Colonel's ashy-white face before him, 'and they behaved as well as
could possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, indeed. I was
watching them. It's not a matter to take to heart, Colonel. As some
German General said of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a
little, that was all.' To himself he said--'Now they're blooded I can
give 'em responsible work. It's as well that they got what they did.
'Teach 'em more than half-a-dozen rifle flirtations, that
will--later--run alone and bite. Poor old Colonel, though.'
All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills,
striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. And in
the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided
Correspondent, who had gone out to assist at a trumpery
village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar, cursing
his luck the while.
'Let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please. It's
the first time I've ever been left this campaign,' said the
Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loath, told
him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and
all but annihilated, by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of
the Brigadier.
But some say, and among these be the Gurkhas who watched on the
hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little
bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the
big ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MAN WHO WAS
The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.
Keep tally--on the gun-butt score
The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
For our dead comrade's sake.
_Ballad._
Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western
peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a
racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians--who appeared to
get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment,
and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never
twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering
through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from
nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether
it was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or
anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable
mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown
everything that was to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and
worse French, from one city to another, till he foregathered with Her
Majesty's White Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the
mouth of that narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber
Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the
manner of the Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could
talk, and (though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been
given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who
individually and collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled
brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all
hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are
exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a
foreigner--that foreigner is certain to be a superior man.
The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
enjoyed himself hugely--even more than among the Black Tyrones.
But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
Hussars were 'My dear true friends,' 'Fellow-soldiers glorious,' and
'Brothers inseparable.' He would unburden himself by the hour on the
glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
when their hearts and their territories should run side by side and
the great mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was
unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilised after the
methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. You
cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school or
learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
information about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look
after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough
work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-your-self
fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be
admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
all, including the Colonel and some majors already married, she was
not going to content herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a
little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and
the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but
compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the
aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior
subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.
The only person who did not share the general regard for the White
Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
across the border, and answered to the name of Paythan. They had once
met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty
minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be
perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment
possessed carbines--beautiful Martini-Henri carbines that would lop a
bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
silver--seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds
sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by
snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of
the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and
in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were open,
they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired
them for family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold
nights of the northern Indian winter they were stolen most
extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at
that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first
doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a
weapon--Government must make it good--but he deeply resents the loss
of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one rifle-thief bears
the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That incident
stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced
accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected
results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps
the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for
a short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played like a
lambent flame across the ground.
They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer,
which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men
than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is
the peculiar right of the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular
Horse. Like everything else in the Service it has to be learnt, but,
unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body
till death.
The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table--the same
table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten
fight long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door
of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver
candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked
down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai,
markhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that
had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in
England, instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his
life by ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.
The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were
clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and
silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was
the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it.
He was fraternising effusively with the Captain of the Lushkar team,
who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own dark wiry
down-country-men could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
speak of these things openly.
[Illustration: '_Rung ho_, Hira Singh!'--P. 85.]
The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played
between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues
ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first
toast of obligation, when an officer rising said, 'Mr. Vice, the
Queen,' and little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, 'The
Queen, God bless her,' and the big spurs clanked as the big men
heaved themselves up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were
falsely supposed to settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the
Mess never grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat
of the listener wherever he be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with
his 'brothers glorious,' but he could not understand. No one but an
officer can tell what the toast means; and the bulk have more
sentiment than comprehension. Immediately after the little silence
that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had
played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the
mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue
and silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. The mess rose
joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty
for the Colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped in a vacant
chair amid shouts of: '_Rung ho_, Hira Singh' (which being translated
means 'Go in and win'). 'Did I whack you over the knee, old man?'
'Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a
pony in the last ten minutes?' '_Shabash_, Ressaidar Sahib!' Then the
voice of the Colonel, 'The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!'
After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what
was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--'Colonel
Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me.
This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were
beaten' ('No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground
y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't apologise!')
'Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.' ('Hear!
Hear! Hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!') 'Then we will play you afresh'
('Happy to meet you.') 'till there are left no feet upon our ponies.
Thus far for sport.' He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye
wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. 'But if by the will
of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be
assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by
side, though _they_,' again his eye sought Dirkovitch, 'though _they_
I say have fifty ponies to our one horse.' And with a deep-mouthed
_Rung ho!_ that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down
amid leaping glasses.
Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy,--the
terrible brandy aforementioned,--did not understand, nor did the
expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point.
Decidedly Hira Singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamour
might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise
of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left
side. Then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
'Carbine-stealing again!' said the Adjutant, calmly sinking back in
his chair. 'This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries
have killed him.'
The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it was as
though something was being dragged.
'Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?' said the
Colonel testily. 'See if they've damaged him, Sergeant.'
The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
troopers and a Corporal, all very much perplexed.
'Caught a man stealin' carbines, Sir,' said the Corporal. 'Leastways
'e was crawlin' towards the barricks, Sir, past the main road
sentries, an' the sentry 'e sez, Sir----'
The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
so destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
another glass of brandy.
'_What_ does the sentry say?' said the Colonel.
'Sez 'e speaks English, Sir,' said the Corporal.
'So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you've no
business----'
Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
'Perhaps it would be better, Sir, to send the men away,' said he to
the Colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms
round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair.
It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in
his being six feet four and big in proportion. The Corporal, seeing
that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the
Colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his
men. The mess was left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head
on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
little children weep.
Hira Singh leapt to his feet. 'Colonel Sahib,' said he, 'that man is
no Afghan, for they weep _Ai! Ai!_ Nor is he of Hindustan, for they
weep _Oh! Ho!_ He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say
_Ow! Ow!_'
'Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?' said
the Captain of the Lushkar team.
'Hear him!' said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
that wept as though it would never cease.
'He said, "My God!"' said little Mildred. 'I heard him say it.'
The Colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
'Poor devil!' said the Colonel, coughing tremendously. 'We ought to
send him to hospital. He's been man-handled.'
Now the Adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
rebelliously: 'I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's built
that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse.'
The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
in the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown
when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
White Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
'Is he going to cry all night?' said the Colonel, 'or are we supposed
to sit up with little Mildred's guest until he feels better?'
The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. 'Oh, my
God!' he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
Lushkar Captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry in a fight against
overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the
hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only
by the Colonel's chair to say, 'This isn't _our_ affair, you know,
Sir,' led them into the veranda and the gardens. Hira Singh was the
last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed
into a brandy-paradise of his own. His lips moved without sound and he
was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
'White--white all over,' said Basset-Holmer, the Adjutant. 'What a
pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?'
The Colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and 'Who are you?' said
he.
There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in
the Colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
than a man till 'Boot and saddle' was sounded, repeated the question
in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man
only smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from
his chair to the floor. No son of Adam in this present imperfect world
can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and
eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged
and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the
White Hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all
their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that
tune; it is a part of their system. The man straightened himself in
his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.
[Illustration: He found the spring.--P. 91.]
'I don't see why we should entertain lunatics,' said the Colonel.
'Call a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the
business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.'
Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it
over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he
straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands
to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a
mystery connected with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring
which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs
on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke
candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He
rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on
to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came
to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of
plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He
pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.
'What is it--oh what is it?' said little Mildred. Then as a mother
might speak to a child, 'That is a horse. Yes, a horse.'
Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural--'Yes,
I--have seen. But--where is _the_ horse?'
You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
question of calling the guard.
Again he spoke--very slowly, 'Where is _our_ horse?'
There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse, the
king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for
seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the
mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man's
hands. He placed it above the mantelpiece, it clattered on the ledge
as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of
the table, falling into Mildred's chair. Then all the men spoke to one
another something after this fashion, 'The drum-horse hasn't hung over
the mantelpiece since '67.' 'How does he know?' 'Mildred, go and speak
to him again.' 'Colonel, what are you going to do?' 'Oh, dry up, and
give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.' 'It isn't
possible anyhow. The man's a lunatic.'
Little Mildred stood at the Colonel's side talking in his ear. 'Will
you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen!' he said,
and the mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to
little Mildred's, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira
Singh's place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in dead
silence. Once more the Colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port
spilled on the table as he looked straight at the man in little
Mildred's chair and said hoarsely, 'Mr. Vice, the Queen.' There was a
little pause, but the man sprung to his feet and answered without
hesitation, 'The Queen, God bless her!' and as he emptied the thin
glass he snapped the shank between his fingers.
Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and
there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few
messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the vast
delight of the mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there
is nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
Government, and that has been broken already.
'That settles it,' said the Colonel, with a gasp. 'He's not a
sergeant. What in the world is he?'
The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would
have scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
could only smile and shake his head.
From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of
the man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible
sight coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had
brought the strayed wits together.
Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him
up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to
the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
dilated. Also his face changed. He said something that sounded like
_Shto ve takete_, and the man fawning answered, _Chetyre_.
[Illustration: It is not good that a gentleman who can answer
to the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of
Cossacks.--P. 94.]
'What's that?' said everybody together.
'His number. That is number four, you know,' Dirkovitch spoke very
thickly.
'What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?' said the
Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
'How can I tell?' said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. 'He is
a--how you have it?--escape--run-a-way, from over there.' He nodded
towards the darkness of the night.