“Secret de deux, secret de Dieu.”
“Guess anybody could be a soldier and swing a sword, while it takes
brains to make a doctor.”
Now I was a doctor, and a very young one in those days, new to the
regiment and conscious of my inferiority to its merest subaltern. The
young person who made the above observation was, moreover, pretty,
with dark eyes and the most bewitching lips that ever gave voice to an
American accent. My heart was young, and therefore easily stirred by
such vanities--nothing stirs it now but the cry of the bugle and the
sullen roar that rises from the ranks when, at last, T. Atkins is
allowed to get to the bayonet.
We were sitting in the verandah of the Residency in the capital of a
northern tributary state which need not be further specified here. The
Rajah was in difficulties and unable, without our aid, to dispose of a
claimant to his throne, whose hereditary right originated somewhere in
the lifetime of St. Paul. General Elias J. Watson, of Boston, U.S.A.,
was travelling for the enlargement of his own and his daughter's mind.
“Pa is just going to write a book about things in general,” explained
Miss Bertha Watson, with a wise little smile, when her father's thirst
for information became irksome.
Hearing in Simla that an expeditionary force was about to be despatched
to the assistance of the Rajah of Oadpur, General Watson hastened
thither. He had letters of introduction from sundry persons who wished
to get rid of him to sundry others who had no desire to assist in any
way. But the old man's naivete and characteristically simple interest
in details soon made their way, while Bertha's wise little smile carried
all before it. It somehow conveyed the impression that she knew a thing
or two of which we were ignorant, and like one man we fell to desiring
knowledge of those things. I was nowhere. Doctors never are anywhere in
regimental competitions, for they are usually, like myself, deadly poor.
Sometimes Bertha danced with me, as on this occasion, at the impromptu
entertainments given by the Resident.
“Say, shall we have another?” she observed before my heart had recovered
from the effect of the last remark. And she handed me the stationery
department envelope which served as a programme on these occasions.
I fumbled for my pencil in a seventh heaven of joy. I had read somewhere
that women sometimes give their hearts to small and insignificant
men. But it seemed unlikely that this referred to such women as Bertha
Watson. I had never dreamt of cutting out the other men: Major
Le Mesurier-Groselin, who had money, for instance, or Austin
Graham--especially Austin Graham. There had been a rumour in the
air--planted there, no doubt, by some of the women who have a marvellous
scent for a light trail--that there was an understanding between Graham
and Bertha. I noticed that she never looked at him with her bewitching
little smile as she did at the rest of us. But that was all I could
detect. Perhaps she thought that he was wiser than herself. Perhaps,
moreover, she was right; for Graham was the wisest man up there, and I
think the bravest. He meant business, he told me, and had come to make
his name in this little war.
He was a quiet-going, fair man, with that inestimable advantage of
looking at all times exactly what he was, namely, a gentleman by long
descent. He was a great friend of mine, and we shared quarters in a sort
of gatehouse to the Rajah's palace, where I knew that he worked night
and day, for he was chief of the staff, and had a great scheme of
crushing the insurrection, at one blow, by a surprise assault of the
fortified town twenty miles away, where the claimant lay with his
forces.
“Seems to me,” said Bertha, when I had duly inscribed my name on the
Government envelope, “that this is what you call a demonstration in
force. This is not serious war. You are not going to fight at all.
Things are much too quiet and orderly--with church parade, and
soirees-dansantes, and visiting cards.”
She looked at me, and if I had had any secrets I should have told them
to her then and there.
“Then you think there'll be fighting,” she added, with a calmness of
demeanour which was in itself unusual and fascinating enough.
She had no reason to arrive at such a conclusion, for I had not uttered
a sound. I probably did not know, however, in those days that the lies
requiring the minutest care are the unspoken ones.
“You see, I'm only a doctor,” I answered, “and, strange to say, the
Brigadier has not as yet taken me into his confidence.”
“I know a lot about war,” she went on after a momentary pause. She
appeared to have some misgiving about one of the buttons on her long
glove which she had undone and was tentatively tugging at the thread.
“May I button that?” I said hurriedly in my extreme youth, and with a
palpitating courage.
“Why, yes--if you have any ambition that way.” And she extended her arm
towards me. “Now,” she said, with a grave air of confidence which I now
distrust whenever it is tried upon me, “if I was the man in charge
of this show, I would just go on like this, giving balls and private
theatricals and exchanging visiting cards. This place is full of spies,
of course. The very servants who wait on the General probably read all
his letters and send copies of them to the enemy. The plan of campaign
is probably as well known to What-'em-you-call-it Khan as it is to the
Brigadier.”
“No, I am sure it isn't,” I interrupted; “because Graham keeps it locked
up in a medical-comfort chest with his dressing-case locked, which we
screwed on ourselves.”
“Ah, is that so, doctor? Well, you can't be too careful, can you? As I
was saying, I should convey to the spies the impression that it was only
a demonstration in force. Then one night I should start off quietly,
march twenty miles, and give What-'em-you-call-it Khan Hail Columbia
before sunrise.”
She looked at me, gave a knowing little nod of the head, and began
fanning herself.
“That is my plan of campaign,” she said. “You know Pa is here on purpose
to see the British soldier fight. We have been waiting here a month now,
and I hope you are going to ring up the curtain soon. Pa has theories
about the British soldier, and although he is a General, you know he
has never seen a fight. I tell him if I was a General who hadn't seen a
fight, I'd just go out and sell myself cheap! What?”
“Nothing.”
“I guess you spoke.”
“I said you'd probably do that at any rate.”
“Not cheap,” she answered gravely, and then we changed the subject. So
far as I recollect, we returned to the discussion of doctors and their
trade, and before long I had the opportunity of airing my special
hobby at that time--the study of native drugs. Miss Watson was deeply
interested--at least, she made me think so, and before we parted I had
promised to send round to her “diggings,” as she called them, a bottle
of a perfectly harmless narcotic which I had made up for the use of
persons suffering from sea-sickness or toothache. I use it still, and
have some always by me on service in a bottle labelled “Bertha,” for
there is, after all, something in a name.
I went home to my quarters rather thoughtful that night; for Bertha
Watson's plan of campaign was Austin Graham's plan of campaign, and I
knew that Graham was not the man to divulge so much as a hint of this
secret. I know now that if a woman loves a man she knows much that he
never tells her, but I was ignorant of this and many other matters at
the time when I made Bertha's acquaintance.
The days dragged on and we seemed to be no nearer solving the Rajah's
difficulties. There were at that time no native newspapers, and
bazaar gossip, which is, by the way, surer and speedier than the most
enlightened press, made up for the want. Bazaar gossip held much the
same opinion as Bertha Watson--namely, that we were only a demonstration
in force. This opinion gained ground daily, and began like a hardy weed
to throw out tendrils in the shape of details. We were afraid of the
claimant to the throne, it seemed. We had quarrelled with the Rajah, and
would not risk a defeat on his account.
Austin Graham came and went. I sometimes found mysterious natives
waiting for him in our quarters. One of these natives spoke Hindustanee
with a faint Scotch accent, and laughed when I told him so.
“I'm all right in the dialects though,” he said, in Glasgow English,
and asked for a cigarette. We sat and talked for half an hour awaiting
Graham's arrival, but he never told me who he was.
One night, about midnight, I was aroused by Le Mesurier-Groselin, who
was in full fighting kit and had a queer light in his eyes which was new
to me, though heaven and the Horse Guards know that I have seen it often
enough since.
“Get up--Sawbones!” said Le Mesurier-Groselin. “You'll be wanted at any
rate, but now I want you badly. We're just off to smoke the old Khan
out, and something has gone wrong with Graham. For God's sake, man,
hurry up! It will be a pretty fight, and I would not miss it for
worlds.”
I looked at Le Mesurier-Groselin as I hauled on my clothes. He had eight
thousand a year, an Elizabethan manor in England, and the certainty of a
baronetcy; but the thought of these things never brought to his eyes the
light that was there now.
“What is wrong with Graham?”
“I don't know--wish I did. Can't move him. Seems quite stupid or dead
drunk,” answered Le Mesurier-Groselin, handing me my belt.
We hurried upstairs to the room occupied by Austin Graham, and there
found him lying on the bed with his eyes almost, but not quite, shut.
“Where was he to-night--dining with you at mess?” I asked, raising one
heavy lid with my finger.
“No, he dined with the Watsons.”
“When did you last see him?”
“About ten o'clock at my quarters. He was coming here to change in time
for the assembly at eleven forty-five--the column is just marching. I
came here to hurry him up and found him like this. The whole attack is
his planning. It would have been the making of him. He was to have led
the ladders. Gad! what a chance the man had--and look at the poor devil
now!”
I was examining Austin Graham with a thumping heart, for a queer
suspicion was in my mind. Presently I ran downstairs and uncorked the
bottle which I now label “Bertha.” The smell was identical, and I went
upstairs again.
“Help me to get him into his boots and tunic,” I said.
And Le Mesurier-Groselin and I huddled the man's fighting clothes on to
him by the light of a flickering candle. Le Mesurier-Groselin was a big
man, and my trade had taught me a certain skill in the handling of the
dead. We soon had Austin Graham in full uniform sitting up in my
arms, with the helmet crammed on his head at an unseemly angle. He was
perfectly insensible, but his heart went well.
“Now help me to get him on to his horse,” I said.
Le Mesurier-Groselin dropped his eye-glass for the first and last time
on record, and looked at me with a surprised eye and a solemn one.
“I'll obey orders,” he said. “But I take it that you are very drunk or
else mad.”
We carried him downstairs and I climbed into Graham's saddle. Le
Mesurier-Groselin lifted Graham, who must have weighed fourteen stone,
into the saddle in front of me, and I rode twenty miles that night with
him there. He recovered consciousness an hour before we reached
the Khan's stronghold, and, as I expected, awoke, as if from sleep,
refreshed and ready for any exertion. We had no time for explanations.
“You were drugged,” I said, “by some native spy, who must have got wind
of the intended attack to-night. I knew that the stuff would have to
run its course, so I did not physic you, but brought you along with the
column.”