CURTISS. Prickly heat between the shoulders. I'm covered with it. Let's
hope Beora will be cooler.
BLAYNE. Whew! Are _you_ ordered into camp, too? I thought the Gunners
had a clean sheet.
CURTISS. No, worse luck. Two cases yesterday--one died--and if we have a
third, out we go. Is there any shooting at Beora, Doone?
DOONE. The country's under water, except the patch by the Grand Trunk
Road. I was there yesterday, looking at a bund, and came across four
poor devils in their last stage. It's rather bad from here to Kuchara.
CURTISS. Then we're pretty certain to have a heavy go of it. Heigho!
I shouldn't mind changing places with Gaddy for a while. 'Sport with
Amaryllis in the shade of the Town Hall, and all that. Oh, why doesn't
somebody come and marry me, instead of letting me go into cholera camp?
MACKESY. Ask the Committee.
CURTISS. You ruffian! You'll stand me another peg for that. Blayne, what
will you take? Mackesy is fine on moral grounds. Doone, have you any
preference?
DOONE. Small glass Kummel, please. Excellent carminative, these days.
Anthony told me so.
MACKESY. (_Signing voucher for four drinks._) Most unfair punishment.
I only thought of Curtiss as Actaeon being chivied round the billiard
tables by the nymphs of Diana.
BLAYNE. Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs. Cockley's
the only woman in the Station. She won't leave Cockley, and he's doing
his best to get her to go.
CURTISS. Good, indeed! Here's Mrs. Cockley's health. To the only wife in
the Station and a damned brave woman!
OMNES. (_Drinking._) A damned brave woman!
BLAYNE. I suppose Gaddy will bring his wife here at the end of the cold
weather. They are going to be married almost immediately, I believe.
CURTISS. Gaddy may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all
detachment and no headquarters this hot weather, or he'd be torn
from the arms of his love as sure as death. Have you ever noticed the
thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It's because they
are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here, they would have been
out in camp a month ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gaddy.
MACKESY. He'll go Home after he's married, and send in his papers--see
if he doesn't.
BLAYNE. Why shouldn't he? Hasn't he money? Would any one of us be here
if we weren't paupers?
DOONE. Poor old pauper! What has became of the six hundred you rooked
from our table last month?
BLAYNE. It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising tradesman got
some of it, and a _shroff_ gobbled the rest--or else I spent it.
CURTISS. Gaddy never had dealings with a _shroff_ in his life.
DOONE. Virtuous Gaddy! If _I_ had three thousand a month, paid from
England, I don't think I'd deal with a _shroff_ either.
MACKESY. (Yawning.) Oh, it's a sweet life! I wonder whether matrimony
would make it sweeter.
CURTISS. Ask Cockley--with his wife dying by inches!
BLAYNE. Go home and get a fool of a girl to come out to--what is it
Thackeray says?--'the splendid palace of an Indian pro-consul.'
DOONE. Which reminds me. My quarters leak like a sieve. I had fever last
night from sleeping in a swamp. And the worst of it is, one can't do
anything to a roof till the Rains are over.
CURTISS. What's wrong with you? _You_ haven't eighty rotting Tommies to
take into a running stream.
DOONE. No: but I'm mixed boils and bad language. I'm a regular Job all
over my body. It's sheer poverty of blood, and I don't see any chance of
getting richer--either way.
BLAYNE. Can't you take leave?
DOONE. That's the pull you Army men have over us. Ten days are
nothing in your sight. _I'm_ so important that Government can't find a
substitute if I go away. Ye-es, I'd like to be Gaddy, whoever his wife
may be.
CURTISS. You've passed the turn of life that Mackesy was speaking of.
DOONE. Indeed I have, but I never yet had the brutality to ask a woman
to share my life out here.
BLAYNE. On my soul I believe you're right. I'm thinking of Mrs. Cockley.
The woman's an absolute wreck.
DOONE. Exactly. Because she stays down here. The only way to keep her
fit would be to send her to the Hills for eight months--and the same
with any woman. I fancy I see myself taking a wife on those terms.
MACKESY. With the rupee at one and sixpence. The little Doones would be
little Dehra Doones, with a fine Mussoorie _chi-chi_ anent to bring home
for the holidays.
CURTISS. And a pair of be-ewtiful _sambhur_-horns for Doone to wear,
free of expense, presented by---
DOONE. Yes, it's an enchanting prospect. By the way, the rupee hasn't
done falling yet. The time will come when we shall think ourselves lucky
if we only lose half our pay.
CURTISS. Surely a third's loss enough. Who gains by the arrangement?
That's what I want to know.
BLAYNE. The Silver Question! I'm going to bed if you begin squabbling.
Thank Goodness, here's Anthony--looking like a ghost.
_Enter_ ANTHONY, _Indian Medical Staff, very white and tired._
ANTHONY. 'Evening, Blayne. It's raining in sheets. _Whiskey-peg, lao,
Khitmatgar._ The roads are something ghastly.
CURTISS. How's Mingle?
ANTHONY. Very bad, and more frightened. I handed him over to Fewton.
Mingle might just as well have called him in the first place, instead of
bothering me.
BLAYNE. He's a nervous little chap. What has he got, this time?
ANTHONY. 'Can't quite say. A very bad tummy and a blue funk so far. He
asked me at once if it was cholera, and I told him not to be a fool.
That soothed him.
CURTISS. Poor devil! The funk does half the business in a man of that
build.
ANTHONY. (_Lighting a cheroot._) I firmly believe the funk will kill him
if he stays down. You know the amount of trouble he's been giving Fewton
for the last three weeks. He's doing his very best to frighten himself
into the grave.
GENERAL CHORUS. Poor little devil! Why doesn't he get away?
ANTHONY. 'Can't. He has his leave all right, but he's so dipped he can't
take it, and I don't think his name on paper would raise four annas.
That's in confidence, though.
MACKESY. All the Station knows it.
ANTHONY. 'I suppose I shall have to die here,' he said, squirming all
across the bed. He's quite made up his mind to Kingdom Come. And I
_know_ he has nothing more than a wet-weather tummy if he could only
keep a hand on himself.
BLAYNE. That's bad. That's very bad. Poor little Miggy. Good little
chap, too. I say--
ANTHONY. What do you say?
BLAYNE. Well, look here--anyhow. If it's like that--as you say--I say
fifty.
CURTISS. I say fifty.
MACKESY. I go twenty better.
DOONE. Bloated Croesus of the Bar! I say fifty. Jervoise, what do you
say? Hi! Wake up!
JERVOISE. Eh? What's that? What's that?
CURTISS. We want a hundred rupees from you. You're a bachelor drawing a
gigantic income, and there's a man in a hole.
JERVOISE. What man? Any one dead?
BLAYNE. No, but he'll die if you don't give the hundred. Here! Here's a
peg-voucher. You can see what we've signed for, and Anthony's man will
come round to-morrow to collect it. So there will be no trouble.
JERVOISE. (Signing.) One hundred, E. M. J. There you are (feebly). It
isn't one of your jokes, is it?
BLAYNE. No, it really _is_ wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest
poker-winner last week, and you've defrauded the tax-collector too long.
Sign!
ANTHONY. Let's see. Three fifties and a seventy--two twenty--three
twenty--say four hundred and twenty. That'll give him a month clear
at the Hills. Many thanks, you men. I'll send round the _chaprassi_
tomorrow.
CURTISS. You must engineer his taking the stuff, and of course you
mustn't--
ANTHONY. Of course. It would never do. He'd weep with gratitude over his
evening drink.
BLAYNE. That's just what he would do, damn him. Oh! I say, Anthony, you
pretend to know everything. Have you heard about Gaddy?
ANTHONY. No. Divorce Court at last?
BLAYNE. Worse. He's engaged!
ANTHONY. How much? He _can't_ be!
BLAYNE. He _is_. He's going to be married in a few weeks. Markyn told me
at the Judge's this evening. It's _pukka_.
ANTHONY. You don't say so? Holy Moses! There'll be a shine in the tents
of Kedar.
CURTISS. 'Regiment cut up rough, think you?
ANTHONY. 'Don't know anything about the Regiment.
MACKESY. It is bigamy, then?
ANTHONY. Maybe. Do you mean to say that you men have forgotten, or is
there more charity in the world than I thought?
DOONE. You don't look pretty when you are trying to keep a secret. You
bloat. Explain.
ANTHONY. Mrs. Herriott!
BLAYNE. (_After a long pause, to the room generally._) It's my notion
that we are a set of fools.
MACKESY. Nonsense. _That_ business was knocked on the head last season.
Why, young Mallard--
ANTHONY. Mallard was a candlestick, paraded as such. Think awhile.
Recollect last season and the talk then. Mallard or no Mallard, did
Gaddy ever talk to any other woman?
CURTISS. There's something in that. It _was_ slightly noticeable now you
come to mention it. But she's at Naini Tal and he's at Simla.
ANTHONY. He had to go to Simla to look after a globetrotter relative of
his--a person with a title. Uncle or aunt.
BLAYNE. And there he got engaged. No law prevents a man growing tired of
a woman.
ANTHONY. Except that he mustn't do it till the woman is tired of him.
And the Herriott woman was not that.
CURTISS. She may be now. Two months of Naini Tal work wonders.
DOONE. Curious thing how some women carry a Fate with them. There was a
Mrs. Deegie in the Central Provinces whose men invariably fell away and
got married. It became a regular proverb with us when I was down there.
I remember three men desperately devoted to her, and they all, one after
another, took wives.
CURTISS. That's odd. Now I should have thought that Mrs. Deegie's
influence would have led them to take other men's wives. It ought to
have made them afraid of the judgment of Providence.
ANTHONY. Mrs. Herriott will make Gaddy afraid of something more than the
judgment of Providence, I fancy.
BLAYNE. Supposing things are as you say, he'll be a fool to face her.
He'll sit tight at Simla.
ANTHONY. 'Shouldn't be a bit surprised if he went off to Naini to
explain. He's an unaccountable sort of man, and she's likely to be a
more than unaccountable woman.
DOONE. What makes you take her character away so confidently?
ANTHONY. _Primum tempus_. Gaddy was her first, and a woman doesn't allow
her first man to drop away without expostulation. She justifies the
first transfer of affection to herself by swearing that it is for ever
and ever. Consequently--
BLAYNE. Consequently, we are sitting here till past one o'clock, talking
scandal like a set of Station cats. Anthony, it's all your fault.
We were perfectly respectable till you came in. Go to bed. I'm off.
Good-night all.
CURTISS. Past one! It's past two, by Jove, and here's the _khit_ coming
for the late charge. Just Heavens! One, two, three, four, _five_ rupees
to pay for the pleasure of saying that a poor little beast of a woman
is no better than she should be. I'm ashamed of myself. Go to bed, you
slanderous villains, and if I'm sent to Beora to-morrow, be prepared to
hear I'm dead before paying my card account!