" Mellish's hair was
standing
on end with excitement, and he
stammered.
stammered.
Kipling - Poems
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Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much
telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying
only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it
was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained,
and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special
information would be worth translating. So they translated him. They
must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was
due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including
the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for
yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do
not know about things Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in,
and you will say it is impossible.
What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was:--"So, this
is the boy who 'rusked' the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir,
that is not done TWICE. " So he must have known something.
What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--"If Mrs.
Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be
Viceroy of India in twenty years. "
What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears
in his eyes, was first:--"I told you so! " and next, to herself:--"What
fools men are! "
THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.
Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.
But, once in a way, there will come a day
When the colt must be taught to feel
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
And the sting of the rowelled steel.
--Life's Handicap.
This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud of
it. Making a Tract is a Feat.
Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--least
of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's throats.
The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGoggin
was the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever--brilliantly
clever--but his cleverness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping to
the study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by a
man called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a Professor
Clifford. [You will find these books in the Library. ] They deal with
people's insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs.
There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should have
smacked him.
They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with a rarefied
religion over and above his work. It was not much of a creed. It only
proved that men had no souls, and there was no God and no hereafter, and
that you must worry along somehow for the good of Humanity.
One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful than
giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said;
but I suspect he had misread his primers.
I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, where
there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all shut in
by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higher
than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything.
But in this country, where you really see humanity--raw, brown, naked
humanity--with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the
used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away,
and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long
enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the
head of affairs.
For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant, the Commissioner
above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the Commissioner, and
the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the Secretary of State,
who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress be not responsible to
her Maker--if there is no Maker for her to be responsible to--the
entire system of Our administration must be wrong. Which is manifestly
impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They are stalled up a good
deal and get intellectually "beany. " When you take a gross, "beany"
horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't
see the horns.
But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get "beany" in India. The
climate and the work are against playing bricks with words.
If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endings
in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers on
both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came
out in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no
souls too, and to help him to eliminate 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 seniors were equally undeveloped; 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! " Aurelian used
to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to
any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the
"Blastoderm"--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 unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an
offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on
the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,
for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if
he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the
Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--all
head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in
McGoggin'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 files instead of
devastating the Club with "isms. "
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 halter; but never a colt.
McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his
year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee
cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause of
Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and fretted over
the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his ridiculous creed out
of office, till the Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoing it. No
man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without suffering. But
McGoggin was still intellectually "beany" 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-engined for your beam. " McGoggin was a little chap.
One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.
It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah 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 Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure you
it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a
Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"
"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and throw
me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments. " The Blastoderm
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 went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"
"Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser. "
The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains.
We were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and
was fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--
"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red
oak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone. "
"Blastoderm's drunk," said one man. But the Blastoderm was not drunk. He
looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with his hands
in the half light as the clouds closed overhead.
Then--with a scream:--
"What is it? --Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"
But his speech seemed to freeze 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 Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing and
champing 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
aphasia," he said. "Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash would come. "
We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to his quarters,
and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to make him sleep.
Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like all
the arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only once
before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a case.
I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this sudden
dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm 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 the speech and memory.
I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though. "
Two days later, the Blastoderm 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 Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane; but I
can't be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can I? "
"Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it," said
the Doctor.
"But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm. "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 cowed the Blastoderm. 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 mistrust. The legitimate
explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to satisfy
him. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milky
lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly afraid.
So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come across
Aurelian McGoggin 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 a glass at your head!
A GERM DESTROYER.
Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.
As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State
in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you.
This tale is a justifiable exception.
Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and
each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary,
who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks
after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.
There was a Viceroy 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 Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy
possessed no name--nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds
of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the
electro-plated figurehead 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
cherubims together," said His Excellency once, "my dear, good friend
Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers
or stealing Peter's keys. THEN I shall report him. "
But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's officiousness,
other people said unpleasant things. Maybe the Members of Council began
it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was "too much Wonder,
and too little Viceroy," in that regime. Wonder was always quoting "His
Excellency. " It was "His Excellency this," "His Excellency that," "In
the opinion of His Excellency," and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he
did not heed.
He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his "dear, good
Wonder," they might be induced to leave the "Immemorial East" in peace.
"No wise man has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail
levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not
believe in the latter. "
I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance
Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--"Lie low. "
That season, came up to Simla 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 Mellish, and he had lived for
fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He
held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a
muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake.
The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by "Mellish's Own
Invincible Fumigatory"--a heavy violet-black powder--"the result of
fifteen years' scientific investigation, Sir! "
Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially
about "conspiracies of monopolists;" they beat upon the table with
their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their
persons.
Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by the
Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital
Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had
something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and what Mellish
wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy--"Steward of our
Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir. " So Mellish went up to Simla, with
eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy
and to show him the merits of the invention.
But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance
to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee
man, so great that his daughters never "married. " They "contracted
alliances. " He himself was not paid. He "received emoluments," and his
journeys about the country were "tours of observation. " His business was
to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench
in a pond--and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old
ways and gasp:--"This is Enlightenment and progress. Isn't it fine! "
Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of
getting rid of him.
Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy. " That was one of
his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was
"one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual
comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes," and that, in all
probability, he had "suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the
public institutions in Madras. " Which proves that His Excellency, though
dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.
Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe and Mellish's was E. S. Mellish, and
they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after
the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final
"e;" that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran:
"Dear Mr. Mellish. --Can you set aside your other engagements and lunch
with us at two tomorrow? His Excellency has an hour at your disposal
then," should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept
with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered off to
Peterhoff, a big paper-bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail
pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of
it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his
"conference," that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin--no
A. -D. -C. 's, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively
that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great
Mellishe of Madras.
But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him.
Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and
talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him
to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk
"shop. "
As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning
with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years' "scientific
labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the excellence of
his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes
and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original
animal.
" Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he
stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy
knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into
the big silver ash-tray.
"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish. "Y' Excellency shall judge
for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honor. "
He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to
smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-colored
smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and
sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your
windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out
blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see,
nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.
"Nitrate of strontia," he shouted; "baryta, bone-meal, etcetera!
Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live--not a
germ, Y' Excellency! "
But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs,
while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the
Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came in, and mace-bearers came in,
and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the smoke was drifting
through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the
verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could
enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that
unspeakable powder had burned itself out.
Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C. , rushed through the rolling
clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with
laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was
shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.
"Glorious! Glorious! " sobbed his Excellency. "Not a germ, 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
Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the
scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would
presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he
felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical "Ring. ". . . . . . . . .
Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble,
and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with the powder"
went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their
remarks.
But His Excellency told the tale once too often--for Wonder. As he meant
to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the
Viceroy.
"And I really thought for a moment," wound up His Excellency, "that my
dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne! "
Every one laughed; but there was a delicate subtinkle in the Viceroy's
tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way;
and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming
"character" for use at Home among big people.
"My fault entirely," said His Excellency, in after seasons, with
a twinkling in his eye. "My inconsistency must always have been
distasteful to such a masterly man. "
KIDNAPPED.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken any way you please, is bad,
And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
No decent soul would think of visiting.
You cannot stop the tide; but now and then,
You may arrest some rash adventurer
Who--h'm--will hardly thank you for your pains.
--Vibart's Moralities.
We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant-marriage is very
shocking and the consequences are sometimes peculiar; but, nevertheless,
the Hindu notion--which is the Continental notion--which is the
aboriginal notion--of arranging marriages irrespective 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 "affinities. "
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 moderately
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 disadvantages 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,
efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief
Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a
love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the courtyard.
All marriages should be made through the Department, which might be
subordinate to the Educational Department, under the same penalty as
that attaching to the transfer of land without a stamped document. But
Government won't take suggestions. It pretends that it is too busy.
However, I will put my notion on record, and explain the example that
illustrates the theory.
Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer in
his own Department--a man with a career before him and, possibly, a K.
C. G. E. at the end of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because
he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times. There
are today only eleven men in India who possess this secret; and they
have all, with one exception, attained great honor and enormous incomes.
This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his years
by far. Which always carries its own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a
Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for
tomorrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared. But when
Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working,
young Peythroppe--fell, there was a flutter through five Departments.
The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss
Castries--d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the
d' for administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically than he worked. Understand clearly that there was not a
breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--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 her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big violet eyes
under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a Gazette
Extraordinary when 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 Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx
at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several other
Castries--Honorary Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries,
her Mamma, and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes
ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections
again.
It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a
Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a Deputy
Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance with the
Castries. It would have weighted his after-career less--even under a
Government which never forgets and NEVER forgives.
Everybody saw this but Peythroppe. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
he was--being of age and drawing a good income--and woe betide the house
that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with
the deference due to her husband's rank.
That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove him frantic.
These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men. There was a case
once--but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the
mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the
Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to
put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument
had not the least effect on him. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
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. Hauksbee--the most wonderful woman in India? She
saved Pluffles from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment in the
Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil.
She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her brain
struck out the plan that saved him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent,
the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and
the triple intuition of the Woman. Never--no, never--as long as a tonga
buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back of
Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended
the consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe's case; and she stood up
with the lash of her riding-whip between her lips and spake. . . . . . .
. . .
Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the Gazette
of India came in. Peythroppe found to his surprise that he had been
gazetted a month's leave. Don't ask me how this was managed. I believe
firmly that if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole Great Indian
Administration would stand on its head.
The Three Men had also a month's leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette
down and said bad words. Then there came from the compound the soft
"pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't
bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.
After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain.
Peythroppe disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long foot-rest
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a
bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.
Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with
the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.
At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension
of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came; and the
D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and mocked Honorary
Lieutenant Castries as one who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs.
Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe
did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three Men returned
from Rajputana. Peythroppe was in hard, 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-bores kick rather curiously.
Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his
perfidious son-in-law to be. He said things--vulgar and "impossible"
things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below the "Honorary," and I
fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his peace till the
end; when he spoke briefly. Honorary Lieutenant Castries asked for a
"peg" before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise.
Miss Castries 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 enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should
be.
So Peythroppe 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 Rajputana.
But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might have
been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial Department, under the
control of the Director General of Education, but corresponding direct
with the Viceroy.
THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY.
"'I've forgotten the countersign,' sez 'e.
'Oh! You 'ave, 'ave you? ' sez I.
'But I'm the Colonel,' sez 'e.
'Oh! You are, are you? ' sez I. 'Colonel nor no Colonel, you
waits 'ere till I'm relieved, an' the Sarjint reports on
your ugly old mug. Coop! ' sez I.
. . . . . . . . .
An' s'help me soul, 'twas the Colonel after all! But I was
a recruity then. "
The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris.
IF there was one thing on which Golightly prided 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 elaborately;
but those who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity. There
was no harm about Golightly--not an ounce.
He recognized a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a
cantle. He played a very fair game at billiards, and was a sound man at
the whist-table. Everyone liked him; and nobody ever dreamed of seeing
him handcuffed on a station platform as a deserter. But this sad thing
happened.
He was going down from Dalhousie, 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 Dalhousie, and knowing what to expect below, he
descended in a new khaki suit--tight fitting--of a delicate olive-green;
a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a snowy white solah helmet. He
prided 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 Pathankote 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 bundobust.
Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain--not a mere
hill-shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled
on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads
turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly's
khaki gaiters.
Followed a pause of eleven days; with thunders and lightnings and much
telegraphing. The appointment was not a very important one, carrying
only between Rs. 500 and Rs. 700 a month; but, as the Viceroy said, it
was the principle of diplomatic secrecy that had to be maintained,
and it was more than likely that a boy so well supplied with special
information would be worth translating. So they translated him. They
must have suspected him, though he protested that his information was
due to singular talents of his own. Now, much of this story, including
the after-history of the missing envelope, you must fill in for
yourself, because there are reasons why it cannot be written. If you do
not know about things Up Above, you won't understand how to fill it in,
and you will say it is impossible.
What the Viceroy said when Tarrion was introduced to him was:--"So, this
is the boy who 'rusked' the Government of India, is it? Recollect, Sir,
that is not done TWICE. " So he must have known something.
What Tarrion said when he saw his appointment gazetted was:--"If Mrs.
Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should be
Viceroy of India in twenty years. "
What Mrs. Hauksbee said, when Tarrion thanked her, almost with tears
in his eyes, was first:--"I told you so! " and next, to herself:--"What
fools men are! "
THE CONVERSION OF AURELIAN McGOGGIN.
Ride with an idle whip, ride with an unused heel.
But, once in a way, there will come a day
When the colt must be taught to feel
The lash that falls, and the curb that galls,
And the sting of the rowelled steel.
--Life's Handicap.
This is not a tale exactly. It is a Tract; and I am immensely proud of
it. Making a Tract is a Feat.
Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man--least
of all a junior--has a right to thrust these down other men's throats.
The Government sends out weird Civilians now and again; but McGoggin
was the queerest exported for a long time. He was clever--brilliantly
clever--but his cleverness worked the wrong way. Instead of keeping to
the study of the vernaculars, he had read some books written by a
man called Comte, I think, and a man called Spencer, and a Professor
Clifford. [You will find these books in the Library. ] They deal with
people's insides from the point of view of men who have no stomachs.
There was no order against his reading them; but his Mamma should have
smacked him.
They fermented in his head, and he came out to India with a rarefied
religion over and above his work. It was not much of a creed. It only
proved that men had no souls, and there was no God and no hereafter, and
that you must worry along somehow for the good of Humanity.
One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful than
giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what McGoggin said;
but I suspect he had misread his primers.
I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town, where
there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all shut in
by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is no one higher
than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything.
But in this country, where you really see humanity--raw, brown, naked
humanity--with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the
used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away,
and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long
enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the
head of affairs.
For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant, the Commissioner
above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the Commissioner, and
the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of the Secretary of State,
who is responsible to the Empress. If the Empress be not responsible to
her Maker--if there is no Maker for her to be responsible to--the
entire system of Our administration must be wrong. Which is manifestly
impossible. At Home men are to be excused. They are stalled up a good
deal and get intellectually "beany. " When you take a gross, "beany"
horse to exercise, he slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't
see the horns.
But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get "beany" in India. The
climate and the work are against playing bricks with words.
If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the endings
in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his grandfathers on
both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the preaching strain came
out in his mind. He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no
souls too, and to help him to eliminate 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 seniors were equally undeveloped; 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! " Aurelian used
to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to
any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the
"Blastoderm"--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 unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an
offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on
the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,
for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if
he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the
Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--all
head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in
McGoggin'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 files instead of
devastating the Club with "isms. "
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 halter; but never a colt.
McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his
year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee
cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause of
Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and fretted over
the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his ridiculous creed out
of office, till the Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoing it. No
man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without suffering. But
McGoggin was still intellectually "beany" 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-engined for your beam. " McGoggin was a little chap.
One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.
It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah 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 Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure you
it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a
Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"
"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and throw
me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments. " The Blastoderm
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 went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"
"Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser. "
The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains.
We were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and
was fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--
"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red
oak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone. "
"Blastoderm's drunk," said one man. But the Blastoderm was not drunk. He
looked at us in a dazed sort of way, and began motioning with his hands
in the half light as the clouds closed overhead.
Then--with a scream:--
"What is it? --Can't--reserve--attainable--market--obscure--"
But his speech seemed to freeze 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 Blastoderm was struck dumb. He stood pawing and
champing 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
aphasia," he said. "Take him to his room. I KNEW the smash would come. "
We carried the Blastoderm across, in the pouring rain, to his quarters,
and the Doctor gave him bromide of potassium to make him sleep.
Then the Doctor came back to us and told us that aphasia was like all
the arrears of "Punjab Head" falling in a lump; and that only once
before--in the case of a sepoy--had he met with so complete a case.
I myself have seen mild aphasia in an overworked man, but this sudden
dumbness was uncanny--though, as the Blastoderm 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 the speech and memory.
I fancy it will keep the Blastoderm quiet, though. "
Two days later, the Blastoderm 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 Blastoderm; "I'm quite sane; but I
can't be sure of my mind, it seems--my OWN memory--can I? "
"Go up into the Hills for three months, and don't think about it," said
the Doctor.
"But I can't understand it," repeated the Blastoderm. "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 cowed the Blastoderm. 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 mistrust. The legitimate
explanation, that he had been overworking himself, failed to satisfy
him. Something had wiped his lips of speech, as a mother wipes the milky
lips of her child, and he was afraid--horribly afraid.
So the Club had rest when he returned; and if ever you come across
Aurelian McGoggin 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 a glass at your head!
A GERM DESTROYER.
Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods,
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.
As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State
in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you.
This tale is a justifiable exception.
Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and
each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary,
who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks
after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.
There was a Viceroy 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 Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy
possessed no name--nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds
of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the
electro-plated figurehead 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
cherubims together," said His Excellency once, "my dear, good friend
Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel's tail-feathers
or stealing Peter's keys. THEN I shall report him. "
But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder's officiousness,
other people said unpleasant things. Maybe the Members of Council began
it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was "too much Wonder,
and too little Viceroy," in that regime. Wonder was always quoting "His
Excellency. " It was "His Excellency this," "His Excellency that," "In
the opinion of His Excellency," and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he
did not heed.
He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his "dear, good
Wonder," they might be induced to leave the "Immemorial East" in peace.
"No wise man has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail
levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not
believe in the latter. "
I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance
Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy's way of saying:--"Lie low. "
That season, came up to Simla 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 Mellish, and he had lived for
fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He
held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a
muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake.
The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by "Mellish's Own
Invincible Fumigatory"--a heavy violet-black powder--"the result of
fifteen years' scientific investigation, Sir! "
Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially
about "conspiracies of monopolists;" they beat upon the table with
their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their
persons.
Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by the
Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital
Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had
something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and what Mellish
wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy--"Steward of our
Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir. " So Mellish went up to Simla, with
eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy
and to show him the merits of the invention.
But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance
to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee
man, so great that his daughters never "married. " They "contracted
alliances. " He himself was not paid. He "received emoluments," and his
journeys about the country were "tours of observation. " His business was
to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench
in a pond--and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old
ways and gasp:--"This is Enlightenment and progress. Isn't it fine! "
Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of
getting rid of him.
Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy. " That was one of
his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was
"one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual
comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes," and that, in all
probability, he had "suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the
public institutions in Madras. " Which proves that His Excellency, though
dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.
Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe and Mellish's was E. S. Mellish, and
they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after
the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final
"e;" that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran:
"Dear Mr. Mellish. --Can you set aside your other engagements and lunch
with us at two tomorrow? His Excellency has an hour at your disposal
then," should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept
with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered off to
Peterhoff, a big paper-bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail
pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of
it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his
"conference," that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin--no
A. -D. -C. 's, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively
that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great
Mellishe of Madras.
But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him.
Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and
talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him
to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk
"shop. "
As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning
with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years' "scientific
labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the excellence of
his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes
and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original
animal.
" Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he
stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy
knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into
the big silver ash-tray.
"J-j-judge for yourself, Sir," said Mellish. "Y' Excellency shall judge
for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honor. "
He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to
smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-colored
smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and
sickening stench--a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your
windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out
blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see,
nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.
"Nitrate of strontia," he shouted; "baryta, bone-meal, etcetera!
Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live--not a
germ, Y' Excellency! "
But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs,
while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the
Head Chaprassi, who speaks English, came in, and mace-bearers came in,
and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the smoke was drifting
through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the
verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could
enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that
unspeakable powder had burned itself out.
Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V. C. , rushed through the rolling
clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with
laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was
shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.
"Glorious! Glorious! " sobbed his Excellency. "Not a germ, 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
Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the
scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would
presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he
felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical "Ring. ". . . . . . . . .
Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble,
and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with the powder"
went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their
remarks.
But His Excellency told the tale once too often--for Wonder. As he meant
to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the
Viceroy.
"And I really thought for a moment," wound up His Excellency, "that my
dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne! "
Every one laughed; but there was a delicate subtinkle in the Viceroy's
tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way;
and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming
"character" for use at Home among big people.
"My fault entirely," said His Excellency, in after seasons, with
a twinkling in his eye. "My inconsistency must always have been
distasteful to such a masterly man. "
KIDNAPPED.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken any way you please, is bad,
And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
No decent soul would think of visiting.
You cannot stop the tide; but now and then,
You may arrest some rash adventurer
Who--h'm--will hardly thank you for your pains.
--Vibart's Moralities.
We are a high-caste and enlightened race, and infant-marriage is very
shocking and the consequences are sometimes peculiar; but, nevertheless,
the Hindu notion--which is the Continental notion--which is the
aboriginal notion--of arranging marriages irrespective 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 "affinities. "
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 moderately
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 disadvantages 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,
efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief
Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a
love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the courtyard.
All marriages should be made through the Department, which might be
subordinate to the Educational Department, under the same penalty as
that attaching to the transfer of land without a stamped document. But
Government won't take suggestions. It pretends that it is too busy.
However, I will put my notion on record, and explain the example that
illustrates the theory.
Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer in
his own Department--a man with a career before him and, possibly, a K.
C. G. E. at the end of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because
he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times. There
are today only eleven men in India who possess this secret; and they
have all, with one exception, attained great honor and enormous incomes.
This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his years
by far. Which always carries its own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a
Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for
tomorrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared. But when
Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working,
young Peythroppe--fell, there was a flutter through five Departments.
The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss
Castries--d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the
d' for administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically than he worked. Understand clearly that there was not a
breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--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 her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big violet eyes
under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a Gazette
Extraordinary when 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 Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx
at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several other
Castries--Honorary Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries,
her Mamma, and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes
ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections
again.
It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a
Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a Deputy
Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance with the
Castries. It would have weighted his after-career less--even under a
Government which never forgets and NEVER forgives.
Everybody saw this but Peythroppe. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
he was--being of age and drawing a good income--and woe betide the house
that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with
the deference due to her husband's rank.
That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove him frantic.
These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men. There was a case
once--but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the
mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the
Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to
put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument
had not the least effect on him. He was going to marry Miss Castries,
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. Hauksbee--the most wonderful woman in India? She
saved Pluffles from Mrs. Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment in the
Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil.
She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her brain
struck out the plan that saved him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent,
the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and
the triple intuition of the Woman. Never--no, never--as long as a tonga
buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back of
Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended
the consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe's case; and she stood up
with the lash of her riding-whip between her lips and spake. . . . . . .
. . .
Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the Gazette
of India came in. Peythroppe found to his surprise that he had been
gazetted a month's leave. Don't ask me how this was managed. I believe
firmly that if Mrs. Hauksbee gave the order, the whole Great Indian
Administration would stand on its head.
The Three Men had also a month's leave each. Peythroppe put the Gazette
down and said bad words. Then there came from the compound the soft
"pad-pad" of camels--"thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't
bubble and howl when they sit down and get up.
After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain.
Peythroppe disappeared--vanished like smoke--and the long foot-rest
chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a
bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.
Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with
the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her.
At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension
of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
The marriage-day had been fixed, but the bridegroom never came; and the
D'Silvas, Pereiras, and Ducketts lifted their voices and mocked Honorary
Lieutenant Castries as one who had been basely imposed upon. Mrs.
Hauksbee went to the wedding, and was much astonished when Peythroppe
did not appear. After seven weeks, Peythroppe and the Three Men returned
from Rajputana. Peythroppe was in hard, 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-bores kick rather curiously.
Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his
perfidious son-in-law to be. He said things--vulgar and "impossible"
things which showed the raw rough "ranker" below the "Honorary," and I
fancy Peythroppe's eyes were opened. Anyhow, he held his peace till the
end; when he spoke briefly. Honorary Lieutenant Castries asked for a
"peg" before he went away to die or bring a suit for breach of promise.
Miss Castries 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 enterprising firm in Calcutta, and was all that a good husband should
be.
So Peythroppe 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 Rajputana.
But just think how much trouble and expense--for camel hire is not
cheap, and those Bikaneer brutes had to be fed like humans--might have
been saved by a properly conducted Matrimonial Department, under the
control of the Director General of Education, but corresponding direct
with the Viceroy.
THE ARREST OF LIEUTENANT GOLIGHTLY.
"'I've forgotten the countersign,' sez 'e.
'Oh! You 'ave, 'ave you? ' sez I.
'But I'm the Colonel,' sez 'e.
'Oh! You are, are you? ' sez I. 'Colonel nor no Colonel, you
waits 'ere till I'm relieved, an' the Sarjint reports on
your ugly old mug. Coop! ' sez I.
. . . . . . . . .
An' s'help me soul, 'twas the Colonel after all! But I was
a recruity then. "
The Unedited Autobiography of Private Ortheris.
IF there was one thing on which Golightly prided 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 elaborately;
but those who knew him best said that it was just personal vanity. There
was no harm about Golightly--not an ounce.
He recognized a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a
cantle. He played a very fair game at billiards, and was a sound man at
the whist-table. Everyone liked him; and nobody ever dreamed of seeing
him handcuffed on a station platform as a deserter. But this sad thing
happened.
He was going down from Dalhousie, 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 Dalhousie, and knowing what to expect below, he
descended in a new khaki suit--tight fitting--of a delicate olive-green;
a peacock-blue tie, white collar, and a snowy white solah helmet. He
prided 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 Pathankote 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 bundobust.
Twenty-two miles out of Dalhousie it began to rain--not a mere
hill-shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled
on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads
turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly's
khaki gaiters.
