Troop-Sergeant-Major--swung his horse round and yelled. No one can
account exactly for what happened afterwards; but it seems that, at
least, one man in each troop set an example of panic, and the rest
followed like sheep. The horses that had barely put their muzzles into
the trough's reared and capered; but, as soon as the Band broke, which
it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong distant, all
hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede--quite different
from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough
horse-play of watering in camp--made them only more terrified. They felt
that the men on their backs were afraid of something. When horses once
know THAT, all is over except the butchery.
Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere, and
everywhere--like spit quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary
spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the
carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men
were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which
was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and
seemed to be spurring for a wager.
The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. Most of the officers
were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go down
to the lines, and receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant
Majors. When “Take me to London again” stopped, after twenty bars, every
one in the Mess said:--“What on earth has happened?” A minute later,
they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White
Hussars scattered, and broken, and flying.
The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment
had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganized
mob, tore past, and at it's heels labored the Drum-Horse--the dead and
buried Drum-Horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton. Hogan-Yale
whispered softly to Martyn:--“No wire will stand that treatment,” and
the Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest
of the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the
dusk had shut in and each man was howling to his neighbor that the
Drum-Horse was on his flank. Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated
as a rule. They can, on emergencies, do a great deal, even with
seventeen stone on their backs. As the troopers found out.
How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon
rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes
and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of
themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by
old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess
verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go
forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's
foot. The Band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly.
The Colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name
that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the
bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and blood. Then he beat the
kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that they were but
made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, still swearing, he tried to
drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found that it had been wired
into the cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the
skeleton's pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse's stomach, was
striking. Not to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a minute or
two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the Band:--“Here, you
curs, that's what you're afraid of.” The skeleton did not look pretty in
the twilight. The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began to
chuckle and choke. “Shall I take it away, sir?” said the Band-Sergeant.
“Yes,” said the Colonel, “take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves!”
The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow,
and led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries
for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful. He
would disband the Regiment--he would court-martial every soul in it--he
would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the
men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the
utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a Colonel of Horse.
Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from
the service as a necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was the
weaker man of the two, Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked,
firstly, that he was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that he was
as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the
Drum-Horse.
“My instructions,” said Yale, with a singularly sweet smile, “were that
the Drum-Horse should be sent back as impressively as possible. I ask
you, AM I responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a
manner as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her Majesty's
Cavalry?”
Martyn said:--“you are a great man and will in time become a General;
but I'd give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this affair.”
Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale. The Second-in-Command led the
Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the subalterns of
the white Hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there,
after many oaths on the Colonel's part, they talked together in low
tones. I fancy that the Second-in-Command must have represented the
scare as the work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect;
and I know that he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of making a public
laughingstock of the scare.
“They will call us,” said the Second-in-Command, who had really a fine
imagination, “they will call us the 'Fly-by-Nights'; they will call us
the 'Ghost Hunters'; they will nickname us from one end of the Army list
to the other. All the explanations in the world won't make outsiders
understand that the officers were away when the panic began. For the
honor of the Regiment and for your own sake keep this thing quiet.”
The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down was not
so difficult as might be imagined. He was made to see, gently and by
degrees, that it was obviously impossible to court-martial the whole
Regiment, and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who,
in his belief, had any concern in the hoax.
“But the beast's alive! He's never been shot at all!” shouted the
Colonel. “It's flat, flagrant disobedience! I've known a man broke for
less, d----d sight less. They're mocking me, I tell you, Mutman! They're
mocking me!”
Once more, the Second-in-Command set himself to sooth the Colonel,
and wrestled with him for half-an-hour. At the end of that time, the
Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather
novel tell to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances.
He saluted and said: “Regiment all come back, Sir.” Then, to propitiate
the Colonel:--“An' none of the horses any the worse, Sir.”
The Colonel only snorted and answered:--“You'd better tuck the men into
their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in the night.”
The Sergeant withdrew.
His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, and, further, he
felt slightly ashamed of the language he had been using. The
Second-in-Command worried him again, and the two sat talking far into
the night.
Next day but one, there was a Commanding Officer's parade, and the
Colonel harangued the White Hussars vigorously. The pith of his speech
was that, since the Drum-Horse in his old age had proved himself capable
of cutting up the Whole Regiment, he should return to his post of pride
at the head of the band, BUT the Regiment were a set of ruffians with
bad consciences.
The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about them into
the air, and when the parade was over, they cheered the Colonel till
they couldn't speak. No cheers were put up for Lieutenant Hogan-Yale,
who smiled very sweetly in the background.
Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unofficially:--“These little
things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect discipline.”
“But I went back on my word,” said the Colonel.
“Never mind,” said the Second-in-Command. “The White Hussars will follow
you anywhere from to-day. Regiment's are just like women. They will do
anything for trinketry.”
A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary letter from some one
who signed himself “Secretary Charity and Zeal, 3709, E. C.,” and asked
for “the return of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in
your possession.”
“Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?” said Hogan-Yale.
“Beg your pardon, Sir,” said the Band-Sergeant, “but the skeleton is
with me, an' I'll return it if you'll pay the carriage into the Civil
Lines. There's a coffin with it, Sir.”
Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band-Sergeant,
saying:--“Write the date on the skull, will you?”
If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date on
the skeleton. But don't mention the matter to the White Hussars.
I happen to know something about it, because I prepared the Drum-Horse
for his resurrection. He did not take kindly to the skeleton at all.
THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE.
In the daytime, when she moved about me,
In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,--
I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence.
Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her--
Would to God that she or I had died!
Confessions.
There was a man called Bronckhorst--a three-cornered, middle-aged man
in the Army--gray as a badger, and, some people said, with a touch of
country-blood in him. That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst
was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her husband.
She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy eyelids, over weak eyes,
and hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell on it.
Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty
public and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is.
His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many things--including
actual assault with the clenched fist--that a wife will endure; but
seldom a wife can bear--as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore--with a long course of
brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her
small fits of gayety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make
herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not
what she has been, and--worst of all--the love that she spends on her
children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear
to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning
no harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of
endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their
feelings. A similar impulse make's a man say:--“Hutt, you old beast!”
when a favorite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the
reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the
tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say.
But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her “teddy,” as she called him.
Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhaps--this is only a theory
to account for his infamous behavior later on--he gave way to the queer
savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband twenty
years' married, when he sees, across the table, the same face of
his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so must he
continue to sit until day of its death or his own. Most men and all
women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule, must be
a “throw-back” to times when men and women were rather worse than they
are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.
Dinner at the Bronckhorst's was an infliction few men cared to undergo.
Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his wife wince.
When their little boy came in at dessert, Bronckhorst used to give him
half a glass of wine, and naturally enough, the poor little mite got
first riotous, next miserable, and was removed screaming. Bronckhorst
asked if that was the way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs.
Bronckhorst could not spare some of her time to teach the “little beggar
decency.” Mrs. Bronckhorst, who loved the boy more than her own life,
tried not to cry--her spirit seemed to have been broken by her marriage.
Lastly, Bronckhorst used to say:--“There! That'll do, that'll do.
For God's sake try to behave like a rational woman. Go into the
drawing-room.” Mrs. Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all
off with a smile; and the guest of the evening would feel angry and
uncomfortable.
After three years of this cheerful life--for Mrs. Bronckhorst had no
woman-friends to talk to--the Station was startled by the news that
Bronckhorst had instituted proceedings ON THE CRIMINAL COUNT, against
a man called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive to Mrs.
Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in public. The utter want of
reserve with which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonor helped us to
know that the evidence against Biel would be entirely circumstantial and
native. There were no letters; but Bronckhorst said openly that he would
rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel superintending the manufacture
of carpets in the Central Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her
house, and let charitable folks say what they pleased. Opinions were
divided. Some two-thirds of the Station jumped at once to the conclusion
that Biel was guilty; but a dozen men who knew and liked him held by
him. Biel was furious and surprised. He denied the whole thing, and
vowed that he would thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life.
No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native
evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the
corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees; but Biel did not care to
scrape through by the benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing
cleared: but as he said one night:--“He can prove anything with
servants' evidence, and I've only my bare word.” This was about a month
before the case came on; and beyond agreeing with Biel, we could do
little. All that we could be sure of was that the native evidence would
be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest of his service; for
when a native begins perjury he perjures himself thoroughly. He does not
boggle over details.
Some genius at the end of the table whereat the affair was being talked
over, said:--“Look here! I don't believe lawyers are any good. Get a man
to wire to Strickland, and beg him to come down and pull us through.”
Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line. He had
not long been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a
chance of return to the old detective work that his soul lusted after,
and next night he came in and heard our story. He finished his pipe and
said oracularly:--“we must get at the evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussalman
khit and methraniayah, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I am on
in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty in my talk.”
He rose and went into Biel's bedroom where his trunk had been put, and
shut the door. An hour later, we heard him say:--“I hadn't the heart
to part with my old makeups when I married. Will this do?” There was a
lothely faquir salaaming in the doorway.
“Now lend me fifty rupees,” said Strickland, “and give me your Words of
Honor that you won't tell my Wife.”
He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank
his health. What he did only he himself knows. A faquir hung about
Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a mehter appeared, and when
Biel heard of HIM, he said that Strickland was an angel full-fledged.
Whether the mehter made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a
question which concerns Strickland exclusively.
He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly:--“You spoke
the truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end.
Jove! It almost astonishes ME! That Bronckhorst-beast isn't fit to
live.”
There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said:--“How are you going to
prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing on Bronckhorst's
compound in disguise!”
“No,” said Strickland. “Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to get up
something strong about 'inherent improbabilities' and 'discrepancies of
evidence.' He won't have to speak, but it will make him happy. I'M going
to run this business.”
Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would happen.
They trusted Strickland as men trust quiet men. When the case came off
the Court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the verandah of the
Court, till he met the Mohammedan khitmatgar. Then he murmured a
faquir's blessing in his ear, and asked him how his second wife did. The
man spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of “Estreeken Sahib,”
his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was married,
he was, as I have told you already, a power among natives. Strickland
whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect that he was
abreast of all that was going on, and went into the Court armed with a
gut trainer's-whip.
The Mohammedan was the first witness and Strickland beamed upon him from
the back of the Court. The man moistened his lips with his tongue and,
in his abject fear of “Estreeken Sahib” the faquir, went back on every
detail of his evidence--said he was a poor man and God was his witness
that he had forgotten every thing that Bronckhorst Sahib had told him
to say. Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and Bronckhorst he
collapsed, weeping.
Then began the panic among the witnesses. Janki, the ayah, leering
chastely behind her veil, turned gray, and the bearer left the Court. He
said that his Mamma was dying and that it was not wholesome for any man
to lie unthriftily in the presence of “Estreeken Sahib.”
Biel said politely to Bronckhorst:--“Your witnesses don't seem to work.
Haven't you any forged letters to produce?” But Bronckhorst was swaying
to and fro in his chair, and there was a dead pause after Biel had been
called to order.
Bronckhorst's Counsel saw the look on his client's face, and without
more ado, pitched his papers on the little green baize table, and
mumbled something about having been misinformed. The whole Court
applauded wildly, like soldiers at a theatre, and the Judge began to say
what he thought.
. . . . . . . . .
Biel came out of the place, and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's-whip
in the verandah. Ten minutes later, Biel was cutting Bronckhorst into
ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly and without scandal. What
was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a carriage; and his wife wept
over it and nursed it into a man again.
Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up the counter-charge against
Bronckhorst of fabricating false evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst, with her
faint watery smile, said that there had been a mistake, but it wasn't
her Teddy's fault altogether. She would wait till her Teddy came back to
her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her, or she had tried his patience,
and perhaps we wouldn't cut her any more, and perhaps the mothers would
let their children play with “little Teddy” again. He was so lonely.
Then the Station invited Mrs. Bronckhorst everywhere, until Bronckhorst
was fit to appear in public, when he went Home and took his wife with
him. According to the latest advices, her Teddy did “come back to her,”
and they are moderately happy. Though, of course, he can never forgive
her the thrashing that she was the indirect means of getting for him.
. . . . . . . . .
What Biel wants to know is:--“Why didn't I press home the charge against
the Bronckhorst-brute, and have him run in?”
What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is:--“How DID my husband bring such
a lovely, lovely Waler from your Station? I know ALL his money-affairs;
and I'm CERTAIN he didn't BUY it.”
What I want to know is:--“How do women like Mrs. Bronckhorst come to
marry men like Bronckhorst?”
And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the three.
VENUS ANNODOMINI.
And the years went on as the years must do;
But our great Diana was always new--
Fresh, and blooming, and blonde, and fair,
With azure eyes and with aureate hair;
And all the folk, as they came or went,
Offered her praise to her heart's content.
Diana of Ephesus.
She had nothing to do with Number Eighteen in the Braccio Nuovo of
the Vatican, between Visconti's Ceres and the God of the Nile. She was
purely an Indian deity--an Anglo-Indian deity, that is to say--and
we called her THE Venus Annodomini, to distinguish her from other
Annodominis of the same everlasting order. There was a legend among the
Hills that she had once been young; but no living man was prepared to
come forward and say boldly that the legend was true. Men rode up to
Simla, and stayed, and went away and made their name and did their
life's work, and returned again to find the Venus Annodomini exactly as
they had left her. She was as immutable as the Hills. But not quite
so green. All that a girl of eighteen could do in the way of riding,
walking, dancing, picnicking and over-exertion generally, the Venus
Annodomini did, and showed no sign of fatigue or trace of weariness.
Besides perpetual youth, she had discovered, men said, the secret of
perpetual health; and her fame spread about the land. From a mere woman,
she grew to be an Institution, insomuch that no young man could be said
to be properly formed, who had not, at some time or another, worshipped
at the shrine of the Venus Annodomini. There was no one like her, though
there were many imitations. Six years in her eyes were no more than six
months to ordinary women; and ten made less visible impression on her
than does a week's fever on an ordinary woman. Every one adored her, and
in return she was pleasant and courteous to nearly every one. Youth had
been a habit of hers for so long, that she could not part with it--never
realized, in fact, the necessity of parting with it--and took for her
more chosen associates young people.
Among the worshippers of the Venus Annodomini was young Gayerson.
“Very Young” Gayerson, he was called to distinguish him from his father
“Young” Gayerson, a Bengal Civilian, who affected the customs--as he had
the heart--of youth. “Very Young” Gayerson was not content to worship
placidly and for form's sake, as the other young men did, or to accept
a ride or a dance, or a talk from the Venus Annodomini in a properly
humble and thankful spirit. He was exacting, and, therefore, the Venus
Annodomini repressed him. He worried himself nearly sick in a futile
sort of way over her; and his devotion and earnestness made him appear
either shy or boisterous or rude, as his mood might vary, by the side of
the older men who, with him, bowed before the Venus Annodomini. She was
sorry for him. He reminded her of a lad who, three-and-twenty years ago,
had professed a boundless devotion for her, and for whom in return she
had felt something more than a week's weakness. But that lad had fallen
away and married another woman less than a year after he had worshipped
her; and the Venus Annodomini had almost--not quite--forgotten his name.
“Very Young” Gayerson had the same big blue eyes and the same way of
pouting his underlip when he was excited or troubled. But the Venus
Annodomini checked him sternly none the less. Too much zeal was a thing
that she did not approve of; preferring instead, a tempered and sober
tenderness.