his comrades Dy'sy from his habit of perpetually warbling that
aggravating ditty, was rather a favourite of mine. He was a perfectly
reckless rolling stone, a bad shilling of about five-and-thirty, who
from the way he had, when not on his guard, of assimilating drill, must
have been through it several times. But over his past he drew a veil;
and, indeed, his present was sufficient for character. He had come
out with a draft in the cold weather, and already his evil influence
with the recruits was notorious. Yet I liked the fellow; he was a
first-class light-weight bruiser, out and away the best in the
regiment. I had taken lessons of his, and his devil-may-care defiance
had been attractive.
"Same as before, sir," replied the sergeant. "Shindy in Number Three.
'Tain't no manner o' use shiftin' 'is room. He'd purwurt a Sunday
School."
Solid truth in every word! Yet the light blue eyes which met mine had a
twinkle in them that softened my heart.
"If you are such a cursed fool," I said, as sternly as I could, "you'll
come to grief."
His face took on sublime innocence. "Beg pardin, sir; but it ralely
ain't fair w'en a party is trying to do 'is dooty to 'is parsters an'
marsters. Them young chaps was makin' fun hover your monkey usin' the
major's py-jammas has a slopper; an' I only tole 'm it was kind o'
disrespekful like, as she meant it hall in k'yindness, an' bid 'm hold
their jaw. That's how the tin dishes got hinjured, for," he added, with
great dignity, "I won't 'ave no slanderin' o' dumb animals as can't
speak up for thesselves."
A gleam of hope shot through me. "You're fond of animals, are you?" I
asked.
For once candid confidence came to him. "Well! I don' know, sir," he
replied, "but 'twas the loss o' a dorg as fust set me wrong." He gave a
glance towards the sergeant, who was discreetly retiring, and then went
on. "I was but a young chap, just gone twenty, and the dorg was a bull
tarrier, sir, as good as they make 'm. S'yme n'yme as your monkey,
sir--Jennie. We was chums. Then I got a gel, one o' the yaller-haired
kind, sir, an' I was a fool about her, as young chaps is apt ter be.
Well, sir, I 'adn't bin just steddy--no real 'arm, you know, but sort
o' light like. But I settles down an' begins ter screw against gettin'
married. The yaller-haired gel was livin' with me, sir, so as to save
time like, but we was sure to get married in church an' go hoff
emigrating so soon as I'd got the 'oof. An' Jennie was to go, too, for
she an' me was chums. Well, sir, there was a big, black chap, coster he
was, I licked him more nor once for 'angin' round; but there! females
are built that way. So it 'appened when I come 'ome one hevening that I
found 'er gone, an' the 'oof too. An' Jennie----" he drew his hand
slowly over his mouth--"Jennie had died game, sir. She 'ad a bit of the
big black brute's corduroys betwixt 'er teeth, but 'e'd bashed 'er 'ead
open with 'is boot."
There was silence. Then he went on with a reckless laugh, "'Tweren't
the gel, sir; there's plenty o' them ter be got, yaller hair an' all.
But Jennie an' me had been chums."
Five minutes later the monkey had changed masters. To oblige me and
save Jennie from being shot Dy'sy Bell had promised to take care of
her.
"I'u'd rather 'ave no money, sir," he said, when he appeared to fetch
her away and I offered him something towards her keep, "'twould only go
to the canteen, and if I get into trouble, oo'd look after 'er?"
'"Er," I may mention, had just bitten his finger through to the bone,
an action which he dismissed with the remark that "females was built
that way."
Three days later, as I rode past Number Three barrack, I saw Jennie
cracking nuts on a brand-new perch. Dy'sy, it now appeared, was quite a
smart carpenter, and had made it himself in the workshop. Three days
after that again, the perch was embellished by a brass chain, and Dy'sy
admitted shamefacedly that he had once been in a foundry. So time
passed on, until it occurred to me that Dy'sy had ceased to come into
prominence before me as company officer, and I questioned the sergeant
concerning him.
The official did not move a muscle. "Number Three's has quiet has a
orphin asylum now, sir. As I lies in my bunk I don't 'ear no whisper.
But it was Bedlam broke loose the fust night after Jennie come, sir. I
lay low, seeing as there never was no use in tryin' to get at the
bottom o' that sort o' row in the dark, sir. An' next morning 'arf the
room complained of 'avin' a hunbaptised brute put to bed with 'em. The
monkey slep' with Dy'sy, sir, so I spoke to 'im, an' told 'im I
c'u'dn't 'ave no more complaints, an' he replied, quite civil-like, as
there sh'u'dn't be none. An' there wasn't; but 'arf the men 'ad black
eyes that week, sir, though 'ow they came by 'm they didn't say."
I did not enquire. It was sufficient for me that Number Three barrack
was rapidly becoming regenerate. As I passed one day I heard a voice
say, "Now, boys! I won't 'ave no cuss words; they ain't fit for a lydy
to hear."
"You don't go so often to the canteen as you used to, Bell," I said to
him one day when I found him sitting alone in the verandah nursing
Jennie, who jibbered at me.
"Ain't got the money, sir," he replied cheerfully. "_Neringis_ and
sich--like is a horful price in this Gordforsaken spot, an' Jennie's
been a bit ailin'; won't eat nothing else."
"Well, you'll be getting your stripes soon, I expect, if you go on as
you are doing," I remarked.
He flushed up. "I 'opes so, sir," he said modestly. "Jennie 'u'd set
store by a striped sleeve, females being built that way."
My prophecy proved correct. Dy'sy was made a corporal, and before long,
in the Border campaign which the cold weather brought us, found himself
a sergeant, and so eventually in charge of a telegraph station on the
top of one of the passes to our rear.
It was an important post to keep open, since on the integrity of the
wire through a mile or so of singularly difficult country hung the
certainty of speedy relief, should any kind of disaster overtake our
little force, which was intimidating the tribes in the valleys beyond.
And disaster did overtake it, chiefly by reason of a terrific snowstorm
which swept over it early in February--a snowstorm which paralysed
progress, and made all thoughts turn to the probability of that mile of
telegraph wire remaining intact.
No supplies could, of course, be sent up, so the men in the station
must either starve or return, if, indeed, they had not been overwhelmed
already. The latter seemed the most likely, since, though the through
wire remained open, not a signal came from the station.
"An avalanche most likely," said the Adjutant. "The station was built,
I always said, in the wrong place. What luck the wire isn't damaged as
yet. It won't be long before it is, I'm afraid."
It was, however, still going strong when four men, one badly
frost-bitten, made their way into camp. They had started five, they
said, by Sergeant Bell's orders, after they had with difficulty
extricated themselves from the ruins of the house, which had been
completely smashed up by a tremendous avalanche. It was impossible,
Dy'sy had said, to keep the post and six men also, so he had given them
what supplies he could spare--the store was luckily uninjured--and
bidden them take their best chance of safety at once.
As for his, it seemed but slender, as I felt when, a fortnight later,
we managed to cut our way through the drifts that lay round the hollow
where the station had stood. Across this hollow the through wire still
stretched, and quite recently someone had evidently been at work upon
it, for tools lay on fresh frosted snow. But all was still as the dead,
quiet as the grave. We found Dy'sy lying on his face in the store many
feet below the snow surface. The steps cut down to it were worn with
the passing of his feet, but he did not move when we bent over him;
something, however, cuddled close in his arms, woke and jibbered at us
angrily. It was Jennie, dressed for warmth in every rag of blanketing
available. She was as fat as a pig, and the charcoal embers in the tin
can hung round her neck were not yet quite cold. But Dy'sy was skin and
bone; yet the Irish doctor, as he bent hastily to examine him, said,
cheerfully: "Annyhow, his love for the baste may have saved his life;
she's kept his heart warm whatever."
And she had.
Six weeks afterwards I sat beside him in hospital. He showed thin and
gaunt still in his grey flannel dressing-gown, and two fingers were
missing on his left hand.
"Well!" I said, "so they've given you the D.S.M., and a special pension
if you want to go."
He smiled brilliantly.
"Don't want to, sir. Jennie she likes the H'army; females is built that
way. And as for t'other, 'twas really Jennie done it. I couldn't take
her through the snow--she'd 'a' died for sure. An' I couldn't leave
her, so there wasn't no choice."
A SONG WITHOUT WORDS
It was in the club that the telegram came, and as I sat watching my
partner make pie of one of the best bridge hands ever ruined, I read it
over once or twice, and, finally, when our adversaries had run out,
handed it over to the culprit as a means of turning my wrath to another
subject.
"Transferred!" he commented, calmly. "H'm! We shall have to get
Beveridge to join our game instead!" (My self-pity flew for a moment
to poor Beveridge, and I wondered what sort of a temper he had.)
"Still, it isn't a bad place, though rather out of the way. Splendid
buck-shooting--only, of course, this isn't the time. And a very decent
house." Here he giggled. "Well, decent isn't, perhaps, the word to use,
is it? And, by Jove, I'm sorry for you. There will be a devil of a mess
to set right, I expect; and, anyhow, it isn't pleasant to step into
another fellow's shoes after that sort of thing."
I acquiesced. "That sort of thing" was, briefly, the suicide of a
fellow civil servant, whom I had known vaguely as the most brilliant
man in my year.
A tall, handsome, light-hearted fellow, full of life, full of
everything, apparently, likely to make him go up; instead of which he
had gone down steadily--so steadily that at last even a Government
which prides itself on ignoring breaches of social law, had been driven
into first banishing him to the charge of a solitary jungle district,
where there was no world to be scandalised, and then with warning him
that he must either pull up or send in his papers.
He chose the latter course decisively, sending in his checks to another
tribunal.
"He wasn't a bad sort when he first came out," continued my partner;
"had, in fact, distinct glimmerings of sense, and to the last he
wasn't, so to speak, a bad officer. But the wine and the women--well,
there you are--and--make the best of it."
This last might have been meant for the nice hand which he displayed.
We had cut for partners again, with the only result of shifting the
deal. I took it that way, anyhow, and said no more.
There was, in fact, nothing to be said, so when I got home, I told the
bearer of my transfer, and, sitting down, wrote an effusively-cheerful
letter to my wife, who was in the hills with the babies, enlarging on
the manifold advantages of my transfer, and making much of the fact
that, though it brought no extra pay, it was, in a measure, promotion.
Then I smoked a pipe, feeling virtuous, for those two estimable
creatures--my bearer and my wife--invariably do my duty for me. In
fact, I am the happiest man in existence. I have told my wife so a
hundred times, and she believes it firmly. The faculty, by the way,
which good women have of believing things that ought to be true, is
occasionally appalling, but is always immensely convenient to their
husbands.
I always wrote her cheerful letters, and in return I used to get
delightful daily budgets, giving me all the wonderful ways and works of
the chicks, and imploring me to let her know regularly what the cook
gave me for dinner, and if I ate it. Also if I were morally sure that
the water was boiling for my tea every afternoon, as, if I was not, she
would infallibly hand the babies over to hirelings, and come down to
her ill-used hubby.
Such delightful, tender, womanly budgets were her replies that I swear
and declare that, had I been asked to read them aloud, a lump in my
throat would have interfered with my elocution.
Yet I swear and declare, also, that I would far rather the kettle were
not boiling than that any one I cared for should fuss over it and a
charcoal brazier on a hot verandah on a sweltering August day. But,
then, as my wife is always telling me, I have no real sense of duty.
I wrote her, therefore, as cheerfully as I could, telling her, which
was true, that solitude would be better than bad bridge. Also that it
really was a move nearer to her, since, in case of emergency, I could
cut across country by dhoolie to the foot of the hills. Finally, I
enlarged on the fact that my successor would take over our house as it
stood until her return, so that she need not fuss about moving
anything, as I should do well in my new house, which was to remain as
it was until my predecessor's unfortunate affairs had gone through the
Administrator-General's office--a business, as a rule, of months.
I even mentioned the existence of a Bechstein grand piano, with a hint
that if I could get rid of our cottage, I might buy it when the sale
came on--an additional craftiness, since my wife loves to think I am
allowed to have my own way in everything. It makes her more certain
that we have won the Dunmow flitch of bacon--which we undoubtedly have.
Having done my best to set her wifely anxiety at rest, I advanced fifty
rupees to my bearer.
In consequence of which we started next day for my new district, bag
and baggage. Though the most part of the journey was by train, the
bearer insisted on buckling a big sword he had picked up somewhere
round his capacious middle. It decidedly had an effect on the railway
coolies.
About three a.m. we turned out at a roadside station, where, thanks to
that fifty rupees, a dak gharri was waiting to convey me the remaining
twenty miles. I was very sleepy, and as I tumbled into my new
conveyance I got a vague impression of a howling wilderness of sand,
tufted with tiger grass, desolate utterly; so falling asleep again, and
not waking until, in the darkness, I tumbled out--this time into a
large empty room, with a tiny camp bed set in its midst--I carried on,
as it were, the impression of desert surrounding me. But not for long.
The next day would, I suspected, be a trifle trying, since my
unfortunate predecessor's methods of business would scarcely be
conducive to a mechanical taking over charge of his office. So I was
soon asleep, without even realising that probably I was sleeping where
he had lain dead but a day or two before.
When I opened my eyes next morning I felt a curious content and
surprise. The room was bare in the extreme. The camp bed on which I
lay, a deck chair, the cover of a travelling chest-of-drawers doing
duty as a wardrobe, the top of a travelling bath doing ditto as a
table, a bit of looking-glass hung above it by a string--these were its
furniture. The furniture of the light-hearted boy who had come out in
the same year as I had. With an odd, guilty remorse, I remembered that
I had long since exchanged these simple satisfactions of youth for more
luxurious methods. An unpaid bill of Maple's, indeed, flashed to my
mind, as, looking round the walls, which were hung with full-sized
photographs and copies of the great masters, I realised that my
predecessor had spent his spare cash in a different fashion to what I
had.
Very different, indeed. My remorse vanished in contempt, as, opening
one of the drawers, a very strong scent of sandal wood made itself
perceptible, and in one corner I saw a trumpery piece of native
jewellery.
A certain anger took possession of me then, as I looked up into the
eyes of the Sistine Madonna, which hung in a conspicuous place, and I
felt virtuous in realising that, after all, it was a natural refinement
and pure love of order and beauty which lay at the bottom of our
civilised cult of comfortableness.
So thinking, I passed out on to the verandah, still with last night's
impression on me that I was in a howling desert.
What I saw, therefore, gave me a shock. For here was a garden such as I
had never seen. Neither English nor Indian, yet reminiscent of both in
its wide sweeps of well-kept lawns, its dense thickets of flowering
shrubs, both, at this break in the rainy season, looking their best. It
took me a moment, however, to realise what it was which gave this
garden its curious distinction from other gardens. There was no path in
it. Though where I stood must once have been the front door, since a
huge pillared porch jutted beyond the verandah, the grass swept right
up to the very house. It had a curious untrodden look. A huge-leaved,
waxen-flowered Beaumontia almost covered the porch with its cold, white
scentless blossoms, and between the pillars Eucharis lilies rose above
a marvellous mass of maidenhair.
The delicate greenery, the chill whiteness made me think involuntarily
of the newly dead, and had I had on my hat I felt as if I should have
removed it.
As it was, I stepped, with a slight shiver, beyond the porch into the
sunlight.
The chilliness was gone in a moment, though the cloistered air
remained, due to the great tamarind trees, which on all sides shut out
the world, shut in the flowers. The birds, too. I never saw so many. A
golden oriole was challenging the sun with its full-throated call from
the bronze rain-shoots of the huge banyan tree, which filled up one
corner, and there were at least a dozen ruby-throated humming-birds
among the hibiscus flowers--those strangely mutable flowers, white in
the dawn, which blush into a crimson death before sunset.
The banyan tree, promising a well in its shade, and the well promising
the possibility of a gardener whom I could question--for I was beset by
curiosity--I strolled over to it, and found what I wanted--a very old,
wizened man, pretending to weed an offensive patch of yellow African
marigolds, which was carefully hidden away behind a henna hedge.
"Yes!" he replied, with the tearless regret one often hears in native
voices, the dead Huzoor had been very fond of his garden--in a way.
(Here the regret became personal and aggrieved.) He had never sent for
European seeds, so, of course, it had been impossible even for the most
skilful of malas to make it into a real garden. But if the new Huzoor
would employ this slave--who had many certificates--here the usual
bundle was drawn out from some mysterious hiding-place--mysterious
because he was more than half-naked--he would make proper paths and
"rippin' beds," and set them ablaze with "floccus" and "soot-ullians"
and "gerabians and----"
He was beginning to reel off a seedsman's catalogue when I pulled him
up by pointing to the marigolds. He pursed up his lips in pious horror.
Oh, no, there would be no more "gooljafari" or "genda" grown in that
garden. They had been for the other folk, who, of course, would no
longer---- The mixture of cunning question and scandalised propriety on
the old humbug's face made me mentally resolve that he should "no
longer" either. In fact, before my wife and the bairns came down I must
have the whole place cleared and fumigated. But the garden? No, it must
not be touched.
I had my breakfast in a huge dark, central room, which was absolutely
bare save for a ricketty table and two chairs. There were not even any
photographs on the walls. It was so dark that they could not have been
seen.
"They found the Huzoor lying there, at the door," said my bearer
calmly, after apologising profusely for an oversight in the matter of
marmalade, which, he trusted, might be forgotten, and not reported to
the memsahib. "He had been dead a long time, for he had paid off all
the servants and sent away the other people and the children on the
evening before, saying he was going on a journey. His bearer waited for
him at the station with his baggage, only he never came, nor his horse,
either.
"It was the office which found him, when it came for signature of
papers next day, and there was nothing disturbed, only the Huzoor lying
where they could see him easily from the front door, and the horse
comfortable in its stall, with plenty of grass. He was always
thoughtful to the poor was the sahib, and never gave trouble to others.
At least, so his servants say--but what can they know--poor, mean
creatures, who do not even know when a kettle boils!"
I let him talk, for somehow I did not wish to think. In much the same
mood I went doggedly through my day's work in taking over charge and
reducing chaos to order--or, rather, conventional order, for through
all the disgraceful neglect of ordinary routine ran the unmistakable
thread of one man's control, and of a strong man at that, even in its
favouritism, its flagrant derelictions from the ordinary conception of
a magistrate's duty.
As I got into my dogcart to come home, an orderly came forward, with a
doubtful air, carrying a small bag, such as natives use as a purse.
"It was the custom," he began; but by this time I felt that I must
return to a right judgment of things, so I purposely lost my temper,
and let it be known that all old customs were to be abolished. "It was
only the pennies for the children on Fridays," stuttered the orderly.
"The Huzoor used always to give them----"
I drove off, thinking that, perhaps, my predecessor might have been
wise in choosing a higher tribunal.
My bearer, however, who, as usual, stood in the verandah to receive my
hat, had no doubts in the totality of his blame. He was full of
virtuous activities. Order, in some measure, had been restored. Certain
screens of grass, which had been removed against a time when the mem
might find them useful in the poultry yard, and the outhouses having
been finally cleared--by the aid of the police--of various pensioners
and idle folk, who wept profusely, had been duly distributed among the
servants, he himself having taken one with a women's enclosure, which
would be the cause of great comfort.
I bid him take what he liked, and for the first time went into the
drawing-room, where he said my tea awaited me.
I shall never forget my first look at that room, with its five
straight, undraped windows, set in a row round one slightly curved
wall. The others bare, save for the shadows, which were fast creeping
to obliterate even the bareness. The windows were mere oblongs of dim
light, stretching up into the lofty roof, and that shadow looming in
one shadowy corner, across a vast expanse of shadowy matting, must be
the Bechstein piano. I made a move towards it, and stumbled against my
own tea-table, a highly ornate, sham Oriental, carved thing, which the
bearer, by my wife's orders, carried about with him religiously, and at
the same time the bearer himself entered with the reading lamp, without
which, so I am told, I cannot exist.
I gave up the Bechstein, therefore, for a time, and had caviare
sandwiches with my tea instead.
I do not know why--my wife would have said because the water was not
boiling--but I did not enjoy my tea. The pity of all things in this
incomprehensible world struck me with a vague anger. I sat wondering
if, after all, a higher tribunal----
Good heavens! What was that? Someone was playing on the Bechstein. I
did not turn. I sat staring at those five solemn oblongs of the
glimmering windows, showing lighter and lighter as the shadows deepened
in the big bare room.
It was Walther's song out of "Tannhauser"--the song of divine love....
The bearer said I was asleep when he came to tell me it was time to
dress for dinner. Perhaps I was, for sound sleep brings perfect peace
and rest, and that had come to me with the music which had come out of
the windows.
I have a dim recollection that the khansaman apologised because the
soup was not clear, and that the bearer explained that a wire mattress
had not arrived owing to the breaking down of a bullock cart. But I
know that I sat up till all hours of the night in the dark, hoping to
hear the Bechstein again, but it was silent as the grave.
Perhaps at dusk I might hear it once more. I raced off to the office
early, in order to be home in time, and was almost glad of a few
flagrant derelictions of duty cropping up to keep my moral nature from
too much sympathy.