ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
“Here--hi!”
As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young
man subsided into occupied silence.
He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost
flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him,
was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the
Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its
characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive.
It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy
suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a
northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of
a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the
pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation
top-boots and khaki breeches.
Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one
else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for
he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses'
feet, nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence
of some person or persons unknown.
He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty
weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another
instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets,
pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide
capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird
cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a
camp-bed or possibly a canoe.
The writing materials consisted of a vaseline bottle (fourpenny size)
full of ink, and two weary pieces of blotting-paper. The paper upon which
he was writing had a travelled and somewhat jaundiced air, the penholder
was of gold. In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof,
there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a
virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man,
Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an
ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar
was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason
to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has
up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch
the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must
throw off his works. This is an age of “throwing off,” and it is to be
presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be
brilliant, shallow, slightly unpleasant and very unwholesome, to acquire
nowadays that best of all literary reputations which leaveth a balance at
one's bank.
J.E.M. Agar--or “Jem” as his friends call him to his face and his
servants behind his back--Jem Sahib to wit--was no Pepys. His literary
style was disjointed, heavy, and occasionally illiterate. This last
peculiarity, by the way, is of no consequence nowadays, but it is
mentioned here for ulterior motives. In the pages of this little
black-bound volume there were no scintillating thoughts scribbled there
with suspicious neatness of diction, such as one finds in the diaries of
great men who, it would seem, are not above post-mortem vanity. The diary
was a chronicle of solid facts--Jem being essentially solid and a man of
the very plainest facts.
Speaking as an impartial critic, one would incline to the opinion that
Agar devoted too much thought to his work--in strong contrast, perhaps,
to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his
penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in
inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the
style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for assistance,
the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book
was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which are in themselves
fatal to a finished style of literature. There is always too much to say
or too little. One's thoughts never fit the rhomboid apportioned by Mr.
Letts for their accommodation. Great men who have thoughts when the diary
is handy do not, of course, patronise Letts, because he could not be
expected to know when there would be a sunset likely to stir up poetic
reflections, or a moonrise comparable with the cold light cast by some
unsympathetic young woman's eyes upon the poet's life.
For such men, however, as Agar, Mr. Letts is a guardian angel. The space
is there, and facts must be forthcoming to fill it. Agar was, and is
still--thank Heaven--a conscientious man. He had promised to keep this
diary and keep it he did. And surely he hath his reward--remembering the
jewel drawer.
At the moment under consideration he was filling in yesterday's rhomboid,
and paused at the conclusion of the following remarks:
“_Seven_ A.M. Turned out, and shot a Ghilzai. Saw him sneaking up the
valley. Long shot--should put it down at a hundred and seventy-five
yards. Hit him in the stom--abd--chest. Looked like rain until two
o'clock. Then cleared up. Walter caught a mongoose and brought him in
with much triumph. He got conceited afterwards and slept on my bed till
kicked off by Ben Abdi. I see it's Sunday. Church four hundred odd miles
away.”
This, my masters, is not the stuff to quote _in extenso_, and yet in its
day this diary was cried over--before it was put away in the jewel
drawer. Truly women are strange--one can never tell how a thing will
present itself to them. Honest Jem Agar, nibbling his penholder and
jerking these lucid observations out of his military brain by mere force
of discipline, never suspected the heart that was in it all--that minute
particle of himself that lay in the blot in the corner carefully absorbed
by the exhausted blotting-paper.
“Sunday, egad!” he muttered, leaning his arms on the cunning table, and
gazing out across the pine-clad valley that lay below him in a deep blue
haze.
He stared into the haze, and there he saw those whom he called “his
people” walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little
English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person
clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread,
as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into
the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared
behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long low house.
Suddenly these visions vanished before something more tangible in the
haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which
seemed to come and go among the fir trees.
Jem Agar rose from his temporary seat and walked to the door of the
tent--exactly two strides. A rifle lay against the canvas, and this he
took up, slowly cocking it without taking his eyes from the belt of fir
trees across the valley.
Presently he threw the rifle up and fired instantaneously. He had been
musketry instructor in his time and held views upon quick firing. The
smoke rose lazily in the ambient air, and he saw a figure all fluttering
rags and flying turban running down the slope away from him. At the same
moment there was a crashing volley, followed by two straggling reports.
The figure stopped, seemed to hesitate, and then slowly subsided into the
grass.
Agar put his head out of the tent and saw half a company of Goorkhas,
keen little sportsmen all standing in line at the edge of the plateau,
reloading.
This was the force at the disposal of Major J. E. M. Agar, at that time
occupying and holding for Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
India a very advanced position on the northern frontier of India. And in
this manner he spent most of his days and some of his nights. In addition
to the plain Major he had several other titles attached to his name at
that time, indicative of duties real and imaginary. He was “deputy
assistant” several things and “acting” one or two; for in military
titles one begins in inverse ratio in a large way, and ends in something
short.
Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except
himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this
matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a
pretty girl could say, “You are a nice man and a clever fellow,” without
doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed
at him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It
never occurred to them to reflect that “old Jem” invariably acquitted
himself well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind
fortune; they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that
each severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men.
One of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up
in a busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever
undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are
hundreds at school at this moment--we have it from their own parents;
hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge--we have it from themselves. In a
few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to
themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen.
Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But--and
mark ye this--he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did
what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely
postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future
date.
At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top
of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty
miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have
no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is
an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his
nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose
their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while
one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a
buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with
sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled
with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of
commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned
elsewhere.
Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied
the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the
scenery, illustrating upon living “running deer” in turbans his views
upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as
second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful
patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his
name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and
succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a
journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days
previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in
future be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the
assistance of so brilliant a young officer.
Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even
by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm
were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never
know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with
many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more
substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon
his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud
possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of
obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held
up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all
this because he was dead. Such is glory.
All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little
tent, nibbling the end of his penholder--the gift, by the way, of his
father--and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a
page instead of three.