page 1 of 6

AS the Three Musketeers share their silver, tobacco, and liquor together, as they protect each other in barracks or camp, and as they rejoice together over the joy of one, so do they divide their sorrows. When Ortheris’s irrepressible tongue has brought him into cells for a season, or Learoyd has run amok through his kit and accoutrements, or Mulvaney has indulged in strong waters, and under their influence reproved his Commanding Officer, you can see the trouble in the faces of the untouched two. And the rest of the Regiment know that comment or jest is unsafe. Generally the three avoid Orderly-Room and the Corner Shop that follows, leaving both to the young bloods who have not sown their wild oats; but there are occasions——For instance, Ortheris was sitting on the drawbridge of the main gate of Fort Amara, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe, bowl down, in his mouth. Learoyd was lying at full length on the turf of the glacis, kicking his heels in the air, and I came round the corner and asked for Mulvaney.

Ortheris spat into the Ditch and shook his head. ‘No good seein’ ’im now,’ said Ortheris; ‘’e’s a bloomin’ camel. Listen.’

I heard on the flags of the veranda opposite to the cells, which are close to the Guard-Room, a measured step that I could have identified out of the tramp of an army. There were twenty paces crescendo, a pause, and then twenty diminuendo.

‘That’s ’im,’ said Ortheris; ‘my Gawd, that’s ’im! All for a bloomin’ button you could see your face in an’ a bit o’ lip that a bloomin’ Harkangel would ’a’ guv back.’

Mulvaney was doing pack-drill–was compelled, that is to say, to walk up and down for certain hours in full marching order, with rifle, bayonet, ammunition, knapsack, and overcoat. And his offence was being dirty on parade! I nearly fell into the Fort Ditch with astonishment and wrath, for Mulvaney is the smartest man that ever mounted guard, and would as soon think of turning out uncleanly as of dispensing with his trousers.

‘Who was the Sergeant that checked him,’ I asked.

‘Mullins, o’ course,’ said Ortheris. ‘There ain’t no other man would whip ’im on the peg so. But Mullins ain’t a man. ’E’s a dirty little pig scraper, that’s wot ’e is.’

‘What did Mulvaney say? He’s not the make of man to take that quietly.’

‘Say! Bin better for ’im if ’e’d shut ’is mouth. Lord, ’ow we laughed! “Sargint,” ’e sez, “ye say I’m dirty. Well,” sez ’e, “when your wife lets you blow your own nose for yourself, perhaps you’ll know wot dirt is. You’re himperfec’ly eddicated, Sargint,” sez ’e, an’ then we fell in. But after p’rade, ’e was up an’ Mullins was swearin’ ’imself black in the face at Ord’ly-Room that Mulvaney ’ad called ’im a swine an’ Lord knows wot all. You know Mullins. ’E’ll ’ave ’is ’ead broke in one o’ these days. ’E’s too big a bloomin’ liar for ord’nary consumption. “Three hours’ can an’ kit,” sez the Colonel; “not for bein’ dirty on p’rade, but for ’avin’ said somethin’ to Mullins, tho’ I do not believe,” sez ’e, “you said wot ’e said you said.” An’ Mulvaney fell away sayin’ nothin’. You know ’e never speaks to the Colonel for fear o’ gettin’ ’imself fresh copped.’

Mullins, a very young and very much married Sergeant, whose manners were partly the result of innate depravity and partly of imperfectly digested Board School, came over the bridge, and most rudely asked Ortheris what he was doing.

‘Me?’ said Ortheris. ‘Ow! I’m waiting for my C’mission. Seed it comin’ along yit?’

Mullins turned purple and passed on. There was the sound of a gentle chuckle from the glacis where Learoyd lay.

‘’E expects to get his C’mission some day,’ explained Ortheris. ‘Gawd ’elp the Mess that ’ave to put their ’ands into the same kiddy as ’im! Wot time d’you make it, sir? Fower! Mulvaney’ll be out in ’arf an hour. You don’t want to buy a dorg, sir, do you? A pup you can trust—’arf Rampur by the Colonel’s grey’ound.’

‘Ortheris,’ I answered sternly, for I knew what was in his mind, ‘do you mean to say that——’

‘I didn’t mean to arx money o’ you, any’ow,’ said Ortheris. ‘I’d ’a’ sold you the dorg good an’ cheap, but—but—I know Mulvaney’ll want somethin’ after we’ve walked ’im orf, an’ I ain’t got nothin’, nor ’e ’asn’t neither. I’d sooner sell you the dorg, sir. ’Strewth I would!’

A shadow fell on the drawbridge, and Ortheris began to rise into the air, lifted by a huge hand upon his collar.

‘Onnything but t’ braass,’ said Learoyd quietly, as he held the Londoner over the Ditch. ‘Onnything but t’ braass, Orth’ris, ma son! Ah’ve got one rupee eight annas ma own.’ He showed two coins, and replaced Ortheris on the drawbridge rail.

‘Very good,’ I said; ‘where are you going to?’

‘Goin’ to walk ’im orf w’en ’e comes out—two miles or three or fower,’ said Ortheris.

The footsteps within ceased. I heard the dull thud of a knapsack falling on a bedstead, followed by the rattle of arms. Ten minutes later, Mulvaney, faultlessly dressed, his lips tight and his face as black as a thunderstorm, stalked into the sunshine on the drawbridge. Learoyd and Ortheris sprang from my side and closed in upon him, both leaning towards him as horses lean upon the pole. In an instant they had disappeared down the sunken road to the cantonments, and I was left alone. Mulvaney had not seen fit to recognise me; so I knew that his trouble must be heavy upon him.

I climbed one of the bastions and watched the figures of the Three Musketeers grow smaller and smaller across the plain. They were walking as fast as they could put foot to the ground, and their heads were bowed. They fetched a great compass round the parade-ground, skirted the Cavalry lines, and vanished in the belt of trees that fringes the low land by the river.

I followed slowly, and sighted them—dusty, sweating, but still keeping up their long, swinging tramp—on the river bank. They crashed through the Forest Reserve, headed towards the Bridge of Boats, and presently established themselves on the bow of one of the pontoons. I rode cautiously till I saw three puffs of white smoke rise and die out in the clear evening air, and knew that peace had come again. At the bridge-head they waved me forward with gestures of welcome.

‘Tie up your ’orse,’ shouted Ortheris, ‘an’ come on, sir. We’re all goin’ ’ome in this ’ere bloomin’ boat.’

From the bridge-head to the Forest Officer’s bungalow is but a step. The mess-man was there, and would see that a man held my horse. Did the Sahib require aught else—a peg, or beer? Ritchie Sahib had left half-a-dozen bottles of the latter, but since the Sahib was a friend of Ritchie Sahib, and he, the mess-man, was a poor man——

I gave my order quietly, and returned to the bridge. Mulvaney had taken off his boots, and was dabbling his toes in the water; Learoyd was lying on his back on the pontoon; and Ortheris was pretending to row with a big bamboo.

page 2

‘I’m an ould fool,’ said Mulvaney reflectively, ‘dhraggin’ you two out here bekaze I was undher the Black Dog—sulkin’ like a child. Me that was sodgerin’ when Mullins, an’ be damned to him, was shquealin’ on a counterpin for five shillin’ a week—an’ that not paid! Bhoys, I’ve tuk you five miles out av natural pivarsity. Phew!’

‘Wot’s the odds as long as you’re ’appy?’ said Ortheris, applying himself afresh to the bamboo. ‘As well ’ere as anywhere else.’

Learoyd held up a rupee and an eight-anna bit, and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Five miles from t’ Canteen, all along o’ Mulvaaney’s blaasted pride.’

‘I know ut,’ said Mulvaney penitently. ‘Why will ye come wid me? An’ yet I wud be mortial sorry av ye did not—any time—though I am ould enough to know betther. But I will do penance. I will take a dhrink av wather.’

Ortheris squeaked shrilly. The butler of the Forest bungalow was standing near the railings with a basket, uncertain how to clamber down to the pontoon.

‘Might ’a’ know’d you’d ’a’ got liquor out o’ bloomin’ desert, sir,’ said Ortheris gracefully to me. Then to the mess-man: ‘Easy with them there bottles. They’re worth their weight in gold. Jock, ye long-armed beggar, get out o’ that an’ hike ’em down.’

Learoyd had the basket on the pontoon in an instant, and the Three Musketeers gathered round it with dry lips. They drank my health in due and ancient form, and thereafter tobacco tasted sweeter than ever. They absorbed all the beer, and disposed themselves in picturesque attitudes to admire the setting sun—no man speaking for a while.

Mulvaney’s head dropped upon his chest, and we thought that he was asleep.

‘What on earth did you come so far for?’ I whispered to Ortheris.

‘To walk ’im orf, o’ course. When, ’e’s been checked we allus walks ’im orf. ’E ain’t fit to be spoke to those times—nor ’e ain’t fit to leave alone neither. So we takes ’im till ’e is.’

Mulvaney raised his head, and stared straight into the sunset. ‘I had my rifle,’ said he dreamily, ‘an’ I had my bay’nit, an’ Mullins came round the corner, an’ he looked in my face an’ grinned dishpiteful. “You can’t blow your own nose,” sez he. Now, I cannot tell fwhat Mullins’s expayrience may ha’ been, but, Mother av God, he was nearer to his death that minut’ than I have iver been to mine—and that’s less than the thicknuss av a hair!’

‘Yes,’ said Ortheris calmly, ‘you’d look fine with all your buttons took orf, an’ the Band in front o’ you, walkin’ roun’ slow time. We’re both front-rank men, me an’ Jock, when the Rig’ment’s in ’ollow square. Bloomin’ fine you’d look. “The Lord giveth an’ the Lord taketh awai,—Heasy with that there drop!—Blessed be the naime o’ the Lord.”’ He gulped in a quaint and suggestive fashion.

‘Mullins! What’s Mullins?’ said Learoyd slowly. ‘Ah’d taake a coomp’ny o’ Mullinses—ma hand behind me. Sitha, Mulvaaney, don’t be a fool.’

‘You were not checked for fwhat you did not do, an’ made a mock av afther. ’Twas for less than that the Tyrone wud ha’ sent O’Hara to Hell, instid av lettin’ him go by his own choosin’, whin Rafferty shot him,’ retorted Mulvaney.

‘And who stopped the Tyrone from doing it?’ I asked.

‘This ould fool who’s sorry he did not shtick that pig Mullins.’ His head dropped again. When he raised it he shivered and put his hands on the shoulders of his two companions.

‘Ye’ve walked the Divil out av me, bhoys,’ said he.

Ortheris shot out the red-hot dottle of his pipe on the back of the hairy fist. ‘They say ’Ell’s ’otter than that,’ said he, as Mulvaney swore aloud. ‘You be warned so. Look yonder!’—he pointed across the river to a ruined temple—‘Me an’ you an’ ’im’—he indicated me by a jerk of his head—‘was there one day when Hi made a bloomin’ show o’ myself. You an’ ’im stopped me doin’ such—an’ Hi was on’y wishful for to desert. You are makin’ a bigger bloomin’ show o’ yourself now.’

‘Don’t mind him, Mulvaney,’ I said; ‘Dinah Shadd won’t let you hang yourself yet awhile, and you don’t intend to try it either. Let’s hear about the Tyrone and O’Hara. Rafferty shot him for fooling with his wife. What happened before that?’

‘There’s no fool like an ould fool. Ye know ye can do anythin’ wid me whin I’m talkin’. Did I say I wud like to cut Mullins’s liver out? I deny the imputashin, for fear that Orth’ris here wud report me—Ah! You wud tip me into the river, wud you? Set quiet, little man. Anyways, Mullins is not worth the throuble av an extry p’rade, an’ I will trate him wid outrajis contimpt. The Tyrone an’ O’Hara! O’Hara an’ the Tyrone, begad! Ould days are hard to bring back into the mouth, but they’re always inside the head.’

Followed a long pause.

‘O’Hara was a Divil. Though I saved him, for the honour av the Rig’mint, from his death that time, I say it now. He was a Divil—a long, bould, black-haired Divil.’

‘Which way?’ asked Ortheris. ‘Wimmen.’

‘Then I know another.’

‘Not more than in reason, if you mane me, ye warped walkin’-shtick. I have been young, an’ for why shud I not have tuk what I cud? Did I iver, whin I was Corp’ril, use the rise av my rank—wan step an’ that taken away, more’s the sorrow an’ the fault av me!—to prosecute nefarious inthrigues, as O’Hara did? Did I, whin I was Corp’ril, lay my spite upon a man an’ make his life a dog’s life from day to day? Did I lie, as O’Hara lied, till the young wans in the Tyrone turned white wid the fear av the Judgment av God killin’ thim all in a lump, as ut killed the woman at Devizes? I did not! I have sinned my sins an’ I have made my confesshin, an’ Father Victor knows the worst av me. O’Hara was tuk, before he cud spake, on Rafferty’s door stip, an’ no man knows the worst av him. But this much I know!

‘The Tyrone was recruited any fashion in the ould days. A draf’ from Connemara—a draf’ from Portsmouth—a draf’ from Kerry, an’ that was a blazin’ bad draf’—here, there, and ivrywhere—but the large av thim was Irish—Black Irish. Now there are Irish an’ Irish. The good are good as the best, but the bad are wurrse than the wurrst. ’Tis this way. They clog together in pieces as fast as thieves, an’ no wan knows fwhat they will do till wan turns informer an’ the gang is bruk. But ut begins agin, a day later, meetin’ in holes an’ corners an’ swearin’ bloody oaths an’ shtickin’ a man in the back an’ runnin’ away, an’ thin waitin’ for the blood-money on the reward papers—to see if ut’s worth enough. Those are the Black Irish, an’ ’tis they that bring dishgrace upon the name av Ireland, an’ thim I wud kill—as I nearly killed wan wanst.

page 3

‘But to reshume. My room—’twas before I was married—was wid twelve av the scum av the earth—the pickin’s av the gutther—mane men that wud neither laugh nor talk nor yet get dhrunk as a man shud. They thried some av their dog’s thricks on me, but I dhrew a line round my cot, an’ the man that thransgressed ut wint into hospital for three days good.

‘O’Hara had put his spite on the room—he was my Colour-Sargint—an’ nothing cud we do to plaze him. I was younger than I am now, an’ I tuk fwhat I got in the way av dhressing-down and punishmint-dhrill wid me tongue in me cheek. But it was diff’rint wid the others, an’ why I cannot say, excipt that some men are borrun mane an’ go to dhirty murther where a fist is more than enough. Afther a whoile, they changed their chune to me an’ was desp’rit frien’ly—all twelve av thim cursin’ O’Hara in chorus.

‘“ Eyah!” sez I, “O’Hara’s a divil and I’m not for denyin’ ut, but is he the only man in the wurruld? Let him go. He’ll get tired av findin’ our kit foul an’ our ’coutrements on properly kep’.”

‘“We will not let him go,” sez they.

‘“Thin take him,” sez I, “an’ a dashed poor yield you will get for your throuble.”

‘“Is he not misconductin’ himsilf wid Slimmy’s wife?” sez another.

‘“She’s common to the Rig’mint,” sez I. “Fwhat has made ye this partic’lar on a suddint?”

‘“Has he not put his spite on the roomful av us? Can we do anythin’ that he will not check us for?” sez another.

‘“That’s thrue,” sez I.

‘“Will ye not help us to do aught,” sez another—“a big bould man like you? “

‘“I will break his head upon his shoulthers av he puts hand on me,” sez I. “ I will give him the lie av he says that I’m dhirty, an’ I wud not mind duckin’ him in the Artillery troughs if ut was not that I’m thryin’ for me shtripes.”

‘“Is that all ye will do?” sez another. “Have ye no more spunk than that, ye blood-dhrawn calf?”

‘“Blood-dhrawn I may be,” says I, gettin’ back to my cot an’ makin’ my line round ut; “but ye know that the man who comes acrost this mark will be more blood-dhrawn than me. No man gives me the name in my mouth,” I sez. “Ondhersthand, I will have no part wid you in anythin’ ye do, nor will I raise my fist to my shuperior. Is any wan comin’ on.” sez I.

‘They made no move, tho’ I gave thim full time, but stud growlin’ an’ snarlin’ together at wan ind av the room. I tuk up my cap and wint out to Canteen, thinkin’ no little av mesilf, an’ there I grew most ondacintly dhrunk in my legs. My head was all reasonable.

‘“Houligan,” I sez to a man in E Comp’ny that was by way av bein’ a frind av mine; “I’m overtuk from the belt down. Do you give me the touch av your shoulther to presarve me formashin an’ march me acrost the ground into the high grass. I’ll sleep ut off there,” sez I; an’ Houligan—he’s dead now, but good he was whoile he lasted—walked wid me, givin’ me the touch whin I wint wide, ontil we came to the high grass, an’, my faith, sky an’ earth was fair rowlin’ undher me. I made for where the grass was thickust, an’ there I slep’ off my liquor wid an aisy conscience. I did not desire to come on the books too frequint; my characther havin’ been shpotless for the good half av a year.

‘Whin I roused, the dhrink was dyin’ out in me, an’ I felt as though a she-cat had littered in me mouth. I had not learned to hould my liquor wid comfort in thim days. ’Tis little betther I am now. “I will get Houligan to pour a bucket over my head,” thinks I, an’ I wud ha’ risen, but I heard some wan say: “Mulvaney can take the blame av ut for the backslidin’ hound he is.”

“Oho!” sez I, an’ me head ringing like a guard-room gong: “fwhat is the blame that this young man must take to oblige Tim Vulmea?” For ’twas Tim Vulmea that shpoke.

I turned on me belly an’ crawled through the grass, a bit at a time, to where the spache came from. There was the twelve av my room sittin’ down in a little patch, the dhry grass wavin’ above their heads an’ the sin av black murther in their hearts. I put the stuff aside to get clear view.

‘“Fwhat’s that?” sez wan man, jumpin’ up.

‘“A dog,” says Vulmea. “You’re a nice hand to this job! As I said, Mulvaney will take the blame—av ut comes to a pinch.”

‘“’Tis harrd to swear a man’s life away,” sez a young wan.

‘“Thank ye for that,” thinks I. “Now, fwhat the divil are you paragins conthrivin’ agin’ me?”

‘“’Tis as aisy as dhrinkin’ your quart,” sez Vulmea. “At sivin or thereon, O’Hara will come acrost to the Married Quarters, goin’ to call on Slimmy’s wife, the swine! Wan av us ’ll pass the wurrud to the room an’ we shtart the divil an’ all av a shine—laughin’ an’ crackin’ on an’ t’rowin’ our boots about. Thin O’Hara will come to give us the ordher to be quiet, the more by token bekaze the room lamp will be knocked over in the larkin’. He will take the straight road to the ind door where there’s the lamp in the veranda, an’ that’ll bring him clear agin’ the light as he shtands. He will not be able to look into the dhark. Wan av us will loose off, an’ a close shot ut will be, an’ shame to the man that misses. ’Twill be Mulvaney’s rifle, she that is at the head av the rack—there’s no mishtakin’ that long-shtocked, cross-eyed bitch even in the dhark.”

‘The thief misnamed my ould firin’-piece out av jealousy—I was pershuaded av that—an’ ut made me more angry than all.

‘But Vulmea goes on: “O’Hara will dhrop, an’ by the time the light’s lit agin, there’ll be some six av us on the chest av Mulvaney, cryin’ murther an’ rape. Mulvaney’s cot is near the ind door, an’ the shmokin’ rifle will be lyin’ undher him whin we’ve knocked him over. We know, an’ all the Rig’mint knows, that Mulvaney has given O’Hara more lip than any man av us. Will there be any doubt at the Coort-Martial? Wud twelve honust sodger-bhoys swear away the life av a dear, quiet, swate-timpered man such as is Mulvaney—wid his line av pipe-clay roun’ his cot, threatenin’ us wid murther av we overshtepped ut, as we can truthful testify?”

“Mary, Mother av Mercy!” thinks I to mesilf; “ut is this to have an unruly mimber an’ fistes fit to use! The hounds!”

The big dhrops ran down my face, for I was wake wid the liquor an’ had not the full av my wits about me. I laid sthill an’ heard thim workin’ thimsilves up to swear me life away by tellin’ tales av ivry time I had put my mark on wan or another; an’, my faith, they was few that was not so dishtinguished. ’Twas all in the way av fair fight, though, for niver did I raise my hand excipt whin they had provoked me to ut.

page 4

‘“’Tis all well,” sez wan av thim, “but who’s to do this shootin’?”

‘“Fwhat matther?” sez Vulmea. “’Tis Mulvaney will do that—at the Coort-Martial.”

‘“He will so,” sez the man, “ but whose hand is put to the thrigger—”

‘“Who’ll do ut?” sez Vulmea, lookin’ round, but divil a man answered. They began to dishpute till Kiss, that was always playin’ Shpoil Five, sez: “Thry the kyards!” Wid that he opind his tunic an’ tuk out the greasy palammers, an’ they all fell in wid the notion.

‘“Deal on!” sez Vulmea, wid a big rattlin’ oath, “an’ the Black Curse av Shielygh come to the man that will not do his jooty as the kyards say. Amin!”

‘“Black Jack is the masther,” sez Kiss, dealin’. Black Jack, sorr, I shud expaytiate to you, is the Ace av Shpades which from time immimorial has been intimately connect wid battle, murther, an’ suddin death.

‘Wanst Kiss dealt, an’ there was no sign, but the men was whoite wid the workin’s av their sowls. Twice Kiss dealt, an’ there was a grey shine on their cheeks like the mess av an egg. Three times Kiss dealt, an’ they was blue. “Have ye not lost him?” sez Vulmea, wipin’ the sweat on him; “let’s ha’ done quick!” “Quick ut is,” sez Kiss, throwin’ him the kyard; an’ ut fell face up on his knee—Black Jack!

‘Thin they all cackled wid laughin’. “Jooty thrippence,” sez wan av thim, “an’ damned cheap at that price!” But I cud see they all dhrew a little away from Vulmea an’ lef’ him sittin’ playin’ wid the kyard. Vulmea sez no wurrud for a whoile but licked his lips—cat-ways. Thin he threw up his head an’ made the men swear by ivry oath known to stand by him not alone in the room but at the, Coort-Martial that was to set on me! He tould off five av the biggest to stretch me on my cot whin the shot was fired, an’ another man he tould off to put out the light, an’ yet another to load my rifle. He wud not do that himsilf; an’ that was quare, for ’twas but a little thing considherin’.

‘Thin they swore over agin that they wud not bethray wan another, an’ crep’ out av the grass in diff’rint ways, two by two. A mercy ut was that they did not come on me. I was sick wid fear in the pit av me stummick—sick, sick, sick! Afther they was all gone, I wint back to Canteen an’ called for a quart to put a thought in me. Vulmea was there, dhrinkin’ heavy, an’ politeful to me beyond reason. “Fwhat will I do?—fwhat will I do?” thinks I to mesilf whin Vulmea wint away.

‘Prisintly the Arm’rer-Sargint comes in stiffin’ an’ crackin’ on, not plazed wid any wan, bekaze the Martini-Henry bein’ new to the Rig’mint in those days we used to play the mischief wid her arrangemints. ’Twas a long time before I cud get out av the way av thryin’ to pull back the backsight an’ turnin’ her over afther firin’—as if she was a Snider.

‘“Fwhat tailor-men do they give me to work wid?” sez the Arm’rer-Sargint. “Here’s Hogan, his nose flat as a table, laid by for a week, an’ ivry Comp’ny sendin’ their arrums in knocked to small shivreens.”

‘“Fwhat’s wrong wid Hogan, Sargint?” sez I.

‘“Wrong!” sez the Arm’rer-Sargint; “I showed him, as though I had been his mother, the way av shtrippin’ a ’Tini, an’ he shtrup her clane an’ aisy. I tould him to put her to agin an’ fire a blank into the blow-pit to show how the dhirt hung on the groovin’. He did that, but he did not put in the pin av the fallin’-block, an’ av coorse whin he fired he was strook by the block jumpin’ clear. Well for him ’twas but a blank—a full charge wud ha’ cut his eye out.”

‘I looked a thrifle wiser than a boiled sheep’s head. “How’s that, Sargint?” sez I.

‘“This way, ye blundherin’ man, an’ don’t you be doin’ ut,” sez he. Wid that he shows me a Waster action—the breech av her all cut away to show the inside—an’ so plazed he was to grumble that he dimonsthrated fwhat Hogan had done twice over. “An’ that comes av not knowin’ the wepping you’re provided wid,” sez he.

‘“Thank ye, Sargint,” sez I; “I will come to you agin for further informashin.”

‘“Ye will not,” sez he. “Kape your clanin’rod away from the breech-pin or you will get into throuble.”

‘I wint outside an’ I cud ha’ danced wid delight for the grandeur av ut. “They will load my rifle, good luck to thim, whoile I’m away,” thinks I, and back I wint to the Canteen to give thim their clear chanst.

‘The Canteen was fillip’ wid men at the ind av the day. I made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an’, wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid Vulmea. I wint away, walkin’ thick an’ heavy, but not so thick an’ heavy that any wan cud ha’ tuk me. Sure an’ thrue, there was a kyartridge gone from my pouch an’ lyin’ snug in my rifle. I was hot wid rage agin’ them all, and I worried the bullet out wid me teeth as fast as I cud, the room bein’ empty. Then I tuk my boot an’ the clanin’-rod and knocked out the pin av the fallin’block. Oh, ’twas music whin that pin rowled on the flure! I put ut into my pouch an’ shtuck a dab av dhirt on the holes in the plate, puttin’ the fallin’-block back. “That’ll do your business, Vulmea,” sez I, lyin’ aisy on me cot. “Come an’ sit on me chest, the whole room av you, an’ I will take you to me bosom for the biggest divils that iver cheated halter.” I wud have no mercy on Vulmea. His eye or his life—little I cared

‘At dusk they came back, the twelve av thim, an’ they had all been dhrinkin’. I was shammin’ sleep on the cot. Wan man wint outside in the veranda. Whin he whishtled they began to rage roun’ the room an’ carry on tremenjus. But I niver want to hear men laugh as they did—sky-larkin’ too! ’Twas like mad jackals.

‘“Shtop that blasted noise!” sez O’Hara in the dark, an’ pop goes the room lamp. I cud hear O’Hara runnin’ up an’ the rattlin’ av my rifle in the rack an’ the men breathin’ heavy as they stud roun’ my cot. I cud see O’Hara in the light av the veranda lamp, an’ thin I heard the crack av my rifle. She cried loud, poor darlint, bein’ mishandled. Next minut’ five men were houldin’ me down. “Go aisy,” I sez; “fwhat’s ut all about?”

‘Thin Vulmea, on the flure, raised a howl you cud hear from wan ind av cantonmints to the other. “I’m dead, I’m butchered, I’m blind!” sez he. “Saints have mercy on my sinful sowl! Sind for Father Constant! Oh, sind for Father Constant an’ let me go clane!” By that I knew he was not so dead as I cud ha’ wished.

‘O’Hara picks up the lamp in the veranda wid a hand as stiddy as a rest. “Fwhat damned dog’s thrick is this av yours?” sez he, and turns the light on Tim Vulmea that was shwimmin’ in blood from top to toe. The fallin’-block had sprung free behin’ a full charge av powther—good care I tuk to bite down the brass afther takin’ out the bullet, that there might be somethin’ to give ut full worth-an’ had cut Tim from the lip to the corner av the right eye, lavin’ the eyelid in tatthers, an’ so up an’ along by the forehead to the hair. ’Twas more av a rakin’ plough, if you will ondhersthand, than a clane cut; an’ niver did I see a man bleed as Vulmea did. The dhrink an’ the stew that he was in pumped the blood strong. The minut’ the men sittin’ on my chest heard O’Hara spakin’ they scatthered each wan to his cot, an’ cried out very politeful: “Fwhat is ut, Sargint?”

page 5

‘“Fwhat is ut!” sez O’Hara, shakin’ Tim. “Well an’ good do you know fwhat ut is, ye skulkin’ ditch-lurkin’ dogs! Get a dooli, an’ take this whimperin’ scutt away. There will be more heard av ut than any av you will care for.”

‘Vulmea sat up rockin’ his head in his hand an’ moanin’ for Father Constant.

‘“Be done!” sez O’Hara, dhraggin’ him up by the hair. “You’re none so dead that you cannot go fifteen years for thryin’ to shoot me.”

‘“I did not,” sez Vulmea; “I was shootin’ mesilf.”

‘“That’s quare,” sez O’Hara, “for the front av my jackut is black wid your powther.” He tuk up the rifle that was still warm an’ began to laugh. “I’ll make your life Hell to you,” sez he, “for attempted murther an’ kapin’ your rifle onproperly. You’ll be hanged first an’ thin put undher stoppages for four fifteen. The rifle’s done for,” sez he.

‘“Why, ’tis my rifle!” sez I, comin’ up to look. “Vulmea, ye divil, fwhat were you doin’ wid her—answer me that?”

‘“’Lave me alone,” sez Vulmea; “I’m dyin’!”

‘“I’ll wait till you’re betther,” sez I, “an’ thin we two will talk ut out umbrageous.”

‘O’Hara pitched Tim into the dooli, none too tinder, but all the bhoys kep’ by their cots, which was not the sign av innocint men. I was huntin’ ivrywhere for my fallin’-block, but not findin’ ut at all. I niver found ut.

‘“Now fwhat will I do?” sez O’Hara, swinging the veranda light in his hand an’ lookin’ down the room. I had hate and contimpt av O’Hara an’ I have now, dead tho’ he is, but for all that will I say he was a brave man. He is baskin’ in Purgathory this tide, but I wish he cud hear that, whin he stud lookin’ down the room an’ the bhoys shivered before the eye av him, I knew him for a brave man an’ I liked him so.

‘“Fwhat will I do?” sez O’Hara agin, an’ we heard the voice av a woman low an’ sof’ in the veranda. ’Twas Slimmy’s wife, come over at the shot, sittin’ on wan av the benches an’ scarce able to walk.

‘“0 Denny!—Denny, dear,” sez she, “have they kilt you?”

‘O’Hara looked down the room agin an’ showed his teeth to the gum. Thin he spat on the flure.

‘“You’re not worth ut,” sez he. “Light that lamp, ye dogs,” an’ wid that he turned away, an’ I saw him walkin’ off wid Slimmy’s wife; she thryin’ to wipe off the powther-black on the front av his jackut wid her handkerchief. “A brave man you are,” thinks I—“a brave man an’ a bad woman.”

‘No wan said a wurrud for a time. They was all ashamed, past spache.

‘“Fwhat d’you think he will do?” sez wan av thim at last. “He knows we’re all in ut.”

‘“Are we so?” sez I from my cot. “The man that sez that to me will be hurt. I do not know,” sez I, “fwhat ondherhand divilmint you have conthrived, but by fwhat I’ve seen I know that you cannot commit murther wid another man’s rifle—such shakin’ cowards you are. I’m goin’ to slape,” I sez, “an’ you can blow my head off whoile I lay.” I did not slape, though, for a long time. Can ye wonder?

‘Next morn the news was through all the Rig’mint, an’ there was nothin’ that the men did not tell. O’Hara reports, fair an’ aisy, that Vulmea was come to grief through tamperin’ wid his rifle in barricks, all for to show the mechanism. An’, by my sowl, he had the impart’nince to say that he was on the shpot at the time an’ cud certify that ut was an accidint! You might ha’ knocked my roomful down wid a straw whin they heard that. ’Twas lucky for thim that the bhoys were always thryin’ to find out how the new rifle was made, an’ a lot av thim had come up for aisin’ the pull by shtickin’ bits av grass an’ such in the part av the lock that showed near the thrigger. The first issues of the ’Tinis was not covered in, an’ I mesilf have aised the pull av mine time an’ agin. A light pull is ten points on the range to me.

‘“I will not have this foolishness!” sez the Colonel. “I will twist the tail off Vulmea!” sez he; but whin he saw him, all tied up an’ groanin’ in hospital, he changed his will. “Make him an early convalescint,” sez he to the Doctor, an’ Vulmea was made so for a warnin’. His big bloody bandages an’ face puckered up to wan side did more to kape the bhoys from messin’ wid the insides av their rifles than any punishmint.

‘O’Hara gave no reason for fwhat he’d said, an’ all my roomful were too glad to ask, tho’ he put his spite upon thim more wearin’ than before. Wan day, howiver, he tuk me apart very polite, for he cud be that at his choosin’.

‘“You’re a good sodger, tho’ you’re a damned insolint man,” sez he.

‘“Fair wurruds, Sargint,” sez I, “or I may be insolint agin.”

‘“’Tis not like you,” sez he, “to lave your rifle in the rack widout the breech-pin, for widout the breech-pin she was whin Vulmea fired. I shud ha’ found the break av ut in the eyes av the holes, else,” he sez.

‘“Sargint,” sez I, “fwhat wud your life ha’ been worth av the breech-pin had been in place, for, on my sowl, my life wud be worth just as much to me av I tould you whether ut was or was not? Be thankful the bullet was not there,” I sez.

‘“That’s thrue,” sez he, pulling his moustache; “but I do not believe that you, for all your lip, were in that business.”

‘“Sargint,” sez I, “I cud hammer the life out av a man in ten minut’s wid my fistes if that man dishplazed me; for I am a good sodger, an’ I will be threated as such, an’ whoile my fistes are my own they’re strong enough for all the work I have to do. They do not fly back towards me!” ’sez I, lookin’ him betune the eyes.

‘“You’re a good man,” sez he, lookin’ me betune the eyes—an’ oh, he was a gran’-built man to see!—“you’re a good man,” he sez, “an’ I cud wish, for the pure frolic av ut, that I was not a Sargint, or that you were not a Privit; an’ you will think me no coward whin I say this thing.”

‘“I do not,” sez I. “I saw you whin Vulmea mishandled the rifle. But, Sargint,” I sez, “take the wurrud from me now, spakin’ as man to man wid the shtripes off, tho’ ’tis little right I have to talk, me bein’ fwhat I am by natur’. This time ye tuk no harm, an’ next time ye may not, but, in the ind, so sure as Slimmy’s wife came into the veranda, so sure will ye take harm—an’ bad harm. Have thought, Sargint,” sez I. “Is ut worth ut?”

page 6

‘“Ye’re a bould man,” sez he, breathin’ harrd. “A very bould man. But I am a bould man tu. Do you go your ways, Privit Mulvaney, an’ I will go mine.”

‘We had no further spache thin or afther, but, wan by another, he drafted the twelve av my room out into other rooms an’ got thim spread among the Comp’nies, for they was not a good breed to live together, an’ the Comp’ny Orf’cers saw ut. They wud ha’ shot me in the night av they had known fwhat I knew; but that they did not.

‘An’, in the ind, as I said, O’Hara met his death from Rafferty for foolin’ wid his wife. He wint his own way too well—Eyah, too well! Shtraight to that affair, widout turnin’ to the right or to the lef’, he wint, an’ may the Lord have mercy on his sowl. Amin!’

‘’Ear! ’ear!’ said Ortheris, pointing the moral with a wave of his pipe. ‘An’ this is ’im ’oo would be a bloomin’ Vulmea all for the sake of Mullins an’ a bloomin’ button! Mullins never went after a woman in his life. Mrs. Mullins, she saw ’im one day——’

‘Ortheris,’ I said hastily, for the romances of Private Ortheris are all too daring for publication, ‘look at the sun. It’s a quarter past six!’

‘Oh, Lord! Three-quarters of an hour for five an’ a ’arf miles! We’ll ’ave to run like Jimmy O.’

The Three Musketeers clambered on to the bridge, and departed hastily in the direction of the cantonment road. When I overtook them I offered them two stirrups and a tail, which they accepted enthusiastically. Ortheris held the tail, and in this manner we trotted steadily through the shadows by an unfrequented road.

At the turn into the cantonments we heard carriage wheels. It was the Colonel’s barouche, and in it sat the Colonel’s wife and daughter. I caught a suppressed chuckle, and my beast sprang forward with a lighter step.

The Three Musketeers had vanished into the night.

ONE night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before any one caught him; but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend’s sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.

Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers—of the old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier—that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not approve.

“’E’s for you,” said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked parting with him.

“Nonsense! That dog’s worth more than most men, Stanley,” I said.

“’E’s that and more. ’Tention!”

The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full minute.

“Eyes right!”

He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and held up one leg.

“Part o’ the trick,” said his owner. “You’re going to die now. Dig yourself your little grave an’ shut your little eye.”

Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured, he jumped out, wagging his tail, and whining for applause. He was put through half-a-dozen other tricks, such as showing how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot, took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him and howled. I read:

Sir—I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me, for I’m not going to take him, if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him back any more. I have kept his name back, so you can call him anything and he will answer. But please do not give him back. He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give him too much meat. He knows more than a man.

Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier’s despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than verminous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders, and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year; a free thing, tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise; a patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul, who knows your moods before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.

I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my friend must have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master, and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled anew. I meant to dine at the Club that night; but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone. So we fed at home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog on the other; she watching his every mouthful, and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners, which were much better than hers.

It was Vixen’s custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when morning came I would always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed purposefully, every hair up, one eye on the stranger, who had dropped on a mat in a helpless, hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several times, to show her little airs and graces, and struck up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber. The stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen’s teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech, that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.

I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely, and said:

“Vixen, if you do that again you’ll be put into the verandah. Now, remember!”

She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her she mouthed my right wrist once more, and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog’s tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way.

I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then she used coarse language—not to me, but to the bull-terrier—till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some one were stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, and her snuffing yelp said, “I’ll be good! Let me in and I’ll’ be good!”

She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I whispered to the other dog, “You can lie on the foot of the bed.” The bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning, and they had early breakfast with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we went for a ride. I don’t think the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with excitement, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and scuttered and scooted, and took charge of the procession.

page 2

There was one corner of a village near by, which we generally passed with caution, because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered about it.

They were half-wild, starving beasts, and though utter cowards, yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an English dog. I kept a whip with a long lash for them.

That morning they attacked Vixen, who, perhaps of design, had moved from beyond my horse’s shadow.

The bull was ploughing along in the dust, fifty yards behind, rolling in his run, and smiling as bull-terriers will. I heard Vixen squeal; half a dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white streak came up behind me; a cloud of dust rose near Vixen, and, when it cleared, I saw one tall pariah with his back broken, and the bull wrenching another to earth. Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip, and the bull paddled back smiling more than ever, covered with the blood of his enemies. That decided me to call him “Garm of the Bloody Breast,” who was a great person in his time, or “Garm” for short; so, leaning forward, I told him what his temporary name would be. He looked up while I repeated it, and then raced away. I shouted “Garm!” He stopped, raced back, and came up to ask my will.

Then I saw that my soldier friend was right, and that that dog knew and was worth more than a man. At the end of the ride I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated: “Go away and get washed!” I said. Garm understood some part of it, and Vixen interpreted the rest, and the two trotted off together soberly. When I went to the back verandah Vixen had been washed snowy-white, and was very proud of herself, but the dog-boy would not touch Garm on any account unless I stood by. So I waited while he was being scrubbed, and Garm, with the soap creaming on the top of his broad head, looked at me to make sure that this was what I expected him to endure. He knew perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders.

“Another time,” I said to the dog-boy, “you will wash the great dog with Vixen when I send them home.”

“Does he know?” said the dog-boy, who understood the ways of dogs.

“Garm,” I said, “another time you will be washed with Vixen.”

I knew that Garm understood. Indeed, next washing-day, when Vixen as usual fled under my bed, Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the verandah, stalked to the place where he had been washed last time, and stood rigid in the tub.

But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three would drive off in the morning at half-past eight and come home at six or later. Vixen knowing the routine of it, went to sleep under my table; but the confinement ate into Garm’s soul. He generally sat on the verandah looking out on the Mall; and well I knew what he expected.

Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the Fort, and Garm rolled forth to inspect them; or an officer in uniform entered into the office, and it was pitiful to see poor Garm’s welcome to the cloth—not the man. He would leap at him, and sniff and bark joyously, then run to the door and back again. One afternoon I heard him bay with a full throat—a thing I had never heard before—and he disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end, and the Garm that met me was a joyous dog. This happened twice or thrice a week for a month.

I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and Vixen knew. He would glide homewards from the office about four o’clock, as though he were only going to look at the scenery, and this he did so quietly that but for Vixen I should not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort, just loud enough to call my attention to the flight. Garm might go out forty times in the day and Vixen would never stir, but when he slunk off to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own tongue. That was the one sign she made to prove that Garm did not altogether belong to the family. They were the best of friends at all times, but, Vixen explained that I was never to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me.

I never expected it. The dog was not my dog could never be my dog—and I knew he was as miserable as his master who tramped eight miles a day to see him. So it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all. One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart (Garm had gone before), and rode over to cantonments to find another friend of mine, who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog’s master.

I explained the whole case, and wound up with:

“And now Stanley’s in my garden crying over his dog. Why doesn’t he take him back? They’re both unhappy.”

“Unhappy! There’s no sense in the little man any more. But ’tis his fit.”

“What is his fit? He travels fifty miles a week to see the brute, and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road; and I’m as unhappy as he is. Make him take the dog back.”

“It’s his penance he’s set himself. I told him by way of a joke, afther you’d run over him so convenient that night, whin he was drunk—I said if he was a Catholic he’d do penance. Off he went wid that fit in his little head an’ a dose of fever, an nothin’ would suit but givin’ you the dog as a hostage.”

“Hostage for what? I don’t want hostages from Stanley.”

“For his good behaviour. He’s keepin’ straight now, the way it’s no pleasure to associate wid him.”

“Has he taken the pledge?”

“If ’twas only that I need not care. Ye can take the pledge for three months on an’ off. He sez he’ll never see the dog again, an’ so mark you, he’ll keep straight for evermore. Ye know his fits? Well, this is wan of them. How’s the dog takin’ it?”

“Like a man. He’s the best dog in India. Can’t you make Stanley take him back?”

“I can do no more than I have done. But ye know his fits. He’s just doin’ his penance. What will he do when he goes to the Hills? The doctor’s put him on the list.”

It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort, they miss the society of the barracks down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head, so I left Terrence hopefully, though he called after me “He won’t take the dog, sorr. You can lay your month’s pay on that. Ye know his fits.”

page 3

I never pretended to understand Private Ortheris; and so I did the next best thing I left him alone.

That summer the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the Hills early, because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good. Their route lay south to a place called Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they would turn east and march up into the hills to Kasauli or Dugshai or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night before they left—they were marching at five in the morning. It was midnight when I drove into my garden, and surprised a white figure flying over the wall.

“That man,” said my butler, “has been here since nine, making talk to that dog. He is quite mad.”

“I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before, and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him to go away, that great dog would immediately slay me. He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink.”

“Kadir Buksh,” said I, “that was well done, for the dog would surely have killed thee. But I do not think the white soldier will come any more.”

Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreams. Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl. He had dreamed he was with his master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley’s silly fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad), and there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April, the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.

“It’s amazing,” said the officer, “what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks. There’s a man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he’d forgotten. I was so taken by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?”

“If you’ll drive me home I think I can show you,” I said.

So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on the way I told him the story of Garm.

“I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He’s the best dog in the regiment,” said my friend. “I offered the little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago. But he’s a hostage, you say, for Stanley’s good conduct. Stanley’s one of the best men I have when he chooses.”

“That’s the reason why,” I said. “A second-rate man wouldn’t have taken things to heart as he has done.”

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees, where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog.

“Good-bye, old man,” we could not help hearing Stanley’s voice. “For ’Eving’s sake don’t get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man. You don’t get drunk an’ run about ’ittin’ your friends. You takes your bones an’ you eats your biscuit, an’ you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I’m goin’ away—don’t ’owl—I’m goin’ off to Kasauli, where I won’t see you no more.”

I could hear him holding Garm’s nose as the dog threw it up to the stars.

“You’ll stay here an’ be’ave, an’—an’ I’ll go away an’ try to be’ave, an’ I don’t know ’ow to leave you. I don’t know—”

“I think this is damn silly,” said the officer, patting his foolish fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who leaped to his feet, marched forward, and saluted.

“You here?” said the officer, turning away his head.

“Yes, sir, but I’m just goin’ back.”

“I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You come with me. I can’t have sick men running about all over the place. Report yourself at eleven, here.”

We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever’s ears.

He was a disgraceful, overfed doormat of a dog; and when he waddled off to my cookhouse to be fed, I had a brilliant idea.

At eleven o’clock that officer’s dog was nowhere to be found, and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made. He called and shouted and grew angry, and hunted through my garden for half an hour.

Then I said:

“He’s sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by rail, and I’ll find the beast and return him.”

“Beast?” said the officer. “I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know. It’s all very fine for you to talk—your dog’s here.”

So she was—under my feet—and, had she been missing, food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return. But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip. My friend had to drive away at last with Stanley in the back seat; and then the dog-boy said to me:

“What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib’s dog? Look at him!”

I went to the boy’s hut, and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up. He must have heard his master calling for twenty minutes, but had not even attempted to join him.

page 4

“He has no face,” said the dog-boy scornfully. “He is a punniar-kooter (a spaniel). He never tried to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called. Now Vixen-baba would have jumped through the window, and that Great Dog would have slain me with his muzzled mouth. It is true that there are many kinds of dogs.”

Next evening who should turn up but Stanley. The officer had sent him back fourteen miles by rail with a note begging me to return the retriever if I had found him, and, if I had not, to offer huge rewards. The last train to camp left at half-past ten, and Stanley, stayed till ten talking to Garm. I argued and entreated, and even threatened to shoot the bull-terrier, but the little man was as firm as a rock, though I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely. Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could hope to see his man, and followed Stanley like a shadow. The retriever said nothing, but licked his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying “Thank you” to the disgusted dog-boy.

So that last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as Garm, who moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped flat till it was time to go home. There was no more running out into the verandahs, no slinking away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my side on the seat, Vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow, and Garm hugging the left handrail.

Here Vixen was ever in great form. She had to attend to all the moving traffic, such as bullock-carts that blocked the way, and camels, and led ponies; as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust. She never yapped for yapping’s sake, but her shrill, high bark was known all along the Mall, and other men’s terriers ki-yied in reply, and bullock-drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road with a grin.

But Garm cared for none of these things. His big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut. There was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief. We called him “Bob the Librarian,” because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper-files. Bob was a well-meaning idiot, but Garm did not encourage him. He would slide his head round the door panting, “Rats! Come along Garm!” and Garm would shift one forepaw over the other, and curl himself round, leaving Bob to whine at a most uninterested back. The office was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days.

Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all contented with his surroundings. He had gone for an unauthorised walk with Vixen early one Sunday morning, and a very young and foolish artilleryman (his battery had just moved to that part of the world) tried to steal them both. Vixen, of course, knew better than to take food from soldiers, and, besides, she had just finished her breakfast. So she trotted back with a large piece of the mutton that they issue to our troops, laid it down on my verandah, and looked up to see what I thought. I asked her where Garm was, and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way.

About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees. Garm was in front of him, looking rather pleased. When the man moved leg or hand, Garm bared his teeth in silence. A broken string hung from his collar, and the other half of, it lay, all warm, in the artilleryman’s still hand. He explained to me, keeping his eyes straight in front of him, that he had met this dog (he called him awful names) walking alone, and was going to take him to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah.

I said that Garm did not seem to me much of a pariah, but that he had better take him to the Fort if he thought best. He said he did not care to do so. I told him to go to the Fort alone. He said he did not want to go at that hour, but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the dog. I instructed Garm to take him to the Fort, and Garm marched him solemnly up to the gate, one mile and a half under a hot sun, and I told the quarter-guard what had happened; but the young artilleryman was more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several regiments, he was told, had tried to steal Garm in their time.

That month the hot weather shut down in earnest, and the dogs slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed. Every morning, as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in, and every morning the man filled the bath a second time. I said to him that he might as well fill a small tub specially for the dogs. “Nay,” said he smiling, “it is not their custom. They would not understand. Besides, the big bath gives them more space.”

The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night came to know Garm intimately. He noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call out to the coolie and bid him pull with a long stroke. If the man still slept I would wake him up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks. At any rate, when the punkah stopped, Garm would first growl and cock his eye at the rope, and if that did not wake the man it nearly always did—he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper’s ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could never connect the punkah and the coolie; so Garm gave me grateful hours of cool sleep. But—he was utterly wretched—as miserable as a human being; and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it, and were envious. If I moved from one room to another Garm followed; if my pen stopped scratching, Garm’s head was thrust into my hand; if I turned, half awake, on the pillow, Garm was up and at my side, for he knew that I was his only link with his master, and day and night, and night and day, his eyes asked one question—“When is this going to end?”

Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather, till one day at the Club a man said: “That dog of yours will die in a week or two. He’s a shadow.” Then I dosed Garm with iron and quinine, which he hated; and I felt very anxious. He lost his appetite, and Vixen was allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes. Even that did not make him swallow, and we held a consultation on him, of the best man-doctor in the place; a lady-doctor, who cured the sick wives of kings; and the Deputy Inspector-General of the veterinary service of all India. They pronounced upon his symptoms, and I told them his story, and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand.

“He’s dying of a broken heart,” said the lady-doctor suddenly.

“’Pon my word,” said the Deputy Inspector General, “I believe Mrs. Macrae is perfectly right as usual.”

The best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription, and the veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog-proportions; and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be edited. It was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on his feet for a week or two; then he lost flesh again. I asked a man I knew to take him up to the Hills with him when he went, and the man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage. Garm took in the situation at one red glance. The hair rose along his back; he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in the jaws of a dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once, and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garm laid his head on my knee and whined. So I knew his answer, and devoted myself to getting Stanley’s address in the Hills.

page 5

My turn to go to the cool came late in August. We were allowed thirty days’ holiday in a year, if no one fell sick, and we took it as we could be spared. My chief and Bob the Librarian had their holiday first, and when they were gone I made a calendar, as I always did, and hung it up at the head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till they returned. Vixen had gone up to the Hills with me five times before, and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as I did.

“Garm,” I said, “we are going back to Stanley at Kasauli. Kasauli—Stanley; Stanley Kasauli.” And I repeated it twenty times. It was not Kasauli really, but another place. Still I remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the last night, and I dared not change the name. Then Garm began to tremble; then he barked; and then he leaped up at me, frisking and wagging his tail.

“Not now,” I said, holding up my hand. “When I say ‘Go,’ we’ll go, Garm.” I pulled out the little blanket coat and spiked collar that Vixen always wore up in the Hills to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards, and I let the two smell them and talk it over. What they said of course I do not know; but it made a new dog of Garm. His eyes were bright; and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate his food, and he killed his rats for the next three weeks, and when he began to whine I had only to say “Stanley—Kasauli; Kasauli—Stanley,” to wake him up. I wish I had thought of it before.

My chief came back, all brown with living in the open air, and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains. That same afternoon we three and Kadir Buksh began to pack for our month’s holiday, Vixen rolling in and out of the bullock-trunk twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning all over and thumping on the floor with his tail. Vixen knew the routine of travelling as well as she knew my office-work. She went to the station, singing songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while Garm sat with me. She hurried into the railway carriage, saw Kadir Buksh make up my bed for the night, got her drink of water, and curled up with her black-patch eye on the tumult of the platform. Garm followed her (the crowd gave him a lane all to himself) and sat down on the pillows with his eyes blazing, and his tail a haze behind him.

We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn, four or five men, who had been working hard for eleven months, shouting for our dales—the two-horse travelling carriages that were to take us up to Kalka at the foot of the Hills. It was all new to Garm. He did not understand carriages where you lay at full length on your bedding, but Vixen knew and hopped into her place at once; Garm following. The Kalka Road, before the railway was built, was about forty-seven miles long, and the horses were changed every eight miles. Most of them jibbed, and kicked, and plunged, but they had to go, and they went rather better than usual for Garm’s deep bay in their rear.

There was a river to be forded, and four bullocks pulled the carriage, and Vixen stuck her head out of the sliding-door and nearly fell into the water while she gave directions. Garm was silent and curious, and rather needed reassuring about Stanley and Kasauli. So we rolled, barking and yelping, into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate enough for two.

After Kalka the road wound among the hills, and we took a curricle with half-broken ponies, which were changed every six miles. No one dreamed of a railroad to Simla in those days, for it was seven thousand feet up in the air. The road was more than fifty miles long, and the regulation pace was just as fast as the ponies could go. Here, again, Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped into the back seat, and shouted. A cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of Kalka, and she whined for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on the liver. I had had one made for Garm too, and, as we climbed to the fresh breezes, I put it on, and Garm chewed it uncomprehendingly, but I think he was grateful.

“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toot-toot-toot!” went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places, and “yow! yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon”; and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told us we should find Stanley “out there,” nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill.

When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great gray hillside.

Here Garm left me.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garm was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garm—gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garm any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road. Then he raced back to his own master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest people in all the world that night.

page 1 of 5

THE autumn batch of recruits for the Old Regiment had just been uncarted. As usual they were said to be the worst draft that had ever come from the Depôt. Mulvaney looked them over, grunted scornfully, and immediately reported himself very sick. ‘Is it the regular autumn fever?’ said the doctor, who knew something of Terence’s ways. ‘Your temperature’s normal.’

‘“Tis wan hundred and thirty-seven rookies to the bad, sorr. I’m not very sick now, but I will be dead if these boys are thrown at me in my rejuced condition. Doctor, dear, supposin’ you was in charge of three cholera camps an’——’

‘Go to hospital then, you old contriver,’ said the doctor, laughing.

Terence bundled himself into a blue bedgown—Dinah Shadd was away attending to a major’s lady, who preferred Dinah without a diploma to anybody else with a hundred,—put a pipe in his teeth, and paraded the hospital balcony, exhorting Ortheris to be a father to the new recruits.

‘They’re mostly your own sort, little man,’ he said, with a grin; ‘the top-spit av Whitechapel. I’ll interogue them whin they’re more like something they never will be,—an’ that’s a good honest soldier like me.’

Ortheris yapped indignantly. He knew as well as Terence what the coming work meant, and he thought Terence’s conduct mean. Then he strolled off to look at the new cattle, who were staring at the unfamiliar landscape with large eyes, and asking if the kites were eagles and the pariah-dogs jackals.

‘Well, you are a holy set of bean-faced beggars, you are,’ he said genially to a knot in the barrack square. Then, running his eye over them,—‘Fried fish an’ whelks is about your sort. Blimy if they haven’t sent some pink-eyed Jews too. You chap with the greasy ’ed, which o’ the Solomons was ‘your father, Moses?’

‘My name’s Anderson,’ said a voice sullenly.

‘Oh, Samuelson! All right, Samuelson! An’ ’ow many o’ the likes o’ you Sheenies are comin’ to spoil B Company?’

There is no scorn so complete as that of the old soldier for the new. It is right that this ‘should be so. A recruit must learn first that he is not a man but a thing, which in time, and by he mercy of Heaven, may develop into a soldier of the Queen if it takes care and attends to good advice. Ortheris’s tunic was open, his cap over-topped one eye, and his hands were behind his back as he walked round, growing more conemptuous at each step. The recruits did not dare to answer, for they were new boys in a strange school, who had called themselves soldiers at the Depôt in comfortable England.

‘Not a single pair o’ shoulders in the whole lot. I’ve seen some bad drafts in my time,—some bloomin’ bad drafts; but this ’ere draft beats any’ draft I’ve ever known. Jock, come an’ look at these squidgy, ham-shanked beggars.’

Learoyd was walking across the square. He arrived slowly, circled round the knot as a whale circles round a shoal of small fry, said nothing, and went away whistling.

‘Yes, you may well look sheepy,’ Ortheris squeaked to the boys. ‘It’s the likes of you; breaks the ’earts of the likes of us. We’ve got to lick you into shape, and never a ha’penny extry do we get for so doin’, and you ain’t never grateful neither. Don’t you go thinkin’ it’s the Colonel nor yet the company orf’cer that makes you. It’s us, you Johnnie Raws—you Johnnie bloomin’ Raws!’

A company officer had come up unperceived behind Ortheris at the end of this oration. ‘You may be right, Ortheris,’ he said quietly, ‘but I shouldn’t shout it.’ The recruits grinned as Ortheris saluted and collapsed.

Some days afterwards I was privileged to look over the new batch, and they were everything that Ortheris had said, and more. B Company had been devastated by forty or fifty of them; and B Company’s drill on parade was a sight to shudder at. Ortheris asked them lovingly whether they had not been sent out by mistake, and whether they had not better post themselves back to their friends. Learoyd thrashed them methodically one by one, without haste but without slovenliness; and the older soldiers took the remnants from Learoyd and went over them in their own fashion. Mulvaney stayed in hospital, and grinned from the balcony when Ortheris called him a shirker and other worse names.

‘By the grace av God we’ll brew men av them yet,’ Terence said one day. ‘Be vartuous an’ parsevere, me son. There’s the makin’s av colonels in that mob if we only go deep enough—wid a belt.’

‘We!’ Ortheris replied, dancing with rage. ‘I just love you and your “we’s.” ‘Ere’s B Company drillin’ like a drunk Militia reg’ment.’

‘So I’ve been officially acquent,’ was the answer from on high; ‘but I’m too sick this tide to make certain.’

‘An’ you, you fat H’irishman, sniftin’ an’ shirkin’ up there among the arrerroot an the sago!’

‘An’ the port wine,—you’ve forgot the port wine, Orth’ris: ’Tis none so bad.’ Terence smacked his lips provokingly.

‘And we’re wore off’ our feet with these ‘ere—kangaroos. Come out o’ that, an’ earn your pay. Come on down outer that, an’ do somethin’, ’stead o’ grinnin’ up there like a Jew monkey, you frowsy—’eaded Fenian!’

‘When I’m better av my various complaints I’ll have a little private talkin’ wid you. In the meanwhile,—duck!’

Terence flung an empty medicine bottle at Ortheris’s head and dropped into a long chair, and Ortheris came to tell me his opinion of Mulvaney three times over,—each time entirely varying all the words.

‘There’ll be a smash one o’ these days,’ he concluded. ‘Well, it’s none o’ my fault, but it’s ‘ard on B Company.’

It was very hard on B Company, for twenty seasoned men cannot push twice that number of fools into their places and keep their own places at the same time. The recruits should have been more evenly distributed through the regiment, but it seemed good to the Colonel to mass them in a company where there was a fair proportion of old soldiers. He found his reward early one morning when the battalion was advancing by companies in echelon from the right. The order was given to form company squares, which are compact little bricks of men very unpleasant for a line of charging cavalry to deal with. B Company was on the left flank, and had ample time to know what was going on. For that reason, presumably, it gathered itself into a thing like a decayed aloe-clump, the bayonets pointing anywhere in general and nowhere in particular; and in that clump, roundel, or mob, it stayed till the dust had gone down and the Colonel could see and speak. He did both, and the speaking part was admitted by the regiment to be the finest thing that the ‘old man’ had ever risen to since one delightful day at a sham-fight, when a cavalry division had occasion to walk over his line of skirmishers. He said, almost weeping, that he had given no order for rallying groups, and that he preferred to see a little dressing among the men occasionally. He then apologised for having mistaken B Company for men. He said that they were but weak little children, and that since he could not offer them each a perambulator and a nursemaid (this may sound comic to read, but B Company heard it by word of mouth and winced) perhaps the best thing for them to do would be to go back to squad-drill. To that end he proposed sending them, out of their turn, to garrison duty in Fort Amara, five miles away,—D Company were next for this detestable duty and nearly cheered the Colonel. There he devoutly hoped that their own subalterns would drill them to death, as they were of no use in their present life.

page 2

It was an exceedingly painful scene, and I made haste to be near B Company barracks when parade was dismissed and the men were free to talk. There was no talking at first, because each old soldier took a new draft and kicked him very severely. The non-commissioned officers had neither eyes nor ears for these accidents. They left the barracks to themselves, and Ortheris improved the occasion by a speech. I did not hear that speech, but fragments of it were quoted for weeks afterwards. It covered the birth, parentage, and education of every man in the company by name: it gave a complete account of Fort Amara from a sanitary and social point of view; and it wound up with an abstract of the whole duty of a soldier, each recruit his use in life, and Ortheris’s views on the use and fate of the recruits of B Company.

‘You can’t drill, you can’t walk, you can’t shoot,—you,—you awful rookies! Wot’s the good of you? You eats and you sleeps, and you eats, and you goes to the doctor for medicine when your innards is out o’ order for all the world as if you was bloomin’ generals. An’ now you’ve topped it all, you bats’-eyed beggars, with getting us druv out to that stinkin’ Fort ’Ammerer. We’ll fort you when we get out there; yes, an’ we’ll ’ammer you too. Don’t you think you’ve come into the H’army to drink Heno, an’ club your comp‘ny, an’ lie on your cots an’ scratch your fat heads. You can do that at ’ome sellin’ matches, which is all you’re fit for, you keb-huntin’, penny-toy, bootlace, baggage-tout, ’orse-’oldin’, sandwich-backed se-werss, you.’ I’ve spoke you as fair as I know ’ow, and you give good ’eed, ’cause if Mulvaney stops skrimshanking—gets out o’ ’orspital—when we’re in the Fort, I lay your lives will be trouble to you.’

That was Ortheris’s peroration, and it caused B Company to be christened the Boot-black Brigade. With this disgrace on their slack shoulders they went to garrison duty at Fort Amara with their officers, who were under instructions to twist their little tails. The army, unlike every other profession, cannot be taught through shilling books. First a man must suffer, then he must learn his work, and the self-respect that that knowledge brings. The learning is hard, in a land where the army is not a red thing that walks down the street to be looked at, but a living tramping reality that may be needed at the shortest notice, when there is no time to say, ‘Hadn’t you better?’ and ‘Won’t you please?’

The company officers divided themselves into three. When Brander the captain was wearied, he gave over to Maydew, and when Maydew was hoarse he ordered the junior subaltern Ouless to bucket the men through squad and company drill, till Brander could go on again. Out of parade hours the old soldiers spoke to the recruits as old soldiers will, and between the four forces at work on them, the new draft began to stand on their feet and feel that they belonged to a good and honourable service. This was proved by their once or twice resenting Ortheris’s technical lectures.

‘Drop it now, lad,’ said Learoyd, coming to the rescue. ‘Th’ pups are biting back. They’re none so rotten as we looked for.’

‘Ho! Yes. You think yourself soldiers now, ’cause you don’t fall over each other on p’rade, don’t you? You think ’cause the dirt don’t cake off you week’s end to week’s end that you’re clean men. You think ’cause you can fire your rifle without more nor shuttin’ both eyes, you’re something to fight, don’t you? You’ll know later on,’ said Ortheris to the barrack-room generally. ‘Not but what you’re a little better than you was,’ he added, with a gracious wave of his cutty.

It was in this transition-stage that I came across the new draft once more. Their officers, in the zeal of youth forgetting that the old soldiers who stiffened the sections must suffer equally with the raw material under hammering, had made all a little stale and unhandy with continuous drill in the square, instead of marching the men into the open and supplying them with skirmishing drill. The month of garrison-duty in the Fort was nearly at an end, and B Company were quite fit for a self-respecting regiment to drill with. They had no style or spring,—that would come in time,—but so far as they went they were passable. I met Maydew one day and inquired after their health. He told me that young Ouless was putting a polish on a half-company of them in the great square by the east bastion of the Fort that afternoon. Because the day was Saturday I went off to taste the full beauty of leisure in watching another man hard at work.

The fat forty-pound muzzle-loaders on the east bastion made a very comfortable resting-place. You could sprawl full length on the iron warmed by the afternoon sun to blood heat, and command an easy view of the parade-ground which lay between the powder-magazine and the curtain of the bastion.

I saw a half-company called over and told off for drill, saw Ouless come from his quarters, tugging at his gloves, and heard the first ’Shun! that locks the ranks and shows that work has begun. Then I went off on my own thoughts; the squeaking of the boots and the rattle of the rifles making a good accompaniment, and the line of red coats and black trousers a suitable back-ground to them all. They concerned the formation of a territorial army for India,—an army of specially paid men enlisted for twelve years’ service in Her Majesty’s Indian possessions, with the option of extending on medical certificates for another five and the certainty of a pension at the end. They would be such an army as the world had never seen,—one hundred thousand trained men drawing annually five, no, fifteen thousand men from England, making India their home, and allowed to marry in reason. Yes, I thought, watching the line shift to and fro, break and re-form, we would buy back Cashmere from the drunken imbecile who was turning it into a hell, and there we would plant our much-married regiments,—the men who had served ten years of their time,—and there they should breed us white soldiers, and perhaps a second fighting-line of Eurasians. At all events Cashmere was the only place in India that the Englishman could colonise, and if we had foothold there we could, . . Oh, it was a beautiful dream! I left that territorial army swelled to a quarter of a million men far behind, swept on as far as an independent India, hiring warships from the mother-country, guarding Aden on the one side and Singapore on the other, paying interest on her loans with beautiful regularity, but borrowing no men from beyond her own borders—a colonised, manufacturing India with a permanent surplus and her own flag. I had just installed myself as Viceroy, and by virtue of my office had shipped four million sturdy thrifty natives to the Malayan Archipelago, where labour is always wanted and the Chinese pour in too quickly, when I became aware that things were not going smoothly with the half-company. There was a great deal too much shuffling and shifting and ‘as you wereing.’ The non-commissioned officers were snapping at the men, and I fancied Ouless backed one of his orders with an oath. He was in no position to do this, because he was a junior who had not yet learned to pitch his word of command in the same key twice running. Sometimes he squeaked, and sometimes he grunted; and a clear full voice with a ring in it has more to do with drill than people think. He was nervous both on parade and in mess, because he was unproven and knew it. One of his majors had said in his hearing, ‘Ouless has a skin or two to slough yet, and he hasn’t the sense to be aware of it.’ That remark had staved in Ouless’s mind and caused him to think about himself in little things, which is not the best training for a young man. He tried to be cordial at mess, and became overeffusive. Then he tried to stand on his dignity, and appeared sulky and boorish. He was only hunting for the just medium and the proper note, and had found neither because he had never faced himself in a big thing. With his men he was as ill at ease as he was with his mess, and his voice betrayed him. I heard two orders and then:—‘Sergeant, what is that rear-rank man doing, damn him?’ That was sufficiently bad. A company officer ought not to ask sergeants for information. He commands, and commands are not held by syndicates.

It was too dusty to see the drill accurately, but I could hear the excited little voice pitching from octave to octave, and the uneasy ripple of badgered or bad-tempered files running down the ranks. Ouless had come on parade as sick of his duty as were the men of theirs. The hot sun had told on everybody’s temper, but most of all on the youngest man’s. He had evidently lost his self-control, and not possessing the nerve or the knowledge to break off till he had recovered it again, was making bad worse by ill-language.

page 3

The men shifted their ground and came close under the gun I was lying on. They were wheeling quarter-right and they did it very badly, in the natural hope of hearing Ouless swear again. He could have taught them nothing new, but they enjoyed the exhibition. Instead of swearing Ouless lost his head completely, and struck out nervously at the wheeling flank-man with a little Malacca riding-cane that he held in his hand for a pointer. The cane was topped with thin silver over lacquer, and the silver had worn through in one place, leaving a triangular flap sticking up. I had just time to see that Ouless had thrown away his commission by striking a soldier, when I heard the rip of cloth and a piece of gray shirt showed under the torn scarlet on the man’s shoulder. It had been the merest nervous flick of an exasperated boy, but quite enough to forfeit his commission, since it had been dealt in anger to a volunteer and no pressed man, who could not under the rules of the service reply. The effect of it, thanks to the natural depravity of things, was as though Ouless had cut the man’s coat off his back. Knowing the new draft by reputation, I was fairly certain that every one of them would swear with many oaths that Ouless had actually thrashed the man. In that case Ouless would do well to pack his trunk. His career as a servant of the Queen in any capacity was ended. The wheel continued, and the men halted and dressed immediately opposite my resting-place. Ouless’s face was perfectly bloodless. The flanking man was a dark red, and I could see his lips moving in wicked words. He was Ortheris! After seven years’ service and three medals, he had been struck by a boy younger than himself! Further, he was my friend and a good man, a proved man, and an Englishman. The shame of the thing made me as hot as it made Ouless cold, and if Ortheris had slipped in a cartridge and cleared the account at once I should have rejoiced. The fact that Ortheris, of all men, had been struck, proved, that the boy could not have known whom he was hitting; but he should have remembered that he was no longer a boy. And then I was sorry for him, and then I was angry again, and Ortheris stared in front of him and grew redder and redder.

The drill halted for a moment. No one knew why, for not three men could have seen the insult, the wheel being end-on to Ouless at the time. Then, led, I conceived, by the hand of Fate, Brander, the captain, crossed the drill-ground, and his eye was caught by not more than a square foot of gray shirt over a shoulder-blade that should have been covered by well-fitting tunic.

‘Heavens and earth!’ he said, crossing in three strides. ‘Do you let your men come on parade in rags, sir? What’s that scarecrow doing here? Fall out, that flank-man. What do you mean by—You, Ortheris! of all men. What the deuce do you mean?’

‘Beg y’ pardon, sir,’ said Ortheris. ‘I scratched it against the guard-gate running up to parade.’

‘Scratched it! Ripped it up, you mean. It’s half off your back.’

‘It was a little tear at first, sir, but in portin’ arms it got stretched, sir, an’—an’ I can’t look be’ind me. I felt it givin’, sir.’

‘Hm! ‘ said Brander. ‘I should think you did feel it give. I thought it was one of the new draft. You’ve a good pair of shoulders. Go on!’

He turned to go. Ouless stepped after him, very white, and said something in a low voice.

‘Hey, what? What? Ortheris,’ the voice dropped. I saw Ortheris salute, say something, and stand at attention.

‘Dismiss,’ said Brander curtly. The men were dismissed. ‘I can’t make this out. You say——?’ he nodded at Ouless, who said something again. Ortheris stood still, the torn flap of his tunic falling nearly to his waist-belt. He had, as Brander said, a good pair of shoulders, and prided himself on the fit of his tunic.

‘Beg y’ pardon, sir,’ I heard him say, ‘but I think Lieutenant Ouless has been in the sun too long. He don’t quite remember things, sir. I come on p’rade with a bit of a rip, and it spread, sir, through portin’ arms, as I ’ave said, sir.’

Brander looked from one face to the other and I suppose drew his own conclusions, for he told Ortheris to go with the other men who were flocking back to barracks. Then he spoke to Ouless and went away, leaving the boy in the middle of the parade-ground fumbling with his sword-knot.

He looked up, saw me lying on the gun, and came to me biting the back of his gloved forefinger, so completely thrown off his balance that he had not sense enough to keep his trouble to himself.

‘I say, you saw that, I suppose?’ He jerked his head back to the square, where the dust left by the departing men was settling down in white circles.

‘I did,’ I answered, for I was not feeling polite.

‘What the devil ought I to do?’ He bit his finger again. ‘I told Brander what I had done. I hit him.’

‘I’m perfectly aware of that,’ I said, ‘and I don’t suppose Ortheris has forgotten it already.’

‘Ye—es; but I’m dashed if I know what I ought to do. Exchange into another company, I suppose. I can’t ask the man to exchange, I suppose. Hey?’

The suggestion showed the glimmerings of proper sense, but he should not have come to me or any one else for help. It was his own affair, and I told him so. He seemed unconvinced, and began to talk of the possibilities of being cashiered. At this point the spirit moved me, on behalf of the unavenged Ortheris, to paint him a beautiful picture of his insignificance in the scheme of creation. He had a papa and a mamma seven thousand miles away, and perhaps some friends. They would feel his disgrace, but no one else would care a, penny. He would be only Lieutenant Ouless of the Old Regiment dismissed the Queen’s service for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The Commander-in-Chief, who would confirm the orders of the court-martial, would not know who he was; his mess would not speak of him; he would return to Bombay, if he had money enough to go home, more alone than when he had come out. Finally,—I rounded the sketch with precision,—he was only one tiny dab of red in the vast gray field of the Indian Empire. He must work this crisis out alone, and no one could help him, and no one cared—(this was untrue, because I cared immensely; he had spoken the truth to Brander on the spot)—whether he pulled through it or did not pull through it. At last his face set and his figure stiffened.

‘Thanks, that’s quite enough. I don’t want to hear any more,’ he said in a dry grating voice, and went to his own quarters.

Brander spoke to me afterwards and asked me some absurd question—whether I had seen Ouless cut the coat off Ortheris’s back. I knew that jagged sliver of silver would do its work well, but I contrived to impress on Brander the completeness, the wonderful completeness, of my disassociation from that drill. I began to tell him all about my dreams for the new territorial army in India, and he left me.

page 4

I could not see Ortheris for some days, but I learnt that when he returned to his fellows he had told the story of the blow in vivid language. Samuelson, the Jew, then asserted that it was not good enough to live in a regiment where you were drilled off your feet and knocked about like a dog. The remark was a perfectly innocent one, and exactly tallied with Ortheris’s expressed opinions. Yet Ortheris had called Samuelson an unmentionable Jew, had accused him of kicking women on the head in London, and howling under the cat, had hustled him, as a bantam hustles a barn-door cock, from one end of the barrack-room to the other, and finally had heaved every single article of Samuelson’s valise and bedding-roll into the verandah and the outer dirt, kicking Samuelson every time that the bewildered creature stooped to pick anything up. My informant could not account for this inconsistency, but it seemed to me that Ortheris was working off his temper.

Mulvaney had heard the story in hospital. First his face clouded, then he spat, and then laughed. I suggested that he had better return to active duty, but he saw it in another light, and told me that Ortheris was quite capable of looking after himself and his own affairs. ‘An’ if I did come out,’ said Terence, ‘like as not I would be catchin’ young Ouless by the scruff av his trousies an’ makin’ an example av him before the men. Whin Dinah came back I would be under court-martial, an’ all for the sake av a little bit av a bhoy that’ll make an orf’cer yet. What’s he goin’ to do, sorr, do ye know?’

‘Which?’ said I.

‘Ouless, av course. I’ve no fear for the man. Begad, tho’, if ut had come to me—but ut could not have so come—I’d ha’ made him cut his wisdom-teeth on his own sword-hilt.’

‘I don’t think he knows himself what he means to do,’ I said.

‘I should not wonder,’ said Terence. ‘There’s a dale av thinkin’ before a young man whin he’s done wrong an’ knows ut, an’ is studyin’ how to put ut right. Give the word from me to our little man there, that if he had ha’ told on his shuperior orf’cer I’d ha’ come out to Fort Amara to kick him into the Fort ditch, an’ that’s a forty-fut drop.’

Ortheris was not in good condition to talk to. He wandered up and down with Learoyd brooding, so far as I could see, over his lost honour, and using, as I could hear, incendiary language. Learoyd would nod and spit and smoke and nod again, and he must have been a great comfort to Ortheris—almost as great a comfort as Samuelson, whom Ortheris bullied disgracefully. If the Jew opened his mouth in the most casual remark Ortheris would plunge down it with all arms and accoutrements, while the barrack-room stared and wondered.

Ouless had retired into himself to meditate. I saw him now and again, and he avoided me because I had witnessed his shame and spoken my mind on it. He seemed dull and moody, and found his half-company anything but pleasant to drill. The men did their work and gave him very little trouble, but just when they should have been feeling their feet, and showing that they felt them by spring and swing and snap, the elasticity died out, and it was only drilling with war-game blocks. There is a beautiful little ripple in a well-made
line of men, exactly like the play of a perfectly-tempered sword. Ouless’s half-company moved as a broom-stick moves, and would have broken as easily.

I was speculating whether Ouless had sent money to Ortheris, which would have been bad, or had apologised to him in private, which would have been worse, or had decided to let the whole affair slide, which would have been worst of all, when orders came to me to leave the station for a while. I had not spoken directly to Ortheris, for his honour was not my honour, and he was its only guardian, and he would not say anything except bad words.

I went away, and from time to time thought a great deal of that subaltern and that private in Fort Amara, and wondered what would be the upshot of everything.

When I returned it was early spring. B Company had been shifted from the Fort to regular duty in cantonments, the roses were getting ready to bud on the Mall, and the regiment, which had been at a camp of exercise among other things, was going through its spring musketry-course under an adjutant who had a notion that its shooting average was low. He had stirred up the company officers and they had bought extra ammunition for their men—the Government allowance is just sufficient to foul the rifling—and E Company, which counted many marksmen, was vapouring and offering to challenge all the other companies, and the third-class shots were very sorry that they had ever been born, and all the subalterns were a rich ripe saddle-colour from sitting at the butts six and eight hours a day.

I went off to the butts after breakfast very full of curiosity to see how the new draft had come forward. Ouless was there with his men by the bald hillock that marks the six hundred yards’ range, and the men were in gray-green khaki, that shows the best points of a soldier and shades off into every background he may stand against. Before I was in hearing distance I could see, as they sprawled on the dusty grass, or stood up and shook themselves, that they were men made over again—wearing their helmets with the cock of self-possession, swinging easily, and jumping to the word of command. Coming nearer, I heard Ouless whistling Ballyhooley between his teeth as he looked down the range with his binoculars, and the back of Lieutenant Ouless was the back of a free man and an officer. He nodded as I came up, and I heard him fling an order to a non-commissioned officer in a sure and certain voice. The flag ran up from the target, and Ortheris threw himself down on his stomach to put in his ten shots. He winked at me over the breech-block as he settled himself, with the air of a man who has to go through tricks for the benefit of children.

‘Watch, you men,’ said Ouless to the squad behind. ‘He’s half your weight, Brannigan, but he isn’t afraid of his rifle.’

Ortheris had his little affectations and pet ways as the rest of us have. He weighed his rifle, gave it a little kick-up, cuddled down again, and fired across the ground that was beginning to dance in the sun-heat.

‘Miss!’ said a man behind.

‘Too much bloomin’ background in front,’ Ortheris muttered.

‘I should allow two feet for refraction,’ said Ouless.

Ortheris fired again, made his outer, crept in, found the bull and stayed there; the non-commissioned officer pricking off the shots.

‘Can’t make out ‘ow I missed that first,’ he said, rising, and stepping back to my side, as Learoyd took his place.

‘Is it company practice?’ I asked.

‘No. Only just knockin’ about. Ouless, ’e’s givin’ ten rupees for second-class shots. I’m outer it, of course, but I come on to show ’em the proper style o’ doin’ things. Jock looks like a sea-lion at the Brighton Aquarium sprawlin’ an’ crawlin’ down there, don’t ‘e? Gawd, what a butt this end of ’im would make.’

page 5

‘B Company has come up very well,’ I said.

‘They ‘ad to. They’re none so dusty now, are they? Samuelson even, ’e can shoot sometimes. We’re gettin’ on as well as can be expected, thank you.’

‘How do you get on with——?’

‘Oh, ’im! First-rate! Theres nothin’ wrong with ’im.’

‘Was it all settled then?’

‘’Asn’t Terence told you? I should say it was. ’E’s a gentleman, ’e is.’

‘Let’s hear,’ I said.

Ortheris twinkled all over, tucked his rifle across his knees and repeated, ‘’E’s a gentleman. ’E’s an officer too. You saw all that mess in Fort ’Ammerer. ’Twasn’t none o’ my fault, as you can guess. Only some goat in the drill judged it was be’aviour or something to play the fool on p’rade. That’s why we drilled so bad. When ’e ’it me, I was so took aback I couldn’t do nothing, an’ when I wished for to knock ’im down the wheel ’ad gone on, an’ I was facin’ you there lyin’ on the guns. After the captain had come up an’ was raggin’ me about my tunic bein’ tore, I saw the young beggar’s eye, an’ ’fore I could ’elp myself I begun to lie like a good ’un. You ’eard that? It was quite instinkive, but, my! I was in a lather. Then he said to the captain, “I struck ’im!” sez ’e, an’ I ‘eard Brander whistle, an’ then I come out with a new set o’ lies all about portin’ arms an’ ’ow the rip growed, same as you ’eard. I done that too before I knew where I was. Then I give Samuelson what-for in barricks when he was dismissed. You should ha’ seen ’is kit by the time I’d finished with it. It was all over the bloomin’ Fort! Then me an’ Jock went off to Mulvaney in ’orspital, five-mile walk, an’ I was hoppin’ mad. Ouless, ’e knowed it was court-martial for me if I ’it ’im back—’e must ha’ knowed. Well, I sez to Terence, whisperin’ under the ’orspital balcony—“Terence,” sez I, “what in ’ell am I to do?” I told ’im all about the row same as you saw. Terence ’e whistles like a bloomin’ old bullfinch up there in ’orspital, an’ ’e sez, “You ain’t to blame,” sez ’e. “’Strewth,” sez I, “d’you suppose I’ve come ’ere five mile in the sun to take blame?” I sez. “I want that young beggar’s hide took off. I ain’t a bloomin’ conscrip’,” I sez. “I’m a private servin’ of the Queen, an’ as good a man as ’e is,” I sez, “for all ’is commission an’ ’is airs an’ ’is money,” sez I’

‘What a fool you were,’ I interrupted. Ortheris, being neither a menial nor an American, but a free man, had no excuse for yelping.

’That’s exactly what Terence said. I wonder you set it the same way so pat if ’e ’asn’t been talkin’ to you. ’E sez to me—“You ought to ’ave more sense,” ’e sez, “at your time of life. What differ do it make to you,” ’e sez, “whether ’e ’as a commission or no commission? That’s none o’ your affair. It’s between man an’ man,” ’e sez, “if ’e ’eld a general’s commission. Moreover,” ’e sez, “you don’t look ’andsome ’oppin’ about on your ’ind legs like that. Take him away, Jock.” Then ’e went inside, an’ that’s all I got outer Terence. Jock, ’e sez as slow as a march in slow time,—“Stanley,” ’e sez, “that young beggar didn’t go for to ’it you.” “I don’t give a damn whether ’e did or ’e didn’t. ’It me ’e did,” I sez. “Then you’ve only got to report to Brander,” sez Jock. “What d’yer take me for?” I sez, as I was so mad I nearly ’it Jock. An’ he got me by the neck an’ shoved my ’ead into a bucket o’ water in the cook-’ouse an’ then we went back to the Fort, an’ I give Samuelson a little more trouble with ’is kit. ’E sez to me, “I haven’t been strook without ’ittin’ back.” “Well, you’re goin’ to be now,” I sez, an’ I give ’im one or two for ’isself, an’ arxed ’im very polite to ’it back, but he didn’t. I’d ha’ killed ’im if ’e ’ad. That done me a lot o’ good.

‘Ouless ’e didn’t make no show for some days,—not till after you was gone; an’ I was feelin’ sick an’ miserable, an’ didn’t know what I wanted, ’cept to black his little eyes good. I ’oped ’e might send me some money for my tunic. Then I’d ha’ had it out with him on p’rade and took my chance. Terence was in ’orspital still, you see, an’ ’e wouldn’t give me no advice.

‘The day after you left, Ouless come across me carrying a bucket on fatigue, an’ ’e sez to me very quietly, “Ortheris, you’ve got to come out shootin’ with me,” ’e sez. I felt like to bunging the bucket in ’is eye, but I didn’t. I got ready to go instead. Oh, ’es a gentleman! We went out together, neither sayin’ nothin’ to the other till we was well out into the jungle beyond the river with ’igh grass all round,—pretty near that place where I went off my ’ead with you. Then ’e puts his gun down an’ sez very quietly: “Ortheris, I strook you on p’rade,” ’e sez. “Yes, sir,” sez I, “you did.” “I’ve been studying it out by myself,” ’e sez. “Oh, you ’ave, ’ave you?” sez I to myself, “an’ a nice time you’ve been about it, you bun-faced little beggar.” “Yes, sir,” sez I. “What made you screen me?” ’e sez. “I don’t know,” I sez, an’ no more I did, nor do. “I can’t ask you to exchange,” ’e sez. “An’ I don’t want to exchange myself,” sez ’e. “What’s comin’ now?” I thinks to myself. “Yes, sir,” sez I. He looks round at the ’igh grass all about, an’ ’e sez to himself more than to me,—“I’ve got to go through it alone, by myself!” ’E looked so queer for a minute that, s’elp me, I thought the little beggar was going to pray. Then he turned round again an’ ’e sez, “What do you think yourself?s ’e sez. “I don’t quite see what you mean, sir,” I sez. “What would you like?” ’e sez. An’ I thought for a minute ’e was goin’ to give me money, but ’e run ’is ’and up to the top-button of ’is shootin’ coat an’ loosed it. “Thank you, sir,” I sez. “I’d like that very well,” I sez, an’ both our coats was off an’ put down.’

‘Hooray!’ I shouted incautiously.

‘Don’t make a noise on the butts,’ said Ouless from the shooting-place. ‘It puts the men off.’

I apologised, and Ortheris went on.

‘Our coats was off, an’ ’e sez, “Are you ready?” sez ’e. “Come on then.” I come on, a bit uncertain at first, but he took me one under the chin that warmed me up. I wanted to mark the little beggar an’ I hit high, but he went an’ jabbed me over the heart like a good one. He wasn’t so strong as me, but he knew more, an’ in about two minutes I calls “Time.” ’E steps back,—it was in—fightin’ then: “Come on when you’re ready,” ’e sez; and when I had my wind I come on again, an’ I got ’im one on the nose that painted ’is little aristocratic white shirt for ’im. That fetched ’im, an’ I knew it quicker nor light. He come all round me, close-fightin’, goin’ steady for my heart. I held on all I could an’ split ’is ear, but then I began to hiccup, an’ the game was up. I come in to feel if I could throw ’im, an’ ’e got me one on the mouth that downed me an’—look ’ere!’

Ortheris raised the left corner of his upper lip. An eye-tooth was wanting.

‘’E stood over me an’ ’e sez, “Have you ’ad enough?” ’e sez. “Thank you, I ’ave,” sez I. He took my ’and an’ pulled me up, an’ I was pretty shook. “Now,” ’e sez, “I’ll apologise for ’ittin’ you. It was all my fault,” ’e sez, “an’ it wasn’t meant for you.” “I knowed that, sir,” I sez, “an’ there’s no need for no apology.” “Then it’s an accident,” ’e sez; “an’ you must let me pay for the coat; else it’ll be stopped out o’ your pay.” I wouldn’t ha’ took the money before, but I did then. ’E give me ten rupees,—enough to pay for a coat twice over, ’an we went down to the river to wash our faces, which was well marked. His was special. Then he sez to himself, sputterin’ the water out of ’is mouth, “I wonder if I done right?” ’e sez. “Yes, sir,” sez I; “ there’s no fear about that.” “It’s all well for you,” ’e sez, “but what about the comp’ny?” “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” I sez, “I don’t think the comp’ny will give no trouble.” Then we went shootin’, an’ when we come back I was feelin’ as chirpy as a cricket, an’ I took an’ rolled Samuelson up an’ down the verandah, an’ give out to the comp’ny that the difficulty between me an’ Lieutenant Ouless was satisfactory put a stop to. I told Jock, o’ course, an’ Terence. Jock didn’t say nothing, but Terence ’e sez : “You’re a pair, you two. An’, begad, I don’t know which was the better man.” There ain’t nothin’ wrong with Ouless. ’E’s a gentleman all over, an’ ’e’s come on as much as B Comp’ny. I lay ’e’d lose ‘is commission, tho’, if it come out that ’e’d been fightin’ with a private. Ho! ho! Fightin’ all an afternoon with a bloomin’ private like me! What do you think?” he added, brushing the breech of his rifle.

‘I think what the umpires said at the sham fight; both sides deserve great credit. But I wish you’d tell me what made you save him in the first place.’

‘I was pretty sure that ’e ’adn’t meant it for me, though that wouldn’t ha’ made no difference if ’e’d been copped for it. An’ ’e was that young too that it wouldn’t ha’ been fair. Besides, if I had ha’ done that I’d ha’ missed the fight, and I’d ha’ felt bad all my time. Don’t you see it that way, sir.’

‘It was your right to get him cashiered if you chose,’ I insisted.

‘My right!’ Ortheris answered with deep scorn. ‘My right! I ain’t a recruity to go whinin’ about my rights to this an’ my rights to that, just as if I couldn’t look after myself. My rights! ’Strewth A’mighty! I’m a man.’

The last squad were finishing their shots in a storm of low-voiced chaff. Ouless withdrew to a little distance in order to leave the men at ease, and I saw his face in the full sunlight for a moment, before he hitched up his sword, got his men together, and marched them back to barracks. It was all right. The boy was proven.

page 1 of 7

THE horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from his comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun had dried it to a dusky goldbeater-skin film, cracked lozenge-wise by the heat; and as the wind rose, each lozenge, rising a little, curled up at the edges as if it were a dumb tongue. Then a heavier gust blew all away down wind in grains of dark coloured dust. It was too hot to stand in the sunshine before breakfast. The men were in barracks talking the matter over. A knot of soldiers’ wives stood by one of the entrances to the married quarters, while inside a woman shrieked and raved with wicked filthy words.A quiet and well-conducted sergeant had shot down, in broad daylight just after early parade, one of his own corporals, had then returned to barracks and sat on a cot till the guard came for him. He would, therefore, in due time be handed over to the High Court for trial. Further, but this he could hardly have considered in his scheme of revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of that trial would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like I knew even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned, with the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his Commanding Officer would put in certificates to the prisoner’s moral character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the witnesses would smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper would lose his head in cross-examination, and the young barrister who always defended soldiers’ cases for the credit that they never brought him, would say and do wonderful things, and would then quarrel with me because I had not reported him correctly. At the last, for he surely would not be hanged, I might meet the prisoner again, ruling blank account-forms in the Central jail, and cheer him with the hope of his being made a warder in the Andamans.

The Indian Penal Code and its interpreters do not treat murder, under any provocation whatever, in a spirit of jest. Sergeant Raines would be very lucky indeed if he got off with seven years, I thought. He had slept the night upon his wrongs, and killed his man at twenty yards before any talk was possible. That much I knew. Unless, therefore, the case was doctored a little, seven years would be his least; and I fancied it was exceedingly well for Sergeant Raines that he had been liked by his Company.

That same evening—no day is so long as the day of a murder—I met Ortheris with the dogs, and he plunged defiantly into the middle of the matter. ‘I’ll be one o’ the witnesses,’ said he. ‘I was in the verandah when Mackie come along. ’E come from Mrs. Raines’s quarters. Quigley, Parsons, an’ Trot, they was in the inside verandah, so they couldn’t ’ave ’eard nothing. Sergeant Raines was in the verandah talkin’ to me, an’ Mackie ’e come along acrost the square an’ ’e sez, “.Well;” sez ’e, “’ave they pushed your ’elmet off yet, Sergeant?” ’e sez. An’ at that Raines ’e catches ’is breath an’ ’e sez, “My Gawd, I can’t stand this!” sez ’e, an’ ’e picks up my rifle an’ shoots Mackie. See?’

‘But what were you doing with your rifle in the outer verandah an hour after parade? ’

‘Cleanin’ ’er,’ said Ortheris, with the sullen brassy stare that always went with his choicer lies.

He might as well have said that he was dancing naked, for at no time did his rifle need hand or rag on her twenty minutes after parade. Still, the High Court would not know his routine.

‘Are you going to stick to that—on the’ Book?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Like a bloomin’ leech.’

‘All right, I don’t want to know any more. Only remember that Quigley, Parsons, and Trot couldn’t have been where you say without hearing something; and there’s nearly certain to be a barrack-sweeper who was knocking about the square at the time. There always is.’

‘’Twasn’t the sweeper. It was the beastie. ’E’s all right.’

Then I knew that there was going to be some spirited doctoring, and I felt sorry for the Government Advocate who would conduct the prosecution.

When the trial came on I pitied him more, for he was always quick to lose his temper and made a personal matter of each lost cause. Raines’s young barrister had for once put aside his unslaked and welling passion for alibis and insanity, had forsworn gymnastics and fireworks, and worked soberly for his client. Mercifully the hot weather was yet young, and there had been no flagrant cases of barrack-shootings up to the time; and the jury was a good one, even for an Indian jury, where nine men out of every twelve are accustomed to weighing evidence. Ortheris stood firm and was not shaken by any cross-examination. The one weak point in his tale—the presence of his rifle in the outer verandah—went unchallenged by civilian wisdom, though some of the witnesses could not help smiling. The Government Advocate called for the rope, contending throughout that the murder had been a deliberate one. Time had passed, he argued, for that reflection which comes so naturally to a man whose honour is lost. There was also the Law, ever ready and anxious to right the wrongs of the common soldier if, indeed, wrong had been done. But he doubted much whether there had been any sufficient wrong. Causeless suspicion over-long brooded upon had led, by his theory, to deliberate crime. But his attempts to minimise the motive failed. The most disconnected witness knew—had known for weeks—the causes of offence; and the prisoner, who naturally was the last of all to know, groaned in the dock while he listened. The one question that the trial circled round was whether Raines had fired under sudden and blinding provocation given that very morning; and in the summing-up it was clear that Ortheris’s evidence told. He had contrived most artistically to suggest that he personally hated the Sergeant, who had come into the verandah to give him a talking to for insubordination. In a weak moment the Government Advocate asked one question too many. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ Ortheris replied, ‘’e was callin’ me a dam’ impudent little lawyer.’ The Court shook. The jury brought it in a killing, but with every provocation and extenuation known to God or man, and the Judge put his hand to his brow before giving sentence, and the Adam’s apple in the prisoner’s throat went up and down like mercury pumping before a cyclone.

In consideration of all considerations, from his Commanding Officer’s certificate of good conduct to the sure loss of pension, service, and honour, the prisoner would get two years, to be served in India, and—there need be no demonstration in Court. The Government Advocate scowled and picked up his papers; the guard wheeled with a clash, and the prisoner was relaxed to the Secular Arm, and driven to the jail in a broken-down ticca-gharri.

His guard and some ten or twelve military witnesses, being less important, were ordered to wait till’ what was officially called the cool of the evening before marching back to cantonments. They gathered together in one of the deep red brick verandahs of a disused lock-up and congratulated Ortheris, who bore his honours modestly. I sent my work into the office and joined them. Ortheris watched the Government Advocate driving off to lunch.

‘That’s a nasty little bald-’eaded little butcher, that is,’ he said. ‘’E don’t please me. ’E’s got a colley dog wot do, though. I’m goin’ up to Murree in, a week. That dawg’ll bring fifteen rupees anywheres.’

page 2

‘You had better spend ut in Masses,’ said Terence, unbuckling his belt; for he had been on the prisoner’s guard, standing helmeted and bolt upright for three long hours.

‘Not me,’ said Ortheris cheerfully. ‘Gawd’ll put it down to B Comp’ny’s barrick-damages one o’ these days. You look strapped, Terence.’

‘Faith, I’m not so young as I was. That guard-mountin’ wears on the sole av the fut, and this’—he sniffed contemptuously at the brick verandah—‘is as hard setting as standin’!’

‘Wait a minute. I’ll get the cushions out of my cart,’ I said.

‘’Strewth—sofies. We’re going it gay,’ said Ortheris, as Terence dropped himself section by section on the leather cushions, saying prettily, ‘May ye niver want a soft place wheriver you go, an’ power to share ut wid a frind. Another for yourself? That’s good. It lets me sit longways. Stanley, pass me a pipe. Augrrh! An’, that’s another man gone all to pieces bekaze av a woman. I must ha’ been on forty or fifty prisoners’ gyards, first an’ last; an’ I hate ut new ivry time.’

‘Let’s see: You were on Losson’s, Lancey’s, Dugard’s, and Stebbins’s, that I can remember,’ I said.

‘Ay, an’ before that an’ before that—scores av thim,’ he answered with a worn smile. ‘’Tis better to die than to live for them, though. Whin Raines comes out—he’ll be changin’ his kit at the jail now—he’ll think that too. He shud, ha’ shot himself an’ the woman by rights an’ made a clean bill av all. Now he’s left the woman—she tuk tay wid Dinah Sunday gone last—an’ he’s left himself. Mackie’s the lucky man.’

‘He’s probably getting it hot where he is,’ I ventured, for I knew something of the dead Corporal’s record.

‘Be sure av that,’ said Terence, spitting over the edge of the verandah. ‘But fwhat he’ll get there is light marchin’ordher to fwhat he’d ha’ got here if he’d lived.’

‘Surely not. He’d have gone on and forgotten—like the others.’

‘Did ye know Mackie well, sorr?’ said Terence.

‘He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out shooting with him in an ekka for the day, and I found him rather an amusing man.’

‘Well, he’ll ha’ got shut av aniusemints, excipt turnin’ from wan side to the other, these few years to come. I knew Mackie, an’ I’ve seen too many to be mistuk in the muster av wan man. He might ha’ gone on an’ forgot as you say, sorr, but he was a man wid an educashin, an’ he used ut for his schames; an’ the same educashin, an’ talkin’, an’ all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in the long-run an’ tear him alive. I can’t say fwhat that I mane to say bekaze I don’t know how, but Mackie was the spit an’ livin’ image av a man that I saw march the same march all but; an’ ’twas worse for him that he did not come by Mackie’s ind. Wait while I remember now,. ’Twas whin I was in the Black Tyrone, an’ he was drafted us from Portsmouth; an’ fwhat was his misbegotten name? Larry—Larry Tighe ut was; an’ wan of the draft said he was a gentleman-ranker, an’ Larry tuk an’ three-parts killed him for saying so. An’ he was a big man, an’ a strong man, an’ a handsome man, an’ that tells heavy in practice wid some women, but, takin’ them by an’ large, not wid all. Yet ’twas wid all that Larry dealt—all—for he cud put the comether on any woman that trod the green earth av God, an’ he knew ut. Like Mackie that’s roastin’ now, he knew ut, an’ niver did he put the comether on any woman save an’ excipt for the black shame. ’Tis not me that shud be talkin’, dear knows, dear knows, but the most av my mis—misallinces was for pure devilry, an’ mighty sorry I have been whin harm came; an’ time an’ again wid a girl, ay, an’ a woman too, for the matter av that, whin I have seen by the eyes av her that I was makin’ more throuble than I talked, I have hild off an’ let be for the sake av the mother that bore me. But Larry, I’m thinkin’, he was suckled by a she-devil, for he never let wan go that came nigh to listen to him. ’Twas his business, as if it might ha’ ben sinthry-go. He was a good soldier too. Now there was the Colonel’s governess—an’ he a privit too!—that was never known in barricks; an’ wan av the Major’s maids, and she was promised to a man; an’ some more outside; an’ fwhat ut was amongst us we’ll never know till Judgment Day. ’Twas the nature av the baste to put the comether on the best av thim—not the prettiest by any manner av manes—but the like av such women as you cud lay your hand on the Book an’ swear there was niver thought av foolishness in. An’ for that very reason, mark you, he was niver caught. He came close to ut wanst or twice, but caught he niver was, an’ that cost him more at the ind than the beginnin’. He talked to me more than most, bekaze he tould me, barrin’ the accident av my educashin, I’d av been the same kind av divil he was. “An’ is ut like,” he wud say, houldin’ his head high—“is ut like that I’d iver be thrapped? For fwhat am I when all’s said an’ done?” he sez. “A damned privit,” sez he. “An’ is ut like, think you, that thim I know wud be connect wid a privit like me? Number tin thousand four hundred an’ sivin,” he sez grinnin’. I knew by the turn av his spache when he was not takin’ care to talk rough-shod that he was a gentleman-ranker.

‘“I do not undherstan’ ut at all,” I sez; “but I know,” sez I, “that the divil looks out av your eyes, an’ I’ll have no share wid you. A little fun by way av amusemint where ’twill do no harm, Larry, is right and fair, but I am mistook if ’tis any amusemint to you;” I sez.

‘“You are much mistook,” he sez. “An’ I counsel you not to judge your betters.”

‘“My betthers!” I sez. “God help you, Larry. There’s no betther in this; ’tis all bad, as ye will find for yoursilf.”

‘“You’re not like me,” he says, tossin’ his head.

‘“Praise the Saints, I am not,” I sez. “Fwhat I have done I have done an’ been crool sorry for. Fwhin your time comes,” sez I, “ye’ll remimber fwhat I say.”

‘“An’ whin that time comes,” sez he, “I’ll come to you for ghostly consolation, Father Terence,” an’ at that he wint off afther some more divil’s business—for to get expayrience, he tould me. He was wicked—rank wicked—wicked as all Hell! I’m not construct by nature to go in fear av any man, but, begad, I was afraid av Larry. He’d come in to barricks wid his cap on three hairs; an’ lie on his cot and stare at the ceilin’, and now an’ again he’d fetch a little laugh, the like av a splash in the bottom av a well, an’ by that I knew he was schamin’ new wickedness, an’ I’d be afraid. All this was long an’ long ago, but ut hild me straight—for a while.

‘I tould you, did I not, sorr, that I was caressed an’ pershuaded to lave the Tyrone on account av a throuble?’

‘Something to do with a belt and a man’s head wasn’t it?’ Terence had never given the tale in full.

page 3

‘It was. Faith, ivry time I go on prisoner’s gyard in coort I wondher fwhy I was not where the pris’ner is. But the man I struk tuk it in fair fight, an’ he had the good sinse not to die. Considher now, fwhat wud ha’ come to the Arrmy if he had! I was enthreated to exchange, an’, my Commandin’ Orf’cer pled wid me. I wint, not to be disobligin’, an’ Larry tould me he was powerful sorry to lose me, though fwhat I’d done to make him sorry I do not know. So to the Ould Reg’mint I came, lavin’ Larry to go to the divil his own way, an’ niver expectin’ to see him again excipt as a shootin’-case in barracks . . . . Who’s that quittin’ the compound?’ Terence’s quick eye had caught sight of a white uniform skulking behind the hedge.

‘The Sergeant’s gone visiting,’ said a voice.

‘Thin I command here, an’ I will have no sneakin’ away to the bazar, an’ huntin’ for you wid a pathrol at midnight. Nalson; for I know ut’s you, come back to the verandah.’

Nalson, detected, slunk back to his fellows. There was a grumble that died away in a minute or two, and Terence turning on the other side went on:—

‘That was the last I saw av Larry for a while. Exchange is the same as death for not thinkin’, an’ by token I married Dinah, an’ that kept me from remimberin’ ould times. Thin we went up to the Front, an’ ut tore my heart in tu to lave Dinah at the Depôt in Pindi. Consequint, whin I was at the Front I fought circumspectuous till I warrmed up, an’ thin I fought double tides. You remember fwhat I tould you in the gyard-gate av the fight at Silver’s Theatre?’

‘Wot’s that about Silver’s Theayter?’ said Ortheris quickly, over his shoulder.

‘Nothin’, little man. A tale that ye know. As I was sayin’, afther that fight, us av the Ould Rig’mint an’ the Tyrone was all mixed together taken’ shtock av the dead, an’ av coorse I went about to find if there was any man that remembered me. The second man I came acrost—an’ how I’d missed him in the fight I do not know—was Larry, an’ a fine man he looked, but oulder, by reason that he had fair call to be. “Larry,” sez I, “how is ut wed you?””

‘“Ye’re callin’ the wrong man,” he sez, wed his gentleman’s smile, “Larry has been dead these three years. They call him ‘ Love-o’-Women’ now,” he sez. By that I knew the ould divil was in him yet, but the end av a fight is no time for the beginnin’ av confession, so we sat down an’ talked av times.

‘“They tell me you’re a married man,” he sez, puffin’ slow at his poipe. “Are ye happy?”

‘“I will be whin I get back to Depot,” I sez, “’Tis a reconnaissance-honeymoon now.”

‘“I’m married too,” he sez, puffin’ slow an’ more slow, an’ stopperin’ wed his forefinger.

‘“Send you happiness,” I sez. “That’s the best hearin’ for a long time.”

‘“Are ye av that opinion?” he sez; an’ thin he began talkin’ av the campaign. The sweat av Silver’s Theatre was not dhry upon him an’ he was prayin’ for more work. I was well contint to lie and listen to the cook-pot lids.

Whin he got up off the ground he shtaggered a little, an’ laned over all twisted.

‘“Ye’ve got more than ye bargained for,” I sez. “Take an inventory, Larry. ’Tis like you’re hurt.”

‘He turned round stiff as a ramrod an’ damned the eyes av me up an’ down for an impartinent Irish-faced ape. If that had been in barracks, I’d ha’ stretched him an’ no more said; but ’twas at the Front, an’ afther such a fight as Silver’s Theatre I knew there was no callin’ a man to account for his tempers. He might as well ha’ kissed me. Aftherwards I was well pleased I kept my fists home. Thin our Captain Crook—Cruik-na-bulleen—came up. He’d been talkin’ to the little orf’cer bhoy av the Tyrone. “We’re all cut to windystraws,” he sez, “but the Tyrone are damned short for noncoms. Go you over there, Mulvaney, an’ be Deputy-Sergeant, Corp’ral, Lance, an’ everything else ye can lay hands on till I bid you stop.”

‘I wint over an’ tuk hould. There was wan sergeant left standin’, an’ they’d pay no heed to him. The remnint was me, an’ ’twas full time I came. Some I talked to, an’ some I did not, but before night the bhoys av the Tyrone stud to attention, begad, if I sucked on my poipe above a whishper. Betune you an’ me an’ Bobbs I was commandin’ the Company, an’ that was what Crook had thransferred me for; an’ the little orf’cer bhoy knew ut; and. I knew ut, but the Comp’ny did not. And there, mark you, is the vartue that no money an’ no dhrill can buy—the vartue av the ould soldier that knows his orf’cer’s work an’ does ut for him at the salute!

‘Thin the Tyrone, wid the Ould Rig’mint in touch, was sint maraudin’ an’ prowlin’ acrost the hills promishcuous an’ onsatisfactory. ’Tis my privit opinion that a gin’ral does not know half his time fwhat to do wid three-quarthers his command. So he shquats on his hunkers an’ bids them run round an’ round forninst him while he considhers on it. Whin by the process av nature they get sejuced into a big fight that was none av their seekin’, he sez: “Obsarve my shuperior janius. I meant ut to come so.” We ran round an’ about, an’ all we got was shootin’ into the camp at night, an’ rushin’ empty sungars wid the long bradawl, an’ bein’ hit from behind rocks till we was wore out—all excipt Love-o’-Women. That puppy-dog business was mate an’ dhrink to him. Begad he cud niver get enough av ut. Me well knowin’ that it is just this desultorial campaignin’ that kills the best men, an’ suspicionin’ that if I was cut, the little orf’cer bhoy wud expind all his men in thryin.’ to get out, I wud lie most powerful doggo whin I heard a shot, an’ curl my long legs behind a bowlder, an’ run like blazes whin the ground was clear. Faith, if I led the Tyrone in rethreat wanst I led thim forty times! Love-o’-Women wud stay pottin’ an’ pottin’ from behind a rock, and wait till the fire was heaviest, an’ thin stand up an’ fire man-height clear. He wud lie out in camp too at night, snipin’ at the shadows, for he never tuk a mouthful av slape. My commandin’ orf’cer—save his little soul!—cud not see the beauty av my strategims, an’ whin the Ould Rig’mint crossed us, an’ that was wanst a week, he’d throt off to Crook, wid his big blue eyes as round as saucers, an’ lay an information against me. I heard thim wanst talkin’ through the tent-wall, an’ I nearly laughed.

‘“He runs—runs like a hare,” sez the little orf’cer bhoy. “’Tis demoralisin’ my men.”

‘“Ye damned little fool,” sez Crook, laughin’, “he’s larnin’ you your business. Have ye been rushed at night yet?”

‘“No,” sez that child; wishful he had been.

‘“Have you any wounded?” sez Crook.

‘“No,” he sez. “There was no chanst for that. They follow Mulvaney too quick,” he sez.

‘“Fwhat more do you want, thin?” sez Crook. “Terence is bloodin’ you neat an’ handy,” he sez. “He knows fwhat you do not, an’ that’s that there’s a time for ivrything. He’ll not lead you wrong,” he sez, “but I’d give a month’s pay to larn fwhat he thinks av you.”

‘That kept the babe quiet, but Love-o’-Women was pokin’ at me for ivrything I did, an’ specially my manoeuvres.

page 4

‘“Mr. Mulvaney,” he sez wan evenin’, very contempshus, “you’re growin’ very jeldy on your feet. Among gentlemen,” he sez, “among gentlemen that’s called no pretty name.”

‘“Among privits ’Tis different,” I sez. “Get back to your tent. I’m sergeant here,” I sez.

‘There was just enough in the voice av me to tell him he was playin’ wid his life betune his teeth. He wint off, an’ I noticed that this man that was contempshus set off from the halt wid a shunt as tho’ he was bein’ kicked behind. That same night there was a Paythan picnic in the hills about, an’ firin’ into our tents fit to wake the livin’ dead. “Lie down all,” I sez. “Lie down an’ kape still. They’ll no more than waste ammunition.”

‘I heard a man’s feet on the ground, an’ thin a ’Tini joinin’ in the chorus. I’d been lyin’ warm, thinkin’ av Dinah an’ all, but I crup out wid the bugle for to look round in case there was a rush; an’ the ’Tini was flashin’ at the fore-ind av the camp, an’ the hill near by was fair flickerin’ wid long-range fire. Undher the starlight I behild Love-o’-Women settin’ on a rock wid his belt and helmet off. He shouted wanst or twice, an’ thin I heard him say: “They shud ha’ got the range long ago. Maybe they’ll fire at the flash.” Thin he fired again, an’ that dhrew a fresh volley, and the long slugs that they chew in their teeth came floppin’ among the rocks like tree-toads av a hot night. “That’s better,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Oh Lord, how long, how long!” he sez, an’ at that he lit a match an’ held ut above his head.

‘“Mad,” thinks I, “mad as a coot,” an’ I tuk wan stip forward, an’ the nixt I knew was the sole av my boot flappin’ like a cavalry gydon an’ the funny-bone av my toes tinglin’. ’Twas a clane-cut shot—a slug—that niver touched sock or hide, but set me barefut on the rocks. At that I tuk Love-o’-Women by the scruff an’ threw him under a
bowlder, an’ whin I sat down I heard the bullets patterin’ on that same good stone.

‘“Ye may dhraw your own wicked fire,” I sez, shakin’ him, “but I’m not goin’ to be kilt too.”

‘“Ye’ve come too soon,” he sez. “Ye’ve come too soon. In another minute they cudn’t ha’ missed me. Mother av’ God,” he sez, “fwhy did ye not lave me be? Now ’tis all to do again,” an’ he hides his face in his hands.

‘“So that’s it,” I sez, shakin’ him again. “That’s the manin’ av your disobeyin’ ordhers.”

‘“I dare not kill meself,” he sez, rockin’ to and fro. “My own hand wud not let me die, and there’s not a bullet this month past wud touch me. I’m to die slow,” he sez. “I’m to die slow. But I’m in hell now,” he sez, shriekin’ like a woman. “I’m in hell now!”

‘“God be good to us all,” I sez, for I saw his face. “Will ye tell a man the throuble? If ’tis not murder, maybe we’ll mend it yet.”

‘At that he laughed. “D’you remember fwhat I said in the Tyrone barricks about comin’ to you for ghostly consolation. I have not forgot,” he sez. “That came back, and the rest av my time is on me now, Terence. I’ve fought ut off for months an’ months, but the liquor will not bite any more. Terence,” he sez, “I can’t get dhrunk!”

‘Thin I knew he spoke the truth about bein’ in hell, for whin liquor does not take hould the sowl av a man is rotten in him. But me bein’ such as I was, fwhat could I say to him?

‘“Di’monds an’ pearls,” he begins again. “Di’monds an’ peals I have thrown away wid both hands—an’ fwhat have I left? Oh, fwhat have I left?”

‘He was shakin’ an’ tremblin’ up against my shouldher, an’ the slugs were singin’ overhead, an’ I was wonderin’ whether my little bhoy wud have sinse enough to kape his men quiet through all this firin’.

‘“So long as I did not think,” sez Love-o’-Women, “so long I did not see—I wud not see, but I can now, what I’ve lost. The time an’ the place,” he sez, “an’ the very words I said whin ut pleased me to go off alone to hell. But thin, even thin,” he, sez, wrigglin’ tremenjous, “I wud not ha’ been happy. There was too much behind av one. How cud I ha’ believed her sworn oath—me that have bruk mine again an’ again for the sport av seein’ thim cry? An’ there are the others,” he sez. “Oh, what will I do—what will I do?” He rocked back an’ forward again, an’ I think he was cryin’ like wan av the women he talked av.

‘The full half of fwhat he said was Brigade Ordhers to me, but from the rest an’ the remnint I suspicioned somethin’ av his throuble. ’Twas, the judgmint av God had grup the heel av him; as I tould him ’twould in the Tyrone barricks. The slugs was singin’ over our rock more an’ more, an’ I sez for to divart him: “Let bad alone,” I sez. “They’ll be tryin’ to rush the camp in a minut’.”

‘I had no more than said that whin a Paythan man crep’ up on his belly wid his knife betune his teeth, not twinty yards from us. Love-o’-Womenjumped up an’ fetched a yell, an’ the man saw him an’ ran at him (he’d left his rifle under the rock) wid the knife. Love-o’-Women niver turned a hair, but by the Living Power, for I saw ut, a stone twisted under the Paythan man’s feet an’ he came down full sprawl, an’ his knife wint tinkling acrost the rocks! “I tould you I was Cain,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Fwhat’s the use av killin’ him? He’s an honust man—by compare.”

‘I was not dishputin’ about the morils av Paythans that tide, so I dhropped Love-o’-Women’s butt acrost the man’s face, an’ “Hurry into camp,” I sez, “for this may be the first av a rush.”

‘There was no rush after all, though we waited undher arms to give them a chanst. The Paythan man must ha’ come alone for the mischief, an’ afther a while Love-o’-Women wint back to his tint wid that quare lurchin’ sind-off in his walk that I cud niver understand. Begad, I pitied him, an’ the more bekaze he made me think for the rest av the night av the day whin I was confirmed Corp’ril, not actin’ Lef’tinant, an’ my thoughts was not good to me.’

‘Ye can ondersthand that afther that night we came to talkin’ a dale together, an’ bit by bit ut came out fwhat I’d suspicioned. The whole av his carr’in’s on an’ divilments had come back on him hard, as liquor comes back whin you’ve been on the dhrink for a wake. All he’d said an’ all he’d done, an’ only he cud tell how much that was, come back, and there was niver a minut’s peace in his sowl. ’Twas the Horrors widout any cause to see, an’ yet, an’ yet—fwhat am I talkin’ av? He’d ha’ taken the Horrors wid thankfulness. Beyon’ the repentince av the man, an’ that was beyon’ the nature av man—awful, awful, to behould!—there was more that was worst than any repentince. Av the scores an’ scores that he called over in his mind (an’ they were drivin’ him mad), there was, mark you, wan woman av all, an’ she was not his wife, that cut him to the quick av his marrow. ’Twas there he said that he’d thrown away di’monds an’ pearls past count, an’ thin he’d begin again like a blind byle in an oil-mill, walkin’ round and round, to considher (him that was beyond all touch av bein’ happy this side hell!) how happy he wud ha’ been wid her. The more he considhered, the more he’d consate himself that he’d lost mighty happiness, an’ thin he wud work ut all backwards, an’ cry that he niver cud ha’ been happy anyway.

page 5

‘Time an’ time an’ again in camp, on p’rade, ay, an’ in action, I’ve seen that man shut his eyes an’ duck his head as ye wud duck to the flicker av a bay’nit. For ’twas thin, he tould me, that the thought av all he’d missed came an’ stud forninst him like red-hot irons. For what he’d done wid the others he was sorry, but he did not care; but this wan woman that I’ve tould of, by the Hilts av God, she made him pay for all the others twice over! Niver did I know that a man cud enjure such tormint widout his heart crackin’ in his ribs, an’ I have been ‘-Terence turned the pipe-stem slowly between his teeth-, I have been in some black cells. All I iver suffered tho’ was not to be talked of alongside av him . . . an’ what could I do? Paternosters was no more than peas on plates for his sorrows.

‘Evenshually we finished our prom’nade acrost the hills, and, thanks to me for the same, there was no casualties an’ no glory. The campaign was comin’ to an ind, an’ all the rig’mints was being drawn together for to be sint back home. Love-o’-Women was mighty sorry bekaze he had no work to do, an’ all his time to think in. I’ve heard that man talkin’ to his belt-plate an’ his sidearms while he was soldierin’ thim, all to prevent himself from thinkin’, an’ ivry time he got up afther he had been settin’ down or wint on from the halt, he’d start wid that kick an’ traverse that I tould you of—his legs sprawlin’ all ways to wanst. He wud niver go see the docthor, tho’ I tould him to be wise. He’d curse me up an’ down for my advice; but I knew he was no more a man to be reckoned wid than the little bhoy was a commandin’ orf’cer, so I let his tongue run if it aised him.

‘Wan day—’twas on the way back—I was walkin’ round camp wid him, an’ he stopped an’ struck ground wid his right fut three or four times doubtful. “Fwhat is ut?” I sez. “Is that ground?” sez he; an’ while I was thinkin’ his mind was goin’, up comes the docthor, who’d been anatomisin’ a dead bullock. Love-o’-Women starts to go on quick, an’ lands me a kick on the knee while his legs was gettin’ into marchin’ ordher.

‘“Hould on there,” sez the docthor; an’ Love-o’-Women’s face, that was lined like a gridiron, turns red as brick.

‘“Tention,” says the docthor; an’ Love-o’-Women stud so. “Now shut your eyes,” sez the docthor. “No, ye must not hould by your comrade.”

‘“’Tis all up,” sez Love-o’-Women, thrying to smile. “I’d fall, docthor, an’ you know ut:”

‘“Fall?’ I sez. “Fall at attention wid your eyes shut! Fwhat do you mane?”

‘“The docthor knows,” he sez. “I’ve hild up as long as I can, but begad I’m glad ’tis all done. But I will die slow,” he sez, “I will die very slow.”

’I cud see by the docthor’s face that he was mortial sorry for the man, an’ he ordered him to hospital. We wint back together, an’ I was dumb-struck. Love-o’-Women was cripplin’ and crumblin’ at ivry step. He walked wid a hand on my shoulder all slued sideways, an’ his right leg swingin’ like a lame camel. Me not knowin’ more than the dead fwhat ailed him, ’twas just as though the docthor’s word had done ut all—as if Love-o’-Women had but been waitin’ for the word to let go.

‘In hospital he sez somethin’ to the docthor that I could not catch.

‘“Holy Shmoke!” sez the docthor, “an’ who are you to be givin’ names to your diseases? ’Tis agin all the reg’lations.”

‘“I’ll not be a privit much longer,” sez Love-o’-Women in his gentleman’s voice, an’ the docthor jumped.

‘“Thrate me as a study, Doctor Lowndes,” he sez; an’ that was the first time I’d iver heard a docthor called his name.

‘“Good-bye, Terence,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Tis a dead man I am widout the pleasure av dyin’. You’ll come an’ set wid me sometimes for the peace av my sowl.”

‘Now I had been minded for to ask Crook to take me back to the Ould Rig’mint; the fightin’ was over, an’ I was wore out wid the ways av the bhoys in the Tyrone; but I shifted my will, an’ hild on, and wint to set wid Love-o’-Women in the hospital. As I have said, sorr, the man bruk all to little pieces under my hand. How long he had hild up an’ forced himself fit to march I cannot tell, but in hospital but two days later he was such as I hardly knew. I shuk hands wid him, an’ his grip was fair strong, but his hands wint all ways to wanst, an’ he cud not button his tunic.

‘“I’ll take long an’ long to die yet,” he sez, “for the wages av sin they’re like interest in the rig’mintal savin’s-banks—sure, but a damned long time bein’ paid.”

‘The docthor sez to me, quiet one day, “Has Tighe there anythin’ on his mind?” he sez. “He’s burnin’ himself out.”

‘“How shud I know, sorr?” I sez, as innocint as putty.

‘“They call him Love-o’-Women in the Tyrone, do they not?” he sez. “I was a fool to ask. Be wid him all you can. He’s houldin’ on to your strength.”

‘“But fwhat ails him, docthor?” I sez.

‘“They call ut Locomotus attacks us,” he sez, “bekaze,” sez he, “ut attacks us like a locomotive, if ye know fwhat that manes. An’ ut comes,” sez he, lookin’ at me, “ ut comes from bein’ called Love-o’-Women.”

‘“You’re jokin’, docthor,” I sez.

‘“Jokin’!” sez he. “If iver you feel that you’ve got a felt sole in your boot instid av a Government bull’s-wool, come to me,” he sez, “an’ I’ll show you whether ’tis a joke.”

‘You would not belave ut, sorr, but that, an’ seein’ Love-o’-Women overtuk widout warnin’, put the cowld fear av Attacks us on me so strong that for a week an’ more I was kickin’ my toes against stones an’ stumps for the pleasure av feelin’ thim hurt.

‘An’ Love-o’-Women lay in the cot (he might have gone down wid the wounded before an’ before, but he asked to stay wid me), and fwhat there was in his mind had full swing at him night an’ day an’ ivry hour ay the day an’ the night, and he shrivelled like beef-rations in a hot sun, an’ his eyes was like owls’ eyes, an’ his hands was mut’nous.

‘They was gettin’ the rig’mints away wan by wan, the campaign bein’ inded, but as ushuil they was behavin’ as if niver a rig’mint had been moved before in the mem’ry av man. Now, fwhy is that, sorr? There’s fightin’, in an’ out, nine months av the twelve somewhere in the army. There has been—for years an’ years an’ years; an’ I wud ha’ thought they’d begin to get the hang av providin’ for throops. But no! Ivry time ’Tis like a girls’ school meetin’ a big red bull whin they’re goin’ to church; an’ “Mother av God,” sez the Commissariat an’ the Railways an’ the Barrick-masters, “fwhat will we do now?” The ordhers came to us av the Tyrone an’ the Ould Rig’mint an’ half a dozen more to go down, an’ there the ordhers stopped dumb. We wint down, by the special grace av God—down the Khaiber anyways. There was sick wid us, an’ I’m thinkin’ that some av thim was jolted to death in the doolies, but they was anxious to be kilt so if they cud get to Peshawur alive the sooner. I walked by Love-o’-Women—there was no marchin’, an’ Love-o’-Women was not in a stew to get on. “If I’d only ha’ died up there,” sez he through the dooli-curtains, an’ thin he’d twist up his eyes an’ duck his head for the thoughts that come an’ raked him.

page 6

‘Dinah was in Depôt at Pindi, but I wint circumspectuous, for well I knew ’tis just at the rump-ind av all things that his luck turns on a man. By token I had seen a dhriver of a batthery goin’ by at a trot singin’ “Home, swate home” at the top av his shout, and takin’ no heed to his bridle-hand—I had seen that man dhrop under the gun in the middle of a word, and come out by the limber like—like a frog on a pavestone. No. I wud not hurry, though, God knows, my heart was all in Pindi. Love-o’-Women saw fwhat was in my mind, an’ “Go on, Terence,” he sez, “I know fwhat’s waitin’ for you.” “I will not,” I sez. “’Twill kape a little yet.”

‘Ye know the turn of the pass forninst Jumrood and the nine-mile road on the flat to Peshawur? All Peshawur was along that road day and night waitin’ for frinds—men, women, childer, and bands. Some av the throops was camped round Jumrood, an’ some wint on to Peshawur to get away down to their cantonmints. We came through in the early mornin’ havin’ been awake the night through, and we dhruv sheer into the middle av the mess. Mother av Glory, will I iver forget that comin’ back? The light was not fair lifted, and the, first we heard was “For ’tis my delight av a shiny night,” frum a band that thought we was the second four comp’nies av the Lincolnshire. At that we was forced to sind them a yell to say who we was, an’ thin up wint “The wearin’ av the Green.” It made me crawl all up my backbone, not havin’ taken my brequist. Then right smash into our rear came fwhat was left av the Jock Elliott’s—wid four pipers an’ not half a kilt among thim, playin’ for the dear life, an’ swingin’ their rumps like buck-rabbits, an’ a native rig’mint shriekin’ blue murther. Ye niver heard the like! There was men cryin’ like women that did—an’ faith I do not blame them! Fwhat bruk me down was the Lancers’ Band—shinin’ an’ spick like angils, wid the ould dhrum-horse at the head an’ the silver kettle-dhrums an’ all an’ all, waitin’ for their men that was behind us. They shtruck up the Cavalry Canter; an’ begad those poor ghosts that had not a sound fut in a throop they answered to ut; the men rockin’ in their saddles. We thried to cheer them as they wint by, but ut came out like a big gruntin’ cough, so there must have been many that was feelin’ like me. Oh, but I’m forgettin’! The Fly-by-Nights was waitin’ for their second battalion, an’ whin ut came out, there was the Colonel’s horse led at the head—saddle-empty. The, men fair worshipped him, an’ he’d died at Ali Musjid on the road down. They waited till the remnint av the battalion was up, and thin—clane against ordhers, for who wanted that chune that day?—they wint back to Peshawur slowtime an’ tearin’ the bowils out av ivry man that heard, wid “The Dead March.” Right acrost our line they wint, an’ ye know their uniforms are as black as the Sweeps, crawlin’ past like the dead, an’ the other bands damnin’ them to let be.

‘Little they cared. The carpse was wid them, an’ they’d ha taken ut so through a Coronation. Our ordhers was to go into Peshawur, an’ we wint hot-fut past The Fly-by-Nights, not singin’, to lave that chune behind us. That was how we tuk the road of the other corps.

‘’Twas ringin’ in my ears still whin I felt in the bones of me that Dinah was comin’, an’ I heard a shout, an’ thin I saw a horse an’ a tattoo latherin’ down the road, hell-to-shplit, under women. I knew—I knew! Wan was the Tyrone Colonel’s wife—ould Beeker’s lady—her gray hair flyin’ an’ her fat round carkiss rowlin’ in the saddle, an’ the other was Dinah, that shud ha’ been at Pindi. The Colonel’s lady she charged the head av our column like a stone wall, an’ she’ all but knocked Beeker off his horse, throwin’ her arms round his neck an’ blubberin’, “Me bhoy! me bhoy!” an’ Dinah wheeled left an’ came down our flank, an’ I let a yell that had suffered inside av me for months and—Dinah came! Will I iver forget that while I live! She’d come on pass from Pindi, an’ the Colonel’s lady had lint her the tattoo. They’d been huggin’ an’ cryin’ in each other’s arms all the long night.

‘So she walked along wid her hand in mine, asking forty questions to wanst, an’ beggin’ me on the Virgin to make oath that there was not a bullet consaled in me, unbeknownst somewhere, an’ thin I remembered Love-o’-Women. He was watchin’ us, an’ his face was like the face av a divil that has been cooked too long. I did not wish Dinah to see ut, for whin a woman’s runnin’ over with happiness she’s like to be touched, for harm afterwards, by the laste little thing in life. So I dhrew the curtain, an’ Love-o’-Women lay back and groaned.

‘Whin we marched into Peshawur Dinah wint to barracks to wait for me, an’, me feelin’ so rich that tide, I wint on to take Love-o’-Women to hospital. It was the last I cud do, an’ to save him the dust an’ the smother I turned the doolimen down a road well clear av the rest av the throops, an’ we wint along, me talkin’ through the curtains. Av a sudden I heard him say:

‘“Let me look. For the mercy av Hiven, let me look.” I had been so tuk up wid gettin’ him out av the dust an’ thinkin’ av Dinah that I had not kept my eyes about me. There was a woman ridin’ a little behind av us; an’, talkin’ ut over wid Dinah afterwards, that same woman must ha’ rid out far on the jumrood road. Dinah said that she had been hoverin’ like a kite on the left flank av the columns.

‘I halted the dooli to set the curtains, an’ she rode by, walkin’ pace, an’ Love-o’-Women’s eyes wint afther her as if he wud fair haul her down from the saddle.

‘“Follow there,” was all he sez, but I niver heard a man speak in that voice before or since; an’ I knew by those two wan words an’ the look in his face that she was Di’monds-an’-Pearls that he’d talked av in his disthresses.

‘We followed till she turned into the gate av a little house that stud near the Edwardes’ Gate. There was two girls in the verandah, an’ they ran in whin they saw us. Faith, at long eye-range it did not take me a wink to see fwhat kind av house ut was. The throops bein’ there an’ all, there was three or four such; but aftherwards the polis bade thim go. At the verandah Love-o’-Women sez, catchin’ his breath, “Stop here,” an’ thin, an’ thin, wid a grunt that must ha’ tore the heart up from his stomick, he swung himself out av the dooli, an’ my troth he stud up on his feet wid the sweat pourin’ down his face! If Mackie was to walk in here now I’d be less tuk back than I was thin. Where he’d dhrawn his power from, God knows—or the Divil—but ’twas a dead man walkin’ in the sun, wid the face av a dead man and the breath av a dead man, hild up by the Power, an’ the legs an’ the arms av the carpse obeyin’ ordhers.

‘The woman stud in the verandah. She’d been a beauty too, though her eyes was sunk in her head, an’ she looked Love-o’-Women up an’ down terrible. “An’,” she sez, kicking back the tail av her habit,—“An’,” she sez, “fwhat are you doin’ here, married man?”

‘Love-o’-Women said nothin’, but a little froth came to his lips, an’ he wiped ut off wid his hand an’ looked at her an’ the paint on her, an’ looked, an’ looked, an’ looked.

‘“An’ yet,” she sez, wid a laugh. (Did you hear Raines’s wife laugh whin Mackie died? Ye did not? Well for you.) “An’ yet,” she sez, “who but you have betther right,” sez she. “You taught me the road. You showed me the way,” she sez. “Ay, look,” she sez, “for ’tis your work; you that tould me—d’you remimber it?—that a woman who was false to wan man cud be false to two. I have been that,” she sez, “that an’ more, for you always said I was a quick learner, Ellis. Look well,” she sez, “for it is me that you called your wife in the sight av God long since.” An’ she laughed.

‘Love-o’-Women stud still in the sun widout answerin’. Thin he groaned an coughed to wanst, an’ I thought ’twas the death-rattle, but he niver tuk his eyes off her face, not for a blink. Ye cud ha’ put her eyelashes through the flies av an E.P. tent, they were so long.

page 7

‘“Fwhat do you do, here?” she sez, word by word, “that have taken away my joy in my man this, five years gone—that have broken my rest an’ killed my body an’ damned my soul for the sake av seein’ how ’twas done. Did your expayrience aftherwards bring you acrost any woman that give you more than I did? Wud I not ha’ died for you, an’ wid you, Ellis? Ye know that, man! If iver your, lyin’ sowl saw truth in uts life ye know that.”

‘An’ Love-o’-Women lifted up his head and said, “I knew,” an’ that was all. While she was spakin’ the Power hild him up parade-set in the sun, an’ the sweat dhripped undher his helmet. ’Twas more an’ more throuble for him to talk, an’ his mouth was running twistways.

‘“Fwhat do you do here?” she sez, an’ her voice wint up. ’Twas like bells tollin’ before. “Time was when you were quick enough wid your words,—you that talked me down to hell. Are ye dumb now?” An’ Love-o’-Women got his tongue, an’ sez simple, like a little child, “May I come in?” he sez.

‘“The house is open day an’ night,” she sez, wid a laugh; an’ Love-o’-Women ducked his head an’ hild up his hand as tho’ he was gyardin’. The Power was on him still—it hild him up still, for, by my sowl, as I’ll never save ut, he walked up the verandah steps that had been a livin’ carpse in hospital for a month!

‘“An’ now?” she sez, lookin’ at him; an’ the red paint stud lone on the white av her face like a bull’s-eye on a target.

‘He lifted up his eyes, slow an’ very slow, an’ he looked at her long an’ very long, an’ he tuk his spache betune his teeth wid a wrench that shuk him.

‘“I’m dyin’, Aigypt—dyin’,” he sez. Ay, those were his words, for I remimber the name he called her. He was turnin’ the death-colour, but his eyes niver rowled. They were set—set on her. Widout word or warnin’ she opened her arms full stretch, an’ “Here!” she sez. (Oh, fwhat a golden mericle av a voice ut was!) “Die here!” she sez an’ Love-o’-Women dhropped forward, an’ she hild him up, for she was a fine big woman.

‘I had no time to turn, bekaze that minut I heard the sowl quit him—tore out in the death-rattle—an’ she laid him back in a long chair, an she sez to me, “Misther soldier,” she sez, “will ye not wait an’ talk to wan av the girls? This sun’s too much for him.”

‘Well I knew there was no sun he’d iver see, but I cud not spake, so I wint away wid the empty dooli to find the docthor. He’d been breakfastin’ an’ lunchin’ iver since we’d come in, an’ he was full as a tick.

‘“Faith, ye’ve got dhrunk mighty soon,” he sez, whin I’d tould him, “to see that man walk. Barrin’ a puff or two av life, he was a carpse before we left Jumrood. I’ve a great mind,” he sez, “to confine you.”

‘“There’s a dale av liquor runnin’ about, docthor,” I sez, solemn as a hard-boiled egg. “Maybe ’tis so; but will ye not come an’ see the carpse at the house?”

‘“’Tis dishgraceful,” he sez, “that I would be expected to go to a place like that. Was she a pretty woman?” he sez, an’ at that he set off double-quick.

‘I cud see that the two was in the verandah where I’d left them, an’ I knew by the hang av her head an’ the noise av the crows fwhat had happened. ’Twas the first and the last time that I’d iver known woman to use the pistol. They fear the shot as a rule, but Di’monds-an’-Pearls she did not—she did not.

‘The docthor touched the long black hair av her head (’twas all loose upon Love-o’-Women’s tunic), an’ that cleared the liquor out av him. He stud considherin’ a long time, his hands in his pockets, an’ at last he sez to me, “Here’s a double death from naturil causes, most naturil causes; an’ in the present state av affairs the rig’mint will be thankful for wan grave the less to dig. Issiwasti,” he sez. “Issiwasti, Privit Mulvaney, these two will be buried together in the Civil Cemet’ry at my expinse; an’ may the good God,” he sez, “make it so much for me whin my time comes. Go you to your wife,” he sez. “Go an’ be happy. I’ll see to this all.”

‘I left him still considherin’. They was buried in the Civil Cemet’ry together, wid a Church av England service. There was too many buryin’s thin to ask questions, an’ the docthor—he ran away wid Major—Major Van Dyce’s lady that year—he saw to ut all. Fwhat the right an’ the wrong av Love-o’-Women an’ Di’monds-an’-Pearls was I niver knew, an’ I will niver know; but I’ve tould ut as I came acrost ut—here an’ there in little pieces. So, being fwhat I am, an’ knowin’ fwhat I knew, that’s fwhy I say in this shootin’case here, Mackie that’s dead an’ in hell is the lucky man. There are times, sorr, whin ’tis better for the man to die than to live, an’ by consequince forty million times betther for the woman.’

‘H’up there.!’ said Ortheris. ‘It’s time to go.’

The witnesses and guard formed up in the thick white dust of the parched twilight and swung off, marching easy and whistling. Down the road to the green by the church I could hear Ortheris, the black Book-lie still uncleansed on his lips, setting, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, the shrill quickstep that runs—

‘Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise,
Learn wisdom from those that are older,
And don’t try for things that are out of your reach—
An’ that’s what the Girl told the Soldier!
Soldier! soldier!
Oh, that’s what the Girl told the Soldier!’

page 1 of 5

‘OHÉ, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don’t kill your own kin! Come out to me!’ The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades. Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They had been making roads all day, and were tired.

Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd’s feet. ‘Wot’s all that?’ he said thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall. The men swore. ‘It’s that bloomin’ deserter from the Aurangabadis,’ said Ortheris. ‘Git up, some one, an’ tell ’im ’e’s come to the wrong shop.’

‘Go to sleep, little man,’ said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the door. ‘I can’t arise an’ expaytiate with him. ’Tis rainin’ entrenchin’ tools outside.’

‘’Tain’t because you bloomin’ can’t. It’s ’cause you bloomin’ won’t, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. ’Ark to ’im ’owlin’!’

‘Wot’s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! ’E’s keepin’ us awake!’ said another voice.

A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the darkness—

‘’Tain’t no good, sir. I can’t see ’im. ’E’s ’idin’ somewhere down ’ill.’

Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ‘Shall I try to get ’im, sir?’ said he.

‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Lie down. I won’t have the whole camp shooting all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.’

Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a ’bus conductor calls in a block, ‘’Igher up, there! ’Igher up!’

The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.

‘An’ that’s all right,’ said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. ‘S’elp me Gawd, tho’, that man’s not fit to live—messin’ with my beauty-sleep this way.’

‘Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,’ said the subaltern incautiously. ‘Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.’

Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental snoring of Learoyd.

The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.

In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.

‘I’m goin’ to lay for a shot at that man,’ said Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his rifle. ‘’E comes up the watercourse every evenin’ about five o’clock. If we go and lie out on the north ’ill a bit this afternoon we’ll get ’im.’

‘You’re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,’ said Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. ‘But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere’s Jock?’

‘Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ’cause ’e thinks ’isself a bloomin’ marksman,’ said Ortheris with scorn.

The ‘Mixed Pickles’ were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.

‘You’ve got to sweat to-day,’ said Ortheris genially. ‘We’re going to get your man. You didn’t knock ’im out last night by any chance, any of you?’

‘No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,’ said a private. ‘He’s my cousin, and I ought to have cleared our dishonour. But good luck to you.’

They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he explained, ‘this is a long-range show, an’ I’ve got to do it.’ His was an almost passionate devotion to his rifle, whom, by barrack-room report, he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.

‘’Ere’s the tail o’ the wood,’ said Ortheris. ‘’E’s got to come up the watercourse, ’cause it gives ’im cover. We’ll lay ’ere. ’Tain’t not arf so bloomin’ dusty neither.’

He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.

‘This is something like,’ he said luxuriously. ‘Wot a ’evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost. How much d’you make it, Mulvaney?’

‘Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air’s so thin.’

Wop! wop! wop! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north hill.

‘Curse them Mixed Pickles firin’ at nothin’! They’ll scare arf the country.’

‘Thry a sightin’ shot in the middle of the row,’ said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. ‘There’s a red rock yonder he’ll be sure to pass. Quick!’

page 2

Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.

‘Good enough!’ said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. ‘You snick your sights to mine or a little lower. You’re always firin’ high. But remember, first shot to me. O Lordy! but it’s a lovely afternoon.’

The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls.

Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts.

‘One o’ them damned gardeners o’ th’ Pickles,’ said he, fingering the rent. ‘Firin’ to th’ right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew who he was I’d ’a’ rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!’

‘That’s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an’ he loose on anythin’ he sees or hears up to th’ mile. You’re well out av that fancy-firin’ gang, Jock. Stay here.’

‘Bin firin’ at the bloomin’ wind in the bloomin’ treetops,’ said Ortheris with a chuckle. ‘I’ll show you some firin’ later on.’

They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the whiffs of his pipe—

‘Seems queer—about ’im yonder—desertin’ at all.’

‘’E’ll be a bloomin’ side queerer when I’ve done with ’im,’ said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.

‘I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin’; but, my faith! I make less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin’ him,’ said Mulvaney.

‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ it. Men do more than more for th’ sake of a lass.’

‘They make most av us ’list. They’ve no manner av right to make us desert.’

‘Ah; they make us ’list, or their fathers do,’ said Learoyd softly, his helmet over his eyes.

Ortheris’s brows contracted savagely. He was watching the valley. ‘If it’s a girl I’ll shoot the beggar twice over, an’ second time for bein’ a fool. You’re blasted sentimental all of a sudden. Thinkin’ o’ your last near shave?’

‘Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin’ o’ what has happened.’

‘An’ fwhat has happened, ye lumberin’ child av calamity, that you’re lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an’ suggestin’ invidious excuses for the man Stanley’s goin’ to kill. Ye’ll have to wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an’ bellow melojus to the moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley, kape a rowlin’ rig’mental eye on the valley.’

‘It’s along o’ yon hill there,’ said Learoyd, watching the bare sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was speaking more to himself than his fellows. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘Rumbolds Moor stands up ower Skipton town, an’ Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brig. I reckon you’ve never heeard tell o’ Greenhow Hill, but yon bit o’ bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin’ is like ut; strangely like. Moors an’ moors an’ moors, wi’ never a tree for shelter, an’ gray houses wi’ flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin’, an’ a windhover goin’ to and fro just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple colour o’ their cheeks an’ nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pin-points by the wind. Miners mostly, burrowin’ for lead i’ th’ hillsides, followin’ the trail of th’ ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin’ I ever seen. Yo’d come on a bit o’ creakin’ wood windlass like a well-head, an’ you was let down i’ th’ bight of a rope, fendin’ yoursen off the side wi’ one hand, carryin’ a candle stuck in a lump o’ clay with t’other, an’ clickin’ hold of a rope with t’other hand.’

‘An’ that’s three of them,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Must be a good climate in those parts.’

Learoyd took no heed.

‘An’ then yo’ came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees through a mile o’ windin’ drift, an’ you come out into a cave-place as big as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin’ water from workin’s ’at went deeper still. It’s a queer country, let alone minin’, for the hill is full of those natural caves, an’ the rivers an’ the becks drops into what they call pot-holes, an’ come out again miles away.’

‘Wot was you doin’ there?’ said Ortheris.

‘I was a young chap then, an’ mostly went wi’ ’osses, leadin’ coal and lead ore; but at th’ time I’m tellin’ on I was drivin’ the waggon-team i’ th’ big sumph. I didn’t belong to that country-side by rights. I went there because of a little difference at home, an’ at fust I took up wi’ a rough lot. One night we’d been drinkin’, an’ I must ha’ hed more than I could stand, or happen th’ ale was none so good. Though i’ them days, By for God, I never seed bad ale.’ He flung his arms over his head, and gripped a vast handful of white violets. ‘Nah,’ said he, ‘I never seed the ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th’ others, an’ when I was climbin’ ower one of them walls built o’ loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an’ broke my arm. Not as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th’ back of my head, an’ was knocked stupid like. An’ when I come to mysen it were mornin’, an’ I were lyin’ on the settle i’ Jesse Roantree’s house-place, an’ ’Liza Roantree was settin’ sewin’. I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi’ gold letters—“A Present from Leeds”—as I looked at many and many a time at after. “Yo’re to lie still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm’s broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo’ when he was goin’ to work, an’ carried you here on his back,” sez she. “Oa!” sez I; an’ I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o’ mysen. “Father’s gone to his work these three hours, an’ he said he’d tell ’em to get somebody to drive the tram.” The clock ticked, an’ a bee comed in the house, an’ they rung i’ my head like mill-wheels. An’ she give me another drink an’ settled the pillow. “Eh, but yo’re young to be getten drunk an’ such like, but yo’ won’t do it again, will yo’?”—“Noa,” sez I, “I wouldn’t if she’d not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin’.” ’

page 3

‘Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you’re sick!’ said Mulvaney. ‘Dir’ cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.’

Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many women in his life.

‘An’ then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin’ up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with ’im. He was a highlarned doctor, but he talked wi’ poor folk same as theirsens. “What’s ta bin agaate on naa?” he sings out. “Brekkin’ tha thick head?” An’ he felt me all ovver. “That’s none broken. Tha’ nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft eneaf.” An’ soa he went on, callin’ me all the names he could think on, but settin’ my arm, wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be. “Yo’ mun let the big oaf bide here a bit, Jesse,” he says, when he hed strapped me up an’ given me a dose o’ physic; “an’ you an’ ’Liza will tend him, though he’s scarcelins worth the trouble. An’ tha’ll lose tha work,” sez he, “an’ tha’ll be upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ months an’ more. Doesn’t tha think tha’s a fool?” ’

‘But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I’d like to know?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Sure, folly’s the only safe way to wisdom, for I’ve thried it.’

‘Wisdom!’ grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin. ‘You’re bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you?’

Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.

‘And that was how I comed to know ’Liza Roantree. There’s some tunes as she used to sing—aw, she were always singin’—that fetches Greenhow Hill before my eyes as fair as you brow across there. And she would learn me to sing bass, an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ’em, where Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man playin’ the fiddle. He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me promise to learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi’ th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin’ at th’ right time.

‘But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it was a man in a black coat that brought it. When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow, he would always stop wi’ Jesse Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’ beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. At th’ same time I jealoused ’at he were keen o’ savin’ ’Liza Roantree’s soul as well, and I could ha’ killed him many a time. An’ this went on till one day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a drink from ’Liza. After fower days I come back, wi’ my tail between my legs, just to see ’Liza again. But Jesse were at home an’ th’ preacher—th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough. ’Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin’ his best to be civil, “Nay, lad, it’s like this. You’ve getten to choose which way it’s goin’ to be. I’ll ha’ nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin’, an’ borrows my lass’s money to spend i’ their drink. Ho’d tha tongue, ’Liza,” sez he, when she wanted to put in a word ’at I were welcome to th’ brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn’t pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in, seein’ as Jesse were losin’ his temper, an’ they fair beat me among them. But it were ’Liza, as looked an’ said naught, as did more than either o’ their tongues, an’ soa I concluded to get converted.’

‘Fwhat!’ shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, ‘Let be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an’ most women; an’ there’s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut stay there. I’d ha’ been converted myself under the circumstances.’

‘Nay, but,’ pursued Learoyd with a blush, ‘I meaned it.’

Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at the time.

‘Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn’t know you preacher Barraclough—a little white-faced chap, wi’ a voice as ’ud wile a bird off an a bush, and a way o’ layin’ hold of folks as made them think they’d never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him, an’—an’—you never seed ’Liza Roantree—never seed ’Liza Roantree.…Happen it was as much ’Liza as th’ preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it, an’ I was fair shamed o’ mysen, an’ so I become what they called a changed charácter. And when I think on, it’s hard to believe as yon chap going to prayer-meetin’s, chapel, and class-meetin’s were me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o’ shoutin’, and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, “Joyful! Joyful!” and ’at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i’ a coach an’ six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin’, “Doesn’t tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn’t tha feel it?” An’ sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn’t, an’ how was that?’

‘The iverlastin’ nature av mankind,’ said Mulvaney. ‘An’, furthermore, I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They’re a new corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she’s the mother of them all—ay, an’ the father, too. I like her bekaze she’s most remarkable regimental in her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein’ fwhat I am, an’ a priest handy, I go under the same orders an’ the same words an’ the same unction as tho’ the Pope himself come down from the roof av St. Peter’s to see me off. There’s neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her, an’ that’s what I like. But mark you, she’s no manner av Church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died that was three months comin’ to his grave; begad he’d ha’ sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes’ quittance of purgathory. An’ he did all he could. That’s why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an’ for that reason you’ll find so many women go there. An’ that sames a conundrum.’

‘Wot’s the use o’ worrittin’ ’bout these things?’ said Ortheris. ‘You’re bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any’ow.’ He jerked the cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. ‘’Ere’s my chaplain,’ he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a marionette. ‘’E’s goin’ to teach a man all about which is which, an’ wot’s true, after all, before sundown. But wot ’appened after that, Jock?’

‘There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th’ gate i’ my face for, and that were my dog Blast, th’ only one saved out o’ a litter o’ pups as was blowed up when a keg o’ minin’ powder loosed off in th’ store-keeper’s hut. They liked his name no better than his business, which were fightin’ every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi’ spots o’ black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o’ one side wi’ being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile.

page 4

‘They said I mun give him up ’cause he were worldly and low; and would I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? “Nay,” says I, “if th’ door isn’t wide enough for th’ pair on us, we’ll stop outside, for we’ll none be parted.” And th’ preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a likin’ for him from th’ first—I reckon that was why I come to like th’ preacher—and wouldn’t hear o’ changin’ his name to Bless, as some o’ them wanted. So th’ pair on us became reg’lar chapel-members. But it’s hard for a young chap o’ my build to cut traces from the world, th’ flesh, an’ the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time, while th’ lads as used to stand about th’ town-end an’ lean ower th’ bridge, spittin’ into th’ beck o’ a Sunday, would call after me, “Sitha, Learoyd, when’s ta bean to preach, ’cause we’re comin’ to hear tha.”—“Ho’d tha jaw. He hasn’t getten th’ white choaker on ta morn,” another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i’ th’ bottom of my Sunday coat, and say to mysen, “If ’twere Monday and I warn’t a member o’ the Primitive Methodists, I’d leather all th’ lot of yond’.” That was th’ hardest of all—to know that I could fight and I mustn’t fight.’

Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.

‘So what wi’ singin’, practisin’, and classmeetin’s, and th’ big fiddle, as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o’ time i’ Jesse Roantree’s house-place. But often as I was there, th’ preacher fared to me to go oftener, and both th’ old man an’ th’ young woman were pleased to have him. He lived i’ Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I’d ever seen i’ one way, and yet I hated him wi’ all my heart i’ t’other, and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was bound to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn’t wanted to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when he was goin’ from Jesse’s I’d set him a bit on the road.’

‘See ’im ’ome, you mean?’ said Ortheris.

‘Ay. It’s a way we have i’ Yorkshire o’ seein’ friends off. Yon was a friend as I didn’t want to come back, and he didn’t want me to come back neither, and so we’d walk together towards Pately, and then he’d set me back again, and there we’d be wal two o’clock i’ the mornin’ settin’ each other to an’ fro like a blasted pair o’ pendulums twixt hill and valley, long after th’ light had gone out i’ ’Liza’s window, as both on us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.’

‘Ah!’ broke in Mulvaney, ‘ye’d no chanst against the maraudin’ psalm-singer. They’ll take the airs an’ the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an’ they only find the blunder later—the wimmen.’

‘That’s just where yo’re wrong,’ said Learoyd, reddening under the freckled tan of his cheeks. ‘I was th’ first wi ’Liza, an’ yo’d think that were enough. But th’ parson were a steady-gaited sort o’ chap, and Jesse were strong o’ his side, and all th’ women i’ the congregation dinned it to ’Liza ’at she were fair fond to take up wi’ a wastrel ne’er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an’ a fighting dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn’t do herself harm. They talk o’ rich folk bein’ stuck up an’ genteel, but for cast-iron pride o’ respectability there’s naught like poor chapel folk. It’s as cold as th’ wind o’ Greenhow Hill—ay, and colder, for ’twill never change. And now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is ’at they couldn’t abide th’ thought o’ soldiering. There’s a vast o’ fightin’ i’ th’ Bible, and there’s a deal of Methodists i’ th’ army; but to hear chapel folk talk yo’d think that soldierin’ were next door, an’ t’other side, to hangin’. I’ their meetin’s all their talk is o’ fightin’. When Sammy Strother were stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he’d sing out, “Th’ sword o’ th’ Lord and o’ Gideon.” They were allus at it about puttin’ on th’ whole armour o’ righteousness, an’ fightin’ the good fight o’ faith. And then, atop o’ ’t all, they held a prayer-meetin’ ower a young chap as wanted to ’list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they’d tell tales in th’ Sunday-school o’ bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o’ Sundays and playin’ truant o’ week-days, and how they took to wrestlin’, dog-fightin’, rabbit-runnin’, and drinkin’, till at last, as if ’twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th’ moors wi’, “an’ then he went and ’listed for a soldier,” an’ they’d all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin’.’

‘Fwhy is ut?’ said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a crack. ‘In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I’ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an’ they swindle an’ they lie an’ they slander, an’ fifty things fifty times worse; but the last an’ the worst by their reckonin’ is to serve the Widdy honest. It’s like the talk av childer—seein’ things all round.’

‘Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whatsername they’d do if we didn’t see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin’ as theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T’other callin’ to which to come on. I’d give a month’s pay to get some o’ them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin’ through a day’s road-makin’ an’ a night’s rain. They’d carry on a deal afterwards—same as we’re supposed to carry on. I’ve bin turned out of a measly arf-license pub down Lambeth way, full o’ greasy kebmen, ’fore now,’ said Ortheris with an oath.

‘Maybe you were dhrunk,’ said Mulvaney soothingly.

‘Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. I was wearin’ the Queen’s uniform.’

‘I’d no particular thought to be a soldier i’ them days,’ said Learoyd, still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, ‘but this sort o’ talk put it i’ my head. They was so good, th’ chapel folk, that they tumbled ower t’other side. But I stuck to it for ’Liza’s sake, specially as she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were gettin’ up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin’s night after night for a matter of three months.’

‘I know what a horotorio is,’ said Ortheris pertly. ‘It’s a sort of chaplain’s sing-song—words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah choruses.’

‘Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t’other, an’ they all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi’ the noise they made they didn’t fair to want anybody to listen. The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn’t playin’ the flute, an’ they set me, as hadn’t got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a’ gate playin.’ Old Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th’ conductor an’ th’ first fiddle an’ th’ leadin’ singer, beatin’ time wi’ his fiddle-stick, till at times he’d rap with it on the table, and cry out, “Now, you mun all stop; it’s my turn.” And he’d face round to his front, fair sweating wi’ pride, to sing th’ tenor solos. But he were grandest i’ th’ choruses, waggin’ his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and singin’ hisself black in the face. A rare singer were Jesse.

‘Yo’ see, I was not o’ much account wi’ ’em all exceptin’ to ’Liza Roantree, and I had a deal o’ time settin’ quiet at meetings and horotorio practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at beginnin’, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and could study what it meaned.

‘Just after th’ horotorios came off, ’Liza, as had allus been weakly like, was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom’s horse up and down a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn’t let me go, though I fair ached to see her.

page 5

‘ “She’ll be better i’ noo, lad—better i’ noo,” he used to say. “That mun ha’ patience.” Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th’ Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin’ propped up among th’ pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to th’ settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th’ preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i’ them days, and i’ one way we was rare good comrades. But I could ha’ stretched him time and again with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go down into th’ bowels o’ th’ earth, and see how th’ Lord had builded th’ framework o’ th’ everlastin’ hills. He were one of them chaps as had a gift o’ sayin’ things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney here, as would ha’ made a rare good preacher if he had nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit o’ miner’s kit as almost buried th’ little man, and his white face down i’ th’ coat-collar and hat-flap looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i’ th’ bottom o’ the waggon. I was drivin’ a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th’ cave where the engine was pumpin’, and where th’ ore was brought up and put into th’ waggons as went down o’ themselves, me puttin’ th’ brake on and th’ horses a-trottin’ after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th’ dark, and could nobbut see th’ day shinin’ at the hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled down-right wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin’ between me and ’Liza. The talk was ’at they were to be wed when she got better, an’ I couldn’t get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and I came out wi’ a chorus that was all cussin’ an’ swearin’ at my horses, an’ I began to know how I hated him. He were such a little chap, too. I could drop him wi’ one hand down Garstang’s Copper-hole—a place where th’ beck slithered ower th’ edge on a rock, and fell wi’ a bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i’ Greenhow could plump.’

Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. ‘Ay, he should see th’ bowels o’ th’ earth an’ never naught else. I could take him a mile or two along th’ drift, and leave him wi’ his candle doused to cry hallelujah, wi’ none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down th’ ladder-way to th’ drift where Jesse Roantree was workin’, and why shouldn’t he slip on th’ ladder, wi’ my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi’ my heel? If I went fust down th’ ladder I could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squshin’ down the shaft, breakin’ his bones at ev’ry timberin’ as Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn’t a bone left when he wrought to th’ bottom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an arm to put round ’Liza Roantree’s waist. Niver no more—niver no more.’

The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved by his comrade’s passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.

‘But it’s none so easy to kill a man like yon. When I’d given up my horses to th’ lad as took my place and I was showin’ th’ preacher th’ workin’s, shoutin’ into his ear across th’ clang o’ th’ pumpin’ engines, I saw he were afraid o’ naught; and when the lamplight showed his black eyes, I could feel as he was masterin’ me again. I were no better nor Blast chained up short and growlin’ i’ the depths of him while a strange dog went safe past.

‘“Th’ art a coward and a fool,” I said to mysen; an’ I wrestled i’ my mind again’ him till, when we come to Garstang’s Copper-hole, I laid hold o’ the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest on it. “Now, lad,” I says, “it’s to be one or t’other on us—thee or me—for ’Liza Roantree. Why, isn’t thee afraid for thysen?” I says, for he were still i’ my arms as a sack. “Nay; I’m but afraid for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught,” says he. I set him down on th’ edge, an’ th’ beck run stiller, an’ there was no more buzzin’ in my head like when th’ bee come through th’ window o’ Jesse’s house. “What dost tha mean?” says I.

‘“I’ve often thought as thou ought to know,” says he, “but ’twas hard to tell thee. ’Liza Roantree’s for neither on us, nor for nobody o’ this earth. Dr. Warbottom says—and he knows her, and her mother before her—that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer. He’s known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!” says he. And that weak little man pulled me further back and set me again’ him, and talked it all over quiet and still, me turnin’ a bunch o’ candles in my hand, and counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were th’ regular preachin’ talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to think as he were more of a man than I’d ever given him credit for, till I were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.

‘Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they lasted, and I said to mysen, “’Liza Roantree hasn’t six months to live.” And when we came into th’ daylight again we were liked dead men to look at, an’ Blast come behind us without so much as waggin’ his tail. When I saw ’Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, “Who’s telled tha? For I see that knows.” And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke down.

‘Yo’see, I was a young chap i’ them days, and had seen naught o’ life, let alone death, as is allus a-waitin’. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin’ to Bradford, to Jesse’s brother David, as worked i’ a mill, and I mun hold up like a man and a Christian, and she’d pray for me. Well, and they went away, and the preacher that same back end o’ th’ year were appointed to another circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.

‘I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th’ chapel, but ’tweren’t th’ same thing at after. I hadn’t Liza’s voice to follow i’ th’ singin’, nor her eyes a’shinin’ acrost their heads. And i’ th’ class-meetings they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn’t a word to say for mysen.

‘Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn’t behave ourselves over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they’d come to take us up. I can’t tell how we got through th’ time, while i’ th’ winter I gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th’ door o’ th’ house, in a long street o’ little houses. He’d been sendin’ th’ children ’way as were clatterin’ their clogs in th’ causeway, for she were asleep.

‘“Is it thee?” he says; “but you’re not to see her. I’ll none have her wakened for a nowt like thee. She’s goin’ fast, and she mun go in peace. Thou’lt never be good for naught i’ th’ world, and as long as thou lives thou’ll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!” So he shut the door softly i’ my face.

‘Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting sergeant. The old tales o’ th’ chapel folk came buzzin’ into my head. I was to get away, and this were th’ regular road for the likes o’ me. I ’listed there and then, took th’ Widow’s shillin’, and had a bunch o’ ribbons pinned i’ my hat.

‘But next day I found my way to David Roantree’s door, and Jesse came to open it. Says he, “Thou’s come back again wi’ th’ devil’s colours flyin’—thy true colours, as I always telled thee.”

‘But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-bye, till a woman calls down th’ stair-way, “She says John Learoyd’s to come up.” Th’ old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like. “But thou’lt be quiet, John,” says he, “for she’s rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.”

‘Her eyes were all alive wi’ light, and her hair was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks were thin—thin to frighten a man that’s strong. “Nay, father, yo mayn’t say th’ devil’s colours. Them ribbons is pretty.” An’ she held out her hands for th’ hat, an’ she put all straight as a woman will wi’ ribbons. “Nay, but what they’re pretty,” she says. “Eh, but I’d ha’ liked to see thee i’ thy red coat, John, for thou was allus my own lad—my very own lad, and none else.”

‘She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i’ a gentle grip, and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. “Now yo’ mun get away, lad,” says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.

‘Th’ recruiting sergeant were waitin’ for me at th’ corner public-house. “Yo’ve seen your sweetheart?” says he. “Yes, I’ve seen her,” says I. “Well, we’ll have a quart now, and you’ll do your best to forget her,” says he, bein’ one o’ them smart, bustlin’ chaps. “Ay, sergeant,” says I. “Forget her.” And I’ve been forgettin’ her ever since.

He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled up the watercourse.

‘See that beggar? … Got ’im.’

Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.

‘That’s a clean shot, little man,’ said Mulvaney.

Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. ‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ him, too,’ said he.

Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work.

[a short tale]

FAR from the haunts of Company Officers who insist upon kit-inspections, far from keen-nosed Sergeants who sniff the pipe stuffed into the bedding-roll, two miles from the tumult of the barracks, lies the Trap. It is an old dry well, shadowed by a twisted pipal tree and fenced with high grass. Here, in the years gone by, did Private Ortheris establish his depot and menagerie for such possessions, dead and living, as could not safely be introduced to the barrack-room. Here were gathered Houdin pullets, and fox-terriers of undoubted pedigree and more than doubtful ownership, for Ortheris was an inveterate poacher and pre-eminent among a regiment of neat-handed dog-stealers.Never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein Ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well; when Learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel on the management of ‘tykes,’ and Mulvaney, from the crook of the overhanging pipal, waved his enormous boots in benediction above our heads, delighting us with tales of Love and War, and strange experiences of cities and men.

Ortheris—landed at last in the ‘little stuff’ bird-shop ‘for which your soul longed; Learoyd—back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed North, amid the clang of the Bradford looms; Mulvaney—grizzled, tender, and very wise Ulysses, sweltering on the earthworks of a Central India line—judge if I have forgotten old days in the Trap! …

Orth’ris, as allus thinks he knaws more than other foaks, said she wasn’t a real laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. Ah don’t gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. But she was a laady. Why, she rode iv a carriage, an’ good ’osses, too, an’ her ’air was that oiled as you could see your faice in it, an’ she wore di’mond rings an’ a goold chain, an’ silk an’ satin dresses as mun ha’ cost a deal, for it isn’t a cheap shop as keeps enough o’ one pattern to fit a figure like hers. Her naame was Mrs. DeSussa, an’ t’ waay I coom to be acquainted wi’ her was along iv our Colonel’s Laady’s dog Rip.

Ah’ve seen a vast o’ dogs, but Rip was t’ prettiest picter iv a cliver fox-tarrier ’at iver I set eyes on. He cud do owt yo’ like but speeak, an’ t’ Colonel’s Laady set more store by him than if he hed been a Christian. She hed bairns iv her awn, but they was i’ England, and Rip seemed to get all t’ coodlin’ an’ pettin’ as belonged to a bairn by good rights.

But Rip wor a bit on a rover, an’ hed a habit o’ breakin’ out o’ barricks like and trottin’ round t’ plaice as if he were t’ Cantonment Magistrate coom round inspectin’. The Colonel leathers him once or twice, but Rip didn’t care an’ kept on gooin’ his rounds, wi’ his taail a-waggin’ as if he were flag-signallin’ to t’ world at large ’at he was ‘gettin’ on nicely, thank yo’, and how’s yo’sen?’ An’ then t’ Colonel, as was noa sort iv a hand wi’ a dog, tees him oop. A real clipper iv a dog, an’ it’s noa wonder yon laady, Mrs. DeSussa, should tek a fancy tiv him. Theer’s one o’ t’ Ten Commandments says yo’ maun’t cuvvet your neebor’s ox nor his jackass, but it doesn’t say nowt about his tarrier dogs, an’ happen thot’s t’ reason why Mrs. DeSussa cuvveted Rip, tho’ she went to church reg’lar along wi’ her husband, who was soa mich darker ’at if he hedn’t such a good coaat tiv his back yo’ might ha’ called him a black man and nut tell a lee nawther. They said he addled his brass i’ jute; an’ he’d a rare lot on it.

Well, yo’ see, when they teed Rip oop, t’ poor awd lad didn’t enjoy very good ’ealth. Soa t’ Colonel’s Laady sends for me as ’ad a naame for bein’ knowledgeable about a dog, an’ axes what’s ailin’ wi’ him.

‘Why,’ says I, ‘he’s getten t’ mopes, an’ what he wants is his libbaty an’ coompany like t’ rest on us; wal happen a rat or two ’ud liven him oop. It’s low, mum,’ says I, ‘is rats, but it’s t’ nature iv a dog. An’ soa’s coottin’ round an’ meetin’ another dog or two an’ passin’ t’ time o’ day, an’ hevvin’ a bit on a turn-up wi’ him like a Christian.’

Soa she says her dog maun’t niver fight an’ noa Christians iver fought.

‘Then what’s a soldier for?’ says I; an’ I explains to her t’ contrairy qualities iv a dog, ’at, when yo’ coom to think on’t, is one o’ t’ curusest things as is. For they larn to behave theirsens like gentlemen born, fit for t’ fost o’ coompany—they tell me t’ Widdy hersen is fond iv a good dog and knaws one when she sees it as well as onnybody: then on t’ other hand a-tewin’ round after cats an’ gettin’ mixed oop i’ all manners o’ blackguardly street-rows, an’ killin’ rats, an’ fightin’ like divils.

T’ Colonel’s Laady says: ‘Well, Learoyd, I doan’t agree wi’ yo’, but yo’re right in a way o’ speeakin’, an’ Ah should like yo’ to tek Rip out a-walkin’ wi’ yo’ sometimes; but yo’ maun’t let him fight, nor chaase cats, nor do nowt ’orrid.’ An’ them was her very wods.

Soa Rip an’ me gooes out a-walkin’ o’ evenin’s, he bein’ a dog as did credit tiv a man, an’ I catches a lot o’ rats an’ we hed a bit iv a match on in an awd dry swimmin’-bath at back o’ t’ cantonments, an’ it was none so long afore he was as bright as a button again. He hed a waay o’ flyin’ at them big yaller pariah dogs as if he was a harrow offan a bow, an’ though his weight were nowt, he tuk ’em so suddint-like they rolled ovver like skittles in a halley, an’ when they coot he stretched after ’em as if he were rabbit-runnin’. Saame wi’ cats when he cud get t’ cat agaate o’ runnin’.

One evenin’, him an’ me was trespassin’ ovver a compound wall after one of them mongooses ’at he’d started, an’ we was busy grubbin’ round a prickle-bush, an’ when we looks oop there was Mrs. DeSussa wi’ a parasel ovver her shoulder, a-watchin’ us. ‘Oh my!’ she sings out. ‘There’s that lovelee dog! Would he let me stroke him, Mister Soldier?’

‘Ay, he would, mum,’ says I, ‘for he’s fond o’ laadies’ coompany. Coom here, Rip, an’ speeak to this kind laady.’ An’ Rip, seein’ ’at t’ mongoose hed getten clean awaay, cooms oop like t’ gentleman he was, niver a hauporth shy nor okkord.

‘Oh, you beautiful—you prettee dog!’ she says, clippin’ an’ chantin’ her speech in a waay them sooart has o’ their awn; ‘I would like a dog like you. You are so verree lovelee—so awfullee prettee,’ an’ all thot sort o’ talk, ’at a dog o’ sense mebbe thinks nowt on, tho’ he’ll bide it by reason o’ his breedin’.

An’ then I meks him joomp ovver my swaggercane, an’ shek hands, an’ beg, an’ lie dead, an’ a lot o’ them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan’t haud wi’ it mysen, for it’s mekkin’ a fool o’ a good dog to do such-like.

An’ at lung length it cooms out ’at she’d been thrawin’ sheep’s eyes, as t’ sayin’ is, at Rip for many a daay. Yo’ see, her childer was grown up, an’ she’d nowt mich to do, an’ wor allus fond iv a dog. Soa she axes me if I’d tek somethin’ to drink. An’ we gooes into t’ drawn-room wheer her ’usband was a-settin’. They meks a gurt fuss ovver t’ dog an’ I has a bottle o’ aale an’ he gev me a handful o’ cigars.

Soa Ah coomed awaay, but t’ awd lass sings out: ‘Oh, Mister Soldier, please coom again and bring that prettee dog.’

Ah didn’t let on to t’ Colonel’s Laady about Mrs. DeSussa, an’ Rip he says nowt nawther; an’ I gooes again, an’ ivry time there was a good drink an’ a handful o’ good smooakes. An’ Ah telled t’ awd lass a heeap more about Rip than Ah’d ever heeard. How he tuk t’ fost prize at Lunnon dog-show an’ cost thotty-three pounds fower shillin’ from t’ man as bred him; ’at his own brother was t’ propputty o’ t’ Prince o’ Wailes, an’ ’at he had a pedigree as long as a Dook’s. An’ she lapped it all oop an’ wor niver tired o’ admirin’ him. But when t’ awd lass took to givin’ me money an’ Ah seed ’at she wor gettin’ fair fond about t’ dog, Ah began to suspicion summat. Onnybody may give a soldier t’ price iv a pint in a friendly waay an’ theer’s no ’arm done, but when it cooms to five rupees slipt into your hand, sly like, why, it’s what t’ ’lectioneerin’ fellows calls bribery an’ corruption. Specially when Mrs. DeSussa thrawed hints how t’ cold weather would soon be ovver, an’ she wor gooin’ to Munsoorie Pahar an’ we wor gooin’ to Rawalpindi, an’ she would niver see Rip onny more onless somebody she knawed on would be kind tiv her.

Soa I tells Mulvaaney an’ Orth’ris all t’ taale thro’, beginnin’ to end.

‘’Tis larceny that wicked ould laady manes,’ says t’ Irishman. ‘’Tis felony she is sejucin’ ye into, my frind Learoyd, but I’ll purtect your innocence. I’ll save ye from the wicked wiles av that wealthy ould woman, an’ I’ll go wid ye this evenin’ an’ spake to her the wurruds av truth an’ honesty. But, Jock,’ says he, waggin’ his heead, ‘’Twas not like ye to kape all that good dhrink an’ thim fine cigars to yo’sen, while Orth’ris here an’ me have been prowlin’ round wid throats as dry as lime-kilns, and nothin’ to smoke but Canteen plug. ’Twas a dhirty thrick to play on a comrade, for why should you, Learoyd, be balancin’ yo’sen on the butt av a satin chair, as if Terence Mulvaney was not the aquil av anybody who thrades in jute!’

‘Let alone me,’ sticks in Orth’ris, ‘but that’s like life. Them wot’s really fitted to decorate society get no show, while a blunderin’ Yorkshireman like you——’

‘Nay,’ says I, ‘it’s none o’ t’ blunderin’ Yorkshireman she wants; it’s Rip. He’s t’ gentleman this journey.’

Soa t’ next daay, Mulvaaney an’ Rip an’ me gooes to Mrs. DeSussa’s, an’ t’ Irishman bein’ a strainger she wor a bit shy at fost. But yo’ve heeard Mulvaaney talk, an’ yo’ may believe as he fairly bewitched t’ awd lass wal she let out ’at she wanted to tek Rip awaay wi’ her to Munsoorie Pahar. Then Mulvaaney changes his tune an’ axes her solemn-like if she’d thowt o’ t’ consequences o’ gettin’ two poor but honest soldiers sent t’ Andamning Islands. Mrs. DeSussa began to cry, so Mulvaaney turns round oppen t’ other tack and smooths her down, allowin’ ’at Rip ’ud be a vast better off in t’ Hills than down i’ Bengal, an’ ’twor a pity he shouldn’t go wheer he was so well beliked. And soa he went on, backin’ an’ fillin’ an’ workin’ up t’ awd lass wal she felt as if her life worn’t worth nowt if she didn’t hev t’ dog.

Then of a suddint he says: ‘But ye shall have him, marm, for I’ve a feelin’ heart, not like this could-blooded Yorkshireman. But ’twill cost ye not a penny less than three hundher rupees.

‘Don’t yo’ believe him, mum,’ says I. ‘T’ Colonel’s Laady wouldn’t tek five hundred for him.’

‘Who said she would?’ says Mulvaaney. ‘’Tis not buyin’ him I mane, but for the sake o’ this kind, good laady, I’ll do what I never dreamt to do in my life. I’ll stale him!’

‘Don’t saay steeal,’ says Mrs. DeSussa; ‘he shall hev the happiest home. Dogs often get lost, yo’ know, and then they stray, an’ he likes me an’ I like him as I niver liked a dog yet, an’ I must hev him. If I got him at t’ last minute I cud carry him off to Munsoorie Pahar and nobody would niver knaw.’

Now an’ again Mulvaaney looked acrost at me, an’ tho’ I could mek nowt o’ what he was after, I concluded to tek his leead.

‘Well, mum,’ I says, ‘I never thowt to coom down to dog-steealin’, but if my comraade sees how it cud be done to oblige a laady like yo’sen, I’m nut t’ man to hod back, tho’ it’s a bad business I’m thinkin’, an’ three hundred rupees is a poor set-off again t’ chance iv them Damning Islands as Mulvaaney talks on.’

‘I’ll mek it three-fifty,’ says Mrs. DeSussa. ‘Only let me hev t’ dog!’

So we let her persuade us, an’ she teks Rip’s measure theer an’ then, an’ sent to Hamilton’s to order a silver collar again’ t’ time when he was to be her verree awn, which was to be t’ daay she set off for Munsoorie Pahar.

‘Sitha, Mulvaaney,’ says I, when we was out side, ‘yo’re niver goin’ to let her hev Rip!’

‘An’ wud ye disappoint a poor old woman?’ says he. ‘She shall have a Rip.’

‘An’ wheer’s he to come thro’?’ says I.

‘Learoyd, my man,’ he sings out, ‘you’re a pretty man av your inches an’ a good comrade, but your head is made av duff. Isn’t our frind Orth’ris a Taxidermist, an’ a rale artist wid his cliver white fingers? An’ fwhat’s a Taxidermist but a man who can thrate shkins? Do ye mind the white dog that belongs to the Canteen Sargint, bad cess to him—he that’s lost half his time an’ snarlin’ the rest? He shall be lost for good now; an’ do ye mind that he’s the very spit in shape an’ size av the Colonel’s, barrin’ that his tail is an inch too long, an’ he has none av the colour that divarsifies the rale Rip, an’ his timper is that av his masther an’ worse? But fwhat is an inch on a dog’s tail? An’ fwhat to a professional like Orth’ris is a few ringstraked shpots av black, brown, an’ white? Nothin’ at all, at all.’

Then we meets Orth’ris, an’ that little man, bein’ sharp as a needle, seed his waay through t’ business in a minute. An’ he went to work a-practisin’ ’air-dyes the very next daay, beginnin’ on some white rabbits he hed, an’ then he drored all Rip’s markin’s on t’ back of a white Commissariat bullock, so as to get his ’and in an’ be sure of his cullers; shadin’ off brown into black as nateral as life. If Rip hed a fault it was too mich markin’, but it was straingely reg’lar, an’ Orth’ris settled himsen to make a fost-rate job on it when he got haud o’ t’ Canteen Sargint’s dog. Theer niver was sich a dog as thot for bad timper, an’ it did nut get noa better when his tail hed to be fettled a inch an’ a haalf shorter. But they may talk o’ theer Royal Academies as they like. I niver seed a bit o’ animal paintin’ to beat t’ copy as Orth’ris made iv Rip’s marks, wal t’ picter itself was snarlin’ all t’ time an’ tryin’ to get at Rip standin’ theer to be copied as good as goold.

Orth’ris allus hed as much conceit on himsen as would lift a balloon, an’ he wor so pleeased wi’ his sham Rip he wor for tekkin’ him to Mrs. DeSussa before she went awaay. But Mulvaaney an’ me stopped thot, knowin’ Orth’ris’s work, though niver so cliver, was nobbut skin-deep.

An’ at last Mrs. DeSussa fixed t’ daay for startin’ to Munsoorie Pahar. We was to tek Rip to t’ staashun i’ a basket an’ hand him ovver just when they was ready to start, an’ then she’d give us t’ brass—as wor ’greed upon.

An’ my wod! It wor high time she wor off, for them ’air-dyes upon t’ cur’s back took a vast iv paintin’ to keep t’ reet culler, tho’ Orth’ris spent a matter o’ seven rupees six annas i’ t’ best drooggist shops i’ Calcutta.

An’ t’ Canteen Sargint was lookin’ for ’is dog everywheer; an’, wi’ bein’ teed oop, t’ beast’s timper got waur nor ever.

It wor i’ t’ evenin’ when t’ train started thro’ Howrah, an’ we ’elped Mrs. DeSussa wi’ about sixty boxes, an’ then we gev her t’ basket. Orth’ris, for pride iv his work, axed us to let him coom along wi’ us, an’ he cudn’t help liftin’ t’ lid an’ showin’ t’ cur as he lay coiled oop.

‘Oh!’ says t’ awd lass; ‘the beautee! How sweet he looks!’ An’ just then t’ beauty snarled an’ showed his teeth, so Mulvaaney shuts down t’ lid an’ says: ‘Ye’ll be careful, marm, whin ye tek him out. He’s disaccustomed to travellin’ by t’ railway, an’ he’ll be sure to want his rale mistress an’ his frind Learoyd, so ye’ll make allowance for his feelin’s at fost.’

She would do all thot an’ more for the dear, good Rip, an’ she would nut oppen t’ basket till they were miles awaay, for fear onnybody should recognise him, an’ we wor real good an’ kind soldier-men, we wor, an’ she honds me a bundle o’ notes, an’ then cooms oop a few of her relations an’ friends to say goodbye—nut more than seventy-five there wasn’t—an’ we coots awaay . . . .

What coom to t’ three hundred an’ fifty rupees? Thot’s what I can scarcelins tell yo’, but we melted it—we melted it. It was share an’ share alike, for Mulvaaney said: ‘If Learoyd got hoult av Mrs. DeSussa first, sure ’twas I that remimbered the Sargint’s dog just in the nick av time, an’ Orth’ris was the artist av janius that made a work av art out av that ugly piece av ill-natur’. Yet, by way av a thank-offerin’ that I was not led into felony by that wicked ould woman, I’ll send a thrifle to Father Victor for the poor people he’s always beggin’ for.’

But me an’ Orth’ris, he bein’ Cockney an’ I bein’ pretty far north, did nut see it i’ t’ saame waay. We’d getten t’ brass, an’ we meaned to keep it. An’ soa we did—for a short time.

Noa, noa, we niver heeard a wod more o’ t’ awd lass. Our Rig’mint went to Pindi, an t Canteen Sargint he got himself another tyke insteead o’ t’ one ’at got lost so reg’lar, an’ wor lost for good at last.

page 1 of 3

We’re goin’ ‘ome, we’re goin’ ‘ome—
Our ship is at the shore,
An’ you mus’ pack your ‘aversack,
For we won’t come back no more.
Ho, don’t you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary Ann,
For I’ll marry you yet on a fourp’ny bit,
As a time expired ma-a-an!
(Barrack-room Ballad)

AN AWFUL thing has happened! My friend, Private Mulvaney, who went home in the Serapis, time-expired, not very long ago, has come back to India as a civilian! It was all Dinah Shadd’s fault. She could not stand the poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant Abdullah more than words could tell. The fact was that the Mulvaneys had been out here too long, and had lost touch of England. Mulvaney knew a contractor on one of the new Central India lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake’s sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and Dinah Shadd said that if Terence did not accept she would make his life a “basted purgathory.” Therefore the Mulvaneys came out as “civilians,” which was a great and terrible fall; though Mulvaney tried to disguise it by saying that he was “Ker’nel on the railway line, an’ a consequinshal man.”

He wrote me an invitation, on a tool-indent form, to visit him; and I came down to the funny little “construction” bungalow at the side of the line. Dinah Shadd had planted peas about and about, and nature had spread all manner of green stuff round the place. There was no change in Mulvaney except the change of clothing, which was deplorable, but could not be helped. He was standing upon his trolly, haranguing a gangman, and his shoulders were as well drilled and his big, thick chin was as clean-shaven as ever.

“I’m a civilian now,” said Mulvaney. “Cud you tell that I was iver a martial man? Don’t answer, Sorr, av you’re strainin’ betune a complimint an’ a lie. There’s no houldin’ Dinah Shadd now she’s got a house av her own. Go inside, an’ dhrink tay out av chiny in the drrrrawin’-room, an’ thin we’ll dhrink like Christians undher the tree here. Scutt, ye naygur-folk! There’s a Sahib come to call on me, an’ that’s more than he’ll iver do for you onless you run! Get out, an’ go on pilin’ up the earth, quick, till sundown.”

When we three were comfortably settled under the big sisham in front of the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about Privates Ortheris and Learoyd and old times and places had died away, Mulvaney said, reflectively: “Glory be, there’s no p’rade to-morrow, an’ no bun-headed Corp’ril-bhoy to give you his lip. An’ yit I don’t know. ’Tis harrd to be something ye niver were an’ niver meant to be, an’ all the ould days shut up along wid your papers. Eyah! I’m growin’ rusty, an’ ’tis the will av God that a man mustn’t serve his Quane for time an’ all.”

He helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously.

“Let your beard grow, Mulvaney,” said I, “and then you won’t be troubled with those notions. You’ll be a real civilian.”

Dinah Shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax Mulvaney into letting his beard grow. “’Twas so civilian-like,” said poor Dinah, who hated her husband’s hankering for his old life.

“Dinah Shadd, you’re a dishgrace to an honust, clane-scraped man!” said Mulvaney, without replying to me. “Grow a beard on your own chin, darlint, and lave my razors alone. They’re all that stand betune me and dis-ris-pect-ability. Av I didn’t shave, I wud be torminted wid an outrajis thurrst; for there’s nothin’ so dhryin’ to the throat as a big billy-goat beard waggin’ undher the chin. Ye wudn’t have me dhrink always, Dinah Shadd? By the same token, you’re kapin’ me crool dhry now. Let me look at that whiskey.”

The whiskey was lent and returned, but Dinah Shadd, who had been just as eager as her husband in asking after old friends, rent me with:—

“I take shame for you, Sorr, coming down here—though the Saints know you’re as welkim as the daylight whin you do come—an’ upsettin’ Terence’s head wid your nonsense about—about fwhat’s much betther forgotten. He bein’ a civilian now, an’ you niver was aught else. Can you not let the Arrmy rest? ’Tis not good for Terence.”

I took refuge by Mulvaney, for Dinah Shadd has a temper of her own.

“Let be—let be,” said Mulvaney. “’Tis only wanst in a way I can talk about the ould days.” Then to me—“Ye say Dhrumshticks is well, an’ his lady tu’? I niver knew how I liked the gray garron till I was shut av him an’ Asia.”—“Dhrumshticks” was the nickname of the Colonel commanding Mulvaney’s old regiment.—“ Will you be seein’ him again? You will. Thin tell him”—Mulvaney’s eyes began to twinkle—“tell him wid Privit——”

“Mister, Terence,” interrupted Dinah Shadd.

“Now the Divil an’ all his angils an’ the Firmament av Hiven fly away wid the ‘Mister,’ an’ the sin av makin’ me swear be on your confession, Dinah Shadd! Privit, I tell ye. Wid Privit Mulvaney’s best obedience, that but for me the last time-expired wud be still pullin’ hair on their way to the sea.”

He threw himself back in the chair, chuckled, and was silent.

“Mrs. Mulvaney,” I said, “please take up the whiskey, and don’t let him have it until he has told the story.”

Dinah Shadd dexterously whipped the bottle away, saying at the same time, “’Tis nothing to be proud av,” and thus captured by the enemy, Mulvaney spake:—

“’Twas on Chuseday week. I was behaderin’ round wid the gangs on the ’bankmint—I’ve taught the hoppers how to kape step an’ stop screechin’—whin a head-gangman comes up to me, wid about two inches av shirt-tail hanging round his neck an’ a disthressful light in his oi. ‘Sahib,’ sez he, ‘there’s a reg’mint an’ a half av soldiers up at the junction, knockin’ red cinders out av ivrything an’ ivrybody! They thried to hang me in my cloth,’ he sez, ‘an’ there will be murdher an’ ruin an’ rape in the place before nightfall! They say they’re comin’ down here to wake us up. What will we do wid our women-folk?’

“’Fetch my throlly!” sez I; “my heart’s sick in my ribs for a wink at anything wid the Quane’s uniform on ut. Fetch my throlly, an’ six av the jildiest men, and run me up in shtyle.’”

“He tuk his best coat,” said Dinah Shadd, reproachfully.

“’Twas to do honour to the Widdy. I cud ha’ done no less, Dinah Shadd. You and your digresshins interfere wid the coorse av the narrative. Have you iver considhered fwhat I wud look like wid me head shaved as well as me chin? You bear that in your mind, Dinah darlin’.

“I was throllied up six miles, all to get a shquint at that draf’. I knew ’twas a spring draf’ goin’ home, for there’s no rig’mint hereabouts, more’s the pity.”

“Praise the Virgin!” murmured Dinah Shadd. But Mulvaney did not hear.

page 2

“Whin I was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin’ along fit to burrst, I heard the noise av the men, an’, on my sowl, Sorr, I cud catch the voice av Peg Barney bellowin’ like a bison wid the belly-ache. You remimber Peg Barney that was in D Comp’ny—a red, hairy scraun, wid a scar on his jaw? Peg Barney that cleared out the Blue Lights’ Jubilee meetin’ wid the cook-room mop last year?

“Thin I knew ut was a draf’ av the Ould Rig’mint, an’ I was conshumed wid sorrow for the bhoy that was in charge. We was harrd scrapin’s at any time. Did I iver tell you how Horker Kelley wint into clink nakid as Phoebus Apollonius, wid the shirts av the Corp’ril an’ file undher his arrum? An’ he was a moild man! But I’m digresshin’. ’Tis a shame both to the rig’mints and the Arrmy sendin’ down little orf’cer bhoys wid a draf’ av strong men mad wid liquor an’ the chanst av gettin’ shut av India, an’ niver a punishment that’s fit to be given right down an’ away from cantonmints to the dock! ’Tis this nonsinse. Whin I am servin’ my time, I’m undher the Articles av War, an’ can be whipped on the peg for thim. But whin I’ve served my time, I’m a Reserve man, an’ the Articles av War haven’t any hould on me. An orf’cer can’t do anythin’ to a time-expired savin’ confinin’ him to barricks. ’Tis a wise rig’lation, bekaze a time-expired does not have any barricks; bein’ on the move all the time. ’Tis a Solomon av a rig’lation, is that. I wud like to be inthroduced to the man that made ut. ’Tis easier to get colts from a Kibbereen horse-fair into Galway than to take a bad draf’ over ten miles av counthry. Consiquintly that rig’lation—for fear that the men wud be hurt by the little orf’cer bhoy. No matther. The nearer my throlly came to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an’ the louder was the voice of Peg Barney. ‘’Tis good I am here,’ thinks I to mysilf, ‘for Peg alone is employmint for two or three.’ He bein’, I well knew, as copped as a dhrover.

“Faith, that rest-camp was a sight! The tent-ropes was all skew- nosed, an’ the pegs looked as dhrunk as the men—fifty av thim—the scourin’s, an’ rinsin’s, an’ Divil’s lavin’s av the Ould Rig’mint. I tell you, Sorr, they were dhrunker than any men you’ve ever seen in your mortial life. How does a draf’ get dhrunk? How does a frog get fat? They suk ut in through their shkins.

“There was Peg Barney sittin’ on the groun’ in his shirt—wan shoe off an’ wan shoe on—whackin’ a tent-peg over the head wid his boot, an’ singin’ fit to wake the dead. ’Twas no clane song that he sung, though. ’Twas the Divil’s Mass.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Whin a bad egg is shut av the Army, he sings the Divil’s Mass for a good riddance; an’ that manes swearin’ at ivrything from the Commandher-in-Chief down to the Room-Corp’ril, such as you niver in your days heard. Some men can swear so as to make green turf crack! Have you iver heard the Curse in an Orange Lodge? The Divil’s Mass is ten times worse, an’ Peg Barney was singin’ ut, whackin’ the tent-peg on the head wid his boot for each man that he cursed. A powerful big voice had Peg Barney, an’ a hard swearer he was whin sober. I stood forninst him, an’ ’twas not me oi alone that cud tell Peg was dhrunk as a coot.

“‘Good mornin’, Peg,’ I sez, whin he dhrew breath afther dursin’ the Adj’tint-Gen’ral; ‘I’ve put on my best coat to see you, Peg Barney,’ sez I.

“‘Thin take ut off again,’ sez Peg Barney, latherin’ away wid the boot; ‘take ut off an’ dance, ye lousy civilian!’

“Wid that he begins cursin’ ould Dhrumshticks, being so full he dane disrernimbers the Brigade-Major an’ the Judge-Advokit-Gen’ral.

“‘Do you not know me, Peg?’ sez I, though me blood was hot in me wid being called a civilian.”

“An’ him a decent married man!” wailed Dinah Shadd.

“‘I do not,’ sez Peg, ‘but dhrunk or sober I’ll tear the hide off your back wid a shovel whin I’ve stopped singin’.’

“’Say you so, Peg Barney?’ sez I. ‘’Tis clear as mud you’ve forgotten me. I’ll assist your autobiography.’ Wid that I stretched Peg Barney, boot an’ all, an’ wint into the camp. An awful sight ut was!

“‘Where’s the orf’cer in charge av the detachment?’ sez I to Scrub Greene—the manest little worm that ever walked.

“‘There’s no orf’cer, ye ould cook,’ sez Scrub; ‘we’re a bloomin’ Republic.’

“‘Are you that?’ sez I; ‘thin I’m O’Connell the Dictator, an’ by this you will larn to kape a civil tongue in your rag-box.’

“Wid that I stretched Scrub Greene an’ wint to the orf’cer’s tent. ’Twas a new little bhoy—not wan I’d iver seen before. He was sittin’ in his tent, purtendin’ not to ’ave ear av the racket.

“I saluted—but for the life av me I mint to shake hands whin I went in. ’Twas the sword hangin’ on the tent-pole changed my will.

“‘Can’t I help, Sorr?’ sez I; ‘’tis a strong man’s job they’ve given you, an’ you’ll be wantin’ help by sundown.’ He was a bhoy wid bowils, that child, an’ a rale gintleman.

“‘Sit down,’ sez he.

“‘Not before my orf’cer,’ sez I; an’ I tould him fwhat my service was.

“‘I’ve heard av you,’ sez he. ‘You tuk the town av Lungtungpen nakid.’

“‘Faith,’ thinks I, ‘that’s Honour an’ Glory’; for ’twas Lift’nint Brazenose did that job. ‘I’m wid ye, Sorr,’ sez I, ‘if I’m av use. They shud niver ha’ sent you down wid the draf’. Savin’ your presince, Sorr,’ I sez, ‘’tis only Lift’nint Hackerston in the Ould Rig’mint can manage a Home draf’.’

“‘I’ve niver had charge of men like this before,’ sez he, playin’ wid the pens on the table; ‘an’ I see by the Rig’lations——’

“‘Shut your oi to the Rig’lations, Sorr,’ I sez, ‘till the throoper’s into blue wather. By the Rig’lations you’ve got to tuck thim up for the night, or they’ll be runnin’ foul av my coolies an’ makin’ a shiverarium half through the counthry. Can you trust your non-coms, Sorr?’

“‘Yes,’ sez he.

“‘Good,’ sez I; ‘there’ll be throuble before the night. Are you marchin’, Sorr?’

“‘To the next station,’ sez he.

page 3

“‘Betther still,’ sez I; ‘there’ll be big throuble.’

“‘Can’t be too hard on a Home draf,’ sez he; ‘the great thing is to get thim in-ship.’

“‘Faith, you’ve larnt the half av your lesson, Sorr,’ sez I, ‘but av you shtick to the Rig’lations you’ll niver get thim inship at all, at all. Or there won’t be a rag av kit betune thim whin you do.’

“‘Twas a dear little orf’cer bhoy, an’ by way av kapin’ his heart up, I tould him fwhat I saw wanst in a draf in Egypt.”

“What was that, Mulvaney?” said I.

“Sivin an’ fifty men sittin’ on the bank av a canal, laughin’ at a poor little squidgereen av an orf’cer that they’d made wade into the slush an’ pitch things out av the boats for their Lord High Mightinesses. That made me orf’cer bhoy woild wid indignation.

“‘Soft an’ aisy, Sorr,’ sez I; ‘you’ve niver had your draf’ in hannd since you left cantonmints. Wait till the night, an’ your work will be ready to you. Wid your permission, Sorr, I will investigate the camp, an’ talk to me ould frinds. ’Tis no manner av use thryin’ to shtop the divilmint now.’

“Wid that I wint out into the camp an’ inthrojuced mysilf to ivry man sober enough to remimber me. I was some wan in the ould days, an’ the bhoys was glad to see me—all excipt Peg Barney wid a eye like a tomata five days in the bazar, an’ a nose to match. They come round me an’ shuk me, an’ I tould thim I was in privit employ wid an income av me own, an’ a drrrawin’-room fit to bate the Quane’s; an’ wid me lies an’ me shtories an’ nonsinse gin’rally, I kept ’em quiet in wan way an’ another, knockin’ roun’ the camp. ’Twas bad even thin whin I was the Angil av Peace.

“I talked to me ould non-coms—they was sober—an’ betune me an’ thim we wore the draf’ over into their tents at the proper time. The little orf’cer bhoy he comes round, dacint an’ civil-spoken as might be.

“‘Rough quarters, men,’ sez he, ‘but you can’t look to be as comfortable as in barricks. We must make the best av things. I’ve shut my eyes to a dale av dog’s thricks today, an’ now there must be no more av ut.’

“No more we will. Come an’ have a dhrink, me son,’ sez Peg Barney, staggerin’ where he stud. Me little orf’cer bhoy kep’ his timper.

“‘You’re a sulky swine, you are,’ sez Peg Barney, an’ at that the men in the tent began to laugh.

“I tould you me orf’cer bhoy had bowils. He cut Peg Barney as near as might be on the eye that I’d squshed whin we first met. Peg wint spinnin’ acrost the tent.

“Peg him out, Sorr,’ sez I, in a whishper.

“Peg him out!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy, up loud, just as if ’twas battalion p’rade an’ he pickin’ his wurrds from the Sargint.

“The non-coms tuk Peg Barney—a howlin’ handful he was—an’ in three minut’s he was pegged out—chin down, tight-dhrawn—on his stummick, a tent-peg to each arm an’ leg, swearin’ fit to turn a naygur white.

“I tuk a peg an’ jammed ut into his ugly jaw—‘Bite on that, Peg Barney,’ I sez; ‘the night is settin’ frosty, an’ you’ll be wantin’ divarsion before the mornin’. But for the Rig’lations you’d be bitin’ on a bullet now at the thriangles, Peg Barney,’ sez I.

“All the draf’ was out av their tents watchin’ Barney bein’ pegged.

“‘’Tis agin the Rig’lations! He strook him!’ screeches out Scrub Greene, who was always a lawyer; an’ some of the men tuk up the shoutin’.

“‘Peg out that man!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy, niver losin’ his timper; an’ the non-coms wint in and pegged out Scrub Greene by the side av Peg Barney.

“I cud see that the draf’ was comin’ roun’. The men stud not knowin’ fwhat to do.

“‘Get to your tents!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy. ‘Sargint, put a sinthry over these two men.’

“The men wint back into the tents like jackals, an’ the rest av the night there was no noise at all excipt the stip av the sinthry over the two, an’ Scrub Greene blubberin’ like a child. ’Twas a chilly night, an’ faith, ut sobered Peg Barney.

“Just before Revelly, me orf’cer bhoy comes out an’ sez: ‘Loose those men an’ send thim to their tents!’ Scrub Greene wint away widout a word, but Peg Barney, stiff wid the cowld, stud like a sheep, thryin’ to make his orf’cer undherstand he was sorry for playin’ the goat.

“There was no tucker in the draf’ whin ut fell in for the march, an’ divil a wurrd about ‘illegality’ cud I hear.

“I wint to the ould Colour-Sargint and I sez:—‘Let me die in glory,’ sez I. ‘I’ve seen a man this day!’

“‘A man he is,’ sez ould Hother; ‘the draf’s as sick as a herrin’. They’ll all go down to the sea like lambs. That bhoy has the bowils av a cantonmint av Gin’rals.’

“‘Amin,’ sez I, ‘an’ good luck go wid him, wheriver he be, by land or by sea. Let me know how the draf’ gets clear.’

“An’ do you know how they did? That bhoy, so I was tould by letter from Bombay, bully-damned ’em down to the dock, till they cudn’t call their sowls their own. From the time they left me eye till they was ’tween decks, not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. An’ by the Holy Articles av War, whin they wint aboord they cheered him till they cudn’t spake, an’ that, mark you, has not come about wid a draf’ in the mim’ry av livin’ man! You look to that little orf’cer bhoy. He has bowils. ’Tis not ivry child that wud chuck the Rig’lations to Flanders an’ stretch Peg Barney on a wink from a brokin an’ dilapidated ould carkiss like mysilf. I’d be proud to serve——”

“Terence, you’re a civilian,” said Dinah Shadd warningly.

“So I am—so I am. Is ut likely I wud forget ut? But he was a gran’ bhoy all the same, an’ I’m only a mud-tipper wid a hod on me shoulthers. The whiskey’s in the heel av your hand, Sorr. Wid your good lave we’ll dhrink to the Ould Rig’mint—three fingers—standin’ up!”

And we drank.

pages 1 of 7

ALL DAY I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand troops had, by the wisdom of the Government of India, been turned loose over a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what they would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a very lifelike camp. Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of the South had finally pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the line of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the move. On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern horse and hammered by the Southern guns till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support. Then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation.

Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and British troops had been pushed round as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the Southern Army,—to break, as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their instructions were to go in, avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient excitement to impress the Southern Army with the wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities. It was a pretty manœuvre, neatly carried out.

Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out, and the main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah’s Ark of elephants, camels, and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train bubbled and squealed behind the guns, when there appeared from nowhere in particular British infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers.

‘How’s that, umpire?’ said the major commanding the attack, and with one voice the drivers and limber gunners answered ‘Hout!’ while the colonel of artillery sputtered.

‘All your scouts are charging our main body,’ said the major. ‘Your flanks are unprotected for two miles. I think we’ve broken the back of this division. And listen,—there go the Ghoorkhas!’

A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung clear of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel to us five or six miles away.

Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,—three batteries, the divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report himself ‘cut up’ to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and all other cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the rest of the division.

‘We’ll bivouac here to-night,’ said the major, ‘I have a notion that the Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy till the transport gets away.’

A hand caught my beast’s bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the special correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd.

‘An’ that’s all right,’ said the Irishman calmly. ‘We thought we’d find you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport? Orth’ris’ll fetch ut out.’

Ortheris did ‘fetch ut out,’ from under the trunk of an elephant, in the shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The little man’s eyes sparkled.

‘If the brutil an’ licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the thruck,’ said Mulvaney, making practised investigation, ‘they’ll loot ev’rything. They’re bein’ fed on iron-filin’s an’ dog-biscuit these days, but glory’s no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we’re here to protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an’ that’s a cur’osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an’ fowls! Mother av Moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner! ’Tis scand’lus.’

‘Ere’s a orficer,’ said Ortheris significantly. ‘When the sergent’s done lushin’ the privit may clean the pot.’

I bundled several things into Mulvaney’s haversack before the major’s hand fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, ‘Requisitioned for the Queen’s service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are the soldier’s best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us to-night.’

And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken three days’ rations with it, and there be few things nastier than Government rations—especially when Government is experimenting with German toys. Erbswurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what Thomas Atkins needs is bulk in his inside. The major, assisted by his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp, and so made the experiment of no effect. Long before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country, and were dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous demands for ‘a little more stuffin’ with that there liver-wing;’ and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a gun-butt.

‘The boys are in a good temper,’ said the major. ‘They’ll be singing presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.’

Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself. The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky. We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the story.

page 2

The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,—their officers with them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate step-dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone. The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that crashing chorus which announces,

Youth’s daring spirit, manhood’s fire,
Firm hand and eagle eye,
Must he acquire, who would aspire
To see the gray boar die.

To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and lay and laughed round that waterproof sheet, not one remains. They went to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah, the Soudan, and the frontier,—fever and fight,—took them in their time.

I drifted across to the men’s fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long day’s march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the ‘might, majesty, dominion, and power’ of the British Empire which stands on those feet you take an interest in the proceedings.

‘There’s a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I can’t touch ut. Prick ut out, little man.’

Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the fire.

‘I’ve bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin’ child av disruption,’ said Mulvaney, sitting cross- legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me, ‘Oh, ut’s you, sorr! Be welkim, an’ take that maraudin’ scutt’s place. Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.’

But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast asleep.

‘There’s the height av politeness for you,’ said Mulvaney, lighting his pipe with a flaming branch. ‘But Jock’s eaten half a box av your sardines at wan gulp, an’ I think the tin too. What’s the best wid you, sorr, an’ how did you happen to be on the losin’ side this day whin we captured you?’

‘The Army of the South is winning all along the line,’ I said.

‘Then that line’s the hangman’s rope, savin’ your presence. You’ll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an’ that’s what a woman does. By the same tokin, we’ll be attacked before the dawnin’ an’ ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy’s flank an’ a crowd av roarin’, tarin’, squealin’ cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet’s nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an’ thin we’ll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, “Don’t fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin’, but if you do, knock the nose av him first an’ frequint.” We ought to ha’ gone on an’ helped the Ghoorkhas.’

‘But what do you know about Polonius?’ I demanded. This was a new side of Mulvaney’s character.

‘All that Shakespeare iver wrote an’ a dale more that the gallery shouted,’ said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. ‘Did I not tell you av Silver’s theatre in Dublin whin I was younger than I am now an’ a patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor—man or woman their just dues, an’ by consequince his comp’nies was collapsible at the last minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an’ oft as not ould Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I’ve seen Hamlut played wid a new black eye an’ the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber wanst Hogin that ’listed in the Black Tyrone an’ was shot in South Africa, he sejuced ould Silver into givin’ him Hamlut’s part instid av me that had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint into the gallery an’ began to fill the pit wid other people’s hats, an’ I passed the time av day to Hogin walkin’ through Denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back. “Hamlut,” sez I, “there’s a hole in your heel. Pull up your shtockin’s, Hamlut,” sez I. “Hamlut, Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an’ pull up your shtockin’s.” The whole house begun to tell him that. He stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. “My shtockin’s may be comin’ down or they may not,” sez he, screwin’ his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who I was. “But afther this performince is over me an’ the Ghost’ll trample the tripes out av you, Terence, wid your ass’s bray!” An’ that’s how I come to know about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those days! Did you iver have onendin’ devilmint an’ nothin’ to pay for it in your life, sorr?’

‘Never, without having to pay,’ I said.

‘That’s thrue! ’Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut’s the same wid horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an’ a belly-ache if you eat too much, an’ a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the colic, an’ he’s the lucky man.’

He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan, senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.

The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O’Moore!

With forty-five O’s in the last word: even at that distance you might have cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.

‘For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,’ murmured Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.

‘What’s the trouble?’ I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an inextinguishable sorrow.

‘Hear now,’ said he. ‘Ye know what I am now. I know what I mint to be at the beginnin’ av my service. I’ve tould you time an’ again, an’ what I have not Dinah Shadd has. An’ what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg’ment change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av times! Ay, scores! An’ me not so near gettin’ promotion as in the first! An’ me livin’ on an’ kapin’ clear av clink, not by my own good conduck, but the kindness av some orf’cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me? Do I not know ut? Can I not tell whin I’m passed over at p’rade, tho’ I’m rockin’ full av liquor an’ ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a suckin’ child might see,

page 3

bekaze, “Oh, ’tis only ould Mulvaney!” An’ whin I’m let off in ord’ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an’ a ready answer an’ the ould man’s mercy, is ut smilin’ I feel whin I fall away an’ go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin’ to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I! ’Tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an’ next time whin the fit comes I will be as bad again. Good cause the reg’ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I’m only fit to tache the new drafts what I’ll niver learn myself; an’ I am sure, as tho’ I heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets away from my “Mind ye now,” an’ “Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,”—sure I am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin’. So I tache, as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be good to me, for I have stud some throuble!’

‘Lie down and go to sleep,’ said I, not being able to comfort or advise. ‘You’re the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest fool. Lie down and wait till we’re attacked. What force will they turn out? Guns, think you?’

‘Try that wid your lorrds an’ ladies, twistin’ an turnin’ the talk, tho’ you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin’ to help me, an’ yet ye niver knew what cause I had to be what I am.’

‘Begin at the beginning and go on to the end,’ I said royally. ‘But rake up the fire a bit first.’

I passed Ortheris’s bayonet for a poker.

‘That shows how little we know what we do,’ said Mulvaney, putting it aside. ‘Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an’ the next time, may be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl’ll break, an’ so you’ll ha’ killed him, manin’ no more than to kape yourself warm. ’Tis a recruity’s thrick that. Pass the clanin’-rod, sorr.’

I snuggled down abashed; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney began.

‘Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?’

I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months—ever since Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a barren land where washing was not.

‘I can’t remember,’ I said casually. ‘Was it before or after you made love to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?’

The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney’s chequered career.

‘Before—before—long before, was that business av Annie Bragin an’ the corp’ril’s ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had married Dinah. There’s a time for all things, an’ I know how to kape all things in place—barrin’ the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av comin’ to be aught else.’

‘Begin at the beginning,’ I insisted. ‘Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks.’

‘An’ the same is a cess-pit,’ said Mulvaney piously. ‘She spoke thrue, did Dinah. ’Twas this way. Talkin’ av that, have ye iver fallen in love, sorr?’

I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued—

‘Thin I will assume that ye have not. I did. In the days av my youth, as I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an’ delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin. Niver man was loved as I—no, not within half a day’s march av ut! For the first five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl to be now, I tuk whatever was within my reach an’ digested ut—an’ that’s more than most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an’ ut did me no harm. By the Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an’ kape them from findin’ out anythin’ about the other three, an’ smile like a full-blown marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we’ll have down on us to-night, could drive his team no better than I mine, an’ I hild the worser cattle! An’ so I lived, an’ so I was happy till afther that business wid Annie Bragin—she that turned me off as cool as a meat-safe, an’ taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman. ’Twas no sweet dose to swallow.

‘Afther that I sickened awhile an’ tuk thought to my reg’mental work; conceiting mesilf I wud study an’ be a sargint, an’ a major-gineral twinty minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty place in my sowl, an’ me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. Sez I to mesilf, “Terence, you’re a great man an’ the best set-up in the reg’mint. Go on an’ get promotion.” Sez mesilf to me, “What for?” Sez I to mesilf, “For the glory av ut!” Sez mesilf to me, “Will that fill these two strong arrums av yours, Terence?”—“Go to the devil,” sez I to mesilf. “Go to the married lines,” sez mesilf to me. “’Tis the same thing,” sez I to mesilf. “Av you’re the same man, ut is,” said mesilf to me; an’ wid that I considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel that way, sorr?’

I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go on. The clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival singers of the companies were pitted against each other.

‘So I felt that way an’ a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein’ a fool, I wint into the married lines more for the sake av spakin’ to our ould colour-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. I was a corp’ril then—rejuced aftherwards, but a corp’ril then. I’ve got a photograft av mesilf to prove ut. “You’ll take a cup av tay wid us?” sez Shadd. “I will that,” I sez, “tho’ tay is not my divarsion.”

“‘’Twud be better for you if ut were,” sez ould Mother Shadd, an’ she had ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bungfull each night.

‘Wid that I tuk off my gloves—there was pipeclay in thim, so that they stud alone—an’ pulled up my chair, lookin’ round at the china ornaments an’ bits av things in the Shadds’ quarters. They were things that belonged to a man, an’ no camp-kit, here to-day an’ dishipated next. “You’re comfortable in this place, sergint,” sez I. “’Tis the wife that did ut, boy,” sez he, pointin’ the stem av his pipe to ould Mother Shadd, an’ she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. “That manes you want money,” sez she.

‘An’ thin—an’ thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in—my Dinah—her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an’ her hair in a winkin’ glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin’ like stars on a frosty night, an’ the tread av her two feet lighter than waste-paper from the colonel’s basket in ord’ly-room whin ut’s emptied. Bein’ but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein’ me, an’ I twisted me moustache an’ looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an’ begad she’ll come bleatin’ to your boot-heels!’

‘I suppose that’s why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the married quarters laughed at you,’ said I, remembering that unhallowed wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.

page 4

‘I’m layin’ down the gin’ral theory av the attack,’ said Mulvaney, driving his boot into the dying fire. ‘If you read the Soldier’s Pocket Book, which niver any soldier reads, you’ll see that there are exceptions. Whin Dinah was out av the door (an’ ’twas as tho’ the sunlight had shut too)—“Mother av Hiven, sergint,” sez I, “but is that your daughter?”—“I’ve believed that way these eighteen years,” sez ould Shadd, his eyes twinklin’; “but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like iv’ry woman.”—“’Tis wid yours this time, for a mericle,” sez Mother Shadd. “Thin why in the name av fortune did I niver see her before?” sez I. “Bekaze you’ve been thrapesin’ round wid the married women these three years past. She was a bit av a child till last year, an’ she shot up wid the spring,” sez ould Mother Shadd. “I’ll thrapese no more,” sez I. “D’you mane that?” sez ould Mother Shadd, lookin’ at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin’ free. “Try me, an’ tell,” sez I. Wid that I pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an’ went out av the house as stiff as at gin’ral p’rade, for well I knew that Dinah Shadd’s eyes were in the small av my back out av the scullery window. Faith! that was the only time I mourned I was not a cav’l’ry man for the pride av the spurs to jingle.

‘I wint out to think, an’ I did a powerful lot av thinkin’, but ut all came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue eyes an’ the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an’ I kept to the married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin’ Dinah. Did I meet her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my valise an’ my heart goin’ like a farrier’s forge on a Saturday morning? ’Twas “Good day to ye, Miss Dinah,” an “Good day t’you, corp’ril,” for a week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze av the respect I had to that girl that I cud ha’ broken betune finger an’ thumb.’

Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she handed me my shirt.

‘Ye may laugh,’ grunted Mulvaney. ‘But I’m speakin’ the trut’, an’ ’tis you that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha’ taken the imperiousness out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand, foot av shod air, an’ the eyes av the livin’ mornin’ she had that is my wife to-day—ould Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.

‘’Twas after three weeks standin’ off an’ on, an’ niver makin’ headway excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face whin I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin’ all over the place. “An’ I’m not the only wan that doesn’t kape to barricks,” sez he. I tuk him by the scruff av his neck,—my heart was hung on a hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand—an’ “Out wid ut,” sez I, “or I’ll lave no bone av you unbreakable.”—“Speak to Dempsey,” sez he howlin.’ “Dempsey which?” sez I, “ye unwashed limb av Satan.”—“Av the Bob-tailed Dhragoons,” sez he. “He’s seen her home from her aunt’s house in the civil lines four times this fortnight.”—“Child!” sez I, dhroppin’ him, “your tongue’s stronger than your body. Go to your quarters. I’m sorry I dhressed you down.”

‘At that I went four ways to wanst huntin’ Dempsey. I was mad to think that wid all my airs among women I shud ha’ been chated by a basin-faced fool av a cav’lryman not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found him in our lines—the Bobtails was quartered next us—an’ a tallowy, topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an’ his plastrons on his epigastrons an’ all. But he niver flinched a hair.

‘“A word wid you, Dempsey,” sez I. “You’ve walked wid Dinah Shadd four times this fortnight gone.”

‘“What’s that to you?” sez he. “I’ll walk forty times more, an’ forty on top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin’ infantry lance-corp’ril.”

‘Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an’ down I went full-sprawl. “Will that content you?” sez he, blowin’ on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf’cer. “Content!” sez I. “For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an’ onglove. ’Tis the beginnin’ av the overture; stand up!”

‘He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jacket, an’ his shoulders had no fair play. I was fightin’ for Dinah Shadd an’ that cut on my cheek. What hope had he forninst me? “Stand up,” sez I, time an’ again whin he was beginnin’ to quarter the ground an’ gyard high an’ go large. “This isn’t ridin’-school,” I sez. “O man, stand up an’ let me get in at ye.” But whin I saw he wud be runnin’ about, I grup his shtock in my left an’ his waist-belt in my right an’ swung him clear to my right front, head undher, he hammerin’ my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the bare ground. “Stand up,” sez I, “or I’ll kick your head into your chest!” and I wud ha’ done ut too, so ragin’ mad I was.

‘ “My collar bone’s bruk,” sez he. “Help me back to lines. I’ll walk wid her no more.” So I helped him back.’

‘And was his collar-bone broken?’ I asked, for I fancied that only Learoyd could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.

‘He pitched on his left shoulder-point. Ut was. Next day the news was in both barricks, an’ whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the reg’mintal tailor’s samples there was no “Good mornin’, corp’ril,” or aught else. “An’ what have I done, Miss Shadd,” sez I, very bould, plantin’ mesilf forninst her, “that ye should not pass the time of day?”

‘“Ye’ve half-killed rough-rider Dempsey,” sez she, her dear blue eyes fillin’ up.

‘“May be,” sez I. “Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in the fortnight?”

‘“Yes,” sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. “An’—an’ what’s that to you?” she sez.

‘“Ask Dempsey,” sez I, purtendin’ to go away.

‘“Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?” she sez, tho’ she knew ut all along.

‘“Who else?” sez I, an’ I tuk wan pace to the front.

‘“I wasn’t worth ut,” sez she, fingerin’ in her apron.

‘“That’s for me to say,” sez I. “Shall I say ut?”

‘“Yes,” sez she in a saint’s whisper, an’ at that I explained mesilf; and she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an’ many that is a woman, hears wanst in his life.

‘“But what made ye cry at startin’, Dinah, darlin’?” sez I.

‘“Your—your bloody cheek,” sez she, duckin’ her little head down on my sash (I was on duty for the day) an’ whimperin’ like a sorrowful angil.

page 5

‘Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an’ my first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip av the nose an’ undher the eye; an’ a girl that lets a kiss come tumbleways like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr. Thin we wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little childher, an’ she said ’twas no bad thing, an’ ould Shadd nodded behind his pipe, an’ Dinah ran away to her own room. That day I throd on rollin’ clouds. All earth was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha’ hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent I was. But I tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an’ began wid general battalion advance whin I shud ha’ been balance-steppin’ them. Eyah! that day! that day!’

A very long pause. ‘Well?’ said I.

‘’Twas all wrong,’ said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. ‘An’ I know that ev’ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the half av three pints—not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an’ that canteen beer was so much whisky to me. I can’t tell how it came about, but bekaze I had no thought for anywan except Dinah, bekaze I hadn’t slipped her little white arms from my neck five minuts, bekaze the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters, an’ I must stay talkin’ to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are above groun’ this day!

‘“An’ what are ye houldin’ your head that high for, corp’ril?” sez Judy. “Come in an’ thry a cup av tay,” she sez, standin’ in the doorway. Bein’ an ontrustable fool, an’ thinkin’ av anything but tay, I wint.

‘“Mother’s at canteen,” sez Judy, smoothin’ the hair av hers that was like red snakes, an’ lookin’ at me corner-ways out av her green cats’ eyes. “Ye will not mind, corp’ril?”

‘“I can endure,” sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein’ no divarsion av mine, nor her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an’ put thim on the table, leanin’ over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back, thinkin’ av Dinah.

‘“Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?” sez Judy.

‘“No,” sez I. “Why should I be?”

‘“That rests wid the girl,” sez Judy, dhrawin’ her chair next to mine.

‘“Thin there let ut rest,” sez I; an’ thinkin’ I’d been a trifle onpolite, I sez, “The tay’s not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little finger in the cup, Judy. ’Twill make ut necthar.”

‘“What’s necthar?” sez she.

‘“Somethin’ very sweet,” sez I; an’ for the sinful life av me I cud not help lookin’ at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look at a woman.

‘“Go on wid ye, corp’ril,” sez she. “You’re a flirrt.”

‘“On me sowl I’m not,” sez I.

‘“Then you’re a cruel handsome man, an’ that’s worse,” sez she, heaving big sighs an’ lookin’ crossways.

‘“You know your own mind,” sez I.

‘“’Twud be better for me if I did not,” she sez.

‘“There’s a dale to be said on both sides av that,” sez I, unthinkin’.

‘“Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin’,” sez she; “for begad I’m thinkin’ I’ve said too much or too little for an honest girl,” an’ wid that she put her arms round my neck an’ kissed me.

‘“There’s no more to be said afther that,” sez I, kissin’ her back again—Oh the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin’ wid Dinah Shadd! How does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he’s sure bound to put it on another? ’Tis the same thing at musketry. Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an’ the next, lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can’t get off the bull’s-eye for ten shots runnin’.’

‘That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He does it without thinking,’ I replied.

‘Thankin’ you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I’m doubtful whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy on my knee tellin’ me all manner av nonsinse an’ only sayin’ “yes” an’ “no,” when I’d much better ha’ kept tongue betune teeth. An’ that was not an hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin’ av I cannot say. Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. She had her daughter’s red hair, but ’twas bald in patches, an’ I cud see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin’, what Judy wud be twenty years to come. I was for jumpin’ up, but Judy niver moved.

‘“Terence has promust, mother,” sez she, an’ the could sweat bruk out all over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an’ began playin’ wid the cups. “Thin you’re a well-matched pair,” she sez very thick. “For he’s the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the Queen’s shoe-leather,” an’—

‘“I’m off, Judy,” sez I. “Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. Get her to bed, girl.”

‘“Nonsinse!” sez the ould woman, prickin’ up her ears like a cat an’ grippin’ the table-edge. “’Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you, ye grinnin’ badger, if nonsinse ’tis. Git clear, you. I’m goin’ to bed.”

‘I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an’ my heart sick, but I had sinse enough to see that I’d brought ut all on mysilf. “It’s this to pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hellcats,” sez I. “What I’ve said, an’ what I’ve not said do not matther. Judy an’ her dam will hould me for a promust man, an’ Dinah will give me the go, an’ I desarve ut. I will go an’ get dhrunk,” sez I, “an’ forget about ut, for ’tis plain I’m not a marrin’ man.”

‘On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, colour-sergeant that was av E Comp’ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. “You’ve the head av a drowned man on your shoulders,” sez he; “an’ you’re goin’ where you’ll get a worse wan. Come back,” sez he. “Let me go,” sez I. “I’ve thrown my luck over the wall wid my own hand!”—“Then that’s not the way to get ut back again,” sez he. “Have out wid your throuble, ye fool-bhoy.” An’ I tould him how the matther was.

page 6

‘He sucked in his lower lip. “You’ve been thrapped,” sez he. “Ju Sheehy wud be the betther for a man’s name to hers as soon as can. An’ ye thought ye’d put the comether on her,—that’s the natural vanity of the baste. Terence, you’re a big born fool, but you’re not bad enough to marry into that comp’ny. If you said anythin’, an’ for all your protestations I’m sure ye did—or did not, which is worse,—eat ut all—lie like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy. Do I not know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit an’ image av Judy whin she was young? I’m gettin’ old an’ I’ve larnt patience, but you, Terence, you’d raise hand on Judy an’ kill her in a year. Never mind if Dinah gives you the go, you’ve desarved ut; never mind if the whole reg’mint laughs you all day. Get shut av Judy an’ her mother. They can’t dhrag you to church, but if they do, they’ll dhrag you to hell. Go back to your quarters and lie down,” sez he. Thin over his shoulder, “You must ha’ done with thim.”

‘Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I walked. I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin’ av mine, an’ I dreaded ut sore.

‘“I heard Judy callin’ me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds’ quarthers, an’ Dinah wud ha’ kissed me but I put her back.

‘“Whin all’s said, darlin’,” sez I, “you can give ut me if ye will, tho’ I misdoubt ’twill be so easy to come by then.”

‘I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an’ her mother came to the door. I think there was a verandah, but I’m forgettin.’

‘“Will ye not step in?” sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds had no dealin’s with the Sheehys. Old Mother Shadd looked up quick, an’ she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.

‘“I’m pressed for time to-day,” sez Judy as bould as brass; “an’ I’ve only come for Terence,—my promust man. ’Tis strange to find him here the day afther the day.”

‘Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an’ I answered straight.

‘“There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys’ quarthers, an’ Judy’s carryin’ on the joke, darlin’,” sez I.

‘“At the Sheehys’ quarthers?” sez Dinah very slow, an’ Judy cut in wid: “He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an’ the betther half av that time I was sittin’ on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may look an’ ye may look me up an’ down, but ye won’t look away that Terence is my promust man. Terence, darlin’, ’tis time for us to be comin’ home.”

‘Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. “Ye left me at half-past eight,” she sez to me, “an’ I niver thought that ye’d leave me for Judy,—promises or no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl! I’m done with you,” sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother followin’. So I was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my sentiments.”

‘“Judy Sheehy,” sez I, “if you made a fool av me betune the lights you shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines.”

‘“You lie,” sez ould Mother Sheehy, “an’ may ut choke you where you stand!” She was far gone in dhrink.

‘“An’ tho’ ut choked me where I stud I’d not change,” sez I. “Go home, Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin’ your mother out bare-headed on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave my word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an’, more blame to me, I was wid you last night talkin’ nonsinse but nothin’ more. You’ve chosen to thry to hould me on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin’ in the world. Is that enough?”

‘Judy wint pink all over. “An’ I wish you joy av the perjury,” sez she, duckin’ a curtsey. “You’ve lost a woman that would ha’ wore her hand to the bone for your pleasure; an’ ’deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped.…” Lascelles must ha’ spoken plain to her. “I am such as Dinah is—’deed I am! Ye’ve lost a fool av a girl that’ll niver look at you again, an’ ye’ve lost what ye niver had,—your common honesty. If you manage your men as you manage your love-makin’, small wondher they call you the worst corp’ril in the comp’ny. Come away, mother,” sez she.

‘But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! “D’you hould by that?” sez she, peerin’ up under her thick gray eyebrows.

‘“Ay, an’ wud,” sez I, “tho’ Dinah gave me the go twinty times. I’ll have no thruck with you or yours,” sez I. “Take your child away, ye shameless woman.”

‘“An’ am I shameless?” sez she, bringin’ her hands up above her head. “Thin what are you, ye lyin’, schamin’, weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a sutler? Am I shameless? Who put the open shame on me an’ my child that we shud go beggin’ through the lines in the broad daylight for the broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by blood and water an’ by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin’, the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from pain for another when ut’s not your own! May your heart bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin’ at the bleedin’! Strong you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the divil’s hands against your own will! Clear-eyed you are? May your eyes see clear evry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! May the ragin’ dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin’ to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an’ do, whin you’re wallowin’ in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there’s breath in your body; an’ may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin’ your death before ut takes you, an’ onable to stir hand or foot!”

‘I heard a scufflin’ in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd’s hand dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.

‘“The half av that I’ll take,” sez she, “an’ more too if I can. Go home, ye silly talkin’ woman,—go home an’ confess.”

‘“Come away! Come away!” sez Judy, pullin’ her mother by the shawl. “’Twas none av Terence’s fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin’!”

‘“An’ you!” said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin’ round forninst Dinah. “Will ye take the half av that man’s load? Stand off from him, Dinah Shadd, before he takes you down too—you that look to be a quarther-master-sergeant’s wife in five years. You look too high, child. You shall wash for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give you the job out av charity; but a privit’s wife you shall be to the end, an’ evry sorrow of a privit’s wife you shall know and niver a joy but wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain av bearin’ you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an’ you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a priest to say a prayer over him, an’ on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you’ll niver have another tho’ you pray till your knees are bleedin’. The mothers av childer shall mock you behind your back when you’re wringing over the wash-tub. You shall know what ut is to help a dhrunken

page 7

husband home an’ see him go to the gyard-room. Will that plase you, Dinah Shadd, that won’t be seen talkin’ to my daughter? You shall talk to worse than Judy before all’s over. The sergints’ wives shall look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an’ you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling face whin your heart’s burstin’. Stand off av him, Dinah Shadd, for I’ve put the Black Curse of Shielygh upon him an’ his own mouth shall make ut good.”

‘She pitched forward on her head an’ began foamin’ at the mouth. Dinah Shadd ran out wid water, an’ Judy dhragged the ould woman into the verandah till she sat up.

‘“I’m old an’ forlore,” she sez, thremblin’ an’ cryin’, “and ’tis like I say a dale more than I mane.”

‘“When you’re able to walk,—go,” says ould Mother Shadd. “This house has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.”

‘“Eyah!” said the ould woman. “Hard words break no bones, an’ Dinah Shadd ’ll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. Judy darlin’, I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom av a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?”

‘But Judy dhragged her off cryin’ as tho’ her heart wud break. An’ Dinah Shadd an’ I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.’

‘Then why do you remember it now?’ said I.

‘Is ut like I’d forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue in my life aftherwards, an’ I cud ha’ stud ut all—stud ut all,—excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an’ Kalka thin, an’ I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me the child, an’ ut turned on uts side an’ died as I looked. We buried him by the road, an’ Father Victor was a day’s march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp’ny captain read a prayer. An’ since then I’ve been a childless man, an’ all else that ould Mother Sheehy put upon me an’ Dinah Shadd. What do you think, sorr?’

I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for Mulvaney’s hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely ignorant of his strength.

‘But what do you think?’ he repeated, as I was straightening out the crushed fingers.

My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten men were shouting for ‘Orth’ris,’ ‘Privit Orth’ris,’ ‘Mistah Or—ther—ris!’ ‘Deah boy,’ ‘Cap’n Orth’ris,’ ‘Field-Marshal Orth’ris,’ ‘Stanley, you pen’north o’ pop, come ’ere to your own comp’ny!’ And the cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and Rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force.

‘You’ve crumpled my dress-shirt ’orrid,’ said he, ‘an’ I shan’t sing no more to this ’ere bloomin’ drawin’-room.’

Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind Ortheris, and slung him aloft on his shoulders.

‘Sing, ye bloomin’ hummin’ bird!’ said he, and Ortheris, beating time on Learoyd’s skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the Ratcliffe Highway, of this song:—

My girl she give me the go onst,
When I was a London lad,
An’ I went on the drink for a fortnight,
An’ then I went to the bad.
The Queen she give me a shillin’
To fight for ’er over the seas;
But Guv’ment built me a fever-trap,
An’ Injia give me disease.

Chorus.
Ho! don’t you ’eed what a girl says,
An’ don’t you go for the beer;
But I was an ass when I was at grass,
An’ that is why I’m here.

I fired a shot at a Afghan,
The beggar ’e fired again,
An’ I lay on my bed with a ’ole in my ’ed,
An’ missed the next campaign!
I up with my gun at a Burman
Who carried a bloomin’ dab,
But the cartridge stuck and the bay’nit bruk,
An’ all I got was the scar.

Chorus.
Ho! don’t you aim at a Afghan,
When you stand on the sky-line clear;
An’ don’t you go for a Burman
If none o’ your friends is near.

I served my time for a corp’ral,
An’ wetted my stripes with pop,
For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
An’ finished the night in the ‘shop.’
I served my time for a sergeant;
The colonel ’e sez ‘No!
The most you’ll see is a full C.B.’
An’…very next night ’twas so.

Chorus.
Ho! don’t you go for a corp’ral
Unless your ’ed is clear;
But I was an ass when I was at grass,
An’ that is why I’m ’ere.

I’ve tasted the luck o’ the army
In barrack an’ camp an’ clink,
An’ I lost my tip through the bloomin’ trip
Along o’ the women an’ drink.
I’m down at the heel o’ my service,
An’ when I am laid on the shelf,
My very wust friend from beginning to end
By the blood of a mouse was myself!

Chorus.
Ho! don’t you ’eed what a girl says,
An’ don’t you go for the beer;
But I was an ass when I was at grass
An’ that is why I’m ’ere.

‘Ay, listen to our little man now, singin’ an’ shoutin’ as tho’ trouble had niver touched him. D’ you remember when he went mad with the home-sickness?’ said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season when Ortheris waded through the deep waters if affliction and behaved abominably. ‘But he’s talkin’ bitter truth, though. Eyah!

‘My very worst frind from beginnin’ to ind
By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!’

When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not what vultures tearing his liver.