_By Rudyard Kipling (1865- )_
Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
till he tucks his shirt in. 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[2] 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, as he said—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 the same. He was a handsome young Oriental, with a
taste for 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, Budukhshan, Chitral,
Beloochistan, 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
forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the city of
Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow sword-cut 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
enameled 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 case by the
Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and collectively, with hot whisky
and honey, mulled brandy and mixed spirits of all kinds, had striven in
all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are
exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner,
that foreigner is certain to be a superior man. This was the argument
of the Black Tyrones, but they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated
regiment, and they allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to
choose their wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel
and a committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
respected but cannot be loved.
The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of an
obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels, because
the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of supply might
be found. The officer on whose head the champagne choosing lay was
forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous to sampling.
This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy—the green and
yellow and white liqueurs did not count—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 civilizing Asia should begin. That was
unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized 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[8] 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-yourself 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 organization of her Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were
a regiment to be admired. When Mrs. 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 who
were already married, she was not going to content herself with one of
them. 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 last
subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
viscount.
The only persons 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 Pathan. They had only
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 cob 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 of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and a few shillings each,
reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired
thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries;
they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and in the hot weather,
when all the doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of
their own smoke. The border people desired them first for their own
family vendettas[10] and then for 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 night-thief who managed to limp away
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.
Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
learned; 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 on the long table—the same table
that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in 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,
the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
successors from between the heads of sambhur[12], nilghai[13], maikhor,
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 on
ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass 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 fraternizing effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team,
who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own long, lathy
down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
speak of these things openly.
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 the colonel, 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
pay 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 land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his "brothers glorious,"
but he could not understand. No one but an officer can understand what
the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension.
It all comes to the same in the end, as the enemy said when he was
wriggling on a lance point. 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 alien, but he
came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue-and-silver
turban atop, and the big black top-boots below. The mess rose joyously
as he thrust forward the hilt of his saber, in token of fealty, for the
colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into 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 honor 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
apologize.") "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 shall 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 rang like a musket butt on
flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy—the terrible
brandy aforementioned—did not understand, nor did the expurgated[14]
translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly the
native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the clamor 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 defenseless left side.
It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the American
fashion—a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team wondering
how Cossack officers were armed at mess. 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 sounded 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 crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the main-road
sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir—"
The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
so destitute and demoralized 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 liqueur glass of brandy.
"_What_ does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
"Sez he 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 leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
"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 cries from his
diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
Now the adjutant loved his rifles. 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 made
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 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. Outside,
the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities crunched the
roadway.
"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, 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 the team into the veranda and the gardens. Hira
Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. 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[15] 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 has been
digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with
which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation, preface 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.
"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 each side and one on
the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum[16]. 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.