The sky is lead and our faces are red,
And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
HIMALAYAN.
Four men, each entitled to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,’ sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked--for
them--one hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it
was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very
white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed
calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke.
Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky,
sun, nor horizon,--nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as
though the earth were dying of apoplexy.
From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without
wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the
parched trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would
scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward,
though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of
piled railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of
mud, condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow
that belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the
Gaudhari State line then under construction.
The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist
crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best
kind of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram
of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from
his lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the
Civil Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as
far to escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished
native State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more
money from the pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and
despairing camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left
a cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight
hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the
assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends
thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to
appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he
might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very
many places in the East where it is not good or kind to let your
acquaintances drop out of sight even for one short week.
The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other.
They squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as
men without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood
the dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of
age,--which is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.
‘Pilsener?’ said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his
forehead.
‘Beer’s out, I’m sorry to say, and there’s hardly enough soda-water for
to-night,’ said Hummil.
‘What filthy bad management!’ Spurstow snarled.
‘Can’t help it. I’ve written and wired; but the trains don’t come
through regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,--as Lowndes knows.’
‘Glad I didn’t come. I could ha’ sent you some if I had known, though.
Phew! it’s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.’ This with a savage
scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.
Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.
‘What a sweet day!’ said he.
The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless
investigation of all Hummil’s possessions,--guns, tattered novels,
saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times
before, but there was really nothing else to do.
‘Got anything fresh?’ said Lowndes.
‘Last week’s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My
father sent it out. It’s rather amusing.’
‘One of those vestrymen that call ‘emselves M.P.’s again, is it?’ said
Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.
‘Yes. Listen to this. It’s to your address, Lowndes. The man was making
a speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here’s a sample:
“And I assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the
preserve--the pet preserve--of the aristocracy of England. What does the
democracy--what do the masses--get from that country, which we have step
by step fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is
farmed with a single eye to their own interests by the scions of the
aristocracy. They take good care to maintain their lavish scale of
incomes, to avoid or stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of
their administration, while they themselves force the unhappy peasant
to pay with the sweat of his brow for all the luxuries in which they are
lapped.”’ Hummil waved the cutting above his head. ‘’Ear! ‘ear!’ said
his audience.
Then Lowndes, meditatively: ‘I’d give--I’d give three months’ pay to
have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and
independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides’--this was his
flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince--‘has
been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest
performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!’
‘Good for you! Did you accept it?’ said Mottram.
‘No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and
she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king’s
women-folk. The darlings haven’t had any new clothes for nearly a month,
and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,--solid silver
railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I’ve tried to make
him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the
last twenty years and must go slow. He can’t see it.’
‘But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be
three millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,’ said
Hummil.
‘Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid
it except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a
quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.’
‘Where the mischief does it all come from?’ said Mottram.
‘The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I’ve
known the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then
hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can’t get the
court clerks to give me any accounts; I can’t raise anything more than
a fat smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are
three months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak
to him. He has taken to the King’s Peg heavily,--liqueur brandy for
whisky, and Heidsieck for soda-water.’
‘That’s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can’t last long at
that,’ said Spurstow. ‘He’ll go out.’
‘And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we’ll have a council of regency,
and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten
years’ accumulations.’
‘Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the
English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years’
work in eighteen months. I’ve seen that business before,’ said Spurstow.
‘I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes.
They’ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.’
‘That’s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light
hand; but you can’t clean a pig-stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I
know my risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant’s an old Pathan,
and he cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don’t
accept food from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it’s
weary work! I’d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There’s shooting near your
camp.’
‘Would you? I don’t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don’t incite a
man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I’ve
tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old
man through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave
him gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don’t
recommend it.’
‘How do the cases run generally?’ said Hummil.
‘Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse,
nitre, bricks to the feet, and then--the burning-ghat. The last seems to
be the only thing that stops the trouble. It’s black cholera, you know.
Poor devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works
like a demon. I’ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it
all alive.’
‘And what are your chances, old man?’ said Mottram.
‘Don’t know; don’t care much; but I’ve sent the letter in. What are you
doing with yourself generally?’
‘Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to
keep it cool,’ said the man of the survey. ‘Washing my eyes to
avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a
sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn’t
quite so small as it looks. I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and shall be
till the end of the hot weather.’
‘Hummil’s the lucky man,’ said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long
chair. ‘He has an actual roof--torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still
a roof--over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer and
soda-water and ice ‘em when God is good. He has books, pictures,---they
were torn from the Graphic,--‘and the society of the excellent
sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.’
Hummil smiled grimly. ‘Yes, I’m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is
luckier.’
‘How? Not----’
‘Yes. Went out. Last Monday.’
‘By his own hand?’ said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was
in everybody’s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil’s section. Even
fever gives a man at least a week’s grace, and sudden death generally
implied self-slaughter.
‘I judge no man this weather,’ said Hummil. ‘He had a touch of the sun,
I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market
Street, Liverpool, that evening.
‘I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie
down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he
had had a fit,--hoped he hadn’t said anything rude. Jevins had a great
idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his
language.’
‘Well?’
‘Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told
the servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally
he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the
head--accidentally. The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and
Jevins is buried somewhere out there. I’d have wired to you, Spurstow,
if you could have done anything.’
‘You’re a queer chap,’ said Mottram. ‘If you’d killed the man yourself
you couldn’t have been more quiet about the business.’
‘Good Lord! what does it matter?’ said Hummil calmly. ‘I’ve got to do
a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I’m the only person
that suffers. Jevins is out of it,--by pure accident, of course, but out
of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust
a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.’
‘Why didn’t you let it go in as suicide?’ said Lowndes.
‘No direct proof. A man hasn’t many privileges in this country, but he
might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day
I may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live.
Die and let die.’
‘You take a pill,’ said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil’s white
face narrowly. ‘Take a pill, and don’t be an ass. That sort of talk is
skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times
over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that
I’d stay on and watch.’
‘Ah! I’ve lost that curiosity,’ said Hummil.
‘Liver out of order?’ said Lowndes feelingly.
‘No. Can’t sleep. That’s worse.’
‘By Jove, it is!’ said Mottram. ‘I’m that way every now and then, and
the fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?’
‘Nothing. What’s the use? I haven’t had ten minutes’ sleep since Friday
morning.’
‘Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,’ said Mottram. ‘Now
you mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.’
Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. ‘I’ll patch him up,
later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?’
‘Where to?’ said Lowndes wearily. ‘We shall have to go away at eight,
and there’ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have
to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?’
‘Begin whist again, at chick points [‘a chick’ is supposed to be eight
shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,’ said Spurstow promptly.
‘Poker. A month’s pay all round for the pool,--no limit,--and
fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,’ said
Lowndes.
‘Can’t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this
company,’ said Mottram. ‘There isn’t enough excitement in it, and
it’s foolish.’ He crossed over to the worn and battered little
camp-piano,--wreckage of a married household that had once held the
bungalow,--and opened the case.
‘It’s used up long ago,’ said Hummil. ‘The servants have picked it to
pieces.’
The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to
bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from
the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a
popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident
interest as Mottram banged the more lustily.
‘That’s good!’ said Lowndes. ‘By Jove! the last time I heard that song
was in ‘79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.’
‘Ah!’ said Spurstow with pride,’ I was home in ‘80.’ And he mentioned a
song of the streets popular at that date.
Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticised and volunteered
emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
character, and made as if to rise.
‘Sit down,’ said Hummil. ‘I didn’t know that you had any music in your
composition. Go on playing until you can’t think of anything more. I’ll
have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.’
Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram’s art and the
limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with
pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or
heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness
of midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle
reached the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered
ceiling-cloth.
In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal
songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening
Hymn.
‘Sunday,’ said he, nodding his head.
‘Go on. Don’t apologise for it,’ said Spurstow.
Hummil laughed long and riotously. ‘Play it, by all means. You’re full
of surprises to-day. I didn’t know you had such a gift of finished
sarcasm. How does that thing go?’
Mottram took up the tune.
‘Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,’ said Hummil. ‘It
ought to go to the “Grasshopper’s Polka,”--this way.’ And he chanted,
prestissimo,--
‘Glory to thee, my God, this night. For all the blessings of the light.