Tales – Page 30 – The Kipling Society

The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

page 1 of 8

ONCE upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her Majesty’s Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. All these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some fighting—work for which the Army Regulations did not call.

Their fate sent them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though poets have sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those who live suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends concerned themselves much with the social or political aspects of the East. They attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burma. Then their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of cantonment life was their portion. They were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty parade-ground. They wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two long years.

There was Mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had served with various regiments from Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier. To him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers’ carts at the back of York railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his chief virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery which even to-day I cannot explain. ‘There was always three av us,’ Mulvaney used to say. ‘An’ by the grace av God, so long as our service lasts, three av us they’ll always be. ’Tis betther so.’

They desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argument was out of the question as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and assault on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain—a business which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good luck and evil ; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.

Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friend-ship—frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning, sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a red-coat. ‘Like to like,’ said he. ‘I’m a bloomin’ sodger—he’s a bloomin’ civilian. ’Taint natural—that’s all.’ But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.

Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst—Mulvaney told me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were many, went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a ‘civilian’—videlicet, some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by Ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string.

The purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. He escaped, however, with nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being ‘the best soldier of his inches’ in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions’ creed. ‘A dhirty man,’ he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, ‘goes to Clink for a weakness in the knees, an’ is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin’; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service—a man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an’ whose’coutrements are widout a speck—that man may, spakin’ in reason, do fwhat he likes an’ dhrink from day to divil. That’s the pride av bein’ dacint.’

We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring white under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that led to Delhi. It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking a day’s leave and going upon a shooting-tour. The peacock is a holy bird throughout India, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone forth, he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold to profit.

It seemed just possible then—‘But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin’ out widout a dhrink? The ground’s powdherdhry underfoot, an’ ut gets unto the throat fit to kill,’ wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. ‘An’ a peacock is not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on wather—an’ jungle-wather too? Ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. He spoke, chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:

‘Go forth, return in glory,
To Clusium’s royal ’ome:
An’ round these bloomin’ temples ’ang
The bloomin’ shields o’ Rome.

You better go. You ain’t like to shoot yourself—not while there’s a chanst of liquor. Me an’ Learoyd’ll stay at ’ome an’ keep shop—’case o’ anythin’ turnin’ up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an’ ketch the little peacockses or somethin’. You kin get one day’s leave easy as winkin’. Go along an’ get it, an’ get peacockses or somethin’.’

‘Jock,’ said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd, who was half asleep under the shadow of the bank. He roused slowly.

page 2

‘Sitha, Mulvaaney, go,’ said he.

And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and barrack-room point.

‘Take note,’ said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in his hand. ‘Take note, Jock, an’ you Orth’ris, I am goin’ in the face av my own will—all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin’ will come av permiscuous huntin’ afther peacockses in a desolit lan’; an’ I know that I will lie down an’ die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy scutts—an’ be sacrificed by the peasanthry—Ugh!’

He waved a huge paw and went away.

At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed, much begrimed with dirt.

‘Peacockses?’ queried Ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a bench.

‘Jock,’ said Mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper. ‘Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?’

Very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the half-roused man. He understood—and again—what might these things mean? Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the room howled with delight. There was war in the confederacy at last—war and the breaking of bonds.

Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must follow the direct reply. This is more binding than the ties of tried friendship. Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered by the only means in his power, and so swiftly that the Irishman had barely time to avoid the blow. The laughter around increased. Learoyd looked bewilderedly at his friend—himself as greatly bewildered. Ortheris dropped from the table because his world was falling.

‘Come outside,’ said Mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, ‘There will be no fight this night—onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The man that does, follows on.’

No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling with the buttons of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted except for the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney’s impetuous rush carried his companions far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the discussion.

‘Be still now. ’Twas my fault for beginnin’ things in the middle av an end, Jock. I should ha’ comminst wid an explanation; but Jock, dear, on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver was—betther than fightin’ me? Considher before ye answer.’

More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, ‘Ah’m fit.’ He was accustomed to fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind.

They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled himself in mighty words.

‘Followin’ your fools’ scheme I wint out into the thrackless desert beyond the barricks. An’ there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a bullockkyart. I tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an’ I jumped in—’

‘You long, lazy, black-haired swine,’ drawled Ortheris, who would have done the same thing under similar circumstances.

‘’Twas the height av policy. That naygurman dhruv miles an’ miles—as far as the new railway line they’re buildin’ now back av the Tavi river. “’Tis a kyart for dhirt only,” says he now an’ again timoreously, to get me out av ut. “Dhirt I am,” sez I, “an’ the dhryest that you iver kyarted. Dhrive on, me son, an’ glory be wid you.” At that I wint to slape, an’ took no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line where the coolies were pilin’ mud. There was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line—you remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an’ they throops off to a big pay-shed.

“Where’s the white man in charge?” sez I to my kyartdhriver. “In the shed,” sez he, “engaged on a riffle.”—“A fwhat?” sez I. “Riffle,” sez he. “You take ticket. He take money. You get nothin’.”—“Oho!” sez I, “that’s fwhat the shuperior an’ cultivated man calls a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an’ sin. Lead on to that raffle, though fwhat the mischief ’tis doin’ so far away from uts home—which is the charity-bazaar at Christmas, an’ the colonel’s wife grinnin’ behind the tea-table—is more than I know.” Wid that I wint to the shed an’ found ’twas payday among the coolies.

Their wages was on a table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man—sivun fut high, four fut wide, an’ three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was payin’ the coolies fair an’ easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that month, an each man sez, “Yes,” av course. Thin he wud deduct from their wages accordin’. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full av gun-wads an’ scatthered ut among the coolies. They did not take much joy av that performince, an’ small wondher.

A man close to me picks up a black gun-wad an’ sings out, “I have ut.”—“Good may ut do you,” sez I. The coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an’ variously bedivilled sedan-chair I iver saw.’

‘Sedan-chair! Put your ’ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don’t yer know a palanquin when you see it?’ said Ortheris with great scorn.

‘I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an’ chair ut shall be, little man,’ continued the Irishman. ‘’Twas a most amazin’ chair—all lined wid pink silk an’ fitted wid red silk curtains. “Here ut is,” sez the red man. “Here ut is,” sez the coolie, an’ he grinned weakly-ways. “Is ut any use to you?” sez the red man. “No,” sez the coolie; “I’d like to make a presint av ut to you.”—“I am graciously pleased to accept that same,” sez the red man; an’ at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat was mint for cheerful notes, an’ wint back to their diggin’, lavin’ me alone in the shed. The red man saw me, an’ his face grew blue on his big, fat neck. “Fwhat d’you want here?” sez he. “Standin’-room an’ no more,” sez I, “onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an’ that’s manners, ye rafflin’ ruffian,” for I was not goin’ to have the Service throd upon.

“Out of this,” sez he. “I’m in charge av this section av construction.”—“I’m in charge av mesilf,” sez I, “an’ it’s like I will stay a while. D’ye raffle much in these parts?”—“Fwhat’s that to you?”sez he. “Nothin’,” sez I, “but a great dale to you, for begad I’m thinkin’ you get the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so?” I sez, an’ wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that man’s name is Dearsley, an’ he’s been rafflin’ that ould sedan-chair monthly this matther av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket—or he gives ’em the go—wanst a month on payday. Ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for ’tis too big to carry away, an’ he’d sack the man that thried to sell ut.

That Dearsley has been makin’ the rowlin’ wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin’. Think av the burnin’ shame to the sufferin’ coolie-man that the Army in Injia are bound to protect an’ nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand coolies defrauded wanst a month!’

page 3

‘Dom t’ coolies. Has’t gotten t’ cheer, man?’ said Learoyd.

‘Hould on. Havin’ onearthed this amazin’ an’ stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin’ all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. That sedan- chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. ’Tis a king’s chair or a quane’s. There’s gold on ut an’ silk an’ all manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, ’tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin’—me bein’ the ould man—but—anyway he has had ut nine months, an’ he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or ut may be six—’

There was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. Learoyd bared one arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly to himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed emotion.

‘I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I made bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front attack—fut, horse, an’ guns—an’ all for nothin’, seein’ that I had no thransport to convey the machine away. “I will not argue wid you,” sez I, “this day, but subsequintly, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin’ jool, we talk ut out lengthways. ’Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned emolumints, an’ by presint informashin’ ”—’twas the kyart man that tould me—“ye’ve been perpethrating that same for nine months. But I’m a just man,” sez I, “an’ overlookin’ the presumpshin that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust”—at that he turned sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable—“not come by honust, I’m willin’ to compound the felony for this month’s winnin’s.”’

‘Ah! Ho!’ from Learoyd and Ortheris.

‘That man Dearsley’s rushin’ on his fate,’ continued Mulvaney, solemnly wagging his head. ‘All Hell had no name bad enough for me that tide. Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin’ him from continuin’ in his evil ways widout a remonstrince—an’ to a man av conscience a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. “’Tis not for me to argue,” sez I, “fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I’ll take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.”—“You will have to fight me for ut,” sez he, “for well I know you will never dare make report to any one.”—“Fight I will,” sez I, “but not this day, for I’m rejuced for want av nourishmint.”—“Ye’re an ould bould hand,” sez he, sizin’ me up an’ down; “an’ a jool av a fight we will have. Eat now an’ dhrink, an’ go your way.” Wid that he gave me some hump an’ whisky—good whisky—an’ we talked av this an’ that the while. “It goes hard on me now,” sez I, wipin’ my mouth, “to confiscate that piece av furniture, but justice is justice.”—“Ye’ve not got ut yet,” sez he; “there’s the fight between.”—“There is,” sez I, “an’ a good fight. Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the dinner you have given this day.” Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould your tongue, the both. ’Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an’ he shall have his pick betune me an’ Jock. Jock’s a deceivin’ fighter, for he is all fat to the eye, an’ he moves slow. Now I’m all beef to the look, an’ I move quick. By my reckonin’ the Dearsley man won’t take me; so me an’ Orth’ris ’ll see fair play. Jock, I tell you, ’twill be big fightin’—whipped, wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business ’twill take a good three av us—Jock’ll be very hurt—to haul away that sedan-chair.’

‘Palanquin.’ This from Ortheris.

‘Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. ’Tis the only sellin’ piece av property widin reach that we can get so cheap. An’ fwhat’s a fight afther all? He has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We rob him honust for the sake av the whisky he gave me.’

‘But wot’ll we do with the bloomin’ article when we’ve got it? Them palanquins are as big as ’ouses, an’

uncommon ’ard to sell, as McCleary said when ye stole the sentry-box from the Curragh.’

‘Who’s goin’ to do t’ fightin’?’ said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided. The three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney’s last argument clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible and to be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney.

Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was without care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely pay-shed by the side of the half- built embankment only a few hundred coolies know, and their tale is a confusing one, running thus—

‘We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the Sahib—Dearsley Sahib. They made oration; and noticeably the small man among the red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many very strong words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib after the custom of white men—with his hands, making no noise, and never at all pulling Dearsley Sahib’s hair. Such of us as were not afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the mid-day meal. The small man in the red coat had possessed himself of Dearsley Sahib’s watch. No, he did not steal that watch. He held it in his hand, and at certain seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the combat of young bulls in spring. Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley Sahib was much more red than the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his life—because we greatly loved him—some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red-coats. But a certain man—very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who fought—that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away. It is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. After that Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no complaint of these latter things having been done? We were senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. There was no palanquin near the pay-shed. What do we know about palanquins? Is it true that Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place, on account of his sickness, for ten days? This is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for Dearsley Sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. Yet, if Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak the truth. There was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On such mulctings Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin. What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of our wages. Will the Government repay us those moneys?

Those three men in red coats bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. All the money that Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin. Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees were there—all our money. It was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to Dearsley Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man look upon us with the eye of disfavour? Before God, there was a palanquin, and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. Why should a palanquin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know nothing.’

page 4

Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it. Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of unchastened splendour—evidently in past days the litter of a queen. The pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted papier-maché of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon—lacquer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king’s palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear; but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley’s pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognise the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a ‘fence’ for stolen property.

‘I’m askin’ you to warehouse ut,’ said Mulvaney, when he was brought to consider the question. ‘There’s no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud have ut if we fought. Jock fought—an’, oh, sorr, when the throuble was at uts finest an’ Jock was bleedin’ like a stuck pig, an’ little Orth’ris was shquealin’ on one leg chewin’ big bites out av Dearsley’s watch, I wud ha’ given my place at the fight to have had you see wan round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would, an’ Jock was deceptive. Nine roun’s they were even matched, an’ at the tenth—About that palanquin now. There’s not the least throuble in the world, or we wud not ha’ brought ut here. You will ondher-stand that the Queen—God bless her!—does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an’ palanquins an’ sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from Dearsley’s through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth’ris’s heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night; an’ a thief av a porcupine an’ a civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin’. I put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the natural abidin’ place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin’ men in the pay-shed yonder—lookin’ at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel—an’ well knowin’ that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. Indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an on-principled son av a night-hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. An’ besides, will I let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? Not I. ’Tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes into the market. There’s not a king widin these forty miles’—he waved his hand round the dusty horizon—‘not a king wud not be glad to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I’ll take ut up along the road an’ dishpose av ut.’

‘How?’ said I, for I knew the man was capable of anything.

‘Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains. Whin I see a likely man av the native persuasion, I will descind blushin’ from my canopy and say, “Buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?” I will have to hire four men to carry me first, though; and that’s impossible till next pay-day.’

Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it would be better to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of the civil law—a thing much abhorred by the soldier. Under any circumstances their fun had come and passed; the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. Wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin?

‘A first-class rifle-shot an’ a good little man av your inches you are,’ said Mulvaney. ‘But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. ’Tis me has to lie awake av nights schamin’ an’ plottin’ for the three av us. Orth’ris, me son, ’tis no matther av a few gallons av beer—no, nor twenty gallons—but tubs an’ vats an’ firkins in that sedan-chair. Who ut was, an’ what ut was, an’ how ut got there, we do not know; but I know in my bones that you an’ me an’ Jock wid his sprained thumb will get a fortune thereby. Lave me alone, an’ let me think.’

Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in Mulvaney’s hands.

Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that Mulvaney, dried by four weeks’ drought, would avoid excess. Next morning he and the palanquin had disappeared. He had taken the precaution of getting three days’ leave ‘to see a friend on the railway,’ and the colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully gave him all he demanded. At this point Mulvaney’s history, as recorded in the mess-room, stopped.

Ortheris carried it not much further. ‘No, ’e wasn’t drunk,’ said the little man loyally, ‘the liquor was no more than feelin’ its way round inside of ’im; but ’e went an’ filled that ’ole bloomin’ palanquin with bottles ’fore ’e went off. E’s gone an’ ’ired six men to carry ’im, an’ I ’ad to ’elp ’im into ’is nupshal couch, ’cause ’e wouldn’t ’ear reason. ’E’s gone off in ’is shirt an’ trousies, swearin’ tremenjus—gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin’ ’is legs out o’ windy.’

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but where?’

‘Now you arx me a question. ’E said ’e was goin’ to sell that palanquin, but from observations what happened when I was stuffin’ ’im through the door, I fancy ’e’s gone to the new embankment to mock at Dearsley. ’Soon as Jock’s off duty I’m goin’ there to see if ’e’s safe—not Mulvaney, but t’other man. My saints, but I pity ’im as ’elps Terence out o’ the palanquin when ’e’s once fair drunk!’

‘He’ll come back without harm,’ I said.

‘’Corse ’e will. On’y question is, what’ll ’e be doin’ on the road? Killing Dearsley, like as not. ’E shouldn’t

’a gone without Jock or me.’

Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang. Dearsley’s head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated brave.

‘I had my pick o’ you two,’ he explained to Learoyd, ‘and you got my palanquin—not before I’d made my profit on it. Why’d I do harm when everything’s settled? Your man did come here—drunk as Davy’s sow on a frosty night—came a-purpose to mock me—stuck his head out of the door an’ called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an’ sent him along. But I never touched him.’

page 5

To these things Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity, answered only, ‘If owt comes to Mulvaaney ’long o’ you, I’ll gripple you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an’ I’ll draw t’ throat twistyways, man. See there now.’

The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over his supper that evening.

Three days passed—a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close and Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable.

‘When Mulvaney goes up the road,’ said he, ‘’e’s like to go a very long ways up, specially when ’e’s so blue drunk as ’e is now. But what gits me is ’is not bein’ ’eard of pullin’ wool off the niggers somewheres about. That don’t look good. The drink must ha’ died out in ’im by this, unless ’e’s broke a bank, an’ then—Why don’t ’e come back? ’E didn’t ought to ha’ gone off without us.’

Even Ortheris’s heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the regiment were out scouring the countryside, and Learoyd had been forced to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward by his much-trusted adjutant.

‘Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,’ said he. ‘No; he’s either fallen into a mischief among the villagers—and yet that isn’t likely, for he’d blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs—some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms. The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days’ confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can. How does he do it?’

‘With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,’ said the adjutant. ‘He is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a queer gang.’

‘For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue. They don’t seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters. I believe I’d forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could in decency accept.’

‘Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,’ said the adjutant. ‘Mulvaney’s explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell his colonel’s charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady’s hack. Shackbolt commanded the Tyrone then.’

‘Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses answering to that description. He used to buy unbacked devils, and tame them on some pet theory of starvation. What did Mulvaney say?’

‘That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, anxious to “sell the poor baste where he would get something to fill out his dimples.” Shackbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why Mulvaney exchanged to ours.’

‘I wish he were back,’ said the colonel; ‘for I like him and believe he likes me.’

That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their clamour—and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments—could not take us out of ourselves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter.

‘This,’ said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation of it all, ‘this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o’ mad country. Like a grate when the fire’s put out by the sun.’ He shaded his eyes against the moonlight. ‘An there’s a loony dancin’ in the middle of it all. Quite right. I’d dance too if I wasn’t so downheart.’

There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon—a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and flung all its legs and arms to the winds.

‘My, but that scarecrow ’as got ’em bad!’ said Ortheris. ‘Seems like if ’e comes any furder we’ll ’ave to argify with ’im.’

Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave tongue to the stars.

‘Mulvaaney! Mulvaaney! A-hoo!’

Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a lump in the throat.

‘You damned fool!’ said they, and severally pounded him with their fists.

‘Go easy!’ he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. ‘I would have you to know that I am a god, to be treated as such—tho’, by my faith, I fancy I’ve got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.’

The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad. He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. But he wore one wondrous garment—a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel—of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled the folds round him.

page 6

Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying to remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed, ‘What ’ave you done with the palanquin? You’re wearin’ the linin’.’

‘I am,’ said the Irishman, ‘an’ by the same token the ’broidery is scrapin’ my hide off. I’ve lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me boots, an’ me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl’s leg at a dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man—all fearful an’ timoreous. Give me a pipe an’ I’ll tell on.’

He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro in a gale of laughter.

‘Mulvaney,’ said Ortheris sternly, ‘’taint no time for laughin’. You’ve given Jock an’ me more trouble than you’re worth. You ’ave been absent without leave an’ you’ll go into cells for that; an’ you ’ave come back disgustin’ly dressed an’ most improper in the linin’ o’ that bloomin’ palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An’ we thought you was dead all the time.’

‘Bhoys,’ said the culprit, still shaking gently, ‘whin I’ve done my tale you may cry if you like, an’ little Orth’ris here can thrample my inside out. Ha’ done an’ listen. My performinces have been stupenjus: my luck has been the blessed luck av the British Army—an’ there’s no betther than that. I went out dhrunk an’ dhrinkin’ in the palanquin, and I have come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was up? He was at the bottom of ut all.’

‘Ah said so,’ murmured Learoyd. ‘To-morrow ah’ll smash t’ face in upon his heead.’

‘Ye will not. Dearsley’s a jool av a man. Afther Ortheris had put me into the palanquin an’ the six bearer-men were gruntin’ down the road, I tuk thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim, “Go to the embankmint,” and there, bein’ most amazin’ full, I shtuck my head out av the concern an’ passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha’ miscalled him outrageous, for whin I am that way the power av the tongue comes on me. I can bare remimber tellin’ him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth av a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had handled ut; an’ I clear remimber his takin’ no manner nor matter av offence, but givin’ me a big dhrink of beer. ’Twas the beer did the thrick, for I crawled back into the palanquin, steppin’ on me right ear wid me left foot, an’ thin I slept like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an’ begad the noise in my head was tremenjus—roarin’ an’ rattlin’ an’ poundin’, such as was quite new to me. “Mother av Mercy,” thinks I, “phwat a concertina I will have on my shoulders whin I wake!” An’ wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, ’twas the rattle av a thrain!’

There followed an impressive pause.

‘Yes, he had put me on a thrain—put me, palanquin an’ all, an’ six black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence, on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin’ an’ bowlin’ along to Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an’ introjuce mysilf to the coolies. As I was sayin’, I slept for the betther part av a day an’ a night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on wan av his material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me overstay my leave an’ get me into the cells.’

The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares lay at least ten hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge. Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected portions of Mulvaney’s body. His thoughts were away on the embankment, and they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney continued—

‘Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin’ an’ talkin’. But I knew well I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments—a smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter. This place smelt marigold flowers an’ bad water, an’ wanst somethin’ alive came an’ blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. “It’s in a village I am,” thinks I to mysilf, “an’ the parochial buffalo is investigatin’ the palanquin.” But anyways I had no desire to move. Only lie still whin you’re in foreign parts an’ the standin’ luck av the British Army will carry ye through. That is an epigram. I made ut.

‘Thin a lot av whishperin’ divils surrounded the palanquin. “Take ut up,” sez wan man. “But who’ll pay us?” sez another. “The Maharanee’s minister, av coorse,” sez the man. “Oho!” sez I to mysilf, “I’m a quane in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I’ll be an emperor if I lie still long enough; but this is no village I’ve found.” I lay quiet, but I gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an I saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an’ horses, an’ a sprinklin’ av naked priests all yellow powder an’ tigers’ tails. But I may tell you, Orth’ris, an’ you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial an’ magnificent. Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the Quane happens to be takin’ a ride. “Women an’ priests!” sez I. “Your father’s son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin’s.” Six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an’ oh! but the rowlin’ an’ the rockin’ made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins—not more than fifty av them—an’ we grated an’ bumped like Queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin’ tide. I cud hear the women gigglin’ and squirkin’ in their palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. They made way for ut, an’, begad, the pink muslin men o’ mine were howlin’, “Room for the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun.” Do you know aught av the lady, sorr?’

‘Yes,’ said I. ‘She is a very estimable old queen of the Central Indian States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares without all the city knowing her palanquin?’

‘’Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygurman. They saw the palanquin lying loneful an’ forlornsome, an’ the beauty av ut, after Dearsley’s men had dhropped ut and gone away, an’ they gave ut the best name that occurred to thim. Quite right too. For aught we know the ould lady was thravellin’ incog—like me. I’m glad to hear she’s fat. I was no light weight mysilf, an’ my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin’s an’ cuttin’s I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush—like a—like a Maharanee.’

‘The temple of Prithi-Devi,’ I murmured, remembering the monstrous horrors of that sculptured archway at Benares.

‘Pretty Devilskins, savin’ your presence, sorr! There was nothin’ pretty about ut, except me. ’Twas all half dhark, an’ whin the coolies left they shut a big black gate behind av us, an’ half a company av fat yellow priests began pully-haulin’ the palanquins into a dharker place yet—a big stone hall full av pillars, an’ gods, an’ incense, an’ all manner av similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived I wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein’ cut off. By the same token a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly turned me inside out draggin’ the palanquin to the temple. Now the disposishin av the forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun—that was me—lay by the favour av Providence on the far left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints’ heads. The remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest, fattest, an’ most amazin’ she-god that iver I dreamed av. Her head ran up into the black above us, an’ her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin’ out av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to sing an’ play on somethin’ back in the dhark, an’ ’twas a queer song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av

page 7

my neck. Thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an’ the women bundled out. I saw what I’ll niver see again. ’Twas more glorious than thransformations at a pantomime, for they was in pink an’ blue an’ silver an’ red an’ grass green, wid dimonds an’ imralds an’ great red rubies all over thim. But that was the least part av the glory. O bhoys, they were more lovely than the like av any loveliness in hiven; ay, their little bare feet were better than the white hands av a lord’s lady, an’ their mouths were like puckered roses, an’ their eyes were bigger an’ dharker than the eyes av any livin’ women I’ve seen. Ye may laugh, but I’m speakin’ truth. I niver saw the like, an’ niver I will again.’

‘Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters of most of the kings of India, the chances are that you won’t,’ I said, for it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big Queens’ Praying at Benares.

‘I niver will,’ he said mournfully. ‘That sight doesn’t come twist to any man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door. I didn’t think he’d have the insolince to disturb the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay still. “The old cow’s asleep,” sez he to another. “Let her be,” sez that. “’Twill be long before she has a calf!” I might ha’ known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in Injia—an’ for matter o’ that in England to—is childher. That made me more sorry I’d come, me bein’, as you well know, a childless man.’

He was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years ago.

‘They prayed, an’ the butter-fires blazed up, an’ the incense turned everything blue, an’ between that an’ the fires the women looked as tho’ they were all ablaze an’ twinklin’. They took hold av the she- god’s knees, they cried out an’ they threw themselves about, an’ that world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin’ thim mad. Mother av Hiven! how they cried, an’ the ould she-god grinni’ above thim all so scornful! The dhrink was dyin’ out in me fast, an’ I was thinkin’ harder than the thoughts wud go through my head—thinkin’ how to get out, an’ all manner of nonsense as well. The women were rockin’ in rows, their di’mond belts clickin’, an’ the tears runnin’ out betune their hands, an’ the lights were goin’ lower an’ dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin’ from the roof, an’ that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an’ at the end where my foot was, stood the livin’ spit an’ image o’ mysilf worked on the linin’. This man here, ut was.’

He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to Mulvaney.

‘The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I believe I was mad too. I slid the off-shutter open an’ rowled out into the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knees, slipped off my boots an’ tuk a general hould av all the pink linin’ av the palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman’s dhriss when you tread on ut at a sergeants’ ball, an’ a bottle came with ut. I tuk the bottle an’ the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin’ wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin’ like kettledrums, an’ a could draft blowin’ round my bare legs. By this hand that did ut, I was Krishna tootlin’ on the flute—the god that the rig’mental chaplain talks about. A sweet sight I must ha’ looked. I knew my eyes were big, and my face was wax-white, an’ at the worst I must ha’ looked like a ghost. But they took me for the livin’ god. The music stopped, and the women were dead dumb, an’ I crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an’ I did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I had done ut at the rig’ mental theatre many times, an’ I slid acrost the width av that temple in front av the she-god tootlin’ on the beer bottle.’

‘Wot did you toot?’ demanded Ortheris the practical.

‘Me? Oh!’ Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half light. ‘I sang—

‘Only say
You’ll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
Don’t say nay,
Charmin’ Judy Callaghan.

I didn’t know me own voice when I sang. An’ oh! ’twas pitiful to see the women. The darlin’s were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last wan I cud see her poor little fingers workin’ one in another as if she wanted to touch my feet. So I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her head for the greater honour, an’ I slid into the dhark on the other side av the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All I wanted was to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy throat an’ shut the speech out av him. “Out!” sez I. “Which way, ye fat heathen?”—“Oh!” sez he. “Man,” sez I. “White man, soldier man, common soldier man. Where in the name av confusion is the back door?” The women in the temple were still on their faces, an’ a young priest was holdin’ out his arms above their heads.

‘“This way,” sez my fat friend, duckin’ behind a big bull-god an’ divin’ into a passage. Thin I remimbered that I must ha’ made the miraculous reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. “Not so fast,” I sez, an’ I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled like a father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to put a knife into me unbeknowst, an’ I ran him up an’ down the passage twice to collect his sensibilities! “Be quiet,” sez he, in English. “Now you talk sense,” I sez. “Fwhat’ll you give me for the use av that most iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?”—“Don’t tell,” sez he. “Is ut like?” sez I. “But ye might give me my railway fare. I’m far from my home an’ I’ve done you a service.” Bhoys, ’tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an’ began dribblin’ ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could hould no more.’

‘You lie!’ said Ortheris. ‘You’re mad or sunstrook. A native don’t give coin unless you cut it out o’ ’im. ’Tain’t nature.’

‘Then my lie an’ my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder,’ retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. ‘An’ there’s a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver taken you to, Orth’ris, me son. Four hundred an’ thirty-four rupees by my reckonin’, an’ a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a remimbrancer, was our share in that business.’

‘An’ ’e give it you for love?’ said Ortheris.

page 8

‘We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin’, but considher fwhat I had done for the good av the temple and the iverlastin’ joy av those women. ’Twas cheap at the price. I wud ha’ taken more if I cud ha’ found ut. I turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another passage an’ I found mysilf up to my knees in Benares river-water, an’ bad smellin’ ut is. More by token I had come out on the river-line close to the burnin’ ghat and contagious to a cracklin’ corpse. This was in the heart av the night, for I had been four hours in the temple. There was a crowd av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an’ wint across the river. Thin I came home acrost country, lyin’ up by day.’

‘How on earth did you manage?’ I said.

‘How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched an’ he niver tould how near he was to breakin’ down. That’s why he is fwhat he is. An’ now—’ Mulvaney yawned portentously. ‘Now I will go an’ give myself up for absince widout leave. It’s eight an’ twenty days an’ the rough end of the colonel’s tongue in orderly room, any way you look at ut. But ’tis cheap at the price.’

‘Mulvaney,’ said I softly. ‘If there happens to be any sort of excuse that the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you’ll get nothing more than the dressing-down. The new recruits are in, and—’

‘Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old man wants? ’Tis not my way, but he shall have thim. I’ll tell him I was engaged in financial operations connected wid a church,’ and he flapped his way to cantonments and the cells, singing lustily—

‘So they sent a corp’ril’s file,
And they put me in the gyard-room
For conduck unbecomin’ of a soldier.’

And when he was lost in the mist of the moonlight we could hear the refrain—

‘Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
As we go marchin’ along, boys, oh!
For although
in this campaign
There’s no whisky nor champagne,
We’ll keep our spirits goin’ with a song, oys!’

Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard, and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager’s cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to ‘Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.’

In the Same Boat

page 1 of 9

‘A THROBBING vein,’ said Dr. Gilbert soothingly, ‘is the mother of delusion.’

‘Then how do you account for my knowing when the thing is due?’ Conroy’s voice rose almost to a break.

‘Of course, but you should have consulted a doctor before using—palliatives.’

‘It was driving me mad. And now I can’t give them up.’

‘Not so bad as that! One doesn’t form fatal habits at twenty-five. Think again. Were you ever frightened as a child?’

‘I don’t remember. It began when I was a boy.’

‘With or without the spasm? By the way, do you mind describing the spasm again?’

‘Well,’ said Conroy, twisting in the chair, ‘I’m no musician, but suppose you were a violin-string—vibrating—and some one put his finger on you? As if a finger were put on the naked soul! Awful!’

‘So’s indigestion—so’s nightmare—while it lasts.’

‘But the horror afterwards knocks me out for days. And the waiting for it . . . and then this drug habit! It can’t go on!’ He shook as he spoke, and the chair creaked.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the doctor, ‘when you’re older you’ll know what burdens the best of us carry. A fox to every Spartan.’

‘That doesn’t help me. I can’t! I can’t!’ cried Conroy, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gilbert, when the paroxysm ended. ‘I’m used to people coming a little—unstuck in this room.’

‘It’s those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out. I used to be fit once. Oh, I’ve tried exercise and everything. But—if one sits down for a minute when it’s due—even at four in the morning-it runs up behind one.’

‘Ye-es. Many things come in the quiet of the morning. You always know when the visitation. is due?’

‘What would I give not to be sure!’ he sobbed.

‘We’ll put that aside for the moment. I’m thinking of a case where what we’ll call anæmia of the brain was masked (I don’t say cured) by vibration. He couldn’t sleep, or thought he couldn’t, but a steamer voyage and the thump of the screw——’

‘A steamer? After what I’ve told you!’ Conroy almost shrieked. ‘I’d sooner . . . ’

‘Of course not a steamer in your case, but a long railway journey the next time you think it will trouble you. It sounds absurd, but——’

‘I’d try anything. I nearly have,’ Conroy sighed.

‘Nonsense! I’ve given you a tonic that will clear that notion from your head. Give the train a chance, and don’t begin the journey by bucking yourself up with tabloids. Take them along, but hold them in reserve—in reserve.’

‘D’you think I’ve self-control enough, after what you’ve heard?’ said Conroy.

Dr. Gilbert smiled. ‘Yes. After what I’ve seen,’ he glanced round the room, ‘I have no hesitation in saying you have quite as much self-control as many other people. I’ll write you later about your journey. Meantime, the tonic,’ and he gave some general directions before Conroy left.

An hour later Dr. Gilbert hurried to the links, where the others of his regular week-end game awaited him. It was a rigid round, played as usual at the trot, for the tension of the week lay as heavy on the two King’s Counsels and Sir John Chartres as on Gilbert. The lawyers were old enemies of the Admiralty Court, and Sir John of the frosty eyebrows and Abernethy manner was bracketed with, but before, Rutherford Gilbert among nerve-specialists.

At the Club-house afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally compared professional matters.

‘Lies—all lies,’ said Sir John, when Gilbert had told him Conroy’s trouble. ‘Post hoc, propter hoc. The man or woman who drugs is ipso facto a liar. You’ve no imagination.’

‘’Pity you haven’t a little—occasionally.

‘I have believed a certain type of patient in my time. It’s always the same. For reasons not given in the consulting-room they take to the drug. Certain symptoms follow. They will swear to you, and believe it, that they took the drug to mask the symptoms. What does your man use? Najdolene? I thought so. I had practically the duplicate of your case last Thursday. Same old Najdolene—same old lie.’

‘Tell me the symptoms, and I’ll draw my own inferences, Johnnie.’

‘Symptoms! The girl was rank poisoned with Najdolene. Ramping, stamping possession. Gad, I thought she’d have the chandelier down.’

‘Mine came unstuck too, and he has the physique of a bull,’ said Gilbert. ‘What delusions had yours?’

‘I Faces—faces with mildew on them. In any other walk of life we’d call it the Horrors. She told me, of course, she took the drugs to mask the faces. Post hoc, propter hoc again. All liars!’

‘What’s that?’ said the senior K.C. quickly. ‘Sounds professional.’

‘Go away! Not for you, Sandy.’ Sir John turned a shoulder against him and walked with Gilbert in the chill evening.

‘To Conroy in his chambers came, one week later, this letter:

page 2

‘DEAR MR. CONROY—If your plan of a night’s trip on the 17th still holds good, and you have no particular destination in view, you could do me a kindness. A Miss Henschil, in whom I am interested, goes down to the West by the 10.8 from Waterloo (Number 3 platform) on that night. She is not exactly an invalid, but, like so many of us, a little shaken in her nerves. Her maid, of course, accompanies her, but if I knew you were in the same train it would be an additional source of strength. Will you please write and let me know whether the 10.8 from Waterloo, Number 3 platform, on the 17th, suits you, and I will meet you there? Don’t forget my caution, and keep up the tonic.—Yours sincerely,

L. RUTHERFORD GILBERT.

‘He knows I’m scarcely fit to look after myself,’ was Conroy’s thought. ‘And he wants me to look after a woman!’

Yet, at the end of half an hour’s irresolution, he accepted.

Now Conroy’s trouble, which had lasted for years, was this:

On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time—in due time—would bring it forth.

Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These guarantee, on the label, ‘Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.’ They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.

Three years of M. Najdol’s preparations do not fit a man for many careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.

When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr. Gilbert had but given him more drugs—a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway carriages—and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e’en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger ‘a little shaken in her nerves.’

He spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. At such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening Dr. Gilbert’s tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors.

Waterloo Station shook him into real life. The change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. The old 10.8 from Waterloo to the West was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station.

Dr. Gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor coach; an older and stouter man behind him. ‘So glad you’re here!’ he cried. ‘Let me get your ticket.’

‘Certainly not,’ Conroy answered. ‘I got it myself—long ago. My bag’s in too,’ he added proudly.

‘I beg your pardon. Miss Henschil’s here. I’ll introduce you.’

‘But—but,’ he stammered—‘think of the state I’m in. If anything happens I shall collapse.’

‘Not you. You’d rise to the occasion like a bird. And as for the self-control you were talking of the other day’—Gilbert swung him round—‘look!’

A young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly.

‘Oh, but that’s only drink,’ Conroy said. ‘I haven’t had one of my—my things since lunch.’

‘Excellent!’ said Gilbert. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Come along. Wait for a minute, Chartres.’

A tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. She bowed her head as the doctor murmured Conroy knew not what. Then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets.

‘My maid—next compartment,’ she said slowly.

Conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver Najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. He snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat.

‘How nice!’ said the woman. She leisurely lifted her veil, unbuttoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a Najdolene-case.

‘Don’t!’ said Conroy, not realising he had spoken.

‘I beg your pardon.’ The deep voice was measured, even, and low. Conroy knew what made it so.

‘I said “don’t”! He wouldn’t like you to do it!’

‘No, he would not.’ She held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. ‘But aren’t you one of the—ah—“soulweary” too?’

‘That’s why. Oh, please don’t! Not at first. I—I haven’t had one since morning. You—you’ll set me off!’

‘You? Are you so far gone as that?’

page 3

He nodded, pressing his palms together. The train jolted through Vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the West.

After long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked Conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book.

‘Conroy shook his head. ‘No. Our sort can’t read. Don’t!’

‘Were you sent to watch me?’ The voice never changed.

‘Me? I need a keeper myself much more—this night of all! ‘

‘This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved me when I told them of mine.’ She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. ‘Aren’t doctors stu-upid? They don’t know.’

She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her—till his eyes were blurred with tears.

‘Have I been there, think you?’ she said.

‘Surely—surely,’ Conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the fine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth.

‘Then—suppose we have one—just one apiece? I’ve gone without since this afternoon.’

He put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke.

‘Don’t! Can’t you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? Don’t let’s both go down together.’

‘But I want one. It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Just one. It’s my night.’

‘It’s mine—too. My sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.’ He shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along.

‘Ah, it’s only my thirty-ninth.’ She paused as he had done. ‘I wonder if I shall last into the sixties . . . . Talk to me or I shall go crazy. You’re a man. You’re the stronger vessel. Tell me when you went to pieces.’

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—eight—I beg your pardon.’

‘Not in the least. I always pretend I’ve dropped a stitch of my knitting. I count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. Do you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve done very much else for the last——’ said Conroy, shivering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised.

‘Oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! It’s not always the same date, is it? ’

‘What difference would that make?’ He unbuttoned his ulster with a jerk. ‘You’re a sane woman. Can’t you see the wicked—wicked—wicked’ (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) ‘unfairness of it? What have I done?’

She laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly.

‘If you begin to think over that,’ she said, ‘you’ll go to pieces and be ashamed. Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. Only be quiet—be quiet, lad, or you’ll set me off!’ She made shift to soothe him, though her chin trembled.

‘Well,’ said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, ‘mine’s nothing much, of course.’

‘Don’t be a fool! That’s for doctors—and mothers.’

‘It’s Hell,’ Conroy muttered. ‘It begins on a steamer—on a stifling hot night. I come out of my cabin. I pass through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.’

‘I’ve travelled too,’ she said.

‘Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher’s meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.’

Again she nodded.

‘It’s a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea’s lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea—perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines—dull grey’. ‘All this time I know something’s going to happen.

‘I know. Something going to happen,’ she whispered.

‘Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down—like fire-irons—and then two most awful yells. They’re more like hoots, and I know—I know while I listen—that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them—in most awful pain. Do you understand?’

‘I ought to. Go on.’

‘That’s the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, “My friend! All is lost!” Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.’ He panted and wiped his forehead.

‘So that is your night?’ she said.

‘That is my night. It comes every few weeks—so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.’

‘Get sentence? D’ycu mean this? ‘She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. ‘“Notice” I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.’

She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes.

‘Listen now! ‘said she. ‘I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.’

‘Just men? Do they speak?’

page 4

‘They try to. Their faces are all mildewy—eaten away,’ and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. ‘It’s the Faces—the Faces!’

‘Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.’

‘Ah! But the place itself—the bareness—and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run . . . . I know what’s coming too. One of them touches me.’

‘Yes! What comes then? We’ve both shirked that.’

‘One awful shock—not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!’

‘As though your soul were being stopped—as you’d stop a finger-bowl humming?’ he said.

‘Just that,’ she answered. ‘One’s very soul—the soul that one lives by—stopped. So!’

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. ‘And now,’ she whined to him, ‘now that we’ve stirred each other up this way, mightn’t we have just one?’

‘No,’ said Conroy, shaking. ‘Let’s hold on. We’re past’—he peered out of the black windows—‘Woking. There’s the Necropolis. How long till dawn?’

‘Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.’

‘And how d’you find that this’—he tapped the palm of his glove—‘helps you?’

‘It covers up the thing from being too real—if one takes enough—you know. Only—only—one loses everything else. I’ve been no more than a bogie-girl for two years. What would you give to be real again? This lying’s such a nuisance.’

‘One must protect oneself—and there’s one’s mother to think of,’ he answered.

‘True. I hope allowances are made for us somewhere. Our burden—can you hear?—our burden is heavy enough.’

She rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. Conroy’s ungentle grip pulled her back.

‘Now you are foolish. Sit down,’ said he.

‘But the cruelty of it! Can’t you see it? Don’t you feel it? Let’s take one now—before I——’

‘Sit down!’ cried Conroy, and the sweat stood again on his forehead. He had fought through a few nights, and had been defeated on more, and he knew the rebellion that flares beyond control to exhaustion.

She smoothed her hair and dropped back, but for a while her head and throat moved with the sickening motion of a captured wry-neck.

‘Once,’ she said, spreading out her hands, ‘I ripped my counterpane from end to end. That takes strength. I had it then. I’ve little now. “All dorn,” as my little niece says. And you, lad?’

‘“All dorn”! Let me keep your case for you till the morning.’

‘But the cold feeling is beginning.’

‘Lend it me, then.’

‘And the drag down my right side. I shan’t be able to move in a minute.’

‘I can scarcely lift my arm myself,’ said Conroy. ‘We’re in for it.’

‘Then why are you so foolish? You know it’ll be easier if we have only one—only one apiece.’

She was lifting the case to her mouth. With tremendous effort Conroy caught it. The two moved like jointed dolls, and when their hands met it was as wood on wood.

‘You must—not!’ said Conroy. His jaws stiffened, and the cold climbed from his feet up.

‘Why—must—I—not?’ She repeated the words idiotically.

Conroy could only shake his head, while he bore down on the hand and the case in it.

Her speech went from her altogether. The wonderful lips rested half over the even teeth, the breath was in the nostrils only, the eyes dulled, the face set grey, and through the glove the hand struck like ice.

Presently her soul came back and stood behind her eyes—only thing that had life in all that place—stood and looked for Conroy’s soul. He too was fettered in every limb, but somewhere at an immense distance he heard his heart going about its work as the engine-room carries on through and beneath the all but overwhelming wave. His one hope, he knew, was not to lose the eyes that clung to his, because there was an Evil abroad which would possess him if he looked aside by a hairbreadth.

The rest was darkness through which some distant planet spun while cymbals clashed. (Beyond Farnborough the 10.8 rolls out many empty milk-cans at every halt.) Then a body came to life with intolerable pricklings. Limb by limb, after agonies of terror, that body returned to him, steeped in most perfect physical weariness such as follows a long day’s rowing. He saw the heavy lids droop over her eyes—the watcher behind them departed—and, his soul sinking into assured peace, Conroy slept.

Light on his eyes and a salt breath roused him without shock. Her hand still held his. She slept, forehead down upon it, but the movement of his waking waked her too, and she sneezed like a child.

‘I—I think it’s morning,’ said Conroy.

‘And nothing has happened! Did you see your Men? I didn’t see my Faces. Does it mean we’ve escaped? Did—did you take any after I went to sleep? I’ll swear I didn’t,’ she stammered.

‘No, there wasn’t any need. We’ve slept through it.’

‘No need! Thank God! There was no need! Oh, look!’

page 5

The train was running under red cliffs along a sea-wall washed by waves that were colourless in the early light. Southward the sun rose mistily upon the Channel.

She leaned out of the window and breathed to the bottom of her lungs, while the wind wrenched down her dishevelled hair and blew it below her waist.

‘Well!’ she said with splendid eyes. ‘Aren’t you still waiting for something to happen?’

‘No. Not till next time. We’ve been let off,’ Conroy answered, breathing as deeply as she.

‘Then we ought to say our prayers.’

‘What nonsense! Some one will see us.’

‘We needn’t kneel. Stand up and say “Our Father.” We must!’

It was the first time since childhood that Conroy had prayed. They laughed hysterically when a curve threw them against an arm-rest.

‘Now for breakfast!’ she cried. ‘My maid—Nurse Blaber—has the basket and things. It’ll be ready in twenty minutes. Oh! Look at my hair! ‘and she went out laughing.

Conroy’s first discovery, made without fumbling or counting letters on taps, was that the London and South Western’s allowance of washing-water is inadequate. He used every drop, rioting in the cold tingle on neck and arms. To shave in a moving train balked him, but the next halt gave him a chance, which, to his own surprise, he took. As he stared at himself in the mirror he smiled and nodded. There were points about this person with the clear, if sunken, eye and the almost uncompressed mouth. But when he bore his bag back to his compartment, the weight of it on a limp arm humbled that new pride.

‘My friend,’ he said, half aloud, ‘you go into training. Your putty.’

She met him in the spare compartment, where her maid had laid breakfast.

‘By Jove,’ he said, halting at the doorway, ‘I hadn’t realised how beautiful you were!’

‘The same to you, lad. Sit down. I could eat a horse.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said the maid quietly. ‘The less you eat the better.’ She was a small, freckled woman, with light fluffy hair and pale-blue eyes that looked through all veils.

‘This is Miss Blaber,’said Miss Henschil. ‘He’s one of the soul-weary too, Nursey.’

‘I know it. But when one has just given it up a full meal doesn’t agree. That’s why I’ve only brought you bread and butter.’

She went out quietly, and Conroy reddened.

‘We’re still children, you see,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘But I’m well enough to feel some shame of it. D’you take sugar?’

They starved together heroically, and Nurse Blaber was good enough to signify approval when she came to clear away.

‘Nursey?’ Miss Henschil insinuated, and flushed.

‘Do you smoke?’ said the nurse coolly to Conroy.

‘I haven’t in years. Now you mention it, I think I’d like a cigarette—or something.’

‘I used to. D’you think it would keep me quiet?’ Miss Henschil said.

‘Perhaps. Try these.’ The nurse handed them her cigarette-case.

‘Don’t take anything else,’ she commanded, and went away with the tea-basket.

‘Good!’ grunted Conroy, between mouthfuls of tobacco.

‘Better than nothing,’ said Miss Henschil; but for a while they felt ashamed, yet with the comfort of children punished together.

‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘who were you when you were a man?’

Conroy told her, and in return she gave him her history. It delighted them both to deal once more in worldly concerns—families, names, places, and dates—with a person of understanding.

She came, she said, of Lancashire folk—wealthy cotton-spinners, who still kept the broadened a and slurred aspirate of the old stock. She lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of Lancaster Gate, where people in Society gave parties at a Mecca called the Langham Hotel.

She herself had been launched into Society there, and the flowers at the ball had cost eighty-seven pounds; but, being reckoned peculiar, she had made few friends among her own sex. She had attracted many men, for she was a beauty—the beauty, in fact, of Society, she said.

She spoke utterly without shame or reticence, as a life-prisoner tells his past to a fellow-prisoner; and Conroy nodded across the smoke-rings.

‘Do you remember when you got into the carriage?’ she asked. ‘(Oh, I wish I had some knitting!) Did you notice aught, lad?’

Conroy thought back. It was ages since. ‘Wasn’t there some one outside the door—crying? ‘he asked.

‘He’s—he’s the little man I was engaged to,’ she said. ‘But I made him break it off. I told him ’twas no good. But he won’t, yo’ see.’

‘That fellow? Why, he doesn’t come up to your shoulder.’

‘That’s naught to do with it. I think all the world of him. I’m a foolish wench’—her speech wandered as she settled herself cosily, one elbow on the arm-rest. ‘We’d been engaged—I couldn’t help that—and he worships the ground I tread on. But it’s no use. I’m not responsible, you see. His two sisters are against it, though I’ve the money. They’re right, but they think it’s the dri-ink,’ she drawled. ‘They’re Methody—the Skinners. You see, their grandfather that started the Patton Mills, he died o’ the dri-ink.’

page 6

‘I see,’ said Conroy. The grave face before him under the lifted veil was troubled.

‘George Skinner.’ She breathed it softly. ‘I’d make him a good wife, by God’s gra-ace—if I could. But it’s no use. I’m not responsible. But he’ll not take “No” for an answer. I used to call him “Toots.” He’s of no consequence, yo’ see.’

‘That’s in Dickens,’ said Conroy, quite quickly, ‘I haven’t thought of Toots for years. He was at Doctor Blimber’s.’

‘And so—that’s my trouble,’ she concluded, ever so slightly wringing her hands. ‘But I—don’t you think—there’s hope now?’

‘Eh?’ said Conroy. ‘Oh yes! This is the first time I’ve turned my corner without help. With your help, I should say.’

‘It’ll come back, though.’

‘Then shall we meet it in the same way? Here’s my card. Write me your train, and we’ll go together.’

‘Yes. We must do that. But between times—when we want—’ She looked at her palm, the four fingers working on it. ‘It’s hard to give ’em up.’

‘I But think what we have gained already, and let me have the case to keep.’

She shook her head, and threw her cigarette out of the window. ‘Not yet.’

‘Then let’s lend our cases to Nurse, and we’ll get through to-day on cigarettes. I’ll call her while we feel strong.’

She hesitated, but yielded at last, and Nurse accepted the offerings with a smile.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said to Miss Henschil. ‘But if I were you’—to Conroy—, ‘I’d take strong exercise.’

When they reached their destination Conroy set himself to obey Nurse Blaber. He had no remembrance of that day, except one streak of blue sea to his left, gorse-bushes to his right, and, before him, a coast-guard’s track marked with white-washed stones that he counted up to the far thousands. As he returned to the little town he saw Miss Henschil on the beach below the cliffs. She kneeled at Nurse Blaber’s feet, weeping and pleading.

Twenty-five days later a telegram came to Conroy’s rooms: ‘Notice given. Waterloo again. Twenty fourth.’ That same evening he was wakened by the shudder and the sigh that told him his sentence had gone forth. Yet he reflected on his pillow that he had, in spite of lapses, snatched something like three weeks of life, which included several rides on a horse before breakfast—the hour one most craves Najdolene; five consecutive evenings on the river at Hammersmith in a tub where he had well stretched the white arms that passing crews mocked at; a game of rackets at his club; three dinners, one small dance, and one human flirtation with a human woman. More notable still, he had settled his month’s accounts, only once confusing petty cash with the days of grace allowed him. Next morning he rode his hired beast in the park victoriously. He saw Miss Henschil on horseback near Lancaster Gate, talking to a young man at the railings.

She wheeled and cantered toward him.

‘By Jove! How well you look!’ he cried, without salutation. ‘I didn’t know you rode.’

‘I used to once,’ she replied. ‘I’m all soft now.’

They swept off together down the ride.

‘Your beast pulls,’ he said.

‘Wa-ant him to. Gi-gives me something to think of. How’ve you been?’ she panted. ‘I wish chemists’ shops hadn’t red lights.’

‘Have you slipped out and bought some, then?’

‘You don’t know Nursey. Eh, but it’s good to be on a horse again! This chap cost me two hundred.’

‘Then you’ve been swindled,’ said Conroy.

‘I know it, but it’s no odds. I must go back to Toots and send him away. He’s neglecting his work for me.’

She swung her heavy-topped animal on his none too sound hocks. ‘’Sentence come, lad?’

‘Yes. But I’m not minding it so much this time.’

‘Waterloo, then—and God help us!’ She thundered back to the little frock-coated figure that waited faithfully near the gate.

Conroy felt the spring sun on his shoulders and trotted home. That evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill. But the other man owned he could not have kept the pace five minutes longer.

He carried his bag all down Number 3 platform at Waterloo, and hove it with one hand into the rack.

‘Well done!’ said Nurse Blaber, in the corridor. ‘We’ve improved too.’

Dr. Gilbert and an older man came out of the next compartment.

‘Hallo!’ said Gilbert. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me, Mr. Conroy? Come under the lamp. Take off your hat. No—no. Sit, you young giant. Ve-ry good. Look here a minute, Johnnie.’

A little, round-bellied, hawk-faced person glared at him.

‘Gilbert was right about the beauty of the beast,’ he muttered. ‘D’you keep it in your glove now?’ he went on, and punched Conroy in the short ribs.

‘No,’ said Conroy meekly, but without coughing. ‘Nowhere—on my honour! I’ve chucked it for good.’

‘Wait till you are a sound man before you say that, Mr. Conroy.’ Sir John Chartres stumped out, saying to Gilbert in the corridor, ‘It’s all very fine, but the question is shall I or we “Sir Pandarus of Troy become,” eh? We’re bound to think of the children.’

‘Have you been vetted?’ said Miss Henschil, a few minutes after the train started. ‘May I sit with you? I—I don’t trust myself yet. I can’t give up as easily as you can, seemingly.’

‘Can’t you? I never saw any one so improved in a month.’

page 7

‘Look here!’ She reached across to the rack, single-handed lifted Conroy’s bag, and held it at arm’s length. ‘I counted ten slowly. And I didn’t think of hours or minutes,’ she boasted.

‘Don’t remind me,’ he cried.

‘Ah! Now I’ve reminded myself. I wish I hadn’t. Do you think it’ll be easier for us to-night?’

‘Oh, don’t.’ The smell of the carriage had brought back all his last trip to him, and Conroy moved uneasily.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve brought some games,’ she went on. ‘Draughts and cards—but they all mean counting. I wish I’d brought chess, but I can’t play chess. What can we do? Talk about something.’

‘Well, how’s Toots, to begin with?’ said Conroy.

‘Why? Did you see him on the platform?’

‘No. Was he there? I didn’t notice.’

‘Oh yes. He doesn’t understand. He’s desperately jealous. I told him it doesn’t matter. Will you please let me hold your hand? I believe I’m beginning to get the chill.’

‘Toots ought to envy me,’ said Conroy.

‘He does. He paid you a high compliment the other night. He’s taken to calling again—in spite of all they say.’

Conroy inclined his head. He felt cold, and knew surely he would be colder.

‘He said,’ she yawned. ‘(Beg your pardon.) He said he couldn’t see how I could help falling in love with a man like you; and he called himself a damned little rat, and he beat his head on the piano last night.’

‘The piano? You play, then?’

‘Only to him. He thinks the world of my accomplishments. Then I told him I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth instead of only the best-looking—not with a million in each stocking.’

‘No, not with a million in each stocking,’ said Conroy vehemently. ‘Isn’t that odd?’

‘I suppose so—to any one who doesn’t know. Well, where was I? Oh, George as good as told me I was deceiving him, and he wanted to go away without saying good-night. He hates standing a-tiptoe, but he must if I won’t sit down.’

Conroy would have smiled, but the chill that foreran the coming of the Lier-in-Wait was upon him, and his hand closed warningly on hers.

‘And—and so—’ she was trying to say, when her hour also overtook her, leaving alive only the fear-dilated eyes that turned to Conroy. Hand froze on hand and the body with it as they waited for the horror in the blackness that heralded it. Yet through the worst Conroy saw, at an uncountable distance, one minute glint of light in his night. Thither would he go and escape his fear; and behold, that light was the light in the watchtower of her eyes, where her locked soul signalled to his soul: ‘Look at me!’

In time, from him and from her, the Thing sheered aside, that each soul might step down and resume its own concerns. He thought confusedly of people on the skirts of a thunderstorm, withdrawing from windows where the torn night is, to their known and furnished beds. Then he dozed, till in some drowsy turn his hand fell from her warmed hand.

‘That’s all. The Faces haven’t come,’ he heard her say. ‘All—thank God! I don’t feel even I need what Nursey promised me. Do you?’

‘No.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But don’t make too sure.’

‘Certainly not. We shall have to try again next month. I’m afraid it will be an awful nuisance for you.’

‘Not to me, I assure you,’ said Conroy, and they leaned back and laughed at the flatness of the words, after the hells through which they had just risen.

‘And now,’ she said, strict eyes on Conroy, ‘why wouldn’t you take me—not with a million in each stocking? ‘

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been puzzling over.’

‘So have I. We’re as handsome a couple as I’ve ever seen. Are you well off, lad?’

‘They call me so,’ said Conroy, smiling.

‘That’s North country.’ She laughed again. ‘Setting aside my good looks and yours, I’ve four thousand a year of my own, and the rents should make it six. That’s a match some old cats would lap tea all night to fettle up.’

‘It is. Lucky Toots!’ said Conroy.

‘Ay,’ she answered, ‘he’ll be the luckiest lad in London if I win through. Who’s yours?’

‘No—no one, dear. I’ve been in Hell for years. I only want to get out and be alive and—so on. Isn’t that reason enough?’

‘Maybe, for a man. But I never minded things much till George came. I was all stu-upid like.’

‘So was I, but now I think I can live. It ought to be less next month, oughtn’t it?’ he said.

‘I hope so. Ye-es. There’s nothing much for a maid except to be married, and — ask no more. Whoever yours is, when you’ve found her, she shall have a wedding present from Mrs. George Skinner that——’

‘But she wouldn’t understand it any more than Toots.’

‘He doesn’t matter—except to me. I can’t keep my eyes open, thank God! Good-night, lad.’

Conroy followed her with his eyes. Beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than George Skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops—but for the new-found life of him Conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. He put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered—with interest on arrears. There were many things in it, but no one face of any one woman.

. . . . .

page 8

Thrice afterward they took the same train, and each time their trouble shrank and weakened. Miss Henschil talked of Toots, his multiplied calls, the things he had said to his sisters, the much worse things his sisters had replied; of the late (he seemed very dead to them) M. Najdol’s gifts for the soul-weary; of shopping, of house rents, and the cost of really artistic furniture and linen.

Conroy explained the exercises in which he delighted—mighty labours of play undertaken against other mighty men, till he sweated and; having bathed, slept. He had visited his mother, too, in Hereford, and he talked something of her and of the home-life, which his body, cut out of all clean life for five years, innocently and deeply enjoyed. Nurse Blaber was a little interested in Conroy’s mother, but, as a rule, she smoked her cigarette and read her paper-backed novels in her own compartment.

On their last trip she volunteered to sit with them, and buried herself in The Cloister and the Hearth while they whispered together. On that occasion (it was near Salisbury) at two in the morning, when the Lier-in-Wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot.

‘But still,’ said Nurse Blaber, not looking up, ‘I think your Mr. Skinner might feel jealous of all this.’

‘It would be difficult to explain,’ said Conroy.

‘Then you’d better not be at my wedding,’ Miss Henschil laughed.

‘After all we’ve gone through, too. But I suppose you ought to leave me out. Is the day fixed?’ he cried.

‘Twenty-second of September—in spite of both his sisters. I can risk it now.’ Her face was glorious as she flushed.

‘My dear chap!’ He shook hands unreservedly, and she gave back his grip without flinching. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am!’

‘Gracious Heavens!’ said Nurse Blaber, in a new voice. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I forgot I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’

‘What at? Oh, I see!’ Miss Henschil explained to Conroy. ‘She expected you were going to kiss me, or I was going to kiss you, or something.’

‘After all you’ve gone through, as Mr. Conroy said.’

‘But I couldn’t, could you?’ said Miss Henschil, with a disgust as frank as that on Conroy’s face.

‘It would be horrible—horrible. And yet, of course, you’re wonderfully handsome. How d’you account for it, Nursey?’

Nurse Blaber shook her head. ‘I was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. When you’re cured I shall go on to the next case—that senile-decay one at Bournemouth I told you about.’

‘And I shall be left alone with George! But suppose it isn’t cured,’ said Miss Henschil of a sudden. ‘Suppose it comes back again. What can I do? I can’t send for him in this way when I’m a married woman!’ She pointed like an infant.

‘I’d come, of course,’ Conroy answered. ‘But, seriously, that is a consideration.’

They looked at each other, alarmed and anxious, and then toward Nurse Blaber, who closed her book, marked the place, and turned to face them.

‘Have you ever talked to your mother as you have to me?’ she said.

‘No. I might have spoken to dad—but mother’s different. What d’you mean?’

‘And you’ve never talked to your mother either, Mr. Conroy?’

‘Not till I took Najdolene. Then I told her it was my heart. There’s no need to say anything, now that I’m practically over it, is there?’

‘Not if it doesn’t come back, but——’ She beckoned with a stumpy, triumphant finger that drew their heads close together. ‘You know I always go in and read a chapter to mother at tea, child.’

‘I know you do. You’re an angel.’ Miss Henschil patted the blue shoulder next her. ‘Mother’s Church of England now,’ she explained. ‘But she’ll have her Bible with her pikelets at tea every night like the Skinners.’

‘It was Naaman and Gehazi last Tuesday that gave me a clue. I said I’d never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she’d seen too many.’

‘Where? She never told me,’ Miss Henschil began.

‘A few months before you were born—on her trip to Australia—at Mola or Molo something or other. It took me three evenings to get it all out.’

‘Ay—mother’s suspicious of questions,’ said Miss Henschil to Conroy. ‘She’ll lock the door of every room she’s in, if it’s but for five minutes. She was a Tackberry from Jarrow way, yo’ see.’

‘She described your men to the life—men with faces all eaten away, staring at her over the fence of a lepers’ hospital in this Molo Island. They begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street, back to the pier. One touched her and she nearly fainted. She’s ashamed of that still.’

‘My men? The sand and the fences? ‘Miss Henschil muttered.

‘Yes. You know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. She remembered that the fences were broken—she remembered the wind blowing. Sand—sun—salt wind—fences—faces—I got it all out of her, bit by bit. You don’t know what I know! And it all happened three or four months before you were born. There!’ Nurse Blaber slapped her knee with her little hand triumphantly.

‘Would that account for it?’ Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.

‘Absolutely. I don’t care who you ask! You never imagined the thing. It was laid on you. It happened on earth to you! Quick, Mr. Conroy, she’s too heavy for me! I’ll get the flask.’

Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney. She came out of her swoon with teeth that chartered on the cup.

page 9

‘No—no,’ she said, gulping. ‘It’s not hysterics. Yo’ see I’ve no call to hev ’em any more. No call—no reason whatever. God be praised! Can’t yo’ feel I’m a right woman now?’

‘Stop hugging me!’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘You don’t know your strength. Finish the brandy and water. It’s perfectly reasonable, and I’ll lay long odds Mr. Conroy’s case is something of the same. I’ve been thinking——’

‘I wonder——’ said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.

Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair. ‘Yes. Your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you. Ask her, child. Ask her and be done with it once for all.’

‘I will,’ said Conroy . . . . ‘There ought to be——’ He opened his bag and hunted breathlessly.

‘Bless you! Oh, God bless you, Nursey!’ Miss Henschil was sobbing. ‘You don’t know what this means to me. It takes it all off—from the beginning.’

‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously. ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’

Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t changed anything. I want Toots. He has never been out of his mind in his life—except over silly me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand. ‘If I change at Templecombe—for Bristol (Bristol—Hereford—yes)—I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’

‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while. You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’ She went out to get them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.

‘Good-bye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you’ve changed already—like me. Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘What should I have done without you?’

‘Or I?’ said Conroy. ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’

‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. ‘Yes, I would. She’d like it.’

When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over The Cloister and the Hearth.

Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’

‘Because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,’ Nurse Blaber answered.

‘And besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. You shouldn’t, you know.’

‘Ay, but you’ve never been in Hell,’ said Miss Henschil.

The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:

‘“Absolutely confirmed. She says she remembers hearing noise of accident in engine-room returning from India eighty-five.”’

‘He means the year, not the thermometer,’ said Nurse Blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea.

‘“And two men scalded thus explaining my hoots.” (The idea of telling me that!) “Subsequently silly clergyman passenger ran up behind her calling for joke, ‘Friend, all is lost,’ thus accounting very words.”

Nurse Blaber purred audibly.

‘“She says only remembers being upset minute or two. Unspeakable relief. Best love Nursey, who is jewel. Get out of her what she would like best.” Oh, I oughtn’t to have read that,’ said Miss Henschil.

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything,’ said Nurse Blaber, ‘and if I did I shouldn’t get it.’

In the Rukh

The Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.
The last ash dropped from the dying fire with the click of a falling spark,
And the Only Son woke up again and called across the dark:—
‘Now, was I born of womankind and laid in a mother’s breast?
For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.
And was I born of womankind and laid on a father’s arm?
For I have dreamed of long white teeth that guarded me from harm.
Oh, was I born of womankind and did I play alone?
For I have dreamed of playmates twain that bit me to the bone.
And did I break the barley bread and steep it in the tyre?
For I have dreamed of a youngling kid new riven from the byre.
An hour it lacks and an hour it lacks to the rising of the moon—
But I can see the black roof-beams as plain as it were noon!
’Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the trooping sambhur go,
But I can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe!
’Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the crop and the upland meet,
But I can smell the warm wet wind that whispers through the wheat!’
(The Only Son)

page 1 of 9

OF the wheels of public service that turn under the Indian Government, there is none more important than the Department of Woods and Forests. The reboisement of all India is in its hands; or will be when Government has the money to spend. Its servants wrestle with wandering sand-torrents and shifting dunes wattling them at the sides, damming them in front, and pegging them down atop with coarse grass and spindling pine after the rules of Nancy. They are responsible for all the timber in the State forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the denuded hillsides that the monsoons wash into dry gullies and aching ravines; each cut a mouth crying aloud what carelessness can do. They experiment with battalions of foreign trees, and coax the blue gum to take root and, perhaps, dry up the Canal fever. In the plains the chief part of their duty is to see that the belt fire-lines in the forest reserves are kept clean, so that when drought comes and the cattle starve, they may throw the reserve open to the villager’s herds and allow the man himself to gather sticks. They poll and lop for the stacked railway-fuel along the lines that burn no coal; they calculate the profit of their plantations to five points of decimals; they are the doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of Upper Burma, the rubber of the Eastern Jungles, and the gall-nuts of the South; and they are always hampered by lack of funds. But since a Forest Officer’s business takes him far from the beaten roads and the regular stations, he learns to grow wise in more than wood-lore alone; to know the people and the polity of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog, and all the deer, not once or twice after days of beating, but again and again in the execution of his duty. He spends much time in saddle or under canvas—the friend of newly-planted trees, the associate of uncouth rangers and hairy trackers—till the woods, that show his care, in turn set their mark upon him, and he ceases to sing the naughty French songs he learned at Nancy, and grows silent with the silent things of the underbrush.Gisborne of the Woods and Forests had spent four years in the service. At first he loved it without comprehension, because it led him into the open on horseback and gave him authority. Then he hated it furiously, and would have given a year’s pay for one month of such society as India affords. That crisis over, the forests took him back again, and he was content to serve them, to deepen and widen his fire-lines, to watch the green mist of his new plantation against the older foliage, to dredge out the choked stream, and to follow and strengthen the last struggle of the forest where it broke down and died among the long pig-grass. On some still day that grass would be burned off, and a hundred beasts that had their homes there would rush out before the pale flames at high noon. Later, the forest would creep forward over the blackened ground in orderly lines of saplings, and Gisborne, watching, would be well pleased. His bungalow, a thatched white-walled cottage of two rooms, was set at one end of the great rukh and overlooking it. He made no pretence at keeping a garden, for the rukh swept up to his door, curled over in a thicket of bamboo, and he rode from his verandah into its heart without the need of any carriage-drive.

Abdul Gafur, his fat Mohammedan butler, fed him when he was at home, and spent the rest of the time gossiping with the little band of native servants whose huts lay behind the bungalow. There were two grooms, a cook, a water-carrier, and a sweeper, and that was all. Gisborne cleaned his own guns and kept no dog. Dogs scared the game, and it pleased the man to be able to say where the subjects of his kingdom would drink at moonrise, eat before dawn, and lie up in the day’s heat. The rangers and forest-guards lived in little huts far away in the rukh, only appearing when one of them had been injured by a falling tree or a wild beast. There Gisborne was alone.

In spring the rukh put out few new leaves, but lay dry and still untouched by the finger of the year, waiting for rain. Only there was then more calling and roaring in the dark on a quiet night; the tumult of a battle-royal among the tigers, the bellowing of arrogant buck, or the steady wood-chopping of an old boar sharpening his tushes against a bole. Then Gisborne laid aside his little-used gun altogether, for it was to him a sin to kill. In summer, through the furious May heats, the rukh reeled in the haze, and Gisborne watched for the first sign of curling smoke that should betray a forest fire. Then came the Rains with a roar, and the rukh was blotted out in fetch after fetch of warm mist, and the broad leaves drummed the night through under the big drops; and there was a noise of running water, and of juicy green stuff crackling where the wind struck it, and the lightning wove patterns behind the dense matting of the foliage, till the sun broke loose again and the rukh stood with hot flanks smoking to the newly-washed sky. Then the heat and the dry cold subdued everything to tiger-colour again. So Gisborne learned to know his rukh and was very happy. His pay came month by month, but he had very little need for money. The currency notes accumulated in the drawer where he kept his homeletters and the recapping-machine. If he drew anything, it was to make a purchase from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, or to pay a ranger’s widow a sum that the Government of India would never have sanctioned for her man’s death.

Payment was good, but vengeance was also necessary, and he took that when he could. One night of many nights a runner, breathless and gasping, came to him with the news that a forest-guard lay dead by the Kanye stream, the side of his head smashed in as though it had been an eggshell. Gisborne went out at dawn to look for the murderer. It is only travellers and now and then young soldiers who are known to the world as great hunters. The Forest Officers take their shikar as part of the day’s work, and no one hears of it. Gisborne went on foot to the place of the kill: the widow was wailing over the corpse as it lay on a bedstead, while two or three men were looking at footprints on the moist ground. ‘That is the Red One,’ said a man. ‘I knew he would turn to man in time, but surely there is game enough even for him. This must have been done for devilry.’

‘The Red One lies up in the rocks at the back of the sal trees,’ said Gisborne. He knew the tiger under suspicion.

‘Not now, Sahib, not now. He will be raging and ranging to and fro. Remember that the first kill is a triple kill always. Our blood makes them mad. He may be behind us even as we speak.’

‘He may have gone to the next hut,’ said another. ‘It is only four koss. Wallah, who is this?’

Gisborne turned with the others. A man was walking down the dried bed of the stream, naked except for the loin-cloth, but crowned with a wreath of the tasselled blossoms of the white convolvulus creeper. So noiselessly did he move over the little pebbles, that even Gisborne, used to the soft-footedness of trackers, started.

‘The tiger that killed,’ he began, without any salute, ‘has gone to drink, and now he is asleep under a rock beyond that hill.’ His voice was clear and bell-like, utterly different from the usual whine of the native, and his face as he lifted it in the sunshine might have been that of an angel strayed among the woods. The widow ceased wailing above the corpse and looked round-eyed at the stranger, returning to her duty with double strength.

‘Shall I show the Sahib?’ he said simply.

‘If thou art sure—’ Gisborne began.

‘Sure indeed. I saw him only an hour ago—the dog. It is before his time to eat man’s flesh. He has yet a dozen sound teeth in his evil head.’

The men kneeling above the footprints slunk off quietly, for fear that Gisborne should ask them to go with him, and the young man laughed a little to himself.

‘Come, Sahib,’ he cried, and turned on his heel, walking before his companion.

‘Not so fast. I cannot keep that pace,’ said the white man. ‘Halt there. Thy face is new to me.’

page 2

‘That may be. I am but newly come into this forest.’

‘From what village?’

‘I am without a village. I came from over there.’ He flung out his arm towards the north.

‘A gipsy then?’

‘No, Sahib. I am a man without caste, and for matter of that without a father.’

‘What do men call thee?’

‘Mowgli, Sahib. And what is the Sahib’s name?’

‘I am the warden of this rukh—Gisborne is my name.’

‘How? Do they number the trees and the blades of grass here?’

‘Even so; lest such gipsy fellows as thou set them afire.’

‘I! I would not hurt the jungle for any gift. That is my home.’

He turned to Gisborne with a smile that was irresistible, and held up a warning hand.

‘Now, Sahib, we must go a little quietly. There is no need to wake the dog, though he sleeps heavily enough. Perhaps it were better if I went forward alone and drove him down wind to the Sahib.’

’Allah! Since when have tigers been driven to and fro like cattle by naked men?’ said Gisborne, aghast at the man’s audacity.

He laughed again softly. ‘Nay, then, come along with me and shoot him in thy own way with the big English rifle.’

Gisborne stepped in his guide’s track, twisted, crawled, and clomb and stooped and suffered through all the many agonies of a jungle-stalk. He was purple and dripping with sweat when Mowgli at the last bade him raise his head and peer over a blue baked rock near a tiny hill pool. By the waterside lay the tiger extended and at ease, lazily licking clean again an enormous elbow and fore paw. He was old, yellow-toothed, and not a little mangy, but in that setting and sunshine, imposing enough.

Gisborne had no false ideas of sport where the man-eater was concerned. This thing was vermin, to be killed as speedily as possible. He waited to recover his breath, rested the rifle on the rock and whistled. The brute’s head turned slowly not twenty feet from the rifle-mouth, and Gisborne planted his shots, business-like, one behind the shoulder and the other a little below the eye. At that range the heavy bones were no guard against the rending bullets.

‘Well, the skin was not worth keeping at any rate,’ said he, as the smoke cleared away and the beast lay kicking and gasping in the last agony.

‘A dog’s death for a dog,’ said Mowgli quietly. ‘Indeed there is nothing in that carrion worth taking away.’

‘The whiskers. Dost thou not take the whiskers?’ said Gisborne, who knew how the rangers valued such things.

‘I? Am I a lousy shikarri of the jungle to paddle with a tiger’s muzzle? Let him lie. Here come his friends already.’

A dropping kite whistled shrilly overhead, as Gisborne snapped out the empty shells, and wiped his face.

‘And if thou art not a shikarri, where didst thou learn thy knowledge of the tiger-folk?’ said he. ‘No tracker could have done better.’

‘I hate all tigers,’ said Mowgli curtly. ‘Let the Sahib give me his gun to carry. Arre, it is a very fine one. And where does the Sahib go now?’

‘To my house.’

‘May I come? I have never yet looked within a white man’s house.’

Gisborne returned to his bungalow, Mowgli striding noiselessly before him, his brown skin glistening in the sunlight.

He stared curiously at the verandah and the two chairs there, fingered the split bamboo shade curtains with suspicion, and entered, looking always behind him. Gisborne loosed a curtain to keep out the sun. It dropped with a clatter, but almost before it touched the flagging of the verandah Mowgli had leaped clear, and was standing with heaving chest in the open.

‘It is a trap,’ he said quickly.

Gisborne laughed. ‘White men do not trap men. Indeed thou art altogether of the jungle.’

‘I see,’ said Mowgli, ‘it has neither catch nor fall. I—I never beheld these things till to-day.’

He came in on tiptoe and stared with large eyes at the furniture of the two rooms. Abdul Gafur, who was laying lunch, looked at him with deep disgust.

‘So much trouble to eat, and so much trouble to lie down after you have eaten!’ said Mowgli with a grin. ‘We do better in the jungle. It is very wonderful. There are very many rich things here. Is the Sahib not afraid that he may be robbed? I have never seen such wonderful things.’ He was staring at a dusty Benares brass plate on a rickety bracket.

‘Only a thief from the jungle would rob here,’ said Abdul Gafur, setting down a plate with a clatter. Mowgli opened his eyes wide and stared at the white-bearded Mohammedan.

‘In my country when goats bleat very loud we cut their throats,’ he returned cheerfully. ‘But have no fear, thou. I am going.’

He turned and disappeared into the rukh. Gisborne looked after him with a laugh that ended in a little sigh. There was not much outside his regular work to interest the Forest Officer, and this son of the forest, who seemed to know tigers as other people know dogs, would have been a diversion.

‘He’s a most wonderful chap,’ thought Gisborne; ‘he’s like the illustrations in the Classical Dictionary. I wish I could have made him a gunboy. There’s no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would have been a perfect shikarri. I wonder what in the world he is.’

page 3

That evening he sat on the verandah under the stars smoking as he wondered. A puff of smoke curled from the pipebowl. As it cleared he was aware of Mowgli sitting with arms crossed on the verandah edge. A ghost could not have drifted up more noiselessly. Gisborne started and let the pipe drop.

‘There is no man to talk to out there in the rukh,’ said Mowgli; ‘I came here, therefore.’ He picked up the pipe and returned it to Gisborne.

‘Oh,’ said Gisborne, and after a long pause, ‘What news is there in the rukh? Hast thou found another tiger?’

‘The nilghai are changing their feeding-ground against the new moon, as is their custom. The pig are feeding near the Kanye river now, because they will not feed with the nilghai, and one of their sows has been killed by a leopard in the long grass at the water-head. I do not know any more.’

‘And how didst thou know all these things?’ said Gisborne, leaning forward and looking at the eyes that glittered in the starlight.

‘How should I not know? The nilghai has his custom and his use, and a child knows that pig will not feed with him.’

‘I do not know this,’ said Gisborne.

‘Tck! Tck! And thou art in charge—so the men of the huts tell me—in charge of all this rukh.’ He laughed to himself.

‘It is well enough to talk and to tell child’s tales,’ Gisborne retorted, nettled at the chuckle. ‘To say that this and that goes on in the rukh. No man can deny thee.’

‘As for the sow’s carcase, I will show thee her bones to-morrow,’ Mowgli returned, absolutely unmoved. ‘Touching the matter of the nilghai, if the Sahib will sit here very still I will drive one nilghai up to this place, and by listening to the sounds carefully, the Sahib can tell whence that nilghai has been driven.’

‘Mowgli, the jungle has made thee mad,’ said Gisborne. ‘Who can drive nilghai?’

‘Still—sit still, then. I go.’

‘Gad, the man’s a ghost!’ said Gisborne; for Mowgli had faded out into the darkness and there was no sound of feet. The rukh lay out in great velvety folds in the uncertain shimmer of the stardust—so still that the least little wandering wind among the tree-tops came up as the sigh of a child sleeping equably. Abdul Gafur in the cook-house was clicking plates together.

‘Be still there!’ shouted Gisborne, and composed himself to listen as a man can who is used to the stillness of the rukh. It had been his custom, to preserve his self-respect in his isolation, to dress for dinner each night, and the stiff white shirtfront creaked with his regular breathing till he shifted a little sideways. Then the tobacco of a somewhat foul pipe began to purr, and he threw the pipe from him. Now, except for the nightbreath in the rukh, everything was dumb.

From an inconceivable distance, and drawled through immeasurable darkness, came the faint, faint echo of a wolf’s howl. Then silence again for, it seemed, long hours. At last, when his legs below the knees had lost all feeling, Gisborne heard something that might have been a crash far off through the undergrowth. He doubted till it was repeated again and yet again.

‘That’s from the west,’ he muttered; ‘there’s something on foot there.’ The noise increased—crash on crash, plunge on plunge—with the thick grunting of a hotly pressed nilghai, flying in panic terror and taking no heed to his course.

A shadow blundered out from between the tree-trunks, wheeled back, turned again grunting, and with a clatter on the bare ground dashed up almost within reach of his hand. It was a bull nilghai, dripping with dew—his withers hung with a torn trail of creeper, his eyes shining in the light from the house. The creature checked at sight of the man, and fled along the edge of the rukh till he melted in the darkness. The first idea in Gisborne’s bewildered mind was the indecency of thus dragging out for inspection the big blue bull of the rukh—the putting him through his paces in the night which should have been his own.

Then said a smooth voice at his ear as he stood staring:

‘He came from the water-head where he was leading the herd. From the west he came. Does the Sahib believe now, or shall I bring up the herd to be counted? The Sahib is in charge of this rukh.’

Mowgli had reseated himself on the verandah, breathing a little quickly. Gisborne looked at him with open mouth. ‘How was that accomplished?’ he said.

The Sahib saw. The bull was driven—driven as a buffalo is. Ho! ho! He will have a fine tale to tell when he returns to the herd.’

‘That is a new trick to me. Canst thou run as swiftly as the nilghai, then?’

‘The Sahib has seen. If the Sahib needs more knowledge at any time of the movings of the game, I, Mowgli, am here. This is a good rukh, and I shall stay.’

‘Stay then, and if thou hast need of a meal at any time my servants shall give thee one.’

‘Yes, indeed, I am fond of cooked food,’ Mowgli answered quickly. ‘No man may say that I do not eat boiled and roast as much as any other man. I will come for that meal. Now, on my part, I promise that the Sahib shall sleep safely in his house by night, and no thief shall break in to carry away his so rich treasures.’

The conversation ended itself on Mowgli’s abrupt departure. Gisborne sat long smoking, and the upshot of his thoughts was that in Mowgli he had found at last that ideal ranger and forest-guard for whom he and the Department were always looking.

‘I must get him into the Government service somehow. A man who can drive nilghai would know more about the rukh than fifty men. He’s a miracle—a lusus naturæ—but a forest-guard he must be if he’ll only settle down in one place,’ said Gisborne.

Abdul Gafur’s opinion was less favourable. He confided to Gisborne at bedtime that strangers from God-knew-where were more than likely to be professional thieves, and that he personally did not approve of naked outcastes who had not the proper manner of addressing white people. Gisborne laughed and bade him go to his quarters, and Abdul Gafur retreated growling. Later in the night he found occasion to rise up and beat his thirteen-year-old daughter. Nobody knew the cause of dispute, but Gisborne heard the cry.

Through the days that followed Mowgli came and went like a shadow. He had established himself and his wild house-keeping close to the bungalow, but on the edge of the rukh, where Gisborne, going out on to the verandah for a breath of cool air, would see him sometimes sitting in the moonlight, his forehead on his knees, or lying out along the fling of a branch, closely pressed to it as some beast of the night. Thence Mowgli would throw him a salutation and bid him sleep at ease, or descending would weave prodigious stories of the manners of the beasts in the rukh. Once he wandered into the stables and was found looking at the horses with deep interest.

page 4

‘That,’ said Abdul Gafur pointedly, ‘is sure sign that some day he will steal one. Why, if he lives about this house, does he not take an honest employment? But no, he must wander up and down like a loose camel, turning the heads of fools and opening the jaws of the unwise to folly.’ So Abdul Gafur would give harsh orders to Mowgli when they met, would bid him fetch water and pluck fowls, and Mowgli, laughing unconcernedly, would obey.

‘He has no caste,’ said Abdul Gafur. He will do anything. Look to it, Sahib, that he does not do too much. A snake is a snake, and a jungle-gipsy is a thief till the death.’

‘Be silent, then,’ said Gisborne. ‘I allow thee to correct thy own household if there is not too much noise, because I know thy customs and use. My custom thou dost not know. The man is without doubt a little mad.’

‘Very little mad indeed,’ said Abdul Gafur. ‘But we shall see what comes thereof.’

A few days later on his business took Gisborne into the rukh for three days. Abdul Gafur being old and fat was left at home. He did not approve of lying up in rangers’ huts, and was inclined to levy contributions in his master’s name of grain and oil and milk from those who could ill afford such benevolences. Gisborne rode off early one dawn a little vexed that his man of the woods was not at the verandah to accompany him. He liked him—liked his strength, fleetness, and silence of foot, and his ever-ready open smile; his ignorance of all forms of ceremony and salutations, and the childlike tales that he would tell (and Gisborne would credit now) of what the game was doing in the rukh. After an hour’s riding through the greenery, he heard a rustle behind him, and Mowgli trotted at his stirrup.

‘We have a three days’ work toward,’ said Gisborne, ‘among the new trees.’

‘Good,’ said Mowgli. ‘It is always good to cherish young trees. They make cover if the beasts leave them alone. We must shift the pig again.’

‘Again? How?’ Gisborne smiled.

‘Oh, they were rooting and tusking among the young sal last night, and I drove them off. Therefore I did not come to the verandah this morning. The pig should not be on this side of the rukh at all. We must keep them below the head of the Kanye river.’

‘If a man could herd clouds he might do that thing; but, Mowgli, if as thou sayest, thou art herder in the rukh for no gain and for no pay——’

‘It is the Sahib’s rukh,’ said Mowgli, quickly looking up. Gisborne nodded thanks and went on: ‘Would it not be better to work for pay from the Government? There is a pension at the end of long service.’

‘Of that I have thought,’ said Mowgli, ‘but the rangers live in huts with shut doors, and all that is all too much a trap to me. Yet I think——’

‘Think well then and tell me later. Here we will stay for breakfast.’

Gisborne dismounted, took his morning meal from his home-made saddle-bags, and saw the day open hot above the rukh. Mowgli lay in the grass at his side staring up to the sky.

Presently he said in a lazy whisper: ‘Sahib, is there any order at the bungalow to take out the white mare to-day.’

‘No, she is fat and old and a little lame beside. Why?’

‘She is being ridden now and not slowly on the road that runs to the railway line.’

‘Bah, that is two koss away. It is a woodpecker.’

Mowgli put up his forearm to keep the sun out of his eyes.

‘The road curves in with a big curve from the bungalow. It is not more than a koss, at the farthest, as the kite goes; and sound flies with the birds. Shall we see?’

‘What folly! To run a koss in this sun to see a noise in the forest.’

‘Nay, the pony is the Sahib’s pony. I meant only to bring her here. If she is not the Sahib’s pony, no matter. If she is, the Sahib can do what he wills. She is certainly being ridden hard.’

‘And how wilt thou bring her here, madman?’

‘Has the Sahib forgotten? By the road of the nilghai and no other.’

‘Up then and run if thou art so full of zeal.’

‘Oh, I do not run!’ He put out his hand to sign for silence, and still lying on his back called aloud thrice—with a deep gurgling cry that was new to Gisborne.

‘She will come,’ he said at the end. ‘Let us wait in the shade.’ The long eyelashes drooped over the wild eyes as Mowgli began to doze in the morning hush. Gisborne waited patiently Mowgli was surely mad, but as entertaining a companion as a lonely Forest Officer could desire.

‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli lazily, with shut eyes. ‘He has dropped off. Well, first the mare will come and then the man.’ Then he yawned as Gisborne’s pony stallion neighed. Three minutes later Gisborne’s white mare, saddled, bridled, but riderless, tore into the glade where they were sitting, and hurried to her companion.

‘She is not very warm,’ said Mowgli, ‘but in this heat the sweat comes easily. Presently we shall see her rider, for a man goes more slowly than a horse—especially if he chance to be a fat man and old.’

‘Allah! This is the devil’s work,’ cried Gisborne leaping to his feet, for he heard a yell in the jungle.

‘Have no care, Sahib. He will not be hurt. He also will say that it is devil’s work. Ah! Listen! Who is that?’

It was the voice of Abdul Gafur in an agony of terror, crying out upon unknown things to spare him and his gray hairs.

‘Nay, I cannot move another step,’ he howled. ‘I am old and my turban is lost. Arré! Arré! But I will move. Indeed I will hasten. I will run! Oh, Devils of the Pit, I am a Mussulman!’

page 5

The undergrowth parted and gave up Abdul Gafur, turbanless, shoeless, with his waist-cloth unbound, mud and grass in his clutched hands, and his face purple. He saw Gisborne, yelled anew, and pitched forward, exhausted and quivering, at his feet. Mowgli watched him with a sweet smile.

‘This is no joke,’ said Gisborne sternly. ‘The man is like to die, Mowgli.’

‘He will not die. He is only afraid. There was no need that he should have come out of a walk.’

Abdul Gafur groaned and rose up, shaking in every limb.

‘It was witchcraft—witchcraft and devildom! ‘ he sobbed, fumbling with his hand in his breast. ‘Because of my sin I have been whipped through the woods by devils. It is all finished. I repent. Take them, Sahib!’ He held out a roll of dirty paper.

‘What is the meaning of this, Abdul Gafur?’ said Gisborne, already knowing what would come.

‘Put me in the jail-khana—the notes are all here—but lock me up safely that no devils may follow. I have sinned against the Sahib and his salt which I have eaten; and but for those accursed wood-demons, I might have bought land afar off and lived in peace all my days.’ He beat his head upon the ground in an agony of despair and mortification. Gisborne turned the roll of notes over and over. It was his accumulated back-pay for the last nine months—the roll that lay in the drawer with the home-letters and the recapping machine. Mowgli watched Abdul Gafur, laughing noiselessly to himself. ‘There is no need to put me on the horse again. I will walk home slowly with the Sahib, and then he can send me under guard to the jail-khana. The Government gives many years for this offence,’ said the butler sullenly.

Loneliness in the rukh affects very many ideas about very many things. Gisborne stared at Abdul Gafur, remembering that he was a very good servant, and that a new butler must be broken into the ways of the house from the beginning, and at the best would be a new face and a new tongue.

‘Listen, Abdul Gafur,’ he said. ‘Thou hast done great wrong, and altogether lost thy izzat and thy reputation. But I think that this came upon thee suddenly.’

‘Allah! I had never desired the notes before. The Evil took me by the throat while I looked.’

‘That also I can believe. Go then back to my house, and when I return I will send the notes by a runner to the Bank, and there shall be no more said. Thou art too old for the jail-khana. Also thy household is guiltless.’

For answer Abdul Gafur sobbed between Gisborne’s cowhide riding-boots.

‘Is there no dismissal then?’ he gulped.

‘That we shall see. It hangs upon thy conduct when we return. Get upon the mare and ride slowly back.’

‘But the devils! The rukh is full of devils.’

‘No matter, my father. They will do thee no more harm unless, indeed, the Sahib’s orders be not obeyed,’ said Mowgli. ‘Then, perchance, they may drive thee home—by the road of the nilghai.’

Abdul Gafur’s lower jaw dropped as he twisted up his waist-cloth, staring at Mowgli.

‘Are they his devils? His devils! And I had thought to return and lay the blame upon this warlock!’

‘That was well thought of, Huzrut; but before we make a trap we see first how big the game is that may fall into it. Now I thought no more than that a man had taken one of the Sahib’s horses. I did not know that the design was to make me a thief before the Sahib, or my devils had haled thee here by the leg. It is not too late now.’

Mowgli looked inquiringly at Gisborne; but Abdul Gafur waddled hastily to the white mare, scrambled on her back and fled, the woodways crashing and echoing behind him.

‘That was well done,’ said Mowgli. ‘But he will fall again unless he holds by the mane.’

‘Now it is time to tell me what these things mean,’ said Gisborne a little sternly. ‘What is this talk of thy devils? How can men be driven up and down the rukh like cattle? Give answer.’

‘Is the Sahib angry because I have saved him his money?’

‘No, but there is trick-work in this that does not please me.’

‘Very good. Now if I rose and stepped three paces into the rukh there is no one, not even the Sahib, could find me till I choose. As I would not willingly do this, so I would not willingly tell. Have patience a little, Sahib, and some day I will show thee everything, for, if thou wilt, some day we will drive the buck together. There is no devil-work in the matter at all. Only . . . I know the rukh as a man knows the cooking-place in his house.’

Mowgli was speaking as he would speak to an impatient child. Gisborne, puzzled, baffled, and a great deal annoyed, said nothing, but stared on the ground and thought. When he looked up the man of the woods had gone.

‘It is not good,’ said a level voice from the thicket, ‘for friends to be angry. Wait till the evening, Sahib, when the air cools.’

Left to himself thus, dropped as it were in the heart of the rukh, Gisborne swore, then laughed, remounted his pony, and rode on. He visited a ranger’s hut, overlooked a couple of new plantations, left some orders as to the burning of a patch of dry grass, and set out for a camping-ground of his own choice, a pile of splintered rocks roughly roofed over with branches and leaves, not far from the banks of the Kanye stream. It was twilight when he came in sight of his resting-place, and the rukh was waking to the hushed ravenous life of the night.

A camp-fire flickered on the knoll, and there was the smell of a very good dinner in the wind.

‘Um,’ said Gisborne, ‘that’s better than cold meat at any rate. Now the only man who’d be likely to be here’d be Muller, and, officially, he ought to be looking over the Changamanga rukh. I suppose that’s why he’s on my ground.’

The gigantic German who was the head of the Woods and Forests of all India, Head Ranger from Burma to Bombay, had a habit of flitting batlike without warning from one place to another, and turning up exactly where he was least looked for. His theory was that sudden visitations, the discovery of shortcomings and a word-of-mouth upbraiding of a subordinate were infinitely better than the slow processes of correspondence, which might end in a written and official reprimand—a thing in after

page 6

years to be counted against a Forest Officer’s record. As he explained it: ‘If I only talk to my boys like a Dutch uncle, dey say, “It was only dot damned old Muller,” and dey do better next dime. But if my fat-head clerk he write and say dot Muller der Inspecdor-General fail to onderstand and is much annoyed, first dot does no goot because I am not dere, and, second, der fool dot comes after me he may say to my best boys: “Look here, you haf been wigged by my bredecessor.” I tell you der big brass-hat pizness does not make der trees grow.’

Muller’s deep voice was coming out of the darkness behind the firelight as he bent over the shoulders of his pet cook. ‘Not so much sauce, you son of Belial! Worcester sauce he is a gondiment and not a fluid. Ah, Gisborne, you haf come to a very bad dinner. Where is your camp?’ and he walked up to shake hands.

‘I’m the camp, sir,’ said Gisborne. ‘I didn’t know you were about here.’

Muller looked at the young man’s trim figure. ‘Goot! That is very goot! One horse and some cold things to eat. When I was young I did my camp so. Now you shall dine with me. I went into Headquarters to make up my rebort last month. I haf written half—ho! ho!—and der rest I haf leaved to my glerks and come out for a walk. Der Government is mad about dose reborts. I dold der Viceroy so at Simla.’

Gisborne chuckled, remembering the many tales that were told of Muller’s conflicts with the Supreme Government. He was the chartered libertine of all the offices, for as a Forest Officer he had no equal.

‘If I find you, Gisborne, sitting in your bungalow and hatching reborts to me about der blantations instead of riding der blantations, I will dransfer you to der middle of der Bikaneer Desert to reforest him. I am sick of reborts and chewing paper when we should do our work.’

‘There’s not much danger of my wasting time over my annuals. I hate them as much as you do, sir.’

The talk went over at this point to professional matters. Muller had some questions to ask, and Gisborne orders and hints to receive, till dinner was ready. It was the most civilised meal Gisborne had eaten for months. No distance from the base of supplies was allowed to interfere with the work of Muller’s cook; and that table spread in the wilderness began with devilled small fresh-water fish, and ended with coffee and cognac.

‘Ah!’ said Muller at the end, with a sigh of satisfaction as he lighted a cheroot and dropped into his much worn campchair. ‘When I am making reborts I am Freethinker und Atheist, but here in der rukh I am more than Christian. I am Bagan also.’ He rolled the cheroot-butt luxuriously under his tongue, dropped his hands on his knees, and stared before him into the dim shifting heart of the rukh, full of stealthy noises; the snapping of twigs like the snapping of the fire behind him; the sigh and rustle of a heat-bended branch recovering her straightness in the cool night; the incessant mutter of the Kanye stream, and the undernote of the many-peopled grass uplands out of sight beyond a swell of hill. He blew out a thick puff of smoke, and began to quote Heine to himself.

‘Yes, it is very goot. Very goot. “Yes, I work miracles, and, by Gott, dey come off too.” I remember when dere was no rukh more big than your knee, from here to der plough-lands, and in drought-time der cattle ate bones of dead cattle up und down. Now der trees haf come back. Dey were planted by a Freethinker, because he know just de cause dot made der effect. But der trees dey had der cult of der old gods—“und der Christian Gods howl loudly.” Dey could not live in der rukh, Gisborne.’

A shadow moved in one of the bridle-paths—moved and stepped out into the starlight.

‘I haf said true. Hush! Here is Faunus himself come to see der Insbector-General. Himmel, he is der god! Look!’

It was Mowgli, crowned with his wreath of white flowers and walking with a half-peeled branch—Mowgli, very mistrustful of the fire-light and ready to fly back to the thicket on the least alarm.

‘That’s a friend of mine,’ said Gisborne. ‘ He’s looking for me. Ohé, Mowgli!’

Muller had barely time to gasp before the man was at Gisborne’s side, crying: ‘I was wrong to go. I was wrong, but I did not know then that the mate of him that was killed by this river was awake looking for thee. Else I should not have gone away. She tracked thee from the back-range, Sahib.’

‘He is a little mad,’ said Gisborne, ‘and he speaks of all the beasts about here as if he was a friend of theirs.’

‘Of course—of course. If Faunus does not know, who should know?’ said Muller gravely. ‘What does he say about tigers—dis god who knows you so well?’

Gisborne relighted his cheroot, and before he had finished the story of Mowgli and his exploits it was burned down to moustache-edge. Muller listened without interruption. ‘Dot is not madness,’ he said at last when Gisborne had described the driving of Abdul Gafur. ‘Dot is not madness at all.’

‘What is it, then? He left me in a temper this morning because I asked him to tell how he did it. I fancy the chap’s possessed in some way.’

‘No, dere is no bossession, but it is most wonderful. Normally they die young—dese beople. Und you say now dot your thief-servant did not say what drove der poney, and of course der nilghai he could not speak.’

‘No, but, confound it, there wasn’t anything. I listened, and I can hear most things. The bull and the man simply came headlong—mad with fright.’

For answer Muller looked Mowgli up and down from head to foot, then beckoned him nearer. He came as a buck treads a tainted trail.

‘There is no harm,’ said Muller in the vernacular. ‘Hold out an arm.’

He ran his hand down to the elbow, felt that, and nodded. ‘So I thought. Now the knee.’ Gisborne saw him feel the knee-cap and smile. Two or three white scars just above the ankle caught his eye.

‘Those came when thou wast very young?’ he said.

‘Ay,’ Mowgli answered with a smile. ‘They were love-tokens from the little ones.’ Then to Gisborne over his shoulder. ‘This Sahib knows everything. Who is he?’

‘That comes after, my friend. Now where are they?’ said Muller.

Mowgli swept his hand round his head in a circle.

page 7

‘So! And thou canst drive nilghai? See! There is my mare in her pickets. Canst thou bring her to me without frightening her?’

‘Can I bring the mare to the Sahib without frightening her!’ Mowgli repeated, raising his voice a little above its normal pitch. ‘What is more easy if the heel-ropes are loose?’

‘Loosen the head and heel-pegs,’ shouted Muller to the groom. They were hardly out of the ground before the mare, a huge black Australian, flung up her head and cocked her ears.

‘Careful! I do not wish her driven into the rukh,’ said Muller.

Mowgli stood still fronting the blaze of the fire—in the very form and likeness of that Greek god who is so lavishly described in the novels. The mare whickered, drew up one hind leg, found that the heel-ropes were free, and moved swiftly to her master, on whose bosom she dropped her head, sweating lightly.

‘She came of her own accord. My horses will do that,’ cried Gisborne.

‘Feel if she sweats,’ said Mowgli.

Gisborne laid a hand on the damp flank.

‘It is enough,’ said Muller.

‘It is enough,’ Mowgli repeated, and a rock behind him threw back the word.

‘That’s uncanny, isn’t it?’ said Gisborne.

‘No, only wonderful—most wonderful. Still you do not know, Gisborne?’

‘I confess I don’t.’

‘Well then, I shall not tell. He says dot some day he will show you what it is. It would be gruel if I told. But why he is not dead I do not understand. Now listen thou.’ Muller faced Mowgli, and returned to the vernacular. ‘I am the head of all the rukhs in the country of India and others across the Black Water. I do not know how many men be under me—perhaps five thousand, perhaps ten. Thy business is this,—to wander no more up and down the rukh and drive beasts for sport or for show, but to take service under me, who am the Government in the matter of Woods and Forests, and to live in this rukh as a forest-guard; to drive the villagers’ goats away when there is no order to feed them in the rukh; to admit them when there is an order; to keep down, as thou canst keep down, the boar and the nilghai when they become too many; to tell Gisborne Sahib how and where tigers move, and what game there is in the forests; and to give sure warning of all the fires in the rukh, for thou canst give warning more quickly than any other. For that work there is a payment each month in silver, and at the end, when thou hast gathered a wife and cattle and, may be, children, a pension. What answer?’

‘That’s just what I——’ Gisborne began.

‘My Sahib spoke this morning of such a service. I walked all day alone considering the matter, and my answer is ready here. I serve, if I serve in this rukh and no other; with Gisborne Sahib and with no other.’

‘It shall be so. In a week comes the written order that pledges the honour of the Government for the pension. After that thou wilt take up thy hut where Gisborne Sahib shall appoint.’

‘I was going to speak to you about it,’ said Gisborne.

‘I did not want to be told when I saw that man. Dere will never be a forest-guard like him. He is a miracle. I tell you, Gisborne, some day you will find it so. Listen, he is blood-brother to every beast in der rukh!’

‘I should be easier in my mind if I could understand him.’

‘Dot will come. Now I tell you dot only once in my service, and dot is thirty years, haf I met a boy dot began as this man began. Und he died. Sometimes you hear of dem in der census reports, but dey all die. Dis man haf lived, and he is an anachronism, for he is before der Iron Age, and der Stone Age. Look here, he is at der beginnings of der history of man—Adam in der Garden, and now we want only an Eva! No! He is older than dot child-tale, shust as der rukh is older dan der gods. Gisborne, I am a Bagan now, once for all.’

Through the rest of the long evening Muller sat smoking and smoking, and staring and staring into the darkness, his lips moving in multiplied quotations, and great wonder upon his face. He went to his tent, but presently came out again in his majestic pink sleeping-suit, and the last words that Gisborne heard him address to the rukh through the deep hush of midnight were these, delivered with immense emphasis:—

‘Dough we shivt und bedeck und bedrape us,
Dou art noble und nude und andeek;
Libidina dy moder, Briapus
Dy fader, a God und a Greek.

Now I know dot, Bagan or Christian, I shall nefer know der inwardness of der rukh!’

. . . . .

It was midnight in the bungalow a week later when Abdul Gafur, ashy gray with rage, stood at the foot of Gisborne’s bed and whispering bade him awake.‘Up, Sahib,’ he stammered. ‘Up and bring thy gun. Mine honour is gone. Up and kill before any see.’

The old man’s face had changed, so that Gisborne stared stupidly.

‘It was for this, then, that that jungle outcaste helped me to polish the Sahib’s table, and drew water and plucked fowls. They have gone off together for all my beatings, and now he sits among his devils dragging her soul to the Pit. Up, Sahib, and come with me!’

He thrust a rifle into Gisborne’s half-wakened hand and almost dragged him from the room on to the verandah.

page 8

‘They are there in the rukh; even within gunshot of the house. Come softly with me.’

‘But what is it? What is the trouble, Abdul?’

‘Mowgli, and his devils. Also my own daughter,’ said Abdul Gafur. Gisborne whistled and followed his guide. Not for nothing, he knew, had Abdul Gafur beaten his daughter of nights, and not for nothing had Mowgli helped in the housework a man whom his own powers, whatever those were, had convicted of theft. Also, a forest wooing goes quickly.

There was the breathing of a flute in the rukh, as it might have been the song of some wandering wood-god, and, as they came nearer, a murmur of voices. The path ended in a little semicircular glade walled partly by high grass and partly by trees. In the centre, upon a fallen trunk, his back to the watchers and his arm round the neck of Abdul Gafur’s daughter, sat Mowgli, newly crowned with flowers, playing upon a rude bamboo flute, to whose music four huge wolves danced solemnly on their hind legs.

‘Those are his devils,’ Abdul Gafur whispered. He held a bunch of cartridges in his hand. The beasts dropped to a longdrawn quavering note and lay still with steady green eyes, glaring at the girl.

‘Behold,’ said Mowgli, laying aside the flute. ‘Is there anything of fear in that? I told thee, little Stout-heart, that there was not, and thou didst believe. Thy father said—and oh, if thou couldst have seen thy father being driven by the road of the nilghai!—thy father said that they were devils; and by Allah, who is thy God, I do not wonder that he so believed.’

The girl laughed a little rippling laugh, and Gisborne heard Abdul grind his few remaining teeth. This was not at all the girl that Gisborne had seen with a half-eye slinking about the compound veiled and silent, but another—a woman full blown in a night as the orchid puts out in an hour’s moist heat.

‘But they are my playmates and my brothers, children of that mother that gave me suck, as I told thee behind the cookhouse,’ Mowgli went on. ‘Children of the father that lay between me and the cold at the mouth of the cave when I was a little naked child. Look’—a wolf raised his gray jowl, slavering at Mowgli’s knee—‘my brother knows that I speak of them. Yes, when I was a little child he was a cub rolling with me on the clay.’

‘But thou hast said that thou art human-born,’ cooed the girl, nestling closer to the shoulder. ‘Thou art human-born?’

‘Said! Nay, I know that I am human born, because my heart is in thy hold, little one.’ Her head dropped under Mowgli’s chin. Gisborne put up a warning hand to restrain Abdul Gafur, who was not in the least impressed by the wonder of the sight.

‘But I was a wolf among wolves none the less till a time came when Those of the jungle bade me go because I was a man.’

‘Who bade thee go? That is not like a true man’s talk.’

‘The very beasts themselves. Little one, thou wouldst never believe that telling, but so it was. The beasts of the jungle bade me go, but these four followed me because I was their brother. Then was I a herder of cattle among men, having learned their language. Ho! ho! The herds paid toll to my brothers, till a woman, an old woman, beloved, saw me playing by night with my brethren in the crops. They said that I was possessed of devils, and drove me from that village with sticks and stones, and the four came with me by stealth and not openly. That was when I had learned to eat cooked meat and to talk boldly. From village to village I went, heart of my heart, a herder of cattle, a tender of buffaloes, a tracker of game, but there was no man that dared lift a finger against me twice.’ He stooped down and patted one of the heads. ‘Do thou also like this. There is neither hurt nor magic in them. See, they know thee.’

‘The woods are full of all manner of devils,’ said the girl with a shudder.

‘A lie. A child’s lie,’ Mowgli returned confidently. ‘I have lain out in the dew under the stars and in the dark night, and I know. The jungle is my house. Shall a man fear his own roof-beams or a woman her man’s hearth? Stoop down and pat them.’

‘They are dogs and unclean,’ she murmured, bending forward with averted head.

‘Having eaten the fruit, now we remember the Law!’ said Abdul Gafur bitterly. ‘What is the need of this waiting, Sahib? Kill!’

‘H’sh, thou. Let us learn what has happened,’ said Gisborne.

‘That is well done,’ said Mowgli, slipping his arm round the girl again. ‘Dogs or no dogs, they were with me through a thousand villages.’

‘Ahi, and where was thy heart then? Through a thousand villages. Thou hast seen a thousand maids. I—that am—that am a maid no more, have I thy heart?’

‘What shall I swear by? By Allah, of whom thou speakest?’

‘Nay, by the life that is in thee, and I am well content. Where was thy heart in those days?’

Mowgli laughed a little. ‘In my belly, because I was young and always hungry. So I learned to track and to hunt, sending and calling my brothers back and forth as a king calls his armies. Therefore I drove the nilghai for the foolish young Sahib, and the big fat mare for the big fat Sahib, when they questioned my power. It were as easy to have driven the men themselves. Even now,’ his voice lifted a little—‘even now I know that behind me stand thy father and Gisborne Sahib. Nay, do not run, for no ten men dare move a pace forward. Remembering that thy father beat thee more than once, shall I give the word and drive him again in rings through the rukh?’ A wolf stood up with bared teeth.

Gisborne felt Abdul Gafur tremble at his side. Next, his place was empty, and the fat man was skimming down the glade.

‘Remains only Gisborne Sahib,’ said Mowgli, still without turning; ‘but I have eaten Gisborne Sahib’s bread, and presently I shall be in his service, and my brothers will be his servants to drive game and carry the news. Hide thou in the grass.’

The girl fled, the tall grass closed behind her and the guardian wolf that followed, and Mowgli turning with his three retainers faced Gisborne as the Forest Officer came forward.

‘That is all the magic,’ he said, pointing to the three. ‘The fat Sahib knew that we who are bred among wolves run on our elbows and our knees for a season. Feeling my arms and legs, he felt the truth which thou didst not know. Is it so wonderful, Sahib?’

‘Indeed it is all more wonderful than magic. These then drove the nilghai?’

‘Ay, as they would drive Eblis if I gave the order. They are my eyes and feet to me.’

page 9

‘Look to it, then, that Eblis does not carry a double rifle. They have yet something to learn, thy devils, for they stand one behind the other, so that two shots would kill the three.’

‘Ah, but they know they will be thy servants as soon as I am a forest-guard.’

‘Guard or no guard, Mowgli, thou hast done a great shame to Abdul Gafur. Thou hast dishonoured his house and blackened his face.’

‘For that, it was blackened when he took thy money, and made blacker still when he whispered in thy ear a little while since to kill a naked man. I myself will talk to Abdul Gafur, for I am a man of the Government service, with a pension. He shall make the marriage by whatsoever rite he will, or he shall run once more. I will speak to him in the dawn. For the rest, the Sahib has his house and this is mine. It is time to sleep again, Sahib.’

Mowgli turned on his heel and disappeared into the grass, leaving Gisborne alone. The hint of the wood-god was not to be mistaken; and Gisborne went back to the bungalow, where Abdul Gafur, torn by rage and fear, was raving in the verandah.

‘Peace, peace,’ said Gisborne, shaking him, for he looked as though he were going to have a fit. ‘Muller Sahib has made the man a forest-guard, and as thou knowest there is a pension at the end of that business, and it is Government service.’

‘He is an outcaste—a mlech—a dog among dogs; an eater of carrion! What pension can pay for that?’

‘Allah knows; and thou hast heard that the mischief is done. Wouldst thou blaze it to all the other servants ? Make the shadi swiftly, and the girl will make him a Mussulman. He is very comely. Canst thou wonder that after thy beatings she went to him?’

‘Did he say that he would chase me with his beasts?’

‘So it seemed to me. If he be a wizard, he is at least a very strong one.’

Abdul Gafur thought awhile, and then broke down and howled, forgetting that he was a Mussulman:—

‘Thou art a Brahmin. I am thy cow. Make thou the matter plain, and save my honour if it can be saved!’

A second time then Gisborne plunged into the rukh and called Mowgli. The answer came from high overhead, and in no submissive tones.

‘Speak softly,’ said Gisborne, looking up. ‘There is yet time to strip thee of thy place and hunt thee with thy wolves. The girl must go back to her father’s house tonight. To-morrow there will be the shadi, by the Mussulman law, and then thou canst take her away. Bring her to Abdul Gafur.’

‘I hear.’ There was a murmur of two voices conferring among the leaves. ‘Also, we will obey—for the last time.’

. . . . .

A year later Muller and Gisborne were riding through the rukh together, talking of their business. They came out among the rocks near the Kanye stream; Muller riding a little in advance. Under the shade of a thorn thicket sprawled a naked brown baby, and from the brake immediately behind him peered the head of a gray wolf. Gisborne had just time to strike up Muller’s rifle, and the bullet tore spattering through the branches above.‘Are you mad?’ thundered Muller. ‘Look!’

‘I see,’ said Gisborne quietly. ‘The mother’s somewhere near. You’ll wake the whole pack, by Jove!’

The bushes parted once more, and a woman unveiled snatched up the child.

‘Who fired, Sahib?’ she cried to Gisborne.

‘This Sahib. He had not remembered thy man’s people.’

‘Not remembered? But indeed it may be so, for we who live with them forget that they are strangers at all. Mowgli is down the stream catching fish. Does the Sahib wish to see him? Come out, ye lacking manners. Come out of the bushes, and make your service to the Sahibs.’

Muller’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. He swung himself off the plunging mare and dismounted, while the jungle gave up four wolves who fawned round Gisborne. The mother stood nursing her child and spurning them aside as they brushed against her bare feet.

‘You were quite right about Mowgli,’ said Gisborne. ‘I meant to have told you, but I’ve got so used to these fellows in the last twelve months that it slipped my mind.’

‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ said Muller. ‘It’s nothing. Gott in Himmel! “Und I work miracles—und dey come off too!”’

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.

[a short tale]

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 seen 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 pawnshop. 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 1-67/8, 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 for ever on the £20 held back by Dicky from his outfit allowance, Dicky saw this and remitted at once; always remembering that Rs.7oo 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 to 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 bedstead, 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 recognising 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 a 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—àpropos 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 the 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 for ever 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 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 honour 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 tablecover, 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 for ever. 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.

In the Presence

page 1 of 5

‘SO the matter,’ the Regimental Chaplain concluded, ‘was correct; in every way correct. I am well pleased with Rutton Singh and Attar Singh. They have gathered the fruit of their lives.’He folded his arms and sat down on the verandah. The hot day had ended, and there was a pleasant smell of cooking along the regimental lines, where half-clad men went back and forth with leaf platters and water-goglets. The Subadar-Major, in extreme undress, sat on a chair, as befitted his rank; the Havildar-Major, his nephew, leaning respectfully against the wall. The Regiment was at home and at ease in its own quarters in its own district which takes its name from the great Muhammadan saint Mian Mir, revered by Jehangir and beloved by Guru Har Gobind, sixth of the great Sikh Gurus.

‘Quite correct,’ the Regimental Chaplain repeated.

No Sikh contradicts his Regimental Chaplain who expounds to him the Holy Book of the Grunth Sahib and who knows the lives and legends of all the Gurus.

The Subadar-Major bowed his grey head. The Havildar-Major coughed respectfully to attract attention and to ask leave to speak. Though he was the Subadar-Major’s nephew, and though his father held twice as much land as his uncle, he knew his place in the scheme of things. The Subadar-Major shifted one hand with an iron bracelet on the wrist.

‘Was there by any chance any woman at the back of it?’ the Havildar-Major murmured. ‘I was not here when the thing happened.’

‘Yes! Yes! Yes! We all know that thou wast in England eating and drinking with the Sahibs. We are all surprised that thou canst still speak Punjabi.’ The Subadar-Major’s carefully-tended beard bristled.

‘There was no woman,’ the Regimental Chaplain growled. ‘It was land. Hear, you! Rutton Singh and Attar Singh were the elder of four brothers. These four held land in—what was the village’s name?—oh, Pishapur, near Thori, in the Banalu Tehsil of Patiala State, where men can still recognise right behaviour when they see it. The two younger brothers tilled the land, while Rutton Singh and Attar Singh took service with the Regiment, according to the custom of the family.’

‘True, true,’ said the Havildar-Major. ‘There is the same arrangement in all good families.’

‘Then, listen again,’ the Regimental Chaplain went on. ‘Their kin on their mother’s side put great oppression and injustice upon the two younger brothers who stayed with the land in Patiala State. Their mother’s kin loosened beasts into the four brothers’ crops when the crops were green; they cut the corn by force when it was ripe; they broke down the water-courses; they defiled the wells; and they brought false charges in the law-courts against all four brothers. They did not spare even the cotton-seed, as the saying is.

‘Their mother’s kin trusted that the young men would thus be forced by weight of trouble, and further trouble and perpetual trouble, to quit their lands in Pishapur village in Banalu Tehsil in Patiala State. If the young men ran away, the land would come whole to their mother’s kin. I am not a regimental schoolmaster, but is it understood, child?’

‘Understood,’ said the Havildar-Major grimly. ‘Pishapur is not the only place where the fence eats the field instead of protecting it. But perhaps there was a woman among their mother’s kin?’

‘God knows!’ said the Regimental Chaplain. ‘Woman, or man, or law-courts, the young men would not be driven off the land which was their own by inheritance. They made appeal to Rutton Singh and Attar Singh, their brethren who had taken service with us in the Regiment, and so knew the world, to help them in their long war against their mother’s kin in Pishapur. For that reason, because their own land and the honour of their house was dear to them, Rutton Singh and Attar Singh needs must very often ask for leave to go to Patiala and attend to the lawsuits and cattle-poundings there.

‘It was not, look you, as though they went back to their own village and sat, garlanded with jasmine, in honour, upon chairs before the elders under the trees. They went back always to perpetual trouble, either of lawsuits, or theft, or strayed cattle; and they sat on thorns.’

‘I knew it,’ said the Subadar-Major. ‘Life was bitter for them both. But they were well-conducted men. It was not hard to get them their leave from the Colonel Sahib.’

‘They spoke to me also,’ said the Chaplain. “Let him who desires the four great gifts apply himself to the words of holy men.” That is written. Often they showed me the papers of the false lawsuits brought against them. Often they wept on account of the persecution put upon them by their mother’s kin. Men thought it was drugs when their eyes showed red.’

‘They wept in my presence too,’ said the Subadar-Major. ‘Well-conducted men of nine years’ service apiece. Rutton Singh was drill-Naik, too.’

‘They did all things correctly as Sikhs should,’ said the Regimental Chaplain. ‘When the persecution had endured seven years, Attar Singh took leave to Pishapur once again (that was the fourth time in that year only) and he called his persecutors together before the village elders, and he cast his turban at their feet and besought them by his mother’s blood to cease from their persecutions. For he told them earnestly that he had marched to the boundaries of his patience, and that there could be but one end to the matter.

‘They gave him abuse. They mocked him and his tears, which was the same as though they had mocked the Regiment. Then Attar Singh returned to the Regiment, and laid this last trouble before Rutton Singh, the eldest brother. But Rutton Singh could not get leave all at once.’

‘Because he was drill-Naik and the recruits were to be drilled. I myself told him so,’ said the Subadar-Major. ‘He was a well-conducted man. He said he could wait.’

‘But when permission was granted, those two took four days’ leave,’ the Chaplain went on.

page 2

‘I do not think Attar Singh should have taken Baynes Sahib’s revolver. He was Baynes Sahib’s orderly, and all that Sahib’s things were open to him. It was, therefore, as I count it, shame to Attar Singh,’ said the Subadar-Major.

‘All the words had been said. There was need of arms, and how could soldiers use Government rifles upon mere cultivators in the fields?’ the Regimental Chaplain replied. ‘Moreover, the revolver was sent back, together with a money-order for the cartridges expended. “Borrow not; but if thou borrowest, pay back soon!” That is written in the Hymns. Rutton Singh took a sword, and he and Attar Singh went to Pishapur and, after word given, the four brethren fell upon their persecutors in Pishapur village and slew seventeen, wounding ten. A revolver is better than a lawsuit. I say that these four brethren, the two with us, and the two mere cultivators, slew and wounded twenty-seven—all their mother’s kin, male and female.

‘Then the four mounted to their housetop, and Attar Singh, who was always one of the impetuous, said “My work is done,” and he made shinan (purification) in all men’s sight, and he lent Rutton Singh Baynes Sahib’s revolver, and Rutton Singh shot him in the head.

‘So Attar Singh abandoned his body, as an insect abandons a blade of grass. But Rutton Singh, having more work to do, went down from the housetop and sought an enemy whom he had forgotten—a Patiala man of this regiment who had sided with the persecutors. When he overtook the man, Rutton Singh hit him twice with bullets and once with the sword.’

‘But the man escaped and is now in the hospital here,’ said the Subadar-Major. ‘The doctor says he will live in spite of all.’

‘Not Rutton Singh’s fault. Rutton Singh left him for dead. Then Rutton Singh returned to the housetop, and the three brothers together, Attar Singh being dead, sent word by a lad to the police station for an army to be dispatched against them that they might die with honours. But none came. And yet Patiala State is not under English law and they should know virtue there when they see it!

‘So, on the third day, Rutton Singh also made shinan, and the youngest of the brethren shot him also in the head, and he abandoned his body.

‘Thus was all correct. There was neither heat, nor haste, nor abuse in the matter from end to end. There remained alive not one man or woman of their mother’s kin which had oppressed them. Of the other villagers of Pishapur, who had taken no part in the persecutions, not one was slain. Indeed, the villagers sent them food on the housetop for those three days while they waited for the police who would not dispatch that army.

‘Listen again! I know that Attar Singh and Rutton Singh omitted no ceremony of the purifications, and when all was done Baynes Sahib’s revolver was thrown down from the housetop, together with three rupees twelve annas; and order was given for its return by post.’

‘And what befell the two younger brethren who were not in the services’ the Havildar-Major asked.

‘Doubtless they too are dead, but since they were not in the Regiment their honour concerns themselves only. So far as we were touched, see how correctlv we came out of the matter! I think the King should be told; for where could you match such a tale except among us Sikhs? Sri wah guru ji ki Khalsa! Sri wah guru ji ki futteh!’ said the Regimental Chaplain.

‘Would three rupees twelve annas pay for the used cartridges?’ said the Havildar-Major.

‘Attar Singh knew the just price. All Baynes Sahib’s gear was in his charge. They expended one tin box of fifty cartouches, lacking two which were returned. As I said—as I say—the arrangement was made not with heat nor blasphemies as a Mussulman would have made it; not with cries nor caperings as an idolater would have made it; but conformably to the ritual and doctrine of the Sikhs. Hear you! “Though hundreds of amusements are offered to a child it cannot live without milk. If a man be divorced from his soul and his soul’s desire he certainly will not stop to play upon the road, but he will make haste with his pilgrimage.” That is written. I rejoice in my disciples.’

‘True! True! Correct! Correct!’ said the Subadar-Major. There was a long, easy silence. One heard a water-wheel creaking somewhere and the nearer sound of meal being ground in a quern.

‘But he—’ the Chaplain pointed a scornful chin at the Havildar-Major.—‘he has been so long in England that——’

‘Let the lad alone,’ said his uncle. ‘He was but two months there, and he was chosen for good cause.’

Theoretically, all Sikhs are equal. Practically, there are differences, as none know better than well-born, land-owning folk, or long-descended chaplains from Amritsar.

‘Hast thou heard anything in England to match my tale? ‘the Chaplain sneered.

‘I saw more than I could understand, so I have locked up my stories in my own mouth,’ the Havildar-Major replied meekly.

‘Stories? What stories? I know all the stories about England,’ said the Chaplain. ‘I know that terains run underneath their bazaars there, and as for their streets stinking with mota-kahars, only this morning I was nearly killed by Duggan Sahib’s mota-kahar. That young man is a devil.”

‘I expect Grunthi-jee,’ said the Subadar-Major, ‘you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—the Bearer’s dance.’ He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun. Then he turned to his nephew. ‘When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what I had seen elsewhere.’

‘Ay, my father,’ said the Havildar-Major, softly and affectionately. He sat himself down with respect, as behoved a mere lad of thirty with a bare half-dozen campaigns to his credit.

page 3

‘There were four men in this affair also,’ he began, ’and it was an affair that touched the honour, not of one regiment, nor two, but of all the Army in Hind. Some part of it I saw; some I heard; but all the tale is true. My father’s brother knows, and my priest knows, that I was in England on business with my Colonel, when the King—the Great Queen’s son—completed his life.

‘First, there was a rumour that sickness was upon him. Next, we knew that he lay sick in the Palace. A very great multitude stood outside the Palace by night and by day, in the rain as well as the sun, waiting for news.

‘Then came out one with a written paper, and set it upon a gate-side—the word of the King’s death—and they read, and groaned. This I saw with my own eyes, because the office where my Colonel Sahib went daily to talk with Colonel Forsyth Sahib was at the east end of the very gardens where the Palace stood. They are larger gardens than Shalimar here’—he pointed with his chin up the lines—‘or Shahdera across the river.

‘Next day there was a darkness in the streets, because all the city’s multitude were clad in black garments, and they spoke as a man speaks in the presence of his dead—all those multitudes. In the eyes, in the air, and in the heart, there was blackness. I saw it. But that is not my tale.

‘After ceremonies had been accomplished, and word had gone out to the Kings of the Earth that they should come and mourn, the new King—the dead King’s son—gave commandment that his father’s body should be laid, coffined, in a certain Temple which is near the river. There are no idols in that Temple; neither any carvings, nor paintings, nor gildings. It is all grey stone, of one colour as though it were cut out of the live rock. It is larger than—yes, than the Durbar Sahib at Amritsar, even though the Akal Bunga and the Baba-Atal were added. How old it may be God knows. It is the Sahibs’ most sacred Temple.

‘In that place, by the new King’s commandment, they made, as it were, a shrine for a saint, with lighted candles at the head and the feet of the Dead, and duly appointed watchers for every hour of the day and the night, until the dead King should be taken to the place of his fathers, which is at Wanidza.

‘When all was in order, the new King said, “Give entrance to all people,” and the doors were opened, and O my uncle! O my teacher! all the world entered, walking through that Temple to take farewell of the Dead. There was neither distinction, nor price, nor ranking in the host, except an order that they should walk by fours.

‘As they gathered in the streets without—very, very far off—so they entered the Temple, walking by fours: the child, the old man; mother, virgin, harlot, trader, priest; of all colours and faiths and customs under the firmament of God, from dawn till late at night. I saw it. My Colonel gave me leave to go. I stood in the line, many hours, one koss, two koss, distant from the temple.’

‘Then why did the multitude not sit down under the trees?’ asked the priest.

‘Because we were still between houses. The city is many koss wide,’ the Havildar-Major resumed. ‘I submitted myself to that slow-moving river and thus—thus—a pace at a time—I made pilgrimage. There were in my rank a woman, a cripple, and a lascar from the ships.

‘When we entered the Temple, the coffin itself was as a shoal in the Ravi River, splitting the stream into two branches, one on either side of the Dead; and the watchers of the Dead, who were soldiers, stood about It, moving no more than the still flame of the candles. Their heads were bowed; their hands were clasped; their eyes were cast upon the ground—thus. They were not men, but images, and the multitude went past them in fours by day, and, except for a little while, by night also.

‘No, there was no order that the people should come to pay respect. It was a free-will pilgrimage. Eight kings had been commanded to come—who obeyed—but upon his own Sahibs the new King laid no commandment. Of themselves they came.

‘I made pilgrimage twice: once for my Salt’s sake, and once again for wonder and terror and worship. But my mouth cannot declare one thing of a hundred thousand things in this matter. There were lakhs of lakhs, crores of crores of people. I saw them.’

‘More than at our great pilgrimages?’ the Regimental Chaplain demanded.

‘Yes. Those are only cities and districts coming out to pray. This was the world walking in grief. And now, hear you! It is the King’s custom that four swords of Our Armies in Hind should stand always before the Presence in case of need.’

‘The King’s custom, our right,’ said the Subadar-Major curtly.

‘Also our right. These honoured ones are changed after certain months or years, that the honour may be fairly spread. Now it chanced that when the old King—the Queen’s son—completed his days, the four that stood in the Presence were Goorkhas. Neither Sikhs alas, nor Pathans, IZajputs, nor Jats. Goorkhas, my father.’

‘Idolaters,’ said the Chaplain.

‘But soldiers; for I remember in the Tirah’ the Havildar-Major began.

‘But soldiers, for I remember fifteen campaigns. Go on,’ said the Subadar-Major.

‘And it was their honour and right to furnish one who should stand in the Presence by day and by night till It went out to burial. There were no more than four all told—four old men to furnish that guard.’

‘Old? Old? What talk is this of old men?’ said the Subadar-Major.

‘Nay. My fault! Your pardon!’ The Havildar-Major spread a deprecating hand. ‘They were strong, hot, valiant men, and the youngest was a lad of forty-five.’

‘That is better,’ the Subadar-Major laughed.

page 4

‘But for all their strength and heat they could not eat strange food from the Sahibs’ hands. There was no cooking place in the Temple; but a certain Colonel Forsyth Sahib, who had understanding, made arrangement whereby they should receive at least a little caste-clean parched grain; also cold rice maybe, and water which was pure. Yet, at best, this was no more than a hen’s mouthful, snatched as each came off his guard. They lived on grain and were thankful, as the saying is.

‘One hour’s guard in every four was each man’s burden, for, as I have shown, they were but four all told; and the honour of Our Armies in Hind was on their heads. The Sahibs could draw upon all the armies in England for the other watchers—thousands upon thousands of fresh men—if they needed; but these four were but four.

‘The Sahibs drew upon the Granadeers for the other watchers. Granadeers be very tall men under very tall bearskins, such as Fusilier regiments wear in cold weather. Thus, when a Granadeer bowed his head but a very little over his stock, the bearskin sloped and showed as though he grieved exceedingly. Now the Goorkhas wear flat, green caps——’

‘I see, I see,’ said the Subadar-Major impatiently.

‘They are bull-necked, too; and their stocks are hard, and when they bend deeply—deeply—to match the Granadeers—they come nigh to choking themselves. That was a handicap against them, when it came to the observance of ritual.

‘Yet even with their tall, grief-declaring bearskins, the Granadeers could not endure the full hour’s guard in the Presence. There was good cause, as I will show, why no man could endure that terrible hour. So for them the hour’s guard was cut to one-half. What did it matter to the Sahibs? They could draw on ten thousand Granadeers. Forsyth Sahib, who had comprehension, put this choice also before the four, and they said, “No, ours is the Honour of the Armies of Hind. Whatever the Sahibs do, we will suffer the full hour.”

‘Forsyth Sahib, seeing that they were—knowing that they could neither sleep long nor eat much, said, “Is it great suffering?” They said, “It is great honour. We will endure.”

‘Forsyth Sahib, who loves us, said then to the eldest, “Ho, father, tell me truly what manner of burden it is; for the full hour’s watch breaks up our men like water.”

‘The eldest answered, “Sahib, the burden is the feet of the multitude that pass us on either side. Our eyes being lowered and fixed, we see those feet only from the knee down—a river of feet, Sahib, that never—never—never stops. It is not the standing without any motion; it is not hunger; nor is it the dead part before the dawn when maybe a single one comes here to weep. It is the burden of the unendurable procession of feet from the knee down, that never—never—never stops!”

‘Forsyth Sahib said, “By God, I had not considered that! Now I know why our men come trembling and twitching off that guard. But at least, my father, ease the stock a little beneath the bent chin for that one hour.”

‘The eldest said, “We are in the Presence. Moreover He knew every button and braid and hook of every uniform in all His armies.”

‘Then Forsyth Sahib said no more, except to speak about their parched grain, but indeed they could not eat much after their hour, nor could they sleep much because of eye-twitchings and the renewed procession of the feet before the eyes. Yet they endured each his full hour—not half an hour—his one full hour in each four hours.’

‘Correct! correct!’ said the Subadar-Major and the Chaplain together. ‘We come well out of this affair.’

‘But seeing that they were old men,’ said the Subadar-Major reflectively, ‘very old men, worn out by lack of food and sleep, could not arrangements have been made, or influence have been secured, or a petition presented, whereby a well-born Sikh might have eased them of some portion of their great burden, even though his substantive rank——’

‘Then they would most certainly have slain me,’ said the ftavildar-Major with a smile.

‘And they would have done correctly,’ said the Chaplain. ‘What befell the honourable ones later?’

‘This. The Kings of the earth and all the Armies sent flowers and such-like to the dead King’s palace at Wanidza, where the funeral offerings were accepted. There was no order given, but all the world made oblation. So the four took counsel—three at a time—and either they asked Forsyth Sahib to choose flowers, or themselves they went forth and bought flowers—I do not know; but, however it was arranged, the flowers were bought and made in the shape of a great drum-like circle weighing half a maund.

‘Forsyth Sahib had said, “Let the flowers be sent to Wanidza with the other flowers which all the world is sending.” But they said among themselves, “It is not fit that these flowers, which are the offerings of His Armies in Hind, should come to the Palace of the Presence by the hands of hirelings or messengers, or of any man not in His service.”

‘Hearing this, Forsyth Sahib, though he was much occupied with office-work, said, “Give me the flowers, and I will steal a time and myself take them to Wanidza.”

The eldest said, “Since when has Forsyth Sahib worn sword?”

‘Forsyth Sahib said, “But always. And I wear it in the Presence when I put on uniform. I am a Colonel in the Armies of Hind.” The eldest said, “Of what regiment? “And Forsyth Sahib looked on the carpet and pulled the hair of his lip. He saw the trap.’

‘Forsyth Sahib’s regiment was once the old Forty-sixth Pathans which was called——’ the Subadar-Major gave the almost forgotten title, adding that he had met them in such and such campaigns, when Forsyth Sahib was a young captain.

The Havildar-Major took up the tale, saying, ‘The eldest knew that also, my father. He laughed, and presently Forsyth Sahib laughed.

‘“It is true,” said Forsyth Sahib. “I have no regiment. For twenty years I have been a clerk tied to a thick pen. Therefore I am the more fit to be your orderly and messenger in this business.”

page 5

‘The eldest then said, “If it were a matter of my life or the honour of any of my household, it would be easy.” And Forsyth Sahib joined his hands together, half laughing, though he was ready to weep, and he said, “Enough! I ask pardon. Which one of you goes with the offering?”

‘The eldest said, feigning not to have heard, “Nor must they be delivered by a single sword—as though we were pressed for men in His service,” and they saluted and went out.’

‘Were these things seen, or were they told thee?’ said the Subadar-Major.

‘I both saw and heard in the office full of books and papers where my Colonel Sahib consulted Forsyth Sahib upon the business that had brought my Colonel Sahib to England.’

‘And what was that business?’ the Regimental Chaplain asked of a sudden, looking full at the Havildar-Major, who returned the look without a quiver.

‘That was not revealed to me,’ said the Havildar-Major.

‘I heard it might have been some matter touching the integrity of certain regiments,’ the Chaplain insisted.

‘The matter was not in any way open to my ears,’ said the Havildar-Major.

‘Humph!’ The Chaplain drew his hard road-worn feet under his robe. ‘Let us hear the tale that it is permitted thee to tell,’ he said, and the Havildar-Major went on

‘So then the three, having returned to the Temple, called the fourth, who had only forty-five years, when he came off guard, and said, “We go to the Palace at Wanidza with the offerings. Remain thou in the Presence, and take all our guards, one after the other, till we return.”

‘Within that next hour they hired a large and strong mota-kahar for the journey from the Temple to Wanidza, which is twenty koss or more, and they promised expedition. But he who took their guards said, “It is not seemly that we should for any cause appear to be in haste. There are eighteen medals with eleven clasps and three Orders to consider. Go at leisure. I can endure.”

‘So the three with the offerings were absent three hours and a half, and having delivered the offering at Wanidza in the correct manner they returned and found the lad on guard, and they did not break his guard till his full hour was ended. So he endured four hours in the Presence, not stirring one hair, his eyes abased, and the river of feet, from the knee down, passing continually before his eyes. When he was relieved, it was seen that his eyeballs worked like weavers’ shuttles.

‘And so it was done—not in hot blood, not for a little while, nor yet with the smell of slaughter and the noise of shouting to sustain, but in silence, for a very long time, rooted to one place before the Presence among the most terrible feet of the multitude.’

‘Correct!’ the Chaplain chuckled.

‘But the Goorkhas had the honour,’ said the Subadar-Major sadly.

‘Theirs was the Honour of His Armies in Hind, and that was Our Honour,’ the nephew replied.

‘Yet I would one Sikh had been concerned in it—even one low-caste Sikh. And after?’

‘They endured the burden until the end—until It went out of the Temple to be laid among the older kings at Wanidza. When all was accomplished and It was withdrawn under the earth, Forsyth Sahib said to the four, “The King gives command that you be fed here on meat cooked by your own cooks. Eat and take ease, my fathers.”

‘So they loosed their belts and ate. They had not eaten food except by snatches for some long time; and when the meat had given them strength they slept for very many hours; and it was told me that the procession of the unendurable feet ceased to pass before their eyes any more.’

He threw out one hand palm upward to show that the tale was ended.

‘We came well and cleanly out of it,’ said the Subadar-Major.

‘Correct! Correct! Correct!’ said the Regimental Chaplain. ‘In an evil age it is good to hear such things, and there is certainly no doubt that this is a very evil age.’

In the Matter of a Private

Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier’s life for me!
Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free.
(The Ramrod Corps)

page 1 of 3

PEOPLE who have seen, say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls’ school. It starts without warning, generally on a hot afternoon among the elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. Then she throws up her head, and cries, ‘Honk, honk, honk,’ like a wild goose, and tears mix with the laughter. If the mistress be wise she will rap out something severe at this point to check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favor of another girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the trouble spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys’ school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is what folk say who have had experience.Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: ‘Take away the brute’s ammunition!’

Thomas isn’t a brute, and his business, which is to look after the virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand. He doesn’t wear silk stockings, and he really ought to he supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions; but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him ‘the heroic defender of the national honor’ one day, and ‘a brutal and licentious soldiery’ the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him; and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what is the matter with himself.

That is the prologue. This is the story:—

Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi M’Kenna, whose history is well known in the regiment and elsewhere. He had his Colonel’s permission, and, being popular with the men, every arrangement had been made to give the wedding what Private Ortheris called ‘eeklar.’ It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane’s grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the ‘eeklar’ of that was meagre. Miss M’Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant’s wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more or less miserable.

And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work was over at eight in the morning, and for the rest of the day they could lie on their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the punkah-coolies. They enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle of the day, and then threw themselves down on their cots and sweated and slept till it was cool enough to go out with their ‘towny,’ whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words, and the Adjective, and whose views on every conceivable question they had heard many times before.

There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinkmg for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever or cholera. The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow of the barrack creeping across the blinding white dust. That was a gay life.

They lounged about cantonments—it was too hot for any sort of game, and almost too hot for vice—and fuddled themselves in the evening, and filled themselves to distension with the healthy nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the less exercise they took and more explosive they grew. Then tempers began to wear away, and men fell a-brooding over insults real or imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of. The tone of the repartees changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: ‘I’ll knock your silly face in,’ men grew laboriously polite and hinted that the cantonments were not big enough for themselves and their enemy, and that there would he more space for one of the two in another place.

It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of the case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons in an aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots side by side, and would sometimes spend a long afternoon swearing at each other; but Simmons was afraid of Losson and dared not challenge him to a fight. He thought over the words in the hot still nights, and half the hate he felt toward Losson be vented on the wretched punkah-coolie.

Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little cage, and lowered the cage into the cool darkness of a well, and sat on the well-curb, shouting bad language down to the parrot. He taught it to say: ‘Simmons, ye so-oor,’ which means swine, and several other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the sentence correctly. Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the room were laughing at him—the parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it looked so human when it chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on the side of the cot, and ask the parrot what it thought of Simmons. The parrot would answer: ‘Simmons, ye so-oor.’ ‘Good boy,’ Losson used to say, scratching the parrot’s head; ‘ye ’ear that, Sim?’ And Simmons used to turn over on his stomach and make answer: ‘I ’ear. Take ’eed you don’t ’ear something one of these days.’

In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of blind rage came upon Simmonr and held him till he trembled all over, while he thought in how many different ways he would slay Losson. Sometimes he would picture himself trampling the life out of the man, with heavy ammunition-boots, and at others smashing in his face with the butt, and at others jumping on his shoulders and dragging the head back till the neckbone cracked. Then his mouth would feel hot and fevered, and he would reach out for another sup of the beer in the pannikin.

But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with him longest was one connected with the great roll of fat under Losson’s right ear. He noticed it first on a moonlight night, and thereafter it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of fat. A man could get his hand upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he could place the muzzle of a rifle on it and blow away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and contented and well-to-do, when he, Simmons, was the butt of the room. Some day, perhaps, he would show those who laughed at the ‘Simmons, ye so-oor’ joke, that he was as good as the rest, and held a man’s life in the crook of his forefinger. When Losson snored, Simmons hated him more bitterly than ever. Why should Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay awake hour after hour, tossing and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing into his right side and his head throbbing and aching after Canteen? He thought over this for many nights, and the world became unprofitable to him. He even blunted his naturally fine appetite with beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot talked at and made a mock of him.

The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than before. A Sergeant’s wife died of heat—apoplexy in the night, and the rumor ran abroad that it was cholera. Men rejoiced openly, hoping that it would spread and send them into camp. But that was a false alarm.

page 2

It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the deep double verandas for ‘Last Posts,’ when Simmons went to the box at the foot of his bed, took out his pipe, and slammed the lid down with a bang that echoed through the deserted barrack like the crack of a rifle. Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice; but their nerves were fretted to fiddle-strings. They jumped up, and three or four clattered into the barrack-room only to find Simmons kneeling by his box.

‘Ow! It’s you, is it?’ they said and laughed foolishly. ‘We thought ’twas——’

Simmons rose slowly. If the accident had so shaken his fellows, what would not the reality do?

‘You thought it was—did you? And what makes you think?’ he said, lashing himself into madness as he went on; ‘to Hell with your thinking, ye dirty spies.’

‘Simmons, ye so-oor,’ chuckled the parrot in the veranda, sleepily, recognizing a well-known voice. Now that was absolutely all.

The tension snapped. Simmons fell back on the arm-rack deliberately,—the men were at the far end of the room,—and took out his rifle and packet of ammunition. ‘Don’t go playing the goat, Sim!’ said Losson. ‘Put it down,’ but there was a quaver in his voice. Another man stooped, slipped his boot and hurled it at Simmon’s head. The prompt answer was a shot which, fired at random, found its billet in Losson’s throat. Losson fell forward without a word, and the others scattered.

‘You thought it was!’ yelled Simmons. ‘You’re drivin’ me to it! I tell you you’re drivin’ me to it! Get up, Losson, an’ don’t lie shammin’ there—you an’ your blasted parrit that druv me to it!’

But there was an unaffected reality about Losson’s pose that showed Simmons what he had done. The men were still clamoring on the veranda. Simmons appropriated two more packets of ammunition and ran into the moonlight, muttering: ‘I’ll make a night of it. Thirty roun’s, an’ the last for myself. Take you that, you dogs!’

He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on the veranda, but the bullet flew high, and landed in the brickwork with a vicious phwit that made some of the younger ones turn pale. It is, as musketry theorists observe, one thing to fire and another to be fired at.

Then the instinct of the chase flared up. The news spread from barrack to barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture of Simmons, the wild beast, who was heading for the Cavalry parade-ground, stopping now and again to send back a shot and a curse in the direction of his pursuers.

‘I’ll learn you to spy on me!’ he shouted; ‘I’ll learn you to give me dorg’s names! Come on the ’ole lot O’ you! Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B.!’—he turned toward the Infantry Mess and shook his rifle—‘you think yourself the devil of a man—but I tell you that if you Put your ugly old carcass outside O’ that door, I’ll make you the poorest-lookin’ man in the army. Come out, Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B.! Come out and see me practiss on the rainge. I’m the crack shot of the ’ole bloomin’ battalion.’ In proof of which statement Simmons fired at the lighted windows of the mess-house.

‘Private Simmons, E Comp’ny, on the Cavalry p’rade-ground, Sir, with thirty rounds,’ said a Sergeant breathlessly to the Colonel. ‘Shootin’ right and lef’, Sir. Shot Private Losson. What’s to be done, Sir?’

Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B., sallied out, only to be saluted by a spurt of dust at his feet.

‘Pull up!’ said the Second in Command; ‘I don’t want my step in that way, Colonel. He’s as dangerous as a mad dog.’

‘Shoot him like one, then,’ said the Colonel, bitterly, ‘if he won’t take his chance, My regiment, too! If it had been the Towheads I could have under stood.’

Private Simmons had occupied a strong position near a well on the edge of the parade-ground, and was defying the regiment to come on. The regiment was not anxious to comply, for there is small honor in being shot by a fellow-private. Only Corporal Slane, rifle in hand, threw himself down on the ground, and wormed his way toward the well.

‘Don’t shoot,’ said he to the men round him; ‘like as not you’ll hit me. I’ll catch the beggar, livin’.’

Simmons ceased shouting for a while, and the noise of trap-wheels could be heard across the plain. Major Oldyne Commanding the Horse Battery, was coming back from a dinner in the Civil Lines; was driving after his usual custom—that is to say, as fast as the horse could go.

‘A orf’cer! A blooming spangled orf’cer,’ shrieked Simmons; ‘I’ll make a scarecrow of that orf’cer!’ The trap stopped.

‘What’s this?’ demanded the Major of Gunners. ‘You there, drop your rifle.’

‘Why, it’s Jerry Blazes! I ain’t got no quarrel with you, Jerry Blazes. Pass frien’, an’ all’s well!’

But Jerry Blazes had not the faintest intention of passing a dangerous murderer. He was, as his adoring Battery swore long and fervently, without knowledge of fear, and they were surely the best judges, for Jerry Blazes, it was notorious, had done his possible to kill a man each time the Battery went out.

He walked toward Simmons, with the intention of rushing him, and knocking him down.

‘Don’t make me do it, Sir,’ said Simmons; ‘I ain’t got nothing agin you. Ah! you would?’—the Major broke into a run—‘Take that then!’

The Major dropped with a bullet through his shoulder, and Simmons stood over him. He had lost the satisfaction of killing Losson in the desired way: hut here was a helpless body to his hand. Should be slip in another cartridge, and blow off the head, or with the butt smash in the white face? He stopped to consider, and a cry went up from the far side of the parade-ground: ‘He’s killed Jerry Blazes!’ But in the shelter of the well-pillars Simmons was safe except when he stepped out to fire. ‘I’ll blow yer ’andsome ’ead off, Jerry Blazes,’ said Simmons, reflectively. ‘Six an’ three is nine an one is ten, an’ that leaves me another nineteen, an’ one for myself.’ He tugged at the string of the second packet of ammunition. Corporal Slane crawled out of the shadow of a bank into the moonlight.

‘I see you!’ said Simmons. ‘Come a bit furder on an’ I’ll do for you.’

‘I’m comm’,’ said Corporal Slane, briefly; ‘you’ve done a bad day’s work, Sim. Come out ’ere an’ come back with me.’

‘Come to,——’ laugbed Simmons, sending a cartridge home with his thumb. ‘Not before I’ve settled you an’ Jerry Blazes.’

The Corporal was lying at full length in the dust of the parade-ground, a rifle under him. Some of the less-cautious men in the distance shouted: ‘Shoot ‘im! Shoot ‘im, Slane !’

page 3

‘You move ’and or foot, Slane,’ said Simmons, ‘an’ I’ll kick Jerry Blazes’ ’ead in, and shoot you after.’

‘I ain’t movin’,’ said the Corporal, raising his head; ‘you daren’t ’it a man on ’is legs. Let go o’ Jerry Blazes an’ come out o’ that with your fistes. Come an’ ’it me. You daren’t, you bloomin’ dog-shooter!’

‘I dare.’

‘You lie, you man-sticker. You sneakin’, Sheeny butcher, you lie. See there!’ Slane kicked the rifle away, and stood up in the peril of his life. ‘Come on, now!’

The temptation was more than Simmons could resist, for the Corporal in his white clothes offered a perfect mark.

‘Don’t misname me,’ shouted Simmons, firing as he spoke. The shot missed, and the shooter, blind with rage, threw his rifle down and rushed at Slane from the protection of the well. Within striking distance, he kicked savagely at Slane’s stomach, but the weedy Corporal knew something of Simmons’s weakness, and knew, too, the deadly guard for that kick. Bowing forward and drawing up his right leg till the heel of the right foot was set some three inches above the inside of the left knee-cap, he met the blow standing on one leg—exactly as Gonds stand when they meditate—and ready for the fall that would follow. There was an oath, the Corporal fell over his own left as shinbone met shinbone, and the Private collapsed, his right leg broken an inch above the ankle.

‘’Pity you don’t know that guard, Sim,’ said Slane, spitting out the dust as he rose. Then raising his voice— ‘Come an’ take him orf. I’ve bruk ’is leg.’ This was not strictly true, for the Private had accomplished his own downfall, since it is the special merit of that leg-guard that the harder the kick the greater the kicker’s discomfiture.

Slane walked to Jerry Blazes and hung over him with ostentatious anxiety, while Simmons, weeping with pain, was carried away. ‘’Ope you ain’t ’urt badly, Sir,’ said Slane. The Major had fainted, and there was an ugly, ragged hole through the top of his arm. Slane knelt down and murmured. ‘S’elp me, I believe ’e’s dead. Well, if that ain’t my blooming luck all over!’

But the Major was destined to lead his Battery afield for many a long day with unshaken nerve. He was removed, and nursed and petted into convalescence, while the Battery discussed the wisdom of capturing Simmons, and blowing him from a gun. They idolized their Major, and his reappearance on parade brought about a scene nowhere provided for in the Army Regulations.

Great, too, was the glory that fell to Slane’s share. The Gunners would have made him drunk thrice a day for at least a fortnight. Even the Colonel of his own regiment complimented him upon his coolness, and the local paper called him a hero. These things did not puff him up. When the Major offered him money and thanks, the virtuous Corporal took the one and put aside the other. But he had a request to make and prefaced it with many a ‘Beg y’pardon, Sir.’ Could the Major see his way to letting the Slane M’Kenna wedding be adorned by the presence of four Battery horses to pull a hired barouche? The Major could, and so could the Battery. Excessively so. It was a gorgeous wedding.

. . . . .

‘Wot did I do it for?’ said Corporal Slane. ‘For the ’orses o’ course. Jhansi ain’t a beauty to look at, but I wasn’t goin’ to ’ave a hired turn-out. Jerry Blazes? If I ’adn’t ’a’ wanted something, Sim might ha’ blowed Jerry Blazes’ blooming ’ead into Hirish stew for aught I’d ’a’ cared.’

And they hanged Private Simmons—hanged him as high as Haman in hollow square of the regiment; and the Colonel said it was Drink; and the Chaplain was sure it was the Devil; and Simmons fancied it was both, but he didn’t know, and only hoped his fate would be a warning to his companions; and half a dozen ‘intelligent publicists’ wrote six beautiful leading articles on “The Prevalence of Crime in the Army.”

But not a soul thought of comparing the ‘bloody-minded Simmons’ to the squawking, gaping schoolgirl with which this story opens.

In the Interests of the Brethren

page 1 of 5

I WAS BUYING a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. ‘The colour is in the feeding,’ said he. ‘Unless you know how to feed ’em, it goes. Canaries are one of our hobbies.’ He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I recognised, turned, and nodded.

‘I took your advice about the canary,’ I said.

‘Did you? Good!’ he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder, and was parted from me by the crowd.

. . . . .

A few years ago I turned into a tobacconist’s to have a badly stopped pipe cleaned out.

‘Well! Well! And how did the canary do?’ said the man behind the counter. We shook hands, and ‘What’s your name?’ we both asked together.

His name was Lewis Holroyd Burges, of ‘Burges and Son,’ as I might have seen above the door—but Son had been killed in Egypt. His hair was whiter than it had been, and the eyes were sunk a little.

‘Well! Well! To think,’ said he, ‘of one man in all these millions turning up in this curious way, when there’s so many who don’t turn up at all—eh?’ (It was then that he told me of Son Lewis’s death and why the boy had been christened Lewis.) ‘Yes. There’s not much left for middle-aged people just at present. Even one’s hobbies—— We used to fish together. And the same with canaries! We used to breed ’em for colour—deep orange was our speciality. That’s why I spoke to you, if you remember; but I’ve sold all my birds. Well! Well! And now we must locate your trouble.’

He bent over my erring pipe and dealt with it skilfully as a surgeon. A soldier came in, spoke in an undertone, received a reply, and went out.

‘Many of my clients are soldiers nowadays, and a number of ’em belong to the Craft,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘It breaks my heart to give them the tobaccos they ask for. On the other hand, not one man in five thousand has a tobacco-palate. Preference, yes. Palate, no. Here’s your pipe, again. It deserves better treatment than it’s had. There’s a procedure, a ritual, in all things. Any time you’re passing by again, I assure you, you will be welcome. I’ve one or two odds and ends that may interest you.’

I left the shop with the rarest of all feelings on me—the sensation which is only youth’s right—that I might have made a friend. A little distance from the door I was accosted by a wounded man who asked for ‘Burges’s.’ The place seemed to be known in the neighbourhood.

I found my way to it again, and often after that, but it was not till my third visit that I discovered Mr. Burges held a half interest in Ackerman and Pernit’s, the great cigar-importers, which had come to him through an uncle whose children now lived almost in the Cromwell Road, and said that the uncle had been on the Stock Exchange.

‘I’m a shopkeeper by instinct,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘I like the ritual of handling things. The shop has done me well. I like to do well by the shop.’

It had been established by his grandfather in 1827, but the fittings and appointments must have been at least half a century older. The brown and red tobacco- and snuff-jars, with Crowns, Garters, and names of forgotten mixtures in gold leaf; the polished ‘Oronoque’ tobacco-barrels on which favoured customers sat ; the cherry-black mahogany counter, the delicately moulded shelves, the reeded cigar-cabinets, the German-silver-mounted scales, and the Dutch brass roll- and cake-cutter, were things to covet.

‘They aren’t so bad,’ he admitted. ‘That large Bristol jar hasn’t any duplicate to my knowledge. Those eight snuff-jars on the third shelf—they’re Dollin’s ware; he used to work for Wimble in Seventeen-Forty—are absolutely unique. Is there any one in the trade now could tell you what “Romano’s Hollande” was? Or “Scholten’s”? Here’s a snuff-mull of George the First’s time; and here’s a Louis Quinze—what am I talking of? Treize, Treize, of course—grater for making bran-snuff. They were regular tools of the shop in my grandfather’s day. And who on earth to leave ’em to outside the British Museum now, I can’t think! ‘

His pipes—I would this were a tale for virtuosi—his amazing collection of pipes was kept in the parlour, and this gave me the privilege of making his wife’s acquaintance. One morning, as I was looking covetously at a jacaranda-wood ‘cigarro’—not cigar-cabinet with silver lock-plates and drawer-knobs of Spanish work, a wounded Canadian came into the shop and disturbed our happy little committee.

‘Say,’ he began loudly, ‘are you the right place?’

‘Who sent you?’ Mr. Burges demanded.

‘A man from Messines. But that ain’t the point! I’ve got no certificates, nor papers nothin’, you understand. I left my Lodge owin’ ’em seventeen dollars back-dues. But this man at Messines told me it wouldn’t make any odds with you.’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘We meet to-night at 7 p.m.’

The man’s face fell a yard. ‘Hell!’ said he. ‘But I’m in hospital—I can’t get leaf.’

‘And Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 p.m.,’ Mr. Burges added promptly. ‘You’ll have to be proved, of course.’

‘Guess I can get by that all right,’ was the cheery reply. ‘Toosday, then.’ He limped off, beaming.

‘Who might that be?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know any more than you do—except he must be a Brother. London’s full of Masons now. Well! Well! We must do what we can these days. If you’ll come to tea this evening, I’ll take you on to Lodge afterwards. It’s a Lodge of Instruction.’

‘Delighted. Which is your Lodge?’ I said, for up till then he had not given me its name.

‘“Faith and Works 5837”—the third Saturday of every month. Our Lodge of Instruction meets nominally every Thursday, but we sit oftener than that now because there are so many Visiting Brothers in town. ‘Here another customer entered, and I went away much interested in the range of Brother Burgess hobbies.

At tea-time he was dressed as for Church, and wore gold pince-nez in lieu of the silver spectacles. I blessed my stars that I had thought to change into decent clothes.

page 2

Yes, we owe that much to the Craft,’ he assented. ‘All Ritual is fortifying. Ritual’s a natural necessity for mankind. The more things are upset, the more they fly to it. I abhor slovenly Ritual anywhere. By the way, would you mind assisting at the examinations, if there are many Visiting Brothers to-night? You’ll find some of ’em very rusty, but—it’s the Spirit, not the Letter, that giveth life. The question of Visiting Brethren is an important one. There are so many of them in London now, you see; and so few places where they can meet.’

‘You dear thing!’ said Mrs. Burges, and handed him his locked and initialed apron-case.

‘Our Lodge is only just round the corner,’ he went on. ‘You mustn’t be too critical of our appurtenances. The place was a garage once.’

As far as I could make out in the humiliating darkness, we wandered up a mews and into a courtyard. Mr. Burges piloted me, murmuring apologies for everything in advance.

‘You mustn’t expect——’ he was still saying when we stumbled up a porch and entered a carefully decorated ante-room hung round with Masonic prints. I noticed Peter Gilkes and Barton Wilson, fathers of ‘Emulation’ working, in the place of honour; Kneller’s Christopher Wren; Dunkerley, with his own Fitz-George book-plate below and the bend sinister on the Royal Arms; Hogarth’s caricature of Wilkes, also his disreputable ‘Night’; and a beautifully framed set of Grand Masters, from Anthony Sayer down.

‘Are these another hobby of yours?’ I asked.

‘Not this time,’ Mr. Burges smiled. ‘We have to thank Brother Lemming for them.’ He introduced me to the senior partner of Lemming and Orton, whose little shop is hard to find, but whose words and cheques in the matter of prints are widely circulated.

‘The frames are the best part of ’em,’ said Brother Lemming after my compliments. ‘There are some more in the Lodge Room. Come and look. We’ve got the big Desaguliers there that nearly went to Iowa.’

I had never seen a Lodge Room better fitted. From mosaicked floor to appropriate ceiling, from curtain to pillar, implements to seats, seats to lights, and little carved music-loft at one end, every detail was perfect in particular kind and general design. I said what I thought of them all, many times over.

‘I told you I was a Ritualist,’ said Mr. Burges. ‘Look at those carved corn-sheaves and grapes on the back of these Wardens’ chairs. That’s the old tradition—before Masonic furnishers spoilt it. I picked up that pair in Stepney ten years ago—the same time I got the gavel.’ It was of ancient, yellowed ivory, cut all in one piece out of some tremendous tusk. ‘That came from the Gold Coast,’ he said. ‘It belonged to a Military Lodge there in 1794. You can see the inscription.’

‘If it’s a fair question,’ I began, ‘how much——’

‘It stood us,’ said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, ‘an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even with what Brother Anstruther—he was our contractor—cheated himself out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I don’t understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we’ve put in—oh, quite another little sum. Now we’ll go to the examination-room and take on the Brethren.’

He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry). A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. ‘That’s only the head of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,’ said an officer of the Lodge.

Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: ‘Don’t be surprised. They come all shapes.’

‘Shapes’ was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all head-bandages—escaped from an Officers’ Hospital, Pentonville way. He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the signs. The next—a New Zealander from Taranaki—reversed the process, for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him.

‘I don’t blame yer,’ he gulped at last. ‘I wouldn’t pass my own self on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I’ve had any religion, it’s been all the religion I’ve had. For God’s sake, let me sit in Lodge again, Brother!’

When the examinations were ended, a Lodge Officer came round with our aprons—no tinsel or silver-gilt confections, but heavily-corded silk with tassels and—where a man could prove he was entitled to them-levels, of decent plate. Some one in front of me tightened a belt on a stiffly silent person in civil clothes with dischargebadge. ‘’Strewth! This is comfort again,’ I heard him say. The companion nodded. The man went on suddenly: ‘Here! What’re you doing? Leave off! You promised not to Chuck it!’ and dabbed at his companion’s streaming eyes.

‘Let him leak,’ said an Australian signaller. ‘Can’t you see how happy the beggar is? ‘

It appeared that the silent Brother was a ‘shell-shocker’ whom Brother Lemming had passed, on the guarantee of his friend and—what moved Lemming more—the threat that, were he refused, he would have fits from pure disappointment. So the ‘shocker’ went happily and silently among Brethren evidently accustomed to these displays.

We fell in, two by two, according to tradition, fifty of us at least, and were played into Lodge by what I thought was an harmonium, but which I discovered to be an organ of repute. It took time to settle us down, for ten or twelve were cripples and had to be helped into long or easy chairs. I sat between a one-footed R.A.M.C. Corporal and a Captain of Territorials, who, he told me, had ‘had a brawl’ with a bomb, which had bent him in two directions. ‘But that’s first-class Bach the organist is giving us now,’ he said delightedly. ‘I’d like to know him. I used to be a piano-thumper of sorts.’

‘I’ll introduce you after Lodge,’ said one of the regular Brethren behind us—a plump, torpedo-bearded man, who turned out to be a doctor. ‘After all, there’s nobody to touch Bach, is there?’ Those two plunged at once into musical talk, which to outsiders is as fascinating as trigonometry.

Now a Lodge of Instruction is mainly a parade-ground for Ritual. It cannot initiate or confer degrees, but is limited to rehearsals and lectures. Worshipful Brother Burges, resplendent in Solomon’s Chair (I found out later where that, too, had been picked up), briefly told the Visiting Brethren how welcome they were and always would be, and asked them to vote what ceremony should be rendered for their instruction.

page 3

When the decision was announced he wanted to know whether any Visiting Brothers would take the duties of Lodge Officers. They protested bashfully that they were too rusty. ‘The very reason why,’ said Brother Surges, while the organ Bached softly. My musical Captain wriggled in his chair.

‘One moment, Worshipful Sir.’ The plump Doctor rose. ‘We have here a musician for whom place and opportunity are needed. Only,’ he went on colloquially, ‘those organ-loft steps are a bit steep.’

‘How much,’ said Brother Burges with the solemnity of an initiation, ‘does our Brother weigh? ‘

‘Very little over eight stone,’ said the Brother. ‘Weighed this morning, Worshipful Sir.’

The Past District Grand Officer, who was also a Battery-Sergeant-Major, waddled across, lifted the slight weight in his arms and bore it to the loft, where, the regular organist pumping, it played joyously as a soul caught up to Heaven by surprise.

When the visitors had been coaxed to supply the necessary officers, a ceremony was rehearsed. Brother Burges forbade the regular members to prompt. The visitors had to work entirely by themselves, but, on the Battery-Sergeant-Major taking a hand, he was ruled out as of too exalted rank. They floundered badly after that support was withdrawn.

The one—footed R.A.M.C. on my right chuckled.

‘D’you like it?’ said the Doctor to him.

‘Do I? It’s Heaven to me, sittin’ in Lodge again. It’s all comin’ back now, watching their mistakes. I haven’t much religion, but all I had I learnt in Lodge.’ Recognising me, he flushed a little as one does when one says a thing twice over in another’s hearing. ‘Yes, “ veiled in all’gory and illustrated in symbols”—the Fatherhood of God, an’ the Brotherhood of Man; an’ what more in Hell do you want? . . . Look at ’em!’ He broke off giggling. ‘See! See! They’ve tied the whole thing into knots. I could ha’ done it better myself—my one foot in France. Yes, I should think they ought to do it again! ‘

The new organist covered the little confusion that had arisen with what sounded like the wings of angels.

When the amateurs, rather red and hot, had finished, they demanded an exhibition-working of their bungled ceremony by Regular Brethren of the Lodge. Then I realised for the first time what word-and-gesture-perfect Ritual can be brought to mean. We all applauded, the one-footed Corporal most of all.

‘We are rather proud of our working, and this is an audience worth playing up to,’ the Doctor said.

Next the Master delivered a little lecture on the meanings of some pictured symbols and diagrams. His theme was a well-worn one, but his deep holding voice made it fresh.

‘Marvellous how these old copybook-headings persist,’ the Doctor said.

‘That’s all right!’ the one-footed man spoke cautiously out of the side of his mouth like a boy in form. ‘But they’re the kind o’ copybook-headin’s we shall find burnin’ round our bunks in Hell. Believe me-ee! I’ve broke enough of ’em to know. Now, hsh!’ He leaned forward, drinking it all in.

Presently Brother Burges touched on a point which had given rise to some diversity of Ritual. He asked for information. ‘Well, in Jamaica, Worshipful Sir,’ a Visiting Brother began, and explained how they worked that detail in his parts. Another and another joined in from different quarters of the Lodge (and the world), and when they were well warmed the Doctor sidled softly round the walls and, over our shoulders, passed us cigarettes.

‘A shocking innovation,’ he said, as he returned to the Captain-musician’s vacant seat on my left. ‘But men can’t really talk without tobacco, and we’re only a Lodge of Instruction.’

‘An’ I’ve learned more in one evenin’ here than ten years.’ The one-footed man turned round for an instant from a dark, sour-looking Yeoman in spurs who was laying down the law on Dutch Ritual. The blue haze and the talk increased, while the organ from the loft blessed us all.

‘But this is delightful,’ said I to the Doctor. ‘How did it all happen?’

‘Brother Burges started it. He used to talk to the men who dropped into his shop when the war began. He told us sleepy old chaps in Lodge that what men wanted more than anything else was Lodges where they could sit—just sit and be happy like we are now. He was right too. We’re learning things in the war. A man’s Lodge means more to him than people imagine. As our friend on your right said just now, very often Masonry’s the only practical creed we’ve ever listened to since we were children. Platitudes or no platitudes, it squares with what everybody knows ought to be done.’ He sighed. ‘And if this war hasn’t brought home the Brotherhood of Man to us all, I’m—a Hun! ‘

‘How did you get your visitors?’ I went on.

‘Oh, I told a few fellows in hospital near here, at Burgess suggestion, that we had a Lodge of Instruction and they’d be welcome. And they came. And they told their friends. And they came! That was two years ago—and now we’ve Lodge of Instruction two nights a week, and a matinee nearly every Tuesday and Friday for the men who can’t get evening leave. Yes, it’s all very curious. I’d no notion what the Craft meant—and means—till this war.’

‘Nor I, till this evening,’ I replied.

‘Yet it’s quite natural if you think. Here’s London—all England—packed with the Craft from all over the world, and nowhere for them to go. Why, our weekly visiting attendance for the last four months averaged just under a hundred and forty. Divide by four—call it thirty-five Visiting Brethren a time. Our record’s seventy-one, but we have packed in as many as eighty-four at Banquets. You can see for yourself what a potty little hole we are!’

‘Banquets too!’ I cried. ‘It must cost like anything. May the Visiting Brethren——’

The Doctor—his name was Keede—laughed. ‘No, a Visiting Brother may not.’

‘But when a man has had an evening like this, he wants to——’

‘That’s what they all say. That makes our difficulty. They do exactly what you were going to suggest, and they’re offended if we don’t take it.’

‘Don’t you?’ I asked.

page 4

‘My dear man—what does it come to? They can’t all stay to Banquet. Say one hundred suppers a week—fifteen quid—sixty a month—seven hundred and twenty a year. How much are Lemming and Orton worth? And Ellis and McKnight—that long big man over yonder—the provision dealers? How much d’you suppose could Burges write a cheque for and not feel? ’Tisn’t as if he had to save for any one now. I assure you we have no scruple in calling on the Visiting Brethren when we want anything. We couldn’t do the work otherwise. Have you noticed how the Lodge is kept—brass-work, jewels, furniture, and so on? ‘

‘I have indeed,’ I said. ‘It’s like a ship. You could eat your dinner off the floor.’

‘Well, come here on a bye-day and you’ll often find half-a-dozen Brethren, with eight legs between ’em, polishing and ronuking and sweeping everything they can get at. I cured a shell-shocker this spring by giving him our jewels to look after. He pretty well polished the numbers off ’em, but—it kept him from fighting Huns in his sleep. And when we need Masters to take our duties—two matinees a week is rather a tax—we’ve the choice of P.M.’s from all over the world. The Dominions are much keener on Ritual than an average English Lodge. Besides that—— Oh, we’re going to adjourn. Listen to the greetings. They’ll be interesting.’

The crack of the great gavel brought us to our feet, after some surging and plunging among the cripples. Then the Battery-Sergeant-Major, in a trained voice, delivered hearty and fraternal greetings to ‘Faith and Works’ from his tropical District and Lodge. The others followed, with out order, in every tone between a grunt and a squeak. I heard ‘Hauraki,’ ‘Inyanga-Umbezi,’ ‘Aloha,’ ‘Southern Lights’ (from somewhere Punta Arenas way), ‘Lodge of Rough Ashlars’ (and that Newfoundland Naval Brother looked it), two or three Stars of something or other, half-a-dozen cardinal virtues, variously arranged, hailing from Klondyke to Kalgoorlie, one Military Lodge on one of the fronts, thrown in with a severe Scots burr by my friend of the head-bandages, and the rest as mixed as the Empire itself. Just at the end there was a little stir. The silent Brother had begun to make noises; his companion tried to soothe him.

‘Let him be! Let him be!’ the Doctor called professionally. The man jerked and mouthed, and at last mumbled something unintelligible even to his friend, but a small dark P.M. pushed forward importantly.

‘It iss all right,’ he said. ‘He wants to say——’ he spat out some yard-long Welsh name, adding, ‘That means Pembroke Docks, Worshipful Sir. We haf good Masons in Wales, too.’ The silent man nodded approval.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, quite unmoved. ‘It happens that way sometimes. Hespere panta fereis, isn’t it? The Star brings ’em all home. I must get a note of that fellow’s case after Lodge. I saw you didn’t care for music,’ he went on, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with a little more. It’s a paraphrase from Micah. Our organist arranged it. We sing it antiphonally, as a sort of dismissal.’

Even I could appreciate what followed. The singing seemed confined to half-a-dozen trained voices answering each other till the last line, when the full Lodge came in. I give it as I heard it

‘We have showèd thee, O Man,
What is good.
What doth the Lord require of us?
Or Conscience’ self desire of us?
But to do justly—
But to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with our God,
As every Mason should.’

Then we were played and sung out to the quaint tune of the ‘Entered Apprentices’ Song.’ I noticed that the regular Brethren of the Lodge did not begin to take off their regalia till the lines

‘Great Kings, Dukes, and Lords
Have laid down their swords.’

They moved into the ante-room, now set for the Banquet, on the verse

‘Antiquity’s pride
We have on our side,
Which maketh men just in their station.’

The Brother (a big-boned clergyman) that I found myself next to at table told me the custom was ‘a fond thing vainly invented’ on the strength of some old legend. He laid down that Masonry should be regarded as an ‘intellectual abstraction.’ An Officer of Engineers disagreed with him, and told us how in Flanders, a year before, some ten or twelve Brethren held Lodge in what was left of a Church. Save for the Emblems of Mortality and plenty of rough ashlars, there was no furniture.

‘I warrant you weren’t a bit the worse for that,’ said the Clergyman. ‘The idea should be enough without trappings.’

‘But it wasn’t,’ said the other. ‘We took a lot of trouble to make our regalia out of camouflage-stuff that we’d pinched, and we manufactured our jewels from old metal. I’ve got the set now. It kept us happy for weeks.’

‘Ye were absolutely irregular an’ unauthorised. Whaur was your Warrant?’ said the Brother from the Military Lodge. ‘Grand Lodge ought to take steps against——‘

‘If Grand Lodge had any sense,’ a private three places up our table broke in, ‘it ’ud warrant travelling Lodges at the front and attach first-class lecturers to ’em.’

‘Wad ye confer degrees promiscuously?’ said the scandalised Scot.

‘Every time a man asked, of course. You’d have half the Army in.’

The speaker played with the idea for a little while, and proved that, on the lowest scale of fees, Grand Lodge would get huge revenues.

‘I believe,’ said the Engineer Officer thoughtfully, ‘I could design a complete travelling Lodge outfit under forty pounds weight.’

‘Ye’re wrong. I’ll prove it. We’ve tried ourselves,’ said the Military Lodge man; and they went at it together across the table, each with his own note-book.

The ‘Banquet’ was simplicity itself. Many of us ate in haste so as to get back to barracks or hospitals, but now and again a Brother came in from the outer darkness to fill a chair and empty a plate. These were Brethren who had been there before and needed no examination.

page 5

One man lurched in—helmet, Flanders mud, accoutrements and all—fresh from the leave-train.

‘’Got two hours to wait for my train,’ he explained. ‘I remembered your night, though. My God, this is good! ‘

‘What is your train and from what station?’ said the Clergyman precisely. ‘Very well. What will you have to eat? ‘

‘Anything. Everything. I’ve thrown up a month’s rations in the Channel.’

He stoked himself for ten minutes without a word. Then, without a word, his face fell forward. The Clergyman had him by one already limp arm and steered him to a couch, where ho dropped and snored. No one took the trouble to turn round.

‘Is that usual too?’ I asked.

‘Why not?’ said the Clergyman. ‘I’m on duty to-night to wake them for their trains. They do not respect the Cloth on those occasions.’ He turned his broad back on me and continued his discussion with a Brother from Aberdeen by way of Mitylene where, in the intervals of mine-sweeping, he had evolved a complete theory of the Revelation of St. John the Divine in the Island of Patmos.

I fell into the hands of a Sergeant-Instructor of Machine Guns—by profession a designer of ladies’ dresses. He told me that Englishwomen as a class ‘lose on their corsets what they make on their clothes,’ and that ‘Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.’ Here, to my grief, he was buttonholed by a zealous Lieutenant of his own branch, and became a Sergeant again all in one click.

I drifted back and forth, studying the prints on the walls and the Masonic collection in the cases, while I listened to the inconceivable talk all round me. Little by little the company thinned, till at last there were only a dozen or so of us left. We gathered at the end of a table near the fire, the night-bird from Flanders trumpeting lustily into the hollow of his helmet, which some one had tipped over his face.

‘And how did it go with you?’ said the Doctor.

‘It was like a new world,’ I answered.

‘That’s what it is really.’ Brother Burges returned the gold pince-nez to their case and reshipped his silver spectacles. ‘Or that’s what it might be made with a little trouble. When I think of the possibilities of the Craft at this juncture I wonder——’ He stared into the fire.

‘I wonder, too,’ said the Sergeant-Major slowly, ‘but—on the whole—I’m inclined to agree with you. We could do much with Masonry.’

‘As an aid—as an aid—not as a substitute for Religion,’ the Clergyman snapped.

‘Oh, Lord! Can’t we give Religion a rest for a bit?’ the Doctor muttered. ‘It hasn’t done so—I beg your pardon all round.’

The Clergyman was bristling. ‘Kamerad!’ the wise Sergeant-Major went on, both hands up. ‘Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as an average plan of life. What I’ve seen at the front makes me sure of it.’

Brother Burges came out of his muse. ‘There ought to be a dozen—twenty—other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn’t the young men join? They practise what we’re always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what we can. What’s the use of old Masons if they can’t give a little help along their own lines? ‘

‘Exactly,’ said the Sergeant-Major, turning on the Doctor. ‘And what’s the darn use of a Brother if he isn’t allowed to help? ‘

‘Have it your own way then,’ said the Doctor testily. He had evidently been approached before. He took something the Sergeant-Major handed to him and pocketed it with a nod. ‘I was wrong,’ he said to me, ‘when I boasted of our independence. They get round us sometimes. This,’ he slapped his pocket, ‘will give a banquet on Tuesday. We don’t usually feed at matinees. It will be a surprise. By the way, try another sandwich. The ham are best.’ He pushed me a plate.

‘They are,’ I said. ‘I’ve only had five or six. I’ve been looking for them.’

‘’Glad you like them,’ said Brother Lemming. ‘Fed him myself, cured him myself—at my little place in Berkshire. His name was Charlemagne. By the way, Doc, am I to keep another one for next month?’

‘Of course,’ said the Doctor with his mouth full. ‘A little fatter than this chap, please. And don’t forget your promise about the pickled nasturtiums. They’re appreciated.’ Brother Lemming nodded above the pipe he had lit as we began a second supper. Suddenly the Clergyman, after a glance at the clock, scooped up half-a-dozen sandwiches from under my nose, put them into an oiled paper bag, and advanced cautiously towards the sleeper on the couch.

‘They wake rough sometimes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nerves, y’know.’ The Clergyman tip-toed directly behind the man’s head, and at arm’s length rapped on the dome of the helmet. The man woke in one vivid streak, as the Clergyman stepped back, and grabbed for a rifle that was not there.

‘You’ve barely half an hour to catch your train.’ The Clergyman passed him the sandwiches. ‘Come along.’

‘You’re uncommonly kind and I’m very grateful,’ said the man, wriggling into his stiff straps. He followed his guide into the darkness after saluting.

‘Who’s that?’ said Lemming.

‘Can’t say,’ the Doctor returned indifferently. ‘He’s been here before. He’s evidently a P.M. of sorts.’

‘Well! Well!’ said Brother Burges, whose eyelids were drooping. ‘We must all do what we can. Isn’t it almost time to lock up? ‘

‘I wonder,’ said I, as we helped each other into our coats, ‘what would happen if Grand Lodge knew about all this.’

‘About what?’ Lemming turned on me quickly.

‘A Lodge of Instruction open three nights and two afternoons a week—and running a lodging-house as well. It’s all very nice, but it doesn’t strike me somehow as regulation.’

‘The point hasn’t been raised yet,’ said Lemming. ‘We’ll settle it after the war. Meantime we shall go on.’

‘There ought to be scores of them,’ Brother Burges repeated as we went out of the door. ‘All London’s full of the Craft, and no places for them to meet in. Think of the possibilities of it! Think what could have been done by Masonry through Masonry for all the world. I hope I’m not censorious, but it sometimes crosses my mind that Grand Lodge may have thrown away its chance in the war almost as much as the Church has.’

‘Lucky for you the Padre is taking that chap to King’s Cross,’ said Brother Lemming, ‘or he’d be down your throat. What really troubles him is our legal position under Masonic Law. I think he’ll inform on us one of these days. Well, good night, all.’ The Doctor and Lemming turned off together.

‘Yes,’ said Brother Burges, slipping his arm into mine. ‘Almost as much as the Church has. But perhaps I’m too much of a Ritualist.’

I said nothing. I was speculating how soon I could steal a march on the Clergyman and inform against ‘Faith and Works No. 5837 E.C.’

In 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)

[a short tale]

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 recognise it by five red hand-prints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the whitewash between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass the grocer 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. Today, 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 honourable 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 extortioner 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 honour 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 practised 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 exactly 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 that 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 free-thinking 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 oillamp. 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 on to one of the beds with a shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a pale bluegreen 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 coloured 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 daytime 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 labouring backmuscles. 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 there 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 mesmerised dying man, and you will realise 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 teraphim that one reads 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 ‘makeup.’

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 purdahnashin 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, and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly—lost in this big India of ours. I dare not 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 patronises 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 be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.

In Flood Time

Tweed said tae Till:
‘What gars ye rin sae still?
Till said tae Tweed
‘Though ye rin wi’ speed
An’ I rin slaw—
Yet where ye droon ae man
I droon twa.’

THERE is no getting over the river to-night, Sahib. They say that a bullock-cart has been washed down already, and the ekka that went over a half-hour before you came has not yet reached the far side. Is the Sahib in haste? I will drive the ford-elephant in to show him. Ohé, mahout there in the shed! Bring out Ram Pershad, and if he will face the current, good. An elephant never lies, Sahib, and Ram Pershad is separated from his friend Kala Nag. He, too, wishes to cross to the far side. Well done! Well done! my King Go half-way across, mahoutji, and see what the river says. Well done, Ram Pershad! Pearl among elephants, go into the river! Hit him on the head, fool! Was the goad made only to scratch thine own fat back with, bastard? Strike strike! What are the boulders to thee, Ram Pershad, my Rustum, my mountain of strength? Go in! Go in!No, Sahib! It is useless. You can hear him trumpet. He is telling Kala Nag that he cannot come over. See! He has swung round and is shaking his head. He is no fool. He knows what the Barhwi means when it is angry. Aha! Indeed, thou art no fool, my child! Salaam, Ram Pershad, Bahadur! Take him under the trees, mahout, and see that he gets his spices. Well done, thou chiefest among tuskers! Salaam to the Sirkar and go to sleep.

What is to be done? The Sahib must wait till the river goes down. It will shrink to-morrow morning, if God pleases, or the day after at the latest! Now why does the Sahib get so angry? I am his servant. Before God, I did not create this stream! What can I do? My hut and all that is therein is at the service of the Sahib, and it is beginning to rain. Come away, my Lord. How will the river go down for your throwing abuse at it? In the old days the English people were not thus. The fire-carriage has made them soft. In the old days, when they drave behind horses by day or by night, they said naught if a river barred the way, or a carriage sat down in the mud. It was the will of God—not like a fire-carriage which goes and goes and goes, and would go though all the devils in the land hung on to its tail. The fire-carriage hath spoiled the English people. After all, what is a day lost, or, for that matter, what are two days? Is the Sahib going to his own wedding, that he is so mad with haste? Ho! ho! ho! I am an old man and see few Sahibs. Forgive me if I have forgotten the respect that is due to them. The Sahib is not angry?

His own wedding! Ho! ho! ho! The mind of an old man is like the numah-tree. Fruit, bud, blossom, and the dead leaves of all the years of the past flourish together. Old and new and that which is gone out of remembrance, all three are there! Sit on the bedstead, Sahib, and drink milk. Or—would the Sahib in truth care to drink my tobacco? It is good. It is the tobacco of Nuklao. My son, who is in service there, sends it to me. Drink, then, Sahib, if you know how to handle the tube. The Sahib takes it like a Mussulman. Wah! Wah! Where did he learn that? His own wedding! Ho! ho! ho! The Sahib says that there is no wedding in the matter at all. Now is it likely that the Sahib would speak true talk to me who am only a black man? Small wonder, then, that he is in haste. Thirty years have I beaten the gong at this ford, but never have I seen a Sahib in such haste. Thirty years, Sahib! That is a very long time. Thirty years ago this ford was on the track of the bunjaras, and I have seen two thousand pack-bullocks cross in one night. Now the rail has come, and the fire-carriage says buz-buz-buz, and a hundred lakhs of maunds slide across that big bridge. It is very wonderful; but the ford is lonely now that there are no bunjaras to camp under the trees.

Nay, do not trouble to look at the sky without.

It will rain till the dawn. Listen! The boulders are talking to-night in the bed of the river. Hear them! They would be husking your bones, Sahib, had you tried to cross. See, I will shut the door and no rain can enter. Wahi! Ahi! Ugh! Thirty years on the banks of the ford. An old man am I and—where is the oil for the lamp?

. . . . .

Your pardon, but, because of my years, I sleep no sounder than a dog; and you moved to the door. Look then, Sahib. Look and listen. A full half koss from bank to bank is the stream now—you can see it under the stars—and there are ten feet of water therein. It will not shrink because of the anger in your eyes, and it will not be quiet on account of your curses. Which is louder, Sahib—your voice or the voice of the river? Call to it—perhaps it will be ashamed. Lie down and sleep afresh, Sahib. I know the anger of the Barhwi when there has fallen rain in the foot-hills. I swam the flood, once, on a night tenfold worse than this, and by the Favour of God I was released from Death when I had come to the very gates thereof.May I tell the tale? Very good talk. I will fill the pipe anew.

Thirty years ago it was, when I was a young man and had but newly come to the ford. I was strong then, and the bunjaras had no doubt when I said: ‘This ford is clear.’ I have toiled all night up to my shoulder-blades in running water amid a hundred bullocks mad with fear, and have brought them across losing not a hoof. When all was done I fetched the shivering men, and they gave me for reward the pick of their cattle—the bell-bullock of the drove. So great was the honour in which I was held! But to-day, when the rain falls and the river rises, I creep into my hut and whimper like a dog. My strength is gone from me. I am an old man and the fire-carriage has made the ford desolate. They were wont to call me the Strong One of the Barhwi.

Behold my face, Sahib—it is the face of a monkey. And my arm—it is the arm of an old woman. I swear to you, Sahib, that a woman has loved this face and has rested in the hollow of this arm. Twenty years ago, Sahib. Believe me, this was true talk—twenty years ago.

Come to the door and look across. Can you see a thin fire very far away down the stream? That is the temple-fire, in the shrine of Hanuman, of the village of Pateera. North, under the big star, is the village itself, but it is hidden by a bend of the river. Is that far to swim, Sahib? Would you take off your clothes and adventure? Yet I swam to Pateera—not once, but many times; and there are muggers in the river too.

Love knows no caste; else why should I, a Mussulman and the son of a Mussulman, have sought a Hindu woman—a widow of the Hindus—the sister of the headman of Pateera? But it was even so. They of the headman’s household came on a pilgrimage to Muttra when She was but newly a bride. Silver tyres were upon the wheels of the bullock-cart, and silken curtains hid the woman. Sahib, I made no haste in their conveyance, for the wind parted the curtains and I saw Her. When they returned from pilgrimage the boy that was Her husband had died, and I saw Her again in the bullock-cart. By God, these Hindus are fools! What was it to me whether She was Hindu or Jain—scavenger, leper, or whole? I would have married Her and made Her a home by the ford. The Seventh of the Nine Bars says that a man may not marry one of the idolaters? Is that truth? Both Shiahs and Sunnis say that a Mussulman may not marry one of the idolaters? Is the Sahib a priest, then, that he knows so much? I will tell him something that he does not know. There is neither Shiah nor Sunni, forbidden nor idolater, in Love; and the Nine Bars are but nine little faggots that the flame of Love utterly burns away. In truth, I would have taken Her; but what could I do? The headman would have sent his men to break my head with staves. I am not—I was not—afraid of any five men; but against half a village who can prevail?

Therefore it was my custom, these things having been arranged between us twain, to go by night to the village of Pateera, and there we met among the crops, no man knowing aught of the matter. Behold, now! I was wont to cross here, skirting the jungle to the river bend where the railway bridge is, and thence across the elbow of land to Pateera. The light of the shrine was my guide when the nights were dark. That jungle near the river is very full of snakes—little karaits that sleep on the sand—and moreover, Her brothers would have slain me had they found me in the crops. But none knew—none knew save She and I; and the blown sand of the river-bed covered the track of my feet. In the hot months it was an easy thing to pass from the ford to Pateera, and in the first Rains, when the river rose slowly, it was an easy thing also. I set the strength of my body against the strength of the stream, and nightly I ate in my hut here and drank at Pateera yonder. She had said that one Hirnam Singh, a thief, had sought Her, and he was of a village up the river but on the same bank. All Sikhs are dogs, and they have refused in their folly that good gift of God—tobacco. I was ready to destroy Hirnam Singh that ever he had come nigh Her; and the more because he had sworn to Her that She had a lover, and that he would lie in wait and give the name to the headman unless She went away with him. What curs are these Sikhs!

After that news I swam always with a little sharp knife in my belt, and evil would it have been for a man had he stayed me. I knew not the face of Hirnam Singh, but I would have killed any who came between me and Her.

Upon a night in the beginning of the Rains I was minded to go across to Pateera, albeit the river was angry. Now the nature of the Barhwi is this, Sahib. In twenty breaths it comes down from the Hills a wall three feet high, and I have seen it, between the lighting of a fire and the cooking of a cake, grow from a runnel to a sister of the Jumna.

When I left this bank there was a shoal a half-mile down, and I made shift to fetch it and draw breath there ere going forward; for I felt the hands of the river heavy upon my heels. Yet what will a young man not do for Love’s sake? There was but little light from the stars, and midway to the shoal a branch of the stinking deodar tree brushed my mouth as I swam. That was a sign of heavy rain in the foot-hills and beyond, for the deodar is a strong tree, not easily shaken from the hillsides. I made haste, the river aiding me, but ere I had touched the shoal, the pulse of the stream beat, as it were, within me and around, and, behold, the shoal was gone and I rode high on the crest of a wave that ran from bank to bank. Has the Sahib ever been cast into much water that fights and will not let a man use his limbs? To me, my head upon the water, it seemed as though there were naught but water to the world’s end, and the river drave me with its driftwood. A man is a very little thing in the belly of a flood. And this flood, though I knew it not, was the Great Flood about which men talk still. My liver was dissolved and I lay like a log upon my back in the fear of Death. There were living things in the water, crying and howling grievously—beasts of the forest and cattle, and once the voice of a man asking for help. But the rain came and lashed the water white, and I heard no more save the roar of the boulders below and the roar of the rain above. Thus I was whirled downstream, wrestling for the breath in me. It is very hard to die when one is young. Can the Sahib, standing here, see the railway bridge? Look, there are the lights of the mail-train going to Peshawur! The bridge is now twenty feet above the river, but upon that night the water was roaring against the lattice-work, and against the lattice came I feet first. But much driftwood was piled there and upon the piers, and I took no great hurt. Only the river pressed me as a strong man presses a weaker. Scarcely could I take hold of the lattice-work and crawl to the upper boom. Sahib, the water was foaming across the rails a foot deep! Judge therefore what manner of flood it must have been. I could not hear. I could not see. I could but lie on the boom and pant for breath.

After a while the rain ceased and there came out in the sky certain new-washed stars, and by their light I saw that there was no end to the black water as far as the eye could travel, and the water had risen upon the rails. There were dead beasts in the driftwood on the piers, and others caught by the neck in the lattice-work, and others not yet drowned who strove to find a foothold on the lattice-work-buffaloes and kine, and wild pig, and deer one or two, and snakes and jackals past all counting. Their bodies were black upon the left side of the bridge, but the smaller of them were forced through the lattice-work and whirled down-stream.

Thereafter the stars died and the rain came down afresh and the river rose yet more, and I felt the bridge begin to stir under me as a man stirs in his sleep ere he wakes. But I was not afraid, Sahib. I swear to you that I was not afraid, though I had no power in my limbs. I knew that I should not die till I had seen Her once more. But I was very cold, and I felt that the bridge must go.

There was a trembling in the water, such a trembling as goes before the coming of a great wave, and the bridge lifted its flank to the rush of that coming so that the right lattice dipped under water and the left rose clear. On my beard, Sahib, I am speaking God’s truth! As a Mirzapore stone-boat careens to the wind, so the Barhwi Bridge turned. Thus and in no other manner.

I slid from the boom into deep water, and behind me came the wave of the wrath of the river. I heard its voice and the scream of the middle part of the bridge as it moved from the piers and sank, and I knew no more till I rose in the middle of the great flood. I put forth my hand to swim, and lo! it fell upon the knotted hair of the head of a man. He was dead, for no one but I, the Strong One of Barhwi, could have lived in that race. He had been dead full two days, for he rode high, wallowing, and was an aid to me. I laughed then, knowing for a surety that I should yet see Her and take no harm; and I twisted my fingers in the hair of the man, for I was far spent, and together we went down the stream—he the dead and I the living. Lacking that help I should have sunk: the cold was in my marrow, and my flesh was ribbed and sodden on my bones. But he had no fear who had known the uttermost of the power of the river; and I let him go where he chose. At last we came into the power of a side-current that set to the right bank, and I strove with my feet to draw with it. But the dead man swung heavily in the whirl, and I feared that some branch had struck him and that he would sink. The tops of the tamarisks brushed my knees, so I knew we were come into flood-water above the crops, and, after, I let down my legs and felt bottom—the ridge of a field—and, after, the dead man stayed upon a knoll under a fig-tree, and I drew my body from the water rejoicing.

Does the Sahib know whither the backwash of the flood had borne me? To the knoll which is the eastern boundary-mark of the village of Pateera! No other place. I drew the dead man up on the grass for the service that he had done me, and also because I knew not whether I should need him again. Then I went, crying thrice like a jackal, to the appointed place, which was near the byre of the headman’s house. But my Love was already there, weeping. She feared that the flood had swept my hut at the Barhwi Ford. When I came softly through the ankle-deep water, She thought it was a ghost and would have fled, but I put my arms round Her, and—I was no ghost in those days, though I am an old man now. Ho! ho! Dried corn, in truth. Maize without juice. Ho! ho!

I told Her the story of the breaking of the Barhwi Bridge, and She said that I was greater than mortal man, for none may cross the Barhwi in full flood, and I had seen what never man had seen before. Hand in hand we went to the knoll where the dead lay, and I showed Her by what help I had made the ford. She looked also upon the body under the stars, for the latter end of the night was clear, and hid Her face in Her hands, crying: ‘It is the body of Hirnam Singh! ‘ I said: ‘The swine is of more use dead than living, my Beloved,’ and She said: ‘Surely, for he has saved the dearest life in the world to my love. None the less, he cannot stay here, for that would bring shame upon me.’ The body was not a gunshot from Her door.

Then said I, rolling the body with my hands ‘God hath judged between us, Hirnam Singh, that thy blood might not be upon my head. Now, whether I have done thee a wrong in keeping thee from the burning-ghat, do thou and the crows settle together.’ So I cast him adrift into the flood-water, and he was drawn out to the open, ever wagging his thick black beard like a priest under the pulpit-board. And I saw no more of Hirnam Singh.

Before the breaking of the day we two parted, and I moved towards such of the jungle as was not flooded. With the full light I saw what I had done in the darkness, and the bones of my body were loosened in my flesh, for there ran two koss of raging water between the village of Pateera and the trees of the far bank, and, in the middle, the piers of the Barhwi Bridge showed like broken teeth in the jaw of an old man. Nor was there any life upon the waters—neither birds nor boats, but only an army of drowned things—bullocks and horses and men—and the river was redder than blood from the clay of the foot-hills. Never had I seen such a flood—never since that year have I seen the like—and, O Sahib, no man living had done what I had done. There was no return for me that day. Not for all the lands of the headman would I venture a second time without the shield of darkness that cloaks danger. I went a koss up the river to the house of a blacksmith, saying that the flood had swept me from my hut, and they gave me food. Seven days I stayed with the blacksmith, till a boat came and I returned to my house. There was no trace of wall, or roof, or floor—naught but a patch of slimy mud. Judge, therefore, Sahib, how far the river must have risen.

It was written that I should not die either in my house, or in the heart of the Barhwi, or under the wreck of the Barhwi Bridge, for God sent down Hirnam Singh two days dead, though I know not how the man died, to be my buoy and support. Hirnam Singh has been in Hell these twenty years, and the thought of that night must be the flower of his torment.

Listen, Sahib! The river has changed its voice. It is going to sleep before the dawn, to which there is yet one hour. With the light it will come down afresh. How do I know? Have I been here thirty years without knowing the voice of the river as a father knows the voice of his son? Every moment it is talking less angrily. I swear that ere will be no danger for one hour or, perhaps, two. I cannot answer for the morning. Be quick, Sahib! I will call Ram Pershad, and he will not turn back this time. Is the paulin tightly corded upon all the baggage? Ohé, mahout with a mud head, the elephant for the Sahib, and tell them on the far side that there will be no crossing after daylight.

Money? Nay, Sahib. I am not of that kind. No, not even to give sweetmeats to the baby-folk. My house, look you, is empty, and I am an old man.

Dutt, Ram Pershad! Dutt! Dutt! Dutt! Good luck go with you, Sahib.

1. I grieve to say that the Warden of the Barhwi Ford is responsible here for two very bad puns in the vernacular.—R.K.

In Flood Time

Tweed said tae Till:
‘What gars ye rin sae still?
Till said tae Tweed
‘Though ye rin wi’ speed
An’ I rin slaw—
Yet where ye droon ae man
I droon twa.’

[a short tale]

Nay, do not trouble to look at the sky without.

. . . . .

Money? Nay, Sahib. I am not of that kind. No, not even to give sweetmeats to the baby-folk. My house, look you, is empty, and I am an old man.

Dutt, Ram Pershad! Dutt! Dutt! Dutt! Good luck go with you, Sahib.

1. I grieve to say that the Warden of the Barhwi Ford is responsible here for two very bad puns in the vernacular.—R.K.