name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on
the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior
Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things
were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small
world of ours, one knows so little of the life of the next man--which,
after all, is entirely his own concern--that one is not surprised when
a crash comes. Anything might turn up any day for any one. Perhaps the
Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that
way occasionally. We didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains'
wives were as anxious as we. If he HAD been trapped, he was to be
excused; for the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes, and gray
travelling dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full
of tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a running
sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as the Senior Subaltern stood up, she
threw her arms round his neck, and called him “my darling,” and said she
could not bear waiting alone in England, and his letters were so short
and cold, and she was his to the end of the world, and would he forgive
her. This did not sound quite like a lady's way of speaking. It was too
demonstrative.
Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the
Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--“Well, Sir?” and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his
neck, but he gasped out:--“It's a d----d lie! I never had a wife in my
life!” “Don't swear,” said the Colonel. “Come into the Mess. We must
sift this clear somehow,” and he sighed to himself, for he believed in
his “Shikarris,” did the Colonel.
We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we
saw how beautiful the woman was. She stood up in the middle of us all,
sometimes choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then holding
out her arms to the Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a
tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern had married her when he
was Home on leave eighteen months before; and she seemed to know all
that we knew, and more too, of his people and his past life. He was
white and ashy gray, trying now and again to break into the torrent
of her words; and we, noting how lovely she was and what a criminal he
looked, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind. We felt sorry for him,
though.
I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.
Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced,
into our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back; but their eyes were
alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced
the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel seemed five years older. One Major was
shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath
it. Another was chewing his moustache and smiling quietly as if he
were witnessing a play. Full in the open space in the centre, by the
whist-tables, the Senior Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I
remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.
I remember the look of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was
rather like seeing a man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the
woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.
M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors
said very politely:--“I presume that your marriage certificate would be
more to the purpose?”
That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern
for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all the rest.
Then she wept, and then she pulled a paper from her breast, saying
imperially:--“Take that! And let my husband--my lawfully wedded
husband--read it aloud--if he dare!”
There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took the
paper. We were wondering as we stared, whether there was anything
against any one of us that might turn up later on. The Senior
Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he
broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the woman:--“You
young blackguard!”
But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
written:--“This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern
is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess
attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in the lawful
currency of the India Empire.”
Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt
and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc.,
on the bed. He came over as he was, and the “Shikarris” shouted till the
Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun. I
think we were all, except the Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little
disappointed that the scandal had come to nothing. But that is human
nature. There could be no two words about The Worm's acting. It leaned
as near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can. When
most of the Subalterns sat upon him with sofa-cushions to find out
why he had not said that acting was his strong point, he answered very
quietly:--“I don't think you ever asked me. I used to act at Home with
my sisters.” But no acting with girls could account for The Worm's
display that night. Personally, I think it was in bad taste. Besides
being dangerous. There is no sort of use in playing with fire, even for
fun.
The “Shikarris” made him President of the Regimental Dramatic Club; and,
when the Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did at once, The
Worm sank the money in scenery and dresses. He was a good Worm; and
the “Shikarris” are proud of him. The only drawback is that he has been
christened “Mrs. Senior Subaltern;” and as there are now two Mrs. Senior
Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing to strangers.
Later on, I will tell you of a case something like, this, but with all
the jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble.
THE BROKEN LINK HANDICAPPED.
While the snaffle holds, or the “long-neck” stings,
While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
While horses are horses to train and to race,
Then women and wine take a second place
For me--for me--
While a short “ten-three”
Has a field to squander or fence to face!
Song of the G. R.
There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than pulling
his head off in the straight. Some men forget this. Understand clearly
that all racing is rotten--as everything connected with losing money
must be. Out here, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the
merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty on paper only. Every one
knows every one else far too well for business purposes. How on earth
can you rack and harry and post a man for his losings, when you are fond
of his wife, and live in the same Station with him? He says, “on the
Monday following, I can't settle just yet.” You say, “All right, old
man,” and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing is
immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a man wants
your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a subscription-list,
instead of juggling about the country, with an Australian larrikin;
a “brumby,” with as much breed as the boy; a brace of chumars in
gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with hogged manes, and a
switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab because she has a kink in
her flag. Racing leads to the shroff quicker than anything else. But
if you have no conscience and no sentiments, and good hands, and some
knowledge of pace, and ten years' experience of horses, and several
thousand rupees a month, I believe that you can occasionally contrive to
pay your shoeing-bills.
Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g., 15.13.8--coarse, loose, mule-like
ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the
queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand,
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a
head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a “brumby;” but if
ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand
this, and lost money in consequence. At last he was bought by a man who
discovered that, if a race was to be won, Shackles, and Shackles only,
would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still. This man
had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West Australia--and
he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing a jock can
learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting still. When
Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the country. No
weight could stop him at his own distance; and the fame of Shackles
spread from Ajmir in the South, to Chedputter in the North. There was no
horse like Shackles, so long as he was allowed to do his work in his own
way. But he was beaten in the end; and the story of his fall is enough
to make angels weep.
At the lower end of the Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into
the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds
enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six
feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding peculiarity of
the course is that, if you stand at one particular place, about half a
mile away, inside the course, and speak at an ordinary pitch, your voice
just hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining
echo there. A man discovered this one morning by accident while out
training with a friend. He marked the place to stand and speak from
with a couple of bricks, and he kept his knowledge to himself. EVERY
peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats
play the mischief with the elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps
to suit their own stables. This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a
long, racking high mare with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of
an airy wandering seraph--a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a
delicate tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called “The Lady Regula Baddun”--or for
short, Regula Baddun.
Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his nerves
had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne,
where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who
came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the
Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts--logs of jarrak
spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once
in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the
Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red
Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck
came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling,
screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three
were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story
of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley
on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--“God ha' mercy, I'm done
for!” and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had crushed
the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell of men and
horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-races and Australia
together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that story by heart. Brunt never
varied it in the telling. He had no education.
Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--“Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and humble
the pride of his owner.” The Districts rose against Shackles and sent
up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do his mile in
1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew how
to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th; Bobolink, the pride of
Peshawar; and many others.
They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to smash
Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund gave
eight hundred rupees, and the distance was “round the course for all
horses.” Shackles' owner said:--“You can arrange the race with regard
to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths,
I don't mind.” Regula Baddun's owner said:--“I throw in my mare to fret
Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance, and she will then lie down
and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting
race.” Now, this was a lie, for Regula had been in work for two months
at Dehra, and her chances were good, always supposing that Shackles
broke a blood-vessel--OR BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.
The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand-rupee
lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in the Pioneer
said that “favoritism was divided.” In plain English, the various
contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the Handicappers
had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary shouted himself hoarse
through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and
the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire.
Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner cantered out
on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks
had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds at the lower end of
the course and waited.
The story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first
mile, Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get
round the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the
others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy,
listening to the “drum, drum, drum” of the hoofs behind, and knowing
that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would draw one deep breath and
go up the last half-mile like the “Flying Dutchman.” As Shackles went
short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, Brunt heard,
above the noise of the wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the
offside, saying:--“God ha' mercy, I'm done for!” In one stride, Brunt
saw the whole seething smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him,
started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror. The start brought the
heels into Shackles' side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He
couldn't stop dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty
yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a
shaking, terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
race with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard
a bad third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the two
bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the stand. He
had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all the
men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner. He went
down to interview Brunt. The boy lay, livid and gasping with fright,
where he had tumbled off. The sin of losing the race never seemed to
strike him. All he knew was that Whalley had “called” him, that the
“call” was a warning; and, were he cut in two for it, he would never get
up again. His nerve had gone altogether, and he only asked his master
to give him a good thrashing, and let him go. He was fit for nothing, he
said. He got his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock, white as chalk,
with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. People said nasty things
in the paddock; but Brunt never heeded. He changed into tweeds, took his
stick and went down the road, still shaking with fright, and muttering
over and over again:--“God ha' mercy, I'm done for!” To the best of my
knowledge and belief he spoke the truth.
So now you know how the Broken-Link Handicap was run and won. Of course
you don't believe it. You would credit anything about Russia's designs
on India, or the recommendations of the Currency Commission; but a
little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand!
BEYOND THE PALE.
“Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of
love and lost myself.”
Hindu Proverb.
A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.
Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, whatever
trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--neither sudden,
alien, nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits
of decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.
He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the
second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never
do so again.
Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee, lies
Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated
window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on
either side of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor
Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. If
Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man
to-day, and little Biessa would have been able to knead her own bread.
Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully
where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue
slime. She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the
Gods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve of
living alone.
One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over
a big heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and
Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that
verse of “The Love Song of Har Dyal” which begins:
Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
to the North.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
Call to the bowman to make ready--
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
wondering who in the world could have capped “The Love Song of Har Dyal”
so neatly.
Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw a
packet into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken
glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
them out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower
of the dhak means diversely “desire,” “come,” “write,” or “danger,”
according to the other things with it. One cardamom means “jealousy;”
but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its
symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time,
or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ran
then:--“A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven o'clock.” The pinch of
bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves much
to instinctive knowledge--that the bhusa referred to the big heap of
cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the
message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
So the message ran then:--“A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of
bhusa, desires you to come at eleven o'clock.”
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knew
that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the
forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went,
that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a boorka,
which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in the City
made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up “The Love
Song of Har Dyal” at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har
Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English
you miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:--
Alone upon the housetops, to the North
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
Below my feet the still bazar is laid
Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
The camels and the captives of thy raid,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered:--“I am here.”
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double
life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a
dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had
detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the
window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an
active man might climb.
In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or
put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station;
wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little
Bisesa. At night, when all the City was still, came the walk under the
evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quick
turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead
walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of
the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that
Durga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter. Who or what Durga Charan
was, Trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was not discovered
and knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, and
Bisesa... But this comes later.
Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird;
and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had
reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping
attempts to pronounce his name--“Christopher.” The first syllable was
always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures
with her rose-leaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then,
kneeling before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do,
if he were sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more than
any one else in the world. Which was true.
After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled
Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You
may take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed
and discussed by a man's own race, but by some hundred and fifty natives
as well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the
Band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instant
dreaming that this would affect his dearer out-of-the-way life. But the
news flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till
Bisesa's duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubled
that she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's
wife in consequence.
A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She understood
no gradations and spoke openly. Trejago laughed and Bisesa stamped her
little feet--little feet, light as marigold flowers, that could lie in
the palm of a man's one hand.