PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
by Rudyard Kipling
CONTENTS
LESPETH
THREE AND AN EXTRA
THROWN AWAY
MISS YOUGHAL'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 AURELIAN MCGOGGIN
A GERM DESTROYER
KIDNAPPED
THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY
THE HOUSE OF SUDDHOO
HIS WEDDED WIFE
THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
BEYOND THE PALE
IN ERROR
A BANK FRAUD
TOD'S AMENDMENT
IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH
PIG
THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS
THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE
VENUS ANNODOMINI
THE BISARA OF POORER
THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS
THE STORY OF MUHAMMID DIN
ON THE STRENGTH OF A LIKENESS
WRESSLEY OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE
BY WORD OF MOUTH
TO BE HELD FOR REFERENCE
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 5 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.