'

'They are subject to fits, if that's what you mean; and you happen
to be
the object of the latest fit among those who are interested in what
they
call Art. Just now you're a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you
please. I appeared to be the only person who knew anything about
you
here, and I have been showing the most useful men a few of the
sketches
you gave me from time to time. Those coming after your work on
the
Central Southern Syndicate appear to have done your business.
You're
in luck.'

'Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking
about the
world like a dog, waiting for it to come! I'll luck 'em later on. I
want a
place to work first.'

'Come here,' said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. 'This place is a
big
box room really, but it will do for you. There's your skylight, or
your
north light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to
thrash
about in, and a bedroom beyond. What more do you need?'

'Good enough,' said Dick, looking round the large room that took
up a
third of a top story in the rickety chambers overlooking the
Thames. A
pale yellow sun shone through the skylight and showed the much
dirt of
the place. Three steps led from the door to the landing, and three
more to
Torpenhow's room. The well of the staircase disappeared into
darkness,
pricked by tiny gas-jets, and there were sounds of men talking and
doors
slamming seven flights below, in the warm gloom.

'Do they give you a free hand here?' said Dick, cautiously. He was
Ishmael enough to know the value of liberty.

'Anything you like; latch-keys and license unlimited. We are
permanent
tenants for the most part here. 'Tisn't a place I would recommend
for a
Young Men's Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these
rooms
for you when I wired.'

'You're a great deal too kind, old man.'

'You didn't suppose you were going away from me, did you?'
Torpenhow
put his hand on Dick's shoulder, and the two walked up and down
the
room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent
communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow's door. 'That's some
ruffian come up for a drink,' said Torpenhow; and he raised his
voice
cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly
middle-aged
gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and
pale, and
there were deep pouches under the eyes.

'Weak heart,' said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, 'very
weak
heart. His pulse is shaking his fingers.'

The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern
Syndicate and 'one of the most ardent admirers of your work, Mr.

Heldar. I assure you, in the name of the syndicate, that we are
immensely
indebted to you; and I trust, Mr. Heldar, you won't forget that we
were
largely instrumental in bringing you before the public.' He panted
because of the seven flights of stairs.

Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment
dead on
his cheek.

'I shan't forget,' said Dick, every instinct of defence roused in him.

'You've paid me so well that I couldn't, you know. By the way,
when I
am settled in this place I should like to send and get my sketches.
There
must be nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you.'

'That is er--is what I came to speak about. I fear we can't allow it
exactly, Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any specified agreement, the
sketches are our property, of course.'

'Do you mean to say that you are going to keep them?'

'Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr.
Heldar, to
assist us in arranging a little exhibition, which, backed by our
name and
the influence we naturally command among the press, should be of
material service to you. Sketches such as yours----'

'Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest
rates you
dared. You can't mean to keep them! Good God alive, man, they're
all
I've got in the world!'

Torpenhow watched Dick's face and whistled.

Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little
stock
in trade, the first weapon of his equipment, annexed at the outset
of his
campaign by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not
caught
aright, who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing
for
which Dick had not the least reverence. The injustice of the
proceedings
did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail too
often in
other places to be squeamish over the moral aspects of right and
wrong.

But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the
frockcoat, and
when he spoke again, and when he spoke again it was with a
strained
sweetness that Torpenhow knew well for the beginning of strife.

'Forgive me, sir, but you have no--no younger man who can
arrange this
business with me?'

'I speak for the syndicate. I see no reason for a third party to----'

'You will in a minute. Be good enough to give back my sketches.'

The man stared blankly at Dick, and then at Torpenhow, who was
leaning against the wall. He was not used to ex-employees who
ordered
him to be good enough to do things.

'Yes, it is rather a cold-blooded steal,' said Torpenhow, critically;
'but
I'm afraid, I am very much afraid, you've struck the wrong man. Be
careful, Dick; remember, this isn't the Soudan.'

'Considering what services the syndicate have done you in putting
your
name before the world----'

This was not a fortunate remark; it reminded Dick of certain
vagrant
years lived out in loneliness and strife and unsatisfied desires. The
memory did not contrast well with the prosperous gentleman who
proposed to enjoy the fruit of those years.

'I don't know quite what to do with you,' began Dick, meditatively.
'Of
course you're a thief, and you ought to be half killed, but in your
case
you'd probably die. I don't want you dead on this floor, and,
besides, it's
unlucky just as one's moving in. Don't hit, sir; you'll only excite
yourself.'

He put one hand on the man's forearm and ran the other down the
plump
body beneath the coat. 'My goodness!' said he to Torpenhow, 'and
this
gray oaf dares to be a thief! I have seen an Esneh camel-driver
have the
black hide taken off his body in strips for stealing half a pound of
wet
dates, and he was as tough as whipcord. This things' soft all
over--like a
woman.'

There are few things more poignantly humiliating than being
handled by
a man who does not intend to strike. The head of the syndicate
began to
breathe heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat
paws a soft
hearth-rug. Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches
underneath the eyes, and shook his head. 'You were going to steal
my
things,--mine, mine, mine!--you, who don't know when you may
die.

Write a note to your office,--you say you're the head of it,--and
order
them to give Torpenhow my sketches,--every one of them. Wait a
minute:
your hand's shaking. Now!' He thrust a pocket-book before him.
The note
was written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word,
while Dick
walked round and round the spellbound captive, giving him such
advice
as he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When Torpenhow
returned with a gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost
soothingly,
'Now, I hope this will be a lesson to you; and if you worry me
when I
have settled down to work with any nonsense about actions for
assault,
believe me, I'll catch you and manhandle you, and you'll die. You
haven't
very long to live, anyhow. Go! Imshi, Vootsak,--get out!' The man
departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a long breath: 'Phew!
what a
lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor orphan meets is
gang
robbery, organised burglary! Think of the hideous blackness of that
man's mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?'

'Yes; one hundred and forty-seven of them. Well, I must say, Dick,
you've
begun well.'

'He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him,
but it
was everything to me. I don't think he'll bring an action. I gave him
some
medical advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at
the little
flurry it cost him. Now, let's look at my things.'

Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and
was
deep in the portfolio, chuckling lovingly as he turned the drawings
over
and thought of the price at which they had been bought.

The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the
door and
saw Dick dancing a wild saraband under the skylight.

'I builded better than I knew, Torp,' he said, without stopping the
dance.

'They're good! They're damned good! They'll go like flame! I shall
have
an exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man
would have
cheated me out of it! Do you know that I'm sorry now that I didn't
actually hit him?'

'Go out,' said Torpenhow,--'go out and pray to be delivered from
the sin
of arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from
whatever place you're staying in, and we'll try to make this barn a
little
more shipshape.'

'And then--oh, then,' said Dick, still capering, 'we will spoil the
Egyptians!'

CHAPTER IV

The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
When the smoke of the cooking hung gray:
He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
And he looked to his strength for his prey.

But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away.

And he turned from his meal in the villager's close,
And he bayed to the moon as she rose.
 In Seonee-

'WELL, and how does success taste?' said Torpenhow, some three
months later. He had just returned to chambers after a holiday in
the
country.

'Good,' said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the
studio.

'I want more,--heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I
approve of
these fat ones.'

'Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work.'

Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small fox-terrier
asleep
on his chest, while Dick was preparing a canvas. A dais, a
background,
and a lay-figure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose
from
a wreck of oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles,
belts,
and regimental badges, and ended with a small bale of
second-hand
uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on
the dais
showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery
autumn
sunlight was falling, and shadows sat in the corners of the studio.

'Yes,' said Dick, deliberately, 'I like the power; I like the fun; I like
the
fuss; and above all I like the money. I almost like the people who
make
the fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they're a queer gang,--an
amazingly queer gang!'

'They have been good enough to you, at any rate. Than tin-pot
exhibition
of your sketches must have paid. Did you see that the papers called
it the
"Wild Work Show"?'

'Never mind. I sold every shred of canvas I wanted to; and, on my
word,
I believe it was because they believed I was a self-taught flagstone
artist.

I should have got better prices if I worked my things on wool or
scratched them on camel-bone instead of using mere black and
white and
colour. Verily, they are a queer gang, these people. Limited isn't
the
word to describe 'em. I met a fellow the other day who told me that
it
was impossible that shadows on white sand should be
blue,--ultramarine,--as they are. I found out, later, that the man had
been
as far as Brighton beach; but he knew all about Art, confound him.
He
gave me a lecture on it, and recommended me to go to school to
learn
technique. I wonder what old Kami would have said to that.'

'When were you under Kami, man of extraordinary beginnings?'

'I studied with him for two years in Paris. He taught by personal
magnetism. All he ever said was, "Continuez, mes enfants," and
you had
to make the best you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he
knew
something about colour. Kami used to dream colour; I swear he
could
never have seen the genuine article; but he evolved it; and it was
good.'

'Recollect some of those views in the Soudan?' said Torpenhow,
with a
provoking drawl.

Dick squirmed in his place. 'Don't! It makes me want to get out
there
again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret
and
brick-red and sulphur--cockatoo-crest--sulphur--against brown,
with a
nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a
decorative
frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky.'
He
began to walk up and down. 'And yet, you know, if you try to give
these
people the thing as God gave it, keyed down to their
comprehension and
according to the powers He has given you----'

'Modest man! Go on.'

'Half a dozen epicene young pagans who haven't even been to
Algiers
will tell you, first, that your notion is borrowed, and, secondly, that
it
isn't Art.

''This comes of my leaving town for a month. Dickie, you've been
promenading among the toy-shops and hearing people talk.'

'I couldn't help it,' said Dick, penitently. 'You weren't here, and it
was
lonely these long evenings. A man can't work for ever.'

'A man might have gone to a pub, and got decently drunk.'

'I wish I had; but I forgathered with some men of sorts. They said
they
were artists, and I knew some of them could draw,--but they
wouldn't
draw. They gave me tea,--tea at five in the afternoon!--and talked
about
Art and the state of their souls. As if their souls mattered. I've
heard
more about Art and seen less of her in the last six months than in
the
whole of my life. Do you remember Cassavetti, who worked for
some
continental syndicate, out with the desert column? He was a
regular
Christmas-tree of contraptions when he took the field in full fig,
with his
water-bottle, lanyard, revolver, writing-case, housewife, gig-lamps,
and
the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with 'em and
show us
how they worked; but he never seemed to do much except fudge
his
reports from the Nilghai. See?'

'Dear old Nilghai! He's in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up
here
this evening. I see the comparison perfectly. You should have kept
clear
of all that man-millinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will
unsettle
your mind.'

'It won't. It has taught me what Art--holy sacred Art--means.'

'You've learnt something while I've been away. What is Art?'

'Give 'em what they know, and when you've done it once do it
again.'

Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. 'Here's a
sample of
real Art. It's going to be a facsimile reproduction for a weekly. I
called it
"His Last Shot." It's worked up from the little water-colour I made
outside El Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful rifleman,
up
here with drink; I drored him, and I redrored him, and I redrored
him,
and I made him a flushed, dishevelled, bedevilled scallawag, with
his
helmet at the back of his head, and the living fear of death in his
eye, and
the blood oozing out of a cut over his ankle-bone. He wasn't pretty,
but
he was all soldier and very much man.'

'Once more, modest child!'

Dick laughed. 'Well, it's only to you I'm talking. I did him just as
well as
I knew how, making allowance for the slickness of oils. Then the
art-manager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers
wouldn't
like it. It was brutal and coarse and violent,--man being naturally
gentle
when he's fighting for his life. They wanted something more
restful, with
a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might
as well
talk to a sheep as an art-manager. I took my "Last Shot" back.
Behold
the result! I put him into a lovely red coat without a speck on it.
That is
Art. I polished his boots,--observe the high light on the toe. That is
Art. I
cleaned his rifle,--rifles are always clean on service,--because that
is Art.

I pipeclayed his helmet,--pipeclay is always used on active service,
and is
indispensable to Art. I shaved his chin, I washed his hands, and
gave him
an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor's pattern-plate. Price,
thank
Heaven, twice as much as for the first sketch, which was
moderately
decent.'

'And do you suppose you're going to give that thing out as your
work?'

'Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred,
home-bred
Art and Dickenson's Weekly.'

Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict,
delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were only a mass of
blathering
vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,--I'd let you go to the deuce on your
own
mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I
find that
to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a
twelve-year-old
girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!'

The canvas ripped as Torpenhow's booted foot shot through it, and
the
terrier jumped down, thinking rats were about.

'If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I
continue.

You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough
to take
liberties with his public, even though they be--which they ain't--all
you
say they are.'

'But they don't know any better. What can you expect from
creatures
born and bred in this light?' Dick pointed to the yellow fog. 'If they
want
furniture-polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they pay
for it.

They are only men and women. You talk as if they were gods.'

'That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They
are
they people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not.
They are
your masters. Don't be deceived, Dickie, you aren't strong enough
to
trifle with them,--or with yourself, which is more important.

Moreover,--Come back, Binkie: that red daub isn't going
anywhere,--unless you take precious good care, you will fall under
the
damnation of the check-book, and that's worse than death. You
will get
drunk--you-re half drunk already--on easily acquired money. For
that
money and you own infernal vanity you are willing to deliberately
turn
out bad work. You'll do quite enough bad work without knowing
it. And,
Dickie, as I love you and as I know you love me, I am not going to
let you
cut off your nose to spite your face for all the gold in England.
That's
settled. Now swear.'

'Don't know, said Dick. 'I've been trying to make myself angry, but
I
can't, you're so abominably reasonable. There will be a row on
Dickenson's Weekly, I fancy.'

'Why the Dickenson do you want to work on a weekly paper? It's
slow
bleeding of power.'

'It brings in the very desirable dollars,' said Dick, his hands in his
pockets.

Torpenhow watched him with large contempt. 'Why, I thought it
was a
man!' said he. 'It's a child.'

'No, it isn't,' said Dick, wheeling quickly. 'You've no notion owhat
the
certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly.

Nothing will pay me for some of my life's joys; on that Chinese
pig-boat,
for instance, when we ate bread and jam for every meal, because
Ho-Wang wouldn't allow us anything better, and it all tasted of
pig,--Chinese pig. I've worked for this, I've sweated and I've
starved for
this, line on line and month after month. And now I've got it I am
going
to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay--they've no
knowledge.'

'What does Your Majesty please to want? You can't smoke more
than
you do; you won't drink; you're a gross feeder; and you dress in the
dark, by the look of you. You wouldn't keep a horse the other day
when I
suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you
cross
the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to
suppose
that theatres and all the live things you can by thereabouts mean
Life.

What earthly need have you for money?'

'It's there, bless its golden heart,' said Dick. 'It's there all the time.

Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack 'em with. I
haven't yet found the nut I wish to crack, but I'm keeping my teeth
filed.

Perhaps some day you and I will go for a walk round the wide
earth.'

'With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete
with?
You would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn't go. I
don't
care to profit by the price of a man's soul,--for that's what it would
mean.

Dick, it's no use arguing. You're a fool.'

'Don't see it. When I was on that Chinese pig-boat, our captain got
credit
for saving about twenty-five thousand very seasick little pigs,
when our
old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timber-junk. Now, taking
those pigs
as a parallel----'

'Oh, confound your parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul,
you
always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs
aren't the
British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go
out for
a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the Nilghai
comes
up this evening can I show him your diggings?'

'Surely.' And Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the
rapidly
gathering London fog.

Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the
staircase. He
was the chiefest, as he was the youngest, of the war
correspondents, and
his experiences dated from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only
his
ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the
craft
than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that
there
would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed
as he
entered.

'Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are
always
screeching. You've heard about Dick's luck?'

'Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn't he? I hope you keep
him
properly humble. He wants suppressing from time to time.'

'He does. He's beginning to take liberties with what he thinks is his
reputation.'

'Already! By Jove, he has cheek! I don't know about his reputation,
but
he'll come a cropper if he tries that sort of thing.'

'So I told him. I don't think he believes it.'

'They never do when they first start off. What's that wreck on the
ground there?'

'Specimen of his latest impertinence.' Torpenhow thrust the torn
edges of
the canvas together and showed the well-groomed picture to the
Nilghai,
who looked at it for a moment and whistled.

'It's a chromo,' said he,--'a chromo-litholeomargarine fake! What
possessed him to do it? And yet how thoroughly he has caught the
note
that catches a public who think with their boots and read with their
elbows! The cold-blooded insolence of the work almost saves it;
but he
mustn't go on with this. Hasn't he been praised and cockered up too
much? You know these people here have no sense of proportion.
They'll
call him a second Detaille and a third-hand Meissonier while his
fashion
lasts. It's windy diet for a colt.'

'I don't think it affects Dick much. You might as well call a young
wolf a
lion and expect him to take the compliment in exchange for a
shin-bone.

Dick's soul is in the bank. He's working for cash.'

'Now he has thrown up war work, I suppose he doesn't see that the
obligations of the service are just the same, only the proprietors are
changed.'

'How should he know? He thinks he is his own master.'

'Does he? I could undeceive him for his good, if there's any virtue
in
print. He wants the whiplash.'

'Lay it on with science, then. I'd flay him myself, but I like him too
much.'

'I've no scruples. He had the audacity to try to cut me out with a
woman
at Cairo once. I forgot that, but I remember now.'

'Did he cut you out?'

'You'll see when I have dealt with him. But, after all, what's the
good?
Leave him alone and he'll come home, if he has any stuff in him,
dragging or wagging his tail behind him. There's more in a week of
life
than in a lively weekly. None the less I'll slate him. I'll slate him
ponderously in the Cataclysm.'

'Good luck to you; but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would
make
Dick wince. His soul seems to have been fired before we came
across him.

He's intensely suspicious and utterly lawless.'

'Matter of temper,' said the Nilghai. 'It's the same with horses.
Some you
wallop and they work, some you wallop and they jib, and some
you
wallop and they go out for a walk with their hands in their
pockets.'

'That's exactly what Dick has done,' said Torpenhow. 'Wait till he
comes
back. In the meantime, you can begin your slating here. I'll show
you
some of his last and worst work in his studio.'

Dick had instinctively sought running water for a comfort to his
mood of
mind. He was leaning over the Embankment wall, watching the
rush of
the Thames through the arches of Westminster Bridge. He began
by
thinking of Torpenhow's advice, but, as of custom, lost himself in
the
study of the faces flocking past. Some had death written on their
features, and Dick marvelled that they could laugh. Others, clumsy
and
coarse-built for the most part, were alight with love; others were
merely
drawn and lined with work; but there was something, Dick knew,
to be
made out of them all. The poor at least should suffer that he might
learn,
and the rich should pay for the output of his learning. Thus his
credit in
the world and his cash balance at the bank would be increased. So
much
the better for him. He had suffered. Now he would take toll of the
ills of
others.

The fog was driven apart for a moment, and the sun shone, a
blood-red
wafer, on the water. Dick watched the spot till he heard the voice
of the
tide between the piers die down like the wash of the sea at low
tide. A girl
hard pressed by her lover shouted shamelessly, 'Ah, get away, you
beast!'

and a shift of the same wind that had opened the fog drove across
Dick's
face the black smoke of a river-steamer at her berth below the
wall. He
was blinded for the moment, then spun round and found himself
face to
face with--Maisie.

There was no mistaking. The years had turned the child to a
woman, but
they had not altered the dark-gray eyes, the thin scarlet lips, or the
firmly modelled mouth and chin; and, that all should be as it was
of old,
she wore a closely fitting gray dress.

Since the human soul is finite and not in the least under its own
command, Dick, advancing, said 'Halloo!' after the manner of
schoolboys, and Maisie answered, 'Oh, Dick, is that you?' Then,
against
his will, and before the brain newly released from considerations
of the
cash balance had time to dictate to the nerves, every pulse of
Dick's body
throbbed furiously and his palate dried in his mouth. The fog shut
down
again, and Maisie's face was pearl-white through it. No word was
spoken, but Dick fell into step at her side, and the two paced the
Embankment together, keeping the step as perfectly as in their
afternoon
excursions to the mud-flats. Then Dick, a little hoarsely--
'What has happened to Amomma?'

'He died, Dick. Not cartridges; over-eating. He was always greedy.
Isn't
it funny?'

'Yes. No. Do you mean Amomma?'

'Ye--es. No. This. Where have you come from?'

'Over there,' He pointed eastward through the fog. 'And you?'

'Oh, I'm in the north,--the black north, across all the Park. I am
very
busy.'

'What do you do?'

'I paint a great deal. That's all I have to do.'

'Why, what's happened? You had three hundred a year.'

'I have that still. I am painting; that's all.'

'Are you alone, then?'

'There's a girl living with me. Don't walk so fast, Dick; you're out
of
step.'

'Then you noticed it too?'

'Of course I did. You're always out of step.'

'So I am. I'm sorry. You went on with the painting?'

'Of course. I said I should. I was at the Slade, then at Merton's in
St.

John's Wood, the big studio, then I pepper-potted,--I mean I went
to the
National,--and now I'm working under Kami.'

'But Kami is in Paris surely?'

'No; he has his teaching studio in Vitry-sur-Marne. I work with
him in
the summer, and I live in London in the winter. I'm a householder.'

'Do you sell much?'

'Now and again, but not often. There is my 'bus. I must take it or
lose
half an hour. Good-bye, Dick.'

'Good-bye, Maisie. Won't you tell me where you live? I must see
you
again; and perhaps I could help you. I--I paint a little myself.'

'I may be in the Park to-morrow, if there is no working light. I walk
from
the Marble Arch down and back again; that is my little excursion.
But of
course I shall see you again.' She stepped into the omnibus and was
swallowed up by the fog.

'Well--I--am--damned!' exclaimed Dick, and returned to the
chambers.

Torpenhow and the Nilghai found him sitting on the steps to the
stgudio
door, repeating the phrase with an awful gravity.

'You'll be more damned when I'm done with you,' said the Nilghai,
upheaving his bulk from behind Torpenhow's shoulder and waving
a
sheaf of half-dry manuscript. 'Dick, it is of common report that you
are
suffering from swelled head.'

'Halloo, Nilghai. Back again? How are the Balkans and all the little
Balkans? One side of your face is out of drawing, as usual.'

'Never mind that. I am commissioned to smite you in print.
Torpenhow
refuses from false delicacy. I've been overhauling the pot-boilers in
your
studio. They are simply disgraceful.'

'Oho! that's it, is it? If you think you can slate me, you're wrong.
You
can only describe, and you need as much room to turn in, on paper,
as a
P. and O. cargo-boat. But continue, and be swift. I'm going to bed.'

'H'm! h'm! h'm! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here's
the
peroration: "For work done without conviction, for power wasted
on
trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate
purpose of
winning the easy applause of a fashion-driven public----"
'That's "His Last Shot," second edition. Go on.'

'----"public, there remains but one end,--the oblivion that is
preceded by
toleration and cenotaphed with contempt. From that fate Mr.
Heldar has
yet to prove himself out of danger.'

'Wow--wow--wow--wow--wow!' said Dick, profanely. 'It's a clumsy
ending
and vile journalese, but it's quite true. And yet,'--he sprang to his
feet
and snatched at the manuscript,--'you scarred, deboshed, battered
old
gladiator! you're sent out when a war begins, to minister to the
blind,
brutal, British public's bestial thirst for blood. They have no arenas
now,
but they must have special correspondents. You're a fat gladiator
who
comes up through a trap-door and talks of what he's seen. You
stand on
precisely the same level as an energetic bishop, an affable actress,
a
devastating cyclone, or--mine own sweet self. And you presume to
lecture
me about my work! Nilghai, if it were worth while I'd caricature
you in
four papers!'

The Nilghai winced. He had not thought of this.

'As it is, I shall take this stuff and tear it small--so!' The manuscript
fluttered in slips down the dark well of the staircase. 'Go home,
Nilghai,'

said Dick; 'go home to your lonely little bed, and leave me in
peace. I am
about to turn in till to-morrow.'

'Why, it isn't seven yet!' said Torpenhow, with amazement.

'It shall be two in the morning, if I choose,' said Dick, backing to
the
studio door. 'I go to grapple with a serious crisis, and I shan't want
any
dinner.'

The door shut and was locked.

'What can you do with a man like that?' said the Nilghai.

'Leave him alone. He's as mad as a hatter.'

At eleven there was a kicking on the studio door. 'Is the Nilghai
with you
still?' said a voice from within. 'Then tell him he might have
condensed
the whole of his lumbering nonsense into an epigram: "Only the
free are
bond, and only the bond are free." Tell him he's an idiot, Torp, and
tell
him I'm another.'

'All right. Come out and have supper. You're smoking on an empty
stomach.'

There was no answer.

CHAPTER V

'I have a thousand men,' said he,
'To wait upon my will,
And towers nine upon the Tyne,
And three upon the Till.'

'And what care I for you men,' said she,
'Or towers from Tyne to Till,
Sith you must go with me,' she said,
'To wait upon my will?'
-Sir Hoggie and the Fairies

NEXT morning Torpenhow found Dick sunk in deepest repose of
tobacco.

'Well, madman, how d'you feel?'

'I don't know. I'm trying to find out.'

'You had much better do some work.'

'Maybe; but I'm in no hurry. I've made a discovery. Torp, there's
too
much Ego in my Cosmos.'

'Not really! Is this revelation due to my lectures, or the Nilghai's?'

'It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much
Ego;
and now I'm going to work.'

He turned over a few half-finished sketches, drummed on a new
canvas,
cleaned three brushes, set Binkie to bite the toes of the lay figure,
rattled
through his collection of arms and accoutrements, and then went
out
abruptly, declaring that he had done enough for the day.

'This is positively indecent,' said Torpenhow, 'and the first time
that
Dick has ever broken up a light morning. Perhaps he has found out
that
he has a soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally
valuable.

That comes of leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been
going
out of evenings. I must look to this.' He rang for the bald-headed
old
housekeeper, whom nothing could astonish or annoy.

'Beeton, did Mr. Heldar dine out at all while I was out of town?'

'Never laid 'is dress-clothes out once, sir, all the time. Mostly 'e
dined in;
but 'e brought some most remarkable young gentlemen up 'ere after
theatres once or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. You
gentlemen on
the top floor does very much as you likes, but it do seem to me, sir,
droppin' a walkin'-stick down five flights o' stairs an' then goin'
down
four abreast to pick it up again at half-past two in the mornin',
singin'

"Bring back the whiskey, Willie darlin,'"--not once or twice, but
scores
o' times,--isn't charity to the other tenants. What I say is, "Do as
you
would be done by." That's my motto.'

'Of course! of course! I'm afraid the top floor isn't the quietest in
the
house.'

'I make no complaints, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Heldar friendly, an'
he
laughed, an' did me a picture of the missis that is as good as a
coloured
print. It 'asn't the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is,
"Never
look a gift-horse in the mouth." Mr. Heldar's dress-clothes 'aven't
been
on him for weeks.'

'Then it's all right,' said Torpenhow to himself. 'Orgies are healthy,
and
Dick has a head of his own, but when it comes to women making
eyes I'm
not so certain,--Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums.
They're
contrary brutes, and they do things without any reason.'

Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in
the
spirit on the mud-flats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he
remembered
the day when he had decked Amomma's horns with the ham-frills,
and
Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four
years
seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with
every hour
of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the
beach,
sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the
homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the
mud-flats, and
Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying
before
the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small
shot
about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling
lies to
Mrs. Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries;
Maisie
picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand
and
her teeth firm-set; and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass
between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy.
The
pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the
longest.

Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his
mind
as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that
there
might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in
the
forenoon.

'There's a good working light now,' he said, watching his shadow
placidly. 'Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. And there's
Maisie.'

She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw
that no
mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her
still
Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting
passed
between them, because there had been none in the old days.

'What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?' said Dick, as
one
who was entitled to ask.

'Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then
I left
it in a little heap of paint-chips and came away.'

'I know what palette-knifing means. What was the piccy?'

'A fancy head that wouldn't come right,--horrid thing!'

'I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The
grain
comes up woolly as the paint dries.'

'Not if you scrape properly.' Maisie waved her hand to illustrate
her
methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. Dick
laughed.

'You're as untidy as ever.'

'That comes well from you. Look at your own cuff.'

'By Jove, yes! It's worse than yours. I don't think we've much
altered in
anything. Let's see, though.' He looked at Maisie critically. The
pale blue
haze of an autumn day crept between the tree-trunks of the Park
and
made a background for the gray dress, the black velvet toque
above the
black hair, and the resolute profile.

'No, there's nothing changed. How good it is! D'you remember
when I
fastened your hair into the snap of a hand-bag?'

Maisie nodded, with a twinkle in her eyes, and turned her full face
to
Dick.

'Wait a minute,' said he. 'That mouth is down at the corners a little.

Who's been worrying you, Maisie?'

'No one but myself. I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I
try
hard enough, and Kami says----'

'"Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants."
Kami is
depressing. I beg your pardon.'

'Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing
better
and he'd let me exhibit this year.'

'Not in this place, surely?'

'Of course not. The Salon.'

'You fly high.'

'I've been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit,
Dick?'

'I don't exhibit. I sell.'

'What is your line, then?'

'Haven't you heard?' Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible?
He
cast about for some means of conviction. They were not far from
the
Marble Arch. 'Come up Oxford Street a little and I'll show you.'

A small knot of people stood round a print-shop that Dick knew
well.

'Some reproduction of my work inside,' he said, with suppressed
triumph. Never before had success tasted so sweet upon the
tongue. 'You
see the sort of things I paint. D'you like it?'

Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going
into
action under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.

'They've chucked the off lead-'orse' said one to the other. ''E's tore
up
awful, but they're makin' good time with the others. That
lead-driver
drives better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse.'

'Number Three'll be off the limber, next jolt,' was the answer.

'No, 'e won't. See 'ow 'is foot's braced against the iron? 'E's all
right.'

Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joy--fine, rank,
vulgar
triumph. She was more interested in the little crowd than in the
picture.

That was something that she could understand.

'And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so!' she said at last, under her
breath.

'Me,--all me!' said Dick, placidly. 'Look at their faces. It hits 'em.
They
don't know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know.
And I
know my work's right.'

'Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one!'

'Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you
think?'

'I call it success. Tell me how you got it.'

They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga
of his
own doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a
woman.

From the beginning he told the tale, the I--I--I's flashing through
the
records as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened
and
nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move
her a
hair's-breadth. At the end of each canto he would conclude, 'And
that
gave me some notion of handling colour,' or light, or whatever it
might
be that he had set out to pursue and understand. He led her
breathless
across half the world, speaking as he had never spoken in his life
before.

And in the flood-tide of his exaltation there came upon him a great
desire
to pick up this maiden who nodded her head and said, 'I
understand. Go
on,'--to pick her up and carry her away with him, because she was
Maisie, and because she understood, and because she was his right,
and a
woman to be desired above all women.

Then he checked himself abruptly. 'And so I took all I wanted,' he
said,
'and I had to fight for it. Now you tell.'

Maisie's tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of
patient
toil backed by savage pride that would not be broken thought
dealers
laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even
sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a
few
bright spots, in pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but it
wound
up with the oft repeated wail, 'And so you see, Dick, I had no
success,
though I worked so hard.'

Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she
could not
hit the breakwater, half an hour before she had kissed him. And
that had
happened yesterday.

'Never mind,' he said. 'I'll tell you something, if you'll believe it.'
The
words were shaping themselves of their own accord. 'The whole
thing,
lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy below
Fort
Keeling.'

Maisie flushed a little. 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you've
had
the success and I haven't.'

'Let me talk, then. I know you'll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds
a bit
absurd, but5 those ten years never existed, and I've come back
again. It
really is just the same. Can't you see? You're alone now and I'm
alone.

What's the use of worrying? Come to me instead, darling.'

Maisie poked the gravel with her parasol. They were sitting on a
bench.

'I understand,' she said slowly. 'But I've got my work to do, and I
must
do it.'

'Do it with me, then, dear. I won't interrupt.'

'No, I couldn't. It's my work,--mine,--mine,--mine! I've been alone
all my
life in myself, and I'm not going to belong to anybody except
myself. I
remember things as well as you do, but that doesn't count. We
were
babies then, and we didn't know what was before us. Dick, don't be
selfish. I think I see my way to a little success next year. Don't take
it
away from me.'

'I beg your pardon, darling. It's my fault for speaking stupidly. I
can't
expect you to throw up all your life just because I'm back. I'll go to
my
own place and wait a little.'

'But, Dick, I don't want you to--go--out of--my life, now you've just
come
back.'

'I'm at your orders; forgive me.' Dick devoured the troubled little
face
with his eyes. There was triumph in them, because he could not
conceive
that Maisie should refuse sooner or later to love him, since he
loved her.

'It's wrong of me,' said Maisie, more slowly than before; 'it's wrong
and
selfish; but, oh, I've been so lonely! No, you misunderstand. Now
I've
seen you again,--it's absurd, but I want to keep you in my life.'

'Naturally. We belong.'

'We don't; but you always understood me, and there is so much in
my
work that you could help me in. You know things and the ways of
doing
things. You must.'

'I do, I fancy, or else I don't know myself. Then you won't care to
lose
sight of me altogether, and--you want me to help you in your
work?'

'Yes; but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That's why
I feel
so selfish. Can't things stay as they are? I do want your help.'

'You shall have it. But let's consider. I must see your pics first, and
overhaul your sketches, and find out about your tendencies. You
should
see what the papers say about my tendencies! Then I'll give you
good
advice, and you shall paint according. Isn't that it, Maisie?'

Again there was triumph in Dick's eye.

'It's too good of you,--much too good. Because you are consoling
yourself
with what will never happen, and I know that, and yet I want to
keep
you. Don't blame me later, please.'

'I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen
can
do no wrong. It isn't your selfishness that impresses me. It's your
audacity in proposing to make use of me.'

'Pooh! You're only Dick,--and a print-shop.'

'Very good: that's all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don't you, that
I love
you? I don't want you to have any false notions about brothers and
sisters.'

Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes.

'It's absurd, but--I believe. I wish I could send you away before you
get
angry with me. But--but the girl that lives with me is red-haired,
and an
impressionist, and all our notions clash.'

'So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from to-day we
shall be
laughing at this together.'

Maisie shook her head mournfully. 'I knew you wouldn't
understand,
and it will only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face,
Dick,
and tell me what you see.'

They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was
gathering, and it stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond
the
railings. Dick brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of
faces to
bear on the eyes, mouth, and chin underneath the black velvet
toque.

'It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me,' he said. 'We've both
nice
little wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken.
Now about
the future. I must come and see your pictures some day,--I suppose
when
the red-haired girl is on the premises.'

'Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are
such
heaps of things I want to talk about and ask your advice about.
Now I
must get back to work.'

'Try to find out before next Sunday what I am,' said Dick. 'Don't
take my
word for anything I've told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you.'

Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till
she was
out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly,
'I'm a
wretch,--a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and Dick will
understand.'

No one has yet explained what actually happens when an
irresistible
force meets the immovable post, though many have thought
deeply, even
as Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be
led in a
few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of
thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all
that
was written on it.

'If I know anything of heads,' he said, 'there's everything in that
face but
love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth
won't be
won for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and
she's
going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide
world,
to use me! But then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that fact;
and
it's good to see her again. This business must have been simmering
at the
back of my head for years. . . . She'll use me as I used Binat at Port
Said.

She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every
Sunday,--like a young man courting a housemaid. She's sure to
come
around; and yet--that mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be
wanting to
kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,--I
don't even
know what sort of work she does yet,--and I shall have to talk
about
Art,--Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually, damn
all
varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in my
way. I'll
go home and do some Art.'

Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought.
The
figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.

'She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl,
who
probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people
have.

Maisie's a bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,--meals
at all
hours, and tea with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris
used
to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able to
help.

Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife.'

Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with
eyes full
of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged
at the
same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the
intimacies of
toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages,
strife,
recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows, and is
proof
against any absence and evil conduct.

Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of
council. He
thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to
think of
anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last
was
an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically
with
jewelry,--a thick gold necklace round that little neck, bracelets
upon the
rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands,--thie cool,
temperate,
ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an absurd
thought, for Maisie would not even allow him to put one ring on
one
finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. It would be better
to sit
with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around her neck and her face
on his
shoulder, as befitted husband and wife. Torpenhow's boots creaked
that
night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows contracted and he
murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a
right
and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in
his
stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not
instantly
care for him.

'I say, old man,' said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain
attempts at conversation, 'I haven't put your back up by anything
I've
said lately, have I?'

'You! No. How could you?'

'Liver out of order?'

'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit
worried about things in general. I suppose it's my soul.'

'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business
have
you with luxuries of that kind?'

'It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands
shouting
lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding?'

'He's right, whoever he is,--except about the misunderstanding. I
don't
think we could misunderstand each other.'

The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then
Torpenhow,
insinuatingly--
'Dick, is it a woman?'

'Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if
you
begin to talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint
trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play
among
three-and-sixpenny pot-palms, and I'll mount all my pics in
aniline-dye
plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who maunders over
what her
guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp,--in a
snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie.
You'll
like that?'

'Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing
and
swearing. You've overdone it, just as he did. It's no business of
mine, of
course, but it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars
there's saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll
come
from heaven or earth, I don't know, but it's bound to come and
break you
up a little. You want hammering.'

Dick shivered. 'All right,' said he. 'When this island is
disintegrated, it
will call for you.'

'I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some
more.

We're talking nonsense. Come along to a theatre.'

CHAPTER VI

'And you may lead a thousand men,
Nor ever draw the rein,
But ere ye lead the Faery Queen
'Twill burst your heart in twain.'

He has slipped his foot from the stirrup-bar,
The bridle from his hand,
And he is bound by hand and foot
To the Queen o' Faery-land.
Sir Hoggie and the Fairies.

SOME weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning
across
the Park to his studio. 'This,' he said, 'is evidently the thrashing that
Torp meant. It hurts more than I expected; but the Queen can do
no
wrong; and she certainly has some notion of drawing.'

He had just finished a Sunday visit to Maisie,--always under the
green
eyes of the red-haired impressionist girl, whom he learned to hate
at
sight,--and was tingling with a keen sense of shame. Sunday after
Sunday, putting on his best clothes, he had walked over to the
untidy
house north of the Park, first to see Maisie's pictures, and then to
criticise and advise upon them as he realised that they were
productions
on which advice would not be wasted. Sunday after Sunday, and
his love
grew with each visit, he had been compelled to cram his heart back
from
between his lips when it prompted him to kiss Maisie several times
and
very much indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above the heart
had
warned him that Maisie was not yet attainable, and that it would be
better to talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the
craft
that was all in all to her. Therefore it was his fate to endure weekly
torture in the studio built out over the clammy back garden of a
frail
stuffy little villa where nothing was ever in its right place and
nobody
every called,--to endure and to watch Maisie moving to and fro
with the
teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it gave him a little longer time
in her
presence, he drank it devoutly, and the red-haired girl sat in an
untidy
heap and eyed him without speaking. She was always watching
him.

Once, and only once, when she had left the studio, Maisie showed
him an
album that held a few poor cuttings from provincial papers,--the
briefest
of hurried notes on some of her pictures sent to outlying
exhibitions. Dick
stooped and kissed the paint-smudged thumb on the open page.
'Oh, my
love, my love,' he muttered, 'do you value these things? Chuck 'em
into
the waste-paper basket!'

'Not till I get something better,' said Maisie, shutting the book.

Then Dick, moved by no respect for his public and a very deep
regard for
the maiden, did deliberately propose, in order to secure more of
these
coveted cuttings, that he should paint a picture which Maisie
should sign.

'That's childish,' said Maisie, 'and I didn't think it of you. It must be
my
work. Mine,--mine,--mine!'

'Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses.
You are
thoroughly good at that.' Dick was sick and savage.

'Better things than medallions, Dick,' was the answer, in tones that
recalled a gray-eyed atom's fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick
would
have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.

Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that
could
almost draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he
believed,
and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It
demanded,
among other things, an exposition of the faith that was in him.

Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the
fluency
with which Dick preached his own gospel of Art.

A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it
was
Maisie's will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to
make
plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of
the
whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in
doing a
thing if you only know how to do it; the trouble is to explain your
method.

'I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand,' said Dick,
despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained
would
not 'look flesh,'--it was the same chin that she had scraped out with
the
palette knife,--'but I find it almost impossible to teach you. There's
a
queer grin, Dutch touch about your painting that I like; but I've a
notion
that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never
used
the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with
flesh in
shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you shirk
hard
work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line
doesn't
allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy, tricky
stuff
in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,--as I know.
That's
immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can tell more
about
your powers, as old Kami used to say.'

Maisie protested; she did not care for the pure line.

'I know,' said Dick. 'You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch
of
flowers at the base of the neck to hide bad modelling.' The
red-haired girl
laughed a little. 'You want to do landscapes with cattle knee-deep
in
grass to hide bad drawing. You want to do a great deal more than
you
can do. You have sense of colour, but you want form. Colour's a
gift,--put
it aside and think no more about it,--but form you can be drilled
into.

Now, all your fancy heads--and some of them are very good--will
keep
you exactly where you are. With line you must go forward or
backward,
and it will show up all your weaknesses.'

'But other people----' began Maisie.

'You mustn't mind what other people do. If their souls were your
soul, it
would be different. You stand and fall by your own work,
remember, and
it's waste of time to think of any one else in this battle.'

Dick paused, and the longing that had been so resolutely put away
came
back into his eyes. He looked at Maisie, and the look asked as
plainly as
words, Was it not time to leave all this barren wilderness of canvas
and
counsel and join hands with Life and Love?
Maisie assented to the new programme of schooling so adorably
that
Dick could hardly restrain himself from picking her up then and
there
and carrying her off to the nearest registrar's office. It was the
implicit
obedience to the spoken word and the blank indifference to the
unspoken
desire that baffled and buffeted his soul. He held authority in that
house,--authority limited, indeed, to one-half of one afternoon in
seven,
but very real while it lasted. Maisie had learned to appeal to him
on
many subjects, from the proper packing of pictures to the
condition of a
smoky chimney. The red-haired girl never consulted him about
anything.

On the other hand, she accepted his appearances without protest,
and
watched him always. He discovered that the meals of the
establishment
were irregular and fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea,
pickles,
and biscuit, as he had suspected from the beginning. The girls were
supposed to market week and week about, but they lived, with the
help of
a charwoman, as casually as the young ravens. Maisie spent most
of her
income on models, and the other girl revelled in apparatus as
refined as
her work was rough. Armed with knowledge, dear-bought from the
Docks, Dick warned Maisie that the end of semi-starvation meant
the
crippling of power to work, which was considerably worse than
death.

Maisie took the warning, and gave more thought to what she ate
and
drank. When his trouble returned upon him, as it generally did in
the
long winter twilights, the remembrance of that little act of
domestic
authority and his coercion with a hearth-brush of the smoky
drawing-room chimney stung Dick like a whip-lash.

He conceived that this memory would be the extreme of his
sufferings,
till one Sunday, the red-haired girl announced that she would make
a
study of Dick's head, and that he would be good enough to sit still,
and--quite as an afterthought--look at Maisie. He sat, because he
could
not well refuse, and for the space of half an hour he reflected on
all the
people in the past whom he had laid open for the purposes of his
own
craft. He remembered Binat most distinctly,--that Binat who had
once
been an artist and talked about degradation.

It was the merest monochrome roughing in of a head, but it
presented the
dumb waiting, the longing, and, above all, the hopeless
enslavement of
the man, in a spirit of bitter mockery.

'I'll buy it,' said Dick, promptly, 'at your own price.'

'My price is too high, but I dare say you'll be as grateful if----' The
wet
sketch, fluttered from the girl's hand and fell into the ashes of the
studio
stove. When she picked it up it was hopelessly smudged.

'Oh, it's all spoiled!' said Maisie. 'And I never saw it. Was it like?'

'Thank you,' said Dick under his breath to the red-haired girl, and
he
removed himself swiftly.

'How that man hates me!' said the girl. 'And how he loves you,
Maisie!'

'What nonsense? I knew Dick's very fond of me, but he had his
work to
do, and I have mine.'

'Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in
impressionism, after all. Maisie, can't you see?'

'See? See what?'

'Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as
that
man looks at you, I'd--I don't know what I'd do. But he hates me.
Oh,
how he hates me!'

She was not altogether correct. Dick's hatred was tempered with
gratitude for a few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely.
Only
the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the Park
in the
fog. 'There'll be an explosion one of these days,' he said wrathfully.
'But
it isn't Maisie's fault; she's right, quite right, as far as she knows,
and I
can't blame her. This business has been going on for three months
nearly.

Three months!--and it cost me ten years' knocking about to get at
the
notion, the merest raw notion, of my work. That's true; but then I
didn't
have pins, drawing-pins, and palette-knives, stuck into me every
Sunday.

Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a
very bad
time of it. No, she won't. I'd be as big a fool about her as I am now.
I'll
poison that red-haired girl on my wedding-day,--she's
unwholesome,--and now I'll pass on these present bad times to
Torp.'

Torpenhow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately
on the
sin of levity, and Dick and listened and replied not a word. In the
weeks
between the first few Sundays of his discipline he had flung
himself
savagely into his work, resolved that Maisie should at least know
the full
stretch of his powers. Then he had taught Maisie that she must not
pay
the least attention to any work outside her own, and Maisie had
obeyed
him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not interested in
his
pictures.

'Your things smell of tobacco and blood,' she said once. 'Can't you
do
anything except soldiers?'

'I could do a head of you that would startle you,' thought
Dick,--this was
before the red-haired girl had brought him under the
guillotine,--but he
only said, 'I am very sorry,' and harrowed Torpenhow's soul that
evening with blasphemies against Art. Later, insensibly and to a
large
extent against his own will, he ceased to interest himself in his
own work.

For Maisie's sake, and to soothe the self-respect that it seemed to
him he
lost each Sunday, he would not consciously turn out bad stuff, but,
since
Maisie did not care even for his best, it were better not to do
anything at
all save wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday.
Torpenhow
was disgusted as the weeks went by fruitless, and then attacked
him one
Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after three hours'

biting self-restraint in Maisie's presence. There was Language, and
Torpenhow withdrew to consult the Nilghai, who had come it to
talk
continental politics.

'Bone-idle, is he? Careless, and touched in the temper?' said the
Nilghai.

'It isn't worth worrying over. Dick is probably playing the fool with
a
woman.'

'Isn't that bad enough?'

'No. She may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces
for a
while. She may even turn up here some day and make a scene on
the
staircase: one never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own
accord you
had better not touch him. He is no easy-tempered man to handle.'

'No; I wish he were. He is such an aggressive, cocksure,
you-be-damned
fellow.'

'He'll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he
can't
storm up and down the world with a box of moist tubes and a slick
brush.

You're fond of him?'

'I'd take any punishment that's in store for him if I could; but the
worst
of it is, no man can save his brother.'

'No, and the worser of it is, there is no discharge in this war. Dick
must
learn his lesson like the rest of us. Talking of war, there'll be
trouble in
the Balkans in the spring.'

'That trouble is long coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out
there
when it comes off?'

Dick entered the room soon afterwards, and the question was put
to him.

'Not good enough,' he said shortly. 'I'm too comf'y where I am.'

'Surely you aren't taking all the stuff in the papers seriously?' said
the
Nilghai. 'Your vogue will be ended in less than six months,--the
public
will know your touch and go on to something new,--and where will
you
be then?'

'Here, in England.'

'When you might be doing decent work among us out there?
Nonsense! I
shall go, the Keneu will be there, Torp will be there, Cassavetti
will be
there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as
much as
ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you of
seeing
things that would make the reputation of three Verestchagins.'

'Um!' said Dick, pulling at his pipe.

'You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at
your
pictures? Just think how full an average man's life is of his own
pursuits
and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look up
between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they
aren't the
least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or
notoriety,
according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.'

'I know that as well as you do. Give me credit for a little
gumption.'

'Be hanged if I do!'

'Be hanged, then; you probably will be,--for a spy, by excited
Turks.

Heigh-ho! I'm weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.'
Dick
dropped into a chair, and was fast asleep in a minute.

'That's a bad sign,' said the Nilghai, in an undertone.

Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was
beginning to
burn, and put a pillow behind the head. 'We can't help; we can't
help,' he
said. 'It's a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I'm fond of it.
There's the
scar of the wipe he got when he was cut over in the square.'

'Shouldn't wonder if that has made him a trifle mad.'

'I should. He's a most businesslike madman.'

Then Dick began to snore furiously.

'Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick,
and go
and sleep somewhere else, if you intend to make a noise about it.'

'When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,' said the Nilghai, in
his
beard, 'I notice that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural
history.'

Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the
night-watches
he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous that he
wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He
would
seek Maisie on a week-day,--would suggest an excursion, and
would take
her by train to Fort Keeling, over the very ground that they two had
trodden together ten years ago.

'As a general rule,' he explained to his chin-lathered reflection in
the
morning, 'it isn't safe to cross an old trail twice. Things remind one
of
things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel said; but this is an
exception
to every rule that ever was. I'll go to Maisie at once.'

Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived,
and
Maisie in a paint-spattered blouse was warring with her canvas.
She was
not pleased to see him; for week-day visits were a stretch of the
bond;
and it needed all his courage to explain his errand.

'I know you've been working too hard,' he concluded, with an air of
authority. 'If you do that, you'll break down. You had much better
come.'

'Where?' said Maisie, wearily. She had been standing before her
easel
too long, and was very tired.

'Anywhere you please. We'll take a train to-morrow and see where
it
stops. We'll have lunch somewhere, and I'll bring you back in the
evening.'

'If there's a good working light to-morrow, I lose a day.' Maisie
balanced
the heavy white chestnut palette irresolutely.

Dick bit back an oath that was hurrying to his lips. He had not yet
learned patience with the maiden to whom her work was all in all.

'You'll lose ever so many more, dear, if you use every hour of
working
light. Overwork's only murderous idleness. Don't be unreasonable.
I'll
call for you to-morrow after breakfast early.'

'But surely you are going to ask----'

'No, I am not. I want you and nobody else. Besides, she hates me as
much
as I hate her. She won't care to come. To-morrow, then; and pray
that
we get sunshine.'

Dick went away delighted, and by consequence did no work
whatever.

He strangled a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a
great
gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then
retired
into himself to consider things.

'I'm going out for the day to-morrow with Dick,' said Maisie to the
red-haired girl when the latter returned, tired, from marketing in
the
Edgware road.

'He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrubbed
while
you're away. It's very dirty.'

Maisie had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked
forward to
the little excitement, but not without misgivings.

'There's nobody nicer than Dick when he talks sensibly, she
though, but
I'm sure he'll be silly and worry me, and I'm sure I can't tell him
anything he'd like to hear. If he'd only be sensible, I should like
him so
much better.'

Dick's eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next
morning
and saw Maisie, gray-ulstered and black-velvet-hatted, standing in
the
hallway. Palaces of marble, and not sordid imitation of grained
wood,
were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The
red-haired
girl drew her into the studio for a moment and kissed her
hurriedly.

Maisie's eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead; she was
altogether
unused to these demonstrations. 'Mind my hat,' she said, hurrying
away,
and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the hansom.

'Are you quite warm enough! Are you sure you wouldn't like some
more
breakfast? Put the cloak over you knees.'

'I'm quite comf'y, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop
singing
like that. People will think we're mad.'

'Let 'em think,--if the exertion doesn't kill them. They don't know
who
we are, and I'm sure I don't care who they are. My faith, Maisie,
you're
looking lovely!'

Maisie stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind
of a
keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks.
Overhead, the
creamy-yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one
against a
pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from
water-spout
committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the coming of
spring.

'It will be lovely weather in the country,' said Dick.

'But where are we going?'

'Wait and see.'

The stopped at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half
the
fraction of an instant it occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled by
the
waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to
the
booking-office than to elbow one's own way through the crowd.
Dick put
her into a Pullman,--solely on account of the warmth there; and
she
regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train
moved out into the country.

'I wish I knew where we are going,' she repeated for the twentieth
time.

The name of a well-remembered station flashed by, towards the
end of
the run, and Maisie was delighted.

'Oh, Dick, you villain!'

'Well, I thought you might like to see the place again. You haven't
been
here since the old times, have you?'

'No. I never cared to see Mrs. Jennett again; and she was all that
was
ever there.'

'Not quite. Look out a minute. There's the windmill above the
potato-fields; they haven't built villas there yet; d'you remember
when I
shut you up in it?'

'Yes. How she beat you for it! I never told it was you.'

'She guessed. I jammed a stick under the door and told you that I
was
burying Amomma alive in the potatoes, and you believed me. You
had a
trusting nature in those days.'

They laughed and leaned to look out, identifying ancient
landmarks with
many reminiscences. Dick fixed his weather eye on the curve of
Maisie's
cheek, very near his own, and watched the blood rise under the
clear
skin. He congratulated himself upon his cunning, and looked that
the
evening would bring him a great reward.

When the train stopped they went out to look at an old town with
new
eyes. First, but from a distance, they regarded the house of Mrs.
Jennett.

'Suppose she should come out now, what would you do?' said
Dick, with
mock terror.

'I should make a face.'

'Show, then,' said Dick, dropping into the speech of childhood.

Maisie made that face in the direction of the mean little villa, and
Dick
laughed.

'"This is disgraceful,"' said Maisie, mimicking Mrs. Jennett's tone.

'"Maisie, you run in at once, and learn the collect, gospel, and
epistle for
the next three Sundays. After all I've taught you, too, and three
helps
every Sunday at dinner! Dick's always leading you into mischief. If
you
aren't a gentleman, Dick, you might at least--"'

The sentence ended abruptly. Maisie remembered when it had last
been
used.

'"Try to behave like one,"' said Dick, promptly. 'Quite right. Now
we'll
get some lunch and go on to Fort Keeling,--unless you'd rather
drive
there?'

'We must walk, out of respect to the place. How little changed it
all is!'

They turned in the direction of the sea through unaltered streets,
and the
influence of old things lay upon them. Presently they passed a
confectioner's shop much considered in the days when their joint
pocket-money amounted to a shilling a week.

'Dick, have you any pennies?' said Maisie, half to herself.

'Only three; and if you think you're going to have two of 'em to buy
peppermints with, you're wrong. She says peppermints aren't
ladylike.'

Again they laughed, and again the colour came into Maisie's
cheeks as
the blood boiled through Dick's heart. After a large lunch they
went
down to the beach and to Fort Keeling across the waste,
wind-bitten land
that no builder had thought it worth his while to defile. The winter
breeze came in from the sea and sang about their ears.

'Maisie,' said Dick, 'your nose is getting a crude Prussian blue at
the tip.

I'll race you as far as you please for as much as you please.'

She looked round cautiously, and with a laugh set off, swiftly as
the
ulster allowed, till she was out of breath.

'We used to run miles,' she panted. 'It's absurd that we can't run
now.'

'Old age, dear. This it is to get fat and sleek in town. When I
wished to
pull you hair you generally ran for three miles, shrieking at the top
of
your voice. I ought to know, because those shrieks of yours were
meant to
call up Mrs. Jennett with a cane and----'

'Dick, I never got you a beating on purpose in my life.'

'No, of course you never did. Good heavens! look at the sea.'

'Why, it's the same as ever!' said Maisie.

Torpenhow had gathered from Mr. Beeton that Dick, properly
dressed
and shaved, had left the house at half-past eight in the morning
with a
travelling-rug over his arm. The Nilghai rolled in at mid-day for
chess
and polite conversation.

'It's worse than anything I imagined,' said Torpenhow.

'Oh, the everlasting Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen
with
one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it'll amuse him. You can
whip a
young pup off feather, but you can't whip a young man.'

'It isn't a woman. It's one woman; and it's a girl.'

'Where's your proof?'

'He got up and went out at eight this morning,--got up in the
middle of
the night, by Jove! a thing he never does except when he's on
service.

Even then, remember, we had to kick him out of his blankets
before the
fight began at El-Maghrib. It's disgusting.'

'It looks odd; but maybe he's decided to buy a horse at last. He
might get
up for that, mightn't he?'

'Buy a blazing wheelbarrow! He'd have told us if there was a horse
in
the wind. It's a girl.'

'Don't be certain. Perhaps it's only a married woman.'

'Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven't. Who gets up in the
gray
dawn to call on another man's wife? It's a girl.'

'Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there's somebody else
in
the world besides himself.'

'She'll spoil his hand. She'll waste his time, and she'll marry him,
and
ruin his work for ever. He'll be a respectable married man before
we can
stop him, and--he'll ever go on the long trail again.'

'All quite possible, but the earth won't spin the other way when that
happens. . . . No! ho! I'd give something to see Dick "go wooing
with the
boys." Don't worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we
can only
look on. Get the chessmen.'

The red-haired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the
ceiling. The footsteps of people on the pavement sounded, as they
grew
indistinct in the distance, like a many-times-repeated kiss that was
all one
long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut
savagely
from time to time.

The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked
at her
door: 'Beg y' pardon, miss, but in cleanin' of a floor there's two, not
to
say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an' mottled, an'
disinfectink.

Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would
be
pre'aps jest as well if I was to come up 'ere an' ask you what sort of
soap
you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap,
miss----'

There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of
fury
that drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost
shouting--
'Do you suppose I care what you use? Any kind will do!--any kind!'

The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her own
reflection in
the glass for an instant and covered her face with her hands. It was
as
though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.

CHAPTER VII

Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love's delight.

She would none of all my posies,--
Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew;
Half the world unto my quest
Answered but with laugh and jest.

It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.

Mine was but an idle quest,--
Roses white and red are best!
-- Blue Roses-

THE SEA had not changed. Its waters were low on the mud-banks,
and
the Marazion Bell-buoy clanked and swung in the tide-way. On the
white
beach-sand dried stumps of sea-poppy shivered and chattered.

'I don't see the old breakwater,' said Maisie, under her breath.

'Let's be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don't believe
they've mounted a single new gun on the fort since we were here.
Come
and look.'

They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook
sheltered
from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder cannon.

'Now, if Ammoma were only here!' said Maisie.

For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie's hand
and
called her by her name.

She shook her head and looked out to sea.

'Maisie, darling, doesn't it make any difference?'

'No!' between clenched teeth. 'I'd--I'd tell you if it did; but it
doesn't, Oh,
Dick, please be sensible.'

'Don't you think that it ever will?'

'No, I'm sure it won't.'

'Why?'

Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea,
spoke
hurriedly--
'I know what you want perfectly well, but I can't give it to you,
Dick. It
isn't my fault; indeed, it isn't. If I felt that I could care for any
one----
But I don't feel that I care. I simply don't understand what the
feeling
means.'

'Is that true, dear?'

'You've been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay
you
back is by speaking the truth. I daren't tell a fib. I despise myself
quit
enough as it is.'

'What in the world for?'

'Because--because I take everything that you give me and I give
you
nothing in return. It's mean and selfish of me, and whenever I think
of it
it worries me.'

'Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs,
and if I
choose to do anything you aren't to blame. You haven't a single
thing to
reproach yourself with, darling.'

'Yes, I have, and talking only makes it worse.'

'Then don't talk about it.'

'How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are
always
talking about it; and when you aren't you look it. You don't know
how I
despise myself sometimes.'

'Great goodness!' said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. 'Speak the
truth
now, Maisie, if you never speak it again! Do I--does this worrying
bore
you?'

'No. It does not.'

'You'd tell me if it did?'

'I should let you know, I think.'

'Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive
a man
when he's in love. He's always a nuisance. You must have known
that?'

Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and
Dick was
forced to repeat it.

'There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I
was
in the middle of my work, and wanted me to listen to them.'

'Did you listen?'

'At first; and they couldn't understand why I didn't care. And they
used
to praise my pictures; and I thought they meant it. I used to be
proud of
the praise, and tell Kami, and--I shall never forget--once Kami
laughed
at me.'

'You don't like being laughed at, Maisie, do you?'

'I hate it. I never laugh at other people unless--unless they do bad
work.

Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally,--of
everything of mine that you've seen.'

'"Honest, honest, and honest over!"' quoted Dick from a catchword
of
long ago. 'Tell me what Kami always says.'

Maisie hesitated. 'He--he says that there is feeling in them.'

'How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under
Kami for
two years. I know exactly what he says.'

'It isn't a fib.'

'It's worse; it's a half-truth. Kami says, when he puts his head on
one
side,--so,--"Il y a du sentiment, mais il n'y a pas de parti pris."' He
rolled
the r threateningly, as Kami used to do.

'Yes, that is what he says; and I'm beginning to think that he is
right.'

'Certainly he is.' Dick admitted that two people in the world could
do and
say no wrong. Kami was the man.

'And now you say the same thing. It's so disheartening.'

'I'm sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you
too
much to pretend about your work. It's strong, it's patient
sometimes,--not
always,--and sometimes there's power in it, but there's no special
reason
why it should be done at all. At least, that's how it strikes me.'

'There's no special reason why anything in the world should ever
be
done. You know that as well as I do. I only want success.'

'You're going the wrong way to get it, then. Hasn't Kami ever told
you
so?'

'Don't quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My
work's bad,
to begin with.'

'I didn't say that, and I don't think it.'

'It's amateurish, then.'

'That it most certainly is not. You're a work-woman, darling, to
your
boot-heels, and I respect you for that.'

'You don't laugh at me behind my back?'

'No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this
cloak
thing round you, or you'll get chilled.'

Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray
kangaroo fur to the outside.

'This is delicious,' she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully along the
fur.

'Well? Why am I wrong in trying to get a little success?'

'Just because you try. Don't you understand, darling? Good work
has
nothing to do with--doesn't belong to--the person who does it. It's
put into
him or her from outside.'

'But how does that affect----'

'Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be
masters of our materials instead of servants, and never to be afraid
of
anything.'

'I understand that.'

'Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we
sit down
quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may
not do
something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of
the
bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think
about
success and the effect of our work--to play with one eye on the
gallery--we lose power and touch and everything else. At least
that's how
I have found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every power you
possess
to your work, you're fretting over something which you can neither
help
no hinder by a minute. See?'

'It's so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do.
Don't
you ever think about the gallery?'

'Much too often; but I'm always punished for it by loss of power.
It's as
simple as the Rule of Three. If we make light of our work by using
it for
our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we're the
weaker,
we shall suffer.'

'I don't treat my work lightly. You know that it's everything to me.'

'Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes
for
yourself to one for your work. It isn't your fault, darling. I do
exactly the
same thing, and know that I'm doing it. Most of the French
schools, and
all the schools here, drive the students to work for their own credit,
and
for the sake of their pride. I was told that all the world was
interested in
my work, and everybody at Kami's talked turpentine, and I
honestly
believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all
manner
of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that!
When
my little head was bursting with a notion that I couldn't handle
because I
hadn't sufficient knowledge of my craft, I used to run about
wondering at
my own magnificence and getting ready to astonish the world.'

'But surely one can do that sometimes?'

'Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it's
done it's
such a tiny thing, and the world's so big, and all but a millionth
part of it
doesn't care. Maisie, come with me and I'll show you something of
the
size of the world. One can no more avoid working than
eating,--that goes
on by itself,--but try to see what you are working for. I know such
little
heavens that I could take you to,--islands tucked away under the
Line.

You sight them after weeks of crashing through water as black as
black
marble because it's so deep, and you sit in the fore-chains day after
day
and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea's so lonely.'

'Who is afraid?--you, or the sun?'

'The sun, of course. And there are noises under the sea, and sounds
overhead in a clear sky. Then you find your island alive with hot
moist
orchids that make mouths at you and can do everything except
talk.

There's a waterfall in it three hundred feet high, just like a sliver of
green jade laced with silver; and millions of wild bees live up in
the
rocks; and you can hear the fat cocoanuts falling from the palms;
and
you order an ivory-white servant to sling you a long yellow
hammock
with tassels on it like ripe maize, and you put up your feet and hear
the
bees hum and the water fall till you go to sleep.'

'Can one work there?'

'Certainly. One must do something always. You hang your canvas
up in a
palm tree and let the parrots criticise. When the scuffle you heave
a ripe
custard-apple at them, and it bursts in a lather of cream. There are
hundreds of places. Come and see them.'

'I don't quite like that place. It sounds lazy. Tell me another.'

'What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone,
with
raw green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected
on
honey-coloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie,
each in
a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces
and
streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till
you
find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the
market-place,
and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads
its
tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a
monkey--a little black monkey--walks through the main square to
get a
drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to
the
water's edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should
fall in.'

'Is that all true?'

'I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights
change
till it's just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little
before
sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with
all his
family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on
his
tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a blind black stone god and
watch
that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in
wagging his
tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you
hear the
desert outside the city singing, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and
everything is dark till the moon rises. Maisie, darling, come with
me and
see what the world is really like. It's very lovely, and it's very
horrible,--but I won't let you see anything horrid,--and it doesn't
care
your life or mine for pictures or anything else except doing its own
work
and making love. Come, and I'll show you how to brew sangaree,
and
sling a hammock, and--oh, thousands of things, and you'll see for
yourself
what colour means, and we'll find out together what love means,
and
then, maybe, we shall be allowed to do some good work. Come
away!'

'Why?' said Maisie.

'How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as
much as
you can? And besides, darling, I love you. Come along with me.
You have
no business here; you don't belong to this place; you're half a
gipsy,--your face tells that; and I--even the smell of open water
makes me
restless. Come across the sea and be happy!'

He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun,
looking down
at the girl. The very short winter afternoon had worn away, and,
before
they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long
ruled
lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning
over
the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense stillness
they
could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A
faint
beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the moon-haze.

'What's that?' said Maisie, quickly. 'It sounds like a heart beating.

Where is it?'

Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he
could
not trust himself to speak, and in this silence caught the sound.
Maisie
from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of
fear.

She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry
her
with over-sea emotion that she both could and could not
understand. She
was not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he
listened.

'It's a steamer,' he said,--'a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't
make
her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!' as the
red of a
rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal before she
clears the
Channel.'

'Is it a wreck?' said Maisie, to whom these words were as Greek.

Dick's eyes were turned to the sea. 'Wreck! What nonsense! She's
only
reporting herself. Red rocket forward--there's a green light aft now,
and
two red rockets from the bridge.'

'What does that mean?'

'It's the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I
wonder
which steamer it is.' The note of his voice had changed; he seemed
to be
talking to himself, and Maisie did not approve of it. The moonlight
broke
the haze for a moment, touching the black sides of a long steamer
working down Channel. 'Four masts and three funnels--she's in
deep
draught, too. That must be the Barralong, or the Bhutia. No, the
Bhutia
has a clopper bow. It's the Barralong, to Australia. She'll lift the
Southern Cross in a week,--lucky old tub!--oh, lucky old tub!'

He stared intently, and moved up the slope of the fort to get a
better
view, but the mist on the sea thickened again, and the beating of
the
screws grew fainter. Maisie called to him a little angrily, and he
returned, still keeping his eyes to seaward. 'Have you ever seen the
Southern Cross blazing right over your head?' he asked. 'It's
superb!'

'No,' she said shortly, 'and I don't want to. If you think it's so lovely,
why
don't you go and see it yourself?'

She raised her face from the soft blackness of the marten skins
about her
throat, and her eyes shone like diamonds. The moonlight on the
gray
kangaroo fur turned it to frosted silver of the coldest.

'By Jove, Maisie, you look like a little heathen idol tucked up
there.' The
eyes showed that they did not appreciate the compliment. 'I'm
sorry,' he
continued. 'The Southern Cross isn't worth looking at unless
someone
helps you to see. That steamer's out of hearing.'

'Dick,' she said quietly, 'suppose I were to come to you now,--be
quiet a
minute,--just as I am, and caring for you just as much as I do.'

'Not as a brother, though You said you didn't--in the Park.'

'I never had a brother. Suppose I said, "Take me to those places,
and in
time, perhaps, I might really care for you," what would you do?'

'Send you straight back to where you came from, in a cab. No, I
wouldn't; I'd let you walk. But you couldn't do it, dear. And I
wouldn't
run the risk. You're worth waiting for till you can come without
reservation.'

'Do you honestly believe that?'

'I have a hazy sort of idea that I do. Has it never struck you in that
light?'

'Ye--es. I feel so wicked about it.'

'Wickeder than usual?'

'You don't know all I think. It's almost too awful to tell.'

'Never mind. You promised to tell me the truth--at least.'

'It's so ungrateful of me, but--but, though I know you care for me,
and I
like to have you with me, I'd--I'd even sacrifice you, if that would
bring
me what I want.'

'My poor little darling! I know that state of mind. It doesn't lead to
good
work.'

'You aren't angry? Remember, I do despise myself.'

'I'm not exactly flattered,--I had guessed as much before,--but I'm
not
angry. I'm sorry for you. Surely you ought to have left a littleness
like
that behind you, years ago.'

'You've no right to patronise me! I only want what I have worked
for so
long. It came to you without any trouble, and--and I don't think it's
fair.'

'What can I do? I'd give ten years of my life to get you what you
want.

But I can't help you; even I can't help.'

A murmur of dissent from Maisie. He went on--
'And I know by what you have just said that you're on the wrong
road to
success. It isn't got at by sacrificing other people,--I've had that
much
knocked into me; you must sacrifice yourself, and live under
orders, and
never think for yourself, and never have real satisfaction in your
work
except just at the beginning, when you're reaching out after a
notion.'

'How can you believe all that?'

'There's no question of belief or disbelief. That's the law, and you
take it
or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can't, and then my
work
turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember,
four-fifths
of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the
trouble
for it's own sake.'

'Isn't it nice to get credit even for bad work?'

'It's much too nice. But---- May I tell you something? It isn't a
pretty
tale, but you're so like a man that I forget when I'm talking to you.'

'Tell me.'

'Once when I was out in the Soudan I went over some ground that
we
had been fighting on for three days. There were twelve hundred
dead;
and we hadn't time to bury them.'

'How ghastly!'

'I had been at work on a big double-sheet sketch, and I was
wondering
what people would think of it at home. The sight of that field
taught me a
good deal. It looked just like a bed of horrible toadstools in all
colours,
and--I'd never seen men in bulk go back to their beginnings before.
So I
began to understand that men and women were only material to
work
with, and that what they said or did was of no consequence. See?
Strictly
speaking, you might just as well put your ear down to the palette to
catch
what your colours are saying.'

'Dick, that's disgraceful!'

'Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody
must
be either a man or a woman.'

'I'm glad you allow that much.'

'In your case I don't. You aren't a woman. But ordinary people,
Maisie,
must behave and work as such. That's what makes me so savage.'
He
hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. 'I know that it is
outside my
business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output
if I
listen to 'em; and yet, confound it all,'--another pebble flew
seaward,--'I
can't help purring when I'm rubbed the right way. Even when I can
see
on a man's forehead that he is lying his way through a clump of
pretty
speeches, those lies make me happy and play the mischief with my
hand.'

'And when he doesn't say pretty things?'

'Then, belovedest,'--Dick grinned,--'I forget that I am the steward
of
these gifts, and I want to make that man love and appreciate my
work
with a thick stick. It's too humiliating altogether; but I suppose
even if
one were an angel and painted humans altogether from outside,
one
would lose in touch what one gained in grip.'

Maisie laughed at the idea of Dick as an angel.

'But you seem to think,' she said, 'that everything nice spoils your
hand.'

'I don't think. It's the law,--just the same as it was at Mrs. Jennett's.

Everything that is nice does spoil your hand. I'm glad you see so
clearly.'

'I don't like the view.'

'Nor I. But--have got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough
to face
it alone?'

'I suppose I must.'

'Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to
walk
straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than
stumbling
apart. Maisie, can't you see reason?'

'I don't think we should get on together. We should be two of a
trade, so
we should never agree.'

'How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He
lived in a
cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I'd make him chew his own
arrow-heads.

Well?'

'I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about
my
work, as I do now. Four days out of the seven I'm not fit to speak
to.'

'You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush.
D'you
suppose that I don't know the feeling of worry and bother and
can't-get-at-ness? You're lucky if you only have it four days out of
the
seven. What difference would that make?'

'A great deal--if you had it too.'

'Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might
laugh at
you. But there's no use talking about it. If you can think in that way
you
can't care for me--yet.'

The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little
ripples
broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak.

'Dick,' she said slowly, 'I believe very much that you are better than
I
am.'

'This doesn't seem to bear on the argument--but in what way?'

'I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things;
and
then you're so patient. Yes, you're better than I am.'

Dick considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man's life.
There
was nothing in the review to fill him with a sense of virtue. He
lifted the
hem of the cloak to his lips.

'Why,' said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, 'can you
see
things that I can't? I don't believe what you believe; but you're
right, I
believe.'

'If I've seen anything, God knows I couldn't have seen it but for
you, and
I know that I couldn't have said it except to you. You seemed to
make
everything clear for a minute; but I don't practice what I preach.
You
would help me. . . . There are only us two in the world for all
purposes,
and--and you like to have me with you?'

'Of course I do. I wonder if you can realise how utterly lonely I
am!'

'Darling, I think I can.'

'Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up
and
down the back-garden trying to cry. I never can cry. Can you?'

'It's some time since I tried. What was the trouble? Overwork?'

'I don't know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had
no
money, and was starving in London. I thought about it all day, and
it
frightened me--oh, how it frightened me!'

'I know that fear. It's the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the
night
sometimes. You oughtn't to know anything about it.'

'How do you know?'

'Never mind. Is your three hundred a year safe?'

'It's in Consols.'

'Very well. If any one comes to you and recommends a better
investment,--even if I should come to you,--don't you listen. Never
shift
the money for a minute, and never lend a penny of it,--even to the
red-haired girl.'

'Don't scold me so! I'm not likely to be foolish.'

'The earth is full of men who'd sell their souls for three hundred a
year;
and women come and talk, and borrow a five-pound note here and
a
ten-pound note there; and a woman has no conscience in a money
debt.

Stick to your money, Maisie, for there's nothing more ghastly in
the
world than poverty in London. It's scared me. By Jove, it put the
fear
into me! And one oughtn't to be afraid of anything.'

To each man is appointed his particular dread,--the terror that, if
he does
not fight against it, must cow him even to the loss of his manhood.
Dick's
experience of the sordid misery of want had entered into the deeps
of
him, and, lest he might find virtue too easy, that memory stood
behind
him, tempting to shame, when dealers came to buy his wares. As
the
Nilghai quaked against his will at the still green water of a lake or
a
mill-dam, as Torpenhow flinched before any white arm that could
cut or
stab and loathed himself for flinching, Dick feared the poverty he
had
once tasted half in jest. His burden was heavier than the burdens of
his
companions.

Maisie watched the face working in the moonlight.

'You've plenty of pennies now,' she said soothingly.

'I shall never have enough,' he began, with vicious emphasis. Then,
laughing, 'I shall always be three-pence short in my accounts.'

'Why threepence?'

'I carried a man's bag once from Liverpool Street Station to
Blackfriar's
Bridge. It was a sixpenny job,--you needn't laugh; indeed it
was,--and I
wanted the money desperately. He only gave me threepence; and
he
hadn't even the decency to pay in silver. Whatever money I make, I
shall
never get that odd threepence out of the world.'

This was not language befitting the man who had preached of the
sanctity of work. It jarred on Maisie, who preferred her payment in
applause, which, since all men desire it, must be of he right. She
hunted
for her little purse and gravely took out a threepenny bit.

'There it is,' she said. 'I'll pay you, Dickie; and don't worry any
more; it
isn't worth while. Are you paid?'

'I am,' said the very human apostle of fair craft, taking the coin. 'I'm
paid a thousand times, and we'll close that account. It shall live on
my
watch-chain; and you're an angel, Maisie.'

'I'm very cramped, and I'm feeling a little cold. Good gracious! the
cloak
is all white, and so is your moustache! I never knew it was so
chilly.'

A light frost lay white on the shoulder of Dick's ulster. He, too, had
forgotten the state of the weather. They laughed together, and with
that
laugh ended all serious discourse.

They ran inland across the waste to warm themselves, then turned
to
look at the glory of the full tide under the moonlight and the
intense
black shadows of the furze bushes. It was an additional joy to Dick
that
Maisie could see colour even as he saw it,--could see the blue in
the white
of the mist, the violet that is in gray palings, and all things else as
they
are,--not of one hue, but a thousand. And the moonlight came into
Maisie's soul, so that she, usually reserved, chattered of herself and
of
the things she took interest in,--of Kami, wisest of teachers, and of
the
girls in the studio,--of the Poles, who will kill themselves with
overwork if
they are not checked; of the French, who talk at great length of
much
more than they will ever accomplish; of the slovenly English, who
toil
hopelessly and cannot understand that inclination does not imply
power;
of the Americans, whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot
afternoon
strain tense-drawn nerves to breaking-point, and whose suppers
lead to
indigestion; of tempestuous Russians, neither to hold nor to bind,
who tell
the girls ghost-stories till the girls shriek; of stolid Germans, who
come to
learn one thing, and, having mastered that much, stolidly go away
and
copy pictures for evermore. Dick listened enraptured because it
was
Maisie who spoke. He knew the old life.

'It hasn't changed much,' he said. 'Do they still steal colours at
lunch-time?'

'Not steal. Attract is the word. Of course they do. I'm good--I only
attract
ultramarine; but there are students who'd attract flake-white.'

'I've done it myself. You can't help it when the palettes are hung
up.

Every colour is common property once it runs down,--even though
you
do start it with a drop of oil. It teaches people not to waste their
tubes.'

'I should like to attract some of your colours, Dick. Perhaps I might
catch
your success with them.'

'I mustn't say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world,
which
you've just missed a lovely chance of seeing, does success or want
of
success, or a three-storied success, matter compared with---- No, I
won't
open that question again. It's time to go back to town.'

'I'm sorry, Dick, but----'

'You're much more interested in that than you are in me.'

'I don't know, I don't think I am.'

'What will you give me if I tell you a sure short-cut to everything
you
want,--the trouble and the fuss and the tangle and all the rest? Will
you
promise to obey me?'

'Of course.'

'In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you
happen to
be at work. You forgot your lunch twice last week,' said Dick, at a
venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing.'

'No, no,--only once, really.'

'That's bad enough. And you mustn't take a cup of tea and a biscuit
in
place of a regular dinner, because dinner happens to be a trouble.'

'You're making fun of me!'

'I never was more in earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love,
hasn't it
dawned on you yet what you are to me? Here's the whole earth in a
conspiracy to give you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the
skin,
or cheat you out of your money, or let you die of overwork and
underfeeding, and I haven't the mere right to look after you. Why, I
don't even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things
when
the weather's cold.'

'Dick, you're the most awful boy to talk to--really! How do you
suppose I
managed when you were away?'

'I wasn't here, and I didn't know. But now I'm back I'd give
everything I
have for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain.'

'Your success too?'

This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words.

'As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you're a trial, Maisie! You've been
cooped
up in the schools too long, and you think every one is looking at
you.

There aren't twelve hundred people in the world who understand
pictures. The others pretend and don't care. Remember, I've seen
twelve
hundred men dead in toadstool-beds. It's only the voice of the
tiniest little
fraction of people that makes success. The real world doesn't care
a
tinker's--doesn't care a bit. For aught you or I know, every man in
the
world may be arguing with a Maisie of his own.'

'Poor Maisie!'

'Poor Dick, I think. Do you believe while he's fighting for what's
dearer
than his life he wants to look at a picture? And even if he did, and
if all
the world did, and a thousand million people rose up and shouted
hymns
to my honour and glory, would that make up to me for the
knowledge
that you were out shopping in the Edgware Road on a rainy day
without
an umbrella? Now we'll go to the station.'

'But you said on the beach----' persisted Maisie, with a certain fear.

Dick groaned aloud: 'Yes, I know what I said. My work is
everything I
have, or am, or hope to be, to me, and I believe I've learnt the law
that
governs it; but I've some lingering sense of fun left,--though you've
nearly knocked it out of me. I can just see that it isn't everything to
all
the world. Do what I say, and not what I do.'

Maisie was careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they
returned to
London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an
eloquent
harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a
horse,--such
a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,--would stable it, with a
companion, some twenty miles from London, and Maisie, solely
for her
health's sake should ride with him twice or thrice a week.

'That's absurd,' said she. 'It wouldn't be proper.'

'Now, who in all London to-night would have sufficient interest or
audacity to call us two to account for anything we chose to do?'

Maisie looked at the lamps, the fog, and the hideous turmoil. Dick
was
right; but horseflesh did not make for Art as she understood it.

'You're very nice sometimes, but you're very foolish more times.
I'm not
going to let you give me horses, or take you out of your way
to-night. I'll
go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me something.
You won't
think any more about that extra threepence, will you? Remember,
you've
been paid; and I won't allow you to be spiteful and do bad work for
a
little thing like that. You can be so big that you mustn't be tiny.'

This was turning the tables with a vengeance. There remained only
to
put Maisie into her hansom.

'Good-bye,' she said simply. 'You'll come on Sunday. It has been a
beautiful day, Dick. Why can't it be like this always?'

'Because love's like line-work: you must go forward or backward;
you
can't stand still. By the way, go on with your line-work.
Good-night, and,
for my--for my sake, take care of yourself.'

He turned to walk home, meditating. The day had brought him
nothing
that he hoped for, but--surely this was worth many days--it had
brought
him nearer to Maisie. The end was only a question of time now,
and the
prize well worth the waiting. By instinct, once more, he turned to
the
river.

'And she understood at once,' he said, looking at the water. 'She
found
out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how
she
understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than
she
was!' He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. 'I wonder if girls
guess
at one-half a man's life. They can't, or--they wouldn't marry us.' He
took
her gift out of his pocket, and considered it in the light of a miracle
and a
pledge of the comprehension that, one day, would lead to perfect
happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in London, with none to
save her
from danger. And the packed wilderness was very full of danger.

Dick made his prayer to Fate disjointedly after the manner of the
heathen as he threw the piece of silver into the river. If any evil
were to
befal, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed, since
the
threepenny piece was dearest to him of all his possessions. It was a
small
coin in itself, but Maisie had given it, and the Thames held it, and
surely
the Fates would be bribed for this once.

The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of
Maisie
for the moment. He took himself off the bridge and went whistling
to his
chambers with a strong yearning for some man-talk and tobacco
after his
first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman.
There
was a stronger desire at his heart when there rose before him an
unsolicited vision of the Barralong dipping deep and sailing free
for the
Southern Cross.

CHAPTER VIII

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
--Hiawatha-

TORPENHOW was paging the last sheets of some manuscript,
while the
Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was
reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.

'It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy,' said he; 'but as a serious
consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it's not worth much.'

'It's off my hands at any rate. . . . Thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
thirty-nine
slips altogether, aren't there? That should make between eleven
and
twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigho!' Torpenhow
shuffled
the writing together and hummed--

Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell,
If I'd as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry, Young lambs to sell!

Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of
tempers
with all the world.

'Back at last?' said Torpenhow.

'More or less. What have you been doing?'

'Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were
behind
you. Here's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven't
done a
line. It's scandalous.'

'The notions come and go, my children--they come and go like our
'baccy,' he answered, filling his pipe. 'Moreover,' he stooped to
thrust a
spill into the grate, 'Apollo does not always stretch his---- Oh,
confound
your clumsy jests, Nilghai!'

'This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,' said
the
Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large and workmanlike bellows to
their
nail on the wall. 'We believe in cobblers' wax. La!--where you sit
down.'

'If you weren't so big and fat,' said Dick, looking round for a
weapon,
'I'd----'

'No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture
last
time you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to
say
How d'you do? to Binkie. Look at him.'

Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round
Dick's
knee, and scratching at his boots.

'Dear man!' said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the
black
patch above his right eye. 'Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly
Nilghai
turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie.' He pitched him on the
Nilghai's stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended
to
destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished
him, and
panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.

'The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up,
Torp.

I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the
shutters
were being taken down--just as if he hadn't enough to eat in his
own
proper house,' said Dick.

'Binks, is that a true bill?' said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog
retreated under the sofa cushion, and showed by the fat white back
of
him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.

'Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too,' said
the
Nilghai. 'What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be
buying
a horse.'

'He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that.
No, I
felt lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea, and
watch the
pretty ships go by.'

'Where did you go?'

'Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some
watering-place
was its name; I've forgotten; but it was only two hours' run from
London
and the ships went by.'

'Did you see anything you knew?'

'Only the Barralong outwards to Australia, and an Odessa
grain-boat
loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelt
good.'

'Wherefore put on one's best trousers to see the Barralong?' said
Torpenhow, pointing.

'Because I've nothing except these things and my painting duds.
Besides,
I wanted to do honour to the sea.'

'Did She make you feel restless?' asked the Nilghai, keenly.

'Crazy. Don't speak of it. I'm sorry I went.'

Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping,
busied
himself among the former's boots and trees.

'These will do,' he said at last; 'I can't say I think much of your taste
in
slippers, but the fit's the thing.' He slipped his feet into a pair of
sock-like
sambhur-skin foot coverings, found a long chair, and lay at length.

'They're my own pet pair,' Torpenhow said. 'I was just going to put
them
on myself.'

'All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy
for a
minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another pair.'

'Good for you that Dick can't wear your clothes, Torp. You two
live
communistically,' said the Nilghai.

'Dick never has anything that I can wear. He's only useful to
sponge
upon.'

'Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my
clothes,
then?' said Dick. 'I put a sovereign in the tobacco-jar yesterday.
How do
you expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you----'

Here the Nilghai began to laugh, and Torpenhow joined him.

'Hid a sovereign yesterday! You're no sort of financier. You lent
me a
fiver about a month back. Do you remember?' Torpenhow said.

'Yes, of course.'

'Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at
the
bottom of the tobacco?'

'By Jove, did I? I thought it was in one of my colour-boxes.'

'You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get
some
'baccy and found it.'

'What did you do with it?'

'Took the Nilghai to a theatre and fed him.'

'You couldn't feed the Nilghai under twice the money--not though
you
gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out
sooner or
later. What is there to laugh at?'

'You're a most amazing cuckoo in many directions,' said the
Nilghai, still
chuckling over the thought of the dinner. 'Never mind. We had
both been
working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent,
and as
you're only a loafer it didn't matter.'

'That's pleasant--from the man who is bursting with my meat, too.
I'll get
that dinner back one of these days. Suppose we go to a theatre
now.'

'Put our boots on,--and dress,--and wash?' The Nilghai spoke very
lazily.

'I withdraw the motion.'

'Suppose, just for a change--as a startling variety, you know--we,
that is
to say we, get our charcoal and our canvas and go on with our
work.'

Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside
the
soft leather moccasins.

'What a one-ideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures
on
hand, I haven't any model; if I had my model, I haven't any spray,
and I
never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and
twenty photographs of backgrounds, I couldn't do anything
to-night. I
don't feel that way.'

'Binkie-dog, he's a lazy hog, isn't he?' said the Nilghai.

'Very good, I will do some work,' said Dick, rising swiftly. 'I'll
fetch the
Nungapunga Book, and we'll add another picture to the Nilghai
Saga.'

'Aren't you worrying him a little too much?' asked the Nilghai,
when
Dick had left the room.

'Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me
savage
to hear him praised for past work when I know what he ought to
do. You
and I are arranged for----'

'By Kismet and our own powers, more's the pity. I have dreamed of
a
good deal.'

'So have I, but we know our limitations now. I'm dashed if I know
what
Dick's may be when he gives himself to his work. That's what
makes me
so keen about him.'

'And when all's said and done, you will be put aside--quite
rightly--for a
female girl.'

'I wonder . . . Where do you think he has been to-day?'

'To the sea. Didn't you see the look in his eyes when he talked
about her?
He's as restless as a swallow in autumn.'

'Yes; but did he go alone?'

'I don't know, and I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the
go-fever
upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There's no
mistaking the
signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call upon him
now.'

'It might be his salvation,' Torpenhow said.

'Perhaps--if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour.'

Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai
knew
well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of
moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the
others,
of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the
Nilghai's
body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he fell back on
fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the Nilghai's
career
that were unseemly,--his marriages with many African princesses,
his
shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to the Mahdi,
his
tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his interview (and his
fears)
with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained execution-ground
of
Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into the bodies of
whales,
elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to time had added
rhymed
descriptions, and the whole was a curious piece of art, because
Dick
decided, having regard to the name of the book which being
interpreted
means 'naked,' that it would be wrong to draw the Nilghai with any
clothes on, under any circumstances. Consequently the last sketch,
representing that much-enduring man calling on the War Office to
press
his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate. He settled
himself
comfortably on Torpenhow's table and turned over the pages.

'What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai!' he said.
'There's
a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that's more than
life-like. "The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the
Mahdieh"--that
was founded on fact, eh?'

'It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie
come
into the Saga yet?'

'No; the Binkie-boy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats.
Let's
see. Here you are as a stained-glass saint in a church. Deuced
decorative
lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being
handed
down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in rare
and
curious facsimiles at ten guineas each. What shall I try this time?
The
domestic life of the Nilghai?'

'Hasn't got any.'

'The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then. Of course. Mass-meeting
of his
wives in Trafalgar Square. That's it. They came from the ends of
the
earth to attend Nilghai's wedding to an English bride. This shall be
an
epic. It's a sweet material to work with.'

'It's a scandalous waste of time,' said Torpenhow.

'Don't worry; it keeps one's hand in--specially when you begin
without
the pencil.' He set to work rapidly. 'That's Nelson's Column.
Presently
the Nilghai will appear shinning up it.'

'Give him some clothes this time.'

'Certainly--a veil and an orange-wreath, because he's been married.'

'Gad, that's clever enough!' said Torpenhow over his shoulder, as
Dick
brought out of the paper with three twirls of the brush a very fat
back
and labouring shoulder pressed against stone.

'Just imagine,' Dick continued, 'if we could publish a few of these
dear
little things every time the Nilghai subsidises a man who can write,
to
give the public an honest opinion of my pictures.'

'Well, you'll admit I always tell you when I have done anything of
that
kind. I know I can't hammer you as you ought to be hammered, so I
give
the job to another. Young Maclagan, for instance----'

'No-o--one half-minute, old man; stick your hand out against the
dark of
the wall-paper--you only burble and call me names. That left
shoulder's
out of drawing. I must literally throw a veil over that. Where's my
pen-knife? Well, what about Maclagan?'

'I only gave him his riding-orders to--to lambast you on general
principles for not producing work that will last.'

'Whereupon that young fool,'--Dick threw back his head and shut
one
eye as he shifted the page under his hand,--'being left alone with an
ink-pot and what he conceived were his own notions, went and
spilt them
both over me in the papers. You might have engaged a grown man
for
the business, Nilghai. How do you think the bridal veil looks now,
Torp?'

'How the deuce do three dabs and two scratches make the stuff
stand
away from the body as it does?' said Torpenhow, to whom Dick's
methods were always new.

'It just depends on where you put 'em. If Maclagan had know that
much
about his business he might have done better.'

'Why don't you put the damned dabs into something that will stay,
then?'

insisted the Nilghai, who had really taken considerable trouble in
hiring
for Dick's benefit the pen of a young gentleman who devoted most
of his
waking hours to an anxious consideration of the aims and ends of
Art,
which, he wrote, was one and indivisible.

'Wait a minute till I see how I am going to manage my procession
of
wives. You seem to have married extensively, and I must rough
'em in
with the pencil--Medes, Parthians, Edomites. . . . Now, setting
aside the
weakness and the wickedness and--and the fat-headedness of
deliberately
trying to do work that will live, as they call it, I'm content with the
knowledge that I've done my best up to date, and I shan't do
anything
like it again for some hours at least--probably years. Most probably
never.'

'What! any stuff you have in stock your best work?' said
Torpenhow.

'Anything you've sold?' said the Nilghai.

'Oh no. It isn't here and it isn't sold. Better than that, it can't be
sold, and
I don't think any one knows where it is. I'm sure I don't. . . . And
yet
more and more wives, on the north side of the square. Observe the
virtuous horror of the lions!'

'You may as well explain,' said Torpenhow, and Dick lifted his
head from
the paper.

'The sea reminded me of it,' he said slowly. 'I wish it hadn't. It
weighs
some few thousand tons--unless you cut it out with a cold chisel.'

'Don't be an idiot. You can't pose with us here,' said the Nilghai.

'There's no pose in the matter at all. It's a fact. I was loafing from
Lima
to Auckland in a big, old, condemned passenger-ship turned into a
cargo-boat and owned by a second-had Italian firm. She was a
crazy
basket. We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we
thought
ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots an hour out of her.
Then we
used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether
the
crack in the shaft was spreading.'

'Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?'

'I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I
should have
been a steward, I think,' said Dick, with perfect gravity, returning
to the
procession of angry wives. 'I was the only other passenger from
Lima,
and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and cockroaches and
scorpions.'

'But what has this to do with the picture?'

'Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her
lower
decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken
down,
and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the
port
holes--most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I
hadn't
anything to do for weeks. The ship's charts were in pieces and our
skipper daren't run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did his
best
to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one, and I
went
into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as far
forward in
her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some green
paint that
they used for the boats, and some black paint for ironwork, and
that was
all I had.'

'The passengers must have thought you mad.'

'There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the
notion of
my picture.'

'What was she like?' said Torpenhow.

'She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match.
She
couldn't read or write, and she didn't want to, but she used to come
down
and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was
paying
her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.'

'I see. That must have been cheerful.'

'It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn't know
whether
we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on;
and
when it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the
paints
and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every
few
minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire.
So, you
see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a
splendid
notion to work out in only three keys of colour.'

'What was the notion?'

'Two lines in Poe--

Neither the angles in Heaven above nor the demons down under
the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel
Lee.

It came out of the sea--all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in
green
water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the
model
for the devils and the angels both--sea-devils and sea-angels, and
the soul
half drowned between them. It doesn't sound much, but when there
was
a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy. It
was
seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting light.'

'Did the woman inspire you much?' said Torpenhow.

'She and the sea between them--immensely. There was a heap of
bad
drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to
foreshorten
for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for
all
that it's the best thing I've ever done; and now I suppose the ship's
broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!'

'What happened after all?'

'It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship,
but
even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of
the
demons scared them, I honestly believe.'

'And the woman?'

'She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself
before
she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of
getting
any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside,
and the
fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!' He had ceased to
look at
the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across the room.

'Why don't you try something of the same kind now?' said the
Nilghai.

'Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find
a
cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same
old life,
I may.'

'You won't find them here,' said the Nilghai.

'No, I shall not.' Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. 'This
room's as
hot as an oven. Open the window, some one.'

He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of
London
below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other
houses,
commanding a hundred chimneys--crooked cowls that looked like
sitting
cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc
mysteries
supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward
the
lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a
copper-coloured
glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights
of the
Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and
its
thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The
Nilghai
looked at his watch and said shortly, 'That's the Paris night-mail.
You
can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose.'

Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked
across
the river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai passed
over
quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large
as
possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to
be
lightly disturbed.

'Well,' said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, 'have you
never
seen this place before?'

A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf.
Then
the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged
Dick.

'Good place to bank in--bad place to bunk in, Dickie, isn't it?'

Dick's chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a
general not
without fame, still looking out on the darkness--'"My God, what a
city to
loot!"'

Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed
plaintively.

'We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold,' said Torpenhow. 'Come in,'
and
they withdrew their heads. 'You'll be buried in Kensal Green, Dick,
one
of these days, if it isn't closed by the time you want to go
there--buried
within two feet of some one else, his wife and his family.'

'Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man
room
to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie.' Dick flung himself down on the
sofa and
tweaked Binkie's velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.

'You'll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune,' Torpenhow
said
to the Nilghai. 'It's never touched except by you.'

'A piece of gross extravagance,' Dick grunted. 'The Nilghai only
comes
when I'm out.'

'That's because you're always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear.'

'The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter,
His writings are watered Dickens and water;
But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high
Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die!'

Dick quoted from Torpenhow's letterpress in the Nungapunga
Book.

'How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai?'

The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as
many
Press-tents in far-off lands had known.

'What shall I sing?' said he, turning in the chair.

'"Moll Roe in the Morning,"' said Torpenhow, at a venture.

'No,' said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old
chanty
whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a
pretty
one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing.
Without
prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and
troubles
the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--

'Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain.'

Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the
Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern
Cross.

Then came the chorus--

'We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,
Until we take soundings in the Channel of Old England
From Ushant to Scilly 'tis forty-five leagues.'

'Thirty-five-thirty-five,' said Dick, petulantly. 'Don't tamper with
Holy
Writ. Go on, Nilghai.'

'The first land we made it was called the Deadman,'

and they sang to the end very vigourously.

'That would be a better song if her head were turned the other
way--to
the Ushant light, for instance,' said the Nilghai.

'Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill,' said Torpenhow.
'Give us
something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight.'

'Give us the "Ganges Pilot"; you sang that in the square the night
before
El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are
alive
to-night,' said Dick.

Torpenhow considered for a minute. 'By Jove! I believe only you
and I.

Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in
Cairo,
carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai.'

'Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a
well-warmed
studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I
charge
too much for my pictures.'

'They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear
child,'

said the Nilghai.

'I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with
the
"Pilot." Where in the world did you get that song?'

'On a tombstone,' said the Nilghai. 'On a tombstone in a distant
land. I
made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords.'

'Oh, Vanity! Begin.' And the Nilghai began--

'I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the
tide,
I have my sailing orders, while yet an anchor ride.

And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea
With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and
free.

'Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge
Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge.

Cries Charnock, "Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two,
The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you!"

'Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark?
Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours?--Why, hark!'

They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the
open sea
about his ears as the deep bass voice let itself go.

'The morning gun--Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me!
I ha' sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth
sound the
sea.

'Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide,
Moore me close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.

My blessing to Kate at Fairlight--Holwell, my thanks to you;
Steady! We steer for heaven, through sand-drifts cold and blue.'

'Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?' said
Dick,
hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.

'It depends on the man,' said Torpenhow.

'The man who has been down to look at the sea,' said the Nilghai.

'I didn't know she was going to upset me in this fashion.'

'That's what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It's
more easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one's
life and
surroundings.'

'But a woman can be----' began Dick, unguardedly.

'A piece of one's life,' continued Torpenhow. 'No, she can't. His
face
darkened for a moment. 'She says she wants to sympathise with
you and
help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must
do
for himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the
dickens
you haven't been wasting your time with her.'

'Don't generalise,' said the Nilghai. 'By the time you arrive at five
notes a
day you must have gone through a good deal and behaved
accordingly.

Shouldn't begin these things, my son.'

'I shouldn't have gone down to the sea,' said Dick, just a little
anxious to
change the conversation. 'And you shouldn't have sung.'

'The sea isn't sending you five notes a day,' said the Nilghai.

'No, but I'm fatally compromised. She's an enduring old hag, and
I'm
sorry I ever met her. Why wasn't I born and bred and dead in a
three-pair back?'

'Hear him blaspheming his first love! Why in the world shouldn't
you
listen to her?' said Torpenhow.

Before Dick could reply the Nilghai lifted up his voice with a
shout that
shook the windows, in 'The Men of the Sea,' that begins, as all
know,
'The sea is a wicked old woman,' and after rading through eight
lines
whose imagery is truthful, ends in a refrain, slow as the clacking of
a
capstan when the boat comes unwillingly up to the bars where the
men
sweat and tramp in the shingle.

'"Ye that bore us, O restore us!
She is kinder than ye;
For the call is on our heart-strings!"
Said The Men of the Sea.'

The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending
that
Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the
men to
their wives.

'"Ye that love us, can ye move us?
She is dearer than ye;
And your sleep will be the sweeter,"
Said The Men of the Sea.'

The rough words beat like the blows of the waves on the bows of
the
rickety boat from Lima in the days when Dick was mixing paints,
making
love, drawing devils and angels in the half dark, and wondering
whether
the next minute would put the Italian captain's knife between his
shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many
doctors'

diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond
anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot,
unregenerate life
again,--to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his
fellows; to
take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures;
to talk
to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow 'Tina mixed
the
drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll
outward,
thin and thicken again till the shining black faces came through,
and in
that hell every man was strictly responsible for his own head, and
his
own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. It was impossible,
utterly
impossible, but--

'"Oh, our fathers in the churchyard,
She is older than ye,
And our graves will be the greener,"
Said The Men of the Sea.'

'What is there to hinder?' said Torpenhow, in the long hush that
followed the song.

'You said a little time since that you wouldn't come for a walk
round the
world, Torp.'

'That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money
for
travelling expenses. You've shot your bolt here and it has gone
home. Go
away and do some work, and see some things.'

'Get some of the fat off you; you're disgracefully out of condition,'
said
the Nilghai, making a plunge from the chair and grasping a
handful of
Dick generally over the right ribs. 'Soft as putty--pure tallow born
of
over-feeding. Train it off, Dickie.'

'We're all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the
field
you'll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp, and die in a fit.'

'Never mind. You go away on a ship. Go to Lima again, or to
Brazil.

There's always trouble in South America.'

'Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the
only
difficulty is to know where I'm to stop. But I shall stay here, as I
told you
before.'

'Then you'll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere
with the
others,' said Torpenhow. 'Are you thinking of commissions in
hand? Pay
forfeit and go. You've money enough to travel as a king if you
please.'

'You've the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see
myself
shipping first class on a six-thousand-ton hotel, and asking the
third
engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn't
very
warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I
shipped
at all, which I'm not going to do. I shall compromise, and go for a
small
trip to begin with.'

'That's something at any rate. Where will you go?' said Torpenhow.
'It
would do you all the good in the world, old man.'

The Nilghai saw the twinkle in Dick's eye, and refrained from
speech.

'I shall go in the first place to Rathray's stable, where I shall hire
one
horse, and take him very carefully as far as Richmond Hill. Then I
shall
walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a
lather
and make Rathray angry. I shall do that to-morrow, for the sake of
air
and exercise.'

'Bah!' Dick had barely time to throw up his arm and ward off the
cushion that the disgusted Torpenhow heaved at his head.

'Air and exercise indeed,' said the Nilghai, sitting down heavily on
Dick.

'Let's give him a little of both. Get the bellows, Torp.'

At this point the conference broke up in disorder, because Dick
would not
open his mouth till the Nilghai held his nose fast, and there was
some
trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth; and
even
when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of the
blast,
and his cheeks blew up with a great explosion; and the enemy
becoming
helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a soft
sofa
cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers, and
Binkie,
interfering in Torpenhow's interests, was bundled into the
half-empty
bag and advised to scratch his way out, which he did after a while,
travelling rapidly up and down the floor in the shape of an agitated
green
haggis, and when he came out looking for satisfaction, the three
pillars of
his world were picking feathers out of their hair.

'A prophet has no honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully,
dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will never brush off my legs.'

'It was all for your own good,' said the Nilghai. 'Nothing like air
and
exercise.'

'All for your good,' said Torpenhow, not in the least with reference
to
past clowning. 'It would let you focus things at their proper worth
and
prevent your becoming slack in this hothouse of a town. Indeed it
would,
old man. I shouldn't have spoken if I hadn't thought so. Only, you
make a
joke of everything.'

'Before God I do no such thing,' said Dick, quickly and earnestly.
'You
don't know me if you think that.'

I don't think it,' said the Nilghai.

'How can fellows like ourselves, who know what life and death
really
mean, dare to make a joke of anything? I know we pretend it, to
save
ourselves from breaking down or going to the other extreme. Can't
I see,
old man, how you're always anxious about me, and try to advise
me to
make my work better? Do you suppose I don't think about that
myself?
But you can't help me--you can't help me--not even you. I must
play my
own hand alone in my own way.'

'Hear, hear,' from the Nilghai.

'What's the one thing in the Nilghai Saga that I've never drawn in
the
Nungapunga Book?' Dick continued to Torpenhow, who was a
little
astonished at the outburst.

Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch
that
Dick had not drawn of the crowning exploit in the Nilghai's life;
when
that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones
belonged to
the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery
grass
in the rear of Bredow's brigade on the day that the troopers flung
themselves at Caurobert's artillery, and for aught they knew twenty
battalions in front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry, to
give
time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere their remnant
came
back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and break
unshaken infantry. Whenever he was inclined to think over a life
that
might have been better, an income that might have been larger,
and a
soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would
comfort himself with the thought, 'I rode with Bredow's brigade at
Vionville,' and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might
bring.

'I know,' he said very gravely. 'I was always glad that you left it
out.'

'I left it out because Nilghai taught me what the Germany army
learned
then, and what Schmidt taught their cavalry. I don't know German.

What is it? "Take care of the time and the dressing will take care
of
itself." I must ride my own line to my own beat, old man.'

'Tempe ist richtung. You've learned your lesson well,' said the
Nilghai.

'He must go alone. He speaks truth, Torp.'

'Maybe I'm as wrong as I can be--hideously wrong. I must find that
out
for myself, as I have to think things out for myself, but I daren't
turn my
head to dress by the next man. It hurts me a great deal more than
you
know not to be able to go, but I cannot, that's all. I must do my
own work
and live my own life in my own way, because I'm responsible for
both.

Only don't think I frivol about it, Torp. I have my own matches and
sulphur, and I'll make my own hell, thanks.'

There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Torpenhow said blandly,
'What did the Governor of North Carolina say to the Governor of
South
Carolina?'

'Excellent notion. It is a long time between drinks. There are the
makings
of a very fine prig in you, Dick,' said the Nilghai.

'I've liberated my mind, estimable Binkie, with the feathers in his
mouth.' Dick picked up the still indignant one and shook him
tenderly.

'You're tied up in a sack and made to run about blind, Binkie-wee,
without any reason, and it has hurt your little feelings. Never mind.
Sic
volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas, and don't sneeze in my
eye
because I talk Latin. Good-night.'

He went out of the room.

'That's distinctly one for you,' said the Nilghai. 'I told you it was
hopeless
to meddle with him. He's not pleased.'

'He'd swear at me if he weren't. I can't make it out. He has the
go-fever
upon him and he won't go. I only hope that he mayn't have to go
some
day when he doesn't want to,' said Torpenhow.

* * * * * *
In his own room Dick was settling a question with himself--and
the
question was whether all the world, and all that was therein, and a
burning desire to exploit both, was worth one threepenny piece
thrown
into the Thames.

'It came of seeing the sea, and I'm a cur to think about it,' he
decided.

'After all, the honeymoon will be that tour--with reservations; only
. . .

only I didn't realise that the sea was so strong. I didn't feel it so
much
when I was with Maisie. These damnable songs did it. He's
beginning
again.'

But it was only Herrick's Nightpiece to Julia that the Nilghai sang,
and
before it was ended Dick reappeared on the threshold, not
altogether
clothed indeed, but in his right mind, thirsty and at peace.

The mood had come and gone with the rising and the falling of the
tide
by Fort Keeling.

CHAPTER IX

'If I have taken the common clay
And wrought it cunningly
In the shape of a god that was digged a clod,
The greater honour to me.'

'If thou hast taken the common clay,
And thy hands be not free
From the taint of the soil , thou hast made thy spoil
The greater shame to thee.'--
The Two Potters-

HE DID no work of any kind for the rest of the week. Then came
another
Sunday. He dreaded and longed for the day always, but since the
red-haired girl had sketched him there was rather more dread than
desire in his mind.

He found that Maisie had entirely neglected his suggestions about
line-work. She had gone off at score filed with some absurd notion
for a
'fancy head.' It cost Dick something to command his temper.

'What's the good of suggesting anything?' he said pointedly.

'Ah, but this will be a picture,--a real picture; and I know that
Kami will
let me send it to the Salon. You don't mind, do you?'

'I suppose not. But you won't have time for the Salon.'

Maisie hesitated a little. She even felt uncomfortable.

'We're going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall
get the
idea sketched out here and work it up at Kami's.

Dick's heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted
with his
queen who could do no wrong. 'Just when I thought I had made
some
headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It's too maddening!'

There was no possibility of arguing, for the red-haired girl was in
the
studio. Dick could only look unutterable reproach.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'and I think you make a mistake. But what's the
idea
of your new picture?'

'I took it from a book.'

'That's bad, to begin with. Books aren't the places for pictures.
And----'

'It's this,' said the red-haired girl behind him. 'I was reading it to
Maisie
the other day from The City of Dreadful Night. D'you know the
book?'

'A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has
taken her
fancy?'

'The description of the Melancolia--

'Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
But all too impotent to lift the regal
Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride.

And here again. (Maisie, get the tea, dear.)

'The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown,
Voluminous indented, and yet rigid
As though a shell of burnished metal frigid,
Her feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down.'

There was no attempt to conceal the scorn of the lazy voice. Dick
winced.

'But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of
Durer,' said he. 'How does the poem run?--

'Three centuries and threescore years ago,
With phantasies of his peculiar thought.

You might as well try to rewrite Hamlet. It will be a waste of time.

'No, it won't,' said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter
to
reassure herself. 'And I mean to do it. Can't you see what a
beautiful
thing it would make?'

'How in perdition can one do work when one hasn't had the proper
training? Any fool can get a notion. It needs training to drive the
thing
through,--training and conviction; not rushing after the first fancy.'
Dick
spoke between his teeth.

'You don't understand,' said Maisie. 'I think I can do it.'

Again the voice of the girl behind him--

'Baffled and beaten back, she works on still;
Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.

Sustained by her indomitable will,
The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore,
And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour----

I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture.'

'Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan't, dear. The
notion in
itself has fascinated me.--Of course you don't care for fancy heads,
Dick.

I don't think you could do them. You like blood and bones.'

'That's a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn't
merely a
sorrowful female head, I can do a better one; and I will, too. What
d'you
know about Melacolias?' Dick firmly believed that he was even
then
tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.

'She was a woman,' said Maisie, 'and she suffered a great deal,--till
she
could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I
painted
her and sent her to the Salon.'

The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.

Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.

'Never mind about the picture,' he said. 'Are you really going back
to
Kami's for a month before your time?'

'I must, if I want to get the picture done.'

'And that's all you want?'

'Of course. Don't be stupid, Dick.'

'You haven't the power. You have only the ideas--the ideas and the
little
cheap impulses. How you could have kept at your work for ten
years
steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going,--a month
before you
need?'

'I must do my work.'

'Your work--bah! . . . No, I didn't mean that. It's all right, dear. Of
course you must do your work, and--I think I'll say good-bye for
this
week.'

'Won't you even stay for tea?
'No, thank you. Have I your leave to go, dear? There's nothing
more you
particularly want me to do, and the line-work doesn't matter.'

'I wish you could stay, and then we could talk over my picture. If
only
one single picture's a success, it draws attention to all the others. I
know
some of my work is good, if only people could see. And you
needn't have
been so rude about it.'

'I'm sorry. We'll talk the Melancolia over some one of the other
Sundays.

There are four more--yes, one, two, three, four--before you go.
Good-bye,
Maisie.'

Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the red-haired
girl
returned, a little white at the corners of her lips.

'Dick's gone off,' said Maisie. 'Just when I wanted to talk about the
picture. Isn't it selfish of him?'

Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and
went
on reading The City of Dreadful Night-

Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had
chosen
as his confidante for many Sundays past. He was swearing audibly,
and
when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed
in his
rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed
for the
use of the afflicted. He was not pleased with the reward of his
patient
service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long before he
arrived at the proposition that the queen could do no wrong.

'It's a losing game,' he said. 'I'm worth nothing when a whim of
hers is in
question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the
stakes
and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn't the power, or the
insight, or
the training. Only the desire. She's cursed with the curse of
Reuben. She
won't do line-work, because it means real work; and yet she's
stronger
than I am. I'll make her understand that I can beat her on her own
Melancolia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do
blood
and bones. I don't believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I
lover
her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her
inordinate
vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a
Melancolia--"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." I'll do it at
once,
con--bless her.'

He discovered that the notion would not come to order, and that he
could
not free his mind for an hour from the thought of Maisie's
departure. He
took very small interest in her rough studies for the Melancolia
when she
showed them next week. The Sundays were racing past, and the
time was
at hand when all the church bells in London could not ring Maisie
back
to him. Once or twice he said something to Binkie about
'hermaphroditic
futilities,' but the little dog received so many confidences both
from
Torpenhow and Dick that he did not trouble his tulip-ears to listen.

Dick was permitted to see the girls off. They were going by the
Dover
night-boat; and they hoped to return in August. It was then
February,
and Dick felt that he was being hardly used. Maisie was so busy
stripping
the small house across the Park, and packing her canvases, that she
had
not time for thought. Dick went down to Dover and wasted a day
there
fretting over a wonderful possibility. Would Maisie at the very last
allow
him one small kiss? He reflected that he might capture her by the
strong
arm, as he had seem women captured in the Southern Soudan, and
lead
her away; but Maisie would never be led. She would turn her gray
eyes
upon him and say, 'Dick, how selfish you are!' Then his courage
would
fail him. It would be better, after all, to beg for that kiss.

Maisie looked more than usually kissable as she stepped from the
night-mail on to the windy pier, in a gray waterproof and a little
gray
cloth travelling-cap. The red-haired girl was not so lovely. Her
green
eyes were hollow and her lips were dry. Dick saw the trunks
aboard, and
went to Maisie's side in the darkness under the bridge. The
mail-bags
were thundering into the forehold, and the red-haired girl was
watching
them.

'You'll have a rough passage to-night,' said Dick. 'It's blowing
outside. I
suppose I may come over and see you if I'm good?'

'You mustn't. I shall be busy. At least, if I want you I'll send for
you. But
I shall write from Vitry-sur-Marne. I shall have heaps of things to
consult you about. Oh, Dick, you have been so good to me!--so
good to
me!'

'Thank you for that, dear. It hasn't made any difference, has it?'

'I can't tell a fib. It hasn't--in that way. But don't think I'm not
grateful.'

'Damn the gratitude!' said Dick, huskily, to the paddle-box.

'What's the use of worrying? You know I should ruin your life, and
you'd ruin mine, as things are now. You remember what you said
when
you were so angry that day in the Park? One of us has to be broken.

Can't you wait till that day comes?'

'No, love. I want you unbroken--all to myself.'

Maisie shook her head. 'My poor Dick, what can I say!'

'Don't say anything. Give me a kiss. Only one kiss, Maisie. I'll
swear I
won't take any more. You might as well, and then I can be sure
you're
grateful.'

Maisie put her cheek forward, and Dick took his reward in the
darkness.

It was only one kiss, but, since there was no time-limit specified, it
was a
long one. Maisie wrenched herself free angrily, and Dick stood
abashed
and tingling from head to toe.

'Good-bye, darling. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry.
Only--keep
well and do good work,--specially the Melancolia. I'm going to do
one,
too. Remember me to Kami, and be careful what you drink.
Country
drinking-water is bad everywhere, but it's worse in France. Write
to me
if you want anything, and good-bye. Say good-bye to the
whatever-you-call-um girl, and--can't I have another kiss? No.
You're
quite right. Good-bye.'

A should told him that it was not seemly to charge of the mail-bag
incline. He reached the pier as the steamer began to move off, and
he
followed her with his heart.

'And there's nothing--nothing in the wide world--to keep us apart
except
her obstinacy. These Calais night-boats are much too small. I'll get
Torp
to write to the papers about it. She's beginning to pitch already.'

Maisie stood where Dick had left her till she heard a little gasping
cough
at her elbow. The red-haired girl's eyes were alight with cold
flame.

'He kissed you!' she said. 'How could you let him, when he wasn't
anything to you? How dared you to take a kiss from him? Oh,
Maisie,
let's go to the ladies' cabin. I'm sick,--deadly sick.'

'We aren't into open water yet. Go down, dear, and I'll stay here. I
don't
like the smell of the engines. . . . Poor Dick! He deserved
one,--only one.

But I didn't think he'd frighten me so.'

Dick returned to town next day just in time for lunch, for which he
had
telegraphed. To his disgust, there were only empty plates in the
studio.

He lifted up his voice like the bears in the fairy-tale, and
Torpenhow
entered, looking guilty.

'H'sh!' said he. 'Don't make such a noise. I took it. Come into my
rooms,
and I'll show you why.'

Dick paused amazed at the threshold, for on Torpenhow's sofa lay
a girl
asleep and breathing heavily. The little cheap sailor-hat, the
blue-and-white dress, fitter for June than for February, dabbled
with
mud at the skirts, the jacket trimmed with imitation Astrakhan and
ripped at the shoulder-seams, the one-and-elevenpenny umbrella,
and,
above all, the disgraceful condition of the kid-topped boots,
declared all
things.

'Oh, I say, old man, this is too bad! You mustn't bring this sort up
here.

They steal things from the rooms.'

'It looks bad, I admit, but I was coming in after lunch, and she
staggered
into the hall. I thought she was drunk at first, but it was collapse. I
couldn't leave her as she was, so I brought her up here and gave her
your
lunch. She was fainting from want of food. She went fast asleep
the
minute she had finished.'

'I know something of that complaint. She's been living on sausages,
I
suppose. Torp, you should have handed her over to a policeman
for
presuming to faint in a respectable house. Poor little wretch! Look
at the
face! There isn't an ounce of immorality in it. Only folly,--slack,
fatuous,
feeble, futile folly. It's a typical head. D'you notice how the skull
begins
to show through the flesh padding on the face and cheek-bone?'

'What a cold-blooded barbarian it is! Don't hit a woman when she's
down. Can't we do anything? She was simply dropping with
starvation.

She almost fell into my arms, and when she got to the food she ate
like a
wild beast. It was horrible.'

'I can give her money, which she would probably spend in drinks.
Is she
going to sleep for ever?'

The girl opened her eyes and glared at the men between terror and
effrontery.

'Feeling better?' said Torpenhow.

'Yes. Thank you. There aren't many gentlemen that are as kind as
you
are. Thank you.'

'When did you leave service?' said Dick, who had been watching
the
scarred and chapped hands.

'How did you know I was in service? I was. General servant. I
didn't like
it.'

'And how do you like being your own mistress?'

'Do I look as if I liked it?'

'I suppose not. One moment. Would you be good enough to turn
your
face to the window?'

The girl obeyed, and Dick watched her face keenly,--so keenly that
she
made as if to hide behind Torpenhow.

'The eyes have it,' said Dick, walking up and down. 'They are
superb
eyes for my business. And, after all, every head depends on the
eyes. This
has been sent from heaven to make up for--what was taken away.
Now
the weekly strain's off my shoulders, I can get to work in earnest.

Evidently sent from heaven. Yes. Raise your chin a little, please.'

'Gently, old man, gently. You're scaring somebody out of her wits,'
said
Torpenhow, who could see the girl trembling.

'Don't let him hit me! Oh, please don't let him hit me! I've been hit
cruel
to-day because I spoke to a man. Don't let him look at me like that!
He's
reg'lar wicked, that one. Don't let him look at me like that, neither!
Oh, I
feel as if I hadn't nothing on when he looks at me like that!'

The overstrained nerves in the frail body gave way, and the girl
wept like
a little child and began to scream. Dick threw open the window,
and
Torpenhow flung the door back.

'There you are,' said Dick, soothingly. 'My friend here can call for a
policeman, and you can run through that door. Nobody is going to
hurt
you.'

The girl sobbed convulsively for a few minutes, and then tried to
laugh.

'Nothing in the world to hurt you. Now listen to me for a minute.
I'm
what they call an artist by profession. You know what artists do?'

'They draw the things in red and black ink on the pop-shop labels.'

'I dare say. I haven't risen to pop-shop labels yet. Those are done by
the
Academicians. I want to draw your head.'

'What for?'

'Because it's pretty. That is why you will come to the room across
the
landing three times a week at eleven in the morning, and I'll give
you
three quid a week just for sitting still and being drawn. And there's
a
quid on account.'

'For nothing? Oh, my!' The girl turned the sovereign in her hand,
and
with more foolish tears, 'Ain't neither o' you two gentlemen afraid
of my
bilking you?'

'No. Only ugly girls do that. Try and remember this place. And, by
the
way, what's your name?'

'I'm Bessic,--Bessie---- It's no use giving the rest. Bessie
Broke,--Stone-broke, if you like. What's your names? But
there,--no one
ever gives the real ones.'

Dick consulted Torpenhow with his eyes.

'My name's Heldar, and my friend's called Torpenhow; and you
must be
sure to come here. Where do you live?'

'South-the-water,--one room,--five and sixpence a week. Aren't you
making fun of me about that three quid?'

'You'll see later on. And, Bessie, next time you come, remember,
you
needn't wear that paint. It's bad for the skin, and I have all the
colours
you'll be likely to need.'

Bessie withdrew, scrubbing her cheek with a ragged
pocket-handkerchief. The two men looked at each other.

'You're a man,' said Torpenhow.

'I'm afraid I've been a fool. It isn't our business to run about the
earth
reforming Bessie Brokes. And a woman of any kind has no right
on this
landing.'

'Perhaps she won't come back.'

'She will if she thinks she can get food and warmth here. I know
she will,
worse luck. But remember, old man, she isn't a woman; she's my
model;
and be careful.'

'The idea! She's a dissolute little scarecrow,--a gutter-snippet and
nothing more.'

'So you think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from
fear. That
fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won't know her in a
week or
two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be too
happy
and smiling for my purposes.'

'But surely you're not taking her out of charity?--to please me?'

'I am not in the habit of playing with hot coals to please anybody.
She has
been sent from heaven, as I may have remarked before, to help me
with
my Melancolia.'

'Never heard a word about the lady before.'

'What's the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at
him
in words? You ought to know what I'm thinking about. You've
heard me
grunt lately?'

'Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad
'baccy to
wicked dealers. And I don't think I've been much in your
confidence for
some time.'

'It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that
it
meant the Melancolia.' Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the
room,
keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, 'Now don't you see
it?
Bessie's abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one
or
two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my
experience
lately. Likewise some orange and black,--two keys of each. But I
can't
explain on an empty stomach.'

'It sounds mad enough. You'd better stick to your soldiers, Dick,
instead
of maundering about heads and eyes and experiences.'

'Think so?' Dick began to dance on his heels, singing--

'They're as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash,
You ought to 'ear the way they laugh an' joke;
They are tricky an' they're funny when they've got the ready
money,--
Ow! but see 'em when they're all stone-broke.'

Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a four-sheet
letter of
counsel and encouragement, and registered an oath that he would
get to
work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.

The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and
overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected
to sit
still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio
with
freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort
and the
release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies
of her
head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia
would not
arrive.

'What a mess you keep your things in!' said Bessie, some days
later, when
she felt herself thoroughly at home. 'I s'pose your clothes are just
as bad.

Gentlemen never think what buttons and tape are made for.'

'I buy things to wear, and wear 'em till they go to pieces. I don't
know
what Torpenhow does.'

Bessie made diligent inquiry in the latter's room, and unearthed a
bale of
disreputable socks. 'Some of these I'll mend now,' she said, 'and
some I'll
take home. D'you know, I sit all day long at home doing nothing,
just like
a lady, and no more noticing them other girls in the house than if
they
was so many flies. I don't have any unnecessary words, but I put
'em
down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me. No; it's quite nice
these
days. I lock my door, and they can only call me names through the
keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady, mending socks. Mr.
Torpenhow
wears his socks out both ends at once.'

'Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No
socks
mended. Nothing from Torp except a nod on the landing now and
again,
and all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,' thought
Dick;
and he looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had
transformed the girl, as Dick knew they would.

'What are you looking at me like that for?' she said quickly. 'Don't.
You
look reg'lar bad when you look that way. You don't think much o'
me, do
you?'

'That depends on how you behave.'

Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a
sitting to
bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred the
studio
and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as an
excuse for
delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would be
moved to
tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still stranger
ones of
her present improved circumstances. She would make them tea as
though
she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these occasions
Dick
caught Torpenhow's eyes fixed on the trim little figure, and
because
Bessie'' flittings about the room made Dick ardently long for
Maisie, he
realised whither Torpenhow's thoughts were tending. And Bessie
was
exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow's linen. She
spoke
very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the
landing.

'I was a great fool,' Dick said to himself. 'I know what red firelight
looks
like when a man's tramping through a strange town; and ours is a
lonely,
selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn't feel that
sometimes. But I can't order Bessie away. That's the worst of
beginning
things. One never knows where they stop.'

One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light,
Dick
was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow's room. He
jumped to his feet. 'Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go
in.--Oh,
bless you, Binkie!' The little terrier thrust Torpenhow's door open
with
his nose and came out to take possession of Dick's chair. The door
swung
wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie in
the
half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was
kneeling
by his side, and her hands were clasped across his knee.

'I know,--I know,' she said thickly. ''Tisn't right o' me to do this, but
I
can't help it; and you were so kind,--so kind; and you never took
any
notice o' me. And I've mended all your things so carefully,--I did.
Oh,
please, 'tisn't as if I was asking you to marry me. I wouldn't think of
it.

But you--couldn't you take and live with me till Miss Right comes
along?
I'm only Miss Wrong, I know, but I'd work my hands to the bare
bone
for you. And I'm not ugly to look at. Say you will!'

Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow's voice in reply--
'But look here. It's no use. I'm liable to be ordered off anywhere at
a
minute's notice if a war breaks out. At a minute's notice--dear.'

'What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. 'Tisn't
much
I'm asking, and--you don't know how good I can cook.' She had put
an
arm round his neck and was drawing his head down.

'Until--I--go, then.'

'Torp,' said Dick, across the landing. He could hardly steady his
voice.

'Come here a minute, old man. I'm in trouble'--'Heaven send he'll
listen
to me!' There was something very like an oath from Bessie's lips.
She was
afraid of Dick, and disappeared down the staircase in panic, but it
seemed an age before Torpenhow entered the studio. He went to
the
mantelpiece, buried his head on his arms, and groaned like a
wounded
bull.

'What the devil right have you to interfere?' he said, at last.

'Who's interfering with which? Your own sense told you long ago
you
couldn't be such a fool. It was a tough rack, St. Anthony, but you're
all
right now.'

'I oughtn't to have seen her moving about these rooms as if they
belonged
to her. That's what upset me. It gives a lonely man a sort of
hankering,
doesn't it?' said Torpenhow, piteously.

'Now you talk sense. It does. But, since you aren't in a condition to
discuss the disadvantages of double housekeeping, do you know
what
you're going to do?'

'I don't. I wish I did.'

'You're going away for a season on a brilliant tour to regain tone.
You're
going to Brighton, or Scarborough, or Prawle Point, to see the
ships go
by. And you're going at once. Isn't it odd? I'll take care of Binkie,
but out
you go immediately. Never resist the devil. He holds the bank. Fly
from
him. Pack your things and go.'

'I believe you're right. Where shall I go?'

'And you call yourself a special correspondent! Pack first and
inquire
afterwards.'

An hour later Torpenhow was despatched into the night for a
hansom.

'You'll probably think of some place to go to while you're moving,'
said
Dick. 'On to Euston, to begin with, and--oh yes--get drunk
to-night.'

He returned to the studio, and lighted more candles, for he found
the
room very dark.

'Oh, you Jezebel! you futile little Jezebel! Won't you hate me
to-morrow!--Binkie, come here.'

Binkie turned over on his back on the hearth-rug, and Dick stirred
him
with a meditative foot.

'I said she was not immoral. I was wrong. She said she could cook.
That
showed premeditated sin. Oh, Binkie, if you are a man you will go
to
perdition; but if you are a woman, and say that you can cook, you
will go
to a much worse place.'

CHAPTER X

What's you that follows at my side?--
The foe that ye must fight, my lord.--
That hirples swift as I can ride?--
The shadow of the night, my lord.--
Then wheel my horse against the foe!--
He's down and overpast, my lord.

Ye war against the sunset glow;
The darkness gathers fast, my lord.
-- The Fight of Heriot's Ford-

'THIS is a cheerful life,' said Dick, some days later. 'Torp's away;
Bessie
hates me; I can't get at the notion of the Melancolia; Maisie's
letters are
scrappy; and I believe I have indigestion. What give a man pains
across
the head and spots before his eyes, Binkie? Shall us take some
liver pills?'

Dick had just gone through a lively scene with Bessie. She had for
the
fiftieth time reproached him for sending Torpenhow away. She
explained
her enduring hatred for Dick, and made it clear to him that she
only sat
for the sake of his money. 'And Mr. Torpenhow's ten times a better
man
than you,' she concluded.

'He is. That's why he went away. I should have stayed and made
love to
you.'

The girl sat with her chin on her hand, scowling. 'To me! I'd like to
catch
you! If I wasn't afraid o' being hung I'd kill you. That's what I'd do.

D'you believe me?'

Dick smiled wearily. It is not pleasant to live in the company of a
notion
that will not work out, a fox-terrier that cannot talk, and a woman
who
talks too much. He would have answered, but at that moment there
unrolled itself from one corner of the studio a veil, as it were, of
the
flimsiest gauze. He rubbed his eyes, but the gray haze would not
go.

'This is disgraceful indigestion. Binkie, we will go to a
medicine-man. We
can't have our eyes interfered with, for by these we get our bread;
also
mutton-chop bones for little dogs.'

The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair, and
he said
nothing till Dick began to describe the gray film in the studio.

'We all want a little patching and repairing from time to time,' he
chirped. 'Like a ship, my dear sir,--exactly like a ship. Sometimes
the hull
is out of order, and we consult the surgeon; sometimes the rigging,
and
then I advise; sometimes the engines, and we go to the
brain-specialist;
sometimes the look-out on the bridge is tired, and then we see an
oculist. I
should recommend you to see an oculist. A little patching and
repairing
from time to time is all we want. An oculist, by all means.'

Dick sought an oculist,--the best in London. He was certain that
the local
practitioner did not know anything about his trade, and more
certain
that Maisie would laugh at him if he were forced to wear
spectacles.

'I've neglected the warnings of my lord the stomach too long.
Hence these
spots before the eyes, Binkie. I can see as well as I ever could.'

As he entered the dark hall that led to the consulting-room a man
cannoned against him. Dick saw the face as it hurried out into the
street.

'That's the writer-type. He has the same modelling of the forehead
as
Torp. He looks very sick. Probably heard something he didn't like.'

Even as he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made
him
hold his breath as he walked into the oculist's waiting room, with
the
heavy carved furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued
prints
on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of one of his own
sketches.

Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was
caught by
a flaming red-and-gold Christmas-carol book. Little children came
to
that eye-doctor, and they needed large-type amusement.

'That's idolatrous bad Art,' he said, drawing the book towards
himself.

'From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany.' He
opened in mechanically, and there leaped to his eyes a verse
printed in
red ink--

The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of three,
To see her good Son Jesus Christ
Making the blind to see;
Making the blind to see, good Lord,
And happy we may be.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
To all eternity!

Dick read and re-read the verse till his turn came, and the doctor
was
bending above him seated in an arm-chair. The blaze of the
gas-microscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor's hand
touched
the scar of the sword-cut on Dick's head, and Dick explained
briefly how
he had come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the
doctor's
face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped
himself in a
mist of words. Dick caught allusions to 'scar,' 'frontal bone,' 'optic
nerve,' 'extreme caution,' and the 'avoidance of mental anxiety.'

'Verdict?' he said faintly. 'My business is painting, and I daren't
waste
time. What do you make of it?'

Again the whirl of words, but this time they conveyed a meaning.

'Can you give me anything to drink?'

Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the
prisoners often needed cheering. Dick found a glass of liqueur
brandy in
his hand.

'As far as I can gather,' he said, coughing above the spirit, 'you call
it
decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless.
What is
my time-limit, avoiding all strain and worry?'

'Perhaps one year.'

'My God! And if I don't take care of myself?'

'I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of
injury
inflicted by the sword-cut. The scar is an old one, and--exposure to
the
strong light of the desert, did you say?--with excessive application
to fine
work? I really could not say?'

'I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you
will let
me, I'll sit here for a minute, and then I'll go. You have been very
good in
telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any warning.

Thanks.'

Dick went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie.

'We've got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it.
We'll
go to the Park to think it out.'

They headed for a certain tree that Dick knew well, and they sat
down to
thin, because his legs were trembling under him and there was cold
fear
at the pit of his stomach.

'How could it have come without any warning? It's as sudden as
being
shot. It's the living death, Binkie. We're to be shut up in the dark in
one
year if we're careful, and we shan't see anybody, and we shall
never have
anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred!' Binkie
wagged
his tail joyously. 'Binkie, we must think. Let's see how it feels to be
blind.' Dick shut his eyes, and flaming commas and
Catherine-wheels
floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the Park the
scope of
his vision was not contracted. He could see perfectly, until a
procession of
slow-wheeling fireworks defiled across his eyeballs.

'Little dorglums, we aren't at all well. Let's go home. If only Torp
were
back, now!'

But Torpenhow was in the south of England, inspecting dockyards
in the
company of the Nilghai. His letters were brief and full of mystery.

Dick had never asked anybody to help him in his joys or his
sorrows. He
argued, in the loneliness of his studio, henceforward to be
decorated with
a film of gray gauze in one corner, that, if his fate were blindness,
all the
Torpenhows in the world could not save him. 'I can't call him off
his trip
to sit down and sympathise with me. I must pull through this
business
alone,' he said. He was lying on the sofa, eating his moustache and
wondering what the darkness of the night would be like. Then
came to
his mind the memory of a quaint scene in the Soudan. A soldier
had been
nearly hacked in two by a broad-bladed Arab spear. For one instant
the
man felt no pain. Looking down, he saw that his life-blood was
going
from him. The stupid bewilderment on his face was so intensely
comic
that both Dick and Torpenhow, still panting and unstrung from a
fight
for life, had roared with laughter, in which the man seemed as if he
would join, but, as his lips parted in a sheepish grin, the agony of
death
came upon him, and he pitched grunting at their feet. Dick laughed
again, remembering the horror. It seemed so exactly like his own
case.

'But I have a little more time allowed me,' he said. He paced up
and
down the room, quietly at first, but afterwards with the hurried feet
of
fear. It was as though a black shadow stood at his elbow and urged
him
to go forward; and there were only weaving circles and floating
pin-dots
before his eyes.

'We need to be calm, Binkie; we must be calm.' He talked aloud
for the
sake of distraction. 'This isn't nice at all. What shall we do? We
must do
something. Our time is short. I shouldn't have believed that this
morning;
but now things are different. Binkie, where was Moses when the
light
went out?'

Binkie smiled from ear to ear, as a well-bred terrier should, but
made no
suggestion.

'"Were there but world enough and time, This coyness, Binkie,
were not
crime. . . . But at my back I always hear----"' He wiped his
forehead,
which was unpleasantly damp. 'What can I do? What can I do? I
haven't
any notions left, and I can't think connectedly, but I must do
something,
or I shall go off my head.'

The hurried walk recommenced, Dick stopping every now and
again to
drag forth long-neglected canvases and old note-books; for he
turned to
his work by instinct, as a thing that could not fail. 'You won't do,
and you
won't do,' he said, at each inspection. 'No more soldiers. I couldn't
paint
'em. Sudden death comes home too nearly, and this is battle and
murder
for me.'

The day was failing, and Dick thought for a moment that the
twilight of
the blind had come upon him unaware. 'Allah Almighty!' he cried
despairingly, 'help me through the time of waiting, and I won't
whine
when my punishment comes. What can I do now, before the light
goes?'

There was no answer. Dick waited till he could regain some sort of
control over himself. His hands were shaking, and he prided
himself on
their steadiness; he could feel that his lips were quivering, and the
sweat
was running down his face. He was lashed by fear, driven forward
by the
desire to get to work at once and accomplish something, and
maddened
by the refusal of his brain to do more than repeat the news that he
was
about to go blind. 'It's a humiliating exhibition,' he thought, 'and
I'm
glad Torp isn't here to see. The doctor said I was to avoid mental
worry.

Come here and let me pet you, Binkie.'

The little dog yelped because Dick nearly squeezed the bark out of
him.

Then he heard the man speaking in the twilight, and, doglike,
understood
that his trouble stood off from him--
'Allah is good, Binkie. Not quite so gentle as we could wish, but
we'll
discuss that later. I think I see my way to it now. All those studies
of
Bessie's head were nonsense, and they nearly brought your master
into a
scrape. I hold the notion now as clear as crystal,--"the Melancolia
that
transcends all wit." There shall be Maisie in that head, because I
shall
never get Maisie; and Bess, of course, because she knows all about
Melancolia, though she doesn't know she knows; and there shall be
some
drawing in it, and it shall all end up with a laugh. That's for myself.
Shall
she giggle or grin? No, she shall laugh right out of the canvas, and
every
man and woman that ever had a sorrow of their own shall--what is
it the
poem says?--

'Understand the speech and feel a stir
Of fellowship in all disastrous fight.

"In all disastrous fight"? That's better than painting the thing
merely to
pique Maisie. I can do it now because I have it inside me. Binkie,
I'm
going to hold you up by your tail. You're an omen. Come here.'

Binkie swung head downward for a moment without speaking.

'Rather like holding a guinea-pig; but you're a brave little dog, and
you
don't yelp when you're hung up. It is an omen.'

Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick
walking
up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling. That night Dick
wrote a
letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health, but
saying
very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancolia to be
born. Not
till morning did he remember that something might happen to him
in the
future.

He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the
clean, clear
joy of creation, which does not come to man too often, lest he
should
consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at the
appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his
feet, but
remembered to stir Bessie, who needed very little stirring, into a
tremendous rage, that he might watch the smouldering lights in her
eyes.

He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not
think of
the doom that was to overtake him, for he was possessed with his
notion,
and the things of this world had no power upon him.

'You're pleased to-day,' said Bessie.

Dick waved his mahl-stick in mystic circles and went to the
sideboard for
a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died
down, he
went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became
convinced that
the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see everything very
clearly.

He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie,
and that
whether she liked it or not she should be his wife. The mood
passed next
morning, but the sideboard and all upon it remained for his
comfort.

Again he set to work, and his eyes troubled him with spots and
dashes
and blurs till he had taken counsel with the sideboard, and the
Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared
lovelier
than ever. There was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon
him, such
as they feel who walking among their fellow-men know that the
death-sentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but
waste
of the little time left, are riotously happy. The days passed without
event.

Bessie arrived punctually always, and, though her voice seemed to
Dick
to come from a distance, her face was always very near. The
Melancolia
began to flame on the canvas, in the likeness of a woman who had
known
all the sorrow in the world and was laughing at it. It was true that
the
corners of the studio draped themselves in gray film and retired
into the
darkness, that the spots in his eyes and the pains across his head
were
very troublesome, and that Maisie's letters were hard to read and
harder
still to answer. He could not tell her of his trouble, and he could
not
laugh at her accounts of her own Melancolia which was always
going to
be finished. But the furious days of toil and the nights of wild
dreams
made amends for all, and the sideboard was his best friend on
earth.

Bessie was singularly dull. She used to shriek with rage when Dick
stared
at her between half-closed eyes. Now she sulked, or watched him
with
disgust, saying very little.

Torpenhow had been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note
heralded
his return. 'News! great news!' he wrote. 'The Nilghai knows, and
so does
the Keneu. We're all back on Thursday. Get lunch and clean your
accoutrements.'

Dick showed Bessie the letter, and she abused him for that he had
ever
sent Torpenhow away and ruined her life.

'Well,' said Dick, brutally, 'you're better as you are, instead of
making
love to some drunken beast in the street.' He felt that he had
rescued
Torpenhow from great temptation.

'I don't know if that's any worse than sitting to a drunken beast in a
studio. You haven't been sober for three weeks. You've been
soaking the
whole time; and yet you pretend you're better than me!'

'What d'you mean?' said Dick.

'Mean! You'll see when Mr. Torpenhow comes back.'

It was not long to wait. Torpenhow met Bessie on the staircase
without a
sign of feeling. He had news that was more to him than many
Bessies,
and the Keneu and the Nilghai were trampling behind him, calling
for
Dick.

'Drinking like a fish,' Bessie whispered. 'He's been at it for nearly a
month.' She followed the men stealthily to hear judgment done.

They came into the studio, rejoicing, to be welcomed over
effusively by a
drawn, lined, shrunken, haggard wreck,--unshaven, blue-white
about the
nostrils, stooping in the shoulders, and peering under his eyebrows
nervously. The drink had been at work as steadily as Dick.

'Is this you?' said Torpenhow.

'All that's left of me. Sit down. Binkie's quite well, and I've been
doing
some good work.' He reeled where he stood.

'You've done some of the worst work you've ever done in your life.
Man
alive, you're----'

Torpenhow turned to his companions appealingly, and they left the
room
to find lunch elsewhere. Then he spoke; but, since the reproof of a
friend
is much too sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since
Torpenhow used figures and metaphors which were unseemly, and
contempt untranslatable, it will never be known what was actually
said
to Dick, who blinked and winked and picked at his hands. After a
time
the culprit began to feel the need of a little self-respect. He was
quite sure
that he had not in any way departed from virtue, and there were
reasons,
too, of which Torpenhow knew nothing. He would explain.

He rose, tried to straighten his shoulders, and spoke to the face he
could
hardly see.

'You are right,' he said. 'But I am right, too. After you went away I
had
some trouble with my eyes. So I went to an oculist, and he turned a
gasogene--I mean a gas-engine--into my eye. That was very long
ago. He
said, "Scar on the head,--sword-cut and optic nerve." Make a note
of
that. So I am going blind. I have some work to do before I go
blind, and I
suppose that I must do it. I cannot see much now, but I can see best
when
I am drunk. I did not know I was drunk till I was told, but I must
go on
with my work. If you want to see it, there it is.' He pointed to the
all but
finished Melancolia and looked for applause.

Torpenhow said nothing, and Dick began to whimper feebly, for
joy at
seeing Torpenhow again, for grief at misdeeds--if indeed they were
misdeeds--that made Torpenhow remote and unsympathetic, and
for
childish vanity hurt, since Torpenhow had not given a word of
praise to
his wonderful picture.

Bessie looked through the keyhole after a long pause, and saw the
two
walking up and down as usual, Torpenhow's hand on Dick's
shoulder.

Hereat she said something so improper that it shocked even
Binkie, who
was dribbling patiently on the landing with the hope of seeing his
master
again.

CHAPTER XI

The lark will make her hymn to God,
The partridge call her brood,
While I forget the heath I trod,
The fields wherein I stood.

'Tis dule to know not night from morn,
But deeper dule to know
I can but hear the hunter's horn
That once I used to blow.
-- The Only Son-

IT WAS the third day after Torpenhow's return, and his heart was
heavy.

'Do you mean to tell me that you can't see to work without
whiskey? It's
generally the other way about.'

'Can a drunkard swear on his honour?' said Dick.

'Yes, if he has been as god a man as you.'

'Then I give you my word of honour,' said Dick, speaking hurriedly
through parched lips. 'Old man, I can hardly see your face now.
You've
kept me sober for two days,--if I ever was drunk,--and I've done no
work.

Don't keep me back any more. I don't know when my eyes may
give out.

The spots and dots and the pains and things are crowding worse
than
ever. I swear I can see all right when I'm--when I'm moderately
screwed,
as you say. Give me three more sittings from Bessie and all--the
stuff I
want, and the picture will be done. I can't kill myself in three days.
It
only means a touch of D. T. at the worst.'

'If I give you three days more will you promise me to stop work
and--the
other thing, whether the picture's finished or not?'

'I can't. You don't know what that picture means to me. But surely
you
could get the Nilghai to help you, and knock me down and tie me
up. I
shouldn't fight for the whiskey, but I should for the work.'

'Go on, then. I give you three days; but you're nearly breaking my
heart.'

Dick returned to his work, toiling as one possessed; and the yellow
devil
of whiskey stood by him and chased away the spots in his eyes.
The
Melancolia was nearly finished, and was all or nearly all that he
had
hoped she would be. Dick jested with Bessie, who reminded him
that he
was 'a drunken beast'; but the reproof did not move him.

'You can't understand, Bess. We are in sight of land now, and soon
we
shall lie back and think about what we've done. I'll give you three
months' pay when the picture's finished, and next time I have any
more
work in hand--but that doesn't matter. Won't three months' pay
make
you hate me less?'

'No, it won't! I hate you, and I'll go on hating you. Mr. Torpenhow
won't
speak to me any more. He's always looking at maps.'

Bessie did not say that she had again laid siege to Torpenhow, or
that at
the end of our passionate pleading he had picked her up, given her
a kiss,
and put her outside the door with the recommendation not to be a
little
fool. He spent most of his time in the company of the Nilghai, and
their
talk was of war in the near future, the hiring of transports, and
secret
preparations among the dockyards. He did not wish to see Dick till
the
picture was finished.

'He's doing first-class work,' he said to the Nilghai, 'and it's quite
out of
his regular line. But, for the matter of that, so's his infernal
soaking.'

'Never mind. Leave him alone. When he has come to his senses
again
we'll carry him off from this place and let him breathe clean air.
Poor
Dick! I don't envy you, Torp, when his eyes fail.'

'Yes, it will be a case of "God help the man who's chained to our
Davie."
The worst is that we don't know when it will happen, and I believe
the
uncertainty and the waiting have sent Dick to the whiskey more
than
anything else.'

'How the Arab who cut his head open would grin if he knew!'

'He's at perfect liberty to grin if he can. He's dead. That's poor
consolation now.'

In the afternoon of the third day Torpenhow heard Dick calling for
him.

'All finished!' he shouted. 'I've done it! Come in! Isn't she a beauty?
Isn't
she a darling? I've been down to hell to get her; but isn't she worth
it?'

Torpenhow looked at the head of a woman who laughed,--a
full-lipped,
hollow-eyed woman who laughed from out of the canvas as Dick
had
intended she would.

'Who taught you how to do it?' said Torpenhow. 'The touch and
notion
have nothing to do with your regular work. What a face it is! What
eyes,
and what insolence!' Unconsciously he threw back his head and
laughed
with her. 'She's seen the game played out,--I don't think she had a
good
time of it,--and now she doesn't care. Isn't that the idea?'

'Exactly.'

'Where did you get the mouth and chin from? They don't belong to
Bess.'

'They're--some one else's. But isn't it good? Isn't it thundering
good?
Wasn't it worth the whiskey? I did it. Alone I did it, and it's the
best I
can do.' He drew his breath sharply, and whispered, 'Just God!
what
could I not do ten years hence, if I can do this now!--By the way,
what do
you think of it, Bess?'

The girl was biting her lips. She loathed Torpenhow because he
had
taken no notice of her.

'I think it's just the horridest, beastliest thing I ever saw,' she
answered,
and turned away.

'More than you will be of that way of thinking, young
woman.--Dick,
there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the
head
that I don't understand,' said Torpenhow.

That's trick-work,' said Dick, chuckling with delight at being
completely
understood. 'I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a
French
trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round
the
head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face
from
the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening
the
shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was flagrant trick-work; but,
having
the notion fixed, I felt entitled to play with it,--Oh, you beauty!'

'Amen! She is a beauty. I can feel it.'

'So will every man who has any sorrow of his own,' said Dick,
slapping
his thigh. 'He shall see his trouble there, and, by the Lord Harry,
just
when he's feeling properly sorry for himself he shall throw back
his head
and laugh,--as she is laughing. I've put the life of my heart and the
light
of my eyes into her, and I don't care what comes. . . . I'm
tired,--awfully
tired. I think I'll get to sleep. Take away the whiskey, it has served
its
turn, and give Bessie thirty-six quid, and three over for luck. Cover
the
picture.'

He dropped asleep in the long chair, hid face white and haggard,
almost
before he had finished the sentence. Bessie tried to take
Torpenhow's
hand. 'Aren't you never going to speak to me any more?' she said;
but
Torpenhow was looking at Dick.

'What a stock of vanity the man has! I'll take him in hand
to-morrow and
make much of him. He deserves it.--Eh! what was that, Bess?'

'Nothing. I'll put things tidy here a little, and then I'll go. You
couldn't
give the that three months' pay now, could you? He said you were
to.'

Torpenhow gave her a check and went to his own rooms. Bessie
faithfully
tidied up the studio, set the door ajar for flight, emptied half a
bottle of
turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the
Melancolia
viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took a
palette-knife and scraped, following each stroke with the wet
duster. In
five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours.
She
threw the paint-stained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her
tongue
at the sleeper, and whispered, 'Bilked!' as she turned to run down
the
staircase. She would never see Torpenhow any more, but she had
at least
done harm to the man who had come between her and her desire
and
who used to make fun of her. Cashing the check was the very
cream of
the jest to Bessie. Then the little privateer sailed across the
Thames, to be
swallowed up in the gray wilderness of South-the-Water.

Dick slept till late in the evening, when Torpenhow dragged him
off to
bed. His eyes were as bright as his voice was hoarse. 'Let's have
another
look at the picture,' he said, insistently as a child.

'You--go--to--bed,' said Torpenhow. 'You aren't at all well, though
you
mayn't know it. You're as jumpy as a cat.'

'I reform to-morrow. Good-night.'

As he repassed through the studio, Torpenhow lifted the cloth
above the
picture, and almost betrayed himself by outcries: 'Wiped
out!--scraped
out and turped out! He's on the verge of jumps as it is. That's
Bess,--the
little fiend! Only a woman could have done that!-with the ink not
dry on
the check, too! Dick will be raving mad to-morrow. It was all my
fault for
trying to help gutter-devils. Oh, my poor Dick, the Lord is hitting
you
very hard!'

Dick could not sleep that night, partly for pure joy, and partly
because
the well-known Catherine-wheels inside his eyes had given place
to
crackling volcanoes of many-coloured fire. 'Spout away,' he said
aloud.

'I've done my work, and now you can do what you please.' He lay
still,
staring at the ceiling, the long-pent-up delirium of drink in his
veins, his
brain on fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be
considered,
and his hands crisped and dry. He had just discovered that he was
painting the face of the Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed
with
millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood
embodied
hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting together
in his
honour, when something cracked inside his temples like an
overstrained
bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was alone in
the
thick night.

'I'll go to sleep. The room's very dark. Let's light a lamp and see
how the
Melancolia looks. There ought to have been a moon.'

It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that
he did
not know,--in the rattling accents of deadly fear.

'He's looked at the picture,' was his first thought, as he hurried into
the
bedroom and found Dick sitting up and beating the air with his
hands.

'Torp! Torp! where are you? For pity's sake, come to me!'

'What's the matter?'

Dick clutched at his shoulder. 'Matter! I've been lying here for
hours in
the dark, and you never heard me. Torp, old man, don't go away.
I'm all
in the dark. In the dark, I tell you!'

Torpenhow held the candle within a foot of Dick's eyes, but there
was no
light in those eyes. He lit the gas, and Dick heard the flame catch.
The
grip of his fingers on Torpenhow's shoulder made Torpenhow
wince.

'Don't leave me. You wouldn't leave me alone now, would you? I
can't
see. D'you understand? It's black,--quite black,--and I feel as if I
was
falling through it all.'

'Steady does it.' Torpenhow put his arm round Dick and began to
rock
him gently to and fro.

'That's good. Now don't talk. If I keep very quiet for a while, this
darkness will lift. It seems just on the point of breaking. H'sh!'
Dick knit
his brows and stared desperately in front of him. The night air was
chilling Torpenhow's toes.

'Can you stay like that a minute?' he said. 'I'll get my
dressing-gown and
some slippers.'

Dick clutched the bed-head with both hands and waited for the
darkness
to clear away. 'What a time you've been!' he cried, when
Torpenhow
returned. 'It's as black as ever. What are you banging about in the
door-way?'

'Long chair,--horse-blanket,--pillow. Going to sleep by you. Lie
down
now; you'll be better in the morning.'

'I shan't!' The voice rose to a wail. 'My God! I'm blind! I'm blind,
and
the darkness will never go away.' He made as if to leap from the
bed, but
Torpenhow's arms were round him, and Torpenhow's chin was on
his
shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only
gasp,
'Blind!' and wriggle feebly.

'Steady, Dickie, steady!' said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip
tightened. 'Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think
you're
afraid,' The grip could draw no closer. Both men were breathing
heavily.

Dick threw his head from side to side and groaned.

'Let me go,' he panted. 'You're cracking my ribs. We-we mustn't let
them think we're afraid, must we,--all the powers of darkness and
that
lot?'

'Lie down. It's all over now.'

'Yes,' said Dick, obediently. 'But would you mind letting me hold
your
hand? I feel as if I wanted something to hold on to. One drops
through
the dark so.'

Torpenhow thrust out a large and hairy paw from the long chair.
Dick
clutched it tightly, and in half an hour had fallen asleep.
Torpenhow
withdrew his hand, and, stooping over Dick, kissed him lightly on
the
forehead, as men do sometimes kiss a wounded comrade in the
hour of
death, to ease his departure.

In the gray dawn Torpenhow heard Dick talking to himself. He
was
adrift on the shoreless tides of delirium, speaking very quickly--
'It's a pity,--a great pity; but it's helped, and it must be eaten,
Master
George. Sufficient unto the day is the blindness thereof, and,
further,
putting aside all Melancolias and false humours, it is of obvious
notoriety--such as mine was--that the queen can do no wrong. Torp
doesn't know that. I'll tell him when we're a little farther into the
desert.

What a bungle those boatmen are making of the steamer-ropes!
They'll
have that four-inch hawser chafed through in a minute. I told you
so--there she goes! White foam on green water, and the steamer
slewing
round. How good that looks! I'll sketch it. No, I can't. I'm afflicted
with
ophthalmia. That was one of the ten plagues of Egypt, and it
extends up
the Nile in the shape of cataract. Ha! that's a joke, Torp. Laugh,
you
graven image, and stand clear of the hawser. . . . It'll knock you
into the
water and make your dress all dirty, Maisie dear.'

'Oh!' said Torpenhow. 'This happened before. That night on the
river.'

'She'll be sure to say it's my fault if you get muddy, and you're quite
near
enough to the breakwater. Maisie, that's not fair. Ah! I knew you'd
miss.

Low and to the left, dear. But you've no conviction. Don't be angry,
darling. I'd cut my hand off if it would give you anything more
than
obstinacy. My right hand, if it would serve.'

'Now we mustn't listen. Here's an island shouting across seas of
misunderstanding with a vengeance. But it's shouting truth, I
fancy,' said
Torpenhow.

The babble continued. It all bore upon Maisie. Sometimes Dick
lectured
at length on his craft, then he cursed himself for his folly in being
enslaved. He pleaded to Maisie for a kiss--only one kiss--before
she went
away, and called to her to come back from Vitry-sur-Marne, if she
would; but through all his ravings he bade heaven and earth
witness that
the queen could do no wrong.

Torpenhow listened attentively, and learned every detail of Dick's
life
that had been hidden from him. For three days Dick raved through
the
past, and then a natural sleep. 'What a strain he has been running
under,
poor chap!' said Torpenhow. 'Dick, of all men, handing himself
over like
a dog! And I was lecturing him on arrogance! I ought to have
known that
it was no use to judge a man. But I did it. What a demon that girl
must
be! Dick's given her his life,--confound him!--and she's given him
one kiss
apparently.'

'Torp,' said Dick, from the bed, 'go out for a walk. You've been
here too
long. I'll get up. Hi! This is annoying. I can't dress myself. Oh, it's
too
absurd!'

Torpenhow helped him into his clothes and led him to the big
chair in the
studio. He sat quietly waiting under strained nerves for the
darkness to
lift. It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick adventured on a
voyage
round the walls. He hit his shins against the stove, and this
suggested to
him that it would be better to crawl on all fours, one hand in front
of
him. Torpenhow found him on the floor.

'I'm trying to get the geography of my new possessions,' said he.
'D'you
remember that nigger you gouged in the square? Pity you didn't
keep the
odd eye. It would have been useful. Any letters for me? Give me
all the
ones in fat gray envelopes with a sort of crown thing outside.
They're of
no importance.'

Torpenhow gave him a letter with a black M. on the envelope flap.
Dick
put it into his pocket. There was nothing in it that Torpenhow
might not
have read, but it belonged to himself and to Maisie, who would
never
belong to him.

'When she finds that I don't write, she'll stop writing. It's better so. I
couldn't be any use to her now,' Dick argued, and the tempter
suggested
that he should make known his condition. Every nerve in him
revolted. 'I
have fallen low enough already. I'm not going to beg for pity.
Besides, it
would be cruel to her.' He strove to put Maisie out of his thoughts;
but
the blind have many opportunities for thinking, and as the tides of
his
strength came back to him in the long employless days of dead
darkness,
Dick's soul was troubled to the core. Another letter, and another,
came
from Maisie. Then there was silence, and Dick sat by the window,
the
pulse of summer in the air, and pictured her being won by another
man,
stronger than himself. His imagination, the keener for the dark
background it worked against, spared him no single detail that
might
send him raging up and down the studio, to stumble over the stove
that
seemed to be in four places at once. Worst of all, tobacco would
not taste
in the darkness. The arrogance of the man had disappeared, and in
its
place were settled despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion
that
Dick confided to his pillow at night. The intervals between the
paroxysms
were filled with intolerable waiting and the weight of intolerable
darkness.

'Come out into the Park,' said Torpenhow. 'You haven't stirred out
since
the beginning of things.'

'What's the use? There's no movement in the dark; and,
besides,'--he
paused irresolutely at the head of the stairs,--'something will run
over
me.'

'Not if I'm with you. Proceed gingerly.'

The roar of the streets filled Dick with nervous terror, and he clung
to
Torpenhow's arm. 'Fancy having to feel for a gutter with your foot!'
he
said petulantly, as he turned into the Park. 'Let's curse God and
die.'

'Sentries are forbidden to pay unauthorised compliments. By Jove,
there
are the Guards!'

Dick's figure straightened. 'Let's get near 'em. Let's go in and look.
Let's
get on the grass and run. I can smell the trees.'

'Mind the low railing. That's all right!' Torpenhow kicked out a tuft
of
grass with his heel. 'Smell that,' he said. 'Isn't it good?' Dick sniffed
luxuriously. 'Now pick up your feet and run.' They approached as
near
to the regiment as was possible. The clank of bayonets being
unfixed
made Dick's nostrils quiver.

'Let's get nearer. They're in column, aren't they?'

'Yes. How did you know?'

'Felt it. Oh, my men!--my beautiful men!' He edged forward as
though he
could see. 'I could draw those chaps once. Who'll draw 'em now?'

'They'll move off in a minute. Don't jump when the band begins.'

'Huh! I'm not a new charger. It's the silences that hurt. Nearer,
Torp!--nearer! Oh, my God, what wouldn't I give to see 'em for a
minute!--one half-minute!'

He could hear the armed life almost within reach of him, could
hear the
slings tighten across the bandsman's chest as he heaved the big
drum
from the ground.

'Sticks crossed above his head,' whispered Torpenhow.

'I know. I know! Who should know if I don't? H'sh!'

The drum-sticks fell with a boom, and the men swung forward to
the
crash of the band. Dick felt the wind of the massed movement in
his face,
heard the maddening tramp of feet and the friction of the pouches
on the
belts. The big drum pounded out the tune. It was a music-hall
refrain
that made a perfect quickstep--

He must be a man of decent height,
He must be a man of weight,
He must come home on a Saturday night
In a thoroughly sober state;
He must know how to love me,
And he must know how to kiss;
And if he's enough to keep us both
I can't refuse him bliss.

'What's the matter?' said Torpenhow, as he saw Dick's head fall
when
the last of the regiment had departed.

'Nothing. I feel a little bit out of the running,--that's all. Torp, take
me
back. Why did you bring me out?'

CHAPTER XII

There were three friends that buried the fourth,
The mould in his mouth and the dust in his eyes
And they went south and east, and north,--
The strong man fights, but the sick man dies.

There were three friends that spoke of the dead,--
The strong man fights, but the sick man dies.--
'And would he were with us now,' they said,
'The sun in our face and the wind in our eyes.'
-- Ballad.

THE NILGHAI was angry with Torpenhow. Dick had been sent to
bed,--blind men are ever under the orders of those who can
see,--and
since he had returned from the Park had fluently sworn at
Torpenhow
because he was alive, and all the world because it was alive and
could
see, while he, Dick, was dead in the death of the blind, who, at the
best,
are only burdens upon their associates. Torpenhow had said
something
about a Mrs. Gummidge, and Dick had retired in a black fury to
handle
and re-handle three unopened letters from Maisie.

The Nilghai, fat, burly, and aggressive, was in Torpenhow's rooms.

Behind him sat the Keneu, the Great War Eagle, and between them
lay a
large map embellished with black-and-white-headed pins.

'I was wrong about the Balkans,' said the Nilghai. 'But I'm not
wrong
about this business. The whole of our work in the Southern Soudan
must
be done over again. The public doesn't care, of course, but the
government does, and they are making their arrangements quietly.
You
know that as well as I do.'

'I remember how the people cursed us when our troops withdrew
from
Omdurman. It was bound to crop up sooner or later. But I can't go,'
said
Torpenhow. He pointed through the open door; it was a hot night.
'Can
you blame me?'

The Keneu purred above his pipe like a large and very happy cat--
'Don't blame you in the least. It's uncommonly good of you, and all
the
rest of it, but every man--even you, Torp--must consider his work.
I know
it sounds brutal, but Dick's out of the race,--down,--gastados
expended,
finished, done for. He has a little money of his own. He won't
starve, and
you can't pull out of your slide for his sake. Think of your own
reputation.'

'Dick's was five times bigger than mine and yours put together.'

'That was because he signed his name to everything he did. It's all
ended
now. You must hold yourself in readiness to move out. You can
command
your own prices, and you do better work than any three of us.'

'Don't tell me how tempting it is. I'll stay here to look after Dick
for a
while. He's as cheerful as a bear with a sore head, but I think he
likes to
have me near him.'

The Nilghai said something uncomplimentary about soft-headed
fools
who throw away their careers for other fools. Torpenhow flushed
angrily. The constant strain of attendance on Dick had worn his
nerves
thin.

'There remains a third fate,' said the Keneu, thoughtfully. 'Consider
this,
and be not larger fools than necessary. Dick is--or rather was--an
able-bodied man of moderate attractions and a certain amount of
audacity.'

'Oho!' said the Nilghai, who remembered an affair at Cairo. 'I begin
to
see,--Torp, I'm sorry.'

Torpenhow nodded forgiveness: 'You were more sorry when he cut
you
out, though.--Go on, Keneu.'

'I've often thought, when I've seen men die out in the desert, that if
the
news could be sent through the world, and the means of transport
were
quick enough, there would be one woman at least at each man's
bedside.'

'There would be some mighty quaint revelations. Let us be grateful
things are as they are,' said the Nilghai.

'Let us rather reverently consider whether Torp's three-cornered
ministrations are exactly what Dick needs just now.--What do you
think
yourself, Torp?'

'I know they aren't. But what can I do?'

'Lay the matter before the board. We are all Dick's friends here.
You've
been most in his life.'

'But I picked it up when he was off his head.'

'The greater chance of its being true. I thought we should arrive.
Who is
she?'

Then Torpenhow told a tale in plain words, as a special
correspondent
who knows how to make a verbal precis should tell it. The men
listened
without interruption.

'Is it possible that a man can come back across the years to his
calf-love?'

said the Keneu. 'Is it possible?'

'I give the facts. He says nothing about it now, but he sits fumbling
three
letters from her when he thinks I'm not looking. What am I to do?'

'Speak to him,' said the Nilghai.

'Oh yes! Write to her,--I don't know her full name, remember,--and
ask
her to accept him out of pity. I believe you once told Dick you
were sorry
for him, Nilghai. You remember what happened, eh? Go into the
bedroom and suggest full confession and an appeal to this Maisie
girl,
whoever she is. I honestly believe he'd try to kill you; and the
blindness
has made him rather muscular.'

'Torpenhow's course is perfectly clear,' said the Keneu. 'He will go
to
Vitry-sur-Marne, which is on the Bezieres-Landes Railway,--single
track
from Tourgas. The Prussians shelled it out in '70 because there was
a
poplar on the top of a hill eighteen hundred yards from the church
spire
There's a squadron of cavalry quartered there,--or ought to be.
Where
this studio Torp spoke about may be I cannot tell. That is Torp's
business. I have given him his route. He will dispassionately
explain the
situation to the girl, and she will come back to Dick,--the more
especially
because, to use Dick's words, "there is nothing but her damned
obstinacy
to keep them apart."'

'And they have four hundred and twenty pounds a year between
'em.

Dick never lost his head for figures, even in his delirium. You
haven't the
shadow of an excuse for not going,' said the Nilghai.

Torpenhow looked very uncomfortable. 'But it's absurd and
impossible. I
can't drag her back by the hair.'

'Our business--the business for which we draw our money--is to do
absurd and impossible things,--generally with no reason whatever
except
to amuse the public. Here we have a reason. The rest doesn't
matter. I
shall share these rooms with the Nilghai till Torpenhow returns.
There
will be a batch of unbridled "specials" coming to town in a little
while,
and these will serve as their headquarters. Another reason for
sending
Torpenhow away. Thus Providence helps those who help others,
and'--here the Keneu dropped his measured speech--'we can't have
you
tied by the leg to Dick when the trouble begins. It's your only
chance of
getting away; and Dick will be grateful.'

'He will,--worse luck! I can but go and try. I can't conceive a
woman in
her senses refusing Dick.'

'Talk that out with the girl. I have seen you wheedle an angry
Mahdieh
woman into giving you dates. This won't be a tithe as difficult.
You had
better not be here to-morrow afternoon, because the Nilghai and I
will be
in possession. It is an order. Obey.'

'Dick,' said Torpenhow, next morning, 'can I do anything for you?'

'No! Leave me alone. How often must I remind you that I'm blind?'

'Nothing I could go for to fetch for to carry for to bring?'

'No. Take those infernal creaking boots of yours away.'

'Poor chap!' said Torpenhow to himself. 'I must have been sitting
on his
nerves lately. He wants a lighter step.' Then, aloud, 'Very well.
Since
you're so independent, I'm going off for four or five days. Say
good-bye
at least. The housekeeper will look after you, and Keneu has my
rooms.'

Dick's face fell. 'You won't be longer than a week at the outside? I
know
I'm touched in the temper, but I can't get on without you.'

'Can't you? You'll have to do without me in a little time, and you'll
be
glad I'm gone.'

Dick felt his way back to the big chair, and wondered what these
things
might mean. He did not wish to be tended by the housekeeper, and
yet
Torpenhow's constant tenderness jarred on him. He did not exactly
know
what he wanted. The darkness would not lift, and Maisie's
unopened
letters felt worn and old from much handling. He could never read
them
for himself as long as life endured; but Maisie might have sent him
some
fresh ones to play with. The Nilghai entered with a gift,--a piece of
red
modelling-wax. He fancied that Dick might find interest in using
his
hands. Dick poked and patted the stuff for a few minutes, and, 'Is it
like
anything in the world?' he said drearily. 'Take it away. I may get
the
touch of the blind in fifty years. Do you know where Torpenhow
has
gone?'

The Nilghai knew nothing. 'We're staying in his rooms till he
comes
back. Can we do anything for you?'

'I'd like to be left alone, please. Don't think I'm ungrateful; but I'm
best
alone.'

The Nilghai chuckled, and Dick resumed his drowsy brooding and
sullen
rebellion against fate. He had long since ceased to think about the
work
he had done in the old days, and the desire to do more work had
departed
from him. He was exceedingly sorry for himself, and the
completeness of
his tender grief soothed him. But his soul and his body cried for
Maisie--Maisie who would understand. His mind pointed out that
Maisie,
having her own work to do, would not care. His experience had
taught
him that when money was exhausted women went away, and that
when a
man was knocked out of the race the others trampled on him.
'Then at
the least,' said Dick, in reply, 'she could use me as I used
Binat,--for some
sort of a study. I wouldn't ask more than to be near her again, even
though I knew that another man was making love to her. Ugh!
what a
dog I am!'

A voice on the staircase began to sing joyfully--

'When we go--go--go away from here,
Our creditors will weep and they will wail,
Our absence much regretting when they find that they've been
getting
Out of England by next Tuesday's Indian mail.'

Following the trampling of feet, slamming of Torpenhow's door,
and the
sound of voices in strenuous debate, some one squeaked, 'And see,
you
good fellows, I have found a new water-bottle--firs'-class
patent--eh, how
you say? Open himself inside out.'

Dick sprang to his feet. He knew the voice well. 'That's Cassavetti,
come
back from the Continent. Now I know why Torp went away.
There's a
row somewhere, and--I'm out of it!'

The Nilghai commanded silence in vain. 'That's for my sake,' Dick
said
bitterly. 'The birds are getting ready to fly, and they wouldn't tell
me. I
can hear Morten-Sutherland and Mackaye. Half the War
Correspondents in London are there;--and I'm out of it.'

He stumbled across the landing and plunged into Torpenhow's
room. He
could feel that it was full of men. 'Where's the trouble?' said he. 'In
the
Balkans at last? Why didn't some one tell me?'

'We thought you wouldn't be interested,' said the Nilghai,
shamefacedly.

'It's in the Soudan, as usual.'

'You lucky dogs! Let me sit here while you talk. I shan't be a
skeleton at
the feast.--Cassavetti, where are you? Your English is as bad as
ever.'

Dick was led into a chair. He heard the rustle of the maps, and the
talk
swept forward, carrying him with it. Everybody spoke at once,
discussing
press censorships, railway-routes, transport, water-supply, the
capacities
of generals,--these in language that would have horrified a trusting
public,--rangint, asserting, denouncing, and laughing at the top of
their
voices. There was the glorious certainty of war in the Soudan at
any
moment. The Nilghai said so, and it was well to be in readiness.
The
Keneu had telegraphed to Cairo for horses; Cassavetti had stolen a
perfectly inaccurate list of troops that would be ordered forward,
and
was reading it out amid profane interruptions, and the Keneu
introduced
to Dick some man unknown who would be employed as war artist
by the
Central Southern Syndicate. 'It's his first outing,' said the Keneu.
'Give
him some tips--about riding camels.'

'Oh, those camels!' groaned Cassavetti. 'I shall learn to ride him
again,
and now I am so much all soft! Listen, you good fellows. I know
your
military arrangement very well. There will go the Royal Argalshire
Sutherlanders. So it was read to me upon best authority.'

A roar of laughter interrupted him.

'Sit down,' said the Nilghai. 'The lists aren't even made out in the
War
Office.'

'Will there be any force at Suakin?' aid a voice.

Then the outcries redoubled, and grew mixed, thus: 'How many
Egyptian troops will they use?--God help the Fellaheen!--There's a
railway in Plumstead marshes doing duty as a fives-court.--We
shall
have the Suakin-Berber line built at last.--Canadian voyageurs are
too
careful. Give me a half-drunk Krooman in a whale-boat.--Who
commands the Desert column?--No, they never blew up the big
rock in
the Ghineh bend. We shall have to be hauled up, as
usual.--Somebody tell
me if there's an Indian contingent, or I'll break everybody's
head.--Don't
tear the map in two.--It's a war of occupation, I tell you, to connect
with
the African companies in the South.--There's Guinea-worm in most
of
the wells on that route.' Then the Nilghai, despairing of peace,
bellowed
like a fog-horn and beat upon the table with both hands.

'But what becomes of Torpenhow?' said Dick, in the silence that
followed.

'Torp's in abeyance just now. He's off love-making somewhere, I
suppose,' said the Nilghai.

'He said he was going to stay at home,' said the Keneu.

'Is he?' said Dick, with an oath. 'He won't. I'm not much good now,
but if
you and the Nilghai hold him down I'll engage to trample on him
till he
sees reason. He'll stay behind, indeed! He's the best of you all.
There'll be
some tough work by Omdurman. We shall come there to stay, this
time.

But I forgot. I wish I were going with you.'

'So do we all, Dickie,' said the Keneu.

'And I most of all,' said the new artist of the Central Southern
Syndicate.

'Could you tell me----'

'I'll give you one piece of advice,' Dick answered, moving towards
the
door. 'If you happen to be cut over the head in a scrimmage, don't
guard.

Tell the man to go on cutting. You'll find it cheapest in the end.
Thanks
for letting me look in.'

'There's grit in Dick,' said the Nilghai, an hour later, when the
room was
emptied of all save the Keneu.

'It was the sacred call of the war-trumpet. Did you notice how he
answered to it? Poor fellow! Let's look at him,' said the Keneu.

The excitement of the talk had died away. Dick was sitting by the
studio
table, with his head on his arms, when the men came in. He did not
change his position.

'It hurts,' he moaned. 'God forgive me, but it hurts cruelly; and yet,
y'know, the world has a knack of spinning round all by itself. Shall
I see
Torp before he goes?'

'Oh, yes. You'll see him,' said the Nilghai.

CHAPTER XIII

The sun went down an hour ago,
I wonder if I face towards home;
If I lost my way in the light of day
How shall I find it now night is come?
--Old Song-

'MAISIE, come to bed.'

'It's so hot I can't sleep. Don't worry.'

Maisie put her elbows on the window-sill and looked at the
moonlight on
the straight, poplar-flanked road. Summer had come upon
Vitry-sur-Marne and parched it to the bone. The grass was
dry-burnt in
the meadows, the clay by the bank of the river was caked to brick,
the
roadside flowers were long since dead, and the roses in the garden
hung
withered on their stalks. The heat in the little low bedroom under
the
eaves was almost intolerable. The very moonlight on the wall of
Kami's
studio across the road seemed to make the night hotter, and the
shadow
of the big bell-handle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black
that
caught Maisie's eye and annoyed her.

'Horrid thing! It should be all white,' she murmured. 'And the gate
isn't
in the middle of the wall, either. I never noticed that before.'

Maisie was hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past
few
weeks had worn her down; secondly, her work, and particularly the
study of a female head intended to represent the Melancolia and
not
finished in time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami
had said
as much two days before; fourthly,--but so completely fourthly that
it
was hardly worth thinking about,--Dick, her property, had not
written to
her for more than six weeks. She was angry with the heat, with
Kami,
and with her work, but she was exceedingly angry with Dick.

She had written to him three times,--each time proposing a fresh
treatment of her Melancolia. Dick had taken no notice of these
communications. She had resolved to write no more. When she
returned
to England in the autumn--for her pride's sake she could not return
earlier--she would speak to him. She missed the Sunday afternoon
conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was,
'Continuez, mademoiselle, continuez toujours,' and he had been
repeating
the wearisome counsel through the hot summer, exactly like a
cicada,--an
old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and a huge
felt hat.

But Dick had tramped masterfully up and down her little studio
north of
the cool green London park, and had said things ten times worse
than
continuez, before he snatched the brush out of her hand and
showed her
where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie remembered, contained
some
trivial advice about not sketching in the sun or drinking water at
wayside
farmhouses; and he had said that not once, but three times,--as if
he did
not know that Maisie could take care of herself.

But what was he doing, that he could not trouble to write? A
murmur of
voices in the road made her lean from the window. A cavalryman
of the
little garrison in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The
moonlight
glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his
hand
lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook's cap cast deep
shadows on
her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round
her
waist, and there followed the sound of a kiss.

'Faugh!' said Maisie, stepping back.

'What's that?' said the red-haired girl, who was tossing uneasily
outside
her bed.

'Only a conscript kissing the cook,' said Maisie.

'They've gone away now.' She leaned out of the window again, and
put a
shawl over her nightgown to guard against chills. There was a very
small
night-breeze abroad, and a sun-baked rose below nodded its head
as one
who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should
turn his
thoughts from her work and his own and descend to the
degradation of
Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded its head
and
one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil scratching
its ear.

Dick could not, 'because,' thought Maisie, 'he is
mind,--mine,--mine. He
said he was. I'm sure I don't care what he does. It will only spoil
his work
if he does; and it will spoil mine too.'

The rose continued to nod it the futile way peculiar to flowers.
There was
no earthly reason why Dick should not disport himself as he chose,
except
that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist
Maisie in
her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that went
sometimes to English provincial exhibitions, as the notices in the
scrap-book proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon
when
Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in
the
future, it seemed, would be the preparation of pictures on exactly
similar
lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way----
The red-haired girl threshed distressfully across the sheets. 'It's too
hot
to sleep,' she moaned; and the interruption jarred.

Exactly the same way. Then she would divide her years between
the little
studio in England and Kami's big studio at Vitry-sur-Marne. No,
she
would go to another master, who should force her into the success
that
was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a
right to
anything. Dick had told her that he had worked ten years to
understand
his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were nothing.
Dick
had said that ten years were nothing,--but that was in regard to
herself
only. He had said--this very man who could not find time to
write--that
he would wait ten years for her, and that she was bound to come
back to
him sooner or later. He had said this in the absurd letter about
sunstroke
and diphtheria; and then he had stopped writing. He was
wandering up
and down moonlit streets, kissing cooks. She would like to lecture
him
now,--not in her nightgown, of course, but properly dressed,
severely and
from a height. Yet if he was kissing other girls he certainly would
not
care whether she lecture him or not. He would laugh at her. Very
good.

She would go back to her studio and prepare pictures that went,
etc., etc.

The mill-wheel of thought swung round slowly, that no section of
it might
be slurred over, and the red-haired girl tossed and turned behind
her.

Maisie put her chin in her hands and decided that there could be
no
doubt whatever of the villainy of Dick. To justify herself, she
began,
unwomanly, to weigh the evidence. There was a boy, and he had
said he
loved her. And he kissed her,--kissed her on the cheek,--by a
yellow
sea-poppy that nodded its head exactly like the maddening dry rose
in the
garden. Then there was an interval, and men had told her that they
loved
her--just when she was busiest with her work. Then the boy came
back,
and at their very second meeting had told her that he loved her.
Then he
had---- But there was no end to the things he had done. He had
given her
his time and his powers. He had spoken to her of Art,
housekeeping,
technique, teacups, the abuse of pickles as a stimulant,--that was
rude,--sable hair-brushes,--he had given her the best in her
stock,--she
used them daily; he had given her advice that she profited by, and
now
and again--a look. Such a look! The look of a beaten hound
waiting for
the word to crawl to his mistress's feet. In return she had given him
nothing whatever, except--here she brushed her mouth against the
open-work sleeve f her nightgown--the privilege of kissing her
once. And
on the mouth, too. Disgraceful! Was that not enough, and more
than
enough? and if it was not, had he not cancelled the debt by not
writing
and--probably kissing other girls?
'Maisie, you'll catch a chill. Do go and lie down,' said the wearied
voice
of her companion. 'I can't sleep a wink with you at the window.'

Maisie shrugged her shoulders and did not answer. She was
reflecting on
the meannesses of Dick, and on other meannesses with which he
had
nothing to do. The moonlight would not let her sleep. It lay on the
skylight of the studio across the road in cold silver; she stared at it
intently and her thoughts began to slide one into the other. The
shadow
of the big bell-handle in the wall grew short, lengthened again, and
faded
out as the moon went down behind the pasture and a hare came
limping
home across the road. Then the dawn-wind washed through the
upland
grasses, and brought coolness with it, and the cattle lowed by the
drought-shrunk river. Maisie's head fell forward on the
window-sill, and
the tangle of black hair covered her arms.

'Maisie, wake up. You'll catch a chill.'

'Yes, dear; yes, dear.' She staggered to her bed like a wearied child,
and
as she buried her face in the pillows she muttered, 'I think--I think.
. . .

But he ought to have written.'

Day brought the routine of the studio, the smell of paint and
turpentine,
and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist, but a
golden
teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was
not in
sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the end of the
work.

She knew when it was coming; for Kami would gather his black
alpaca
coat into a bunch behind him, and, with faded flue eyes that saw
neither
pupils nor canvas, look back into the past to recall the history of
one
Binat. 'You have all done not so badly,' he would say. 'But you
shall
remember that it is not enough to have the method, and the art, and
the
power, nor even that which is touch, but you shall have also the
conviction that nails the work to the wall. Of the so many I
taught,'--here
the students would begin to unfix drawing-pins or get their tubes
together,--'the very so many that I have taught, the best was Binat.
All
that comes of the study and the work and the knowledge was to
him even
when he came. After he left me he should have done all that could
be
done with the colour, the form, and the knowledge. Only, he had
not the
conviction. So to-day I hear no more of Binat,--the best of my
pupils,--and that is long ago. So to-day, too, you will be glad to
hear no
more of me. Continuez, mesdemoiselles, and, above all, with
conviction.'

He went into the garden to smoke and mourn over the lost Binat as
the
pupils dispersed to their several cottages or loitered in the studio to
make
plans for the cool of the afternoon.

Maisie looked at her very unhappy Melancolia, restrained a desire
to
grimace before it, and was hurrying across the road to write a letter
to
Dick, when she was aware of a large man on a white troop-horse.
How
Torpenhow had managed in the course of twenty hours to find his
way to
the hearts of the cavalry officers in quarters at Vitry-sur-Marne, to
discuss with them the certainty of a glorious revenge for France, to
reduce the colonel to tears of pure affability, and to borrow the
best
horse in the squadron for the journey to Kami's studio, is a mystery
that
only special correspondents can unravel.

'I beg your pardon,' said he. 'It seems an absurd question to ask, but
the
fact is that I don't know her by any other name: Is there any young
lady
here that is called Maisie?'

'I am Maisie,' was the answer from the depths of a great sun-hat.

'I ought to introduce myself,' he said, as the horse capered in the
blinding
white dust. 'My name is Torpenhow. Dick Heldar is my best friend,
and--and--the fact is that he has gone blind.'

'Blind!' said Maisie, stupidly. 'He can't be blind.'

'He has been stone-blind for nearly two months.'

Maisie lifted up her face, and it was pearly white. 'No! No! Not
blind! I
won't have him blind!'

'Would you care to see for yourself?' said Torpenhow.

'Now,--at once?'

'Oh, no! The Paris train doesn't go through this place till to-night.
There
will be ample time.'

'Did Mr. Heldar send you to me?'

'Certainly not. Dick wouldn't do that sort of thing. He's sitting in
his
studio, turning over some letters that he can't read because he's
blind.'

There was a sound of choking from the sun-hat. Maisie bowed her
head
and went into the cottage, where the red-haired girl was on a sofa,
complaining of a headache.

'Dick's blind!' said Maisie, taking her breath quickly as she
steadied
herself against a chair-back. 'My Dick's blind!'

'What?' The girl was on the sofa no longer.

'A man has come from England to tell me. He hasn't written to me
for six
weeks.'

'Are you going to him?'

'I must think.'

'Think! I should go back to London and see him and I should kiss
his eyes
and kiss them and kiss them until they got well again! If you don't
go I
shall. Oh, what am I talking about? You wicked little idiot! Go to
him at
once. Go!'

Torpenhow's neck was blistering, but he preserved a smile of
infinite
patience as Maisie's appeared bareheaded in the sunshine.

'I am coming,' said she, her eyes on the ground.

'You will be at Vitry Station, then, at seven this evening.' This was
an
order delivered by one who was used to being obeyed. Maisie said
nothing, but she felt grateful that there was no chance of disputing
with
this big man who took everything for granted and managed a
squealing
horse with one hand. She returned to the red-haired girl, who was
weeping bitterly, and between tears, kisses,--very few of
those,--menthol,
packing, and an interview with Kami, the sultry afternoon wore
away.

Thought might come afterwards. Her present duty was to go to
Dick,--Dick who owned the wondrous friend and sat in the dark
playing
with her unopened letters.

'But what will you do,' she said to her companion.

'I? Oh, I shall stay here and--finish your Melancolia,' she said,
smiling
pitifully. 'Write to me afterwards.'

That night there ran a legend through Vitry-sur-Marne of a mad
Englishman, doubtless suffering from sunstroke, who had drunk
all the
officers of the garrison under the table, had borrowed a horse from
the
lines, and had then and there eloped, after the English custom,
with one
of those more mad English girls who drew pictures down there
under the
care of that good Monsieur Kami.

'They are very droll,' said Suzanne to the conscript in the
moonlight by
the studio wall. 'She walked always with those big eyes that saw
nothing,
and yet she kisses me on both cheeks as though she were my sister,
and
gives me--see--ten francs!'

The conscript levied a contribution on both gifts; for he prided
himself on
being a good soldier.

Torpenhow spoke very little to Maisie during the journey to
Calais; but
he was careful to attend to all her wants, to get her a compartment
entirely to herself, and to leave her alone. He was amazed of the
ease
with which the matter had been accomplished.

'The safest thing would be to let her think things out. By Dick's
showing,--when he was off his head,--she must have ordered him
about
very thoroughly. Wonder how she likes being under orders.'

Maisie never told. She sat in the empty compartment often with
her eyes
shut, that she might realise the sensation of blindness. It was an
order
that she should return to London swiftly, and she found herself at
last
almost beginning to enjoy the situation. This was better than
looking
after luggage and a red-haired friend who never took any interest
in her
surroundings. But there appeared to be a feeling in the air that she,
Maisie,--of all people,--was in disgrace. Therefore she justified her
conduct to herself with great success, till Torpenhow came up to
her on
the steamer and without preface began to tell the story of Dick's
blindness, suppressing a few details, but dwelling at length on the
miseries of delirium. He stopped before he reached the end, as
though he
had lost interest in the subject, and went forward to smoke. Maisie
was
furious with him and with herself.

She was hurried on from Dover to London almost before she could
ask
for breakfast, and--she was past any feeling of indignation
now--was
bidden curtly to wait in a hall at the foot of some lead-covered
stairs
while Torpenhow went up to make inquiries. Again the knowledge
that
she was being treated like a naughty little girl made her pale
cheeks
flame. It was all Dick's fault for being so stupid as to go blind.

Torpenhow led her up to a shut door, which he opened very softly.
Dick
was sitting by the window, with his chin on his chest. There were
three
envelopes in his hand, and he turned them over and over. The big
man
who gave orders was no longer by her side, and the studio door
snapped
behind her.

Dick thrust the letters into his pocket as he heard the sound. 'Hullo,
Topr! Is that you? I've been so lonely.'

His voice had taken the peculiar flatness of the blind. Maisie
pressed
herself up into a corner of the room. Her heart was beating
furiously,
and she put one hand on her breast to keep it quiet. Dick was
staring
directly at her, and she realised for the first time that he was blind.

Shutting her eyes in a rail-way carriage to open them when she
pleased
was child's play. This man was blind though his eyes were wide
open.

'Torp, is that you? They said you were coming.' Dick looked
puzzled and
a little irritated at the silence.

'No; it's only me,' was the answer, in a strained little whisper.
Maisie
could hardly move her lips.

'H'm!' said Dick, composedly, without moving. 'This is a new
phenomenon. Darkness I'm getting used to; but I object to hearing
voices.'

Was he mad, then, as well as blind, that he talked to himself?
Maisie's
heart beat more wildly, and she breathed in gasps. Dick rose and
began
to feel his way across the room, touching each table and chair as
he
passed. Once he caught his foot on a rug, and swore, dropping on
his
knees to feel what the obstruction might be. Maisie remembered
him
walking in the Park as though all the earth belonged to him,
tramping up
and down her studio two months ago, and flying up the gangway of
the
Channel steamer. The beating of her heart was making her sick,
and
Dick was coming nearer, guided by the sound of her breathing. She
put
out a hand mechanically to ward him off or to draw him to herself,
she
did not know which. It touched his chest, and he stepped back as
though
he had been shot.

'It's Maisie!' said he, with a dry sob. 'What are you doing here?'

'I came--I came--to see you, please.'

Dick's lips closed firmly.

'Won't you sit down, then? You see, I've had some bother with my
eyes, and----'

'I know. I know. Why didn't you tell me?'

'I couldn't write.'

'You might have told Mr. Torpenhow.'

'What has he to do with my affairs?'

'He--he brought me from Vitry-sur-Marne. He thought I ought to
see you.'

'Why, what has happened? Can I do anything for you? No, I can't. I
forgot.'

'Oh, Dick, I'm so sorry! I've come to tell you, and---- Let me take
you
back to your chair.'

'Don't! I'm not a child. You only do that out of pity. I never meant
to tell
you anything about it. I'm no good now. I'm down and done for.
Let me alone!'

He groped back to his chair, his chest labouring as he sat down.

Maisie watched him, and the fear went out of her heart, to be
followed by
a very bitter shame. He had spoken a truth that had been hidden
from
the girl through every step of the impetuous flight to London; for
he was,
indeed, down and done for--masterful no longer but rather a little
abject;
neither an artist stronger than she, nor a man to be looked up
to--only
some blind one that sat in a chair and seemed on the point of
crying. She
was immensely and unfeignedly sorry for him--more sorry than she
had
ever been for any one in her life, but not sorry enough to deny his
words.

So she stood still and felt ashamed and a little hurt, because she
had
honestly intended that her journey should end triumphantly; and
now
she was only filled with pity most startlingly distinct from love.

'Well?' said Dick, his face steadily turned away. 'I never meant to
worry
you any more. What's the matter?'

He was conscious that Maisie was catching her breath, but was as
unprepared as herself for the torrent of emotion that followed. She
had
dropped into a chair and was sobbing with her face hidden in her
hands.

'I can't--I can't!' she cried desperately. 'Indeed, I can't. It isn't my
fault.

I'm so sorry. Oh, Dickie, I'm so sorry.'

Dick's shoulders straightened again, for the words lashed like a
whip.

Still the sobbing continued. It is not good to realise that you have
failed in
the hour of trial or flinched before the mere possibility of making
sacrifices.

'I do despise myself--indeed I do. But I can't. Oh, Dickie, you
wouldn't
ask me--would you?' wailed Maisie.

She looked up for a minute, and by chance it happened that Dick's
eyes
fell on hers. The unshaven face was very white and set, and the
lips were
trying to force themselves into a smile. But it was the worn-out
eyes that
Maisie feared. Her Dick had gone blind and left in his place some
one
that she could hardly recognise till he spoke.

'Who is asking you to do anything, Maisie? I told you how it would
be.

What's the use of worrying? For pity's sake don't cry like that; it
isn't
worth it.'

'You don't know how I hate myself. Oh, Dick, help me--help me!'
The
passion of tears had grown beyond her control and was beginning
to
alarm the man. He stumbled forward and put his arm round her,
and her
head fell on his shoulder.

'Hush, dear, hush! Don't cry. You're quite right, and you've nothing
to
reproach yourself with--you never had. You're only a little upset by
the
journey, and I don't suppose you've had any breakfast. What a brute
Torp was to bring you over.'

'I wanted to come. I did indeed,' she protested.

'Very well. And now you've come and seen, and I'm--immensely
grateful.

When you're better you shall go away and get something to eat.
What
sort of a passage did you have coming over?'

Maisie was crying more subduedly, for the first time in her life
glad that
she had something to lean against. Dick patted her on the shoulder
tenderly but clumsily, for he was not quite sure where her shoulder
might be.

She drew herself out of his arms at last and waited, trembling and
most
unhappy. He had felt his way to the window to put the width of the
room
between them, and to quiet a little the tumult in his heart.

'Are you better now?' he said.

'Yes, but--don't you hate me?'

'I hate you? My God! I?'

'Isn't--isn't there anything I could do for you, then? I'll stay here in
England to do it, if you like. Perhaps I could come and see you
sometimes.'

'I think not, dear. It would be kindest not to see me any more,
please. I
don't want to seem rude, but--don't you think--perhaps you had
almost
better go now.'

He was conscious that he could not bear himself as a man if the
strain
continued much longer.

'I don't deserve anything else. I'll go, Dick. Oh, I'm so miserable.'

'Nonsense. You've nothing to worry about; I'd tell you if you had.
Wait a
moment, dear. I've got something to give you first. I meant it for
you ever
since this little trouble began. It's my Melancolia; she was a beauty
when
I last saw her. You can keep her for me, and if ever you're poor you
can
sell her. She's worth a few hundreds at any state of the market.' He
groped among his canvases. 'She's framed in black. Is this a black
frame
that I have my hand on? There she is. What do you think of her?'

He turned a scarred formless muddle of paint towards Maisie, and
the
eyes strained as though they would catch her wonder and surprise.
One
thing and one thing only could she do for him.

'Well?'

The voice was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he
was
speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic
desire
to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick's sake--whatever
this mad
blankness might mean--she must make no sign. Her voice choked
with
hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck--
'Oh, Dick, it is good!'

He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. 'Won't
you
have it, then? I'll send it over to your house if you will.'

'I? Oh yes--thank you. Ha! ha!' If she did not fly at once the
laughter
that was worse than tears would kill her. She turned and ran,
choking
and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take
refuge in
a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in
the
dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness,
useless
till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the
sorrow, the
shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the
red-haired
girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her
companion
before. Not until she found herself saying, 'Well, he never asked
me,' did
she realise her scorn of herself.

And that is the end of Maisie.

* * * * * *
For Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not
realise at
first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without
a word
of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had
brought
upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then
his
dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires to
get
what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no
wrong, but
in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had
wounded her
one subject more than his own brain would let him know.

'It's all I had and I've lost it,' he said, as soon as the misery
permitted
clear thinking. 'And Torp will think that he has been so infernally
clever
that I shan't have the heart to tell him. I must think this out quietly.'

'Hullo!' said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had
enjoyed two
hours of thought. 'I'm back. Are you feeling any better?'

'Torp, I don't know what to say. Come here.' Dick coughed huskily,
wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it
temperately.

'What's the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.'
Torpenhow
was perfectly satisfied.

They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow's hand on
Dick's
shoulder, and Dick buried in his own thoughts.

'How in the world did you find it all out?' said Dick, at last.

'You shouldn't go off your head if you want to keep secrets, Dickie.
It
was absolutely impertinent on my part; but if you'd seen me
rocketing
about on a half-trained French troop-horse under a blazing sun
you'd
have laughed. There will be a charivari in my rooms to-night.
Seven
other devils----'

'I know--the row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils
the
other day, and it made me unhappy. Have you fixed your flint to
go?
Who d'you work for?'

'Haven't signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your
business
would turn out.'

'Would you have stayed with me, then, if--things had gone wrong?'
He
put his question cautiously.

'Don't ask me too much. I'm only a man.'

'You've tried to be an angel very successfully.'

'Oh ye--es! . . . Well, do you attend the function to-night? We shall
be
half screwed before the morning. All the men believe the war's a
certainty.'

'I don't think I will, old man, if it's all the same to you. I'll stay
quiet here.'

'And meditate? I don't blame you. You observe a good time if ever
a man did.'

That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents
poured
in from theatre, dinner, and music-hall to Torpenhow's room that
they
might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military
operations
becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu,, and the Nilghai had
bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr.
Beeton,
the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered
experience
had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the
chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite
as bad
as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and
all
knew what those meant.

Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the
landing,
Dick suddenly began to laugh to himself.

'When one comes to think of it the situation is intensely comic.
Maisie's
quite right--poor little thing. I didn't know she could cry like that
before;
but now I know what Torp thinks, I'm sure he'd be quite fool
enough to
stay at home and try to console me--if he knew. Besides, it isn't
nice to
own that you've been thrown over like a broken chair. I must carry
this
business through alone--as usual. If there isn't a war, and Torp
finds out,
I shall look foolish, that's all. If there is a way I mustn't interfere
with
another man's chances. Business is business, and I want to be
alone--I
want to be alone. What a row they're making!'

Somebody hammered at the studio door.

'Come out and frolic, Dickie,' said the Nilghai.

'I should like to, but I can't. I'm not feeling frolicsome.'

'Then, I'll tell the boys and they'll drag you like a badger.'

'Please not, old man. On my word, I'd sooner be left alone just
now.'

'Very good. Can we send anything in to you? Fizz, for instance.

Cassavetti is beginning to sing songs of the Sunny South already.'

For one minute Dick considered the proposition seriously.

'No, thanks, I've a headache already.'

'Virtuous child. That's the effect of emotion on the young. All my
congratulations, Dick. I also was concerned in the conspiracy for
your welfare.'

'Go to the devil--oh, send Binkie in here.'

The little dog entered on elastic feet, riotous from having been
made
much of all the evening. He had helped to sing the choruses; but
scarcely
inside the studio he realised that this was no place for
tail-wagging, and
settled himself on Dick's lap till it was bedtime. Then he went to
bed with
Dick, who counted every hour as it struck, and rose in the morning
with
a painfully clear head to receive Torpenhow's more formal
congratulations and a particular account of the last night's revels.

'You aren't looking very happy for a newly accepted man,' said
Torpenhow.

'Never mind that--it's my own affair, and I'm all right. Do you
really go?'

'Yes. With the old Central Southern as usual. They wired, and I
accepted
on better terms than before.'

'When do you start?'

'The day after to-morrow--for Brindisi.'

'Thank God.' Dick spoke from the bottom of his heart.

'Well, that's not a pretty way of saying you're glad to get rid of me.
But
men in your condition are allowed to be selfish.'

'I didn't mean that. Will you get a hundred pounds cashed for me
before
you leave?'

'That's a slender amount for housekeeping, isn't it?'

'Oh, it's only for--marriage expenses.'

Torpenhow brought him the money, counted it out in fives and
tens, and
carefully put it away in the writing table.

'Now I suppose I shall have to listen to his ravings about his girl
until I
go. Heaven send us patience with a man in love!' he said to
himself.

But never a word did Dick say of Maisie or marriage. He hung in
the
doorway of Torpenhow's room when the latter was packing and
asked
innumerable questions about the coming campaign, till Torpenhow
began
to feel annoyed.

'You're a secretive animal, Dickie, and you consume your own
smoke,
don't you?' he said on the last evening.

'I--I suppose so. By the way, how long do you think this war will
last?'

'Days, weeks, or months. One can never tell. It may go on for
years.'

'I wish I were going.'

'Good Heavens! You're the most unaccountable creature! Hasn't it
occurred to you that you're going to be married--thanks to me?'

'Of course, yes. I'm going to be married--so I am. Going to be
married.

I'm awfully grateful to you. Haven't I told you that?'

'You might be going to be hanged by the look of you,' said
Torpenhow.

And the next day Torpenhow bade him good-bye and left him to
the
loneliness he had so much desired.

CHAPTER XIV

Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
Yet at the last, with his masters around him,
He of the Faith spoke as master to slave;
Yet at the last, tho' the Kafirs had maimed him,
Broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver,--
Yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him,
He called upon Allah and died a believer.
--Kizzilbashi.

'BEG your pardon, Mr. Heldar, but--but isn't nothin' going to
happen?'

said Mr. Beeton.

'No!' Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and
his
temper was of the shortest.

''Tain't my regular business, o' course, sir; and what I say is, "Mind
your own business and let other people mind theirs;" but just
before Mr.

Torpenhow went away he give me to understand, like, that you
might be
moving into a house of your own, so to speak--a sort of house with
rooms
upstairs and downstairs where you'd be better attended to, though I
try
to act just by all our tenants. Don't I?'

'Ah! That must have been a mad-house. I shan't trouble you to take
me
there yet. Get me my breakfast, please, and leave me alone.'

'I hope I haven't done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope
that as
far as a man can I tries to do the proper thing by all the gentlemen
in
chambers--and more particular those whose lot is hard--such as
you, for
instance, Mr. Heldar. You likes soft-roe bloater, don't you?
Soft-roe
bloaters is scarcer than hard-roe, but what I says is, "Never mind a
little
extra trouble so long as you give satisfaction to the tenants."'

Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had
been long
away; there was no more rioting in the chambers, and Dick had
settled
down to his new life, which he was weak enough to consider
nothing
better than death.

It is hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night;
dropping
to sleep through sheer weariness at mid-day, and rising restless in
the
chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings, would grope
along the
corridors of the chambers till he heard some one snore. Then he
would
know that the day had not yet come, and return wearily to his
bedroom.

Later he learned not to stir till there was a noise and movement in
the
house and Mr. Beeton advised him to get up. Once dressed--and
dressing,
now that Torpenhow was away, was a lengthy business, because
collars,
ties, and the like hid themselves in far corners of the room, and
search
meant head-beating against chairs and trunks--once dressed, there
was
nothing whatever to do except to sit still and brood till the three
daily
meals came. Centuries separated breakfast from lunch and lunch
from
dinner, and though a man prayed for hundreds of years that his
mind
might be taken from him, God would never hear. Rather the mind
was
quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other as
millstones grind when there is no corn between; and yet the brain
would
not wear out and give him rest. It continued to think, at length,
with
imagery and all manner of reminiscences. It recalled Maisie and
past
success, reckless travels by land and sea, the glory of doing work
and
feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have
happened had
the eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased
through
sheer weariness, there poured into Dick's soul tide on tide of
overwhelming, purposeless fear--dread of starvation always, terror
lest
the unseen ceiling should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the
chambers and a louse's death in red flame, and agonies of fiercer
horror
that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed his
head,
and clutching the arms of his chair fought with his sweating self
till the
tinkle of plates told him that something to eat was being set before
him.

Mr. Beeton would bring the meal when he had time to spare, and
Dick
learned to hang upon his speech, which dealt with badly fitted
gas-plugs,
waste-pipes out of repair, little tricks for driving picture-nails into
walls,
and the sins of the charwoman or the housemaids. In the lack of
better
things the small gossip of a servant'' hall becomes immensely
interesting,
and the screwing of a washer on a tap an event to be talked over
for days.

Once or twice a week, too, Mr. Beeton would take Dick out with
him
when he went marketing in the morning to haggle with tradesmen
over
fish, lamp-wicks, mustard, tapioca, and so forth, while Dick rested
his
weight first on one foot and then on the other and played aimlessly
with
the tins and string-ball on the counter. Then they would perhaps
meet
one of Mr. Beeton's friends, and Dick, standing aside a little,
would hold
his peace till Mr. Beeton was willing to go on again.

The life did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as
a
dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant
exposure
of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly
brushed,
and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance
he
became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal
with
cleanliness till he has been some months used to the darkness. If
he
demand attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he must assert
himself and stand upright. Then the meanest menial can see that he
is
blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will keep his
eyes on
the floor and sit still. For amusement he may pick coal lump by
lump out
of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a little heap in the
fender,
keeping count of the lumps, which must all be put back again, one
by one
and very carefully. He may set himself sums if he cares to work
them
out; he may talk to himself or to the cat if she chooses to visit him;
and if
his trade has been that of an artist, he may sketch in the air with
his
forefinger; but that is too much like drawing a pig with the eyes
shut. He
may go to his bookshelves and count his books, ranging them in
order of
their size; or to his wardrobe and count his shirts, laying them in
piles of
two or three on the bed, as they suffer from frayed cuffs or lost
buttons.

Even this entertainment wearies after a time; and all the times are
very,
very long.

Dick was allowed to sort a tool-chest where Mr. Beeton kept
hammers,
taps and nuts, lengths of gas-pipes, oil-bottles, and string.

'If I don't have everything just where I know where to look for it,
why,
then, I can't find anything when I do want it. You've no idea, sir,
the
amount of little things that these chambers uses up,' said Mr.
Beeton.

Fumbling at the handle of the door as he went out: 'It's hard on you,
sir,
I do think it's hard on you. Ain't you going to do anything, sir?'

'I'll pay my rent and messing. Isn't that enough?'

'I wasn't doubting for a moment that you couldn't pay your way, sir;
but
I 'ave often said to my wife, "It's 'ard on 'im because it isn't as if he
was
an old man, nor yet a middle-aged one, but quite a young
gentleman.

That's where it comes so 'ard."'

'I suppose so,' said Dick, absently. This particular nerve through
long
battering had ceased to feel--much.

'I was thinking,' continued Mr. Beeton, still making as if to go, 'that
you
might like to hear my boy Alf read you the papers sometimes of an
evening. He do read beautiful, seeing he's only nine.'

'I should be very grateful,' said Dick. 'Only let me make it worth
his
while.'

'We wasn't thinking of that, sir, but of course it's in your own 'ands;
but
only to 'ear Alf sing "A Boy's best Friend is 'is Mother!" Ah!'

'I'll hear him sing that too. Let him come this evening with the
newspapers.'

Alf was not a nice child, being puffed up with many school-board
certificates for good conduct, and inordinately proud of his
singing. Mr.

Beeton remained, beaming, while the child wailed his way through
a
song of some eight eight-line verses in the usual whine of a young
Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign
telegrams. Ten minutes later Alf returned to his parents rather pale
and
scared.

''E said 'e couldn't stand it no more,' he explained.

'He never said you read badly, Alf?' Mrs. Beeton spoke.

'No. 'E said I read beautiful. Said 'e never 'eard any one read like
that,
but 'e said 'e couldn't abide the stuff in the papers.'

'P'raps he's lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin' him
about
Stocks, Alf?'

'No; it was all about fightin' out there where the soldiers is gone--a
great
long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words in
it. 'E
give me 'arf a crown because I read so well. And 'e says the next
time
there's anything 'e wants read 'e'll send for me.'

'That's good hearing, but I do think for all the half-crown--put it
into the
kicking-donkey money-box, Alf, and let me see you do it--he
might have
kept you longer. Why, he couldn't have begun to understand how
beautiful you read.'

'He's best left to hisself--gentlemen always are when they're
downhearted,' said Mr. Beeton.

Alf's rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow's
special
correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could
hear,
through the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares
behind
the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and
chaffing
across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as
it
drifted over camp before the wind of the desert.

That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from
him,
offering for proof that he was worthy of this favour the fact that he
had
not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and
indeed
Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of
humour
and no special virtue had kept him alive. Suicide, he had
persuaded
himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation
as well
as a weak-kneed confession of fear.

'Just for the fun of the thing,' he said to the cat, who had taken
Binkie's
place in his establishment, 'I should like to know how long this is
going to
last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for
me. I
must have two or three thousand at least in the Bank--twenty or
thirty
years more provided for, that is to say. Then I fall back on my
hundred
and twenty a year, which will be more by that time. Let's consider.

Twenty-five--thirty-five--a man's in his prime then, they
say--forty-five--a middle-aged man just entering
politics--fifty-five--"died
at the comparatively early age of fifty-five," according to the
newspapers. Bah! How these Christians funk death!
Sixty-five--we're
only getting on in years. Seventy-five is just possible, though.
Great hell,
cat O! fifty years more of solitary confinement in the dark! You'll
die,
and Beeton will die, and Torp will die, and Mai--everybody else
will die,
but I shall be alive and kicking with nothing to do. I'm very sorry
for
myself. I should like some one else to be sorry for me. Evidently
I'm not
going ma before I die, but the pain's just as bad as ever. Some day
when
you're vivisected, cat O! they'll tie you down on a little table and
cut you
open--but don't be afraid; they'll take precious good care that you
don't
die. You'll live, and you'll be very sorry then that you weren't sorry
for
me. Perhaps Torp will come back or . . . I wish I could go to Torp
and the
Nilghai, even though I were in their way.'

Pussy left the room before the speech was ended, and Alf, as he
entered,
found Dick addressing the empty hearth-rug.

'There's a letter for you, sir,' he said. 'Perhaps you'd like me to read
it.'

'Lend it to me for a minute and I'll tell you.'

The outstretched hand shook just a little and the voice was not
over-steady. It was within the limits of human possibility that--that
was
no letter from Maisie. He knew the heft of three closed envelopes
only too
well. It was a foolish hope that the girl should write to him, for he
did not
realise that there is a wrong which admits of no reparation though
the
evildoer may with tears and the heart's best love strive to mend all.
It is
best to forget that wrong whether it be caused or endured, since it
is as
remediless as bad work once put forward.

'Read it, then,' said Dick, and Alf began intoning according to the
rules
of the Board School--
'"I could have given you love, I could have given you loyalty, such
as you
never dreamed of. Do you suppose I cared what you were? But you
chose
to whistle everything down the wind for nothing. My only excuse
for you is
that you are so young."
'That's all,' he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.

'What was in the letter?' asked Mrs. Beeton, when Alf returned.

'I don't know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin'
at
everything when you're young.'

'I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking
about
and it has bounced up and hit me. God help it, whatever it
is--unless it
was all a joke. But I don't know any one who'd take the trouble to
play a
joke on me. . . . Love and loyalty for nothing. It sounds tempting
enough.

I wonder whether I have lost anything really?'

Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or
how he
had put himself in the way of winning these trifles at a woman's
hands.

Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think
about stung him into a fit of frenzy that lasted for a day and night.
When
his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body
and soul
together seemed to be dropping without check through the
darkness.

Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the
light
again. But there was no light to be reached. When that agony had
left
him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would
recommence till
the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as
hopeless as
the first. Followed some few minutes of sleep in which he dreamed
that
he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he
was
utterly worn out and the brain took up its everlasting consideration
of
Maisie and might-have-beens.

At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and
volunteered to
take him out. 'Not marketing this time, but we'll go into the Parks
if you
like.'

'Be damned if I do,' quoth Dick. 'Keep to the streets and walk up
and
down. I like to hear the people round me.'

This was not altogether true. The blind in the first stages of their
infirmity dislike those who can move with a free stride and
unlifted
arms--but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and
only
once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's
charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine
with
some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost
weeping
with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a
friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the
Albert
Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but . . . this
was not
the manner in which he was used to walk the Parks aforetime.

'What streets would you like to walk down, then?' said Mr. Beeton,
sympathetically. His own ideas of a riotous holiday meant
picnicking on
the grass of Green Park with his family, and half a dozen paper
bags full
of food.

'Keep to the river,' said Dick, and they kept to the river, and the
rush of
it was in his ears till they came to Blackfriars Bridge and struck
thence
on to the Waterloo Road, Mr. Beeton explaining the beauties of
the
scenery as he went on.

'And walking on the other side of the pavement,' said he, 'unless
I'm
much mistaken, is the young woman that used to come to your
rooms to
be drawed. I never forgets a face and I never remembers a name,
except
paying tenants, o' course!'

'Stop her,' said Dick. 'It's Bessie Broke. Tell her I'd like to speak to
her
again. Quick, man!'

Mr. Beeton crossed the road under the noses of the omnibuses and
arrested Bessie then on her way northward. She recognised him as
the
man in authority who used to glare at her when she passed up
Dick's
staircase, and her first impulse was to run.

'Wasn't you Mr. Heldar's model?' said Mr. Beeton, planting himself
in
front of her. 'You was. He's on the other side of the road and he'd
like to
see you.'

'Why?' said Bessie, faintly. She remembered--indeed had never for
long
forgotten--an affair connected with a newly finished picture.

'Because he has asked me to do so, and because he's most
particular
blind.'

'Drunk?'

'No. 'Orspital blind. He can't see. That's him over there.'

Dick was leaning against the parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton
pointed
him out--a stub-bearded, bowed creature wearing a dirty
magenta-coloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was
nothing to fear from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie
thought,
he could not follow far. She crossed over, and Dick's face lighted
up. It
was long since a woman of any kind had taken the trouble to speak
to
him.

'I hope you're well, Mr. Heldar?' said Bessie, a little puzzled. Mr.
Beeton
stood by with the air of an ambassador and breathed responsibly.

'I'm very well indeed, and, by Jove! I'm glad to see--hear you, I
mean,
Bess. You never thought it worth while to turn up and see us again
after
you got your money. I don't know why you should. Are you going
anywhere in particular just now?'

'I was going for a walk,' said Bessie.

'Not the old business?' Dick spoke under his breath.

'Lor, no! I paid my premium'--Bessie was very proud of that
word--'for a
barmaid, sleeping in, and I'm at the bar now quite respectable.
Indeed I
am.'

Mr. Beeton had no special reason to believe in the loftiness of
human
nature. Therefore he dissolved himself like a mist and returned to
his
gas-plugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight
with a
certain uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of
the
harm that had been done to him . . .

'It's hard work pulling the beer-handles,' she went on, 'and they've
got
one of them penny-in-the-slot cash-machines, so if you get wrong
by a
penny at the end of the day--but then I don't believe the machinery
is
right. Do you?'

'I've only seen it work. Mr. Beeton.'

'He's gone.

'I'm afraid I must ask you to help me home, then. I'll make it worth
your
while. You see.' The sightless eyes turned towards her and Bessie
saw.

'It isn't taking you out of your way?' he said hesitatingly. 'I can ask
a
policeman if it is.'

'Not at all. I come on at seven and I'm off at four. That's easy
hours.'

'Good God!--but I'm on all the time. I wish I had some work to do
too.

Let's go home, Bess.'

He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with
an
oath. Bessie took his arm and said nothing--as she had said nothing
when
he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They
walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly
through the
crowd.

'And where's--where's Mr. Torpenhow?' she inquired at last.

'He has gone away to the desert.'

'Where's that?'

Dick pointed to the right. 'East--out of the mouth of the river,' said
he.

'Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the
under-side of
Europe. Then south again, God knows how far.' The explanation
did not
enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to
Dick's
patch till they came to the chambers.

'We'll have tea and muffins,' he said joyously. 'I can't tell you,
Bessie,
how glad I am to find you again. What made you go away so
suddenly?'

'I didn't think you'd want me any more,' she said, emboldened by
his
ignorance.

'I didn't, as a matter of fact--but afterwards-- At any rate I'm glad
you've come. You know the stairs.'

So Bessie led him home to his own place--there was no one to
hinder--and
shut the door of the studio.

'What a mess!' was her first word. 'All these things haven't been
looked
after for months and months.'

'No, only weeks, Bess. You can't expect them to care.'

'I don't know what you expect them to do. They ought to know
what
you've paid them for. The dust's just awful. It's all over the easel.'

'I don't use it much now.'

'All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I'd like
to
speak to them housemaids.'

'Ring for tea, then.' Dick felt his way to the one chair he used by
custom.

Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But
there
remained always a keen sense of new-found superiority, and it was
in her
voice when she spoke.

'How long have you been like this?' she said wrathfully, as though
the
blindness were some fault of the housemaids.

'How?'

'As you are.'

'The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my
picture was finished; I hardly saw her alive.'

'Then they've been cheating you ever since, that's all. I know their
nice
little ways.'

A woman may love one man and despise another, but on general
feminine
principles she will do her best to save the man she despises from
being
defrauded. Her loved one can look to himself, but the other man,
being
obviously an idiot, needs protection.

'I don't think Mr. Beeton cheats much,' said Dick. Bessie was
flouncing
up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of
enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the light step
between.

'Tea and muffins,' she said shortly, when the ring at the bell was
answered; 'two teaspoonfuls and one over for the pot. I don't want
the
old teapot that was here when I used to come. It don't draw. Get
another.'

The housemaid went away scandalised, and Dick chuckled. Then
he
began to cough as Bessie banged up and down the studio
disturbing the
dust.

'What are you trying to do?'

'Put things straight. This is like unfurnished lodgings. How could
you let
it go so?'

'How could I help it? Dust away.'

She dusted furiously, and in the midst of all the pother entered
Mrs.

Beeton. Her husband on his return had explained the situation,
winding
up with the peculiarly felicitous proverb, 'Do unto others as you
would
be done by.' She had descended to put into her place the person
who
demanded muffins and an uncracked teapot as though she had a
right to
both.

'Muffins ready yet?' said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a
drab of
the streets but a young lady who, thanks to Dick's check, had paid
her
premium and was entitled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being
neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton,
and there
passed between the two women certain regards that Dick would
have
appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won,
and
Mrs. Beeton returned to cook muffins and make scathing remarks
about
models, hussies, trollops, and the like, to her husband.

'There's nothing to be got of interfering with him, Liza,' he said.
'Alf,
you go along into the street to play. When he isn't crossed he's as
kindly
as kind, but when he's crossed he's the devil and all. We took too
many
little things out of his rooms since he was blind to be that
particular
about what he does. They ain't no objects to a blind man, of
course, but if
it was to come into court we'd get the sack. Yes, I did introduce
him to
that girl because I'm a feelin' man myself.'

'Much too feelin'!' Mrs. Beeton slapped the muffins into the dish,
and
thought of comely housemaids long since dismissed on suspicion.

'I ain't ashamed of it, and it isn't for us to judge him hard so long as
he
pays quiet and regular as he do. I know how to manage young
gentlemen,
you know how to cook for them, and what I says is, let each stick
to his
own business and then there won't be any trouble. Take them
muffins
down, Liza, and be sure you have no words with that young
woman. His
lot is cruel hard, and if he's crossed he do swear worse than any
one I've
ever served.'

'That's a little better,' said Bessie, sitting down to the tea. 'You
needn't
wait, thank you, Mrs. Beeton.'

'I had no intention of doing such, I do assure you.'

Bessie made no answer whatever. This, she knew, was the way in
which
real ladies routed their foes, and when one is a barmaid at a
first-class
public-house one may become a real lady at ten minutes' notice.

Her eyes fell on Dick opposite her and she was both shocked and
displeased. There were droppings of food all down the front of his
coat;
the mouth under the ragged ill-grown beard drooped sullenly; the
forehead was lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the
hair was
a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might not have been
called
gray. The utter misery and self-abandonment of the man appealed
to her,
and at the bottom of her heart lay the wicked feeling that he was
humbled and brought low who had once humbled her.

'Oh! it is good to hear you moving about,' said Dick, rubbing his
hands.

'Tell us all about your bar successes, Bessie, and the way you live
now.'

'Never mind that. I'm quite respectable, as you'd see by looking at
me.

You don't seem to live too well. What made you go blind that
sudden?
Why isn't there any one to look after you?'

Dick was too thankful for the sound of her voice to resent the tone
of it.

'I was cut across the head a long time ago, and that ruined my eyes.
I
don't suppose anybody thinks it worth while to look after me any
more.

Why should they?--and Mr. Beeton really does everything I want.'

'Don't you know any gentlemen and ladies, then, while you
was--well?'

'A few, but I don't care to have them looking at me.'

'I suppose that's why you've growed a beard. Take it off, it don't
become
you.'

'Good gracious, child, do you imagine that I think of what becomes
of me
these days?'

'You ought. Get that taken off before I come here again. I suppose
I can
come, can't I?'

'I'd be only too grateful if you did. I don't think I treated you very
well in
the old days. I used to make you angry.'

'Very angry, you did.'

'I'm sorry for it, then. Come and see me when you can and as often
as
you can. God knows, there isn't a soul in the world to take that
trouble
except you and Mr. Beeton.'

'A lot of trouble he's taking and she too.' This with a toss of the
head.

'They've let you do anyhow and they haven't done anything for you.
I've
only to look and see that much. I'll come, and I'll be glad to come,
but you
must go and be shaved, and you must get some other clothes--those
ones
aren't fit to be seen.'

'I have heaps somewhere,' he said helplessly.

'I know you have. Tell Mr. Beeton to give you a new suit and I'll
brush it
and keep it clean. You may be as blind as a barn-door, Mr. Heldar,
but it
doesn't excuse you looking like a sweep.'

'Do I look like a sweep, then?'

'Oh, I'm sorry for you. I'm that sorry for you!' she cried impulsively,
and
took Dick's hands. Mechanically, he lowered his head as if to
kiss--she
was the only woman who had taken pity on him, and he was not
too
proud for a little pity now. She stood up to go.

'Nothing o' that kind till you look more like a gentleman. It's quite
easy
when you get shaved, and some clothes.'

He could hear her drawing on her gloves and rose to say good-bye.
She
passed behind him, kissed him audaciously on the back of the
neck, and
ran away as swiftly as on the day when she had destroyed the
Melancolia.

'To think of me kissing Mr. Heldar,' she said to herself, 'after all
he's
done to me and all! Well, I'm sorry for him, and if he was shaved
he
wouldn't be so bad to look at, but . . . Oh them Beetons, how
shameful
they've treated him! I know Beeton's wearing his shirt on his back
to-day
just as well as if I'd aired it. To-morrow, I'll see . . . I wonder if he
has
much of his own. It might be worth more than the bar--I wouldn't
have
to do any work--and just as respectable as if no one knew.'

Dick was not grateful to Bessie for her parting gift. He was acutely
conscious of it in the nape of his neck throughout the night, but it
seemed,
among very many other things, to enforce the wisdom of getting
shaved.

He was shaved accordingly in the morning, and felt the better for
it. A
fresh suit of clothes, white linen, and the knowledge that some one
in the
world said that she took an interest in his personal appearance
made him
carry himself almost upright; for the brain was relieved for a while
from
thinking of Maisie, who, under other circumstances, might have
given
that kiss and a million others.

'Let us consider,' said he, after lunch. 'The girl can't care, and it's a
toss-up whether she comes again or not, but if money can buy her
to look
after me she shall be bought. Nobody else in the world would take
the
trouble, and I can make it worth her while. She's a child of the
gutter
holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she shall have everything she
wants
if she'll only come and talk and look after me.' He rubbed his
newly
shorn chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of her
not
coming. 'I suppose I did look rather a sweep,' he went on. 'I had no
reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes, but
it
didn't matter. It would be cruel if she didn't come. She must.
Maisie
came once, and that was enough for her. She was quite right. She
had
something to work for. This creature has only beer-handles to pull,
unless she has deluded some young man into keeping company
with her.

Fancy being cheated for the sake of a counter-jumper! We're
falling
pretty low.'

Something cried aloud within him:--This will hurt more than
anything
that has gone before. It will recall and remind and suggest and
tantalise,
and in the end drive you mad.

'I know it, I know it!' Dick cried, clenching his hands despairingly;
'but,
good heavens! is a poor blind beggar never to get anything out of
his life
except three meals a day and a greasy waistcoat? I wish she'd
come.'

Early in the afternoon time she came, because there was no young
man in
her life just then, and she thought of material advantages which
would
allow her to be idle for the rest of her days.

'I shouldn't have known you,' she said approvingly. 'You look as
you
used to look--a gentleman that was proud of himself.'

'Don't you think I deserve another kiss, then?' said Dick, flushing a
little.

'Maybe--but you won't get it yet. Sit down and let's see what I can
do for
you. I'm certain sure Mr. Beeton cheats you, now that you can't go
through the housekeeping books every month. Isn't that true?'

'You'd better come and housekeep for me then, Bessie.'

'Couldn't do it in these chambers--you know that as well as I do.'

'I know, but we might go somewhere else, if you thought it worth
your
while.'

'I'd try to look after you, anyhow; but I shouldn't care to have to
work
for both of us.' This was tentative.

Dick laughed.

'Do you remember where I used to keep my bank-book?' said he.
'Torp
took it to be balanced just before he went away. Look and see.'

'It was generally under the tobacco-jar. Ah!'

'Well?'

'Oh! Four thousand two hundred and ten pounds nine shillings and
a
penny! Oh my!'

'You can have the penny. That's not bad for one year's work. Is that
and
a hundred and twenty pounds a year good enough?'

The idleness and the pretty clothes were almost within her reach
now,
but she must, by being housewifely, show that she deserved them.

'Yes; but you'd have to move, and if we took an inventory, I think
we'd
find that Mr. Beeton has been prigging little things out of the
rooms here
and there. They don't look as full as they used.'

'Never mind, we'll let him have them. The only thing I'm
particularly
anxious to take away is that picture I used you for--when you used
to
swear at me. We'll pull out of this place, Bess, and get away as far
as
ever we can.'

'Oh yes,' she said uneasily.

'I don't know where I can go to get away from myself, but I'll try,
and
you shall have all the pretty frocks that you care for. You'll like
that.

Give me that kiss now, Bess. Ye gods! it's good to put one's arm
round a
woman's waist again.'

Then came the fulfilment of the prophecy within the brain. If his
arm
were thus round Maisie's waist and a kiss had just been given and
taken
between them,--why then . . . He pressed the girl more closely to
himself
because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain
a little
accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired
the
solace of her company--and certainly he would relapse into his
original
slough if she withdrew it--he would not be more than just a little
vexed.

It would be delightful at least to see what would happen, and by
her
teachings it was good for a man to stand in certain awe of his
companion.

She laughed nervously, and slipped out of his reach.

'I shouldn't worrit about that picture if I was you,' she began, in the
hope
of turning his attention.

'It's at the back of all my canvases somewhere. Find it, Bess; you
know it
as well as I do.'

'I know--but--'

'But what? You've wit enough to manage the sale of it to a dealer.

Women haggle much better than men. It might be a matter of eight
or
nine hundred pounds to--to us. I simply didn't like to think about it
for a
long time. It was mixed up with my life so.--But we'll cover up our
tracks
and get rid of everything, eh? Make a fresh start from the
beginning,
Bess.'

Then she began to repent very much indeed, because she knew the
value
of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was
overestimating
the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly
particular
about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles
when she
tries to explain the breakage of a pipe.

'I'm very sorry, but you remember I was--I was angry with you
before
Mr. Torpenhow went away?'

'You were very angry, child; and on my word I think you had some
right
to be.'

'Then I--but aren't you sure Mr. Torpenhow didn't tell you?'

'Tell me what? Good gracious, what are you making such a fuss
about
when you might just as well be giving me another kiss?'

He was beginning to learn, not for the first time in his experience,
that
kissing is a cumulative poison. The more you get of it, the more
you want.

Bessie gave the kiss promptly, whispering, as she did so, 'I was so
angry I
rubbed out that picture with the turpentine. You aren't angry, are
you?'

'What? Say that again.' The man's hand had closed on her wrist.

'I rubbed it out with turps and the knife,' faltered Bessie. 'I thought
you'd only have to do it over again. You did do it over again, didn't
you?
Oh, let go of my wrist; you're hurting me.'

'Isn't there anything left of the thing?'

'N'nothing that looks like anything. I'm sorry--I didn't know you'd
take
on about it; I only meant to do it in fun. You aren't going to hit
me?'

'Hit you! No! Let's think.'

He did not relax his hold upon her wrist but stood staring at the
carpet.

Then he shook his head as a young steer shakes it when the lash of
the
stock-whip cross his nose warns him back to the path on to the
shambles
that he would escape. For weeks he had forced himself not to think
of the
Melancolia, because she was a part of his dead life. With Bessie's
return
and certain new prospects that had developed themselves, the
Melancolia--lovelier in his imagination than she had ever been on
canvas--reappeared. By her aid he might have procured mor money
wherewith to amuse Bess and to forget Maisie, as well as another
taste of
an almost forgotten success. Now, thanks to a vicious little
housemaid's
folly, there was nothing to look for--not even the hope that he
might some
day take an abiding interest in the housemaid. Worst of all, he had
been
made to appear ridiculous in Maisie's eyes. A woman will forgive
the
man who has ruined her life's work so long as he gives her love; a
man
may forgive those who ruin the love of his life, but he will never
forgive
the destruction of his work.

'Tck--tck--tck,' said Dick between his teeth, and then laughed
softly. 'It's
an omen, Bessie, and--a good many things considered, it serves me
right
for doing what I have done. By Jove! that accounts for Maisie's
running
away. She must have thought me perfectly mad--small blame to
her! The
whole picture ruined, isn't it so? What made you do it?'

'Because I was that angry. I'm not angry now--I'm awful sorry.'

'I wonder.--It doesn't matter, anyhow. I'm to blame for making the
mistake.'

'What mistake?'

'Something you wouldn't understand, dear. Great heavens! to think
that
a little piece of dirt like you could throw me out of stride!' Dick
was
talking to himself as Bessie tried to shake off his grip on her wrist.

'I ain't a piece of dirt, and you shouldn't call me so! I did it 'cause I
hated
you, and I'm only sorry now 'cause you're--'cause you're----'

'Exactly--because I'm blind. There's noting like tact in little things.'

Bessie began to sob. She did not like being shackled against her
will; she
was afraid of the blind face and the look upon it, and was sorry too
that
her great revenge had only made Dick laugh.

'Don't cry,' he said, and took her into his arms. 'You only did what
you
thought right.'

'I--I ain't a little piece of dirt, and if you say that I'll never come to
you
again.'

'You don't know what you've done to me. I'm not angry--indeed,
I'm not.

Be quiet for a minute.'

Bessie remained in his arms shrinking. Dick's first thought was
connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as white-hot iron hurts an
open
sore.

Not for nothing is a man permitted to ally himself to the wrong
woman.

The first pang--the first sense of things lost is but the prelude to the
play,
for the very just Providence who delights in causing pain has
decreed
that the agony shall return, and that in the midst of keenest
pleasure.

They know this pain equally who have forsaken or been forsaken
by the
love of their life, and in their new wives' arms are compelled to
realise it.

It is better to remain alone and suffer only the misery of being
alone, so
long as it is possible to find distraction in daily work. When that
resource
goes the man is to be pitied and left alone.

These things and some others Dick considered while he was
holding
Bessie to his heart.

'Though you mayn't know it,' he said, raising his head, 'the Lord is
a just
and a terrible God, Bess; with a very strong sense of humour. It
serves
me right--how it serves me right! Torp could understand it if he
were
here; he must have suffered something at your hands, child, but
only for
a minute or so. I saved him. Set that to my credit, some one.'

'Let me go,' said Bess, her face darkening. 'Let me go.'

'All in good time. Did you ever attend Sunday school?'

'Never. Let me go, I tell you; you're making fun of me.'

'Indeed, I'm not. I'm making fun of myself. . . . Thus. "He saved
others,
himself he cannot save." It isn't exactly a school-board text.' He
released
her wrist, but since he was between her and the door, she could not
escape. 'What an enormous amount of mischief one little woman
can do!'

'I'm sorry; I'm awful sorry about the picture.'

'I'm not. I'm grateful to you for spoiling it. . . . What were we
talking
about before you mentioned the thing?'

'About getting away--and money. Me and you going away.'

'Of course. We will get away--that is to say, I will.'

'And me?'

'You shall have fifty whole pounds for spoiling a picture.'

'Then you won't----?'

'I'm afraid not, dear. Think of fifty pounds for pretty things all to
yourself.'

'You said you couldn't do anything without me.'

'That was true a little while ago. I'm better now, thank you. Get me
my
hat.'

'S'pose I don't?'

'Beeton will, and you'll lose fifty pounds. That's all. Get it.'

Bessie cursed under her breath. She had pitied the man sincerely,
had
kissed him with almost equal sincerity, for he was not
unhandsome; it
pleased her to be in a way and for a time his protector, and above
all
there were four thousand pounds to be handled by some one. Now
through a slip of the tongue and a little feminine desire to give a
little, not
too much, pain she had lost the money, the blessed idleness and
the pretty
things, the companionship, and the chance of looking outwardly as
respectable as a real lady.

'Now fill me a pipe. Tobacco doesn't taste, but it doesn't matter,
and I'll
think things out. What's the day of the week, Bess?'

'Tuesday.'

'Then Thursday's mail-day. What a fool--what a blind fool I have
been!
Twenty-two pounds covers my passage home again. Allow ten for
additional expenses. We must put up at Madam Binat's for old
time's
sake. Thirty-two pounds altogether. Add a hundred for the cost of
the
last trip--Gad, won't Torp stare to see me!--a hundred and
thirty-two
leaves seventy-eight for baksheesh--I shall need it--and to play
with.

What are you crying for, Bess? It wasn't your fault, child; it was
mine
altogether. Oh, you funny little opossum, mop your eyes and take
me out!
I want the pass-book and the check-book. Stop a minute. Four
thousand
pounds at four per cent--that's safe interest--means a hundred and
sixty
pounds a year; one hundred and twenty pounds a hear--also safe--is
two
eighty, and two hundred and eighty pounds added to three hundred
a
year means gilded luxury for a single woman. Bess, we'll go to the
bank.'

Richer by two hundred and ten pounds stored in his money-belt,
Dick
caused Bessie, now thoroughly bewildered, to hurry from the bank
to the
P. and O. offices, where he explained things tersely.

'Port Said, single first; cabin as close to the baggage-hatch as
possible.

What ship's going?'

'The Colgong,' said the clerk.

'She's a wet little hooker. Is it Tilbury and a tender, or Galleons
and the
docks?'

'Galleons. Twelve-forty, Thursday.'

'Thanks. Change, please. I can't see very well--will you count it
into my
hand?'

'If they all took their passages like that instead of talking about
their
trunks, life would be worth something,' said the clerk to his
neighbour,
who was trying to explain to a harassed mother of many that
condensed
milk is just as good for babes at sea as daily dairy. Being nineteen
and
unmarried, he spoke with conviction.

'We are now,' quoth Dick, as they returned to the studio, patting
the
place where his money-belt covered ticket and money, 'beyond the
reach
of man, or devil, or woman--which is much more important. I've
had
three little affairs to carry through before Thursday, but I needn't
ask
you to help, Bess. Come here on Thursday morning at nine. We'll
breakfast, and you shall take me down to Galleons Station.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Going away, of course. What should I stay for?'

'But you can't look after yourself?'

'I can do anything. I didn't realise it before, but I can. I've done a
great
deal already. Resolution shall be treated to one kiss if Bessie
doesn't
object.' Strangely enough, Bessie objected and Dick laughed. 'I
suppose
you're right. Well, come at nine the day after to-morrow and you'll
get
your money.'

'Shall I sure?'

'I don't bilk, and you won't know whether I do or not unless you
come.

Oh, but it's long and long to wait! Good-bye, Bessie,--send Beeton
here as
you go out.'

The housekeeper came.

'What are all the fittings of my rooms worth?' said Dick,
imperiously.

''Tisn't for me to say, sir. Some things is very pretty and some is
wore out
dreadful.'

'I'm insured for two hundred and seventy.'

'Insurance policies is no criterion, though I don't say----'

'Oh, damn your longwindedness! You've made your pickings out of
me
and the other tenants. Why, you talked of retiring and buying a
public-house the other day. Give a straight answer to a straight
question.'

'Fifty,' said Mr. Beeton, without a moment's hesitation.

'Double it; or I'll break up half my sticks and burn the rest.'

He felt his way to a bookstand that supported a pile of
sketch-books, and
wrenched out one of the mahogany pillars.

'That's sinful, sir,' said the housekeeper, alarmed.

'It's my own. One hundred or----'

'One hundred it is. It'll cost me three and six to get that there
pilaster
mended.'

'I thought so. What an out and out swindler you must have been to
spring
that price at once!'

'I hope I've done nothing to dissatisfy any of the tenants, least of all
you,
sir.'

'Never mind that. Get me the money to-morrow, and see that all
my
clothes are packed in the little brown bullock-trunk. I'm going.'

'But the quarter's notice?'

'I'll pay forfeit. Look after the packing and leave me alone.'

Mr. Beeton discussed this new departure with his wife, who
decided that
Bessie was at the bottom of it all. Her husband took a more
charitable
view.

'It's very sudden--but then he was always sudden in his ways.
Listen to
him now!'

There was a sound of chanting from Dick's room.

'We'll never come back any more, boys,
We'll never come back no more;
We'll go to the deuce on any excuse,
And never come back no more!
Oh say we're afloat or ashore, boys,
Oh say we're afloat or ashore;
But we'll never come back any more, boys,
We'll never come back no more!'

'Mr. Beeton! Mr. Beeton! Where the deuce is my pistol?'

'Quick, he's going to shoot himself--'avin' gone mad!' said Mrs.
Beeton.

Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time
before the
latter, threshing up and down his bedroom, could realise the
intention of
the promises to 'find everything to-morrow, sir.'

'Oh, you copper-nosed old fool--you impotent Academician!' he
shouted
at last. 'Do you suppose I want to shoot myself? Take the pistol in
your
silly shaking hand then. If you touch it, it will go off, because it's
loaded.

It's among my campaign-kit somewhere--in the parcel at the
bottom of
the trunk.'

Long ago Dick had carefully possessed himself of a forty-pound
weight
field-equipment constructed by the knowledge of his own
experience. It
was this put-away treasure that he was trying to find and rehandle.
Mr.

Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the
package,
and Dick drove his hand among the khaki coat and breeches, the
blue
cloth leg-bands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of
swan-neck spurs. Under these and the water-bottle lay a
sketch-book and
a pigskin case of stationery.

'These we don't want; you can have them, Mr. Beeton. Everything
else
I'll keep. Pack 'em on the top right-hand side of my trunk. When
you've
done that come into the studio with your wife. I want you both.
Wait a
minute; get me a pen and a sheet of notepaper.'

It is not an easy thing to write when you cannot see, and Dick had
particular reasons for wishing that his work should be clear. So he
began, following his right hand with his left: '"The badness of this
writing is because I am blind and cannot see my pen."
H'mph!--even a
lawyer can't mistake that. It must be signed, I suppose, but it
needn't be
witnessed. Now an inch lower--why did I never learn to use a
type-writer?--"This is the last will and testament of me, Richard
Heldar.

I am in sound bodily and mental health, and there is no previous
will to
revoke."--That's all right. Damn the pen! Whereabouts on the paper
was
I?--"I leave everything that I possess in the world, including four
thousand pounds, and two thousand seven hundred and twenty
eight
pounds held for me"--oh, I can't get this straight.' He tore off half
the
sheet and began again with the caution about the handwriting.
Then: 'I
leave all the money I possess in the world to'--here followed
Maisie's
name, and the names of the two banks that held the money.

'It mayn't be quite regular, but no one has a shadow of a right to
dispute
it, and I've given Maisie's address. Come in, Mr. Beeton. This is
my
signature; I want you and your wife to witness it. Thanks.
To-morrow
you must take me to the landlord and I'll pay forfeit for leaving
without
notice, and I'll lodge this paper with him in case anything happens
while
I'm away. Now we're going to light up the studio stove. Stay with
me,
and give me my papers as I want 'em.'

No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year's
accumulation of
bills, letters, and dockets can make. Dick stuffed into the stove
every
document in the studio--saving only three unopened letters;
destroyed
sketch-books, rough note-books, new and half-finished canvases
alike.

'What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long
enough in
one place, to be sure,' said Mr. Beeton, at last.

'He does. Is there anything more left?' Dick felt round the walls.

'Not a thing, and the stove's nigh red-hot.'

'Excellent, and you've lost about a thousand pounds' worth of
sketches.

Ho! ho! Quite a thousand pounds' worth, if I can remember what I
used
to be.'

'Yes, sir,' politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone
mad,
otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture
for a
song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much
better out
of the way.

There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that
could not
be accomplished to to-morrow. Dick groped about the floor
picking up
the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there
remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk,
and
sat down before the stove till the fire died out and the contracting
iron
cracked in the silence of the night.

CHAPTER XV

With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander;
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.

With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney--
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end,
Methinks it is no journey.
-- Tom a' Bedlam's Song-

'GOOD-BYE, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here's a hundred--all that
I got
for my furniture from Beeton. That will keep you in pretty frocks
for
some time. You've been a good little girl, all things considered, but
you've
given me and Torpenhow a fair amount of trouble.'

'Give Mr. Torpenhow my love if you see him, won't you?'

'Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gang-plank and into the
cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the maid is--and I am free, I
mean.'

'Who'll look after you on this ship?'

'The head-steward, if there's any use in money. The doctor when
we
come to Port Said, if I know anything of P. and O. doctors. After
that, the
Lord will provide, as He used to do.'

Bess found Dick his cabin in the wild turmoil of a ship full of
leavetakers
and weeping relatives. Then he kissed her, and laid himself down
in his
bunk until the decks should be clear. He who had taken so long to
move
about his own darkened rooms well understood the geography of a
ship,
and the necessity of seeing to his own comforts was as wine to
him.

Before the screw began to thrash the ship along the Docks he had
been
introduced to the head-steward, had royally tipped him, secured a
good
place at table, opened out his baggage, and settled himself down
with joy
in the cabin. It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved
about,
for he knew everything so well. Then God was very kind: a deep
sleep of
weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of Maisie,
and
he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the Thames and
was
lifting to the pulse of the Channel.

The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very
familiar
sound in the next cabin roused him to his new inheritance.

'Oh, it's good to be alive again!' He yawned, stretched himself
vigorously,
and went on deck to be told that they were almost abreast of the
lights of
Brighton. This is no more open water than Trafalgal Square is a
common; the free levels begin at Ushant; but none the less Dick
could feel
the healing of the sea at work upon him already. A boisterous little
cross-swell swung the steamer disrespectfully by the nose; and one
wave
breaking far aft spattered the quarterdeck and the pile of new
deck-chairs. He heard the foam fall with the clash of broken glass,
was
stung in the face by a cupful, and sniffing luxuriously, felt his way
to the
smoking-room by the wheel. There a strong b reeze found him,
blew his
cap off and left him bareheaded in the doorway, and the
smoking-room
steward, understanding that he was a voyager of experience, said
that
the weather would be stiff in the chops off the Channel and more
than
half a gale in the Bay. These things fell as they were foretold, and
Dick
enjoyed himself to the utmost. It is allowable and even necessary
at sea to
lay firm hold upon tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from
place to
place. On land the man who feels with his hands is patently blind.
At sea
even a blind man who is not sea-sick can jest with the doctor over
the
weakness of his fellows. Dick told the doctor many tales--and
these are
coin of more value than silver if properly handled--smoked with
him till
unholy hours of the night, and so won his short-lived regard that he
promised Dick a few hours of his time when they came to Port
Said.

And the sea roared or was still as the winds blew, and the engines
sang
their song day and night, and the sun grew stronger day by day, and
Tom
the Lascar barber shaved Dick of a morning under the opened
hatch-grating where the cool winds blew, and the awnings were
spread
and the passengers made merry, and at last they came to Port Said.

'Take me,' said Dick, to the doctor, 'to Madame Binat's--if you
know
where that is.'

'Whew!' said the doctor, 'I do. There's not much to choose between
'em;
but I suppose you're aware that that's one of the worst houses in the
place. They'll rob you to begin with, and knife you later.'

'Not they. Take me there, and I can look after myself.'

So he was brought to Madame Binat's and filled his nostrils with
the
well-remembered smell of the East, that runs without a change
from the
Canal head to Hong-Kong, and his mouth with the villainous
Lingua
Franca of the Levant. The heat smote him between the
shoulder-blades
with the buffet of an old friend, his feet slipped on the sand, and
his
coat-sleeve was warm as new-baked bread when he lifted it to his
nose.

Madame Binat smiled with the smile that knows no astonishment
when
Dick entered the drinking-shop which was one source of her gains.
But
for a little accident of complete darkness he could hardly realise
that he
had ever quitted the old life that hummed in his ears. Somebody
opened a
bottle of peculiarly strong Schiedam. The smell reminded Dick of
Monsieur Binat, who, by the way, had spoken of art and
degradation.

Binat was dead; Madame said as much when the doctor departed,
scandalised, so far as a ship's doctor can be, at the warmth of
Dick's
reception. Dick was delighted at it. 'They remember me here after
a
year. They have forgotten me across the water by this time.
Madame, I
want a long talk with you when you're at liberty. It is good to be
back
again.'

In the evening she set an iron-topped caf‚-table out on the sands,
and
Dick and she sat by it, while the house behind them filled with
riot,
merriment, oaths, and threats. The stars came out and the lights of
the
shipping in the harbour twinkled by the head of the Canal.

'Yes. The war is good for trade, my friend; but what dost thou do
here?
We have not forgotten thee.'

'I was over there in England and I went blind.'

'But there was the glory first. We heard of it here, even here--I and
Binat; and thou hast used the head of Yellow 'Tina--she is still
alive--so
often and so well that 'Tina laughed when the papers arrived by the
mail-boats. It was always something that we here could recognise
in the
paintings. And then there was always the glory and the money for
thee.'

'I am not poor--I shall pay you well.'

'Not to me. Thou hast paid for everything.' Under her breath, 'Mon
Dieu,
to be blind and so young! What horror!'

Dick could not see her face with the pity on it, or his own with the
discoloured hair at the temples. He did not feel the need of pity; he
was
too anxious to get to the front once more, and explained his desire.

'And where? The Canal is full of the English ships. Sometimes
they fire
as they used to do when the war was here--ten years ago. Beyond
Cairo
there is fighting, but how canst thou go there without a
correspondent's
passport? And in the desert there is always fighting, but that is
impossible also,' said she.

'I must go to Suakin.' He knew, thanks to Alf's readings, that
Torpenhow
was at work with the column that was protecting the construction
of the
Suakin-Berber line. P. and O. steamers do not touch at that port,
and,
besides, Madame Binat knew everybody whose help or advice was
worth
anything. They were not respectable folk, but they could cause
things to
be accomplished, which is much more important when there is
work
toward.

'But at Suakin they are always fighting. That desert breeds men
always--and always more men. And they are so bold! Why to
Suakin?'

'My friend is there.

'Thy friend! Chtt! Thy friend is death, then.'

Madame Binat dropped a fat arm on the table-top, filled Dick's
glass
anew, and looked at him closely under the stars. There was no
need that
he should bow his head in assent and say--
'No. He is a man, but--if it should arrive . . . blamest thou?'

'I blame?' she laughed shrilly. 'Who am I that I should blame any
one--except those who try to cheat me over their consommations.
But it is
very terrible.'

'I must go to Suakin. Think for me. A great deal has changed
within the
year, and the men I knew are not here. The Egyptian lighthouse
steamer
goes down the Canal to Suakin--and the post-boats-- But even
then----'

'Do not think any longer. I know, and it is for me to think. Thou
shalt
go--thou shalt go and see thy friend. Be wise. Sit here until the
house is a
little quiet--I must attend to my guests--and afterwards go to bed.
Thou
shalt go, in truth, thou shalt go.'

'To-morrow?'

'As soon as may be.' She was talking as though he were a child.

He sat at the table listening to the voices in the harbour and the
streets,
and wondering how soon the end would come, till Madame Binat
carried
him off to bed and ordered him to sleep. The house shouted and
sang and
danced and revelled, Madame Binat moving through it with one
eye on
the liquor payments and the girls and the other on Dick's interests.
To
this latter end she smiled upon scowling and furtive Turkish
officers of
fellaheen regiments, and more than kind to camel agents of no
nationality
whatever.

In the early morning, being then appropriately dressed in a flaming
red
silk ball-dress, with a front of tarnished gold embroidery and a
necklace
of plate-glass diamonds, she made chocolate and carried it in to
Dick.

'It is only I, and I am of discreet age, eh? Drink and eat the roll too.
Thus
in France mothers bring their sons, when those behave wisely, the
morning chocolate.' She sat down on the side of the bed
whispering:--
'It is all arranged. Thou wilt go by the lighthouse boat. That is a
bribe of
ten pounds English. The captain is never paid by the Government.
The
boat comes to Suakin in four days. There will go with thee George,
a
Greek muleteer. Another bribe of ten pounds. I will pay; they must
not
know of thy money. George will go with thee as far as he goes
with his
mules. Then he comes back to me, for his well-beloved is here,
and if I do
not receive a telegram from Suakin saying that thou art well, the
girl
answers for George.'

'Thank you.' He reached out sleepily for the cup. 'You are much too
kind,
Madame.'

'If there were anything that I might do I would say, stay here and be
wise; but I do not think that would be best for thee.' She looked at
her
liquor-stained dress with a sad smile. 'Nay, thou shalt go, in truth,
thou
shalt go. It is best so. My boy, it is best so.'

She stooped and kissed Dick between the eyes. 'That is for
good-morning,' she said, going away. 'When thou art dressed we
will
speak to George and make everything ready. But first we must
open the
little trunk. Give me the keys.'

'The amount of kissing lately has been simply scandalous. I shall
expect
Torp to kiss me next. He is more likely to swear at me for getting
in his
way, though. Well, it won't last long.--Ohe, Madame, help me to
my
toilette of the guillotine! There will be no chance of dressing
properly out
yonder.'

He was rummaging among his new campaign-kit, and rowelling
his
hands with the spurs. There are two says of wearing well-oiled
ankle-jacks, spotless blue bands, khaki coat and breeches, and a
perfectly
pipeclayed helmet. The right way is the way of the untired man,
master
of himself, setting out upon an expedition, well pleased.

'Everything must be very correct,' Dick explained. 'It will become
dirty
afterwards, but now it is good to feel well dressed. Is everything as
it
should be?'

He patted the revolver neatly hidden under the fulness of the
blouse on
the right hip and fingered his collar.

'I can do no more,' Madame said, between laughing and crying.
'Look at
thyself--but I forgot.'

'I am very content.' He stroked the creaseless spirals of his
leggings.

'Now let us go and see the captain and George and the lighthouse
boat.

Be quick, Madame.'

'But thou canst not be seen by the harbour walking with me in the
daylight. Figure to yourself if some English ladies----'

'There are no English ladies; and if there are, I have forgotten
them.

Take me there.'

In spite of this burning impatience it was nearly evening ere the
lighthouse boat began to move. Madame had said a great deal both
to
George and the captain touching the arrangements that were to be
made
for Dick's benefit. Very few men who had the honour of her
acquaintance cared to disregard Madame's advice. That sort of
contempt
might end in being knifed by a stranger in a gambling hell upon
surprisingly short provocation.

For six days--two of them were wasted in the crowded Canal--the
little
steamer worked her way to Suakin, where she was to pick up the
superintendent of the lighthouse; and Dick made it his business to
propitiate George, who was distracted with fears for the safety of
his
light-of-love and half inclined to make Dick responsible for his
own
discomfort. When they arrived George took him under his wing,
and
together they entered the red-hot seaport, encumbered with the
material
and wastage of the Suakin-Berger line, from locomotives in
disconsolate
fragments to mounds of chairs and pot-sleepers.

'If you keep with me,' said George, 'nobody will ask for passports
or
what you do. They are all very busy.'

'Yes; but I should like to hear some of the Englishmen talk. They
might
remember me. I was known here a long time ago--when I was
some one
indeed.'

'A long time ago is a very long time ago here. The graveyards are
full.

Now listen. This new railway runs out so far as
Tanai-el-Hassan--that is
seven miles. Then there is a camp. They say that beyond
Tanai-el-Hassan
the English troops go forward, and everything that they require
will be
brought to them by this line.'

'Ah! Base camp. I see. That's a better business than fighting
Fuzzies in
the open.'

'For this reason even the mules to up in the iron-train.'

'Iron what?'

'It is all covered with iron, because it is still being shot at.'

'An armoured train. Better and better! Go on, faithful George.'

'And I go up with my mules to-night. Only those who particularly
require to go to the camp go out with the train. They begin to shoot
not
far from the city.'

'The dears--they always used to!' Dick snuffed the smell of parched
dust,
heated iron, and flaking paint with delight. Certainly the old life
was
welcoming him back most generously.

'When I have got my mules together I go up to-night, but you must
first
send a telegram of Port Said, declaring that I have done you no
harm.'

'Madame has you well in hand. Would you stick a knife into me if
you
had the chance?'

'I have no chance,' said the Greek. 'She is there with that woman.'

'I see. It's a bad thing to be divided between love of woman and the
chance of loot. I sympathise with you, George.'

They went to the telegraph-office unquestioned, for all the world
was
desperately busy and had scarcely time to turn its head, and Suakin
was
the last place under sky that would be chosen for holiday-ground.
On
their return the voice of an English subaltern asked Dick what he
was
doing. The blue goggles were over his eyes and he walked with his
hand
on George's elbow as he replied--
'Egyptian Government--mules. My orders are to give them over to
the A.

C. G. at Tanai-el-Hassan. Any occasion to show my papers?'

'Oh, certainly not. I beg your pardon. I'd no right to ask, but not
seeing
your face before I----'

'I go out in the train to-night, I suppose,' said Dick, boldly. 'There
will be
no difficulty in loading up the mules, will there?'

'You can see the horse-platforms from here. You must have them
loaded
up early.' The young man went away wondering what sort of
broken-down waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and
consorted with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an
English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses relish when
one plays
it from the utter dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways,
thinking
and eternally thinking of what might have been if things had fallen
out
otherwise, and all had been as it was not.

George shared his meal with Dick and went off to the mule-lines.
His
charge sat alone in a shed with his face in his hands. Before his
tight-shut
eyes danced the face of Maisie, laughing, with parted lips. There
was a
great bustle and clamour about him. He grew afraid and almost
called
for George.

'I say, have you got your mules ready?' It was the voice of the
subaltern
over his shoulder.

'My man's looking after them. The--the fact is I've a touch of
ophthalmia
and can't see very well.

'By Jove! that's bad. You ought to lie up in hospital for a while. I've
had
a turn of it myself. It's as bad as being blind.'

'So I find it. When does this armoured train go?'

'At six o'clock. It takes an hour to cover the seven miles.'

'Are the Fuzzies on the rampage--eh?'

'About three nights a week. Fact is I'm in acting command of the
night-train. It generally runs back empty to Tanai for the night.'

'Big camp at Tanai, I suppose?'

'Pretty big. It has to feed our desert-column somehow.'

'Is that far off?'

'Between thirty and forty miles--in an infernal thirsty country.'

'Is the country quiet between Tanai and our men?'

'More or less. I shouldn't care to cross it alone, or with a subaltern's
command for the matter of that, but the scouts get through it in
some
extraordinary fashion.'

'They always did.'

'Have you been here before, then?'

'I was through most of the trouble when it first broke out.'

'In the service and cashiered,' was the subaltern's first thought, so
he
refrained from putting any questions.

'There's you man coming up with the mules. It seems rather
queer----'

'That I should be mule-leading?' said Dick.

'I didn't mean to say so, but it is. Forgive me--it's beastly
impertinence I
know, but you speak like a man who has been at a public school.
There's
no mistaking the tone.'

'I am a public school man.'

'I thought so. I say, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're a
little
down on your luck, aren't you? I saw you sitting with your head in
your
hands, and that's why I spoke.'

'Thanks. I am about as thoroughly and completely broke as a man
need
be.'

'Suppose--I mean I'm a public school man myself. Couldn't I
perhaps--take it as a loan y'know and----'

'You're much too good, but on my honour I've as much money as I
want.

. . . I tell you what you could do for me, though, and put me under
an
everlasting obligation. Let me come into the bogie truck of the
train.

There is a fore-truck, isn't there?'

'Yes. How d'you know?'

'I've been in an armoured train before. Only let me see--hear some
of the
fun I mean, and I'll be grateful. I go at my own risk as a
non-combatant.'

The young man thought for a minute. 'All right,' he said. 'We're
supposed to be an empty train, and there's no one to blow me up at
the
other end.'

George and a horde of yelling amateur assistants had loaded up the
mules, and the narrow-gauge armoured train, plated with
three-eighths
inch boiler-plate till it looked like one long coffin, stood ready to
start.

Two bogie trucks running before the locomotive were completely
covered
in with plating, except that the leading one was pierced in front for
the
muzzle of a machine-gun, and the second at either side for lateral
fire.

The trucks together made one long iron-vaulted chamber in which
a
score of artillerymen were rioting.

'Whitechapel--last train! Ah, I see yer kissin' in the first class
there!'

somebody shouted, just as Dick was clamouring into the forward
truck.

'Lordy! 'Ere's a real live passenger for the Kew, Tanai, Acton, and
Ealin' train. Echo, sir. Speshul edition! Star, sir.'--'Shall I get you a
foot-warmer?' said another.

'Thanks. I'll pay my footing,' said Dick, and relations of the most
amiable
were established ere silence came with the arrival of the subaltern,
and
the train jolted out over the rough track.

'This is an immense improvement on shooting the
unimpressionable
Fuzzy in the open,' said Dick, from his place in the corner.

'Oh, but he's still unimpressed. There he goes!' said the subaltern,
as a
bullet struck the outside of the truck. 'We always have at least one
demonstration against the night-train. Generally they attack the
rear-truck, where my junior commands. He gets all the fun of the
fair.'

'Not to-night though! Listen!' said Dick. A flight of heavy-handed
bullets
was succeeded by yelling and shouts. The children of the desert
valued
their nightly amusement, and the train was an excellent mark.

'Is it worth giving them half a hopper full?' the subaltern asked of
the
engine, which was driven by a Lieutenant of Sappers.

'I should think so! This is my section of the line. They'll be playing
old
Harry with my permanent way if we don't stop 'em.'

'Right O!'

'Hrrmph!' said the machine gun through all its five noses as the
subaltern
drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the floor
and the
smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate
firing at
the rear of the train, and return fire from the darkness without and
unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself on the floor, wild with
delight
at the sounds and the smells.

'God is very good--I never thought I'd hear this again. Give 'em
hell,
men. Oh, give 'em hell!' he cried.

The train stopped for some obstruction on the line ahead and a
party
went out to reconnoitre, but came back, cursing, for spades. The
children
of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and twenty
minutes
were lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress
recommenced, to be
varied with more shots, more shoutings, the steady clack and kick
of the
machine guns, and a final difficulty with a half-lifted rail ere the
train
came under the protection of the roaring camp at Tanai-el-Hassan.

'Now, you see why it takes an hour and a half to fetch her through,'
said
the subaltern, unshipping the cartridge-hopper above his pet gun.

'It was a lark, though. I only wish it had lasted twice as long. How
superb
it must have looked from outside!' said Dick, sighing regretfully.

'It palls after the first few nights. By the way, when you've settled
about
your mules, come and see what we can find to eat in my tent. I'm
Bennil
of the Gunners--in the artillery lines--and mind you don't fall over
my
tent-ropes in the dark.'

But it was all dark to Dick. He could only smell the camels, the
hay-bales,
the cooking, the smoky fires, and the tanned canvas of the tents as
he
stood, where he had dropped from the train, shouting for George.
There
was a sound of light-hearted kicking on the iron skin of the rear
trucks,
with squealing and grunting. George was unloading the mules.

The engine was blowing off steam nearly in Dick's ear; a cold
wind of the
desert danced between his legs; he was hungry, and felt tired and
dirty--so dirty that he tried to brush his coat with his hands. That
was a
hopeless job; he thrust his hands into his pockets and began to
count over
the many times that he had waited in strange or remote places for
trains
or camels, mules or horses, to carry him to his business. In those
days he
could see--few men more clearly--and the spectacle of an armed
camp at
dinner under the stare was an ever fresh pleasure to the eye. There
was
colour, light, and motion, without which no man has much
pleasure in
living. This night there remained for him only one more journey
through
the darkness that never lifts to tell a man how far he has travelled.
Then
he would grip Torpenhow's hand again--Torpenhow, who was
alive and
strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had once made the
reputation of a man called Dick Heldar: not in the least to be
confused
with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer to the
same
name. Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the old
life as
might be. Afterwards he would forget everything: Bessie, who had
wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; Beeton,
who lived
in a strange unreal city full of tin-tacks and gas-plugs and matters
that
no men needed; that irrational being who had offered him love and
loyalty for nothing, but had not signed her name; and most of all
Maisie,
who, from her own point of view, was undeniably right in all she
did, but
oh, at this distance, so tantalisingly fair.

George's hand on his arm pulled him back to the situation.

'And what now?' said George.

'Oh yes of course. What now? Take me to the camel-men. Take me
to
where the scouts sit when they come in from the desert. They sit
by their
camels, and the camels eat grain out of a black blanket held up at
the
corners, and the men eat by their side just like camels. Take me
there!'

The camp was rough and rutty, and Dick stumbled many times
over the
stumps of scrub. The scouts were sitting by their beasts, as Dick
knew
they would. The light of the dung-fires flickered on their bearded
faces,
and the camels bubbled and mumbled beside them at rest. It was
no part
of Dick's policy to go into the desert with a convoy of supplies.
That
would lead to impertinent questions, and since a blind
non-combatant is
not needed at the front, he would probably be forced to return to
Suakin.

He must go up alone, and go immediately.

'Now for one last bluff--the biggest of all,' he said. 'Peace be with
you,
brethren!' The watchful George steered him to the circle of the
nearest
fire. The heads of the camel-sheiks bowed gravely, and the camels,
scenting a European, looked sideways curiously like brooding
hens, half
ready to get to their feet.

'A beast and a driver to go to the fighting line to-night,' said Dick.

'A Mulaid?' said a voice, scornfully naming the best baggage-breed
that
he knew.

'A Bisharin,' returned Dick, with perfect gravity. 'A Bisharin
without
saddle-galls. Therefore no charge of thine, shock-head.'

Two or three minutes passed. Then--
'We be knee-haltered for the night. There is no going out from the
camp.'

'Not for money?'

'H'm! Ah! English money?'

Another depressing interval of silence.

'How much?'

'Twenty-five pounds English paid into the hand of the driver at my
journey's end, and as much more into the hand of the camel-sheik
here,
to be paid when the driver returns.'

This was royal payment, and the sheik, who knew that he would
get his
commission on this deposit, stirred in Dick's behalf.

'For scarcely one night's journey--fifty pounds. Land and wells and
good
trees and wives to make a man content for the rest of his days.
Who
speaks?' said Dick.

'I,' said a voice. 'I will go--but there is no going from the camp.'

'Fool! I know that a camel can break his knee-halter, and the
sentries do
not fire if one goes in chase. Twenty-five pounds and another
twenty-five
pounds. But the beast must be a good Bisharin; I will take no
baggage-camel.'

Then the bargaining began, and at the end of half an hour the first
deposit was paid over to the sheik, who talked in low tones to the
driver.

Dick heard the latter say: 'A little way out only. Any baggage-beast
will
serve. Am I a fool to waste my cattle for a blind man?'

'And though I cannot see'--Dick lifted his voice a little--'yet I carry
that
which has six eyes, and the driver will sit before me. If we do not
reach
the English troops in the dawn he will be dead.'

'But where, in God's name, are the troops?'

'Unless thou knowest let another man ride. Dost thou know?
Remember
it will be life or death to thee.'

'I know,' said the driver, sullenly. 'Stand back from my beast. I am
going
to slip him.'

'Not so swiftly. George, hold the camel's head a moment. I want to
feel
his cheek.' The hands wandered over the hide till they found the
branded
half-circle that is the mark of the Biharin, the light-built
riding-camel.

'That is well. Cut this one loose. Remember no blessing of God
comes on
those who try to cheat the blind.'

The men chuckled by the fires at the camel-driver's discomfiture.
He had
intended to substitute a slow, saddle-galled baggage-colt.

'Stand back!' one shouted, lashing the Biharin under the belly with
a
quirt. Dick obeyed as soon as he felt the nose-string tighten in his
hand,--and a cry went up, 'Illaha! Aho! He is loose.'

With a roar and a grunt the Biharin rose to his feet and plunged
forward
toward the desert, his driver following with shouts and
lamentation.

George caught Dick's arm and hurried him stumbling and tripping
past a
disgusted sentry who was used to stampeding camels.

'What's the row now?' he cried.

'Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,' Dick answered,
after
the manner of a common soldier.

'Go on, and take care your throat's not cut out side--you and your
dromedary's.'

The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a
hillock,
and his driver had called him back and made him kneel down.

'Mount first,' said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and
gently
screwing the pistol muzzle into the small of his companion's back,
'Go on
in God's name, and swiftly. Good-bye, George. Remember me to
Madame, and have a good time with your girl. Get forward, child
of the
Pit!'

A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly
broken by
the creaking of the saddle and the soft pad of the tireless feet. Dick
adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace,
girthed
his belt tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was
conscious only of the sense of rapid progress.

'A good camel,' he said at last.

'He was never underfed. He is my own and clean bred,' the driver
replied.

'Go on.'

His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor
of his
thoughts was broken because he was very sleepy. In the half doze
in
seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett's.
He
had committed some crime as bad as Sabbath-breaking, and she
had
locked him up in his bedroom. But he could never repeat more
than the
first two lines of the hymn--

When Israel of the Lord believed
Out of the land of bondage came.

He said them over and over thousands of times. The driver turned
in the
saddle to see if there were any chance of capturing the revolver
and
ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the
butt, and
stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of
camel-thorn shouted as the camel toiled up rising ground. A shot
was
fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep.
Dick
could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to do
more
than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and
punching
the driver with the pistol.

'Is there a moon?' he asked drowsily.

'She is near her setting.'

'I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the
desert talk.'

The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of
wind. It
rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some distance away and ceased.
A
handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench
and
crumbled softly to the bottom.

'Go on. The night is very cold.'

Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour
before
the light lengthens itself into many eternities. It seemed to Dick
that he
had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything
at all
save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would finger
the
nailheads on the saddle-front and count them all carefully.
Centuries
later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his left and
allow
the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe distance of
London
he was watching himself thus employed,--watching critically. Yet
whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he might paint the
tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking moon, the black
shadow of a camel and the two bowed figures atop, that hand held
a
revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collar-bone.
Moreover,
he was in the dark, and could see no canvas of any kind whatever.

The driver grunted, and Dick was conscious of a change in the air.

'I smell the dawn,' he whispered.

'It is here, and yonder are the troops. Have I done well?'

The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down
wind
the pungent reek of camels in the square.

'Go on. We must get there swiftly. Go on.'

'They are moving in their camp. There is so much dust that I
cannot see
what they do.'

'Am I in better case? Go forward.'

They could hear the hum of voices ahead, the howling and the
bubbling
of the beasts and the hoarse cries of the soldiers girthing up for the
day.

Two or three shots were fired.

'Is that at us? Surely they can see that I am English,' Dick spoke
angrily.

'Nay, it is from the desert,' the driver answered, cowering in his
saddle.

'Go forward, my child! Well it is that the dawn did not uncover us
an
hour ago.'

The camel headed straight for the column and the shots behind
multiplied. The children of the desert had arranged that most
uncomfortable of surprises, a dawn attack for the English troops,
and
were getting their distance by snap-shots at the only moving object
without the square.

'What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!' said Dick. 'It's
"just
before the battle, mother." Oh, God has been most good to me!
Only'--the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an
instant--'Maisie . . .'

'Allahu! We are in,' said the man, as he drove into the rearguard
and the
camel knelt.

'Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What's the strength
of the
enemy behind that ridge? How did you get through?' asked a dozen
voices. For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt,
and
shouted from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice,
'Torpenhow! Ohe, Torp! Coo-ee, Tor-pen-how.'

A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe
moved
very swiftly towards that cry, as the rearguard, facing about, began
to
fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually the
scattered white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked
white
that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn before they turned
over
wave-like and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square
were
coughing and swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view,
and
they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded camel leaped to
its feet
and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one
had cut
its throat to prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a man
receiving his death-wound from a bullet; then a yell of agony and
redoubled firing.

There was no time to ask any questions.

'Get down, man! Get down behind the camel!'

'No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.' Dick turned his
face to
Torpenhow and raised his hand to set his helmet straight, but,
miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that
his hair
was gray on the temples, and that his face was the face of an old
man.

'Come down, you damned fool! Dickie, come off!'

And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways
from the
Bisharin's saddle at Torpenhow's feet. His luck had held to the last,
even
to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.

Torpenhow knelt under the lee of the camel, with Dick's body in
his
arms.

 The End

Volume VII  THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS

Preface

To THE ADDRESS OF

CAPTAIN J. MAFFLIN,

Duke of Derry's (Pink) Hussars.

DEAR MAPFLIN,-You will remember that I wrote this story as an
Awful Warning. None the less you have seen fit to disregard it and
have followed Gadsby's example-as I betted you would.  I
acknowledge that you paid the money at once, but you have
prejudiced the mind of Mrs. Mafflin against myself, for though I
am almost the only respectable friend of your bachelor days, she
has been darwaza band to me throughout the season.  Further, she
caused you to invite me to dinner at the Club, where you called me
"a wild ass of the desert," and went home at half-past ten, after
discoursing for twenty minutes on the responsibilities of
housekeeping.  You now drive a mail-phaeton and sit under a
Church of England clergyman.  I am not angry, Jack. It is your
kismet, as it was Gaddy's, and his kismet who can avoid? Do not
think that I am moved by a spirit of revenge as I write, thus
publicly, that you and you alone are responsible for this book. In
other and more expansive days, when you could look at a magnum
without flushing and at a cheroot without turning white, you
supplied me with most of the material. Take it back again-would
that I could have preserved your fetterless speech in the
telling-take it back, and by your slippered hearth read it to the late
Miss Deercourt. She will not be any the more willing to receive
my cards, but she will admire you immensely, and you, I feel sure,
will love me. You may even invite me to another very bad
dinner-at the Club, which, as you and your wife know, is a safe
neutral ground for the entertainment of wild asses. Then, my very
dear hypocrite, we shall be quits.

Yours always,

RUDYARD KIPLING.

P. S.-On second thoughts I should recommend you to keep the
book away from Mrs. Mafflin.

POOR DEAR MAMMA

The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, The deer to the wholesome
wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.
Gypsy Song.

SCENE. - Interior of Miss MINNIE THREEGAN'S Bedroom at
Simla. Miss THREEGAN, in window-seat, turning over a
drawerful of things.  Miss EMMA DEERCOURT, bosom - friend,
who has come to spend the day, sitting on the bed, manipulating
the bodice of a ballroom frock, and a bunch of artificial lilies of
the valley. Time, 5:30 P. M. on a hot May afternoon.

Miss DEERCOURT.  And he said: "I shall never forget this
dance," and, of course, I said: "Oh, how can you be so silly!"  Do
you think he meant any-thing, dear?

Miss THREEGAN.  (Extracting long lavender silk stocking from
the rubbish.) You know him better than I do.

Miss D.  Oh, do be sympathetic, Minnie!  I'm sure he does. At least
I would be sure ii he wasn't always riding with that odious Mrs.
Hagan.

Miss T.  I suppose so.  How does one manage to dance through
one's heels first? Look at this-isn't it shameful? (Spreads
stocking-heel on open hand for inspection.)

Miss D.  Never mind that!  You can't mend it. Help me with this
hateful bodice. I've run the string so, and I've run the string so, and
I can't make the fulness come right.  Where would you put this?
(Waves lilies of the valley.)

Miss T. As high up on the shoulder as possible.

Miss D. Am I quite tall enough? I know it makes May Older look
lopsided.

Miss T. Yes, but May hasn't your shoulders. Hers are like a
hock-bottle.

BEARER.  (Rapping at door.)  Captain Sahib aya.

Miss D. (Jumping up wildly, and hunting for bodice, which she has
discarded owing to the heat of the day.) Captain Sahib!  What
Captain Sahib? Oh, good gracious, and I'm only half dressed!
Well, I sha'n't bother.

Miss T. (Calmly.) You needn't. It isn't for us.  That's Captain
Gadsby. He is going for a ride with Mamma. He generally comes
five days out of the seven.

AGONIZED VOICE.  (Prom an inner apartment.) Minnie, run out
and give Captain Gadsby some tea, and tell him I shall be ready in
ten minutes; and, O Minnie, come to me an instant, there's a dear
girl!

Miss T. Oh, bother! (Aloud.) Very well, Mamma.

Exit, and reappears, after five minutes, flushed, and rubbing her
fingers.

Miss D. You look pink. What has happened?

Miss T.  (In a stage whisper.) A twenty-four-inch waist, and she
won't let it out.  Where are my bangles? (Rummager on the
toilet-table, and dabs at her hair with a brush in the interval.)

Miss D. Who is this Captain Gadsby? I don't think I've met him.

Miss T. You must have. He belongs to the Harrar set.  I've danced
with him, but I've never talked to him. He's a big yellow man, just
like a newly-hatched chicken, with an enormous moustache. He
walks like this (imitates Cavalry swagger), and he goes
"Ha-Hmmm!" deep down in his throat when he can't think of
anything to say. Mamma likes him. I don't.

Miss D.  (Abstractedly.)  Does he wax that moustache?

Miss T.  (Busy with Powder-puff.) Yes, I think so. Why?

Miss D.  (Bending over the bodice and sewing furiously.) Oh,
nothing-only-Miss T. (Sternly.) Only what? Out with it, Emma.

Miss D.  Well, May Olger-she's engaged to Mr. Charteris, you
know-said-Promise you won't repeat this?

Miss T. Yes, I promise. What did she say?

Miss D.  That-that being kissed (with a rush) with a man who
didn't wax his moustache was-like eating an egg without salt.

Miss T. (At her full height, with crushing scorn.) May Olger is a
horrid, nasty Thing, and you can tell her I said so. I'm glad she
doesn't belong to my set-I must go and feed this man! Do I look
presentable?

Miss D.  Yes, perfectly.  Be quick and hand him over to your
Mother, and then we can talk. I shall listen at the door to hear what
you say to him.

Miss T. 'Sure I don't care. I'm not afraid of Captain Gadsby.

In proof of this swings into the drawing-room with a mannish
stride followed by two short steps, which Produces the effect of a
restive horse entering. Misses CAPTAIN GADSBY, who is sitting
in the shadow of the window-curtain, and gazes round helplessly.

CAPTAIN GADSBY.  (Aside.)  The filly, by Jove! 'Must ha'
picked up that action from the sire.  (Aloud, rising.) Good evening,
Miss Threegan.

Miss T.  (Conscious that she is flushing.) Good evening, Captain
Gadsby. Mamma told me to say that she will be ready in a few
minutes. Won't you have some tea?  (Aside.) I hope Mamma will
be quick. What am I to say to the creature?  (Aloud and abruptly.)
Milk and sugar?

CAPT. G.  No sugar, tha-anks, and very little milk. Ha-Hmmm.

Miss T.  (Aside.) If he's going to do that, I'm lost.  I shall laugh.  I
know I shall!

CAPT. G.  (Pulling at his moustache and watching it sideways
down
his nose.)  Ha-Hamm. (Aside.) 'Wonder what the little beast can
talk about. 'Must make a shot at it.

Miss T. (Aside.) Oh, this is agonizing. I must say something.

Both Together. Have you Been-CAPT. G. I beg your pardon. You
were going to say-Miss T.  (Who has been watching the moustache
with awed fascination.) Won't you have some eggs?

CAPT. G.  (Looking bewilderedly at the tea-table.)  Eggs!  (Aside.)
O Hades!  She must have a nursery-tea at this hour. S'pose they've
wiped her mouth and sent her to me while the Mother is getting on
her duds. (Aloud.) No, thanks.

Miss T.  (Crimson with confusion.) Oh!  I didn't mean that.  I
wasn't thinking of mou-eggs for an instant. I mean salt.  Won't you
have some sa-sweets?  (Aside.)  He'll think me a raving lunatic. I
wish Mamma would come.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) It was a nursery-tea and she's ashamed of it. By
Jove! She doesn't look half bad when she colors up like that.
(Aloud, helping himself from the dish.) Have you seen those new
chocolates at Peliti's?

Miss T.  No, I made these myself. What are they like?

CAPT. G. These! De-licious. (Aside.) And that's a fact.

Miss T. (Aside.) Oh, bother! he'll think I'm fishing for
compliments. (Aloud.) No, Peliti's of course.

CAPT. G. (Enthusiastically.) Not to compare with these. How
d'you
make them?  I can't get my khansamah to understand the simplest
thing beyond mutton and fowl.

Miss T. Yes? I'm not a khansamah, you know.  Perhaps you
frighten him. You should never frighten a servant. He loses his
head.  It's very bad policy.

CAPT. G. He's so awf'ly stupid.

Miss T.  (Folding her hands in her Zap.) You should call him
quietly and say:  "O khansamah jee!"

CAPT. G. (Getting interested.) Yes? (Aside.) Fancy that little
featherweight saying, "O khansamah jee" to my bloodthirsty Mir
Khan!

Miss T  Then you should explain the dinner, dish by dish.

CAPT. G. But I can't speak the vernacular.

Miss T. (Patronizingly.) You should pass the Higher Standard and
try.

CAPT. G.  I have, but I don't seem to be any the wiser. Are you?

Miss T. I never passed the Higher Standard.  But the khansamah is
very patient with me. He doesn't get angry when I talk about
sheep's topees, or order maunds of grain when I mean seers.

CAPT. G.  (Aside with intense indignation.) I'd like to see Mir
Khan
being rude to that girl! Hullo!  Steady the Buffs!  (Aloud.) And do
you understand about horses, too?

Miss T. A little-not very much. I can't doctor them, but I know
what they ought to eat, and I am in charge of our stable.

CAPT. G. Indeed! You might help me then.  What ought a man to
give his sais in the Hills?  My ruffian says eight rupees, because
everything is so dear.

Miss T. Six rupees a month, and one rupee Simla allowance-
neither more nor less.  And a grass-cut gets six rupees. That's
better than buying grass in the bazar.

CAPT. G.  (Admiringly.)  How do you know?

Miss T. I have tried both ways.

CAPT. G. Do you ride much, then? I've never seen you on the
Mall.

Miss T. (Aside.)  I haven't passed him more than fifty times.
(Aloud.) Nearly every day.

CAPT. G. By Jove!  I didn't know that. Ha-Hamm  (Pulls at his
mousache and is silent for forty seconds.) Miss T.  (Desperately,
and wondering what will happen next.) It looks beautiful.  I
shouldn't touch it if I were you. (Aside.) It's all Mamma's fault for
not coming before. I will be rude!

CAPT. G. (Bronzing under the tan and bringing down his hand
very
quickly.) Eh! What-at! Oh, yes! Ha! Ha! (Laughs uneasily.)
(Aside.) Well, of all the dashed cheek! I never had a woman say
that to me yet. She must be a cool hand or else-Ah! that
nursery-tea!

VOICE PROM THE UNKNOWN. Tchk! Tchk!  Tchk!

CAPT. G. Good gracious!  What's that?

Miss T. The dog, I think. (Aside.) Emma has been listening, and
I'll never forgive her!

CAPT. G. (Aside.) They don't keep dogs here.  (Aloud.)  'Didn't
sound like a dog, did it?

Miss T. Then it must have been the ~at. Let's go into the veranda.
What a lovely evening it is!

Steps into veranda and looks out across the hills into sunset. The
CAPTAIN follows.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Superb eyes!  I wonder that I never noticed
them
before!  (Aloud.)  There's going to he a dance at Viceregal Lodge
on Wednesday.  Can you spare me one?

Miss T. (Shortly.)  No!  I don't want any of your charity-dances.
You only ask me because Mamma told you to. I hop and I bump.
You know I do!

CAPT. G. (Aside.) That's true, but little girls shouldn't understand
these
things. (Aloud.)  No, on my word, I don't.  You dance beautifully.

Miss T. Then why do you always stand out after half a dozen
turns?  I thought officers in the Army didn't tell fibs.

CAPT. G. It wasn't a fib, believe me. I really do want the pleasure
of
a dance with you.

Miss T.  (Wickedly.) Why? Won't Mamma dance with you any
more?

CAPT. G.  (More earnestly than the necessity demands.) I wasn't
thinking of your Mother.  (Aside.) You little vixen!

Miss T. (Still looking out of the window.)  Eh?  Oh, I beg your par
don. I was thinking of something else.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Well! I wonder what she'll say next. I've never
known a woman treat me like this before.  I might b~Dash it, I
might be an Infantry subaltern!  (Aloud.) Oh, please don't trouble.
I'm not worth thinking about. Isn't your Mother ready yet?

Miss T.  I should think so; but promise me, Captain Gamsby, you
won't take poor dear Mamma twice round Jakko any more. It tires
her so.

CAPT. G.  She says that no exercise tires her.

Miss T. Yes, but she suffers afterward.  You don't know what
rheumatism is, and you oughtn't to keep her out so late, when it
gets chill in the evenings.

CAPT. G. (Aside.)  Rheumatism. I thought she came off her horse
rather in a bunch.  Whew!  One lives and learns.  (Aloud.)  I'm
sorry to hear that. She hasn't mentioned it to me.

Miss T. (Flurried.) Of course not! Poor dear Mamma never would.
And you mustn't say that I told you either. Promise me that you
won't. Oh, CAPTAIN Gamsby, promise me you won't I

CAPT. G. I am dumb, or-I shall be as soon as you've given me that
dance, and another-if you can trouble yourself to think about me
for a minute.

Miss T.  But you won't like it one little bit. You'll be awfully sorry
afterward.

CAPT. G. I shall like it above all things, and I shall only be sorry
that I didn't get more.  (Aside.)  Now what in the world am I
saying?

Miss T. Very well.  You will have only yourself to thank if your
toes are trodden on.  Shall we say Seven?

CAPT.  G. And Eleven.  (Aside.) She can't be more than eight
stone,
but, even then, it's an absurdly small foot. (Looks at his own riding
boots.)

Miss T. They're beautifully shiny. I can almost see my face in
them.

CAPT. G. I was thinking whether I should have to go on crutches
for
the rest of my life if you trod on my toes.

Miss T.  Very likely.  Why not change Eleven for a square?

CAPT. G.  No, please! I want them both waltzes.  Won't you write
them down?

Miss T. J don't get so many dances that I shall confuse them. You
will be the offender.

CAPT. G. Wait and see!  (Aside.) She doesn't dance perfectly,
perhaps, but

Miss T. Your tea must have got cold by this time. Won't you have
another cup?

CAPT. G.  No, thanks.  Don't you think it's pleasanter out in the
veranda? (Aside.)  I never saw hair take that color in the sunshine
before. (Aloud.) It's like one of Dicksee's pictures.

Miss T. Yes I It's a wonderful sunset, isn't it?  (Bluntly.)  But what
do you know about Dicksee's pictures?

CAPT. G. I go Home occasionally. And I used to know the
Galleries. (Nervously.) You mustn't think me only a Philistine
with-a moustache.

Miss T. Don't! Please don't. I'm so sorry for what I said then. I was
horribly rude.  It slipped out before j thought.  Don't you know the
temptation to say frightful and shocking things just for the mere
sake of saying them? I'm afraid I gave way to it.

CAPT. G.  (Watching the girl as she flushes.)  I think I know the
feeling. It would be terrible if we all yielded to it, wouldn't it? For
instance, I might say-POOR DEAR MAMMA. (Entering, habited,
hatted, and booted.) Ah, Captain Gamsby?  'Sorry to keep you
waiting. 'Hope you haven't been bored.  'My little girl been talking
to you?

Miss T.  (Aside.)  I'm not sorry I spoke about the rheumatism. I'm
not! I'm NOT! I only wished I'd mentioned the corns too.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.) What a shame! I wonder how old she is. It
never
occurred to me before.  (Aloud.) We've been discussing
"Shakespeare and the musical glasses" in the veranda.

Miss T.  (Aside.)  Nice man!  He knows that quotation. He isn't a
Philistine with a moustache.  (Aloud.) Good-bye, Captain Gamsby.
(Aside.) What a huge hand and what a squeeze! I don't suppose he
meant it, but he has driven the rings into my fingers.

POOR DEAR MAMMA. Has Vermillion come round yet?  Oh,
yes!  Captain Gadsby, don't you think that the saddle is too far
forward? (They pass into the front veranda.)

CAPT. G. (Aside.) How the dickens should I know what she
prefers?  She told me that she doted on horses. (Aloud.)  I think it
is.

Miss T. (Coming out into front veranda.)  Oh!  Bad Buldoo!  I
must speak to him for this.  He has taken up the curb two links,
and Vermillion bates that.  (Passes out and to horse's head.)

CAPT.  G. Let me do it!

Miss. T. No, Vermillion understands me. Don't you, old man?
(Looses curb-chain skilfully, and pats horse on nose and throttle.)
Poor Vermillion!  Did they want to cut his chin off? There!

Captain Gadsby watches the interlude with undisguised
admiration.

POOR DEAR MAMMA. (Tartly to Miss T.)  You've forgotten
your guest, I think, dear.

Miss T.  Good gracious! So I have! Good-bye. (Retreats indoors
hastily.)

POOR DEAR MAMMA.   (Bunching reins in fingers hampered by
too tight gauntlets.) CAPTAIN Gamsby!

CAPTAIN GADSBY stoops and makes the  foot-rest.   POOR
DEAR MAMMA blunders, halts too long, and breaks through it.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  Can't hold up ~even stone forever. It's all your
rheumatism.  (Aloud.)  Can't imagine why I was so clumsy.
(Aside.) Now Little Featherweight would have gone up like a bird.

They ride oat of the garden. The Captain falls back.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.) How that habit catches her under the arms!
Ugh!

POOR DEAR MAMMA.   (With the worn smile of sixteen
seasons, the worse for exchange.)  You're dull this afternoon,
CAPTAIN Gamsby.

CAPT. G.  (Spurring up wearily.) Why did you keep me waiting so
long?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

(AN INTERVAL OF THREE WEEKS.)

GILDED YOUTH.  (Sitting on railings opposite Town Hall.)
Hullo, Gandy! 'Been trotting out the Gorgonzola! We all thought it
was the Gorgan you're mashing.

CAPT. G. (With withering emphasis.) You young cub! What the-
does it matter to you?

Proceeds to read GILDED YOUTH a lecture on discretion and
deportment, which crumbles latter like a Chinese Lantern. Departs
fuming.

(FURTHER INTERVAL OF FIVE WEEKS.) SCENE.-Exterior of
New Simla Library

on a foggy evening. Miss THREECAN and Miss DEERCOURT
meet among the 'rickshaws.  Miss T. is carrying a bundle of books
under her left arm~

Miss D. (Level intonation.) Well?

Miss 'I'.  (Ascending intonation.) Well?

Miss D. (Capturing her friend's left arm, taking away all the books,
placing books in 'rickshaw, returning to arm, securing hand by
third finger and investigating.)  Well!  You bad girl! And you
never told me.

Miss T.  (Demurely.) He-he-he only spoke yesterday afternoon.

Miss D.  Bless you, dear! And I'm to be bridesmaid, aren't I? You
know you promised ever so long ago.

Miss T. Of course. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow.  (Gets into
'rickshaw.)  O Emma!

Miss D.  (With intense interest.) Yes, dear?

Miss T. (Piano.) It's quite true- - - about-the-egg.

Miss D. What egg?

Miss T.  (Pianissimo prestissimo.) The egg without the salt.
(Porte.) Chalo ghar ko jaldi, jhampani!  (Go home, jhampani.)

THE WORLD WITHOUT

Certain people of importance.

SCENE.-Smoking-room of the Degchi Club. Time, 10.30 P. M. of
a stuffy night in the Rains. Four men dispersed in picturesque
attitudes and easy-chairs.  To these enter BLAYNE of the Irregular
Moguls, in evening dress.

BLAYNE.  Phew!  The Judge ought to be hanged in his own
store-godown. Hi, khitmatgarl Poora whiskey-peg, to take the taste
out of my mouth.

CURTISS.  (Royal Artillery.)  That's it, is it?  What the deuce
made you dine at the Judge's?  You know his bandobust.

BLAYNE.  'Thought it couldn't be worse than the Club, but I'll
swear he buys ullaged liquor and doctors it with gin and ink
(looking round the room.) Is this all of you to-night?

DOONE.  (P.W.D.)  Anthony was called out at dinner.  Mingle had
a pain in his tummy.

CURTISS. Miggy dies of cholera once a week in the Rains, and
gets drunk on chlorodyne in between.  'Good little chap, though.
Any one at the Judge's, Blayne?

BLAYNE. Cockley and his memsahib looking awfully white and
fagged. 'F('.male girl-couldn't catch the name-on her way to the
Hills, under the Cockleys' charge-the Judge, and Markyn fresh
from Simla-disgustingly fit.

CURTISS. Good Lord, how truly magnificent! Was there enough
ice? When I mangled garbage there I got one whole lump-nearly as
big as a walnut. What had Markyn to say for himself?

BLAYNE.  'Seems that every one is having a fairly good time up
there in spite of the rain.  By Jove, that reminds me! I know I
hadn't come across just for the pleasure of your society. News!
Great news!  Markyn told me.

DOONE. Who's dead now?

BLAYNE.  No one that I know of; but Gandy's hooked at last!

DROPPING CHORUS. How much? The Devil!  Markyn was
pulling your leg. Not GANDY!

BLAYNE. (Humming.) "Yea, verily, verily, verily!  Verily, verily,
I say unto thee."  Theodore, the gift o' God!  Our Phillup!  It's been
given out up above.

MACKESY. (Barrister-at-Law.) Huh! Women will give out
anything.  What does accused say?

BLAYNE.  Markyn told me that he congratulated him warily-one
hand held out, t'other ready to guard. Gandy turned pink and said it
was so.

CURTISS. Poor old Caddy! They all do it. Who's she? Let's hear
the details.

BLAYNE. She's a girl-daughter of a Colonel Somebody.

DOONE.  Simla's stiff with Colonels' daughters.  Be more explicit.

BLAYNE.  Wait a shake. What was her name? Thresomething.
Three-

CURTISS.  Stars, perhaps.  Caddy knows that brand.

BLAYNE. Threegan-Minnie Threegan.

MACKESY. Threegan   Isn't she a little bit of a girl with red hair?

BLAYNE. 'Bout that-from what from what Markyn said.

MACKESY. Then I've met her.  She was at Lucknow last season.
'Owned a permanently  juvenile  Mamma,  and danced damnably. I
say, Jervoise, you knew the Threegans, didn't you?

JERVOISE.  (Civilian of twenty-five years' service, waking up
from his doze.) Eh? What's that? Knew who? How? I thought I was
at Home, confound you!

MACKESY.  The Threegan girl's engaged, so Blayne says.

JERVOISE.  (Slowly.)  Engaged-en-gaged!  Bless my soul! I'm
getting an old man!  Little Minnie Threegan engaged. It was only
the other day I went home with them in the Surat-no, the Massilia-
and she was crawling about on her hands and knees among the
ayahs. 'Used to call me the "Tick Tack Sakib" because I showed
her my watch. And that was in Sixty-Seven-no, Seventy.  Good
God, how time flies! I'm an old man. I remember when Threegan
married Miss Derwent-daughter of old Hooky Derwent-but that
was before your time. And so the little baby's engaged to have a
little baby of her own!  Who's the other fool?

MACKESY. Gadsby of the Pink Hussars.

JERVOISE.  'Never met him.  Threegan lived in debt, married in
debt, and 'll die in debt.  'Must be glad to get the girl off his hands.

BLAYNE.  Caddy has money-lucky devil. Place at Home, too.

DOONE.  He comes of first-class stock.  'Can't quite understand
his being caught by a Colonel's daughter, and (looking cautiously
round room.) Black Infantry at that!  No offence to you, Blayne.

BLAYNE.  (Stiffly.) Not much, thaanks.

CURTISS. (Quoting motto of Irregular Moguls.)  "We are what we
are," eh, old man? But Gandy was such a superior animal as a rule.
Why didn't he go Home and pick his wife there?

MACKESY.  They are all alike when they come to the turn into
the straight. About thirty a man begins to get sick of living alone.

CURTISS. And of the eternal muttony-chop in the morning.

DOONE.  It's a dead goat as a rule, but go on, Mackesy.

MACKESY.  If a man's once taken that way nothing will hold him,
Do you remember Benoit of your service, Doone? They transferred
him to Tharanda when his time came, and he married a platelayer's
daughter, or something of that kind.  She was the only female
about the place.

DONE.  Yes, poor brute.  That smashed Benoit's chances of
promotion altogether.  Mrs. Benoit used to ask "Was you gem' to
the dance this evenin'?"

CURTISS. Hang it all! Gandy hasn't married beneath him.  There's
no tarbrush in the family, I suppose.

JERVOISE. Tar-brush!  Not an anna. You young fellows talk as
though the man was doing the girl an honor in marrying her.
You're all too conceited-nothing's good enough for you.

BLAYNE.  Not even an empty Club, a dam' bad dinner at the
Judge's, and a Station as sickly as a hospital. You're quite right.
We're a set of Sybarites.

DOONE.  Luxurious dogs, wallowing in-

CURTISS.  Prickly heat between the shoulders. I'm covered with
it. Let's hope Beora will be cooler.

BLAYNE.  Whew!  Are you ordered into camp, too?  I thought the
Gunners had a clean sheet.

CURTISS.  No, worse luck. Two cases yesterday-one died-and if
we have a third, out we go. Is there any shooting at Beora, Doone?

DOONE.  The country's under water, except the patch by the
Grand Trunk Road.  I was there yesterday, looking at a bund, and
came across four poor devils in their last stage.  It's rather bad
from here to Kuchara.

CURTISS.  Then we're pretty certain to have a heavy go of it.
Heigho!  I shouldn't mind changing places with Gaddy for a while.
'Sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the Town Hall, and all that.
Oh, why doesn't somebody come and marry me, instead of letting
me go into cholera-camp?

MACKESY. Ask the Committee.

CURTISS. You ruffian!  You'll stand me another peg for that.
Blayne, what will you take?  Mackesy is fine on moral grounds.
Done, have you any preference?

DONE. Small glass Kummel, please. Excellent carminative, these
days. Anthony told me so.

MACKESY. (Signing voucher for four drinks.)  Most unfair
punishment.  I only thought of Curtiss as Actaeon being chivied
round the billiard tables by the nymphs of Diana.

BLAYNE.  Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs.
Cockley's the only woman in the Station. She won't leave Cockley,
and he's doing his best to get her to go.

CURTISS.  Good, indeed!  Here's Mrs. Cockley's health.  To the
only wife in the Station and a damned brave woman!

OMNES.  (Drinking.)  A damned brave woman

BLAVNE. I suppose Gandy will bring his wife here at the end of
the cold weather. They are going to be married almost
immediately, I believe.

CURTISS. Gandy may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all
detachment and no headquarters this hot weather, or he'd be torn
from the arms of his love as sure as death.  Have you ever noticed
the thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It's
because they are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here,
they would have been out in camp a. month

THE WORLD WITHOUT
561

ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gandy.

MACKESY. He'll go Home after he's married, and send in his
papers-see if he doesn't.

BLAYNE. Why shouldn't he? Hasn't he money?  Would any one of
us be here if we weren't paupers?

DONE. Poor old pauper! What has become of the six hundred you
rooked from our table last month?

BLAYNE.  It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising
tradesman got some of it, and a shroff gobbled the rest-or else I
spent it.

CURTISS.  Gandy never had dealings with a shroff in his life.

DONE. Virtuous Gandy!  If I had three thousand a month, paid
from England, I don't think I'd deal with a shroff either.

MACKESY.  (Yawning.)  Oh, it's a sweet life!  I wonder whether
matrimony would make it sweeter.

CURTISS.  Ask Cockley-with his wife dying by inches!

BLAYNE. Go home and get a fool of a girl to come out to-what is
it Thackeray says?-"the splendid palace of an Indian pro-consul."

DOONE.  Which reminds me.  My quarters leak like a sieve. I had
fever last night from sleeping in a swamp. And the worst of it is,
one can't do anything to a roof till the Rains are over.

CURTISS.  What's wrong with you? You haven't eighty rotting
Tommies to take into a running stream.

DONE.  No: but I'm mixed boils and bad language.  I'm a regular
Job all over my body.  It's sheer poverty of blood, and I don't see
any chance of getting richer-either way.

BLAYNE. Can't you take leave? DONE.  That's the pull you Army
men have over us. Ten days are nothing in your sight.  I'm so
important that Government can't find a substitute if I go away.
Ye-es, I'd like to be Gandy, whoever his wife may be.

CURTISS. You've passed the turn of life that Mackesy was
speaking of.

DONE. Indeed I have, but I never yet had the brutality to ask a
woman to share my life out here.

BLAvNE. On my soul I believe you're right.  I'm thinking of Mrs.
Cockley. The woman's an absolute wreck.

DONE. Exactly.  Because she stays down here. The only way to
keep her fit would be to send her to the Hills for eight months-and
the same with any woman. I fancy I see myself taking a wife on
those terms.

MACKESY.  With the rupee at one and sixpence. The little
Doones would be little Debra Doones, with a fine Mussoorie
chi-chi anent to bring home for the holidays.

CURTISS.  And a pair of be-ewtiful sambhur-horns for Done to
wear, free of expense, presented by-DONE. Yes, it's an enchanting
prospect.  By the way, the rupee hasn't done falling yet. The time
will come when we shall think ourselves lucky if we only lose half
our pay.

CURTISS. Surely a third's loss enough. Who gains by the
arrangement? That's what I want to know.

BLAYNE. The Silver Question! I'm going to bed if you begin
squabbling Thank  Goodness,  here's  Anthony-looking like a
ghost.

Enter ANTHONY, Indian Medical Staff, very white and tired.

ANTHONY.  'Evening, Blayne.  It's raining in sheets.  Whiskey
peg lao, khitmatgar.  The roads are something ghastly.

CURTISS. How's Mingle?

ANTHONY.  Very bad, and more frightened. I handed him over to
Few-ton.  Mingle might just as well have called him in the first
place, instead of bothering me.

BLAYNE. He's a nervous little chap. What has he got, this time?

ANTHONY. 'Can't quite say. A very bad tummy and a blue funk so
far. He asked me at once if it was cholera, and I told him not to be
a fool.  That soothed him.

CURTIS. Poor devil! The funk does half the business in a man of
that build.

ANTHONY.  (Lighting a cheroot.)  I firmly believe the funk will
kill him if he stays down. You know the amount of trouble he's
been giving Fewton for the last three weeks.  He's doing his very
best to frighten himself into the grave.

GENERAL CHORUS. Poor little devil! Why doesn't he get away?

ANTHONY. 'Can't. He has his leave all right, but he's so dipped he
can't take it, and I don't think his name on paper would raise four
annas.  That's in confidence, though.

MACKESY. All the Station knows it.

ANTHONY. "I suppose I shall have to die here," he said,
squirming all across the bed. He's quite made up his mind to
Kingdom Come. And I know he has nothing more than a
wet-weather tummy if he could only keep a hand on himself.

BLAYNE.  That's bad.  That's very bad.  Poor little Miggy.  Good
little chap, too. I say-

ANTHONY. What do you say?

BLAYNE.  Well, look here-anyhow. If it's like that-as you say-I
say fifty.

CURTISS. I say fifty.

MACKESY. I go twenty better.

DONE. Bloated Croesus of the Bar! I say fifty. Jervoise, what do
you say? Hi! Wake up!

JERVOISE. Eh? What's that? What's that?

CURTISS. We want a hundred rupees from you.  You're a
bachelor drawing a gigantic income, and there's a man in a hole.

JERVOISE.  What man?  Any one dead?

BLAYNE.  No, hut he'll die if you don't give the hundred. Here!
Here's a peg-voucher.  You can see what we've signed for, and
Anthony's man will come round to-morrow to collect it. So there
will be no trouble.

JERVOISE.  (Signing.)  One hundred, E. M. J. There you are
(feebly).  It isn't one of your jokes, is it?

BLAYNE. No, it really is wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest
poker-winner last week, and you've defrauded the tax-collector too
long. Sign!

ANTHONY.  Let's see.  Three fifties and  a  seventy-two
twenty-three twenty~say four hundred and twenty. That'll give him
a month clear at the Hills.  Many thanks, you men.  I'll send round
the chaprassi to-morrow.

CURTISS.  You must engineer hi~ taking the stuff, and of course
you mustn't-

ANTHONY.  Of course.  It would never do.  He'd weep with
gratitude over his evening drink.

BLAYNE. That's just what he would do, damn him. Oh!  I say,
Anthony, you pretend to know everything. Have you heard about
Gandy?

ANTHONY.  No.  Divorce Court at last?

BLAYNE. Worse. He's engaged!

ANTHONY. How much? He can't be!

BLAYNE.  He is. He's going to be married in a few weeks. Markyn
told me at the Judge's this evening.  It's pukka.

ANTHONY. You don't say so? Holy Moses! There'll be a shine in
the tents of Kedar.

CURTISS.  'Regiment cut up rough, think you?

ANTHONY.  'Don't know anything about the Regiment.

MACKESY.  It is bigamy, then?

ANTHONY. Maybe. Do you mean to say that you men have
forgotten, or is there more charity in the world than I thought?

DONE. You don't look pretty when you are trying to keep a secret.
You bloat.  Explain.

ANTHONY. Mrs. Herriott!

BLAYNE. (After a long pause, to the room generally.)  It's my
notion that we are a set of fools.

MACKESY. Nonsense. That business was knocked on the head
last season. Why, young Mallard-

ANTHONY.  Mallard was a candlestick, paraded as such. Think
awhile. Recollect last season and the talk then. Mallard or no
Mallard, did Gandy ever talk to any other woman?

CURTISS. There's something in that. It was slightly noticeable
now you come to mention it. But she's at Naini Tat and he's at
Simla.

ANTHONY.  He had to go to Simla to look after a globe-trotter
relative of his-a person with a title.  Uncle or aunt.

BLAYNE  And there he got engaged. No law prevents a man
growing tired of a woman.

ANTHONY.  Except that he mustn't do it till the woman is tired of
him. And the Herriott woman was not that.

CURTISS.  She may be now.  Two months of Naini Tal works
wonders.

DONE.  Curious thing how some women carry a Fate with them.
There was a Mrs. Deegie in the Central Provinces whose men
invariably fell away and got married.  It became a regular proverb
with us when I was down there. I remember three men desperately
devoted to her, and they all, one after another, took wives.

CURTISS. That's odd. Now I should have thought that Mrs.
Deegie's influence would have led them to take other men's wives.
It ought to have made them afraid of the judgment of Providence.

ANTHONY. Mrs. Herriott will make Gandy afraid of something
more than the judgment of Providence, I fancy.

BLAYNE. Supposing things are as you say, he'll be a fool to face
her. He'll sit tight at Simla.

ANTHONY.  'Shouldn't be a bit surprised if he went off to Naini to
explain.  He's an unaccountable sort of man, and she's likely to be
a more than unaccountable woman.

DONE. What makes you take her character away so confidently?

ANTHONY. Primum tern pus.  Caddy was her first and a woman
doesn't allow her first man to drop away without expostulation.
She justifies the first transfer of affection to herself by swearing
that it is forever and ever.  Consequently-

BLAYNE.  Consequently, we are sitting here till past one o'clock,
talking scandal like a set of Station cats. Anthony, it's all your
fault.  We were perfectly respectable till you came in Go to bed.
I'm off, Good-night all.

CURTISS.  Past one!  It's past two by Jove, and here's the khit
coming for the late charge.  Just Heavens!  One, two, three, four,
five rupees to pay for the pleasure of saying that a poor little beast
of a woman is no better than she should be. I'm ashamed of myself.
Go to bed, you slanderous villains, and if I'm sent to Beora
to-morrow, be prepared to hear I'm dead before paying my card
account!

THE TENTS OF KEDAR

Only why should it be with pain at all
Why must I 'twix the leaves of corona!
Put any kiss of pardon on thy brow?
Why should the other women know so much,
And talk together -Such the look and such
The smile he used to love with, then as now.
-Any Wife to any Husband.

SCENE -A Naini Tal dinner for thirty-four.  Plate, wines, crockery,
and khitmatgars care fully calculated to scale of Rs. 6000 per
mensem, less Exchange. Table split lengthways by bank of
flowers.

MRS. HERRIOTT.  (After conversation has risen to proper pitch.)
Ah! 'Didn't see you in the crush in the drawing-room.  (Sotto voce.)
Where have you been all this while, Pip?

CAPTAIN GADSBY.  (Turning from regularly ordained dinner
partner and settling hock glasses.)  Good evening. (Sotto voce.)
Not quite so loud another time.  You've no notion how your voice
carries. (Aside.)  So much for shirking the written explanation. It'll
have to be a verbal one now. Sweet prospect!  How on earth am I
to tell her that I am a respectable, engaged member of society and
it's all over between us?

MRS. H.  I've a heavy score against you. Where were you at the
Monday Pop?  Where were you on Tuesday? Where were you at
the Lamonts' tennis?  I was looking everywhere.

CAPT. G.  For me!  Oh, I was alive somewhere, I suppose.
(Aside.)
It's for Minnie's sake, but it's going to be dashed unpleasant.

MRS. H.  Have I done anything to offend you? I never meant it if I
have. I couldn't help going for a ride with the Vaynor man.  It was
promi5ed a week before you came up.

CAPT. G. I didn't know-

MRS. H.  It really was.

CAPT. G. Anything about it, I mean.

MRS. H.  What has upset you today? All these days? You haven't
been near me for four whole days-nearly one hundred hours.  Was
it kind of you, Pip?  And I've been looking forward so much to
your coming.

CAPT. G. Have you?

MRS. H. You know I have! I've been as foolish as a schoolgirl
about it.  I made a little calendar and put it in my card-case, and
every time the twelve o'clock gun went off I scratched out a square
and said:  "That brings me nearer to Pip. My Pip!"

CAPT. G.  (With an uneasy laugh). What will Mackler think if you
neglect him so?

MRS. H. And it hasn't brought you nearer.  You seem farther away
than ever.  Are you sulking about something? I know your temper.

CAPT. G. No.

MRS. H.  Have I grown old in' the last few months, then? (Reaches
forward to bank of flowers for menu-card.)

PARTNER ON LEFT. Allow me. (Hands menu-card. MRS. H.
keeps her arm at full stretch for three seconds.)

MRS. H. (To partner.) Oh, thanks. I didn't see.  (Turns right again.)
Is anything in me changed at all?

CAPT. G.  For Goodness's sake go on with your dinner!  You must
eat something. Try one of those cutlet arrangements.  (Aside.)
And I fancied she had good shoulders, once upon a time!  What an
ass a man can make of himself!

MRS. H.  (Helping herself to a paper frill, seven peas, some
stamped carrots and a spoonful of gravy.)  That isn't an answer.
Tell me whether I have done anything.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) If it isn't ended here there will be a ghastly
scene
some-
where else. If only I'd written to her and stood the racket-at long
range! (To Khitmatgar.) Han! Simpkin do. (Aloud.)  I'll tell you
later on.

MRS. H. Tell me now. It must be some foolish misunderstanding,
and you know that there was to be nothing of that sort between us.
We) of all people in the world, can't afford it.  Is it the Vaynor
man, and don't you like to say so? On my honor-CAPT. G. I haven't
given the Vaynor man a thought.

MRS. H. But how d'you know that I haven't?

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Here's my chance and may the Devil help me
through with it. (Aloud and measuredly.)  Believe me, I do not care
how often or how tenderly you think of the Vaynor man.

MRS. H. I wonder if you mean that! Oh, what is the good of
squabbling and pretending to misunderstand when you are only up
for so short a time? Pip, don't be a stupid!

Follows a pause, during which he crosses his left leg over his right
and continues his dinner.

CAPT. G.  (In answer to the thunderstorm in her eyes.)   Corns-my
worst.

MRS. H.  Upon my word, you are the very rudest man in the
world! I'll never do it again.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) No, I don't think you will; but I wonder what
you
will do before it's all over.  (To Khitmatgar.) Thorah ur Simpkin
do.

MRS. H.  Well!  Haven't you the grace to apologize, bad man?

CAPT. G.  (Aside.) I mustn't let it drift back now.  Trust a woman
for being as blind as a bat when she won't see.

MRS. H. I'm waiting; or would you like me to dictate a form of
apology?

CAPT. G.  (Desperately.)  By  all means dictate.

MRS. H. (Lightly.) Very well. Rehearse your several Christian
names after me and go on:  "Profess my sincere repentance."

CAPT. G. "Sincere repentance."

MRS. H.  "For having behaved"-

CAPT. G. (Aside.) At last! I wish to Goodness she'd look away.
"For having behaved"-as I have behaved, and declare that I am
thoroughly and heartily sick of the whole business, and take this
opportunity of making clear my intention of ending it, now,
henceforward, and forever.  (Aside.)  If any one had told me I
should be such a blackguard!-

MRS. H. (Shaking a spoonful of potato chips into her plate.) That's
not a pretty joke.

CAPT. G. No. It's a reality. (Aside.) I wonder if smashes of this
kind
are always so raw.

MRS. H. Really, Pip, you're getting more absurd every day.

CAPT. G. I don't think you quite understand me.  Shall I repeat it?

MRS. H. No!  For pity's sake don't do that. It's too terrible, even in
fur.

CAPT. G.  I'll let her think it over for a while. But I ought to be
horsewhipped.

MRS. H. I want to know what you meant by what you said just
now.

CAPT. G. Exactly what I said.  No less.

MRS. H.  But what have I done to deserve it? What have I done?

CAPT. G.   (Aside.)  If she only wouldn't look at me.  (Aloud and
very slowly, his eyes on his plate.)  D'you remember that evening
in July, before the Rains broke, when you said that the end would
have to come sooner or later-and you wondered for which of US it
would come first?

MRS. H. Yes!  I was only joking. And you swore that, as long as
there was breath in your body, it should never come. And I
believed you.

CAPT. G.  (Fingering  menu-card.) Well, it has. That's all.

A long pause, during which MRS. H. bows her head and rolls the
bread-twist into little pellets; G. stares at the oleanders.

MRS. H.  (Throwing back her head and laughing naturally.) They
train us women well, don't they, Pip?

CAPT. G.  (Brutally, touching shirt-stud.)  So far as the expression
goes. (Aside.)  It isn't in her nature to take things quietly. There'll
be an explosion yet.

MRS. H.  (With a shudder.) Thank you.  B-but even Red Indians
allow people to wriggle when they're being tortured, I believe.
(Slips fan from girdle and fans slowly: rim of fan level with chin.)

PARTNER ON LEFT.  Very close tonight, isn't it?  'You find it too
much for you?

MRS. H. Oh, no, not in the least. But they really ought to have
punkahs, even in your cool Naini Tal, oughtn't they?  (Turns,
dropping fan and raising eyebrows.)

CAPT. G.  It's all right.  (Aside.) Here comes the storm!

MRS. H.  (Her eyes on the tablecloth: fan ready in right hand.) It
was very cleverly managed, Pip, and I congratulate you. You
swore-you never contented yourself with merely Saying a
thing-you swore that, as far as lay in your power, you'd make my
wretched life pleasant for me.  And you've denied me the
consolation of breaking down.  I should have done it-indeed I
should. A woman would hardly have thought of this refinement,
my kind, considerate friend.  (Fan-guard as before.)  You have
explained things so tenderly and truthfully, too!  You haven't
spoken or written a word of warning, and you have let me believe
in you till the last minute.  You haven't condescended to give me
your reason yet.  No!  A woman could not have managed it half so
well.  Are there many men like you in the world?

CAPT. G.  I'm sure I don't know. (To Khitmatgar.) Ohe! Simpkin
do.

MRS. H. You call yourself a man of the world, don't you? Do men
of the world behave like Devils when they a woman the honor to
get tired of her?

CAPT. G.  I'm sure I don't know. Don't speak so loud!

MRS. H.  Keep us respectable, O Lord, whatever happens.  Don't
be afraid of my compromising you. You've chosen your ground far
too well, and I've been properly brought up.  (Lowering fan.)
Haven't you any pity, Pip, except for yourself?

CAPT. G. Wouldn't it be rather impertinent of me to say that I'm
sorry for you?

MRS. H. I think you have said it once or twice before.  You're
growing very careful of my feelings. My God, Pip, I was a good
woman once! You said I was.  You've made me what I am.  What
are you going to do with me?  What are you going to do with me?
Won't you say that you are sorry? (Helps herself to iced asparagus.)

CAPT. G. I am sorry for you, if you Want the pity of such a brute
as
I am. I'm awf'ly sorry for you.

MRS. H. Rather tame for a man of the world. Do you think that
that admission clears you?

CAPT. G. What can I do?  I can only tell you what I think of
myself.
You can't think worse than that?

MRS. H. Oh, yes, I can! And now, will you tell me the reason of
all this? Remorse?  Has Bayard been suddenly conscience-
stricken?

CAPT. G. (Angrily, his eyes still lowered.)  No!  The thing has
come
to an end on my side.  That's all. Mafisch!

MRS. H. "That's all. Mafisch!" As though I were a Cairene
Dragoman. You used to make prettier speeches. D'you remember
when you said?-

CAPT. G. For Heaven's sake don't bring that back!  Call me
anything
you like and I'll admit it-

MRS. H.  But you don't care to be reminded of old lies? If I could
hope to hurt you one-tenth as much as you have hurt me
to-night-No, I wouldn't-I couldn't do it-liar though you are.

CAPT. G. I've spoken the truth.

MRS. H.  My dear Sir, you flatter yourself.  You have lied over the
reason.  Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know
yourself. You have heen everything to me, though you are-
(Fan-guard.)  Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you are
merely tired of me?

CAPT. G. Since you insist upon my repeating it-Yes.

Mas. H. Lie the first.  I wish I knew a coarser word. Lie seems so
in-effectual in your case. The fire has just died out and there is no
fresh one? Think for a minute, Pip, if you care whether I despise
you more than I do. Simply Mafisch, is it?

CAPT. G. Yes.  (Aside.) I think I deserve this.

MRS. H. Lie number two.  Before the next glass chokes you, tell
me her

name.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) I'll make her pay for dragging Minnie into the
business! (Aloud.)  Is it likely?

MRS. H. Very likely if you thought that it would flatter your
vanity. You'd cry my name on the house-tops to make people turn
round.

CAPT. G. I wish I had. There would have been an end to this
business.

MRS. H. Oh, no, there would not-And so you were going to be
virtuous and blase', were you?  To come to me and say:  "I've done
with you.  The incident is clo-osed."  I ought to be proud of having
kept such a man so long.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  It only remains to pray for the end of the
dinner.
(Aloud.)  You know what I think of myself.

MRS. H. As it's the only person in he world you ever do think of,
and as I know your mind thoroughly, I do. Vou want to get it all
over and-Oh, I can't keep you back!  And you're going-think of it,
Pip-to throw me over for another woman.  And you swore that all
other women were-Pip, my Pip!  She can't care for you as I do.
Believe me, she can't. Is it any one that I know?

CAPT. G. Thank Goodness it isn't. (Aside.) I expected a cyclone,
but not an earthquake.

MRS. H.  She can't! Is there anything that I wouldn't do for you-or
haven't done?  And to think that I should take this trouble over you,
knowing what you are! Do you despise me for it?

CAPT. G. (Wiping his mouth to hide a smile.)  Again?  It's entirely
a
work of charity on your part.

MRS. H. Ahhh! But I have no right to resent it.-Is she better-
looking than I? Who was it said?-

CAPT. G. No-not that!

MRS. H. I'll be more merciful than you were.  Don't you know that
all women are alike?

CAPT. G.  (Aside.) Then this is the exception that proves the rule.

MRS. H. All of them!  I'll tell you anything you like. I will, upon
my word! They only want the admiration-from anybody-no  matter
who-anybody! But there is always one man that they care for more
than any one else in the world, and would sacrifice all the others
to. Oh, do listen! I've kept the Vaynor man trotting after me like a
poodle, and he believes that he is the only man I am interested in.
I'll tell you what he said to me.

CAPT. G.  Spare him.  (Aside.)  I wonder what his version is.

MRS. H.  He's been waiting for me to look at him all through
dinner. Shall I do it, and you can see what an idiot he looks?

CAPT. G. "But what imports the nomination of this gentleman?"

MRS. H. Watch!  (Sends a glance to the Vaynor man, who tries
vainly to combine a mouthful of ice pudding, a smirk of
self-satisfaction, a glare of intense devotion, and the stolidity of a
Bntish dining countenance.)

CAPT. G. (Critically.)  He doesn't look pretty.  Why didn't you
wait
till the spoon was out of his mouth?

MRS. H. To amuse you.  She'll make an exhibition of you as I've
made of him; and people will laugh at you. Oh, Pip, can't you see
that?  It's as plain as the noonday Sun.  You'll be trotted about and
told lies, and made a fool of like the others. j never made a fool of
you, did I?

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  What a clever little woman it is!

MRS. H. Well, what have you to say?

CAPT. G. I feel better.

MRS. H. Yes, I suppose so, after I have come down to your level.
I couldn't have done it if I hadn't cared for you so much. I have
spoken the truth.

CAPT. G. It doesn't alter the situation.

MRS. H. (Passionately.)  Then she has said that she cares for you!
Don't believe her, Pip.  It's a lie-as bad as yours to me!

CAPT. G.  Ssssteady!  I've a notion that a friend of yours is looking
at you.

MRS. H. He!  I hate him. He introduced you to me.

CAPT.  G.  (Aside.) And some people would like women to assist
in
making the laws.  Introduction to imply condonement. (Aloud.)
Well, you see, if you can remember so far back as that, I couldn't,
in' common politeness, refuse the offer.

MRS. H. In common politeness I We have got beyond that!

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Old ground means fresh trouble. (Aloud.) On
my
honor

MRS. H. Your what? Ha, ha!

CAPT. G. Dishonor, then. She's not what you imagine. I meant to-

MRS. H. Don't tell me anything about her! She won't care for you,
and when you come back, after having made an exhibition of
yourself, you'll find me occupied with-

CAPT. G. (Insolently.) You couldn't while I am alive.  (Aside.)  If
that doesn't bring her pride to her rescue, nothing will.

MRS. H.  (Dr~wing herself up.) Couldn't  do  it?  I'   (Softening.)
You're right. I don't believe I could-though you are what you are-a
coward and a liar in grain.

CAPT. G. It doesn't hurt so much after your little lecture-with
demonstrations.

MRS. H. One mass of vanity! Will nothing ever touch you in this
life? There must be a Hereafter if it's only

for the benefit of-But you will have
it all to yourself.

CAPT. G.  (Under his eyebrows.) Are you certain of that?

MRS. H. I shall have had mine in this life; and it will serve me
right,

CAPT. G.  But the admiration that you insisted on so strongly a
moment ago?  (Aside.)  Oh, I am a brute!

MRS. H. (Fiercely.)  Will that con-sole me for knowing that you
will go to her with the same words, the same arguments,  and
the-the  same pet names you used to me?  And if she cares for you,
you two will laugh over my story.  Won't that be punishment heavy
enough even for me-even for me?-And it's all useless.  That's
another punishment.

CAPT. G.  (Feebly.) Oh, come! I'm not so low as you think.

MRS. H.  Not now, perhaps, but you will be.  Oh, Pip, if a woman
flatters your vanity, there's nothing on earth that you would not tell
her; and no meanness that you would not do. Have I known you so
long without knowing that?

CAPT. G. If you can trust me in nothing else-and I don't s~e why I
should be trusted-you can count upon my holding my tongue.

MRS. H.  If you denied everything you've said this evening and
declared it was all in' fun (a long pause), I'd trust you.  Not
otherwise.  All I ask is, don't tell her my name. Please don't. A man
might forget: a woman never would.  (Looks up table and sees
hostess beginning to collect eyes.)  So it's all ended, through no
fault of mine-Haven't I behaved beautifully?  I've accepted your
dismissal, and you managed it as cruelly as you could, and I
have made you respect my sex, haven't I?  (Arranging gloves and
fan.) I only pray that she'll know you some day as I know you now.
I wouldn't be you then, for I think even your conceit will be hurt.  I
hope she'll pay you back the humiliation you've brought on me.  I
hope- No.  I don't!  I can't give you up! I must have something to
look forward to or I shall go crazy.  When it's all over, come back
to me, come back to me, and you'll find that you're my Pip still!

CAPT. G. (Very clearly.) False move, and you pay for it. It's a girl!

MRS. H. (Rising.) Then it was true! They said-but I wouldn't insult
you by asking.  A girl!  I was a girl not very long ago.  Be good to
her, Pip. I daresay she believes in' you.

Goes out with an uncertain smile. He watches her through the
door, and settles into a chair as the men redistribute themselves.

CAPT. G.  Now, if there is any Power who looks after this world,
will He kindly tell me what I have done? (Reaching out for the
claret, and half aloud.)  What have I done?

WITH ANY AMAZEMENT

And are not afraid with any amazement.
-Marriage Service.

SCENE.-A bachelor's bedroom-toilet-table arranged with
unnatural neat-ness.  CAPTAIN GADSBY asleep and snoring
heavily. Time, 10:30 A. M.- a glorious autumn day at Simla. Enter
delicately Captain MAFFLIN of GADSBY's regiment. Looks at
sleeper, and shakes his head murmuring "Poor Gaddy."  Performs
violent fantasia with hair-brushes on chairback.

CAPT. M. Wake up, my sleeping beauty! (Roars.)

"Uprouse ye, then, my merry merry men!
It is our opening day!
It is our opening da-ay!"

Gaddy, the little dicky-birds have been billing and cooing for ever
so long; and I'm here!

CAPT. G.  (Sitting up and yawning.) 'Mornin'.  This is awf'ly good
of you, old fellow.  Most awf'ly good of you. 'Don't know what I
should do without you. 'Pon my soul, I don't. 'Haven't slept a wink
all night.

CAPT. M. I didn't get in till half-past eleven.  'Had a look at you
then, and you seemed to be sleeping as soundly as a condemned
criminal.

CAPT. G. Jack, if you want to make those disgustingly worn-out
jokes, you'd better go away. (With portentous gravity.) It's the
happiest day in my life.

CAPT. M. (Chuckling grimly.) Not by a very long chalk, my son.
You're going through some of the most refined torture you've ever
known.  But be calm.  I am with you.  'Shun! Dress!

CAPT. G. Eh! Wha-at?

CAPT. M. Do you suppose that you are your own master for the
next
twelve hours?  If you do, of course-(Makes for the door.)

CAPT. G.  No! For Goodness' sake, old man, don't do that! You'll
see ~ through, won't you?  I've been mugging up that beastly drill,
and can't remember a line of it.

CAPT. M.  (Overturning G.'s uniform.) Go and tub. Don't bother
me.
I'll give you ten minutes to dress in.

interval, filled by the noise as O/ one splashing in the bath-room..

CAPT. G.  (Emerging from dressing-room.) What time is it?

CAPT. M. Nearly eleven.

CAPT. G. Five hours more. O Lord!

CAPT. M. (Aside.)  'First sign of funk, that.  'Wonder if it's going
to
spread.   (Aloud.)  Come along to breakfast.

CAPT. G. I can't eat anything. I don't want any breakfast.

CAPT. M. (Aside.) So early! (Aloud~) CAPTAIN Gamsby, I order
you to eat breakfast, and a dashed good break -fast, too.  None of
your bridal airs and graces with me!

Leads G. downstairs and stands over him while he eats two chops.

CAPT. G. (Who has looked at his watch thrice in the last five
minutes.) What time is it?

CAPT. M. Time to come for a walk. Light up.

CAPT. G. I haven't smoked for ten days, and I won't now. (Takes
cheroot which M. has cut for him, and blows smoke through his
nose luxuriously.) We aren't going down the Mall, are we?

CAPT. M. (Aside.) They're all alike in these stages.  (Aloud.)  No,
my Vestal. We're going along the quietest road we can find.

CAPT. G. Any chance of seeing Her? CAPT. M. Innocent!  No!
Come along, and, if you want me for the final obsequies, don't cut
my eye out with your stick.

CAPT. G.  (Spinning round.) I say, isn't She the dearest creature
that
ever walked?  What's the time?  What comes  after  "wilt  thou
take  this woman"?

CAPT. M. You go for the ring. R'clect it'll be on the top of my
right-hand little finger, and just be careful how you draw it off,
because I shall have the Verger's fees somewhere in my glove.

CAPT. G. (Walking forward hastily.) D- the Verger!  Come along!
It's past twelve and I haven't seen Her since yesterday evening.
(Spinning round again.)  She's an absolute angel, Jack, and She's a
dashed deal too good for me. Look here, does She come up the
aisle on my arm, or how?

CAPT. M. If I thought that there was the least chance of your
remembering anything for two consecutive minutes, I'd tell you.
Stop passaging about like that!

CAPT. G.  (Halting in *he middle of the road.) I say, Jack.

CAPT. M. Keep quiet for another ten minutes if you can, you
lunatic; and walk!

The two tramp at five miles an hour for fifteen minutes.

CAPT. G. What's the time?  How about the cursed wedding-cake
and the slippers?  They don't throw 'em about in church, do they?

CAPT. M. In-variably.  The Padre leads off with his boots.

CAPT. G.  Confound your silly soul! Don't make fun of me. I can't
stand it, and I won't!

CAPT. M. (Untroubled.) So-ooo, old horse  You'll have to sleep
for
a couple of hours this afternoon.

CAPT. G. (Spinning round.) I'm not going to be treated like a
dashed
child. understand that

CAPT. M.  (Aside.)  Nerves gone to fiddle-strings.  What a day
we're having!  (Tenderly putting his hand on G.'s shoulder.)  My
David, how long have you known this Jonathan? Would I come up
here to make a fool of you-after all these years?

CAPT. G. (Penitently.)  I know, I know, Jack-but I'm as upset as I
can be. Don't mind what I say. Just hear me run through the drill
and see if I've got it all right:-"To have and to hold for better or
worse, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world
without end, so help me God. Amen."

CAPT. M.  (Suffocating  with  suppressed laughter.)  Yes.  That's
about the gist of it.  I'll prompt if you get into a hat.

CAPT. G. (Earnestly.) Yes, you'll stick by me, Jack, won't you?
I'm
awfully happy, but I don't mind telling you that I'm in a blue funk!

CAPT. M. (Gravely.)  Are you?  I should never have noticed it.
You
don't look like it.

CAPT. G. Don't I? That's all right. (Spinning round.)  On my soul
and honor, Jack, She's the sweetest little angel that ever came
down from the sky.  There isn't a woman on earth fit to speak to
Her.

CAPT. M.  (Aside.)  And this is old Gandy! (Aloud.)  Go on if it
relieves you.

CAPT. G. You can laugh! That's all you wild asses of bachelors
are
fit for.

CAPT. M.  (Drawling.)  You never would wait for the troop to
come
up. You aren't quite married yet, y'know.

CAPT. G.  Ugh! That reminds me. I don't believe I shall be able to
get into
any boots  Let's go home and try 'em on  (Hurries forward.)

CAPT. M.  'Wouldn't be in your shoes for anything that Asia has to
offer.

CAPT. G.  (Spinning round.)  That just shows your hideous
blackness of soul-your dense stupidity-your brutal
narrow-mindedness.  There's only ~ne fault about you.  You're the
best of good fellows, and I don't know what [ should have done
without you, but-you aren't married.  (Wags his head gravely.)
Take a wife, Jack.

CAPT. M.  (With a face like a wall.) Va-as.  Whose for choice?

CAPT. G. If you're going to be a blackguard, I'm going on- What's
the time?

CAPT. M. (Hums.)-

An' since 'twas very clear we drank only ginger-beer,
Faith, there must ha' been some stingo in the ginger."

Come back, you maniac.  I'm going to take you home, and you're
going to lie down.

CAPT. G. What on earth do I want to lie down for?

CAPT. M. Give me a light from your cheroot and see.

CAPT.  G.  (Watching  cheroot-butt quiver like a tuning-fork.)
Sweet state I'm in!

CAPT. M. You are. I'll get you a peg and you'll go to sleep.

They return and M. compounds a four-finger peg.

CAPT. G.  O bus! bus! It'll make me as drunk as an owl.

CAPT. M.  'Curious  thing,  'twon't have the slightest effect on you.
Drink it off, chuck yourself down there, and go to bye-bye.

CAPT. G. It's absurd. I sha'n't sleep, I know I sha'n'tl

Falls into heavy doze at end of seven minutes. CAPT. M. watches
him tenderly.

CAPT. M. Poor old Gandy!  I've seen a few turned off before, but
never one who went to the gallows in this condition. 'Can't tell how
it affects 'em, though.  It's the thoroughbreds that sweat when
they're backed into double-harness.-And that's the man who went
through the guns at Amdheran like a devil possessed of devils.
(Leans over G.)  But this is worse than the guns, old pal-worse than
the guns, isn't it? (G. turns in his sleep, and M. touches him
clumsily on the forehead.)  Poor, dear old Gaddy I Going like the
rest of 'em-going like the rest of 'em-Friend that sticketh closer
than a brother-eight years.  Dashed bit of a slip of a girl-eight
weeks!  And-where's your friend?  (Smokes disconsolately till
church clock strikes three.)

CAPT. M. Up with you!  Get into your kit.

CAPT. C. Already? Isn't it too soon? Hadn't I better have a shave?

CAPT. M. No!  You're all right. (Aside.) He'd chip his chin to
pieces.

CAPT. C. What's the hurry?

CAPT. M. You've got to be there first.

CAPT. C. To be stared at?

CAPT. M. Exactly. You're part of the show.  Where's the
burnisher?
Your spurs are in a shameful state.

CAPT. G.  (Gruffly.) Jack,  I  be damned if you shall do that for
me.

CAPT. M.  (More gruffly.) Dry' up and get dressed! If I choose to
clean your spurs, you're under my orders.

CAPT. G. dresses.  M. follows suit.

CAPT. M. (Critically, walking round.) M'yes, you'll do.  Only don't
look so like a criminal.  Ring, gloves, fees-that's all right for me.
Let your moustache alone.  Now, if the ponies are ready, we'll go.

CAPT. G.  (Nervously.)  It's much too soon. Let's light up! Let's
have
a peg!  Let's-CAPT. M. Let's make bally asses of ourselves!

BELLS.  (Without.)-

"Good-peo-ple-all
To prayers-we call."

CAPT. M. There go the bells! Come an-unless you'd rather not.
(They ride off.)

BELLS.-

"We honor the King
And Brides joy do bring-
Good tidings we tell, And ring the Dead's knell."

CAPT. G.  (Dismounting at the door of the Church.) I say, aren't
we
much too soon? There are no end of people inside. I say, aren't we
much too late? Stick by me, Jack! What the devil do I do?

CAPT. M.  Strike an attitude at the bead of the aisle and wait for
Her. (G. groans as M. wheels him into position he/ore three
hundred eyes.)

CAPT. M.  (Imploringly.) Gaddy, if you love me, for pity's sake,
for
the Honor of the Regiment, stand up! Chuck yourself into your
uniform! Look like a man! I've got to speak to the Padre a minute.
(G. breaks into a gentle Perspiration.) your face I'll never man
again.  Stand up! visibly.) If you wipe your face I'll never be your
best man again. Stand up! (G. Trembles visibly.)

CAPT. M.  (Returning.)  She's commg now.  Look out when the
music starts.  There's the organ beginning to clack.

Bride steps out of 'rickshaw at Church  door.  G.  catches a glimpse
o/ her and takes heart.

ORGAN.-

"The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,
That earliest marriage day,
The primal marriage-blessing,
It hath not passed away."

CAPT. M.  (Watching G.) By Jove! He is looking well.  'Didn't
think he had it in him.

CAPT. G. How long does this hymn go on for?

CAPT. M.  It will be over directly. (Ansiously.)  Beginning to
vleach and gulp. Hold on, Gabby, and think o' the Regiment.

CAPT. G.   (Measuredly.)  I say there's a big brown lizard crawling
up that wall.

CAPT. M.  My Sainted Mother! The last stage of collapse!

Bride comes Up to left of altar, lifts her eyes once to G., who is
suddenly smitten mad.

CAPT. G.  (TO himself again and again.) Little Featherweight's a
woman-a woman! And I thought she was a little girl.

CAPT. M.  (In a whisper.) Form the halt-inward wheel.

CAPT. G. obeys mechanically and the ceremony proceeds.

PADRE. .  .  . only unto her as ye both shall live?

CAPT. G.  (His throat useless.) Ha-hmmm!

CAPT. M. Say you will or you won't. There's no second deal here.

Bride gives response with perfect coomess, and is given away by
the father.

CAPT. G.  (Thinking to show his learning.)  Jack give me away
now, quick!

CAPT. M. You've  given yourself away quite enough.  Her right
hand, man!  Repeat!  Repeat!  "Theodore Philip." Have you
forgotten your own name?

CAPT. G. stumbles through Affirmation, which Bride repeats
without a tremor.

CAPT. M. Now the ring!  Follow the Padre! Don't pull off my
glove! Here it is! Great Cupid, he's found his voice.

CAPT. G. repeats Troth in a voice to be heard to the end of the
Church and turns on his heel.

CAPT. M. (Desperately.) Rein back! Back to your troop!  'Tisn't
half
legal yet.

PAnRE. . . . joined together let no man put asunder.

CAPT. G. paralyzed with fear jibs after Blessing.

CAPT. M.  (Quickly.) On your own front-one length. Take her
with
you. I don't come. You've nothing to say. (CAPT. G. jingles up to
altar.)

CAPT. M. (In a piercing rattle meant to be a whisper.)  Kneel, you
stiff-necked ruffian!  Kneel!

PADRE.  .  .   whose daughters are ye so long as ye do well and are
not afraid with any amazement.

CAPT. M. Dismiss! Break off! Left wheel!

All troop to vestry.  They sign.

CAPT. M. Kiss Her, Gaddy.

CAPT. G.  (Rubbing the ink into his glove.) Eh! Wha-at?

CAPT. M.  (Taking  one  pace  to Bride.) If you don't, I shall.

CAPT. G. (Interposing an arm.) Not this journey!

General kissing, in which CAPT. G. is pursued by unknown
female.

CAPT. G.  (Faintly to M.)  This is Hades! Can I wipe my face
now?

CAPT. M.  My  responsibility has ended.  Better ask Misses
GADSAY.

CAPT. G. winces as though shot and procession is Mendelssohned
out of Church to house, where usual tortures take place over the
wedding-cake.

CAPT. M.  (At table.) Up with you, Gaddy.  They expect a speech.

CAPT. G. (After three minutes' agony.) Ha-hmmm.  (Thunders Of
applause.)

CAPT. M. Doocid good, for a first attempt. Now go and change
your kit while Mamma is weeping over_"the Missus." (CAPT. G.
disappears. CAPT. M. starts up tearing his hair.) It's not half legal.
Where are the shoes? Get an ayah.

AVAH. Missie Captain Sahib done gone band karo all the jutis.

CAPT. M.  (Brandishing scab larded sword.) Woman, produce
those
shoes Some one lend me a bread-knife. We mustn't crack Gaddy's
head more than it is.  (Slices heel off white satin slipper and puts
slipper up his sleeve.)

Where is the Bride?  (To the company at large.) Be tender with
that rice. It's a heathen custom. Give me the big bag.

*     *     *     *     *     *

Bride slips out quietly into 'rickshaw and departs toward the
sun-set.

CAPT. M.  (In the  open.)  Stole away, by Jove! So much the
worse
for Gaddy! Here he is. Now Gaddy, this'll be livelier than
Amdberan!  Where's your horse?

CAPT. G. (Furiously, seeing that the women are out of an earshot.)
Where the-is my Wife?

CAPT. M. Half-way to Mahasu by this time.  You'll have to ride
like
Young Lochinvar.

Horse comes round on his hind legs; refuses to let G. handle him.

CAPT. G. Oh you will, will you? Get 'round, you brute-you
hog-you
beast! Get round!

Wrenches horse's head over, nearly breaking lower jaw: swings
himself into saddle, and sends home both spurs in the midst of a
spattering gale of Best Patna.

CAPT. M. For your life and your love-ride, Gaddy -And God bless
you!

Throws half a pound of rice at G. who disappears, bowed forward
on the saddle, in a cloud of sun-lit dust.

CAPT. M.  I've  lost  old  Gaddy. (Lights cigarette and strolls off,
singing absently):-

"You may carve it on his tombstone, you may cut it on his card,
That a young man married is a young man marred!"

Miss DEERCOURT. (From her horse.) Really, Captain Mafflin!
You are more plain spoken than polite!

CAPT. M.  (Aside.) They say marriage is like cholera.  'Wonder
who'll be the next victim.

White satin slipper slides from his sleeve and falls at his feet. Left
wondering.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN
And ye shall be as-Gods!

SCENE.-Thymy grass-plot at back of t!'e Mahasu dak-bungalow,
overlooking little wooded valley. On the left, glimpse of the Dead
Forest of Fagoo; on the right, Simla Hills.  In background, line of
the Snows. CAPTAIN GADSBY, now three weeks a husband, is
smoking the pipe of peace on a rug in the sunshine.  Banjo and
tobacco-pouch on rug. Overhead the Fagoo eagles. MRS. G. comes
out of bungalow.

MRS. G. My husband! CAPT. G. (Lazily, with intense enjoyment.)
Eb, wha-at? Say that again.

MRS. G. I've written to Mamma and told her that we shall be back
on the 17th.

CAPT. G. Did you give her my love?

MRS. G. No, I kept all that for myself.  (Sitting down by his side.)
I thought you wouldn't mind.

CAPT. G.  (With mock sternness.) I object awf'ly. How did you
know that it was yours to keep?

MRS. G. I guessed, Phil.

CAPT. G.   (Rapturously.)  Lit-tle Featherweight!

MRS. G.  I won' t be called those sporting pet names, bad boy.

CAPT. G. You'll be called anything I choose. Has it ever occurred
to
you, Madam, that you are my Wife?

MRS. G. It has.  I haven't ceased wondering at it yet.

CAPT. G. Nor I. It seems so strange; and yet, somehow, it doesn't.
(Confidently.)  You see, it could have been no one else.

MRS. G.  (Softly.) No. No one else -for me or for you.  It must
have been all arranged from the beginning. Phil, tell me again
what made you care for me.

CAPT. G. How could I help it? You were you, you know.

MRS. G. Did you ever want to help it? Speak the truth!

CAPT. G.  (A twinkle in his eye.) I did, darling, just at the first.
Rut
only at the very first. (Chuckles.) I called you-stoop low and I'll
whisper-"a little beast." Ho! Ho! Ho!

MRS. G.  (Taking him by the mous'ache and making him sit up.)
"A-little-beast!"   Stop  laughing  over your crime! And yet you had
the-the -awful cheek to propose to me!

CAPT. C. I'd changed my mind then. And you weren't a little beast
any more.

MRS. G. Thank you, sir! And when was I ever?

CAPT. G.  Never! But that first day, when you gave me tea in that
peach-colored muslin gown thing, you looked-you did indeed,
dear-such an absurd little mite. And I didn't know what to say to
you.

MRS. G.  (Twisting moustache.) So you said "little beast." Upon
my word, Sir!  I called you a "Crrrreature," but I wish now I had
called you something worse.

CAPT. G.  (Very meekly.)  I apologize, but you're hurting me
awf'ly.
(Interlude.) You're welcome to torture me again on those terms.

MRS. G. Oh, why did you let me do it?

CAPT. G.  (Looking across valley.) No reason in particular, but-if
it
amused you or did you any good-you might-wipe those dear little
boots of yours on me.

MRS. G.  (Stretching out her hands.) Don't!  Oh, don't!  Philip, my
King, please don't talk like that. It's how I feel.  You're so much too
good for me. So much too good!

CAPT. G. Me! I'm not fit to put my arm around you. (Puts it
round.)

MRS. C.  Yes, you are.  But I-what have I ever done?

CAPT. G. Given me a wee bit of your heart, haven't you, my
Queen!

MRS. G.  That's nothing. Any one would do that. They
cou-couldn't help it.

CAPT. G. Pussy, you'll make me horribly conceited.  Just when I
was beginning to feel so humble, too.

MRS. G. Humble!  I don't believe it's in your character.

CAPT. G. What do you know of my character, Impertinence?

MRS. G. Ah, but I shall, shan't I, Phil? I shall have time in all the
years and years to come, to know everything about you; and there
will be no secrets between us.

CAPT. G.  Little witch!  I believe you know me thoroughly
already.

MRS. G. I think I can guess. You're selfish?

CAPT. G. Yes.

MRS. G. Foolish?

CAPT. G.  Very.

MRS. G. And a dear?

CAPT. G. That is as my lady pleases.

MRS. G. Then your lady is pleased. (A pause.) D'you know that
we're two solemn, serious, grown-up people -CAPT. G.  (Tilting
her
straw hat over her eyes.)  You  grown-up!  Pooh! You're a baby.

MRS. G. And we're talking nonsense.

CAPT. G.  Then let's go on talking nonsense. I rather like it. Pussy,
I'll tell you a secret. Promise not to repeat?

MRS. G. Ye-es. Only to you.

CAPT. G. I love you.

MRS. G. Re-ally! For how long?

CAPT. G. Forever and ever.

MRS. G. That's a long time.

CAPT. G. 'Think so? It's the shortest I can do with.

MRS. G. You're getting quite clever.

CAPT. G. I'm talking to you.

MRS. G.  Prettily turned. Hold up your stupid old head and I'll pay
you for it.

CAPT. G.  (Affecting supreme contempt.)  Take it yourself if you
want it.

MRS. G. I've a great mind to-and I will!  (Takes it and is repaid
with interest.)

CAPT. G, Little Featherweight, it's my opinion that we are a
couple
of idiots.

MRS. G. We're the only two sensible people in the world.  Ask the
eagle. He's coming by.

CAPT. G. Ah! I dare say he's seen a good many sensible people at
Mahasu. They say that those birds live for ever so long.

MRS. G. How long?

CAPT. G. A hundred and twenty years.

MRS. G.  A hundred and twenty years!  O-oh!  And in a hundred
and twenty years where will these two sensible people be?

CAPT. G.  What does it matter so long as we are together now?

MRS. G.  (Looking round the horizon.)  Yes.  Only you and I-I and
you-in the whole wide, wide world until the end. (Sees the line of
the Snows.) How big and quiet the hills look! D'you think they care
for us?

CAPT. G.  'Can't say I've consulted em particularly.  I care, and
that's
enough for me.

MRS. G.  (Drawing nearer to him.) Yes, now-but afterward.
What's that little black blur on the Snows?

CAPT. G. A snowstorm, forty miles away. You'll see it move, as
the
wind carries it across the face of that spur and then it will be all
gone.

MRS. G. And then it will be all gone. (Shivers.)

CAPT. G.  (Anriously.)  'Not chilled, pet, are you? 'Better let me
get your cloak.

MRS. G. No. Don't leave me, Phil. Stay here. I believe I am afraid.
Oh, why are the hills so horrid! Phil, promise me that you'll always
love me.

CAPT. G. What's the trouble, darling? I can't promise any more
than
I have; but I'll promise that again and again if you like.

MRs. G. (Her head on his shoulder.) Say it, then-say it!  N-no-
don't! The-the-eagles would laugh.  (Recovering.) My husband,
you've married a little goose.

CAPT. G.  (Very tenderly.) Have I? I am content whatever she is,
so
long as she is mine.

MRS. G.  (Quickly.) Because she is yours or because she is me
mineself?

CAPT. G. Because she is both. (Piteously.)  I'm not clever, dear,
and
I don't think I can make myself understood properly.

MRS. G. I understand. Pip, will you tell me something?

CAPT. G. Anything you like. (Aside.) I wonder what's coming
now.

MRS. G.  (Haltingly, her eyes 'owered.)  You told me once in the
old days-centunes and centuries ago-that you had been engaged
before.  I didn't say anything-then.

CAPT. G. (Innocently.) Why not?

MRS. G.  (Raising her eyes to his.) Because-because I was afraid
of losing you, my heart. But now-tell about it-please.

CAPT. G. There's nothing to tell. I was awf'ly old then-nearly two
and twenty-and she was quite that.

MRS. G. That means she was older than you. I shouldn't like her to
have been younger. Well?

CAPT. G. Well, I fancied myself in love and raved about a bit,
and-oh, yes, by Jove! I made up poetry. Ha! Ha!

MRS. G. You never wrote any for me! What happened?

CAPT. G. I came out here, and the whole thing went phut.  She
wrote to say that there had been a mistake, and then she married.

Mas. G. Did she care for you much?

CAPT. G. No. At least she didn't show it as far as I remember.

MRS. G. As far as you rememberl Do you remember her name?
(Hears it and bows her head.) Thank you, my husband.

CAPT. G. Who but you had the right? Now, Little Featherweight,
have you ever been mixed up in any dark and dismal tragedy?

MRS. G.  If you call me Mrs. Gadsby, p'raps I'll tell.

CAPT. G.  (Throwing Parade rasp into his voice.)  Mrs. Gadsby,
confessl

MRS. G. Good Heavens, Phil!  I never knew that you could speak
in that terrible voice.

CAPT. G.  You don't know half my accomplishments yet. Wait till
we are settled in the Plains, and I'll show you how I bark at my
troop.  You were going to say, darling?

MRS. G. I-I don't like to, after that voice.  (Tremulously.) Phil,
never you dare to speak to me in that tone, whatever I may do!

CAPT. G. My poor little love! Why, you're shaking all over. I am
so
sorry. Of course I never meant to upset you Don't tell me anything,
I'm a brute.

MRS. G. No, you aren't, and I will tell- There was a man.

CAPT. G.  (Lightly.)  Was there? Lucky man!

MRS. G.  (In a whisper.)  And I thougbt I cared for him.

CAPT. G. Still luckier man! Well?

MRS. G. And I thought I cared for him-and I didn't-and then you
came-and I cared for you very, very much indeed.  That's all.
(Face hidden.) You aren't angry, are you?

CAPT. G. Angry? Not in the least. (Aside.) Good Lord, what have
I
done to deserve this angel?

MRS. G.  (Aside.)  And he never asked for the name! How funny
men are! But perhaps it's as well.

CAPT. G. That man will go to heaven because you once thought
you
cared for him.  'Wonder if you'll ever drag me up there?

MRS. G.  (Firmly.)  'Sha'n't go if you don't.

CAPT. G.  Thanks.  I say, Pussy, I don't know much about your
religious beliefs. You were brought up to believe in a heaven and
all that, weren't you?

MRS. G.  Yes.  But it was a pincushion heaven, with hymn-books
in all the pews.

CAPT. G. (Wagging his head with intense conviction.) Never
mind.
There is a pukka heaven.

MRS. G. Where do you bring that message from, my prophet?

CAPT. G.  Here!  Because we care for each other. So it's all right.

Mrs.  G.  (As a troop of langurs crash through the branches.) So it's
all right.  But Darwin says that we came from those!

CAPT. G.  (Placidly.) Ah! Darwin was never in love with an angel.
That settles it. Sstt, you brutes! Monkeys, indeed!  You shouldn't
read those books.

MRS. G.  (Folding her hands.)  If it pleases my Lord the King to
issue proclamation.

CAPT. G.  Don't, dear one. There are no orders between us.  Only
I'd
rather you didn't.  They lead to nothing, and bother people's heads.

MRS. G.  Like your first engagement.

CAPT. G.  (With an immense calm.) That was a necessary evil and
led to you. Are you nothing?

MRS. G. Not so very much, am I?

CAPT. G. All this world and the next to me.

MRS. G.  (Very softly.)  My boy of boys!  Shall I tell you
something?

CAPT. G. Yes, if it's not dreadful-about other men.

MRS. G. It's about my own bad little self.

CAPT. G. Then it must be good. Go on, dear.

MRS. G.  (Slowly.) I don't know why I'm telling you, Pip; but if
ever you marry again-(Interlude.)  Take your hand from my mouth
or I'll bite! In the future, then remember-I don't know quite how to
put it!

CAPT.  G.  (Snorting indignantly.) Don't try. "Marry again,"
indeed!

MRS. G. I must. Listen, my husband.  Never, never, never tell your
wife anything that you do not wish her to remember and think over
all her life. Because a woman-yes, I am a woman -can't forget.

CAPT. G. By Jove, how do you know that?

MRS. G. (Confusedly.) I don't. I'm only guessing. I am-I was-a silly
little girl; but I feel that I know so much, oh, so very much more
than you, dearest. To begin with, I'm your wife.

CAPT. G.  So I have been led to believe.

MRS. G. And I shall want to know every one of your secrets-to
share everything you know with you. (Stares round desperately.)

CAPT. G. So you shall, dear, so you shall-but don't look like that.

MRS. G.  For your own sake don't stop me, Phil.  I shall never talk
to you in this way again. You must not tell me! At least, not now.
Later on, when I'm an old matron it won't matter, but if you love
me, be very good to me now; for this part of my life I shall never
forget!  Have I made you understand?

CAPT. G. I think so, child. Have I said anything yet that you
disapprove of?

MRS. G. Will you be very angry? That-that voice, and what you
said about the engagement-

CAPT. G.  But you asked to be told that, darling.

MRS. G.  And  that's why you shouldn't have told me!  You must
be the Judge, and, oh, Pip, dearly as I love you, I shan't be able to
help you! I shall hinder you, and you must judge in spite of me!

CAPT. G.  (Meditatively.) We have a great many things to find out
together, God help us both-say so, Pussy-but we shall understand
each other better every day; and I think I'm beginning to see now.
How in the world did you come to know just the importance of
giving me just that lead?

MRS. G.  I've told you that I don't know.  Only somehow it seemed
that, in all this new life, I was being guided for your sake as well
as my own.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Then Mafilin was right! They know, and
we-we're blind all of us. (Lightly.) 'Getting a little beyond our
depth, dear, aren't we? I'll remember, and, if I fail, let me be
punished as I deserve.

MRS. G. There shall be no punishment.  We'll start into life
together from here-you and I-and no one else.

CAPT. G.  And no one else.  (A pause.)  Your eyelashes are all
wet,
Sweet? Was there ever such a quaint little Absurdity?

Mas. G.  Was there ever such nonsense talked before?

CAPT. G.  (Knocking the ashes out of his pipe.)  'Tisn't what we
say,
it's what we don't say, that helps. And it's all the profoundest
philosophy. But no one would understand-even if it were put into a
book.

MRS. G.  The idea!  No-only we ourselves, or people like
ourselves-if there are any people like us.

CAPT. G.  (Magisterially.) All people, not like ourselves, are blind
idiots.

MRS. G.  (Wiping her eyes.) Do you think, then, that there are any
people as happy as we are?

CAPT. G. 'Must be-unless we've appropriated all the happiness in
the world.

MRS. G'.  (Looking toward Simla.) Poor dears! Just fancy if we
have!

CAPT. G. Then we'll hang on to the whole show, for it's a great
deal too jolly to lose-eh, wife o' mine?

MRS. G. O Pip! Pip! How much of you is a solemn, married man
and how much a horrid slangy schoolboy?

CAPT. G.  When you tell me how much of you was eighteen last
birthday and how much is as old as the Sphinx and twice as
mysterious, perhaps I'll attend to you.  Lend me that banjo. The
spirit moveth me to jowl at the sunset.

MRS. G. Mind! It's not tuned. Ah! How that jars!

CAPT G. (Turning pegs.) It's amazingly different to keep a banjo
to proper pitch.

MRS. G. It's the same with all musical instruments, What shall it
be?

CAPT. G. "Vanity," and let the hills hear.  (Sings through the first
and hal' of the second verse.  Turning to MRS. G.) Now, chorus!
Sing, Pussy!

BOTH TOGETHRR.  (Con brio, to the horror of the monkeys who
are settling for the night.)-

"Vanity, all is Vanity," said Wisdom. scorning me-
I clasped my true Love's tender hand and answered frank and
free-ee
"If this be Vanity who'd be wise?
If this be Vanity who'd be wise?
If this be Vanity who'd be wi-ise
(Crescendo.)  Vanity let it be!"

MRS. G.  (Defiantly to the grey of the evening sky.) "Vanity let it
be!"

ECHO. (Prom the Fagoo spur.) Let it be!

FATIMA

And you may go in every room of the house and see everything
that is there, but into the Blue Room you must not go.-The Story of
Blue Beard.

SCENE.-The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains.  Time, 11 A. M.
on a Sunday morning.  Captain GADSBY, in his shirt-sleeves, is
bending over a complete set of Hussar's equipment, from saddle to
picketing-rope, which is neatly spread over the floor of his study.
He is smoking an unclean briar, and his forehead is puckered with
thought.

CAPT. G.  (To himself, fingering a headstall.)  Jack's an ass.
There's
enough brass on this to load a mule-and, if the Americans know
anything about anything, it can be cut down to a bit only.  'Don't
want the watering-bridle, either. Humbug!-Half a dozen sets of
chains and pulleys for one horse! Rot!   (Scratching his head.)
Now, let's consider it all over from the he-ginning.  By Jove, I've
forgotten the scale of weights!  Ne'er mind.  'Keep the bit only, and
eliminate every boss from the crupper to breastplate.  No
breastplate at all. Simple leather strap across the breast-like the
Russians. Hi! Jack never thought of that!

MRS. G.  (Entering hastily, her hand bound in a cloth.) Oh, Pip,
I've scalded my hand over that horrid, horrid Tiparee jam!

CAPT. G. (Absently.) Eb! Wha-at?

MRS.  G.   (With  round-eyed reproach.)  I've scalded it aw-fully!
Aren't you sorry? And I did so want that jam to jam properly.

CAPT. G.  Poor little woman!  Let me kiss the place and make it
well. (Unrolling bandage.)  You small sinner!  Where's that scald?
I can't see it.

MRS. G.  On the top of the little finger. There!-It's a most
'normous big burn!

CAPT. G.   (Kissing little finger.) Baby!  Let Hyder look after the
jam. You know I don't care for sweets.

Mas. G. In-deed?-Pip!

CAPT. G. Not of that kind, anyhow. And now run along, Minnie,
and leave me to my own base devices. I'm busy.

MRS. G.  (Calmly settling herself in long chair.)  So I see.  What a
mess you're making! Why have you brought all that smelly leather
stuff into the house?

CAPT. G.  To play with.  Do you mind, dear?

MRS. G. Let me play too.  I'd like it.

CAPT. G. I'm afraid you wouldn't. Pussy- Don't you think that jam
will burn, or whatever it is that jam does when it's not looked after
by a clever little housekeeper?

MRS. G.  I thought you said Hyder could attend to it.  I left him in
the veranda, stirring-when I hurt myself so.

CAPT. G.  (His eye returning to the equipment.)  Po-oor little
woman!-Three pounds four and seven is three eleven, and that can
be cut down to two eight, with just a lee-tie care, with-out
weakening anything. Farriery is all rot in incompetent hands.
What's the use of a shoe-case when a man's scouting? He can't
stick it on with a lick-like a stamp-the shoe! Skittles

MRS. G.  What's  skittles?  Pah! What is this leather cleaned with?

CAPT. G.  Cream and champagne and- Look here, dear, do you
really want to talk to me about anything important?

MRS. G.  No.  I've done my accounts, and I thought I'd like to see
what you're doing.

CAPT. G.  Well, love, now you've seen and- Would you mind?-
That
is to say-Minnie, I really am busy.

MRS. G. You want me to go?

CAPT. G, Yes, dear, for a little while. This tobacco will hang in
your dress, and saddlery doesn't interest you.

MRS. G.  Everything you do interests me, Pip.

CAPT. G. Yes, I know, I know, dear. I'll tell you all about it some
day when I've put a head on this thing. In the meantime-

MRS. G. I'm to be turned out of the room like a troublesome child?

CAPT. G. No-o. I don't mean that exactly. But, you see, I shall be
tramping up and down, shifting these things to and fro, and I shall
be in your way. Don't you think so?

MRS. G.  Can't I lift them about? Let me try.  (Reaches forward  to
trooper's saddle.)

CAPT. G. Good gracious, child, don't touch it. You'll hurt yourself.
(Picking up saddle.)  Little girls aren't expected to handle
numdahs. Now, where would you like it put?  (Holds saddle above
his head.)

MRS. G.  (A break in her voice.) Nowhere.  Pip, how good you
are-and how strong!  Oh, what's that ugly red streak inside your
arm?

CAPT. G.  (Lowering saddle quickly.) Nothing. It's a mark of sorts.
(Aside.) And Jack's coming to tiffin with his notions all cut and
dried!

MRS. G. I know it's a mark, but I've never seen it before.  It runs
all up the arm. What is it?

CAPT. G.  A cut-if you want to know.

MRS. G. Want to know! Of course I do! I can't have my husband
cut to pieces in this way. How did it come? Was it an accident?
Tell me, Pip.

CAPT. G.  (Grimly.)  No.  'Twasn't an accident. I got it-from a
man-in Afghanistan.

MRS. G. In action? Oh, Pip, and you never told me!

CAPT. G. I'd forgotten all about it.

MRS. G. Hold up your arm! What a horrid, ugly scar!  Are you
sure it doesn't hurt now!  How did the man give it you?

CAPT. G. (Desperately looking at his watch.) With a knife. I came
down-old Van Loo did, that's to say-and fell on my leg, so I
couldn't run. And then this man came up and began chopping at
me as I sprawled.

MRS. G.  Oh, don't, don't!  That's enough!- Well, what happened?

CAPT. G.  I couldn't get to my holster, and Mafflin came round the
corner and stopped the performance.

MRS. G.  How?  He's such a lazy man, I don't believe he did.

CAPT. G. Don't you? I don't think the man had much doubt about
it. Jack cut his head off.

Mas. G. Cut-his-head-off! "With one blow," as they say in the
books?

CAPT. G.  I'm not sure. I was too interested in myself to know
much about it.  Anyhow, the head was off, and Jack was punching
old Van Loo in the ribs to make him get up. Now you know all
about it, dear, and now-

MRS. G.  You want me to go, of course. You never told me about
this, though I've been married to you for ever so long; and you
never would have told me if I hadn't found out; and you never do
tell me anything about yourself, or what you do, or what you take
an interest in.

CAPT. G.  Darling, I'm always with you, aren't I?

MRS. G. Always in my pocket, you were going to say.  I know you
are; but you are always thinking away from me.

CAPT. G.  (Trying to hide a smile.) Am I?  I wasn't aware of it.
I'm awf'ly sorry.

MRS.  G.  (Piteously.)  Oh, don't make fun of me!  Pip, you know
what I mean. When you are reading one of those things about
Cavalry, by that idiotic Prince-why doesn't he be a Prince instead
of a stable-boy?

CAPT. G. Prince Kraft a stable-boy-Oh, my Aunt! Never mind,
dear. You were going to say?

MRS. G. It doesn't matter; you don't care for what I say.  Only-only
you get up and walk about the room, staring in front of you, and
then Mafflin comes in to dinner, and after I'm in the drawmg-room
I can hear you and him talking, and talking, and talking, about
things I can't understand, and-oh, I get so tired and feel so lonely!-I
don't want to complain and be a trouble, Pip; but I do indeed I
do!

CAPT. G. My poor darling! I never thought of that.  Why don't you
ask some nice people in to dinner?

MRS. G.  Nice people!  Where am I to find them? Horrid frumps!
And if I did, I shouldn't be amused. You know I only want you.

CAPT, G. And you have me surely, Sweetheart?

MRS. G. I have not! Pip why don't you take me into your life?

CAPT. G.  More than I do?  That would be difficult, dear.

MRS. G. Yes, I suppose it would-to you.  I'm no help to you-no
companion to you; and you like to have it so.

CAPT. G. Aren't you a little unreasonable, Pussy?

MRS. G.  (Stamping her foot.) I'm the most reasonable woman in
the world-when I'm treated properly.

CAPT. G.  And since when have I been treating you improperly?

MRS. G. Always-and since the beginning. You know you have.

CAPT. G. I don't; but I'm willing to be convinced.

MRS. G.  (Pointing  to  saddlery.) There!

CAPT. G. How do you mean?

MRS. G.  What does all that mean? Why am I not to be told?  Is it
so precious?

CAPT. G.  I forget its exact Government value just at present.  It
means that it is a great deal too heavy.

MRS. G. Then why do you touch it?

CAPT. G.  To make it lighter.  See here, little love, I've one notion
and Jack has another, but we are both agreed that all this
equipment is about thirty pounds too heavy. The thing is how to
cut it down without weakening any part of it, and, at the same
time, allowing the trooper to carry everything he wants for his own
comfort-socks and shirts and things of that kind.

MRS. G. Why doesn't he pack them in a little trunk?

CAPT. G.  (Kissing her.)  Oh, you darling! Pack them in a little
trunk, indeed!  Hussars don't carry trunks, and it's a most important
thing to make the horse do all the carrying.

MRS. G. But why need you bother about it? You're not a trooper.

CAPT. G.  No; but I command a few score of him; and equipment
is
nearly everything in these days.

MRS. G. More than me?

CAPT. G.  Stupid!  Of course not; but it's a matter that I'm
tremendously interested in, because if I or Jack, or I and Jack,
work out some sort of lighter saddlery and all that. it's possible
that we may get  it adopted.

MRS. G. How?

CAPT. G. Sanctioned at Home, where they will make a sealed
pattern-a pattern that all the saddlers must copy-and so it will be
used by all the regiments.

MRS. G. And that interests you?

CAPT. G. It's part of my profession, y'know, and my profession is
a
good deal to me.  Everything in a soldier's equipment is important,
and if we can improve that equipment, so much the better for the
soldiers and for us.

Mas. G. Who's "us"?

CAPT. G.  Jack and I; only Jack's notions are too radical.  What's
that big sigh for, Minnie?

MRS. G.  Oh, nothing-and you've kept all this a secret from me!
Why?

CAPT. G. Not a secret, exactly, dear. I didn't say anything about it
to you because I didn't think it would amuse you.

MRS. G. And am I only made to be amused?

CAPT. G.  No, of course.  I merely mean that it couldn't interest
you.

MRS. G. It's your work and-and if you'd let me, I'd count all these
things up.  If they are too heavy, you know by how much they are
too heavy, and you must have a list of things made out to your
scale of lightness, and-

CAPT. G.  I have got both scales somewhere in my head; hut it's
hard to tell how light you can make a head-stall, for instance, until
you've actually had a model made.

MRS. G.  But if you read out the list, I could copy it down, and pin
it up  there  just  above  your  table. Wouldn't that do?

CAPT. G.  It would be awf'ly nice, dear, but it would be giving you
trouble for nothing. I can't work that way. I go by rule of thumb.  I
know the present scale of weights, and the other one-the one that
I'm trying to work to-will shift and vary so much that I couldn't be
certain, even if I wrote it down.

MRS. G. I'm so sorry. I thought I might help. Is there anything else
that I could be of use in?

CAPT. G. (Looking round the room.) I can't think of anything.
You're always helping me you know.

MRS. G. Am I? How?

CAPT. G. You are of course, and as long as you're near me-I can't
explain exactly, but it's in the air.

MRS. G. And that's why you wanted to send me away?

CAPT. G. That's only when I'm trying to do work-grubby work like
this.

MRS. G. Mafflin's better, then, isn't he?

CAPT. G.  (Rashly.)  Of course he is. Jack and I have been
thinking along the same groove for two or three years about this
equipment.  It's our hobby, and it may really be useful some day.

MRS. G.  (After a pause.)  And that's all that you have away from
me?

CAPT. G. It isn't very far away from you now. Take care the oil on
that bit doesn't come off on your dress.

MRS. G.  I wish-I wish so much that I could really help you. I
believe I could-if I left the room. But that's not what I mean.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Give me patience! I wish she would go.
(Aloud.)
I as-sure you you can't do anything for me, Minnie, and I must
really settle down to this. Where's my pouch?

MRS. G.  (Crossing to writing-table.) Here you are, Bear. What a
mess you keep your table in!

CAPT. G.  Don't touch it.  There's a method in my madness,
though
you mightn't think of it.

MRS. G.  (At table.)  I want to look- Do you keep accounts, Pip?

CAPT. G.  (Bending over saddlery.) Of a sort. Are you rummaging
among the Troop papers? Be careful.

MRs. G.  Why?  I sha'n't disturb anything.  Good gracious!  I had
no idea that you had anything to do with so many sick horses.

CAPT. G.  'Wish I hadn't, but they insist on falling sick. Minnie, if
1
were you I really should not investigate those papers.  You may
come across something that you won't like.

MRS. G. Why will you always treat me like a child? I know I'm
not displacing the horrid things.

CAPT. G.  (Resignedly.)  Very well, then. Don't blame me if
anything happens.  Play with the table and let me go on with the
saddlery.  (Slipping hand into trousers-pocket.)  Oh, the deuce!

MRS. G.  (Her back to G.)  What's that for?

CAPT. G. Nothing. (Aside.) There's not much in it, but I wish I'd
torn it up.

MRS. G.  (Turning over contents of table.) I know you'll hate me
for this; but I do want to see what your work is like. (A pause.)
Pip, what are "farcybuds"?

CAPT. G.  Hab!  Would you really like to know?  They aren't
pretty
things.

MRS. G. This Journal of Veterinary Science says they are of
"absorbing interest." Tell me.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.) It may turn her attention.

Gives a long and designedly loathsome account of glanders and
farcy.

MRS. G.  Oh, that's enough.  Don't go on!

CAPT. G. But you wanted to know-Then these things suppurate
and
matterate and spread-

MRS. G.  Pin, you're making me sick!  You're  a horrid,  disgusting
schoolboy.

CAPT. G.  (On his knees among the bridles.)  You asked to be
told.
It's not my fault if you worry me into talking about horrors.

Mas. G. Why didn't you say-No?

CAPT.  G. Good Heavens, child! Have you come in here simply to
bully me?

Mas. G. I bully you? How could I! You're so strong. (Hysterically.)
Strong enough to pick me up and put me outside the door and
leave me there to cry. Aren't you?

CAPT. G. It seems to me that you're an irrational little baby. Are
you
quite well?

MRS. G. Do I look ill?  (Returning to table).  Who is your lady
friend with the big grey envelope and the fat monogram outside?

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  Then it wasn't locked up, confound it.
(Aloud.)
"God made her, therefore let her pass for a woman." You
remember what farcybuds are like?

Mas. G.  (Showing envelope.)  This has nothing to do with them.
I'm going to open it. May I?

CAPT. G. Certainly, if you want to. I'd sooner you didn't though. I
don't ask to look at your letters to the Deer-court girl.

Mas. G.  You'd better not, Sir! (Takes letter from envelope.)  Now,
may I look?  If you say no, I shall cry.

CAPT. G. You've never cried in my knowledge of you, and I don't
believe you could.

Mas. G. I feel very like it to-day, Pip.  Don't be hard on me. (Reads
letter.) It begins in the middle, with-out any "Dear Captain
Gadsby," or anything. How funny!

CAPT. G. (Aside.) No, it's not Dear Captain Gadsby, or anything,
now. How funny!

Mas. G.  What a strange letter! (Reads.)  "And so the moth has
come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into-shall I
say Respectability?  I congratulate him, and hope he will be as
happy as he deserves to be."  What does that mean?  Is she
congratulating you about our marriage?

CAPT. G. Yes, I suppose so.

Mas. G.  (Still r'ading letter.) She seems to be a particular friend of
yours.

CAPT. G.  Yes.  She was an excellent matron of sorts-a Mrs.
Herriott-wife of a Colonel Herriott. I used to know some of her
people at Home long ago-before I came out.

Mas. G.  Some Colonel's wives are young-as young as me.  I knew
one who was younger.

CAPT. G. Then it couldn't have been Mrs. Herriott. She was old
enough to have been ycur mother, dear.

Mas. G.  I remember now.  Mrs. Scargill was talking about her at
the Dutfins' tennis, before you came for me, on Tuesday.  Captain
Mafflin said she was a "dear old woman." Do you know, I think
Mafilin is a very clumsy man with his feet.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  Good old Jack! (Aloud.) Why, dear?

Mas. G.  He had put his cup down on the ground then, and he
literally stepped into it. Some of the tea spirted over my dress-the
grey one. I meant to tell you about it before.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  There are the makings of a strategist about
Jack though his methods are coarse. (Aloud.) You'd better get a
new dress, then. (Aside.) Let us pray that that will turn her.

Mas. G.  Oh, it isn't stained in the least. I only thought that I'd tell
you. (Returning to letter.)  What an extraordinary person!  (Reads.)
"But need I remind you that you have taken upon yourself a charge
of wardship"-what in the world is a charge of wardship?-"which as
you yourself know, may end in Consequences"-

CAPT. G. (Aside.) It's safest to let em see everything as they come
across it; but 'seems to me that there are exceptions to the rule.
(Aloud.) I told you that there was nothing to be gained from
rearranging my table.

Mas. G.  (Absently.)  What does the woman mean? She goes on
talking about Consequences-' 'almost inevitable Consequences"
with a capital C-for half a page.  (Flushing scarlet.)  Oh, good
gracious! How abominable!

CAPT. G. (Promptly.) Do you think so? Doesn't it show a sort of
motherly interest in us? (Aside.) Thank Heaven. Harry always
wrapped her meaning up safely! (Aloud.) Is it absolutely necessary
to go on with the letter, darling?

Mas. G.  It's impertinent-it's simply horrid. What right has this
woman to write in this way to you?  She oughtn't to.

CAPT. G.  When you write to the Deercourt girl, I notice that you
generally fill three or four sheets.  Can't you let an old woman
babble on paper once in a way? She means well.

MRS. G. I don't care. She shouldn't write, and if she did, you ought
to have shown me her letter.

CAPT. G. Can't you understand why I kept it to myself, or must I
explain at length-as I explained the farcybuds?

Mas. G.  (Furiously.)  Pip I hate you!  This is as bad as those
idiotic saddle-bags on the floor.  Never mind whether it would
please me or not, you ought to have given it to me to read.

CAPT. G.  It comes to the same thing. You took it yourself.

MRS. G. Yes, but if I hadn't taken it, you wouldn't have said a
word. I think this Harriet Herriott-it's like a name in a book-is an
interfering old Thing.

CAPT. G.  (Aside.)  So long as you thoroughly understand that she
is
old, I don't much care what you think. (Aloud.) Very good, dear.
Would you like to write and tell her so? She's seven thousand
miles away.

MRS. G. I don't want to have any-thing to do with her, but you
ought to have told me.  (Turning to last page of letter.) And she
patronizes me, too. I've never seen her!  (Reads.) "I do not know
how the world stands with you; in all human probability I shall
never know; but whatever I may have said before, I pray for her
sake more than for yours that all may be well. I have learned what
misery means, and I dare not wish that any one dear to you should
share my knowledge."

CAPT. G.  Good God!  Can't you leave that letter alone, or, at
least,
can't you refrain from reading it aloud? I've been through it once.
Put it back on 'he desk. Do you hear me?

Mas. G.  (Irresolutely.)  I  sh-sha'n't! (Looks at G.'s eyes.) Oh, Pip,
please!  I didn't mean to make you angry- 'Deed, I didn't.  Pip, I'm
so sorry. I know I've wasted your time-CAPT. G.  (Grimly.)  You
have. Now, will you be good enough to go-if there is nothing more
in my room that you are anxious to pry into?

Mas. G.  (Putting out her hands.) Oh, Pip, don't look at me like
that! I've never seen you look like that before and it hu-urts me!
I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have been here at all, and -and- and-
(sobbing.)  Oh, be good to me!  Be good to me!  There's
only you-anywhere! Breaks down in long chair, hiding face in
cushions.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) She doesn't know how she flicked me on the
raw.
(Aloud, bending over chair.) I didn't mean to be harsh, dear-I didn't
really.  You can stay here as long as you please, and do what you
please. Don't cry like that. You'll make yourself sick. (Aside.)
What on earth has come over her? (Aloud.) Darling, what's the
matter with you?

Mrs. G. (Her face still hidden.) Let me go-let me go to my own
room. Only-only say you aren't angry with me.

CAPT. G. Angry with you, love!  Of course not. I was angry with
myself. I'd lost my temper over the saddlery-Don't hide your face,
Pussy. I want to kiss it.

Bends lower, Mas. G. slides right arm round his neck. Several
interludes and much sobbing.

Mas. G.  (In a whisper.)  I didn't mean about the jam when I came
in to tell you-

CAPT'. G.  Bother the jam and the equipment!  (Interlude.)

Mas. G.  (Still more faintly.)  My finger  wasn't  scalded  at  all.
I-[ wanted to speak to you about-about -something else, and-I
didn't know how.

CAPT. G. Speak away, then. (Looking into her eyes.)  Eb!
Wha-at?
Minnie!  Here, don't go away!  You don't mean?

Mas. G.  (Hysterically, backing to portiere and hiding her face in
its fold's.) The-the Almost Inevitable Consequences!  (Flits through
portiere as G. attempts to catch her, and bolts her self in her own
room.)

CAPT. G.  (His arms full of portiere.)  Oh!  (Sitting down heavily
in
chair.)  I'm a brutea pig-a bully, and a blackguard. My poor, poor
little darling! "Made to be amused only?"-

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Knowing Good and Evil.

SCENE.-The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains,  in June.
Punkah-coolies asleep in veranda where Captain GADBY is
walking up and down. DOCTOR'S trap in porch.  JUNIOR
CHAPLAIN drifting generally and uneasily through the house.
Time, 3:4O A. M. Heat 94 degrees in veranda.

DOCTOR.  (Coming into veranda and touching G. on the
shoulder.) You had better go in and see her now.

CAPT. G.  (The color of good cigar-ash.)  Eb, wha-at? Oh, yes, of
course. What did you say?

DOCTOR. (Syllable by syllable.)  Go -in-to-the -room -and- see-
her. She wants to speak to you.  (Aside, testily.) I shall have him
on my hands next.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN.  (In half-lighted dining room.) Isn't there
any?-

DOCTOR.  (Savagely.)  Hsb, you little fool!

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. Let me do my work. Gadsby, stop a minute
I (Edges after G.)

DOCTOR. Wait till she sends for you at least-at least. Man alive,
he'll kill you if you go in there! What are you bothering him for?

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. (Coming into veranda.) I've given him a
stiff brandy-peg.  He wants it.  You've forgotten him for the last
ten hours and-forgotten yourself too.

G. enters bedroom, which is lit by one night-lamp. Ayak on the
floor pretending to be asleep.

VOICE.  (From the bed.) All down the street-such bonfires!  Ayah,
go and put them out! (Appealingly.) How can I sleep with an
installation of the C.I.E. in my room?  No-not C.I.E. Something
else. What was it?

CAPT. G.  (Trying to control his voice.)  Minnie, I'm here.
(Bending over bed.) Don't you know me, Mmnie? It's me-it's
Phil-it's your husband.

VOICE.  (Mechanically.)  It's me-it's Phil-it's your husband.

CAPT. G.  She doesn't know mel-It's your own husband, darling.

VOICE. Your own husband, darling. AYAH. (With an inspiration.)
Memsahib understanding all I saying.

CAPT. G.  Make her understand me then-quick!

AYAH.  (Hand on Mas. G.'s fore-head.) Memsahib! Captain Sahib
here.

VOICE. Salaem do.  (Fretfully.)  I know I'm not fit to be seen.

AYAH. (Aside to G.) Say "marneen" same as breakfash.

CAPT.  G.   Good-morning,  little woman. How are we to-day?

VOICE. That's Phil. Poor old Phil. (Viciously.) Phil, you fool, I
can't see you. Come nearer.

CAPT. G. Minnie! Minnie! It's me -you know me?

VOICE.  (Mockingly.)  Of course I do. Who does not know the
man who was so cruel to his wife-almost the only one he ever had?

CAPT. G. Yes, dear. Yes-of course, of course.  But won't you
speak
to bim?  He wants to speak to you so much.

VOICE. They'd never let him in. The Doctor would give darwaza
bund even if he were in the house.  He'll never come.
(Despairingly.) O Judas! Judas! Judas!

CAPT. G.  (Putting out his arms.) They have let him in, and he
always was in the house  Oh, my love-don't you know me?

VOrCE.  (In a half chant.)  "And it came to pass at the eleventh
hour that this poor soul repented."  It knocked at the gates, but they
were shut-tight as a plaster-a great, burning plaster They had
pasted our marriage certificate all across the door, and it was made
of red-hot iron-people really ought to be more careful, you know.

CAPT. G. What am I  to do? (Taking her in his arms.) Minnie!
speak
to me-to Phil.

VOICE. What shall I say? Oh, tell me what to say before it's too
late! They are all going away and I can't say anything.

CAPT. G. Say you know me! Only say you know me!

DOCTOR. (Who has entered quietly.) For pity's sake don't take it
too much to heart, Gadsby. It's this way sometimes. They won't
recognize. They say all sorts of queer things-don't you see?

CAPT. G. All right! All right! Go away now; she'll recognize me;
you're bothering her. She must-mustn't she?

DOCTOR.  She will before- Have I your leave to try?-

CAPT. G. Anything you please, so long as she'll know me.  It's
only a question of-hours, isn't it?

DOCTOR.   (Professionally.)   While there's life there's hope
y'know.  But don't build on it.

CAPT. G.  I don't.  Pull her together if it's possible.  (Aside.)  What
have I done to deserve this?

DOCTOR.  (Bending over bed.) Now, Mrs. Gadsby! We shall be
all right tomorrow. You must take it, or I sha'n't let Phil see you. It
isn't nasty, is it?

Voice.  Medicines!  Always  more medicines! Can't you leave me
alone?

CAPT. G.  Oh, leave her in peace, Doc!

DOCTOR.   (Stepping  back,-aside.) May I be forgiven if I've none
wrong. (Aloud.)  In a few minutes she ought to be sensible; but I
daren't tell you to look for anything. It's only-

CAPT. G. What? Go on, man.

DOCTOR.  (In a whisper.)  Forcing the last rally.

CAPT. G. Then leave us alone.

DOCTOR. Don't mind what she says at first, if you can. They- they
-they turn against those they love most sometimes in this.-It's hard,
but-

CAPT. G. Am I her husband or are you? Leave us alone for what
time we have together.

VOICE.  (Confidentially.)  And we were engaged quite suddenly,
Emma. I assure you that I never thought of it for a moment; but,
oh, my little Me!-I don't know what I should have done if he hadn't
proposed.

CAPT. G. She thinks of that Deercourt girl before she thinks of
me.
(Aloud.) Minnie!

VOICE. Not from the shops, Mummy dear. You can get the real
leaves from Kaintu, and (laughing weakly) never mind about the
blossoms-Dead white silk is only fit for widows, and I won't wear
it. It's as bad as a winding sheet. (A long pause.)

CAPT. G. I never asked a favor yet. If there is anybody to listen to
me, let her know me-even if I die too!

VOICE. (Very faintly.) Pip, Pip dear.

CAPT. G. I'm here, darling.

VOICE. What has happened? They've been bothering me so with
medicines and things, and they wouldn't let you come and see me.
I was never ill before. Am I ill now?

CAPT. G.  You-you aren't quite well.

VOICE. How funny! Have I been ill long?

CAPT. G.  Some day; but you'll be all right in a little time.

VOICE.  Do you think so, Pip?  I don't feel well and- Oh! what
have they done to my hair?

CAPT. G.  I d-d-on't know.

VOICE. They've cut it off. What a shame!

CAPT. G. It must have been to make your head cooler.

VOICE. Just like a boy's wig. Don't I look horrid?

CAPT. G.  Never looked prettier in your life, dear.  (Aside.)  How
am I to ask her to say good-bye?

VOICE. I don't feel pretty.  I feel very ill.  My heart won't work.
It's nearly dead inside me, and there's a funny feeling in my eyes.
Everything seems the same distance-you and the almirah and the
table inside my eyes or miles away.  What does it mean, Pip?

CAPT. G.  You're a little feverish, Sweetheart-very feverish.
(Breaking down.) My love! my love! How can I let you go?

VOICE.  I thought so.  Why didn't you tell me that at first?

CAPT. G. What?

VOICE. That I am going to-die.

CAPT.  G.  But you aren't!  You sha'n't.

AYAH to punkah-coolie.  (Stepping into veranda after a glance at
the bed. ). Punkah chor do!  (Stop pulling the punkah.)

VOICE. It's hard, Pip. So very, very hard after one year-just one
year.

(Wailing.) And I'm only twenty. Most girls aren't even married at
twenty. Can't they do anything to help me? I don't want to die.

CAPT. G.  Hush, dear. You won't.

VOICE.  What's the use of talking? Help me! You've never failed
me yet. Oh, Phil, help me to keep alive.  (Feverishly.) I don't
believe you wish me to live. You weren't a bit sorry when that
horrid Baby thing died.  I wish I'd killed it!

CAPT. G. (Drawing his hand across his forehead.)  It's more than a
man's meant to bear-it's not right. (Aloud.) Minnie, love, I'd die for
you if it would help.

VOICE. No more death.  There's enough already. Pip, don't you die
too.

CAPT. G. I wish I dared.

VOICE. It says: "Till Death do us part."  Nothing after that-and so
it would be no use.  It stops at the dying.  Why does it stop there?
Only such a very short life, too.  Pip, I'm sorry we married.

CAPT. G.  No!  Anything but that, Mm!

VOICE. Because you'll forget and I'll forget.  Oh, Pip, don't forget!
I always loved you, though I was cross sometimes. If I ever did
anything that you didn't like, say you forgive me now.

CAPT. G. You never did, darling. On my soul and honor you never
did.  I haven't a thing to forgive you.

VOICE.  I sulked for a whole week about those petunias.  (With a
laugh.) What a little wretch I was, and how grieved you were!
Forgive me that, Pp.

CAPT. G. There's nothing to forgive. It was my fault. They were
too near the drive.  For God's sake don't talk so, Minnie!  There's
such a lot to say and so little time to say it in.

VOICE.  Say that you'll always love me-until the end.

CAPT. G.  Until the end.  (Carried away.) It's a lie. It must be,
because we've loved each other. This isn't the end.

VOICE.   (Relapsing  into  semi-delirium.)  My Church-service has
an ivory-cross on the back, and it says so, so it must be true. "Till
Death do us part."-but that's a lie.  (With a parody of G.'s manner.)
A damned lie! (Recklessly.) Yes, I can swear as well as a Trooper,
Pip. I can't make my head think, though. That's because they cut
off my hair. How can one think with one's head all fuzzy?
(Pleadingly.) Hold me, Pip! Keep me with you always and always.
(Relapsing.)  But if you marry the Thorniss girl when I'm dead, I'll
come back and howl under our bedroom window all night. Oh,
bother!  You'll think I'm a jackall. Pip, what time is it?

CAPT. G. A little before the dawn, dear.

VOICE.  I wonder where I shall be this time to-morrow?

CAPT. G. Would you like to see the Padre?

VOICE. Why should I?  He'd tell me that I am going to heaven;
and that wouldn't be true, because you are here. Do you recollect
when he upset the cream-ice all over his trousers at the Gassers'
tennis?

CAPT. G. Yes, dear.

VOICE. I often wondered whether he got another pair of trousers;
but then his are so shiny all over that you really couldn't tell unless
you were told. Let's call him in and ask.

CAPT. G.  (Gravely.)  No. I don't think he'd like that. 'Your head
comfy, Sweetheart?'

VOICE.  (Faintly with a sigh of contentment.) Yeth! Gracious, Pip,
when did you shave last? Your chin's worse than the barrel of a
musical box.-No, don't lift it up. I like it. (A pause.) You said
you've never cried at all. You're crying all over my cheek.

CAPT. G. I-I-I can't help it, dear.

VOICE. How funny!  I couldn't cry now to save my life. (G.
shivers.)  I want to sing.

CAPT. G. Won't it tire you? 'Better not, perhaps.

VOICE. Why? I won't be bothered about.  (Begins in a hoarse
quaver)

"Minnie bakes oaten cake, Minnie brews ale,
All because her Johnnie's coming home from the sea.
(That's parade, Pip.)
And she grows red as a rose, who was so pale;
And 'Are you sure the church-clock goes?' says she."

(Pettishly.) I knew I couldn't take the last note. How do the bass
chords run?  (Puts out her hands and begins playing piano on the
sheet.)

CAPT. G. (Catching up hands.) Ahh! Don't do that, Pussy, if you
love me.

VOICE. Love you? Of course I do.
Who else should it be? (A pause.)

VOICE. (Very clearly.) Pip, I'm gomg now.  Something's choking
me cruelly.  (Indistinctly.) Into the dark-without you, my heart -But
it's a lie, dear-we mustn't believe it.-Forever and ever, living or
dead. Don't let me go, my husband-hold me tight.-They can't-
whatever happens.  (A cough.) Pip-my Pip!  Not for always-and-
so-soon! (Voice ceases.)

Pause of ten minutes. G. buries his face in the side of the bed while
AYAH bends over bed from opposite side and feels Mas. G.'s
breast and forehead.

CAPT. G.  (Rising.)  Doctor Sahib ko salaam do.

AYAH.  (Still by bedside, with a shriek.) Ail Ail  Tuta-phuta! My
Memsahib! Not getting-not have got! -Pusseena agyal   (The sweat
has come.)  (Fiercely to G.)  TUM jao Doctor Sahib ko jaldi! (You
go to the doctor.) Oh, my Memsahib!

DOCTOR.  (Entering hastily.)  Come away, Gadsby. (Bends over
bed.) Eb! The Dev- What inspired you to stop the punkab? Get out,
man-go away-wait outside! Go! Here, Ayab! (Over his shoulder to
G.)  Mind I promise nothing.

The dawn breaks as G. stumbles into the garden.

CAPT. M. (Rehung up at the gate on his way to parade and very
soberly.) Old man, how goes?

CAPT. G.  (Dazed.)  I don't quite know.  Stay a bit.  Have a drink
or something.  Don't run away.  You're just getting amusing. Ha!
ha!

CAPT. M. (Aside.) What am I let in for?  Gaddy has aged ten years
in the night.

CAPT. G. (Slowly, fingering charger's headstall.) Your curb's too
loose.

CAPT. M.  So it is. Put it straight, will you?  (Aside.) I shall be late
for parade. Poor Gaddy.

CAPT. G. links and unlinks curb-chain aimlessly, and finally
stands staring toward the veranda. The day brightens.

DOCTOR.  (Knocked out of professional gravity, tramping across
flower-beds and shaking G's hands.) It'-it's-it's !-Gadsby, tbere's
a fair chance-a dashed fair chance.  The flicker, y'know.  The
sweat, y'know  I saw how  it  would  be.  The  punkab, y'know.
Deuced clever woman that Ayah of yours.  Stopped the punkab
just at the right time. A dashed good chance!  No-you don't go in.
We'll pull her through yet I promise on my reputation-under
Providence. Send a man with this note to Bingle.  Two heads
better than one. 'Specially the Ayah!  We'll pull her round.
(Retreats hastily to house.)

CAPT. G. (His head on neck of M.'s charger.) Jack! I bub-bu-
believe, I'm going to make a bu-bub-bloody exhibitiod of
byself.

CAPT. M.  (Sniffing openly and feelmg in his left cuff.) I
b-b-believe, I'b doing it already.  Old bad, what cad I say?  I'b as
pleased as-Cod dab you, Gaddy! You're one big idiot and I'b
adother. (Pulling himself together.) Sit tight!  Here comes the
Devil-dodger.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN.  (Who is not in the Doctor's confidence.)
We-we are only men in these things, Gadsby.  I know that I can say
nothing now to help

CAPT. M.  (fealously.)  Then don't say it  Leave him alone. It's not
bad enough to croak over.  Here, Gaddy, take the chit to Bingle
and ride hell-for-leather. It'll do you good. I can't go.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. Do him good! (Smiling.)  Give me the chit
and I'll drive. Let him lie down. Your horse is blocking my
cart-please!

CAPT. M.  (Slowly without reining back.) I beg your pardon-I'll
apologize. On paper if you like.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN.  (Flicking M.'s charger.) That'll do, thanks.
Turn in, Gadsby, and I'll bring Bingle back-ahem-"hell-for-
leather."

CAPT. M.  (Solus.)  It would have served me right if he'd cut me
across the face. He can drive too. I shouldn't care to go that pace in
a bamboo cart. What a faith he must have in his Maker-of harness!
Come hup, you brute!  (Gallops off to parade, blowing his nose, as
the sun rises.)

(INTERVAL OF' FIVE WEEKS.)

MRS. G.  (Very white and pinched, in morning wrapper at break
fast table.) How big and strange the room looks, and how glad I am
to see it again! What dust, though!  I must talk to the servants.
Sugar, Pip? I've almost forgotten.  (Seriously.) Wasn't I very ill?

CAPT. G. Iller than I liked.  (Tenderly.) Oh, you bad little Pussy,
what a start you gave me'

MRS. G. I'll never do it again.

CAPT. G.  You'd better not.  And now get those poor pale cheeks
pink again, or I shall be angry. Don't try to lift the urn.  You'll
upset it.  Wait. (Comes round to head of table and lifts urn.)

Mas. G. (Quickly.) Khitmatgar, howarchikhana see kettly lao.
Butler, get a kettle from the cook-house.  (Drawing down G.'s face
to her own.) Pip dear, I remember.

CAPT. G. What?

Mas. G. That last terrible night.

CAPT'. G. Then just you forget all about it.

Mas. G.  (Softly, her eyes filling.) Never. It has brought us very
close together, my husband. There! (Interlude.) I'm going to give
Junda a saree.

CAPT. G. I gave her fifty dibs.

Mas. G.  So she told me. It was a 'normous reward.  Was I worth
it? (Several interludes.)  Don't!  Here's the khitmatgar.-Two lumps
or one Sir?

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN

If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then
how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace
wherein thou trustedst they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in
the swelling of Jordan?

SCENE.-The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains, on a January
morning. Mas. G. arguing with bearer in back veranda.

CAPT. M. rides up.

CAPT. M.  'Mornin', Mrs. Gadsby. How's the Infant Phenomenon
and the Proud Proprietor?

Mas. G. You'll find them in the front veranda; go through the
house.  I'm Martha just now.

CAPT. M,  'Cumbered about with cares of Khitmatgars? I fly.

Passes into front veranda, where GADSBV is watching GADSBY
JUNIOR, aged ten months, crawling about the matting.

CAPT. M. What's the trouble, Gaddy-spoiling an honest man's
Europe morning this way? (Seeing G. JUNIOR.) By Jove, that
yearling's comm' on amaxingly!  Any amount of bone below the
knee there.

CAPT. G. Yes, he's a healthy little scoundrel.  Don't you think his
hair's growing?

CAPT. M. Let's have a look. Hi!  Hst Come here, General Luck,
and we'll report on you.

MRS. G.  (Within.)  What absurd name will you give him next?
Why do you call him that?

CAPT. M. Isn't he our Inspector-General of Cavalry? Doesn't he
come down in his seventeen-two perambulator every morning the
Pink Hussars parade? Don't wriggle, Brigadier. Give us your
private opinion on the way the third squadron went past.  'Trifle
ragged, weren t they?

CAPT. G. A bigger set of tailors than the new draft I don't wish to
see. They've given me more than my fair share-knocking the
squadron out of shape. It's sickening!

CAPT. M. When you're in command, you'll do better, young 'un.
Can't you walk yet? Grip my finger and try. (To G.) 'Twon't hurt
his hocks, will it?

CAPT. G.  Oh, no.  Don't let him flop, though, or he'll lick all the
blacking off your boots.

MRS. G.  (Within.) Who's destroy mg my son's character?

CAPT. M. And my Godson's. I'm ashamed of you, Gaddy. Punch
your father in the eye, Jack!  Don't you stand it! Hit him again I

CAPT. G.  (Sotto voce.)  Put The Butcha down and come to the
end of the veranda. I'd rather the Wife didn't hear-just now.

CAPT. M.  You look awf'ly serious.  Anything wrong?

CAPT. G. 'Depends on your view entirely. I say, Jack, you won't
think more hardly of me than you can help, will you? Come further
this way.-The fact of the matter is, that I've made up my mind-at
least I'm thinking seriously of-cutting the Service.

CAPT. M. Hwhatt?

CAPT. G. Don't shout. I'm going to send in my papers.

CAPT. M. You! Are you mad?

CAPT. G. No-only married.

CAPT. M. Look here! What's the meaning of it all? You never
intend to leave us. You can't. Isn't the best squadron of the best
regiment of the best cavalry in all the world good enough for you?

CAPT. G.  (Jerking his head over his shoulder.)  She doesn't seem
to thrive in this God-forsaken country, and there's The Butcha to
be considered and all that, you know.

CAPT. M.  Does she say that she doesn't like India?

CAPT. G. That's the worst of it. She won't for fear of leaving me.

CAPT. M. What are the Hills made for?

CAPT. G. Not for my wife, at any rate.

CAPT. M.  You know too much, Gaddy, and -I don't like you any
the better for it!

CAPT. G. Never mind that.  She wants England, and The Butcha
would be all the better for it. I'm going to chuck. You don't
understand.

CAPT. M.  (Hotly.)  I understand this One hundred and
thirty-seven new horse to be licked into shape somehow before
Luck comes round again; a hairy-heeled draft who'll give more
trouble than the horses; a camp next cold weather for a certainty;
ourselves the first on the roster; the Russian shindy ready to come
to a head at five minutes' notice, and you, the best of us all,
backing out of it all!  Think a little, Gaddy. You won't do it.

CAPT. G. Hang it, a man has some duties toward his family, I
suppose.

CAPT. M. I remember a man, though, who told me, the night after
Amdheran, when we were picketed under Jagai, and he'd left his
sword-by the way, did you ever pay Ranken for that sword?-in an
Utmanzai's head-that man told me that he'd stick by me and the
Pinks as long as he lived. I don't blame him for not sticking by
me-I'm not much of a man-but I do blame him for not sticking by
the Pink Hussars.

CAPT. G.  (Uneasily.) We were little more than boys then.  Can't
you see, Jack, how things stand?  'Tisn't as if we were serving for
our bread. We've all of us, more or less, got the filthy lucre. I'm
luckier than some, perhaps. There's no call for me to serve on.

CAPT. M. None in the world for you or for us, except the
Regimental. If you don't choose to answer to that, of course-

CAPT. G. Don't be too hard on a man. You know that a lot of us
only take up the thing for a few years and then go back to Town
and catch on with the rest.

CAPT. M. Not lots, and they aren't some of Us.

CAPT. G. And then there are one's affairs at Home to be
considered-my place and the rents, and all that. I don't suppose my
father can last much longer, and that means the title, and so on.

CAPT. M.  'Fraid you won't be entered in the Stud Book correctly
unless you go Home?  Take six months, then, and come out in
October.  If I could slay off a brother or two, I s'pose I should be a
Marquis of sorts.  Any fool can be that; but it needs men, Gaddy-
men like you-to lead flanking squadrons properly. Don't you
delude yourself into the belief that you're going Home to take your
place and prance about among pink-nosed Kabuli dowagers.  You
aren't built that way.  I know better.

CAPT. G. A man has a right to live his life as happily as he can.
You aren't married.

CAPT. M.  No-praise be to Providence and the one or two women
who have had the good sense to jawab me.

CAPT. G. Then you don't know what it is to go into your own
room and see your wife's head on the pillow, and when everything
else is safe and the house shut up for the night, to wonder whether
the roof-beams won't give and kill her.

CAPT. M.  (Aside.)  Revelations first and second!  (Aloud.)  So-o!
I knew a man who got squiffy at our Mess once and confided to
me that he never helped his wife on to her horse without praymg
that she'd break her neck before she came back.  All husbands
aren't alike, you see.

CAPT. G. What on earth has that to do with my case? The man
must ha' been mad, or his wife as bad as they make 'em.

CAPT. M.  (Aside.)  'No fault of yours if either weren't all you say.
You've forgotten the time when you were insane about the Herriott
woman.  You always were a good hand at forgetting. (Aloud.) Not
more mad than men who go to the other extreme.  Be reasonable,
Gaddy.  Your roof-beams are sound enough.

CAPT. G. That was only a way of speaking. I've been uneasy and
worried about the Wife ever since that awful business three years
ago-when-I nearly lost her. Can you wonder?

CAPT. M. Oh, a shell never falls twice in the same place. You've
paid your toll to misfortune-why should your Wife be picked out
more than anybody else's?

CAPT. G. I can talk just as reasonably as you can, but you don't
understand-you don't understand. And then there's The Butcha.
Deuce knows where the Ayah takes him to sit in the evening! He
has a bit of a cough. Haven't you noticed it?

CAPT. M.  Bosh!  The Brigadier's jumping out of his skin with
pure condition. He's got a muzzle like a rose-leaf and the chest of a
two-year-old.  What's demoralized you?

CAPT. G. Funk. That's the long and the short of it.  Funk!

CAPT. M.  But what is there to funk?

CAPT. G. Everything.  It's ghastly.

CAPT. M. Ah! I see.

You don't want to fight,
And by Jingo when we do,
You've got the kid, you've got the Wife,
You've got the money, too.

That's about the case, eh?

CAPT. G. I suppose that's it. But it's not br myself. It's because of
them. At least I think it is.

CAPT. M. Are you sure? Looking at the matter in a cold-blooded
light, the Wife is provided for even if you were wiped out tonight.
She has an ancestral home to go to, money and the Brigadier to
carry on the illustrious name.

CAPT. G. Then it is for myself or because they are part of me. You
don't see it. My life's so good, so pleasant, as it is, that I want to
make it quite safe. Can't you understand?

CAPT. M. Perfectly.  "Shelter-pit for the Off'cer's charger," as they
say in the Line.

CAPT. G. And I have everything to my hand to make it so.  I'm
sick of the strain and the worry for their sakes out here; and there
isn't a single real difficulty to prevent my dropping it altogether.
It'll only cost me-Jack, I hope you'll never know the shame that I've
been going through for the past six months.

CAPT. M. Hold on there! I don't wish to he told. Every man has
his moods and tenses sometimes.

CAPT. G.  (Laughing brtterly.)  Has he? What do you call craning
over to see where your near-fore lands?

CAPT. M. In my case it means that I have been on the
Considerable Bend, and have come to parade with a Head and a
Hand. It passes in three strides.

CAPT. G. (Lowering voice.) It never passes w'th me, Jack.  I'm
always thinking about it. Phil Gadsby funking a fall on parade!
Sweet picture, isn't it! Draw it for me.

CAPT. M.  (Gravely.) Heaven forbid! A man like you can't be as
bad as that. A fall is no nice thing, but one never gives it a thought.

CAPT. G. Doesn't one?  Wait till you've got a wife and a youngster
of your own, and then you'll know how the roar of the squadron
behind you turns you cold all up the back.

CAPT. M.  (Aside.)  And this man led at Amdheran after Bagal
Deasin went under, and we were all mixed up together, and he
came out of the snow dripping like a butcher. (Aloud.) Skittles!
The men can always open out, and you can always pick your way
more or less. We haven't the dust to bother us, as the men have,
and whoever heard of a horse stepping on a man?

CAPT. G. Never-as long as he can see. But did they open out for
poor Errington?

CAPT. M.  Oh, this is childish!

CAPT. G. I know it is, worse than that. I don't care. You've ridden
Van Loo. Is he the sort of brute to pick his way-'specially when
we're coming up in column of troop with any pace on?

CAPT. M. Once in a Blue Moon do we gallop in column of troop,
and then only to save time. Aren't three lengths enough for you?

CAPT. G. Yes-quite enough.  They just allow for the full
development of the smash. I'm talking like a cur, I know: but I tell
you that, for the past three months, I've felt every hoof of the
squadron in the small of my back every time that I've led.

CAPT. M. But, Gaddy, this is awful!

CAPT. G. Isn't it lovely?  Isn't it royal? A Captain of the Pink
Hussars watering up his charger before parade like the blasted
boozing Colonel of a Black Regiment!

CAPT. M. You never did!

CAPT. G. Once Only. He squelched like a mussuck, and the
Troop-Sergeant-Major cocked his eye at me. You know old
Haffy's eye. I was afraid to do it again.

CAPT. M. I should think so. That was the best way to rupture old
Van Loo's tummy, and make him crumple you up. You knew that.

CAPT. G. I didn't care. It took the edge off him.

CAPT. M. "Took  the  edge  off  him"? Gaddy, you-you-you
mustn't, you know!  Think of the men.

CAPT. G. That's another thing I am afraid of. D'you s'pose they
know?

CAPT. M. Let's hope not;  but they're deadly quick to spot
skirm-little things of that kind.  See here, old man, send the Wife
Home for the hot weather and come to Kashmir with me. We'll
start a boat on the Dal or cross the Rhotang-shoot ibex or loaf-
which you please. Only come! You're a bit off your oats and you're
talking nonsense.  Look at the Colonel-swag-bellied rascal that he
is. He has a wife and no end of a bow-window of his own. Can any
one of us ride round him-chalkstones and all?  I can't, and I think I
can shove a crock along a bit.

CAPT. G. Some  men  are  different.  I haven't any nerve.  Lord
help me, I haven't the nerve! I've taken up a hole and a half to get
my knees well under the wallets.  I can't help it.  I'm so afraid of
anything happening to me. On my soul, I ought to be broke in front
of the squadron, for cowardice.

CAPT. M. Ugly word, that. I should never have the courage to own
up.

CAPT. G. I meant to lie about my reasons when I began, but-I've
got out of the habit of lying to you, old man.  Jack, you won't?-But
I know you won't.

CAPT. M. Of course not.  (Half aloud.) The Pinks are paying
dearly for their Pride.

CAPT. G. Eb!  What-at?

CAPT. M. Don't you know? The men have called Mrs. Gadsby the
Pride of the Pink Hussars ever since she came to us.

CAPT. G. 'Tisn't her fault.  Don't think that.  It's all mine.

CAPT. M. What does she say?

CAPT. G. I haven't exactly put it before her. She's the best little
woman in the world, Jack, and all that-but she wouldn't counsel a
man to stick to his calling if it came between him and her. At least,
I think-

CAPT. M. Never mind.  Don't tell her what you told me.  Go on
the Peerage and Landed-Gentry tack.

CAPT. G. She'd see through it.  She's five times cleverer than I am.

CAPT. M. (Aside.) Then she'll accept the sacrifice and think a
little bit worse of him for the rest of her days.

CAPT. G. (Absentl'y.) I say, do you despise me?

CAPT. M. 'Queer way of putting it. Have you ever been asked that
question? Think a minute.  What answer used you to give?

CAPT. G. So bad as that?  I'm not entitled to expect anything
more, but it's a bit hard when one's best friend turns round and-

CAPT. M. So ! have found  But you will have consolations-Bailiffs
and Drains and Liquid Manure and the Primrose League, and,
perhaps, if you're lucky, the Colonelcy of a Yeomanry Cav-al-ry
Regiment-all uniform and no riding, I believe.  How old are you?

CAPT. G. Thirty-three.  I know it's-

CAPT. M. At forty you'll be a fool of a J. P. landlord.  At fifty
you'll own a bath-chair, and The Brigadier, if he takes after you,
will be fluttering the dovecotes  of-what's  the  particular dunghill
you're going to?  Also, Mrs. Gadsby will be fat.

CAPT. G. (Limply.)  This is rather more than a joke.

CAPT. M. D'you think so?  Isn't cutting the Service a joke? It
generally takes a man fifty years to arrive at it. You're quite right,
though. It is more than a joke.  You've managed it in thirty-three.

CAPT. G. Don't make me feel worse than I do. Will it satisfy you
if I own that I am a shirker, a skrim-shanker, and a coward?

CAPT. M. It wil! not, because I'm the only man in the world who
can talk to you like this without being knocked down. You mustn't
take all that I've said to heart in this way. I only spoke-a lot of it at
least-out of pure selfishness, because, because-Oh, damn it all, old
man,-I don't know what I shall do without you.  Of course, you've
got the money and the place and all that-and there are two very
good reasons why you should take care of yourself.

CAPT. G. 'Doesn't make it any sweeter. I'm backing out-I know I
am.  I always had a soft drop in me somewhere-and I daren't risk
any danger to them.

CAPT. M. Why in the world should you? You're bound to think of
your family-bound  to  think.  Er-hmm.  If  I wasn't a younger son
I'd go too-be shot if I wouldn't I!

CAPT. G. Thank you, Jack. It's a kind lie, but it's the blackest
you've told for some time.  I know what I'm doing, and I'm going
into it with my eyes open. Old man, I can't help it. What would you
do if you were in my place?

CAPT. M. (Aside.) 'Couldn't conceive any woman getting
permanently between me and the Regiment.  (Aloud.)  'Can't say.
'Very likely I should do no better. I'm sorry for you-awf'ly sorry-but
"if them's your sentiments," I believe, I really do, that you are
acting wisely.

CAPT. G. Do you? I hope you do. (In a whisper.)  Jack, be very
sure of yourself before you marry. I'm an ungrateful ruffian to say
this, but marriage-even as good a marriage as mine has been-
hampers a man's work, it cripples his sword-arm, and oh, it plays
Hell with his notions of duty.  Sometimes-good and sweet as she
is-sometimes I could wish that I had kept my freedom- No, I don't
mean that exactly.

MRS. G. (Coming down veranda.) What are you wagging your
head ove; Pip?

CAPT. M. (Turning quickly.) Me, as usual. The old sermon. Your
husband is recommending me to get married. 'Never saw such a
one-ideaed man.

MRS. G.  Well, why don't you?  I dare say you would make some
woman very happy.

CAPT. G. There's the Law and the Prophets, Jack. Never mind the
Regiment. Make a woman happy. (Aside.) O Lord!

CAPT. M. We'll see. I must be off to make a Troop Cook
desperately unhappy. I won't have the wily Hussar fed on
Government Bullock Train shinbones- (Hastily.)  Surely black ants
can't be good for The Brigadier.  He's picking em off the matting
and eating 'em. Here, Senor Comandante Don Grubbynuse, come
and talk to me.  (Lifts G. JUNIOR in his arms.) 'Want my watch?
You won't be able to put it into your mouth, but you can try.  (G.
JUNIOR drops watch, breaking dial and hands.)

MRS. G.  Oh, Captain Mafflin, I am so sorry! Jack, you bad, bad
little villain. Ahhh!

CAPT. M. It's not the least consequence, I assure you.  He'd treat
the world in the same way if he could get it into his hands.
Everything's made to be played, with and broken, isn't it, young
'un?

*     *     *    *    *    *

MRS. G.  Mafflin didn't at all like his watch being broken, though
he was too polite to say so.  It was entirely his fault for giving it to
the child. Dem little puds are werry, werry feeble, aren't dey, by
Jack-in-de-box? (To G.) What did he want to see you for?

CAPT. G. Regimental shop as usual.

MRS. G. The Regiment! Always the Regiment.  On my word, I
sometimes feel jealous of Mafflin.

CAPT. G. (Wearily.)  Poor old Jack?  I don't think you need. Isn't it
time for The Butcha to have his nap? Bring a chair out here, dear.
I've got some thing to talk over with you.

AND THIS IS THE END OF THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS

VOLUME VIII  from MINE OWN PEOPLE

Bimi
Namgay Doola
The Recrudescence Of Imray
Moti Guj-Mutineer

BIMI

THE orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen
began the discussion.  The night was stiflingly hot, and as Hans
Breitmann and I passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak
of the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely.  He
had been caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was
going to England to be exhibited at a shilling a head.  For four days
he had struggled, yelled, and wrenched at the heavy iron bars of
his prison without ceasing, and had nearly slain a Lascar
incautious enough to come within reach of the great hairy paw.

"It would he well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,"
said Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage.  "You haf too much
Ego in your Cosmos."

The orang-outang's arm slid out negligently from between the
bars.   No one would have believed that it would make a sudden
snake-like rush at the German's breast.  The thin silk of the
sleeping-suit tore out:  Hans stepped back unconcernedly, to pluck
a banana from a bunch hanging close to one of the boats.

"Too much Ego," said be, peeling the fruit and offering it to the
caged devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.

Then we laid out our bedding in the bows, among the sleeping
Lascars, to catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us.
The sea was like smoky oil., except where it turned to fire under
our forefoot and Whirled back into the dark in smears of dull
flame. There was a thunderstorm some miles away: we could
see the glimmer of the lightning.  The ship's cow, distressed by the
heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed unhappily
from time to time in exactly the same key as the lookout man at
the bows answered the hourly call from the bridge. The trampling
tune of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift,
as it was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of hushed noise.
Hans lay down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar. This was
naturally the beginning of conversation.  He owned a voice as
soothing as the wash of the sea, and stores of experiences as vast
as the sea itself; for his business in life was to wander up and down
the world, collecting orchids and wild beasts and ethnological
specimens for German  and  American  dealers.   I watched the
glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the
sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orang-outang,
troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell
like a soul in purgatory, and to wrench madly at the bars of the
cage.

"If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabouts,"
said Hans, lazily.  "He screams good.  See, now, how I shall tame
him when he stops himself."

There was a pause in the outcry, and  from Hans' mouth came an
imitation of a snake's hiss, so perfect that I almost sprung to my
feet. The sustained murderous sound ran along the deck, and the
wrenching at the bars ceased. The orang-outang was quaking in an
ecstasy of pure terror.

"Dot stop him," said Hans.  "I learned dot trick in Mogoung
Tanjong when I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in
Berlin. Efery one in der world is afraid of der monkeys except der
snake.  So I blay snake against monkey, and he keep quite still.
Dere was too much Ego in his Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of
monkeys. Are you asleep, or will you listen, and I will tell a dale
dot you shall not pelief?"

"There's no tale in the wide world that I can't believe," I said.

"If you have learned pelief you haf learned somedings.  Now I
shall try your pelief.  Good!  When I was collecting dose liddle
monkeys-it was in '79 or '80, und I was in der islands of der
Archipelago-over  dere in  der dark"-he pointed southward to New
Guinea  generally-"Mein  Gott!   I would sooner collect life red
devils than liddle monkeys. When dey do not bite off your thumbs
dey are always dying from nostalgia-homesick-for dey haf der
imperfect soul, which is midway arrested in defelopment-und too
much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, und dere I found a man dot
was called Bertran.  He was a Frenchman, und he was a goot
man-naturalist to the bone. Dey said he was an escaped convict,
but he was a naturalist, und dot was enough for me. He would call
all her life beasts from der forests, und dey would come. I said he
was St. Francis of Assisi in a new dransmigration produced, und he
laughed und said he hal never preach to der fishes.  He sold dem
for tripang-beche-de-mer.

"Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der
house shush such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage-a great
orang-outang dot thought he was a man. He haf found him when
he was a child-der orang-outang-und he was child and brother and
opera comique all round to Bertran. He had his room in dot
house-not a cage, but a room-mit a bed and sheets, and he would
go to bed and get up in der morning and smoke his cigar und eat
his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand-in-hand, which.
was most horrible. Herr Gott!  I haf seen dot beast throw himself
back in his chair and laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me. He
was not a beast; he was a man, and he talked to Bertran, und
Bertran comprehended, for I bave seen dem.  Und he was always
politeful to me except when I talk too long to Bertran und say
nodings at all to him. Den he would pull me away-dis great, dark
devil, mit his enormous paws~hush as if I was a child.  He was not
a beast, he was a man. Dis I saw pefore I know him three months,
und Bertran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der orang-outang, baf
understood us both, mit his cigar between his big-dog teeth und der
blue gum.

"I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands-somedimes for
monkeys and somedimes for butterflies und orchits.  One time
Bertran says to me dot he will be married, because he ha~ found a
girl dot was goot, and he inquire if this marrying idea was right. I
would not say, pecause it was not me dot was going to be married.
Den he go off courting der girl-she was a half-caste French girl-
very pretty.  Haf you got a new light for my cigar? Oof! Very
pretty.  Only I say  'Haf you thought of Bimi? If he pulls me away
when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife?  He will pull her
in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for wedding
present der stuff figure of Bimi.'  By dot time I bad learned
somedings about der monkey peoples. 'Shoot him?' says Bertran.
'He is your beast,' I said; 'if he was mine he would be shot now.'

"Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi.  Mein
Gott!  I tell you dot he talked through dose fingers.  It was der
deaf-and-dumb alphabet all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round
my neck, and he tilt up my chin and look into my face, shust to see
if I understood his talk so well as he understood mine.

"'See now dere!' says Bertran, 'und you would shoot him while he
is cuddling you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!'

"But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life's enemy, pecause his
fingers haf talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I
see Bimi dere was a pistol in my belt, und he touch it once, and I
open de breech to show him it was loaded.  He haf seen der liddle
monkeys killed in der woods, and he understood.

"So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot
was skippin' alone on the beach mit der haf of a human soul in his
belly. I was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der
sand till he haf made a great hole like a grave.  So I says to Bertran
'For any sakes, kill Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.'

"Bertran haf said: 'He is not mad at all. He haf obey and love my
wife, und if she speaks he wall get her slippers,' und he looked at
his wife across der room. She was a very pretty girl.

"Den I said to him: 'Dost thou pretend to know monkeys und dis
beast dot is lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do
not talk to him? Shoot him when he comes to der house, for he haf
der light in his eyes dot means killing-und killing.' Bimi come to
der house, but dere was no light in his eyes. It was all put away,
cunning -so cunning-und he fetch der girl her slippers, and Bertran
turn to me und say:  'Dost thou know him in nine months more dan
I haf known him n twelve years?  Shall a child stab his fader?  I
have fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak this nonsense to
my wife or to me any more.'

"Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some
wood cases for der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his
wife a liddle while mit Bimi in der garden.  Den I finish my cases
quick, und I say:  'Let us go to your house und get a trink.' He laugh
und say:  'Come along, dry mans.'

"His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when
Bertran called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he
knocked at her bedroom door und dot was shut tight-locked. Den
he looked at me, und his face was white. I broke down der door
mit my shoulder, und der thatch of der roof was torn into a great
hole, und der sun came in upon der floor. Haf you ever seen paper
in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on der table scattered?  Dere
was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere was noddings in dot
room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor, und dot
was all.  I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but Bertran
looked a little longer at what was upon the floor und der walls, und
der hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft and low, und I
know und thank God dot he was mad.  He nefer cried, he nefer
prayed. He stood still in der doorway und laugh to him-self.  Den
he said:  'She haf locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der
thatch.  Fi donc.  Dot is so. We will mend der thatch und wait for
Bimi. He will surely come.'

"I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was
made into a room again, and once or twice we saw Bimi comm' a
liddle way from der woods.  He was afraid pecause he haf done
wrong.  Bertran called him when he was come to look on the tenth
day, und Bimi come skipping along der beach und making noises,
mit a long piece of Nack hair in his hands. Den Bertran laugh and
say, 'Fi dond' shust as if it was a glass broken upon der table; und
Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet in his voice and
laughed to himself. For three days he made love to Bimi, pecause
Bimi would not let himself be touched  Den Bimi come to dinner
at der same table mit us, und der hair on his hands was all black
und thick mit-mit what had dried on his hands.  Bertran gave him
sangaree till Bimi was drunk and stupid, und den-"

Hans paused to puff at his cigar.

"And then?"  said I.

"Und den Bertran kill him with his hands, und I go for a walk
upon der heach.  It was Bertran's own piziness. When I come back
der ape he was dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still
he laughed a liddle und low, and he was quite content.  Now you
know der formula uf der strength of der orang-outang-it is more as
seven to one in relation to man. But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit
sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der mericle."

The infernal clamor in the cage recommenced. "Aba! Dot friend of
ours haf still too much Ego in his Cosmos, Be quiet, thou!"

Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast
quaking in his cage.

"But why in the world didn't you help Bertran instead of letting
him be killed?" I asked.

"My friend," said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber,
"it was not nice even to mineself dot I should lif after I had seen
dot room wit der hole in der thatch.  Und Bertran, he was her
husband.  Good-night, und sleep well,"

NAMGAY DOOLA

ONCE upon a time there was a king who lived on the road to
Thibet, very many miles in the Himalaya Mountains.  His kingdom
was 11,000 feet above the sea, and exactly four miles square, but
most of the miles stood on end, owing to the nature of the country.
His revenues were rather less than 400 pounds yearly, and they
were expended on the maintenance of one elephant and a standing
army of five men. He was tributary to the Indian government, who
allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of the Himalaya-
Thibet road in repair.  He further increased his revenues by selling
timber to the railway companies, for he would cut the great deodar
trees in his own forest arid they fell thundering into the Sutlej
River and were swept down to the Plains, 300 miles away, and
became railway ties. Now and again this king, whose name does
not matter, would mount a ring-streaked horse and ride scores of
miles to Simlatown to confer with the lieutenant-governor on
matters of state, or assure the viceroy that his sword was at the
service of the queen-empress. Then the viceroy would cause a
ruffle of drums to be sounded and the ring-streaked horse and the
cavalry of the state-two men in tatters-and the herald who bore the
Silver Stick before the king would trot back to their own place,
which was between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a
dark birch forest.

Now, from such a king, always remembering that he possessed one
veritable elephant and could count his descent for 1,200 years, I
expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions,
no more than mere license to live.

The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the
lights of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched
by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Dongo Pa-the Mountain
of the Council of the Gods-upheld the evening star. The monkeys
sung sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roots in the
fern-draped trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from
the unseen villages the scent of damp wood smoke, hot cakes,
dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones.  That smell is the
true smell of the Himalayas, and if it once gets into the blood of a
man he will, at the last, forgetting everything else, return to the
Hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell went away, and there
remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mists and
the boom of the Sutlej River.

A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated lamentably at
my tent-door. He was scuffling with the prime minister and the
director-general of public education, and he was a royal gift to me
and my camp servants.  I expressed my thanks suitably and
inquired if I might have audience of the king. The prime minister
readjusted his turban-it had fallen off in the struggle-and assured
me that the king would be very pleased to see me.  Therefore I
dispatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had
entered upon another incarnation, climbed up to the king's palace
through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but it stayed to
talk with my cook.  Soldiers are very much alike all the world
over.

The palace was a four-roomed, white-washed mud-and-timber
house, the finest in all the Hills for a day's journey. The king was
dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a
saffron-yellow turban of price. He gave me audience in a little
carpeted room opening off the palace court-yard, which was
occupied by the elephant of state. The great beast was sheeted and
anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his back stood out
against the sky line.

The prime minister and the director-general of public instruction
were present to introduce me; but all the court had been dismissed
lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The king
cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed,
and inquired how my honored presence had the felicity to be. I
said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of
the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his
beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the
gods.  He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his
kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent  more
than the average.  I said that the fame of the king had reached to
the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their
teeth when they heard daily of the glory of his realm and the
wisdom of his moon-like prime minister and lotus-eyed director-
general of public education.

Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the king's
right hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the
condition of the maize crop was something disgraceful, and that
the railway companies would not pay him enough for his timber.
The talk shifted to and fro with the bottles. We discussed very
many quaint things, and the king became confidential on the
subject of government generally. Most of all he dwelt on the
shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from what I could
gather, had been paralyzing the executive.

"In the old days," said the king, '~I could have ordered the elephant
yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e'en send him seventy
miles across the hills to be tried, and his keep for that time would
be upon the state. And the elephant eats everything."

"What be the man's crimes, Rajah Sahib?" said I.

"Firstly, he is an 'outlander,' and no man of mine own people.
Secondly, since of my favor I gave him land upon his coming, he
refuses to pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and
below-entitled by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop?  Yet
this devil, establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax . . . and
he brings a poisonous spawn of babes."

"Cast him into jail," I said.

"Sahib," the king answered, shifting a little on the cushions, "once
and only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I
was not able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God
that I would never again cut man or woman from the light of the
sun and the air of God, for I perceived the nature of the
punishment.  How can I break my vow?  Were it only the lopping
off of a hand or a foot, I should not delay. But even that is
impossible now that the English have rule.  One or another
of my people"-he looked obliquely at the director-general of public
education-"would at once write a letter to the viceroy, and perhaps
I should be deprived of that ruffle of drums."

He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a
plain amber one, and passed the pipe to me.  "Not content with
refusing revenue," he continued, "this outlander refuses also to
beegar" (this is the corvee or forced labor on the roads), "and stirs
my people up to the like treason.  Yet he is, if so he wills, an
expert log-snatcher. There is none better or bolder among my
people to clear a block of the river when the logs stick fast."

"But he worships strange gods," said the prime minister,
deferentially.

"For that I have no concern," said the king, who was as tolerant as
Akbar in matters of belief. "To each man his own god, and the fire
or Mother Earth for us all at the last.  It is the rebellion that
offends me."

"The king has an army," I suggested. "Has not the king burned the
man's house, and left him naked to the night dews?"

"Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man.  But once I sent
my army against him when his excuses  became wearisome.  Of
their heads he brake three across the top with a stick.  The other
two men ran away. Also the guns would not shoot."

I had seen the equipment of the infantry.  One-third of it was an
old muzzle-loading fowling-piece with ragged rust holes where the
nipples should have  been; one-third a  wirebound matchlock with
a worm-eaten stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun,
without a flint.

"But it is to be remembered," said the king, reaching out for the
bottle, "that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry
face. What shall I do to him, sahib?"

This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have
refused taxes to their king as offerings to their gods. The rebel
must be a man of character.

"If it be the king's permission," I said, "I will not strike my tents till
the third day, and I will see this man. The mercy of the king is
godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover,
both the bottles, and another, be empty."

"You have my leave to go," said the king.

Next morning the crier went through the stare proclaiming that
there was a log-jam on the river and that it behooved all loyal
subjects to clear it. The people poured down from their villages to
the moist, warm valley of poppy fields, and the king and I went
with them.

Hundreds of dressed deodar logs had caught on a snag of rock, and
the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete
the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the
timber, while the population of the state prodded at the nearest
logs with poles, in the hope of easing the pressure. Then there
went up a shout of "Namgay Doola!  Namgay Doola!" and a large,
red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he ran.

"That he is. That is the rebel!" said the king.  "Now will the dam
be cleared."

"But why has he red hair?" I asked, since red hair among hill-folk
is as Un-common as blue or green.

"He is an outlander," said the king. "Well done!  Oh, well done!"

Namgay Doola had scrambled on the jam and was clawing out the
butt of a log with a rude sort of a boat-hook. It slid forward slowly,
as an alligator moves, and three or four others followed it.  The
green water spouted through the gaps.  Then the villagers howled
and shouted and leaped among the logs, pulling and pushing the
obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief
among them all. The logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh
consignments from up-stream battered the now weakening dam.  It
gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing butts, bobbing black
heads, and a confusion indescribable, as the river tossed everything
before it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants of the
jam and disappear between the great grinding tree trunks. It rose
close to the hank, and blowing like a grampus, Namgay Doola
wiped the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the king.

I had time to observe the man closely. The virulent redness of his
shock head and beard was most startling, and in the thicket of hair
twinkled above high cheek-bones two very merry blue eyes. He
was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit and
attire.  He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals.  It was not
so much a lisp as an accent.

"Whence comest thou?" I asked, wondering.

"From Thibet."  He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin
went straight to my heart.  Mechanically I held out my hand and
Namgay Doola took it. No pure Thibetan would have understood
the meaning of the gesture.  He went away to look for his clothes,
and as he climbed back to his village, I heard a joyous yell that
seemed unaccountably familiar. It was the whooping of Namgay
Doola.

"You see now," said the king, "why I would not kill him.  He is a
bold man among my logs, but," and he shook his head like a
schoolmaster, "I know that before long there will be complaints of
him in the court. Let us return to the palace and do justice."

It was that king's custom to judge his subjects every day between
eleven and three o'clock.  I heard him do justice equitably on
weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little wife-stealing.
Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.

"Again it is Namgay Doola," he said, despairingly.  "Not content
with refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his
village by an oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing
befallen me!  Nor are my taxes heavy."

A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear,
advanced trembling.  He had been in Namgay Doola's conspiracy,
but had told everything and hoped for the king's favor.

"Oh, king!" said I, "if it be the king's will, let this matter stand over till the morning.  Only the
gods can do right in a hurry, and it may be that yonder villager has lied."

"Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest
asks, let the matter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak harshly
to this red-headed outlander? He may listen to thee."

I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could
not keep my  countenance.   Namgay  Doola grinned so
persuasively and began to tell me about a big brown bear in a
poppy field by the river. Would I care to shoot that bear?  I spoke
austerely on the sin of detected conspiracy and the certainty of
punishment.  Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly
afterward he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing
softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but
the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of
something strangely familiar.

"Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir
To weeree ala gee,"

crooned Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for
that lost tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one
had cut a square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made me so angry
that I wandered down the
valley in the hope of meeting the big brown bear. I could hear him
grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy field as I waited
shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch him after
his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the scent of the
tasseled crop.  Then I
heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow-one of the little
black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows
that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in the act
of firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant red head.  The lesser
animal was trailing something rope-like that left a dark track on
the path. They were within six feet of me, and the shadow of the
moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was
exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were
masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and went to
bed.

Next morning the kingdom was in an uproar. Namgay Doola, men
said, had gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off
the tail of a cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had
betrayed him. It was sacrilege unspeakable against the holy cow
The state desired his blood, but he had retreated into his hut,
barricaded the doors and windows with big stones, and defied the
world.

The king and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously.
There was no hope of capturing our man without loss of life, for
from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely
well-cared-for gun-the only gun in the state that could shoot.
Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just be. fore we
came up.

The standing army stood.

It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale
flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time
showers of scalding water. We saw red beads bobbing up and
down within. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire.  Blood-curdling yells of
defiance were the only answer to our prayers.

"Never," said the king, puffing, "has such a thing befallen my state.
Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon." He looked at me
imploringly.

"Is there any priest in the kingdom to whom he will listen?" said I,
for a light was beginning to break upon me.

"He worships his own god," said the prime minister.  "We can but
starve him out."

"Let the white man approach," said Namgay Doola from within.
"All others I will kill. Send me the white man."

The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a
Thibetan hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming
red hair.  A freshgathered cow's tail lay on the floor, and by its side
two pieces of black velvet-my black velvet-rudely hacked into the
semblance of masks.

"And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?" I asked.

He grinned more charmingly than ever. "There is no shame," said
he. "I did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I
was minded to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to
death; only in the legs."

"And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king?
Why at all?"

"By the god of my father, I cannot tell," said Namgay Doola.

"And who was thy father?"

"The same that had this gun." He showed me his weapon, a Tower
musket, bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honorable East
India Company.

"And thy father's name?" said I.

"Timlay Doola," said he.  "At the first, I being then a little child, it
is in my mind that he wore a red coat."

"Of that I have no doubt; but repeat the name of thy father twice or
thrice."

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his
speech came. "Timlay Doola!" said he, excitedly. "To this hour I
worship his god."

"May I see that god?"

"In a little while-at twilight time."

"Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?"

"It is long ago.  But there was one word which he said often.  Thus,
''Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to
our sides, thus."

"Even  so.  And what was  thy mother?"

"A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they
call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest."

The  Thibetan  woman,  his  wife, touched him on the arm gently.
The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day.  It was
now close upon twilight-the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly
the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle.
Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set
it before a recess in the wall.  Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he
revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of
a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment.  "Thus did my
father," be said, crossing himself clumsily.  The wife and children
followed suit.  Then, all together, they struck will, let this matter stand over till the morning.
Only the gods can do right in a hurry, and it may be that yonder villager has lied."

"Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest
asks, let the matter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak harshly
to this red-headed outlander? He may listen to thee."

I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could
not keep my  countenance.   Namgay  Doola grinned so
persuasively and began to tell me about a big brown bear in a
poppy field by the river. Would I care to shoot that bear?  I spoke
au~terely on the sin of detected conspiracy and the certainty of
punishment.  Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly
afterward he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing
softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but
the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of
something strangely familiar.

"Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee,"

crooned Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for
that lost tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one
had cut a square foot of velvet from the centre of my best
.mera-cloth. This rAade me so angry that I wandered down the
valley in the hope of meeting the big brown bear. I could hear him
grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy field as I waited
shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch him after
his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the scent of the
tasseled crop.  Then I
heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow-one of the little
black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows
that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in the act
of firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant red head.  The lesser
animal was trailing something rope-like that left a dark track on
the path. They were within six feet of me, and the shadow of the
moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was
exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were
masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and went to
bed.

Next morning the kingdom was in an uproar. Namgay Doola, men
said, had gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off
the tail of a cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had
betrayed him. It was sacrilege unspeakable against the holy cow!
The state desired his blood, hut he had retreated into his hut,
barricaded the doors and windows with big stones, and defied the
world.

The king and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously.
There was no hope of capturing our man without loss of life, for
from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely
well-cared-for gun-the only gun in the state that could shoot.
Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just before we came
up.

The standing army stood.

It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale
flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time
showers of scalding water. We saw red beads bobbing up and
down within.  The family of Namgay Doola
WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

were aiding their sire.  Blood-curdling yells of defiance were the
only answer to our prayers.

"Never," said the king, puffing, "has such a thing befallen my state.
Next year I will certainly buy a little can-non." He looked at me
imploringly.

"Is there any priest in the kingdom to whom he will listen?" said I,
for a light was beginning to break upon me.

"He worships his own god," said the prime minister.  "We can but
starve him out."

"Let the white man approach," said Namgay Doola from within.
"All others I will kill. Send me the white man."

The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a
Thibetan hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming
red hair.  A freshgathered cow's tail lay on the floor, and by its side
two pieces of black velvet-~y black velvet-rudely hacked into the
semblance of masks.

"And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?" I asked.

He grinned more charmingly than ever. "There is no shame," said
he. "I did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I
was minded to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to
death; only in the legs."

"And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king?
Why at all?"

"By the god of my father, I cannot tell," said Namgay Doola.

"And who was thy father?"

"The same that had this gun." He showed me his weapon, a Tower
musket, bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honorable East
India Company.

"And thy father's name?" said I.

"Timlay Doola," said he.  "At the first, I being then a little child, it
is in my mind that he wore a red coat."

"Of that I have no doubt; but repeat the name of thy father twice or
thrice."

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his
speech came. "Thimla Dhula!" said he, excitedly. "To this hour I
worship his god."

"May I see that god?"

"In a little while-at twilight time."

"Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?"

"It is long ago.  But there was one word which he said often.  Thus,
''Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to
our sides, thus."

"Even  so.  And what was  thy mother?"

"A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they
call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest."

The  Thibetan  woman,  his  wife, touched him on the arm gently.
The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day.  It was
now close upon twilight-the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly
the red-headed brats rosc from the floor and formed a semicircle.
Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set
it before a recess in the wall.  Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he
revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of
a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment.  "Thus did my
father," he said, crossing himself clumsily.  The wife and children
followed suit.  Then, all together, they struck up the wailing cham that I heard on the hillside:

"Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
To weeree ala gee."

I was puzzled no longer.  Again and again they sung, as if their
hearts would break, their version of the chorus of "The Wearing of
the Green":

"They're hanging men and women, too,
For the wearing of the green,."

A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about
eight years old-could he have been in the fields last night?-was
watching me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin
between finger and thumb, and looked-only look-at the gun
leaning against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his
porringer-like face.  Never for an
instant stopping the song, he held out his hand for the money, and
then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola
dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied.  The inevitable blood- instinct held true. Namgay Doola
drew the curtain across the
recess. Angelus was over.

"Thus my father sung.  There was much more, but I have forgotten,
and I do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be
that the god will understand.  I am not of this people, and I will not
pay revenue."

"And why?"

Again  that  soul-compelling  grin. "What occupation would be to
me between crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But
these people do not understand."

He picked the masks off the floor and looked in my face as simply
as a child.

"By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make those deviltries?" I said, pointing.

"I cannot tell.  I am but a Lepcha of Darjiling, and yet the
stuff"-

"Which thou hast stolen," said I. "Nay, surely. Did I steal? I
desired it so. The stuff-the stuff. What else should I have done with the stuff?" He twisted the
velvet between his fingers.

"But the sin of maiming the cow-consider that."

"Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the heifer's tail waved in the
moonlight, and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The
tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I."

"That is true," said I. "Stay within the door. I go to speak to the
king." The population of the state were ranged on the hillside. I
went forth and spoke.

"O king," said I, "touching this man, there be two courses open to
thy wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree-he and his
brood-till there re mains no hair that is red within thy land."

"Nay," said the king.  "Why should I hurt the little children?"

They had poured out of the hut and were making plump obeisances
to every-body.  Namgay Doola waited at the door with his gun
across his arm.

"Or thou canst, discarding their impiety of the cow-maiming, raise
him to honor in thy army. He comes of a race that will not pay
revenue. A red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of
his bead in that glowing hair. Make him chief of thy army.  Give
him honor as may befall and full allowance of work, but look to it,
oh, king, that neither he nor his hold a foot of earth from thee
henceforward. Feed him with words and favor, and also liquor
from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he will be a bulwark
of defense. But deny him even a tuft-let of grass for his own. This
is the nature that God has given him.  Moreover, he has
brethren"-

The state groaned unanimously.

"But if his brethren come they will surely fight with each other till
they die; or else the one will always give information concerning
the other.  Shall he be of thy army, oh, king?  Choose"

The king bowed his head, and I said:

"Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the king's army. Thy name shall no more be
Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for, as thou hast truly said, I know."

Then Namgay Doola, never-christened Patsay Doola, son of
Timlay Doola-which is Tim Doolan-clasped the king's feet, cuffed
the standing army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from
temple to temple making offerings for the sin of the cattle- maiming.

And the king was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered
to sell me a village for 20 pounds  sterling.  But I buy no village in the Himalayas so long as one
red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch forest.

I know that breed.

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY

IMRAY had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no
conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career
he had chosen to disappear from the world-which is to say, the
little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well,
happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables.
Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make
sure where he might be.  He had stepped out of his place; he bad
not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was
not upon the public roads.  For these reasons and because he was
hampering in a microscopical degree the administration of the
Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into
the fate of Imray.  Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down
the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town-1,200 miles away-but Imray was not at the
end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the
work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from
being a man, became a mystery-such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a
month and the, forget utterly.  His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His
superior officer wrote an absurd
letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared and his bungalow stood
empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone
by, my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the
bungalow from the native landlord.  This was before he was
engaged to Miss Youghal-an affair which has been described in
another place-and while he was pursuing his investigations into
native life.  His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men
complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in
his house, hut there were no regular- times for meals. He eat,
standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on the
sideboard, and this is not good for the in-sides of human beings.
His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns,
five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger
and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied
one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to
Strickland and his dog Tietjens-an enormous Rampur slut, who
sung when she was ordered, and devoured daily the rations of two
men.  She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and
whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things calculated to destroy
the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she returned to her
master and gave him information. Strickland would take steps at
once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and
imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens
was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that
is born of hate and fear  One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use.  She owned
a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at
night, her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue
till some one came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her.
When he was on the frontier in search of the local murderer who
came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further than the
Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into
Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his
record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was
hanged.  From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and
employed a monogram on her night blanket, and the blanket was
double-woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland,
and when he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the
doctors because she did not know how to help her master and
would not allow another creature to attempt aid.  Macarnaght, of
the Indian Medical Service, beat her over the head with a gun,
before she could understand that she must give room for those who
could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my
business took me through that station, and naturally, the club
quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland.  It was a
desirable bungalow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against
any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a
ceiling cloth, which looked just as nice as a whitewashed ceiling.
The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how
Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark,
three- cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under side of the thatch harbored all
manner of rats, hats, ants, and other things.

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the
bells of St. Paul's, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she
was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to put together that
sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was
finished went out about his business.  I was left alone with Tietjens
and my own affairs.  The heat of the summer had broken up and
given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in
the heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and
flung up a blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos
and the custard apples, the poinsettias and the mango-trees in the
garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and
the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the
light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back
veranda and beard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched
myself because I was covered with the thing they called prickly
heat.  Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and
was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and
I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I
found there.  The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could
smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not
the least desire to sit among these things.  My own servant came to
me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his
drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and
wished to see some one. Very much against my will, and because
of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room,
telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have
been a caller in the room-it seems to me that I saw a figure by one
of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing save
the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in
my nostrils.  I explained to my man that he was no wiser than he
ought to be, and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens.  She
had gone out into the wet and I could hardly coax her back to me- even with biscuits with sugar
on top.  Strickland rode back,
dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was:

Has any one called?"

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the
drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer bad tried to
call on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his
name.  Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it
was a real dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and
went into the leastexposed veranda as soon as her master moved to
his own room, which was ncxt to  the  stately  chamber  set  apart
for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that
pelting rain, it would not have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal.
I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man
would smile after telling some hideous domestic tragedy.  "She has done this ever since I moved
in here."

The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside
my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered
on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a
thrown egg spattered a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not
yellow; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the
great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift
on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope
of a suspension bridge.  In the very short pauses of the thunder I
tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted me very badly.
He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice
was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and
Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon.
Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through
the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just
when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering
and clamoring above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and
had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed,
with a pipe in his mouth.  "I thought you'd come," he
said. "Have I been walking around the house at all?"

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the
smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and
told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the
morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing some one an
injustice in not attending to his wants.  What those wants were I
could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring,
loitering some one was reproaching me for my slackness, and
through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the
garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office
daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens
for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was
comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I
moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company.
We were alone in the house, but for all that it was fully occupied
by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere.  I never saw
him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering
where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking
as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them;
and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room
that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till
I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more
interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair
erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms,
but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps
and make all light and habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her
haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder.  Dogs are
cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over
to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his
hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much
care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end,
and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a
man who understands things.  "Stay on," he said, "and see what
this thing means.  All you have talked about I have known since I
took the bungalow.  Stay on and wait.  Tietjens has left me.  Are
you going too?"

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that
had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no
desire to help him through further experiences.  He was a man to
whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him
immensely, and would he happy to see him in the daytime, but that
I didn't care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when
Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda.

"'Pon my soul, I don't wonder," said Strickland, with his eyes on the
ceiling-cloth.  "Look at that'."

The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
cornice of the wall.  They threw long shadows in the lamp-light.
"If you are afraid of snakes, of course"-said Strickland. "I hate and
fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will
see that it knows all and more of man's fall, and that it feels all the
contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden.
Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser
legs."

"You ought to get your thatch over-hauled," I said.  "Give me a
masheer rod, and we'll poke 'em down."

"They'll hide among the roof beams," said Strickland.  "I can't
stand snakes overhead.  I'm going up.  If I shake 'em down, stand
by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs."

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, hut I took the
loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland
brought a gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the
side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and
disappeared.  We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies
running over the baggy cloth.  Strickland took a lamp with him,
while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes
between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration
of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

"N o n s en s e "  said  Strickland. "They're sure to hide near the
walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of
the room is just what they like."  He put his hands to the corner of
the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice.  It gave great sound of tearing, and
Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my
teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

"H'm," said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the
roof. "There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove!
some one is occupying em."

"Snakes?" I said down below.

"No. It's a buffalo.  Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer
rod, and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main beam."

I handed up the rod.

"What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live
here," said Strickland, climbing further into the 'roof. I could see
his elbow thrusting with the rod. "Come out of that, whoever you
are! Look out! Heads below there!  It's tottering."

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the
lighted lamps on the table.  I snatched a lamp out of danger and
stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split,
swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not
look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing
by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up
the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the
table.

"It strikes me," said he, pulling down the lamp, "our friend Imray
has come back. Oh! you would, would you?"

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggle'd out, to be back-broken by the
butt of the masheer rod.  I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally. The
thing under the cloth made no more signs of life.

"Is it Imray?" I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked. "It is
Imray,'1 he said, "and his throat is cut from ear to ear."

Then we spoke both together and to ourselves:

"That's why he whispered about the house."

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth
hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly
room to move away from the discovery.

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her
forepaws planted.  She looked at Strickland.

"It's bad business, old lady," said he.  "Men don't go up into the
roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the
ceiling-cloth behind 'em. Let's think it out."

"Let's think it out somewhere else," I said.

"Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We'll get into my room."

I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first and
allowed him to make the darkness.  Then he followed me, and we
lighted tobacco and thought. Strickland did the thinking. I smoked furiously because I was
afraid.

"Imray is back," said Strickland. "The question is, who killed
Imray? Don't talk-I have a notion of my own. When I took this
bungalow I took most of Imray's servants.  Imray was guile-less
and inoffensive, wasn't he?"

I agreed, though the heap under the cloth looked neither one thing
nor the other.

"If I call the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like
Aryans. What do you suggest?"

"Call 'em in one by one," I said.

"They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows," said
Strickland.

"We must segregate 'em.  Do you suppose your servant knows
anything about it?"

"He may, for aught I know, hut I don't think it's likely.  He has only
been here two or three days."

"What's your notion?" I asked.

"I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side
of the ceiling-cloth?"

There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's  bedroom  door.
This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked
from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

"Come in," said Strickland.  "It is a very warm night, isn't it?"

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mohammedan,
said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain
pending, which, by his honor's favor, would bring relief to the
country.

"It will be so, if God pleases," said Strickland, tugging off his
hoots.  "It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many
days-ever since that time when thou first came into my service. What time was that?"

"Has the heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went
secretly to Europe without warning given, and I even I-came into
the honored service of the protector of the poor."

"And Imray Sahib went to Europe?"

"It is so said among the servants."

"And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?"

"Assuredly, sahib.  He was a good master and cherished his
dependents."

"That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me the little rifle that I
use for black buck; it is in
the case yonder."

The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and
fore-end to Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning
dolefully, then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid
drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the .360 express.

"And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly?  That is very
strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?"

"What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born?"

"Very little, truly.  But thou shalt know more.  It has reached me
that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and
that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant."

"Sahib!"

The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled
themselves against Bahadur Khan's broad breast.

"Go. then. and look!" said Strickland.

"Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits. Go!"

The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room,
Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of
the rifle.  He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the
ceiling-cloth, at the carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and
last, a grey glaze setting on his face, at the thing under the
table-cloth.

"Hast thou seen?" said Strickland, after a pause.

"I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands.  What does the
presence do?"

"Hang thee within a month!  What else?"

"For killing him?  Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his
servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old.
Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child!"

"What said Imray Sahib?"

"He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head;
wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the
twilight, when he came back from office and was sleeping. The
heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven- born."

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular:
"Thou art witness to this saying.  He has killed."

Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp.  The
need for justification came upon him very swiftly.

"I am trapped," he said, "but the offence was that man's.  He cast
an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him.  Only such as are served by devils," he
glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, "only such could know what I did."

"It was clever.  But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam
with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope.  Orderly!"

A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed
by another, and Tietjens sat still.

"Take him to the station," said Strickland. "There is a case
toward."

"Do I hang, then?" said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to
escape and keeping his eyes on the ground.

"If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang," said
Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and
stood still  The two policemen waited further orders.

"Go!" said Strickland.

"Nay; but I go very swiftly," said Bahadur Khan. "Look! I am even
now a dead man."

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

"I come of land-h~ding stock," said Bahadur Khan, rocking where
he stood. "It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold,
therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib's shirts
are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in
his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard.
Why should you seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and-and-I
die."

At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the
little kariat, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the table-cloth to their appointed
places. They were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray

"This," said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, "is
called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?"

"I heard," I answered. "Imray made a mistake."

"Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever.
Bahadur Khan has been with
him for four years."

I shuddered.  My own servant had been with me for exactly that
length of time. When I went over to my own room I found him
waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my
boots.

"What has befallen Bahadur Khan?" said I.

"He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows," was
the answer.

"And how much of the matter hast thou known?"

"As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to
seek satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots."

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
shouting from his side of the house:

"Tietjens has come back to her room!"

And so she had.  The great deer-hound was couched on her own
bedstead, on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty
ceiling-cloth wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.

MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER

ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished
to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut
down all the trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still
remained.  Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy
medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the
elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his
tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes.  The planter,
therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to
work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst
of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's name was
Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj
was a creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being
translated, meant the Pearl Elephant.  Because the British
government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his
property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much
money through the strength of his elephant, he would get
extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over
the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these
occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep
and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor.  Moti Guj
was very fond of liquor-arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing
better offered.  Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa
generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and
would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake
up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
wages were too high to risk.  Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and
gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps-for he
owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a
rope-for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders-while Deesa
kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants.
At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred
pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa
would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
was time to go to bed.  Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to
the river, and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows,
while Deesa went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj
never mistook the pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the
former that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side.
Then Deesa would look at his feet and examine his eyes, and turn
up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia.  After inspection the
two would come up with a song from the sea," Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a torn
tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
desire to drink deep.  He wished for an orgy. The little draughts
that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," said he, weeping.

"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died
once before that when you were working for me last year," said the
planter, who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,"
said Deesa, weeping more than ever.  "She has left eighteen small
children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
stomachs," said Deesa, beat. mg his head on the floor.

"Who brought the news?" said the planter.

"The post," said Deesa.

"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
lines!',

"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives
are dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.

"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter.
"Chihun, has this man got a wife?"

"He?" said Chihun.  "No.  Not a woman of our village would look
at him, They'd sooner marry the elephant,"

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.

"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back to your work!"

"Now I will speak Heaven's truth gulped Deesa, with an
inspiration.  "I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to
depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this
heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble."

A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he,
"you've spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if
anything could be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You
know that he will only obey your orders."

"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
absent but ten little days.  After that, upon my faith and honor and
soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?"

Permission was granted, and in answer of Deesa's shrill yell, the
mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he
had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.

"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might,
give ear!" said Deesa, standing in front of him.

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk.  "I am going away."
said Deesa.

Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master.
One could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.

"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work."

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.

"I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near
fore-foot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
mud-puddle." Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails.  Moti Guj
grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.

"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees
as Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on
your neck!" Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was swung on to
the neck.  Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus -the iron elephant goad.

Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a
curbstone.

Moti Guj trumpeted.

"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chibun's your mahout for ten
days. And now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart.  Oh,
my lord, my king! Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd,
preserve your honored health; be virtuous.  Adieu!"

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air
twice. That was his way of bidding him good-bye.

"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go?"

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods.  Moti Guj
went back to haul stumps.

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for
all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under
the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was
over. and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa
was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back
again-the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa
had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of
his own caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted
with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no
Deesa, Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He
swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to
walk away, as one having business elsewhere.

"Hi! ho!  Come back you!" shouted Chihun.  "Come back and put
me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the
hillsides!  Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe
off your forefoot!"

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey.  Chihun ran after him
with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and
Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with
high words.

"None of your nonsense with me," said he.  "To your pickets,
devil-son!"

"Hrrump!" said Moti Guj, and that was all-that and the forebent
ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a
toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other
elephants who had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it
furiously.  Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a
mile across the clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside the
house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an elephant will.

"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received.
Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty."

Kala Nag-which means Black Snake-and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines,
and one of their duties was to administer the graver punishment, since no man can beat an
elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as
they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them.
Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been
whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he
waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the
precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink
deepest.  Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his
authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last
minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for
amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not
feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing
alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled
back to his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work and is not tied up
is about as manageable as an eightyone-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends
on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense
concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long "nooning"; and, wandering to
and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his picket for
food.

"If you won't work, you sha'n't eat," said Chihun, angrily.  "You're
a wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your
jungle."

Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and
stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway.
Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to
Chihun.  He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the
end, and the brown baby threw itself, shouting, upon it.  Moti Guj
made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air
twelve feet above his father's head.

"Great Lord!" said Chihun.  "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in
number, two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the
instant, and two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young
sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that
insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me!"

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet,
that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and
waited for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away.
Moti Guj dozed and thought of Deesa.  One of many mysteries
connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives.
Four or five hours in the night suffice-two just before midnight, lying down on one side; two just
after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and
fidgeting, and long grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk
somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him.  So all
that night he chased through the undergrowth, blowing and
trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and
blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, hut
there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all
the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death
some gypsies in the woods.

At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation.  He had been very drunk
in deed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his
leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and
the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti
Guj's temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams.
Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercise
had made him hungry.

"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the
mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came
from China at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men
were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop
They move from places of varying rates of speed.  If an elephant
wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could
catch the train.  So Moti Guj was at the planter's door almost
before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets.  He fell into
Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept
and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head
to heel to see that no harm had befallen

"Now we will get to work," saod Dessa. "Lift me up, my son and
my joy!"

Moti Guj swang him up, and the two went to the coffe-clearing to
look for difficult stumps.

The planter was too astonished to be very angry.