Colonel Jackson emptied it.
Not having prepared to meet the request to replenish the store a second
time, it was useless for Mr. Ross-Ellison to make more passes when
commanded so to do.
"The usual end of the 'supernatural,'" observed Mrs. Dearman with
contempt.
"Most usual," said he.
"More than 'most,'" corrected Mrs. Dearman. "It is the invariable end of
it, I believe. Just humbug and rubbish. It is either an invention, pure
and simple, or else it is perfectly explicable. Don't you think so,
Colonel Jackson?"
"Not always," said her partner. "Now, will you, first, believe my word,
and, secondly, find the explanation--if I tell you a perfectly true
'supernatural' story?"
"I'll certainly believe your word, Colonel, if you're serious, and I'll
try and suggest an explanation if you like," replied Mrs. Dearman.
"Same to me, Mrs. Dearman?" asked Mr. Ross-Ellison. "I've had
'experiences' too--and can tell you one of them."
"Same to you, Mr. Ross-Ellison," replied Mrs. Dearman, and added: "But
why only one of them?"
Mr. Ross-Ellison smiled, glanced round the luxuriously appointed table
and the company of fair women and brave men--and thought of a
far-distant and little-known place called Mekran Kot and of a phantom
cavalry corps that haunted a valley in its vicinity.
"Only one worth telling," said he.
"Well,--first case," began Colonel Jackson, "I was once driving past a
cottage on my way home from College (in Ireland), and I saw the old lady
who lived in that cottage come out of the door, cross her bit of garden,
go through a gate, scuttle over the railway-line and enter a fenced
field that had belonged to her husband, and which she (and a good many
other people) believed rightly belonged to her.
"'There goes old Biddy Maloney pottering about in that plot of ground
again,' thinks I. 'She's got it on the brain since her law-suit.' I knew
it was Biddy, of course, not only because of her coming out of Biddy's
house, but because it was Biddy's figure, walk, crutch-stick, and
patched old cloak. When I got home I happened to say to Mother: 'I saw
poor old Biddy Maloney doddering round that wretched field as I came
along'.
"'What?' said my mother, 'why, your father was called to her, as she was
dying, hours ago, and she's not been out of her bed for weeks.' When my
father came in, I learned that Biddy was dead an hour before I saw
her--before I left the railway station in fact! What do you make of
that? Is there any 'explanation'?"
"Some other old lady," suggested Mrs. Dearman.
"No. There was nobody else in those parts mistakable for Biddy Maloney,
and no other old woman was in or near the house while my father was
there. We sifted the matter carefully. It was Biddy Maloney and no one
else."
"Auto-suggestion. Visualization on the retina of an idea in the mind.
Optical illusion," hazarded Mrs. Dearman.
"No good. I hadn't realized I was approaching Biddy Maloney's cottage
until I saw her coming out of it and I certainly hadn't thought of Biddy
Maloney until my eye fell upon her. And it's a funny optical illusion
that deceives one into seeing an old lady opening gates, crossing
railways and limping away into fenced fields."
"H'm! What was the other case?" asked Mrs. Dearman, turning to Mr.
Ross-Ellison.
"That happened here in India at a station called Duri, away in the
Northern Presidency, where I was then--er--living for a time. On the day
after my arrival I went to call on Malet-Marsac to whom I had letters of
introduction--political business--and, as he was out, but certain to
return in a minute or two from Parade, I sat me down in a comfortable
chair in the verandah----"
"And went to sleep?" interrupted Mrs. Dearman.
'"I _nevah_ sleep,'" quoted Mr. Ross-Ellison, "and I had no time, if any
inclination. Scarcely indeed had I seated myself, and actually while I
was placing my _topi_ on an adjacent stool, a lady emerged from a
distant door at the end of the verandah and walked towards me. I can
tell you I was mighty surprised, for not only was Captain Malet-Marsac a
lone bachelor and a misogynist of blameless life, but the lady looked as
though she had stepped straight out of an Early Victorian
phonograph-album. She had on a crinoline sort of dress, a deep lace
collar, spring-sidey sort of boots, mittens, and a huge cameo brooch.
Also she had long ringlets. Her face is stamped on my memory and I
could pick her out from a hundred women similarly dressed, or her
picture from a hundred others...."
"What did you do?" asked Mrs. Dearman, whose neglected ice-pudding was
fast being submerged in a pink lake of its own creation.
"Do? Nothing. I grabbed my _topi_, stood up, bowed--and looked silly."
"And what did the lady do?"
"Came straight on, taking no notice whatsoever of me, until she reached
the steps leading into the porch and garden.... She passed down these
and out of my sight.... That is the plain statement of an actual fact.
Have you any 'explanation' to offer?"
"Well--what about a lady staying there, unexpectedly and unbeknownst (to
the station), trying on a get-up for a Fancy Dress Ball. Going as 'My
ancestress' or something?" suggested Mrs. Dearman.
"Exactly what I told myself, though I _knew_ it was nothing of the
kind.... Well, five minutes later Malet-Marsac rode up the drive and we
were soon fraternizing over cheroots and cold drinks.... As I was
leaving, an idea struck me, and I saw a way to ask a question--which was
burning my tongue,--without being too rudely inquisitive.
"'By the way,' said I, 'I fear I did not send in the right number of
visiting cards, but they told me there was no lady here, so I only sent
in one--for you.'
"'There _is_ no lady here,' he replied, eyeing me queerly. 'What made
you think you had been misinformed?'
"'Well,' said I bluntly, 'a lady came out of the end room just now,
walked down the verandah, and went out into the garden. You'd better
see if anything is missing as she's not an inhabitant!'
"'No--there won't be anything missing,' he replied. 'Did she wear a
crinoline and a general air of last century?'
"'She did,' said I.
"'Our own private ghost,' was the answer--and it was the sort of
statement I had anticipated. Now I solemnly assure you that at that time
I had never heard, read, nor dreamed that there was a 'ghost' in this
bungalow, nor in Duri--nor in the whole Northern Presidency for that
matter....
"'What's the story?' I asked, of course.
"'Mutiny. 1857,' said Malet-Marsac. 'Husband shot on the parade-ground.
She got the news and marched straight to the spot. They cut her in
pieces as she held his body in her arms. Lots of people have seen
her--anywhere between that room and the parade-ground.'
"'Then you have to believe in ghosts--in Duri, or how do you account for
it?' I asked.
"'I don't bother my head,' he replied. 'But I have seen that poor lady a
good many times. And no one told me a word about her until after I had
seen her.'"
And then Mrs. Dearman suddenly rose, as her hostess "caught" the
collective female eye of the table.
"Was all that about the 'ghosts' of the old Irishwoman and the Early
Victorian Lady true, you fellows?" asked John Bruce, the Professor of
Engineering, after coffee, cigars and the second glass of port had
reconciled the residue or sediment to the departure of the sterner sex.
"Didn't you hear me say my story was true?" replied Colonel Jackson
brusquely. "It was absolutely and perfectly true."
"Same here," added Mr. Ross-Ellison.
"Then on two separate occasions you two have seen what you can only
believe to be the ghosts of dead people?"
"On one occasion I have, without any possibility of error or doubt, seen
the ghost of a dead person," said Colonel Jackson.
"Have you ever come across any other thoroughly substantiated cases of
ghost-seeing--cases which have really convinced you, Colonel?" queried
Mr. Ross-Ellison--being deeply interested in the subject by reason of
queer powers and experiences of his own.
"Yes. Many in which I fully believe, and one about which I am _certain_.
A very interesting case--and a very cruel tragedy."
"Would you mind telling me about it?" asked Mr. Ross-Ellison.
"Pleasure. More--I'll give you as interesting and convincing a 'human
document' about it as ever you read, if you like."
"I shall be eternally grateful," replied the other.
"It was a sad and sordid business. The man, whose last written words
I'll give you to read, was a Sergeant-Major in the Volunteer Rifles
(also at Duri where I was stationed, as you know) and he was a gentleman
born and bred, poor chap." ["Lawrence-Smith," murmured Mr. John Robin
Ross-Ellison with an involuntary movement of surprise. His eyebrows rose
and his jaw fell.] "Yes, he was that rare bird a gentleman-ranker who
remained a gentleman and a ranker--and became a fine soldier. He called
himself Lawrence-Smith and owned a good old English name that you'd
recognize if I mentioned it--and you'd be able to name some of his
relatives too. He was kicked out of Sandhurst for striking one of the
subordinate staff under extreme provocation. The army was in his blood
and bones, and he enlisted."
"Excuse me," interrupted Mr. Ross-Ellison, "you speak of this
Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith in the past tense. Is he dead then?"
"He is dead," replied Colonel Jackson. "Did you know him?"
"I believe I saw him at Duri," answered Mr. Ross-Ellison with an
excellent assumption of indifference. "What's the story?"
"I'll give you his own tale on paper--let me have it back--and, mind
you, every single word of it is Gospel truth. The man was a _gentleman_,
an educated, thoughtful, sober chap, and as sane as you or I. I got to
know him well--he was in hospital, with blood-poisoning from
panther-bite, for a time--and we became friends. Actual friends, I mean.
Used to play golf with him. (You remember the Duri Links.) In mufti,
you'd never have dreamed for a moment that he was not a Major or a
Colonel. Army life had not coarsened him in the slightest, and he kept
some lounge-suits and mess-kit by Poole. Many a good Snob of my
acquaintance has left my house under the impression that the
Lawrence-Smith he had met there, and with whom he had been
hail-fellow-well-met, was his social equal or superior.
"He simply was a refined and educated gentleman and that's all there is
about it. Well--you'll read his statement--and, as you read, you may
tell yourself that I am as convinced of its truth as I am of anything in
this world.... He was dead when I got to him.
"The stains, on the backs of some of the sheets and on the front of the
last one, are--blood stains...."
And at this point their host suggested the propriety of joining the
ladies....
Colonel Jackson gave Mr. Ross-Ellison a "lift" in his powerful motor as
far as his bungalow, entered, and a few minutes later emerged with a
long and fat envelope.
"Here you are," said he. "I took it upon myself to annex the papers as I
was his friend. Let's have 'em back. No need for me to regard them as
'private and confidential' so far as I can see, poor chap. Good-night."
Having achieved the haven of loose Pathan trousers and a muslin shirt
(worn over them) in the privacy of his bed-room, Mr. Ross-Ellison,
looking rather un-English, sat on a camp-cot (he never really liked
chairs) and read, as follows, from a sheaf of neatly-written (and
bloodstained) sheets of foolscap.
* * * * *
I have come to the point at which I decide to stop. I have had enough.
But I should like to ask one or two questions.
1. Why has a man no right to quit a world in which he no longer desires
to live? 2. Why should Evil be allowed to triumph? 3. Why should people
who cannot see spirit forms be so certain that such do not exist, when
none but an ignorant fool argues, "I believe in what I can see"?
With regard to the first question I maintain that a man has a perfect
right to "take" the life that was "given" him (without his own consent
or desire), provided it is not an act of cowardice nor an evasion of
just punishment or responsibility. I would add--provided also that he
does not, in so doing, basely desert his duty, those who are in any way
dependent on him, or those who really love him.
I detest that idiotic phrase "while of unsound mind". I am as sound in
mind as any man living, but because I end an unbearable state of
affairs, and take the only step I can think of as likely to give me
peace--I shall be written down mad. Moreover should I fail--in my
attempt to kill myself (which I shall not) I should be prosecuted as a
criminal!
To me, albeit I have lived long under strict discipline and regard true
discipline as the first essential of moral, physical, mental, and social
training, to me it seems a gross and unwarrantable interference with the
liberty of the individual--to deny him sufficient captaincy of his soul
for him to be free to control it at the dictates of his conscience, and
to keep it Here or to send it There as may seem best. Surely the
implanted love of life and fear of death are sufficient safeguards
without any legislation or insolent arrogant interference between a man
and his own ego? Anyhow, such are my views, and in perfect soundness of
mind and body, after mature reflection and with full confidence in my
right so to do, I am about to end my life here.
As to the second question, "Why should Evil be allowed to triumph?" I
confess that my mind cannot argue in a circle and say, "You are born
full of Original Sin, and if you sin you are Damned"--a vicious circle
drawn for me by the gloomy, haughty, insincere and rather unintelligent
young gentleman whom I respectfully salute as Chaplain, and who regards
me and every other non-commissioned soldier as a Common, if not Low,
person.
He would not even answer my queries by means of the good old loop-hole,
"It is useless to appeal to Reason if you cannot to Faith" and so beg
the question. He said that things _were_ because the Lord said they
were, and that it was impious to doubt it. More impious was it, I
gathered, to doubt him, and to allude to Criticisms he had never read.
His infallible "proof" was "It is in the Bible".
Possibly I shall shortly know why an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Impeccable
Deity allows this world to be the Hell it is, even if there be no actual
Hell for the souls of his errant Creatures (in spite of the statements
of the Chaplain who appears to have exclusive information on the
subject, inaccessible to laymen, and to rest peacefully assured of a
Real Hell for the wicked,--nonconforming, and vulgar).
At present I cannot understand and I do not know--though I am informed
and infused with a burning and reverent desire to understand and to
know--why Evil should be allowed to triumph, as in my own case, as well
as in those of millions of others, it does. And thirdly, why does the
man who would never deny beauty in a poem or picture because he failed
to see it while others did, deny that immaterial forms of the dead
exist, because he has never seen one, though others have?
I know of so many many men who would blush to be called
"I-believe-what-I-see men," who yet laugh to scorn the bare idea of the
materialization and visualization of visitants from the spirit world,
because they have never seen one. I have so often met the argument, "The
ghost of a man I might conceive--but I can _not_ conceive the appearance
of the ghost of a pair of trousers or of a top-hat," offered as though
it were unanswerable. Surely the spirit, aura, shade, ghost, soul,
ego--what you will--can permeate and penetrate and pervade clothing and
other matter as well as flesh?
Well, once again, I do not know,--and yet I have seen, not once
but repeatedly, not by moonlight in a churchyard, but under the
Indian sun on a parade-ground, the ghost of a man _and of all his
accoutrements,--of a rifle, of a horse and all a horse's trappings_.
I have been a teetotaller for years, I have never had sunstroke and I am
as absolutely sane as ever a man was.
And further I am in no sense remorseful, repentant, or "dogged by the
spectre of an evil deed".
I killed Burker intentionally. Were he alive again I would kill him
again. I punished him myself because the law could not punish him as he
deserved, and I in no way regret or deplore my just and judicial action.
There are deeds a gentleman must resent and punish--with the extreme
penalty. No, it is in no sense a case of the self-tormented wretch
driven mad by the awful hallucinations of his guilty, unhinged mind. I
am no haunted murderer pursued by phantoms and illusions, believing
himself always in the presence of his victim's ghost.
All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible
fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the
way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that
"murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his
own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and
terrible hallucination.
My case is in no wise parallel.
I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or
terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. Exactly how and why
I killed him, and how and why I am about to kill myself, I will now set
forth, without the slightest exaggeration, special pleading or any other
deviation from the truth....
I am to my certain knowledge the eighth consecutive member of my family,
in the direct line, to follow the profession of arms, but am the first
to do so without bearing a commission. My father died young in the rank
of Captain, my grandfather led his own regiment in the Crimea, my
great-grandfather was a Lieutenant-General, and, if I told you my real
name, you could probably state something that he did at Waterloo.
I went to Sandhurst and I was expelled from Sandhurst--very rightly and
justly--for an offence, or rather the culminating offence of a series of
offences, that were everything but mean, dishonest or underhand. I was
wild, hasty, undisciplined and I was lost for want of a father to thrash
me as a boy, and by possession of a most loving and devoted mother who
worshipped, spoiled--and ruined me.
I enlisted under an assumed name in my late father's (and
grandfather's) old Regiment of Foot and quickly rose to the rank of
Sergeant-Major.
I might have had a commission in South Africa but I decided that I
preferred ruling in hell to serving in heaven, and declined to be a
grey-haired Lieutenant and a nuisance to the Officers' Mess of the Corps
I would not leave until compelled.
In time I _was_ compelled and I became Sergeant-Major of the Volunteer
Rifle Corps here and husband of a--well--_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_.
Why I married I don't know.
The English girl of the class from which soldiers are drawn never
attracted me in the very least, and I simply could not have married one,
though a paragon of virtue and compendium of housewifely qualities.
Admirable and pretty as Miss Higgs, Miss Bloggs, or Miss Muggins might
be, my youthful training prevented my seeing beyond her fringe,
finger-nails, figure, and aspirates, to her solid excellences;--and from
sergeants'-dances I returned quite heart-whole and still unplighted to
the Colonel's cook. But Dolores De Souza was different.
There was absolutely nothing to offend the most fastidious taste in her
speech, appearance, or manners. She was convent-bred, accomplished,
refined, gentle, worthless and wicked. The good Sisters of the Society
of the Broken Heart had polished the exterior of the Eurasian orphan
very highly--but the polish was a thin veneer on very cheap and
unseasoned wood.
It is a strange fact that, while I could respect the solid virtues of
the aspirateless Misses Higgs, Bloggs or Muggins, I could never have
married one of them; yet, while I knew Dolores to be a heartless flirt,
and more than suspected her to be of most unrigid principle, I was
infatuated with her dark beauty, her grace, her wiles and witchery--and
asked her to become my wife.
The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had taught Dolores
to sing beautifully, to play upon the piano and the guitar, to
embroider, to paint mauve roses on pink tambourines and many other
useful arts, graces and accomplishments--but they had not taught her
_practical_ morality nor anything of cooking, marketing, plain sewing,
house-cleaning or anything else of house-keeping. However, having been
bred as I had been bred, I could take the form and let the substance go,
accept the shapely husks and shout not for the grain, and prefer a
pretty song, and a rose in black hair over a shell-like ear, to a square
meal. I fear the average Sergeant-Major would have beaten Dolores within
a week of matrimony, but I strove to make loss, discomfort, and
disappointment a discipline,--and music, silk dresses and daintiness an
aesthetic re-training to a barrack-blunted mind.
In justice to Dolores I should make it clear that she was not of the
slatternly, dirty, lazy, half-breed type that pigs in a _peignoir_ from
twelve to twelve and snores again from midnight to midday. She was trim
and dainty, used good perfume or none, rose early and went in the
garden, loathed cheap and showy trash whether in dress, jewellery, or
furniture; and was incapable of wearing fine shoes over holey stockings
or a silk gown over dirty linen. No--there was nothing to offend the
fastidious about Dolores, but there was everything to offend the good
house-keeper and the moralist.
Frequently she would provide no dinner in order that we might be
compelled to dine in public at a restaurant or a hotel, a thing she
loved to do, and she would often send out for costly sweets and pastry,
drink champagne (very moderately, I admit), and generally behave as
though she were the wife of a man of means.
And she was an arrant, incorrigible, shameless flirt.
Well--I do not know that a virtuous vulgar dowd is preferable to a
wicked winsome witch of refined habits and person, and I should probably
have gone quietly on to bankruptcy without any row or rupture, but for
Burker. Having been bred in a "gentle" home I naturally took the
attitude of "as you please, my dear Dolores" and refrained from bullying
when quiet indication of the inevitable end completely failed. Whether
she intended to act in a reasonable manner and show some wifely traits
when my £250 of legacy and savings was quite dissipated I do not know.
Burker came before that consummation.
A number of gentlemen joined the Duri Volunteer Corps and formed a
Mounted Infantry troop, and, though I am a good horseman, I was not
competent to train the troop, as I had never enjoyed any experience of
mounted military work of any kind. So Sergeant Burker, late of the 54th
Lancers, was transferred to Duri as Instructor of the Mounted Infantry
Troop. Naturally I did what I could to make him comfortable and, till
his bungalow was furnished after a fashion, gave him our spare room.
Sergeant Barker was the ideal Cavalryman and the ideal breaker of
hearts,--hearts of the Mary-Ann and Eliza-Jane order.
He was a black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman with a heart as black as his
hair, and language as blue as his eye--a handsome, plausible, selfish,
wicked devil with scarcely a virtue but pride and high courage. I
disliked him at first sight, and Dolores fell in love with him equally
quickly, I am sure.
I don't think he had a solitary gentlemanly instinct.
Being desirous of learning Mounted Infantry work, I attended all his
drills, riding as troop-leader, and, between close attention to him and
close study of the drill-book, did not let the gentlemen in the ranks
know that, in the beginning, I knew as little about it as they did.
And an uncommonly good troop he soon made of it, too.
Of course it was excellent material, all good riders and good shots, and
well horsed.
Burker and I were mounted by the R.H.A. Battery here, and the three
drills we held, weekly, were seasons of delight to a horse-lover like
myself.
Now the horse I had was a high-spirited, powerful animal, and he
possessed the trait, very common among horses, of hating to be pressed
behind the saddle. Turning to look behind while "sitting-easy" one day I
rested my right hand on his back behind the saddle and he immediately
lashed out furiously with both hind legs. I did not realize for the
moment what was upsetting him--but quickly discovered that I had only to
press his back to send his hoofs out like stones from a sling. I then
remembered other similar cases and that I had also read of this curious
fact about horses--something to do with pressure on the kidneys I
believe.
One day Burker was unexpectedly absent and I took the drill, finding
myself quite competent and _au fait_.
The same evening I went to my wife's wardrobe, she being out, to try and
find the keys of the sideboard. I knew they frequently reposed in the
pocket of her dressing-gown.
In the said pocket they were--and so was a letter in the crude large
handwriting of Sergeant Burker.
I did not read it, but I did not see the necessity of a correspondence
between my wife and such a man as I knew Sergeant Burker to be. They met
often enough, in all conscience, to say what they might have to say to
each other.
At dinner I remarked casually: "I shouldn't enter into a correspondence
with Burker if I were you, Dolly. His reputation isn't over savoury
and--" but, before I could say more, my wife was literally screaming
with rage, calling me "Spy," "Liar," "Coward," and demanding to know
what I insinuated and of what I accused her. I replied that I had
accused her of nothing at all, and merely offered advice in the matter
of correspondence with Burker. I explained how I had come to find the
letter and stated that I had not read it.
"Then how do you know that we--" she began, and suddenly stopped.
"That you--what?" I inquired.
"Nothing," she said.
At the next Sergeants' Dance at the Institute I did not like Burker's
manner to my wife at all. It was--well, amorous, and tinged with a shade
of proprietorship. I distinctly heard him call her "Dolly," and equally
distinctly saw an expressively affectionate look in her eyes as he
hugged her in the waltzes--whereof they indulged in no less than five.
My position was awkward and unpleasant. I loathe a row or a scene
unspeakably--though I delight in fighting when that pastime is
legitimate--and I was brought into daily contact with the ruffian and I
disliked him intensely.
I was very averse from the course of forbidding him the house and thus
insulting my wife by implication--since she obviously enjoyed his
society--and descending to pit myself against the greasy cad in a
struggle for a woman's favour, and that woman my own wife. Nor could I
conscientiously take the line of, "If she desires to go to the Devil let
her," for a man has as much responsibility for his wife as for his
children, and it is equally his duty to guide and control her and them.
Women may vote and may legislate for men--but on men they will ever
depend and rely.
No, the position of carping, jealous husband was one that I could not
fill, and I determined to say nothing, do nothing and be
watchful--watchful, that is, to avoid exposing her to temptation. I did
my best, but I was away from home a good deal, visiting the out-station
detachments of the Corps.
Then, one day, the wretched creature I called "butler" came to me with
an air of great mystery and said: "Sahib, Sergeant Burker Sahib sending
Mem Sahib bundle of flowers and _chitti_[53] inside and diamond ring
yesterday. His boy telling me and I seeing. He often coming here too
when Sahib out. Both wicked peoples."
[53] Note.
I raised my hand to knock his lies down his throat--and dropped it. They
were not lies, I knew, and the fellow had been faithful to me for many
years and--the folly of childish human vanity--I felt he knew I was a
"gentleman," and I liked him for it.
I paid him his wages then and there, gave him a present and a good
testimonial and discharged him. He wept real tears and shook with sobs
of grief--easy grief, but very genuine.
When Dolores came home from the Bandstand I said quietly: "Show me the
jewellery Burker sent you, Dolly. I am very much in earnest, so don't
bluster."
She seemed about to faint and looked very frightened--perhaps my face
was more expressive than a gentleman's should be.
"It was only a little thing for my birthday," she whined. "Can't I keep
it? Don't be a tyrant or a fool."
"Your next birthday or your last?" I asked. "Please get it at once.
We'll settle matters quietly and finally."
I fear the poor girl had visions of the doorstep and a closed door. Two,
perhaps, for I am sure Burker would not have taken her in if I had
turned her out, and she may have thought the same.
It was a diamond ring, and the scoundrel must have given a couple of
months' pay for it--if he had paid for it at all. I thrust aside the
sudden conviction that Burker's own taste could not have been
responsible for its choice and that it was selected by my wife.
"Why should he give you this, Dolores?" I asked. "Will you tell me or
must I go to him?" And then she burst into tears and flung herself at my
feet, begging for mercy.
Mercy!
_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_.
What should I do?
To cast her out was to murder her soul quickly and her body slowly, and
I could foresee her career with prophetic eye and painful clearness.
And what could the Law do for me?
Publish our shame and perhaps brand me that wretched thing--the
willingly deceived and complaisant husband.
What could I do by challenging Burker?
He was a champion man-at-arms, a fine boxer, and a younger, stronger
man, I should merely experience humiliation and defeat. What _could_ I
do?
If I said, "Go and live with your Burker," I should be committing a
bigger crime than hers, for if he did take her in, it would not be for
long.
I sat the night through, pondered the question carefully, looked at it
from all points of view and--decided that Burker must die. Also that he
must not drag me to jail or the scaffold as he went to his doom. If I
shot him and was punished, Dolores would become a--well, as I have said,
her soul would die quickly and her body slowly. I had married Dolores
and I must do what lay in my power to protect Dolores. But I simply
could not kill the hound in some stealthy secret manner and wait for
the footsteps of warrant-armed police for the rest of my life.
What could I do? Or rather--for the question had narrowed to that--how
could I kill him?
And as the sun struck upon my eyes at dawn, an idea struck upon my mind.
I would leave it to Fate and if Fate willed it so, Burker should die.
_If Burker stood behind my charger, Fate sat with down-turned thumb_.
I would not seek the opportunity--but, by God, I would take it if it
offered.
If it did not, I would go to Burker and say to him quietly: "Burker, you
must leave this station at once and never see or communicate with my
wife in any way. Otherwise I have to kill you, Burker--to execute you,
you understand." ...
A native syce from the Artillery lines led my charger into the little
compound of my tiny bungalow.
Having buckled on my belt I went out, patted him, and gave him a lump of
sugar. He nuzzled me for more, and, as he did so, I placed my hand on
his back, behind the saddle, and pressed. He lashed out wildly.
I then trotted across the _maidan_[54] to the Volunteer Headquarters and
parade-ground.
[54] Plain; level tract of ground.
Several gentlemen of the Mounted Infantry were waiting about, some
standing by their horses, some getting bandoliers, belts, and rifles,
some cantering their horses round the ground.
Sergeant Burker strode out of the Orderly Boom.
"Morning, Smith," said he. "How's the Missus?"
I looked him in the eye and made no reply.
He laughed, as jeering, evil, and caddish a laugh as I have ever heard.
I almost forgot my purpose and had actually turned toward the armoury
for a rifle and cartridge when I remembered and controlled my rage.
If I shot him, then and there, I must go to the scaffold or to jail
forthwith, and Dolores must inevitably go to a worse fate. Had I been
sure that she could have kept straight, Burker would have been shot,
then and there.
"Fall in," he shouted, but did not mount his horse.
The gentlemen assembled with their horses and faced him in line,
dismounted, I in front of the centre of the troop. How clearly I can see
every feature and detail of that morning's scene, and hear every word
and sound.
"Tell off by sections," commanded Burker.
"One, two, three, four--one, two, three, four...."
There were exactly six sections.
"Flanks of sections, proof."
"Section leaders, proof."
"Centre man, proof."
"Prepare to mount."
"Mount."
"Sections right."
"Sections left."
The last two words were the last words Burker ever spoke. Passing on
foot along the line of mounted men, to inspect saddlery, accoutrements,
and the adjustment of rifle-buckets and slings, he halted immediately
behind me, where I sat on my charger in front of the centre of the
troop.
I could not have placed him more exactly with my own hands. _Fate sat
with down-pointing thumb_.
Turning round, as though to look at the troop, I rested my hand on my
horse's back--just behind the saddle--and pressed hard. He lashed out
with both hoofs and Sergeant Burker dropped--and never moved again.
The base of his skull was smashed like an egg, and his back was broken
like a dry stick....
The terrible accident roused wide sympathy with the unfortunate man, the
local reporter used all his adjectives, and a military funeral was given
to the soldier who had died in the execution of his duty.
On reaching home, after satisfying myself at the Station Hospital that
the man was dead, I said to my poor, pale and red-eyed wife:--
"Dolores, Sergeant Burker met with an accident this morning on parade.
He is dead. Let us never refer to him again."
She fainted.
I spent that night also in meditation, questioning myself and examining
my soul--with every honest endeavour to be not a self-deceiver.
I came to the conclusion that I had acted rightly and in the only way in
which a gentleman could act. I had snatched Dolores from his foul
clutches, I had punished him without depriving Dolores of my protection,
and I had avenged the stain on my honour.
"You have committed a treacherous cowardly murder," whispered the Fiend
in my ear.
"You are a liar," I replied. "I did not fear the man and I took this
course solely on account of Dolores. I was strong enough to accept this
position--and to risk the accusation of murder, from my conscience, from
the Devil, or from man."
Any doubt I might otherwise have had was forestalled and inhibited by
the obvious Fate that placed Burker in the one spot favourable to my
scheme of punishment.
God had willed it?
God had not prevented it.
Surely God was consenting unto it....
And Dolores? I would forgive her and offer her the choice of remaining
with me or leaving me and receiving a half of my income and
possessions--both alternatives being contingent upon good conduct.
At dawn I prepared tea for her, and entered our bedroom. Dolores had
wound a towel round her neck, twisted the ends tightly--and suffocated
herself.
She had been dead for hours....
At the police inquiry, held the same day, I duly lied as to the virtues
of the "deceased," and the utter impossibility of assigning any reason
for the rash and deplorable act. The usual smug stereotyped verdict was
pronounced, and, in addition to expressing their belief that the suicide
was committed "while of unsound mind," the officials expressed much
sympathy with the bereaved husband.
Dolores was buried that evening and I returned to an empty house.
I believe opinion had been divided as to whether I was callous or
"stunned"--but the sight of her little shoes caused pains in my throat
and eyes. Had Burker been then alive I would have killed him with my
hands--and teeth. Yes, teeth.
I spent that night in packing every possession and trace of Dolores into
her boxes, and then in trying to persuade myself that I should have
acted differently.
I could not do so. I had acted for the best--so let God who gave me
free-will, intelligence, conscience and opportunity, approve the deed or
take the blame.
And let God remember how that opportunity came so convincingly--so
impellingly--and if He would judge me and ask for my defence I would ask
him who sent Burker here, and who placed him on that fatal spot?
Does God sit only in judgment?
Does God calmly watch His creatures walking blindfold to the
Pit--struggling to tear away the bandage as they walk? Can He only
judge, and can He never help?
"_Pray_?"
Is God a petty-minded "jealous" God to be propitiated like the gods of
the heathen?
Must we continually ask, or, not asking, not receive?
And if we know not to ask aright and to demand the best and highest?
Cannot the well-fed, well-read, well-paid Chaplain give advice?
"_God knoweth best. Ask unceasingly. Pray always_."
_Why_?--if. He knows best, is All Merciful, All Powerful?
"_Praise_?"
Is God a child, a savage, a woman? Shall I offer adulation that would
sicken _me_.
"_God is our Father which art in heaven_."
Would I have my son praise me to my face continually--or at all. Would I
compel him to pester me with demands for what he desired,--good, bad and
indifferent?
And would I give him what he asked regardless of what was best for
him--or say, "If you ask not, you receive not?" Give me a God finer and
greater and juster and nobler than myself--something higher than the
Chaplain's jealous, capricious, inconsequent and illogical God.
Anthropomorphism!
Is there a God at all?
I shall soon know.
If so--
Oh Thou, who man of baser earth didst make
And ev'n with Paradise devised the Snake,
For all the Sin the face of wretched man
Is black with--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
At dawn I said aloud:--
"This Chapter is closed. The story of Burker and Dolores is written. I
may now strive to forget."
I was wrong.
Major Jackson of the R.A.M.C. came to see me soon after daylight. He
gave me an opiate and I slept all that day and night. I went on parade
next morning, fresh, calm, and cool--and saw _Burker riding toward the
group of gentlemen who were awaiting the signal to "fall in"_.
I say I was fresh, calm, and cool.
I was.
And there was Burker--looking exactly as in life, save for a slight
nebulosity, a very faint vagueness of outline, and a hint of
transparency.
I had been instructed by the Adjutant to assume the post of Instructor
(as the end of the Mounted Infantry drill season was near)--and I blew
the "rally" on my whistle as many of the gentlemen were riding about,
and shouted the command: "Fall in".
Twenty living men and one dead faced me, twenty dismounted and one
mounted. I called the corporal in charge of the armoury.
"How many on parade?" I asked.
He looked puzzled, counted, and said:--
"Why--twenty, ain't there?"
I numbered the troop.
Twenty--and Burker.
"Tell off by sections."
Five sections--and Burker.
"Sections right."
A column of five sections--and Burker, in the rear.
I called out the section-leader of Number One section.
"Are the sections correctly proved?" I asked, and added: "Put the troop
back in line and tell-off again".
"Five sections, correct," he reported.
I held that drill, with five sections of living men, and a single file
of dead, who manoeuvred to my word.
When I gave the order "With Numbers Three for action dismount," or
"Right-hand men, for action dismount," Burker remained mounted. When I
dismounted the whole troop, Burker remained mounted. Otherwise he
drilled precisely as Number Twenty-one would have drilled in a troop of
twenty-one men.
Was I frightened? I do not know.
At first my heart certainly pounded as though it would leap from my
body, and I felt dazed, lost, and shocked.
I think I _was_ frightened--not of Burker so much as of the unfamiliar,
the unknown, the impossible.
How would you feel if your piano suddenly began to play of itself? You
would be alarmed and afraid probably, not frightened of the piano, but
of the fact.
A door could not frighten you--but you would surely be alarmed at its
persistently opening, each time you shut, locked, and bolted it, if it
acted thus.
Of Burker I had no fear--but I was perturbed by the _fact_ that the dead
could ride with the living.
When I gave the order "Dismiss" at the end of the parade Burker rode
away, as he had always done, in the direction of his bungalow.
Returning to my lonely house, I sat me down and pondered this appalling
event that had come like a torrent, sweeping away familiar landmarks of
experience, idea, and belief. I was conscious of a dull anger against
Burker and then against God.
Why should He allow Burker to haunt me?...
Why should Evil triumph?...
_Was_ I haunted? Or was it, after all, but a hallucination--due to
grief, trouble, and the drug of the opiate?
I sat and brooded until I thought I could hear the voices of Burker and
Dolores in converse.
This I knew to be hallucination, pure and simple, and I went to see my
friend (if he will let me call him what he is in the truest and highest
sense) Major Jackson of the R.A.M.C.
He took me for a long ride, kept me to dinner, and manufactured a job
for me--a piece of work that would occupy and tire me.
He assured me that the Burker affair was pure hallucination and staked
his professional reputation that the image of Burker came upon my retina
from within and not from without. "The shock of the deaths of your wife
and your friend on consecutive days has unhinged you, and very naturally
so," he said.
Of course I did not tell him that I had killed Burker, though I
should have liked to do so. I felt I had no right to put him in the
position of having to choose between denouncing me and condoning a
murder--compounding a felony.
Nor did I see any reason for confessing to the Police what I had done
(even though Dolores was dead) and finishing my career on the scaffold.
One owes something to one's ancestors as well as to oneself. Well,
perhaps it was a hallucination. I would wait.
At the next drill Burker was present and rode as Number Three in Section
Six.
As there were twenty-three (living) on parade I ordered Number
Twenty-three to ride as Number Four of his section and leave a blank
file.
Burker rode in that blank file and drilled so, throughout--save that he
would not dismount.
Once, as the troop rode in column of sections, I fell to the rear and,
coming up behind, struck with all my might at that slightly nebulous
figure, with its faint vagueness of outline and hint of transparency.
My heavy cutting-whip whistled--and touched nothing. I was as one who
beats the air. Section Six must have thought me mad.... Twice again the
dead man drilled with the living, and each time I described what
happened to Major Jackson.
"It is a persistent hallucination," said he; "you must go on leave."
"I won't run from Burker, nor from a hallucination," I replied.
Then came the end.
At the next drill, twenty-one gentlemen were present and Number
Twenty-one, the Sessions Judge of Duri, a Scot, kept staring with looks
of amazement and alarm at Burker, who rode as Number Four on his flank,
making an odd file into a skeleton section. I was certain that he saw
Burker.
As the gentlemen "dismissed" after parade, the Judge rode up to me and,
with a white face, demanded:--
"Who the devil was that rode with me as Number Twenty-four? It was--it
was--like--Sergeant Burker."
"It _was_ Sergeant Burker, Sir," said I.
"I knew it was," he replied, and added: "Man, you and I are fey."
"Will you tell Major Jackson of this, Sir?" I begged. "He knows I have
seen Burker's ghost here before, and tells me it is a hallucination."
"I'll go and see him now." he replied. "He is an old friend of mine,
and--he's a damned good doctor. Man--you and I are fey." He rode to
where his trap, with its spirited cob, was awaiting him, dismounted and
drove off.
As everybody knows, Mr. Blake of the Indian Civil Service, Sessions
Judge of Duri, was thrown from his trap and killed. It happened five
minutes after he had said to me, with a queer look in his eyes, and a
queer note in his voice, "Man! you and I are fey".... So it is no
hallucination and I am haunted by Burker's ghost. Very good. I will
fight Burker on his own ground.
My ghost shall haunt Burker's ghost--or I shall be at peace.
Though the religion of the Chaplain has failed me, the religion of my
Mother, taught to me at her knee, has implanted in me an ineradicable
belief in the ultimate justice of things, and the unquenchable hope of
"somehow good".
I am about to go before my Maker or to obliteration and oblivion. If the
former, I am prepared to say to Him: "You made me a man. I have played
the man. I look to you for justice, and that is--compensation and not
'forgiveness'. Much less is it punishment. You have treated me ill and
given me no help. You have bestowed free-_will_ without free-_dom_.
Compensate me or know Yourself unjust."
To a servant or child who spoke so to me and with equal reason, I would
reply:--
"Compensation is due to you and not 'forgiveness'--much less
punishment," and I would act accordingly.... Why should I cringe to
God--and why should He love a cringer more than I do?
God help Men and Women--and such Children as are doomed to grow up to be
Men and Women.
As I finish this sentence I shall put my revolver in my mouth and seek
Justice or Peace....
* * * * *
"Bad luck," murmured Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, "that was the man of all
men for me! A gentleman, wishful to die.... That is the sort that _does_
things when swords are out and bullets fly. Seeks a gory grave and gets
a V.C. instead. He and Mike Malet-Marsac and I would have put a polish
on the new Gungapur Fusiliers.... Rough luck...."
He was greatly disappointed, for his experiences in the bazaars,
market-places, secret-meeting houses, and the bowers of Hearts'
Delights,--the Rialtos of Gungapur (he disguised, now as an Afghan
horse-dealer, now as a sepoy, now as a Pathan money-lender, again as a
gold-braided, velvet waistcoated, swaggering swashbuckler from the
Border)--his experiences were disquieting, were such as to make him push
on preparations, perfect plans, and work feverishly at the "polishing"
of his re-organized Corps.
Also the reports of his familiar, a Somali yclept Moussa Isa, were
disquieting, disturbing to a lover of the Empire who foresaw the Empire
at war in Europe.
Moussa Isa also knew that there was talk among Pathan horse-dealers and
_budmashes_ of the coming of one Ilderim the Weeper, a mullah of great
influence and renown, and talk, moreover, among men of other race, of a
Great Conspiracy.
Moussa was bidden to take service as a mill-coolie in one of Colonel
Dearman's mills, and to report on the views and attitude of the
thousands who laboured therein. This he did and there learnt many
interesting facts.
§ 4. MR. AND MRS. CORNELIUS GOSLING-GREEN.
It was Sunday--and therefore John Bruce, the Engineering College
Professor, was exceptionally busy. On a-week-day he only had to deliver
his carefully prepared lectures, interview students, read and return
essays, take the chair at meetings of college societies, coach one or
two "specialists," superintend the games on the college gymkhana ground,
interview seekers after truth and perverters of the same, write letters
on various matters of college business, visit the hostel, set question
papers and correct answers, attend common-room meetings, write articles
for the college magazine and papers for the Scientific, Philosophical,
Shakespearean, Mathematical, Debating, Literary, Historical, Students',
Old Boys', or some other "union" and, if God willed, get a little
exercise and private study at his beloved "subject" and invention,
before preparing for the morrow.
On Sundays, the thousand and one things crowded out of the programme
were to be cleared up, his home mail was to be written, and then arrears
of work had to be attacked.
At four o'clock he addressed Roy Pittenweem and Mrs. MacDougall, his
dogs, and said:--
"There's a bloomin' bun-snatch somewhere, you fellers, don't it?".
Though a Professor and one of the most keen and earnest workmen in
India, his own college blazers were not quite worn out, and Life, the
great Artist, had not yet done much sketching on the canvas of his
face--in spite of his daily contact with the Science Professor, William
Greatorex Bonnett, B.A., widely known as the Mad Hatter, the greatest
of whose many great achievements is his avoidance of death at the hands
of his colleagues and acquaintance.
Receiving no reply beyond a wink and a waggle, he dropped his blue
pencil, rose, and went to the table sacred to litter; and from a wild
welter of books, pipes, papers, golf-balls, hats, cigar-boxes,
dog-collars, switches, cartridges and other sediment, he extracted a
large gilt-edged card and studied it without enthusiasm or bias.
"Large coat of arms," he murmured--"patience--no--a pay-sheet on a
monument asking for time; item a hand, recently washed; ditto, a dickey
bird--possibly pigeon plucked proper or gull argent; guinea-pig
regardant and expectant; supporters, two bottliwallahs rampant. Crest, a
bum-boat flottant, and motto '_Cinq-cento-percentum_'. All done in gold.
Likewise in gold and deboshed gothic, the legend 'Sir and Lady Fuggilal
Potipharpar, At Home. To meet Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P.
Five p.m. C.T.' ... Now what the devil, Roy Pittenweem, _is_ C.T.? Is it
'Curious Time' or 'Cut for Trumps' or a new decoration for gutter
plutocrats? It _might_ mean 'Calcutta Time,' mightn't it, as the
egregious Phossy and his gang would have it? Well, we'll go and look
upon the Cornmealious Gosling-Green, M.P.'s, and chasten our soul from
sinful pride--ain't it, Mrs. MacDougall?" and the Professor strolled
across to the Sports Club for a cup of tea.
In the midst of cheery converse with a non-moral and unphilosophic
Professor of Moral Philosophy, a fat youth of the name of Augustus
Grobble whose life was one long picturesque pose, he sprang to his feet,
remarking: "I go, Augustus, I am bidden to behold some prize
Gosling-Greens or something, at 5 p.m., D.V. or D.T. or C.T. or L.S.D.
or otherwise. Perhaps it was S.T. which means 'Standard Time,' and as I
said, I go, Augustus."
Augustus Grobble was understood to return thanks piously....
"Taxi, Sahib?" inquired the messenger-boy at the door.
"Go to," said the Professor. "Also go call me a _tikka-gharri_[55] and
select a _very_ senior horse, blind, angular, withered, wilted, and
answering to the name, most obviously, of Skin-and-Grief--lest I be
taken by the Grizzly-Goslings for a down-trodden plutocrat and a
brother--and not seen for the fierce and 'aughty oppressor that I am."
[55] Public conveyance.
"Sahib?"
"_Tikka-gharri lao_,[56] you lazy little 'ound! Don't I speak plain
English?" The Professor made it a practice to "rot" when not
working--hoping thus even in India to retain sanity and the broad and
wholesome outlook, for he was a very short-tempered person, easily
roused to dangerous wrath.
[56] Bring.
A carriage, upholding a pony who, in return, spasmodically moved the
carriage which gave evidence of having been where moths break through
and steal, lumbered into the Club garden, and the Professor, imploring
the jehu not to let the pony "die on him" in the Hibernian sense of the
expression, gingerly entered.
"Convey me to the gilded Potipharparian 'alls, Arthur," said he.
"Sahib?"
"Why _don't_ you listen? _Palangur Hill ki pas_[57] And don't forget
you've to get me there at 5 p.m. C.T. or S.T.--I leave it to you,
partner."
[57] To.
On arrival, the Professor concluded that if he had arrived at 5 p.m.
C.T. he ought to have come at 5 p.m. S.T., or vice versa; as what he
termed 'the show' was evidently about over. Fortune favours all sorts of
people.
His hostess, who looked as though she had come straight out of the Bible
_via_ Bond Street, and his host, who looked as though he had never come
out of Petticoat Lane at all, both accused him of being unable to work
out the problem of "Find Calcutta Time given the Standard Time," and he
professed to be proud to be able to acknowledge the truth of the
compliment.
"Come and be presented to Meester and Meesers Carneelius Garsling-Green,
M.P.," said the lady, waddling before him; and her husband echoed:--
"Oah, yess. Come and be presented to Meester and Meesers
Garsling-Green," waddling after him.
Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., proved to be a tall, drooping,
melancholy creature, with "Dundreary" whiskers, reach-me-down suit of
thick cloth, wrong kind of tie, thickish boots, and no presence. Without
"form" and void.
Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green was a Severe Person, tiny, hard-featured
and even more garrulous than her husband, who watched her anxiously and
nervously as he answered any question put in her presence....
"And, oh, why, _why_ are not you Mohammedans _loyal_?" said Mrs.
Cornelius Gosling-Green, to a magnificent-looking specimen of the
Mussulman of the old school--stately, venerable, courteous and
honourable--who stood near, looking as though he wondered what the devil
he was doing in that galley.
Turning from his friend, Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan,
a fine Pathan, "Loyal, Madam! _Loyal_! Believe me we Mohammedans are
most intensely and devotedly loyal," he replied. "You have indeed been
misled. Though you are only spending a month in India for collecting the
materials for your book or pamphlet, you must really learn _that_ much.
We Mohammedans are as loyal as the English themselves.--More loyal than
some in fact," he added, with intent. The Pathan smiled meaningly.
"Ah, that's just it. I mean 'Why aren't you Mohammedans _loyal to poor
India_?'"
The man turned and left the marquee and the garden without another word.
"Poor _bleeding_ India," corrected the Professor.
"And are _you_ a friend and worker for India?" continued the lady,
turning to him and eyeing him with severity.
"I am. I do my humble possible in my obscure capacity, Mrs.
Grisly-Gosling," he replied. "I _beg_ your pardon, Mrs.
Grossly-Grin----that is--er--Gosling-Green, I _should_ say."
Be sure your sins will find you out. Through wilful perversion of the
pleasing name the Professor had rendered himself incapable of
enunciating it.
"And what do _you_ do for India,--write, speak, organize, subscribe or
what?" asked the lady with increasing severity.
"I work."
"In what capacity?"
"I am a professor at the Government Engineering College, here in
Gungapur."
"O-h-h-h-h! You're one of the overpaid idlers who bolster up the
Bureaucracy and batten on the....'"
"Allow me to assure you that I neither bolster, batten, nor bureau, Mrs.
Grizzling--I mean _Gosling_ Green. Nor do I talk through my hat. I----"
the Professor was beginning to get angry and to lose control.
"Perhaps you are one of us in disguise--a Pro-Native?"
"I am intensely Pro-Native."
The tall Pathan stared at the Professor.
"Oh, _good!_ I _beg_ your pardon! Cornelius, this gentleman is a
Government professor and is _with us!_" said this female of the M.P.
species.
"That's right," gushed the Gosling. "We want a few in the enemy's camp
both to spy out their weakness and to embarrass them. Now about this
University business. I am going to take it up. That history affair now!
_Scandalous!_ I _cannot_ tell you what a wave of indignation swept over
England when that syllabus was drawn up. Nothing truly _Liberal_ about
the whole course, much less Radical. I at once said: '_I_ will see this
righted. _I_ will go to India, and _I_ will beard the....'"
"I think it was _I_ who said it, Cornelius," remarked his much better
half, coldly.
"Yes, my dear Superiora, yes. Now with your help I think we can do
something, Professor. Good. This _is_ providential. We shall be able to
embarrass them now! Will you write me----"
"You are going a little too fast, I think," said the Professor. "I am a
'Pro-Native' and a servant of the Pro-Native Government of India. As
such, I don't think I can be of any service to twenty-one-day visitors
who wish to 'embarrass' the best friends of my friends the Natives, even
supposing I were the sort of gentle Judas you compliment me by imagining
me. I----"
"You distinctly say you are Pro-Native and then----"
"I repeat I am intensely Pro-Native, and so are the Viceroy, the
Governors, the entire Civil Service, the Educational Service, the Forest
Service, the P.W.D., the Medical Service, the Army, and every other
Service and Department in India as well as every decent man in India. We
are _all_ Pro-Native, and all doing our best in our respective spheres,
in spite of a deal of ignorant and officious interference and attempted
'embarrassment' at the hands of the self-seeking, the foolish, the
busy-body, the idle--not to mention the vicious. What a _charming_ day
it is. I have so enjoyed the honour of meeting you."
* * * * *
"Well, my Scroobious Bird! And have they this day roasted in India such
a Gosling as shall never be put out?" inquired the non-moral and
unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a little later.
"No, my Augustus," was the reply. "It's a quacking little gosling, and
won't lead to any great commotion m the farm-yard. Nasty little
bird--like a _sat-bai_ or whatever they call those appalling things
'seven-sister' birds, aren't they, that chatter and squeak all day."
"Have a long drink and tell us all about it," replied Mr. Augustus
Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble.
"Oh, same old game on the same old stage. Same old players. Leading lady
and gent changed only. Huge great hideous bungalow, like a Goanese
wedding-cake, in a vast garden of symmetrically arranged blue and red
glazed 'art' flower-pots. Lofty room decorated with ancestral portraits
done by Mr. Guzzlebhoy Fustomji Paintwallah; green glass chandeliers and
big blue and white tin balls; mauve carpet with purple azure roses;
wall-paper, bright pink with red lilies and yellow cabbages; immense
mouldy mirrors, and a tin alarm clock. Big crowd of all the fly-blown
rich knaves of the place who have got more than they want out of
Government or else haven't got enough. Only novelty was a splendid
Pathan chap, got-up in English except for the conical cap and puggri.
Extraordinarily like Ross-Ellison, except that he had long black Pathan
hair on his shoulders. Been to England; barrister probably, and seemed
the most viciously seditious of the lot. Silly ignorant Goslings in the
middle saying to Brahmins, 'And you are Muscleman, aren't you, or are
you a Dhobi?' and to Parsis, 'I suppose you High Caste gentlemen have to
bathe _every_ day?' shoving their awful ignorance under the noses of
everybody, and inquiring after the healths of the 'chief wives'. Silly
fatuous geese!--and then talking the wildest piffle about the 'burning
question of the hour' and making the seditious rotters groan at their
ineptitude and folly, until they cheer them up sudden-like with a bit
of dam' treason and sedition they ought to be jailed for. _Jailed_. I
nearly threw a fit when the old geezer, in a blaze of diamonds and
glory, brought up old Phossy and presented him to the Gander, and he
murmured:--
"'My _deah_ friend,' as Phossy held on to his paw in transports, 'to
think of their casting _you_ into jail,' and old Mother Potiphar
squeaked: _'Oh, this is not the forger of that name--but the eminent
politeecian'_. But poor Gosly had thought he had been a political
prisoner! Meant no offence. And then some little squirt of an editor
primed him with lies about the University and the new syllabus, and
straightway the Gander tried to get me on the 'embarrass the Government'
lay, and talked as though he knew all about it. 'I'll get some of the
ladies of my committee sent out here as History-lecturers at your
University,' says he. 'They'll teach pure Liberal History and inculcate
true ideas of liberty and self-government.' I wanted to go outside and
be ill. Good old 'Paget M.P.'--takes up a 'Question' and writes a silly
pamphlet on it and thinks he's said the last word.--Written
thousands.--Don't matter so long as he does it in England.--Just the
place for him nowadays.--But when he feels he's shoved out of the
lime-light by a longer-haired Johnny, it's rough luck that he should try
and get back by spending his blooming committee's money coming here and
deludin' the poor seditionist and seducin' your Hatter from his
allegiance to his salt.... Awful old fraud really--no ability whatever.
Came to my college to spout once, in my time. Lord! Still he was a
guest, and we let him go. Run by his missus really, I think. Why can't
she stop at home and hammer windows? They say she went and asked the
Begum of Bhopal to join her in a 'mission and crusade'. Teach the Zenana
Woman and Purdah Lady to Come Forth instead of Bring Forth. Come Forth
and smash windows. Probably true. Silly Goslings. Drop 'em.... What did
you think of our bowling yesterday? With anything like a wicket your
College should be...."
* * * * *
Entering his lonely and sequestered bungalow that evening Mir Ilderim
Dost Mahommed changed his Pathan dress for European dining-kit, removed
his beard and wig, and became Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison. After dinner he
wrote to the eminent Cold weather Visitor to India, Mr. Cornelius
Gosling-Green, as follows--
"DEAR SIR,
"As I promised this afternoon, when you graciously condescended to
honour me with your illuminating conversation, I enclose the papers
which I guaranteed would shed some light on certain aspects of Indian
conditions, and which I consider likely to give you food for thought.
"As I was myself educated in India, was brought up to maturity with
Indian students, and have lived among them in many different places, I
may claim to know something about them. As a class they are gentle,
affectionate, industrious, well-meaning and highly intelligent. They are
the most malleable of human metal, the finest material for the sculptor
of humanity, the most impressionable of wax. In the right hands they can
be moulded to anything, by the right leader led to any height. And
conversely, of them a devil can make fiends. By the wrong leader they
can be led down to any depth.
"The crying need of India is noble men to make noble men of these fine
impressionable youths. Read the enclosed and take it that the writer
(who wrote this recently in Gungapur Jail) is typical of a large class
of misled, much-to-be-pitied youths, wrecked and ruined and
destroyed--their undoing begun by an unspeakably false and spurious
educational ideal, and completed by the writings, and the spoken words
of heartless unscrupulous scoundrels who use them to their own vile
ends.
"Read, Sir, and realize how truly noble, useful and beautiful is your
great work of endeavouring to embarrass our wicked Government, to weaken
its prestige here and in England, to encourage its enemies, to increase
discontent and unrest, to turn the thoughts of students to matters
political, and, in short, to carry on the good work of the usual
Self-advertising Visitation M.P.
"Humbly thanking your Honour, and wishing your Honour precisely the
successes and rewards that your Honour deserves,
"I remain,
"The dust of your Honour's feet,
"ILDERIM DOST MAHOMMED."
And Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., read as follows:--
... And so I am to be hanged by the neck till I am dead, am I? And for a
murder which I never committed, and in the perpetration of which I had
no hands? Is it, my masters? I trow so. But I can afford to spit--for I
did commit a murder, nevertheless, a beautiful secret murder that no one
could possibly ever bring to my home or cast in my tooth.
"Well, well! Hang me and grin in sleeve--and I will laugh on other side
of face while dancing on nothing--for if you think you are doing me in
eye, I know I have done you in eye!
"Yes. _I_ murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Chief Secretary of the Nuddee
River Commission.
"As the Latin-and-Greeks used to say, '_Solo fesit_'!
"You think Mr. Spensonly died of plague? So he did. And who caused him
to have plague? In short, who _plagued_ him? (Ha! Ha! An infinite jest!)
You shall know all about it and about, as Omar says, for I am going now
to write my autobiography of myself, as all great so-called Criminals
have done, for the admiration of mankind and the benefit of posterity.
And my fellow-brothers and family-members shall proudly publish it with
my photo--that of a great Patriot Hero and second Mazzini, Robespierre,
Kossuth, Garibaldi, Wallace, Charlotte Corday, Kosciusko, and Mr. Robert
Bruce (of spider fame).
"And I shall welcome death and embrace the headsman ere making last
speech and dying confession. Having long desired to know what lies
Beyond, I shall make virtue of necessity and seize opportunity (of
getting to know) to play hero and die gamish.
"Not like the Pathan murderer who walked about in front of condemned
cell with Koran balanced on head, crying to his Prophet to save him, and
defying Englishes to touch him. Of course they cooked his geese, Koran
or not. One warder does more than many Prophets in Gungapur Jail. (He!
He! Quite good epigram and nice cynicality of educated man.) The
degraded and unpolished fellow decoyed two little girls into empty house
to steal their jewellery, and cut off fingers and noses and ears to get
rings and nose-jewels and ear-drops, and left to die. Holy Fakir,
gentleman of course! Pooh! and Bah! for all holy men. I give spurnings
to them all for fools, knaves, or hypocrites. There are no gods any more
for educated gentleman, except himself, and that's very good god to
worship and make offering to (Ha! Ha! What a wit will be lost to the
silly world when it permits itself to lose me.)
"Well, to return to the sheep, as the European proverb has it. I was
born here in Gungapur, which will also have honour of being my
death-and-cremation place, of poor but honest parent on thirty rupees a
mensem. He was very clever fellow and sent five sons to Primary School,
Middle School, High School and Gungapur Government College at cost of
over hundred rupees a month, all out of his thirty rupees a mensem. He
always used proverb 'Politeness lubricates wheels of life and palm
also,' and he obliged any man who made it worth his while. But he fell
into bad odours at hands of Mr. Spensonly owing to folly of
bribing-fellow sending cash to office and the letter getting into Mr.
Spensonly's post-bag and opening by mistake.
"But the Sahib took me up into his office to soften blow to progenitor
and that shows he was a bad man or his luck would not have been to take
me in and give chance to murder him.
"My good old paternal parent made me work many hours each night, and
though he knew nothing of the subjects he could read English and would
hear all my lessons and other brothers', and we had to say Skagger Rack,
Cattegat, Scaw Fell and Helvellyn, and such things to him, and he would
abuse us if we mis-arranged the figures and letters in CaH2O2 and
H2SO4 and all those things in bottles. Before the Matriculation
Examination he made a Graduate, whom he had got under his thumb-nail,
teach us all the answers to all the back questions in all subjects till
we knew them all by heart, and also made us learn ten long essays by
heart so as to make up the required essay out of parts of them. He
nearly killed my brother by starvation (saving food as well as punishing
miscreant) for failing--the only one of us who ever failed in any
examination--which he did by writing out all first chapter of Washington
Irving for essay, when the subject was 'Describe a sunrise in the
Australian back-blocks'. As parent said, he could have used 'A moonlight
stroll by the sea-shore' and change the colour from silver to golden.
But the fool was ill--so ill that he tried to kill himself and had not
the strength. He said he would rather go to the missionaries' hell, full
of Englishes, than go on learning _Egbert, Ethelbald, Ethelbert,
Ethelwulf, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edred, Edwy, Edgar,
Ethelred the Unready_, and _If two triangles have two sides of the one
equal to two angles of the other each to each and the sides so subtended
equal then shall the bases or fourth sides be equal each to each or be
isosceles_.
"Well, the progenitor kept our noses in the pie night and day and we all
hated the old papa piously and wished he and we and all teachers and
text-books were burned alive.
"But we were very much loved by everybody as we were so learned and
clever, and whenever the Collector or anybody came to School, the Head
Master used to put one of us in each room and call on us to answer
questions and recite and say capes and bays without the map, and other
clever things; and when my eldest brother left I had to change coat with
another boy and do it twice sometimes, in different rooms.
"Sometimes the Educational Inspector himself would come, but then
nothing could be done, for he would not ask questions that were always
asked and were in the book, like the teachers and Deputy Inspectors did,
but questions that no one knew and had to be thought out then and there.
That is no test of Learning--and any fool who has not troubled to mug
his book by heart might be able to answer such questions, while the man
who had learnt every letter sat dumb.
"I hated the school and the books I knew by heart, but I loved Mr.
Ganeshram Joshibhai. He was a clever cunning man, and could always tweak
the leg of pompous Head Master when he came to the room, and had
beautiful ways of cheating him when he came to examine--better than
those of the other teachers.
"Before we had been with him a month he could tell us things while being
examined, and no one else knew he was doing it. The initial letters of
each word made up the words he wanted to crib to us, and when he
scratched his head with the right hand the answer was 'No,' while with
the left hand it was 'Yes'. And the clever way he taught us sedition
while teaching us History, and appearing to praise the English!
"He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought
and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the
Government and Members of Council. We knew all about Oliver Cromwell,
Hampden, Pim, and those crappies, and many a boy who had never heard of
Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot
who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.
"We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons
telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too,
and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about
the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day. He showed
always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed. And he gave
weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.
"And all the Indian History was about the Mutiny and how and why it
failed, when he was not showing us how the Englishes have ruined and
robbed India, and comparing the Golden Age of India (when no cow ever
died and there was never famine, plague, police nor taxes) with the
miserable condition of poor bleeding India to-day.
"He was a fine fellow and so clever that we were almost his worshippers.
But I am not writing his autobiography but my own, so let him lapse
herewith into posterity and well-merited oblivious.
"At the College when we could work no longer, we who had never learnt
crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with
big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the
grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to
each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in
a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the
heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing
in chokey and do _poojah_ to their photos. But the superior members did
no _poojah_ to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy
man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have assumed,
for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on
suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind
Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.
"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.
"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the
next Instrument?
"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.
"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless
Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be
unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit
for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went
away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he
could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a
mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.
"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British
Government does for you--educates you to be passed B.A. and educated
gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects
you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A.
work with hands like _maistri_?
"Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman
who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky
joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at
school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-class
superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory.
"His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they
did much--for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it.
"But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not
grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing
up of the _bhangi_ by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired
to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacred cause and have photo in newspapers
and be talked about.
"Besides, as I have said, I am not being done brown, as I murdered Mr.
Spensonly, the Engineer.
"How I hated him!
"Why should he be big and strong while I am skinny and feeble--owing to
night-and-day burning midnight candle at both ends and unable to make
them meet?
"Besides did he not bring unmerited dishonour on grey hairs of poor old
progenitor by finding him out in bribe-taking? Did he not bring my
honoured father's aforesaying grey hairs in sorrow to reduced pension?
"Did he not upbraid and rebuke, nay, reproach me when I made grievous
little errors and backslippers?
"A thousand times Yea.
"But I should never have murdered him had I not caught the Plague, so
out of evil cometh good once more.
"The Plague came to Gungapur in its millions and we knew not what to do
but stood like drowning man splitting at a straw.
"Superstitious Natives said it was the revenge of Goddess Kali for not
sacrificing, and superstitious Europeans said it was a microbe created
by their God to punish unhygienic way of living.
"Knowing there are no gods of any sort I am in a position to state that
it was just written on our foreheads.
"To make confusion worse dumbfounded the Government of course had to
seize horns of dilemma and trouble the poor. They had all cases taken to
hospital and made segregation and inspection camps. They disinfected
houses and burnt rags and even purdah women were not allowed to die in
bosom of family. Of course police stole lakhs of rupees worth of clothes
and furniture and said it was infected. And many good men who were
enemies of Government were falsely accused of being plague-stricken and
were dragged to hospital and were never seen again.
"Terrible calamities fell upon our city and at last it nearly lost me
myself. I was seized, dragged from my family-bosom, cast into hospital
and cured. And in hospital I learned from fellow who was
subordinate-medical that rats get plague in sewers and cesspools and
when they die of it their fleas must go elsewhere for food, and so hop
on to other rat and give that poor chap plague too, by biting him with
dirty mouths from dead rat, and then he dies and so _in adfinitum_, as
the poet has it. But suppose no other rat is handy, what is poor hungry
flea to do? When you can't get curry, eat rice! When flea can't get rat
he eats man--turns to nastier food. (He! He!)
"So when flea from plague-stricken rat jumps on to man and bites him,
poor fellow gets plague--_bus_.[58]
[58] Finale, enough, the end.
"Didn't friends and family-members skeddaddle and bunk when they saw rat
after I told them all that! But I didn't care, I had had plague once,
and one cannot get it twice. Not one man in thousand recovers when he
has got it, but I did. Old uneducated fool maternal parent did lots of
thanks-givings and _poojah_ because gods specially attentive to me--but
I said 'Go to, old woman. It was written on forehead.'
"And when I returned to work, one day I had an idea--an idea of how to
punish Mr. Spensonly for propelling honoured parent head first out of
job, and idea for striking blow at British prestige. We had our office
in private bungalow in those days before new Secretariat was built, and
it was unhealthy bungalow in which no one would live because they died.
"Mr. Spensonly didn't care, and he had office on top floor, but bottom
floor was clerks' office who went away at night also. Now it was my
painful duty to go every morning up to his office-room and see that peon
had put fresh ink and everything ready and that the _hamal_ had dusted
properly. So it was not long before I was aware that all the drawers
were locked except the top right-hand drawer, and that was not used as
there was a biggish hole in the front of it where the edge was broken
away from the above, some miscreant having once forced it open with
tool.
"And verily it came to pass that one day, entering my humble abode-room,
I saw a plague-rat lying suffering from _in extremis_ and about to give
up ghost. But having had plague I did not trouble about the fleas that
would leave his body when it grew stiff and cold, in search of food.
Instead I let it lie there while my food was being prepared, and
regretted that it was not beneath the chair of some enemy of mine who
had not had plague, instead of beneath my own ... that of Mr. Spensonly
for example!...
"It was Saturday night. I returned to the office that evening, knowing
that Mr. Spensonly was out; and I went to his office-room with idle
excuse to the peon sitting in verandah--and in my pocket was poor old
rat kicking bucket fast.
"Who was to say _I_ put deceasing rat in the Sahib's table-drawer just
where he would come and sit all day--being in the habit of doing work on
Sunday the Christian holy day (being a man of no religion or caste)?
What do I know of rats and their properties when at death's front door?
"Cannot rat go into a Sahib's drawer as well as into poor man's? If he
did no work on Sunday very likely the fleas would remain until Monday,
the rat dying slowly and remaining warm and not in _rigour mortuis_.
Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed
up with old rat--or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be
jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an
Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and
did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling
feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, to make humble inquiries
on Tuesday, he was reported jolly sickish with Plague--and he died
Tuesday night. I never heard of any other Sahib dying of Plague in
Gungapur except one missionary fellow who lived in the native city with
native fellows.
"So they can hang me for share in bomb-outrage and welcome (though I
never threw the bomb nor made it, and only took academic interest in
affair as I told the Judge Sahib)--for I maintain with my dying breath
that it was I who murdered Mr. Spensonly and put tongue in cheeks when
_Gungapur Gazette_ wrote column about the unhealthy bungalow in which he
was so foolish as to have his office. When I reflect that by this time
to-morrow I shall be Holy Martyr I rejoice and hope photo will be good
one, and I send this message to all the world--
"'Oh be....'"
* * * * *
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Gosling-Green, M.P., liked this Pathan gentleman so
well after reading his letter and enclosure. Before long they liked him
very much less--although they did not know it--which sounds cryptic.
§ 5. MR. HORACE FAGGIT.
"Fair cautions, ain't they, these bloomin' niggers," observed Mr. Horace
Faggit, as the train rested and refreshed itself at a wayside station on
its weary way to distant Gungapur.
Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley, of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry,
apparently did not feel called upon to notice the remark of Horace, whom
he regarded as a Person.
"Makes you proud to think you are one of the Ruling Rice to look at the
silly blighters, don't it?" he persisted.
"No authority on rice," murmured the Colonel, without looking up from
his book.
Stuffy old beggar he seemed to the friendly and genial Horace, but
Horace was too deeply interested in India and Horace to be affected by
trifles.
For Mr. Horace Faggit had only set foot in his Imperial Majesty the King
Emperor's Indian Empire that month, and he was dazed with impressions,
drunk with sensations, and uplifted with pride. Was he not one of the
Conquerors, a member of the Superior Society, one of the Ruling Race,
and, in short, a Somebody?
The train started again and Horace sank back upon the long couch of the
unwonted first-class carriage, and sighed with contentment and
satisfaction.
How different from Peckham and from the offices of the fine old British
Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt! A Somebody at
last--after being office-boy, clerk, strap-hanger, gallery-patron,
cheap lodger, and paper-collar wearer. A Somebody, a Sahib, an English
gent., one of the Ruling and Upper Class after being a fourpenny
luncher, a penny-'bus-and-twopenny--tuber, a waverer 'twixt Lockhart and
Pearce-and-Plenty.
For him, now, the respectful salaam, precedence, the first-class
carriage, the salutes of police and railway officials, hotels, a servant
(elderly and called a "Boy"), cabs (more elderly and called "gharries"),
first-class refreshment and waiting rooms, a funny but imposing
sun-helmet, silk and cotton suits, evening clothes, deference, regard
and prompt attention everywhere. Better than Peckham and the City, this!
My! What tales he'd have to tell Gwladwys Gwendoline when he had
completed his circuit and returned.
For Mr. Horace Faggit, plausible, observant, indefatigably cunning, and
in business most capable ("No bloomin' flies on 'Orris F." as he would
confidently and truthfully assure you) was the first tentative tentacle
advanced to feel its way by the fine old British Firm of Schneider,
Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, in the mazy markets of the gorgeous
Orient, and to introduce to the immemorial East their famous jewellery
and wine of Birmingham and Whitechapel respectively; also to introduce
certain exceeding-private documents to various gentlemen of Teutonic
sympathies and activities in various parts of India--documents of the
nature of which Horace was entirely ignorant.
And the narrow bosom of Horace swelled with pride, as he realized that,
here at least, he was a Gentleman and a Sahib.
Well, he'd let 'em know it too. Those who did him well and pleased him
should get tips, and those who didn't should learn what it was to earn
the displeasure of the Sahib and to evoke his wrath. And he would
endeavour to let all and sundry see the immeasurable distance and
impassable gulf that lay between a Sahib and a nigger--of any degree
whatsoever.
This was the country to play the gentleman in and no error! You _could_
fling your copper cash about in a land where a one-and-fourpenny piece
was worth a hundred and ninety-two copper coins, where you could get a
hundred good smokes to stick in your face for about a couple of bob, and
where you could give a black cabby sixpence and done with it. Horace had
been something of a Radical at home (and, indeed, when an office-boy, a
convinced Socialist), especially when an old-age pension took his lazy,
drunken old father off his hands, and handsomely rewarded the aged
gentleman for an unswervingly regular and unbroken career of
post-polishing and pub-pillaring. But now he felt he had been mistaken.
Travel widens the horizon and class-hatred is only sensible and
satisfactory when you are no class yourself. When you have got a
position you must keep it up--and being one of the Ruling Race was a
position undoubtedly. Horace Faggit _would_ keep it up too, and let 'em
see all about it.
The train entered another station and drew in from the heat and glare to
the heat and comparative darkness.
Yes, he would keep up his position as a Sahib haughtily and with
jealousy,--and he stared with terrible frown and supercilious hauteur at
what he mentally termed a big, fat buck-nigger who dared and presumed
to approach the carriage and look in. The man wore an enormous white
turban, a khaki Norfolk jacket, white jodhpore riding-breeches that
fitted the calf like skin, and red shoes with turned-up pointed toes.
His beard was curled, and his hair hung in ringlets from his turban to
his shoulders in a way Horace considered absurd. Could the blighter be
actually looking to see whether there might be room for him, and
meditating entry? If so Horace would show him his mistake. Pretty thing
if niggers were to get into First-Class carriages with Sahibs like
Horace!
"'Ere! What's the gaime?" he inquired roughly. "Can't yer see this is
Firs-Class, and if you got a Firs-Class ticket, can't yer see there's
two Sahibs 'ere? Sling yer 'ook, _sour_.[59] Go on, _jao!_"[60]
[59] Pig.
[60] Go away.
The man gave no evidence of having understood Horace.
"Sahib!" said he softly, addressing Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley.
The Colonel went on reading.
"_Jao_, I tell yer," repeated Horace, rather proud of his grasp of the
vernacular. "Slope, _barnshoot_."[61]
[61] An insulting epithet.
"Sahib!" said the man again.
The Colonel looked up and then sprang to his feet with outstretched
hand.
"_Bahut salaam_,[62] Subedar Major Saheb," he cried, and wrung the hand
of the "big fat buck-nigger" (who possessed the same medal-ribbons that
he himself did) as he poured forth a torrent of mingled Pushtu, Urdu,
and English while the Native Officer alternately saluted and pressed
the Colonel's hand to his forehead in transports of pure and wholly
disinterested joy.
[62] Hearty greeting.
"They told me the Colonel Sahib would be passing through this week," he
said, "and I have met all the trains that I might look upon his face. I
am weary of my furlough and would rejoin but for my law-suit. Praise be
to Allah that I have met my Colonel Sahib," and the man who had five war
decorations was utterly unashamed of the tear that trickled.
"How does my son, Sahib?" he asked in Urdu.
"Well, Subedar Major Saheb, well. Worthily of his father--whose place in
the _pultan_ may he come to occupy."
"Praise be to God, Sahib! Let him no more seek his father's house nor
look upon his father's face again, if he please thee not in all things.
And is there good news of Malet-Marsac Sahib, O Colonel Sahib?" Then,
with a glance at Horace, he asked: "Why does this low-born one dare to
enter the carriage of the Colonel Sahib and sit? Truly the _rêlwêy
terain_ is a great caste-breaker! Clearly he belongs to the class of the
_ghora-log_, the common soldiers." ...
"'Oo was that,--a Rajah?" inquired the astounded Horace, as the train
moved on.
"One of the people who keep India safe for you bagmen," replied the
Colonel, who was a trifle indignant on behalf of the insulted Subedar
Major Mir Daoud Khan Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan of the 99th Baluch Light
Infantry.
"No doubt he thought I was another officer," reflected Horace. "They
think you're a gent, if you chivvy 'em."
At Umbalpur Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley left the train and Mr.
Faggit had the carriage to himself--for a time.
And it was only through his own firmness and proper pride that he had it
to himself for so long, for at the very next station a beastly little
brute of a black man actually tried to get in--in with _him_, Mr. Horace
Faggit of the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer &
Schmidt, manufacturers of best quality Birmingham jewellery and
"importers" of a fine Whitechapel wine.
But Horace settled _him_ all right and taught him to respect Sahibs. It
happened thus. Horace lay idly gazing at the ever-shifting scene of the
platform in lordly detachment and splendid isolation, when, just as the
train was starting, a little fat man, dressed in a little red turban
like a cotton bowler, a white coat with a white sash over the shoulder,
a white apron tucked up behind, pink silk socks, and patent leather
shoes, told his servant to open the door. Ere the stupefied Horace could
arise from his seat the man was climbing in! The door opened inwards
however, and Horace was in time to give it a sharp thrust with his foot
and send the little man, a mere Judge of the High Court, staggering
backwards on to the platform where he sprawled at full length, while his
turban, which Horace thought most ridiculous for a grown man, rolled in
the dust. Slamming the door the "Sahib" leant out and jeered, while the
insolent presumptuous "nigger" wiped the blood from his nose with a
corner of the _dhoti_ or apron-like garment (which Horace considered
idiotic if not improper)....
But Homer nodded, and--Horace went to sleep.
When he awoke he saw by the dim light of the screened roof-lamp that he
was not alone, and that on the opposite couch a _native_ had actually
made up a bed with sheets, blankets and pillow, undressed himself, put
on pyjamas and gone to bed! Gord streuth, he had! He'd attend to him in
the morning--though it would serve the brute right if Horace threw him
out at the next station--without his kit. But he looked rather large,
and Mercy is notoriously a kingly attribute.
In the morning Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed of
Mekran Kot, Gungapur, and the world in general, awoke, yawned, stretched
himself and arose.
He arose to some six feet and three inches of stature, and his thin
pyjamasuit was seen to cover a remarkably fine and robustious
figure--provided with large contours where contours are desirable, and
level tracts where such are good. As he lay flat back again, Horace
noted that his chest rose higher than his head and the more southerly
portion of his anatomy, while the action of clasping his hands behind
his neck brought into prominence a pair of biceps that strained their
sleeves almost to bursting. He was nearly as fair as London-bred Horace,
but there were his turbanned conical hat, his curly toed shoes, his long
silk coat, his embroidered velvet waistcoat and other wholly Oriental
articles of attire. Besides, his vest was of patterned muslin and he had
something on a coloured string round his neck.
"What are you doing 'ere?" demanded Horace truculently, as this bold
abandoned "native" caught his eye and said "Good-morning".
"At present I am doing nothing," was the reply, "unless passive
reclining may count as being something. I trust I do not intrude or
annoy?"
"You do intrude and likewise you do annoy also. I ain't accustomed to
travel with blacks, and I ain't agoing to have you spitting about 'ere.
You got in when I was asleep."
"You were certainly snoring when I got in, and I was careful not to
awaken you--but not on account of any great sensation of guilt or fear.
I assure you I have no intention of spitting or being in any way rude,
unmannerly, or offensive. And since you object to travelling with
'blacks' I suggest--that you leave the carriage."
Did Horace's ears deceive him? Did he sleep, did he dream, and were
visions about? _Leave the carriage_?
"Look 'ere," he shouted, "you keep a civil tongue in your 'ead. Don't
you know I am a gentleman? What do you mean by getting into a
first-class carriage with a gentleman and insulting 'im? Want me to
throw you out before we reach a station? Do yer?"
"No, to tell you the truth I did not realize that you are a
gentleman--and I have known a great number of English gentlemen in
England and India, and generally found them mirrors of chivalry and the
pink of politeness and courtesy. And I hope you won't try to throw me
out either in a station or elsewhere for I might get annoyed and hurt
you."
What a funny nigger it was! What did he mean by "mirrors of chivalry".
Talked like a bloomin' book. Still, Horace would learn him not to
presoom.
The presumptuous one retired to the lavatory; washed, shaved, and
reappeared dressed in full Pathan kit. But for this, there was nothing
save his very fine physique and stature to distinguish him from an
inhabitant of Southern Europe.
Producing a red-covered official work on Mounted Infantry Training, he
settled down to read.
Horace regretted that India provided not his favourite _Comic Cuts and
Photo Bits_.
"May I offer you a cigarette and light one myself?" said the "black" man
in his quiet cultured voice.
"I don't want yer fags--and I don't want you smoking while I got a empty
stummick," replied the Englishman.
Anon the train strolled into an accidental-looking station with an air
of one who says, "Let's sit down for a bit--what?" and Horace sprang to
the window and bawled for the guard.
"'Ere--ask this native for 'is ticket," he said, on the arrival of that
functionary. "Wot's 'e doing in 'ere with _me_?"
"Ticket, please?" said the guard--a very black Goanese.
The Pathan produced his ticket.
"Will you kindly see if there is another empty first-class carriage,
Guard?" said he.
"There iss one next a'door," replied the guard.
"Then you can escape from your unpleasant predicament by going in there,
Sir," said the Pathan.
"I shall remine where I ham," was the dignified answer.
"And so shall I," said the Pathan.
"Out yer go," said the bagman, rising threateningly.
"I am afraid I shall have to put you to the trouble of ejecting me,"
said the Pathan, with a smile.
"I wouldn't bemean myself," countered Horace loftily, and didn't.
"One often hears of the dangerous classes in India," said the Pathan, as
the train moved on again. "You belong to the most dangerous of all. You
and your kind are a danger to the Empire and I have a good mind to be a
public benefactor and destroy you. Put you to the edge of the sword--or
rather of the tin-opener," and he pulled his lunch-basket from under the
seat.
"Have some chicken, little Worm?" he continued, opening the basket and
preparing to eat.
"Keep your muck," replied Horace.
"No, no, little Cad," corrected the strange and rather terrible person;
"you are going to breakfast with me and you are going to learn a few
things about India--and yourself."
And Horace did....
"Where are you going?" asked the Pathan person later.
"I'm going to work up a bit o' trade in a place called Gungerpore," was
the reply of the cowed Horace.
But in Gungapur Horace adopted the very last trade that he, respectable
man, ever expected to adopt--that of War.