FATIMA…

FATIMA

And you may go in every room of the house and see everything that is there, but into the Blue Room you must not go. --The Story of Blue Beard.

SCENE. The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains. Time, 11 A. M. on a Sunday morning. Captain GADSBY, in his shirt-sleeves, is bending over a complete set of Hussar's equipment, from saddle to picketing-rope, which is neatly spread over the floor of his study. He is smoking an unclean briar, and his forehead is puckered with thought.

Capt. G. (To himself, fingering a headstall.) Jack's an ass. There's enough brass on this to load a mule--and, if the Americans know anything about anything, it can be cut down to a bit only. 'Don't want the watering-bridle, either. Humbug!--Half a dozen sets of chains and pulleys for one horse! Rot! (Scratching his head.) Now, let's consider it all over from the beginning. By Jove, I've forgotten the scale of weights! Never mind. 'Keep the bit only, and eliminate every boss from the crupper to breastplate. No breastplate at all. Simple leather strap across the breast--like the Russians. Hi! Jack never thought of that!

Mrs. G. (Entering hastily, her hand bound in a cloth.) Oh, Pip, I've scalded my hand over that horrid, horrid Tiparee jam!

Capt. G. (Absently.) Eh! Wha-at?

Mrs. G. (With round-eyed reproach.) I've scalded it aw-fully! Aren't you sorry? And I did so want that jam to jam properly.

Capt. G. Poor little woman! Let me kiss the place and make it well. (Unrolling bandage.) You small sinner! Where's that scald? I can't see it.

Mrs. G. On the top of the little finger. There!--It's a most 'normous big burn!

Capt. G. (Kissing little finger.) Baby! Let Hyder look after the jam. You know I don't care for sweets.

Mrs. G. Indeed?--Pip!

Capt. G. Not of that kind, anyhow. And now run along, Minnie, and leave me to my own base devices. I'm busy.

Mrs. G. (Calmly settling herself in long chair.) So I see. What a mess you're making! Why have you brought all that smelly leather stuff into the house?

Capt. G. To play with. Do you mind, dear?

Mrs. G. Let me play too. I'd like it.

Capt. G. I'm afraid you wouldn't. Pussy--Don't you think that jam will burn, or whatever it is that jam does when it's not looked after by a clever little housekeeper?

Mrs. G. I thought you said Hyder could attend to it. I left him in the veranda, stirring--when I hurt myself so.

Capt. G. (His eye returning to the equipment.) Po-oor little woman!--Three pounds four and seven is three eleven, and that can be cut down to two eight, with just a lee-tle care, without weakening anything. Farriery is all rot in incompetent hands. What's the use of a shoe-case when a man's scouting? He can't stick it on with a lick--like a stamp--the shoe! Skittles--

Mrs. G. What's skittles? Pah! What is this leather cleaned with?

Capt. G. Cream and champagne and--Look here, dear, do you really want to talk to me about anything important?

Mrs. G. No. I've done my accounts, and I thought I'd like to see what you're doing.

Capt. G. Well, love, now you've seen and--Would you mind?--That is to say--Minnie, I really am busy.

Mrs. G. You want me to go?

Capt. G, Yes, dear, for a little while. This tobacco will hang in your dress, and saddlery doesn't interest you.

Mrs. G. Everything you do interests me, Pip.

Capt. G. Yes, I know, I know, dear. I'll tell you all about it some day when I've put a head on this thing. In the meantime--

Mrs. G. I'm to be turned out of the room like a troublesome child?

Capt. G. No-o. I don't mean that exactly. But, you see, I shall be tramping up and down, shifting these things to and fro, and I shall be in your way. Don't you think so?

Mrs. G. Can't I lift them about? Let me try. (Reaches forward to trooper's saddle.)

Capt. G. Good gracious, child, don't touch it. You'll hurt yourself. (Picking up saddle.) Little girls aren't expected to handle numdahs. Now, where would you like it put? (Holds saddle above his head.)

Mrs. G. (A break in her voice.) Nowhere. Pip, how good you are--and how strong! Oh, what's that ugly red streak inside your arm?

Capt. G. (Lowering saddle quickly.) Nothing. It's a mark of sorts. (Aside.) And Jack's coming to tiffin with his notions all cut and dried!

Mrs. G. I know it's a mark, but I've never seen it before. It runs all up the arm. What is it?

Capt. G. A cut--if you want to know.

Mrs. G. Want to know! Of course I do! I can't have my husband cut to pieces in this way. How did it come? Was it an accident? Tell me, Pip.

Capt. G. (Grimly.) No. 'Twasn't an accident. I got it--from a man--in Afghanistan.

Mrs. G. In action? Oh, Pip, and you never told me!

Capt. G. I'd forgotten all about it.

Mrs. G. Hold up your arm! What a horrid, ugly scar! Are you sure it doesn't hurt now! How did the man give it you?

Capt. G. (Desperately looking at his watch.) With a knife. I came down--old Van Loo did, that's to say--and fell on my leg, so I couldn't run. And then this man came up and began chopping at me as I sprawled.

Mrs. G. Oh, don't, don't! That's enough!--Well, what happened?

Capt. G. I couldn't get to my holster, and Mafflin came round the corner and stopped the performance.

Mrs. G. How? He's such a lazy man, I don't believe he did.

Capt. G. Don't you? I don't think the man had much doubt about it. Jack cut his head off.

Mrs. G. Cut-his-head-off! “With one blow,” as they say in the books?

Capt. G. I'm not sure. I was too interested in myself to know much about it. Anyhow, the head was off, and Jack was punching old Van Loo in the ribs to make him get up. Now you know all about it, dear, and now--

Mrs. G. You want me to go, of course. You never told me about this, though I've been married to you for ever so long; and you never would have told me if I hadn't found out; and you never do tell me anything about yourself, or what you do, or what you take an interest in.

Capt. G. Darling, I'm always with you, aren't I?

Mrs. G. Always in my pocket, you were going to say. I know you are; but you are always thinking away from me.

Capt. G. (Trying to hide a smile.) Am I? I wasn't aware of it. I'm awf'ly sorry.

Mrs. G. (Piteously.) Oh, don't make fun of me! Pip, you know what I mean. When you are reading one of those things about Cavalry, by that idiotic Prince--why doesn't he be a Prince instead of a stable-boy?

Capt. G. Prince Kraft a stable-boy--Oh, my Aunt! Never mind, dear. You were going to say?

Mrs. G. It doesn't matter; you don't care for what I say. Only--only you get up and walk about the room, staring in front of you, and then Mafflin comes in to dinner, and after I'm in the drawing-room I can hear you and him talking, and talking, and talking, about things I can't understand, and--oh, I get so tired and feel so lonely!--I don't want to complain and be a trouble, Pip; but I do indeed I do!

Capt. G. My poor darling! I never thought of that. Why don't you ask some nice people in to dinner?

Mrs. G. Nice people! Where am I to find them? Horrid frumps! And if I did, I shouldn't be amused. You know I only want you.

Capt. G. And you have me surely, Sweetheart?

Mrs. G. I have not! Pip why don't you take me into your life?

Capt. G. More than I do? That would be difficult, dear.

Mrs. G. Yes, I suppose it would--to you. I'm no help to you--no companion to you; and you like to have it so.

Capt. G. Aren't you a little unreasonable, Pussy?

Mrs. G. (Stamping her foot.) I'm the most reasonable woman in the world--when I'm treated properly.

Capt. G. And since when have I been treating you improperly?

Mrs. G. Always--and since the beginning. You know you have.

Capt. G. I don't; but I'm willing to be convinced.

Mrs. G. (Pointing to saddlery.) There!

Capt. G. How do you mean?

Mrs. G. What does all that mean? Why am I not to be told? Is it so precious?

Capt. G. I forget its exact Government value just at present. It means that it is a great deal too heavy.

Mrs. G. Then why do you touch it?

Capt. G. To make it lighter. See here, little love, I've one notion and Jack has another, but we are both agreed that all this equipment is about thirty pounds too heavy. The thing is how to cut it down without weakening any part of it, and, at the same time, allowing the trooper to carry everything he wants for his own comfort--socks and shirts and things of that kind.

Mrs. G. Why doesn't he pack them in a little trunk?

Capt. G. (Kissing her.) Oh, you darling! Pack them in a little trunk, indeed! Hussars don't carry trunks, and it's a most important thing to make the horse do all the carrying.

Mrs. G. But why need you bother about it? You're not a trooper.

Capt. G. No; but I command a few score of him; and equipment is nearly everything in these days.

Mrs. G. More than me?

Capt. G. Stupid! Of course not; but it's a matter that I'm tremendously interested in, because if I or Jack, or I and Jack, work out some sort of lighter saddlery and all that, it's possible that we may get it adopted.

Mrs. G. How?

Capt. G. Sanctioned at Home, where they will make a sealed pattern--a pattern that all the saddlers must copy--and so it will be used by all the regiments.

Mrs. G. And that interests you?

Capt. G. It's part of my profession, y'know, and my profession is a good deal to me. Everything in a soldier's equipment is important, and if we can improve that equipment, so much the better for the soldiers and for us.

Mrs. G. Who's “us”?

Capt. G. Jack and I; only Jack's notions are too radical. What's that big sigh for, Minnie?

Mrs. G. Oh, nothing--and you've kept all this a secret from me! Why?

Capt. G. Not a secret, exactly, dear. I didn't say anything about it to you because I didn't think it would amuse you.

Mrs. G. And am I only made to be amused?

Capt. G. No, of course. I merely mean that it couldn't interest you.

Mrs. G. It's your work and--and if you'd let me, I'd count all these things up. If they are too heavy, you know by how much they are too heavy, and you must have a list of things made out to your scale of lightness, and--

Capt. G. I have got both scales somewhere in my head; but it's hard to tell how light you can make a head-stall, for instance, until you've actually had a model made.

Mrs. G. But if you read out the list, I could copy it down, and pin it up there just above your table. Wouldn't that do?

Capt. G. It would be awf'ly nice, dear, but it would be giving you trouble for nothing. I can't work that way. I go by rule of thumb. I know the present scale of weights, and the other one--the one that I'm trying to work to--will shift and vary so much that I couldn't be certain, even if I wrote it down.

Mrs. G. I'm so sorry. I thought I might help. Is there anything else that I could be of use in?

Capt. G. (Looking round the room.) I can't think of anything. You're always helping me you know.

Mrs. G. Am I? How?

Capt. G. You are of course, and as long as you're near me--I can't explain exactly, but it's in the air.

Mrs. G. And that's why you wanted to send me away?

Capt. G. That's only when I'm trying to do work--grubby work like this.

Mrs. G. Mafflin's better, then, isn't he?

Capt. G. (Rashly.) Of course he is. Jack and I have been thinking along the same groove for two or three years about this equipment. It's our hobby, and it may really be useful some day.

Mrs. G. (After a pause.) And that's all that you have away from me?

Capt. G. It isn't very far away from you now. Take care the oil on that bit doesn't come off on your dress.

Mrs. G. I wish--I wish so much that I could really help you. I believe I could--if I left the room. But that's not what I mean.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Give me patience! I wish she would go. (Aloud.) I assure you you can't do anything for me, Minnie, and I must really settle down to this. Where's my pouch?

Mrs. G. (Crossing to writing-table.) Here you are, Bear. What a mess you keep your table in!

Capt. G. Don' ttouch it. There's a method in my madness, though you mightn't think of it.

Mrs. G. (At table.) I want to look--Do you keep accounts, Pip?

Capt. G. (Bending over saddlery.) Of a sort. Are you rummaging among the Troop papers? Be careful.

Mrs. G. Why? I sha'n't disturb anything. Good gracious! I had no idea that you had anything to do with so many sick horses.

Capt. G. 'Wish I hadn't, but they insist on falling sick. Minnie, if 1 were you I really should not investigate those papers. You may come across something that you won't like.

Mrs. G. Why will you always treat me like a child? I know I'm not displacing the horrid things.

Capt. G. (Resignedly.) Very well, then. Don't blame me if anything happens. Play with the table and let me go on with the saddlery. (Slipping hand into trousers-pocket.) Oh, the deuce!

Mrs. G. (Her back to G.) What's that for?

Capt. G. Nothing. (Aside.) There's not much in it, but I wish I'd torn it up.

Mrs. G. (Turning over contents of table.) I know you'll hate me for this; but I do want to see what your work is like. (A pause.) Pip, what are “farcybuds”?

Capt. G. Hah! Would you really like to know? They aren't pretty things.

Mrs. G. This Journal of Veterinary Science says they are of “absorbing interest.” Tell me.

Capt. G. (Aside.) It may turn her attention.

Gives a long and designedly loathsome account of glanders and farcy.

Mrs. G. Oh, that's enough. Don't go on!

Capt. G. But you wanted to know--Then these things suppurate and matterate and spread--

Mrs. G. Pin, you're making me sick! You're a horrid, disgusting schoolboy.

Capt. G. (On his knees among the bridles.) You asked to be told. It's not my fault if you worry me into talking about horrors.

Mrs. G. Why didn't you say No?

Capt. G. Good Heavens, child! Have you come in here simply to bully me?

Mrs. G. I bully you? How could I! You're so strong. (Hysterically.) Strong enough to pick me up and put me outside the door and leave me there to cry. Aren't you?

Capt. G. It seems to me that you're an irrational little baby. Are you quite well?

Mrs. G. Do I look ill? (Returning to table). Who is your lady friend with the big grey envelope and the fat monogram outside?

Capt. G. (Aside.) Then it wasn't locked up, confound it. (Aloud.) “God made her, therefore let her pass for a woman.” You remember what farcybuds are like?

Mrs. G. (Showing envelope.) This has nothing to do with them. I'm going to open it. May I?

Capt. G. Certainly, if you want to. I'd sooner you didn't though. I don't ask to look at your letters to the Deercourt girl.

Mrs. G. You'd better not, Sir! (Takes letter from envelope.) Now, may I look? If you say no, I shall cry.

Capt. G. You've never cried in my knowledge of you, and I don't believe you could.

Mrs. G. I feel very like it today, Pip. Don't be hard on me. (Reads letter.) It begins in the middle, without any “Dear Captain Gadsby,” or anything. How funny!

Capt. G. (Aside.) No, it's not Dear Captain Gadsby, or anything, now. How funny!

Mrs. G. What a strange letter! (Reads.) “And so the moth has come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into--shall I say Respectability? I congratulate him, and hope he will be as happy as he deserves to be.” What does that mean? Is she congratulating you about our marriage?

Capt. G. Yes, I suppose so.

Mrs. G. (Still reading letter.) She seems to be a particular friend of yours.

Capt. G. Yes. She was an excellent matron of sorts--a Mrs. Herriott--wife of a Colonel Herriott. I used to know some of her people at Home long ago--before I came out.

Mrs. G. Some Colonel's wives are young--as young as me. I knew one who was younger.

Capt. G. Then it couldn't have been Mrs. Herriott. She was old enough to have been your mother, dear.

Mrs. G. I remember now. Mrs. Scargill was talking about her at the Dutfins' tennis, before you came for me, on Tuesday. Captain Mafflin said she was a “dear old woman.” Do you know, I think Mafflin is a very clumsy man with his feet.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Good old Jack! (Aloud.) Why, dear?

Mrs. G. He had put his cup down on the ground then, and he literally stepped into it. Some of the tea spirted over my dress--the grey one. I meant to tell you about it before.

Capt. G. (Aside.) There are the makings of a strategist about Jack though his methods are coarse. (Aloud.) You'd better get a new dress, then. (Aside.) Let us pray that that will turn her.

Mrs. G. Oh, it isn't stained in the least. I only thought that I'd tell you. (Returning to letter.) What an extraordinary person! (Reads.) “But need I remind you that you have taken upon yourself a charge of wardship”--what in the world is a charge of wardship?--“which as you yourself know, may end in Consequences”--

Capt. G. (Aside.) It's safest to let em see everything as they come across it; but 'seems to me that there are exceptions to the rule. (Aloud.) I told you that there was nothing to be gained from rearranging my table.

Mrs. G. (Absently.) What does the woman mean? She goes on talking about Consequences--“almost inevitable Consequences” with a capital C--for half a page. (Flushing scarlet.) Oh, good gracious! How abominable!

Capt. G. (Promptly.) Do you think so? Doesn't it show a sort of motherly interest in us? (Aside.) Thank Heaven. Harry always wrapped her meaning up safely! (Aloud.) Is it absolutely necessary to go on with the letter, darling?

Mrs. G. It's impertinent--it's simply horrid. What right has this woman to write in this way to you? She oughtn't to.

Capt. G. When you write to the Deercourt girl, I notice that you generally fill three or four sheets. Can't you let an old woman babble on paper once in a way? She means well.

Mrs. G. I don't care. She shouldn't write, and if she did, you ought to have shown me her letter.

Capt. G. Can't you understand why I kept it to myself, or must I explain at length--as I explained the farcybuds?

Mrs. G. (Furiously.) Pip I hate you! This is as bad as those idiotic saddle-bags on the floor. Never mind whether it would please me or not, you ought to have given it to me to read.

Capt. G. It comes to the same thing. You took it yourself.

Mrs. G. Yes, but if I hadn't taken it, you wouldn't have said a word. I think this Harriet Herriott--it's like a name in a book--is an interfering old Thing.

Capt. G. (Aside.) So long as you thoroughly understand that she is old, I don't much care what you think. (Aloud.) Very good, dear. Would you like to write and tell her so? She's seven thousand miles away.

Mrs. G. I don't want to have anything to do with her, but you ought to have told me. (Turning to last page of letter.) And she patronizes me, too. I've never seen her! (Reads.) “I do not know how the world stands with you; in all human probability I shall never know; but whatever I may have said before, I pray for her sake more than for yours that all may be well. I have learned what misery means, and I dare not wish that any one dear to you should share my knowledge.”

Capt. G. Good God! Can't you leave that letter alone, or, at least, can't you refrain from reading it aloud? I've been through it once. Put it back on the desk. Do you hear me?

Mrs. G. (Irresolutely.) I sh-sha'n't! (Looks at G.'s eyes.) Oh, Pip, please! I didn't mean to make you angry--'Deed, I didn't. Pip, I'm so sorry. I know I've wasted your time--

Capt. G. (Grimly.) You have. Now, will you be good enough to go--if there is nothing more in my room that you are anxious to pry into?

Mrs. G. (Putting out her hands.) Oh, Pip, don't look at me like that! I've never seen you look like that before and it hu-urts me! I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have been here at all, and--and--and--(sobbing.) Oh, be good to me! Be good to me! There's only you--anywhere! Breaks down in long chair, hiding face in cushions.

Capt. G. (Aside.) She doesn't know how she flicked me on the raw. (Aloud, bending over chair.) I didn't mean to be harsh, dear--I didn't really. You can stay here as long as you please, and do what you please. Don't cry like that. You'll make yourself sick. (Aside.) What on earth has come over her? (Aloud.) Darling, what's the matter with you?

Mrs. G. (Her face still hidden.) Let me go--let me go to my own room. Only--only say you aren't angry with me.

Capt. G. Angry with you, love! Of course not. I was angry with myself. I'd lost my temper over the saddlery--Don't hide your face, Pussy. I want to kiss it.

Bends lower, Mrs. G. slides right arm round his neck. Several interludes and much sobbing.

Mrs. G. (In a whisper.) I didn't mean about the jam when I came in to tell you-- CAPT. G. Bother the jam and the equipment! (Interlude.)

Mrs. G. (Still more faintly.) My finger wasn't scalded at all. I--wanted to speak to you about--about--something else, and--I didn't know how.

Capt. G. Speak away, then. (Looking into her eyes.) Eh! Wha-at? Minnie! Here, don't go away! You don't mean?

Mrs. G. (Hysterically, backing to portiere and hiding her face in its folds.) The--the Almost Inevitable Consequences! (Flits through portiere as G. attempts to catch her, and bolts her self in her own room.)

Capt. G. (His arms full of portiere.) Oh! (Sitting down heavily in chair.) I'm a brute, a pig--a bully, and a blackguard. My poor, poor little darling! “Made to be amused only?”--

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL.

SCENE. The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains, in June. Punkah-coolies asleep in veranda where Captain GADSBY is walking up and down. DOCTOR'S trap in porch. JUNIOR CHAPLAIN drifting generally and uneasily through the house. Time, 3:40 A. M. Heat 94 degrees in veranda.

DOCTOR. (Coming into veranda and touching G. on the shoulder.) You had better go in and see her now.

Capt. G. (The color of good cigar-ash.) Eh, wha-at? Oh, yes, of course. What did you say?

DOCTOR. (Syllable by syllable.) Go-in-to-the-room-and-see-her. She wants to speak to you. (Aside, testily.) I shall have him on my hands next.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. (In half-lighted dining room.) Isn't there any?--

DOCTOR. (Savagely.) Ha, you little fool!

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. Let me do my work. Gadsby, stop a minute--I (Edges after G.)

DOCTOR. Wait till she sends for you at least--at least. Man alive, he'll kill you if you go in there! What are you bothering him for?

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. (Coming into veranda.) I've given him a stiff brandy-peg. He wants it. You've forgotten him for the last ten hours and--forgotten yourself too.

G. enters bedroom, which is lit by one night-lamp. Ayah on the floor pretending to be asleep.

VOICE. (From the bed.) All down the street--such bonfires! Ayah, go and put them out! (Appealingly.) How can I sleep with an installation of the C.I.E. in my room? No--not C.I.E. Something else. What was it?

Capt. G. (Trying to control his voice.) Minnie, I'm here. (Bending over bed.) Don't you know me, Minnie? It's me--it's Phil--it's your husband.

VOICE. (Mechanically.) It's me--it's Phil--it's your husband.

Capt. G. She doesn't know me!--It's your own husband, darling.

VOICE. Your own husband, darling.

Ayah. (With an inspiration.) Memsahib understanding all I saying.

Capt. G. Make her understand me then--quick!

Ayah. (Hand on Mrs. G.'s fore-head.) Memsahib! Captain Sahib here.

VOICE. Salaem do. (Fretfully.) I know I'm not fit to be seen.

Ayah. (Aside to G.) Say “marneen” same as breakfash.

Capt. G. Good morning, little woman. How are we today?

VOICE. That's Phil. Poor old Phil. (Viciously.) Phil, you fool, I can't see you. Come nearer.

Capt. G. Minnie! Minnie! It's me--you know me?

VOICE. (Mockingly.) Of course I do. Who does not know the man who was so cruel to his wife--almost the only one he ever had?

Capt. G. Yes, dear. Yes--of course, of course. But won't you speak to him? He wants to speak to you so much.

VOICE. They'd never let him in. The Doctor would give darwaza band even if he were in the house. He'll never come. (Despairingly.) O Judas! Judas! Judas!

Capt. G. (Putting out his arms.) They have let him in, and he always was in the house Oh, my love--don't you know me?

VOICE. (In a half chant.) “And it came to pass at the eleventh hour that this poor soul repented.” It knocked at the gates, but they were shut--tight as a plaster--a great, burning plaster. They had pasted our marriage certificate all across the door, and it was made of red-hot iron--people really ought to be more careful, you know.

Capt. G. What am I to do? (Taking her in his arms.) Minnie! speak to me--to Phil.

VOICE. What shall I say? Oh, tell me what to say before it's too late! They are all going away and I can't say anything.

Capt. G. Say you know me! Only say you know me!

DOCTOR. (Who has entered quietly.) For pity's sake don't take it too much to heart, Gadsby. It's this way sometimes. They won't recognize. They say all sorts of queer things--don't you see?

Capt. G. All right! All right! Go away now; she'll recognize me; you're bothering her. She must--mustn't she?

DOCTOR. She will before--Have I your leave to try?--

Capt. G. Anything you please, so long as she'll know me. It's only a question of hours, isn't it?

DOCTOR. (Professionally.) While there's life there's hope y'know. But don't build on it.

Capt. G. I don't. Pull her together if it's possible. (Aside.) What have I done to deserve this?

DOCTOR. (Bending over bed.) Now, Mrs. Gadsby! We shall be all right tomorrow. You must take it, or I sha'n't let Phil see you. It isn't nasty, is it?

Voice. Medicines! Always more medicines! Can't you leave me alone?

Capt. G. Oh, leave her in peace, Doc!

DOCTOR. (Stepping back,--aside.) May I be forgiven if I've done wrong. (Aloud.) In a few minutes she ought to be sensible; but I daren't tell you to look for anything. It's only--

Capt. G. What? Go on, man.

DOCTOR. (In a whisper.) Forcing the last rally.

Capt. G. Then leave us alone.

DOCTOR. Don't mind what she says at first, if you can. They--they--they turn against those they love most sometimes in this.--It's hard, but--

Capt. G. Am I her husband or are you? Leave us alone for what time we have together.

VOICE. (Confidentially.) And we were engaged quite suddenly, Emma. I assure you that I never thought of it for a moment; but, oh, my little Me!--I don't know what I should have done if he hadn't proposed.

Capt. G. She thinks of that Deercourt girl before she thinks of me. (Aloud.) Minnie!

VOICE. Not from the shops, Mummy dear. You can get the real leaves from Kaintu, and (laughing weakly) never mind about the blossoms--Dead white silk is only fit for widows, and I won't wear it. It's as bad as a winding sheet. (A long pause.)

Capt. G. I never asked a favor yet. If there is anybody to listen to me, let her know me--even if I die too!

VOICE. (Very faintly.) Pip, Pip dear.

Capt. G. I'm here, darling.

VOICE. What has happened? They've been bothering me so with medicines and things, and they wouldn't let you come and see me. I was never ill before. Am I ill now?

Capt. G. You--you aren't quite well.

VOICE. How funny! Have I been ill long?

Capt. G. Some days; but you'll be all right in a little time.

VOICE. Do you think so, Pip? I don't feel well and--Oh! what have they done to my hair?

Capt. G. I d-d-on't know.

VOICE. They've cut it off. What a shame!

Capt. G. It must have been to make your head cooler.

VOICE. Just like a boy's wig. Don't I look horrid?

Capt. G. Never looked prettier in your life, dear. (Aside.) How am I to ask her to say goodbye?

VOICE. I don't feel pretty. I feel very ill. My heart won't work. It's nearly dead inside me, and there's a funny feeling in my eyes. Everything seems the same distance--you and the almirah and the table inside my eyes or miles away. What does it mean, Pip?

Capt. G. You're a little feverish, Sweetheart--very feverish. (Breaking down.) My love! my love! How can I let you go?

VOICE. I thought so. Why didn't you tell me that at first?

Capt. G. What?

VOICE. That I am going to--die.

Capt. G. But you aren't! You sha'n't.

Ayah to punkah-coolie. (Stepping into veranda after a glance at the bed. ). Punkah chor do! (Stop pulling the punkah.)

VOICE. It's hard, Pip. So very, very hard after one year--just one year. (Wailing.) And I'm only twenty. Most girls aren't even married at twenty. Can't they do anything to help me? I don't want to die.

Capt. G. Hush, dear. You won't.

VOICE. What's the use of talking? Help me! You've never failed me yet. Oh, Phil, help me to keep alive. (Feverishly.) I don't believe you wish me to live. You weren't a bit sorry when that horrid Baby thing died. I wish I'd killed it!

Capt. G. (Drawing his hand across his forehead.) It's more than a man's meant to bear--it's not right. (Aloud.) Minnie, love, I'd die for you if it would help.

VOICE. No more death. There's enough already. Pip, don't you die too.

Capt. G. I wish I dared.

VOICE. It says: “Till Death do us part.” Nothing after that--and so it would be no use. It stops at the dying. Why does it stop there? Only such a very short life, too. Pip, I'm sorry we married.

Capt. G. No! Anything but that, Min!

VOICE. Because you'll forget and I'll forget. Oh, Pip, don't forget! I always loved you, though I was cross sometimes. If I ever did anything that you didn't like, say you forgive me now.

Capt. G. You never did, darling. On my soul and honor you never did. I haven't a thing to forgive you.

VOICE. I sulked for a whole week about those petunias. (With a laugh.) What a little wretch I was, and how grieved you were! Forgive me that, Pp.

Capt. G. There's nothing to forgive. It was my fault. They were too near the drive. For God's sake don't talk so, Minnie! There's such a lot to say and so little time to say it in.

VOICE. Say that you'll always love me--until the end.

Capt. G. Until the end. (Carried away.) It's a lie. It must be, because we've loved each other. This isn't the end.

VOICE. (Relapsing into semi-delirium.) My Church-service has an ivory cross on the back, and it says so, so it must be true. “Till Death do us part.”--but that's a lie. (With a parody of G.'s manner.) A damned lie! (Recklessly.) Yes, I can swear as well as a Trooper, Pip. I can't make my head think, though. That's because they cut off my hair. How can one think with one's head all fuzzy? (Pleadingly.) Hold me, Pip! Keep me with you always and always. (Relapsing.) But if you marry the Thorniss girl when I'm dead, I'll come back and howl under our bedroom window all night. Oh, bother! You'll think I'm a jackal. Pip, what time is it?

Capt. G. A little before the dawn, dear.

VOICE. I wonder where I shall be this time tomorrow?

Capt. G. Would you like to see the Padre?

VOICE. Why should I? He'd tell me that I am going to heaven; and that wouldn't be true, because you are here. Do you recollect when he upset the cream-ice all over his trousers at the Gassers' tennis?

Capt. G. Yes, dear.

VOICE. I often wondered whether he got another pair of trousers; but then his are so shiny all over that you really couldn't tell unless you were told. Let's call him in and ask.

Capt. G. (Gravely.) No. I don't think he'd like that. Your head comfy, Sweetheart?

VOICE. (Faintly with a sigh of contentment.) Yeth! Gracious, Pip, when did you shave last? Your chin's worse than the barrel of a musical box.--No, don't lift it up. I like it. (A pause.) You said you've never cried at all. You're crying all over my cheek.

Capt. G. I-I-I can't help it, dear.

VOICE. How funny! I couldn't cry now to save my life. (G. shivers.) I want to sing.

Capt. G. Won't it tire you? 'Better not, perhaps.

VOICE. Why? I won't be bothered about. (Begins in a hoarse quaver)

“Minnie bakes oaten cake, Minnie brews ale, All because her Johnnie's coming home from the sea.” (That's parade, Pip.) “And she grows red as a rose, who was so pale; And 'Are you sure the church-clock goes?' says she.”

(Pettishly.) I knew I couldn't take the last note. How do the bass chords run? (Puts out her hands and begins playing piano on the sheet.)

Capt. G. (Catching up hands.) Ahh! Don't do that, Pussy, if you love me.

VOICE. Love you? Of course I do. Who else should it be? (A pause.)

VOICE. (Very clearly.) Pip, I'm going now. Something's choking me cruelly. (Indistinctly.) Into the dark--without you, my heart--But it's a lie, dear--we mustn't believe it.--Forever and ever, living or dead. Don't let me go, my husband--hold me tight.--They can't--whatever happens. (A cough.) Pip--my Pip! Not for always--and--so--soon! (Voice ceases.)

Pause of ten minutes. G. buries his face in the side of the bed while AYAH bends over bed from opposite side and feels Mrs. G.'s breast and forehead.

Capt. G. (Rising.) Doctor Sahib ko salaam do.

Ayah. (Still by bedside, with a shriek.) Ail Ail Tuta-phuta! My Memsahib! Not getting--not have got!--Pusseena agyal (The sweat has come.) (Fiercely to G.) TUM jao Doctor Sahib ko jaldi! (You go to the doctor.) Oh, my Memsahib!

DOCTOR. (Entering hastily.) Come away, Gadsby. (Bends over bed.) Eh! The Dev--What inspired you to stop the punkah? Get out, man--go away--wait outside! Go! Here, Ayah! (Over his shoulder to G.) Mind I promise nothing.

The dawn breaks as G. stumbles into the garden.

Capt. M. (Rehung up at the gate on his way to parade and very soberly.) Old man, how goes?

Capt. G. (Dazed.) I don't quite know. Stay a bit. Have a drink or something. Don't run away. You're just getting amusing. Ha! ha!

Capt. M. (Aside.) What am I let in for? Gaddy has aged ten years in the night.

Capt. G. (Slowly, fingering charger's headstall.) Your curb's too loose.

Capt. M. So it is. Put it straight, will you? (Aside.) I shall be late for parade. Poor Gaddy.

Capt. G. links and unlinks curb-chain aimlessly, and finally stands staring toward the veranda. The day brightens.

DOCTOR. (Knocked out of professional gravity, tramping across flower-beds and shaking G's hands.) It'-it's-it's!--Gadsby, there's a fair chance--a dashed fair chance. The flicker, y'know. The sweat, y'know I saw how it would be. The punkah, y'know. Deuced clever woman that Ayah of yours. Stopped the punkah just at the right time. A dashed good chance! No--you don't go in. We'll pull her through yet I promise on my reputation--under Providence. Send a man with this note to Bingle. Two heads better than one. 'Specially the Ayah! We'll pull her round. (Retreats hastily to house.)

Capt. G. (His head on neck of M.'s charger.) Jack! I bub-bu-believe, I'm going to make a bu-bub-bloody exhibitiod of byself.

Capt. M. (Sniffing openly and feeling in his left cuff.) I b-b-believe, I'b doing it already. Old bad, what cad I say? I'b as pleased as--Cod dab you, Gaddy! You're one big idiot and I'b adother. (Pulling himself together.) Sit tight! Here comes the Devil-dodger.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. (Who is not in the Doctor's confidence.) We--we are only men in these things, Gadsby. I know that I can say nothing now to help.

Capt. M. (jealously.) Then don't say it Leave him alone. It's not bad enough to croak over. Here, Gaddy, take the chit to Bingle and ride hell-for-leather. It'll do you good. I can't go.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. Do him good! (Smiling.) Give me the chit and I'll drive. Let him lie down. Your horse is blocking my cart--please!

Capt. M. (Slowly without reining back.) I beg your pardon--I'll apologize. On paper if you like.

JUNIOR CHAPLAIN. (Flicking M.'s charger.) That'll do, thanks. Turn in, Gadsby, and I'll bring Bingle back--ahem--“hell-for-leather.”

Capt. M. (Solus.) It would have served me right if he'd cut me across the face. He can drive too. I shouldn't care to go that pace in a bamboo cart. What a faith he must have in his Maker--of harness! Come hup, you brute! (Gallops off to parade, blowing his nose, as the sun rises.)

(INTERVAL OF FIVE WEEKS.)

Mrs. G. (Very white and pinched, in morning wrapper at breakfast table.) How big and strange the room looks, and how glad I am to see it again! What dust, though! I must talk to the servants. Sugar, Pip? I've almost forgotten. (Seriously.) Wasn't I very ill?

Capt. G. Iller than I liked. (Tenderly.) Oh, you bad little Pussy, what a start you gave me!

Mrs. G. I'll never do it again.

Capt. G. You'd better not. And now get those poor pale cheeks pink again, or I shall be angry. Don't try to lift the urn. You'll upset it. Wait. (Comes round to head of table and lifts urn.)

Mrs. G. (Quickly.) Khitmatgar, howarchikhana see kettly lao. Butler, get a kettle from the cook-house. (Drawing down G.'s face to her own.) Pip dear, I remember.

Capt. G. What?

Mrs. G. That last terrible night.

CAPT. G. Then just you forget all about it.

Mrs. G. (Softly, her eyes filling.) Never. It has brought us very close together, my husband. There! (Interlude.) I'm going to give Junda a saree.

Capt. G. I gave her fifty dibs.

Mrs. G. So she told me. It was a 'normous reward. Was I worth it? (Several interludes.) Don't! Here's the khitmatgar.--Two lumps or one Sir?

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN

If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?

SCENE. The GADSBYS' bungalow in the Plains, on a January morning. Mrs. G. arguing with bearer in back veranda.

Capt. M. rides up.

Capt. M. 'Mornin', Mrs. Gadsby. How's the Infant Phenomenon and the Proud Proprietor?

Mrs. G. You'll find them in the front veranda; go through the house. I'm Martha just now.

Capt. M, 'Cumbered about with cares of Khitmatgars? I fly.

Passes into front veranda, where GADSBV is watching GADSBY JUNIOR, aged ten months, crawling about the matting.

Capt. M. What's the trouble, Gaddy-spoiling an honest man's Europe morning this way? (Seeing G. JUNIOR.) By Jove, that yearling's comin' on amazingly! Any amount of bone below the knee there.

Capt. G. Yes, he's a healthy little scoundrel. Don't you think his hair's growing?

Capt. M. Let's have a look. Hi! Hst Come here, General Luck, and we'll report on you.

Mrs. G. (Within.) What absurd name will you give him next? Why do you call him that?

Capt. M. Isn't he our Inspector-General of Cavalry? Doesn't he come down in his seventeen-two perambulator every morning the Pink Hussars parade? Don't wriggle, Brigadier. Give us your private opinion on the way the third squadron went past. 'Trifle ragged, weren't they?

Capt. G. A bigger set of tailors than the new draft I don't wish to see. They've given me more than my fair share--knocking the squadron out of shape. It's sickening!

Capt. M. When you're in command, you'll do better, young 'un. Can'tyou walk yet? Grip my finger and try. (To G.) 'Twon't hurt his hocks, will it?

Capt. G. Oh, no. Don't let him flop, though, or he'll lick all the blacking off your boots.

Mrs. G. (Within.) Who's destroying my son's character?

Capt. M. And my Godson's. I'm ashamed of you, Gaddy. Punch your father in the eye, Jack! Don't you stand it! Hit him again!

Capt. G. (Sotto voce.) Put The Butcha down and come to the end of the veranda. I'd rather the Wife didn't hear--just now.

Capt. M. You look awf'ly serious. Anything wrong?

Capt. G. 'Depends on your view entirely. I say, Jack, you won't think more hardly of me than you can help, will you? Come further this way.--The fact of the matter is, that I've made up my mind--at least I'm thinking seriously of--cutting the Service.

Capt. M. Hwhatt?

Capt. G. Don't shout. I'm going to send in my papers.

Capt. M. You! Are you mad?

Capt. G. No--only married.

Capt. M. Look here! What's the meaning of it all? You never intend to leave us. You can't. Isn't the best squadron of the best regiment of the best cavalry in all the world good enough for you?

Capt. G. (Jerking his head over his shoulder.) She doesn't seem to thrive in this God-forsaken country, and there's The Butcha to be considered and all that, you know.

Capt. M. Does she say that she doesn't like India?

Capt. G. That's the worst of it. She won't for fear of leaving me.

Capt. M. What are the Hills made for?

Capt. G. Not for my wife, at any rate.

Capt. M. You know too much, Gaddy, and--I don't like you any the better for it!

Capt. G. Never mind that. She wants England, and The Butcha would be all the better for it. I'm going to chuck. You don't understand.

Capt. M. (Hotly.) I understand this!--One hundred and thirty-seven new horse to be licked into shape somehow before Luck comes round again; a hairy-heeled draft who'll give more trouble than the horses; a camp next cold weather for a certainty; ourselves the first on the roster; the Russian shindy ready to come to a head at five minutes' notice, and you, the best of us all, backing out of it all! Think a little, Gaddy. You won't do it.

Capt. G. Hang it, a man has some duties toward his family, I suppose.

Capt. M. I remember a man, though, who told me, the night after Amdheran, when we were picketed under Jagai, and he'd left his sword--by the way, did you ever pay Ranken for that sword?--in an Utmanzai's head--that man told me that he'd stick by me and the Pinks as long as he lived. I don't blame him for not sticking by me--I'm not much of a man--but I do blame him for not sticking by the Pink Hussars.

Capt. G. (Uneasily.) We were little more than boys then. Can't you see, Jack, how things stand? 'Tisn't as if we were serving for our bread. We've all of us, more or less, got the filthy lucre. I'm luckier than some, perhaps. There's no call for me to serve on.

Capt. M. None in the world for you or for us, except the Regimental. If you don't choose to answer to that, of course--

Capt. G. Don't be too hard on a man. You know that a lot of us only take up the thing for a few years and then go back to Town and catch on with the rest.

Capt. M. Not lots, and they aren't some of Us.

Capt. G. And then there are one's affairs at Home to be considered--my place and the rents, and all that. I don't suppose my father can last much longer, and that means the title, and so on.

Capt. M. 'Fraid you won't be entered in the Stud Book correctly unless you go Home? Take six months, then, and come out in October. If I could slay off a brother or two, I s'pose I should be a Marquis of sorts. Any fool can be that; but it needs men, Gaddy--men like you--to lead flanking squadrons properly. Don't you delude yourself into the belief that you're going Home to take your place and prance about among pink-nosed Kabuli dowagers. You aren't built that way. I know better.

Capt. G. A man has a right to live his life as happily as he can. You aren't married.

Capt. M. No--praise be to Providence and the one or two women who have had the good sense to jawab me.

Capt. G. Then you don't know what it is to go into your own room and see your wife's head on the pillow, and when everything else is safe and the house shut up for the night, to wonder whether the roof-beams won't give and kill her.

Capt. M. (Aside.) Revelations first and second! (Aloud.) So-o! I knew a man who got squiffy at our Mess once and confided to me that he never helped his wife on to her horse without praying that she'd break her neck before she came back. All husbands aren't alike, you see.

Capt. G. What on earth has that to do with my case? The man must ha' been mad, or his wife as bad as they make 'em.

Capt. M. (Aside.) 'No fault of yours if either weren't all you say. You've forgotten the time when you were insane about the Herriott woman. You always were a good hand at forgetting. (Aloud.) Not more mad than men who go to the other extreme. Be reasonable, Gaddy. Your roof-beams are sound enough.

Capt. G. That was only a way of speaking. I've been uneasy and worried about the Wife ever since that awful business three years ago--when--I nearly lost her. Can you wonder?

Capt. M. Oh, a shell never falls twice in the same place. You've paid your toll to misfortune--why should your Wife be picked out more than anybody else's?

Capt. G. I can talk just as reasonably as you can, but you don't understand--you don't understand. And then there's The Butcha. Deuce knows where the Ayah takes him to sit in the evening! He has a bit of a cough. Haven't you noticed it?

Capt. M. Bosh! The Brigadier's jumping out of his skin with pure condition. He's got a muzzle like a rose-leaf and the chest of a two-year-old. What's demoralized you?

Capt. G. Funk. That's the long and the short of it. Funk!

Capt. M. But what is there to funk?

Capt. G. Everything. It's ghastly.

Capt. M. Ah! I see. You don't want to fight, And by Jingo when we do, You've got the kid, you've got the Wife, You've got the money, too. That's about the case, eh?

Capt. G. I suppose that's it. But it's not for myself. It's because of them. At least I think it is.

Capt. M. Are you sure? Looking at the matter in a cold-blooded light, the Wife is provided for even if you were wiped out tonight. She has an ancestral home to go to, money and the Brigadier to carry on the illustrious name.

Capt. G. Then it is for myself or because they are part of me. You don't see it. My life's so good, so pleasant, as it is, that I want to make it quite safe. Can't you understand?

Capt. M. Perfectly. “Shelter-pit for the Off'cer's charger,” as they say in the Line.

Capt. G. And I have everything to my hand to make it so. I'm sick of the strain and the worry for their sakes out here; and there isn't a single real difficulty to prevent my dropping it altogether. It'll only cost me--Jack, I hope you'll never know the shame that I've been going through for the past six months.

Capt. M. Hold on there! I don't wish to be told. Every man has his moods and tenses sometimes.

Capt. G. (Laughing bitterly.) Has he? What do you call craning over to see where your near-fore lands?

Capt. M. In my case it means that I have been on the Considerable Bend, and have come to parade with a Head and a Hand. It passes in three strides.

Capt. G. (Lowering voice.) It never passes with me, Jack. I'm always thinking about it. Phil Gadsby funking a fall on parade! Sweet picture, isn't it! Draw it for me.

Capt. M. (Gravely.) Heaven forbid! A man like you can't be as bad as that. A fall is no nice thing, but one never gives it a thought.

Capt. G. Doesn't one? Wait till you've got a wife and a youngster of your own, and then you'll know how the roar of the squadron behind you turns you cold all up the back.

Capt. M. (Aside.) And this man led at Amdheran after Bagal Deasin went under, and we were all mixed up together, and he came out of the snow dripping like a butcher. (Aloud.) Skittles! The men can always open out, and you can always pick your way more or less. We haven't the dust to bother us, as the men have, and whoever heard of a horse stepping on a man?

Capt. G. Never--as long as he can see. But did they open out for poor Errington?

Capt. M. Oh, this is childish!

Capt. G. I know it is, worse than that. I don't care. You've ridden Van Loo. Is he the sort of brute to pick his way--'specially when we're coming up in column of troop with any pace on?

Capt. M. Once in a Blue Moon do we gallop in column of troop, and then only to save time. Aren't three lengths enough for you?

Capt. G. Yes--quite enough. They just allow for the full development of the smash. I'm talking like a cur, I know: but I tell you that, for the past three months, I've felt every hoof of the squadron in the small of my back every time that I've led.

Capt. M. But, Gaddy, this is awful!

Capt. G. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it royal? A Captain of the Pink Hussars watering up his charger before parade like the blasted boozing Colonel of a Black Regiment!

Capt. M. You never did!

Capt. G. Once only. He squelched like a mussuck, and the Troop-Sergeant-Major cocked his eye at me. You know old Haffy's eye. I was afraid to do it again.

Capt. M. I should think so. That was the best way to rupture old Van Loo's tummy, and make him crumple you up. You knew that.

Capt. G. I didn't care. It took the edge off him.

Capt. M. “Took the edge off him”? Gaddy, you--you--you mustn't, you know! Think of the men.

Capt. G. That's another thing I am afraid of. D'you s'pose they know?

Capt. M. Let's hope not; but they're deadly quick to spot skirm--little things of that kind. See here, old man, send the Wife Home for the hot weather and come to Kashmir with me. We'll start a boat on the Dal or cross the Rhotang--shoot ibex or loaf--which you please. Only come! You're a bit off your oats and you're talking nonsense. Look at the Colonel--swag-bellied rascal that he is. He has a wife and no end of a bow-window of his own. Can any one of us ride round him--chalkstones and all? I can't, and I think I can shove a crock along a bit.

Capt. G. Some men are different. I haven't any nerve. Lord help me, I haven't the nerve! I've taken up a hole and a half to get my knees well under the wallets. I can't help it. I'm so afraid of anything happening to me. On my soul, I ought to be broke in front of the squadron, for cowardice.

Capt. M. Ugly word, that. I should never have the courage to own up.

Capt. G. I meant to lie about my reasons when I began, but--I've got out of the habit of lying to you, old man. Jack, you won't?--But I know you won't.

Capt. M. Of course not. (Half aloud.) The Pinks are paying dearly for their Pride.

Capt. G. Eh! Wha-at?

Capt. M. Don't you know? The men have called Mrs. Gadsby the Pride of the Pink Hussars ever since she came to us.

Capt. G. 'Tisn't her fault. Don't think that. It's all mine.

Capt. M. What does she say?

Capt. G. I haven't exactly put it before her. She's the best little woman in the world, Jack, and all that--but she wouldn't counsel a man to stick to his calling if it came between him and her. At least, I think--

Capt. M. Never mind. Don't tell her what you told me. Go on the Peerage and Landed-Gentry tack.

Capt. G. She'd see through it. She's five times cleverer than I am.

Capt. M. (Aside.) Then she'll accept the sacrifice and think a little bit worse of him for the rest of her days.

Capt. G. (Absently.) I say, do you despise me?

Capt. M. 'Queer way of putting it. Have you ever been asked that question? Think a minute. What answer used you to give?

Capt. G. So bad as that? I'm not entitled to expect anything more, but it's a bit hard when one's best friend turns round and--

Capt. M. So I have found. But you will have consolations--Bailiffs and Drains and Liquid Manure and the Primrose League, and, perhaps, if you're lucky, the Colonelcy of a Yeomanry Cav-al-ry Regiment--all uniform and no riding, I believe. How old are you?

Capt. G. Thirty-three. I know it's--

Capt. M. At forty you'll be a fool of a J. P. landlord. At fifty you'll own a bath-chair, and The Brigadier, if he takes after you, will be fluttering the dovecotes of--what's the particular dunghill you're going to? Also, Mrs. Gadsby will be fat.

Capt. G. (Limply.) This is rather more than a joke.

Capt. M. D'you think so? Isn't cutting the Service a joke? It generally takes a man fifty years to arrive at it. You're quite right, though. It is more than a joke. You've managed it in thirty-three.

Capt. G. Don't make me feel worse than I do. Will it satisfy you if I own that I am a shirker, a skrim-shanker, and a coward?

Capt. M. It will not, because I'm the only man in the world who can talk to you like this without being knocked down. You mustn't take all that I've said to heart in this way. I only spoke--a lot of it at least--out of pure selfishness, because, because--Oh, damn it all, old man,--I don't know what I shall do without you. Of course, you've got the money and the place and all that--and there are two very good reasons why you should take care of yourself.

Capt. G. 'Doesn't make it any sweeter. I'm backing out--I know I am. I always had a soft drop in me somewhere--and I daren't risk any danger to them.

Capt. M. Why in the world should you? You're bound to think of your family--bound to think. Er--hmm. If I wasn't a younger son I'd go too--be shot if I wouldn't!

Capt. G. Thank you, Jack. It's a kind lie, but it's the blackest you've told for some time. I know what I'm doing, and I'm going into it with my eyes open. Old man, I can't help it. What would you do if you were in my place?

Capt. M. (Aside.) 'Couldn't conceive any woman getting permanently between me and the Regiment. (Aloud.) 'Can't say. 'Very likely I should do no better. I'm sorry for you--awf'ly sorry--but “if them's your sentiments,” I believe, I really do, that you are acting wisely.

Capt. G. Do you? I hope you do. (In a whisper.) Jack, be very sure of yourself before you marry. I'm an ungrateful ruffian to say this, but marriage--even as good a marriage as mine has been--hampers a man's work, it cripples his sword-arm, and oh, it plays Hell with his notions of duty. Sometimes--good and sweet as she is--sometimes I could wish that I had kept my freedom--No, I don't mean that exactly.

Mrs. G. (Coming down veranda.) What are you wagging your head over, Pip?

Capt. M. (Turning quickly.) Me, as usual. The old sermon. Your husband is recommending me to get married. 'Never saw such a one-ideaed man.

Mrs. G. Well, why don't you? I dare say you would make some woman very happy.

Capt. G. There's the Law and the Prophets, Jack. Never mind the Regiment. Make a woman happy. (Aside.) O Lord!

Capt. M. We'll see. I must be off to make a Troop Cook desperately unhappy. I won't have the wily Hussar fed on Government Bullock Train shinbones--(Hastily.) Surely black ants can't be good for The Brigadier. He's picking em off the matting and eating 'em. Here, Senor Comandante Don Grubbynose, come and talk to me. (Lifts G. JUNIOR in his arms.) 'Want my watch? You won't be able to put it into your mouth, but you can try. (G. JUNIOR drops watch, breaking dial and hands.)

Mrs. G. Oh, Captain Mafflin, I am so sorry! Jack, you bad, bad little villain. Ahhh!

Capt. M. It's not the least consequence, I assure you. He'd treat the world in the same way if he could get it into his hands. Everything's made to be played, with and broken, isn't it, young 'un?

* * * * *

Mrs. G. Mafflin didn't at all like his watch being broken, though he was too polite to say so. It was entirely his fault for giving it to the child. Dem little puds are werry, werry feeble, aren't dey, by Jack-in-de-box? (To G.) What did he want to see you for?

Capt. G. Regimental shop as usual.

Mrs. G. The Regiment! Always the Regiment. On my word, I sometimes feel jealous of Mafflin.

Capt. G. (Wearily.) Poor old Jack? I don't think you need. Isn't it time for The Butcha to have his nap? Bring a chair out here, dear. I've got some thing to talk over with you.

THIS IS THE END OF THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VOLUME VIII from MINE OWN PEOPLE

Bimi Namgay Doola The Recrudescence Of Imray Moti Guj--Mutineer

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

BIMI

THE orangoutang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the discussion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as Hans Breitmann and I passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak of the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England to be exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled, yelled, and wrenched at the heavy iron bars of his prison without ceasing, and had nearly slain a Lascar incautious enough to come within reach of the great hairy paw.

“It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,” said Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage. “You haf too much Ego in your Cosmos.”

The orangoutang's arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No one would have believed that it would make a sudden snake-like rush at the German's breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out: Hans stepped back unconcernedly, to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close to one of the boats.

“Too much Ego,” said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.

Then we laid out our bedding in the bows, among the sleeping Lascars, to catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was like smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot and whirled back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a thunderstorm some miles away: we could see the glimmer of the lightning. The ship's cow, distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as the lookout man at the bows answered the hourly call from the bridge. The trampling tune of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift, as it was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of hushed noise. Hans lay down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar. This was naturally the beginning of conversation. He owned a voice as soothing as the wash of the sea, and stores of experiences as vast as the sea itself; for his business in life was to wander up and down the world, collecting orchids and wild beasts and ethnological specimens for German and American dealers. I watched the glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orangoutang, troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell like a soul in purgatory, and to wrench madly at the bars of the cage.

“If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabouts,” said Hans, lazily. “He screams good. See, now, how I shall tame him when he stops himself.”

There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans' mouth came an imitation of a snake's hiss, so perfect that I almost sprung to my feet. The sustained murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the bars ceased. The orangoutang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror.

“Dot stop him,” said Hans. “I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong when I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery one in der world is afraid of der monkeys except der snake. So I blay snake against monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in his Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep, or will you listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?”

“There's no tale in the wide world that I can't believe,” I said.

“If you have learned pelief you haf learned somedings. Now I shall try your pelief. Good! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys--it was in '79 or '80, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago--over dere in der dark”--he pointed southward to New Guinea generally--“Mein Gott! I would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey do not bite off your thumbs dey are always dying from nostalgia--homesick--for dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway arrested in defelopment--und too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, und dere I found a man dot was called Bertran. He was a Frenchman, und he was a goot man--naturalist to the bone. Dey said he was an escaped convict, but he was a naturalist, und dot was enough for me. He would call all her life beasts from der forests, und dey would come. I said he was St. Francis of Assisi in a new dransmigration produced, und he laughed und said he had never preach to der fishes. He sold dem for trepang--beche-de-mer.

“Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der house shush such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage--a great orangoutang dot thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child--der orangoutang--und he was child and brother and opera comique all round to Bertran. He had his room in dot house--not a cage, but a room--mit a bed and sheets, and he would go to bed and get up in der morning and smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand-in-hand, which was most horrible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast throw himself back in his chair and laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me. He was not a beast; he was a man, and he talked to Bertran, und Bertran comprehended, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me except when I talk too long to Bertran und say nodings at all to him. Den he would pull me away--dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous paws shush as if I was a child. He was not a beast, he was a man. Dis I saw pefore I know him three months, und Bertran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der orangoutang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between his big-dog teeth und der blue gum.

“I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands--somedimes for monkeys and somedimes for butterflies und orchits. One time Bertran says to me dot he will be married, because he hass found a girl dot was goot, and he inquire if this marrying idea was right. I would not say, pecause it was not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off courting der girl--she was a half-caste French girl--very pretty. Haf you got a new light for my cigar? Oof! Very pretty. Only I say 'Haf you thought of Bimi? If he pulls me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for wedding present der stuff figure of Bimi.' By dot time I bad learned somedings about der monkey peoples. 'Shoot him?' says Bertran. 'He is your beast,' I said; 'if he was mine he would be shot now.'

“Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I tell you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb alphabet all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, and he tilt up my chin and look into my face, shust to see if I understood his talk so well as he understood mine.

“'See now dere!' says Bertran, 'und you would shoot him while he is cuddling you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!'

“But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life's enemy, pecause his fingers haf talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a pistol in my belt, und he touch it once, and I open de breech to show him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods, and he understood.

“So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was skippin' alone on the beach mit der haf of a human soul in his belly. I was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till he haf made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran 'For any sakes, kill Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.'

“Bertran haf said: 'He is not mad at all. He haf obey and love my wife, und if she speaks he will get her slippers,' und he looked at his wife across der room. She was a very pretty girl.

“Den I said to him: 'Dost thou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot is lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him? Shoot him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eyes dot means killing--und killing.' Bimi come to der house, but dere was no light in his eyes. It was all put away, cunning--so cunning--und he fetch der girl her slippers, and Bertran turn to me und say: 'Dost thou know him in nine months more dan I haf known him in twelve years? Shall a child stab his fader? I have fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak this nonsense to my wife or to me any more.'

“Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases for der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle while mit Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say: 'Let us go to your house und get a trink.' He laugh und say: 'Come along, dry mans.'

“His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her bedroom door und dot was shut tight-locked. Den he looked at me, und his face was white. I broke down der door mit my shoulder, und der thatch of der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der floor. Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on der table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere was noddings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor, und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but Bertran looked a little longer at what was upon the floor und der walls, und der hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft and low, und I know und thank God dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He stood still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said: 'She haf locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi donc. Dot is so. We will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely come.'

“I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was made into a room again, and once or twice we saw Bimi comin' a liddle way from der woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called him when he was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping along der beach und making noises, mit a long piece of Nack hair in his hands. Den Bertran laugh and say, 'Fi donc' shust as if it was a glass broken upon der table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet in his voice and laughed to himself. For three days he made love to Bimi, pecause Bimi would not let himself be touched Den Bimi come to dinner at der same table mit us, und der hair on his hands was all black und thick mit--mit what had dried on his hands. Bertran gave him sangaree till Bimi was drunk and stupid, und den--”

Hans paused to puff at his cigar.

“And then?” said I.

“Und den Bertran kill him with his hands, und I go for a walk upon der heach. It was Bertran's own piziness. When I come back der ape he was dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still he laughed a liddle und low, and he was quite content. Now you know der formula uf der strength of der orangoutang--it is more as seven to one in relation to man. But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der mericle.”

The infernal clamor in the cage recommenced. “Aha! Dot friend of ours haf still too much Ego in his Cosmos, Be quiet, thou!”

Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking in his cage.

“But why in the world didn't you help Bertran instead of letting him be killed?” I asked.

“My friend,” said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, “it was not nice even to mineself dot I should lif after I had seen dot room wit der hole in der thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband. Good-night, und sleep well.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

NAMGAY DOOLA

ONCE upon a time there was a king who lived on the road to Thibet, very many miles in the Himalaya Mountains. His kingdom was 11,000 feet above the sea, and exactly four miles square, but most of the miles stood on end, owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather less than 400 pounds yearly, and they were expended on the maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was tributary to the Indian government, who allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further increased his revenues by selling timber to the railway companies, for he would cut the great deodar trees in his own forest and they fell thundering into the Sutlej River and were swept down to the Plains, 300 miles away, and became railway ties. Now and again this king, whose name does not matter, would mount a ring-streaked horse and ride scores of miles to Simlatown to confer with the lieutenant-governor on matters of state, or assure the viceroy that his sword was at the service of the queen-empress. Then the viceroy would cause a ruffle of drums to be sounded and the ring-streaked horse and the cavalry of the state--two men in tatters--and the herald who bore the Silver Stick before the king would trot back to their own place, which was between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch forest.

Now, from such a king, always remembering that he possessed one veritable elephant and could count his descent for 1,200 years, I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions, no more than mere license to live.

The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Dongo Pa--the Mountain of the Council of the Gods--upheld the evening star. The monkeys sung sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roots in the fern-draped trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That smell is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if it once gets into the blood of a man he will, at the last, forgetting everything else, return to the Hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mists and the boom of the Sutlej River.

A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated lamentably at my tent-door. He was scuffling with the prime minister and the director-general of public education, and he was a royal gift to me and my camp servants. I expressed my thanks suitably and inquired if I might have audience of the king. The prime minister readjusted his turban--it had fallen off in the struggle--and assured me that the king would be very pleased to see me. Therefore I dispatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation, climbed up to the king's palace through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but it stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much alike all the world over.

The palace was a four-roomed, white-washed mud-and-timber house, the finest in all the Hills for a day's journey. The king was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the palace courtyard, which was occupied by the elephant of state. The great beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his back stood out against the sky line.

The prime minister and the director-general of public instruction were present to introduce me; but all the court had been dismissed lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The king cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honored presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the king had reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they heard daily of the glory of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like prime minister and lotus-eyed director-general of public education.

Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the king's right hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the condition of the maize crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway companies would not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the bottles. We discussed very many quaint things, and the king became confidential on the subject of government generally. Most of all he dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from what I could gather, had been paralyzing the executive.

“In the old days,” said the king, “I could have ordered the elephant yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e'en send him seventy miles across the hills to be tried, and his keep for that time would be upon the state. And the elephant eats everything.”

“What be the man's crimes, Rajah Sahib?” said I.

“Firstly, he is an 'outlander,' and no man of mine own people. Secondly, since of my favor I gave him land upon his coming, he refuses to pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below--entitled by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax... and he brings a poisonous spawn of babes.”

“Cast him into jail,” I said.

“Sahib,” the king answered, shifting a little on the cushions, “once and only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God, for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my vow? Were it only the lopping off of a hand or a foot, I should not delay. But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One or another of my people”--he looked obliquely at the director-general of public education--“would at once write a letter to the viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of that ruffle of drums.”

He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber one, and passed the pipe to me. “Not content with refusing revenue,” he continued, “this outlander refuses also to beegar” (this is the corvee or forced labor on the roads), “and stirs my people up to the like treason. Yet he is, if so he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when the logs stick fast.”

“But he worships strange gods,” said the prime minister, deferentially.

“For that I have no concern,” said the king, who was as tolerant as Akbar in matters of belief. “To each man his own god, and the fire or Mother Earth for us all at the last. It is the rebellion that offends me.”

“The king has an army,” I suggested. “Has not the king burned the man's house, and left him naked to the night dews?”

“Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once I sent my army against him when his excuses became wearisome. Of their heads he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also the guns would not shoot.”

I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old muzzle-loading fowling-piece with ragged rust holes where the nipples should have been; one-third a wirebound matchlock with a worm-eaten stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun, without a flint.

“But it is to be remembered,” said the king, reaching out for the bottle, “that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry face. What shall I do to him, sahib?”

This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused taxes to their king as offerings to their gods. The rebel must be a man of character.

“If it be the king's permission,” I said, “I will not strike my tents till the third day, and I will see this man. The mercy of the king is godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the bottles, and another, be empty.”

“You have my leave to go,” said the king.

Next morning the crier went through the stare proclaiming that there was a log-jam on the river and that it behooved all loyal subjects to clear it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist, warm valley of poppy fields, and the king and I went with them.

Hundreds of dressed deodar logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, while the population of the state prodded at the nearest logs with poles, in the hope of easing the pressure. Then there went up a shout of “Namgay Doola! Namgay Doola!” and a large, red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he ran.

“That he is. That is the rebel!” said the king. “Now will the dam be cleared.”

“But why has he red hair?” I asked, since red hair among hill-folk is as uncommon as blue or green.

“He is an outlander,” said the king. “Well done! Oh, well done!”

Namgay Doola had scrambled on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of a boat-hook. It slid forward slowly, as an alligator moves, and three or four others followed it. The green water spouted through the gaps. Then the villagers howled and shouted and leaped among the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from up-stream battered the now weakening dam. It gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing butts, bobbing black heads, and a confusion indescribable, as the river tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding tree trunks. It rose close to the hank, and blowing like a grampus, Namgay Doola wiped the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the king.

I had time to observe the man closely. The virulent redness of his shock head and beard was most startling, and in the thicket of hair twinkled above high cheek-bones two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent.

“Whence comest thou?” I asked, wondering.

“From Thibet.” He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola took it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar. It was the whooping of Namgay Doola.

“You see now,” said the king, “why I would not kill him. He is a bold man among my logs, but,” and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, “I know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let us return to the palace and do justice.”

It was that king's custom to judge his subjects every day between eleven and three o'clock. I heard him do justice equitably on weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.

“Again it is Namgay Doola,” he said, despairingly. “Not content with refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor are my taxes heavy.”

A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear, advanced trembling. He had been in Namgay Doola's conspiracy, but had told everything and hoped for the king's favor.

“Oh, king!” said I, “if it be the king's will, let this matter stand over till the morning. Only the gods can do right in a hurry, and it may be that yonder villager has lied.”

“Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks, let the matter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak harshly to this red-headed outlander? He may listen to thee.”

I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned so persuasively and began to tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy field by the river. Would I care to shoot that bear? I spoke austerely on the sin of detected conspiracy and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterward he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something strangely familiar.

“Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee,” crooned Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy field as I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the scent of the tasseled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow--one of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in the act of firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant red head. The lesser animal was trailing something rope-like that left a dark track on the path. They were within six feet of me, and the shadow of the moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and went to bed.

Next morning the kingdom was in an uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was sacrilege unspeakable against the holy cow. The state desired his blood, but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with big stones, and defied the world.

The king and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was no hope of capturing our man without loss of life, for from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun--the only gun in the state that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just before we came up.

The standing army stood.

It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red beads bobbing up and down within. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire. Blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only answer to our prayers.

“Never,” said the king, puffing, “has such a thing befallen my state. Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon.” He looked at me imploringly.

“Is there any priest in the kingdom to whom he will listen?” said I, for a light was beginning to break upon me.

“He worships his own god,” said the prime minister. “We can but starve him out.”

“Let the white man approach,” said Namgay Doola from within. “All others I will kill. Send me the white man.”

The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A freshgathered cow's tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black velvet--my black velvet--rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.

“And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?” I asked.

He grinned more charmingly than ever. “There is no shame,” said he. “I did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I was minded to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to death; only in the legs.”

“And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king? Why at all?”

“By the god of my father, I cannot tell,” said Namgay Doola.

“And who was thy father?”

“The same that had this gun.” He showed me his weapon, a Tower musket, bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honorable East India Company.

“And thy father's name?” said I.

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech came. “Thimla Dhula!” said he, excitedly. “To this hour I worship his god.”

“May I see that god?”

“In a little while--at twilight time.”

“Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?”

“It is long ago. But there was one word which he said often. Thus, ''Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides, thus.”

“Even so. And what was thy mother?”

“A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest.”

The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight--the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment. “Thus did my father,” he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then, all together, they struck up the wailing cham that I heard on the hillside:

“Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.”

I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they sung, as if their hearts would break, their version of the chorus of “The Wearing of the Green”:

“They're hanging men and women, too, For the wearing of the green,”

A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight years old--could he have been in the fields last night?--was watching me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin between finger and thumb, and looked--only looked--at the gun leaning against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his porringer-like face. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied. The inevitable blood-instinct held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess. Angelus was over.

“Thus my father sung. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be that the god will understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.”

“And why?”

Again that soul-compelling grin. “What occupation would be to me between crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not understand.”

He picked the masks off the floor and looked in my face as simply as a child.

“By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make those deviltries?” I said, pointing.

“I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjiling, and yet the stuff”--

“Which thou hast stolen,” said I.

“Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff--the stuff. What else should I have done with the stuff?” He twisted the velvet between his fingers.

“But the sin of maiming the cow--consider that.”

“Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the heifer's tail waved in the moonlight, and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I.”

“That is true,” said I. “Stay within the door. I go to speak to the king.” The population of the state were ranged on the hillside. I went forth and spoke.

“O king,” said I, “touching this man, there be two courses open to thy wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree--him and his brood--till there remains no hair that is red within thy land.”

“Nay,” said the king. “Why should I hurt the little children?”

They had poured out of the hut and were making plump obeisances to everybody. Namgay Doola waited at the door with his gun across his arm.

“Or thou canst, discarding their impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to honor in thy army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that glowing hair. Make him chief of thy army. Give him honor as may befall and full allowance of work, but look to it, oh, king, that neither he nor his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and favor, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he will be a bulwark of defense. But deny him even a tuftlet of grass for his own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover, he has brethren”--

The state groaned unanimously.

“But if his brethren come they will surely fight with each other till they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the other. Shall he be of thy army, oh, king? Choose!”

The king bowed his head, and I said:

“Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the king's army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for, as thou hast truly said, I know.”

Then Namgay Doola, never christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola--which is Tim Doolan--clasped the king's feet, cuffed the standing army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to temple making offerings for the sin of the cattle--maiming.

And the king was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered to sell me a village for 20 pounds sterling. But I buy no village in the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch forest.

I know that breed.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY

Imray had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen to disappear from the world--which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables. Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the administration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town--1,200 miles away--but Imray was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a man, became a mystery--such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a month and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared and his bungalow stood empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal--an affair which has been described in another place--and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on the sideboard, and this is not good for the insides of human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens--an enormous Rampur slut, who sung when she was ordered, and devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she returned to her master and gave him information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born of hate and fear One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at night, her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her. When he was on the frontier in search of the local murderer who came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further than the Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and employed a monogram on her night blanket, and the blanket was double-woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland, and when he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the doctors because she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over the head with a gun, before she could understand that she must give room for those who could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my business took me through that station, and naturally, the club quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth, which looked just as nice as a whitewashed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark, three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under side of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, hats, ants, and other things.

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the bells of St. Paul's, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to put together that sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken up and given place to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like bayonet rods on the earth, and flung up a blue mist where it splashed back again. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias and the mango-trees in the garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the thing they called prickly heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not the least desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some one. Very much against my will, and because of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have been a caller in the room--it seems to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my man that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and I could hardly coax her back to me--even with biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland rode back, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was:

“Has any one called?”

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his name. Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it was a real dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too. Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and went into the least exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that pelting rain, it would not have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some hideous domestic tragedy. “She has done this ever since I moved in here.”

The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spattered a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe in his mouth. “I thought you'd come,” he said. “Have I been walking around the house at all?”

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering some one was reproaching me for my slackness, and through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but for all that it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. “Stay on,” he said, “and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?”

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn't care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda.

“'Pon my soul, I don't wonder,” said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. “Look at that.”

The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamp-light. “If you are afraid of snakes, of course”--said Strickland. “I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of man's fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser legs.”

“You ought to get your thatch over-hauled,” I said. “Give me a masheer rod, and we'll poke 'em down.”

“They'll hide among the roof beams,” said Strickland. “I can't stand snakes overhead. I'm going up. If I shake 'em down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.”

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

“N o n s en s e,” said Strickland. “They're sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of the room is just what they like.” He put his hands to the corner of the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice. It gave great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

“H'm,” said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. “There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove! some one is occupying em.”

“Snakes?” I said down below.

“No. It's a buffalo. Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer rod, and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main beam.”

I handed up the rod.

“What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,” said Strickland, climbing further into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. “Come out of that, whoever you are! Look out! Heads below there! It's tottering.”

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the lighted lamps on the table. I snatched a lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the table.

“It strikes me,” said he, pulling down the lamp, “our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?”

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the masheer rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally. The thing under the cloth made no more signs of life.

“Is it Imray?” I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked. “It is Imray,” he said, “and his throat is cut from ear to ear.”

Then we spoke both together and to ourselves:

“That's why he whispered about the house.”

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.

“It's bad business, old lady,” said he. “Men don't go up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the ceiling-cloth behind 'em. Let's think it out.”

“Let's think it out somewhere else,” I said.

“Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We'll get into my room.”

I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lighted tobacco and thought. Strickland did the thinking. I smoked furiously because I was afraid.

“Imray is back,” said Strickland. “The question is, who killed Imray? Don't talk--I have a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took most of Imray's servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn't he?”

I agreed, though the heap under the cloth looked neither one thing nor the other.

“If I call the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?”

“Call 'em in one by one,” I said.

“They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows,” said Strickland.

“We must segregate 'em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?”

“He may, for aught I know, but I don't think it's likely. He has only been here two or three days.”

“What's your notion?” I asked.

“I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?”

There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

“Come in,” said Strickland. “It is a very warm night, isn't it?”

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain pending, which, by his honor's favor, would bring relief to the country.

“It will be so, if God pleases,” said Strickland, tugging off his hoots. “It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days--ever since that time when thou first came into my service. What time was that?”

“Has the heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given, and I--even I--came into the honored service of the protector of the poor.”

“And Imray Sahib went to Europe?”

“It is so said among the servants.”

“And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?”

“Assuredly, sahib. He was a good master and cherished his dependents.”

“That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case yonder.”

The man stooped over the case, banded barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning dolefully, then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the .360 express.

“And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly? That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?”

“What do I know of the ways of the white man, heaven-born?”

“Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.”

“Sahib!”

The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled themselves against Bahadur Khan's broad breast.

“Go, then, and look!” said Strickland. “Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits. Go!”

The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at the carcass of the mangled snake under foot, and last, a grey glaze setting on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth.

“Hast thou seen?” said Strickland, after a pause.

“I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the presence do?”

“Hang thee within a month! What else?”

“For killing him? Nay, sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever. My child!”

“What said Imray Sahib?”

“He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he came back from office and was sleeping. The heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven-born.”

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular: “Thou art witness to this saying. He has killed.”

Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly.

“I am trapped,” he said, “but the offence was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,” he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, “only such could know what I did.”

“It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!”

A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat still.

“Take him to the station,” said Strickland. “There is a case toward.”

“Do I hang, then?” said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and keeping his eyes on the ground.

“If the sun shines, or the water runs, thou wilt hang,” said Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.

“Go!” said Strickland.

“Nay; but I go very swiftly,” said Bahadur Khan. “Look! I am even now a dead man.”

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

“I come of land-holding stock,” said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. “It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold, therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me? My honor is saved, and--and--I die.”

At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the little kariat, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the table-cloth to their appointed places. They were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.

“This,” said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, “is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?”

“I heard,” I answered. “Imray made a mistake.”

“Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan has been with him for four years.”

I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found him waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.

“What has befallen Bahadur Khan?” said I.

“He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the sahib knows,” was the answer.

“And how much of the matter hast thou known?”

“As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, sahib. Let me pull off those boots.”

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house:

“Tietjens has come back to her room!”

And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched on her own bedstead, on her own blanket, and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth wagged light-heartedly as it flailed on the table.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER

ONCE upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which would never have been the case under native rule; for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders--while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti Gui lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would come up with a song from the sea, Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and “My mother's dead,” said he, weeping.

“She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once before that when you were working for me last year,” said the planter, who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

“Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,” said Deesa, weeping more than ever. “She has left eighteen small children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs,” said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.

“Who brought the news?” said the planter.

“The post,” said Deesa.

“There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!”,

“A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are dying,” yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.

“Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village,” said the planter. “Chihun, has this man got a wife?”

“He?” said Chihun. “No. Not a woman of our village would look at him. They'd sooner marry the elephant!”

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.

“You will get into a difficulty in a minute,” said the planter. “Go back to your work!”

“Now I will speak Heaven's truth,” gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. “I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble.”

A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. “Deesa,” said he, “you've spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey your orders.”

“May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?”

Permission was granted, and in answer of Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.

“Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give ear!” said Deesa, standing in front of him.

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. “I am going away,” said Deesa.

Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.

“But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work.”

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.

“I shall be gone for ten days, oh, delectable one! Hold up your near forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried mud-puddle.” Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.

“Ten days,” said Deesa, “you will work and haul and root the trees as Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!” Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus--the iron elephant goad.

Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.

Moti Guj trumpeted.

“Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And now bid me goodbye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king! Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored health; be virtuous. Adieu!”

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice. That was his way of bidding him goodbye.

“He'll work now,” said Deesa to the planter. “Have I leave to go?”

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to haul stumps.

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa, Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one having business elsewhere.

“Hi! ho! Come back you!” shouted Chihun. “Come back and put me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hillsides! Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your forefoot!”

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.

“None of your nonsense with me,” said he. “To your pickets, devil-son!”

“Hrrump!” said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing and “Hrrumphing” him into his veranda. Then he stood outside the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an elephant will.

“We'll thrash him,” said the planter. “He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty.”

Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work and is not tied up is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long 'nooning'; and, wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his picket for food.

“If you won't work, you sha'n't eat,” said Chihun, angrily. “You're a wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.”

Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself, shouting, upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.

“Great Lord!” said Chihun. “Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number, two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me!”

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting, and long grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the woods.

At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk in deed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercise had made him hungry.

“Call up your beast,” said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came from China at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop They move from places at varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.

“Now we will get to work,” said Deesa. “Lift me up, my son and my joy!”

Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for difficult stumps.

The planter was too astonished to be very angry.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us