AS there is only one man in charge of a steamer, so there is but one man in charge of a newspaper, and he is the Editor. My Chief taught me this on an Indian journal, and he further explained that an order was an order, to be obeyed at a run, not a walk, and that any notion or notions as to the fitness or unfitness of any particular kind of work for the young had better be held over till the last page was locked up to press. He was breaking me into harness, and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude, which I did not discharge at the time. The path of virtue was very steep, whereas the writing of verses allowed a certain play to the mind, and, unlike the filling-in of reading-matter, could be done as the spirit served. Now a sub-editor is not hired to write verses. He is paid to sub-edit. At the time, this discovery shocked me greatly; but, some years later, when, for a few weeks I came to be an editor- in-charge, Providence dealt me for my sub-ordinate one saturated with Elia. He wrote very pretty, Lamb-like essays, but he wrote them when he should have been sub-editing. Then I saw a little what my Chief must have suffered on my account. There is a moral here for the ambitious and aspiring who are oppressed by their superiors.

This is a digression, as all my verses were digressions from office work. They came without invitation, unmanneredly, in the nature of things; but they had to come, and the writing out of them kept me healthy and amused. To the best of my remembrance, no one then discovered their grievous cynicism, or their pessimistic tendency, and I was far too busy, and too happy, to take thought about these things.

So they arrived merrily, being born out of the life about me, and they were very bad indeed; but the joy of doing them was pay a thousand times their worth. Some, of course, came and ran away again, and the dear sorrow of going in search of these (out of office hours) and catching them, was almost better than writing them clear. Bad as they were, I burned twice as many as were published, and of the survivors at least two-thirds were cut down at the last moment. Nothing can be wholly beautiful that is not useful, and therefore my verses were made to ease off the perpetual strife between the manager extending his advertisements, and my Chief fighting for his reading-matter. They were born to be sacrificed. Rukn-Din, the foreman of our side, approved of them immensely, for he was a Muslim of culture. He would say: ‘Your potery very good, sir; just coming proper length today. You giving more soon? One-third column just proper. Always can take on third page.’

Mahmoud, who set them up, had an unpleasant way of referring to a new lyric as ‘Ek aur chiz ‘— ‘one more thing ‘—which I never liked. The job side, too, were unsympathetic, because I used to raid into their type for private proofs with Old English and Gothic headlines. Even a Hindu does not like to find the serifs of his f’s cut away to make long s’s.

And in this manner, week by week, my verses came to be printed in the paper. I was in very good company, for there is always an undercurrent of song, a little bitter for the most part, running through the Indian papers. The bulk of it is much better than mine, being more graceful, and is done by those less than Sir Alfred Lyall — to whom I would apologise for mentioning his name in this gallery — ‘Pekin’, ‘Latakia’, ‘Cigarette,’ ‘ O,’ ‘ T.W.,’ ‘ Foresight,’ and others, whose names came up with the stars out of the Indian Ocean going eastward.

Sometimes a man in Bangalore would be moved to song, and a man on the Bombay side would answer him, and a man in Bengal would echo back, till at last we would all be crowing together, like cocks before daybreak, when it is too dark to see your fellow. And, occasionally, some unhappy Chaaszee, away in the China Ports, would lift up his voice among the tea-chests, and the queer-smelling yellow papers of the Far East brought us his sorrows. The newspaper files showed that, forty years ago, the men sang of just the same subjects as we did — of heat, loneliness, love, lack of promotion, poverty, sport, and war. Further back still, at the end of the eighteenth century, Hickey’s Bengal Gazette, a very wicked little sheet in Calcutta, published the songs of the young factors, ensigns, and writers to the East India Company. They, too, wrote of the same things, but in those days men were strong enough to buy a bullock’s heart for dinner, cook it with their own hands because they could not afford a servant, and make a rhymed jest of all the squalor and poverty. Lives were not worth two monsoons’ purchase, and perhaps a knowledge of this a little coloured the rhymes when they sang:

‘In a very short time you’re released from all cares —
If the Padre’s asleep, Mr. Oldham reads prayers!’

The note of physical discomfort that runs through so much Anglo- Indian poetry had been struck then. You will find it most fully suggested in ‘ The Long, Long Indian Day’, a comparatively modern affair; but there is a set of verses called ‘Scanty Ninety-five’, dated about Warren Hastings’s time, which gives a lively idea of what our seniors in the service had to put up with. One of the most interesting poems I ever found was written at Meerut, three or four days before the Mutiny broke out there. The author complained that he could not get his clothes washed nicely that week, and was very facetious over his worries!

My verses had the good fortune to last a little longer than some others, which were more true to facts, and certainly better workmanship. Men in the Army and the Civil Service and the Railway wrote to me saying that the rhymes might be made into a book. Some of them had been sung to the banjoes round the camp-fires, and some had run as far down coast as Rangoon and Moulmein, and up to Mandalay. A real book was out of the question, but I knew that Rukn-Din and the office plant were at my disposal at a price, if I did not use the office time. Also, I had handled in the previous year a couple of small books, of which I was part owner, and had lost nothing. So there was built a sort of book, a lean oblong docket, wire-stitched, to imitate a D.O. Government envelope, printed on one side only, bound in brown paper, and secured with red tape. It was addressed to all Heads of Departments, and all Government Officials, and among a pile of papers would have deceived a clerk of twenty years’ service. Of these ‘books’ we made some hundreds, and as there was no necessity for advertising, my public being to my hand, I took reply – postcards, printed the news of the birth of the book on one side, the blank order-form on the other, and posted them up and down the Empire from Aden to Singapore and from Quetta to Colombo. There was no trade discount, no reckoning twelves as thirteens, no commission, and no credit of any kind whatever. The money came back in poor but honest rupees, and was transferred from the publisher, my left-hand pocket, direct to the author, my right-hand pocket. Every copy sold in a few weeks, and the ratio of expenses to profits, as I remember it, has since prevented my injuring my health by sympathising with publishers who talk of their risks and advertisements. The down-country papers complained of the form of the thing. The wire-binding cut the pages, and the red tape tore the covers. This was not intentional, but Heaven helps those who help themselves. Consequently, there arose a demand for a new edition, and this time I exchanged the pleasure of taking in money over the counter for that of seeing a real publisher’s imprint on the title-page. More verses were taken out and put in, and some of that edition travelled as far as Hong Kong on the map, and each edition grew a little fatter, and, at last, the book came to London with a gilt top and a stiff back, and was advertised in a publisher’s poetry department.

But I loved it best when it was a little brown baby, with a pink string round its stomach; a child’s child ignorant that it was afflicted with all the most modern ailments; and before people had learned beyond doubt how its author lay awake of nights in India, plotting and scheming to write something that should take with the English public.

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.

[a short tale]

AS a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you. This tale is a justifiable exception.

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary, who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.

There was a Viceroy once who brought out with him a turbulent Private Secretary—a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for work. This Secretary was called Wonder—John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the electro-plated figure head of a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder’s attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands. ‘When we are all cherubim together,’ said His Excellency once, ‘my dear, good friend Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel’s tailfeathers or stealing Peter’s keys. Then I shall report him.’

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder’s officiousness, other people said unpleasant things. May be the Members of Council began it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was ‘too much Wonder and too little Viceroy’ in that rule. Wonder was always quoting ‘His Excellency.’ It was ‘His Excellency this,’ ‘His Excellency that,’ ‘In the opinion of His Excellency,’ and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he did not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his ‘dear, good Wonder,’ they might be induced to leave the Immemorial East in peace.

‘No wise man has a Policy,’ said the Viceroy. ‘A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe in the latter.’

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy’s way of saying, ‘Lie low.’

That season came up to Simla one of those crazy people with only a single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they are not nice to talk to. This man’s name was Mellish, and he had lived for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by ‘Mellish’s Own Invincible Fumigatory’—a heavy violet-black powder—, ‘the result of fifteen years’ scientific investigation, Sir!’

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially about ‘conspiracies of monopolists;’ they beat upon the table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical ‘Ring’ at Simla, headed by the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had something to do with ‘skulking up to the Hills’; and what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy—‘Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir.’ So Mellish went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never married.‘They I contracted alliances.’ He himself was not paid. He ‘received emoluments,’ and his journeys about the country were ‘tours of observation.’ His business was to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole—as you stir up tench in a pond—and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and gasp—‘This is Enlightenment and Progress. Isn’t it fine !’ Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla ‘to confer with the Viceroy.’ That was one of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was ‘one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes,’ and that, in all probability, he had ‘suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in Madras.’ Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousandrupee men.

Mellishe’s name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish’s was E. S. Mellish, and they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final ‘e’ ; that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran

should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered to Peterhof, a big paper bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his ‘conference’ that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin,—no A.-D.-C.’s, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe of Madras.

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him. Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk ‘shop.’

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years’ ‘scientific labours,’ the machinations of the ‘Simla Ring,’ and the excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes and thought—, ‘Evidently this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original animal.’ Mellish’s hair was standing on end with excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into the big silver ash-tray.

‘J-j-judge for yourself, Sir,’ said Mellish. ‘Y’ Excellency shall judge for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honour.’

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-coloured smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench—a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.

‘Nitrate of strontia,’ he shouted; ‘baryta, bone-meal, etcetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live—not a germ, Y’ Excellency!’

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhof hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the head Chaprassi who speaks English came in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming, ‘Fire’; for the smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory till that unspeakable powder had burned itself out.

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V.C., rushed through the rolling clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.

‘Glorious! Glorious!’ sobbed His Excellency. ‘Not a germ, as you justly observe, could exist! I can swear it. A magnificent success!’

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught the real Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical ‘Ring.’

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble, and his account of ‘my dear, good Wonder’s friend with the powder’ went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their remarks.

But His Excellency told the tale once too often—for Wonder. As he meant to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the Viceroy.

‘And I really thought for a moment,’ wound up His Excellency, ‘that my dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne!’

Every one laughed; but there was a delicate sub-tinkle in the Viceroy’s tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way; and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming ‘character’ for use at Home among big people.

‘My fault entirely,’ said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘My inconsistency must always have been distasteful to such a masterly man.’

Est fuga, volvitur rota,
On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five contribute their quota:
Something is gained if one caught but the import,—
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

(Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha)
Robert Browning

Shall I not one day remember thy Bower—
One day when all days are one day to me?
Thinking I stirred not and yet had the power,
Yearning—ah, God, if again it might be!
—The Song of the Bower.

 
THIS is a base betrayal of confidence, but the sin is Mrs. Hauksbee’s and not mine.
If you remember a certain foolish tale called “The Education of Otis Yeere,” you will not forget that Mrs. Mallowe laughed at the wrong time, which was a single, and at Mrs. Hauksbee, which was a double, offence. An experiment had gone wrong, and it seems that Mrs. Mallowe had said some quaint things about the experimentrix.

“I am not angry,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, “and I admire Polly in spite of her evil counsels to me. But I shall wait—I shall wait, like the frog footman in Alice in Wonderland, and Providence will deliver Polly into my hands. It always does if you wait.” And she departed to vex the soul of the “Hawley boy,” who says that she is singularly “uninstruite and childlike.” He got that first word out of a Ouida novel. I do not know what it means, but am prepared to make an affidavit before the Collector that it does not mean Mrs. Hauksbee.

Mrs. Hauksbee’s ideas of waiting are very liberal. She told the “Hawley boy” that he dared not tell Mrs. Reiver that “she was an intellectual woman with a gift for attracting men,” and she offered another man two waltzes if he would repeat the same thing in the same ears. But he said: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” which means “Mistrust all waltzes except those you get for legitimate asking.”

The “Hawley boy” did as he was told because he believes in Mrs. Hauksbee. He was the instrument in the hand of a Higher Power, and he wore jharun coats, like “the scoriac rivers that roll their sulphurous torrents down Yahek, in the realms of the Boreal Pole,” that made your temples throb when seen early in the morning. I will introduce him to you some day if all goes well. He is worth knowing.

Unpleasant things have already been written about Mrs. Reiver in other places.

She was a person without invention. She used to get her ideas from the men she captured, and this led to some eccentric changes of character. For a month or two she would act à la Madonna, and try Theo for a change if she fancied Theo’s ways suited her beauty. Then she would attempt the dark and fiery Lilith, and so and so on, exactly as she had absorbed the new notion. But there was always Mrs. Reiver—hard, selfish, stupid Mrs. Reiver—at the back of each transformation. Mrs. Hauksbee christened her the Magic Lantern on account of this borrowed mutability. “It just depends upon the slide,” said Mrs. Hauksbee. “The case is the only permanent thing in the exhibition. But that, thank Heaven, is getting old,”

There was a Fancy Ball at Government House and Mrs. Reiver came attired in some sort of ’98 costume, with her hair pulled up to the top of her head, showing the clear outline on the back of the neck like the Récamier engravings. Mrs. Hauksbee had chosen to be loud, not to say vulgar, that evening, and went as The Black Death—a curious arrangement of barred velvet, black domino and flame-coloured satin puffery coming up to the neck and the wrists, with one of those shrieking keel-backed cicalas in the hair. The scream of the creature made people jump. It sounded so unearthly in a ballroom.

I heard her say to some one: “Let me introduce you to Madame Récamier,” and I saw a man dressed as Autolycus bowing to Mrs. Reiver, while The Black Death looked more than usually saintly. It was a very pleasant evening, and Autolycus and Madame Recamier—I heard her ask Autolycus who Madame Récamier was, by the way—danced together ever so much. Mrs. Hauksbee was in a meditative mood, but she laughed once or twice in the back of her throat, and that meant trouble.

Autolycus was Trewinnard, the man whom Mrs. Mallowe had told Mrs. Hauksbee about—the Platonic Paragon, as Mrs. Hauksbee called him. He was amiable, but his moustache hid his mouth, and so he did not explain himself all at once. If you stared at him, he turned his eyes away, and through the rest of the dinner kept looking at you to see whether you were looking again. He took stares as a tribute to his merits, which were generally known and recognised. When he played billiards he apologised at length between each bad stroke, and explained what would have happened if the red had been somewhere else, or the bearer had trimmed the third lamp, or the wind hadn’t made the door bang. Also he wriggled in his chair more than was becoming to one of his inches. Little men may wriggle and fidget without attracting notice. It doesn’t suit big-framed men. He was the Main Girder Boom of the Kutcha, Pukka, Bimdobust and Benaoti Department and corresponded direct with the Three Taped Bashaw. Every one knows what that means. The men in his own office said that where anything was to be gained, even temporarily, he would never hesitate for a moment over handing up a subordinate to be hanged and drawn and quartered. He didn’t back up his underlings, and for that reason they dreaded taking responsibility on their shoulders, and the strength of the Department was crippled.

A weak Department can, and often does, do a power of good work simply because its chief sees it through thick and thin. Mistakes may be bom of this policy, but it is safe and sounder than giving orders which may be read in two ways and reserving to yourself the right of interpretation according to subsequent failure or success. Offices prefer administration to diplomacy. They are very like Empires.

Hatchett of the Almirah and Thannicutch—a vicious little three-cornered Department that was always stamping on the toes of the Elect—had the fairest estimate of Trewinnard, when he said: “I don’t believe he is as good as he is.” They always quoted that verdict as an instance of the blind jealousy of the Uncovenanted, but Hatchett was quite right. Trewinnard was just as good and no better than Mrs. Mallowe could make him; and she had been engaged on the work for three years. Hatchett has a narrow-minded partiality for the more than naked—the anatomised Truth—but he can gauge a man.

Trewinnard had been spoilt by over-much petting, and the devil of vanity that rides nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand made him behave as he did. He had been too long one woman’s property; and that belief will sometimes drive a man to throw the best things in the world behind him, from rank perversity. Perhaps che only meant to stray temporarily and then return, but in arranging for this excursion he misimderstood both Mrs. Mallowe and Mrs. Reiver. The one made no sign, she would have died first; and the other—well, the high-falutin mindsome lay was her craze for the time being. She had never tried it before and several men had hinted that it would eminently become her. Trewinnard was in himself pleasant, with the great merit of belonging to somebody else. He was what they call “intellectual,” and vain to the marrow. Mrs. Reiver returned his lead in the first, and hopelessly out-trumped him in the second suit. Put down all that comes after this to Providence or The Black Death.

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Trewimiard never realised how far he had fallen from his allegiance till Mrs. Reiver referred to some official matter that he had been telling her about as “ours.” He remembered then how that word had been sacred to Mrs. Mallowe and how she had asked his permission to use it. Opium is intoxicating, and so is whisky, but more intoxicating than either to a certain build of mind is the first occasion on which a woman—especially if she have asked leave for the “honour”—identifies herself with a man’s work. The second time is not so pleasant. The answer has been given before, and the treachery comes to the top and tastes coppery in the mouth.

Trewinnard swallowed the shame—he felt dimly that he was not doing Mrs. Reiver any great wrong by untruth—and told and told and continued to tell, for the snare of this form of open-heartedness is that no man, unless he be a consmnmate liar, knows where to stop. The office door of all others must be either open wide or shut tight with a shaprassi to keep off callers.

Mrs. Mallowe made no sign to show that she felt Trewinnard’s desertion till a piece of information that could only have come from one quarter ran about Simla like quicksilver. She met Trewinnard at a dinner. “Choose your confidantes better, Harold,” she whispered as she passed him in the drawing-room. He turned salmon-colour, and swore very hard to himself that Babu Durga Charan Laha must go—must go—must go. He almost believed in that grey-headed old oyster’s guilt.

And so another of those upside-down tragedies that we call a Simla Season wore through to the end—from the Birthday Ball to the “tripping” to Naldera and Kotghar. And fools gave feasts and wise men ate them, and they were bidden to the wedding and sat down to bake, and those who had nuts had no teeth and they staked the substance for the shadow, and carried coals to Newcastle, and in the dark all cats were grey, as it was in the days of the great Curé of Meudon.

Late in the year there developed itself a battle-royal between the K.P.B. and B. Department and the Almirah and Thannicutch. Three columns of this paper would be needed to supply you with the outlines of the difficulty; and then you would not be grateful. Hatchett snuffed the fray from afar and went into it with his teeth bared to the gums, while his Department stood behind him solid to a man. They believed in him, and their answer to the fury of men who detested him was: “Ah! But you’ll admit he’s d—d right in what he says.”

“The head of Trewinnard in a Government Resolution,” said Hatchett, and he told the daftri to put a new pad on his blotter, and smiled a bleak smile as he spread out his notes. Hatchett is a Thug in his systematic way of butchering a man’s reputation.

“What are you going to do?” asked Trewinnard’s Department. “Sit tight,” said Trewinnard, which was tantamount to saying “Lord knows.” The Department groaned and said: “Which of us poor beggars is to be Jonahed this time?” They knew Trewinnard’s vice.

The dispute was essentially not one for the K.P.B. and B. under its then direction to fight out. It should have been compromised, or at the worst sent up to the Supreme Government with a private and confidential note directing justice into the proper paths.

Some people say that the Supreme Government is the Devil. It is more like the Deep Sea. Anything that you throw into it disappears for weeks, and comes to light hacked and furred at the edges, crusted with weeds and shells and almost unrecognisable. The bold man who would dare to give it a file of love-letters would be amply rewarded. It would overlay them with original comments and marginal notes, and work them piecemeal into D. O. dockets. Few things, from a setter or a whirlpool to a sausage-machine or a hatching hen, are more interesting and peculiar than the Supreme Government.

“What shall we do?” said Trewinnard, who had fallen from grace into sin. “Fight,” said Mrs. Reiver, or words to that effect; and no one can say how far aimless desire to test her powers, and how far belief in the man she had brought to her feet prompted the judgment. Of the merits of the case she knew just as much as any ayah.

Then Mrs. Mallowe, upon an evil word that went through Simla, put on her visiting-garb and attired herself for the sacrifice, and went to call—to call upon Mrs. Reiver, knowing what the torture would be. From half-past twelve till twenty-five minutes to two she sat, her hand upon her cardcase, and let Mrs. Reiver stab at her, all for the sake of the information. Mrs. Reiver double-acted her part, but she played into Mrs. Mallowe’s hand by this defect. The assumptions of ownership, the little intentional slips, were overdone, and so also was the pretence of intimate knowledge. Mrs. Mallowe never winced. She repeated to herself: “And he has trusted this—this Thing. She knows nothing and she cares nothing, and she has digged this trap for him.” The main feature of the case was abundantly clear. Trewinnard, whose capacities Mrs. Mallowe knew to the utmost farthing, to whom public and departmental petting were as the breath of his delicately-cut nostrils—Trewinnard, with his nervous dread of dispraise, was to be pitted against the Paul de Cassagnac of the Almirah and Thannicutch—the unspeakable Hatchett, who fought with the venom of a woman and the skill of a Red Indian. Unless his cause was triply just, Trewinnard was already under the guiotine. and if he had been under this “Thing’s” dominance, small hope for the justice of his case. “Oh, why did I let him go without putting out a hand to fetch him back?” said Mrs. Mallowe, as she got into her ’rickshaw.

Now, Tim, her fox-terrier, is the only person who knows what Mrs. Mallowe did that afternoon, and as I found him loafing on the Mall in a very disconsolate condition and as he recognised me effusively and suggested going for a monkey-hunt—a thing he had never done before—my impression is that Mrs. Mallowe stayed at home till the light fell and thought. If she did this, it is of course hopeless to account for her actions. So you must fill in the gap for yourself.

That evening it rained heavily, and horses mired their riders. But not one of all the habits was so plastered with mud as the habit of Mrs. Mallowe when she pulled up under the scrub oaks and sent in her name by the astounded bearer to Trewinnard. “Folly! downright folly!” she said as she sat in the steam of the dripping horse. “But it’s all a horrible jumble together.”

It may be as well to mention that ladies do not usually call upon bachelors at their houses. Bachelors would scream and run away. Trewinnard came into the light of the verandah with a nervous, undecided smile upon his lips, and he wished—in the bottomless bottom of his bad heart—he wished that Mrs. Reiver was there to see. A minute later he was profoundly glad that he was alone, for Mrs. Mallowe was standing in his office room and calling him names that reflected no credit on his intellect. “What have you done? What have you said?’ she asked. “Be quick! Be quick! And have the horse led round to the back. Can you speak? What have you written? Show me!”

She had interrupted him in the middle of what he was pleased to call his reply; for Hatchett’s first shell had already fallen in the camp. He stood back and offered her the seat at the duftar table. Her elbow left a great wet stain on the baize, for she was soaked through and through.

“Say exactly how the matter stands,” she said, and laughed a weak little laugh, which emboldened Trewinnard to say loftily: “Pardon me, Mrs. Mallowe, but I hardly recognise your——’

“Idiot! Will you show me the papers, will you speak, and will you be quick?”

page 3

Her most reverent admirers would hardly have recognised the soft-spoken, slow-gestured, quiet-eyed Mrs. Mallowe in the indignant woman who was drununing on Trewinnard’s desk. He submitted to the voice of authority, as he had submitted in the old times, and explained as quickly as might be the cause of the war between the two Departments. In conclusion he handed over the rough sheets of his reply. As she read he watched her with the expectant sickly half-smile of the unaccustomed writer who is doubtful of the success of his work. And another smile followed, but died away as he saw Mrs. Mallowe read his production. All the old phrases out of which she had so carefully drilled him had returned; the unpruned fluency of diction was there, the more luxuriant for being so long cut back; the reckless riotousness of assertion that sacrificed all—even the vital truth that Hatchett would be so sure to take advantage of—for the sake of scoring a point, was there; and through and between every line ran the weak, wilful vanity of the man. Mrs. Mallowe’s mouth hardened.

“And you wrote this!” she said. Then to herself: “He wrote this!”

Trewinnard stepped forward with a gesture habitual to him when he wished to explain. Mrs. Reiver had never asked for explanations. She had told him that all his ways were perfect. Therefore he loved her.

Mrs. Mallowe tore up the papers one by one, saying as she did so: “You were going to cross swords with Hatchett. Do you know your own strength? Oh, Harold, Harold, it is too pitiable! I thought—I thought——” Then the great anger that had been growing in her broke out, and she cried: “Oh, you fool! You blind, blind, blind, trumpery fool! Why do I help you? Why do I have anything to do with you? You miserable man! Sit down and write as I dictate. Quickly! And I had chosen you out of a hundred other men! Write! It is a terrible thing to be found out by a mere unseeing male—Thackeray has said it. It is worse, far worse, to be found out by a woman, and in that hour after long years to discover her worth. For ten minutes Trewinnard’s pen scratched across the paper, and Mrs. Mallowe spoke. “And that is all,” she said bitterly. “As you value yourself—your noble, honourable, modest self—keep within that.”

But that was not all—by any means. At least as far as Trewinnard was concerned.

He rose from his chair and delivered his soul of many mad and futile thoughts—such things as a man babbles when he is deserted of the gods, has missed his hold upon the latch-door of Opportunity—and cannot see that the ways are shut. Mrs. Mallowe bore with him to the end, and he stood before her—no enviable creature to look upon.

“A cur as well as a fool!” she said. “Will you be good enough to tell them to bring my horse? I do not trust to your honour—you have none—but I believe that your sense of shame will keep you from speaking of my visit.”

So he was left in the verandah crying “Come back” like a distracted guinea-fowl.

.     .     .     .     .

“He’s done us in the eye,” grunted Hatchett as he perused the K.P.B. and B. reply. “Look at the cunning of the brute in shifting the issue on to India in that carneying, blarneying way! Only wait until I can get my knife into him again. I’ll stop every bolt-hole before the hunt begins.”

.     .     .     .     .

Oh, I believe I have forgotten to mention the success of Mrs. Hauksbee’s revenge. It was so brilliant and overwhelming that she had to cry in Mrs. Mallowe’s arms for the better part of half an hour; and Mrs. Mallowe was just as bad, though she thanked Mrs. Hauksbee several times in the course of the interview, and Mrs. Hauksbee said that she would repent and reform, and Mrs. Mallowe said: “Hush, dear, hushl I don’t think either of us had anything to be proud of.” And Mrs. Hauksbee said: “Oh, but I didn’t mean it, Polly, I didn’t mean itl” And I stood with my hat in my hand trying to make two very indignant ladies imderstand that the bearer really had given me “salaam bolta.”

That was an evil quarter minute.

THERE are yearly appointments, and two-yearly appointments, and five-yearly appointments at Simla, and there are, or used to be, permanent appointments, whereon you stayed up for the term of your natural life, and secured red cheeks and a nice income. Of course, you could descend in the cold weather; for Simla is rather dull then.

Tarrion came from goodness knows where—all away and away in some forsaken part of Central India, where they call Pachmari a Sanitarium, and drive behind trotting-bullocks, I believe. He belonged to a regiment ; but what he really wanted to do was to escape from his regiment and live in Simla for ever and ever. He had no preference for anything in particular, beyond a good horse
and a nice partner. He thought he could do everything well; which is a beautiful belief when you hold it with all your heart. He was clever in many ways, and good to look at, and always made people round him comfortable—even in Central India.

So he went up to Simla, and, because he was clever and amusing, he gravitated naturally to Mrs. Hauksbee, who could forgive everything but stupidity. Once he did her great service by changing the date on an invitation-card for a big dance which Mrs. Hauksbee wished to attend, but couldn’t, because she had quarrelled with the A.-D.-C., who took care, being a mean man, to invite her to a small dance on the 6th instead of the big Ball of the 26th. It was a very clever piece of forgery; and when Mrs. Hauksbee showed the A.-D.-C. her invitation-card, and chaffed him mildly for not better managing his vendettas, he really thought that he had made a mistake; and—which was wise—realised that it was no use to fight with Mrs. Hauksbee. She was grateful to Tarrion, and asked what she could do for him. He said simply, ‘I’m a Freelance up here on leave, on the lookout for what I can loot. I haven’t a square inch of interest in all Simla. My name isn’t known to any man with an appointment in his gift, and I want an appointment—a good, sound one. I believe you can do anything you turn yourself to. Will you help me?’ Mrs. Hauksbee thought for a minute, and passed the lash of her riding-whip through her lips, as was her custom when thinking. Then her eyes sparkled and she said, ‘I will’ ; and she shook hands on it. Tarrion, having perfect confidence in this great woman, took no further thought of the business at all, except to wonder what sort of an appointment he would win.

Mrs. Hauksbee began calculating the prices of all the Heads of Departments and Members of Council she knew, and the more she thought the more she laughed, because her heart was in the game and it amused her. Then she took a Civil List and ran over a few of the appointments. There are some beautiful appointments in the Civil List. Eventually, she decided that, though Tarrion was too good for the Political Department, she had better begin by trying to place him there. Her own plans to this end do not matter in the least, for Luck or Fate played into her hands, and she had nothing to do but to watch the course of events and take the credit of them.

All Viceroys, when they first come out, pass through the Diplomatic Secrecy craze. It wears off in time; but they all catch it in the beginning, because they are new to the country. The particular Viceroy who was suffering from the complaint just then—this was a long time ago, before Lord Dufferin ever came from Canada, or Lord Ripon from the bosom of the English Church—had it very badly; and the result was that men who were new to keeping official secrets went about looking unhappy; and the Viceroy plumed himself on the way in which he had instilled notions of reticence into his Staff.

Now, the Supreme Government have a careless custom of committing what they do to printed papers. These papers deal with all sorts of things—from the payment of Rs.200 to a ‘secret service’ native, up to rebukes administered to Vakils and Motamids of Native States, and rather brusque letters to Native Princes, telling them to put their houses in order, to refrain from kidnapping women, or filling offenders with pounded red pepper, and eccentricities of that kind. Of course, these things could never be made public, because Native Princes never err officially, and their States are officially as well administered as Our territories. Also, the private allowances to various queer people are not exactly matters to put into newspapers, though they give quaint reading sometimes. When the Supreme Government is at Simla these papers are prepared there, and go round to the people who ought to see them in office-boxes or by post. The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent despotism like Ours should never allow even little things, such as appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper time. He was always remarkable for his principles.

There was a very, important batch of papers in preparation at that time. It had to travel from one end of Simla to the other by hand. It was not put into an official envelope, but a large, square, pale pink one; the matter being in MS. on soft crinkley paper. It was addressed to ‘The Head Clerk, etc. etc.’ Now, between ‘The Head Clerk, etc. etc.’ and ‘Mrs. Hauksbee’ and a flourish, is no very great difference, if the address be written in a very bad hand, as this was. The orderly who took the envelope was not more of an idiot than most orderlies. He merely forgot where this most unofficial cover was to be delivered, and so asked the first Englishman he met, who happened to be a man riding down to Annandale in a great hurry. The Englishman hardly looked at it, said, ‘ Mrs. Hauksbee,’ and went on. So did the orderly, because that letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his work over. There was no book to sign; he thrust the letter into Mrs. Hauksbee’s bearer’s hands and went off to smoke with a friend. Mrs. Hauksbee was expecting some cut-out pattern things in flimsy paper from a friend. As soon as she got the big square packet, therefore, she said, ‘Oh, the dear creature !’ and tore it open with a paper-knife, and all the MS. enclosures tumbled out on the floor.

Mrs. Hauksbee began reading. I have said the batch was rather important. That is quite enough for you to know. It referred to some correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a native chief, and two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had taken hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and did not quite know what to do with it. There were remarks and initials at the side of the papers; and some of the remarks were rather more severe than the papers. The initials belonged to men who are all dead or gone now; but they were great in their day. Mrs. Hauksbee read on and thought calmly as she read. Then the value of her trove struck her, and she cast about for the best method of using it. Then Tarrion dropped in, and they read through all the papers together, and Tarrion, not knowing how she had come by them, vowed that Mrs. Hauksbee was the greatest woman on earth. Which I believe was true or nearly so.

‘The honest course is always the best,’ said Tarrion, after an hour and a half of study and conversation. ‘All things considered, the Intelligence Branch is about my form. Either that or the Foreign Office. I go to lay siege to the High Gods in their Temples.’

He did not seek a little man, or a little big man, or a weak Head of a strong Department, but he called on the biggest and strongest man that the Government owned, and explained that he wanted an appointment at Simla on a good salary. The compound insolence of this amused the Strong Man, and, as he had nothing to do for the moment, he listened to the proposals of the audacious Tarrion. ‘You have, I presume, some special qualifications, besides the gift of self-assertion, for the claims you put forward?’ said the Strong Man. ‘That, Sir,’ said Tarrion, ‘is for you to judge.’ Then he began, for he had a good memory, quoting a few of the more important notes in the papers—slowly and one by one as a man drops chlorodyne into a glass. When he had reached the peremptory order—and it was a very peremptory order—the Strong Man was troubled. Tarrion wound up—‘And I fancy that special knowledge of this kind is at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a distinguished officer’s wife.’ That hit the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had been by black favour, and he knew it.

‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ said the Strong Man.

‘Many thanks,’ said Tarrion. Then he left, and the Strong Man departed to see how the appointment was to be blocked.

Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying only between Rs.500 and Rs.700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained, and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special information would be worth translating. So they translated Tarrion. They must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do not know about things Up Above, you won’t understand how to fill in, and you will say it is impossible.

What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was—‘This is the boy who “rushed” the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir, that is not done twice.’ So he must have known something.

What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was—‘If Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be Viceroy of India in fifteen years.’

What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears in his eyes, was first—‘I told you so!’ and next, to herself—‘What fools men are!’

ONCE upon a time there lived at Simla a very pretty girl, the daughter of a poor but honest District and Sessions Judge. She was a good girl, but could not help knowing her power and using it. Her Mamma was very anxious about her daughter’s future, as all good Mammas should be.

When a man is a Commissioner and a bachelor, and has the right of wearing open-work jam-tart jewels in gold and enamel on his clothes, and of going through a door before every one except a Member of Council, a Lieutenant-Governor, or a Viceroy, he is worth marrying. At least, that is what ladies say. There was a Commissioner in Simla, in those days, who was, and wore and did all I have said. He was a plain man—an ugly man—the ugliest man in Asia, with two exceptions. His was a face to dream about and try to carve on a pipe-head afterwards. His name was Saggott—Barr-Saggott—Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow. Departmentally, he was one of the best men the Government of India owned. Socially, he was like unto a blandishing gorilla.

When he turned his attentions to Miss Beighton, I believe that Mrs. Beighton wept with delight at the reward Providence had sent her in her old age.

Mr. Beighton held his tongue. He was an easy-going man.

A Commissioner is very rich. His pay is beyond the dreams of avarice—is so enormous that he can afford to save and scrape in a way that would almost discredit a Member of Council. Most Commissioners are mean; but Barr-Saggott was an exception. He entertained royally; he horsed himself well; he gave dances; he was a power in the land; and he behaved as such.

Consider that everything I am writing of took place in an almost pre-historic era in the history of British India. Some folk may remember the years before lawn-tennis was born when we all played croquet. There were seasons before that, if you will believe me, when even croquet had not been invented, and archery—which was revived in England in 1844—was as great a pest as lawn-tennis is now. People talked learnedly about‘holding’ and ‘loosing,’ ‘steles,’ ‘reflexed bows,’ ‘56-pound bows,’ ‘backed’ or ‘self-yew bows,’ as we talk about ‘rallies,’ I volleys,’ ‘smashes,’ ‘returns,’ and ‘16-ounce rackets.’

Miss Beighton shot divinely over ladies’ distance—60 yards that is—and was acknowledged the best lady archer in Simla. Men called her ‘Diana of Tara-Devi.’

Barr-Saggott paid her great attention; and, as I have said, the heart of her mother was uplifted in consequence. Kitty Beighton took matters more calmly. It was pleasant to be singled out by a Commissioner with letters after his name, and to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feelings. But there was no denying the fact that Barr-Saggott was phenomenally ugly; and all his attempts to adorn himself only made him more grotesque. He was not christened ‘The Langur’—which means gray ape—for nothing. It was pleasant, Kitty thought, to have him at her feet, but it was better to escape from him and ride with the graceless Cubbon—the man in a Dragoon Regiment at Umballa—the boy with a handsome face and no prospects. Kitty liked Cubbon more than a little. He never pretended for a moment that he was anything less than head over heels in love with her; for he was an honest boy. So Kitty fled, now and again, from the stately wooings of Barr-Saggott to the company of young Cubbon, and was scolded by her Mamma in consequence. ‘But, Mother,’ she said, ‘Mr. Saggott is such—such a—is so fearfully ugly, you know!’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Beighton piously, ‘we cannot be other than an all-ruling Providence has made us. Besides, you will take precedence of your own Mother, you know? Think of that and be reasonable.’

Then Kitty put up her little chin and said irreverent things about precedence, and Commissioners, and matrimony. Mr. Beighton rubbed the top of his head; for he was an easy-going man.

Late in the season, when he judged that the time was ripe, Barr-Saggott developed a plan which did great credit to his administrative powers. He arranged an archery-tournament for ladies, with a most sumptuous diamond-studded bracelet as prize. He drew up his terms skilfully, and every one saw that the bracelet was a gift to Miss Beighton; the acceptance carrying with it the hand and the heart of Commissioner Barr-Saggott. The terms were a St. Leonard’s Round—thirty-six shots at sixty yards—under the rules of the Simla Toxophilite Society.

All Simla was invited. There were beautifully arranged tea-tables under the deodars at Annandale, where the Grand Stand is now; and, alone in its glory, winking in the sure, sat the diamond bracelet in a blue velvet case. Miss Beighton was anxious—almost too anxious—to compete. On the appointed afternoon all Simla rode down to Annandale to witness the Judgment of Paris turned upside down. Kitty rode with young Cubbon, and it was easy to see that the boy was troubled in his mind. He must be held innocent of everything that followed. Kitty was pale and nervous, and looked long at the bracelet. Barr-Saggott was gorgeously dressed, even more nervous than Kitty, and more hideous than ever.

Mrs. Beighton smiled condescendingly, as befitted the mother of a potential Commissioneress, and the shooting began; all the world standing a semicircle as the ladies came out one after the other.

Nothing is so tedious as an archery competition. They shot, and they shot, and they kept on shooting, till the sun left the valley, and little breezes got up in the deodars, and people waited for Miss Beighton to shoot and win. Cubbon was at one horn of the semicircle round the shooters, and Barr-Saggott at the other. Miss Beighton was last on the list. The scoring had been weak, and the bracelet, with Commissioner Barr-Saggott, was hers to a certainty.

The Commissioner strung her bow with his own sacred hands. She stepped forward, looked at the bracelet, and her first arrow went true to a hair—full into the heart of the ‘gold’—counting nine points.

Young Cubbon on the left turned white, and his Devil prompted Barr-Saggott to smile. Now horses used to shy when Barr-Saggott smiled. Kitty saw that smile. She looked to her left-front, gave an almost imperceptible nod to Cubbon, and went on shooting.

I wish I could describe the scene that followed. It was out of the ordinary and most improper. Miss Kitty fitted her arrows with immense deliberation, so that every one might see what she was doing. She was a perfect shot; and her 46-pound bow suited her to a nicety. She pinned the wooden legs of the target with great care four successive times. She pinned the wooden top of the target once, and all the ladies looked at each other. Then she began some fancy shooting at the white, which if you hit it, counts exactly one point. She put five arrows into the white. It was wonderful archery; but, seeing that her business was to make ‘golds’ and win the bracelet, Barr-Saggott turned a delicate green like young water-grass. Next, she shot over the target twice, then wide to the left twice—always with the same deliberation—while a chilly hush fell over the company, and Mrs. Beighton took out her handkerchief. Then Kitty shot at the ground in front of the target, and split several arrows. Then she made a red—or seven points—just to show what she could do if she liked, and she finished up her amazing performance with some more fancy shooting at the target supports. Here is her score as it was pricked off :

Barr-Saggott looked as if the last few arrowheads had been driven into his legs instead of the target’s, and the deep stillness was broken by a little snubby, mottled, half-grown girl saying in a shrill voice of triumph, ‘Then I’ve won!’

Mrs. Beighton did her best to bear up; but she wept in the presence of the people. No training could help her through such a disappointment. Kitty unstrung her bow with a vicious jerk, and went back to her place, while Barr-Saggott was trying to pretend that he enjoyed snapping the bracelet on the snubby girl’s raw, red wrist. It was an awkward scene—most awkward. Every one tried to depart in a body and leave Kitty to the mercy of her Mamma.

But Cubbon took her away instead, and—the rest isn’t worth printing.

They burnt a corpse upon the sand—
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging boats
That beat from Zanzibar.
Spirit of Fire, where’er Thy altars rise,
Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!
(Salrette Boat-Song)

[a short tale]

THERE is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more often than he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinks secretly and alone in his own house—the man who is never seen to drink.

This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it. Moriarty’s case was that exception.

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put him quite by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk to and a great deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four years he was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make him. You know the saying, that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more than a year is never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty’s queerness of manner and moody ways to the solitude, and said that it showed how Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very good reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation with L.L.L. and Christopher and little nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution and a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like a sick camel in the district; as better men have done before him.

Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the desert; and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant. That season, Mrs. Reiver—perhaps you will remember her—was in the height of her power, and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad that could be said has already been said about Mrs. Reiver, in another tale. Moriarty was heavily-built and handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to please his neighbours when he wasn’t sunk in a brown study. He started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to without warning; and, when you watched him drinking his glass of water at dinner, you could see the hand shake a little. But all this was put down to nervousness, and the quiet, steady, sip-sip-sip, fill and sip-sip-sip again that went on in his own room when he was by himself, was never known. Which was miraculous, seeing how everything in a man’s private life is public property in India.

Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver’s set, because they were not his sort, but into the power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in front of her and made a goddess of her. This was due to his coming fresh out of the jungle to a big town. He could not scale things properly or see who was what.

Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard he said she was stately and dignified. Because she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly, he said she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver shy! Because she was unworthy of honour or reverence from any one, he reverenced her from a distance and dowered her with all the virtues in the Bible and most of those in Shakespeare.

This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous when a pony cantered behind him, used to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing with pleasure when she threw a word or two his way. His admiration was strictly platonic; even other women saw and admitted this. He did not move about in Simla, so he heard nothing against his idol: which was satisfactory. Mrs. Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond seeing that he was added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with him now and then, just to show that he was her property, claimable as such. Moriarty must have done most of the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn’t talk much to a man of his stamp; and the little she said could not have been profitable. What Moriarty believed in, as he had good reason to, was Mrs. Reiver’s influence over him, and, in that belief, he set himself seriously to try to do away with the vice that only he himself knew of.

His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been peculiar, but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off from everything except water for a week. Then, on a rainy night, when no one had asked him out to dinner, and there was a big fire in his room, and everything comfortable, he would sit down and make a big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, planning big schemes of reformation meanwhile, until he threw himself on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered next morning.

One night the big crash came. He was troubled in his own mind over his attempts to make himself ‘worthy of the friendship’ of Mrs. Reiver. The past ten days had been very bad ones, and the end of it all was that he received the arrears of two and three-quarter years of sipping in one attack of delirium tremens of the subdued kind; beginning with suicidal depression, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and ending with downright raving. As he sat in a chair in front of the fire, or walked up and down the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the most part; though he ravelled some P.W.D. accounts into the same skein of thought. He talked and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one who was in the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-five next morning.

From what he said, one gathered how immense in influence Mrs. Reiver held over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse. His whisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were very instructive—as showing the errors of his estimates.

When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances were pitying him for the bad attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down, Moriarty swore a big oath to himself and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till the end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential way as an angel from heaven. Later on, he took to riding—not hacking, but honest riding—which was good proof that he was improving, and you could slam doors behind him without his jumping to his feet with a gasp. That, again, was hopeful.

How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning nobody knows. He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a man who has drunk heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner; but he never drank alone, and never let what he drank have the least hold on him.

Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great trouble, and how the ‘influence of a pure honest woman, and an angel as well,’ had saved him. When the man—startled at anything good being laid to Mrs. Reiver’s door—laughed, it cost him Moriarty’s friendship. Moriarty, who is married now to a woman ten thousand times better than Mrs. Reiver—a woman who believes that there is no man on earth as good and clever as her husband—will go down to his grave vowing and protesting that Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in both worlds.

That she knew anything of Moriarty’s weakness nobody believed for a moment. That she would have cut him dead, thrown him over, and acquainted all her friends with her discovery, if she had known of it, nobody who knew her doubted for an instant.

Moriarty thought her something she never was, and in that belief saved himself; which was just as good as though she had been everything that he had imagined.

But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have to the credit of Moriarty’s salvation, when her day of reckoning comes?

Part One

PERSONS CHIEFLY INTERESTED

• His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India.
• Charles Hilton Hawley (lieutenant at large).
• Lieutenant-Colonel J. Scriffshaw (not so much at large).
• Major Decker (a persuasive Irishman).
• Peroo (an Aryan butler).
• Mrs. Hauksbee (a lady with a will of her own).
• Mrs. Scriffshaw (a lady who believes she has a will of her own).
• May Holt (niece of the above).
• Assunta (an Aryan lady’s-maid).
• Aides-de-Camp, Dancers, Horses, and Devils as Required.

SCENE—The imperial city of Simla, on a pine-clad mountain seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Gray roofs of houses peering through green; white clouds going to bed in the valley below, purple clouds of sunset sitting on the peaks above. Smell of wood-smoke and pine-cones. A curtained verandah-room in Mrs. Hauksbee’s house, overlooking Simla, shows Mrs. Hauksbee, in black cachemire tea-gown opening over cream front, seated in a red-cushioned chair, her foot on a Khokand rug, Russian china tea things on red lacquered table beneath red-shaded lamps. On a cushion at her feet, Miss Holt — gray riding-habit, soft gray felt terai hat, blue and gold puggree, buff gauntlets in lap, and glimpse of spurred riding-boot. They have been talking as the twilight gathers. Mrs. Hauksbee crosses over to the piano in a natural pause of the conversation and begins to play.

May. (Without changing her position.) Yes. That’s nice. Play something.

Mrs. H.What?

May. Oh! Anything. Only I don’t want to hear about sighing over tombs, and saying Nevermore.

Mrs. H. Have you ever known me do that? May, you’re in one of your little tempers this afternoon.

May. So would a Saint be. I’ve told you why. Horrid old thing! — isn’t she?

Mrs. H. (Without prelude) —
Fair Eve knelt close to the guarded gate in the hush of an Eastern spring,
She saw the flash of the Angel’s sword, the gleam of the Angel’s wing—

May. (Impetuously.) And now you’re laughing at me!

Mrs. H. (Shaking her head, continues the song for a verse; then crescendo) —

And because she was so beautiful, and because she could not see
How fair were the pure white cyclamens crushed dying at her knee.
(That’s the society of your aunt, my dear.)

He plucked a Rose from the Eden Tree where the four great rivers meet.

May. Yes. I know you’re laughing at me. Now somebody’s going to die, of course. They always do.

Mrs. H. No. Wait and see what is going to happen. (The puckers pass out of May’s face as she listens) —

And though for many a Cycle past that Rose in the dust hath lain
With her who bore it upon her breast when she passed from grief to pain,
(Retard)—
There was never a daughter of Eve but once, ere the tale of years be done,
Shall know the scent of the Eden Rose, but once beneath the sun!
Though the years may bring her joy or pain, fame, sorrow, or sacrifice,
The hour that brought her the scent of the Rose she lived it in Paradise!
(Concludes with arpeggio chords.)

May. (Shuddering.) Ah! don’t. How good that is! What is it?

Mrs. H. Something called ‘The Eden Rose’. An old song to a new setting.

May. Play it again!

Mrs. H. (I thought it would tell.) No, dear. (Returning to her place by the tea-things.) And so that amiable aunt of yours won’t let you go to the dance?

May. She says dancing’s wicked and sinful ; and it’s only a Volunteer ball, after all.

Mrs. H. Then why are you so anxious to go?

May. Because she says I mustn’t! Isn’t that sufficient reason? And because —

Mrs. H. Ah, it’s that ‘because’ I want to hear about, dear.

May. Because I choose. Mrs. Hauksbee — dear Mrs. Hauksbee — you will help me, won’t you ?

Mrs. H. (Slowly.) Ye – es. Because I choose. Well?

May. In the first place, you’ll take me under your wing, won’t you? And, in the second, you’ll keep me there, won’t you ?

Mrs. H. That will depend a great deal on the Hawley Boy’s pleasure, won’t it?

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May. (Flushing.) Char — Mr. Hawley has nothing whatever to do with it.

Mrs. H. Of course not. But what will your aunt say?

May. She will be angry with me, but not with you. She is pious — oh! so pious! — and she would give anything to be put on that lady’s committee for — what is it? — giving pretty dresses to half-caste girls. Lady Bieldar is the secretary, and she won’t speak to Aunt on the Mall. You’re Lady Bieldar’s friend. Aunt daren’t quarrel with you, and, besides, if I come here after dinner tonight, how are you to know that everything isn’t correct?

Mrs. H. On your own pretty head be the talking to! I’m willing to chaperon to an unlimited extent.

May. Bless you! and I’ll love you always for it!

Mrs. H. There, again, the Hawley Boy might have something to say. You’ve been a well-conducted little maiden so far, May. Whence this sudden passion for Volunteer balls? (Turning down lamp and lowering voice as she takes the girl’s hand.) Won’t you tell me? I’m not very young, but I’m not a grim griffin, and I think I’d understand, dear.

May. (After a pause, and swiftly.) His leave is nearly ended. He goes down to the plains to his regiment the day after tomorrow, and —

Mrs. H. Has he said anything?

May. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Don’t laugh at me, please! But I believe me it would nearly break my heart if he didn’t.

Mrs. H. (Smiling to herself.) Poor child! And how long has this been going on?

May. Ever so long ! Since the beginning of the world — or the begin- ning of the season. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to help it. And last time we met I was just as rude as I could be — and — and he thought I meant it.

Mrs. H. How strange! Seeing that he is a man too (half aloud) — and probably with experiences of his own!

May. (Dropping Mrs. H.’s hand.) I don’t believe that, and — I won’t. He couldn’t!

Mrs. H. No, dear. Of course he hasn’t had experiences. Why should he? I was only teasing! But when do I pick you up tonight, and how?

May. Aunt’s dining out somewhere — with goody-goody people. I dine alone with Uncle John — and he sleeps after dinner. I shall dress then. I simply daren’t order my ‘rickshaw. The trampling of four coolies in the verandah would wake the dead. I shall have Dandy brought round quietly, and slip away.

Mrs. H. But won’t riding crumple your frock horribly?

May. (Rising.) Not in the least, if you know how. I’ve ridden ten miles to a dance, and come in as fresh as though I had just left my brougham. A plain head hunting-saddle — swing up carefully — throw a waterproof over the skirt and an old shawl over the body, and there you are! Nobody notices in the dark, and Dandy knows when he feels a high heel that he must behave.

Mrs. H. And what are you wearing?

May. My very, very bestest — slate body, smoke-coloured tulle skirt, and the loveliest steel-worked little shoes that ever were. Mother sent them. She doesn’t know Aunt’s views. That, and awfully pretty yellow roses — teeny-weeny ones. And you’ll wait for me here, won’t you — you Angel! — at half-past nine? (Shortens habit and whirls Mrs. H. down the verandah. Winds up with a kiss.) There!

Mrs. H. (Holding her at arm’s length and looking into her eyes.) And the next one will be given to—

May. (Blushing furiously.) Uncle John — when I get home.

Mrs. H. Hypocrite! Go along, and be happy! (As May mounts her horse in the garden.) At half-past nine, then? And can you curl your own wig? But I shall be here to put the last touches to you.

Mrs. H. (In the verandah alone, as the stars come out.) Poor child! Dear child! And Charley Hawley too! God gie us a guid conceit of oorselves! But I think they are made for each other! I wonder whether that Eurasian dress – reform committee is susceptible of improvements. I wonder whether — O youth, youth!

Enter Peroo, the butler, with a note on a tray.

Mrs. H. (Reading.) ‘Help! Help! Help! The decorations are vile — the Volunteers are fighting over them. The roses are just beginning to come in. Mrs. Mallowe has a headache. I am on a step- ladder and the verge of tears! Come and restore order, if you have any regard for me! Bring things and dress; and dine with us. — Constance’. How vexatious! But I must go, I suppose. I hate dressing in other people’s rooms — and Lady Bieldar takes all the chairs. But I’ll tell Assunta to wait for May. (Passes into house, gives orders, and departs. The clock-hands in the dining-room mark half-past seven.)

Enter Assunta, the lady’s-maid, to Peroo, squatting on the hearth-run.

Assunta. Peroo, there is an order that I am to remain on hand till the arrival of a young lady. (Squats at his side.)

Peroo. Hah!

Assunta. I do not desire to wait so long. I wish to go to my house.

Peroo. Hah!

Assunta. My house is in the bazar. There is an urgency that I should go there.

Peroo. To meet a lover?

Assunta. No — black beast! To tend my children, who be honest born. Canst thou say that of thine?

Peroo. (Without emotion.) That is a lie, and thou art a woman of notoriously immoral carriage.

Assunta. For this, my husband, who is a man, shall break thy lizard’s back with a bamboo.

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Peroo. For that, I, who am much honoured and trusted in this house, can, by a single word, secure his dismissal, and, owing to my influence among the servants of this town, can raise the bad name against ye both. Then ye will starve for lack of employ.

Assunta. (Fawning.) That is true. Thy honour is as great as thy influence, and thou art an esteemed man. Moreover, thou art beautiful; especially as to thy moustachios.

Peroo. So other women, and of higher caste than thou, sweeper’s wife, have told me.

Assunta. The moustachios of a fighting-man — of a very swashbuckler! Ahi! Peroo, how many hearts hast thou broken with thy fine face and those so huge moustachios?

Peroo. (Twirling moustache.) One or two — two or three. It is a matter of common talk in the bazars. I speak not of the matter myself. (Hands her betel-nut and lime wrapped in the leaf. They chew in silence.)

Assunta. Peroo!

Peroo. Hah!

Assunta. I greatly desire to go away, and not to wait.

Peroo. Go, then!

Assunta. But what wilt thou say to the mistress?

Peroo. That thou hast gone.

Assunta. Nay, but thou must say that one came crying with news that my littlest babe was smitten with fever, and that I fled weeping. Else it were not wise to go.

Peroo. Be it so! But I shall need a little tobacco to solace me while I wait for the return of the mistress alone.

Assunta. It shall come; and it shall be of the best. (A snake is a snake, and a bearer is a thieving ape till he dies!) I go. It was the fever of the child — the littlest babe of all — remember. (And now, if my lover finds I am late, he will beat me, judging that I have been unfaithful.) (Exit.)

(At half-past nine enter tumultuously May, a heavy shawl over her shoulders, a skirt of smoke-coloured tulle showing beneath.)

May. Mrs. Hauksbee! Oh! She isn’t here. And I dared not get Aunt’s ayah to help. She would have told Uncle John — and I can’t lace it myself. (Peroo hands note. May reads.) ‘So sorry. Dragged off to put the last touches to the draperies. Assunta will look after you’. Sorry! You may well be sorry, wicked woman! Draperies, indeed! You never thought of mine, and — all up the back, too. (To Peroo) Where’s Assunta?

Peroo. (Bowing to the earth.) By your honoured favour, there came a man but a short time ago crying that the ayah’s baby was smitten with fever, and she fled, weeping, to tend it. Her house is a mile hence. Is there any order?

May. How desperately annoying! (Looking into fire, her eyes soften- ing.) Her baby! )With a little shiver, passing right hand before eyes.) Poor woman! (A pause.)

But what am I to do? I can’t even creep into the cloak-room as I am, and trust to someone to put me to rights; and the shawl’s a horrid old plaid! Who invented dresses to lace up the back? It must have been a man! I’d like to put him into one! What am I to do? Perhaps the Colley-Haughton girls haven’t left yet. They’re sure to be dining at home. I might run up to their rooms and wait till they came. Eva wouldn’t tell, I know.

(Remounts Dandy, and rides up the hill to house immediately above,, enters glazed hall cautiously, and calls up staircase in an agonised whisper, huddling her shawl about her.) Jenny! Eva! Eva! Jenny! They’re out too, and, of course, their ayah’s gone!

Sir Henry Colley-Haughton. (Opening door of dining-room, where he has been finishing an after-dinner cigar, and stepping into hall.) I thought I heard a — Miss Holt! I didn’t know you were going with my girls. They’ve just left.

May. (Confusedly.) I wasn’t. I didn’t — that is, it was partly my fault. (With desperate earnestness.) Is Lady Haughton in?

Sir Henry. She’s with the girls. Is there anything that I can do? I’m going to the dance in a minute. Perhaps I might ride with you!

May. Not for worlds! Not for anything! It was a mistake. I hope the girls are quite well.

Sir Henry. (With bland wonder.) Perfectly, thanks. (Moves through hall towards horse.)

May. (mounting in haste.) ‘No; Please don’t hold my stirrup! I can manage perfectly, thanks!

(Canters out of the garden to side road shadowed by pines. Sees beneath her the lights of Simla town in orderly constellations, and on a bare ridge the illuminated bulk of the Simla Town-hall, shining like a cut-paper transparency. The main road is firefly-lighted with the moving ‘rickshaw lamps all climbing towards the Town-hall. The wind brings up a few bars of a waltz. A monkey in the darkness of the wood wakes and croons dolefully).

And now, where in the world am I to go? May, you bad girl ! This all comes of disobeying aunts and wearing dresses that lace up the back, and — trusting Mrs. Hauksbee. Everybody is going. I must wait a little till that crowd has thinned. Perhaps — perhaps Mrs. Lefevre might help me. It’s a horrid road to her poky little house, but she’s very kind, even if she is pious.

(Thrusts Dandy along an almost inaccessible path; halts in the shadow of a clump of rhododendron, and watches the lighted windows of Mrs. Lefevre’s small cottage.)

Oh! horror! so that’s where Aunt is dining! Back, Dandy, back! Dandy, dearest, step softly! (Regains road, panting.) I’ll never forgive Mrs. Hauksbee! — never. And there’s the band beginning ‘God save the Queen’, and that means the Viceroy has come; and Charley will think I’ve disappointed him on purpose, because I was so rude last time. And I’m all but ready. Oh! it’s cruel, cruel! I’ll go home, and I’ll go straight to bed, and Charley may dance with any other horrid girl he likes!

(The last of the ‘rickshaw lights pass her as she reaches the main road. Clatter of stones overhead and squeak of a saddle as a big horse picks his way down a steep path above, and a robust baritone chants)—

page 4

Our King went forth to Normandie
With power of might and chivalry;
The Lord for him wrought wondrously,
Therefore now may England cry,
Deo Gratias !

(Swings into main road, and the young moon shows a glimpse of the cream, and silver of the Deccan Irregular Horse uniform under rider’s opened cloak.>

May. (Leaning forward and taking reins short.) That’s Charley! What a splendid voice! Just like a big, strong angel’s! I wonder what he is so happy about? How he sits his horse! And he hasn’t anything round his neck, and he’ll catch his death of cold! If he sees me riding in this direction, he may stop and ask me why, and I can’t explain. Fate’s against me tonight. I’ll canter past quickly. Bless you, Charley!

(Canters up the main road, under the shadow of the pines, as Hawley canters down. Dandy’s hoofs keep the tune ‘There was never a daughter of Eve’ etc. All Earth wakes, and tells the Stars. The Occupants of the Little Simla Cemetery stir in their sleep.)

PINES OF THE CEMETERY (to the OCCUPANTS)

Lie still, lie still! O earth to earth returning !
Brothers beneath, what wakes you to your pain?

The OCCUPANTS (underground)

Earth’s call to earth — the old unstifled yearning,
To clutch our lives again.
By summer shrivelled and by winter frozen,
Ye cannot thrust us wholly from the light,
Do we not know, who were of old his chosen,
Love rides abroad tonight?
By all that was our own of joy or sorrow,
By Pain foredone, Desire snatched away !
By hopeless weight of that unsought Tomorrow,
Which is our lot today,
By vigil in our chambers ringing hollow,
With Love’s foot overhead to mock our dearth,
We who have come would speak for those who follow —
Be pitiful, O Earth!

(The Devil of Chance, in the similitude of a gray ape, runs out on the branch of an overhanging tree, singing—

On a road that is pied as a panther’s hide
The shadows flicker and dance.
And the leaves that make them, my hand shall shake them—
The hand of the Devil of Chance.
Echo from the Snows on the Thibet road —
The little blind Devil of Chance.
The Devil (swinging the branch furiously)—
Yea, chance and confusion and error
The chain of their destiny wove;
And the horse shall be smitten with terror,
And the maiden made sure of her love!

(Dandy shies at the waving shadows, and cannons into Hawley’s horse, off shoulder to off shoulder. Hawley catches the reins.)

The Devil, above (letting the branch swing back)—
On a road that is pied as a panther’s hide
The souls of the twain shall dance!
And the passions that shake them, my hand shall wake them—
The hand of the Devil of Chance.
(Echo)
The little blind Devil of Chance.

Hawley. (Recovering himself.) Confou — er — hm! Oh, Miss Holt! And to what am I indebted for this honour?

May. Dandy shied. I hope you aren’t hurt?

All Earth, the Flowers, the Trees, and the Moonlight (together to Hawley). Speak now, or for ever hold your peace!

Hawley (Drawing reins tighter, keeping his horse’s off shoulder to Dandy’s side.) My fault entirely. (It comes easily now.) Not much hurt, are you (leaning off side, and putting his arm round her), my May? It’s awfully mean, I know, but I meant to speak weeks ago, only you never gave a fellow the chance — ‘specially last time. (Moistens his lips.) I’m not fit — I’m utterly— (in a gruff whisper) — I’m utterly unworthy, and — and you aren’t angry, May, are you? I thought you might have cared a little bit. Do you care, darl —?

May (Her head falling on his right shoulder. The arm tightens.) Oh! don’t — don’t!

Hawley. (Nearly tumbling off his horse.) Only one, darling. We can talk at the dance!

May. But I can’t go to the dance.

Hawley. (Taking another promptly as head is raised.) Nonsense! You must, dear, now. Remember I go down to my Regiment the day after to-morrow, and I shan’t see you again. (Catches glimpse of steel-gray slipper in stirrup.) Why, you’re dressed for it!

May. Yes, but I can’t go! I’ve — torn my dress.

Hawley. Run along and put on a new one; only be quick. Shall I wait here?

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May. No! Go away! Go at once!

Hawley. You’ll find me opposite the cloakroom.

May. Yes, yes! Anything! Good-night!

(Hawley canters up the road, and the song breaks out again fortissimo.)

May. (Absently, picking up reins.) Yes, indeed. My king went forth to Normandie; and — I shall never get there. Let me think, though! Let me think! It’s all over now — all over! I wonder what I ought to have said! I wonder what I did say! Hold up, Dandy ; you need some one to order you about. It’s nice to have some one nice to order you about. (Flicks horse, who capers.)

Oh, don’t jiggit, Dandy! I feel so trembly and faint. But I shan’t see him for ever so long . . . But we understand now. (Dandy turns down path to Mrs. Scriffshaw’s house.) And I wanted to go to the dance so much before, and now I want to go worse than ever! (Dismounts, runs into house, and weeps with her head on the drawing-room table.)

(Enter Scriffshaw, grizzled Lieutenant-Colonel.)

Scriffshaw. May! Bless my soul, what’s all this? What’s all this? (Shawl slips.) And, bless my soul, what’s all this?

May. N—nothing. Only I’m miserable and wretched.

Scriffshaw. But where have you been? I thought you were in your own room.

May. (With icy desperation.) I was, till you had fallen asleep. Then I dressed myself for a dance — this dance that Aunt has forbidden me to go to. Then I took Dandy out, and then — (collapsing and wriggling her shoulders) — doesn’t it show enough?

Scriffshaw. (Critically.) It does, dear, I thought those things — er — laced up the front.

May. This one doesn’t. That’s all. (Weeps afresh.)

Scriffshaw. Then what are you going to do? Bless my soul, May don’t cry!

May. I will cry, and I’ll sit here till Aunt comes home, and then she’ll see what I’ve been trying to do, and I’ll tell her that I hate her, and ask her to send me back to Calcutta!

Scriffshaw. But — but if she finds you in this dress she’ll be furiously angry with me!

May. For allowing me to put it on? So much the better. Then you’ll know what it is to be scolded by Aunt.

Scriffshaw. I knew that before you were born. (Standing by May’s bowed head.)

(She’s my sister’s child, and I don’t think Alice has the very gentlest way with girls. I’m sure her mother wouldn’t object if we took her to twenty dances. She can’t find us amusing company — and Alice will be simply beside herself under any circumstances. I know her tempers after those ‘refreshing evenings’ at the Lefevres’.)

May, dear, don’t cry like that!

May. I will! I will! I will! You — you don’t know why!

Scriffshaw. (Revolving many matters) We may just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

May. (Raising head swiftly.) Uncle John!

Scriffshaw. You see, my dear, your aunt can’t be a scrap more angry than she will be if you don’t take off that frock. She looks at the intention of things.

May. Yes; disobedience, of course. (And I’ll only obey one person in the wide living world.) Well?

Scriffshaw. Your aunt may be back at any moment. I can’t face her.

May. Well?

Scriffshaw. Let’s go to the dance. I’ll jump into my uniform, and then see if I can’t put those things straight. We may just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. (And there’s the chance of a rubber.) Give me five minutes, and we’ll fly. (Dives into his room, leaving May astounded.)

Scriffshaw. (From the room.) Tell them to bring round Dolly Bobs. We can get away quicker on horseback.

May. But really, Uncle, hadn’t you better go in a ‘rickshaw? Aunt says —

Scriffshaw. We’re in open mutiny now. We’ll ride. (Emerges in full uniform.) There!

May. Oh, Uncle John! you look perfectly delightful — and so martial, too!

Scriffshaw. I was martial once. Suppose your aunt came in? Let me see if I can lace those things of yours. That’s too tight — eh?

May. No! Much, much tighter. You must bring the edges together. Indeed you must. And lace it quick! Oh! what if Aunt should come? Tie it in a knot! Any sort of knot.

Scriffshaw. (Lacing bodice after a fashion of his own devising.) Yes — yes! I see! Confound! That’s all right! (They pass into the garden and mount their horses.) Let go her head! By Jove, May, how well you ride!

May. (As they race through the shadows neck and neck.) (Small blame to me. I’m riding to my love.) Go along, Dandy Boy! Wasn’t that Aunt’s ‘rickshaw that passed just now? She’ll come to the dance and fetch us back.

Scriffshaw. (After the gallop.) Who cares?

Part Two

SCENE – Main ball-room of the Simla Town-hall; dancing-floor grooved and tongued teak, vaulted roof, and gallery round the walls. Four hundred people dispersed in couples. Banners, bayonet-stars on walls ; red and gold, blue and gold, chocolate, buff, rifle-green, black and other uniforms under glare of a few hundred lamps. Cloak and supper-rooms at the sides, with alleys leading to Chinese-lanterned verandahs. Hawley, at entrance, receives May as she drops from her horse and passes towards cloak-rooms.

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Hawley. (As he pretends to rearrange shawl.) Oh, my love, my love, my love!

May. (Her eyes on the ground.) Let me go and get these things off. I’m trying to control my eyes, but it is written on my face. (Dashes into cloak-room.)

Newly married Wife of Captain of Engineers to Husband. No need to ask what has happened there, Dick.

Husband. No, bless ’em both, whoever they are!

Hawley. (Under his breath.) Damn his impertinence!

(May comes from cloak-room, having completely forgotten to do more than look at her face and hair in the glass.)

Hawley. Here’s the programme, dear!

May. (Returning it with pretty gesture of surrender.) Here’s the programme — dear!

(Hawley draws line from top to bottom, initials, and returns card.) May. You can’t! It’s perfectly awful! But — I should have been angry if you hadn’t. (Taking his arm.) Is it wrong to say that?

Hawley. It sounds delicious. We can sit out all the squares and dance all the round dances. There are heaps of square dances at Volunteer balls. Come along!

May. One minute! I want to tell my chaperon something.

Hawley. Come along! You belong to me now.

May. (Her eyes seeking Mrs. Hauksbee, who is seated on an easy-chair by an alcove.) But it was so awfully sudden!

Hawley. My dear infant! When a girl throws herself literally into a man’s arms —

May. I didn’t! Dandy shied

Hawley. Don’t shy to conclusions. That man is never going to let her go. Come!

(May catches Mrs. H.’s eye. Telegraphs a volume, and receives by return two. Turns to go with Hawley.)

Mrs. H. (As she catches sight of back of May’s dress.) Oh, horror! Assunta shall die tomorrow! (Sees Scriffshaw fluctuating uneasily among the chaperons, and following his niece’s departure with the eye of an artist.)

Mrs.H. (Furiously.) Colonel Scriffshaw, you — you did that?

Scriffshaw. (Imbecilely.) The lacing? Yes. I think it will hold.

Mrs. H. You monster ! Go and tell her. No don’t! (Falling back in chair.) I have lived to see every proverb I believed in a lie. The maid has forgotten her attire! (What a handsome couple they make! Anyhow, he doesn’t care, and she doesn’t know.) How did you come here, Colonel Scriffshaw?

Scriffshaw. Strictly against orders. (Uneasily.) I’m afraid I shall have my wife looking for me.

Mrs. H. I fancy you will. (Sees reflection of herself in the mirrors — black-lace dinner dress, blood-red poinsettia at shoulder and girdle to secure single brace of black lace. Silver shoes, silver-handled black fan.) (You’re looking pretty tonight, dear. I wish your husband were here.)

(Aloud, to drift of expectant men.) No, no, no ! For the hundredth time, Mrs. Hauksbee is not dancing this evening. (Her hands are full, or she is in error. Now, the chances are that I shan’t see May again till it is time to go, and I may see Mrs. Scriffshaw at any moment.)

Colonel, will you take me to the supper-room? The hall’s chilly without perpetual soups. (Goes out on Colonel’s arm. Passing the cloak-room, sees portion of Mrs. Scriffshaw’s figure.) (Before me the Deluge!) If I were you, Colonel Scriffshaw, I’d go to the whist-room, and — stay there.

(S.follows the line of her eye, and blanches as he flies.) She has come — to — take them home, and she is quite capable of it. What shall I do? (Looks across the supper-tables. Sees Major Decker, a big black-haired Irishman, and attacks him among the meringues.) Major Decker! Dear Major Decker! If ever I was a friend of yours, help me now!

Major D. I will indeed. What is it?

Mrs. H. (Walking him back deftly in the direction of the cloak-room door.) I want you to be very kind to a very dear friend of mine — a Mrs. Scriffshaw. She doesn’t come to dances much, and, being very sensitive, she feels neglected if no one asks her to dance. She really waltzes divinely, though you might not think it. There she is, walking out of the cloak-room now, in the high dress. Please come and be introduced. (Under her eyelashes.) You’re an Irishman, Major, and you’ve got a way with you.

(Planting herself in front of Mrs. S.)Mrs. Scriffshaw, may I wah-wah-wah Decker? — wah-wah-wah Decker? Mrs. Scuffles. (Flies hastily.) Saved for a moment! And now, if I can enlist the Viceroy on my side, I may do something.

Major D. (To Mrs. S.) The pleasure of a dance with you, Mrs. Scruffun?

Mrs. Scriffshaw. (Backing, and filling in the doorway.) Sirr!

Major D. (Smiling persuasively.) You’ve forgotten me, I see! I had the pleasure o’ meeting you — (there’s missionary in every line o’ that head)—at — at — the last Presbyterian Conference.

Mrs. S. (Strict Wesleyan Methodist.) I was never there.

Major D. (Retiring en échelon towards two easy-chairs.) Were ye not, now? That’s queer. Let’s sit down here and talk over it, and perhaps we will strike a chord of mutual reminiscence. (Sits down exhaustedly.) And if it was not at the Conference, where was it?

Mrs. S. (Icily, looking for her husband.) I apprehend that our paths in the world are widely different.

Major D. (My faith ! they are !) Not the least in the world. (Mrs. S. shudders.) Are you sitting in a draught? Shall we try a turn at the waltz now?

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Mrs. S. (Rising to the expression of her abhorrence.) My husband is Colonel Scriffshaw. I should be much obliged if you would find him for me.

Major D. (Throwing up his chin.) Scriffshaw, begad! I saw him just now at the other end of the room. (I’ll get a dance out of the old woman, or I’ll die for it.) We’ll just waltz up there an’ inquire. (Hurls Mrs. S. into the waltz. Revolves ponderously.)

(Mrs.Hauksbee has perjured herself — but not on my behalf. She’s ruining my instep.) No, he’s not at this end. (Circling slowly.) We’ll just go back to our chairs again. If he won’t dance with so magnificent a dancer as his wife, he doesn’t deserve to be here, or anywhere else. That’s my one sound knee-cap she’s kicking now.) (Halts at point of departure.) And now we’ll watch for him here.

Mrs. S. (Panting.) Abominable! Infamous!

Major D. Oh no! He’s not so bad as that! Prob’bly playin’ whist in the kyard-rooms. Will I look for him? (Departs, leaving Mrs. S. purple in the face among the chaperons, and passes Mrs. H. in close conversation with a partner.)

Major D. (To Mrs. H., not noticing her partner.) She’s kicked me to pieces. She can dance no more than a Windsor chair, an’ now she’s sent me to look for her husband. You owe me something for this.

(The Viceroy, by Jove!)

Mrs. H. (Turning to her partner and concluding story.) A base betrayal of confidence, of course; but the woman’s absolutely without tact, and capable of making a scene at a minute’s notice, besides doing her best to wreck the happiness of two lives, after her treatment at Major Decker’s hands. But on the Dress Reform Committee, and under proper supervision, she would be most valuable.

HIS Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India. (Diplomatic uniform, stars, etc.) But surely the work of keeping order among the waltzers is entrusted to abler hands. I cannot, cannot fight! I — I only direct armies.

Mrs. H. No. But your Excellency has not quite grasped the situation. (Explains it with desperate speed, one eye on Mrs. S. panting on her chair.) So you see! Husband fled to the whist-room for refuge; girl with lover, who goes down the day after tomorrow; and she is loose. She will be neither to hold nor to bind after the Major’s onslaught, save by you. And on a committee — she really would —

HIS Excellency. I see. I am penetrated with an interest in Eurasian dress reform. I never felt so alive to the importance of committees before.(Screwing up his eyes to see across the room.) But pardon me — my sight is not so good as it has been — which of that line of Mothers in Israel do I attack! The wearied one who is protesting with a fan against this scene of riot and dissipation?

Mrs. H. Can you doubt for a moment? I’m afraid your task is a heavy one, but the happiness of two —

HIS Excellency. (Wearily.) Hundred and fifty million souls? Ah, yes! And yet they say a Viceroy is overpaid. Let us advance, It will not talk to me about its husband’s unrecognised merits, will it? You have no idea how inevitably the conversation drifts in that direction when I am left alone with a lady. They tell me of Poor Tom, or Dear Dick, or Persecuted Paul, before I have time to explain that these things are really regulated by my Secretaries. On my honour, I sometimes think that the ladies of India are polyandrous !

Mrs. H. Would it be so difficult to credit that they love their husbands?

HIS Excellency. That also is possible. One of your many claims to my regard is that you have never mentioned your husband.

Mrs. H. (Sweetly.) No; and as long as he is where he is, I have not the least intention of doing so.

HIS Excellency. (As they approach the row of eminently self- conscious chaperons.) And, by the way, where is he?

(Mrs. H. lays her fan lightly over her heart, bows her head, and moves on.)

HIS Excellency. (As the chaperons become more self-conscious, drifting to vacant chair at Mrs. S.’s side.) That also is possible. I do not recall having seen him elsewhere, at any rate. (Watching Mrs. S.) How very like twenty thousand people that I could remember if I had time!

(Glides into vacant chair. Mrs. S. colours to the temples; chaperons exchange glances. In a voice of strained honey.) May I be pardoned for attacking you so brusquely on matters of public importance, Mrs. Scriffshaw? But my times are not my own, and I have heard so much about the good work you carry on so successfully. (When she has quite recovered I may learn what that work was.)

(Mrs. S., in tones meant for the benefit of all the chaperons, discourses volubly, with little gasps, of her charitable mission work.)

HIS Excellency. How interesting! Of course, quite natural! What we want most on our dress reform committee is a firm hand and enormous local knowledge. Men are so tactless. You have been too proud, Mrs. Scriffshaw, to offer us your help in that direction. So, you see, I come to ask it as a favour. (Gives Mrs. S. to understand that the Eurasian dress reform committee cannot live another hour without her help and comfort.)

First Aide. (By doorway within eye-reach of His Excellency.) What in the world is His Excellency tackling now?

Second Aide. (In attitude of fascination.) Looks as if it had been a woman once. Anyhow, it isn’t amusing him. I know that smile when he is in acute torment.

Mrs. H. (Coming up behind him.) ‘Now the Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field!’

Second Aide. (Turning.) Ah! Your programme full, of course,Mrs. Hauksbee?

Mrs. H. I’m not dancing, and you should have asked me before. You Aides have no manners.

First Aide. You must excuse him. Hugh’s a blighted being. He’s watching somebody dance with somebody else, and somebody’s wanting to dance with him.

Mrs. H. (Keenly, under her eyebrows.) You’re too young for that rubbish.

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Second Aide. It’s his imagination. He’s all right, but Government House duty is killing me. My heart’s in the plains with a dear little, fat little, lively little nine-foot tiger. I want to sit out over that kill instead of watching over His Excellency.

Mrs. H. Don’t they let the Aides out to play, then?

Second Aide. Not me. I’ve got to do most of Duggy’s work while he runs after —

Mrs. H. Never mind! A discontented Aide is a perpetual beast. One of you boys will take me to a chair, and then leave me. No, I don’t want the delights of your conversation.

Second Aide. (As first goes off.) When Mrs. Hauksbee is attired in holy simplicity it generally means — larks!

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. Scriffshaw.) . . . And so we all wanted to see more of you. I felt I was taking no liberty when I dashed into affairs of State at so short a notice. It was with the greatest difficulty I could find you. Indeed, I hardly believed my eyes when I saw you waltzing so divinely just now. (She will first protest, and next perjure herself.)

Mrs. S. (Weakly.) But I assure you —

HIS Excellency. My eyes are not so old that they cannot recognise a good dancer when they see one.

Mrs. S. (With a simper.) But only once in a way, Your Excellency.

HIS Excellency. (Of course.) That is too seldom — much too seldom. You should set our younger folk an example. These slow swirling waltzes are tiring. I prefer — as I see you do — swifter measures.

Major D. (Entering main door in strict charge of Scriffshaw, who fears the judgement.) Yes! she sent me to look for you, after giving me the dance of the evening. I’ll never forget it!

Scriffshaw. (His jaw dropping.) My — wife — danced — with — you! I mean — anybody!

Major D. Anybody! Aren’t I somebody enough? (Looking across room.) Faith! you’re right, though! There she is in a corner flirting with the Viceroy! I was not good enough for her. Well, it’s no use to interrupt ’em.

Scriffshaw. Certainly not! We’ll — we’ll get a drink and go back to the whist-rooms. (Alice must be mad! At any rate, I’m safe, I sup- pose.)

(HIS Excellency rises and fades away from Mrs. Scriffshaw’s side after a long and particular pressure of the hand. Mrs. S. throws herself back in her chair with the air of one surfeited with similar attentions, and the chaperons begin to talk.)

HIS Excellency. (Leaning over Mrs. H.’s chair with an absolutely expressionless countenance.) She is a truly estimable lady — one that I shall count it an honour to number among my friends. No! she will not move from her place, because I have expressed a hope that, a little later on in the dance, we may renew our very interesting conversation. And now, if I could only get my boys together, I think I would go home. Have you seen any Aide who looked as though a Viceroy belonged to him?

Mrs. H. The feet of the young men are at the door without. You leave early.

HIS Excellency. Have I not done enough?

Mrs. H. (Half rising from her chair.) Too much, alas! Too much! Look!

HIS Excellency. (Regarding Mrs. Scriffshaw, who has risen and is moving towards a side door.) How interesting! By every law known to me she should have waited in that chair — such a comfortable chair — for my too tardy return. But now she is loose! How has this happened?

Mrs. H. (Half to herself, shutting and opening fan.) She is looking for May! I know it! Oh! why wasn’t she isolated? One of those women has taken revenge on Mrs. Scriffshaw’s new glory — you — by telling her that May has been sitting out too much with Mr. Hawley.

HIS Excellency. Blame me! Always blame a Viceroy! (Mrs. H. moves away.) What are you meditating?

Mrs. H. Following — watching — administering — anything! I fly! I know where they are!

HIS Excellency. The plot thickens! May I come to administer?

Mrs. H. (Over her shoulder.) If you can!

(Mrs. H. flies down a darkened corridor speckled with occasional Chinese lanterns, and establishes herself behind a pillar as Mrs. S. sweeps by to the darkest end, where May and Hawley are sitting very close together. HIS Excellency follows Mrs. H.)

Mrs. S. (To both the invisibles.) Well!

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H. in a whisper.) Now, I should be afraid. I should run away.

Mrs. S. (In a high pitched voice of the matron.) May, go to the cloak-room at once, and wait till I come. I wonder you expect any one to speak to you after this! (May hurries down corridor very considerably agitated.)

HIS Excellency. (As May passes, slightly raising his voice, and with all the deference due to half a dozen Duchesses.) May an old man be permitted to offer you his arm, my dear? (To Mrs. H.) I entreat — I command you to delay the catastrophe till I return!

Mrs. H. (Plunging into the darkness, and halting before a dead wall.) Oh! I thought there was a way round! (Pretends to discover the two.) Mrs. Scriffshaw and Mr. Hawley! (With exaggerated emphasis.) Mrs. Scriffshaw — Oh ! Mrs. Scriffshaw! — how truly shocking! What will that dear, good husband of yours say? (Smothered chuckle from Hawley, who otherwise preserves silence. Snorts of indignation from Mrs. S.)

Mrs. H (Hidden by pillar of observation.) Now, in any other woman that would have been possibly weak — certainly vulgar. But I think it has answered the purpose.

HIS Excellency. (Returning, and taking up his post at her side.) Poor little girl! She was shaking all over. What an enormous amount of facile emotion exists in the young! What is about to —

Mrs. S. (In a rattling whisper to Hawley.) Take me to some quieter place.

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Hawley. On my word, you seem to be accustomed to very quiet places. I’m sorry I don’t know any more secluded nook; but if you have anything to say —

Mrs. S. Say, indeed! I wish you to understand that I consider your conduct abominable, sir!

Hawley. (In level, expressionless voice.) Yes? Explain yourself.

Mrs. S. In the first place, you meet my niece at an entertainment of which I utterly disapprove —

Hawley. To the extent of dancing with Major Decker, the most notorious loose fish in the whole room? Yes.

Mrs. S. (Hotly.) That was not my fault. It was entirely against my inclination.

Hawley. It takes two to make a waltz. Presumably, you are capable of expressing your wishes — are you not?

Mrs. S. I did. It was — only — and I couldn’t —

Hawley. (Relentlessly.) Well, it’s a most serious business. I’ve been talking it over with May.

Mrs. S. May!

Hawley. Yes, May; and she has assured me that you do not do — er — this sort of thing often. She assured me of that.

Mrs. S. But by what right —

Hawley. You see, May has promised to marry me, and one can’t be too careful about one’s connections.

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H.) That young man will go far! This is invention indeed.

Mrs. H. He seems to have marched some paces already. (Blessed be the chance that led me to the Major! I can always say that I meant

Mrs. S. May has promised . . . this is worse than ever! And I was not consulted!

Hawley. If 1 had known the precise hour, you know, I might possibly have chosen to take you into my confidence.

Mrs. S. May should have told me.

Hawley. You mustn’t worry May about it. Is that perfectly clear to you?

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H.) What a singularly flat, hopeless tone he has chosen to talk in — as if he were speaking to a coolie from a distance.

Mrs. H. Yes. It’s the one note that will rasp through her over-strained nerves.

HIS Excellency. You know him well?

Mrs. H. I trained him.

HIS Excellency. Then she collapses.

Mrs. H. If she does not, all my little faith in man is gone for ever.

Mrs. S. (To Hawley.) This is perfectly monstrous! It’s conduct utterly unworthy of a man, much less a gentleman. What do I know of you, or your connections, or your means?

Hawley. Nothing. How could you?

Mrs. S. How could I? … Because — because I insist on knowing?

Hawley. Then am I to understand that you are anxious to marry me? Suppose we talk to the Colonel about that ?

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H.) Very far, indeed, will that young man go.

Mrs. S. (Almost weeping with anger.) Will you let me pass ? I — I want to go away. I’ve no language at my command that could convey to you —

Hawley. Then surely it would be better to wait here till the inspira- tion comes?

Mrs. S. But this is insolence!

Hawley. You must remember that you drove May, who, by the way, is a woman, out of this place like a hen. That was insolence, Mrs.Scriffshaw — to her.

Mrs. S. To her ? She’s my husband’s sister’s child.

Hawley. And she is going to do me the honour of carrying my name. I am accountable to your husband’s sister in Calcutta. Sit down, please.

HIS Excellency. She will positively assault him in a minute. I can hear her preparing for a spring.

Mrs. H. He will be able to deal with that too, if it happens. (I trained him. Bear witness, heaven and earth, I trained him, that his tongue should guard his head with my sex.)

Mrs. S. (Feebly.) What shall I do? What can I do? (Through her teeth.) I hate you!

HIS Excellency. (Critically.) Weak. The end approaches.

Mrs. S. You’re not the sort of man I should have chosen for anybody’s husband.

Hawley. I can’t say your choice seems particularly select — Major Decker, for instance. And believe me, you are not required to choose husbands for anybody.

page 10

(Mrs. Scriffshaw looses all the double-thonged lightnings of her tongue, condemns Hawley as no gentleman, an imposter, possibly a bigamist, a defaulter, and every other unpleasant character she has ever read of; announces her unalterable intention of refusing to recognise the engagement, and of harrying May tooth and talon; and renews her request to be allowed to pass. No answer.)

HIS Excellency. What a merciful escape! She might have attacked me on the chairs in this fashion. What will he do now?

Mrs. H. I have faith — illimitable faith.

Mrs. S. (At the end of her resources.) Well, what have you to say?

Hawley. (In a placid and most insinuating drawl.) Aunt Alice — give — me — a — kiss.

HIS Excellency. Beautiful! Oh! thrice beautiful! And my Secretaries never told me there were men like this in the Empire.

Mrs. S. (Bewilderedly, beginning to sob.) Why — why should I?

Hawley. Because you will make — you really will — a delightful aunt-in-law, and it will save such a lot of trouble when May and I are married, and you have to accept me as a relation.

Mrs. S. (Weeping gently.) But — but you’re taking the management of affairs into your own hands.

Hawley. Quite so. They are my own affairs. And do you think that my aunt is competent to manage other people’s affairs when she doesn’t know whether she means to dance or sit out, and when she chooses the very worst —

Mrs. S. (Appealingly.) Oh, don’t — don’t! Please, don’t! (Bursts into tears.)

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H.) Unnecessarily brutal, surely? She’s crying.

Mrs. H. No! It’s nothing. We all cry — even the worst of us.

Hawley. Well?

Mrs. S. (Sniffling, with a rustle.) There!

Hawley. No, no, no! I said give it to me! (It is given.)

HIS Excellency. (Carried away.) And I? What am I doing here, pretending to govern India, while that man languishes in a lieutenant’s uniform?

Mrs. H. (Speaking very swiftly and distinctly.) It rests with Your Excellency to raise him to honour. He should go down the day after tomorrow. A month at Simla, now, would mean Paradise to him, and one of your Aides is dying for a little tiger-shooting.

HIS Excellency. But would such an Archangel of Insolence condescend to run errands for me?

Mrs. H. You can but try.

HIS Excellency. I shall be afraid of him; but we’ll see if we can get the Commander-in-Chief to lend him to me.

Hawley. (To Mrs. S.) There, there, there! It’s nothing to make a fuss about, is it? Come along, Aunt Alice, and I’ll tuck you into your ‘rickshaw, and you shall go home quite comfy, and the Colonel and I will bring May home later. I go down to my regiment the day after tomorrow, worse luck! So you won’t have me long to trouble you. But we quite understand each other, don’t we? (Emerges from the darkness, very tenderly escorting the very much shaken Mrs. Scriffshaw.)

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H. as the captive passes.) I feel as if I ought to salute that young man; but I must go to the ball-room. Send him to me as soon as you can. (Drifts in direction of music. Hawley returns to Mrs. H.)

Hawley. (Mopping his forehead.) Phew! I have had easier duties.

Mrs. H. How could you? How dared you? I builded better than I knew. It was cruel, but it was superb.

Hawley. Who taught me? Where’s May?

Mrs. H. In the cloak-room — being put to rights — I fervently trust.

Hawley. (Guiltily.) They wear their fringes so low on their foreheads that one can’t —

Mrs. H. (Laughing.) Oh, you goose! That wasn’t it. His Excellency wants to speak to you! (Hawley turns to ball-room as Mrs. H. flings herself down in a chair.)

Mrs. H. (Alone.) For two seasons, at intervals, I formed the infant mind. Heavens, how raw he was in the beginning! And never once throughout his schooling did he disappoint you, dear. Never once, by word or look or sign, did he have the unspeakable audacity to fall in love with you. No, he chose his maiden, then he stopped his confidences, and conducted his own wooing, and in open fight slew his aunt-in-law. But he never, being a wholesome, dear, delightful boy, fell in love with you, Mrs. Hauksbee; and I wonder whether you liked it or whether you didn’t. Which? … You certainly never gave him a chance . . . but that was the very reason why . . . (Half aloud.) Mrs. Hauksbee, you are an idiot!

(Enters main ball-room just in time to see HIS Excellency conferring with Hawley, Aides in background.)

HIS Excellency. Have you any very pressing employments in the plains, Mr. Hawley?

Hawley. Regimental duty. Native Cavalry, sir.

HIS Excellency. And, of course, you are anxious to return at once?

Hawley. Not in the least, sir.

HIS Excellency. Do you think you could relieve one of my boys here for a month?

Hawley. Most certainly, sir

Second Aide. (Behind Viceroy’s shoulders, shouting in dumb show.) My tiger! My tiger! My tigerling!

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HIS Excellency. (Lowering his voice and regarding Hawley be- tween his eyes.) But could we trust you — ahem! — not to insist on ordering kisses at inopportune moments from — people?

Hawley. (Dropping eyes.) Not when I’m on duty, sir.

HIS Excellency. (Turning.) Then I’ll speak to the Commander-in- Chief about it.

Mrs. H. (As she sees gratified expression of the Viceroy’s and Hawley’s lowered eyes.) I am sometimes sorry that I am a woman, but I’m very glad that I’m not a man, and — I shouldn’t care to be an angel. (Mrs. Scriffshaw and May pass — the latter properly laced, the former regarding the lacing.) So that’s settled at last.

(To Mrs. S.) Your husband, Mrs. Scriffshaw? Yes, I know. But don’t be too hard on him. Perhaps he never did it, after all.

Mrs. S. (With a grunt of infinite contempt.) Mrs. Hauksbee, that man has tried to lace me!

Mrs. H. (Then he’s bolder than I thought. She will avenge all her outrages on the Colonel.) May, come and talk to me a moment, dear.

First Aide. (To Hawley, as the Viceroy drifts away.) Knighted on the field of battle, by Jove! What the deuce have you been doing to His Excellency?

Second Aide. I’ll bet on it that Mrs. Hauksbee is at the bottom of this, somehow. I told her what I wanted, and —

Hawley. Never look a gift tiger in the mouth. It’s apt to bite. (Departs in search of May.)

HIS Excellency. (To Mrs. H. as he passes her sitting out with May.) No, I am not so afraid of your young friend. Have I done well?

Mrs. H.Exceedingly. (In a whisper, including May.) She is a pretty girl, isn’t she?

HIS Excellency. (Regarding mournfully, his chin on his breast.) O youth, youth, youth !Si la jeunesse savait — si la vieillesse pouvait.

Mrs. H.(Incautiously.) Yes, but in this case we have seen that youth did know quite as much as was good for it, and— (Stops.)

HIS Excellency. And age had power, and used it. Sufficient reward, perhaps; but I hardly expected the reminder from you.

Mrs. H. No. I won’t try to excuse it. Perhaps the slip is as well, for it reminds me that I am but mortal, and in watching you controlling the destinies of the universe I thought I was as the gods!

HIS Excellency. Thank you! I go to be taken away. But it has been an interesting evening.

Scriffshaw. (Very much disturbed after the Viceroy has passed on, to Mrs. H.) Now, what in the world was wrong with my lacing? My wife didn’t appear angry about my bringing May here. I’m informed she danced several dances herself. But she — she gave it me awfully in the supper-room for my — ahem! — lady’s-maid’s work. Fearfully she gave it me! What was wrong? It held, didn’t it?

May. (From her chair.) It was beautiful, Uncle John. It was the best thing in the world you could have done. Never mind. I forgive you. (To Hawley, behind her.) No, Charley. No more dances for just a little while. Ask Mrs. Hauksbee now.

(Alarums and Excursions. The ball-room is rent in twain as the Viceroy, Aides, etc., file out between Lines of Volunteers and Uniforms.)

BAND IN THE GALLERY—

God save our gracious Queen,
Heaven bless our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen!

Hawley. (Behind Mrs. H.’s chair.) Amen, your Imperial Majesty!

Mrs. H. (Looking up, head thrown back on left shoulder.) Thank you! Yes, you can have the next if you want it. Mrs. Hauksbee isn’t sitting out any more.