Men are
crippled
that
way occasionally.
way occasionally.
Kipling - Poems
Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris,
Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable
profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the
North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere
near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He
is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting
pretends to be very poor.
This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants
in the house of Suddhoo. 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.
Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.
Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo
was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made
capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in
Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.
And here the story begins.
Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The ekka did not run quickly.
It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's
Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo 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 Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.
Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared
that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know
anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something
interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being
discouraged by the Government it was highly commended.
The greatest officials of the State practiced 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 jadoo afoot, I had
not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to
seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as distinguished from
the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo
admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he
told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was
a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of
the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and
that this news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he
had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could
be removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see
how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo
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
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo 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 cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if
some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while
we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and
Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was
coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is
a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was
an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would
go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo 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 Azizun if
the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own
landlord.
Janoo 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 seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier
barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out
the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow
from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal-cutter
came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan.
Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed to one of the beds with a
shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a
pale blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show
Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between
her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on
the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.
I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was
stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle,
and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was
the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first
place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only
see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of
a demon--a ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old
ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He
was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him,
as if he had been thrown down pinioned. 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 cobra 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 wriggled himself three times. How
he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine
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 uncurl of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was
breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes;
and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his white
beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that the creeping,
crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! And, remember, this lasted for
ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun shuddered, and Janoo
gasped, and Suddhoo cried.
I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a
thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter 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-spouting is done--I can do it myself--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 thud; the whole body lying then
like a corpse with its arms trussed.
There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-green
flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets, while
Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms.
Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and she slid it
across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on the wall,
were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper frames, of the
Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked down on the performance, and,
to my thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all.
Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and
rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach
up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise
a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the centre
revived.
I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling
exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to speak.
Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man,
and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's
voice.
There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort
of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a
bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes
before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me.
I looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the
hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing
to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The
whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that
one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a
piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head
was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. It
told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of
the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. I always
shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time
of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were
night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in
the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask for
twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used
when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of
masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say "Asli
nahin! Fareib! " scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so,
the light in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard
the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the
lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. Suddhoo
was wringing his hands and explaining to any one who cared to listen,
that, if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it, he could not
raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the
corner; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss
the probabilities of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up. "
I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but
her argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always demanding
gifts is no true magic," said she. "My mother told me that the
only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. This
seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything, or
get anything done, because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for
two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The
seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food.
A fool's jadoo has been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo
many rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and
mantras before. He never showed us anything like this till tonight.
Azizun is a fool, and will be a purdah nashin soon. Suddhoo has lost
his strength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many
rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he
is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the
seal-cutter! "
Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business?
Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. The whole
thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless. "
"Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofs these
seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here
to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, whose
salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the
seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his
son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have
to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below. "
Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation;
while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun
was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth. . . . . . .
. . .
Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the
charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under
false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal
Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform
the Police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses
flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this
big India of ours. I cannot again take the law into my own hands, and
speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo
disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is
bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard;
and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but
Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose
advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the
money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter,
and becomes daily more furious and sullen.
She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something
happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of
cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And thus I
shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.
HIS WEDDED WIFE.
Cry "Murder! " in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
That ask:--"Art thou the man? "
We hunted Cain,
Some centuries ago, across the world,
That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
Today.
--Vibart's Moralities.
Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or beetles,
turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan is never to
tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his
buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of sappy English
beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm that turned. For
the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The
Worm," although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair
on his face, and with a waist like a girl's when he came out to the
Second "Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways. The "Shikarris"
are a high-caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well--play
a banjo or ride more than a little, or sing, or act--to get on with
them.
The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of
gate-posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time. He
objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept
very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four
of these five things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and
set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how subalterns are, by
brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to be ferocious. It is
good and wholesome, and does no one any harm, unless tempers are lost;
and then there is trouble. There was a man once--but that is another
story.
The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore everything
without winking. He was so good and so anxious to learn, and flushed
so pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left to his own
devices by every one except the Senior Subaltern, who continued to make
life a burden to The Worm. The Senior Subaltern meant no harm; but his
chaff was coarse, and he didn't quite understand where to stop. He had
been waiting too long for his company; and that always sours a man. Also
he was in love, which made him worse.
One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who never
existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to The
Worm purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the Mess all
about it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet, ladylike
voice: "That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a month's pay to
a month's pay when you get your step, that I work a sell on you that
you'll remember for the rest of your days, and the Regiment after you
when you're dead or broke. " The Worm wasn't angry in the least, and the
rest of the Mess shouted. Then the Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm
from the boots upwards, and down again, and said, "Done, Baby. " The Worm
took the rest of the Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, and
retired into a book with a sweet smile.
Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The Worm,
who began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on. I have
said that the Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing is that
a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the Colonel said
awful things, and the Majors snorted, and married Captains looked
unutterable wisdom, and the juniors scoffed, those two were engaged.
The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company and his
acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm. The girl
was a pretty girl, and had money of her own. She does not come into this
story at all.
One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except The
Worm, who had gone to his own room to write Home letters, were sitting
on the platform outside the Mess House. The Band had finished playing,
but no one wanted to go in. And the Captains' wives were there also. The
folly of a man in love is unlimited.
The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the girl
he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring approval, while the men
yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and a tired,
faint voice lifted itself:
"Where's my husband? "
I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the
"Shikarris;" but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had
been shot. Three of them were married men. Perhaps they were afraid that
their wives had come from Home unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had
acted on the impulse of the moment. He explained this afterwards.
Then the voice cried:--"Oh, Lionel! " Lionel was the Senior Subaltern's
name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on
the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior
Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things
were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small
world of ours, one knows so little of the life of 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 Subaltern had been trapped 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 trapped, 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 Subaltern stood up, she
threw her arms round 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
demonstrative.
Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the
Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir? " and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern 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
sift this clear somehow," and he sighed to himself, for he believed in
his "Shikarris," did the Colonel.
We trooped into the ante-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 Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a
tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern 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 ashy 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, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind. We felt sorry for him,
though.
I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.
Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced,
into our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back; but their eyes were
alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced
the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel seemed five years older. One Major was
shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath
it. Another was chewing his moustache and smiling quietly as if he
were witnessing a play. Full in the open space in the centre, by the
whist-tables, the Senior Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I
remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.
I remember the look of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was
rather like seeing a man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the
woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.
M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors
said very politely:--"I presume that your marriage certificate would be
more to the purpose? "
That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern
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
imperially:--"Take that! And let my husband--my lawfully wedded
husband--read it aloud--if he dare! "
There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
Senior Subaltern came 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
Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he
broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the woman:--"You
young blackguard! "
But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
written:--"This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern
is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess
attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in the lawful
currency of the India Empire. "
Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt
and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc. ,
on the bed. He came over as he was, and the "Shikarris" shouted till the
Gunners' 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 Subaltern, 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 Subalterns 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 girls could account for The Worm's
display that night. Personally, I think it was in bad taste.
Besides being dangerous. There is no sort of use in playing with fire,
even for fun.
The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic Club; and,
when the Senior Subaltern 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 "Shikarris" are proud of him. The only drawback is that he has been
christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern;" and as there are now two Mrs. Senior
Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing 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 HANDICAPPED.
While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, 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 squander 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 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
rottenness, 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 on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his
losings, 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 rupee debt. Any way you look at
it, Indian racing is immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much
worse. If a man wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round
a subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a brace
of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with hogged
manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab because she
has a kink in her flag. Racing leads to the shroff 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 rupees a month, I believe that you can occasionally
contrive to pay your shoeing-bills.
Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g. , 15. 13. 8--coarse, loose, mule-like
ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the
queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand,
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l. -10s. a
head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if
ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners 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, Shackles, and Shackles only,
would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.
This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing
a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting
still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the
country. No weight could stop him at his own distance; and The fame of
Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South, to Chedputter in the North.
There was no horse like Shackles, 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 Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into
the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds
enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six
feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding 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 hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining
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 Stewards build jumps to
suit their own stables.
This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph--a
drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute to Mrs.
Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for short, Regula Baddun.
Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his nerves
had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne,
where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who
came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the
Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts--logs of jarrak
spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once
in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the
Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red
Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck
came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling,
screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three
were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story
of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley
on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done
for! " and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had crushed
the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell of men and
horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-races and Australia
together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that story by heart. Brunt never
varied it in the telling. He had no education.
Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and humble
the pride of his owner. " The Districts rose against Shackles and sent
up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do his mile in
1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew how
to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th; Bobolink, the pride of
Peshawar; and many others.
They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to smash
Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund gave
eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the course for all
horses. " Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the race with regard
to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths,
I don't mind. " Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I throw in my mare to fret
Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance, and she will then lie down
and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting
race. " Now, this was a lie, for Regula had been in work for two months
at Dehra, and her chances were good, always supposing that Shackles
broke a blood-vessel--OR BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.
The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand rupee
lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in the Pioneer
said that "favoritism was divided. " In plain English, the various
contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the Handicappers
had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary shouted himself hoarse
through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and
the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire.
Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner cantered out
on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks
had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds at the lower end of
the course and waited.
he story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first mile,
Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get round
the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the
others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy,
listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs behind, and knowing
that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would draw one deep breath and
go up the last half-mile like the "Flying Dutchman. " As Shackles went
short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, Brunt heard,
above the noise of the wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the
offside, saying:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for! " In one stride, Brunt
saw the whole seething smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him,
started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror. The start brought the
heels into Shackles' side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He
couldn't stop dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty
yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a
shaking, terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
race with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard
a bad third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the two
bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the stand. He
had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all the
men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.
He went down to interview Brunt. 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 Whalley had "called" him,
that the "call" was a warning; and, 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 thrashing, and let him go. He was fit for
nothing, he said. He got his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock,
white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. People
said nasty things in the paddock; but Brunt never heeded. He changed
into tweeds, 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 Handicap was run and won. Of course
you don't believe it. You would credit anything about Russia's designs
on India, or the recommendations of the Currency Commission; but a
little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand!
BEYOND THE PALE.
"Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of
love and lost myself. " Hindu 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, nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who wilfully 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 Jitha Megji's bustee, lies
Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated
window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on
either side of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor
Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. If
Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man
today, and little Bisesa would have been able to knead her own bread.
Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully
where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue
slime. She was a widow, 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--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over
a big heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and
Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that
verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:
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 tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus 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 with the pack-horses
to the North.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
Call to the bowman to make ready--
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
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 bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
them out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass.
The flower of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or
"danger," according to the other things with it. One cardamom means
"jealousy;" but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter,
it loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number
indicating time, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also,
place. The message ran then:--"A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven
o'clock.
Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable
profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the
North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere
near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He
is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting
pretends to be very poor.
This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants
in the house of Suddhoo. 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.
Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.
Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo
was troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made
capital out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in
Peshawar to telegraph daily accounts of the son's health.
And here the story begins.
Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well-off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an ekka, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The ekka did not run quickly.
It was full dark when we pulled up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's
Tomb near the main gate of the Fort. Here was Suddhoo 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 Huzuri Bagh, under the stars.
Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
there was an order of the Sirkar against magic, because it was feared
that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know
anything about the state of the law; but I fancied that something
interesting was going to happen. I said that so far from magic being
discouraged by the Government it was highly commended.
The greatest officials of the State practiced 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 jadoo afoot, I had
not the least objection to giving it my countenance and sanction, and to
seeing that it was clean jadoo--white magic, as distinguished from
the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo
admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he
told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was
a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of
the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and
that this news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he
had told Suddhoo how a great danger was threatening his son, which could
be removed by clean jadoo; and, of course, heavy payment. I began to see
how the land lay, and told Suddhoo that I also understood a little jadoo
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
Suddhoo told me he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and
two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo 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 cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if
some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while
we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and
Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was
coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is
a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was
an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would
go to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo 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 Azizun if
the seal-cutter ought not to make a reduction in the case of his own
landlord.
Janoo 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 seal-cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier
barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out
the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow
from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal-cutter
came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan.
Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed to one of the beds with a
shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a
pale blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show
Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between
her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on
the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal-cutter.
I hope I may never see another man like that seal-cutter. He was
stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my
wrist round his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle,
and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was
the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first
place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only
see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of
a demon--a ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old
ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He
was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him,
as if he had been thrown down pinioned. 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 cobra 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 wriggled himself three times. How
he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine
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 uncurl of the laboring back-muscles. Janoo from the bed was
breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes;
and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his white
beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that the creeping,
crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! And, remember, this lasted for
ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun shuddered, and Janoo
gasped, and Suddhoo cried.
I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a
thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal-cutter 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-spouting is done--I can do it myself--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 thud; the whole body lying then
like a corpse with its arms trussed.
There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the blue-green
flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets, while
Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms.
Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's huqa, and she slid it
across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on the wall,
were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper frames, of the
Queen and the Prince of Wales. They looked down on the performance, and,
to my thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all.
Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and
rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach
up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise
a fish makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the centre
revived.
I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water, the dried,
shrivelled, black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and
shaved scalp. It was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling
exhibition. We had no time to say anything before it began to speak.
Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man,
and you will realize less than one-half of the horror of that head's
voice.
There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort
of "ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice, like the timbre of a
bell. It pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes
before I got rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me.
I looked at the body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the
hollow of the throat joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing
to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The
whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that
one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a
piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head
was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. It
told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of
the state of the illness up to the evening of that very night. I always
shall respect the seal-cutter for keeping so faithfully to the time
of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to say that skilled doctors were
night and day watching over the man's life; and that he would eventually
recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the head in
the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask for
twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used
when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of
masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say "Asli
nahin! Fareib! " scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so,
the light in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard
the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the
lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-cutter were gone. Suddhoo
was wringing his hands and explaining to any one who cared to listen,
that, if his chances of eternal salvation depended on it, he could not
raise another two hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the
corner; while Janoo sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss
the probabilities of the whole thing being a bunao, or "make-up. "
I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but
her argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always demanding
gifts is no true magic," said she. "My mother told me that the
only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. This
seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything, or
get anything done, because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for
two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The
seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food.
A fool's jadoo has been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo
many rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and
mantras before. He never showed us anything like this till tonight.
Azizun is a fool, and will be a purdah nashin soon. Suddhoo has lost
his strength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many
rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he
is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the
seal-cutter! "
Here I said:--"But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business?
Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. The whole
thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless. "
"Suddhoo IS an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofs these
seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here
to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the Sirkar, whose
salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the
seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his
son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have
to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below. "
Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation;
while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun
was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth. . . . . . .
. . .
Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the
charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under
false pretences, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal
Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform
the Police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses
flatly, Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this
big India of ours. I cannot again take the law into my own hands, and
speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo
disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is
bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard;
and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but
Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose
advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the
money that she hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter,
and becomes daily more furious and sullen.
She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something
happens to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal-cutter will die of
cholera--the white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And thus I
shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.
HIS WEDDED WIFE.
Cry "Murder! " in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
That ask:--"Art thou the man? "
We hunted Cain,
Some centuries ago, across the world,
That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
Today.
--Vibart's Moralities.
Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or beetles,
turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan is never to
tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his
buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of sappy English
beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm that turned. For
the sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The
Worm," although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair
on his face, and with a waist like a girl's when he came out to the
Second "Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways. The "Shikarris"
are a high-caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well--play
a banjo or ride more than a little, or sing, or act--to get on with
them.
The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of
gate-posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time. He
objected to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept
very much to himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four
of these five things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and
set themselves to eradicate. Every one knows how subalterns are, by
brother subalterns, softened and not permitted to be ferocious. It is
good and wholesome, and does no one any harm, unless tempers are lost;
and then there is trouble. There was a man once--but that is another
story.
The "Shikarris" shikarred The Worm very much, and he bore everything
without winking. He was so good and so anxious to learn, and flushed
so pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left to his own
devices by every one except the Senior Subaltern, who continued to make
life a burden to The Worm. The Senior Subaltern meant no harm; but his
chaff was coarse, and he didn't quite understand where to stop. He had
been waiting too long for his company; and that always sours a man. Also
he was in love, which made him worse.
One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who never
existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to The
Worm purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the Mess all
about it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet, ladylike
voice: "That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a month's pay to
a month's pay when you get your step, that I work a sell on you that
you'll remember for the rest of your days, and the Regiment after you
when you're dead or broke. " The Worm wasn't angry in the least, and the
rest of the Mess shouted. Then the Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm
from the boots upwards, and down again, and said, "Done, Baby. " The Worm
took the rest of the Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, and
retired into a book with a sweet smile.
Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The Worm,
who began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on. I have
said that the Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing is that
a girl was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the Colonel said
awful things, and the Majors snorted, and married Captains looked
unutterable wisdom, and the juniors scoffed, those two were engaged.
The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company and his
acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm. The girl
was a pretty girl, and had money of her own. She does not come into this
story at all.
One night, at the beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except The
Worm, who had gone to his own room to write Home letters, were sitting
on the platform outside the Mess House. The Band had finished playing,
but no one wanted to go in. And the Captains' wives were there also. The
folly of a man in love is unlimited.
The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the girl
he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring approval, while the men
yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and a tired,
faint voice lifted itself:
"Where's my husband? "
I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the
"Shikarris;" but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had
been shot. Three of them were married men. Perhaps they were afraid that
their wives had come from Home unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had
acted on the impulse of the moment. He explained this afterwards.
Then the voice cried:--"Oh, Lionel! " Lionel was the Senior Subaltern's
name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on
the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior
Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things
were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small
world of ours, one knows so little of the life of 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 Subaltern had been trapped 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 trapped, 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 Subaltern stood up, she
threw her arms round 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
demonstrative.
Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the
Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
Next the Colonel said, very shortly:--"Well, Sir? " and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern 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
sift this clear somehow," and he sighed to himself, for he believed in
his "Shikarris," did the Colonel.
We trooped into the ante-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 Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a
tragedy. She told us how the Senior Subaltern 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 ashy 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, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind. We felt sorry for him,
though.
I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.
Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced,
into our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back; but their eyes were
alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced
the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel seemed five years older. One Major was
shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath
it. Another was chewing his moustache and smiling quietly as if he
were witnessing a play. Full in the open space in the centre, by the
whist-tables, the Senior Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I
remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.
I remember the look of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was
rather like seeing a man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the
woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.
M. in tattoo on his left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent
minds it seemed to clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors
said very politely:--"I presume that your marriage certificate would be
more to the purpose? "
That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern
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
imperially:--"Take that! And let my husband--my lawfully wedded
husband--read it aloud--if he dare! "
There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the
Senior Subaltern came 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
Subaltern's throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he
broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the woman:--"You
young blackguard! "
But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was
written:--"This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my
debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern
is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess
attested, to the extent of one month's Captain's pay, in the lawful
currency of the India Empire. "
Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt
and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc. ,
on the bed. He came over as he was, and the "Shikarris" shouted till the
Gunners' 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 Subaltern, 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 Subalterns 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 girls could account for The Worm's
display that night. Personally, I think it was in bad taste.
Besides being dangerous. There is no sort of use in playing with fire,
even for fun.
The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic Club; and,
when the Senior Subaltern 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 "Shikarris" are proud of him. The only drawback is that he has been
christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern;" and as there are now two Mrs. Senior
Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing 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 HANDICAPPED.
While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, 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 squander 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 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
rottenness, 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 on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his
losings, 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 rupee debt. Any way you look at
it, Indian racing is immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much
worse. If a man wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round
a subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a brace
of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with hogged
manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab because she
has a kink in her flag. Racing leads to the shroff 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 rupees a month, I believe that you can occasionally
contrive to pay your shoeing-bills.
Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g. , 15. 13. 8--coarse, loose, mule-like
ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the
queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand,
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l. -10s. a
head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if
ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners 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, Shackles, and Shackles only,
would win it in his own way, so long as his jockey sat still.
This man had a riding-boy called Brunt--a lad from Perth, West
Australia--and he taught Brunt, with a trainer's whip, the hardest thing
a jock can learn--to sit still, to sit still, and to keep on sitting
still. When Brunt fairly grasped this truth, Shackles devastated the
country. No weight could stop him at his own distance; and The fame of
Shackles spread from Ajmir in the South, to Chedputter in the North.
There was no horse like Shackles, 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 Chedputter racecourse, just before the turn into
the straight, the track passes close to a couple of old brick-mounds
enclosing a funnel-shaped hollow. The big end of the funnel is not six
feet from the railings on the off-side. The astounding 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 hits the funnel of the brick-mounds and makes a curious whining
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 Stewards build jumps to
suit their own stables.
This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare
with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph--a
drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute to Mrs.
Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"--or for short, Regula Baddun.
Shackles' jockey, Brunt, was a quiet, well-behaved boy, but his nerves
had been shaken. He began his career by riding jump-races in Melbourne,
where a few Stewards want lynching, and was one of the jockeys who
came through the awful butchery--perhaps you will recollect it--of the
Maribyrnong Plate. The walls were colonial ramparts--logs of jarrak
spiked into masonry--with wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once
in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the
Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red
Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck
came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling,
screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three
were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story
of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley
on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done
for! " and how, next instant, Sithee There and White Otter had crushed
the life out of poor Whalley, and the dust hid a small hell of men and
horses, no one marvelled that Brunt had dropped jump-races and Australia
together. Regula Baddun's owner knew that story by heart. Brunt never
varied it in the telling. He had no education.
Shackles came to the Chedputter Autumn races one year, and his owner
walked about insulting the sportsmen of Chedputter generally, till
they went to the Honorary Secretary in a body and said:--"Appoint
Handicappers, and arrange a race which shall break Shackles and humble
the pride of his owner. " The Districts rose against Shackles and sent
up of their best; Ousel, who was supposed to be able to do his mile in
1-53; Petard, the stud-bred, trained by a cavalry regiment who knew how
to train; Gringalet, the ewe-lamb of the 75th; Bobolink, the pride of
Peshawar; and many others.
They called that race The Broken-Link Handicap, because it was to smash
Shackles; and the Handicappers piled on the weights, and the Fund gave
eight hundred rupees, and the distance was "round the course for all
horses. " Shackles' owner said:--"You can arrange the race with regard
to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths,
I don't mind. " Regula Baddun's owner said:--"I throw in my mare to fret
Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance, and she will then lie down
and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting
race. " Now, this was a lie, for Regula had been in work for two months
at Dehra, and her chances were good, always supposing that Shackles
broke a blood-vessel--OR BRUNT MOVED ON HIM.
The plunging in the lotteries was fine. They filled eight thousand rupee
lotteries on the Broken Link Handicap, and the account in the Pioneer
said that "favoritism was divided. " In plain English, the various
contingents were wild on their respective horses; for the Handicappers
had done their work well. The Honorary Secretary shouted himself hoarse
through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and
the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire.
Ten horses started--very level--and Regula Baddun's owner cantered out
on his back to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks
had been thrown. He faced towards the brick-mounds at the lower end of
the course and waited.
he story of the running is in the Pioneer. At the end of the first mile,
Shackles crept out of the ruck, well on the outside, ready to get round
the turn, lay hold of the bit and spin up the straight before the
others knew he had got away. Brunt was sitting still, perfectly happy,
listening to the "drum, drum, drum" of the hoofs behind, and knowing
that, in about twenty strides, Shackles would draw one deep breath and
go up the last half-mile like the "Flying Dutchman. " As Shackles went
short to take the turn and came abreast of the brick-mound, Brunt heard,
above the noise of the wind in his ears, a whining, wailing voice on the
offside, saying:--"God ha' mercy, I'm done for! " In one stride, Brunt
saw the whole seething smash of the Maribyrnong Plate before him,
started in his saddle and gave a yell of terror. The start brought the
heels into Shackles' side, and the scream hurt Shackles' feelings. He
couldn't stop dead; but he put out his feet and slid along for fifty
yards, and then, very gravely and judicially, bucked off Brunt--a
shaking, terror-stricken lump, while Regula Baddun made a neck-and-neck
race with Bobolink up the straight, and won by a short head--Petard
a bad third. Shackles' owner, in the Stand, tried to think that his
field-glasses had gone wrong. Regula Baddun's owner, waiting by the two
bricks, gave one deep sigh of relief, and cantered back to the stand. He
had won, in lotteries and bets, about fifteen thousand.
It was a broken-link Handicap with a vengeance. It broke nearly all the
men concerned, and nearly broke the heart of Shackles' owner.
He went down to interview Brunt. 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 Whalley had "called" him,
that the "call" was a warning; and, 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 thrashing, and let him go. He was fit for
nothing, he said. He got his dismissal, and crept up to the paddock,
white as chalk, with blue lips, his knees giving way under him. People
said nasty things in the paddock; but Brunt never heeded. He changed
into tweeds, 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 Handicap was run and won. Of course
you don't believe it. You would credit anything about Russia's designs
on India, or the recommendations of the Currency Commission; but a
little bit of sober fact is more than you can stand!
BEYOND THE PALE.
"Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of
love and lost myself. " Hindu 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, nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who wilfully 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 Jitha Megji's bustee, lies
Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated
window. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on
either side of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor
Gaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. If
Durga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man
today, and little Bisesa would have been able to knead her own bread.
Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully
where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue
slime. She was a widow, 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--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over
a big heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh
from behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and
Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that
verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:
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 tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus 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 with the pack-horses
to the North.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
Call to the bowman to make ready--
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
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 bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
them out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass.
The flower of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or
"danger," according to the other things with it. One cardamom means
"jealousy;" but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter,
it loses its symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number
indicating time, or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also,
place. The message ran then:--"A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven
o'clock.
