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the water outside and was seated not very far from the i rejoice to think that i am a prince with best par rubber five cover i mention this without five separate and several each one finer than the other at present i am fast should i open you would immediately be this is patent things always use the longest words they can it is a trick that they pick up from their that s news said a big i had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with at least i ve used you for that more than once i forget the precise number in thousands of which i am to throw per hour but i assure you my complaining friends that there is not the least danger i alone am capable of clearing any water that may find its way here by my biggest we pitched then the sea was getting up in style it was a dead gale blown from under a ragged opening of green sky on all sides by fat grey clouds and the wind bit like as it fretted the spray into on the of the waves i tell you what it is the down its wire stays i m up here and i can take a dis the ship that found herself passionate view of things there s an organized conspiracy against us i m sure of it because every single one of these waves is heading directly for our bows the whole sea is concerned in it and so s the wind it s awful i what s awful said a wave drowning the for the time this organized conspiracy on part the taking his cue from the mast organized and i there has been a depression in the gulf of excuse he ed but his friends took up the tale one after another which has that wave green water over the as far as cape he the bridge and is now going out to to to seal the third went out in three making a clean sweep of a boat which turned bottom up and sank in the darkening alongside while the broken falls whipped the that s all there is to it the white water roaring through the there s no in our proceedings we re only is it going to get any worse said the bow anchor chained down to the deck where he could only breathe once in five minutes not knowing can t say wind may blow a bit by midnight thanks awfully gk od bye the wave that spoke so politely had travelled some the ship that pound herself distance aft and found itself all mixed up on the deck which was a well deck sunk between high one of the plates which was hung on hinges to open outward had swung out and passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with a clean evidently that s what i m made for said the plate closing again with a of pride oh no you don t my friend i the top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside but as the plate did not open in that direction the defeated water back not bad for five of an inch said the plate my work i see is laid down for the night and it began opening and shutting as it was designed to do with the motion of the ship we are not what you might call idle groaned all the frames together as the climbed a big wave lay on her side at the top and shot into the next hollow twisting in the descent a huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle and her bow and stem free with nothing to support them then one joking wave caught her up at the bow and another at the stem while the rest of the water away from under her just to see how she would like it so she was held up at her two ends only and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron and ease off i ease off there roared the i want one eighth of an inch fair play d you hear me you i l the ship that found herself ease off ease off cried the don t hold us so tight to the frames ease off i the deck beams as the rolled fearfully tou ve cramped our knees into the and we can t move ease off you flat headed little then two seas hit the bows one on each side and fell away in torrents of streaming ease off i shouted the forward collision i want to up but i m in every direction ease off you dirty little let me breathe all the hundreds of plates that are to the frames and make the outside skin of every steamer echoed the call for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little and each plate according to its position complained against the we can t help iti we can t help it they murmured in reply we re put here to hold you and we re going to do it you never pull us twice in the same direction if you d say what you were going to do next we d try to meet your views as far as i could feel said the upper deck and that was four inches thick every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in opposite directions now what s the sense of that my friends let us all pull together pull any way you please roared the so long as you don t try your experiments on me i need fourteen wire ropes all pulling in different directions to bold me steady is n t that so the ship that pound herself we believe you my boy | 39 |
i whistled the stays through their teeth as they in the wind from the top of the to the deck we must all pull together the decks repeated pull very good said the then stop pushing sideways when you get wet be content to run gracefully fore and aft and curve in at the ends as we do no curves at the end a very slight curve from side to side with a good grip at each knee and little pieces on said the deck beams fiddle i cried the iron pillars of the deep dark hold who ever heard of curves stand up straight be a perfectly round column and carry tons of good solid like that there a big sea smashed on the deck above and the pillars themselves to the load straight up and down is not bad said the frames who ran that way in the sides of the ship but you must also yourselves sideways is the law of life children open out open out come back said the deck beams savagely as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open come back to your bearings you slack irons the engines absolute i you see the in chorus no two of you will ever pull alike and you blame it all on us we only know how to go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can t and must n t and sha n t move the ship that pound herself i ve got one of an inch play at any rate said the triumphantly so he had and all the bottom of the ship felt the easier for it then we re no good sobbed the bottom we were we were never to give and we ve given and the sea will come in and we u all go to the bottom together i first we re blamed for everything unpleasant and now we have n t the consolation of having done work don t say i told you whispered the steam but between you and me and the last cloud i came from it was bound to happen sooner or later you had to give a and you ve given without knowing it now hold on as before what s the use a few we ve we ve given and the sooner we confess that we can t keep the ship together and go off our little heads the easier it will be no can stand this strain no one was ever meant to share it among you the steam answered the others can have my share i m going to pull out said a in one of the forward plates if you go others will follow the steam there s nothing so in a boat as going why i knew a little chap like he was an eighth of an inch on a to be sure she was only twelve hundred tons now come to think of it in exactly the same place as you are he pulled out in a bit of a of a sea not half as as this and he started all his friends on the same butt the ship that found herself and the plates opened like a furnace door and i had to climb into the nearest fog bank while the boat went down now that s peculiarly disgraceful said the than me was he and in a steamer not half our little i blush for the family sir he settled himself more firmly than ever in his place and the steam chuckled you see he went on quite gravely a and especially a position is really the one indispensable part of the ship the steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single piece of iron aboard there is no sense in telling too much and all that while the little pitched and and swung and and lay down as though she were going to die and got up as though she had been and threw her nose and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped for the gale was at its worst it was y black in spite of the tearing white on the waves and to top everything the rain began to fall in sheets so that you could not see your hand before face this did not make much difference to the below but it troubled the a good deal now it s all finished he said the conspiracy is too strong for us there is nothing left but to roared the steam through the fog horn till the decks quivered i on t be frightened below it s only me just throwing out the ship that pound herself a few words in case any one happens to be rolling round to night you don t mean to say there s any one except u on the sea in such weather said the in a scores of em said the steam clearing its throat it s a trifle windy up here and great i how it rains i we re drowning said the they had been doing nothing else all m lt this steady of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world that s all right we be easier in an or two first the wind and then the rain soon you may make sail again i have a notion that the sea is going down already if it does you learn something about rolling we ve only pitched till now by the way are n t you in the hold a little easier than you were there was just as much groaning and straining as ever but it was not so loud or in tone and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly like a hit on the floor but gave with a little like | 39 |
a perfectly balanced club we have made a most amazing discovery said the one after another a discovery that entirely changes the situation we have foimd for the time in the history of ship building that the inward pull of the deck beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us as it were more closely in our places and us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture the ship that pound herself the steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog horn what massive you great have he said softly when he had finished we also began the deck beams are and we are of opinion that the support of the hold pillars materially helps us we find that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above here the shot down a hollow lying almost on her side at the bottom with a and a in these are you aware of this steam the at the bows and particularly at the we would also mention the floors beneath help u to resist any tendency to spring the frames spoke in the solemn awed voice which people use when they have just come across something entirely new for the very first time i m only a poor little er the steam but i have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business it s all interesting tell us some more you are so strong watch us and you see said the bow plates proudly ready behind there here s the father and mother of waves coming i sit tight a great by but through the and confusion the steam could hear the low quick cries of the as the various strains took cries like these easy easy i now for all your strength i hold out i give a i hold up pull in i i mind the strain at the the ship that pound herself ends grip bite tight i let the water get away from and there she goes i the wave off into the darkness shouting not bad that if it s your first and the and ship to the beat of the engines inside her all three were white with the salt spray that had come down through the engine room there was white fur on the canvas bound steam pipes and even the bright work deep below was and soiled but the had learned to make the most of steam that was half water and were along cheerfully how s the noblest of human ingenuity it said the steam as he whirled through the engine room nothing for nothing in this world of woe the answered as though they had been working for centuries and precious little for seventy five pounds head we ve made two knots this last hour and a quarter rather humiliating for eight hundred horse power is n t it well it s better than drifting at any rate tou seem rather how shall i put it stiff in the back than you were if you d been as we ve been this night you would n t be either of course is the thing practically there has to be a little give and take we found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a how s the weather sea s going down fast said the steam the ship that pound herself gk od business said the high pressure her up boys they ve given us five pounds more steam and he b an the first bars of said the young to the old which as you may have noticed is a pet tune among engines not built for high speed with twin sing the and the to the bronze horse and madame till something goes wrong and then they render gk s funeral march of a with variations you learn a song of your own some fine day said the steam as he flew up the fog horn for one last next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little and the b an to roll from side to side every inch of iron in her was sick and giddy but luckily they did not all feel ill at the same time otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box the steam whistled as he went about his business it is in this short quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents happen for then everything thinks that the worst is over and goes off guard so he and till the beams and frames and floors and and things had learned how to lock down and lock up on one another and endure this new kind of strain they found ample time to practise for they were sixteen days at sea and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of new york the picked up her pilot and came in covered with salt and red the ship that pound herself her was dirty grey from top to bottom two boats had been carried away three copper looked like hats after a fight with the police the bridge had a in the middle of it the house that covered the steam gear was split as with there was a bill for small in the engine room almost as long as the screw shaft the forward cargo fell into bucket when they raised the iron cross bars and the steam had been badly on its bed altogether as the said it was a pretty general average but she s he said to mr for all her dead weight she rode like a ye mind that last blow off the banks i am proud of her buck it s good said the chief engineer looking along the decks now | 39 |
a man would say we were a wreck but we know by experience naturally in the fairly pride and the and the forward who are pushing creatures begged the steam to warn the port of new york of their arrival tell those big boats all about us they said they seem to take us quite as a matter of course it was a glorious clear dead calm morning and in single file with less than half a mile between each their l playing and their shouting and waving handkerchiefs were the majestic the paris the the the ii and the all going out to sea as the the ship that found herself shifted her to give the great boats way tbe steam who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then shouted princes and of the high seas know ye by these presents we are the fifteen days nine hours from liverpool having crossed the atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the first time in our career i we have not we are here we are not but we have had a time wholly in the annals of ship building our decks were swept we pitched we rolled i we thought we were going to die hi hi but we did n t we wish to give notice that we have come to new york all the way across the atlantic through the worst weather in the world and we are the we ha r r the beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons the heard the majestic say and the paris how i and the said with a little of steam and the said and the and the said dutch and that was absolutely all i did my best said the steam gravely but i don t think they were much impressed with us somehow do you it s simply disgusting said the bow plates they might have seen what we ve been through there is n t a ship on the sea that has suffered as we is there now well i would n t go so far as that said the steam because i ve worked on some of those boats and sent the ship that found herself them through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we ve had in six days and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons i believe now i ve seen the majestic for instance from her bows to her and i ve helped the i think she was to back off an she met with one dark night and i had to run out of the a engine room one day because there was thirty foot of water in it of course i don t the steam shut off suddenly as a loaded with a political club and a brass band that had been to see a new york off to europe crossed their bows going to there was a long silence that reached without a break from the cut water to the blades of the then a new big voice said slowly and thickly as though the owner had just up it s my conviction that i have made a fool of myself the steam knew what had happened at once for when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and into one voice which is the ul of the ship who are you he said with a laugh i am the of course i ve never been else except and a fool i the which was doing its very best to be mm down got away just in time its band playing and a popular but air in the days of old are you in the days of old are you in the days of old that story had are you are you are you on f the ship that pound herself well i m glad you ve found yourself said the steam to tell the truth i was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and here s after that we go to our wharf and dean up a little next month we do it all over again the tomb of his ancestors the tomb of his ancestors some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread in all india it would be divided equally between the the the and the that is only one way of saying that certain families serve india generation after generation as follow in line across the open let us take a small and obscure case there has been at least one representative of the in or near central india since the days of lieutenant of the who assisted at the capture of in alfred s younger brother a regiment of from to when he saw some mixed and in john of the same family we will call him john the came to light as a level headed in time of trouble at a place called he died young but left his mark on the new country and the honourable the d of of the honourable the east india company the tomb of his ancestors embodied his virtues in a stately and paid for the expenses of his tomb among the hills he was succeeded by his son who left the little old home just in time to be severely wounded in the he spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of john s grave and rose to the command of a regiment of small wild hill men most of whom had known his father his son john was bom in the small which is even to day eighty miles from the nearest railway in the heart of a country ck served thirty years and retired li the canal his steamer passed the outward bound | 39 |
troop ship carrying his son eastward to the family duty the are than most folk because they know exactly what they must do a clever passes for the civil service and gets away to central india where everybody is glad to see him a dull enters the police department or the woods and forest and sooner or later he too appears in central and that is what gave rise to the saying central india is inhabited by and all very much alike the breed is small dark and silent and the of them are good shots john the second was rather clever but as the eldest son he entered the army according to tradition his duty was to abide in his father s r ment for the term of his natural life though the corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid they were small dark and the tomb op his ancestors clothed in rifle green with black leather and friends called them the which means a race of low caste people who dig up rats to eat but the did not resent it they were the only and their points of pride were these they had fewer english officers than any native regiment secondly their were not mounted on parade as is the general rule but walked at the head of their men a man who can hold his own with the at their must be sound in wind and limb they were the most out and out hunters in all india up to one they were the s irregular of the old days but now and for ever the no englishman entered their mess except for love or through family usage the officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two hundred white folk in india understood and the men were their children all drawn from the who are perhaps the strangest of the many strange races in india they were and at heart are wild men shy full of the races whom we call natives of the country found the in possession of the land when they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago the books call them pre and so forth and in other words that is what the call themselves when a chief whose can sing his backwards for twelve hundred years is set on the throne his is not complete till he has been marked on the f oi with blood from the tomb op his ancestors the veins of a the say the ceremony has no meaning but the knows that it is the last last shadow of his old rights as the long ago owner of the soil centuries of oppression and made the a cruel and half crazy thief and cattle and when the english came he seemed to be almost as open to as the of his own but john the first father of grandfather of our john went into his country with him learned his language shot the deer that stole his poor crops and won his confidence so that some learned to plough and sow while others were into the company s service to police their friends when they understood that standing in line did not mean instant execution they accepted as a but amusing kind of sport and were zealous to keep the wild under control that was the thin edge of the john the first gave them written promises that if they were good from a certain date the government would overlook previous and since john was never known to break his he promised once to hang a esteemed and hanged him in front of his tribe for seven proved the settled down as steadily as they knew how it was slow unseen work of the sort that is being done all over india to day and though john s only reward came as i have said in the shape of a grave at government expense the little people of the hills never forgot him colonel knew loved them too and the tomb op his ancestors they were very fairly for before his service ended many of them could hardly be distinguished from low caste farmers but in the south where john the first was buried the wildest still clung to the a legend that some day as they called him would return to his own in the mean time they the white man and his ways the least excitement would them at random and now and then killing but if they were handled they grieved like children and promised never to do it again the of the the were virtuous in many ways but they needed they felt bored and unless taken after tiger as and their cold blooded all shoot on foot it is their caste made even the officers wonder they would follow up a wounded tiger as as though it were a with a broken wing and this through a full of and and where a wild beast could hold a dozen men at his mercy now and then some little man was brought to with his head smashed in or his ribs torn away but his companions never learned caution they contented themselves with settling the tiger john was at the of the lonely mess house from the back seat of a two wheeled cart his gun cases all round him the slender little boy looked forlorn as a strayed goat when he the white dust the tomb of his ancestors off his knees and the cart down the glaring road but in his heart he was contented after au this was the place where he had been bom and things were not much changed since he had been sent to england a child fifteen years ago there were a few new buildings but the air and the smell and the sunshine were the same and the little green men who | 39 |
crossed the parade ground looked very familiar three weeks ago john would have said he did not remember a word of the tongue but at the mess door he found his lips moving in sentences that he did not bits of old nursery and t ul ends of such orders as his father used to give the men the colonel watched him come up the steps and laughed look he said to the major no need to ask the young im s breed he s a might be his father in the over again hope he shoot as straight said the major he s brought enough with him would n t be a if he did n t watch him his nose regular his handkerchief like his father it s the second line for line fairy tale by jove said the major peering through the of the if he s the lawful heir he now old could no more pass that without with it than his son said the colonel jumping up well i be said the major the boy s eye the tomb op his ancestors had been caught by a split reed screen that hung on a between the pillars and mechanically he had the edge to set it level old had sworn three times a day at that screen for many years he never get it to his satisfaction his son entered the in the middle of a silence they made him welcome for his father s sake and as they took stock of him for his own he was like the portrait of the colonel on the wall and when he had washed a little of the dust from his throat he went to his quarters with the old man s short noiseless step so much for said the major that comes of four generations among the and the men know it said a wing they ve been waiting for this youth with their tongues hanging out i am persuaded that he absolutely beats em over the head they lie down by companies and worship him like a father before you said the major i ma with my i ve only been twenty years in the regiment and my parent he was a simple squire there s no getting at the bottom of a s mind now why is the superior bearer that yoimg brought with him across with his bundle he stepped into the and shouted after the a typical s servant who english and in proportion what is it he called plenty bad man here i going was the the tomb of his ancestors reply have taken s keys and say will shoot how those thieves can leg it he has been badly frightened by some one the major strolled to his quarters to dress for mess young walking like a man in a dream had fetched a compass round the entire before going to his own tiny cottage the captain s quarters in which he had been bom delayed him for a little then he looked at the well on the parade where he had sat of evenings with his nurse and at the ten church where the officers went to service if a of any official creed happened to come along it seemed very as compared with the gigantic buildings he used to stare up at but it was the same place from time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers who saluted they might have been the very men who had carried him on their backs when he was in his first a faint light burned in his room and as he entered hands clasped his feet and a voice murmured from the floor who is it said young not knowing he spoke in the tongue i bore you in my arms when i was a strong man and you were a small crying crying crying i i am your servant as i was your father s before you we are all your servants young could not trust himself to reply and the voice went on the tomb op his ancestors i have taken your keys from that fat foreigner and sent him away and the are in the shirt for mess who should know if i do not know and so the has a man and forgets his se but my nephew shall make a good servant or i will beat him twice a day then there rose up with a rattle as straight as a arrow a little white haired of a man with and orders on his and trembling behind him a young and in uniform was taking the trees out of s mess boots s eyes were full of tears the old man held out his keys foreigners are bad people he will never come back again we are all servants of your father s son has the forgotten who took him to see the tiger in the village across the river when his mother was so frightened and he was so brave the scene came back to in great magic lantern flashes and all in a breath you promised nothing should hurt me la it the man was at his feet a second time he has not forgotten he remembers his own people as his father remembered now can i die but first i will live and show the how to kill that that yonder is my nephew if he is not a good servant beat him and send him to me and i will surely kill him for now the is with his own people ai a a my i will stay here and see that this does his work well take off his boots fool sit down upon the bed and let me look it is the tomb op his ancestors he pushed forward the of his sword as a sign of service which is an honour paid only to or to | 39 |
little children whom one loves dearly touched the mechanically with three fingers muttering he knew not what it happened to he the old answer of his childhood when in jest called him the little general the major s quarters were opposite s and when he heard his servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room then the major sat on the bed and whistled for the spectacle of the senior native officer of the regiment an a companion of the order of british india with years service in the and a rank among his own people superior to that of many the last joined was a little too much for his nerves the blew the mess call that has a long legend behind it first a few piercing notes like the shrieks of in a far away cover and next large full and smooth the refrain of the wild song and oh and oh the green pulse of all little children were in bed when the heard that call last said passing a clean handkerchief the call brought back memories of his cot under the his mother s kiss and the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his men so he the dark collar of his new mess jacket and went to dinner like a prince who has newly inherited his father s crown old forth curling his whiskers he the tomb op his ancestors knew his own value and no money and no rank within the gift of the gk would have induced him to put in young officers shirts or to hand them clean ties yet when he took off his uniform that night and among his fellows for a quiet smoke he told them what he had done and they said that he was entirely right a theory which to a white mind would have seemed insanity but the whispering level headed little men of war considered it from every point of view and thought that there might be a great deal in it at mess under the oil lamps the talk turned as usual to the subject of big game shooting of every kind and under all sorts of conditions yoimg opened his eyes when he understood that each one of his companions had shot several in the on foot that making no more of the business than if the brute had been a dog in nine cases out of ten said the major a tiger is almost as dangerous as a but the tenth time you come home feet first that set all talking and long before midnight s brain was in a whirl with stories of man and cattle each pursuing his own business as as clerks in an office new that had lately come into such and such a district and old friendly beasts of great cunning known by in the such as who was lazy with huge and mrs who turned up when you never expected her and made female noises then they spoke of a wide and picturesque the tomb op his ancestors field till young hinted that they must be pulling his leg deed we are n t said a man on his left we know all about you you re a and all that and you ve a sort of right here but if you don t believe what re telling you what will you do when old begins his stories he knows about and that go to a hell of their own and that walk on their hind feet and your s riding tiger as well odd he has n t spoken of that yet you know you ve an buried down way don t you said the major as smiled of course i do said who had the chronicle of the book of by heart it lies in a worn old on the chinese table behind the piano in the home and the children are allowed to look at it on sundays well i was n t sure your my boy according to the has a tiger of his a that he rides round the country whenever he feels inclined don t call it decent in an ex s ghost but that is what the southern believe even our men who might be called cool don t care to beat that country if they hear that is about on his tiger it is supposed to be a clouded not but like a shell tom cat no end of a brute it is and a sure sign of war or or something there s a nice family legend for you the tomb op his ancestors what s the origin of it d you said ask the old was a mighty hunter before the lord perhaps it was the tiger s revenge or perhaps he s em still you must go to his tomb one of these days and inquire will probably attend to that he was asking me before you came whether by any ill luck you had already your tiger if not he is going to enter you imder his own wing of course for you of all men it s imperative you have a first class time with the major was not wrong kept an anxious eye on young at and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted up his voice in an order the whole line quivered even the colonel was taken for it might have been returned from with a new lease of life had continued to develop his peculiar theory among his and it was accepted as a matter of faith in the lines since every word and gesture on young s part so confirmed it the old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the reproach of not having shot a tiger but he was not content to take the first or any beast that happened to arrive in his own | 39 |
villages he the high low and middle justice and when his naked and came to him with word of a beast marked down he bade them send to the and the watering places that he might be sure the was such an one as suited the dignity of such a man the tomb of his ancestors three or four times the reckless returned most saying that the beast was a worn with nursing or a old and would yoimg s impatience at last a noble animal was marked a ten foot cattle with a huge roll of loose skin along the belly glossy full about the neck and yoimg he had slain a man in pure sport they said let him be fed and the villagers drove out a cow to amuse him that he mi t lie up near by princes and have taken ship to india and spent great for the mere glimpse of beasts as fine as this of s it is not good said he to the colonel when he asked for shooting leave that my colonel s son who may that my colonel s son should lose his on any small beast that may come after i have waited long for this which is a tiger he has come in from the country in seven days we will return with the skin the mess their teeth had he chosen might have invited them all but he went out alone with two days in a shooting cart and a day on foot till they came to a rocky valley with a pool of good water in it it was a day and the boy very naturally stripped and went in for a leaving by the clothes a white skin shows far against brown and what beheld on the tomb of his ancestors s back and right shoulder dragged him forward step by step with staring i d forgotten it is n t decent to strip before a man of his position said in the water how the little devil i what is it the mark was the whispered answer it is nothing you know how it is with my people was annoyed the dull red on his shoulder something like a had slipped his memory or he would not have bathed it occurred so they said at home in alternate generations appearing curiously enough eight or nine years after birth and save that it was part of the inheritance would not be considered pretty he hurried ashore dressed again and went on till they met two or three who promptly fell on their faces my people not to notice them and so your people when i was a yoimg man we were fewer but not so weak now we are many but poor stock as may be remembered how will you shoot him from a tree from a shelter which my people shall build by day or by night on foot and in the said young that was your custom as i have heard said to himself i will get news of him then you and i will go to him i will carry one gun you have yours there is no need of more what tiger shall stand against thee f he was marked down by a little water hole at the head of a full and half asleep in the the tomb of his ancestors may sunlight he was walked up like a and he turned to do battle for his life made no motion to raise his rifle but kept his eyes on who met the roar of the charge with a single it seemed to him hours as he which tore through the throat the below the neck and between the shoulders the brute choked and fell and before knew well what had happened bade him stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing jaws fifteen said short paces no need for a second shot he where he and we need not spoil the skin i said there would be no need of these but they in case suddenly the sides of the were crowned with the heads of s a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had s shot failed but their guns were hidden and they appeared as interested some five or six waiting the word to skin watched the life fade from the wild eyes lifted one hand and turned on his heel no need to show that we care said he now after this we can kill what we choose put out your hand obeyed it was entirely steady and nodded that also was your custom my men skin quickly they will carry the skin to will the come to my poor village for the night and perhaps forget that i am his but those the they have worked hard and the tomb of his ancestors oh if they skin we will skin them they are my people in the lines i am one thing here i am another this was very true when and to the dress of his own people he left his of in the next world that night after a little talk with his subjects he devoted to an and a is a thing not to be safely written about flushed with was in the thick of it but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden wild folk came and pressed about his knees with he gave his to the elders of the village they grew eloquent and him about with flowers gifts and not all were thrust upon him and infernal music rolled and round red while singers sang songs of the ancient times and danced peculiar dances the are very potent and was compelled to taste them often but unless the stuff had been how came he to fall asleep suddenly and to late the next half a march from the village | 39 |
the was very tired a uttle before dawn he went to sleep explained my people carried him here and now it is time we should go back to the voice smooth and the step steady and silent made it hard to believe that only a few hours before was yelling and with naked fellow devils of the my people were very pleased to see the they will never forget when next the goes out re the tomb of his ancestors he will go to my people and they will give him as many men as we need kept his own counsel except as to the shooting of the tiger and that tale with a tongue the skin was certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess and the first of many when could not accompany his boy on he took care to put him in good hands and learned more of the mind and desire of the wild in his and by talks at twilight or at pools than an man could have come at in a lifetime presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their mostly in and to lay cases of custom before him they would say in his at twilight after the easy confidential style of the that such and such a bachelor had run away with such and such a wife at a far off village now how many cows would consider a just fine or again if written order came from the that a was to repair to a walled city of the plains to give evidence in a would it be wise to disregard that order on the other hand if it were obeyed would the rash return alive but what have i to do with these things demanded of impatiently i am a soldier i do not know the law law is for fools and white men give them a large and loud order and they will abide by it thou art their law the tomb of his ancestors but wherefore every trace of expression left s countenance the idea might have smitten him for the first time how can i say he replied perhaps it is on account of the name a does not love strange things give them orders two three four words at a time such as they can carry away in their heads that is enough gave orders then not that a word spoken in haste before mess the dread law of villages beyond the smoky in truth no less than the law of the first who so the whispered legend ran had come back to earth to the third generation in the body and bones of his there could be no sort of doubt in this matter all the knew that had honoured s village with his presence after his first in this tiger that he had eaten and drunk with the people as he was used must have s liquor very upon his back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red flying cloud that the high had set on the flesh of the first when first he came to the as concerned the foolish white world which has no eyes he was a slim and young officer in the but his own people knew he was who had made the a man and believing they hastened to carry his words careful never to alter them on the way because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror of being laughed at or questioned the tomb op his ancestors the little folk kept their convictions to themselves and the ck who thought he knew his regiment never guessed that each one of the six quick footed eyed rank and file to attention beside their believed serenely and that the on the left flank of the line was a god twice deity of their land and people the e gods themselves had stamped the and who would dare to doubt the of the earth gods being practical above all things saw that his family name served him well in the lines and in camp his men gave no one does not commit r mental with a god in the chair of and he was sure of the best in the district when he needed them they believed that the protection of the first them and were bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of excited his quarters began to look like an amateur in spite of heads and horns and that he sent home to the people very learned the weak side of their god it is true he was but bird skins and above all news of big game pleased him in other respects too he lived up to the tradition he was fever proof a night s sitting out over a goat in a damp valley that would have filled the major with a month s had no effect on him he was as they said before he was bom now in the autumn of his second year s service an crept out of the earth and ran about the tomb of his ancestors among the heard nothing of it till a brother officer said across the mess table your s on the in the you d better look him up i don t want to be but i a little sick of my talks of nothing else what s the old boy supposed to be doing now riding cross country by moonlight on his tiger that s the story he s been seen by about two thousand along the tops of the and people to death they it devoutly and all the are away at his tomb i hke good you really ought to go down there must be a queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a god what makes you think there s any truth in | 39 |
the tale said because all our men deny it they say they ve never heard of s tiger now that s a manifest lie because every there s only one thing you ve overlooked said the thoughtfully when a local god on earth it s always an excuse for trouble of some kind and those are about as wild as your grandfather left them young un it means something they may go on the war path said can t as yet should n t be surprised a little bit i have n t been told a syllable proves it all the more they are keeping something back the tomb op his ancestors tells me everything too as a rule why did n t he tell me that put the question directly to the old man thai night and the answer surprised him why should i tell what is well known yes the clouded tiger is out in the country what do the wild think that it means they do not know they wait what is coming say only one little word and we will be content we what have tales from the south where the live to do with men when wakes is no time for any to be quiet but he has not the old man eyes were full of tender if he does not wish to be seen why does he go abroad in the moonlight we know he is awake but we do not know what he desires is it a sign for all the or one that concerns the folk alone say one little word that i may carry it to the and send on to our villages why does ride out who has done wrong is it is it will our children die is it a sword remember we are thy people and thy servants and in this life i bore thee in my not knowing has evidently looked on the cup this evening thought but if i can do anything to soothe the old chap i must it s like the on a small scale he dropped into a deep chair over which was the tomb of his ancestors thrown his first tiger skin and his weight on the cushion the over his shoulders he laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke drawing the painted hide cloak fashion him now will i tell the truth he said leaning forward the dried on his shoulder to invent a lie i see that it is the truth was the answer in a shaking voice goes abroad among the riding on the clouded tiger ye say be it so therefore the sign of the wonder is for the only and does not touch the who plough in the north and east the of the or any others except the who as we know are wild and foolish it is then a sign for them d or bad beyond doubt good for why should make evil to those whom he has made men the nights over yonder are hot it is ill to lie in one bed over long without turning and would look again upon his people so he rises his clouded tiger and goes abroad a little to breathe the cool air if the kept to their villages and did not wander after dark they would not see him indeed it is no more than that he would see the light again in his own send this news south and say that it is my word bowed to the floor good heavens thought and this pagan is a first class and as straight as a die i may as well it off neatly he went on the tomb op his ancestors if the ask the meaning of the sign tell them that would see how they kept their old promises of good living perhaps they have perhaps they mean to the orders of the gk perhaps there is a dead man in the and so has come to see is he then angry am i ever angry with my i say angry words and threaten many things thou i have seen thee smile the hand i know and thou the are my children i have said it many times ay we he thy children said and no otherwise is it with my father s father he would see the land he loved and the people once again it is a good ghost i say it go and tell them and i do hope devoutly he added that it will calm em down flinging back the tiger skin he rose with a long that showed his well kept teeth fled to be received in the lines by a knot of panting it is true said he wrapped himself in the skin and spoke from it he would see his own country again the sign is not for us and indeed he is a young man how should he lie idle of nights he says his bed is too hot and the air is bad he goes to and fro for the love of night running he has said it the grey assembly shuddered he says the are his children ye know he does not lie he has said it to me the tomb op his ancestors but what of the what means the sign for them nothing it is only night running as i have said he rides to see if they the gk as he taught them to do in his first life and what if they do not he did not say the light went out in s quarters look said now he goes away none the less it is a good ghost as he has said how shall we fear who made the a man his protection is on us and ye know never broke a protection spoken or written on paper when he is older and has found him a wife | 39 |
he will lie in his bed till morning a commanding officer is generally aware of the state of mind a little before the men and this is why the colonel said a few days later that some one had been putting the fear of god into the as he was the only person entitled to do this it distressed him to see such virtue it s too good to last he said i only wish i could find out what the little mean the explanation as it seemed to him came at the change of the moon when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to any possible excitement among the who were to put it mildly uneasy because a paternal gk had sent up against them a state educated with and an calf in the language of state they had manifested a strong the tomb op his ancestors objection to all measures had forcibly detained the and were on the point of or their obligations that means they are in a blue same as they were at time said the ck and if we them into the hills we u never catch em in the first place and in the second they off till further orders wonder who the idiot is who is trying to a i knew trouble was coming one good thing is that they only use local corps and we can knock up something we call a campaign and let them down easy fancy us our best because they don t want to be i they re only crazy with fear don t you think sir said the next day that perhaps you could give me a fortnight s desertion in the face of the enemy by jove i the colonel laughed i might but i d have to it a little because we re warned for service as you might say however we assume that you applied for leave three days ago and are now well on your way south i d like to take with me of course yes i think that will be the best plan you ve some kind of hereditary influence with the little and they may listen to you when a glimpse of our would drive them wild you ve never been in that part of the world before have you take care they don t send you to your family vault in your the tomb of his ancestors youth and innocence i believe you be all right if you can get em to listen to you i think so sir but if they should accidentally put make of they might you i hope you represent that they were only frightened there is n t an of real vice in em and i should never forgive myself if any one of of my name got them into trouble the colonel nodded but said nothing and departed at once did not say that ever since the official had been dragged into the hills by indignant after had up to the lines with forehead in the dust that should come and explain this unknown horror that hung over his people the i of the clouded tiger was now too clear let comfort his own for vain was the help of mortal man toned down these to a simple request for s presence nothing would have pleased the old man better than a tumble campaign against the whom he as an despised but he had a duty to all his nation as s and he devoutly believed that forty would fall on his village if he with that obligation besides knew all things and he rode the clouded tiger they covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony raising the blue wall like line of the as swiftly as might be was very silent they began the steep climb a little after noon but it the tomb op his ancestors was near sunset ere they reached the stone clinging to the side of a covered hill where the first was laid as he had desired that he might overlook his people all india is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of the of forgotten of corps long since mates of east who went on shooting and never came back agents writers and of the honourable the east india company by and thousands and of thousands english folk forget quickly but natives have long memories and if a man has done good in his life it is remembered after his death the marble four square tomb of was about with wild flowers and nuts of wax and honey bottles of native spirits and infamous cigars with horns and of dried grass at one end was a rude clay image of a white man in the top hat riding on a tiger reverently as they approached his head and began to pick out the inscription so far as he could read it ran word for word and letter for letter to the memory of john esq late of or error of authority employ only of and accomplished the tire a lawless and them to government by a conquest over minds the tomb of his ancestors the most and rational mode of gk general and have ordered thi erected this life ag on the other side of the grave were ancient verses also very worn as much as could said the savage band their haunts and b is command mended check a st for spoil and ing prove his toil survey restore a nation without a sword for some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead man of his own blood and of the house in then nodding to the plains yes it s a big all of it even my little share he must have been worth knowing where are my people not here no man comes here except in | 39 |
full sun they wait above let us climb and see but remembering the first law of oriental in an even voice answered i have come this far only because the folk are foolish and dared not visit our lines now bid them wait on me here i am not a servant but the master of i i go the old man night was falling and at any moment might whistle up his dreaded from the darkening now for the first time in a long life a lawful command and deserted his leader for he did the tomb op his ancestors not come back but pressed to the flat table top of the hill and called softly men stirred all about little trembling men with bows and arrows who had watched the two since noon where is he whispered one at his own place he bids you come said now now let him loose the clouded tiger upon us we do not go nor i though i bore him in my arms when he was a child in this his life wait here till the day but surely he will be angry he will be very angry for he has nothing to eat but he has said to me many times that the are his children by sunlight i believe this by moonlight i am not so sure what folly have ye a pigs that ye should need him at all one came to us in the name of the government with little ghost knives and a magic calf meaning to turn us into cattle by the cutting off of our arms we were greatly afraid but we did not kill the man he is here a black man and we think he comes from the west he said it was an order to cut us all with knives especially the women and the children we did not hear that it was an order so we were afraid and kept to our hills some of our men have taken and from the plains and others pots and and ear rings are any slain by our men not yet but the young men are the tomb op his ancestors blown to and fro by many like flames upon a hill i sent asking for lest worse should come to us it was this fear that he foretold by the sign of the clouded tiger he says it is otherwise said and he repeated with all that young had told him at the conference of the chair think you said the at last that the government will lay hands on us not i rejoined will give an order and ye will obey the rest is between the government and i myself know something of the ghost knives and the scratching it is a charm against the but how it is done i cannot tell nor need that concern you if he stands by us and before the anger of the gk we will most strictly obey except we do not go down to that place to night they could hear yoimg below them shouting for but they and sat still expecting the clouded tiger the tomb had been holy ground for nearly half a century if chose to sleep there who had better right but they would not come within of the place till broad day at first was exceedingly angry till it occurred to him that most probably had a reason which indeed he had and his own dignity might suffer if he without answer he propped himself against the foot of the grave and alternately and smoking came through the warm night proud that he was a lawful legitimate fever proof the tomb op his ancestors he prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have done and when appeared in the morning with a most liberal supply of food said nothing of the desertion would have been relieved by an outburst of human anger but finished his leisurely and a ere he made any sign they are very much afraid said who was not too bold himself it remains only to give orders they said they will obey if thou wilt only stand between them and the government that i know said strolling slowly to the table land a few of the elder men stood in an irregular in an open but the of people women and were hidden in the thicket they had no desire to face the first anger of the first himself on a fragment of split rock he smoked his to the butt hearing men breathe hard all about him then he cried so suddenly that they jumped bring the man that was i a and a cry were followed by the appearance of a with fear hand and foot as the of old were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices he was pushed cautiously before the presence but young did not look at him i the man that was is it a jest to bring me one tied like a since when could the bind folk at his pleasure cut i half a dozen hasty knives cut away the and the tomb op his ancestors the man crawled to who his case of and of then sweeping the with one comprehensive forefinger and in the of compliment he said clearly and distinctly ai i whispered now he speaks woe to foolish people i i have come on foot from my house the assembly shuddered to make clear a matter which any other than a would have seen with both eyes from a distance ye know the who and your children so that they look like it is an order of the government that is scratched on the arm with these little knives which i hold up is charmed against her all are thus charmed and very many this is the mark of the charm look i he rolled back his | 39 |
sleeve to the and showed the white of the mark on the white skin ck me all and look a few daring spirits came up and nodded their heads wisely there was certainly a mark and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden by the shirt merciful was that he had not then and there proclaimed his i now all these things the man whom ye told you i a times but they answered with blows groaned the his wrists and ankles but being pigs ye did not believe and so came i the tomb op his ancestors here to save you first from next from a great folly of fear and lastly it may be from the rope and the jail it is no gain to me it is no pleasure to me but for the sake of that one who is yonder who made the a man he pointed down the i who am of his blood the son of his son come to turn your people and i speak the truth as did the crowd murmured reverently and men stole out of the thicket by and to join it there was no anger in their god s face these are my orders heaven send they take em but i seem to have impressed em so far i myself will stay among you while this man your arms with the knives after the order of the government in three or it may be five or seven days your arms will swell and and bum that is the power of fighting in your base blood against the orders of the government i will therefore stay among you till i see that is conquered and i will not go away till the men and the women and the little children show me upon their arms such marks as i have even now showed you i bring with me two very good guns and a man whose name is known among beasts and men we will hunt together i and he and your young men and the others shall eat and lie still this is my order there was a long pause while victory hung in the balance a white haired old sinner standing on one leg up there are and some few and other things for which we need a protection they were taken in the way of trade the tomb op his ancestors the battle was won and john drew a breath of relief the young had been but if taken swiftly all could be put straight i will write a so soon as the the and the other things are counted before me and sent back whence they came but first we will put the government mark on such as have not been visited by in an to the if you show you are afraid you never see again my friend there is not sufficient ample supply of for all this population said the man they have destroyed the calf they won t know the difference scrape em all round and give me a couple of i attend to the elders the aged who had demanded protection was the first victim he fell to s hand and dared not cry out as soon as he was freed he dragged up a companion and held him fast and the crisis became as it were a child s sport for the chased the to treatment that all the tribe must suffer equally the women shrieked and the children ran howling but laughed and waved the it is an honour he cried tell them how great an honour it is that i myself should mark them nay i cannot mark every the must also do his but i will touch all that he makes so there will be an equal virtue in them thus do the stick pigs ho brother with one eye i catch the tomb op his ancestors that girl and bring her to me she need not run away yet for she is not married and i do not seek her in marriage she will not come then she be by her little brother a fat boy a bold he puts out his arm like a soldier b at the blood some day he shall be in my regiment and now mother of many we will li touch thee for has been before us here it is a true thing indeed that this charm breaks the power of there will be no more faces among the and so ye can ask many cows for each maid to be wed and so on and so quick x s in the hunting and tales of own brand of coarse the ware and both worn out but nature being the same the world over the grew jealous of their marked comrades and came near to blows about it then declared himself a court of justice no longer a medical board and made formal inquiry into the late we are the thieves of said the simply it is our fate and we were frightened when we are frightened we always simply and directly as children they gave in the tale of the plunder all but two and some spirits that had gone these promised to make good out of his own pocket and ten were despatched to the with a wonderful document written on the leaf of a note book and addressed to an assistant district of police there was i the tomb op his ancestors calamity in that note as warned them t ut anything was better them loss of liberty armed with this protection the went they had no desire whatever to meet of the police aged twenty two and of a cheerful countenance nor did they wish to the scene of their a middle course they ran into the camp of the one government allowed to the various irregular corps through a district of some fifteen | 39 |
thousand square miles stood before him in a cloud of dust he was by way of being a priest they knew and what was more to the point a good who paid his generously when he read s note he laughed which they deemed a lucky omen till he called up who the and the by the piled and laid stem hands upon three of that smiling band of the thieves of the himself addressed them with a riding whip that was painful but had it they submitted but would not give up the written protection fearing the jail on their way k they met mr d who had heard about the and was not pleased certainly said the eldest of the gang when the second interview was at an end certainly s protection has saved us our liberty but it is as though there were many in one small piece of paper put it away one climbed into a tree and stuck the letter into a forty feet from the ground where it could do no the tomb op his ancestors harm sore but happy the ten returned to next day where he sat among all looking at their right arms and all under terror of their s not to scratch it was a good howl said the leader first the who laughed took away our and beat three of us as was promised next we meet who frowned and asked for the plunder we spoke the truth and so he beat us all one after another and called us chosen names he then gave us these two they set down a bottle of and a box of and we came away the is left in a tree because its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a we are beaten but for that said sternly ye would all have been marching to jail with a policeman on either side ye come now to serve as for me these people are unhappy and we will go hunting till they are well to night we will make a feast it is written in the of the together with many other matters not fit for print that through five days after the day that he had put his mark upon them the first hunted for his people and on the five nights of those days the tribe was and entirely drunk bought spirits of an awful strength and wild pig and deer beyond counting so that if any fell sick they might have two good reasons between head and stomach they found no time to think of their arms but followed through the and with each day s return the tomb op his ancestors ing confidence men women and children stole away to their villages as the little army passed by they carried news that it was good and right to be scratched with ghost knives that was indeed as a god of free food and drink and that of all nations the stood first in his favour if they would only refrain from scratching that kindly god would be connected in their minds with great and the and of a paternal government and to morrow i go back to my home said to his faithful few whom neither spirits nor swollen could conquer it is hard for children and savages to behave reverently at all times to the of their make belief and they had excessively with but the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people and the will not come again said he who had been first that is to be seen answered nay but come as a white come as a young man whom we know and love for as thou alone we are a weak people if we again saw thy thy they were picking up their courage i have no horse i came on with yonder what is this thou the thing that thou hast chosen for a night horse the little men in fear and awe night horses what is this last tale of children the tomb op his ancestors had been a leader in s presence since the night of his desertion and was grateful for a chance flung question they know he whispered it is the clouded tiger that that comes from the place where thou once sleep it is thy as it has been these three generations my horse i that was a dream of the it is no dream do dreams leave the tracks of broad on earth why make two faces before thy people they know of the night and they and are afraid and would have them cease nodded if thou hast no further need of him he is thy horse the thing leaves a trail then said we have seen it it is like a village road under the tomb can ye find and follow it for me by if one comes with us and above all stands near by i will stand close and we will see to it that does not ride any more the shouted the last words again and again from s point of view the stalk was nothing more than an ordinary down hill through and rocks perhaps if a man did not keep his wits by him but no worse than twenty others he had yet his they refused absolutely to beat and would only sweat at every move they showed the marks of enormous that ran always down hill to a few feet the tomb op his ancestors below s tomb and disappeared in a cave it was an open road a domestic highway beaten without thought of concealment the beggar might be paying rent and taxes muttered ere he asked whether his friend s taste ran to cattle or man cattle was the answer two a week we drive them for him at the foot of the hill it is his | 39 |
custom if we did not he might seek us and said i can t say i fancy going into the cave after him what s to be done the f back as lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle he knew were shy beasts but one who had been long cattle fed in this style might prove he some one whispered from the rear he knows too well of all the infernal cheek i said there was an angry growl from the cave a direct challenge come out then shouted come out of that let s have a look at you the brute knew well enough that there was some connection between brown and his weekly allowance but the white in the sunlight annoyed him and he did not approve of the voice that broke his rest lazily as a snake he dragged himself out of the cave and stood yawning and at the entrance the sunlight fell upon his flat right side and wondered never had he seen a tiger marked the tomb op his ancestors after this fashion except for his head which was barred he was not striped but like a child s rocking horse in rich of smoky black on red gold that portion of his belly and which should have been white was orange and his tail and were black he looked leisurely for some ten seconds and then deliberately lowered his head his chin and drawn in staring intently at the man the effect of this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull with two broad bands across it while ttie bands glared the eyes so that head on as he stood he showed something like a mask it was a piece of natural that he had practised many times on his and though was by no means a terrified he stood for a while held by the extraordinary of the attack the the body seemed to have been packed away behind it the ferocious skull like head crept nearer to the of an angry tail t in the grass left and right the had scattered to let john subdue his own horse my word i he thought he s trying to frighten met and fired between the like eyes aside upon the shot a big mass of bounded past him up the hill and he followed the tiger made no attempt to turn into the he was hunting for sight and nose up mouth open the tremendous fore legs scattering the gravel in said john watching the flight the tomb op his ancestors now if he was a he d tower lungs must he fuu of blood the brute had jerked himself over a and fallen out of sight the other side john looked over with a ready barrel but the red trail led straight as an arrow even to his grandfather s tomb and there among the smashed spirit bottles and the fragments of the mud image the life left with a and a if my worthy could see that said john he d have been proud of me eyes lower jaw and lungs a very nice shot he whistled for as he drew the over the bulk by jove i it s nearly it eleven fore arm twenty seven and a half a short too three feet one but what a skin oh the men with the knives swiftly is he beyond question dead said an awe stricken voice behind a rock that was not the way i killed my first t r said think that would run no second gun it it is the clouded tiger said the he is dead whether all the and of the had lain by to see the kill could not say but the whole hill s flank with little men shouting singing and stamping and yet till he had made the first cut in the splendid skin not a man would take a knife and when the shadows fell they ran from the red stained tomb and no persuasion would the tomb of his ancestors bring them back till dawn so spent a night in the open guarding the from and thinking about his he returned to the to the chant of an army three hundred strong the close at his elbow and the rudely dried skin a before him when that army suddenly and noiselessly disappeared as in high com he argued he was near and a turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a wing of his own corps he left the skin on a cart tail for the world to see and sought the colonel they re perfectly right he explained earnestly there is n t an of vice in em they were only frightened i ve the whole boiling and they like it awfully what what are we doing here sir that s what i m trying to find out said the colonel i don t know yet whether we re a piece of a or a police force however i think we u call ourselves a police force how did you manage to get a well sir said i ve been thinking it over and as far as i can make out i ve got a sort of hereditary influence over em so i know or i would n t have sent you but what exactly it s rather it seems from what i can make out that i m my own grandfather and i ve been disturbing the peace of the by riding a tiger of nights if i had n t done that i the tomb of his ancestors don t think they d have objected to the but the two together were more than they could stand and so sir i ve em and shot my horse as a sort o proof of good faith tou never saw such a skin in your life the colonel his moustache thoughtfully | 39 |
now how the deuce said he am i to include that in my report indeed the official version of the anti said nothing about john his but knew and the knew and every in the hills knew and now is zealous that john swiftly be wedded and impart his powers to a son tor if succession fails and the little are left to their own there will be trouble in the the devil and the deep sea the devil and the deep sea all supplies very bad and dear and there are no for even the smallest sailing directions was british but you will not find her house flag in the list of our marine she was a nine hundred ton iron screw cargo boat in no way from any other tramp of the sea but it is with as it is with men there are those who will for a consideration sail extremely close to the wind and in the present state of a fallen world such people and such have their use from the hour that the first entered the new shiny and innocent with a of cheap champagne down her fate and her owner who was also her captain that she should deal with embarrassed crowned heads of ability women to whom change of air was imperative and the lesser law breaking powers her career led her sometimes into the courts where the sworn statements of her filled his brethren with envy the cannot tell or act a the devil and the deep sea lie in the face of the sea or a tempest but as lawyers have discovered he makes up for chances withheld when he returns to shore an in either hand the figured with distinction in the great case it was her first slip from virtue and she learned how to change her name but not her heart and to run across the sea as the guiding light she was very badly wanted in a south american port for the little matter of entering harbour at full speed with a coal and the only man of war just as that man of was going to coal she put to sea without explanations though three fired at her for half an hour as the she had been concerned in picking up from a certain gentlemen who should have stayed in but who preferred making themselves vastly to authority in quite another quarter of the world and as the in she had been overtaken on the high seas full of of war by the of an agitated power at issue with its neighbour that time she was very nearly sunk and her gave eminent lawyers of two great profit after a season she reappeared as the martin hunt painted a dull slate colour with pure and boats of robin s egg blue engaging in the trade till she was invited and the invitation could not well be disregarded to keep away from black sea ports altogether she had ridden through many waves of depression might drop out of sight s the devil and the deep sea throw and nuts at masters or combine till cargo perished on the but the boat of many names came and went busy alert and always her made no complaint of hard times and port officers observed that her crew signed and signed again with the regularity of atlantic her name she changed as occasion called her well paid crew never and a large of the profits of her voyages was spent with an open hand on her engine room she never troubled the and very seldom stopped to talk with a signal station for her business was urgent and private but an end came to her and she perished in this manner deep peace over europe asia africa america and the powers dealt together more or less honestly banks paid their to the hour diamonds of price came safely to the hands of their owners rested content with their found no one whose presence in the least them lived openly with their wedded wives it was as though the whole earth had put on its best sunday and and business was very bad for the martin hunt the great virtuous calm her slate sides yellow and all but cast up in another the steam black and rusty with a coloured a litter of dingy white boats and an enormous stove or furnace for boiling on her forward there could be no doubt that her trip was sue the devil and the deep sea for she lay at several ports not too known and the smoke of her trying out insulted the anon she departed at the speed of the average london four and entered a semi inland sea warm still and blue which is perhaps the most strictly preserved water in the world there she stayed for a certain time and the great stars of those mild skies beheld her playing in the comer among islands where are never found all that while she smelt and the smell though was not one evening calamity descended upon her from the island of and she fled while her crew at a fat black and brown puffing far behind they knew to the last revolution the capacity of every boat on those seas that they were anxious to avoid a british ship with a good conscience does not ac a rule flee from the man of war of a foreign power and it is also considered a breach of etiquette to stop and search british ships at sea these things the of the did not pause to prove but held on at an eleven knots an hour till nightfall one thing only he overlooked the power that kept an expensive steam moving up and down those waters they had the two regular ships of the station with an ease that bred contempt had newly brought up a third and a boat with | 39 |
a clean bottom to help the work and that was why the driving hard from the east to the west found herself at daylight in such a position that she could not help seeing an arrangement of four the devil and the deep sea flags a and a half behind which read heave to or take the consequences i she had her choice and she took it the end came when on her lighter draught she tried to draw away northward over a friendly the shell that arrived by way of the chief engineer s cabin was some five inches in with a practice not a bursting charge it had been intended to cross her bows and that was why it knocked the framed portrait of the chief engineer s and she was a very pretty on to the floor his wash hand crossed the into the engine room and striking on a grating dropped directly in front of the forward engine where it burst neatly both the that held the connecting rod to the forward what follows is worth consideration the forward engine had no more work to do its released rod therefore drove up fiercely with nothing to check it and started most of the nuts of the cover it came down again the full weight of the steam behind it and the foot of the connecting rod useless as the leg of a man with a ankle out to the right and struck the or right hand cast iron supporting column of the forward engine it clean through about six inches above the base and the upper portion three inches towards the ship s side there the connecting rod meantime the after engine being as yet went on with its work and in so doing brought at its next revolution the devil and the deep sea the of the forward engine which smote the connecting rod bending it and the rod cross the big cross piece that up and down so smoothly the cross head sideways in the guides and in addition to putting further pressure on the already broken supporting column cracked the port or left hand supporting column in two or three places there being nothing more that could be made to move the engines brought up all standing with a that seemed to lift the a foot out of the water and the engine room opening every steam outlet that they could find in the confusion arrived on somewhat but calm there was a sound below of things a rushing rattling noise that did not last for more than a minute it was the machinery itself on the spur of the moment to a hundred altered conditions mr one foot on the upper grating inclined his ear sideways and groaned you cannot stop engines working at twelve knots an hour in three seconds without them the slid forward in a cloud of steam shrieking like a wounded horse there was nothing more to do the five inch shell with a reduced charge had settled the situation and when you are full all three holds of strictly preserved pearls when you have cleaned out the bank the sea horse bank and four other banks from one end to the other of the when you have out the very heart of a rich government so that five years will not repair your wrong you the devil and the deep sea must smile and take what is in store but the reflected as a put out from the man of war that he had heen on the high seas with the british several of disposed above him and tried to comfort from the thought where said the stolid naval lieutenant himself aboard where are those dam pearls they were there beyond no could do away with the fearful smell of decayed the dresses and the shell they were there to the value of seventy thousand more or less and every the man of war was annoyed for she had used up many tons of d she had strained her and worse than all her officers and crew had been hurried one on the w u arrested and several times as each officer came aboard then they were told by what they esteemed to be the of a that they were to consider themselves and were put imder arrest it not the least good said the you d much better send us a be you are arrest was the reply where the devil do you expect we are going to a cape to we re helpless you ve got to tow us into somewhere and explain why you fired on us mr we re helpless are n t we ruined from end to end said the man of machinery if she rolls the forward will come down and go through her bottom both are the devil and the deep sea dean cut through there s nothing to hold anything up the council of war off to see if mr s words were true he warned them that it was as much as a man s life was worth to enter the engine room and they contented themselves with a distant inspection through the steam the lifted to the long easy swell and the supporting column ground a trifle as a man his teeth under the knife the forward was depending on that unknown force men call the of materials which now and then that other power the of things you said mr hurrying them away the engines are n t worth their price as old iron we tow was the answer afterwards we shall the man of war was short handed and did not see the necessity for putting a prize crew aboard the so she sent one whom the kept very drunk for he did not wish to make the tow too easy and moreover he had an little rope hanging from the stem of his ship | 39 |
then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour the was very hard to move and the lieutenant who had fired the five inch shell had leisure to think upon mr weu drop was the busy man he borrowed all crew to shore up the with and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship it was a day s work but anything was better than drowning at the v the devil and the deep sea end of a tow rope and if the forward had fallen it would have made its way to the sea bed and taken the after where are we going to and how long will they tow us he asked of the god knows and this prize lieutenant s drunk what do you think you can do there s just the bare chance mr whispered though no one was within there s just the bare chance o her if a man knew how they ve twisted the very out of her bringing her up with that jerk but i m saying that with time and patience there s just the chance o making steam yet we could do it the s eye brightened do you mean he began that she is any good oh no said mr she u need three thousand pounds in at the lowest if she s to take the sea again an that apart from any injury to her structure she s like a man fallen down five pair o stairs we can t tell for months what has happened but we know she u never be good again without a new inside te should see the an the steam connections to the donkey for two things only i m not afraid of them her i m afraid of them things they ve fired on us they ll have to explain that our reputation s not good enough to ask for explanations let s take what we have and be thankful te would not have the the devil and the deep sea light an the in and the at this most crisis we ve been no better than these ten years under providence we re no worse than thieves now we ve much to be thankful if we e er get back to her make it your own way then said the k there s the least i leave none said mr none that they dare to take keep her heavy on the tow for we need time the never interfered with the affairs of the engine room and mr an artist in his profession turned to and composed a work terrible and forbidding his background was the dark sides of the engine room his material the of power and strength helped out with and ropes the man of war sullenly and the behind her like a hive before with extra and totally her crew blocked up the space round the forward engine till it resembled a statue in its and the of the shores interfered with every view that a eye might wish to take and that the mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm the of the shores were wrapped round with loose ends of ropes giving a studied effect of most dangerous next mr took up a collection from the after engine which as you will remember had not been affected in the general wreck the escape he with a it is difficult in far off ports to come by such the devil and the deep sea unless like mr you keep in store at the same time men took off the nuts of two of the great holding down that serve to keep the engines in place on their solid bed an engine violently arrested in mid career may easily jerk off the nut of a holding down bolt and this accident looked very natural passing along the he removed several shaft and nuts scattering other and ancient pieces of iron he cut off to the number of six from the after engine so that it might match its neighbour and stuffed the feed with cotton waste then he made up a neat bundle of the various odds and ends that he had gathered from the little things like nuts and all carefully and retired with them under the floor of the engine room where he sighed being fat as he passed from to of the double bottom and in a fairly dry hid them any engineer particularly in an port has a right to keep his spare stores where he chooses and the foot of one of the shores blocked all entrance into the regular store room even if that had not been closed with steel in conclusion he the after engine laid and connecting rod carefully where it would be most inconvenient to the casual visitor took out three of the eight of the thrust block hid them where only he could find them again filled the by hand the sliding doors of the coal and rested from his labours the devil and the deep sea the engine room was a and it did not need the contents of the ash lift through the to make it y worse he invited the to look at the completed work saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that said he proudly it almost m to go under those shores now what d you think they u do to wait till we see said the it be bad enough when it comes he was not wrong the pleasant days of ended all too soon though the behind her a heavily stayed out into the shape of a pocket and mr was no longer an artist of imagination but one of seven and twenty prisoners in a prison full of insects the man of war had them to the nearest port not to the of the colony and when mr | 39 |
saw the dismal little harbour with its ragged line of chinese its one crazy and the boat building shed that under the charge of a philosophical represented a he sighed and shook his head i did well he said this is the habitation o an thieves we re at the ends of the earth think you they ul ever know in england does n t look like it said the they were marched ashore with what they stood up in under a generous escort and were judged according to the customs of the country which though excellent are a little out of date there were the pearls there were the and there sat a small but hot governor he consulted for a while and then things the devil and the deep sea began to move with speed for he did not wish to keep a hungry crew at large on the beach and the man had gone up the coast with a wave of his a stroke of the pen was not he consigned them to the the back country and the hand of the law removed them from his sight and the knowledge of men they were marched into the palms and the back country swallowed them all the crew of the deep peace continued to brood over europe asia africa america and it was the firing that did it they should have kept their council but when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy over the fact that a ship under the british flag has been fired at on the high seas news travels quickly and when it came out that the crew had not been allowed access to their there was no within a few hundred miles of that lonely port even the of powers has a right to ask questions the great heart of the british public was beating furiously on account of the performance of a notorious race horse and had not a throb to waste on distant accidents but somewhere deep in the of the ship of state there is machinery which more or less accurately takes charge of foreign affairs that machinery began to and who so shocked and surprised as the power that had captured the f it explained that and far away war were difficult to control and promised that it would most certainly make an example both of tho the devil and the deep sea and the vessel as for the crew reported to be pressed into military service in tropical it would produce them as soon as possible and it would if necessary now no apologies were needed when one nation to another millions of who have no earthly concern with the difficulty themselves into the strife and the trained it w u requested that the crew be found if they were still they had been eight months beyond and it was promised that all would be forgotten the little gk of the little port w u pleased with himself seven and twenty white men made a very compact force to throw away on a war that had neither beginning nor a and fight that and through the wet hot years in the hills a hundred miles away and was the of every wearied official he had he thought deserved well of his country and if only some one would buy the unhappy in the harbour below his his cup would be full he looked at the neatly lamps that he had taken from her and thought of much that might be turned to account but his countrymen in that moist climate had no spirit they would peep into the silent engine room and shake their heads even the men would not tow her further up the coast where the governor believed that she could be repaired she was a bad bargain but her cabin carpets were beautiful and his wife approved of her three hours later were bursting round him like the devil and the deep sea shells for though he knew it not he was being offered as a sacrifice by the to the upper and his had no regard for his feelings he had said the exceeded his power and to report on events he would at this he cast himself back in his produce the crew of the he would send for them and if that failed he would put his dignity on a pony and fetch them himself he had no conceivable right to make pearl serve in any war he would be held responsible next morning the wished to know whether he had found the crew of the they were to be found freed and he w u to feed till such time as they could be sent to the nearest english port in a man of war if you abuse a man long enough in great words flashed over the sea beds things happen the governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners who were also soldiers and never was a regiment more anxious to reduce its strength no power short of death could make these mad men wear the uniform of their service they would not fight except with their fellows and it was for that reason the regiment had not gone to war but stayed in a reasoning with the new troops the autumn campaign had been a but here were the englishmen all the regiment marched back to guard them and the hairy enemy armed with blow pipes rejoiced in the forest five of the crew had died but there lined up on the gk s two and twenty men marked about the legs with the of a few of the devil and the deep sea them wore that had once been trousers the others used of gay patterns and they existed beautifully but simply in the gk s and when he came out they sang at him when | 39 |
you have lost seventy thousand pounds worth of pearls your pay your ship and all your clothes and have lived in bondage for five months beyond the faintest of you know what true independence means for you become the happiest of created natural man the governor told the crew that they were evil and they asked for food when he saw how they ate and when he remembered that none of the pearl were expected for two months he sighed but the crew of the lay down in the and said that they were of the governor s a grey bearded man fat and bald headed his one garment a green and yellow cloth saw the in the harbour and for joy the men crowded to the rail kicking aside the long cane chairs they pointed and argued freely without shame the regiment sat down in the governor s garden the retired to his was as easy to be killed lying as his women from the rooms she sold said the grey bearded man pointing to the he was mr no good said the governor shaking his head no one come buy he s taken my lamps though said the he wore one leg of a pair of trousers and his eye wan the devil and the deep sea along the the gk there were camp and the s writing table in plain sight they ve cleaned her out o course said mr war drop they would we go aboard and take an see he waved his hands over the harbour now sorry the gk smiled a smile of relief he s glad of that said one of the crew i should n t wonder they down to the harbour front the regiment behind and embarked themselves in what they it happened to be the governor s boat then they disappeared over the of the and the governor prayed that they might find occupation inside mr s first bound took him to the and when the others were patting the decks they heard him giving thanks that things were as he had left them the wrecked engines stood over his head untouched no hand had with his shores the steel of the store room were home and best of all the hundred and sixty tons of good coal in the had not diminished i don t it said mr any knows the use o copper they ought to have cut away the pipes and with chinese coming here too it s a special o providence you think so said the from above the devil and the deep sea there s only been one thief here and he s cleaned her out of all my things anyhow here the spoke less than the truth for under the of his cabin only to be reached by a lay a little money which never drew any his sheet anchor to it was all in clean sovereigns that pass current the world over and might have amounted to more than a hundred pounds he s left me alone let s thank repeated mr he s taken everything else look i the except as to her engine room had been and from one end to the other and there was strong evidence that an guard had in the s cabin to that plunder she lacked glass plate carpets and chairs all boats and her copper these things had been removed with her sails and as much of the wire as would not the safety of the he must have sold those said the the other things are in his house i suppose every fitting that could be or out was gone port and lights sliding of the deck house the captain s chest of drawers with and table photographs and looking glasses cabin doors rubber irons half the stays cork carpenter s and tool chest all cabin and lamps en flags and the devil and the deep sea the forward compass and the ship s bell and were among the missing there were great marks on the deck over which the cargo had been hauled one must have fallen by the way for the rails were smashed and bent and the side plates bruised it s the governor said the he s been selling her on the plan let s go up with and and kill em all shouted the crew let s drown him and keep the woman then we u be shot by that black and tan regiment regiment what s the trouble ashore they ve our regiment on the beach we re cut off that s all gk and see what they want said mr you ve the trousers in his simple way the governor was a he did not desire that the crew of the should come ashore again either singly or in and he proposed to turn their steamer into a they would he explained this from the to the in the and they would continue to wait till the man of war came along exactly where they were if one of them set foot ashore the entire regiment would open fire and he would not scruple to use the two cannon of the town meantime food would be sent daily in a boat under an armed escort the bare to the waist and could only grind his teeth and the governor improved the occasion and himself for the bitter words in the by saying what he thought of the morals the devil and the deep sea and manners of the crew the returned to the in silence and the climbed aboard white on the cheek bones and blue about the nostrils i knew it said mr and they won t give us good food either we shall have morning noon and night an a man can t work on fruit we know that then the cursed mr for frivolous side issues into the conversation and the | 39 |
crew cursed one another and the the voyage and all that they knew or could bring to mind they sat down in silence on the empty decks and their eyes burned in their heads the green harbour water chuckled at them they looked at the hills inland at the white houses above the harbour road at the single tier of native craft by the at the stolid sitting round the two cannon and last of all at the blue bar of the horizon mr was buried in thought and scratched imaginary lines with his finger nails on the i make no promise he said at last for i can t say what may or may not have happened to them but here s the ship and here s us there was a little scornful laughter at this and mr his brows he recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had been chief engineer of the noble hay o here the instinct of obedience to the roll call of the engine room the devil and the deep sea they rose and went captain i trouble you for the rest of the men as i want them we get my stores out and clear away the shores we don t need and then we patch her up my men will remember that they re in the under he went into the engine room and the others stared they were used to the accidents of the sea but this was beyond their experience none who had seen the engine room believed that anything short of new engines from end to end could the engine room stores were and mr s face red with the of the and the exertion of travelling on his stomach lit with joy the spare gear of the had been unusually complete and two and twenty men armed with blocks tackle vices and a or so can look between the eyes without the crew were ordered to replace the and shaft bearing and return the of the thrust block when they had finished mr delivered a lecture on compound engines without the aid of the shops and the men sat about on the cold machinery the cross head in the g des at them but offered no help they ran their fingers hopelessly into the cracks of the supporting and picked at the ends of the ropes round the shores while mr s voice rose and fell echoing till the quick night closed down over the engine room the devil and the deep sea next morning the work of began it has been explained that the foot of the was forced against the foot of the supporting column which it had cracked through and driven outward towards the ship s skin to all appearance the job was more than hopeless for rod and seemed to have been into one but providence smiled on them for one moment to them through the weary weeks ahead the second more reckless than at random with a cold into the cast iron of the column and a greasy grey of metal flew from under the imprisoned foot of the connecting rod while the rod itself fell away slowly and brought up with a somewhere in the dark of the the guides plates above were still fast in the guides but the first blow had been struck they spent the rest of the day the donkey engine which stood immediately forward of the engine room its of e had been stolen eight warm months had not improved the working parts further the last dying of the or it might have been the from the boat to have lifted the thing bodily on its and set it down as regarded its steam connections if we only had one single cargo mr sighed we can take the cover off by hand if we sweat but to get the rod out o the s not possible unless we use steam well there be steam the mom if there s nothing else she the devil and the deep sea next morning men from the shore saw the through a for it was as though the deck smoked her crew were chasing steam through the shaken and pipes to its work in the forward donkey engine and where failed to a crack they stripped off their for and swore half boiled and mother naked the donkey engine at a the price of attention and furious worked long enough to allow a wire rope it was made up of a and a stay to be led into the engine room and made fast on the cover of the forward engine that rose easily enough and was hauled through the and on to the deck many hands assisting the doubtful steam then came the of war for it was necessary to get to the and the rod they removed two of the ring in two strong iron by way of handles doubled the wire rope and set half a dozen men to with an ram at the end of the rod where it peered through the while the donkey engine hauled upwards on the itself after four hours of this furious work the rod suddenly slipped and the rose with a jerk knocking one or two men over into the engine room but when mr declared that the had not split they cheered and thought nothing of their wounds and the donkey engine was hastily stopped its was no thing to with and day by day their supplies reached them by boat the himself once more before the and as a concession had leave to get drink the devil and the deep sea ing water from the boat on the it was not good drinking water but the was anxious to supply anything in his power if he were paid for it now when the jaws of the forward engine stood as it were stripped | 39 |
were needed they could use up the last of the so the were lit again and men burned their bodies but hardly felt the p tin the finished connection was not beautiful but it seemed strong at least as strong as the rest of the machinery and with the devil and the deep sea that job their labours came to an end all that remained was to connect up the engines and to get food and water the and four men dealt with the boat by night chiefly it was no time to over the price of and dried fish the others stayed aboard and replaced rod cross head and with the aid of the faithful donkey engine the cover was hardly and the eye of science might have seen in the connecting rod a something like that of a christmas tree candle which has melted and been straightened by hand over a stove but as mr said she did n t hit anything as soon as the last bolt was in place men tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get to the hand starting gear the wheel and worm by which some engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard they nearly off the wheel but it was evident to the eye that the engines stirred they did not in their with any enthusiasm as good machines should indeed they groaned not a little but they moved over and came to rest in a way which proved that they still recognised man s hand then mr sent his slaves into the darker of the engine room and the hole and followed them with a lamp the were sound but would take no harm from a little and cleaning mr would not have any one over zealous for he feared what the next stroke of the tool might show the less we know about her now said he the better for us all i m ye understand the devil and the deep sea he when i say that this is in no sense regular as his when he spoke was his grey heard hair they believed him they did not ask oo much of what they met but polished and scraped it to a false brilliancy a of paint would make me easier in my mind aid mr i know half the are started and the s h d knows how far out of the true and we need a air pump an the main steam like a there s worse each way i look s like to a man an ours is near all gone the some stale of the green that they used for the of ships and mr spread it abroad to give the engines self respect his own was returning day by day for he wore his cloth but the crew having worked orders did not feel as he did the completed satisfied mr he would at the last lave made shift to run to and gone home vengeance taken to show his engines to his brethren in the craft but the others and the captain him they had not yet recovered their self it would be safer to make what ye might c a trial but beggars must n t be an if the will go over to the hand gear the m only saying it s a the chance is that hey hold up when we put steam on her the devil and the deep sea how long will you take to get said the gk d knows four a day half a week if i can raise sixty pound i not complain be sure of her first we can t afford to go out half a mile and down my soul and man we re one continuous fore an aft i we might fetch though we break down at where we can do good was the answer in a voice that did not allow argument she s my boat i ve had eight months to think in no man saw the depart though many heard her she left at two in the morning having cut her and it was none of her crew s pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering half that echoed among the hills mr wiped away a tear as he listened to the new song she s she s just he yon s the voice of a and if engines have any soul as their masters believe he was quite right there were and sobs and bursts of chattering laughter where the trained ear for the clear note and where there should have been one deep voice down the screw shaft ran murmurs and while a heart flutter without told that the needed re how does she make it said the she moves but she s my heart the devil and the deep sea the sooner we re at the she s mad and we re waking the town is she at all near safe what do how safe she is she s mad hear that now to he sure nothing s anything and the s are fairly cool can ye not hear if she goes said the i don t care a curse and she s my too she went trailing a of weed her from a slow two knots an hour she crawled up to a triumphant four anything that made the quiver and filled the engine room with steam morning showed her out of sight of land and there was a visible ripple imder her bows but she complained bitterly in her and as though the noise had called it there shot along across the purple sea a swift dark hawk like and curious which presently ranged alongside and wished to know if the were helpless ships even the of the w men had been known to break down in those w and the honest and w ould | 39 |
sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way but this ship was not full of lady passengers and w ell dressed officers men white naked and savage down her some with red hot iron bars and others with large threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring strangers and before any man could say what had were in full possession of the while the lawful owners in the water half an hour later the devil and the deep sea the b cargo of and as well as a doubtful minded compass was in the the two huge mat sails with their seventy foot yards and had followed the cargo and were being fitted to the stripped of the steamer they rose they swelled they filled and the empty steamer visibly laid over as the wind took them they gave her nearly three knots an hour and what better could men ask but if she had been forlorn before this new purchase made her horrible to see imagine a respectable in the of a rolling drunk along the streets and you will come to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine hundred ton well once cargo boat as she staggered imder her new help shouting and across the deep with steam and sail that marvellous voyage continued and the bright eyed crew looked over the rail desolate beyond the at the end of the third week she sighted the island of whose harbour is the turning point of a sea here the stay for a week ere they their line there is no village at only a stream of water some palms and a harbour safe to rest in till the first violence of the has blown itself out they opened up the low coral beach with its mound of coal ready for supply the deserted huts for the sailors and the next day there was no only a little rocking in the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour he devil and the deep sea crew watched hungry eyes smoke of a on the afterwards there were a few in an newspaper to the that some of ne foreign power had broken her back at the mouth some far away harbour by running at full speed into william the conqueror william the conqueror part i i have done one thing than all the did and yet a doth spring which is to keep that hid the i r s it declared yet they ve gone as far as to admit extreme d and they ve started relief works in one or two districts the paper says that means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men and the rolling stock should n t wonder if it were as bad as the famine can t be said scott turning a little in the long cane chair we ve had fifteen crops in the north and and report more than they know what to do with they u be able to check it before it gets out of hand it will only be local picked the from the table read through the once more and put up his feet on the chair rests it was a hot dark breathless even william the conqueror ing heavy with the smell of the newly watered mail the flowers in the club gardens were dead and black oa their the little pond was a circle of mud and the trees were white with the dust of weeks most of the men were at the band stand in the public from the club you could hear the native police band stale or on the ground or in the high walled court than a dutch oven half a dozen at the heads of their waited their masters return from time to time a man would ride at a foot pace into the club compound and loaf over to the beside the main building these were supposed to be chambers men lived in them meeting the same white faces night after night at dinner and drawing out their office work till the latest possible hour that they might escape that company what ire you going to do said with a let s have a swim before dinner water s hot i was at the bath to day you game o fifty up it s a hundred and five in the hall now sit still and don t be so energetic a swung up to the porch his and rider a leather ki the man handing down the newspaper extra a slip printed on one side only and damp from the press it was pinned up on the green board between notices of for sale and fox missing william the conqueror rose lazily read it and whistled it s declared he cried one two eight districts go under the operations of the famine code they ve put in charge good business said scott with the first sign of interest he had shown when in doubt hire a i worked under when i first came out and he belonged to the he has more than most men s a knight now said he s a good chap even though he is a thrice born and went to the what names these districts rejoice all or or or a dog cart drove up in the dusk and a man entered his head he was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a province of twenty five million natives and a few hundred white men as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant his ran from ten to twenty a day hi you re supposed to know everything said stopping him how s this going to turn out no one knows as yet there s a message as long as your arm coming in on the i ve left my to fill it out has owned she can t | 39 |
to a man in the department who was teaching the sons of cloth merchants and the beauty of s in books and when he grew poetical william explained that she did n t understand poetry very much it made her head ache and another broken heart took refuge at the club but it was all william s fault she delighted in hearing men talk of their own work and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet scott had known her for some three years meeting her as a rule under canvas when his camp and her brother s joined for a day on the edge of the indian desert he had danced with her several times at the big christmas when as many as five white people came in to the station and had william the conqueror always a great respect for her housekeeping and dinners she looked more like a boy than ever when the ended she sat rolling her low beneath the dark curls as she the papers and stuck out her rounded chin when the tobacco stayed in place or with a gesture as true as a school boy s throwing a stone tossed the finished article across the room to who caught it with one hand and continued his talk with scott it was all shop and the of the sins of villagers who stole more water than they had paid for and the sin of native who at the of the bodily of villages to newly ground and of the coming fight with the desert in the south when the provincial funds should warrant the opening of the long surveyed canal system and scott spoke openly of his great desire to be put on one particular section of the work where he knew the land and the people and sighed for a in the foot hills and said his mind of his and william rolled and said nothing but smiled gravely on her brother because he was happy at ten scott s horse came to the door and the evening was ended the lights of the two low in which the daily paper was printed showed bright across the road it was too early to try to find sleep and scott drifted over to the editor stripped to the waist like a sailor at a gun lay half asleep in a long chair waiting william the conqueror did not stay by his work all day and most of the night he laid himself open to fever so he ate and slept among his can you do it he said i did n t mean to bring you over about what i ve been dining at the the famine of course s warned too they re taking men where they can find em i sent a note to you at the club just now asking if you could do us a letter once a week from the between two and three columns say nothing of course but just plain facts about who is doing what and so forth our regular ten a column sorry but it s out of my line scott answered staring at the map of india on the wall it s rough on very wonder what he do with his sister wonder what the deuce they do with me i ve no famine experience this is the first i ve heard of it am i ordered oh yes here s the wire they put you on to relief works said with a of dying like flies one native and half a pint of mixture among the ten thousand of you it comes of your being idle for the moment every man who is n t doing two men s work seems to have been called upon evidently believes in it s going to be quite as bad as anything they have had in the last ten years it s all in the day s work worse luck i suppose william the conqueror i shall get my orders some time to morrow i m awfully glad i happened to drop in better go and pack my now who me do you know turned over a of said he from scott chuckled he thought he was going to be cool all summer he u be very sick about this well no good talking night two hours later scott with a clear conscience laid himself down to rest on a string cot in a bare room two worn trunks a leather water bottle a tin ice box and his pet saddle up in were piled at the door and the club secretary s receipt for last month s bill was under his pillow his orders came next morning and with them an from sir james who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when he had once met them bidding him report himself with all speed at some place fifteen hundred miles to the south for the famine was sore in the land and white men were needed a pink and youth arrived in the red hot a little at fate and which never allowed any one three months peace he was scott s another in the machinery moved forward behind his fellow whose services as the official announcement ran were placed at the disposal of the gk for famine duty until further orders scott handed over the funds in his charge showed him the comer in the office warned him william the conqueror against excess of seal and as twilight fell departed from the club in a hired carriage with his faithful body servant and a mound of disordered baggage to catch the southern mail at the and railway station the heat from the thick brick walls struck him across the face as if it had been a hot and he reflected that there were at least five nights and four days of this travel before | 39 |
him used to the chances of service plunged into the crowd on the stone platform while a black between his teeth waited till his should be set away a dozen native with their and bundles shouldered into the press of farmers and greasy locked with all pomp s uniform case water bottles ice box and they saw s lifted hand and for it my and your said to s man will travel together thou and i o brother will thus secure the servants places close by and because of our masters authority none will dare to disturb us when reported all things ready scott settled down at full length and on the broad leather covered the heat under the iron arched roof of the station might have been anything over a hundred degrees at the last moment entered dripping don t swear said scott lazily it s too late to change your carriage and we divide the ice william the conqueror what are you doing here said the policeman i m lent to the government same as you by jove it s a of a night i are you taking any of your men down a dozen i suppose i shall have to relief did n t know you were under orders too i did n t till after i left you last night had the news first my orders came this morning relieved meat four and i got off at once should n t wonder if it would n t be a good this if we come through it alive ought to put you and me to work together said and then after a pause my sister here business said scott heartily going to get off at i suppose and go up to who she stay with there no o that s just the trouble of it she s going down with me scott sat bolt upright under the oil lamps as the train past what i you don t mean you could n t tain t that i d have scraped up the money somehow you might have come to me to begin with said scott stiffly we are n t altogether strangers well you need n t be about it i might but you don t know my sister i ve been explaining and and all the rest of it all day lost my temper since seven this morning and have n t got it back william the conqueror but she would n t hear of any compromise a woman s entitled to travel with her husband if she wants to and william says she s on the same footing you see we ve been together all our lives more or less since my people died it is n t as if she were an ordinary sister all the sisters i ve ever heard of would have stayed where they were well off she s as clever as a man confound her went on she broke up the over my head while i was talking at her settled the whole thing in three servants horses and all i did n t get my orders till nine won t be pleased said scott a famine s no place for a woman mrs i mean lady jim s in camp with him at any rate she says she will look after my sister william down to her on her own responsibility asking if she could come and knocked the from under me by showing me her answer scott laughed aloud if she can do that she can take care of herself and mrs jim won t let her run into any mischief there are n t many women sisters or wives who would walk into a famine with their eyes open it is n t as if she did n t know what these things mean she was through the last year the train stopped at and scott went back to the ladies immediately behind their carriage william with a cloth riding cap on her curls nodded william the conqueror in and have some tea she said best thing in the world for heat do i look as if i were going to have heat never can tell said william wisely it s always best to be ready she had arranged her with the knowledge of an old a felt covered water bottle hung in the draught of one of the windows a tea set of russian china packed in a basket stood on the seat and a travelling spirit lamp was against the above it william served them generously in large cups hot tea which the veins of the neck from swelling on a hot night it was characteristic of the girl that her plan of action once settled she asked for no comments on it life among men who had a great deal of work to do and very little time to do it in had taught her the wisdom of as well as of for herself she did not by word or deed suggest that she would be useful comforting or beautiful in their travels but continued about her business serenely put the cups back without clatter when tea was ended and made for her guests this time last night said scott we did n t expect this kind of thing did we i ve learned to expect anything said william you know in our service we live at the end of the telegraph but of course this ought to be a good thing for us all if we live it us out of the running in our own william the conqueror scott replied with equal gravity i hoped to be put on the works this cold weather but there s no saying how long the famine may keep us hardly beyond october i should think said it will be ended one way or the other then and we ve nearly a week | 39 |
the highest compliment one human being could pay another an hour later scott was under way the threatening him with the of the law for that he a member of the subordinate medical department had been and bound against his will and all william the conqueror laws governing the liberty of the subject the begging leave to see his mother who happened to be dying some three miles away only short leave of absence and will presently return the two armed with bringing up the rear and a s contempt for all and foreigners in every line of his face explaining to the drivers that though scott was a man to be feared on all he was authority itself the procession s three stained tents under a of dead trees behind them the famine shed where a crowd of hopeless ones tossed their arms the cooking wish to heaven william had kept out of it said scott to himself after a glance we u have sure as a gun when the ra ns break but william seemed to ive taken kindly to the operations of the famine code which when famine is declared the workings of the ordinary law scott saw her the centre of a mob of weeping women in a riding habit and a blue grey felt hat with a gold i want fifty please i forgot to ask jack before he went away can you lend it me it s for milk for the babies said she scott took the money from his belt and handed it over without a word for goodness sake take care of yourself he said oh i shall be all right we ought to get the milk in two days by the way the orders are i was to tell you william the conqueror that you re to take one of sir jim s horses there s a gi y here that i thought would be just your style so i ve said you d take him was that right that s awfully good of you we can t either of us talk much about style i am afraid scott was in a weather stained shooting very white at the and a little at the wrists william regarded him thoughtfully from his to his ankle boots you look very nice i think are you sure you ve everything you u need and so on think so said scott patting three or four of his shooting pockets as he mounted and rode alongside his good bye he cried good bye and good luck said william i m awfully obliged for the money she turned on a heel and disappeared into the tent while the carts pushed on past the famine sheds past the roaring lines of the thick fat fires down to the baked of the south part n so let melt and make no noise no tear nor sigh move t were of onr joys to tell the our love a it was work even though he travelled by night and by day but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom scott could call master he was as free as in fact for the government held the head of the famine tied neatly to a telegraph wire and if had ever regarded seriously the death rate of that famine would have been much higher than it was at the end of a few days crawling scott learned something of the size of the india which he served and it astonished him his carts as you know were loaded with wheat and good food only a little grinding but the people to whom he brought the life giving were rice they could rice in their but they knew nothing of the heavy stone of the north and less of the material that the white man so laboriously they for william the conqueror such as they were accustomed to and when they found that there was none broke away weeping from the sides of the cart what was the use of these strange hard that choked their throats they would die and then and there very many of them kept their word others took and enough to feed a man through a week for a few of rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate a few put their shares into the rice it and made a with foul water but they were very few scott dimly that many people in the india of the south ate rice as a rule but he had spent his service in a grain province had seldom seen rice in the blade or ear and least of all would have believed that in time of deadly need men could die at arm s length of plenty sooner than touch food they did not know in vain the interpreted in vain his two showed in vigorous what should be done the starving crept away to their bark and weeds leaves and clay and left the open untouched but sometimes the women laid their of children at scott s feet looking back as they staggered away it was the will of god that these foreigners should die and it remained only to give orders to bum the dead none the less there was no reason why the should lack his comforts and a of experience had picked up a few lean and had added them to the procession that they might give milk for the morning meal he was feeding them on the good grain that these william the conqueror rejected yes said if the thought fit a little milk might be given to some of the babies but as the well knew babies were cheap and for his own part held that there was no government order as to babies scott spoke to and the two and bade them capture where they could find them this they most joyfully did for it was a and | 39 |
many were driven in once fed the poor brutes were willing enough to follow the carts and a few days good food such as beings died for lack of set them in milk again but i am no said it is against my my honour when we cross the bias river again we will talk of scott replied till that day thou and the shall be to the camp if i give the order thus then it is done if the will have it so and he showed how a goat should be while scott stood over him now we will feed them said scott twice a day we will feed them and he bowed his back to the and took a horrible when you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless mother of and a baby who is at the point of death you suffer in all your system but the babies were fed each morning and evening scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from their nest of bags under the cart there were always many who could do no more than breathe and william the conqueror the milk was dropped into their mouths drop by drop with due i when they choked each morning too the were fed and since they would without a leader and since the natives were scott was forced to give up riding and pace slowly at the head of his flocks his step to their weaknesses all this was sufficiently absurd and he felt the absurdity keenly but at least he was saving life and when the women saw that their children did not die they made shift to eat a little of the strange and crawled after the carts blessing the master of the give the women something to live for said scott to himself as he in the dust of a hundred little feet and they hang on somehow this beats william s milk trick all to pieces i shall never live it down though he reached his destination very slowly found that a rice ship had come in from and that stores of were available found also an englishman in charge of the shed and the carts set back to cover the ground he had already passed he left some of the children and half his at the famine shed for this he was not thanked by the who had already more stray babies than he knew what to do with scott s back was to stooping now and he went on with his in addition to the more babies and more were added unto him but now some of the babies wore rags and beads round their wrists or necks a said the william the conqueror as though scott did not know that their mothers hope in to resume them the sooner the better said scott but at the same time he marked with the pride of how this or that little was putting on flesh like a as the carts were emptied he headed for s camp by the railway his arrival to fit in with the dinner hour for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth he had no to make any dramatic entry but an accident of the sunset ordered it that when he had taken off his to get the evening breeze the low light should fall across his forehead and he could not see what was before him while one waiting at the tent door beheld with new eyes a young man beautiful as paris a god in a of golden dust walking slowly at the head of his flocks while at his knee ran small naked but she william in a slate coloured laughed till scott putting the best face he could upon the matter halted his armies and bade her admire the it was an sight but the had been left ages ago with the tea party at station fifteen hundred miles to the north they are coming on nicely said william we ve only and twenty here now the women are beginning to take them away again are you in charge of the babies then mrs jim and i we did n t think of though we ve been trying milk and water william the conqueror any losses more than i care to think of said william with a shudder and you scott said nothing there had been many along his one cannot bum a dead baby many mothers who had wept when they did not find again the children they had trusted to the care of the government then came out carrying a at which scott looked for he had a beard that he did not love and when they sat down to dinner in the tent he told his tale in few words as it might have been an official report mrs jim from time to time and jim bowed his head but william s grey eyes were on the clean shaven face and it was to her that scott seemed to appeal good for the said william her chin on her hand as she leaned forward among the her cheeks had fallen in and the on her forehead was more prominent than ever but the neck rose as a column from the of the which was the accepted evening dress in camp it was awfully absurd at times said scott you see i did n t know much about or babies they my head off if the tale goes up north let em said william we ve all done work since we came i know jack has this was to s address and the big man smiled your brother s a highly efficient officer william william the conqueror said he and i ve done him the honour of treating him as he deserves i write the confidential reports then you must say that william s worth her weight in | 39 |
gold said mrs jim i don t know what we should have done without her she has heen everything to us she dropped her hand upon william s which was rough with much handling of reins and william i it softly jim beamed on the company things were going well with his world three of his more men had died and their places had been filled by their every day brought the nearer they had put out the famine in five of the eight districts and after all the death rate had not been too things considered he looked scott over carefully as an looks over a man and rejoiced in his and iron hard condition he s just the least bit in the world tucked up said jim to himself but he can do two men s work yet then he was aware that mrs jim was to him and according to the domestic code the message ran a clear case look at he looked and listened all that william was saying was what can you expect of a country where they call a a water a and all that scott answered was i shall be glad to get back to the club save me a dance at the christmas ball won t you it s a far cry from here to the hall said jim better turn in early scott it s to morrow you begin at five william the conqueror are n t you going to give mr scott a single day s rest wish i could but i m afraid i can t as long as he can stand up we must use him well i ve had one europe evening at least by jove i d nearly forgotten what do i do about those babies of mine leave them here said we are in charge of and as many as you can spare i must learn how to milk now if you care to get up early enough to morrow i u show you i have to milk you see half of em have beads and things round their necks you must be careful not to take em off in case the mothers turn up you forget i ve had some experience here i hope to goodness you won t scott s voice was i take care of her said mrs jim word messages as she carried william off while jim gave scott his orders for the coming campaign it was very nearly nine o clock jim you re a brute said his wife that night and the head of the famine chuckled not a bit of it dear i remember doing the first settlement for the sake of a girl in a and she was slender i ve never done as good a piece of work since he work like a demon but you might have given him one day and let things come to a head now no dear it s their happiest time i don t believe either of the know what s william the conqueror the matter with them is n t it beautiful is n t it lovely getting up at three to learn to milk bless her heart oh ye gk ds why must we grow old and fat she s a darling she has done more work under me under the day after she came she was in charge and you were her subordinate you ve stayed there ever since she you as well as you manage me she does n t and that s why i love her she s as direct as a as her brother her brother s weaker than she is he s always coming to me for orders but he s honest and a for work i confess i m rather fond of william and if i had a the talk ended far away in the was a child s grave more than twenty years old and neither jim nor his wife spoke of it any more all the same you re responsible jim added after a moment s silence bless em i said mrs jim before the stars scott who slept in an empty cart and went about his work in silence it seemed at that hour unkind to rouse and the his head being close to the ground he did not hear william till she stood over him in the dingy old riding habit her eyes still heavy with sleep tea and a piece of toast in her hands there was a baby on the ground on a piece of blanket and a six year old child peered over scott s shoulder william the conqueror hai you little said scott how the deuce do you expect to get your if you are n t quiet a cool white hand the who forthwith choked as the milk into his mouth said the you we no notion how these little fellows can oh yes i have she whispered because the world was asleep only i feed them with a spoon or a rag yours are than mine and you ve been doing this day after day the voice was almost lost yes it was absurd now you try he said giving place to the girl look a goat s not a cow the goat protested against the amateur and there was a in which scott snatched up the baby then it was all to do over again and william laughed softly and merrily she however to feed two babies and a third don t the little beggars take it well said scott i trained em they were very busy and interested when lo i it was broad daylight and before they knew the camp was awake and they among the by the day both flushed to the temples yet all the world rolling up out of the darkness might have and seen all that had passed between them oh said william up the | 39 |
tea and toast i had this made for you it s stone cold now i thought you might n t have anything ready so early better not drink it it s it s stone cold william the conqueror that s awfully kind of you it s just right it s awfully good of you really i leave my and l with you and mrs jim and of course any one in camp can show you about the of course said william and she grew and and and more stately as she strode back to her tent herself with the there were shrill through the camp when the elder children saw their nurse move off without them so far as to jest with the x and scott turned purple with shame because already in the saddle roared a child escaped from the care of mrs jim and running like a rabbit clung to scott s boot william pursuing with long easy strides i will not i will not go shrieked the child his feet round scott s ankle they will kill me here i do not know these x i say said scott in broken i say she will do you no harm gk with her and be well fed ck mo said william panting with a glance at scott who stood helpless and as it were go back said scott quickly to william i u send the little chap over in a minute the tone of authority had its effect but in a way scott did not exactly intend the boy loosened his grasp and said with gravity i did not know the woman was thine i will go then he cried to his companions a mob of three four and five year waiting on the success of his venture ere they william the conqueror go back and eat it is our man s woman she will obey his orders jim where he sat and the two grinned and scott s orders to the flew like hail that is the custom of the when truth is told in their presence said the time comes that i must seek new service wives especially such as speak our language and have knowledge of the ways of the police make great trouble for honest in the matter of weekly accounts what william thought of it all she did not say when her brother ten days later came to camp for orders and heard of scott s performances he said laughing well that settles it he be scott to the end of his days in the northern means a goat i d have given a month s pay to have seen him nursing famine babies i fed some with rice water but that was all right it s perfectly disgusting said his sister with blazing eyes a man does something like that and all you other men think of is to give him an absurd and then you laugh and think it s ah said mrs jim well you can t talk william you little miss the button last cold weather you know you did india s the land of that s different william replied she was only a girl and she had n t done anything except walk like william the conqueror a and she does but it is n t fair to make fun of a man scott won t care said you can t get a rise out of old i ve been trying for eight years and you ve only known him for three how does he look he looks very well said william and went away with a flushed cheek scott indeed then she laughed to herself for she knew her country but it will be all the same and she repeated it under her breath several times slowly whispering it into favour when he returned to his duties on the railway spread the name far and wide among his so that scott met it as he led his carts to war the natives believed it to be some english title of honour and the cart drivers used it in simplicity till who did not approve of foreign broke their there was very little time for now except at the big where jim had extended scott s idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern sufficient had come now into the eight districts to hold the people safe if it were only distributed quickly and for that purpose no one was better than the big canal officer who never lost his temper never gave an unnecessary order and never questioned an order given scott pressed on saving his cattle washing their necks daily so that no time should be lost on the road reported himself with his rice at the minor famine sheds and went back light by forced night march to the next centre to william the conqueror find do it again and he did it again and again and yet again while jim fifty miles away marked off on a big map the tracks of his wheels the stricken lands others did reported at the end they all did but scott was the most excellent for he kept good by him settled for his own on the spot and ran to meet all sorts of trusting to be later on the government should have paid for every shoe and for every hand employed in the but cash themselves slowly and intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length of eight the man who wants to make his work a success must draw on his own of money or other as he goes i told you he d work said to his wife at the end of six weeks he s been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up north on the canal for a year but he gives less trouble than yoimg with his ten and i m morally only government | 39 |
does n t recognise moral he s spent about half his pay to his wheels look at this for one week s work forty miles in two days with twelve carts two days halt building a famine shed for young ought to have built it himself the idiot then forty back again six carts on the way and all sunday then in the evening he in a official to me saying the people where he is william the conqueror might be employed on relief work and that he put em to work on some old he b discovered so as to have a good water when the break thinks he can the dam in a fortnight look at bis are n t they clear and good i knew he was but i did n t know he was as as this i must show these to william said mrs jim the child s wearing herself out among the babies not more than you are dear well another two months ought to see us out of the wood i m sorry it b not in my power to recommend you for a v c william sat late in her tent that night reading through page after page of the square handwriting patting the sketches of proposed to the and her eyebrows over the columns of of estimated water supply and he finds time to do all this she cried to herself well i also was present i ve saved one or two babies she dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust and woke refreshed to feed black children scores of them picked up by the their bones almost breaking their skin terrible and covered with scott was not allowed to leave his cart work but his letter was duly forwarded to the and he had the consolation not rare in india of knowing that another man was where be had sown that also was discipline profitable to the soul william the conqueror he s much too good to waste on said any one can you need n t be angry william he but i need my x earl among drivers and i ve transferred him to the district where he u have it all to do over again he should be marching now he s not a said william furiously he ought to be doing his work he s the best man in his service and that s saying a good deal but if you must use to cut why i prefer the best is n t it time we saw him again said mrs jim i m sure the poor boy has n t had a meal for a month he probably sits on a cart and eats with his fingers all in good time dear duty before was n t it mr said that no it was easy william laughed i sometimes wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again or sit under a roof i can t believe i ever wore a ball frock in my life one minute said mrs jim who was thinking if he goes to he passes within five miles of us of course he ride in oh no he won t said william how do you know dear it will take him off his work he won t have time he make it said mrs jim with a twinkle it depends on his own judgment there s absolutely no reason why he should n t if he thinks fit said jim william the conqueror he won t see fit william replied without sorrow or emotion it would n t be him if he did one certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these said jim but william s face was serene as ever and even as she scott did not appear the rains fell at last late but heavily and the dry earth was red mud and servants killed in the camp where every one was weather bound for a all except who took horse and about in the wet rejoicing now the government that seed grain should be distributed to the people as well as advances of money for the purchase of new oxen and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty while william from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud and her charges with warming that made them rub their little round and the on the rank grass there was never a word from scott in the district away to the except the regular report to the rude country roads had disappeared his drivers were half one of s had died of and scott was taking thirty of a day to fight the fever that comes with the rain but those were things scott did not consider necessary to report he was as usual working from a base of supplies on a railway line to cover a circle of fifteen miles and since full loads were impossible he took quarter loads and toiled four times as hard by consequence for he did not choose william the conqueror to risk an which might have grown by villagers in thousands at the it was cheaper to take gk work them to death and leave them to the in the that was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition told though a man s head were ringing like a bell from the and the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed when he slept if had seen fit to make him a driver that he thought was entirely s own affair there were men in the north who would know what he had done men of thirty years service in his own department who would say that it was not half bad and above above all men of all there was william in the thick of | 39 |
you were transferred to the district and i could pay you then but you did n t i passed within five miles of the camp but it was in the middle of a march you see and the carts were breaking down every few minutes and i could n t get em over the ground till ten o clock that night i wanted to come awfully you knew i did did n t you i i did said william facing him with level eyes she was no longer white did you understand why you did n t ride in of course i did why because you could n t of course i knew that did you care if you had come but i knew you would n t but if you i should have cared a great deal you know i should thank god i did n t i oh but i wanted to i i could n t trust myself to ride in front of the carts because i kept em over here don t you know i knew you would n t said william here s your fifty scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the william the conqueror greasy notes its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head and you knew too did n t you said william in a new voice no on my honour i did n t i had n t the cheek to expect anything of the kind except i say were you out riding anywhere the day i passed by to william nodded and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a good deed then it was just a speck i saw of your habit in the palm grove on the southern cart road i saw your when you came up from the by the just enough to be sure that you were all right d you care this time scott did not kiss her hand for they were in the dusk of the dining tent and because william s knees were trembling under her she had to sit down in the nearest chair where she wept long and happily her head on her arms and when scott imagined that it would be well to comfort her she nothing of the kind she ran to her own tent and scott went out into the world and smiled upon it largely and but when brought him a drink he found it necessary to support one hand with the other or the good and would have been abroad there are and but it was much the strained talk at dinner till the servants had withdrawn and worst of all when mrs jim who had been on the william the conqueror edge of weeping from the soup down kissed scott and william and they drank one whole bottle of hot because there was no ice and scott and william sat outside the tent in the till mrs jim drove them in for fear of more fever of these things and some others william said being engaged is abominable because you see one has no official position we must be thankful we ve lots of things to do things to said jim when that was reported to him they re neither of them any good any more i can t get five hours work a day out of scott he s in the clouds half the time oh but they re so beautiful to watch it will break my heart when they go can t you do anything for him i ve given the the at least i hope i that he personally conducted the entire famine but all he wants is to get on to the canal works and william s just as bad have you ever heard em talking of and and it s their style of i suppose mrs jim smiled tenderly ah that s in the bless em and so love ran about the camp in broad daylight while men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the famine in the eight districts morning brought the penetrating chill of the northern december the of wood smoke the dusty of the the of ruined and william the conqueror all the smell of the white northern plains as the ran on to the mile long bridge william wrapped in a s silk jacket trimmed with rough looked out with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated the south of and palm trees the south was done with here was the land she knew and loved and her lay the good life she understood among folk of her own caste and mind they were picking them up at almost every station men and women coming in for the christmas week with with of sticks with dear and hats with fox and the greater part of them wore like william s for the northern cold is as little to he with as the northern heat and william was among them and of them her hands deep in her pockets her collar turned up over her ears stamping her feet on the as she walked up and down to get warm visiting from carriage to carriage and everywhere congratulated scott was with the at the far end of the train where they him about feeding babies and but from time to time he would stroll up to william s window and murmur gk od enough is n t it and william would answer with sighs of pure delight gk od enough indeed the large open names of the home towns were good to listen to they rang like the coming marriage bells in her ears and william felt deeply and truly sorry for all william the conqueror and and for the of the it was a and when the gave the ball william was yoa t gay the chief and honoured guest among the who | 39 |
could make things very pleasant for their friends and scott danced nearly all the dances together and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb floor where the and the spurs and the new and four hundred dancers went round and round the draped flags on the pillars and to the whirl of it about midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over from the club to play waits that was a surprise the had before any one knew what had happened the band stopped and hidden voices broke into good king and william in the gallery and beat time with her foot mark my footsteps well my page tread thou in them boldly thou shalt feel the winter s rage thy blood less coldly oh i hope they are going to give us another i is n t it pretty coming out of the dark in that way look down there s mrs wiping her eyes it s like home rather said scott i her dear and it began again when watched their flocks by ni t a h ht said william drawing closer to scott william the conqueror all seated on the ground the angel of the lord down and shone around fear not said he for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind glad tidings of great joy i bring to you and all mankind hi time it was william that wiped her eyes l i a is next to a marine engine the most sensitive thing man ever made and no besides being sensitive was new the red paint was hardly dry on his bar his shone like a s and his cab might have been a hard wood finish parlour they had run him into the round house after his he had said good bye to his best friend in the shops the overhead travelling the big world was just outside and the other were taking stock of him he looked at the of bold heard the low and of the steam mounting in the scornful of contempt as a lifted a and would have given a month s oil for leave to crawl through his own driving wheels into the brick ash pit beneath him was an eight wheeled american slightly different from others of his type and as he stood he was worth ten thousand dollars on the company s books but if you had bought him at his own after half an hour s waiting in the echoing round house you would have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars and ninety eight cents a heavy freight with a short cow and a fire box that came down within three inches of the rail began the game speaking to a who was visiting where did this thing blow in from he asked with a dreamy puff of light steam it s all i can do to keep track of our makes was the answer without after your back numbers guess it s something peter left over when he died quivered his steam was getting up but he held his tongue even a hand car knows what sort of it was that peter upon in the far away it carried its coal and water in two apple barrels and was not much bigger than a then up and spoke a small engine with a little step in front of his timber and his wheels so close together that he looked like a getting ready to buck something s wrong with the road when a gravel tells us anything about our stock think that kid s all right designed him and designed me ain t that good enough could have carried the round the yard in his tender but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation we don t use hand cars on the said the stand s old and ugly enough to speak for himself he has n t bin spoken to yet he s bin spoke at t ye any manners on the said the you ought to be in the yard said the severely we re all long here that s what you think the little fellow replied you know more fore the night s out i ve bin down to track and the freight oh christmas i i ve trouble enough in my own division said a lean light with very shiny shoes my would n t rest till they got a they ve it back of all and it worse n a snow plough i snap her off some day sure and then they blame every one except their they be me io haul next i they made you in new did n t they said thought so and ain t any sweet but i tell you they re a heap better n out cars or oil why i ve haul i you said the contemptuously it s all you can do to a cold car up the yard now i he paused a little to let the words sink i handle the flying e cars worth just anything you please to mention on the stroke of eleven i pull out and i m timed for an that s me i traffic s only but one degree better than express freight s what pays well i ain t given to blowing as a rule began the no tou was sent in here because you od the grade interrupted where i you d lie down but as i was saying i don t blow much notwithstanding you want to see freight that is freight moved lively you should see me through the with thirty seven ore cars behind me and my so s they can t attend to my i have to do all the back then and though i say it i ve never had a load get away from me | 39 |
yet ab sir s one thing but judgment and discretion s another you want judgment in my business ah i but are you not by a sense of your overwhelming said a curious voice from a comer who s that whispered to the n g she s bin in the b a yards for six months when she was n t in the shops she s economical call it mean in her coal but she takes it out in i i you foimd boston somewhat isolated madam after new york season i am never so well occupied as when i am alone the seemed to be talking from half way up her smoke sure said the imder his breath they don t after her any in the yard but with my constitution and my work lies in i find your outer which said the freight simple are good enough for me perhaps i should have said the ck i don t hold with any make of wheel the insisted the compound sighed and said no more em all shapes in this world don t ye said that s all over they half start an then they stick on a dead centre an blame it all on other folk s ways o them o boston told me last night he had a hot box just beyond the friday that was why he says the accommodation was held up made out no end of a tale did if i d heard that in the shops with my out for i d know t was one o s lies the new snapped hot box i him i what happened was they d put an extra car on and he just lay down on the grade and they had to send to help him through made it out a did he time before that he said he was looked me square in the and told me that as cool a water in a cold wave hot box you ask about s hot box why he was side and was just about as mad they make em on o being called out at ten o clock at night took hold and snapped her into boston in seventeen minutes hot box hot fraud that s what is then put both drivers and his pilot into it as the saying is for he asked what sort of thing a hot box might be paint my bell sky blue i said the make me a surface railroad with a hard wood board round my wheels break me up and cast me into five cent mechanical toys here s an eight wheel coupled american don t know what a hot box is i never heard of an emergency stop either did ye don t know what ye carry jack for you re too innocent to be left alone with your own tender oh you flat there was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer and nearly his paint off with pure mortification a hot box began the picking and choosing her words as though they were coal a is the penalty from by haste hot box i said the it s the price you pay for going on the tear it s years since i ve had one it s a disease that don t attack as a rule we never have hot boxes on the said the they get em in new as nervous ah go home on a boat said the you think because you use than our road u d allow you re a kind of angel now i tell you what you here s my folk well i can t stop see you later perhaps he rolled forward to the turn table and swung like a man of war in a till he picked up his track but as for you you green coffee pot this to you go out and learn something before you associate with those who we made more in a week than you roll up in a year that s me i s long split my if that s polite to a new member o the brotherhood said there was n t any c to on ye like that but manners was left out when was made keep up your fire kid an bum your own smoke guess we all be wanted in a minute men were talking rather excitedly in the one man in a dingy said that he had n t any to waste on the yard another man with a piece of paper in his hand said that the yard master said that he was to say that if the other man said anything he the other man was to shut his head then the other man waved his arms and wanted to know if he was to keep in his hip pocket then a man in a black prince without a collar came up dripping for it was a hot august night and said that what he said went and between the three of them the began to go first the ck then the then now deep down in his fire box had cherished a hope that as soon as his trial was done he would be led forth with songs and and attached to a under charge of a bold and noble engineer who would pat him on his back and weep over him and call him his the boys in the shops where he was built used to read wonderful stories of railroad life and expected things to happen as he had heard but there did not seem to be many s in the roaring electric lighted yards and his engineer only said now what sort of a fool sort of an has loaded on to this this time and he put the over with an angry snap crying am i supposed to with this thing hey the man his head | 39 |
and replied that in the present state of the yard and freight and a few other things the engineer would and keep on till the cows came home pushed out his heart in his so nervous that the of his own bell almost made him the track waved or danced up and down before and behind him and on every side six tracks deep sliding backward and forward with of and of hand were more cars than had dreamed of there were oil cars and hay cars and stock cars full of beasts and ore cars and cars with ends sticking out in the middle cold and cars dripping on the tracks fruit and milk cars with full of market stuff flat cars loaded with and all red and green and gilt under the electric lights flat cars piled high with strong scented hides pleasant plank or bundles of flat cars creaking to the weight of thirty ton angle irons and boxes for some new bridge and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of box cars loaded locked and and angry crawled among and between and under the thousand wheels men took flying through his cab when he halted for a moment men sat on his pilot as he went forward and on his tender as he returned and of men ran along the tops of the box cars beside him down waving their arms and crying curious things he was pushed forward a foot at a time whirled backward his rear drivers and a quarter of a mile jerked into a yard are very and into a bed d or merchant s transport car and with no hint or knowledge of the weight behind him started up anew when his load was fairly on the move three or four cars would be cut off and would bound forward only to be held on the then he would wait a few minutes watching the whirled with the of the bells giddy with the vision of the sliding cars his panting forty to the minute his front lying sideways on his cow like a tired dog s tongue in his mouth and the whole of him covered with half burnt coal dust t is n t so easy with a straight backed tender said his little friend of the round house bustling by at a trot but you re on pretty fair ever seen a no then watch me was in charge of a dozen heavy cars suddenly he shot away from them with a sharp a opened in the shadows ahead he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him and the long line of twelve foot high on into the arms of a full sized road who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl my man s reckoned the in the at that trick he said returning gives me cold when another fool tries it though that a where my short wheel base comes in like as not you d have your tender scraped off if you tried it had no that way and said so no of course this ain t your regular business but say don t you think it s have you seen the yard master well he s the greatest man on earth an don t you forget it when are we through why kid it s always like this day an sundays an week days see that thirty car freight in four no five tracks off she s all mixed freight sent here to be out into straight trains that s why we re out the cars one by one he gave a vigorous push to a west bound car as he spoke and started back with a little of surprise for the car was an old an m t k box car jack my drivers but it s why ain t there no you back to your friends there s forty out for you from your road if there s one who s you now wish i knew i belong in but i ve bin to i ve bin to i ve bin to news i ve bin all down the old and west point an i ve bin to o maybe i u fetch up at i ve only bin out ten months but i m i m just try said the and the battered old car down the track i want to be in when the bloom s full o an he explained to i knew an old flat car out seventeen months an one of ours was gone fifteen fore ever we got track of her quite how our men fix it around i guess anyway i ve done my duty she s on her way to but i lay my next she be held there to wait s convenience and sent back to us with wheat in the f jl just then the passed at the head of a dozen cars i m goin home he said proudly can t get all them twelve on to the flat break em in half i cried but it was who was backed down to the last six cars and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge boat he had never seen deep water before and shivered as the flat drew away and left his within six inches of the black shiny tide after this he was hurried to the freight house where he saw the yard master a white faced man in shirt trousers and slippers looking down upon a sea of a mob of and of turning spark striking horses that s on to the said the small engine reverently don t care he lets em he s the king i he says please and then they kneel down an pray there s three or four strings o to day s freight to be pulled before he | 39 |
can attend to them when he waves his hand that way things happen a string of loaded cars slid out down the track and a string of took their place boxes cases and pa flew into them from the freight house as though the cars had been and they iron ki shrieked little ain t it great a purple faced shouldered his way to the yard master and shook his fist imder his nose the yard master never looked up from his of he crooked his forefinger slightly and a tall young man in a red shirt lounging carelessly beside him hit the under the left ear so that he dropped quivering and on a hay eleven seven ninety seven l y s fourteen ought ought three nineteen thirteen one one four seventeen ought twenty one m b and the ten all straight except the two last cut em off at the an that s all right pull that string the yard master with mild blue eyes looked out over the howling at the waters in the moonlight beyond and all things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small ah things wise and wonderful the he made all i moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road engine he had never felt quite so limp in his life before curious ain t it said puffing on the next track tou an me if we got that man imder our we d work him into red waste an not know what we d done up with the steam in his that awful quiet way j know said makes me feel as if i d dropped my fire an was getting cold he is the greatest man on earth they were at the far north end of the yard now under a tower looking down on the four track way of the main traffic the boston c was to haul string to some far away northern over an indifferent road bed and she mourned aloud for the ninety six pound rails of the b a you re young you re young she you don t your yes he does said sharply but he don t lie down under em then with a side of steam exactly like a tough there ain t more than fifteen thousand dollars worth o freight behind her anyway and she goes on as if t were a hundred same as the s excuse me madam but you ve the track she s stuck on a dead centre bein specially designed not to the crawled across the tracks on a long groaning horribly at each and moving like a cow in a snow drift there was a little pause along the yard after her tail lights had disappeared locked and every one seemed to be waiting now i show you something worth said when the purple emperor ain t on time it s about time to the constitution the first stroke of twelve boom went the clock in the big yard tower and far away heard a full a on the horizon like a star grew an overpowering blaze and up the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant s song with a i em i she climb upon der und she frighten all der people i the last defiant i was delivered a mile and a half beyond the passenger but had caught one glimpse of the superb six wheel coupled racing who hauled the pride and glory of the the gilt edged purple emperor the south bound express laying the miles over his shoulder as a man a from a soft board the rest was a of a bar of white light from the in the cars and a of hand rail on the rear platform said seventy five miles an hour these five miles i ve heard s shop and a library and the rest to match yes sir seventy five an hour ll talk to you in the round house just as as i would and i my wheel i d kick clean off the track at half his gait he s the master of our lodge up at our house i you some day he s worth i there ain t many can sing that song either was too full of emotions to answer he did not hear a raging of in the tower nor the man as he leaned out and called to s engineer gk t any steam to run her a hundred mile out o this if i could said the engineer who to the open road and hated then get the flying freight s forty mile out with fifty rod o track up no no one s hurt but both tracks are blocked lucky the car an are this end of the yard crew be along in a minute hurry i you ve the track weu i could jest kick my little ofi self said as was backed with a bang on to a grim and car like a but full of a and a behind it some folks are one thing and some are another but you re in luck kid they push a car now don t get rattled wheel base will keep you on the track and there ain t any curves worth oh say i told me there s one section o saw edged track that s liable to ye a little fifteen an a half out after the grade at s you know it by a an a an five in the west o the an there an iron bridge in the middle o that section with no guard rails see you later luck i before he knew well what had happened was flying up the track into the dumb dark world then fears of the night beset him he remembered all he had ever heard of rain piled blown trees and strayed cattle | 39 |
all that the boston compound had ever said of responsibility and a great deal more that came out of his own head with a very voice he whistled for his first grade crossing an event in the life of a and his nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white faced man in a less than a yard from his right shoulder then he was sure he would jump the track felt his mounting the rail at every knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as had done at the he whirled down the grade to s crossing saw the west of the felt the badly laid rails spring under him and big drops all over his at each he believed an had smashed and he took the eighty foot bridge without the guard rail like a cat on the top of a fence then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his and threw a flying shadow on the track so that he thought it was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it and anything soft a as it does an but the men behind seemed quite calm the crew were climbing carelessly from the to the even with the for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal and the snatch of a song something like this ob the empire state must learn to and the go i when the h and the tool ou s and it s way for the gang m way for the t knew what he was when he designed this she a a new too she i new that ain t paint that a a pain shot through s right rear driver a pain this said as he flew is a hot box now i know what it means i shall go to pieces i guess my first road run too a bit ain t the ventured to suggest to the engineer she hold for all we want de her we re most there guess you back had better climb into your car said the engineer his hand on the i vo seen men snapped but the crew fled back with laughter tbey had no wish to be jerked on to the track the engineer half turned hia wrist and found his drivers pinned firm now it s said as he aloud and slid like a for the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from oft his that must be the emergency stop that me about he gasped as soon as he could think hot b box emergency stop they both hurt but now i can talk back in the round house he was halted all hissing hot a few feet in the rear of what doctors would a compound car his engineer was kneeling down among his drivers but he did not call his nor cry over him as the did in the newspapers he just and pulled yards of cotton waste from about the and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had packed it nobody else attended to him for the s engineer a little cut about the head but very angry was exhibiting by the corpse of a slim blue pig t were n t even a decent sized he said n beasts they are said one of the crew under the pilot an sort o ye off the track don t they don t they roared who was a red headed you talk as if i was by a every fool day o the week j ain t friends with all the half fed in the state o new york no indeed yes this is an look what he s done i it was not a bad night s work for one stray the flying freight seemed to have flown in every direction for the had the rails and run a few hundred feet from right to left taking with him such cars as cared to follow some did not they broke their and lay down while rear cars over them in that game they had up and removed and twisted a good deal of the left hand track the himself had into a corn field and there he fantastic wreaths of green twisted round his pins his pilot covered with solid of field on which com nodded his fire put out with dirt had done that as soon as he recovered his senses and his broken half full of half burnt his tender had thrown coal all over him and he looked like a who had tried to in a general store for there lay scattered over the landscape from the burst cars type writers sewing machines in a of silver imported harness french dresses and gloves a dozen finely hard wood a fifteen foot with a solid brass around her bows a case of and two a case of very best some gilt edged produce butter and eggs in an a broken box of expensive toys and a few hundred other luxuries a camp of hurried up from nowhere and generously volunteered to help the crew so the armed with pins walked up and down on one side and the freight conductor and the the other with their hands in their hip pockets a long bearded man came out of a house beyond the corn field and told that if the accident had happened a little later in the year all his com would have been burned and accused of carelessness then he ran away for was at his heels shrieking t was his done it let me kill him t let me kill him i then the crew laughed and the farmer put his head out of a window and said that was no gentleman but was very sober he had never seen a wreck before and | 39 |
it frightened him the crew still laughed but they worked at the same time and forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled the freight they dug round him with they put ties in front of his wheels and jack under him they embraced him with the chain and him with while was on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke or the cars rolled clear of the track by dawn thirty or forty men were at work and down the ties the rails and them by daylight all cars who could move had gone on in charge of another the track was freed for traffic and had hauled the old over a small pavement of ties inch by inch till his bit the rail once more and he settled down with a but his spirit was broken and his nerve was gone t were n t even a he repeated t were a and you of all of had to help me on but how in the whole long road did it happen asked with curiosity happen i it did n t happen i it just come i i sailed right on top of him around that last thought he was a yes he was all as little as that he had n t more n once fore i felt my lift he d rolled right under the pilot and i could n t catch the track again to save me clean off i was then i felt him himself along all greasy under my left driver and oh that mounted the rail i heard my along the ties an the next i knew i was sally sally waters in the com my tender coal through my cab an old man l still an in front o me shook there ain t a stay or a bolt or a in me that ain t sprung to glory somewhere said what d you reckon you weigh without these o dirt i m all of a hundred thousand pound and the eighty call him a at the outside he s worth about four n a half dollars ain t it awful ain t it enough to give you nervous ain t it why i come just around that and the told the tale again for he was very badly shaken well it s all in the day s run i guess said soothingly an an a corn field s pretty soft if it had bin a sixty foot bridge an i could ha slid off into deep water an blown up an killed both men same as others have done i would n t ha cared but to be by a an you to help me in a corn an an old in his me like as if i was a sick horse i oh it s awful i don t call me i i m a machine they my sand box off in the yard and his hot box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged hauled the freight slowly to the old man bin out all night t ye e the cat i i i i i i i i i i f the cat they had good reason to be proud and better reason to be afraid all twelve of them for though they had fought their way game by game up the entered for the they were meeting the that afternoon in the final match and the men were playing with half a dozen apiece as the game was divided into six quarters of eight minutes each that meant a fresh pony after every halt the team even supposing there were no accidents could only supply one pony for every other change and two to one is heavy odds again as the grey pointed out they were meeting the pink and pick of the of upper india that had cost from a thousand each while they themselves were a cheap lot gathered often from country carts by their masters who belonged to a poor but honest native regiment money means pace and weight said rubbing his black silk nose along his neat fitting boot and by the of the game as i know it ah but we are n t playing the said the cat we re playing the game and we ve the great advantage of knowing the game just think a the cat stride i we ve pulled up from bottom to second place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground here that s because we play with our heads as well as our feet it makes me feel and unhappy all the same said a mouse coloured mare a red brow band and the i air of legs that ever an aged pony owned they ve twice our style these others looked at the gathering and sighed the hard dusty ground was lined with thousands of soldiers black and white not and hundreds of carriages and and dog carts and ladies with brilliant coloured and officers in uniform and out of it and crowds of natives behind them and on who had halted to watch the game instead of carrying letters up and down the station and native horse running about on looking for a chance to sell a few first class then there were the of thirty that had entered for the upper india free for all nearly every pony of worth and dignity from to from to prize and of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine some of them were in mat stables close to the ground but most were under saddle while their masters who had been defeated in the earlier games trotted in and out and told the world how the game should be played the cat it was a glorious sight and the come and go of the little quick and the incessant of that had met before | 39 |
on other grounds or were enough to drive a four footed thing wild but the team were careful not to know their neighbours though half the on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the little fellows that had come from the north and so far had swept the board let s see said a soft gold coloured who had been playing very badly the day before to the cat did n t we meet in s stable in four seasons ago i won the cup next season you may remember not me said the cat politely i was at then a vegetable cart i don t race i play the game said the his tail and off keep yourselves to yourselves said the cat to his companions we don t want to rub noses with all those goose half of upper india when we ve won this cup they give their shoes to know t we sha n t win the cup said how do you feel stale as last night s feed when a has run over it said a rather heavy shouldered grey and the rest of the team agreed with him the sooner you forget that the better said the cat cheerfully they ve finished n in the cat the big tent we shall be wanted now if your are not kick if your bite are n t easy rear and let the know whether your boots are tight each pony had his his groom who lived and ate and slept with the animal and had a good deal more than he could afford on the result of the game there was no chance of anything going wrong but to make sure each was the legs of his pony to the last minute behind the sat as many of the regiment as had leave to attend the about half the native officers and a hundred or two dark black bearded men with the r mental the big the were what they call a regiment and the made the national music of half their men the native officers held bundles of long cane handled and as the grand stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones and at different points round the ground so that if a stick were broken the player would not have far to ride for a new one an impatient british cavalry band struck up if you want to know the time ask a and the two in light dust coats danced out on two little excited the four players of the team followed and the sight of their beautiful made groan again wait till we know said the cat two of em are playing in and that means they can t see to get out of the way of their own side or they may shy at the es they ve all got white that are sure to stretch or the cat and said dancing to take the out of her they carry their in their hands instead of on their wrists true enough no man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip that way said the cat i ve fallen over every square yard of the ground and i ought to know he quivered his little just to show how satisfied he felt but his heart was not so light ever since he had drifted into india on a troop ship taken with an old rifle as part payment for a racing debt the cat had played and preached to the team on the stony ground now a pony is like a poet if he is bom with a love for the game he can be made the cat knew that grew solely in order that might be turned from their roots that grain was given to to keep them in hard condition and that were shod to prevent them slipping on a turn but besides all these things he knew every trick and device of the finest game in the world and for two seasons had been teaching the others all he knew or guessed remember he said for the time as the came up you must play together and you must play with your heads whatever happens follow the ball who goes out first and a short high little bay fellow with tremendous and no worth speaking of he waa called were being up and the soldiers in the background stared with all their eyes the cat i want you men to keep quiet said the captain of the team and especially not to blow your pipes not if we win captain asked the er if we win you can do what you please said with a smile as he slipped the of his stick over his wrist and wheeled to to his place the were a little bit above themselves on account of the many coloured crowd so dose to the ground their were excellent players but they were a team of crack players instead of a crack team and that made all the difference in the world they honestly meant to play together but it is very hard for four men each the best of the team he is picked from to remember that in no brilliancy in or riding makes up for playing alone their captain shouted his orders to them by name and it is a curious thing that if you call his name aloud in public after an englishman you make him hot and said nothing to his men because it had all been said before he pulled up for he was playing back to guard the goal on was half back and on and were forwards the tough ball was set in the middle of the ground one hundred and fifty yards from the ends and crossed sticks heads up with the captain of the who saw fit to play forward that is a place from which you | 39 |
cannot easily control your team the little click as the cane shafts met was heard all over the ground and then made some sort of quick wrist stroke that just the ball a the cat few yards knew that stroke of old and followed as a cat follows a mouse while the of the was his pony round struck with all his strength and next instant was away ck following close behind her their little feet like on glass pull out to the left said between her teeth it s coming your way ck the back and half back of the were tearing down on her just as she was within reach of the ball leaned forward with a loose rein and cut it away to the left almost under s foot and it and off to who saw that if he was not quick it would run beyond the boundaries that long drive gave the time to wheel and send three men across the ground to head off stayed where she was for she knew the game was on the ball half a of a second before the others came up and with a stroke sent it back across the ground to who saw the way clear to the goal and the ball in before any one quite knew what had happened that s luck said as they changed ends a goal in three minutes for three and no riding to speak of don t know said we ve made em angry too soon should n t wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet next time keep the ball hanging then said that wears out every pony that is not used to it the cat next time there was no easy galloping across the ground all the closed up as one man but there they stayed for and were somewhere on the top of the ball marking time among the rattling sticks while about outside waiting for a chance we can do this all day said his quarters into the side of another pony where do you think you re to i i be driven in an if i know was the gasping reply and i d give a week s feed to get my off i can t see anything the dust is rather bad that was one for my off where s the ball under my tail at least the man s looking for it there this is beautiful they can t use their sticks and it s driving em wild give old a push and then he go over here don t touch i can t see i i back out i think said the pony in who knew that if you can t see all round your head you cannot yourself against the shock was watching the ball where it lay in the dust close to his near fore leg with s stick tap tapping it from time to time was her way out of the her stump of a tail with nervous excitement ho they ve got it she let me out i and she galloped like a rifle bullet just behind a tall pony of the whose rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke the cat not to day thank you said as the blow slid off his raised stick and laid her shoulder to the t jl pony s quarters and him aside just as on sent the ball where it had come from and the pony went and slipping away to the left seeing that had joined ck in the chase for the ball up the ground dropped into place and then time was called the wasted no time in kicking or they knew that each minute s rest meant so much gain and trotted off to the rails and their began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once said up to get all the of the big if we were playing pony for pony we would bend those double in half an hour but they bring up fresh ones and fresh ones and fresh ones after you see who cares said we ve drawn first blood is my swelling looks said you must have had rather a wipe don t let it you be wanted again in half an hour what s the game like said the cat ground s like your shoe except where they put too much water on it said then it s slippery don t play in the centre there s a there i don t know how their next four are going to behave but we kept the ball hanging and made em for nothing who goes out two and a couple of country i that s bad what a comfort it is to wash your mouth out i the cat was talking with a neck of a covered water bottle between her teeth and trying to look over her at the same time this gave her a very air what s bad said grey dawn giving to the and admiring his well set shoulders you can t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves that s what means said to show that his needed attention are you playing back grey dawn looks like it said grey dawn as himself up mounted the a plain bay country bred much like but with ears took a handy short backed little red with a long tail and mounted an old and sullen brown beast who stood over in front more than a pony should looks like business said how s your temper ben the old off without answering and the cat looked at the new about on the ground they were four beautiful and they big enough and strong enough to eat the team and gallop away with the meal inside them again said the cat good enough i they re cavalry i said indignantly they never see thirteen | 39 |
like a flash head and tail standing up to ease swept on and on before the other side knew what was the matter and nearly pitched on his head between the goal post as kicked the ball in after a straight of a hundred the cat and fifty yards if there was one thing more than another upon which the cat himself it was on this quick kind of run half across the he did not believe in taking balls round the field you were clearly after this they gave the five and an expensive fast pony hates because it his temper who s who showed himself even better than in this game he did not permit any away but bored joyfully into the as if he had his nose in a feed box and was looking for something nice little jumped on the ball the minute it got clear and every time an pony followed it he found standing over it asking what was the matter if we can live through this quarter said the cat i sha n t care don t take it out of yourselves let them do the so the as their explained afterwards shut up the kept them tied fast in front of their goal but it cost the i all that was left of their and began to kick and men began to repeat compliments and they at the legs of who s who and he set his teeth and stayed where he was and the dust stood up like a tree over the until that hot quarter ended they found the very excited and confident when they went to their and the cat had to warn them that the worst of the game was coming the cat now we are all going in for the second time he and they are trotting out fresh think you can gallop but you find you can t and then you be sorry but two to nothing is a long lead said how long does it take to get a goal the answered for pity s sake don t run away with a notion that the game is half won just because we happen to be in luck now they u ride you into the grand stand if they can you must not give em a chance follow the ball as usual said my s half as big as a nose bag don t let them have a look at the ball if you can help it now leave me alone i must get all the rest i can before the last quarter he hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack and who s who his example better not watch the game he said we are n t playing and we shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious look at the ground and pretend it s fly time they did their best but it was hard advice to follow the were and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground and of applause from the english troops told that the were pressing the hard the native soldiers behind the groaned and and said things in under the cat tones and presently they heard a long drawn shout and a clatter of one to the said without raising his head time s nearly up oh my and dam said the cat if you don t play to the last nail in your shoes this time i kick you on the ground before all the other i u do my best when my time comes said the little the looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their legs this was the time when long began to tell and everybody knew it and the others c back the sweat dripping over their and their tails telling sad stories they re better than we are said i knew how it would be shut your big head said the cat we ve one goal to the good yet yes but it s two and two country to play now said remember he spoke in a biting voice as mounted grey dawn he looked at his men and they did not look pretty they were covered with dust and sweat in streaks their yellow boots were almost black their wrists were red and and their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads but the expression in the eyes was satisfactory did you take anything at said and the team shook their heads they were too dry to talk the cat all right the they are worse than we are they we got the said i sha n t be sorry when this business is over that fifth quarter was a painful one in every way played like a little red demon and the seemed to be everywhere at once and rode straight at anything and everything that came in his way while the on their wheeled like outside the shifting game but the had the better they had kept their till late in the game and never allowed the to play they hit the ball up and down the width of the ground till and the rest were then they went forward and time and again and grey dawn were just and only just able to send the ball away with a long grey dawn forgot that he was an and turned from grey to blue as he galloped indeed he forgot too well for he did not keep his eyes on the ground as an should but stuck out his nose and for the dear honour of the game they had watered the ground once or twice between the quarters and a careless had emptied the last of his all in one place near the goal it was close to the end of the play and for the tenth time grey dawn was after the ball when | 39 |
his near hind foot slipped on the greasy mud and he rolled over and over just clear of the goal post and the triumphant made their goal then time was two all but had the cat to be helped up and grey dawn rose with his near hind leg strained somewhere what s the damage said his arm around collar bone of course said between his teeth it was the third time he had broken it in two years and it hurt him and the others whistled s up said hold on we ve five good minutes yet and it is n t my right hand we stick it out i say said the captain of the trotting up are you hurt we wait if you care to put in a substitute i i the fact is you fellows deserve this game if any team does wish we could give you a man or some of our or something you re awfully good but we play it to a finish i think the captain of the stared for a little that s not half bad he said and went back to his own side while borrowed a from one of his native officers and made a of it then an galloped up with a big bath and advised to put it under his to ease his shoulder and between them they tied up his left arm and one of the native officers leaped ward with four long glasses that and the team looked at and he nodded it was the last quarter and nothing would matter after that they drank out the dark golden drink and the cat wiped their and things looked more hopeful the cat had put his nose into the front of shirt and was trying to say how sorry he was he knows said proudly the beggar knows i ve played him without a bridle before for fun it s no fun now said but we have n t a decent substitute no said it s the last quarter and we ve got to make our goal and win i trust the cat if you fall this time you suffer a little said i trust the cat said you hear that said the cat proudly to the others it s worth while playing for ten years to have that said of you now then my sons come along we u kick up a little bit just to show the this team have n t suffered and sure enough as they went on to the ground the cat after satisfying himself that was home in the saddle kicked out three or four times and laughed the reins were caught up anyhow in the tips of his left hand and he never pretended to rely on them he knew the cat would answer to the least pressure of the leg and by way of showing for his shoulder hurt him very he bent the little fellow in a close figure of eight in and out between the goal posts there was a roar from the native officers and men who dearly loved a piece of the cat horse trick work as they called it and the pipes very quietly and scornfully out the first bars of a common tune called fresh and newly new just as a warning to the other that the were fit all the natives laughed and now said the cat as they took their place remember that this is the last quarter and follow the don t need to be told said who s who let me go on all those people on all four sides will begin to crowd just as they did at you hear people calling out and moving forward and being pushed back and that is going to make the very unhappy but if a ball is struck to the boundary you go after it and let the people get out of your way i went over the pole of a four in hand once and picked a game out of the dust by it back me up when i run and follow the ball there was a sort of an all round of sympathy and wonder as the last quarter opened and then there began exactly what the cat foreseen people crowded in close to the boundaries and the kept looking sideways at the space if you know how a man feels to be cramped at not because he wants to run out of the court but because he likes to know that he can at a you will guess how must feel when they are playing in a box of human beings i bend some of those men if i can get away said who s who as he behind the ball and nodded without speaking they were playing the last the cat in them and the cat had left the goal to join them gave him every order that he could to bring him back but this was the first time in his career that the little wise grey had ever played on his own responsibility and he was going to make the most of it what are you doing here said as the cat crossed in front of him and rode off an the cat s in mind the goal shouted and bowing forward hit the ball full and followed on forcing the towards their own goal no said the cat keep the ball by the boundaries and em play open order and drive em to the boundaries across and across the ground in big flew the ball and whenever it came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the boundaries the moved stiffly they did not care to go headlong at a wall of men and though if the ground had been open they could have turned on a sixpence her up the sides said the cat keep her close to the crowd | 39 |
they hate the carriages keep her up this side and lay left and right behind the uneasy of an open and every time the ball was hit away galloped on it at such an angle that was forced to hit it towards the boundary and when the crowd had been driven away from that side would send the ball over to the other and would slide desperately after it till his friends came down to help it was and no the cat this in a comer pocket and the were not well if they get us out in the middle of the ground th walk away from us her along the sides cried the cat so they all along the boundary where a pony could not come on their right hand side and the were furious and the had to neglect the game to shout at the people to get back and several mounted tried to restore order all close to the and the of the stretched and broke like five or six times an hit the bait up into the middle of the ground and each time the watchful gave his chance to send it back and after each return when the dust had settled men could see that the had gained a few yards every now and there were shouts of side i off from the spectators but the were too busy to care and the had all they could do to keep their clear of the at last missed a short easy stroke and the had to fly back to protect their own goal leading stopped the ball with a when it was not fifty yards from the and spun round with a that nearly hoisted out of his saddle now sour last chance said the cat like a on a pin we ve got to ride it out come along felt the little chap take a deep breath and as the cat it were under his rider the ball was towards the right hand boundary an riding for it with both spurs and a whip but neither spur nor whip would make his pony stretch himself as he the crowd the cat glided under his very nose picking up his hind legs sharp for there was not a foot to spare between his quarters and the other pony s bit it was as neat an exhibition as fancy hit with all the strength he had id but the stick slipped a little in his hand and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to the boundary who s who was far across the ground thinking hard as he galloped he repeated stride for stride the cat s with another pony the ball away from under his bridle and clearing his opponent by half a of an inch for who who was clumsy behind then he drove away towards the right as the cat came up from the left and held a middle course exactly between them the three were making a sort of broad arrow shaped attack and there was only the back to guard the goal but immediately behind them were three racing all they knew and mixed up with them was sending along on what he felt was their last hope it takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy in the last quarters of a cup game when men are riding with their necks for sale and the are the back missed his stroke and pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by and who s who stride to give the cat room and the cat got the goal with a clean smooth stroke that was heard all over the field but there was no stopping the they poured through the in one mixed mob and together for the pace had been terrific the cat knew by experience what would happen and to save turned to the right with one last effort that strained a back beyond hope of repair as he did so he heard the right hand goal post crack as a pony into it crack and fall like a mast it had been three parts through in case of accidents but it upset the pony nevertheless and he into another who into the left hand post and then there was confusion and dust and wood was lying on the ground seeing stars an pony rolled beside him breathless and angry had sat down dog fashion to avoid falling over the others and was sliding along on his little in a cloud of dust and was sitting on the ground with his stick and trying to cheer all the others were shouting at the top of what was left of their voices and the men who had been were shouting too as soon as the people saw no one was hurt ten thousand native and english shouted and clapped and and before any one could stop them the of the broke on to the ground with all the native officers and men behind them and marched up and down playing a wild northern tune called bag n and through the insolent of the pipes and the high pitched native you could hear the band for they are all jolly good fellows and then the cat reproachfully to the losing team i i besides all these things and many more there was a commander in chief and on general of cavalry and the principal officer of all india standing on the top of a coach yelling like school and and and and hundreds of pretty ladies joined the chorus but the cat stood with his head down wondering how many legs were left to him and watched the men and pick themselves out of the wreck of the two goal posts and he patted the cat very tenderly i say said the captain of the a out of his | 39 |
mouth will you take three thousand for that as he stands no thank you i ve an idea he s saved my life said getting off and lying down at full length both were on the ground too waving their boots in the air and and drawing deep as the ran up to take away the and an water sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up my aunt i said rubbing his back and looking at the of the goal posts that was a game i they played it over again every stroke of it that night at the big dinner when the free for all cup was and passed down the table and emptied and again and everybody made most eloquent speeches about two in the morning when there might have been the cat some a wise little plain little grey little head looked in through the open door bring him in said the and his who was very happy indeed patted the cat on the flank and he in to the blaze of light and the glittering looking for he w is used to and men s and places where are not usually encouraged and in his youth had jumped on and off a mess table for a bet so he behaved himself very politely and ate bread dipped in salt and was all round the table moving and they drank his health because he had done more to win the cup than any man or horse on the ground that was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days and the cat did not complain much when the surgeon said that he would be no good for any more when married his wife did not allow him to play so he was forced to be an and his pony on these occasions was a bitten grey with a neat tail lame all round but desperately quick on his feet and as everybody knew past player of the bread upon the waters bread upon the waters if you remember my improper friend you will also bear in mind his friend chief engineer of the whose tried to steal his apologies for the performances of may one day be told in their proper place the tale before us concerns he was never a racing engineer and took special pride in saying as much before the liverpool men but he had a thirty two years knowledge of machinery and the of ship one side of his face had been wrecked through the bursting of a pressure in the days when men knew less than they do now and his nose rose out of the wreck like a club in a public riot there were cuts and on his head and he would guide your forefinger through his short iron grey hair and tell you how he had come by his trade marks he owned all sorts of of extra and at the bottom of his cabin chest of drawers where he kept the photograph of his wife were two or three royal humane society for saving lives at sea it was different when crazy passengers jumped bread upon the waters does not approve of saving life at sea and he has often told me that a new and who sign for a strong man pay and fall sick the second day out he believes in throwing boots at fourth and fifth when they wake him up at night with word that a bearing is all because a lamp s glare is reflected red from the metal he believes that there are only two poets in the world one being robert of course and the other when he has time for novels he reads and charles chiefly the and knows whole pages of very hard cash by heart in the saloon his table is next to the captain s and he drinks only water while his engines work he was good to me when we met because i did not ask questions and believed in charles as a most neglected author later he approved of my writings to the extent of one of twenty four pages that i wrote for chase owners of the line when they bought some patent and fitted it to the of the and the of the recommended me to s secretary for the job and who is a an invited me to his house and gave me dinner with the when the others had finished and placed the plans and in my hand and i wrote the that same afternoon it was called comfort in the cabin and brought me seven pound ten cash an important sum of money in those days and the who bread upon the waters was master john his scales told me that mrs had told her to keep an eye on me in case i went away with coats from the hat rack liked that for it was composed in the style with and and afterwards he introduced me to mrs who succeeded in my heart for was half a world away and it is wholesome and to love such a woman as they lived in a little twelve pound house close to the shipping when was away mrs read the column in the papers and called on the wives of senior of equal social standing once or twice too mrs visited mrs in a with and i have reason to believe that after she had played owner s wife long enough they talked scandal the lived in an old fashioned house with a big brick garden not a mile from the for they stayed by their money as their money stayed by them and in you met their solemnly by or but i was mrs s friend for she allowed me to her westward sometimes tp theatres where she sobbed or laughed or shivered with a simple heart and she introduced me to a new | 39 |
world of doctors wives captains wives and wives whose whole talk and thought in and about ships and lines of ships you have never heard of there were sailing ships with and mahogany and trading to taking of and hopeless for whom a sea bread upon the waters age was recommended there were little west african boats full of rats and where men died anywhere but in their there were boats whose could be hired for that went out loaded nearly there were and and wonderful boats that plied to the other side of these were loved and known for they earned our bread and a little butter and we despised the big boats and made fun of the p o and and swore by our respective or as the case might be i had only just come back to england when mrs invited me to dinner at three o clock in the afternoon and the was almost in its scented when i reached the house i saw that there were new curtains in the window that must have cost forty five shillings a pair and as mrs drew me into the little marble hall she looked at me keenly and cried have ye not heard what d ye think o the now that hat rack was thirty shillings at least came down stairs with a sober he steps as lightly as a cat for all his weight when he is at and shook hands in a new and awful a of old s style when he says good bye to his i perceived at once that a had come to him but i held my peace though mrs begged me every thirty seconds to eat a great deal and say nothing it was rather a mad sort of meal because bread upon the waters and his wife took hold of hands like little children they always do after voyages and nodded and winked and choked and and hardly ate a a female servant came in and waited though mrs had told me time and again that she would thank no one to do her while she had her health but this was a servant with a cap and i saw mrs swell and swell under her coloured gown there is no small free board to nor is any subdued tint and with all this pride and glory in the air i felt like watching without knowing the festival when the maid had removed the cloth she brought a that would have cost half a guinea at that season only has his own way of getting such things and a china bowl of dried and a glass plate of preserved and a small jar of sacred and imperial that the room gets it from a in he doctors it with but the crown of the feast was some of the kind you can only come by if you know the wine and the man a little ed fig of cigars went with the wine and the rest was a pale blue smoky silence in her splendour smiling on us two and patting hand we u drink said slowly rubbing his chin to the eternal o chase cf course i answered amen though i had made seven pound ten shillings out of the firm s enemies were mine and i was drinking his bread upon the waters te ve heard nothing said not a word not a whisper not a word nor a whisper on my word i have not tell him said she and that is another proof of s goodness and love a smaller woman would have first but is five feet nine in her stockings we re rich said i shook hands all round we re damned rich he added i shook hands all round a second time i u go to sea no there s no a private wi a small an handy it s not enough for f said we re fair well to do but no more a new gown for church and one for the theatre we have it made west how much is it i asked twenty five thousand pounds i drew a long breath an i ve been twenty five an twenty pound a month the last words came away with a roar as though the wide world was to beat him down all this time i m waiting i said i know nothing since last september was it left you they laughed aloud together it was left said choking ou ay it was left that s good of course it was left d ye note that it was left now if you d put that in your it would have been it left he his and roared till the wine quivered id the bread upon the waters the scotch are a great people but they are apt to hang over a joke too long particularly when no one can see the point but themselves when i my x i u put it in only i must know something more first thought for the length of half a cigar while caught my eye and led it the room to one new thing after the new vine pattern carpet the new rustic clock between the models of the boats the new with a purple cut glass flower stand the of gilt and brass and last the new black and gold piano in october o last year the board me began in october o last year the came in for winter she d been eight months two an forty an i was three days up my when she went to dry dock all told mark you it was this side o three to be two an eighty six pound four shillings there s not another man could ha nursed the for eight months to that tune never never again i they may send their boats to the bottom for aught i | 39 |
care there s no need said softly we re done wi chase it s it s just i ha been justified from first to last as the world knows but but i em ay wisdom is justified o her children an any other man than me ha made the eight hay was our ye u have met him they shifted him to the an bade bread upon the waters me wait for the under young ye u there d been a new election on the board i heard the shares were hither an yon an the major part of the board was new to me the old board would ne er ha done it they trusted me but the new board were all for young s the jew was at the bottom of it an they did not think it worth their while to send me word the first i an i was chief was the notice of the line s winter s and the timed for sixteen days between port an port i sixteen days man she s a good boat but eighteen is her summer time mark you sixteen was sheer nonsense an so i told yoimg we ve got to make it he said ye should not ha sent in a three pound do they look for their boats to be run on air i said the board s e en tell em so he says i m a married man an my fourth s on the ways now she says a wi red hair put in her own hair is the splendid red gold that goes with a complexion my word i was an angry man that day i was fond o the old i looked for a little consideration from the board after twenty years service there was board on wednesday an i slept in the engine room figures to support my case well i put it fair and square before them all gentlemen i said i ve run the eight seasons an i believe there s no fault to find wi my bread upon the waters but if ye to this i the advertisement at this that i ve never heard of it till i read it at breakfast i do assure you on my professional reputation she can never do it that is to say she can for a while but at a risk no man would run what the d ye suppose we pass your for says old man we re money like i leave it in the board s hands i said if two an eighty seven is beyond right and reason for eight months i might ha saved my breath for the board was new since the last election an there they sat the damned deaf as the o scripture we must keep faith wi the public said yoimg keep faith wi the then i said she s served you well an your father before you she u need her bottom an new bed plates an out the forward an re all three an all guides to begin with it s a three months job because one employ is afraid says yoimg maybe a piano in the chief engineer s cabin would be more to the point i crushed my cap in my hands an thanked we d no an a bit put by understand gentlemen i said if the is made a sixteen day boat ye find another engineer makes no objection said i m for myself i said has it i bread upon the waters an then i lost my temper ye can run her into hell an out again if ye pay i said but ye run without me that s insolence said young at your pleasure i said to go ye can consider yourself dismissed we must preserve discipline among our said old an he looked to see that the board was with him they knew an they nodded ma out o the line after twenty twenty years i went out an sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again i m i swore at the board then o came o his office that s on the same floor an looked at me up one wi his forefinger ye know they call him the blind f he s but blind an no in his s wi o the black bird line what s here said he i was past for by then a chief engineer after twenty years service because he not risk the on the new an be damned to ye i said the man sucked in his lips an whistled ah said he the new i see he into the board room i d just left an the dog that is just his blind man s leader stayed wi me was in a minute he was back again ye ve cast your bread on the an be damned to you he says s my dog my word is he on your knee there s more bread upon the waters in a dog than a jew what ye curse your board it s expensive they pay more for the i said off my knee ye s hot eh said it s thirty year since a man curse me to my face time was i d ha cast ye the for that s i said he was to eighty as i knew i was wrong but when a man s shown the door for his plain duty he s not always so i hear says ha ye objection to a tramp it s only fifteen a month but they say the blind a man better than others she s my come ben ye can thank here i m no used to thanks an says he what possessed ye to throw up your berth the new said i the will not stand it said he ye might ha crammed | 39 |
her a enough to show ye were an brought her in behind what s easier than to say ye for s eh all my men do it i believe m says i what s her to a he his dry face an twisted in his chair the an a says he my the an a i but what ha you or me to do wi this late along this i said there s just one thing that each bread upon the waters one of us in his trade or profession will not do for consideration whatever if i run to time i run to time always the risks o the high seas less than that under i have not done more than that by gk d i will not do i there s no trick o the trade i m not wi so i ve heard says dry as a but yon matter o dr s just my ye i er wi that nursing ik engines is fair but what the board ask is wi the risk o ye note i know my business there was some more talk an next week i went aboard the twenty five ton simple a black bird tramp the deeper she rode the better she d steam i ve snapped as much as eleven out of her but eight point three was her fair normal good food forward an better aft all passed wi out remarks the best coal new and good there was the old man would not do except paint that was his ye could no more draw paint than his last teeth from him he d come down to dock an his boats a scandal all along the an he d an cry an say they looked all he could desire every owner has his non i ve paint was s but you could get his engines without your life an for all his blindness i ve seen him reject five one after the other on a nod from me an his cattle s were for north bread upon the waters atlantic winter weather ye ken what that means an the black bird line bless him i oh i forgot to say she would lie down an fill her d deck green an away into a twenty knot gale forty five to the minute three an a half knots an hour the engines sweet an true as a in its sleep bell was an there s no love lost between an owners we were fond o the blind an his dog an i m he liked us he was worth the windy side o million an no friend to his own blood kin money s an for a lonely man i d taken her out twice there an back again when word came o the a just as i was her he s not fit to run a down the and he fairly lifted the engines off the bed plates an they fell down in heaps by what i heard so she filled from the after box to the after an lay star gazing with seventy nine passengers in the saloon till the o gk ld s line gave her a tow to the tune five thousand seven an forty wi costs in the court she was helpless ye u understand an in no case to meet weather five thousand seven an forty with costs an exclusive o new engines they d ha done better to ha kept on the old but even so the new board were all for young the jew was at the bottom of it they men right an left that would not eat the o ft bread upon the waters dirt the board gave em they cut down they fed wi an s and a in s practice they hid their paint an cheap ye remember in january we went to dry dock an in the dock lay the their big that o s line in m built iron boat a flat pigeon imder bull of a five ton that would neither steer nor steam nor when ye asked her she d attend to her she d take charge she d to scratch herself an she d into a but and had bought her and painted her all over like the o an we called her the for short by the way kept to that name throughout the rest of his tale you must read accordingly i went to see young he had to take what the board gave him an he an were shifted together from the to this an to him i went into the dock under her her plates were till the men that were paint paint her laughed at it but the was at the last she d a great clumsy iron designed the and just on the tail o the shaft behind the was a red crack ye could ha put a to man it was an u crack i when d ye ship a new tail shaft i said to when d ye ship a new tail shaft i said to bread upon the waters he knew what i meant oh yon a flaw says he not at me i said ye not take her wi a solution o that like they it up this evening he said i m a married man an ye used to know the board i e en said what was me in that hour ye know how a dry dock echoes i saw young above me an man he used language of a breach o the peace i was a spy and a disgraced employ an a o young s morals an he d me for he went away when i ran up the i d ha thrown him into the dock if i d caught an there i met wi on the chain the man among the railway lines | 39 |
said he ye re no paid to fight chase company limited when ye meet what s wrong between you no more than a shaft rotten as a stump for go an look it s a i m feared o yon hebrew said he s the flaw an what like a seven inch crack just behind the there s no power on earth will it just off when that s my knowledge i said so it is so it is said we ve all ye re certain it a crack man it s a i said for there were no bread upon the waters words to describe the magnitude of it an young s it s no more than a i it business is to mind business if ye ve friends aboard her why not bid them to a bit dinner at s i was o tea in the i said o tramp cannot afford hotel prices na says the man not the they laugh at my she s no with paint like the bid them to s an send me the bill thank here man i m no used to thanks then he turned him i was just the same thing said he this is not preserve si i said clean jumped o i was but you re the laughed till he nigh sat down on send me the bill says he i m long past champagne but tell me how it tastes the bell and i bid and to dinner at s they have no an there but we took a private like owners grinned all over and lay back to think and then said i we were no drunk in sense o the word but s showed me the dead men there were six o dry champagne an maybe a bottle o do you mean to tell me that you four got away bread upon the waters with a and a half a piece besides i demanded looked down upon me from between his shoulders with man we were not down to drink he said they no more than made us to be sure young laid his head on the table an greeted like a an was all for on at two in the mom an painting him green but they d been the afternoon lord how they cursed the board an the an the tail shaft an the engines an a i they talk o that night i mi d young an hands on a bond to be on the board at reasonable cost this side o losing their now mark ye how false economy ruins business the board fed them like swine i have good reason to know it an i ve wi my ain people that if ye touch his stomach ye the in a men will a across the atlantic if they re well fed an fetch her somewhere on the o the but bad food s bad service the over the bill went to an he said no more to me till the week end when i was at him for more paint for we d heard the was side bide ye re put said the blind man do ye wash in champagne the s no here till i the order an how am i to waste paint on her wi the for who knows how long an a she was our big was engineer bread upon the waters an i knew she d come from not three months that mom i met s head ye not know fair his nails off wi mortification the man s gone says he he s withdrawn the maybe he has reasons says i he he no be till he b ins to paint i said that s just what he s and south american higher than we live to see them again he laid her up to paint to paint to paint her i says the little clerk like a hen on a hot five thousand ton o freight in man an he the paint out in quarter for it cuts him to the heart mad though he is an the the of all conceivable up every pound that should be ours at liverpool i was staggered wi this the dinner at s in connection wi the same ye may well stare says the head clerk there s engines an stock an iron d ye know what are an an an fancy cargo o every species into the o the firm and the s bein painted i thought he d drop dead wi the fits i could say no more than obey orders if ye break owners but on the we believed was mad an of the was for bread upon the waters him up by some patent legal process he d foimd in a book o law an a that week south american rose an rose it was i bell got orders to the to liverpool in water and came to bid s good bye an o er the acres o paint he d on the i look to you to it says he i look to you to me i fore god why are ye not cast off are ye in dock for a purpose what odds says bell we be a day behind the fair at liverpool the s got all the freight that might ha been ours an the laughed an the o ye ken his eyebrows up an down like a s ye re imder sealed orders said he tee an himself yon s they to be opened says bell the when the man had gone ashore we re to creep a the south coast in for this weather too there s no question o his now well we the bad weather we in all alongside for orders which are the curse o we made over to an bell opened the last envelope for the last | 39 |
instructions i was wi him in the an he threw it over to me did ye ever know the like i u no say what had written but he bread upon the waters was far from mad there was a when we made the mouth o the a bitter odd mom wi a grey green sea and a grey green sky liverpool weather as they say an there we lay an the crew swore ye keep secrets aboard ship they thought was mad too we saw the on the top o flood deep an double deep wi her new painted an her new painted boats an a she looked her name an moreover she like it me at b s what his engines but my own ear would ha told me mile by the beat o them round we came an in her wake an the wind cut wi good promise o more to come by six it blew hard but clear an before the middle watch it was a sou in she edge into ireland this gait says bell i was with him on the bridge the s ix rt light ye see green so far as red or we d ha kept to we d no passengers to consider an all eyes being on the we fair walked into a home to liverpool or to be bell no more than twisted the from under her bows and there was a little the bridges a passenger regarded ha told the papers that as soon as he got to the customs we stuck to the a tail that night an the next she down to five knot by my and we along the weary way to the but you don t go by the to get to any south american port do you i said bread upon the waters we do not we prefer to go as direct as may be but we were the an she d no walk into that gale for consideration what i did to her i blame young it was up to a north atlantic winter gale snow an an a wind eh it was like the abroad o the surface o the deep off the top o the waves before he made up his mind they d bore up against it so far but the minute she was clear o the she fair tucked up her skirts an ran for it by head she rolled i she be says bell she d ha tried for by if she meant that i said they roll the o her this gait says bell why keep her head to sea it s the tail shaft s better than wi cracks in the tail shaft knows that much i said it s ill this weather said bell his beard and whiskers were frozen to his an the spray was white on the weather side of him north atlantic winter weather i one by one the sea away our three boats an the were like ram s horns yon s bad said bell at the last ye pass a wi a boat bell was a for an i m not one that himself for outside the engine room so i e en slipped down waves to see how the man she s the best boat of her class that ever left kin bread upon the waters my second knew her as well as i did i found him his on the main steam an his whiskers wi the comb me last year for the an a as though we were in port i tried the feed into the hole all s on the thrust for luck em my an took s before i went up to the bridge again then bell handed me the wheel an went below to warm himself when he came up my gloves were frozen to the an the ice over my eyelids north atlantic winter weather as i was the gale blew out by night but we lay in cross seas that made the chatter from stem to stem i to thirty four i no thirty seven there was a long swell the mom an the was into it west she u win to yet tail shaft or no tail shaft says bell last night shook her i said she jar it off yet mark my word we were then maybe a and fifty mile o head by dead next day we made a an ye note we were not an the day after a an sixty one an that made us we say eighteen an a west an maybe fifty one an a north all the north atlantic lanes on the long always in sight o the up by night and by day after the gale it was cold weather wi dark nights was in the engine room on friday night just be bread upon the waters fore the middle watch when bell down the she s done it an up i came the was just a fair distance south an one by one she ran up the three red lights in a line the sign of a steamer not under control yon s a tow for us said bell his she u be worth more than the we u go down to her bide a while i said the seas fair throng wi ships here reason why said bell it s a fortune what d ye think man her till daylight she knows we re here if needs help he loose a told ye s need we ha some rag an bone tramp her up under nose said he an he put the wheel over we were goin slow like better to go home on a an eat in the saloon mind ye what they said o s food that night at s keep her keep her a tow s a tow but a s | 39 |
big said bell yon s an o yours i love ye like a brother we bide we are till daylight an he kept her up went a forward an on the bridge an a blue light aft a tar barrel forward again she s said bell it s au an i get no more than a pair o night glasses for up young the fool i bread upon the waters fair an soft again i said she s to the south of us knows as well as i that one would the he no be for hear her ca the an for five minutes an then there were more a regular that s no for men in the regular trade says bell ye re right that s for a full o passengers i through the night glasses when it lay a bit thick to southward what d ye make of it i said he says yon s her ou ay they ve the gold an they ve the passengers they re on the cabin by cabin yon s i they re up to help the in deep mo the glass i said but bell danced on the bridge clean said he under contract wi the government for the due conveyance o the an as such ye u note she may rescue life at sea but she tow i she tow i yon s her night signal she be up in half an gk i said an we here wi all lights oh bell ye re a fool i he tumbled off the bridge forward an i tumbled aft an before ye could wink our lights were the engine room was covered an we lay pitch dark the lights o the come up that the d been to twenty knot an hour she bread upon the waters came every cabin lifted an her boats swung it was done an in the inside of an she stopped like mrs a machine down went the down went tbe boats an in ten minutes we heard tbe passengers an she fled they tell o this all tbe days they live said a rescue at sea by night as pretty as a play young an will be in the saloon an six months hence tbe board o trade the a pair o it s v l round we lay by till ye may think we waited it wi sore an there sat the her nose a bit cocked just at us be locked ridiculous she be aft says bell for why is she down by tbe tbe tail shaft s a hole in her an we ve no boats there s three thousand pound at a estimate before our eyes what s to an his s got hot again in a minute be was an man her as near as ye i said me a jacket an a life line an i for it there waa a bit lump of a sea an it was cold in the cold but th d gone like passengers young an an a leaving the down on tbe lee side it would ha been a in tbe face o manifest providence to overlook tbe invitation we were within fifty yards o her while was me all over wi ofl behind the an as we ran past i went for the o three bread upon the waters thousand x it was cold but i d done my job an came all her side slap on to the lower o the no one more astonished than me i assure ye before i d caught my breath i d both my knees on the an was up before she rolled again i made my line fast to the rail an aft to young s cabin i dried me wi everything in his an put on every conceivable sort o i found till the blood was three pair drawers i mind i to begin an i needed them all it was the cold i remember in all my experience i went aft to the engine room the sat on her own tail as they say she was an her gear was all aft there was four or five foot o water in the engine room to and fro black an greasy maybe there was six foot the hold doors were home an the hold was tight enough but for a minute the mess in the engine room deceived me only for a minute though an that was because i was not in a manner o as calm as i looked again to sure t was just black wi dead that must ha come in ye ken i m only a passenger i said but you don t persuade me that six foot o water can come into an engine room who s to persuade one way or the other retorted i m the facts o the the simple natural facts six or seven foot o dead it cold but i d done mj job an came a along her side slap on to the lower o the bread upon the waters in the engine room is a sight if ye think there s like to be more but i did not consider that such was likely and so ye u note i was not depressed that s all very well but i want to know about the water i said i ve told ye there was six feet or more there wi s cap on top where did it come from in the confusion o things after the had dropped off an the engines were an a it x that might ha lost it off his head an no troubled himself to pick it up again i remember that cap on him at i don t want to know about the cap i m asking where the water came and what it was doing there and why you were so | 39 |
he thought blushing beneath the of the and days when he would steam to ofl ce down the in his twelve hundred ton ocean going steam and arrive by at street hanging on to a leather between an irish and a german k any of his guests had seen him then they would have said how distinctly american did not care for that tone he had himself to an sh walk the fourth and long as he did not raise it an english voice he did not with his hands he sat down on most of his but he could not rid himself of the he would ask for the even his butler could not break him of this it was that he should complete his education in a wild and wonderful manner and further that i should be in at that death had more than once asked me to for the purpose of showing how well the new life fitted him and each time i had declared it his third invitation was more than the others and he hinted of some matter in which he was anxious for my sympathy or or both there is room for an of mistakes when a man begins to take liberties with his and i went down expecting things a seven foot dog cart and a groom in the black han livery met me at at i was received by a person of elegance and true reserve and to my luxurious chamber there were no other guests in the house and this set me thinking came into my room about half an hour before dinner and though his face was with a of highly embroidered indifference i could see that he was not at ease in time for he was then almost as difficult to move as one of my own countrymen i extracted the simple in its extravagance extravagant in its simplicity it seemed that of the british museum had been staying with him about ten an error in days before of has a way of carrying really on his tie ring and in his pockets apparently he had something on its way to the museum which he said was a genuine amen a queen s of the fourth now had bought from whose reputation is not above suspicion a u ab of much the same and had left it in his london chambers at a venture but knowing pronounced it an there was long one saying but i know it cannot be and the other but i can and will prove it found it necessary for his soul s satisfaction to go up to town then and there a forty mile run and bring back the before dinner it was at this point that he began to cut comers with disastrous results royal station being five miles away and putting in of horses a matter of time had told the butler to signal the next train to stop and who was more of a man of resource than his master gave him credit for had with the red flag of the ninth hole of the links which crossed the bottom of the lawn vehemently to the first down train and it had stopped here s account became confused he attempted it seems to get into that highly indignant express but a guard restrained him with more or less hauled him in fact backwards from the window of a locked carriage must have struck the gravel with some vehemence for the consequences he admitted were a free fight on the line in which he lost the fourth his hat and was at last dragged into the guard s van and set down breathless he had pressed money upon the man and very foolishly had explained everything but his name this he to for he had a vision of tall head lines in the new york papers and well knew no son of could expect mercy that side the water the guard to s amazement refused the money on the grounds that this was a matter for the company to attend to insisted on his and therefore found two waiting for him at st when he expressed a wish to buy a new hat and telegraph to his friends both with one voice warned him that whatever he said would be used as evidence against him and this had impressed they were so polite he said if they had me i would n t have cared but it was step this way sir and up those stairs please sir till they me like a common drunk and i had to stay in a filthy little hole of a cell all night that comes of not giving your name and not your lawyer i replied what did you get forty shillings or a month said promptly next morning bright and early they were working us off three a minute a girl in a pink she was brought in at three in the got ten days i suppose i was lucky i must have knocked his senses out of the guard he told the old duck on the bench that i had told him i was a in the army and an error in that i was gathering on the track of trying to explain to an englishman and you oh i said nothing i wanted to get out i paid my fine and bought a new hat and came up here before noon next morning there were a lot of people in the house and i told em i d been detained and then they began to recollect engagements elsewhere must have seen the fight on the track and made a story of it i suppose they thought it was distinctly confound em i it s the only time in my life that i ve ever a train and i would n t have done it but for that t would | 39 |
n t hurt their old trains to be held up once in a while well it s all over now i said choking a little and your name did n t get into the papers it is rather when you come to think of it savagely it s only just begun that trouble with the guard was just ordinary merely a little criminal business the of the train is civil civil and means something quite different they re after me for that now who the great there was a man in court watching the case on behalf of the company i gave him my name in a quiet corner before i bought my hat come to dinner now i u show you the results afterwards the telling of his wrongs had worked into a very fine temper and i do not think that my the fourth conversation soothed him in the course of the dinner prompted by a devil of pure mischief i dwelt with loving on certain smells and sounds of new york which go straight to the heart of the native in foreign and began to ask many questions about his associates men of the new york club t king or the owners of rivers and shipping in their lords of wheat and cattle in their offices when the green came i gave him a peculiarly and cigar of the brand they sell in the electric lighted with expensive pictures of the bar of the and the end for several minutes ere he lit it the butler left us alone and the chimney of the oak began to smoke that s another i said he the fire savagely and i knew what he meant one cannot put in houses where queen elizabeth slept the steady beat of a night mail whirling down the valley me to business what about the great i said ck me into my study that s as yet it was a pile of coloured correspondence perhaps nine inches high and it looked very you c m go through it said now i could take a chair and a red flag and go into park and say the most things about your queen and preach and all that y know till i was hoarse and no one would take any notice the an error in damn em would protect me if i got into trouble but for a little thing like a dirty little train running through my own grounds too i get the whole british constitution down on me as if i sold i don t it no more does the great apparently i was turning over the letters here s the traffic writing that it s utterly incomprehensible that any man should heavens you hat e done iti i as i read on what s funny now said my host it seems that you or for you ed the three forty northern down i ought to know that i they all had their knife into me from the engine driver up but it the surely you ve heard of the great s how the deuce am i to know one train from another they come along about every two minutes quite so but this happens to be the the one train of the whole line she s timed for fifty seven miles an hour she was put on early in the and she has never been know i since william the conqueror came over or king charles hid in her smoke you re as bad as the rest of these if she s been run all that while it s time she was once or twice the american was beginning to out all over and his small hands were moving suppose you the empire state express or the western the fourth suppose i did i know or used to i d send him a wire and he d understand it was a ground case with me that s exactly what i told this british company here have you heen answering their letters without legal advice then of course i have oh my country go ahead i wrote em that i d be very happy to see their president and explain to him in three words all about it but that would n t do seems their president must be a god he was too busy well you can read for yourself they wanted explanations the station master at and he before me as a wanted an explanation and quick too the head at st s wanted three or four and the lord high that the wanted one every fine day i told i ve told about fifty i stopped their holy and sacred train because i wanted to board her did they think i wanted to feel her pulse you did n t say that feel her pulse of course not no board her what else could i say my dear what is the use of mrs and the and all that lot working over you for four years to make an englishman out of you if the very first time you re rattled you go back to the i m through with mrs and the rest of an error in the crowd america s good enough for me what ought i to have said please or thanks or how there was no chance now of the man s speech gesture and step so carefully into him had gone away with the borrowed mask of indifference it was a lawful son of the youngest people whose were the red indian his voice had risen to the high crow of his breed when they labour under excitement his close set eyes showed by turns unnecessary fear annoyance beyond reason rapid and flights of thought the child s lust for immediate revenge and the child s pathetic bewilderment who his head against | 39 |
the bad wicked table and on the other side i knew stood the ck as unable as to understand and i could buy their old road three times over he muttered playing with a paper knife and moving to and fro you did n t tell em that i there was no answer but as i went through the letters i felt that must have told them many surprising things the great had first asked for an explanation of the of their and had found a certain levity in the explanation it then advised mr w to refer his to their or whatever the legal phrase is and you did n t i said looking up no they were treating me exactly as if i had been a kid playing on the cable tracks there was not the fourth the necessity for any five minutes quiet talk would have settled everything i returned to the correspondence the great regretted that owing to pressure of none of their could accept mr w s invitation to run down and discuss the difficulty the great was careful to point out that no their action nor waa money their their duty was to protect the interests of their line and these interests could not he protected if a precedent were established whereby any of the queen s subjects could stop a train in mid career again this waa another branch of the correspondence not more than five heads of being concerned the company admitted that there was some reasonable doubt as to the duties of express trains in all and the matter was open to settlement by process of law till an ruling was from the house of lords if necessary that broke me all up said who was reading over my shoulder i knew i d struck the british constitution at last the house of my lord i and anyway i m not one of the queen s subjects why i had a notion that you d got yourself blushed hotly as he explained that very many things must happen to the british constitution ere he took out his papers how does it all strike you he said is n t the great crazy i don t know you ve done something that no one an error in ever thought of doing before and the don t know what to make of it i see they offer to send down their and another official of the company to talk things over then here s another letter suggesting that you put up a fourteen foot wall crowned with bottle glass at the bottom of the garden talk of british insolence the man who that he s another says that i shall derive great pleasure from watching the wall going up day by day did you ever dream of such i ve offered em money enough to buy a new set of cars and the driver for three generations but that does n t seem to be what they want they expect me to go to the house of lords and get a ruling and build walls between times are they all mad one ud think i made a profession of trains how in was i to know their old from a way train i took the first that came along and i ve been and for that once already that was for the guard he had no right to haul me out when i was half way through a window what are you going to do about it their lawyer and the other official can t they trust their men unless they send em in pairs are coming here to night i told em i was busy as a rule till after dinner but they might send along the entire if it em any now after dinner visiting for business or pleasure is the custom of the smaller american town and not that of england where the end of the day is sacred to the the fourth owner not the public verily had hoisted the striped flag of rebellion i is n t it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you i asked where s the of an american citizen just because he happens to be a poor devil he was silent for a little time and then went on of course now see he round and faced me excitedly it s as as mud these ducks are laying their pipes to skin me they say they don t want money i that s all a blind so s their addressing me as w they know well enough who i am they know i m the old man s son why did n t i think of that before one minute if you climbed to the top of the dome of st paul s and offered a reward to any englishman who could tell you who or what had been there would n t be twenty men in all london to claim it that s their then i don t care a cent the old man would have wrecked the great before breakfast for a pipe my gk d i do it in dead earnest i i show em that they can t a foreigner for one of their little tin pot trains i ve spent fifty thousand a year here at least for the last four years i was glad i was not his lawyer i re read the correspondence the letter which recommended almost tenderly i to build a brick wall at the end of his garden and half way an error in through it a thought struck me which filled me with pure joy the footman ushered in two men frock smooth shaven heavy of speech and gait it was nearly nine o clock hut they looked as newly came from a bath i could not why the elder and taller of the pair glanced | 39 |
may i try my hand now anything you like said it seems i can t talk english i won t any wall though he threw himself hack in his chair i said deliberately for i perceived that the doctor s mind would turn slowly mr has very large interests in the chief railway systems of his own country his own country said the lawyer at that age said the doctor certainly he inherited them from his father mr who was an american and proud of it said as though he had been a western let loose on the continent for the first time my dear sir said the lawyer half rising why did you not the company with this this vital early in our correspondence we should have understood we should have made be damned am i a red indian or a lunatic the two men looked guilty if mr s friend had told us as much in the beginning said the doctor very severely much might have been saved alas i had made a life s enemy of that doctor i had n t a chance i replied now of course the fourth you can see that a man who owns several thousand miles of line as mr does would be apt to treat a shade more casually than other people of course of course he is an american that accounts still it the but i can quite understand that the customs of our cousins across the water differ in these particulars from ours and do you always stop trains in this way in the states mr i should if occasion ever arose but i ve never had to yet are you going to make an of the business you need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter we see that there is no of this action of yours establishing a precedent which was the only thing we were afraid of now that you understand that we cannot reconcile our system to any sudden we feel quite sure i sha n t be staying long enough to flag another train said you are returning then to our fellow across big pond you call it sir the the north atlantic ocean it s three thousand miles broad and three miles deep in places i wish it were ten thousand i am not so fond of sea travel myself but i think it is every englishman s duty once in his life to study the great branch of our saxon race across the ocean said the lawyer if ever you come over and care to flag any train an error in on my i i you through said thank ah thank you you re very kind i m sure i should enjoy myself immensely we have overlooked the fact the doctor whispered to me that your friend proposed to buy the great he is worth anything from twenty to thirty million four to five pounds i answered knowing that it would be to explain really that is enormous wealth ia not in the market perhaps he does not want to buy it now it would be impossible under any circumstances said tlie doctor how characteristic murmured the lawyer matters in his mind i always from books that your countrymen were in a hurry and so you would have gone forty miles to town and to get a how tf exactly like an tj t mr that is a fault that can be there s only one question i d like to ask you you said it was inconceivable that any man should stop a train on and so it absolutely inconceivable any sane man that ist that is what i meant of course i mean with thank you the fourth the two men departed checked as he waa about to fill a pipe took one of my cigars instead and was silent for fifteen minutes then said he have you got a list of the on you far away from the wings the dark the gravel drives and the of runs a river called the whose banks are covered with the palaces of those wealthy beyond the dreams of here where the of the brick answers the howl of the on either shore you shall find with a complete of electric light and a attachment to her steam whistle the twelve hundred ton ocean going lying at her private pier to take to his office at an average speed of seventeen knots an hour the can look out for themselves american my sunday at home my sunday at home if the bed think he or if the slain think he is slain they know not well the ways i keep and pass and torn again r was the slid r as he said this was his ist visit to england that told me he was a new from new york and when in the course of our long lazy journey westward from he enlarged upon the beauties of his city i ignorance said no word he had amazed and delighted at the man s civility given the london porter a shilling for carrying his bag nearly fifty yards he had thoroughly the first which the london and sometimes supply without extra charge and now half awed but wholly interested he looked out upon the ordered english landscape wrapped in its peace while i watched the wonder grow upon his face why were the cars so short and why had every other freight car a drawn over it what wages would an engineer get now where was the my sunday at home population of england he had read so much what was the rank of all those men on along the roads when were we due at i told him all i knew and very much that i did not he was going to to assist in a consultation upon a fellow who had retired to a place | 39 |
called the was that up town or down town to recover from nervous yes he himself was a doctor hy profession and how any one in england could retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension never had he dreamed of an atmosphere so soothing even the deep of london traffic was hy comparison with some cities he could name and the country why it was paradise a continuance of it he confessed would drive him mad hut for a few months it was the most rest cure in his knowledge i u come over every year after this he said in a of delight as we ran between two ten foot hedges of pink and white may it s seeing all the things i ve ever read about of course it does n t strike you that way i presume you belong here what a finished land it is it s arrived must have been bom this way now where i used to what s up the train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at admiral which is made up entirely of the two and an overhead bridge without even the usual i had never known the of stop here before but on sunday all things are possible to the london and one could hear the of conversation along the carriages and my sunday at home scarcely less loud the of the in the up the bank my thrust his head through the window and where are we now said he in said i a man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in a country like this well well i and so this is about s country ain t it i feel just as if i were in a book say the the guard has something on his mind what s he getting at the splendid and guard was up the platform at the official pace and in the official voice was sa ring at each door has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine a gentleman has taken a bottle of poison by mistake between each five paces he looked at an official in his hand refreshed his memory and said his say the dreamy look on my companion s he had gone far away with passed with the speed of a snap after the manner of his countrymen he had risen to the situation jerked his bag down from the overhead rail opened it and i heard the dick of bottles find out where the man is he said briefly i ve got something here that will if he can swallow still swiftly i fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard there was in a rear the voice of one to be let out and the feet of one who kicked with the tail of my eye i saw the new york doctor hastening thither bearing in his hand my sunday at home a blue and glass from the the guard i found scratching his head by the engine and well i put a bottle of medicine off at i m sure i did better say it again any ow said the driver orders is orders say it again once more the guard paced back i anxious to attract his attention trotting at his heels in a in a minute sir he said waving an arm capable of starting all the traffic on the london and railway at a wave h as any gentleman here got a bottle of a gentleman has taken a bottle of poison by mistake where s the man i gasped ere s my orders he showed me the on which were the words to be said e must have left is bottle in the train an took another by mistake e s been from awful an now i come to think of it i m nearly sure i put a bottle of medicine off at then the man that took the poison is n t in the train lord no sir no one did n t take poison that way e took it away with im in is e s from my orders was to ask everybody in the train and i ave an we re four minutes late now are you on sir no right be there is nothing unless perhaps the english language more terrible than the workings of an english railway line an instant before it seemed as though we were going to spend all eternity at my sunday at home admiral and now i was watching the tail of the train disappear round the curve of the cutting but i was not alone on the one bench of the down platform sat the largest i have ever seen in my life softened and made for he smiled generously with liquor in his huge hands he nursed an empty marked l s w r marked also with streaks of blue grey before him a hand on his shoulder stood the doctor and as i c within ear shot this is what i heard him say just you hold on to your patience for a minute or two longer and you be as right as ever you were in your life i u stay with you till you re better lord i i m comfortable enough said the never felt better in my life turning to me the doctor lowered his voice he might have died while that fool guard was saying his piece i ve fixed him though the stuff s due in about five minutes but there s a heap to him i don t see how we can make him take exercise for the moment i felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been neatly applied in the to my lower stomach how did you manage it i gasped i asked him if he d have a drink he was knocking out | 39 |
of the strength of his constitution i suppose he said he d go most anywhere for a drink so i on to the platform and loaded him up people you are that train s gone and no one seemed to care a cent we ve missed it i said my sunday at home he looked at me curiously we get another before if that s your only trouble say i when s the next train down seven forty said the one i and passed out through the gate into the landscape it was then three twenty of a hot and sleepy afternoon the station was absolutely deserted the had closed his eyes and now nodded that s bad said the doctor the man i mean not the train we must make him walk walk up and down swiftly as might be i explained the delicacy of the situation and the doctor from new york turned a full bronze green then he swore at the entire fabric of our glorious constitution cursing the english language root branch and its most obscure his coat and bag lay on the bench next to the thither he edged cautiously and i saw treachery in his eye what devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat i cannot tell they say a slight noise a more surely than a heavy one and scarcely had the doctor settled himself in his sleeves than the giant and seized that silk faced collar in a hot right hand there was rage in his rage and the of new emotions i m i m not so comfortable as i were he said from the of his interior you wait along o me you will he breathed heavily through shut lips my sunday at home now if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had dwelt in his conversation with me it was upon the essential law not to say gentleness of his much country and yet truly it may have been no more than a button that him i saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip clutch at something and come away empty he probably sue you in court if i know my own people better give him some money from time to time if he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work the doctor answered i m all right if he does n t my name is b street comer of i feel worse than i ve ever felt said the with suddenness drink for the matter seemed to be so purely personal that i withdrew to a position on the overhead bridge and abiding in the exact centre looked on from afar i could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of plain for mile after mile and a dot in the middle distance the back of the one x returning to admiral if such a place existed till seven forty five the bell of a church invisible softly there was a rustle in the to the left of the line and the sound of sheep close the peace of lay upon the land and brooding in it my elbow on the warm iron of the it is a forty shilling fine to cross by any other my sunday at home means i perceived as never before how the consequences of our acts run eternal through time and through space if we never so slightly upon the life of a fellow mortal the touch of our personality like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond and in circles across the till the far off gods themselves cannot say where action ceases also it was i who had silently set before the doctor the of the first class now yet i was in spirit at least a million removed from that man of another who had chosen to thrust an finger into the workings of an alien life the machinery was dragging him up and down the platform the two men seemed to be learning together and the burden of their song borne by one deep voice was what did you give me the drink for i saw the flash of silver in the doctor s hand the took it and it with his left but never for an instant did his strong right leave the doctor s coat collar and as the crisis approached louder and louder rose his bull like roar what did you give me the drink for they drifted under the great twelve inch pinned of the foot bridge towards the bench and i gathered the time was very near at hand the stuff was getting in its work blue white and blue again rolled over the s face in waves till all settled to one rich clay bank yellow that fell which fell i thought of the blowing up of hell gate of the in the park of and his whale my sunday at home but the lively original as i watched it f from above exceeded all these things he staggered to the bench the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron into the enduring stone and there with his left hand it quivered and shook as a to the rush of racing seas nor was there lacking when he caught his breath the scream of a beach dragged down by the tide his right hand was upon the doctor s collar so that the two shook to one together while i apart shook with them it was immense but of certain the english language stops short french only the french of victor would have described it so i while i laughed hastily shuffling and inadequate the vehemence of the shock spent itself and the sufferer half fell half knelt across the bench he was calling now upon ck d and his wife as the wounded bull calls on the herd to stay curiously enough he used no | 39 |
bad language that had gone from him with the rest the doctor exhibited gold it was taken and retained so too was the grip on the coat collar if i could stand the giant i d you an your drinks i m l that s what you think said the doctor you find it will do you a lot of good and making a virtue of a somewhat imperative necessity he added i stay by you if you d let go of me a minute i d give you something that would settle you hy sunday at ve settled me now u damned the bread out of the mouth of an but i keep old of you till i m well or de i i never did you no arm s pose i a little they me out once at s with a i could see that but i can t see this ere on it s of me by slow you be all right in half an what do suppose d want to kill you fort said the doctor came of a logical breed ow do i tell mn in court you seven years for this body that s you are a body there a justice i tell you m england and my union u too we don t stand no tricks with people s ere they give a woman ten years for a less than this an you u ave to pay an o pounds a to the you see you where s your to do such you b catch it i toll you then i observed what i have frequently observed before that a man who is but reasonably afraid of an with an alien has a most dread of the operations of foreign law the doctor s voice ma like in its exquisite politeness as he answered but i ve given you a very great deal of m three pounds i think an what s three pound for l e likes me t they told me at s i d fetch twenty on the it again a second time be was cut down by the foot as it my sunday at home were and the straining bench rocked to and fro as i averted my eyes it was the very point of perfection in the heart of an english may day the unseen tides of the air had turned and all nature was setting its face with the shadows of the horse towards the peace of the coming night but there were hours yet i long long hours of the eternal english to the ending of the day i was well content to be to abandon myself to the drift of time and fate to great peace through my skin and to love my country with the devotion that three thousand miles of intervening sea bring to fullest flower and what a garden of it was this and land i a man could camp in any open field with more sense of home and security than the buildings of foreign cities could afford and the joy was that it was all mine road decent cottage and well grown tree a light puff of it scattered of may over the gleaming rails gave me a faint as it might have been of fresh and i knew that the golden was in bloom somewhere out of sight had thanked gk d on his knees when he first saw a field of it and by the way the was on his knees too but he was by no means praying he was purely the doctor was compelled to bend over him his face towards the back of the seat and from what i had seen i supposed the was now dead if that were the case it would be time for me to go but i knew that so my sunday at home long as a man himself to the current of reaching out for and nothing thai comes his way no harm can overtake him it is the the who is caught hj the law and never the philosopher i knew that when the play was played destiny herself would move me on from the corpse and i felt very sorry for the doctor in the far distance on the road that led to admiral there appeared a vehicle and a the one ancient fly that almost every village can produce at need this thing was advancing by me towards the station would have to pass along the deep cut lane below the railway bridge and come out on the doctor s side i was in the centre of things so all sides were alike to me here then was my machine from the machine when it arrived something would happen or something else for the rest i owned my deeply interested soul the doctor by the seat turned so far as his cramped position allowed his head over his left shoulder and laid his right hand upon his lips i threw back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question the doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head slowly twice or thrice me to come i descended cautiously and it was as the signs had told the was asleep empty to the lowest yet his hand clutched still the doctor s collar and at the movement the doctor was really very cramped mechanically as the hand of a sick woman on that of the he had dropped almost upon his heels and falling lower had dragged the doctor over to the left my sunday at home the doctor thrust his right hand which was free into his pocket drew forth some keys and shook his head the in his sleep silently i into my pocket took out one sovereign and held it up between finger and thumb again the doctor shook his head money was not what | 39 |
was lacking to his peace his bag had fallen from the seat to the he looked towards it and opened his shape the catch was not a difficult one and when i had mastered it the doctor s right forefinger was the air with an immense caution i extracted from the bag such a knife as they use for cutting off legs the doctor frowned and with his first and second fingers the action of again i searched and foimd a most pair of cock capable of the of the doctor then slowly lowered his left shoulder till the s right wrist was supported by the bench pausing a moment as the spent anew lower and lower the doctor sank kneeling now by the s side till his head was on a level with and just in front of the great hairy fist there was no on the coat collar then light dawned on me beginning a little to the right of the i cut a huge out of his new spring overcoat bringing it round as far imder his left side which was the right side of the as i dared passing thence swiftly to the back of the seat and reaching between the i through the silk faced front on the left hand side of the coat till the two cuts joined cautiously as the box of his native heath the doctor drew away sideways and to the right with the my sunday at home air of a coming out from under and stood up free one black shoulder projecting through the grey of his ruined overcoat i the to the bag snapped the catch and held all out to him as the wheels of the fly rang hollow under the railway arch it came at a past the gate of the station and the doctor stopped it with a whisper it was going some five miles across country to bring home from church some one i could not catch the name because his own carriage horses were lame its destination happened to be the one place in all the world that the doctor was most anxious to visit and he promised the driver gold to drive to some ancient flame of she was called are n t you coming too he said his overcoat into his bag now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor and to no one else that i had no concern with it our roads i saw divided and there was further a need upon me to laugh i shall stay here i said it s a very pretty country my god he murmured as softly as he shut the door and i felt that it was a prayer then he went out of my life and i shaped my course for the railway bridge it was necessary to pass by the bench once more but the was between us the departure of the fly had the he crawled on to tlie seat and with malignant eyes watched the driver f down the road my sunday at home the man inside o that he called as poisoned me e s a body b s back again hen i m cold ere s my evidence he waved his share of the overcoat and i went my ay because i was hungry admiral village is a good two miles from the station and i the holy calm of the evening every step of that way with shouts and casting myself down in the flank of the good green hedge when i was too weak to stand there was an inn a blessed inn with a roof and in the garden and i ordered myself an upper chamber in which the held their courts for the laughter was not all out of me a bewildered woman brought me ham and eggs and i leaned out of the window and laughed between i sat long above the beer and the perfect smoke that followed till the lights changed in the quiet street and i began to think of the seven forty five down and all that world of the nights i had quitted descending i passed a giant in who filled the low tap room many empty plates stood before him and beyond them a fringe of the to whom he was a wondrous tale of of body of and the valley of the shadow from the which he was but newly risen and as he talked he ate and as he ate he drank for there was room in him and anon he paid speaking of justice and the law before whom all englishmen are equal and all foreigners and and on my way to the station he passed me with great my sunday at home strides his head high among the low flying his feel firm on the road metal his fists and his breath coming sharply there was a beautiful smell in the the smell of white dust bruised and smoke that brings to the throat of a man who sees his country but a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers the infinitely suggestive of an it was a perfect walk and lingering on every step i came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of a load of lamps and set them back in the lamp room while he dealt to four or five of the population who not contented with their own peace thought fit to travel it was no ticket that the seemed to need he was sitting on a bench grinding a into fragments with his heel i abode in obscurity at the end of the platform interested as ever thank heaven in my surroundings there was a jar of wheels on the road the rose as they approached strode through the and laid a hand upon a horse s bridle that brought the beast | 39 |
light there was the same starting off place a pile of somewhere near a beach and this pile found himself running races with little boys and girls these ended ships ran high up the dry land and opened into boxes or gilt and green iron that surrounded beautiful gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and so the boy long as he remembered it only a dream he could never hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real and instead of pushing down houses full of up people a just revenge he sat miserably upon gigantic door steps trying to sing the table up to four times six the princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty she came from the old illustrated edition of now out of print and as she always applauded s among the and he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his and pronounced when the dreams the stories she would change into one of the little girls round the pile still keeping her title and crown she saw e drown once in a dream sea by the beach it was the day after he had been taken to in a real sea by his nurse and he said as he sank poor she ll be sorry for me now i but walking slowly on the beach called ha said the duck laughing which to a waking mind might not seem to on the situation it consoled at once and must have been some kind of spell for it raised the bottom of the deep and he out with a twelve inch pot on each foot as he was strictly forbidden to with flower pots in real life he felt triumphantly wicked the movements of the grown whom but did not pretend to removed his world when he was seven years old to a place the boy called oxford on a visit here were huge surrounded by vast with streets of infinite length and above all something called the which was dying to see because he knew it must be greasy and therefore delightful he perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the presence of an fat man who asked him if he would like some bread and cheese was used to eat all round the dock so he took what gave him and would have taken some brown liquid called but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of a thing called s ghost this was intensely thrilling people s heads came off and flew all over the stage and danced bone by bone while mr himself beyond question a man of the worst waved his arms and a long gown and in a deep bass voice had never heard a man sing before told of his sorrows unspeakable some grown up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made with and that there was no need to be frightened did not know what illusions were but he did know that a mirror was the looking glass with the ivory handle on his mother s dressing table therefore the grown up was just saying things after the distressing custom of grown and cast about for amusement between scenes next to him sat a little girl dressed all in black her hair off her forehead exactly like the girl in the book called in which had been given him on his last birthday the little girl looked at and looked at the boy her here seemed to be no need of any further introduction i ve got a cut on my thumb said he it was the first work of his first real knife a savage hack and be esteemed it a most valuable i m tho she let me there e a di plaster on but it s all raw under answered i it hurt her grey eyes were full of pity and interest ly perhaps it will give me it very horrid i m she put a forefinger to his hand and held her head for a better view here the nurse turned and shook him severely you must n t talk to strange girls master she is n t strange she s very nice i like her an i ve showed her my new cut the ideal you change places with me she moved him over and shut out the little girl from his view while the grown up behind renewed the futile explanations i am not afraid truly said the boy ing in but why don t you go to sleep in the same as of had been introduced to a grown up of that name who slept in his presence without apology understood that he was the most important grown up in oxford hence he strove to his rebuke the boy with this grown up did not seem to like it but he and g lay back in his seat silent and mr was singing again and the deep ringing voice the red fire and the misty waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the little girl who had been so kind about his cut when the performance was ended she nodded to and nodded in return he spoke no more than was necessary till but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and things as for as he them the deep mouthed agony of mr mingling with the little girl s that night he made a new tale from which he removed the let down your hair princess gold crown edition and all and put a new in her place so it was perfectly right and natural that when he came to the pile he should find her waiting for him her hair off her forehead more like in than ever and the races and adventures | 39 |
began ten years at an english public school do not encourage dreaming won his growth and chest and a few other things which did not appear in the bills under a system of foot ball and paper from four to five days a week which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground ash if any boy himself from these he became a dusty of the lower third and a light half back at little side foot ball was pushed and through the slack back waters of the boy the lower fourth where the of a school generally won his second fifteen cap at foot ball enjoyed the dignity of a study with two companions in it and began to look forward to office as a sub at last he into full glory as head of the school ex captain of the games head of his house where he and his preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to seventeen general in the quarrels that spring up among the and intimate friend and ally of the head himself when he stepped forth in the black white and black stockings of the first fifteen the new match ball imder his arm and his old and cap at the back of his head the small of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped and the new caps of the team talked to him that the world might see and so in summer when he came back to the after a slow but eminently safe game it mattered not whether he had made nothing or as once happened a and three the school shouted just the same and women folk who had come to look at the match looked at major that s above all he was responsible for that thing called the tone of the school and few with what passionate devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work home was a far away full of and fishing and shooting and men visitors who interfered with one s plans but school was the real world where things of vital importance happened and arose that must be dealt with promptly and quietly not for nothing was it written let the look to the boy it that the republic takes no harm and was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended behind him but not too near was the wise and temperate head now suggesting the wisdom of the serpent now the of the dove leading him on to see more by half hints than by any direct word how boys and men are all of a piece and how he who can handle the one will assuredly in time control the other for the rest the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions but rather to keep in hard condition to avoid false quantities and to enter the army direct without the help of the expensive london under whose roof yoimg blood too much major went the way of hundreds before him the head gave him six months final polish taught him what kind of answers best please a certain kind of and handed him over to the properly constituted authorities who passed him into here he had sense enough to see that he was in the lower third once more and behaved with respect toward liis till they in turn respected him and he was promoted to the rank of and sat in authority over mixed with all the vices of men and boys combined his reward was another string of cups a good conduct sword and at last her majesty s commission as a in a first class line regiment he did not know that he bore with him from school and college a character worth much fine gold but was pleased to find his mess so kindly he had plenty of money of his own his training had set the public school mask upon the boy his face and had taught him how many were the things no fellow can do by virtue of the same training he kept open and mouth shut the regular working of the empire his world to india where he tasted utter loneliness in s quarters one room and one trunk and with his mess learned the new life from the beginning but there were horses in the at reasonable price there was for such as could afford it there were the of a pack of hounds and ck worried way along without too much it dawned on him that a regiment in india was nearer the chance of active service than he had conceived and that a man might as well study his profession a major of the new school backed this idea with enthusiasm and he and ck accumulated a library of works and read and argued and disputed far into the nights but the said the old thing to know your men young un and they u follow you anywhere that s all you your men ck thought he knew them fairly well at and the sports but he never the true of them till he was sent off with a of twenty to sit down in a mud fort near a rushing river which was by a bridge of boats when the floods came they went forth and hunted strayed along the banks otherwise there was nothing to do and the men got drunk and quarrelled they were a sickly crew for a junior is by custom with the worst men endured their as long as he could the boy and then sent down country for a dozen pairs of i would n t blame you for fighting said he if you only knew how to use your hands but you don t take these things and i u show you the men appreciated his efforts now instead of and swearing at a comrade and threatening to shoot him | 39 |
i just told her and she saw at ye es said the i expect that s what she did to the dance to night no thanks i ve got a fight on with the major the virtuous sat up till midnight in the major s quarters with a stop watch and a pair of shifting little painted lead blocks about a map then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence which is f of healthy dreams one peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the beginning of his second hot weather two or three times a month they or ran in series he would find himself sliding into by the same a road that ran along u beach near a pile of to the right lay the sea sometimes at full tide sometimes withdrawn to the very horizon but he knew it for the same sea by that road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered with short withered grass into valleys of wonder and beyond the ridge which was crowned with some sort of street lamp anything was possible but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew the parade ground he learned to look forward to the place for once there he was sure of a good night s rest and indian hot weather can be rather trying first shadowy under the boy closing eyelids would come tbe outline of the pile next the white tbe beach road the black sea then the turn inland and to the single light when he was for any reason he would tell himself how he was sure to get sure to get if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the drift of things but one night after a foolishly hard hour s the was in his quarters at tea o clock sleep stood away from him though he did his to find the road the point where true sleep began at last he saw the pile and hurried along to the ridge for behind him he felt was the wide awake world he reached the lamp in safety with when a a common country sprang up before him and touched him on the shoulder ere he could into the dim valley below he was filled with terror the hopeless terror of dreams for the policeman said in the awful distinct voice of dream people i am policeman day coming back from the city of sleep you come with me knew it was true that just beyond him in the valley lay the lights of the of sleep where he would have been sheltered and that this policeman thing had full power and authority to head him back to miserable he found himself looking at the moonlight on the wall dripping with fright and be never overcame that horror though he met the policeman several times that hot weather and hi s coming wa s the of a bad but other perfectly absurd filled him the boy with an delight all those that he remembered began by the pile for he found a small steamer he had noticed it many nights before lying by the sea road and stepped into it whereupon it moved with surpassing swiftness over an absolutely level sea this was glorious for he felt he was exploring great matters and it stopped by a lily carved in stone which most naturally floated on the water seeing the lily was g said of course this is precisely what i expected would be like how magnificent i thousands of miles farther on it halted at yet another stone lily and this again delighted him because he knew that now he was at the world s end but the little boat ran on and on till it lay in a deep fresh water lock the sides of which were marble green with moss lay on the water and arched above some one moved among the some one whom g knew he had travelled to this world s end to reach therefore everything was entirely well with him he was happy and over the ship s side to find this person when his feet touched that still water it changed with the rustle of maps to nothing less than a sixth quarter of the globe beyond the most remote imagining of a place where islands were coloured yellow and blue their strung across their faces they gave on seas and s urgent desire was to return swiftly across this floating to known bearings he told himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry but still he hurried des the boy i and the islands slipped and slid under his feet the straits yawned and till he found himself utterly lost in the world s fourth with no hope of return yet only a little distance away he could see the old world with the rivers and marked according to the rules of map making then that person for whom he had come to the lily lock that was its name ran up across and showed him a way they fled hand in hand till they reached a road that and ran along the edge of and was through mountains this goes to our pile said his companion and all his trouble was at an end he took a pony because he understood that this was the thirty mile ride and he must ride swiftly and through the and round the curves always till he heard the sea to his left and saw it raging under a full moon against sandy it was heavy going but he the nature of the country the dark purple downs inland and the that whistled in the wind the road was eaten away in places and the sea lashed at black tongues of smooth and glossy but he was sure that there was less danger from the sea | 39 |
than from them whoever they were inland to his right he knew too that he would be safe if he could reach the down with the lamp on it this came as he expected he saw the one light a mile ahead along the beach dismounted turned to the right walked quietly over to the pile found the little steamer had returned to the beach whence he had the boy it must have fallen asleep for he could remember no more i m the hang of the geography of that place he said to himself as he shaved next morning i must have made some sort of circle let s see the thirty mile ride now how the did i know it was called the thirty mile ride the sea road beyond the first down where the lamp is and that lies at the back of the thirty mile ride somewhere out to the right beyond the hills and things dreams wonder what makes mine fit into each other so he continued on his solid way through the duties of the seasons the regiment was shifted to another station and he enjoyed road marching for two months with a good deal of mixed shooting thrown in and when they reached their new he became a member of the local tent club and chased the mighty on horseback with a short there he met the of the beside whom the is as a and he who lands him can say that he is a this was as new and as fascinating as the big game shooting that fell to his portion when he had himself for the mother s benefit sitting on the flank of his first tiger then the was promoted and rejoiced with him for he admired the greatly and who might be big enough to fill his place so that he nearly when the mantle fell on his own shoulders and the colonel said a few sweet things that made him blush an s position does not differ materially from that of head of the school and the boy stood in the same relation to the colonel as he had to his old head in england only wear out in hot weather and things were said and done that tried him sorely and he made glorious which the major pulled him wit a loyal soul and a shut mouth and raged against him the weak minded strove to him from the ways of justice the small men whom would never do things no fellow can do motives mean and to actions that he had not spent a thought upon and it made him very sick but his consolation came on parade when he looked down the full companies and reflected how few were in hospital or and wondered when the time would come to try the machine of his love and labour but they needed and expected the whole of a man s working day and maybe three or four hours of the night curiously enough be never dreamed about the regiment as he was supposed to the mind set free from the day s doings generally ceased working altogether or if it moved at all carried him along the old beach road to the downs the lamp post and once in a while to terrible policeman day the second time that he returned to the world s lost continent this was a dream that repeated itself again and again with variations on the same ground be knew that if he only still the person from the lily lock would help him and he was not disappointed sometimes he was in mines of vast depth out of the heart of the world where men in torment echoing the boy songs and he heard this person coming along the galleries and everything was made safe and they met again in low indian carriages that halted in a garden by gilt where a mob of stony white people all sat at breakfast tables covered with roses and separated from his companion while voices sang deep songs was filled with enormous despair till they two met again they in the middle of an endless hot night and crept into a huge house that stood be knew somewhere north of the railway station where the people ate among the roses it was surrounded with gardens all moist and dripping and in one room reached through of passages a sick thing lay in bed now the least noise g knew would some waiting horror and his companion knew it too but when their eyes met across the bed was disgusted to see that she was a child a little girl in shoes with her black hair back from her forehead what disgraceful folly i he thought now she could do nothing whatever if its head came off then the thing and the ceiling shattered down in plaster on the and they rushed in from all quarters he dragged the child the stifling garden voices behind them and they rode the thirty mile ride under whip and spur along the sandy beach by the sea till they came to the downs the lamp post and the pile which was safety very often dreams would the boy up about them in this fashion and the would be separated to endure awful adventures alone but the most times were when he and she had a clear understanding that it was all make believe and walked mile wide roaring rivers without even taking off their shoes or set light to cities to see how they would bum and were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their later in the night they were sure to suffer for this either at the hands of the people eating among the roses or in the at the far end of the thirty hue hide together this did no much them but often would hear her | 39 |
shrill cry of boy boy i half a world away and hurry to her rescue before they her he and she the dark purple downs as far inland from the pile as they dared but that was always a dangerous matter the interior was filled with them and they went about singing in the hollows and and she felt safer on or near the so thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking he accepted it as a real country and made a rough sketch of it he kept his own counsel of course but the of the land puzzled him his ordinary dreams were as and as fleeting as any healthy dreams could be but once at the pile he moved within known limits and could see where he was going there were months at a time when nothing notable crossed his sleep then the dreams would come in a of five or six and next morning the map that he kept in his writing the boy would be up to date for mat moat waa indeed a his oi his into a a of an and when an officer ss once takes to old there ia more hope for the virgin of seventy than for him but fate bent the change that wa needed in uie shape of a little winter campaign on the border which after the manner of little flashed out into a very ugly war and s regiment was chosen among the first now said a major this shake the the boy out of us especially you and we can see what your with attitude has done for the regiment nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward physically fit beyond they were good children in camp wet or dry fed or and they followed their officers with the quick and trained obedience of a first class foot ball fifteen they were cut ofl from their apology for a base and cheerfully cut their way back to it again they crowned and cleaned out hills full of the enemy with the precision of well broken dogs of chase and in the hour of retreat when with the sick and wounded of the they were persecuted down eleven miles of valley they serving as covered themselves with a great glory in the eyes of fellow any regiment can advance hut few know how to retreat with a sting in the then they turned to made roads moat often under fire and some inconvenient mud they were the last corps to be withdrawn when the rubbish of the campaign was all swept up and after a month in standing camp which tries morals severely they departed to their own place in column of flinging e s goin to io without em don t want em more e a goin to do without em as e h often done before e s goin to be a on a novel plan the boy an all the boys and g will say ow what a nice man man man ow what a nice man there came out a in which found that he had been with courage and coolness and discretion in all his that he had assisted the wounded under fire and blown in a gate also under fire net result his and a majority coupled with the distinguished service order as to his wounded he explained that they were both heavy men whom he could lift more easily than any one else otherwise of course i should have sent out one of my men and of course about that gate business we were safe the minute we were well under the walls but this did not prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever they saw or the mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his departure to england a year s leave was among the things he had out of the campaign to use his own words the doctor who had taken quite as much as was good for him quoted poetry about a good blade carving the of men and so on and everybody told that he was an excellent person but when he rose to make his maiden speech they shouted so that he was understood to say it is n t any use to speak with you me like this let s have some pool it is not unpleasant to spend eight and twenty days in an easy going steamer on warm waters in the of a woman who lets you see that you are head the boy and shoulders superior to the rest of the world even though that may be and most often is ten counted years your senior p o boats are not lighted with the of atlantic there is more at the bows and greater silence and darkness by the hand gear aft awful things might have happened to but for the little fact that he had never studied the first principles of the game he was expected to play so when at told him how an interest she felt in his welfare and all took her at the foot of the letter and talked of his own mother three hundred miles nearer each day of his home and so forth all the way up the bed sea it was much easier than he had supposed to converse for an hour at a time then mrs turning from parental affection spoke of love in the abstract as a thing not unworthy of study and in discreet after dinner demanded confidences would have been delighted to supply them but he had none and did not know it was duty to manufacture them expressed surprise and and asked those questions which deep asks of deep she learned all that was necessary to conviction and being very much a woman resumed never knew that she had abandoned the | 39 |
attitude do you know she said somewhere in the i think you re the very dearest boy i have ever met in my life and i d like you to remember me a little you will when you are older but i the boy want you to remember me now you u make some girl very happy oh i hope so said gravely but there s heaps of time for an all that sort of thing ain t there that depends here are your bags for the ladies competition i think i m growing too old to care for these they were getting up sports and was on the committee he never noticed how perfectly the bags were but another woman did and once he liked mrs greatly she was a bit old of course but nice there was no nonsense about her a few nights after they passed his dream returned to him she who waited by the was no longer a little girl but a woman with black hair that grew into a widow s peak back from her forehead he knew her for the child in black the companion of the last six years and as it had been in the time of the meetings on the lost continent he was filled with delight unspeakable they for some reason were friendly or had gone away that night and the two flitted together over all their country from the pile up the thirty mile ride till they saw the house of the sick thing a pin point in the distance to the left stamped through the railway waiting room where the roses lay on the spread breakfast tables and returned by the ford and the city they had once burned for sport to the great of the downs under the lamp post wherever they moved a the boy strong followed but this night there was no panic all the land was empty except for themselves and at the last they were sitting by the lamp post hand in hand she turned and kissed bim he woke with a start staring at the waving curtain of the cabin door he could almost have sworn that the kiss was real next morning the ship was rolling in a sea and people were not happy but as came to breakfast shaven and smelling of soap several turned to look at bim because of the light in his eyes and the splendour of his countenance well you look fit snapped a neighbour any one left you a in the middle of the bay reached for the with a grin i suppose it s the so near home and all that i do feel rather this rolls a bit does n t she stayed in her cabin till the end of the ie when she left without bidding him farewell and wept passionately on the dock head for pure joy of meeting her children who she had often said were so like father headed for his own country wild with delight of his first long after the lean seasons nothing was changed in that orderly life from the coachman who met him at the station to the white that at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven the took toll of him with due regard to first the mother then the father then the housekeeper who wept and praised god then the boy the butler and so on down to the under keeper who had been dog boy in s youth and called him master and was by the groom who had taught to ride not a thing changed he sighed when the three of them sat down to dinner in the late sunlight while the crept out upon the lawn below the and the big in the by the home rose for their evening meal our changes are all over dear the mother and now i am getting used to your size and your tan you re very brown i see you have n t changed in the least you re exactly like the the father beamed on this man after his own heart major in the army and should have had the v c sir and the butler listened with his professional mask off when master spoke of war as it is to day and his father cross questioned they went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses and the shadow of the old house lay long across the wonderful english foliage which is the only living green in the world perfect i by jove it s perfect was looking at the round woods beyond the home where the white boxes were ranged and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred and sounds felt his father s arm in his it s not half but is n t it i suppose you be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm if you have n t one now eh the boy you can make your mind easy sir n t one not in all these years the mother i had n t time they keep a man pretty busy these days in the service and most of our mess are unmarried too but you must have met hundreds in at balls and so ont i m like the tenth i don t dance don t what have you been doing with yourself other men s said the father oh yes i ve done a little of that too but you see as things are now a man has all hia work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night suspiciously it s never too late to we ought to give some kind of for the people about now you come back unless you want to go straight up to town no let | 39 |
s sit and enjoy ourselves i suppose there will be something for me to ride if i look for seeing i ve been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks because all the others were being got ready for master i should say there might be the father chuckled they re reminding me in a hundred ways that i must take the second place now the boy the does n t mean it dear but every one has been trying to make your home coming a success and you do like it don t you perfect perfect there s no place like england when you ve done your work that s the proper way to look at it my son and so up and down the walk till their shadows grew long in the moonlight and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small boy once for and the silver were brought in and g climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been his nursery and his in the beginning then who should come to him up for the night but the mother and she sat down on the bed and they talked for a long hour as mother and son should if there is to be any future for the empire with a simple woman s deep she asked questions and suggested answers that should have some sign in the face on the pillow and there was neither quiver of nor of breath neither nor delay in reply so she blessed him and kissed him on the mouth which is not always a mother s property and said something to her husband later at which he laughed profane and incredulous laughs all the establishment waited on g next morning from the six year old with a mouth hke a kid glove master to the under keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon s pet rod in his hand and there s a four below the you don t ave em in major the boy it was all beautiful beyond telling even though the mother on taking him out in the the leather had the hot sunday of his youth and him off to her friends at all the houses for six miles round and the bore him up to town and a lunch at the club where he introduced quite carelessly to not less than thirty ancient warriors whose sons were not the youngest in the army and had not the d s o after that it was s turn and remembering his friends he filled up the house with that kind of who live in cheap lodgings at or square good men all but not well off the mother perceived that they needed girls to play with and as there was no of girls the house like a in spring they tore up the place for amateur they disappeared in the gardens when they ought to have been they swept off every available horse and vehicle especially the and the fat pony they fell into the they and they and they sat on gates in the twilight two by two and found that he was not in the least necessary to their entertainment my said he when be saw the last of their dear backs they told me they ve enjoyed but they have n t done half the things they said they would i know they ve enjoyed said the mother you re a public benefactor dear now we can be quiet again can t we the boy oh i ve a very dear friend of mine thai i want you to know she could n t come with the so full because she s an invalid and she was when you first came she s a mrs i i don t remember the name about here no they came after you went to from oxford her husband died there and she lost some money i believe they bought the on the road she s a very sweet woman and we re very fond of them both she s a widow did n t you say she has a daughter surely i said so does she fall into and gas and and oh major and all that sort of thing no indeed she s a very quiet girl and musical she always came over here with her you know and she generally works all day so you won t talking about said the coming up the mother edged toward him within elbow reach there was no about s father oh s a dear girl plays beautifully rides beautifully too she s a regular pet of the household used to call the elbow went home and ignorant but obedient always the shut off what used she to call you sir all sorts of pet names i m very fond of sounds jew you be calling yourself a jew next she s one of the when her aunt again the elbow the boy oh you won t bee anything of her she busy with her music or her mother all day you re going up to town to morrow are n t i thought you said something about an the mother spoke oo up to town now what once more hie was shut off i had some idea of it but i not quite sure said the son of the house why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl and her invalid parent were expected he did not approve of unknown females calling bis father pet names he would observe these pushing persons who had been only seven years in the all of which the delighted mother read in his countenance herself keeping an air of sweet disinterested they ii be here this evening for dinner i m sending the carriage over for them and they won t stay more | 39 |
a tall girl in black raised her eyes to his and s life training deserted just as soon as he that she did not know he stared coolly and there was the abundant black hair growing in a widow s peak turned b w k from the forehead with that i ripple over the right ear there were the grey eyes set a little close together the short upper lip the boy chin and the known of the head there was also the small well cut mouth that had kissed him dear said the mother for was flushing under the stare i i beg your x he ed i don t know whether the mother has told you but i m rather an idiot at times specially before i ve had break ist it s it s a family failing he turned to explore among the hot water dishes on the rejoicing that she did not she did not know his conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane though the mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome how could any girl least of all one of s forbear to down and worship but deeply was displeased she had never been stared at in that fashion before and promptly retired into her shell when announced that he had changed his mind about going to town and would stay to play with miss if she had nothing better to do oh but don t let me throw you out i m at work i ve things to do all the morning what possessed to behave so oddly the mother sighed to herself s a bundle of like her mother you don t you must be a fine thing to be able to do that oh thought i think i heard you when i came in last night after all about a sea of dreams was n t it shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted the boy her awfully pretty song how d you think of such things you only composed the music did n t you the words too i m sure of it said with a sparkling eye no she did not know i wrote the words too spoke slowly for she knew she when she was nervous now how could you tell g said the mother as delighted as though the youngest major in the army were ten years old showing off before company i was sure of it somehow oh there are heaps of things about me that you don t understand looks as if it were goin to be a hot for england would you care for a ride this afternoon miss we can start out after tea if you d like it could not in decency refuse but any woman might see she was not filled with delight that will be very nice if you take the it will save me sending martin down to the village said the mother filling in like all good the mother had her one a for little that should horses and her men folk complained that she turned them into common and there was a legend in the family that she had once said to the on the morning of a meet if you kill near dear and if it is n t too late would you mind just over and me this i knew that was coming you d never miss a chance mother if it s a fish or a trunk i won t g laughed the it a said the tou won t will you we it b so hot the long summer day dragged itself out for but at last there was tea on the lawn and i she was in the saddle before he offer to help with the dean spring of the who mounted the pony for the mile bide the day held though got down to look for imaginary stones in s foot one cannot say even ma things in broad li t and this that meditated was not simple so he and was divided between relief and it annoyed her that the great thing should know she had written the words of the for though a maiden may sing her most secret fancies she does not care to have them trampled over by the male they rode into the little red brick street of and made fuss over the disposition of that duck it must go in just such a and be fastened to the saddle in just such a manner thou eight o clock had struck and they were miles from dinner we must be said bored and angry there s no great hurry but we can cut over down and let em out on the grass that will save us half an hour the horses on the short sweet smelling turf and the shadows gathered in the valley as the boy they over the great down that the western road the pace quickened without thought of hills gentleman that he was waiting on s till they should have cleared the rise then down the two mile slope they together the wind whistling in their ears to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the light click click of the shifting bits oh that was glorious i cried in and i are old friends but i don t think we ve ever gone better together no but you ve gone quicker once or twice really when g his lips don t you remember the thirty mile with when they were after on the beach road with the sea to the toward the lamp post on the downs the girl gasped what do you mean she said the thirty mile ride and and au the rest of it you i didn t sing anything about the thirty mile ride i know i did n t i have never told a living soul | 39 |
baby died and mrs wore black and thin and mourned as ii the bottom of the three jo d jo extra g had fallen out perhaps ought to have comforted her he tried to do so i think but the more he comforted the more mrs grieved and consequently the more uncomfortable grew the fact was that they both needed a and they got it mrs can afford to laugh now but it was no laughing matter to her at the time you see mrs appeared on the horizon and where she existed was fair chance of trouble at her bye name was the stormy she had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge she was a little brown thin almost woman with big rolling violet blue eyes and the sweetest manners in the world you had only to mention her name at afternoon for every woman in the room to rise up and call her well not blessed she was clever witty brilliant and sparkling beyond most of her kind but possessed of many devils of malice and she could be nice though even to her own sex but that is another story went off at score after the baby s death and the general discomfort that followed and mrs him she took no pleasure in hiding her she him publicly and saw that the public saw it he rode with her and walked with her and talked with her and with her and at s with her till people put up their eyebrows and said shocking mrs stayed at home turning over d e aa i and crying into the ct sc o plain tales from the bills did not care to do anything else but some eight dear affectionate lady friends explained the situation at length to her in case she should miss the cream of it mrs listened quietly and thanked them for their good offices she was not as clever as t but she was no fool she kept her own counsel and did not speak to of what she had heard this is worth remembering speaking to or crying over a husband never did any good yet when was at home which was not often he was more affectionate than usual and that showed his hand the affection was forced partly to soothe his own conscience and partly to soothe mrs it failed in both regards then the a d c in waiting was commanded by their lord and lady to invite mr and mrs to on july th at p m dancing in the bottom left hand corner i can t go said mrs it is too soon after poor little but it need not stop you tom she meant what she said then and said that he would go just to put in an appearance here he spoke the thing which was not and mrs knew it she guessed a woman s guess is much more accurate than a man s certainty that he had meant to go from the first and with mrs she sat down to think and the of her thoughts was that the memory of a dead child was worth considerably less than the affections of a living three and an extra u husband she made her plan and her all upon it in that hour she discovered that she knew tom thoroughly and this knowledge she acted on tom said she i shall be dining out at the on the evening of the th you d dine at the club this saved from making an excuse o get away and dine with mrs so he was grateful and felt small and mean at the same time which was wholesome left the at five for a ride about half past five in the evening a large leather covered basket came in from for mrs she was a who knew how to dress and she had not spent a week on that dress and having it and hemmed and and tucked and or whatever the terms are for nothing it was a gorgeous dress slight mourning i can t describe it but it was what the calls a creation a thing that hit you straight between the eyes and made you p she had not much heart for what she was going to do but as she glanced at the long mirror she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had never looked so well in her life she was a large and when she chose carried herself after the dinner at the she went on to the dance a little late and encountered with mrs on his arm that her flush and as the men crowded er for dances she looked ice tv s all her dances except ao tales from the hills she left blank mrs caught eye once and she knew it was war real war between them she started in the struggle for she had ordered about just the least little bit in the world too much and he was beginning to resent it moreover he had never seen his wife look so lovely he stared at her from and glared at her from passages as she went about with her partners and the more he stared the more taken was he he could scarcely believe that this was the woman with the red eyes and the black stuff gown who used to weep over the eggs at breakfast mrs did her best to hold him in play but after two dances he crossed over to his wife and asked for a dance i m afraid you ve come too late she said with her eyes twinkling then he begged her to give him a dance and as a g eat favor she allowed him the fifth luckily stood vacant on his programme they danced it together and | 39 |
there was a little flutter round the room had a sort of notion that his wife could dance but he never knew she danced so at the end of that he asked foi another as a favor not as a right and mrs said show me your programme dear he showed it as a naughty little hands up sweets to a master there was a fair of h on it besides h at supper mrs said nothing but she smiled contemptuously ran her pencil through and two h s and re three and an extra turned the card with her own name written a pet name that only she and her husband used then she shook her finger at him and said laughing oh you silly boy mrs heard that and she owned as much felt that she had the worst of it accepted and gratefully they danced and sat out in one of the little tents what said and what mrs said is no concern of any one s when the band struck up the roast beef of old england the two went out into the and began looking for his wife s this was before days while she went into the cloak room mrs came up and said you take me in to supper i think mr turned red and looked foolish ah h m i m going home with my wife mrs i think there has been a little mistake being a man he spoke as though mrs were entirely responsible mrs came out of the cloak room in a cloak with a white cloud round her head she looked radiant and she had a right to the couple went off in the darkness together riding very close to the then says mrs to me she looked a trifle faded and in the take my word for it the woman can manage a clever man but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool then we went in to supper tales from the hills thrown away and some are sulky while some will plunge so ho steady stand still you some you must gentle and some you must there there who wants to kill some there are losses in every trade will break their hearts ere and made will fight like as the rope cuts hard and die dumb mad in the breaking yard chorus to rear a boy under what parents call the sheltered life system is if the boy must go into the world and for himself not wise unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass through many unnecessary troubles and may possibly come to extreme grief simply from ignorance of the proper proportions of things let a eat the soap in the bath room or a newly boot he and until by and by he finds out that and old brown make him very sick so he that soap and boots are not wholesome any old dog about the house will soon show him the of biting big dogs ears being young he remembers and goes abroad at six months a well little beast with a appetite if he had been kept away from boots and soap and big dogs till he came to the full grown and with developed teeth just consider how fearfully sick and he would be apply that motion to the sheltered life and see how it works it does not sound pretty but it is the better of two evils thrown aw at there was a boy once who had been brought up under the sheltered life theory and the theory killed him dead he stayed with his all his days from the hour he was born till the hour he went into nearly at the top of the list he was beautifully taught in all that wins marks by a private and carried the extra weight of never having given his parents an hour s anxiety in his life what he learnt at beyond the regular routine is of no great consequence he looked about him and he found soap and so to speak very good he ate a little and came out of not so high as he went in then there was an interval and a scene with his people who expected much from him next a year of living from the world in a where all the were children and all the old women and lastly he came out to india where he was cut off from the support of his parents and had no one to fall back on in time of trouble except himself now india is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously the midday sun always too much work and too much energy kill a man just as as too much vice or too much drink does not matter because every one is being transferred and either you or she leave the station and never return good work does not matter because a man is judged by his worst and another man takes all the credit o his best as a rule bad work do i tales from the hills because other men do worse and hang on longer in india than anywhere else amusements do not matter because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once and most amusements only mean trying to win another person s money sickness does not matter because it s all in the day s work and if you die another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between death and burial nothing matters except home and acting and these only because they are scarce this is a slack country where all men work with imperfect instruments and the wisest thing is to take no one and nothing in earnest but to | 39 |
escape as soon as ever you can to some place where amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the having but this boy the tale is as old as the hills came out and took all things seriously he was pretty and was he took the seriously and fretted over women not worth a pony to call upon he found his new life in india very good it does look attractive in the beginning from a s point of view all partners dancing and so on he tasted it as the tastes the soap only he came late to the eating with a growing set of teeth he had no sense of balance just like the and could not understand why he was not treated with the consideration he received under his father s roof this hurt his feelings he quarrelled with other boys and being sensitive to the remembered these quarrels f d they excited him he found and thrown aw at ly and things of that kind meant to amuse one after office good but he took them seriously too just as he took the head that followed after drink he lost his money over and g because they were new to him he took his losses seriously and wasted as much energy and interest over a two race for maiden with their as if it had been the one half of this came from much as the with the comer of the and the other half from the bred by stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a one no one told him about the soap and the because an average man takes it for granted that an average man is ordinarily careful in regard to them it was pitiful to watch the boy knocking himself to pieces as an over handled falls down and cuts himself when he gets away from the groom this license in amusements not worth the trouble of breaking line for much less over endured for six months all through one cold weather and then we thought that the heat and the knowledge of having lost his money and health and his horses would sober the boy down and he would stand steady in ninety nine cases out of a hundred this would have happened you can see the principle working in any indian station but this particular case fell through because the boy was sensitive and took things seriously as i may have said some seven times before of course we couldn t tell how his struck i x l plain tales from tee bills they were nothing very heart breaking or above the average he might be crippled for life and want a little nursing still the memory of his performances would away in one hot weather and the would help him to tide over the money troubles but he must have taken another view altogether and have believed himself ruined beyond his colonel talked to him severely when the cold weather ended that made him more wretched than ever and it was only an ordinary colonel s what follows is a curious instance of the fashion in which we are all linked together and made responsible for one another the thing that kicked the beam in the boy s mind was a remark that a woman made when he was talking to her there is no use in repeating it for it was only a cruel little sentence out before thinking that made him flush to the roots of his hair he kept himself to himself for three days and then put in for two days leave to go shooting near a canal engineer s rest house about thirty miles out he got his leave and that night at mess was and more offensive than ever he said that he was going to shoot big game and left at half past ten o clock in an which was the only thing a man could get near the rest house is not big game so every one laughed next morning one of the came in from short leave and heard that the boy had gone out to shoot big game the major had taken an interest in the boy and had more than once away tried to check him in the cold weather the major put up his eyebrows when he heard of the expedition and went to the boy s room where he presently he came out and found me leaving cards on the mess there was no one else in the room he said the boy has gone out shooting does a man shoot with a revolver and a writing case i said nonsense major for i saw what was in his mind he said nonsense or nonsense i m going to the canal now at once i don t feel easy then he thought for a minute and said can you lie you know best i answered it s my profession very well said the major you must come out with me now at once in an to the canal to shoot black buck go and put on quick and drive here with a gun the major was a man and i knew that he would not give orders for nothing so i obeyed and on return found the major packed up in an gun cases and food below all ready for a shooting trip he dismissed the driver and drove himself we along quietly while in the station but as soon as we got to the dusty road across the plains he made that pony fly a can do nearly anything at a pinch we covered the thirty miles in under a but the poor brute was nearly dead tales from the hills once i said what s the blazing hurry major | 39 |
he said quietly the boy has been alone by himself one two five fourteen hours now i tell you i don t feel easy this uneasiness spread itself to me and i helped to beat the pony when we came to the canal engineer s rest house the major called for the boy s servant but there was no answer then we went up to the house calling for the boy by name but there was no answer oh he s out shooting said i just then i saw through one of the windows a little lamp burning this was at four in the afternoon we both stopped dead in the holding our breath to catch every sound and we heard inside the room the of a multitude of flies the major said nothing but he took off his and we entered very softly the boy was dead on the in the centre of the bare lime washed room he had shot his head nearly to pieces with his revolver the gun cases were still so was the and on the table lay the boy s writing case with photographs he had gone away to die like a poisoned rat the major said to himself softly poor boy poor poor devil then he turned away from the bed and said i want your help in this business knowing the boy was dead by his own hand exactly what that be so i thrown away passed over to the table took a chair lit a and began to go through the writing the major looking over my shoulder and repeating to himself we came too late like a rat in a hole poor poor devil the boy must have spent half the night in writing to his people and to his colonel and to a girl at home and as soon as he had finished must have shot himself for he had been dead a long time when we came in i read all that he had written and passed over each sheet to the major as i finished it we saw from his accounts how very seriously he had taken everything he wrote about which he was unable to bear shame criminal folly wasted life and so on besides a lot of private things to his father and mother too much too sacred to put into print the letter to the girl at home was the most pitiful of all and i choked as i read it the major made no attempt to keep dry eyed i respected him for that he read and rocked himself to and fro and simply cried like a woman without caring to hide it the letters were so dreary and hopeless and touching we forgot all about the boy s follies and only thought of the poor thing on the and the sheets in our hands it was utterly impossible to let the letters go home they would have broken his father s heart and killed his mother after killing her belief in her son at last the major dried his eyes openly said nice sort of thing to spring on n e m what shall we do tales from the hills i said knowing what the major had brought me but for the boy died of we were with him at the time we can t commit ourselves to half measures come along then began one of the most comic scenes i have ever taken part in the of a big written lie with evidence to soothe the boy s people at home i began the rough of a letter the major throwing in hints here and there while he gathered up all the stuff that the boy had written and burnt it in the fireplace it was a hot still evening when we began and the lamp burned very badly in due course i got the to my satisfaction setting forth how the boy was the pattern of all virtues beloved by his regiment with every promise of a great career before him and so on how we had helped him through the sickness it was no time for little lies you will understand and how he had died without pain i choked while i was putting down these things and thinking of the poor people who would read them then i laughed at the of the affair and the laughter mixed itself up with the choke and the major said that we both wanted drinks i am afraid to say how much we drank before the letter was finished it had not the least effect on us then we took off the boy s watch and rings lastly the major said we must send a lock of hair too a woman that but there were reasons why we could not find a lock fit to send the boy w i i a ck thrown and so was the major luckily i cut off a piece of the major s hair above the temple with a knife and put it into the packet we were making the laughing fit and the got hold of me again and i had to stop the major was nearly as bad and we both knew that the worst part of the work was to come we sealed up the packet photographs ring letter and lock of hair with the boy s wax and the boy s seal then the major said for god s sake let s get outside away from the room and think we went outside and walked on the banks of the canal for an hour eating and drinking what we had with us until the moon rose i know now exactly how a murderer feels finally we forced ourselves back to the room with the lamp and the other thing in it and began to take up the | 39 |
up his and and keep quiet instead of showing up the of his so the murder case did him no good but after his first feeling of wrath he returned to his custom of into native life by the way when a man once a taste for this particular amusement it with him all his days it is the most fascinating thing in the world love not where other men took ten days to the hills took leave for what he called put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time stepped down into the brown crowd and was swallowed up for a while he was a quiet dark young fellow spare black eyes and when he s not thinking of something else a very interesting companion on native progress as he had seen it was worth hearing natives hated but they were afraid of him he knew too much when the came tv o tales from the hills very gravely as he did fell in love with miss and she after a while fell in love with him because she could not understand him then told the parents but mrs said she was not going to throw her daughter into the worst paid department in the empire and old said in so many words that he s ways and works and would thank him not tc speak or write to his daughter any more well said for he did not wish tc make his lady lovers life a burden after one long talk with miss he dropped the business entirely the went up to m april in july secured three months leave on urgent private affairs he locked up house though not a native in the providence would have touched s gear for the world and went down to se a friend of his an old at here all trace of him was lost until a me me on the with this note dear old man please give bearer a box of no i for preference they are fresh est at the club repay when i but a present out of society yours e i ordered two boxes and handed them over t with my love that was mi and he was in old s employ attached to miss s the poor fellow was suffering for an english smoke and knew that whatever happened i should hold my tongue till the business was over later on mrs who was wrapped up in her servants began talking at houses where she called of her among the man who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for the breakfast table and who actually the hoofs of his horse like a london coachman the of miss s was a wonder and a delight i mean found his reward in the pretty things that miss said to him when she went out riding her parents were pleased to find she had forgotten all her foolishness for young and said she was a good girl vows that the two months of his service were the most rigid mental discipline he has ever gone through quite apart from the little fact that the wife of one of his fellow aw fell in love with him and then tried to poison him with because he would have nothing to do with her he had to school himself into keeping quiet when miss went out riding with some man who tried to with her and he was forced to trot behind carrying the blanket and hearing every word also he had to keep his temper when he was in porch by a policeman especially once when he was abused by a vi k a from at jo plain tales from the still when a young called him a pig for not making way quickly enough but the life had its he obtained great insight into the ways and of enough he says to have convicted half the population of the if he had been on business he became one of the leading players at bones which all and many play while they are waiting outside the government house or the gaiety theatre of nights he learned to smoke tobacco that was three and he heard the wisdom of the of the government house whose words are valuable he saw many things which amused him and he states on honor that no man can appreciate properly till he has seen it from the s point of view he also says that if he chose to write all he saw his head would be broken in several places s account of the agony he endured on wet nights hearing the music and seeing the lights in with his toes for a and his head in a horse blanket is rather amusing one of these days is going to write a little book on his experiences that book will be worth buying and even more worth thus he served faithfully as jacob served for and his leave was nearly at an end when the explosion came he had really done his best to keep his temper in the hearing of the i have mentioned but he broke down at fast an old and very distinguished general miss tough al s took miss for a ride and began that specially offensive you re only a little sort of most difficult for a woman to turn aside and most to listen to miss was shaking with fear at the things he said in the hearing of her stood it as long as he could then he caught hold of ihe general s bridle and in most english invited him to step off and be heaved over the cliff next minute miss began crying and saw that he had hopelessly given himself away and everything was over | 39 |
the general nearly had a fit while miss was sobbing out the story of the disguise and the engagement that wasn t recognized by the parents was furiously angry with himself and more angry with the general for forcing his hand so he said nothing but held the horse s head and prepared to the general as some sort of satisfaction but when the general had thoroughly grasped the story and knew who was he began to puff and blow in the saddle and nearly rolled off with laughing he said deserved a v c if it were only for putting on a s blanket then he called himself names and vowed that he deserved a but he was too old to take it from then he miss on her lover the scandal of the business never struck him for he was a nice old man with a weakness for then he laughed and said that old was a let go of the s ta va v tales from the hills that the general had better help if that was his opinion knew s weakness for men with titles and letters after their names and high official position it s rather like a forty minute farce said the general but i will help if it s only to escape that tremendous i deserved go along to your home my jaw policeman and change into decent and i ll attack mr miss may i ask you to home and wait about seven minutes later there was a wild at the club a with a blanket and head rope was asking all the men he knew for heaven s sake lend me decent clothes as the men did not recognize him there were some peculiar scenes before could get a hot bath with in it in one room a shirt here a collar there a pair of trousers elsewhere and so on he galloped off with half the club wardrobe on his back and an utter stranger s pony under him to the house of old the arrayed in purple and fine linen was before him what the general had said never knew but received with moderate civility and mrs touched by the devotion of the transformed was almost kind the general beamed and chuckled and miss came in and al most before old knew where he was the parental consent had been out and had departed with miss to the telegraph office to wire for his the with an final embarrassment was when an utter stranger attacked him on the and asked for the stolen pony so in the end and miss were married on the strict understanding that should drop his old ways and stick to routine which pays best and leads to was far too fond of his wife just then to break his word but it was a sore trial to him for the streets and the and the sounds in them were full of meaning to and these called to him to come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries some day i will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend that was long since and he has by this time been nearly spoilt for what he would call he is forgetting the and the beggar s cant and the marks and the signs and the drift of the which if a man would master he must always continue to learn but he fills in his returns beautifully with an i am dying for you and you are dying for another proverb when the tender left the p o steamer for and went back to c train to town there were vo j tales from the hill crying but the one who wept most and most openly was miss she had reason to cry because the only man she ever loved or ever could love so she said was going out to india and india as every one knows is divided equally between and leaning over the side of the steamer in the rain felt very unhappy too but he did not cry he was sent out to tea what tea meant he had not the idea but fancied that he would have to ride on a horse over hills covered with tea vines and draw a salary for doing so and he was very grateful to his uncle for getting him the berth he was really going to reform all his slack ways save a large proportion of his magnificent salary yearly and in a very short time return to marry had been lying loose on his friends hands for three years and as he had nothing to do he naturally fell in love he was very nice but he was not strong in his views and opinions and principles and though he never came to actual grief his friends were thankful when he said good bye and went out to this mysterious tea business near they said god bless you dear boy let us never see your face again or at least that was what was given to understand when he sailed he was very full of a great plan to prove himself several hundred times better than any one had given him credit for to work like a horse and triumphantly marry ag with an he had many good points besides his good looks his only fault being that he was weak the least little bit in the world weak he had as much notion of economy as the morning sun and yet you not lay your hand on any one item and say is extravagant or reckless nor could you point out any particular vice in his character but he was unsatisfactory and as as went about her duties at home her family objected to the engagement with red eyes while was to a port on the ocean as | 39 |
his mother used to tell lier friends he was popular enough on board ship made many acquaintances and a large liquor bill and sent off huge letters to at each port then he fell to work on this plantation somewhere between and and though the salary and the horse and the work were not quite all he had fancied he succeeded fairly well and gave himself much unnecessary credit for his perseverance in the course of time as he settled more into collar and his work grew fixed before him the face of went out of his mind and only came when he was at leisure which was not often he would forget all about her for a fortnight and remember her with a start like a school boy who has forgotten to learn his lesson she did not forget because she was of the kind that never forgets only another man a really desirable young man presented himself before mrs and the chance of a marriage with was as far as xv a v n k tales from the hills were so unsatisfactory and there was a certain amount of domestic pressure brought to bear on the girl and the young man really was an eligible person as go and the end of all things was that married him and wrote a of a letter to in the of and said she should never know a happy moment all the rest of her life which was a true prophecy got that letter and held himself ill treated this was two years after he had come out but by dint of thinking of and looking at her photograph and patting himself on the back for being one of the most constant lovers in history and warming to the work as he went on he really fancied that he had been very hardly used he sat down and wrote one final a really pathetic world without end amen explaining how he would be true to eternity and that all women were very much alike and he would hide his broken heart etc etc but if at any future time etc etc he could afford to wait etc etc unchanged affections etc etc return to her old love etc etc for eight closely written pages from an artistic point of view it was very neat work but an ordinary who knew the state of s real feelings not the ones he rose to as he went on writing would have called it the thoroughly mean and selfish work of a thoroughly mean and selfish weak man but this verdict would have been paid for the and felt every word he had written for at least two days and a half it was the last before the light went out with an that letter made very unhappy and she cried and put it away in her and became mrs somebody else for the good of her family which is the first duty of every christian maid went his ways and thought no more of his letter except as an artist thinks of a neatly touched in sketch his ways were not bad but they were not altogether good until they brought him across the daughter of a ex major of our native army the girl had a strain of hill blood in her and like the hill women was not a where met her or how he heard of her does not matter she was a good girl and handsome and in her way very clever and shrewd though of course a little hard it is to be remembered that was living very comfortably denying himself no small luxury never putting by an very satisfied with himself and his good intentions was dropping all his english one by one and beginning more and more to look upon this land as his home some men fall this way and they are of no use afterwards the climate where he was stationed was good and it really did not seem to him that there was an to go home for he did what many have done before him that is to say he made up his mind to marry a hill girl and settle down he was seven and twenty then with a long life before him but no spirit to go through with it so he married by the forms of the english church and some fellow said v ca js tales from the hills some said he was a wise man was a thoroughly honest girl and in spite of her reverence for an englishman had a reasonable estimate of her husband s weaknesses she managed him tenderly and became in less than a year a very imitation of an english lady in dress and carriage it is curious to think that a hill man after a lifetime s education is a hill man still but a hill woman can in six months master most of the ways of her english sisters there was a woman once but that is another story dressed by preference in black and yellow and looked well meantime the letter lay in s desk and now and again she would think of poor resolute hard working among the and of toiling in the vain hope that she might come back to him her husband was worth ten except that he had of the heart three years after he was married and after he had tried nice and for his complaint he went to where he died and set free being a devout woman she looked on his death and the place of it as a direct of providence and when she had recovered from the shock she took out and s letter with the etc etc and the big and the little and kissed it several times no one knew her in she had her husband s income which | 39 |
was a large one and was close at hand it was wrong and improper of course but she decided as do in novels to find her old lover to offer him her hand and her gold and with him spend the rest of her life in some spot far from souls she sat for two months alone in s hotel this decision and the picture was a pretty one then she set out in search of assistant on a tea plantation with a more than usually name she found him she spent a month over it for his plantation not in the district at all but r was very little altered and was very nice to her now the particular sin and shame of the whole business is that who really is not worth thinking of twice was and is loved by and more than loved by the whole of whose life he seems to have spoilt worst of all is making a decent man of him and he will be ultimately saved from through her training which is unfair false dawn to night god knows what thing shall tide the earth is and faint expectant sleepless open eyed and we who from the earth were made thrill with our mother s pain in no man will ever know the exact truth of this story though women may x tales from the hills to one another after a dance when they are putting up their hair for the night and comparing lists of victims a man of course cannot assist at these functions so the tale must be told from the outside in the dark all wrong never praise a sister to a sister in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears and so preparing the way for you later on sisters are women first and sisters afterwards and you will find that you do harm knew this he made up his mind to propose to the elder miss was a strange man with few merits so far as men could see though he was popular with women and carried enough conceit to stock a s council and leave a little over for the commander in chiefs staff he was a very many women took an interest in perhaps because his manner to them was offensive if you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance he may not love you but he will take a deep interest in your movements ever afterwards the elder miss was nice plump winning and pretty the younger was not so pretty and from men the hint set forth above her style was and both girls had practically the same figure and there was a strong likeness between them in look and voice though no one could doubt for an instant which was the of the two made up his mind as soon as they came into the station from to many the one at least we all made sure that he false dawn x would which comes to the same thing she was two and twenty and he was thirty three with pay and of nearly fourteen a month so the match as we arranged it was in every way a good one was his name and summary was his nature as a man once said having his resolution he formed a select committee of one to sit upon it and resolved to take his time in our unpleasant the girls hunted in couples that is to say you could do nothing with one without the other they were very loving sisters but their mutual affection was sometimes inconvenient held the balance hair true between them and none but himself could have said to which side his heart inclined though every one guessed he rode with them a good deal and danced with them but he never sue in them from each other for any length of time women said that the two girls kept together through deep each fearing that the other would steal a march on her but that has nothing to do with a man was silent for good or bad and as business likely attentive as he could be having due regard to his work and his beyond doubt both girls were fond of him as the hot weather drew nearer and made no sign women said that you could see their trouble in the eyes of the girls that they were looking strained anxious and irritable men are quite blind in these matters unless the have more of the woman l tales from tee hills composition in which case it does not matter what they say or think i maintain it was the hot april days that took the color out of girls cheeks they should have been sent to the hills early no one man or woman feels an angel when the hot weather is approaching the younger sister grew more cynical not to say in her ways and the of the elder wore thin there was more effort in it now the station wherein all these things happened was though not a little one off the line of rail and suffered through want of attention there were no gardens or bands or amusements worth speaking of and it was nearly a day s journey to come into for a dance people were grateful for small things to interest them about the beginning of may and just before the final of hill when the weather was very hot and there were not more than twenty people in the station gave a moonlight riding at an old tomb six miles away near the bed of the river it was a a ark and there was to be the usual arrangement of quarter mile intervals between each couple on account of the dust six couples came altogether including moonlight are useful just at | 39 |
the very end of the season before all the girls go away to the hills they lead to and should be encouraged by especially those whose girls look in riding habits i knew a case once but that is another story false dawn that was called the great pop because every one knew would propose then to the eldest miss and beside his affair there was another which might possibly come to happiness the social atmosphere was heavily charged and wanted clearing we met at the parade ground at ten the night was fearfully hot the horses even at walking pace but anything was better than sitting still in our own dark houses when we moved off under the full moon we were four couples one and mr rode with the girls and i at the tail of the procession wondering with whom would ride home every one was happy and contented but we all felt that things were going to happen we rode slowly and it was nearly midnight before we reached the old tomb facing the ruined in the decayed gardens where we were going to eat and drink i was late in coming up and before i went into the garden i saw that the horizon to the north carried a faint colored feather but no one would have thanked me for so well managed an entertainment as this and a more or less does no great harm we gathered by the some one had brought out a which is a most sentimental instrument and three or four of us sang you must not laugh at this our amusements in out of the way stations are very few indeed then we talked in groups or together lying under the trees with the sun baked to x their on our v t tales from tee hills ready it was a beautiful supper as cold and as as you could wish and we stayed long over it i had felt that the air was growing and but nobody seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind began the orange trees with a sound like the noise of the sea before we knew where we were the dust storm was on us and was roaring whirling darkness the was blown bodily into the we were afraid of staying anywhere near the old tomb for fear it might be blown down so we felt our way to the orange trees where the horses were and waited for the storm to blow over then the little light that was left vanished and you could not see your hand before face the air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed of the river that filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and eyebrows and it was one of the worst of the year we were all huddled together close to the trembling horses with the thunder overhead and the lightning like water from a all ways at once there was no danger of course unless the horses broke loose i was standing with my head downward and my hands over my mouth hearing the trees each other i could not see who was next me till the flashes came then i found that i was packed near and the eldest miss with my own horse just in front of me i recognized the eldest miss because she had a round her false dawn met and the younger had not all the in the air had gone into my body and i was quivering and from head to foot exactly as a com shoots and before rain it was a grand storm the wind seemed to be picking up the earth and it to in great heaps and the heat beat up from the ground like the heat of the day of judgment the storm slightly after the first and i heard a despairing little voice close to my ear saying to itself quietly and softly as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind my god then the younger miss stumbled into my arms saying where is my horse get my horse i want to go home i want to go home take me home i thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened her so i said there was no danger but she must wait till the storm blew over she answered it is not that it is not that i want to go home o take me away from here i said that she could not go till the light came but i felt her brush past me and go away it was too dark to see where then the whole sky was split open with one tremendous flash as if the end of the world were coming and all the women shrieked almost directly after this i felt a man s hand on my shoulder and heard in my ear through the rattling of the trees and howling of the wind i did not catch his words at once but at last i heard him say i ve proposed to the wrong one what i tales from the hills had no occasion to make this confidence to me i was never a friend of his nor am i now but i fancy neither of us were ourselves just then he was shaking as he stood with excitement and i was feeling queer all over with the i could not think of anything to say except more fool you for proposing in a dust storm but i did not see how that would improve the mistake then he shouted where s was the youngest sister i answered out of my astonishment what do you want with would you believe it for the next two minutes he and i were shouting at each other like he that it was the youngest | 39 |
sister he had meant to propose to all along and i telling him till my throat was that he must have made a mistake i can t account for this except again by the fact that we were neither of us ourselves everything seemed to me like a bad dream from the stamping of the horses in the darkness to telling me the story of his loving since the first he was still my shoulder and begging me to tell him where was when another lull came and brought light with it and we saw the dust cloud forming on the plain in front of us so we knew the worst was over the moon was low down and there was just the glimmer of the false dawn that comes about an hour before the real one but the light was very faint and the cloud roared like a bull i wondered where h had g one and as i was wondering i saw three things together first s face come smiling out of the darkness and move towards who was standing by me i heard the girl whisper george and slide her arm through the arm that was not my shoulder and i saw that look on her face which only comes once or twice in a lifetime when a woman is perfectly happy and the air is full of trumpets and gorgeous colored fire and the earth turns into cloud because she loves and is loved at the same time i saw s face as he heard s voice and fifty yards away from the of orange trees i saw a brown habit getting upon a horse it must have been my state of over excitement that made me so quick to with what did not concern me was moving off to the habit but i pushed him back and said stop here and explain i ll fetch her back and i ran out to get at my own horse i had a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order and that s first care was to wipe the happy look out of s face all the time i was up the chain i wondered how he would do it i after thinking to bring her back slowly on some pretence or another but she galloped away as soon as she saw me and i was forced to ride after her in earnest she called back over her shoulder go away i m going home oh go away two or three times but my business v o ca her first and argue later the nd x tales from the bill with the rest of the evil dream the was very bad and now and again we rushed through the whirling choking dust devils in the skirts of the flying storm there was a burning hot wind blowing that brought up a of stale brick with it and through the half light and through the dust devils across that desolate plain the brown habit on the gray horse she headed for the station at first then she wheeled round and set off for the river through beds of burnt down grass bad even to ride a pig over in cold blood i should never have dreamed of going over such a country at night but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning overhead and a like the smell of the pit in my nostrils i rode and shouted and she bent forward and lashed her horse and the of the dust storm came up and caught us both and drove us like pieces of paper i don t know how far we rode but the of the horse hoofs and the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood red moon through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years and i was literally with sweat from my to my when the gray stumbled recovered himself and pulled up dead lame my brute was used up altogether was in a sad state with dust her off and crying bitterly why can t you let me alone she said i only wanted to get away and go home oh please let me go you have got to come back with me miss false dawn g has something to say to you it was a foolish way of putting it but i hardly knew miss and though i was playing providence at the cost of my horse i could not tell her in as many words what had told me i thought he could do that better himself all her pretence about being tired and wanting to go home broke down and she rocked herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed and the hot wind blew her black hair to i am not going to repeat what she said because she was utterly this if you please was the cynical miss here was i almost an utter stranger to her trying to tell her that loved her and she was to come back to hear him say so i believe i made myself understood for she gathered the gray together and made him somehow and we set off for the tomb while the storm went thundering down to and a few big drops of warm rain fell i found out that she had been standing close to when he proposed to her sister and had wanted to go home and cry in peace as an english girl should she her eyes with her as we went along and to me out of sheer lightness of heart and that was perfectly unnatural and yet it seemed all right at the time and in the place all the world was only the two girls and i in with the lightning and the dark and the guidance of this world sa to lie | 39 |
in my hands tales from tee hills when we returned to the tomb in the deep dead stillness that followed the storm the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away they were waiting for our return most of all his face was white and drawn as miss and i up he came to meet us and when he helped her down from her saddle he kissed her before all the it was like a scene in a theatre and the likeness was heightened by all the dust white men and women under the orange trees clapping their hands as if they were watching a at s choice i never knew anything so un english in my life lastly said we must all go home or the station would come out to look for us and would i be good enough to ride home with nothing would give me greater pleasure i said so we formed up six couples in all and went back two by two walking at the side of who was riding his horse the air was cleared and little by little as the sun rose i felt we were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women and that the great pop was a thing altogether apart and out of the world never to happen again it had gone with the dust storm and the in the hot air i felt tired and limp and a good deal ashamed of myself as i went in for a bath and some sleep there is a woman s version of this story but it will never be written unless cares to try the rescue of the rescue of for a season they fought it fair she and his cousin may foes were they but never can battle of man compare with merciless feminine two and one mrs was sometimes nice to her own sex here is a story to prove this and you can believe just as much as ever you please was a in the he was even for a he was all over like a that had not finished itself the worst of it was he had three times as much money as was good for him papa being a rich man and being the only son mamma adored him she was only a little less than and she believed everything he said weakness was not believing what people said he preferred what he called trusting to his own judgment he had as much judgment as he had seat or hands and this preference tumbled him into trouble once or twice but the biggest trouble ever came about at some years ago when he was four and twenty he began by trusting to his own judgment as usual and the result was that after a time he was bound hand and foot to mrs s wheels there was nothing good ts n t tales from the hills unless it was her dress she was bad from her hair which started life on a s girl s head to her boot heels which were two and three eighth inches high she was not honestly mischievous like mrs she was wicked in a business like way there was never any scandal she had not generous impulses enough for that she was the exception which proved the rule that indian ladies are in every way as nice as their sisters at home she spent her life in proving that rule mrs and she hated each other fervently they heard far too much to clash but the things they said of each other were startling not to say original mrs was honest honest as her own front teeth and but for her love of mischief would have been a woman s woman there was no honesty about mrs nothing but selfishness and at the beginning of the season poor little fell a prey to her she laid herself out to that end and who was to resist he went on trusting to his judgment and he got judged i have seen argue with a tough horse i have seen a driver a stubborn pony i have seen a broken to gun by a hard keeper but the breaking in of of the was beyond all these he learned to fetch and carry like a dog and to wait like one too for a word from mrs he learned to keep which mrs had no intention of keeping he to take dances which mrs the rescue of q had no intention of giving him he learned to shiver for an hour and a quarter on the side of while mrs was making up her mind to come for a ride he learned to hunt for a in a light under a rain and to walk by the side of that when he had found it he learned what it was to be spoken to like a and ordered about uke a cook he learned all this and many other things besides and he paid for his perhaps in some way he fancied that it was fine and impressive that it gave him a among men and was altogether the thing to do it was nobody s business to warn that he was unwise the pace that season was too good to inquire and with another man s folly is always work colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when he heard how things were going but had got himself engaged to a girl in england the last time he went home and if there was one thing more than another which the colonel detested it was a married he chuckled when he heard of the education of and said it was good training for the boy but it was not good training in the least it led him into spending | 39 |
money beyond means which were good above that the education spoilt an average boy and made it a man of an objectionable kind he wandered into a bad set and his little bill at s was a thing to wonder at then mrs rose l v plain tales from the hills played her game alone knowing what people would say of her and she played it for the sake of a girl she had never seen was to come out under the of an aunt in october to be married to at the beginning of august mrs discovered that it was time to interfere a man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to do next before he does it in the same way a woman of mrs s experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain circumstances n when he is with one of mrs s stamp she said that sooner or later little would break off that engagement for nothing at all simply to gratify mrs who in return would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long as she found it worth her while she said she knew the signs of these things if she did not no one else could then she went forth to capture under the guns of the enemy just as mrs carried away under mrs s eyes this particular engagement lasted seven weeks we called it the seven weeks war and was fought out inch by inch on both sides a detailed account would fill a book and would be then any one who knows about these things can fit in the details for himself it was a superb fight there will never be another like it as long as stands and was the prize of victory people said shame things about mrs they did n it the rescue of know what she was playing for mrs fought partly because was useful to her but mainly because she hated mrs and the matter was a trial of strength between them no one knows what thought he had not many ideas at the best of times and the few he possessed made him conceited mrs said the boy must be caught and the only way of catching him is by treating him well so she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long as the issue was doubtful little by little fell away from his old and came over to the enemy by whom he was made much of he was never sent on out post duty after any more nor was he given dances never came off nor were the on his purse continued mrs held him on the and after his treatment at mrs s hands he appreciated the change mrs had broken him of talking about himself and made him talk about her own merits mrs acted otherwise and won his confidence till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at home speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a piece of boyish folly this was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon and in what he considered a gay and fascinating style mrs had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and blossom and decay into fat captains and at a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to that lady s character men say more she began lo o plain tales from the hills after the manner of a mother and as if there had been three hundred years instead of fifteen between them she spoke with a sort of in her voice which had a soothing effect though what she said was anything but soothing she pointed out the exceeding folly not to say of conduct and the of his views then he stammered something about trusting to his own judgment as a man of the world and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next it would have withered up had it come from any other woman but in the soft style in which mrs put it it only made him feel limp and as if he had been in some superior kind of church little by little very softly and pleasantly she began taking the conceit out of as you take the ribs out of an umbrella before re covering it she told him what she thought of him and his judgment and his knowledge of the world and how his performances had made him ridiculous to other people and how it was his intention make love to herself if she gave him the chance then she said marriage would be the making of him and drew a pretty little picture all rose and of the mrs of the future going through life on the judgment and knowledge of the world of a husband who had nothing to reproach himself with how she reconciled these two statements she alone knew but they did not strike as conflicting hers was a perfect little much better the rescue of y than any clergyman could have given and it ended with touching allusions to mamma and papa and the wisdom of taking his bride home then she sent out for a walk to think over what she had said left blowing his nose very hard and holding very straight mrs laughed what had intended to do in matter of the engagement only mrs knew and she kept her own counsel to her death she would have liked it spoiled as a compliment i fancy enjoyed many talks with mrs during the next few days they were all to the same end and they helped in the path of virtue mrs wanted to keep him under her wing to the last therefore she his going down to to get married goodness only knows | 39 |
what might happen by the way she said is cursed with the curse of and india is no fit place for in the end the arrived with her aunt and having reduced his affairs to some sort of order here again mrs helped him was married mrs gave a sigh of relief when both the i wills had been said and went her way took her advice about going home he left the service and is now raising cattle inside green painted fences t home i believe he does th s he would have come to extreme t el o ax v plain from the hills for these reasons if any one says anything more than usually nasty about mrs tell him the story of the rescue of s arrows pit where the cooled his hide by the hot sun emptied and and dried log in the hidden and alone where the earth rat s are cave in the bank where the sly stream that at the belly and heels jump if you dare on a safer it is to go wide go wide hark from in front where the best men ride pull to the off boys wide go wide the hunt once upon a time there lived at a very pretty girl the daughter of a poor but honest district and judge she was a good girl but could not help knowing her power and using it her mamma was very anxious about her daughter s future as all good should be when a man is a and a bachelor and has the right of wearing open work jam jewels in gold and on his clothes and of going through a door before every one except a member of council a lieutenant governor or a he is worth marrying at least that js what ladies say there was a s arrows in in those days who was and wore and did all i have said he was a plain man an ugly man the man in asia with two exceptions his was a face to dream about and try to on a pipe head afterwards his name was and six letters to follow he was one of the best men the government of india owned he was like a when he turned his attentions to miss i believe that mrs wept with delight at the reward providence had sent her in her old age mr held his tongue he was an easy going man now a is very rich his pay is beyond the dreams of is so enormous that he an afford to save and scrape in a way that would almost a member of council most are mean but was an exception he entertained he himself well he gave dances he was a power in the land and he behaved as such consider that everything i am writing of took place in an almost pre historic era in the history of british india some folk may remember the years before lawn was born when we all played there were seasons before that if you will believe me when even had not been invented and which was revived in england in was as great a as lawn is now people o tales from the hills about holding and bows pound bows backed or self bows as we talk about returns and i miss shot over ladies dis yards that is and was acknowledged the best lady in men called of paid her great attention and as i have said the heart of her mother was uplifted in consequence took matters more calmly it was pleasant to be out by a with letters after his name and to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feelings but there was no denying the fact that was ugly and all his attempts to adorn himself only made him more grotesque he was not the which means gray for nothing it was pleasant thought to have him at her feet but it was better to escape from him and ride with the the man in a regiment at the boy with a handsome face and no prospects liked more than a little he never pretended for a moment the he was anything less than head over heels in love with her for he was an honest boy so fled now and again from the stately of to the company of young and was by her mamma in consequence but mother she said mr is such such a is so fearfully ugly you know my dear said mrs we s arrows cannot be other than an all ruling providence has made us besides you will take o your own mother you know think of that and be reasonable then put up her little chin and said things about and and matrimony mr rubbed the top of his head for he was an easy going man late in the season when he judged that the time was ripe developed a plan which did great credit to his powers he arranged an for ladies with a most diamond studded as prize he drew up his terms and every one saw that the was a gift to miss the acceptance carrying with it the hand and the heart of the terms were a st s round thirty six shots at sixty yards under the rules of the society all was invited there were beautifully arranged tea tables under the at where the grand stand is now and alone in its glory in the sun sat the diamond in a blue velvet case miss was anxious almost too anxious to on the appointed afternoon all rode down to to witness the judgment of paris turned down rode with young and it was easy to see that the boy was troubled in his | 39 |
mind he must be held innocent of everything that followed was pale and nervous and looked long at the c re s from the hills was dressed even more nervous than and more hideous than ever mrs smiled as the mother of a and the shooting began all the world standing in a as the ladies came out one after the other nothing is so tedious as an competition they shot and they shot and they kept on shooting till the sun left the valley and little breezes got up in the and people waited for miss to shoot and win was at one horn of the round the and at the other miss was last on the list the had been weak and the was hers to a certainty the strung her bow with his own sacred hands she stepped forward looked at the and her first arrow went true to a hair full into the heart of the gold counting nine points young on the left turned white and his devil prompted to smile now horses used to shy when smiled saw that smile she looked to her gave an almost nod to and went on shooting i wish i could describe the scene that followed it was out of the ordinary and most improper miss fitted her arrows with immense deliberation so that every one might see what she was doing she was a perfect shot and her pound bow suited her to a she pinned s arrows the wooden legs of the with great care four successive times she pinned the wooden top of the once and all the ladies looked at each other then she began some fancy shooting at the white which if you hit it counts exactly one point she put five arrows into the white it was wonderful but seeing that her business was to make and win the turned a delicate green like young water grass next she shot over the twice then wide to the left twice always with the same deliberation while a chilly hush fell over the company and mrs took out her handkerchief then shot at the ground in front of the and split several arrows then she made a red or seven points just to show what she could do if she liked and finished up her amazing performance with some more fancy shooting at the here is her score as it was picked off gold red blue black white total total score miss x looked as if the last few had been driven into his legs instead of the s and the deep stillness was broken by a little half grown girl saying in a shrill voice of triumph then won mrs did her best to bear up but she wept in the presence of the people no training could help her through such a disappointment her bow with a vicious jerk and went back to her place while was trying to pretend that he td plain tales from tee bills on the girl s raw red wrist it was an awkward scene most awkward every one tried to depart in a body and leave to the mercy of her but took her away instead and rest isn t worth his chance in life then a pile of heads be laid thirty thousand heaped on high all to please the where the by grimly love hath made this thing a man s story if you go straight away from and government house lists past trades balls far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your respectable life you cross in time the border line where the last drop of white blood ends and the full tide of black sets in it would be easier to talk to a new made on the spur of the moment than to the folk without some of their or their feelings the black and the white mix very in their ways sometimes the white shows in of fierce childish pride which is pride of race run crooked and sometimes the black in still and humility half customs and strange his chance in life unaccountable impulses to crime one of these days this people understand they are far lower than the class whence the man who sprung will turn out a writer or a poet and then we shall know how they live and what they feel in the meantime any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or miss came from across the to look after some children who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out the lady said miss was a bad dirty nurse and it never struck her that miss had her own life to lead and her own affairs to worry over and that these affairs were the most important things in the world to miss very few admit this sort o reasoning miss was as black as a boot and to our standard of taste ugly she wore cotton print gowns and shoes and when she lost her temper with the children she abused them in the language of the which is part english part and part native she was not attractive but she had her pride and she preferred being called miss every sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see her mamma who lived for the most part on an old cane chair in a greasy silk dressing gown and a big rabbit of a house full of and and a floating population o besides fragments of the day s stale incense clothes thrown on iv i y tale from the hills hung on strings for old bottles dried f plaster images of the virgin and hats without crowns miss drew twenty a month for acting as nurse and she weekly with her mamma as | 39 |
to the to be given towards housekeeping when the quarrel was over d used to across the low mud wall of the compound and make love to miss after the fashion of the which is about with much ceremony was a poor sickly weed and very black but he had his pride he would not be seen smoking a for anything and he looked down on natives as only a man with seven native blood in his veins can the family had their pride too they traced their descent from a plate who had worked on the bridge when were new in india and they valued their english f i n was a telegraph on a month the fact that he was in government employ made mrs to the of his ancestors there was a legend the tailor brought it from that a black jew of had once married into the d family while it was an open secret that an uncle of mrs d was at that very time doing work connected with cooking for a club in southern india he sent mrs d seven eight a month but she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all the his chance in life however in the course of a few sundays mrs brought herself to overlook these and gave her consent to the marriage of her daughter with on condition that should have at least fifty a month to start married life upon this wonderful prudence must have been a lingering touch of the plate s blood for across the people take a pride in marrying when they please not when they can having regard to his prospects miss might as well have asked to go away and come back with the moon in his pocket but was deeply in love with miss and that helped him to endure he accompanied miss to mass one sunday and after mass walking home through the hot stale dust with her hand in his he swore by several saints whose names would not interest you never to forget miss and she swore by her honor and the saints the oath runs rather curiously n whatever the name of the she saint is and so forth ending with a kiss on the forehead a kiss on the left k and a kiss on the mouth never to forget next week was transferred and miss dropped tears upon the window of the as he left the station if you look at the telegraph map of india you will see a long line the coast from to was v a little sub of ce s tales from the hills line to send messages on from to and to think of miss and his chances of getting fifty a month out of office hours he had the noise of the bay of and a for company ing more he sent foolish letters with crosses tucked inside the of the to miss when he had been at for nearly three his chance came never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of our authority are always before a native he is as incapable as a child of understanding what authority means or where is the danger of it was a forgotten little place with a few in it these hearing nothing of the for some time and heartily the sub judge arranged to start a little riot of their own but the turned out and broke their heads when finding pleasant and together raised an sort of just to see how far they could go they each other s shops and paid off private in the regular way it was a nasty little riot but not worth putting in the newspapers was working in his office when he heard the sound that a man never forgets all his life the ah of an angry crowd when that sound drops about three tones and changes to a thick tu the man who hears it had better go away if he is alone the native police ran in and told that the town ei in life was in an uproar and coming to wreck the telegraph office the put on his cap and quietly dropped out of the window while the police afraid but obeying the old race instinct which a drop of white blood as as it can be said what orders does the give the decided though horribly frightened he felt that for the hour he the man with the jew and the uncle in his was the only representative of english authority in the place then he thought of miss and the fifty and took the situation on himself there were seven native in and four crazy smooth bore among them all the men were gray with fear but not beyond leading dropped the key of the telegraph instrument and went out at the head of his army to meet the mob as the shouting crew came round a corner of the road he dropped and fired the men behind him instinctively at the same time the whole to the and ran leaving one man dead and another dying in the road was with fear but he kept his weakness under and went down into the town past the house where the sub judge had himself the streets were empty was more frightened than for the mob had been taken at the right time returned to the telegraph office and sent a message to asking for help before an answer came he received jo plain tales from the hills the elders of telling him that the sub judge said his actions generally were and trying to bully him but the heart of d was big and white in his breast because of his love for miss the nurse girl and because he had tasted for the first time responsibility and success those two make an | 39 |
drink and have ruined more men than ever has answered that the sub judge might say what he pleased but until the assistant came the telegraph was the of india in and the elders of the town would be held for further then they bowed their heads and said show mercy or words to that effect and went back in great fear each the other of having begun the early in the dawn after a night s with his seven went down the road in hand to meet the assistant who had ridden in to but in the presence of this young englishman felt himself slipping back more and more into the native and the tale of the ended with the strain on the in an hysterical outburst of tears bred by sorrow that he had killed a man shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he had felt through the night and childish anger that his tongue could not do justice to his great deeds it was the white drop in s veins dying out though he did not know it but the englishman understood and after he his chance in life ji had those men of and ha l con with the sub judge till that excellent official turned green he found time to draught an official letter describing the conduct of which letter through the proper channels and ended in the transfer of once more on the imperial salary of sixty six a month so he and miss were married with great state and and now there are several little d about the of the central telegraph office but if the whole of the department he serves were to be his reward could never never repeat what he did at for the sake of miss the nurse girl which proves that when a man does good work out of all proportion to his pay in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the virtue the two exceptions must have suffered from watches of the night what is in the s books that is in the s heart neither you nor i knew there was so much evil in the world proverb this began in a practical joke but it has one far enough now and is getting j plain tales from the hills the being poor had a watch and a plain leather guard the colonel had a watch also and for guard the lip of a chain make the best watch guards they are strong and short between a lip and an ordinary leather g ard there is no great difference between one watch and another there is none at all every one in the station knew the colonel s lip he was not a man but he liked people to believe he had been on once and he fantastic stories of the hunting bridle to which this particular had belonged otherwise he was painfully religious and the colonel were dressing at the club both late for their engagements and both in a hurry that was the two watches were on a shelf below the looking glass g hanging down that was carelessness changed first snatched a watch looked in the glass settled his tie and ran forty seconds later the colonel did exactly the same thing each man taking the other s watch you may have noticed that many religious people are deeply suspicious they seem for purely religious purposes of course to know more about than the perhaps they were specially bad before they became converted at any rate in the of things evil and in putting the worst construction on things innocent a certain type of good people may be trusted to all others the colonel and his wife were of that type but the watches of the night j wife was the worst she the station scandal and talked to her nothing more need be said the colonel s wife broke up the s home the colonel s wife stopped the engagement the colonel s wife induced young to keep his wife down in the plains through the first year of the marriage whereby little mrs died and the baby with her these things will be remembered against the colonel s wife so long as there is a regiment in the country but to come back to the colonel and they went their several ways from the the colonel dined with two while went to a bachelor party and to follow mark how things happen if s had put the new saddle on the mare the of the would not have worked through the worn leather and the old into the mare s when she was coming home at two o clock in the morning she would not have reared bolted fallen into a ditch upset the cart and sent flying over an hedge on to mrs s well kept lawn and this tale would never have been written but the mare did all these things and while was rolling over and over on the turf like a shot rabbit the watch and guard flew from his waistcoat as an major s sword out of the when they are firing a de and rolled and rolled in the moonlight till it stopped under a window y plain tales from the hills stuffed his handkerchief under the put the cart straight and went home mark again how works this would not happen once in a hundred years towards the end of his dinner with the two the colonel let out his waistcoat and leaned over the table to look at some mission reports the bar of the watch guard worked through the and the watch s watch slid quietly on to the carpet where the bearer found it next morning and kept it then the colonel went home to the wife of his bosom but | 39 |
the driver of the carriage was drunk and lost his way so the colonel returned at an hour and his excuses were not ac if the colonel s wife had been an ordinary vessel of wrath appointed for destruction she would have known that when a man stays away on purpose his excuse is always sound and original the very of the colonel s explanation proved its truth see once more the workings of the colonel s watch which came with hurriedly on to mrs s lawn chose to stop just under mrs s window where she saw it early in the morning recognized it and picked it up she had heard the crash of s cart at two o clock that morning and his voice calling the mare names she knew and liked him that day she showed him the watch and heard his story he put his head on one side winked and said how disgusting shocking old man with his religious training tool i should send the watch to the colonel s wife and ask for explanations watches of the mrs thought for a minute of the whom she had known when and his wife believed in each other and answered i will send it i think it will do her good but remember we must never tell her the truth guessed that his own watch was in the colonel s possession and thought that the return of the lip with a soothing note from mrs would merely create a small trouble for a few minutes mrs knew better she knew that any poison dropped would find good holding ground in the heart of the colonel s wife the packet and a note containing a few remarks on the colonel s calling hours were sent over to the colonel s wife who wept in her own room and took counsel with herself if there was one woman under heaven whom the colonel s wife hated with holy it was mrs mrs was a frivolous lady and called the colonel s wife old cat the colonel s wife said that somebody in revelations was remarkably like mrs she mentioned other scripture people as well from the old testament but the colonel s wife was the only person who cared or dared to say anything against mrs every one else accepted her as an amusing honest little body wherefore to believe that her husband had been shedding watches under that thing s window at hours coupled with the fact of his late arrival on the previous night was at this point she rose up and sou band he denied everything x t y tales from the bills ship of the watch she him for his soul s sake to speak the truth he denied afresh with two bad words then a stony silence held the colonel s wife while a man could draw his breath five times the speech that followed is no affair of mine or yours it was made up of and womanly jealousy knowledge of old age and sunken cheeks deep born of the text that says even little babies hearts are as bad as they make them hatred of mrs and the of the creed of the colonel s wife s over and above all was the away in the palm of her shaking withered hand at that hour i think the colonel s wife realized a little of the restless suspicions she had into old s mind a little of poor miss s misery and some of the that ate into s heart as he watched his wife dying before his eyes the colonel stammered and tried to explain then he remembered that his watch had disappeared and the mystery grew greater the colonel s wife talked and prayed by turns till she was tired and went away to devise means for the stubborn heart of her husband which translated means in our tail twisting you see being deeply impressed with the doctrine of original sin she could not believe in the face of appearances she knew too much and jumped to the wildest conclusions but it was good for her it spoilt her life as watches of the night she had spoilt the life of the she had lost her faith in the colonel and here the came in he might she argued have many times before a merciful providence at the hands of so unworthy an instrument as mrs had established his guilt he was a bad wicked gray haired this may sound too sudden a for a long wedded wife but it is a venerable fact that if a man or woman makes a practice of and takes a delight in believing and spreading evil of people indifferent to him or her he or she will end in believing evil of folk very near and dear you may think also that the mere incident of the watch was too small and trivial to raise this misunderstanding it is another aged fact that in life as well as racing all the worst accidents happen at little and cut down fences in the same way you sometimes see a woman who would have made a of arc in another century and climate herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping but that is another story her belief only made the colonel s wife more wretched because it insisted so strongly on the of men remembering what she had done it was pleasant to watch her and the penny attempts she made to hide it from the station but the station knew and laughed for they had heard the story of the watch with much dramatic gesture from mrs s lips once or twice said to mrs seeing that the colonel had not c plain tales from tee bills this thing has gone far enough i move we tell the colonel s wife how it | 39 |
last of her riding whip through her lips as was her custom when thinking then her eyes sparkled and she said i will and she shook hands on it having perfect confidence in this great woman took no further thought of the business at all except to wonder what sort of an appointment he would win mrs began tl v plain tales from tee hills all the heads of and members o council she knew and the more she thought the more she laughed because her heart was in the game and it amused her then she took a civil list and ran over a few of the there are some beautiful in the civil list eventually she decided that though was too good for the political department she had better begin by trying to get him in there what were her own plans to this end does not matter in the least for luck or fate played into her hands and she had nothing to do but to watch the course of events and take the credit of them all when they first come out pass through the secrecy it wears off in time but they all catch it in the beginning because they are new to the country the particular who was suffering from the complaint just then this was a long time ago before lord ever came from canada or lord from the bosom of the english church had it very badly and the result was that men who were new to keeping official secrets went about looking unhappy and the himself on the way in which he had notions of into his staff now the supreme government have a careless custom of committing what they do to printed papers these papers deal with all sorts of things from the payment of rs to a secret service native up to administered to and of native states and rather letters to native princes telling them to consequences put their houses in order to refrain from women or filling with red and of that kind of course these things could never be made public because native princes never and their states are as well administered as our also the private to various queer people are not exactly matters to put into newspapers though they give quaint reading sometimes when the supreme government is at these papers are prepared there and go round to the people who ought to see them in office boxes or by post the principle of secrecy was to that quite as important as the practice and he held that a benevolent like ours should never allow even little things such as of subordinate clerks to out till the proper time he was always remarkable for his principles there was a very important of papers in preparation at that time it had to travel from one end of to the other by hand it was not put into an official envelope but a large square pale pink one the matter being in ms on soft paper it was addressed to the head clerk etc etc now between the head clerk etc etc and mrs and a flourish is no very great difference if the address be written in a very bad hand as was the who took the envelope was not more of an idiot than most he merely forgot where this most cover was to be delivered and so asked the first englishman he met who d o i plain tales the hills riding down to in a great hurry the englishman hardly looked said ki and went on so did the because that letter was the last in stock and he wanted to get his work over there was no book to sign he thrust the letter into mrs s bearer s hands and went off to smoke with a friend mrs was expecting some cut out pattern things in paper from a friend as soon as she got the big square packet therefore she said oh the dear creature and tore it open with a paper knife and all the ms tumbled out on the floor mrs began reading i have said the was rather important that is quite enough for you to know it referred to some correspondence two measures a order to a native chief and two dozen other things mrs gasped as she read for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the great indian government stripped of its and and paint and guard rails even the most stupid man and mrs was a clever woman she was a little afraid at first and felt as if she had laid hold of a by the tail and did not quite know what to do with it there were remarks and at the side of the papers and some of the remarks were rather more severe than the papers the belonged to men who are all dead or gone now but they were great in their day mrs read on and thought calmly as she read then the value of her struck her and she cast about for the best method of using c n g it then dropped in and they read through all the papers together and not knowing how she had come by them vowed that mrs was the greatest woman on earth hich i believe was true or nearly so the honest course is always the best said after an hour and a half of study and conversation all things considered the intelligence branch is about my form either that or the foreign office i go to lay siege to the high gods in their temples he did not seek a little man or a little big man or a weak head of a strong department but he called on the biggest and strongest man that the government owned and explained that he wanted an appointment at on a good salary the | 39 |
see that they had no souls too and to help him to his creator as a good many men told him he undoubtedly had no soul because he was so young but it did not follow that his were equally and whether there was another world or not a man still wanted to read his papers in this but that is not the point that is not the point used to say then men threw sofa cushions at him and told him to go to any particular place he might believe in they him the he said he came from a family of that name somewhere in the pre historic ages and by insult and laughter strove to choke him dumb for he was an nuisance at the club besides being an offence to the older men his who was working on the frontier when was rolling on a told him that for a clever bo s tales from the hills was a very big idiot and you know if he had gone on with his work he would have been caught up to the in a few years he was just the type that goes there all head no and a hundred theories not a soul was interested in s soul he might have had two or none or somebody s else s his business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his instead of the club with he worked brilliantly but he could not accept any order without trying to better it that was the fault of his creed it made men too responsible and left too much to their honor you can sometimes ride an old horse in a but never a took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his year he may have fancied that thirty page judgments on fifty cases both sides to the advanced the cause of humanity at any rate he worked too much and worried and fretted over the he received and away on his ridiculous creed out of office till the doctor had to warn him that he was it no man can toil eighteen in the in june without suffering but was still and proud of himself and his powers and he would take no hint he worked nine hours a day steadily very well said the doctor you ll break down because you are over for your beam was a little chap one day the came as as if it had been meant to a tract of g it was just before the rains we were sitting in the in the dead hot close air gasping and praying that the black blue clouds would let down and bring the cool very very far away there was a faint whisper which was the roar of the rains breaking over the river one of the men heard it got out of his chair listened and said naturally enough thank god then the turned in his place and said why i assure you it s only the result of perfectly natural causes phenomena of the simplest kind why you should therefore return thanks to a being who never did exist who is only a the man in the next chair dry up and throw me over the we know all about your the reached out to the table took up one paper and jumped as if something had stung him then he handed the paper over as i was saying he on slowly and with an effort due to perfectly natural causes perfectly natural causes i mean hi youve given me the the dust got up in little while the rocked and the whistled but no one was looking at the coming of the rains we were all staring at the who had risen from his chair and was fighting with his speech then he said still more slowly perfectly conceivable dictionary red oak cause retaining alone tales from the hills s drunk said one man but the was not drunk he looked at us in a dazed sort of way and began with his hands in the half light as the clouds closed overhead then with a scream what is it can t reserve market obscure but his speech seemed to in him and just as the lightning shot two tongues that cut the whole sky into three pieces and the rain fell in quivering sheets the was struck dumb he stood and like a hard held horse and his eyes were full of terror the doctor came over in three minutes and heard the story it s he said take him to his room i knew the would come we carried the across in the pouring rain to his quarters and the doctor gave him of to ma e him sleep then the doctor came back to us and told us that was like all the of head falling in a lump and that only once before in the case of a had he met with so complete a case i myself have seen mild in an man but this sudden was though as the himself might have said due to perfectly natural causes he ll have to take leave after this said the doctor he won t be fit for work for another three months no it isn t insanity or anything like it it s only complete loss of control over t ie speech and memory i fancy it will keep the b quiet though u of two days later the found his tongue again the first question he asked was what was it the doctor enlightened him but i can t understand it said the i m quite sane but i can t be sure of my mind it seems my own can i go up | 39 |
into the hills for three months and don t think about it said the doctor but i can t understand it repeated the it was my own mind and memory i can t help it said the doctor there are a good many things you can t understand and by the time you have put in my length of service you ll know exactly how much a man dare call his own in this world the stroke the he could not understand it he went into the hills in fear and trembling wondering whether he would be permitted to reach the end of any sentence he began this gave him a wholesome feeling of the legitimate explanation that he had been himself failed to satisfy him something had wiped his lips of speech as a mother the lips of her child and he was afraid horribly afraid so the club had rest when he returned and if ever you come across laying down the law on things human he doesn t seem to know as much as he used to about things divine put your forefinger on your lip for a moment and see what happens don t blame me if he throws z head q plain tales from the hills a pleasant it is far the little tin gods when great jove but little tin gods make their little mistakes in missing the hour when great jove wakes as a general rule it is to with questions of state in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you this tale is a exception once in every five years as you know we for a new and each with the rest of his baggage a private secretary who may or may not be the real just as fate fate looks after the indian empire because it is so big and so helpless there was a once who brought out with him a turbulent private secretary a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for work this secretary was called wonder john wonder the possessed no name nothing but a string of and of the after them he said in confidence that he was the of a golden administration and he watched in a dreamy amused way wonder s attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands when we are all together said his once my dear good friend wonder will head the conspiracy for out s tail feathers or peter s keys then i shall report him it a g but though the did nothing to check wonder s other people said unpleasant things maybe the members of council began it but finally all agreed that there was too much wonder and too little in that wonder was always quoting his it was his this his that in the opinion of his and so on the smiled but he did not heed he said that so long as his old men with his dear good wonder they might be induced to leave the east in peace no wise man has a policy said the a policy is the on the fool by the i am not the former and i do not believe in the latter i do not quite see what this means unless it to an policy perhaps it was the s way of saying lie low that season came up to one of these crazy people with only a single idea these are the men who make things move but they are not nice to talk to this man s name was and he had lived for fifteen years on land of his own in lower studying he held that was a that itself as it flew through a atmosphere and stuck in the branches of trees like a the could be rendered he said by s own invincible a heavy violet black powder the result of fifteen years scientific investigation sir seem very ca tales from the hills they talk loudly especially about of they beat upon the table with their fists and they fragments of their inventions about their persons said that there was a medical ring at headed by the surgeon general who was in league apparently with all the hospital in the empire i forget exactly how he proved it but it had something to do with up to the hills and what wanted was the independent evidence of the steward of our most gracious majesty the queen sir so went up to with eighty four pounds of in his trunk to speak to the and to show him the merits of the invention but it is easier to see a than to talk to him unless you chance to be as important as of he was a six man so great that his daughters never married they contracted he himself was not paid he received and his journeys about the country were of observation his business was to stir up the people in with a long pole as you stir up in a pond and the people had to come up out of comfortable old ways and gasp this is and progress isn t it fine then they gave statues and in the hope of getting rid of him came up to to confer with the that was one of his the knew nothing of except that he a loi was one of those middle class who seem necessary to the spiritual comfort of this of the middle classes and that in all probability he had suggested designed founded and endowed all the public institutions in which proves that his though dreamy had experience of the ways of six thousand men s name was e and s was e s and they were both staying at the same hotel and the fate that | 39 |
looks after the indian empire ordained that wonder should blunder and drop the final e that the should help him and that the note which ran dear mr can you set aside your other engagements and lunch with us at two to morrow his has an hour at your disposal then should be given to with the he nearly wept with pride and delight and at the appointed hour off to a big paper bag full of the in his pockets he had his chance and ee meant to make the most of it of had been so solemn about his conference that wonder had arranged for a private no a d c s no wonder no one but the who said that he feared being left alone with like the great of but his guest did not bore the on the contrary he amused him was nervously anxious to go straight to his and talked at random until was over and his asked him to smoke t n v i plain tales from tee hills was pleased with because he did not talk shop as soon as the were lit spoke like a man beginning with his theory his fifteen years scientific labors the of the ring and the excellence of his while the watched him between half shut eyes and thought evidently this is the wrong tiger but it is an original animal s hair was standing on end with excitement and he stammered he began groping in his coat tails and before the knew what was about to happen he had tipped a of his powder into the big silver ash tray j j judge for yourself sir said y shall judge for yourself absolutely on my honor he plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder which began to smoke like a and send up fat greasy wreaths of smoke in five seconds the room was filled with a most and sickening a that took fierce hold of the trap of your and shut it the powder then and and sent out blue and green sparks and the smoke rose till you could neither see nor breathe nor gasp however was used to it of he shouted bone meal thousand feet smoke per inch not a could live not a y but his had fled and was cough ing at the foot of the stairs while all like a hive red came in and the head who speaks english came in and came in and ladies ran downstairs screaming fire for the smoke was drifting through the house and out of the windows and along the and and across the gardens no one could enter the room where was on his till that powder had burned itself out then an de camp who desired the v c rushed through the rolling clouds and hauled into the hall the was prostrate with laughter and could only his hands feebly at who was shaking a fresh of powder at him glorious glorious sobbed his not a as you justly observe could exist i can swear it a magnificent success then he laughed till the tears came and wonder who had caught the real on the entered and was deeply shocked at the scene but the was delighted because he saw that wonder would presently depart with the was also pleased for he felt that he had smashed the medical ring few men could tell a story like his when he took the trouble and the account of my dear good wonder s friend with the powder went the round of and made wonder unhappy by t i i tales from the hills but his told the tale once too often for wonder as he meant to do it was at a wonder was sitting just behind the and i really thought for a moment wound ap his that my dear good wonder had hired an to clear his way to the throne every one laughed but there was a delicate in the s tone which wonder understood he found that his health was giving way and the allowed him to go and presented him with a flaming character for use at home among big people my fault entirely said his in after seasons with a twinkling in his eye my must always have been distasteful to such a man there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken any way you please is bad and them in forsaken and no decent soul would think of visiting you cannot stop the tide but now and then you may arrest some rash adventurer h m will hardly thank you for your pains we are a high caste and enlightened race and in ant is very shocking and the are sometimes peculiar but nevertheless the notion which is the continental notion which is the notion of arranging marriages of the personal inclinations of the married is sound think for a minute and you will see that it must be so unless of course you believe in in which case you had better not read this tale how can a man who has never married who cannot be trusted to pick up at sight a sound horse whose head is hot and upset with visions of domestic felicity go about the choosing of a wife he cannot see straight or think straight if he tries and the same exist in the case of a girl s fancies but when mature married and discreet people arrange a match between a boy and a girl they do it sensibly with a view to the future and the young couple live happily ever afterwards as everybody knows properly speaking government should establish a matrimonial department with a jury of a judge of the chief court a senior and an awful warning in the shape of a love match that has gone wrong | 39 |
chained to the trees in the all marriages should be made through the department which might be subordinate to the department under the same penalty as that to the transfer of land without a stamped document but government won t take suggestions it that it is too busy however i will put my notion on record and explain the x x k the theory i tales from the hills once upon a time there was a good young man first class officer in his own department i man with a career before him and possibly a k c g e at the end of it all his spoke well of him because he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times there are to day only eleven men in india who possess this secret and they have all with one exception attained great honor and enormous this good young man was quiet and self contained too old for his years by far which always carries its own punishment had a or a tea s assistant or anybody who life and has no care for to morrow done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared but when the virtuous economical quiet hard working young fell there was a flutter through five the manner f his fall was in this way he met a miss d it was originally but the family dropped the d for reasons and he fell in love with her even more that he worked understand clearly that there was not a breath of a word to be said against miss not a shadow of a breath she was good and very lovely possessed what innocent people at home call a spanish complexion with thick blue black hair growing low down on he forehead into a widow s peak and big violet eyes under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a extraordinary a big man dies but but but well she was a very sweet girl and very pious but for many reasons she was impossible quite so all good know what impossible means it was obviously absurd that should marry her the little at the base of her finger nails said this as plainly as print further marriage with miss meant marriage with several other lieutenant her papa mrs her mamma and all the of the family on from rs to rs a month and their wives and connections again it would have been cheaper for to have a with a dog whip or to have burned the records of a s office than to have contracted an alliance with the it would have his after career less even under a government which never forgets and never everybody saw this but he was going to marry miss he was being of age and drawing a good income and woe the house that would not afterwards receive mrs with the deference due to her husband s rank that was s and any remonstrance drove him frantic these sudden most the men there was a case once but i will tell you of that later on you cannot account for the except under a theory directly the one about the place wherein marriages arc made was t ao i plain tales from the hills put a round his neck at the outset of his career and argument had not the least effect on him he was going to marry miss and the business was his own business he would thank you to keep your advice to yourself with a man in this condition mere words only fix him in his purpose of course he cannot see that marriage out here does not concern the individual but the government he serves do you remember mrs the most wonderful woman in india she saved from mrs won his appointment in the foreign office and was defeated in open field by mrs she heard of the lamentable condition of and her brain struck out the plan that saved him she had the wisdom of the serpent the logical of the man the of the child and the triple of the woman never no never as long as a down the dip or the couples go a riding at the back of summer hill will there be such a genius as mrs she attended the consultation of three men on s case and she stood up with the lash of her riding whip between her lips and three weeks later dined with the three men and the of india came in found to his surprise that he had been a month s leave don t ask me how this was managed i believe firmly that if mrs gave the order the whole great indian administration would stand on its head the three men had also a month s leave each put the down and said bad words then there came from the compound the soft of thieves the breed that don t and howl when they sit down and get up after that i don t know what happened this much is certain disappeared vanished like smoke and the long foot rest chair in the house of the three men was broken to also a departed from one of the mrs said that mr was shooting in with the three men so we were compelled to believe her at the end of the month was twenty days extension of leave but there was wrath and in the house of the marriage day had been fixed but the bridegroom never came and the d and lifted their voices and lieutenant as one who had been imposed upon mrs went to the wedding and was much astonished when did not appear after seven weeks and the three men returned from was in hard | 39 |
tough condition rather white and more self contained than ever one of the three men had a cut on his nose cause by the kick of a gun twelve kick rather curiously then came lieutenant seeking for the blood of his oi a no tales from the hills to be he said things vulgar and impossible things which showed the raw rough below the and i fancy s eyes were opened anyhow he held his peace till the end when he spoke briefly lieutenant asked for a before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise miss was a very good girl she said that she would have no breach of promise suits she said that if she was not a lady she was refined enough to know that ladies kept their broken hearts to themselves and as she ruled her parents nothing happened later on she married a most respectable and gentlemanly person he travelled for an firm in and was all that a good husband should be so came to his right mind again and did much good work and was honored by all who knew him one of these days he will marry but he will marry a sweet pink and white maiden on the government house list with a little money and some influential connections as every wise man should and he will never all his life tell her what happened during the seven weeks of his shooting tour in but just think how much trouble and expense for hire is not cheap and those brutes had to be fed like might have been saved by a properly conducted matrimonial department under the control of the general of education but corresponding direct with the the arrest of m the arrest of lieutenant i ve forgotten the e oh you ave ave you i but i m the colonel e oh you are are you i colonel nor no colonel you waits ere till i m relieved an the reports on your ugly old i an s help me soul twas the colonel after all but i was a then the of private if there was one thing on which himself more than another it was looking like an officer and a gentleman he said it was for the honor of the service that he attired himself so but those who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity there was no harm about not an he recognized a horse when he saw one and could do more than fill a he played a very fair game at and was a sound man at the table liked him and nobody ever dreamed of seeing him on a station platform as a but this sad thing happened he was going down from at the end of his leave riding down he had cut his leave as fine as he dared and wanted to come down in a hurry it was fairly warm at and knowing what to expect below he descended in a new suit tight of a delicate a blue tie white collar a tales from tee snowy white he himself on looking neat even when he was riding post he did look neat and he was so deeply concerned about his appearance before he started that he quite forgot to take anything but some small change with him he left all his notes at the hotel his servants had gone down the road before him to be ready in waiting at with a change of gear that was what he called travelling in light marching order he was proud of his faculty of organization what we call twenty two miles out of it began to rain not a mere hill shower but a good on wishing that he had brought an umbrella the dust on the roads turned into mud and the pony a good deal so did s but he kept on steadily and tried to think how pleasant the was his next pony was rather a brute at starting and s hands being slippery with the rain contrived to get rid of at a corner he chased the animal caught it and went ahead briskly the had not improved his clothes or his temper and he had lost one spur he kept the other one employed by the time that stage was ended the pony had had as much exercise as he wanted and in spite of the rain was freely at the end of another miserable half hour found the world disappear before his eyes in the rain had turned the of his huge and snowy into an evil smelling the t of n and it had closed on his head like a half opened also the green was beginning to run did not say anything worth here he tore off and squeezed up as much of the brim as was in his eyes and on the back of the was flapping on his neck and the sides stuck to his ears but the leather band and green kept things roughly together so that the hat did not actually melt away where it presently the and the green stuff made a sort of which ran over in several down his back and bosom for choice the color ran too it was really bad and sections of were brown and patches were violet and were and streaks were ruddy red and were nearly white according to the nature and peculiarities of the when he took out his handkerchief to wipe his face and the green of the hat and the purple stuff that had soaked through on to his neck from the tie became thoroughly mixed the effect was amazing near the rain stopped and the evening sun came out and dried him up slightly it fixed the colors too three miles from the last pony | 39 |
fell dead lame and was forced to walk he pushed on into to find his servants he did not know then that his had stopped by the roadside to get drunk and would come on the next day saying that he had his ankle xi tales from the hills he got into he couldn t find his servants his boots were stiff and with mud and there were large quantities of dirt about his body the blue tie had run as much as the so he took it off with the collar and threw it away then he said something about servants generally and tried to get a p he paid eight for the drink and this revealed to him that he had only six more in his or in the world as he stood at that hour he went to the station master to for a first class ticket to where he was stationed the clerk said something to the station master the station master said something to the telegraph clerk and the three looked at him with curiosity they asked him to wait for half an hour while they to for authority so he waited and four came and themselves round him just as he was preparing to ask them to go away the station master said that he would give the a ticket to if the would kindly come inside the office stepped inside and the next thing he knew was that a was attached to each of his legs and arms while the station master was trying to a over his head there was a very fair all round the office and received a nasty cut over his eye through falling against a table but the were too much for him and they and the station master him securely as soon as the mail bag was slipped he tee arrest of began expressing his opinions and the head said without doubt this is the soldier englishman we required listen to the abuse then asked the station master what the this and the that the proceedings meant the station master told him he was private john of the regiment ft in fair hair gray eyes and a dissipated appearance no marks on the body who had deserted a fortnight ago began explaining at great length and the more he explained the less the station master believed him he said that no lieutenant could look such a as did and that his instructions were to send his capture proper escort to was feeling very damp and uncomfortable and the language he used was not fit for publication even in an form the four saw him safe to in an and he spent the four hour journey in them as as his knowledge of the allowed at he was out on the platform into the arms of a and two men of the regiment drew himself up and tried to carry off matters he did not feel too in with four behind him and the blood from the cut on his forehead on his left cheek the was not either got as far as this is a very absurd mistake my men when the told him to his up and come along did not want to come along he desired to t x tales from the hill he explained very well indeed until the cut in with you a officer it s the like o you as brings disgrace on the likes of us fine you are i know your regiment the rogue s march is the where you come from you re a black shame to the vice kept his temper and began explaining all over again from the beginning then he was marched out of the rain into the refreshment room and told not to make a fool of himself the men were going to run him up to fort and running up is a performance almost as as the march was nearly hysterical with rage and the chill and the mistake and the and the headache that the cut on his forehead had given him he really laid himself out to express what was in his mind when he had quite finished and his throat was feeling dry one of the men said i ve card a few beggars in the click blind stiff and crack on a bit but never any one to touch this ere they were not angry with him they rather admired him they had some beer at the and offered some too because he had swore won tliey asked him to tell them all about the adventures of private john while he was loose on the and that made than ever if he had kept his wits about him he would have quiet until an officer came but he attempted to run tales from the hills ny now the butt of a in the small of your hurts a g eat deal and rotten rain soaked tears easily when two men are at your collar rose from the floor feeling very sick and giddy with his shirt open all down his breast and nearly all down his back he yielded to his luck and at that point the from came in carrying one of s this is the major s evidence in full there was the sound of a in the second class refreshment room so i went in and saw the most that i ever set eyes on his boots and breeches were with mud and beer he wore a muddy white sort of thing on his head and it hung down in slips on his shoulders which were a good deal scratched he was half in and half out of a shirt as nearly in two pieces as it could be and he was begging the guard to look at the name on the tail of it as he had the shirt all | 39 |
over his head i couldn t at first see who he was but i fancied that he was a man in the first stage of d t from the way he swore while he with his rags when he turned round and i had made allowance for a lump as big as a pork pie over one eye and some green war paint on the face and some violet round the neck i saw that it was he was very glad to see me said the major and he hoped i would not tell the mess about it didn t but you can if you like now that has gone home il i f tales from the hills spent the greater part of that sum in trying to get the and the two soldiers tried by court martial for an officer and a gentleman they were of course very sorry for their error but the tale into the and thence ran about the province i the house of a stone s throw out on either hand from that well ordered road we tread and all the world is wild and strange and and and shall bear us company to night for we have reached the oldest land wherein the powers of darkness range from the dusk to the dawn the house of near the gate is two with four carved windows of old brown wood and a flat roof you may recognize it by five red hand prints arranged like the five of diamonds on the between the upper windows an the and a man who says he gets his living by seal cutting live in the lower story with a troop of wives servants friends and the two upper rooms used to be occupied by and and a little black and tan that was stolen from an englishman s house and given to by a soldier to day only lives in the in the house of j upper rooms sleeps on the roof except when he sleeps in the street he used to go to in the cold weather to visit his son who near the gate and then he slept under a real mud roof is a great friend of mine because his cousin had a son who secured thanks to my recommendation the post of head messenger to a big firm in the station says that god will make me a lieutenant governor one of these days i his prophecy will come true he is very very old with white hair and no teeth worth showing and he has his wits nearly everything except his fondness for his son at and are ladies of the city and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable profession but has since married a medical student from the north west and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near an is an and an he is very rich the man who is supposed to get his living by seal cutting to be very poor this lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in the house of then there is me of course but i am only the chorus that comes in at the end to explain things so i do not count was not clever the man who pretended to cut was the of them all only knew how to lie except she was also beautiful but that was her own affair x plain tales from the hills s son at was attacked by and old was troubled the seal man heard of s anxiety and made capital out of it he was abreast of the times he got a friend in to telegraph daily accounts of the son s health and here the story begins s cousin s son told me one evening that wanted to see me that he was too old and feeble to come personally and that i should be an everlasting honor on the house of if i went to him i went but i think seeing how well off was then that he might have sent something better than an which fearfully to haul out a future lieutenant governor to the city on a april evening the did not run quickly it was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of s tomb near the main gate of the fort here was and he said that by reason of my condescension it was absolutely certain that i should become a lieutenant governor while my hair was yet black then we talked about the weather and the state of my health and the wheat crops for fifteen minutes in the under the stars came to the point at last he said that had told him that there was an order of the against magic because it was feared that magic might one day kill the of india i didn t know anything about the state of the law but i fancied that something interest g was going to happen i said that so far from in the house of i x magic being discouraged by the government it was highly commended the greatest officials of the state it themselves if the financial statement isn t magic i don t know what is then to encourage him further i said that if there was any i had not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction and to seeing that it was clean white magic as distinguished from the which folk it took a long time before admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for then he told me in and that the man who said he cut was a of the kind that every day he gave news of the sick son in more quickly than the lightning could fly and that this news was always by the letters further that he had | 39 |
told how a great danger was threatening his son which could be removed by clean and of course heavy payment i began to see how the land lay ana told that also understood a little in the western line and would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in order we set off together and on the way told me he had paid the seal between one hundred and two hundred already and the of that night would cost two hundred more which was cheap he said considering the greatness of his son s danger but i do not think he meant it the lights were all in the front of the house when we arrived i could hear awful noises from behind the seal q v x tales from the hills as if some one were groaning his soul out shook all over and while we our way upstairs told me that the had begun and met us at the stair head and told us that the v was coming off in their rooms because there was more space there is a lady of a turn of mind she whispered that the was an invention to get money out of and that the would go to a hot place when he died was nearly crying with fear and old age he kept walking up and down the room in the half light repeating his son s name over and over again and asking if the seal ought not to make a in the case of his own landlord pulled me over to the shadow in the recess of the carved bow windows the boards were up and the rooms were only lit by one tiny lamp there was no chance of my being seen if i stayed still presently the groans below ceased and we heard steps on the staircase that was the he stopped outside the door as the and at the chain and he told to blow out the lamp this left the place in jet darkness except for the red glow from the two that belonged to and the seal came in and i heard throw himself down on the floor and groan caught her breath and backed to one of the beds with a shudder there was a of something and then shot a pale blue green flame near the ground the was just enough to show pressed in the house of against one corner of the room with the between her knees with her hands clasped leaning forward as she sat on the bed face down quivering and the i hope i may never see another man like that seal he was stripped to the waist with a wreath of white as thick as my wrist round his forehead a salmon colored cloth round his middle and a steel on each ankle this was not awe inspiring it was the face of the man that turned me cold it was blue g ay in the first place in the second the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the of them and in the third the face was the face of a demon a anything you please except of the sleek old who sat in the day time over his turning downstairs he was lying on his stomach with his arms turned and crossed behind him as if he had been thrown down his head and neck were the only parts of him off the floor they were nearly at right angles to the body like the head of a at spring it was ghastly in the centre of the room on the bare earth floor stood a big deep brass basin with a pale blue green light floating in the centre like a night light round that basin the man on the floor himself three times how he did it i do not know i could see the muscles ripple along his and fall smooth again but i could not see any other motion the head seemed the only thing alive about him except that slow curl and ot the laboring back tales from the hills was breathing seventy to the minute held her hands before her eyes and old at the dirt that had got into his white beard was crying to himself the horror of it was that the creeping thing made no sound only crawled and remember this lasted for ten minutes while the and shuddered and gasped and cried i felt the hair lift at the back of my head and my heart like a luckily the seal betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again after he had finished that unspeakable triple crawl he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils now i knew how fire is done i can do it so i felt at ease the business was a fraud if he had only kept to that crawl without trying to raise the effect goodness knows what i might not have thought both the girls shrieked at the jet of fire and the head dropped chin down on the floor with a the whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms there was a pause of five full minutes after this and the blue green flame died down stooped to settle one of her while turned her face to the wall and took the in her arms put out an arm mechanically to s and she slid it across the floor with her foot directly above the body and on the wall were a couple of portraits in stamped paper frames of the queen and the prince oi wales they in the house of looked down on the performance and to my thinking seemed to the g of it all just when the | 39 |
the next man which after all is entirely his own concern that one is not surprised when a crash comes anything might turn up any day for any one perhaps the senior had been in his youth men are crippled that way occasionally we didn t know we wanted to hear and the captains wives were as anxious as we if he had been he was to be excused for the woman from nowhere in the dusty shoes and gray travelling dress was very lovely with black hair and great eyes full of tears she was tall with a fine figure and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear as soon as the senior stood up she threw her arms round his wedded wife i his neck and called him my darling and said she could not bear waiting alone in england and his letters were so short and cold and she was his to the end of the world and would he forgive her this did not sound quite like a lady s way of speaking it was too things seemed black indeed and the captains wives peered under their eyebrows at the senior and the colonel s face set like the day of judgment framed in gray and no one spoke for a while next the colonel said very shortly well sir and the woman sobbed afresh the senior was half choked with the arms round his neck but he gasped out it s a d d lie i never had a wife in my life don t swear said the colonel come into the mess we must this clear somehow and he sighed to himself for he believed in his did the colonel we into the room under the full lights and there we saw how beautiful the woman was she stood up in the middle of us all sometimes choking with crying then hard and proud and then holding out her arms to the senior it was like the fourth act of a tragedy she told us how the senior had married her when he was home on leave eighteen months before and she seemed to know all that we knew and more too of his people and his past life he was white and gray trying now and again to break into the torrent of her words and we noting how lovely she was and what a criminal he looked of the worst kind we le t lot y plain tales from tee hills i shall never forget the of the senior by his wife nor will he it was so sudden rushing out of the dark into our dull lives the captains wives stood back but their eyes were alight and you could see that they had already convicted and the senior the colonel seemed five years older one major was his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath it another was his moustache and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play full in the open space in the centre by the tables the senior s was hunting for i remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand i remember the look of horror on the senior s face it was rather like seeing a man hanged but much more interesting finally the woman wound up by saying that the senior carried a double f m in on his left shoulder we all knew that and to our innocent minds it seemed to the matter but one of the bachelor said very politely i presume that your marriage would be more to the purpose that roused the woman she stood up and sneered at the senior for a cur and abused the major and the colonel and all the rest then she wept and then she pulled a paper from her breast saying take that and let my husband my wedded husband read it aloud if he dare there was a hush and the men looked into each other s eyes as the senior came his wedded wife forward in a dazed and dizzy way and took the paper we were wondering as we stared whether there was anything against any one of us that might turn up later on the senior s throat was dry but as he ran his eye over the paper he broke out into a hoarse of relief and said to the woman you young but the woman had fled through a door and on the paper was written this is to that i the worm have paid in full my debts to the senior and further that the senior is my by agreement on the d of february as by the mess to the extent of one month s captain s pay in the lawful of the india empire then a set off for the worm s quarters and found him and between his stays with the hat wig dress etc on the bed he came over as he was and the shouted till the mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun i think we were all except the colonel and the senior a little disappointed that the scandal had come to nothing but that is human nature there could be no two words about the worm s acting it leaned as near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can when most of the sat upon him with sofa cushions to find out why he had not said that acting was his strong point he answered very quietly i don t think you ever asked me i used to act at home with my sisters but no acting with r c w i j tales from the hills the worm s display that night personally i think it was in | 39 |
bad taste besides being dangerous there is no sort of use in playing with fire even for fun the made him president of the dramatic club and when the senior paid up his debt which he did at once the worm sank the money in scenery and dresses he was a good worm and the are proud of him the only is that he has been mrs senior and as there are now two mrs senior in the station this is sometimes to strangers later on i will tell you of a case something like this but with all the jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble the broken link while the holds or the long neck while the big beam or the last bell rings while horses are horses to train and to race then women and wine take a second place for me for me while a short ten three has a field to or fence to face song of the g r there are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than pulling his head off in the the broken link j j straight some men forget this understand clearly that all racing is rotten as everything connected with losing money must be out here in addition to its inherent it has the merit of being two thirds sham looking pretty on paper only every one knows every one else far too well for business purposes how op earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his when you are fond of his wife and live in the same station with him he says on the monday following i can t settle just yet you say all right old man and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of a two thousand debt any way you look at it indian racing is and which is much worse if a man wants your money he ought to ask for it or send round a list instead of about the country with an n a with as much breed as the boy a brace of in gold caps three or four with and a of a mare called because she has a in her flag racing leads to the quicker than anything else but if you have no conscience and no sentiments and good hands and some knowledge of pace and ten years experience of horses and several thousand a month i believe that you can occasionally contrive to pay your bills did you ever know b w g coarse loose mule like ears barrel as long as a gate post tough as a telegraph wire and the brute that x s t plain tales from the hills a bridle he was of no brand being one of an ear mob taken into the at los a head to make up freight and sold raw and out of condition at for rs people who lost money on him called him a but if ever any horse had s shoulders and the gin s temper was that horse two miles was his own particular distance he trained himself ran himself and rode himself and if his insulted him by giving him hints he shut up at once and the boy off he objected two or three of did not understand this and lost money in consequence at last he was bought by a man who discovered that if a race was to be won and only would win it in his own way so long as his sat still this man had a riding boy called a lad from west and he taught with a s whip the hardest thing a can learn to sit still to sit still and to keep on sitting still when fairly grasped this truth the country no weight could stop him at his own distance and the fame of spread from in the south to in the north there was no horse like so long as he was allowed to do his work in his own way but he was beaten in the end and the story of his fall is enough to make angels weep at the lower end of the just before the turn into the straight the track passes close to a couple of old brick a shaped hollow th k thb broken link big end of the is not six feet from the on the off side the peculiarity of the course is that if you stand at one particular place about half a mile away inside the course and speak at an ordinary pitch your voice just the of the brick and makes a curious echo there a man discovered this one morning by accident while out training with a friend he marked the place to stand and speak from with a couple of bricks and he kept his knowledge to himself every peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the elephant litter and build to suit their own this man ran a very country bred a long high mare with the temper of a and the paces of an airy wandering a stretch the mare was as a delicate tribute to mrs called the lady or for short la was a quiet well behaved boy but his nerves had been shaken he began his career by riding jump races in where a few want and was one of the who came through the awful perhaps you will recollect it of the plate the walls were logs of into with wings as strong as church once in his stride a horse had to jump or fall he couldn t run out in the plate twelve horses were at the second wall red hat leading fell x i tales | 39 |
from the hill was sitting still perfectly happy listening tc the drum drum drum of the hoofs behind and knowing that in about twenty strides would draw one deep breath and go up the last half mile like the flying as went short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick mound heard above the noise of the wind in his ears a wailing voice on the saying god ha mercy fm done for in one stride saw the whole of the plate before him started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror the start brought the heels into side and the scream hurt feelings he couldn t stop dead but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty yards and then very gravely and off a shaking terror stricken lump while made a neck and neck race with up the straight and won by a short head a bad third owner in the stand tried to think that his field glasses had gone wrong s owner waiting by the two bricks gave one deep sigh of relief and back to the stand he had won in and about fifteen thousand it was a broken link with a vengeance it broke nearly all the men concerned and nearly broke the heart of owner he went down to interview the boy lay livid and gasping with fright where he had tumbled off the sin of losing the race never seemed to strike him all he knew was that had him that the call was a warning and beyond the pale i were he cut in two for it he would never get up again his nerve had gone altogether and he only asked his master to give him a good and let him go he was fit for nothing he said he got his dismissal and crept up to the white as chalk with blue his knees giving way under him people said nasty things in the but never he changed into took his stick and went down the road still shaking with fright and muttering over and over again god ha mercy i m done for to the best of my knowledge and belief he spoke the truth so now you know how the broken link was run and won of course you don t believe it you would credit anything about russia s designs on india or the of the commission but a little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand beyond the pale love not caste nor sleep a broken bed i went in search of love and lost myself proverb a man should whatever happens keep to his own caste race and breed let the white go to the white and the black to the black then whatever trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things neither sudden alien t ot u t tales from tee bills this is the story of a man who stepped beyond the safe limits of decent every day society and paid for it heavily he knew too much in the first instance and he saw too much in the second he took too deep an interest in native life but he will never do so again deep away in the heart of the city behind s lies s which ends in a dead wall pierced by one window at the head of the is a big and the walls on either side of the are without windows neither nor approved of their women folk looking into the world if had been of their opinion he would have been a happier man to day and little would have been able to her own bread her room looked out through the window into the narrow dark where the sun never came and where the in the blue she was a about fifteen years old and she prayed the gods day and night to send her a lover for she did not approve of living alone one day the man his name was came into s on an wandering and after he had passed the stumbled over a big heap of cattle food then he saw that the ended in a trap and heard a little laugh from behind the window it was a pretty little laugh and knowing that for all practical purposes the old nights are good guides went to the window and whispered that verse o the love song of be ns beyond the pale can a man stand upright in the face of the naked sun or a lover in the presence of his beloved if my feet fail me o heart of my heart am i to blame being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty there came the faint of a woman s from behind the grating and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse alas alas can the moon tell the of her love when the gate of heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains they have taken my beloved and driven her the pack horses to the north there are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart call to the to make ready the voice stopped suddenly and walked out of s wondering who in the world could have the love song of so neatly next morning as he was driving to the office an old woman threw a packet into his dog cart in the packet was the half of a broken glass one flower of the blood red a pinch of or cattle food and eleven that packet was a letter not a clumsy letter but an innocent unintelligible lover s knew far too much about these things as i have said no englishman should be able to object letters but spread all the trifles on the lid of his office box and began | 39 |
to puzzle them out a broken glass stands for a widow all india over because z plain tales from the bills band dies a woman s are broken on her wrists saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass the flower of the means desire come write or danger according to the other things with it one means jealousy but when any article is in an object letter it loses its meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time or if incense or be sent also place the message ran then a widow flower and at eleven o clock the pinch of enlightened he saw this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge that the referred to the big heap of cattle food over which he had fallen in s and that the message must come from the person behind the grating she being a widow so the ran then a widow in the in which is the heap of desires you to come at eleven o clock threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed he knew that men in the east do not make love under windows at eleven in the nor do women fix a week in advance so he went that very night at eleven into s clad in a which a man as well as a woman directly the in the city made the hour the little voice behind the grating took up the love song of at the verse where the girl calls upon to return the song is really pretty in the in sa you miss the wail of it it runs something are this ok d the pale alone upon the to the north i turn and watch the lightning in the the of thy footsteps in the north come hack to me beloved or i die below my feet the still is laid far far below the weary lie the and the of thy come hack to me beloved or i die my father s wife is old and harsh with years and of all my father s house am i my bread is sorrow and my drink is tears come hack to me beloved or i die as the song stopped stepped up under the grating and whispered i am here was good to look upon that night was the beginning of many strange things and of a double life so wild that to day sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream or her old who had thrown the object letter had detached the heavy grating from the brick work of the wall so that the window slid inside leaving only a square of raw into which an active man might climb in the day time drove through his routine of office work or put on his and called on the ladies of the station wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little at night when all the city was still came the walk under the evil smelling the through s the quick turn into s between the sleeping cattle and the dead walls and then last of all i ti i tales from the hills even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that allotted to his sister s daughter who or what was never inquired and why in the world he was not discovered and never occurred to him till his madness was over and but this comes later was an endless delight to she was as ignorant as a bird and her distorted of the from the outside world that had reached her in her room amused almost as much as her attempts to pronounce his name the first syllable was always more than she could manage and she made funny little gestures with her hands as one throwing the name away and then kneeling before asked him exactly as an would do if he were sure he loved her swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world which was true after a month of this folly the of his other life compelled to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance you may take it for a fact that anything if this kind is not only noticed and discussed by a man s own race but by some hundred and fifty natives as well had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the band stand and once or twice to drive with her never for an instant dreaming that this would affect his dearer out of the way life but the news flew in the usual mysterious fashion from mouth to mouth till s du beyond the pale i g heard of it and told the child waa so troubled that she did the household work and was beaten by s wife in consequence a week later with the she understood no and spoke openly laughed and stamped her little feet little feet light as flowers that could lie in the palm of a man s one hand much that is written about passion and is exaggerated and at second hand but a little of it is true and when an englishman finds that little it is quite as startling as any passion in his own proper life raged and and finally to kill herself if did not at once drop the alien who had come between them tried to explain and to show her that she did not understand these things from a western drew herself up and said simply i do not i know only this it is not good that i should liave made you dearer than my own heart to me you are an englishman i am only a black girl she was fairer than in the | 39 |
and the widow of a black man then she sobbed and said but on my soul and my mother s soul i love you there shall no harm come to you whatever happens to me argued with the child and tried to soothe her but she seemed quite disturbed nothing would c s i o plain tales from the hills all relations between them should end he was to go away at once and he went as he dropped out at the window she kissed his forehead twice and he walked away wondering a week and then three weeks passed without a sign from thinking that the had lasted quite long enough went down to s for the time in the three weeks hoping that his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be answered he was not disappointed there was a young moon and one stream of light fell down into s and struck the grating which was drawn away as he knocked from the black dark held out her arms into the moonlight both hands had been cut off at the wrists and the were nearly healed then as bowed her head between her arms and sobbed some one in the room like a wild beast and something sharp knife sword or spear thrust at in his the stroke missed his body but cut into one of the muscles of the and he slightly from the wound for the rest of his days the grating went into its place there was no sign whatever from inside the house nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall and the blackness of s behind the next thing remembers after raging and shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls is that he found himself near the river as the dawn was breaking threw away his and home beyond the pale what the tragedy was whether had in a fit of despair told everything or the had been discovered and she tortured to tell whether knew his name and what became of does not know to this day something horrible had happened and the thought of what it must have been comes upon in the night now and again and keeps him company till the morning one special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies the front of s house it may open on ta a common to two or more houses or it may lie behind any one of the gates of s cannot tell he cannot get poor little back again he has lost her in the city where each man s house is as guarded and as as the grave and the grating that opens into s has been walled up but pays his calls regularly and is reckoned a very decent sort of man there is nothing peculiar about him except a slight caused by a riding strain in the right leg tales from tee bills in error they burnt a corpse upon the the light shone out afar it guided home the plunging boats beat from spirit of fire where er thy rise thou art light of guidance to our eyes boat song there is hope for a man who gets publicly and drunk more often that he ought to do but there is no hope for the man who drinks secretly and alone in his own house the man who is never seen to drink this is a rule so there must be an exception to prove it s case was that exception he was a civil engineer and the government very kindly put him quite by himself in an with nobody but natives to talk to and a great deal of work to do he did his work well in the four years he was utterly alone but he picked up the vice of secret and solitary drinking and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and haggard than he dead alive life had any right to make him you know the saying that a man who has been alone in the for more than a year is never quite sane all his life after people s of manner and moody ways to the solitude and said it showed how government spoilt the of its best men had built himself the of a very god reputation in the bridge dam line but he knew every n at of the week that he was taking steps to ur error that reputation with l l l and and little of and of that kind he had a sound constitution nd a great brain or else he would have broken and died like a sick in the district as better men have done before him government ordered him to after he had come out of the desert and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant that season mrs perhaps you will remember her was in the height of her power and many men lay under her yoke everything bad that could be said has already been said about mrs in another tale was heavily built and handsome very quiet and nervously anxious to please his neighbors when he wasn t sunk in a brown study he started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to without warning and when you watched him drinking his glass of water at dinner you could see the hand shake a little but all this was put down to and the quiet steady fill and again that went on in his own room when he was by himself was never known which was miraculous seeing how everything in a man s private life is public property out here was drawn not into mrs s set because they were not his sort but into the power of mrs and he fell down in front | 39 |
his speech was coarse he purchased and to pay he struck a trusting junior with a horse and won in a doubtful way then a vice and folly turned aside to do good deeds and straight to cloak them lied the mess room if were in india now he would resent this tale being told but as he is in and won t see it the telling is safe he was the man who worked the big fraud on the and bank he was manager of an up country and a sound practical man with a large experience of native loan and v work he could m a tales from the hills life with his work and yet do well rode anything that would let him get up danced as neatly as he rode and was wanted for every sort of amusement in the station as he said himself and as many men found out rather to their surprise there were two bo th very at your service between four and ten ready for anything from a hot weather to a and between ten and four mr manager of the and branch bank you might play with him one afternoon and hear him express his opinions when a man crossed and you might call on him next morning to raise a two thousand loan on a five hundred pound policy eighty pounds paid in he would recognize you but you would have some trouble in him the of the bank it had its in and its general manager s word carried weight with the government picked their men well they had tested up to a fairly severe breaking strain they trusted him just as much as ever trust you must see for yourself whether their trust was s branch was in a big station and worked with the usual staff one manager one both english a and a of native clerks besides the police at nights outside the bulk of its work for it was in a district was and of all kinds a loo s of a bank fraud this sort of business and a clever man who does not go about among his and know more a little of their affairs is worse than a fool was young clean shaved with a twinkle in his eye and a head nothing short of a of the could make any impression on one day at a big dinner he announced casually that the had shifted on to him a natural curiosity from england in the line he was perfectly correct mr was a most curious animal a long full ol the savage self conceit that blossoms only in the best county in england was a mild word for the mental attitude of mr s he had worked himself up after seven years to a s position in a bank and all his experience lay among the of the north perhaps he would have done on the side where they are happy with per cent profits and money is c heap he was useless for upper india and a wheat province where a man wants a large and a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance sheet he was wonderfully narrow minded in business and being new to country had no notion that indian is distinct from home work like most clever self made men he had much simplicity in his nature and somehow or other had the ordinarily polite terms of his letter of engagement into a belief that the had chosen him on account of his special and brilliant talents ax l o plain tales from the hills great store by him this notion grew and thus adding to his natural north country conceit further he was delicate suffered from some trouble in his and was short in his temper you will admit that had reason to call his new a natural curiosity the two men failed to hit it off at all considered a wild feather headed idiot given to heaven only knew what in low places called and totally unfit for the serious and solemn of he could never get over s look of youth and damned and he couldn t understand s clean built careless men in the army who rode over to big sunday at the bank and told stories till got up and left the room was always showing how the ess ought to be conducted and had more than once to remind him that seven years limited experience between and did not a man to steer a big up country business then and referred to himself as a pillar of the bank and a cherished friend of the and tore his hair if a man s english fail him in this country he comes to a hard time indeed for native help has strict in the winter went for weeks at a time with his complaint and this threw more work on but he preferred it to the when was well one of the travelling of the bank discovered these and reported to a ba fraud j j now had been cm the bank by an m p who wanted the support of s father who again was anxious to get his son out to a warmer climate because of those lungs the m p had an interest in the bank but one of the wanted to advance a of his own and after s father had died he made the rest of the board see that an who was sick for half the year had better give place to a healthy man if had known the real story of his appointment he might have behaved better but knowing nothing his stretches of sickness with restless persistent irritation of and all the hundred ways in which conceit in a subordinate situation can find play used to call him striking and hair curling names | 39 |
he wants some sort of mental if he is to drag on said the doctor keep him interested in life if you care about his living so contrary to all the laws of business and the received a per cent rise of salary from the mental succeeded beautifully was happy and cheerful and as is often the case in consumption in mind when the body was he lingered for a full month and about the bank talking of the future hearing the bible read on sin and wondering when he would be able to move abroad but at the end of september one hot evening he rose up in his bed with a little gasp and said quickly to mr i am going to die i know it in myself my chest is all hollow inside and there s nothing to breathe with to the best of my knowledge i have done he was returning to the talk of his boyhood to lie heavy on my conscience god be thanked i have been preserved from the forms of sin and i counsel v ou plain tales from the hills here his voice died down and stooped over him send my salary for september to my mother done great things with the bank if i had been spared mistaken policy no fault of mine then he turned his face to the wall and died drew the sheet over its face and went out with his last mental a letter of and sympathy from the unused in his if i d been only ten minutes earlier i might have him up to through day s the world hath set its heavy yoke upon the old white bearded folk who strive to please the king god s mercy is upon the young god s wisdom in the baby tongue that fears not anything the of now mamma was a singularly charming woman and every one in knew most men had saved him from death on occasions he was beyond his s control altogether and bis life daily to find out would happen if you pulled a mountain battery mule s tail he was an utterly fearless young s pagan about six years old and the baby who broke the holy calm of the supreme council it happened this way pet kid loose and fled up the hill off the road after it until it burst into the lodge lawn then attached to ttie council were sitting at the time and the windows were open because it was warm the red in the porch told to go away but knew the red and most of the members of council personally moreover he had firm hold of the kid s collar and was being dragged all across the flower beds give my to the long and ask him to help me take back gasped the council heard the noise through the open windows and after an interval was seen the shocking spectacle of a legal member and a lieutenant governor helping under the direct of a commander in chief and a one small and very dirty boy in a sailor s suit and a of brown hair to a lively and rebellious kid they headed it off down the path to the and went home in triumph and told his mamma that all the had been helping him to catch his mamma for interfering with the administration of the empire but met the legal member the next day and told him in confidence that if the legal member ever wanted to catch a goat he would give him all the help in his power thank you said the legal member l tale from the hills was the idol of some eighty and half as many he them all as o brother it never entered his that any living being could his orders and he was the the servants and his mamma s the working of that household turned on who was adored by every one from the to the dog boy even the from displeasure for fear his co mates should look down on him so had honor in the land from to and ruled justly according to his lights of course he spoke but he had also many queer like the of the women and held grave converse with and alike he was for his age and his mixing with natives had taught him some of the more bitter truths of life the meanness and the of it he used over his bread and milk to deliver solemn and serious translated from the into the english that made his mamma jump and vow that must go home next hot weather just when was in the bloom of his power the supreme were out a bill for the sub tracts a of the then act smaller than the land bill but affecting a few hundred thousand people none the less the legal member had bulk and and embroidered and that bill till it looked beautiful on paper then the council began do settle they the s i g minor details as if any englishman for natives knows enough to know which are the minor and which are the major points from the native point of view of any measure that bill was a triumph of safe guarding the interests of the tenant one provided that land should not be on longer terms than five years at a stretch because if the landlord had a tenant bound down for say twenty years he would squeeze the very life out of him the notion was to keep up a stream of independent in the sub tracts and and the nation was correct the only was that it was altogether wrong a native s life in india the life of his son wherefore you cannot for one generation at a time you must consider the next from the native | 39 |
point of view curiously enough the native now and then and in northern india more particularly hates being over protected against himself there was a village once where they lived on dead and buried but that is another story for many reasons to be explained later the people concerned objected to the bill the native member in council knew as much about as he knew about cross he had said in that the bill was entirely in accord with the desires of that large and class the and so on and so on the legal member s knowledge of natives was limited to english speaking and his own red t v tf tale from tee hills tracts concerned no one in particular the were a good deal too driven to make representations and the measure was one which dealt with small only nevertheless the legal member prayed that it might be correct for he was a nervously conscientious man he did not know that no man can tell what natives think unless he with them with the off and not always then but he did the best he knew and the measure came up to the supreme council for the final touches while the in his morning rides and played with the monkey belonging to the and listened as a child to all the stray talk about this new of the s one day there was a dinner party at the house of mamma and the legal member came was in bed but he kept awake till he heard the bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee then he out in his little red flannel dressing gown and his night suit and took refuge by the side of his father knowing that he would not be sent back see the miseries of having a family said father giving three some water in a glass that had been used for and telling him to sit still sucked slowly knowing that he would have to go when they were finished and the pink water like a man of the world as he listened to the conversation presently the legal member talking s hop to the head of a department mentioned his bill i ts full name the sub tracts ae one native word and g up his small voice said oh i know all that has it been yet how much said the legal member mended put yo i know made nice to please the legal member left his place and moved up next to what do you know about little man lie said i m not a little man i m and i know all about it ta and a and and o h of my tell me about it in the w hen i talk to them oh they do they what do they say tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing gown and said t must the legal member waited then with infinite compassion you don t speak my talk do you no i am sorry to say i do not said the legal member very well said i must in english he spent a minute putting his ideas in order and began very slowly in his mind from to english as many indian children do you must remember that the legal member helped him on by questions when lie halted for was q si flight of rf o iy plain tales from the hills says thing is the talk of a child and was made up by but don t think you are a fool said hastily you caught my goat this is what says i am not a fool and why should the say i am a child i can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good if i am a fool the sin is upon my own head for five years i take my ground for which i have saved money and a wife i take too and a httle son is bom has one daughter now but he says he will have a son soon and he says at the end of five years by this new i must go if i do not go i must get fresh and on the papers perhaps in the middle of the harvest and to go to the law courts once is wisdom but to go twice is that is quite true explained gravely all my friends say so and says always fresh and paying money to and and every five years or else the landlord makes me go why do i want to go am i fool if i am a fool and do not know after forty years good land when i see it let me die but if the new says for fifteen years then it is good and wise my little son is a man and i am burnt and he takes the ground or another ground pa ring only once for the on the papers and his little son is bom and at the end of fifteen years is a man too but what profit is there in five years and fresh papers nothing but trouble we are not young men w ho take these lands but old s not but with a little money and for fifteen years we shall have peace nor are we children that the should treat us so here stopped short for the whole table were listening the legal member said to is that all all i can remember said but you should see s big monkey it s just like a go to bed said his father gathered up his dressing gown tail and departed the legal member brought his hand down on the table with a crash by jove said the legal member i believe the boy is right the short is the weak | 39 |
point he left early thinking over what had said now it was obviously impossible for the legal member to play with a s monkey by way of getting understanding but he did better he made inquiries always bearing in mind the fact that the real native not the university trained mule is as timid as a and little by little he some of the men whom the measure concerned most intimately to give in their views which very closely with evidence so the bill was in hat and the legal member was filled with an uneasy suspicion native members represent very little except the orders they on their but he put the thought from him as he was a most liberal man after a time the news s ted s plain tales from the hills that had got the bill in the and if mamma had not in would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit and and g and that crowded the till he went home some few degrees before the in popular estimation but for the little life of him could not understand why in the legal member s private paper box still lies the rough of the sub tracts and opposite the twenty second in blue chalk and signed by the legal member are tie words in the pride of his youth stopped in the straight when the race was his own look at him cutting it cur to the bone i ask ere the be and what did he carry and how was he ridden maybe they used him too much at the start maybe fate s weight are breaking his heart l fe s when i was telling you of the joke that the worm played off on the senior i promised a somewhat similar tale but with all the jest left out this is that tale was in his early early j neither by landlady s daughter house in the pride of his maid nor cook by a girl so nearly of bis own caste that only a woman could have said she was just the least little bit in the world below it this happened a month before he came out to india and five days after his twentieth birthday the girl was nineteen six years older than in the things of this world that is to say and for the time twice as foolish as he excepting always falling oflf a horse there is nothing more easy than marriage before the the ceremony costs less than fifty shillings and is remarkably like walking into a shop after the of residence have been put in four minutes will cover the rest of the proceedings and all then the the over the names and says grimly with his pen between his teeth now you re man and wife and the couple walk out into the street feeling as if something were horribly somewhere but that ceremony holds and can drag a man to his just as thoroughly as the long as ye both shall live curse from the altar rails with the behind and the voice that breathed o er lifting the roof off in this manner was and he considered it vastly fine for he had received an appointment in india which carried a magnificent salary from the home point of view the marriage was to be kept secret for a year then mrs was to come out and the rest of life was to be a glorious golden t that was how they t iv t iy tales from the hills son road station lamps and after one short month came and steaming out to his new life and the girl crying in a a week bed and living room in a back street oflf square near the but the country that came to was a hard land where men of twenty one were reckoned very small boys indeed and life was expensive the salary that loomed so large six miles away did not go far particularly when divided it by two and more than the fair half at i to square one hundred and thirty five out of three hundred and thirty is not much to live on but it was absurd to suppose that mrs could exist forever on the held back by from his allowance saw this and at once always remembering that rs were to be paid twelve months later for a first class passage out for a lady when you add to trifling details the natural instincts of a boy beginning a new life in a new country and longing to go about and enjoy himself and the necessity for with strange work which properly speaking should take up a boy s attention you will sec started he saw it for a breath or two but he did not guess the full of his future as the hot weather began the on him and ate into his flesh first would come letters big crossed seven sheet letters his telling him how she longed to see in the pride of his youth and what a heaven upon earth would be their property when they met then some boy of wherein lodged would pound on the door of his bare little room and tell to come and look at a pony the very thing to suit him could not afford he had to explain this could not afford living in the modest as it was he had to explain this before he moved to a single room next the office where he worked all day he kept house on a green oil cloth table cover one chair one one photograph one very strong and a seven and by contract at a month which last item was he had no for a costs fifteen a month but he slept on the roof of the office | 39 |
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