Life's handicap : being stories of mine own people

THE SERVICE EDITION

OF

THE WORKS OF
RUDYARD KIPLING

LIFE'S HANDICAP

VOL. I

LIFE'S HANDICAP

BEING

STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE

BY

RUDYARD KIPLING

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they
were all my brothers. — Native Proverb.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1915

COPYRIGHT

TO

E. K. R.

FROM

R. K.

1887-89
C. M. G.

PREFACE

In Northern India stood a monastery called The
Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat. No one remem-
bered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been.
He had lived his life, made a little money, and
spent it all, as every good Hindu should do, on
a work of piety — the Chubara. That was full
of brick cells, gaily painted with the figures of
Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of
things : the paths were brick paved, and the naked
feet of thousands had worn them into gutters.
Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the
bricks ; great pipal trees overhung the well-windlass
that whined all dayj and hosts of parrots tore
through the trees. Crows and squirrels were tame
in that place, for they knew that never a priest
would touch them.

ix

LIFE'S HANDICAP

The wandering mendicants, charm-sellers, and
holy vagabonds for a hundred miles round used to
make the Chubara their place of call and rest.
Mahomedan, Sikh, and Hindu mixed equally
under the trees. They were old men, and when
man has come to the turnstiles of Night all the
creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike
and colourless.

Gobind the one-eyed told me this. He was a
holy man who lived on an island in the middle of
a river and fed the fishes with little bread pellets
twice a day. In flood-time, when swollen corpses
stranded themselves at the foot of the island,
Gobind would cause them to be piously burned,
for the sake of the honour of mankind, and having
regard to his own account with God hereafter.
But when two-thirds of the island was torn away
in a spate, Gobind came across the river to Dhunni
Bhagat's Chubara, he and his brass drinking vessel
with the well-cord round the neck, his short arm-
rest crutch studded with brass nails, his roll of
bedding, his big pipe, his umbrella, and his tall
sugar-loaf hat with the nodding peacock feathers
in it. He wrapped himself up in his patched quilt
made of every colour and material in the world, sat
x

PREFACE

down in a sunny corner of the very quiet Chubara,
and, resting his arm on his short'handled crutch,
waited for death. The people brought him food and
little clumps of marigold flowers, and he gave his
blessing in return. He was nearly blind, and his
face was seamed and lined and wrinkled beyond
belief, for he had lived in his time, which was before
the English came within five hundred miles of
Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara.

When we grew to know each other well, Gobind
would tell me tales in a voice most like the
rumbling of heavy guns over a wooden bridge.
His tales were true, but not one in twenty could
be printed in an English book, because the Eng-
lish do not think as natives do. They brood
over matters that a native would dismiss till a
fitting occasion; and what they would not think
twice about a native will brood over till a fitting
occasion: then native and English stare at each
other hopelessly across great gulfs of miscom-
prehension.

' And what/ said Gobind one Sunday evening,
4 is your honoured craft, and by what manner of
means earn you your daily bread ? '

4 1 am/ said 1, 4 a herani — one who writes with
xi

LIFE'S HANDICAP

a pen upon paper, not being in the service of the
Government/

'Then what do you write ?' said Gobind.
* Come nearer, for I cannot see your countenance,
and the light fails/

4 1 write of all matters that lie within my under-
standing, and of many that do not. But chiefly I
write of Life and Death, and men and women,
and Love and Fate according to the measure of
my ability, telling the tale through the mouths of
one, two, or more people* Then by the favour
of God the tales are sold and money accrues to
me that I may keep alive/

4 Even so/ said Gobind. 4 That is the work of
the bazar story-teller j but he speaks straight to
men and women and does not write anything at
all. Only when the tale has aroused expectation,
and calamities are about to befall the virtuous,
he stops suddenly and demands payment ere he
continues the narration. Is it so in your craft,
my son ? '

4 1 have heard of such things when a tale is of
great length, and is sold, as a cucumber, in small
pieces/

4 Ay, I was once a famed teller of stories when
xii

PREFACE

I was begging on the road between Koshin and
Etra; before the last pilgrimage that ever I took
to Orissa. I told many tales and heard many more
at the rest-houses in the evening when we were
merry at the end of the march. It is in my heart
that grown men are but as little children in the
matter of tales, and the oldest tale is the most
beloved/

'With your people that is truth/ said I. 'But
in regard to our people they desire new tales, and
when all is written they rise up and declare that
the tale were better told in such and such a
manner, and doubt either the truth or the invention
thereof/

1 But what folly is theirs ! ' said Gobind, throw-
ing out his knotted hand. * A tale that is told is
a true tale as long as the telling lasts. And of
their talk upon it — you know how Bilas Khan,
that was the prince of tale-tellers, said to one who
mocked him in the great rest-house on the Jhelum
road : " Go on, my brother, and finish that I have
begun," and he who mocked took up the tale, but
having neither voice nor manner for the task came
to a standstill, and the pilgrims at supper made
him eat abuse and stick half that night/
xiii

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'Nay, but with our people, money having
passed, it is their right j as we should turn against
a shoeseller in regard to shoes if those wore out.
If ever I make a book you shall see and judge/

'And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait,
brother, till I fetch a prop!' said Gobind with a
grim chuckle. 'God has given me eighty years,
and it may be some over. I cannot look for more
than day granted by day and as a favour at this
tide. Be swift/

'In what manner is it best to set about the
task/ said I, ' oh chief est of those who string pearls
with their tongue ? '

'How do I know? Yet' — he thought for a
little — ' how should I not know ? God has made
very many heads, but there is only one heart in
all the world among your people or my people.
They are children in the matter of tales/

' But none are so terrible as the little ones, if a
man misplace a word, or in a second telling vary
events by so much as one small devil/

'Ay, I also have told tales to the little ones,

but do thou this ' His old eyes fell on the

gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red

dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond.

xiv

PREFACE

4 Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen
and they have seen together. Thus their know-
ledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them
of what thou alone hast seen, then what thou hast
heard, and since they be children tell them of
battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and
angels, but omit not to tell them of love and such-
like. All the earth is full of tales to him who
listens and does not drive away the poor from
his door. The poor are the best of tale-tellers;
for they must lay their ear to the ground every
night.'

After this conversation the idea grew in my
head, and Gobind was pressing in his inquiries as
to the health of the book.

Later, when we had been parted for months, it
happened that I was to go away and far off, and I
came to bid Gobind good-bye.

4 It is farewell between us now, for I go a very
long journey/ I said.

'And I also. A longer one than thou. But
what of the book ? ' said he.

'It will be born in due season if it is so
ordained/

'I would I could see it/ said the old man,
xv

LIFE'S HANDICAP

huddling beneath his quilt. ' But that will not be.
I die three days hence, in the night, a little before
the dawn. The term of my years is acconv
plished/

In nine cases out of ten a native makes no
miscalculation as to the day of his death. He
has the foreknowledge of the beasts in this
respect.

4 Then thou wilt depart in peace, and it is good
talk, for thou hast said that life is no delight to
thee/

'But it is a pity that our book is not born.
How shall I know that there is any record of my
name ? '

4 Because I promise, in the forepart of the book,
preceding everything else, that it shall be written,
Gobind, sadhu, of the island in the river and
awaiting God in Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara, first
spoke of the book/ said I.

'And gave counsel — an old man's counsel.
Gobind, son of Gobind of the Chumi village in
the Karaon tehsil, in the district of Mooltan.
Will that be written also ? '

4 That will be written also/

4 And the book will go across the Black Water
xvi

PREFACE

to the houses of your people, and all the Sahibs
will know of me who am eighty years old ? '

' All who read the book shall know. I cannot
promise for the rest/

'That is good talk. Call aloud to all who
are in the monastery, and I will tell them this
thing/

They trooped up, faquirs, sadhus, sunnyasis,
byragis, nihangs, and mullahs, priests of all faiths
and every degree of raggedness, and Gobind,
leaning upon his crutch, spoke so that they were
visibly filled with envy, and a white-haired senior
bade Gobind think of his latter end instead of
transitory repute in the mouths of strangers.
Then Gobind gave me his blessing and I came
away.

These tales have been collected from all places,
and all sorts of people, from priests in the Chubara,
from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun Singh the car*
penter, nameless men on steamers and trains round
the world, women spinning outside their cottages
in the twilight, officers and gentlemen now dead
and buried, and a few, but these are the very best,
my father gave me. The greater part of them
have been published in magazines and newspapers,
xvii

LIFE'S HANDICAP

to whose editors I am indebted; but some are
new on this side of the water, and some have not
seen the light before.

The most remarkable stories are, of course,
those which do not appear — for obvious reasons.

XVlll

CONTENTS

Page
The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney « 1

The Courting of Dinah Shadd . . .45

On Greenhow Hill 84

The Man Who Was 115

The Head of the District . . . .139
Without Benefit of Clergy . . . .177
At the End of the Passage . . . .216

xix

THE INCARNATION OF
KRISHNA MULVANEY

Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers

We ride to church to-day,
The man that hasn't got a horse

Must steal one straight away.

Be reverent, men, remember

This is a Gottes haus.
Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle

And schenck der whiskey aus.

Hans Breitmann 's Ride to Church.

ONCE upon a time, very far from England,
there lived three men who loved each other
so greatly that neither man nor woman
could come between them. They were in no sense
refined, nor to be admitted to the outer^door mats
of decent folk, because they happened to be
private soldiers in Her Majesty's Army; and
private soldiers of our service have small time for
self ^culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and

L. H. Vol. I JEl B

LIFE'S HANDICAP

their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from
getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey
their superiors, and to pray for a war. All these
things my friends accomplished ; and of their own
motion threw in some fighting-work for which the
Army Regulations did not call. Their fate sent
them to serve in India, which is not a golden
country, though poets have sung otherwise. There
men die with great swiftness, and those who live
suffer many and curious things. I do not think
that my friends concerned themselves much with
the social or political aspects of the East. They
attended a not unimportant war on the northern
frontier, another one on our western boundary, and
a third in Upper Burma. Then their regiment
sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of
cantonment life was their portion. They were
drilled morning and evening on the same dusty
parade-ground. They wandered up and down the
same stretch of dusty white road, attended the
same church and the same grog-shop, and slept
in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two
long years. There was Mulvaney, the father in
the craft, who had served with various regiments
from Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred,
reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an
unequalled soldier. To him turned for help and
comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-

2

KRISHNA MULVANEY

footed Yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in
the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers'
carts at the back of York railway-station. His
name was Learoyd, and his chief virtue an unmiti'
gated patience which helped him to win fights.
How Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever
came to be one of the trio, is a mystery which
even to-day I cannot explain. 4 There was always
three av us/ Mulvaney used to say. * An' by the
grace av God, so long as our service lasts, three
av us they'll always be. Tis betther so.'

They desired no companionship beyond their
own, and it was evil for any man of the regiment
who attempted dispute with them. Physical
argument was out of the question as regarded
Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman ; and assault on
Ortheris meant a combined attack from these
twain — a business which no five men were anxious
to have on their hands. Therefore they flourished,
sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money ;
good luck and evil ; battle and the chances of
death; life and the chances of happiness from
Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern
India.

Through no merit of my own it was my good
fortune to be in a measure admitted to their friend'
ship — frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and

3

LIFE'S HANDICAP

suspiciously by Ortheris, who held to it that no
man not in the Army could fraternise with a red'
coat, 'Like to like/ said he. 'I'm a bloomin'
sodger — he's a bloomin' civilian. Taint natural
-that's all/

But that was not all. They thawed progres^
sively, and in the thawing told me more of their
lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.

Omitting all else, this tale begins with the
Lamentable Thirst that was at the beginning of
First Causes. Never was such a thirst — Mulvaney
told me so. They kicked against their compulsory
virtue, but the attempt was only successful in the
case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were many,
went forth into the highways and stole a dog from
a 4 civilian ' — videlicet, some one, he knew not who,
not in the Army. Now that civilian was but
newly connected by marriage with the colonel of
the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters
least anticipated by Ortheris, and, in the end, he
was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to
dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as
promising a small terrier as ever graced one end
of a leading string. The purchase - money was
barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led
him to the guardroom. He escaped, however,
with nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and
a few hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing

KRISHNA MULVANEY

had he acquired the reputation of being ' the best
soldier of his inches ' in the regiment. Mulvaney
had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as
the first articles of his companions' creed. 4A
dhirty man/ he was used to say, in the speech of
his kind, 'goes to Clink for a weakness in the
knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks
missin' ; but a clane man, such as is an ornament
to his service — a man whose buttons are gold,
whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutre-
ments are widout a speck — that man may, spakin'
in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink from day
to divil. That's the pride av bein' dacint.'

We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a
ravine far from the barracks, where a watercourse
used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was the
scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray
wolves of the North - Western Provinces, and
occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central India,
were supposed to dwell. In front lay the canton-
ment, glaring white under a glaring sun ; and on
either side ran the broad road that led to Delhi.

It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the
wisdom of Mulvaney taking a day's leave and
going upon a shooting -tour. The peacock is a
holy bird throughout India, and he who slays
one is in danger of being mobbed by the nearest
villagers j but on the last occasion that Mulvaney

5

LIFE'S HANDICAP

had gone forth, he had contrived, without in the
least offending local religious susceptibilities, to
return with six beautiful peacock skins which he
sold to profit. It seemed just possible then

4 But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin'
out widout a dhrink? The ground's powdher'
dhry underfoot, an* ut gets unto the throat fit to
kill/ wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully.
' An' a peacock is not a bird you can catch the tail
av onless ye run. Can a man run on wather — an'
jungle^wather too ? '

Ortheris had considered the question in all its
bearings. He spoke, chewing his pipe-stem medi-
tatively the while :

' Go forth, return in glory,
To Clusium's royal 'ome :
An' round these bloomin' temples 'ang
The bloomin' shields o' Rome.

You better go. You ain't like to shoot yourself
— not while there's a chanst of liquor. Me an*
Learoyd'll stay at 'ome an' keep shop — 'case o'
anythin* turnin' up. But you go out with a gas*
pipe gun an' ketch the little peacockses or somethin'.
You kin get one day's leave easy as winkin'.
Go along an' get it, an' get peacockses or some'
thin'.'
'Jock/ said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd,

6

KRISHNA MULVANEY

who was half asleep under the shadow of the bank.
He roused slowly,

4 Sitha, Mulvaaney, go/ said he.

And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with
Irish fluency and barrack-room point.

'Take note/ said he, when he had won his
holiday, and appeared dressed in his roughest
clothes with the only other regimental fowling*
piece in his hand. 'Take note, Jock, an' you
Orth'ris, I am goin' in the face av my own will-
all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin' will
come av permiscuous huntin' af ther peacockses in
a desolit Ian' j an' I know that I will lie down an''
die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye
lazy scutts — an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry —
Ugh!'

He waved a huge paw and went away.

At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he
returned empty-handed, much begrimed with dirt.

* Peacockses ? ' queried Ortheris from the safe
rest of a barrack -room table whereon he was
smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a
bench.

4 Jock/ said Mulvaney without answering, as
he stirred up the sleeper. 'Jock, can ye fight?
Will ye fight?'

Very slowly the meaning of the words com-
municated itself to the half -roused man. He

LIFE'S HANDICAP

understood — and again — what might these things
mean ? Mulvaney was shaking him savagely.
Meantime the men in the room howled with
delight. There was war in the confederacy at
last — war and the breaking of bonds.

Barrack 'room etiquette is stringent. On the
direct challenge must follow the direct reply.
This is more binding than the ties of tried friend'
ship. Once again Mulvaney repeated the question.
Learoyd answered by the only means in his power,
and so swiftly that the Irishman had barely time
to avoid the blow* The laughter around increased.
Learoyd looked bewilderedly at his friend — himself
as greatly bewildered. Ortheris dropped from the
table because his world was falling.

* Come outside/ said Mulvaney, and as the
occupants of the barracks-room prepared joyously
to follow, he turned and said furiously, * There
will be no fight this night — onless any wan av you
is wishful to assist. The man that does, follows
on/

No man moved. The three passed out into
the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling with the buttons
of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted
except for the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney's
impetuous rush carried his companions far into the
open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and
continue the discussion.

8

KRISHNA MULVANEY

4 Be still now. Twas my fault for beginnin'
things in the middle av an end, Jock. I should
ha' comminst wid an explanation ; but Jock, dear,
on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest
fight that iver was — betther than fightin' me?
Considher before ye answer/

More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round
two or three times, felt an arm, kicked tentatively,
and answered, 'Ah'm fit.' He was accustomed
to fight blindly at the bidding of the superior
mind.

They sat them down, the men looking on from
afar, and Mulvaney untangled himself in mighty
words.

'Followin' your fools' scheme I wint out into
the thrackless desert beyond the barricks. An'
there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a bullock-
kyart. I tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted
for to convoy me a piece, an' I jumped in —

'You long, lazy, black-haired swine,' drawled
Ortheris, who would have done the same thing
under similar circumstances.

' 'Twas the height av policy. That naygur-
man dhruv miles an' miles — as far as the new
railway line they're buildin' now back av the Tavi
river. 4t 'Tis a kyart for dhirt only," says he now
an' again timoreously, to get me out av ut.
"Dhirt I am," sez I, "an' the dhryest that you

9

LIFE'S HANDICAP

iver kyarted. Dhrive on, me son, an' glory be
wid you." At that I wint to slape, an' took no
heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the
line where the coolies were pilin' mud. There
was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line
— you remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an'
they throops off to a big pay <• shed. "Where's
the white man in charge?" sez I to my kyart-
dhriver. " In the shed/' sez he, " engaged on a
riffle."— "A fwhat?" sez I. "Riffle," sez he.
"You take ticket. He take money. You get
nothin'."— "Oho!" sez I, "that's fwhat the
shuperior an' cultivated man calls a raffle, me
misbeguided child av darkness an' sin. Lead on
to that raffle, though fwhat the mischief 'tis doin'
so far away from uts home — which is the charity-
bazaar at Christmas, an' the colonel's wife grinnin'
behind the tea-table — is more than I know."
Wid that I wint to the shed an' found 'twas pay-
day among the coolies. Their wages was on a
table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man —
sivun fut high, four fut wide, an' three fut thick,
wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was payin'
the coolies fair an' easy, but he wud ask each man
if he wud raffle that month, an each man sez,
"Yes," av course. Thin he wud deduct from
their wages accordin'. Whin all was paid, he
filled an ould cigar - box full av gun -wads an'

10

KRISHNA MULVANEY

scatthered ut among the coolies. They did not
take much joy av that performince, an' small
wondher. A man close to me picks up a black
gun-wad an' sings out, "I haveut." — "Good may
ut do you/' sez I, The coolie wint forward to
this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av
the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an' variously
bedivilled sedan-chair I iver saw.'

4 Sedan-chair I Put your 'ead in a bag. That
was a palanquin. Don't yer know a palanquin
when you see it ?' said Ortheris with great scorn.

4 1 chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an' chair ut shall
be, little man,' continued the Irishman. ' Twas a
most amazin' chair — all lined wid pink silk an'
fitted wid red silk curtains. "Here ut is," sez
the red man. " Here ut is," sez the coolie, an' he
grinned weakly-ways. " Is ut any use to you ? "
sez the red man. "No," sez the coolie; "I'd
like to make a presint av ut to you."- "I am
graciously pleased to accept that same," sez the
red man ; an' at that all the coolies cried aloud in
fwhat was mint for cheerful notes, an' wint back
to their diggin', lavin' me alone in the shed. The
red man saw me, an' his face grew blue on his big,
fat neck. "Fwhat d'you want here?" sez he.
" Standin'-room an' no more," sez I, " onless it
may be fwhat ye niver had, an' that's manners, ye
rafflin' ruffian," for I was not goin' to have the

11

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Service throd upon. " Out of this/' sez he. " I'm
in charge av this section av construction." — "I'm
in charge av mesilf/' sez I, " an' it's like I will stay
a while. D'ye raffle much in these parts?" —
"Fwhat's that to you?" sez he. "Nothin'," sez
\t " but a great dale to you, for begad I'm thinkin'
you get the full half av your revenue from that
sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so ? " I sez, an'
wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys,
that man's name is Dearsley, an' he's been rafflin'
that ould sedan-chair monthly this matther av nine
months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket
— or he gives 'em the go — wanst a month on pay-
day. Ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him,
for 'tis too big to carry away, an' he'd sack the
man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been
makin' the rowlin' wealth av Roshus by nefarious
rafflin'. Think av the burnin' shame to the suffer-
in' coolie-man that the Army in Injia are bound to
protect an' nourish in their bosoms ! Two thousand
coolies defrauded wanst a month 1 '

* Dom t' coolies. Has't gotten t' cheer, man ? '
said Learoyd.

* Hould on. Havin' onearthed this amazin' an'
stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I
hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to
sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language.
That sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any

12

KRISHNA MULVANEY

foreman av coolies. Tis a king's chair or a quane's.
There's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av
trapesemints. Bhoys, 'tis not for me to counte*
nance any sort av wrong^doin' — me bein' the ould

man — but anyway he has had ut nine months,

an' he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from
him. Five miles away, or ut may be six —

There was a long pause, and the jackals howled
merrily. Learoyd bared one arm, and contemplated
it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly to
himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled
with suppressed emotion.

4 1 thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut/
said Mulvaney. 4 1 made bould to say as much to
the man before. He was for a direct front attack

— fut, horse, an' guns an' all for nothin', seein'

that I had no thransport to convey the machine
away. " I will not argue wid you," sez I, i4 this
day, but subsequintly, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin'
jool, we talk ut out lengthways. His no good
policy to swindle the naygur av his hard'earned
emolumints, an' by presint informashin' " —'twas
the kyart man that tould me — "ye've been per*
pethrating that same for nine months. But I'm a
just man," sez I, " an' overlookin' the presumpshin
that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come
by honust" — at that he turned sky 'green, so I
knew things was more thrue than tellable — "not

13

LIFE'S HANDICAP

come by honust, I'm willin' to compound the felony
for this month's winnin's." '

4 Ah I Ho I ' from Learoyd and Ortheris.

'That man Dearsley's rushin' on his fate/
continued Mulvaney, solemnly wagging his head.
'All Hell had no name bad enough for me that
tide. Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that
was savin' him from continuin' in his evil ways
widout a remonstrince — an' to a man av conscience
a remonstrince may change the chune av his life.
" Tis not for me to argue/' sez I, " fwhatever ye
are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I'll take
away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-
chair." — " You will have to fight me for ut," sez he,
44 for well I know you will never dare make report
to any one."—" Fight I will," sez I, " but not this
day, for I'm rejuced for want av nourishmint." —
44 Ye're an ould bould hand," sez he, sizin' me up
an' down ; 44 an' a jool av a fight we will have.
Eat now an' dhrink, an' go your way." Wid that
he gave me some hump an' whisky — good whisky
— an' we talked av this an' that the while. 4t It goes
hard on me now," sez I, wipin' my mouth, " to con-
fiscate that piece av furniture, but justice is justice."
— " Ye've not got ut yet," sez he ; 4i there's the fight
between." — 44 There is," sez I, 4i an' a good fight.
Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my
rigimint for the dinner you have given this day."

14

KRISHNA MULVANEY

Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould your
tongue, the both. Tis this way. To-morrow we
three will go there an' he shall have his pick betune
me an' Jock. Jock's a deceivin' fighter, for he is
all fat to the eye, an' he moves slow. Now I'm
all beef to the look, an' I move quick. By my
reckonin' the Dearsley man won't take me j so me
an' Orth'ris '11 see fair play. Jock, I tell you,
'twill be big f ightin' — whipped, wid the cream above
the jam. Afther the business 'twill take a good
three av us — Jock'll be very hurt — to haul away
that sedan-chair.'

4 Palanquin.' This from Ortheris.

'Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. Tis the
only sellin' piece av property widin reach that we
can get so cheap. An' fwhat's a fight af ther all ?
He has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We
rob him honust for the sake av the whisky he gave
me.'

'But wot'll we do with the bloomin' article
when we've got it ? Them palanquins are as big
as 'ouses, an' uncommon 'ard to sell, as McCleary
said when ye stole the sentry-box from the
Curragh.'

'Who's goin' to do t' f ightin'?' said Learoyd,
and Ortheris subsided. The three returned to
barracks without a word. Mulvaney's last argu-
ment clinched the matter. This palanquin was

15

LIFE'S HANDICAP

property, vendible and to be attained in the simplest
and least embarrassing fashion. It would events
ally become beer. Great was Mulvaney.

Next afternoon a procession of three formed
itself and disappeared into the scrub in the direction
of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was with'
out care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the
future, and little Ortheris feared the unknown.
What befell at that interview in the lonely pay*
shed by the side of the half -built embankment only
a few hundred coolies know, and their tale is a
confusing one, running thus —

'We were at work. Three men in red coats
came. They saw the Sahib — Dearsley Sahib.
They made oration ; and noticeably the small man
among the red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made
oration, and used many very strong words. Upon
this talk they departed together to an open space,
and there the fat man in the red coat fought with
Dearsley Sahib after the custom of white men —
with his hands, making no noise, and never at all
pulling Dearsley Sahib's hair. Such of us as were
not afraid beheld these things for just so long a
time as a man needs to cook the mid-day meal.
The small man in the red coat had possessed him-
self of Dearsley Sahib's watch. No, he did not
steal that watch. He held it in his hand, and at
certain seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased

16

KRISHNA MULVANEY

their combat, which was like the combat of young
bulls in spring. Both men were soon all red, but
Dearsley Sahib was much more red than the other.
Seeing this, and fearing for his life — because we
greatly loved him — some fifty of us made shift to
rush upon the red-coats. But a certain man — very
black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused
with the small man, or the fat man who fought —
that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he
embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat
our heads together, so that our livers turned to
water, and we ran away. It is not good to interfere
in the fightings of white men. After that Dearsley
Sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon
his stomach and despoiled him of all his money,
and attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed.
Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no complaint
of these latter things having been done ? We were
senseless with fear, and do not at all remember.
There was no palanquin near the pay-shed. What
do we know about palanquins? Is it true that
Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place, on
account of his sickness, for ten days ? This is the
fault of those bad men in the red coats, who should
be severely punished ; for Dearsley Sahib is both
our father and mother, and we love him much.
Yet, if Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place
at all, we will speak the truth. There was a
L.H. voi.i 17

LIFE'S HANDICAP

palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were forced
to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On such
mulctings Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make
obeisance to him before the palanquin. What
could we do? We were poor men. He took a
full half of our wages. Will the Government repay
us those moneys ? Those three men in red coats
bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and
departed. All the money that Dearsley Sahib had
taken from us was in the cushions of that palan-
quin. Therefore they stole it. Thousands of
rupees were there — all our money. It was our
bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed
to Dearsley Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly
wage. Why does the white man look upon us
with the eye of disfavour ? Before God, there was
a palanquin, and now there is no palanquin ; and
if they send the police here to make inquisition,
we can only say that there never has been any
palanquin. Why should a palanquin be near these
works ? We are poor men, and we know nothing '
Such is the simplest version of the simplest story
connected with the descent upon Dearsley. From
the lips of the coolies I received it. Dearsley him-
self was in no condition to say anything, and
Mulvaney preserved a massive silence, broken only
by the occasional licking of the lips. He had seen
a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech

18

KRISHNA MULVANEY

was taken from him. I respected that reserve
until, three days after the affair, I discovered in a
disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of un*
chastened splendour — evidently in past days the
litter of a queen. The pole whereby it swung
between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with
the painted papier 'inachi of Cashmere. The
shoulder^pads were of yellow silk. The panels of
the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all
the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon —
lacquer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors were
fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel and
ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions
were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which
once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's
palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation
showed that the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed
and discoloured by time and wear ; but even thus
it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on
the threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault
with it, except that it was in my stable. Then,
trying to lift it by the silver^shod shoulder'pole, I
laughed. The road from Dearsley's pay'shed to
the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and,
traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin*
bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the
head, must have been a path of torment. S^ill I
did not quite recognise the right of the three

19

LIFE'S HANDICAP

musketeers to turn me into a * fence' for stolen
property.

'I'm askin' you to warehouse ut,' said MuL
vaney, when he was brought to consider the
question. 4 There's no steal in ut. Dearsley
tould us we cud have ut if we fought. Jock
fought — an', oh, sorr, when the throuble was at
uts finest an' Jock was bleedin' like a stuck pig,
an' little Orth'ris was shquealin' on one leg chewin'
big bites out av Dearsley's watch, I wud ha' given
my place at the fight to have had you see wan
round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would,
an' Jock was deceptive. Nine roun's they were

even matched, an' at the tenth About that

palanquin now. There's not the least throuble in
the world, or we wud not ha' brought ut here.
You will ondherstand that the Queen — God bless
her I — does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape
elephints an' palanquins an' sich in barricks.
Afther we had dhragged ut down from Dearsley's
through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth'ris's
heart, we set ut in the ravine for a night ; an' a
thief av a porcupine an' a civet-cat av a jackal
roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. I
put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for
the princess, the natural abidin' place av all the
verr.iin in cantonmints ? We brought ut to you,
afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not

20

KRISHNA MULVANEY

let your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin'
men in the pay-shed yonder — lookin' at Dearsley
wid his head tied up in a towel — an' well knowin'
that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout
stoppages for riffles. Indirectly, sorr, you have
rescued from an onprincipled son av a night'hawk
the peasanthry av a numerous village. An' be*
sides, will I let that sedan-chair rot on our hands ?
Not I. Tis not every day a piece av pure joolry
comes into the market. There's not a king widin
these forty miles ' — he waved his hand round the
dusty horizon — 'not a king wud not be glad to
buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure,
I'll take ut up along the road an' dishpose av ut.'

4 How ? ' said I, for I knew the man was capable
of anything.

* Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open
through the curtains. Whin I see a likely man av
the native persuasion, I will descind blushin' from
my canopy and say, " Buy a palanquin, ye black
scutt?" I will have to hire four men to carry
me first, though ; and that's impossible till next
pay-day/

Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought
for the prize, and in the winning secured the
highest pleasure life had to offer him, was alto-
gether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris
openly said it would be better to break the thing

21

LIFE'S HANDICAP

up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided
man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting
qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of
the civil law — a thing much abhorred by the
soldier. Under any circumstances their fun had
come and passed ; the next pay-day was close at
hand, when there would be beer for all. Where.-
fore longer conserve the painted palanquin ?

4 A first-class rifle-shot an' a good little man av
your inches you are/ said Mulvaney. 4 But you
niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. Tis
me has to lie awake av nights schamin' an* plottin*
for the three av us. OrtiYris, me son, 'tis no
matther of a few gallons av beer — no, nor twenty
gallons — but tubs an' vats an' firkins in that sedan-
chair. Who ut was, an' what ut was, an' how ut
got there, we do not know; but I know in my
bones that you an' me an' Jock wid his sprained
thumb will get a fortune thereby. Lave me alone,
an' let me think.'

Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the
key of which was in Mulvaney's hands.

Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in
experience to hope that Mulvaney, dried by four
weeks' drought, would avoid excess. Next morn-
ing he and the palanquin had disappeared. He
had taken the precaution of getting three days'
leave ' to see a friend on the railway,' and the

22

KRISHNA MULVANEY

colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst
was near, and hoping it would spend its force
beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully
gave him all he demanded. At this point MuL
vaney's history, as recorded in the mess-room,
stopped.

Ortheris carried it not much further. 'No, 'e
wasn't drunk/ said the little man loyally, 'the
liquor was no more than feelin' its way round
inside of 'im ; but 'e went an' filled that 'ole
bloomin' palanquin with bottles 'fore 'e went off.
'E's gone an' 'ired six men to carry 'im, an' I 'ad
to 'elp 'im into 'is nupshal couch, 'cause 'e wouldn't
'ear reason. 'E's gone off in 'is shirt an' trousies,
swearin' tremenjus — gone down the road in the
palanquin, wavin' 'is legs out o' windy.'

4 Yes,' said I, ' but where ? '

4 Now you arx me a question. 'E said 'e was
goin' to sell that palanquin, but from observations
what happened when I was stuffin' 'im through
the door, I fancy 'e's gone to the new embankment
to mock at Dearsley. 'Soon as Jock's off duty
I'm goin' there to see if 'e's safe — not Mulvaney,
but t'other man. My saints, but I pity 'im as 'elps
Terence out o' the palanquin when 'e's once fair
drunk!'

* He'll come back without harm,' I said.

4 'Corse 'e will. On'y question is, what'll 'e be

23

LIFE'S HANDICAP

doin' on the road ? Killing Dearsley, like as not.
'E shouldn't 'a gone without Jock or me/

Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the
foreman of the coolie-gang. Dearsley's head was
still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk
or sober, would have struck no man in that con-
dition, and Dearsley indignantly denied that he
would have taken advantage of the intoxicated
brave.

*I had my pick o' you two/ he explained to
Learoyd, * and you got my palanquin — not before
I'd made my profit on it. Why'd I do harm
when everything's settled ? Your man did come
here — drunk as Davy's sow on a frosty night —
came a-purpose to mock me — stuck his head out
of the door an' called me a crucified hodman. I
made him drunker, an' sent him along. But I
never touched him/

To these things Learoyd, slow to perceive the
evidences of sincerity, answered only, 'If owt
comes to Mulvaaney 'long o' you, I'll gripple you,
clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' I'll
draw t' throat twistyways, man. See there now/

The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the
battered, laughed alone over his supper that
evening.

Three days passed — a fourth and a fifth. The
week drew to a close and Mulvaney did not

24

KRISHNA MULVANEY

return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six
attendants, had vanished into air. A very large
and very tipsy soldier, his feet sticking out of the
litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to travel
along the ways without comment. Yet no man
of all the country round had seen any such
wonder. He was, and he was not ; and Learoyd
suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley
as a sacrifice to his ghost Ortheris insisted that
all was well, and in the light of past experience
his hopes seemed reasonable*

4 When Mulvaney goes up the road/ said he,
"e's like to go a very long ways up, specially
when Vs so blue drunk as 'e is now. But what
gits me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool off
the niggers somewheres about. That don't look
good. The drink must ha' died out in 'im by
this, unless Vs broke a bank, an' then — Why
don't 'e come back ? 'E didn't ought to ha' gone
off without us.'

Even Ortheris's heart sank at the end of the
seventh day, for half the regiment were out
scouring the countryside, and Learoyd had been
forced to fight two men who hinted openly that
Mulvaney had deserted. To do him justice, the
colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was
put forward by his much'trusted adjutant.

* Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as

25

LIFE'S HANDICAP

you would/ said he. ' No ; he's either fallen into
a mischief among the villagers — and yet that isn't
likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the Pit ; or
else he is engaged on urgent private affairs— some
stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at
mess after it has been the round of the barrack*
rooms. The worst of it is that I shall have to
give him twenty^eight days' confinement at least
for being absent without leave, just when I most
want him to lick the new batch of recruits into
shape. I never knew a man who could put a
polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney
can. How does he do it ? *

'With blarney and the buckle "end of a belt,
sir/ said the adjutant. * He is worth a couple of
noncommissioned officers when we are dealing
with an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to
adore him. The worst of it is that if he goes to
the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to
bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris
preaches mutiny on those occasions, and I know
that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for
Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room.
The sergeants tell me that he allows no man to
laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a queer
gang.'

'For all that, I wish we had a few more of
them. I like a well-conducted regiment, but these

26

KRISHNA MULVANEY

pasty 'faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young
slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes
with their offensive virtue. They don't seem to
have backbone enough to do anything but play
cards and prowl round the married quarters. I
believe I'd forgive that old villain on the spot if
he turned up with any sort of explanation that I
could in decency accept/

'Not likely to be much difficulty about that,
sir/ said the adjutant * Mulvaney's explanations
are only one degree less wonderful than his per*
formances. They say that when he was in the
Black Tyrone, before he came to us, he was dis-
covered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell
his colonel's charger to a Donegal dealer as a
perfect lady's hack. Shackbolt commanded the
Tyrone then/

'Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the
thought of his ramping war-horses answering to
that description. He used to buy unbacked
devils, and tame them on some pet theory of
starvation. What did Mulvaney say ? '

4 That he was a member of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, anxious to " sell
the poor baste where he would get something to
fill out his dimples." Shackbolt laughed, but I
fancy that was why Mulvaney exchanged to
ours/

27

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'I wish he were back/ said the colonel; 'for
I like him and believe he likes me/

That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd,
Ortheris, and I went into the waste to smoke out
a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even
their clamour — and they began to discuss the
shortcomings of porcupines before they left canton*
ments — could not take us out of ourselves. A
large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-
grass to silver, and the stunted camelthorn bushes
and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping
devils. The smell of the sun had not left the
earth, and little aimless winds blowing across
the rose-gardens to the southward brought the
scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once
started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the
dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a
rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across
the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with
the long grass, and dotted with spots of level
pond -bottom, where the snipe would gather in
winter.

'This/ said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took
in the unkempt desolation of it all, 'this is
sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort
o' mad country. Like a grate when the fire's put
out by the sun/ He shaded his eyes against the
moonlight. 'An there's a loony dancin' in the

28

KRISHNA MULVANEY

middle of it all. Quite right. Yd dance too if I
wasn't so downheart.'

There pranced a Portent in the face of the
moon — a huge and ragged spirit of the waste, that
flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of
the earth ; it was coming towards us, and its out'
line was never twice the same. The toga, table'
cloth, or dressing 'gown, whatever the creature
wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on
a neighbouring mound and flung all its legs and
arms to the winds.

'My, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!'
said Ortheris. * Seems like if 'e comes any f urder
we'll 'ave to argify with 'im.'

Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull
clears his flanks of the wallow. And as a bull
bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave
tongue to the stars.

'Mulvaaney! Mulvaaneyl A'hoo!'

Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure
dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending
grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the
fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of
joyous dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave
greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallow*
ing a lump in the throat.

'You damned fool!' said they, and severally
pounded him with their fists.

29

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'Go easy!' he answered; wrapping a huge
arm round each. M would have you to know
that I am a god, to be treated as such — tho', by my
faith, I fancy I've got to go to the guardroom
just like a privit soldier/

The latter part of the sentence destroyed the
suspicions raised by the former. Any one would
have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad.
He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and
trousers were dropping off him. But he wore one
wondrous garment — a gigantic cloak that fell from
collar-bone to heel — of pale pink silk, wrought all
over in cunningest needlework of hands long
since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods.
The monstrous figures leaped in and out of
the light of the fire as he settled the folds round
him.

Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a
moment while I was trying to remember where I
had seen it before. Then he screamed, 'What
'awe you done with the palanquin ? You're wearin'
the lininV

4 1 am,' said the Irishman, 4 an' by the same
token the 'broidery is scrapin' my hide off. IVe
lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days.
Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is
no use. Widout me boots, an' me trousies like
an openwork stocking on a gyurl's leg at a dance,

30

KRISHNA MULVANEY

I begin to feel like a naygurvman — all fearful an'
timoreous. Give me a pipe an' I'll tell on/

He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two
friends, and rocked to and fro in a gale of
laughter.

'Mulvaney,' said Ortheris sternly, * 'taint no
time for laughin'. You've given Jock an' me
more trouble than you're worth. You 'ave been
absent without leave an' you'll go into cells for
that ; an' you 'ave come back disgustingly dressed
an' most improper in the linin' o' that bloomin'
palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An' we
thought you was dead all the time.'

'Bhoys,' said the culprit, still shaking gently,
* whin I've done my tale you may cry if you like,
an' little Orth'ris here can thrample my inside out.
Ha' done an' listen. My performinces have been
stupenjus : my luck has been the blessed luck av
the British army — an' there's no betther than that.
I went out dhrunk an' dhrinkin' in the palanquin,
and I have come back a pink god. Did any of
you go to Dearsley af ther my time was up ? He
was at the bottom of ut all.'

* Ah said so,' murmured Learoyd. 4 To-morrow
ah'll smash t' face in upon his heead.'

'Ye will not. Dearsley's a jool av a man.
Afther Ortheris had put me into the palanquin an'
the six bearer-men were gruntin' down the road, I

31

LIFE'S HANDICAP

tuk thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So
I tould thim, "Go to the embankmint," and
there, bein' most amazin' full, I shtuck my head
out av the concern an* passed compliments wid
Dearsley. I must ha' miscalled him outrageous,
for whin I am that way the power av the tongue
comes on me. I can bare remimber tellin' him
that his mouth opened endways like the mouth av
a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had
handled ut; an' I clear remimber his takin' no
manner nor matter av offence, but givin' me a big
dhrink of beer. 'Twas the beer did the thrick,
for I crawled back into the palanquin, steppin' on
me right ear wid me left foot, an' thin I slept like
the dead. Wanst I half^roused, an' begad the
noise in my head was tremenjus — roarin' an'
rattlin' an' poundin', such as was quite new to me.
" Mother av Mercy," thinks I, " phwat a concer*
tina I will have on my shoulders whin I wake ! "
An' wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut
should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was
not dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain ! '

There followed an impressive pause.

4 Yes, he had put me on a thrain — put me,
palanquin an' all, an' six black assassins av his own
coolies that was in his nefarious confidence, on the
flat av a ballasMhruck, and we were rowlin' an'
bowlin' along to Benares. Glory be that I did not

32

KRISHNA MULVANEY

wake up thin an' introjuce mysilf to the coolies.
As I was sayin', I slept for the betther part av a
day an' a night. But remimber you, that that
man Dearsley had packed me off on wan av his
material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me
overstay my leave an' get me into the cells/

The explanation was an eminently rational one.
Benares lay at least ten hours by rail from the
cantonments, and nothing in the world could have
saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he
appeared there in the apparel of his orgies.
Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge.
Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft
blows over selected portions of Mulvaney's body.
His thoughts were away on the embankment, and
they meditated evil for Dearsley* Mulvaney con*
tinued —

4 Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set
down in a street, I suspicioned, for I cud hear
people passin' an' talkin'. But I knew well I was
far from home. There is a queer smell upon our
cantonments — a smell av dried earth and brick-
kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter. This
place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an'
wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with
his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. " It's in a
village I am," thinks I to mysilf, " an' the parochial
buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin." But any'

L.H. Vol. I 33 D

LIFE'S HANDICAP

ways I had no desire to move. Only lie still whin
you're in foreign parts an' the standin' luck av the
British Army will carry ye through. That is an
epigram. I made ut.

'Thin a lot av whishperin' divils surrounded
the palanquin. "Take ut up/' sez wan man.
44 But who'll pay us ? " sez another. " The Maria-
ranee's minister, av coorse," sez the man. " Oho ! "
sez I to mysilf, " I'm a quane in me own right, wid
a minister to pay me expenses. I'll be an emperor
if I lie still long enough ; but this is no village I've
found." I lay quiet, but I gummed me right eye
to a crack av the shutters, an' I saw that the
whole street was crammed wid palanquins an'
horses, an' a sprinklin' av naked priests all yellow
powder an' tigers' tails. But I may tell you,
Orth'ris, an' you, Learoyd, that av all the palan-
quins ours was the most imperial an' magnificent.
Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world
over, except whin a soldier av the Quane happens
to be takin' a ride. " Women an' priests I " sez I.
44 Your father's son is in the right pew this time,
Terence. There will be proceeding." Six black
divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an'
oh I but the rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick.
Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins —
not more than fifty av them — an' we grated an'
bumped like Queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin'

34

KRISHNA MULVANEY

tide. I cud hear the women gigglin' and squirkin'
in their palanquins, but mine was the royal
equipage. They made way for ut, an', begad,
the pink muslin men o' mine were howling " Room
for the Maharanee av Gokral'Seetarun." Do you
know aught av the lady, sorr ? '

4 Yes/ said I. 'She is a very estimable old
queen of the Central Indian States, and they say
she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares
without all the city knowing her palanquin ? '

"Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur*
man. They saw the palanquin lying loneful an*
forlornsome, an' the beauty av ut, after Dearsley's
men had dhropped ut and gone away, an' they
gave ut the best name that occurred to thim.
Quite right too. For aught we know the ould
lady was thravellin' incog — like me. I'm glad to
hear she's fat. I was no light weight mysilf, an'
my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under
a great big archway promiscuously ornamented
wid the most improper carvin's an' cuttin's I iver
saw. Begad! they made me blush — like a — like
a Maharanee.'

4 The temple of Prithi ' Devi/ I murmured,
remembering the monstrous horrors of that sculp*
tured archway at Benares.

4 Pretty Devilskins, savin' your presence, sorr !
There was nothin' pretty about ut, except me*

35

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Twas all half dhark, an* whin the coolies left they
shut a big black gate behind av us, an' half a
company av fat yellow priests began pully-haulin'
the palanquins into a dharker place yet — a big
stone hall full av pillars, an' gods, an' incense,
an' all manner av similar thruck. The gate dis-
concerted me, for I perceived I wud have to go
forward to get out, my retreat bein' cut off. By
the same token a good priest makes a bad palan-
quin-coolie. Begad ! they nearly turned me inside
out draggin' the palanquin to the temple. Now
the disposishin av the forces inside was this way.
The Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun — that was me
— lay by the favour av Providence on the far left
flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with
elephints' heads. The remainder of the palanquins
was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest,
fattest, an' most amazin' she-god that iver I
dreamed av. Her head ran up into the black
above us, an' her feet stuck out in the light av a
little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin'
out av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to sing
an' play on somethin' back in the dhark, an' 'twas
a queer song. Ut made my hair lift on the back
av my neck. Thin the doors of all the palanquins
slid back, an' the women bundled out. I saw
what I'll niver see again. 'Twas more glorious
than transformations at a pantomime, for they

36

KRISHNA MULVANEY

was in pink an* blue an' silver an' red an' grass
green, wid diamonds an' imralds an' great red
rubies all over thim. But that was the least part
av the glory. O bhoys, they were more lovely
than the like av any loveliness in hiven ; ay, their
little bare feet were better than the white hands av
a lord's lady, an' their mouths were like puckered
roses, an' their eyes were bigger an' dharker than
the eyes av any livin' women I've seen. Ye may
laugh, but I'm speakin' truth. I niver saw the
like, an' niver I will again.'

* Seeing that in all probability you were watching
the wives and daughters of most of the kings of
India, the chances are that you won't,' I said, for
it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled
upon a big Queens' Praying at Benares.

'I niver will/ he said mournfully. 'That
sight doesn't come twist to any man. It made
me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at
my door. I didn't think he'd have the insolince
to disturb the Maharanee av Gokral'Seetarun, so
I lay still. "The old cow's asleep," sez he to
another. "Let her be," sez that. "Twill be
long before she has a calf ! " I might ha' known
before he spoke that all a woman prays for in
Injia — an' for matter o' that in England to — is
childher. That made me more sorry I'd come, me
bein', as you well know, a childless man/

37

LIFE'S HANDICAP

He was silent for a moment, thinking of his
little son, dead many years ago.

'They prayed, an' the butter-fires blazed up,
an' the incense turned everything blue, an' between
that an' the fires the women looked as tho' they
were all ablaze an' twinklin'. They took hold av
the she-god's knees, they cried out an' they threw
themselves about, an' that world-without-end-
amen music was dhrivin' thim mad. Mother av
Hiven ! how they cried, an' the ould she-god grinni'
above thim all so scornful I The dhrink was dyin'
out in me fast, an' I was thinkin' harder than the
thoughts wud go through my head — thinkin' how
to get out, an' all manner of nonsense as well.
The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond
belts clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune
their hands, an' the lights were goin' lower an'
dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from
the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the
palanquin, an' at the end where my foot was, stood
the livin' spit an' image o' mysilf worked on the
linin'. This man here, ut was/

He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a
hand under one, and thrust into the firelight a
foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god
Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the
staring eye, and the blue-black moustache of the
god made up a far-off resemblance to Mulvaney.

38

KRISHNA MULVANEY

4 The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole
schame came to me thin. I believe I was mad
too. I slid the off-shutter open an' rowled out
into the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar,
tucked up my trousies to my knees, slipped off my
boots an' tuk a general hould av all the pink linin'
av the palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a
woman's dhriss when you tread on ut at a sergeants'
ball, an' a bottle came with ut. I tuk the bottle
an' the next minut I was out av the dhark av the
pillar, the pink linin' wrapped round me most
graceful, the music thunderin' like kettledrums,
an' a could draft blowin' round my bare legs.
By this hand that did ut, I was Krishna tootlin' on
the flute — the god that the rig'rnental chaplain
talks about. A sweet sight I must ha' looked.
I knew my eyes were big, and my face was wax^
white, an' at the worst I must ha' looked like a
ghost. But they took me for the livin' god.
The music stopped, and the women were dead
dumb, an' I crooked my legs like a shepherd on a
china basin, an' I did the ghost'Waggle with my
feet as I had done ut at the rig'rnental theatre
many times, an' I slid acrost the width av that
temple in front av the she-god tootlin' on the beer
bottle.'

'Wot did you toot?' demanded Ortheris the
practical.

39

LIFE'S HANDICAP

' Me ? Oh I ' Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the
action to the word, and sliding gravely in front of
us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half
light. 4 1 sang —

1 Only say

You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
Don't say nay,
Charmin' Judy Callaghan.

I didn't know me own voice when I sang. An'
oh I 'twas pitiful to see the women. The darlin's
were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last
wan I cud see her poor little fingers workin' one
in another as if she wanted to touch my feet. So
I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her
head for the greater honour, an' I slid into the
dhark on the other side av the temple, and fetched
up in the arms av a big fat priest. All I wanted was
to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy
throat an' shut the speech out av him. " Out I "
sez I. " Which way, ye fat heathen ? "—" Oh ! "
sez he. " Man," sez I. " White man, soldier
man, common soldier man. Where in the name
av confusion is the back door ? " The women in
the temple were still on their faces, an' a young
priest was holdin' out his arms above their heads.
4 " This way," sez my fat friend, duckin' behind
a big bull'god an' divin' into a passage. Thin I

40

KRISHNA MULVANEY

rcmimbered that I must ha' made the miraculous
reputation av that temple for the next fifty years.
"Not so fast/' I sez, an' I held out both my
hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled like a
father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in
case he should be wishful to put a knife into me
unbeknowst, an' I ran him up an' down the passage
twice to collect his sensibilities ! " Be quiet," sez
he, in English. "Now you talk sense," I sez.
44 Fwhat'll you give me for the use av that most
iligant palanquin I have no time to take away ? "
-"Don't tell," sez he. "Is ut like?" sez L
" But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far
from my home an' I've done you a service."
Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould
man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank.
As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered
all round the slack av his clothes an' began
dribblin' ten^rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and
rupees into my hand till I could hould no more.'

'You lie!' said Ortheris. 'You're mad or
sunstrook. A native don't give coin unless you
cut it out o' 'im. Tain't nature.'

'Then my lie an' my sunstroke is concealed
under that lump av sod yonder,' retorted Mulvaney
unruffled, nodding across the scrub. ' An' there's
a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs
have iver taken you to, Orth'ris, me son. Four

41

LIFE'S HANDICAP

hundred an' thirty-four rupees by my reckoning
an' a big fat gold necklace that I took from him
as a remimbrancer, was our share in that business/

* An' 'e give it you for love ? ' said Ortheris.

* We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was
a trifle too pressing but considher fwhat I had done
for the good av the temple and the iverlastin' joy
av those women. Twas cheap at the price. I
wud ha' taken more if I cud ha' found ut. I
turned the ould man upside down at the last, but
he was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in
another passage an' I found mysilf up to my knees
in Benares river «• water, an' bad smellin' ut is.
More by token I had come out on the river * line
close to the burnin' ghat and contagious to a
cracklin' corpse. This was in the heart av the night,
for I had been four hours in the temple. There
was a crowd av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an'
wint across the river. Thin I came home acrost
country, lyin' up by day.'

1 How on earth did you manage ? ' I said.

'How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from
Cabul to Candahar? He marched an' he niver
tould how near he was to breakin' down. That's
why he is fwhat he is. An' now — ' Mulvaney
yawned portentously. * Now I will go an' give
myself up for absince widout leave. It's eight an'
twenty days an' the rough end of the colonel's

42

KRISHNA MULVANEY

tongue in orderly room, any way you look at ut,
But 'tis cheap at the price/

* Mulvaney/ said I softly. ' If there happens
to be any sort of excuse that the colonel can in
any way accept, I have a notion that you'll get
nothing more than the dressing^down. The new
recruits are in, and—

4 Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old
man wants ? Tis not my way, but he shall have
thim. I'll tell him I was engaged in financial
operations connected wid a church,' and he flapped
his way to cantonments and the cells, singing
lustily —

' So they sent a corp'ril's file,
And they put me in the gyard-room
For conduck unbecomin' of a soldier.'

And when he was lost in the mist of the moonlight
we could hear the refrain —

' Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
As we go marchin' along, boys, oh I
For although in this campaign
There's no whisky nor champagne,
We'll keep our spirits goin' with a song, boys 1 '

Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful
and almost weeping guard, and was made much
of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that
he had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain

43

LIFE'S HANDICAP

insensible on a villager's cot for untold hours;
and between laughter and goodwill the affair was
smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach
the new recruits how to * Fear God, Honour the
Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.'

44

THE COURTING OF DINAH
SHADD

What did the colonel's lady think ?

Nobody never knew.
Somebody asked the sergeant's wife

An' she told 'em true.
When you git to a man in the case

They're like a row o' pins,
For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady

Are sisters under their skins.

Barrack Room Ballad.

ALL day I had followed at the heels of a pur>
suing army engaged on one of the finest
battles that ever camp of exercise beheld.
Thirty thousand troops had, by the wisdom of
the Government of India, been turned loose
over a few thousand square miles of country to
practise in peace what they would never attempt
in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken
infantry at the trot. Infantry captured artillery
by frontal attacks delivered in line of quarter

45

LIFE'S HANDICAP

columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up
to the wheels of an armoured train which
carried nothing more deadly than a twenty^five
pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few
score volunteers all cased in three - eighths - inch
boiler .• plate. Yet it was a very lifelike camp.
Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody
knew the country and nobody spared man or
horse. There was unending cavalry scouting and
almost unending forced work over broken ground.
The Army of the South had finally pierced the
centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring
through the gap hot - foot to capture a city of
strategic importance. Its front extended fanwise,
the sticks being represented by regiments strung
out along the line of route backwards to the
divisional transport columns and all the lumber
that trails behind an army on the move. On its
right the broken left of the Army of the North
was flying in mass, chased by the Southern horse
and hammered by the Southern guns till these had
been pushed far beyond the limits of their last
support. Then the flying sat down to rest,
while the elated commandant of the pursuing
force telegraphed that he held all in check and
observation.

Unluckily he did not observe that three miles
to his right flank a flying column of Northern

46

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and British
troops had been pushed round as fast as the failing
light allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the
Southern Army, — to break, as it were, all the ribs
of the fan where they converged by striking at
the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery
supplies. Their instructions were to go in, avoid-
ing the few scouts who might not have been
drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient
excitement to impress the Southern Army with the
wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before
they captured cities. It was a pretty manoeuvre,
neatly carried out.

Speaking for the second division of the Southern
Army, our first intimation of the attack was at
twilight, when the artillery were labouring in deep
sand, most of the escort were trying to help them
out, and the main body of the infantry had
gone on. A Noah's Ark of elephants, camels,
and the mixed menagerie of an Indian trans-
port-train bubbled and squealed behind the guns,
when there appeared from nowhere in particular
British infantry to the extent of three companies,
who sprang to the heads of the gun-horses
and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and
cheers.

'How's that, umpire?' said the major com-
manding the attack, and with one voice the drivers

47

LIFE'S HANDICAP

and limber gunners answered 'Hout!' while the
colonel of artillery sputtered,

* All your scouts are charging our main body/
said the major. 4 Your flanks are unprotected for
two miles. I think we've broken the back of this
division. And listen, — there go the Ghoorkhas I '

A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more
than a mile away, and was answered by cheerful
howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have
swung clear of the second division, had stepped on
its tail in the dark, but drawing off hastened to
reach the next line of attack, which lay almost
parallel to us five or six miles away.

Our column swayed and surged irresolutely, —
three batteries, the divisional ammunition reserve,
the baggage, and a section of the hospital and
bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised
to report himself 4 cut up ' to the nearest umpire,
and commending his cavalry and all other cavalry
to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume
touch with the rest of the division.

* We'll bivouac here to-night/ said the major.
* I have a notion that the Ghoorkhas will get caught.
They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy till
the transport gets away/

A hand caught my beast's bridle and led him
out of the choking dust; a larger hand deftly
canted me out of the saddle; and two of the

48

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

hugest hands in the world received me sliding.
Pleasant is the lot of the special correspondent who
falls into such hands as those of Privates Mulvaney,
Ortheris, and Learoyd.

4 An' that's all right/ said the Irishman calmly.
4 We thought we'd find you somewheres here by.
Is there anything av yours in the transport?
Orth'ris'll fetch ut out/

Ortheris did 'fetch ut out/ from under the
trunk of an elephant, in the shape of a servant and
an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
little man's eyes sparkled.

'If the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these
parts gets sight av the thruck/ said Mulvaney,
making practised investigation, 4 they'll loot ev'ry-
thing. They're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-
biscuit these days, but glory's no compensation
for a belly-ache. Praise be, we're here to protect
you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an' that's a
cur'osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av
ut, an' fowls I Mother av Moses, but ye take the
field like a confectioner ! Tis scand'lus/

"Ere's a orficer/ said Ortheris significantly.
' When the sergent's done lushin' the privit may
clean the pot/

I bundled several things into Mulvaney's haver-
sack before the major's hand fell on my shoulder
and he said tenderly, 4 Requisitioned for the Queen's

L.H. Vol.1 49 :

LIFE'S HANDICAP

service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special
correspondents : they are the soldier's best friends.
Come and take pot-luck with us to-night/

And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings
that my well-considered commissariat melted away
to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a
waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The
flying column had taken three days' rations with
it, and there be few things nastier than Govern*
ment rations — especially when Government is
experimenting with German toys. Erbswurst,
tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed
vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing,
but what Thomas Atkins needs is bulk in his
inside. The major, assisted by his brother officers,
purchased goats for the camp, and so made the
experiment of no effect. Long before the fatigue*
party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the
men were settled down by their valises, kettles
and pots had appeared from the surrounding
country, and were dangling over fires as the kid
and the compressed vegetable bubbled together;
there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; out*
rageous demands for 'a little more stuffin' with
that there liver-wing ' ; and gust on gust of chaff
as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a gun-
butt.

'The boys are in a good temper/ said the

50

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

major, 'They'll be singing presently. Well, a
night like this is enough to keep them happy/

Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian
stars, which are not all pricked in on one plane,
but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the
eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to
the barred doors of heaven itself. The earth was
a gray shadow more unreal than the sky. We
could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses
between the howling of the jackals, the movement
of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter
of musketry - fire leagues away to the left. A
native woman from some unseen hut began to sing,
the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi,
and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there
was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the
even breathing of the crowded earth took up the
story.

The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,
— their officers with them. The subaltern is
happy who can win the approval of the musical
critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the
more intricate step-dancers. By him, as by him
who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins will
stand in time of need, when he will let a better
officer go on alone. The ruined tombs of forgotten
Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra Town,
The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long,

51

LIFE'S HANDICAP

long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie
died, and that crashing chorus which announces,

Youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire,

Firm hand and eagle eye,
Must he acquire, who would aspire

To see the gray boar die.

To 'day, of all those jovial thieves who ap^
propriated my commissariat and lay and laughed
round that waterproof sheet, not one remains.
They went to camps that were not of exercise and
battles without umpires. Burmah, the Soudan,
and the frontier, — fever and fight, — took them in
their time.

I drifted across to the men's fires in search of
Mulvaney, whom I found strategically greasing his
feet by the blaze. There is nothing particularly
lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after
a long day's march, but when you reflect on the
exact proportion of the 4 might, majesty, dominion,
and power ' of the British Empire which stands on
those feet you take an interest in the proceedings.

* There's a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,'
said Mulvaney. * I can't touch ut. Prick ut out,
little man.'

Ortheris took out his house * wife, eased the
trouble with a needle, stabbed Mulvaney in the
calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked
into the fire.

52

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

'I've bruk the best av my toes over you, ye
grinnin' child av disruption/ said Mulvaney,
sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then
seeing me, ' Oh, ut's you, sorr ! Be welkim, an'
take that maraudin' scutt's place. Jock, hold
him down on the cindhers for a bit/

But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I
took possession of the hollow he had scraped for
himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd on
the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a
minute fell fast asleep.

4 There's the height av politeness for you/ said
Mulvaney, lighting his pipe with a flaming branch.
* But Jock's eaten half a box av your sardines at
wan gulp, an' I think the tin too. What's the
best wid you, sorr, an' how did you happen to be
on the losin' side this day whin we captured you ? '

4 The Army of the South is winning all along
the line/ I said.

'Then that line's the hangman's rope, savin'
your presence. You'll learn to-morrow how we
rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim
trouble, an' that's what a woman does. By the
same tokin, we'll be attacked before the dawnin'
an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots.
How do I know that? By the light av pure
reason. Here are three companies av us ever so
far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av

53

LIFE'S HANDICAP

roaring taring squealin' cavalry gone on just to
turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av
course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as
not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my
words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he
said, " Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy
av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him
first an' frequint." We ought to ha' gone on an'
helped the Ghoorkhas.'

'But what do you know about Polonius?' I
demanded. This was a new side of Mulvaney's
character.

'All that Shakespeare iver wrote an' a dale
more that the gallery shouted,' said the man of
war, carefully lacing his boots. 'Did I not tell
you av Silver's theatre in Dublin whin I was
younger than I am now an' a patron av the
drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor^man
or woman their just dues, an' by consequince his
comp'nies was collapsible at the last minut. Thin
the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an' oft as
not ould Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith,
I've seen Hamlut played wid a new black eye an'
the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber
wanst Hogin that 'listed in the Black Tyrone an'
was shot in South Africa, he sejuced ould Silver
into givin' him Hamlut's part instid av me that
had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av

54

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

course I wint into the gallery an' began to fill the
pit wid other people's hats, an' I passed the time
av day to Hogin walkin' through Denmark like
a hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back.
"Hamlut," sez I, "there's a hole in your heel.
Pull up your shtockin's, Hamlut," sez I. " Hamlut,
Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop that skull
an' pull up your shtockin's." The whole house
begun to tell him that. He stopped his solilo-
quishms mid-between. "My shtockin's may be
comin' down or they may not," sez he, screwin'
his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who I
was. " But af ther this performince is over me an'
the Ghost'll trample the tripes out av you, Terence,
wid your ass's bray I " An' that's how I come to
know about Hamlut. Eyah I Those days, those
days ! Did you iver have onendin' devilmint an'
nothin' to pay for it in your life, sorr ? '

' Never, without having to pay,' I said.

* That's thrue 1 Tis mane whin you considher
on ut; but ut's the same wid horse or fut. A
headache if you dhrink, an' a belly-ache if you eat
too much, an' a heart' ache to kape all down.
Faith, the beast only gets the colic, an' he's the
lucky man.'

He dropped his head and stared into the fire,
fingering his moustache the while. From the far
side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan,

55

LIFE'S HANDICAP

senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in
an ancient and much appreciated song of senti*
ment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.

The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O'Moore I

With fortyxfive O's in the last word: even at
that distance you might have cut the soft South
Irish accent with a shovel,

4 For all we take we must pay, but the price is
cruel high/ murmured Mulvaney when the chorus
had ceased.

* What's the trouble ? ' I said gently, for I knew
that he was a man of an inextinguishable sorrow.

'Hear now/ said he. 'Ye know what I am
now. / know what I mint to be at the beginnin'
av my service. I've tould you time an' again, an'
what I have not Dinah Shadd has. An' what am
I ? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an ould dhrunken,
untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the
reg'ment change out from colonel to drummer*
boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av times ! Ay,
scores I An' me not so near gettin' promotion as
in the first! An' me livin' on an' kapin' clear
av clink, not by my own good conduck, but the
kindness av some orf cer-bhoy young enough to
be son to me ? Do I not know ut ? Can I not
tell whin I'm passed over at p'rade, tho' I'm rockin'

56

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

full av liquor an' ready to fall all in wan piece,
such as even a suckin' child might see, bekaze,
" Oh, 'tis only ould Mulvaney I " An' whin I'm
let off in ord'ly'room through some thrick of the
tongue an' a ready answer an' the ould man's
mercy, is ut smilin' I feel whin I fall away an' go
back to Dinah Shadd, thryin' to carry ut all off
as a joke ? Not 1 1 Tis hell to me, dumb hell
through ut all ; an' next time whin the fit comes
I will be as bad again. Good cause the reg'ment
has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better
cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man.
I'm only fit to tache the new drafts what I'll niver
learn myself; an' I am sure, as tho' I heard ut,
that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities
gets away from my " Mind ye now," an' " Listen
to this, Jim, bhoy," — sure I am that the sergint
houlds me up to him for a warnin'. So I tache,
as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and
ricochet fire. Lord be good to me, for I have
stud some throuble 1 '

'Lie down and go to sleep,' said I, not being
able to comfort or advise. * You're the best man
in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
fool. Lie down and wait till we're attacked.
What force will they turn out? Guns, think
you?'

'Try that wid your lorrds an' ladies, twistin'

57

LIFE'S HANDICAP

an' turnin' the talk, tho' you mint ut well. Ye
cud say nothin' to help me, an' yet ye niver knew
what cause I had to be what I am/

4 Begin at the beginning and go on to the end/
I said royally. 'But rake up the fire a bit
first/

I passed Ortheris's bayonet for a poker.

'That shows how little we know what we do/
said Mulvaney, putting it aside. 'Fire takes all
the heart out av the steel, an' the next time, may
be, that our little man is fighting for his life his
bradawl'll break, an' so you'll ha' killed him,
manin' no more than to kape yourself warm. 'Tis
a recruity's thrick that. Pass the clanin'^rod,
sorr/

I snuggled down abashed ; and after an interval
the voice of Mulvaney began.

* Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to
be wife av mine ? '

I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt
for some months — ever since Dinah Shadd, the
strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had
of her own good love and free will washed a shirt
for me, moving in a barren land where washing
was not.

'I can't remember/ I said casually. 'Was it
before or after you made love to Annie Bragin,
and got no satisfaction ? '

58

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

The story of Annie Bragin is written in another
place. It is one of the many less respectable
episodes in Mulvaney's chequered career.

4 Before — before — long before, was that business
av Annie Bragin an* the corp'ril's ghost. Niver
woman was the worse for me whin I had married
Dinah. There's a time for all things, an' I know
how to kape all things in place — barrin' the dhrink,
that kapes me in my place wid no hope av comin'
to be aught else/

4 Begin at the beginning/ I insisted. 'Mrs.
Mulvaney told me that you married her when you
were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks/

'An' the same is a cess^pit/ said Mulvaney
piously. ' She spoke thrue, did Dinah. 'Twas
this way. Talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in
love, sorr ? *

I preserved the silence of the damned. MuL
vaney continued —

'Thin I will assume that ye have not. / did.
In the days av my youth, as I have more than wanst
tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an' de'
lighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated
as I have bin. Niver man was loved as I — no, not
within half a day's march av ut I For the first five
years av my service, whin I was what I wud give
my sowl to be now, I tuk whatever was within my
reach an' digested ut — an' that's more than most

59

LIFE'S HANDICAP

men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an' ut did me no
harm. By the Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid
four women at wanst, an' kape them from findin'
out anythin' about the other three, an' smile like a
full-blown marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan,
av the battery we'll have down on us to-night,
could drive his team no better than I mine, an' I
hild the worser cattle! An' so I lived, an' so I
was happy till afther that business wid Annie
Bragin — she that turned me off as cool as a meat-
safe, an' taught me where I stud in the mind av
an honest woman. Twas no sweet dose to
swallow.

1 Afther that I sickened awhile an' tuk thought
to my reg'mental work ; conceiting mesilf I wud
study an' be a sargint, an' a major-gineral twinty
minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitious-
ness there was an empty place in my sowl, an' me
own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. Sez I to
mesilf, " Terence, you're a great man an' the best
set-up in the reg'mint. Go on an' get promotion."
Sez mesilf to me, " What for ? " Sez I to mesilf,
" For the glory av ut I " Sez mesilf to me, " Will
that fill these two strong arrums av yours,
Terence?" — "Go to the devil," sez I to mesilf.
"Go to the married lines," sez mesilf to me.
"Tis the same thing," sez I to mesilf. "Av
you're the same man, ut is," said mesilf to me;

60

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

an' wid that I considhered on ut a long while.
Did you iver feel that way, sorr ? '

I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney
were uninterrupted he would go on. The clamour
from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the
rival singers of the companies were pitted against
each other.

'So I felt that way an' a bad time ut was.
Wanst, bein' a fool, I wint into the married lines
more for the sake av spakin' to our ould colour.-
sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid womenfolk.
I was a corp'ril then — rejuced aftherwards, but a
corp'ril then. I've got a photograft av mesilf to
prove ut. " You'll take a cup av tay wid us ? "
sez Shadd. ** I will that," I sez, " tho' tay is not
my divarsion."

"Twud be better for you if ut were," sez
ould Mother Shadd, an' she had ought to know,
for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung'
full each night.

* Wid that I tuk off my gloves — there was
pipeclay in thim, so that they stud alone — an'
pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china
ornaments an' bits av things in the Shadds'
quarters. They were things that belonged to a
man, an' no camp'kit, here to-day an' dishipated
next. " You're comfortable in this place, sergint,"
sez I. " 'Tis the wife that did ut, boy," sez he,

61

LIFE'S HANDICAP

pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould Mother
Shadd, an' she smacked the top av his bald head
apon the compliment. "That manes you want
money," sez she.

4 An* thin — an' thin whin the kettle was to be
filled, Dinah came in — my Dinah — her sleeves
rowled up to the elbow an' her hair in a winkin'
glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath
twinklin' like stars on a frosty night, an' the tread
av her two feet lighter than waste^paper from the
colonel's basket in ord'ly<room whin ut's emptied.
Bein' but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein'
me, an' I twisted me moustache an' looked at a
picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman
that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad
she'll come bleatin' to your boot'heels ! '

'I suppose that's why you followed Annie
Bragin till everybody in the married quarters
laughed at you,' said I, remembering that un*
hallowed wooing and casting off the disguise of
drowsiness.

'I'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the
attack,' said Mulvaney, driving his boot into the
dying fire. 'If you read the Soldier's Pocket
Book, which niver any soldier reads, you'll see that
there are exceptions. Whin Dinah was out av the
door (an' 'twas as tho' the sunlight had shut too)
— " Mother av Hiven, sergint," sez I, " but is that

62

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

your daughter ?" — "I've believed that way these
eighteen years/' sez ould Shadd, his eyes twinklin' ;
" but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like iv'ry
woman."- ''Tis wid yours this time, for a
mericle/' sez Mother Shadd. " Thin why in the
name av fortune did I niver see her before ? " sez
I. " Bekaze you've been thrapesin' round wid the
married women these three years past. She was a
bit av a child till last year, an' she shot up wid the
spring," sez ould Mother Shadd. "I'll thrapese
no more," sez I. " D'you mane that ? " sez ould
Mother Shadd, lookin' at me side^ways like a hen
looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin'
free. "Try me, an' tell," sez I. Wid that I
pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an' went
out av the house as stiff as at gin'ral p'rade, for
well I knew that Dinah Shadd's eyes were in the
small av my back out av the scullery window.
Faith I that was the only time I mourned I was not
a cav'l'ry man for the pride av the spurs to jingle.
* I wint out to think, an' I did a powerful lot
av thinkin', but ut all came round to that shlip av
a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue
eyes an' the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off
canteen, an' I kept to the married quarthers, or near
by, on the chanst av meetin' Dinah. Did I meet
her ? Oh, my time past, did I not ; wid a lump
in my throat as big as my valise an' my heart goin'

63

LIFE'S HANDICAP

like a farrier's forge on a Saturday morning?
Twas " Good day to ye, Miss Dinah/' an " Good
day t'you, corp'ril," for a week or two, and divil
a bit further could I get bekaze av the respect I
had to that girl that I cud ha' broken betune finger
an' thumb.'

Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure
of Dinah Shadd when she handed me my shirt.

4 Ye may laugh/ grunted Mulvaney. * But I'm
speakin' the trut', an' 'tis you that are in fault.
Dinah was a girl that wud ha' taken the imperious-
ness out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days.
Flower hand, foot av shod air, an' the eyes av the
livin' mornin' she had that is my wife to-day — ould
Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to
me.

4 Twas after three weeks standin' off an' on, an'
niver makin' headway excipt through the eyes, that
a little drummer-boy grinned in me face whin I had
admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for
riotin' all over the place. " An' I'm not the only
wan that doesn't kape to barricks," sez he. I tuk
him by the scruff av his neck, — my heart was hung
on a hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand
— an' " Out wid ut," sez I, " or I'll lave no bone
av you unbreakable." — " Speak to Dempsey," sez
he howlin'. " Dempsey which ? " sez I, 4t ye un-
washed limb av Satan." — "Av the Bob-tailed

64

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

Dhragoons," sez he. " He's seen her home from
her aunt's house in the civil lines four times this
fortnight." — " Child I " sez I, dhroppin' him, " your
tongue's stronger than your body. Go to your
quarters. I'm sorry I dhressed you down."

'At that I went four ways to wanst huntinr
Dempsey. I was mad to think that wid all my airs
among women I shud ha' been chated by a basinx
faced fool av a cav'lryman not fit to trust on a
trunk. Presintly I found him in our lines — the
Bobtails was quartered next us — an' a tallowy,
topheavy son av a she^mule he was wid his big
brass spurs an' his plastrons on his epigastrons an'
all. But he niver flinched a hair.

4 " A word wid you, Dempsey," sez I. u You've
walked wid Dinah Shadd four times this fortnight
gone."

4 "What's that to you?" sez he. "I'll walk
forty times more, an' forty on top av that, ye
shovel'futted clod'breakin' infantry lance^corp'ril."

4 Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home
on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. 4t Will
that content you ? " sez he, blowin' on his knuckles
for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer.
"Content I" sez I. "For your own sake, man,
take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove.
Tis the beginnin' av the overture ; stand up ! "

4 He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his

L.H. Vol.1 65 F

LIFE'S HANDICAP

jacket, an' his shoulders had no fair play. I was
f ightin' for Dinah Shadd an' that cut on my cheek.
What hope had he forninst me ? " Stand up," sez
I, time an' again whin he was beginnin' to quarter
the ground an' gyard high an' go large. "This
isn't ridin'-school," I sez. " O man, stand up an'
let me get in at ye." But whin I saw he wud be
runnin' about, I grup his shtock in my left an' his
waist-belt in my right an' swung him clear to my
right front, head undher, he hammerin' my nose
till the wind was knocked out av him on the bare
ground. "Stand up," sez I, "or I'll kick your
head into your chest I " and I wud ha' done ut too,
so ragin' mad I was.

4 " My collar-bone's bruk," sez he. " Help me
back to lines. I'll walk wid her no more." So I
helped him back.'

* And was his collar-bone broken ? ' I asked, for
I fancied that only Learoyd could neatly accom<
plish that terrible throw.

4 He pitched on his left shoulder -point. Ut
was. Next day the news was in both barricks, an'
whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like
all the reg'mintal tailor's samples there was no
"Good mornin', corp'ril," or aught else. "An'
what have I done, Miss Shadd," sez I, very bould,
plantin' mesilf forninst her, "that ye should not
pass the time of day ? "

66

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

'"Ye've half ^killed rough-rider Dempsey," sez
she, her dear blue eyes fillin' up.

* " May be/' sez I. " Was he a friend av yours
that saw ye home four times in the fortnight ? "

'"Yes," sez she, but her mouth was down at
the corners. " An' — an' what's that to you ? "
she sez.

4 " Ask Dempsey," sez I, purtendin' to go away.

4 4t Did you fight for me then, ye silly man ? "
she sez, tho' she knew ut all along.

'"Who else?" sez I, an' I tuk wan pace to
the front.

4 4i I wasn't worth ut," sez she, f ingerin' in her
apron.

'" That's for me to say," sez I. "Shall I say
ut?"

'"Yes," sez she in a saint's whisper, an' at
that I explained mesilf; and she tould me what
ivry man that is a man, an' many that is a woman,
hears wanst in his life.

'"But what made ye cry at startin', Dinah,
darlin'?"sezl.

'"Your — your bloody cheek," sez she, duckin'
her little head down on my sash (I was on duty
for the day) an' whimperin' like a sorrowful angil.

'Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk
ut as pleased me best an' my first kiss wid ut.
Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the

67

LIFE'S HANDICAP

tip av the nose an' undher the eye \ an' a girl that
lets a kiss come tumbleways like that has never
been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr.
Thin we wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd
like two little childher, an* she said 'twas no bad
thing, an' ould Shadd nodded behind his pipe an'
Dinah ran away to her own room. That day I
throd on rollin' clouds. All earth was too small
to hould me. Begad, I cud ha' hiked the sun out
av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnify
cent I was. But I tuk recruities at squad'drill
instid, an' began wid general battalion advance
whin I shud ha' been balance - steppin' them.
Eyah ! that day ! that day I '

A very long pause. * Well ? ' said I.

"Twas all wrong,' said Mulvaney, with an
enormous sigh. * An' I know that ev'ry bit av ut
was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe
the half av three pints — not enough to turn the
hair of a man in his natural senses. But I was
more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that
canteen beer was so much whisky to me. I can't
tell how it came about, but behave I had no
thought for anywan except Dinah, behave I hadn't
slipped her little white arms from my neck five
minuts, behave the breath of her kiss was not gone
from my mouth, I must go through the married
lines on my way to quarters, an' I must stay talkin'

68

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

to a red'headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy
Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the
wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen * sergint — the
Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood
that are above groun' this day I

"An' what are ye houldin' your head that
high for, corp'ril?" sez Judy. "Come in an'
thry a cup av tay," she sez, standin' in the door*
way. Bein' an ontrustable fool, an' thinkin' av
anything but tay, I wint.

'"Mother's at canteen," sez Judy, smoothin'
the hair av hers that was like red snakes, an'
lookin' at me corner^ways out av her green cats'
eyes. " Ye will not mind, corp'ril ? "

'"I can endure," sez I; ould Mother Sheehy
bein' no divarsion av mine, nor her daughter too.
Judy fetched the tea things an' put thim on the
table, leanin' over me very close to get thim
square. I dhrew back, thinkin' av Dinah.

"Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?" sez
Judy.

" No," sez I. " Why should I be ? "

"That rests wid the girl," sez Judy, dhrawin'
her chair next to mine.

'"Thin there let ut rest," sez I; an' thinkin'
I'd been a trifle onpolite, I sez, "The tay's not
quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little
finger in the cup, Judy. 'Twill make ut necthar."

69

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'" What's necthar?"sez she.

'"Somethin' very sweet/' sez I; an' for the
sinful life av me I could not help lookin' at her out
av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look at
a woman.

* " Go on wid ye, corp'ril," sez she. " You're
a flirrt."

4 " On me sowl I'm not," sez I.

* " Then you're a cruel handsome man, an' that's
worse," sez she, heaving big sighs an' lookin'
crossways.

4 " You know your own mind," sez I.

'"Twud be better for me if I did not," she
sez.

444 There's a dale to be said on both sides av
that," sez I, unthinkin'.

'"Say your own part av ut, then, Terence,
darlin'," sez she; "for begad I'm thinkin* I've
said too much or too little for an honest girl/' an'
wid that she put her arms round my neck an'
kissed me.

* " There's no more to be said af ther that/' sez
I, kissin' her back again — Oh the mane scutt that
I was, my head ringin' wid Dinah Shadd ! How
does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has
put the comether on wan woman, he's sure bound
to put it on another? Tis the same thing at
musketry. Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into

70

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

the bank, an' the next, lay high lay low, sight or
snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten shots
runnin'.'

'That only happens to a man who has had
a good deal of experience. He does it without
thinking,' I replied.

'Thankin' you for the complimint, sorr, ut
may be so. But I'm doubtful whether you mint
ut for a complimint. Hear now ; I sat there wid
Judy on my knee tellin' me all manner av nonsinse
an' only sayin' " yes " an' " no/' when I'd much
better ha' kept tongue betune teeth. An' that
was not an hour afther I had left Dinah I What
I was thinkin' av I cannot say. Presintly, quiet
as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet'
dhrunk. She had her daughter's red hair, but
'twas bald in patches, an' I cud see in her wicked
ould face, clear as lightnin', what Judy wud be
twenty years to come. I was for jumpin' up, but
Judy niver moved.

" Terence has promust, mother," sez she, an'
the could sweat bruk out all over me. Ould
Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an' began
playin' wid the cups. "Thin you're a well'
matched pair," she sez very thick. "For he's
the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the Queen's
shoe'leather," an'

4 "I'm off, Judy," sez I. "Ye should not

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

talk nonsinse to your mother. Get her to bed,

girl"

* " Nonsinse ! " sez the ould woman, prickin'
up her ears like a cat an' grippin' the table-edge.
" 'Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you,
ye grinnin' badger, if nonsinse 'tis. Git clear,
you. I'm goin' to bed/'

4 1 ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew
an' my heart sick, but I had sinse enough to see
that I'd brought ut all on mysilf. " It's this to
pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-
cats," sez I. " What I've said, an' what I've not
said do not matther. Judy an' her dam will
hould me for a promust man, an' Dinah will give
me the go, an' I desarve ut. I will go an' get
dhrunk," sez I, " an' forget about ut, for 'tis plain
I'm not a marrin' man."

4 On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles,
colour-sergeant that was av E Comp'ny, a hard,
hard man, wid a torment av a wife. " You've the
head av a drowned man on your shoulders," sez
he j " an' you're goin' where you'll get a worse
wan. Come back," sez he. " Let me go," sez I.
" I've thrown my luck over the wall wid my own
hand I " — " Then that's not the way to get ut back
again," sez he. " Have out wid your throuble,
ye fool-bhoy." An' I tould him how the matther
was.

72

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

4 He sucked in his lower lip. "You've been
thrapped," sez he. "Ju Sheehy wud be the
betther for a man's name to hers as soon as can.
An' ye thought ye'd put the comether on her, —
that's the natural vanity of the baste. Terence,
you're a big born fool, but you're not bad enough
to marry into that comp'ny. If you said any thin',
an' for all your protestations I'm sure ye did — or
did not, which is worse, — eat ut all — lie like the
father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy.
Do I not know what ut is to marry a woman that
was the very spit an' image av Judy whin she was
young? I'm gettin' old an' I've larnt patience,
but you, Terence, you'd raise hand on Judy an'
kill her in a year. Never mind if Dinah gives you
the go, you've desarved utj never mind if the
whole reg'mint laughs you all day. Get shut av
Judy an' her mother. They can't dhrag you to
church, but if they do, they'll dhrag you to hell. Go
back to your quarters and lie down," sez he. Thin
over his shoulder, " You must ha' done with thim."

* Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was
no tucker in me as I walked. I knew the throuble
wud come soon enough widout any handlin' av
mine, an' I dreaded ut sore.

'"I heard Judy callin' me, but I hild straight
on to the Shadds' quarthers, an' Dinah wud ha'
kissed me but I put her back.

73

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'"Whin all's said, darlin'," sez I, "you can
give ut me if ye will, tho' I misdoubt 'twill be so
easy to come by then."

* I had scarce begun to put the explanation into
shape before Judy an' her mother came to the door.
I think there was a veranda, but I'm forgettin'.

* " Will ye not step in ? " sez Dinah, pretty and
polite, though the Shadds had no dealin's with the
Sheehys. Old mother Shadd looked up quick, an'
she was the fust to see the throublej for Dinah
was her daughter.

4 " I'm pressed for time to-day," sez Judy as
bould as brass ; " an' I've only come for Terence, —
my promust man. 'Tis strange to find him here
the day afther the day."

4 Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her,
an' I answered straight.

"There was some nonsinse last night at the
Sheehys' quarthers, an' Judy's carryin' on the joke,
darlin'," sez I.

'"At the Sheehys' quarthers ?" sez Dinah
very slow, an' Judy cut in wid : " He was there
from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an' the betther
half av that time I was sittin' on his knee, Dinah
Shadd. Ye may look and ye may look an' ye
may look me up an' down, but ye won't
look away that Terence is my promust man.
Terence, darlin', 'tis time for us to be comin' home."

74

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

* Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. " Ye
left me at half-past eight/' she sez to me, " an' I
niver thought that ye'd leave me for Judy, —
promises or no promises. Go back wid her, you
that have to be fetched by a girl I I'm done with
you/' sez she, and she ran into her own room, her
mother followin'. So I was alone wid those two
women and at liberty to spake my sentiments.

4 " Judy Sheehy," sez I, " if you made a fool av
me betune the lights you shall not do ut in the
day. I niver promised you words or lines."

' " You lie/' sez ould Mother Sheehy, " an' may
ut choke you where you stand I" She was far
gone in dhrink.

4 4t An' tho' ut choked me where I stud I'd not
change," sez I. " Go home, Judy. I take shame
for a decent girl like you dhraggin' your mother
out bare-headed on this errand. Hear now,
and have ut for an answer. I gave my word
to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an', more blame
to me, I was wid you last night talkin' nonsinse
but nothin' more. You've chosen to thry to
hould me on ut. I will not be held thereby for
anythin' in the world. Is that enough ? "

'Judy wint pink all over. "An' I wish you
joy av the perjury," sez she, duckin' a curtsey.
" You've lost a woman that would ha' wore her
hand to the bone for your pleasure; an' 'deed,

75

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Terence, ye were not thrapped. . . ." Lascelles
must ha' spoken plain to her. " I am such as Dinah
is — 'deed I am ! Ye've lost a fool av a girl that'll
niver look at you again, an' ye've lost what ye
niver had, — your common honesty. If you
manage your men as you manage your love-makin',
small wondher they call you the worst corp'ril in
the comp'ny. Come away, mother," sez she.

* But divil a f ut would the ould woman budge !
"D'you hould by that?" sez she, peerin' up
under her thick gray eyebrows.

4 " Ay, an' wud," sez I, 4i tho' Dinah gave me
the go twinty times. I'll have no thruck with you
or yours," sez I. "Take your child away, ye
shameless woman."

4 " An' am I shameless ? " sez she, bringin' her
hands up above her head. " Thin what are you,
ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty^souled son
av a sutler? Am / shameless? Who put the
open shame on me an' my child that we shud go
beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight
for the broken word of a man ? Double portion
of my shame be on you, Terence Mulvaney, that
think yourself so strong ! By Mary and the saints,
by blood and water an' by ivry sorrow that came
into the world since the beginnin', the black blight
fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be
free from pain for another when ut's not your

76

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

own! May your heart bleed in your breast
drop by drop wid all your friends laughin' at
the bleedin'l Strong you think yourself? May
your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into
the divil's hands against your own will! Clear.*
eyed you are ? May your eyes see clear evry step
av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers
av hell put thim out I May the ragin' dry thirst
in my own ould bones go to you that you shall
niver pass bottle full nor glass empty, God
preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you,
my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget
what you mint to be an* do, whin you're wallowin'
in the muck I May ye see the betther and follow
the worse as long as there's breath in your body ;
an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin'
your death before ut takes you, an' enable to stir
hand or foot ! "

4 1 heard a scufflin' in the room behind, and
thin Dinah Shadd's hand dhropped into mine like
a rose'leaf into a muddy road.

'"The half av that I'll take/' sez she, "an'
more too if I can. Go home, ye silly talkin'
woman, — go home an' confess."

'"Come away! Come away!" sez Judy,
pullin' her mother by the shawl. "Twas none
av Terence's fault. For the love av Mary stop
the talkin' I"

77

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'"An" you I" said ould Mother Sheeny,
spinnin' round forninst Dinah. "Will ye take
the half av that man's load ? Stand off from him,
Dinah Shadd, before he takes you down too — you
that look to be a quarther^master^sergeant's wife
in five years. You look too high, child. You
shall wash for the quarther^master^sergeant, whin
he plases to give you the job out av charity ; but
a priviYs wife you shall be to the end, an' evry
sorrow of a privit's wife you shall know and niver
a joy but wan, that shall go from you like the
running tide from a rock. The pain av bearin'
you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving
the breast; an' you shall put away a man-child
into the common ground wid niver a priest to say
a prayer over him, an' on that man-child ye shall
think ivry day av your life. Think long, Dinah
Shadd, for you'll niver have another tho' you pray
till your knees are bleedin'. The mothers av
childer shall mock you behind your back when
you're wringing over the wash-tub. You shall
know what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home
an' see him go to the gyard'room. Will that
plase you, Dinah Shadd, that won't be seen talkin'
to my daughter ? You shall talk to worse than
Judy before all's over. The sergints' wives shall
look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a
sergint, an' you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling

78

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

face whin your heart's burstin'. Stand off av him,
Dinah Shadd, for I've put the Black Curse of
Shielygh upon him an' his own mouth shall make
ut good."

'She pitched forward on her head an' began
foamin' at the mouth. Dinah Shadd ran out wid
water, an' Judy dhragged the ould woman into
the veranda till she sat up.

'"I'm old an' forlore," she sezt thremblin' an'
cryin', "and 'tis like I say a dale more than I
mane/'

4 "When you're able to walk, — go," says ould
Mother Shadd. " This house has no place for the
likes av you that have cursed my daughter."

'"Eyah!" said the ould woman. "Hard
words break no bones, an' Dinah Shadd '11 kape the
love av her husband till my bones are green corn.
Judy darlin', I misremember what I came here for.
Can you lend us the bottom av a taycup av tay,
Mrs. Shadd?"

4 But Judy dhragged her off cryin' as tho' her
heart wud break. An' Dinah Shadd an' I, in ten
minutes we had forgot ut all.'

'Then why do you remember it now?'
said I.

'Is ut like I'd forget? Ivry word that wicked
ould woman spoke fell thrue in my life afther*
wards, an' I cud ha' stud ut all — stud ut all, —

79

LIFE'S HANDICAP

excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was
on the line av march three months afther the
regiment was taken with cholera. We were be-
tune Umballa an' Kalka thin, an' I was on picket.
Whin I came off duty the women showed me the
child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I
looked. We buried him by the road, an' Father
Victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy
baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer.
An' since then I've been a childless man, an' all
else that ould Mother Sheehy put upon me an'
Dinah Shadd. What do you think, sorr ? '

I thought a good deal, but it seemed better
then to reach out for Mulvaney's hand. The
demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses,
Mulvaney is entirely ignorant of his strength.

'But what do you think?' he repeated, as I
was straightening out the crushed fingers.

My reply was drowned in yells and outcries
from the next fire, where ten men were shouting
for 'Orth'ris,' 'Privit Orth'ris,' 'Mistah Or— ther
-risl' 'Deah boy/ 'Cap'n Orth'ris,' 'Field.
Marshal Orth'ris,' 'Stanley, you pen'north o'
pop, come 'ere to your own comp'ny!' And
the cockney, who had been delighting another
audience with recondite and Rabelaisian yarns, was
shot down among his admirers by the major force.

80

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

'You've crumpled my dress ^ shirt 'orrid,' said
he, * an' I shan't sing no more to this 'ere bloomin'
drawin'^room.'

Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled
himself, crept behind Ortheris, and slung him
aloft on his shoulders.

'Sing, ye bloomin' hummin' bird I' said he,
and Ortheris, beating time on Learoyd's skull,
delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the
Ratclif f e Highway, of this song : —

My girl she give me the go onst,

When I was a London lad,
An' I went on the drink for a fortnight,

An' then I went to the bad.
The Queen she give me a shillin'

To fight for 'er over the seas ;
But Guv'ment built me a fever'trap,

An' Injia give me disease.

Chorus.

Ho I don't you 'eed what a girl says,
An' don't you go for the beer ;

But I was an ass when I was at grass,
An' that is why I'm here.

I fired a shot at a Afghan,

The beggar 'e fired again,
An' I lay on my bed with a 'ole in my 'ed,

An' missed the next campaign 1

L. H. Vol. I 81 G

LIFE'S HANDICAP

I up with my gun at a Burman

Who carried a bloomin' dah,
But the cartridge stuck and the bay'nit bruk,

An' all I got was the scar.

Chorus.

Ho I don't you aim at a Afghan,

When you stand on the sky-line clear ;

An' don't you go for a Burman
If none o' your friends is near.

I served my time for a corp'ral,

An' wetted my stripes with pop,
For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,

An' finished the night in the ' shop.'
I served my time for a sergeant ;

The colonel 'e sez ' No I
The most you'll see is a full C.B.' 1

An' . . . very next night 'twas so.

Chorus.

Ho I don't you go for a corp'ral

Unless your 'ed is clear ;
But I was an ass when I was at grass,

An' that is why I'm 'ere.

I've tasted the luck o' the army

In barrack an' camp an' clink,
An' I lost my tip through the bloomin' trip

Along o' the women an' drink.

1 Confined to barracks.

82

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

I'm down at the heel o' my service,
An' when I am laid on the shelf,

My very wust friend from beginning to end
By the blood of a mouse was myself I

Chorus

Ho I don't you 'eed what a girl says,
An' don't you go for the beer ;

But I was an ass when I was at grass
An' that is why I'm 'ere.

'Ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an'
shoutin' as tho' trouble had niver touched him.
D' you remember when he went mad with the
home'Sickness ? ' said Mulvaney, recalling a never^
to - be * forgotten season when Ortheris waded
through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
abominably. * But he's talkin' bitter truth, though.
Eyah!

' My very worst frind from beginnin' to ind
By the blood av a mouse was mesilf 1 '

When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night'dew
gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at
picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I
know not what vultures tearing his liver.

83

ON GREENHOW HILL

To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear ;

Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,

A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear ;

But with averted face went on her way.

But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,

Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning

Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,

And Love was left forlorn and wondering,

That she who for his bidding would not stay,

At Death's first whisper rose and went away.

Rivals.

Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo /
Bahadur Khan, where are you ? Come
out of the tents, as I have done, and fight
against the English. Don't kill your own kin!
Come out to me I '

The deserter from a native corps was crawling
round the outskirts of the camp, firing at intervals,
and shouting invitations to his old comrades. Mis-
led by the rain and the darkness, he came to the

84

ON GREENHOW HILL

English wing of the camp, and with his yelping
and rifk'practice disturbed the men. They had
been making roads all day, and were tired.

Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd's feet. 4 Wot's
all that ? ' he said thickly. Learoyd snored, and a
Snider bullet ripped its way through the tent wall.
The men swore. ' It's that bloomin' deserter from
the Aurangabadis,' said Ortheris. * Git up, some
one, an' tell 'im 'e's come to the wrong shop/

4 Go to sleep, little man/ said Mulvaney, who
was steaming nearest the door. * I can't arise an'
expaytiate with him. 'Tis rainin' entrenchin' tools
outside/

' 'Tain't because you bloomin' can't. It's 'cause
you bloomin' won't, ye long, limp, lousy, lazy
beggar, you. 'Ark to 'im 'owlin' I '

'Wot's the good of argifying? Put a bullet
into the swine I 'E's keepin' us awake I' said
another voice.

A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping
sentry whined from the darkness —

"Tain't no good, sir. I can't see 'im. 'E's
'idin' somewhere down 'ill/

Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. 4 Shall I
try to get 'im, sir ? ' said he.

'No,' was the answer. 'Lie down. I won't
have the whole camp shooting all round the clock.
Tell him to go and pot his friends/

85

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Ortheris considered for a moment* Then, put'
ting his head under the tent wall, he called, as a
'bus conductor calls in a block, * 'Igher up, there !
'Igher up I '

The men laughed, and the laughter was carried
down wind to the deserter, who, hearing that he
had made a mistake, went off to worry his own
regiment half a mile away. He was received with
shots ; the Aurangabadis were very angry with him
for disgracing their colours.

' An' that's all right,' said Ortheris, withdrawing
his head as he heard the hiccough of the Sniders in
the distance. 4 S'elp me Gawd, tho', that man's not
fit to live — messin' with my beauty-sleep this
way.'

* Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,'
said the subaltern incautiously. * Silence in the
tents now. Get your rest, men/

Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and
in two minutes there was no sound except the rain
on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental
snoring of Learoyd.

The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas,
and for a week had been waiting for a flying
column to make connection. The nightly rounds
of the deserter and his friends had become a
nuisance.

In the morning the men dried themselves in hot

86

ON GREENHOW HILL

sunshine and cleaned their grimy accoutrements.
The native regiment was to take its turn of road'
making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.

4 I'm goin' to lay for a shot at that man/ said
Ortheris, when he had finished washing out his
rifle. 4 'E comes up the watercourse every evenin'
about five o'clock. If we go and lie out on the
north 'ill a bit this afternoon we'll get 'im.'

4 You're a bloodthirsty little mosquito/ said
Mulvaney, blowing blue clouds into the air. 4 But
I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere's
Jock?'

'Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, 'cause 'e
thinks 'isself a bloomin' marksman/ said Ortheris
with scorn.

The 'Mixed Pickles' were a detachment of
picked shots, generally employed in clearing spurs
of hills when the enemy were too impertinent.
This taught the young officers how to handle men,
and did not do the enemy much harm. Mulvaney
and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the
Aurangabadis going to their road-making.

'You've got to sweat to-day/ said Ortheris
genially. ' We're going to get your man. You
didn't knock 'im out last night by any chance,
any of you ? '

4 No. The pig went away mocking us. I had
one shot at him/ said a private. ' He's my cousin,

87

LIFE'S HANDICAP

and / ought to have cleared our dishonour. But
good luck to you/

They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris
leading, because, as he explained, * this is a long'
range show, an' I've got to do it/ His was an almost
passionate devotion to his rifle, whom, by barrack'
room report, he was supposed to kiss every night
before turning in. Charges and scuffles he held in
contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped
between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to
fight for his skin as well as their own. They
never failed him. He trotted along, questing like
a hound on a broken trail, through the wood of
the north hill. At last he was satisfied, and threw
himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that
commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a
brown, bare hillside beyond it. The trees made a
scented darkness in which an army corps could
have hidden from the sun-glare without.

"Ere's the tail o' the wood/ said Ortheris.
"E's got to come up the watercourse, 'cause it
gives 'im cover. We'll lay 'ere. Tain't not arf
so bloomin' dusty neither.'

He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white
violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that
the season of their strength was long past, and
they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the
pines.

88

ON GREENHOW HILL

'This is something like/ he said luxuriously.
'Wot a 'evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost.
How much d'you make it, Mulvaney ? '

'Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze
the air's so thin/

Wop! wop! wop! went a volley of musketry
on the rear face of the north hill.

'Curse them Mixed Pickles firm' at nothin'I
They'll scare arf the country/

' Thry a sightin' shot in the middle of the row/
said Mulvaney, the man of many wiles. ' There's
a red rock yonder he'll be sure to pass. Quick I '

Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards
and fired. The bullet threw up a feather of dust
by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.

'Good enoughl' said Ortheris, snapping the
scale down. ' You snick your sights to mine or a
little lower. You're always firin' high. But
remember, first shot to me. O Lordy ! but it's a
lovely afternoon/

The noise of the firing grew louder, and there
was a tramping of men in the wood. The two
lay very quiet, for they knew that the British
soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that
moves or calls. Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic
ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking
ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine*
needles, breathing in snorts.

89

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 One o' them damned gardeners o' th' Pickles/
said he, fingering the rent 'Firin' to th' right
flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew
who he was I'd 'a' rippen the hide offan him.
Look at ma tunic I '

4 That's the spishil trustability av a marksman.
Train him to hit a fly wid a stiddy rest at seven
hunder, an' he loose on anythin' he sees or hears
up to th' mile. You're well out av that fancy-
firm' gang, Jock. Stay here.'

* Bin firin' at the bloomin' wind in the bloomin'
treetops,' said Ortheris with a chuckle. 'I'll
show you some firin' later on.'

They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun
warmed them where they lay. The Mixed Pickles
ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the
wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted
up its voice in the silence, and talked foolishly to
the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a
blasting charge three miles away told that the
Aurangabadis were in difficulties with their road-
making. The men smiled as they listened and lay
still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently
Learoyd, between the whiffs of his pipe —

4 Seems queer — about 'im yonder — desertin' at
all.'

4 'E'll be a bloomin' side queerer when I've done
with 'im,' said Ortheris. They were talking in

90

ON GREENHOW HILL

whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the
desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.

'I make no doubt he had his reasons for
desertin' ; but, my faith 1 I make less doubt ivry
man has good reason for killin' him/ said Mulvaney.

4 Happen there was a lass tewed up wi' it.
Men do more than more for th' sake of a lass/

'They make most av us 'list. They've no
manner av right to make us desert/

'Ah; they make us 'list, or their fathers do/
said Learoyd softly, his helmet over his eyes.

Ortheris's brows contracted savagely. He was
watching the valley. * If it's a girl I'll shoot the
beggar twice over, an' second time for bein' a
fool. You're blasted sentimental all of a sudden.
Thinkin' o' your last near shave ? '

'Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin' o' what has
happened/

4 An' fwhat has happened, ye lumberin' child av
calamity, that you're lowing like a cow-calf at the
back av the pasture, an' suggestin' invidious excuses
for the man Stanley's goin' to kill. Ye'll have to
wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out,
Jock, an' bellow melojus to the moon. It takes
an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out
av you. Discourse, Don Juan ! The a-moors av
Lotharius Learoyd ! Stanley, kape a rowlin'
rig'mental eye on the valley/

91

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'It's along o' yon hill there/ said Learoyd,
watching the bare sub-Himalayan spur that re*
minded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was
speaking more to himself than his fellows. ' Ay/
said he, * Rumbolds Moor stands up ower Skipton
town, an' Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately
Brig. I reckon you've never heeard tell o' Green*
how Hill, but yon bit o' bare stuff if there was
nobbut a white road windin' is like ut ; strangely
like. Moors an' moors an' moors, wi' never a
tree for shelter, an' gray houses wi' flagstone
rooves, and pewits cryin', an' a windhover goin' to
and fro just like these kites. And cold ! A wind
that cuts you like a knife. You could tell Green*
how Hill folk by the red-apple colour o' their
cheeks an' nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven
into pin-points by the wind. Miners mostly,
burrowin' rfor lead i' th' hillsides, followin' the
trail of th' ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the
roughest minin' I ever seen. Yo'd come on a bit
o' creakin' wood windlass like a well-head, an' you
was let down i' th' bight of a rope, fendin' yoursen
off the side wi' one hand, carryin' a candle stuck in
a lump o' clay with t'other, an' clickin' hold of a
rope with t'other hand.'

'An' that's three of them/ said Mulvaney.
* Must be a good climate in those parts/

Learoyd took no heed.

92

ON GREENHOW HILL

4 An* then yo' came to a level, where you crept
on your hands and knees through a mile o' windin'
drift, an' you come out into a cave'place as big as
Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin' water from
workings 'at went deeper still. It's a queer country,
let alone minin', for the hill is full of those natural
caves, an* the rivers an* the becks drops into what
they call pot'holes, an' come out again miles away.'

* Wot was you doin' there ? ' said Ortheris.

* I was a young chap then, an' mostly went wi'
'osses, leadin' coal and lead ore; but at th' time
I'm tellin' on I was drivin' the waggon-team i' th'
big sumph. I didn't belong to that country-side
by rights. I went there because of a little difference
at home, an' at fust I took up wi' a rough lot.
One night we'd been drinkin', an' I must ha' hed
more than I could stand, or happen th' ale was
none so good. Though i' them days, By for God,
I never seed bad ale.' He flung his arms over
his head, and gripped a vast handful of white
violets. 'Nah,' said he, 'I never seed the ale I
could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor
the lass I could not kiss. Well, we mun have a
race home, the lot on us. I lost all th' others, an'
when I was climbin' ower one of them walls built
o' loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones
and all, an' broke my arm. Not as I knawed much
about it, for I fell on th' back of my head, an' was

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

knocked stupid like. An* when I come to mysen
it were morning an* I were lyin* on the settle i'
Jesse Roantree's house-place, an' 'Liza Roantree
was settin' sewin'. I ached all ovver, and my
mouth were like a lime «• kiln. She gave me a
drink out of a china mug wi' gold letters — "A
Present from Leeds " — as I looked at many and
many a time at after. "Yo're to lie still while
Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm's broken,
and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found
yo' when he was goin' to work, an' carried you
here on his back," sez she. "Oa!" sez I; an'
I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o' mysen.
" Father's gone to his work these three hours, an'
he said he'd tell 'em to get somebody to drive the
tram." The clock ticked, an' a bee corned in the
house, an' they rung i' my head like mill-wheels.
An' she give me another drink an' settled the
pillow. "Eh, but yo're young to be getten
drunk an' such like, but yo' won't do it again,
will yo'?"— "Noa," sez I, "I wouldn't if she'd
not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin'." '

4 Faith, it's a good thing to be nursed by a
woman when you're sick ! ' said Mulvaney. * Dir'
cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.'

Ortheris turned to frown across the valley.
He had not been nursed by many women in his life.

4 An' then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin' up, an'

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ON GREENHOW HILL

Jesse Roantree along with 'im. He was a high*
larned doctor, but he talked wi' poor folk same
as theirsens. "What's ta bin agaate on naa?"
he sings out. "Brekkin' tha thick head?" An'
he felt me all ovver, "That's none broken,
Tha' nobbut knocked a bit sillier than ordinary,
an' that's daaft eneaf." An' soa he went on,
callin' me all the names he could think on, but
settin' my arm, wi' Jesse's help, as careful as could
be. "Yo' mun let the big oaf bide here a bit,
Jesse," he says, when he hed strapped me up an'
given me a doze o' physic; "an' you an' 'Liza
will tend him, though he's scarcelins worth the
trouble. An' tha'll lose tha work," sez he, " an'
tha'll be upon th' Sick Club for a couple o' months
an' more. Doesn't tha think tha's a fool ? "

' But whin was a young man, high or low, the
other av a fool, I'd like to know ? ' said Mulvaney.
' Sure, folly's the only safe way to wisdom, for
I've thried it.'

'Wisdom!' grinned Ortheris, scanning his
comrades with uplifted chin. * You're bloomin'
Solomons, you two, ain't you ? '

Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like
an ox chewing the cud.

4 And that was how I corned to know 'Liza
Roantree. There's some tunes as she used to sing
— aw, she were always singin' — that fetches Green*

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

how Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow
across there. And she would learn me to sing
bass, an' I was to go to th' chapel wi' 'em, where
Jesse and she led the singin', th' old man playin'
the fiddle. He was a strange chap, old Jesse, fair
mad wi' music, an' he made me promise to learn
the big fiddle when my arm was better. It
belonged to him, and it stood up in a big case
alongside o' th' eight - day clock, but Willie
Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had
getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed Jesse,
as he had to rap him ower his head wi' th' fiddle-
stick to make him give ower sawin' at th' right
time.

4 But there was a black drop in it all, an' it was
a man in a black coat that brought it. When th'
Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow,
he would always stop wi' Jesse Roantree, an' he
laid hold of me from th' beginning. It seemed I
wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it.
At th' same time I jealoused 'at he were keen of
savin' 'Liza Roantree's soul as well, and I could
ha' killed him many a time. An' this went on
till one day I broke out, an' borrowed th' brass
for a drink from 'Liza. After fower days I come
back, wi' my tail between my legs, just to see
'Liza again. But Jesse were at home an' th'
preacher — th' Reverend Amos Barraclough. 'Liza

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ON GREENHOW HILL

said naught, but a bit o' red come into her face
as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse,
tryin' his best to be civil, "Nay, lad, it's like
this. You've getten to choose which way it's
goin' to be. I'll ha' nobody across ma doorstep
as goes a'drinkin', an' borrows my lass's money
to spend i' their drink. Ho'd tha tongue, 'Liza,"
sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at I
were welcome to th' brass, and she were none
afraid that I wouldn't pay it back. Then the
Reverend cuts in, seein' as Jesse were losin' his
temper, an' they fair beat me among them. But
it were 'Liza, as looked an' said naught, as did
more than either o* their tongues, an' soa I
concluded to get converted.'

* Fwhat I ' shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking
himself, he said softly, 'Let be! Let be! Sure
the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an'
most women ; an' there's a dale av piety in a girl
if the men would only let ut stay there. I'd ha'
been converted myself under the circumstances/

* Nay, but,' pursued Learoyd with a blush, * I
meaned it/

Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having
regard to his business at the time,

* Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn't
know yon preacher Barraclough — a little white*
faced chap, wi' a voice as 'ud wile a bird off an a

L. H. Vol.1 97 H

LIFE'S HANDICAP

bush, and a way o' layin' hold of folks as made
them think they'd never had a live man for a
friend before. You never saw him, an' — an' —
you never seed 'Liza Roantree — never seed 'Liza
Roantree. . . . Happen it was as much 'Liza as
th' preacher and her father, but anyways they all
meaned it, an' I was fair shamed o' mysen, an' so
I become what they called a changed character.
And when I think on, it's hard to believe as yon
chap going to prayer-meetin's, chapel, and class-
meetin's were me. But I never had naught to say
for mysen, though there was a deal o' shoutin',
and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed
to death and doubled up with the rheumatics,
would sing out, " Joyful I Joyful I " and 'at it were
better to go up to heaven in a coal'basket than
down to hell i' a coach an' six. And he would
put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin',
"Doesn't tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn't
tha feel it ? " An' sometimes I thought I did, and
then again I thought I didn't, an' how was that ? '
4 The iverlastin' nature av mankind,' said Mul-
vaney. 4 An', furthermore, I misdoubt you were
built for the Primitive Methodians. They're a
new corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church,
for she's the mother of them all — ay, an' the
father, too. I like her bekaze she's most remark-
able regimental in her fittings. I may die in

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ON GREENHOW HILL

Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but
wherever I die, me bein' fwhat I am, an' a priest
handy, I go under the same orders an' the same
words an' the same unction as tho' the Pope
himself come down from the roof av St. Peter's to
see me off. There's neither high nor low, nor
broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her,
an' that's what I like. But mark you, she's no
manner av Church for a wake man, bekaze she
takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has
his proper work to do. I remember when my
father died that was three months comin' to his
grave ; begad he'd ha' sold the shebeen above our
heads for ten minutes' quittance of purgathory.
An' he did all he could. That's why I say ut
takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church,
an' for that reason you'll find so many women go
there. An' that sames a conundrum/

4 Wot's the use o' worrittin' 'bout these things ? '
said Ortheris. 4 You're bound to find all out
quicker nor you want to, any'ow.' He jerked the
cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of
his hand. * 'Ere's my chaplain/ he said, and made
the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a
marionette. 4 'E's goin' to teach a man all about
which is which, an' wot's true, after all, before
sundown. But wot 'appened after that, Jock ? '

4 There was one thing they boggled at, and

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

almost shut th' gate i' my face for, and that were
my dog Blast, th' only one saved out o' a litter o'
pups as was blowed up when a keg o' minin'
powder loosed off in th' storekeeper's hut. They
liked his name no better than his business, which
were fightin' every dog he corned across ; a rare
good dog, wi' spots o' black and pink on his face,
one ear gone, and lame o' one side wi' being
driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter
of half a mile.

4 They said I mun give him up 'cause he were
worldly and low j and would I let mysen be shut
out of heaven for the sake on a dog ? 4t Nay,"
says I, u if th' door isn't wide enough for th' pair
on us, we'll stop outside, for we'll none be parted."
And th' preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a likin'
for him from th' first — I reckon that was why I
come to like th' preacher — and wouldn't hear o'
changin' his name to Bless, as some o' them wanted.
So th' pair on us became reg'lar chapel-members.
But it's hard for a young chap o' my build to cut
traces from the world, th' flesh, an' the devil all
uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time, while
th' lads as used to stand about th' town-end an'
lean ower th' bridge, spittin' into th' beck o' a
Sunday, would call after me, "Sitha, Learoyd,
when's ta bean to preach, 'cause we're comin' to
hear tha." — "Ho'd tha jaw. He hasn't getten

100

ON GREENHOW HILL

th' white choaker on ta mom" another lad would
say, and I had to double my fists hard i' th' bottom
of my Sunday coat, and say to mysen, " If 'twere
Monday and I warn't a member o' the Primitive
Methodists, I'd leather all th' lot of yond'." That
was th' hardest of all — to know that I could fight
and I mustn't fight/

Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.

4 So what wi' singin', practising and class-
meetin's, and th' big fiddle, as he made me take
between my knees, I spent a deal o' time i' Jesse
Roantree's house-place. But often as I was there,
th' preacher fared to me to go oftener, and both
th' old man an' th' young woman were pleased to
have him. He lived i' Pately Brig, as were a
goodish step off, but he come. He come all the
same. I liked him as well or better as any man
I'd ever seen i' one way, and yet I hated him wi'
all my heart i' t'other, and we watched each other
like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I
was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair
and open that I was bound to be fair with him.
Rare good company he was, if I hadn't wanted to
wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often
and often when he was goin' from Jesse's I'd set
him a bit on the road.'

' See 'im 'ome, you mean ? ' said Ortheris.

* Ay. It's a way we have i' Yorkshire o' seein'

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

friends off. Yon was a friend as I didn't want to
come back, and he didn't want me to come back
neither, and so we'd walk together towards Pately,
and then he'd set me back again, and there we'd
be wal two o'clock i' the mornin' settin' each other
to an' fro like a blasted pair o' pendulums twixt
hill and valley, long after th' light had gone out i'
'Liza's window, as both on us had been looking at,
pretending to watch the moon.'

'Ah!' broke in Mulvaney, 'ye'd no chanst
against the maraudin' psalnvsinger. They'll take
the airs an' the graces instid av the man nine times
out av ten, an' they only find the blunder later —
the wimmen.'

* That's just where yo're wrong,' said Learoyd,
reddening under the freckled tan of his cheeks.
4 1 was th' first wi 'Liza, an' yo'd think that were
enough. But th' parson were a steady^gaited sort
o' chap, and Jesse were strong o' his side, and all
th' women i' the congregation dinned it to 'Liza
'at she were fair fond to take up wi' a wastrel
ne'er'do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable
an' a fighting dog at his heels. It was all very
well for her to be doing me good and saving my
soul, but she must mind as she didn't do herself
harm. They talk o' rich folk bein' stuck up an'
genteel, but for cast-iron pride o' respectability
there's naught like poor chapel folk. It's as cold

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ON GREENHOW HILL

as th' wind o' Greenhow Hill — ay, and colder, for
'twill never change. And now I come to think on
it, one at strangest things I know is 'at they
couldn't abide th' thought o' soldiering. There's
a vast o' fightin' i' th' Bible, and there's a deal of
Methodists i' th' army; but to hear chapel folk
talk yo'd think that soldierin' were next door, an'
t'other side, to hangin'. I' their meetin's all their
talk is o' fightin'. When Sammy Strother were
stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he'd sing
out, " Th' sword o' th' Lord and o' Gideon."
They were allus at it about puttin' on th' whole
armour o' righteousness, an' fightin' the good
fight o' faith. And then, atop o' 't all, they held
a prayer^meetin' ower a young chap as wanted to
'list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his
hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in
th' Sunday "School o' bad lads as had been thumped
and brayed for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin'
truant o' week-days, and how they took to
wrestlin', dog'fightin', rabbiNrunnin', and drinkin',
till at last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone,
they damned him across th' moors wi', " an' then
he went and 'listed for a soldier/' an' they'd all
fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a
hen drinkin'.'

'Fwhy is ut?' said Mulvaney, bringing down
his hand on his thigh with a crack. * In the name

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

av God, fwhy is ut ? I've seen ut, tu. They
cheat an' they swindle an' they lie an' they slander,
an' fifty things fifty times worse ; but the last an'
the worst by their reckonin' is to serve the Widdy
honest. It's like the talk av childer — seein' things
all round,'

* Plucky lot of fightin' good fights of whatser*
name they'd do if we didn't see they had a quiet
place to fight in. And such fightin' as theirs is I
Gats on the tiles. T'other callin' to which to
come on. I'd give a month's pay to get some o'
them broad'backed beggars in London sweatin'
through a day's road-makin' an' a night's rain.
They'd carry on a deal afterwards — same as we're
supposed to carry on. I've bin turned out of a
measly arf -license pub down Lambeth way, full o'
greasy kebmen, 'fore now,' said Ortheris with an
oath,

* Maybe you were dhrunk,' said Mulvaney
soothingly.

4 Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk.
/ was wearin' the Queen's uniform.'

4 Yd no particular thought to be a soldier i'
them days,' said Learoyd, still keeping his eye on
the bare hill opposite, * but this sort o' talk put it
i' my head. They was so good, th' chapel folk,
that they tumbled ower t'other side. But I stuck
to it for 'Liza's sake, specially as she was learning

104

ON GREENHOW HILL

me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were
gettin' up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and
we had practising night after night for a matter
of three months/

4 1 know what a horotorio is/ said Ortheris
pertly. * It's a sort of chaplain's sing-song — words
all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah choruses/

'Most Greenhow Hill folks played some in-
strument or t'other, an' they all sung so you
might have heard them miles away, and they were
so pleased wi' the noise they made they didn't fair
to want anybody to listen. The preacher sung
high seconds when he wasn't playin' the flute, an'
they set me, as hadn't got far with big fiddle,
again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when
he had to get a' gate playin/ Old Jesse was
happy if ever a man was, for he were th'
conductor an' th' first fiddle an' th' leadin' singer,
beatin' time wi' his fiddle-stick, till at times he'd
rap with it on the table, and cry out, " Now, you
mun all stop ; it's my turn." And he'd face round
to his front, fair sweating wi' pride, to sing th'
tenor solos. But he were grandest i' th' choruses,
waggin' his head, flinging his arms round like a
windmill, and singin' hisself black in the face. A
rare singer were Jesse.

4 Yo' see, I was not o' much account wi' 'em all
exceptin' to 'Liza Roantree, and I had a deal o'

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

time settin' quiet at meetings and horotorio practises
to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me
at beginning it got stranger still at after, when I
was shut on it, and could study what it meaned.

'Just after th' horotorios came off, 'Liza, as
had allus been weakly like, was took very bad. I
walked Dr. Warbottom's horse up and down a
deal of times while he were inside, where they
wouldn't let me go, though I fair ached to see
her,

' " She'll be better i' noo, lad— better i' noo,"
he used to say. " Tha mun ha' patience." Then
they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th'
Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her
lyin' propped up among th' pillows. Then she
began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her
on to th' settle, and when it got warm again she
went about same as afore. Th' preacher and me
and Blast was a deal together i' them days, and i'
one way we was rare good comrades. But I
could ha' stretched him time and again with a
good will. I mind one day he said he would like
to go down into th' bowels o' th' earth, and see
how th' Lord had builded th' framework o' th'
everlastin' hills. He were one of them chaps as
had a gift o' sayin' things. They rolled off the
tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney here,
as would ha' made a rare good preacher if he had

106

ON GREENHOW HILL

nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit c/
miner's kit as almost buried th' little man, and his
white face down i' th' coat-collar and hat-flap
looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered
down i' th' bottom o' the waggon. I was drivin'
a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th' cave
where the engine was pumping and where th' ore
was brought up and put into th' waggons as went
down o' themselves, me puttin' th' brake on and th'
horses a-trottin' after. Long as it was daylight
we were good friends, but when we got fair into
th' dark, and could nobbut see th' day shinin' at
the hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled down-
right wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from
me when I looked back at him as were always
comin' between me and 'Liza* The talk was 'at
they were to be wed when she got better, an' I
couldn't get her to say yes or nay to it. He
began to sing a hymn in his thin voice, and I came
out wi' a chorus that was all cussin' an' swearin' at
my horses, an' I began to know how I hated him.
He were such a little chap, too. I could drop him
wi' one hand down Garstang's Copper-hole — a
place where th' beck slithered ower th' edge on a
rock, and fell wi' a bit of a whisper into a pit as
no rope i' Greenhow could plump.'

Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets.
* Ay, he should see th' bowels o' th' earth an' never

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

naught else* I could take him a mile or two along
th' drift, and leave him wi' his candle doused to
cry hallelujah, wi' none to hear him and say amen.
I was to lead him down th' ladder^way to th' drift
where Jesse Roantree was working and why
shouldn't he slip on th' ladder, wi' my feet on his
fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down
wi' my heel? If I went fust down th' ladder I
could click hold on him and chuck him over my
head, so as he should go squshin' down the shaft,
breakin' his bones at ev'ry timberin' as Bill
Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn't a bone
left when he wrought to th' bottom, Niver a
blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an arm
to put round 'Liza Roantree's waist. Niver no
more — niver no more.'

The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth,
and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon.
Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved
by his comrade's passion, brought up the rifle to
his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his
quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a
spout, and a thunder'Storm. The voice of the
watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till
Learoyd picked up his story.

'But it's none so easy to kill a man like yon.
When I'd given up my horses to th' lad as took
my place and I was showin' th' preacher th'

108

ON GREENHOW HILL

workings, shoutin' into his ear across th' clang of
th' pumpin' engines, I saw he were afraid o'
naught ; and when the lamplight showed his black
eyes, I could feel as he was masterin' me again. I
were no better nor Blast chained up short and
growlin' i' the depths of him while a strange dog
went safe past.

'"Th'art a coward and a fool/' I said to
mysen ; an* I wrestled i' my mind again' him till,
when we come to Garstang's Copper^hole, I laid
hold o' the preacher and lifted him up over my
head and held him into the darkest on it. " Now,
lad," I says, " it's to be one or t'other on us — thee
or me — for 'Liza Roantree. Why, isn't thee
afraid for thysen ? " I says, for he were still i' my
arms as a sack. " Nay ; I'm but afraid for thee,
my poor lad, as knows naught," says he. I set
him down on th' edge, an' th' beck run stiller, an'
there was no more buzzin' in my head like when
th' bee come through th' window o' Jesse's house.
" What dost tha mean ? " says I.

4 " I've often thought as thou ought to know,"
says he, "but 'twas hard to tell thee. 'Liza
Roantree's for neither on us, nor for nobody o'
this earth. Dr. Warbottom says — and he knows
her, and her mother before her — that she is in a
decline, and she cannot live six months longer.
He's known it for many a day. Steady, John!

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

Steady!" says he. And that weak little man
pulled me further back and set me again' him, and
talked it all over quiet and still, me turnin' a bunch
o' candles in my hand, and counting them ower
and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were
th' regular preachin' talk, but there were a vast lot
as made me begin to think as he were more of a
man than I'd ever given him credit for, till I were
cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.

'Six candles we had, and we crawled and
climbed all that day while they lasted, and I said
to mysen, "'Liza Roantree hasn't six months to
live." And when we came into th' daylight
again we were like dead men to look at, an' Blast
come behind us without so much as waggin' his
tail. When I saw 'Liza again she looked at me a
minute and says, "Who's telled tha? For I see
tha knows." And she tried to smile as she kissed
me, and I fair broke down.

4 Yo'see, I was a young chap i' them days, and
had seen naught o' life, let alone death, as is allus
E'waitin'. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom said
as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin'
to Bradford, to Jesse's brother David, as worked
i' a mill, and I mun hold up like a man and a
Christian, and she'd pray for me. Well, and they
went away, and the preacher that same back end
o' th' year were appointed to another circuit, as

110

ON GREENHOW HILL

they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow
Hill.

4 1 tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th' chapel,
but 'tweren't th' same thing at after. I hadn't
'Liza's voice to follow i' th' singin', nor her eyes
a'shinin' acrost their heads. And i' th' class*
meetings they said as I mun have some experiences
to tell, and I hadn't a word to say for mysen.

4 Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen
we didn't behave ourselves over well, for they
dropped us and wondered however they'd come to
take us up. I can't tell how we got through th'
time, while i' th' winter I gave up my job and
went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th' door o'
th' house, in a long street o' little houses. He'd
been sendin' th' children 'way as were clatterin'
their clogs in th' causeway, for she were asleep.

4 44 Is it thee ? " he says ; u but you're not to see
her. I'll none have her wakened for a nowt like
thee. She's goin' fast, and she mun go in peace.
Thou'lt never be good for naught i' th' world, and
as long as thou lives thou'll never play the big
fiddle. Get away, lad, get away I " So he shut
the door softly i' my face.

4 Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it
seemed to me he was about right, and I went
away into the town and knocked up against a
recruiting sergeant. The old tales o' th' chapel

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

folk came buzzin' into my head. I was to get
away, and this were th' regular road for the likes o'
me. I 'listed there and then, took th' Widow's
shillin', and had a bunch o' ribbons pinned i' my
hat.

'But next day I found my way to David
Roantree's door, and Jesse came to open it. Says
he, "Thou's come back again wi' th' devil's
colours flyin' — thy true colours, as I always telled
thee."

4 But I begged and prayed of him to let me see
her nobbut to say good'bye, till a woman calls
down th' stairway, " She says John Learoyd's to
come up." Th' old man shifts aside in a flash,
and lays his hand on my arm, quite gentle like.
"But thou'lt be quiet, John," says he, "for she's
rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad."

* Her eyes were all alive wi' light, and her hair
was thick on the pillow round her, but her cheeks
were thin — thin to frighten a man that's strong.
"Nay, father, yo mayn't say th' devil's colours.
Them ribbons is pretty." An' she held out her
hands for th' hat, an' she put all straight as a
woman will wi' ribbons. " Nay, but what they're
pretty," she says. "Eh, but I'd ha' liked to see
thee i' thy red coat, John, for thou was allus my
own lad — my very own lad, and none else."

* She lifted up her arms, and they come round

112

ON GREENHOW HILL

my neck i' a gentle grip, and they slacked away,
and she seemed fainting. "Now yo' mun get
away, lad/' says Jesse, and I picked up my hat
and I came downstairs.

4 Th' recruiting sergeant were waitin' for me at
th' corner public'house. " Yo've seen your sweet'
heart?" says he. "Yes, I've seen her," says I.
44 Well, we'll have a quart now, and you'll do your
best to forget her," says he, bein' one o' them
smart, bustlin' chaps. "Ay, sergeant," says I.
"Forget her." And I've been forgettin' her ever
since.'

He threw away the wilted clump of white
violets as he spoke. Ortheris suddenly rose to his
knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across
the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin
cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of
the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted ;
Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his busi*
ness. A speck of white crawled up the water*
course.

4 See that beggar ? . . . Got 'im/

Seven hundred yards away, and a full two
hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the
Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red
rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of
blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the
pine wood to make investigation.

L.H. Vol. I 113

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 That's a clean shot, little man/ said Mulvaney.

Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear
away. 4 Happen there was a lass tewed up wi'
him, too/ said he.

Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across
the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks
on the completed work*

114

THE MAN WHO WAS

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,

Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,

And left our hearts aflame.

Keep tally — on the gun-butt score

The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,

For our dead comrade's sake.

Ballad.

LET it be clearly understood that the Russian
is a delightful person till he tucks in his
shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It
is only when he insists upon being treated as the
most easterly of western peoples instead of the
most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial
anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host
never knows which side of his nature is going to
turn up next.
Dirkovitch was a Russian — a Russian of the

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

Russians — who appeared to get his bread by
serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regi-
ment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper
with a name that was never twice alike. He was
a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering
through unexplored portions of the earth, and he
arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At
least no living man could ascertain whether it was
by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan,
or Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian Govern-
ment, being in an unusually affable mood, gave
orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown
everything that was to be seen. So he drifted,
talking bad English and worse French, from one
city to another, till he foregathered with Her
Majesty's White Hussars in the city of Peshawur,
which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut
in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after
the manner of the Russians with little enamelled
crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has
nothing to do with his merits) he had been given
up as a hopless task, or cask, by the Black
Tyrone, who individually and collectively, with
hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed
spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality
to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone,
who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace

116

THE MAN WHO WAS

of head of a foreigner — that foreigner is certain to
be a superior man.

The White Hussars were as conscientious in
choosing their wine as in charging the enemy.
All that they possessed, including some wondrous
brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of
Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely — even
more than among the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through
it all. The White Hussars were 4 My dear true
friends/ * Fellow'Soldiers glorious/ and 4 Brothers
inseparable/ He would unburden himself by the
hour on the glorious future that awaited the com*
bined arms of England and Russia when their
hearts and their territories should run side by side,
and the great mission of civilising Asia should
begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is
not going to be civilised after the methods of the
West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.
You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and
Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.
She will never attend Sunday school or learn to
vote save with swords for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else,
but it suited him to talk speciaLcorrespondently
and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
and then he volunteered a little, a very little informa*
tion about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left appar'

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

ently to look after themselves somewhere at the
back of beyond* He had done rough work in
Central Asia, and had seen rather more help^your^
self fighting than most men of his years. But he
was careful never to betray his superiority, and
more than careful to praise on all occasions the
appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were
a regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan,
widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their
station, and after a short time had been proposed
to by every single man at mess, she put the public
sentiment very neatly when she explained that they
were all so nice that unless she could marry them
all, including the colonel and some majors already
married, she was not going to content herself with
one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man
in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious ;
and the White Hussars were going to wear crape
on their arms, but compromised by attending the
wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with
unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all —
from Basset - Holmer the senior captain to little
Mildred the junior subaltern, who could have
given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only persons who did not share the general
regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand
gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the

118

THE MAN WHO WAS

border, and answered to the name of Pathan.
They had once met the regiment officially and for
something less than twenty minutes, but the inter-
view, which was complicated with many casualties,
had filled them with prejudice. They even called
the White Hussars children of the devil and sons
of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible
to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
above making their aversion fill their money.*
belts. The regiment possessed carbines — beautiful
Martini'Henry carbines that would lob a bullet
into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and
were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore
they were coveted all along the border, and since
demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight
in coined silver — seven and one half pounds weight
of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the
rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky*
haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs
under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared
mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the
hot weather, when all the barrack doors and
windows were open, they vanished like puffs of
their own smoke. The border people desired them
for family vendettas and contingencies. But in
the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter
they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of

119

LIFE'S HANDICAP

murder was liveliest among the hills at that season,
and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper
does not much care if he loses a weapon — Govern-
ment must make it good — but he deeply resents
the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very
angry, and one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of
their anger upon him to this hour. That incident
stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards
were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted
itself to polo with unexpected results ; for it beat
by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps
the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had
four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as well
as a native officer who played like a lambent flame
across the ground.

They gave a dinner to celebrate the event.
The Lushkar team came, and Dirkovitch came, in
the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced
to the Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded.
They were lighter men than the Hussars, and they
carried themselves with the swing that is the
peculiar right of the Punjab Frontier Force and
all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in the
Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things,
it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till
death.

120

THE MAN WHO WAS

The great beanvroofed mess-room of the White
Hussars was a sight to be remembered. All the
mess plate was out on the long table — the same
table that had served up the bodies of five officers
after a forgotten fight long and long ago — the
dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance,
clumps of winter ^ roses lay between the silver
candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers
deceased looked down on their successors from
between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor,
and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow*
leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months'
leave that he might have spent in England,
instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk
of his life by ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.

The servants in spotless white muslin and the
crest of their regiments on the brow of their turbans
waited behind their masters who were clad in the
scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the
cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse.
Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was the only dark
spot at the board, and his big onyx eyes made up
for it. He was fraternising effusively with the
captain of the Lushkar team, who was wondering
how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own dark
wiry down-countrymen could account for in a fair
charge. But one does not speak of these things
openly,

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

The talk rose higher and higher, and the regi-
mental band played between the courses, as is the
immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a
moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and
the first toast of obligation, when an officer rising
said, 'Mr. Vice, the Queen/ and little Mildred
from the bottom of the table answered, 'The
Queen, God bless her/ and the big spurs clanked
as the big men heaved themselves up and drank
the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely sup-
posed to settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament
of the Mess never grows old, and never ceases to
bring a lump into the throat of the listener wher-
ever he be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose
with his 'brothers glorious/ but he could not
understand. No one but an officer can tell what
the toast means; and the bulk have more senti-
ment than comprehension. Immediately after the
little silence that follows on the ceremony there
entered the native officer who had played for the
Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with
the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of
him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the
big black boots below. The mess rose joyously
as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token
of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to
touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts
of: * Rung ho, Hira Singh T (which being trans-

122

THE MAN WHO WAS

lated means * Go in and win '). * Did I whack
you over the knee, old man ? ' 4 Ressaidar Sahib,
what the devil made you play that kicking pig of
a pony in the last ten minutes ? ' l Shabash, Res^
saidar Sahib 1' Then the voice of the colonel,
* The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh ! '

After the shouting had died away Hira Singh
rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal
house, the son of a king's son, and knew what
was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in
the vernacular: — 'Colonel Sahib and officers of
this regiment. Much honour have you done me.
This will I remember. We came down from afar
to play you. But we were beaten/ (' No fault
of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
ground y' know. Your ponies were cramped
from the railway. Don't apologise!') 4 Therefore
perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.'
('Hear! Hear! Hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!')
4 Then we will play you afresh ' (' Happy to meet
you.') ' till there are left no feet upon our ponies.
Thus far for sport.' He dropped one hand on
his sword 'hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch
lolling back in his chair. 'But if by the will of
God there arises any other game which is not the
polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and
officers, that we will play it out side by side,
though they/ again his eye sought Dirkovitch,

123

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 though they I say have fifty ponies to our one
horse/ And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho ! that
sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones, he sat
down amid leaping glasses.

Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily
to the brandy — the terrible brandy aforementioned
— did not understand, nor did the expurgated
translations offered to him at all convey the point.
Decidedly Hira Singh's was the speech of the
evening, and the clamour might have continued to
the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of
a shot without that sent every man feeling at his
defenceless left side. Then there was a scuffle
and a yell of pain.

4 Carbine - stealing again!' said the adjutant,
calmly sinking back in his chair. 4 This comes of
reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
killed him/

The feet of armed men pounded on the
veranda flags, and it was as though something
was being dragged.

'Why don't they put him in the cells till the
morning?' said the colonel testily. 'See if
they've damaged him, sergeant/

The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness
and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all
very much perplexed.

4 Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir/ said the

124

THE MAN WHO WAS

corporal. * Leastways 'e was crawlin' towards the
barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an' the
sentry 'e sez, sir —

The limp heap of rags upheld by the three
men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and
demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoe^
less, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough
handling. Hira Singh started slightly at the
sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took another
glass of brandy.

* What does the sentry say ? ' said the colonel.

4 Sez 'e speaks English, sir/ said the corporal.

'So you brought him into mess instead of
handing him over to the sergeant I If he spoke
all the Tongues of the Pentecost you've no busi*
ness '

Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little
Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He
jumped back as though he had been shot.

' Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the
men away/ said he to the colonel, for he was a
much privileged subaltern. He put his arms
round the rag'bound horror as he spoke, and
dropped him into a chair. It may not have been
explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his
being six feet four and big in proportion. The
corporal seeing that an officer was disposed to look
after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was

125

LIFE'S HANDICAP

beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and
his men. The mess was left alone with the car'
bine-thief, who laid his head on the table and
wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
little children weep,

Hira Singh leapt to his feet. 4 Colonel Sahib/
said he, * that man is no Afghan, for they weep
Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they
weep Oh! Ho! He weeps after the fashion of
the white men, who say Ow ! Ow ! f

'Now where the dickens did you get that
knowledge, Hira Singh ? ' said the captain of the
Lushkar team.

* Hear him ! ' said Hira Singh simply, pointing
at the crumpled figure that wept as though it
would never cease.

'He said, "My God!"' said little Mildred.
4 1 heard him say it/

The colonel and the mess-room looked at the
man in silence. It is a horrible thing to hear a
man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
palate, on her lips, or anywhere else, but a man
must cry from his diaphragm, and it rends him to
pieces.

' Poor devil ! ' said the colonel, coughing tre-
mendously. 4 We ought to send him to hospital.
He's been man-handled.'

Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They

126

THE MAN WHO WAS

were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing
in the first place. He grunted rebelliously : 4I
can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's
built that way. But I can't understand his crying.
That makes it worse/

The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for
he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a
shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some
peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room
this shadow was always thrown when the candles
were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of
the White Hussars. They were in fact rather
proud of it.

4 Is he going to cry all night ? ' said the colonel,
* or are we supposed to sit up with little Mildred's
guest until he feels better ? '

The man in the chair threw up his head and
stared at the mess. * Oh, my God ! ' he said, and
every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to
have been given the Victoria Cross — distinguished
gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity.
He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess
picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and
pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, * This
isn't our affair, you know, sir,' led them into the
veranda and the gardens. Hira Singh was the

127

LIFE'S HANDICAP

last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch. But
Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of
his own. His lips moved without sound, and he
was studying the coffin on the ceiling.

'White — white all over/ said Basset-Holmer,
the adjutant. 'What a pernicious renegade he
must be ! I wonder where he came from ? '

The colonel shook the man gently by the arm,
and * Who are you ? ' said he.

There was no answer. The man stared round
the mess-room and smiled in the colonel's face.
Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
than a man till ' Boot and saddle ' was sounded,
repeated the question in a voice that would have
drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid
gently from his chair to the floor. No son of
Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the
Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by
five and eight glasses of each without remembering
the pit whence he was digged and descending
thither. The band began to play the tune with
which the White Hussars from the date of their
formation have concluded all their functions.
They would sooner be disbanded than abandon
that tune ; it is a part of their system. The man
straightened himself in his chair and drummed on
the table with his fingers.
128

THE MAN WHO WAS

' I don't see why we should entertain lunatics/
said the colonel. 'Call a guard and send him
off to the cells. We'll look into the business in
the morning. Give him a glass of wine first
though/

Little Mildred filled a sherry- glass with the
brandy and thrust it over to the man. He drank,
and the tune rose louder, and he straightened him-
self yet more. Then he put out his long*taloned
hands to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it
lovingly. There was a mystery connected with
that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which
converted what was a seven^branched candlestick,
three springs on each side and one in the middle,
into a sort of wheel -spoke candelabrum. He
found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly.
He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on
the wall, then moved on to another picture, the
mess watching him without a word. When he
came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and
seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing
a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye.
He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with
inquiry in his eyes.

'What is it— Oh what is it?' said little
Mildred. Then as a mother might speak to a
child, ' That is a horse. Yes, a horse/

Very slowly came the answer in a thick

L. H. Vol.1 129 K

LIFE'S HANDICAP

passionless guttural — 'Yes, I— have seen. But —
where is the horse ? '

You could have heard the hearts of the mess
beating as the men drew back to give the stranger
full room in his wanderings. There was no
question of calling the guard.

Again he spoke — very slowly, 'Where is our
horse ? '

There is but one horse in the White Hussars,
and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess*
room. He is the piebald drum-horse, the king of
the regimental band, that served the regiment for
seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot
for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down
from its place and thrust it into the man's hands.
He placed it above the mantelpiece, it clattered on
the ledge as his poor hands dropped it, and he
staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling
into Mildred's chair. Then all the men spoke to
one another something after this fashion, 'The
drum -horse hasn't hung over the mantelpiece
since '67.' 'How does he know?' 'Mildred,
go and speak to him again.' ' Colonel, what are
you going to do?' 'Oh, dry up, and give the
poor devil a chance to pull himself together.' ' It
isn't possible anyhow. The man's a lunatic/

Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking
in his ear. 'Will you be good enough to take

130

THE MAN WHO WAS

your seats please, gentlemen!' he said, and the
mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch's
seat, next to little Mildred's, was blank, and little
Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place.
The widened mess-sergeant filled the glasses in
dead silence. Once more the colonel rose, but his
hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as he
looked straight at the man in little Mildred's chair
and said hoarsely, * Mr. Vice, the Queen.' There
was a little pause, but the man sprung to his feet
and answered without hesitation, 'The Queen,
God bless her ! ' and as he emptied the thin glass
he snapped the shank between his fingers.

Long and long ago, when the Empress of
India was a young woman and there were no
unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a
few messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken
glass, to the vast delight of the mess-contractors.
The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to
break anything for, except now and again the word
of a Government, and that has been broken already.

4 That settles it,' said the colonel, with a gasp.
* He's not a sergeant. What in the world is he ? '

The entire mess echoed the word, and the
volley of questions would have scared any man.
It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
could only smile and shake his head.

From under the table, calm and smiling, rose

131

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Dirkovitch, who had been roused from healthful
slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of
the man he rose, and the man shrieked and
grovelled. It was a horrible sight coming so
swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that
had brought the strayed wits together.

Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but
little Mildred heaved him up in an instant. It is
not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern
of Cossacks.

The hasty action tore the wretch's upper cloth'
ing nearly to the waist, and his body was seamed
with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is
neither the cane nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the
marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated. Also
his face changed. He said something that sounded
like Shto ve takete, and the man fawning answered,
Chetyre.

4 What's that ? ' said everybody together.

'His number. That is number four, you
know,' Dirkovitch spoke very thickly.

'What has a Queen's officer to do with a
qualified number ? ' said the colonel, and an un^
pleasant growl ran round the table.

' How can I tell ? ' said the affable Oriental with
a sweet smile. 'He is a — how you have it? —
132

THE MAN WHO WAS

escape — run-a-way, from over there/ He nodded
towards the darkness of the night.

* Speak to him if he'll answer you, and speak to
him gently/ said little Mildred, settling the man
in a chair. It seemed most improper to all present
that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in
purring, spitting Russian to the creature who
answered so feebly and with such evident dread.
But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand no
one said a word. All breathed heavily, leaning
forward, in the long gaps of the conversation.
The next time that they have no engagements on
hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Peters-
burg in a body to learn Russian.

* He does not know how many years ago/ said
Dirkovitch facing the mess, 'but he says it was
very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
accident. He says he was of this glorious and
distinguished regiment in the war/

'The rolls I The rolls 1 Holmer, get the rolls I '
said little Mildred, and the adjutant dashed off
bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the muster-
rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just
in time to hear Dirkovitch conclude, 'Therefore,
my dear friends, I am most sorry to say there was
an accident which would have been reparable if he
had apologised to that our colonel, which he had
insulted/

133

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Then followed another growl which the colonel
tried to beat down. The mess was in no mood
just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.

* He does not remember, but I think that there
was an accident, and so he was not exchanged
among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
place — how do you say? — the country. So, he
says, he came here. He does not know how he
came. Eh? He was at Chepany* — the man
caught the word, nodded, and shivered — 'at
Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how
he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the
forests for many years, but how many years he
has forgotten — that with many things. It was an
accident; done because he did not apologise to
that our colonel. Ah ! *

Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret,
it is sad to record that the White Hussars livelily
exhibited un-Christian delight and other emotions,
hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality.
Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls
on the table, and the men flung themselves at these.

* Steady ! Fifty-six — fifty-five — fifty-four/ said
Holmer. 'Here we are. "Lieutenant Austin
Limmason. Missing." That was before Sebasto-
pol. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of
their colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty
years of his life wiped out/

134

THE MAN WHO WAS

'But he never apologised. Said he'd see him
damned first/ chorused the mess.

'Poor chap I I suppose he never had the
chance afterwards. How did he come here ? ' said
the colonel*

The dingy heap in the chair could give no
answer.

* Do you know who you are ? '
It laughed weakly.

* Do you know that you are Limmason — Lieu^
tenant Limmason of the White Hussars ? '

Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly
surprised tone, 'Yes, Pm Limmason, of course/
The light died out in his eyes, and the man
collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch
with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few
elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem
to lead to continuity of thought. The man could
not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had
found his way to his own old mess again. Of
what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing.
He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he
had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought
the picture of the drunvhorse, and answered to
the toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank
that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in
part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and
he giggled and cowered alternately.

135

LIFE'S HANDICAP

The devil that lived in the brandy prompted
Dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment
to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly,
gripped the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like
opals, and began :

4 Fellow * soldiers glorious — true friends and
hospitables. It was an accident, and deplorable —
most deplorable/ Here he smiled sweetly all round
the mess, * But you will think of this little, little
thing. So little, is it not? The Czar! Posh!
I slap my fingers — I snap my fingers at him. Do
I believe in him ? No ! But in us Slav who has
done nothing, him I believe. Seventy — how much
— millions peoples that have done nothing — not
one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode/
He banged a hand on the table. * Hear you, old
peoples, we have done nothing in the world — out
here. All our work is to do; and it shall be
done, old peoples. Get a-way ! ' He waved his
hand imperiously, and pointed to the man. * You
see him. He is not good to see. He was just
one little — oh, so little — accident, that no one
remembered. Now he is That\ So will you be,
brother soldiers so brave — so will you be. But
you will never come back. You will all go where
he is gone, or' — he pointed to the great coffin-
shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, 4 Seventy
millions — get a-way, you old peoples,' fell asleep.

136

THE MAN WHO WAS

'Sweet, and to the point/ said little Mildred.
''What's the use of getting wroth? Let's make
this poor devil comfortable/

But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly
taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars.
The lieutenant had returned only to go away
again three days later, when the wail of the Dead
March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the
wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess*
table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned
his new-found commission.

And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always
genial, went away too by a night train. Little
Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was
the guest of the mess, and even had he smitten
the colonel with the open hand, the law of that
mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.

' Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey/
said little Mildred.

* Au revoir,' said the Russian.

* Indeed ! But we thought you were going home ? '
4 Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends,

is that road shut?' He pointed to where the
North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.

'By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to
meet you, old man, any time you like. Got every-
thing you want ? Cheroots, ice, bedding ? That's
all right. Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch/

137

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'Urn/ said the other man, as the tail'lights of
the train grew small. 'Of — all — the — unmiti^
gated-

Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched
the North Star and hummed a selection from a
recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted
the White Hussars. It ran —

I'm sorry for Mr. Bluebeard,
I'm sorry to cause him pain ;
But a terrible spree there's sure to be
When he comes back again.

138

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

There's a convict more in the Central Jail,

Behind the old mud wall ;
There's a lifter less on the Border trail,
And the Queen's Peace over all,

Dear boys,
The Queen's Peace over all.

For we must bear our leader's blame,

On us the shame will fall,
If we lift our hand from a fettered land
And the Queen's Peace over all,

Dear boys,
The Queen's Peace over all I

The Running of Shindand.

I

THE Indus had risen in flood without warn*
ing. Last night it was a fordable shallow ;
tonight five miles of raving muddy water
parted bank and caving bank, and the river
was still rising under the moon. A litter borne by
six bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped
in the white sand that bordered the whiter plain.

139

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'It's God's will/ they said 'We dare not
cross to-night, even in a boat. Let us light a fire
and cook food. We be tired men/

They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within,
the Deputy Commissioner of the Kot-Kumharsen
district lay dying of fever. They had brought
him across country, six fighting-men of a frontier
clan that he had won over to the paths of a
moderate righteousness, when he had broken down
at the foot of their inhospitable hills. And Tallan-
tire, his assistant, rode with them, heavy-hearted
as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He
had served under the sick man for three years, and
had learned to love him as men associated in toil
of the hardest learn to love — or hate. Dropping
from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter
and peered inside.

'Orde — Orde, old man, can you hear? We
have to wait till the river goes down, worse luck.'

4 1 hear,' returned a dry whisper. 4 Wait till
the river goes down. I thought we should reach
camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She'll
meet me.'

One of the litter -men stared across the river
and caught a faint twinkle of light on the far side.
He whispered to Tallantire, ' There are his camp-
fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning,
for they have better boats. Can he live so long ? '
140

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was
very near to death. What need to vex his soul
with hopes of a meeting that could not be ? The
river gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of
sand, and snarled the more hungrily. The litter*
men sought for fuel in the waste — dried camel"
thorn and refuse of the camps that had waited
at the ford. Their sword-belts clinked as they
moved softly in the haze of the moonlight, and
Tallantire's horse coughed to explain that he would
like a blanket.

'I'm cold too/ said the voice from the litter.
* I fancy this is the end. Poor Polly I '

Tallantire rearranged the blankets ; Khoda Dad
Khan, seeing this, stripped off his own heavy*
wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the pile.
4 1 shall be warm by the fire presently/ said he.
Tallantire took the wasted body of his chief into
his arms and held it against his breast. Perhaps
if they kept him very warm Orde might live to
see his wife once more. If only blind Providence
would send a three-f oot fall in the river !

* That's better/ said Orde faintly. 4 Sorry to
be a nuisance, but is — is there anything to
drink?'

They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire
felt a little warmth against his own breast. Orde
began to mutter.

141

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'It isn't that I mind dying/ he said 'It's
leaving Polly and the district. Thank God! we
have no children. Dick, you know, I'm dipped—
awfully dipped — debts in my first five years' service.
It isn't much of a pension, but enough for her.
She has her mother at home. Getting there is
the difficulty. And — and — you see, not being a
soldier's wife '

4 We'll arrange the passage home, of course,'
said Tallantire quietly.

'It's not nice to think of sending round the
hat; but, good Lord! how many men I lie here
and remember that had to do it ! Morten's dead
— he was of my yean Shaughnessy is dead, and
he had children ; I remember he used to read us
their schooMetters ; what a bore we thought him !
Evans is dead — Kot - Kumharsen killed him!
Ricketts of Myndonie is dead — and I'm going too.
" Man that is born of a woman is small potatoes
and few in the hill." That reminds me, Dick;
the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our border
want a one^third remittance this spring. That's
fair; their crops are bad. See that they get it,
and speak to Ferris about the canal. I should like
to have lived till that was finished; it means so
much for the NorthJndus villages — but Ferris is
an idle beggar — wake him up. You'll have charge
•of the district till my successor comes. I wish

142

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

they would appoint you permanently ; you know
the folk. I suppose it will be Bullows, though.
'Good man, but too weak for frontier work ; and
he doesn't understand the priests. The blind
priest at Jagai will bear watching. You'll find it
in my papers, — in the uniform case, I think. Call
the Khusru Kheyl men up; I'll hold my last
public audience. Khoda Dad Khan ! '

The leader of the men sprang to the side of the
litter, his companions following.

'Men, I'm dying,' said Orde quickly, in the
vernacular ; 4 and soon there will be no more Orde
Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from
raiding cattle.'

4 God forbid this thing!' broke out the deep
bass chorus. * The Sahib is not going to die/

'Yes, he is; and then he will know whether
Mahomed speaks truth, or Moses. But you must
be good men when I am not here. Such of you
as live in our borders must pay your taxes quietly
as before. I have spoken of the villages to be
gently treated this year. Such of you as live in
the hills must refrain from cattle^lifting, and burn
no more thatch, and turn a deaf ear to the voice
of the priests, who, not knowing the strength of
the Government, would lead you into foolish
wars, wherein you will surely die and your crops
be eaten by strangers. And you must not sack

143

LIFE'S HANDICAP

any caravans, and must leave your arms at the
police-post when you come in ; as has been your
custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib will
be with you, but I do not know who takes my
place. I speak now true talk, for I am as it were
already dead, my children, — for though ye be
strong men, ye are children/

4 And thou art our father and our mother/ broke
in Khoda Dad Khan with an oath. * What shall
we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to
teach us to go wisely ! '

4 There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him ;
he knows your talk and your heart. Keep the
young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey.
Khoda Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and
chain go to thy brother. Keep those things for
my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may
encounter and tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are
good men. Ye have my leave to go/

Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger,
choked audibly as he caught the well-known
formula that closed an interview. His brother
turned to look across the river. The dawn
was breaking, and a speck of white showed
on the dull silver of the stream. 4 She comes/
said the man under his breath. 'Can he live
for another two hours?' And he pulled the
newly-acquired watch out of his belt and looked

144

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

uncomprehendingly at the dial, as he had seen
Englishmen do.

For two hours the bellying sail tacked and
blundered up and down the river, Tallantire still
clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan
chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the
district and his wife, but, as the end neared, more
frequently of the latter. They hoped he did not
know that she was even then risking her life in a
crazy native boat to regain him. But the awful
foreknowledge of the dying deceived them.
Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through
the curtains and saw how near was the sail.
4 That's Polly/ he said simply, though his mouth
was wried with agony. * Polly and — the grimmest
practical joke ever played on a man. Dick — you'll
— have — to — explain/

And an hour later Tallantire met on the bank
a woman in a gingham riding-habit and a sun-hat
who cried out to him for her husband — her boy
and her darling — while Khoda Dad Khan threw
himself face-down on the sand and covered his
eyes.

The very simplicity of the notion was its charm.
What more easy to win a reputation for far-seeing
statesmanship, originality, and, above all, deference

L.H. Vol.1 145 L

LIFE'S HANDICAP

to the desires of the people, than by appointing a
child of the country to the rule of that country ?
Two hundred millions of the most loving and
grateful folk under Her Majesty's dominion would
laud the fact, and their praise would endure for
ever. Yet he was indifferent to praise or blame
as befitted the Very Greatest of All the Viceroys.
His administration was based upon principle, and
the principle must be enforced in season and out
of season. His pen and tongue had created the
New India, teeming with possibilities — loud' voiced,
insistent, a nation among nations — all his very
own. Wherefore the Very Greatest of All the
Viceroys took another step in advance, and with it
counsel of those who should have advised him on
the appointment of a successor to Yardley-Orde.
There was a gentleman and a member of the
Bengal Civil Service who had won his place and a
university degree to boot in fair and open competi-
tion with the sons of the English. He was cultured,
of the world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely
and, above all, sympathetically ruled a crowded
district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had been to
England and charmed many drawing-rooms there.
His name, if the Viceroy recollected aright, was
Mr. Grish Chunder De, M.A. In short, did any-
body see any objection to the appointment, always
on principle, of a man of the people to rule the

146

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

people? The district in South - Eastern Bengal
might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over
to a younger civilian of Mr. G. C. De's nationality
(who had written a remarkably clever pamphlet on
the political value of sympathy in administration) ;
and Mr. G. C. De could be transferred northward
to Kot-Kumharsen. The Viceroy was averse, on
principle, to interfering with appointments under
control of the Provincial Governments. He wished
it to be understood that he merely recommended
and advised in this instance. As regarded the mere
question of race, Mr. Grish Chunder De was more
English than the English, and yet possessed of
that peculiar sympathy and insight which the best
among the best Service in the world could only
win to at the end of their service.

The stern, black-bearded kings who sit about
the Council-board of India divided on the step,
with the inevitable result of driving the Very
Greatest of All the Viceroys into the borders of
hysteria, and a bewildered obstinacy pathetic as
that of a child.

4 The principle is sound enough/ said the weary-
eyed Head of the Red Provinces in which Kot-
Kumharsen lay, for he too held theories. 'The
only difficulty is —

4 Put the screw on the district officials ; brigade
De with a very strong Deputy Commissioner on

147

LIFE'S HANDICAP

each side of him; give him the best assistant in
the Province ; rub the fear of God into the people
beforehand ; and if anything goes wrong, say that
his colleagues didn't back him up. All these lovely
little experiments recoil on the District'Officer in
the end/ said the Knight of the Drawn Sword with
a truthful brutality that made the Head of the Red
Provinces shudder. And on a tacit understanding
of this kind the transfer was accomplished, as
quietly as might be for many reasons.

It is sad to think that what goes for public
opinion in India did not generally see the wisdom
of the Viceroy's appointment. There were not
lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the
pay of a tyrannous bureaucracy, who more than
hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a dreamer
of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler
with the lives of men. ' The Viceroy's Excellence
Gazette,' published in Calcutta, was at pains to
thank ' Our beloved Viceroy for once more and
again thus gloriously vindicating the potentialities
of the Bengali nations for extended executive and
administrative duties in foreign parts beyond our
ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent
fellow-townsman, Mr. Grish Chunder De, Esq.,
M.A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali,
notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and pesh*
bundi may be set on foot to insidiously nip his

148

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

fame and blast his prospects among the proud
civilians, some of which will now have to serve
under a despised native and take orders too.
How will you like that, Misters? We entreat
our beloved Viceroy still to substantiate himself
superiorly to race-prejudice and colour-blindness,
and to allow the flower of this now our Civil
Service all the full pays and allowances granted
to his more fortunate brethren/

III

'When does this man take over charge? I'm
alone just now, and I gather that I'm to stand fast
under him/

4 Would you have cared for a transfer?' said
Bullows keenly. Then, laying his hand on Tallan-
tire's shoulder : * We're all in the same boat ; don't
desert us. And yet, why the devil should you
stay, if you can get another charge ? '

4 It was Orde's,' said Tallantire simply.

'Well, it's De's now. He's a Bengali of the
Bengalis, crammed with code and case law; a
beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go,
and pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always
kept him in his own home district, where all his
sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived, some-
where south of Dacca. He did no more than turn

149

LIFE'S HANDICAP

the place into a pleasant little family preserve,
allowed his subordinates to do what they liked,
and let everybody have a chance at the shekels.
Consequently he's immensely popular down there/

'I've nothing to do with that. How on earth
am I to explain to the district that they are going
to be governed by a Bengali ? Do you — does the
Government, I mean — suppose that the Khusru
Kheyl will sit quiet when they once know ? What
will the Mahomedan heads of villages say ? How
will the police — Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans — how
will they work under him ? We couldn't say any'
thing if the Government appointed a sweeper ; but
my people will say a good deal, you know that.
It's a piece of cruel folly I '

' My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I've
represented it, and have been told that I am ex^
hibiting " culpable and puerile prejudice." By Jove,
if the Khusru Kheyl don't exhibit something worse
than that I don't know the Border ! The chances
are that you will have the district alight on your
hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help
you pull through. I needn't ask you to stand by
the Bengali man in every possible way. You'll
do that for your own sake.'

4 For Ode's. I can't say that I care twopence
personally/

4 Don't be an ass. It's grievous enough, God

150

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

knows, and the Government will know later on j
but that's no reason for your sulking. You must
try to run the district; you must stand between
him and as much insult as possible ; you must show
him the ropes ; you must pacify the Khusru Kheyl,
and just warn Curbar of the Police to look out for
trouble by the way. I'm always at the end of a
telegraph'wire, and willing to peril my reputation
to hold the district together. You'll lose yours, of
course. If you keep things straight, and he isn't
actually beaten with a stick when he's on tour, he'll
get all the credit. If anything goes wrong, you'll
be told that you didn't support him loyally.'

4 1 know what I've got to do,' said Tallantire
wearily, ' and I'm going to it. But it's hard.'

4 The work is with us, the event is with Allah, —
as Orde used to say when he was more than
usually in hot water/ And Bullows rode away.

That two gentlemen in Her Majesty's Bengal
Civil Service should thus discuss a third, also in
that service, and a cultured and affable man withal,
seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the
artless babble of the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the
priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon a rock
overlooking the Border. Five years before, a
chance'hurled shell from a screw^gun battery had
dashed earth in the face of the Mullah, then
urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen

151

LIFE'S HANDICAP

British bayonets. So he became blind, and hated
the English none the less for the little accident.
Yardley'Orde knew his failing, and had many
times laughed at him therefor.

'Dogs you are/ said the Blind Mullah to the
listening tribesmen round the fire. ' Whipped
dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and
called him father and behaved as his children,
the British Government have proven how they
regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead/

' Ai ! ai ! ai ! ' said half a dozen voices.

'He was a man. Comes now in his stead,
whom think ye ? A Bengali of Bengal — an eater
of fish from the South/

'A lie!' said Khoda Dad Khan. 'And but
for the small matter of thy priesthood, I'd drive
my gun butt'first down thy throat/

' Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English ?
Go in to-morrow across the Border to pay service
to Orde Sahib's successor, and thou shalt slip thy
shoes at the tent*door of a Bengali, as thou shalt
hand thy offering to a Bengali's black fist. This
I know; and in my youth, when a young man
spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of
Heaven and Hell, the gun-butt was not rammed
down the Mullah's gullet. No 1 '

The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan
with Afghan hatred, both being rivals for the

152

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared
for bodily as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda
Dad Khan looked at Orde's ring and grunted, 4 1 go
in to-morrow because I am not an old fool, preach-
ing war against the English. If the Government,
smitten with madness, have done this, then . . /

'Then/ croaked the Mullah, 'thou wilt take
out the young men and strike at the four villages
within the Border ? '

4 Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum,
for a bearer of ill-tidings/

Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with
great care, put on his best Bokhara belt, a new
turban-cap, and fine green shoes, and accompanied
by a few friends came down from the hills to pay
a visit to the new Deputy Commissioner of Rot*
Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute — four or five
priceless gold mohurs of Akbar's time in a white
handkerchief. These the Deputy Commissioner
would touch and remit. The little ceremony used
to be a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan's
personal influence went, the Khusru Kheyl would
be good boys, — till the next time; especially if
Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new
Deputy Commissioner. In Yardley-Orde's consul*
ship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner
and perhaps forbidden liquors ; certainly with
some wonderful tales and great good-fellowship.

153

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to his
hold, vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and
Tallantire Sahib another, and that whosoever went
a Braiding into British territory would be flayed
alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy
Commissioner's tents looking much as usual.
Regarding himself as privileged he strode through
the open door to confront a suave, portly Bengali
in English costume writing at a table. Unversed
in the elevating influence of education, and not in
the least caring for university degrees, Khoda Dad
Khan promptly set the man down for a Babu — the
native clerk of the Deputy Commissioner — a
hated and despised animal.

'Ugh!' said he cheerfully. ' Where's your
master, Babujee ? '

M am the Deputy Commissioner/ said the
gentleman in English.

Now he overvalued the effects of university
degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan in the face.
But if from your earliest infancy you have been
accustomed to look on battle, murder, and sudden
death, if spilt blood affects your nerves as much
as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
believed that the Bengali was the servant of all
Hindustan, and that all Hindustan was vastly
inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
endure, even though uneducated, a very large

154

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

amount of looking over. You can even stare down
a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter has
been born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hot'
house, and fearing physical pain as some men fear
sin ; especially if your opponent's mother has
frightened him to sleep in his youth with horrible
stories of devils inhabiting Afghanistan, and dismal
legends of the black North. The eyes behind the
gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan
chuckled, and swung out to find Tallantire hard
by. * Here/ said he roughly, thrusting the coins
before him, * touch and remit. That answers for
my good behaviour. But, O Sahib, has the
Government gone mad to send a black Bengali
dog to us ? And am I to pay service to such an
one ? And are you to work under him ? What
does it mean ? r

4 It is an order/ said Tallantire. He had
expected something of this kind. 4 He is a very
clever S'Sahib.'

1 He a Sahib ! He's a kola admi — a black
man — unfit to run at the tail of a potter's donkey.
All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal.
It is written. Thou knowest when we of the
North wanted women or plunder whither went
we ? To Bengal — where else ? What child's talk
is this of Sahibdom — after Orde Sahib too I Of a
truth the Blind Mullah was right.'

155

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 What of him?' asked Tallantire uneasily.
He mistrusted that old man with his dead eyes
and his deadly tongue.

4 Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to
Orde Sahib when we watched him die by the river
yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is it true
that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on
their own neck, and that there is no more English
rule in the land ? '

'I am here,' said Tallantire, 'and I serve the
Maharanee of England.'

'The Mullah said otherwise, and further that
because we loved Orde Sahib the Government sent
us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now
have been held by the strong hand. Also that
they were taking away the white soldiers, that
more Hindustanis might come, and that all was
changing.'

This is the worst of ill-considered handling of
a very large country. What looks so feasible in
Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable in
Madras, is misunderstood by the North, and
entirely changes its complexion on the banks of
the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as clearly
as he could that, though he himself intended to
be good, he really could not answer for the more
reckless members of his tribe under the leadership
of the Blind Mullah. They might or they might

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THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

not give trouble, but they certainly had no
intention whatever of obeying the new Deputy
Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure
that in the event of any systematic bordered'
ing the force in the district could put it down
promptly ?

'Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool's
talk/ said Tallantire curtly, l that he takes his men
on to certain death, and his tribe to blockade,
trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I
talk to one who no longer carries weight in the
counsels of the tribe ? '

Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He
had learned something that he much wanted to
know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically
complimented by the Mullah, whose tongue raging
round the camp-fires was deadlier flame than ever
dung-cake fed.

IV

Be pleased to consider here for a moment the
unknown district of Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut
lengthways by the Indus under the line of the
Khusru hills — ramparts of useless earth and tumbled
stone. It was seventy miles long by fifty broad,
maintained a population of something less than
two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

extent of forty thousand pounds a year on an
area that was by rather more than half sheer,
hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle
people, the miners for salt were less gentle still,
and the cattle-breeders least gentle of all. A
police * post in the top right-hand corner and a
tiny mud fort in the top left-hand corner prevented
as much salt-smuggling and cattle-lifting as the
influence of the civilians could not put down j and
in the bottom right-hand corner lay Jumala, the
district headquarters — a pitiful knot of lime-washed
barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking with
frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in
the summer.

It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was
travelling, there formally to take over charge of
the district. But the news of his coming had gone
before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among
the simple Borderers, who cut each other's heads
open with their long spades and worshipped
impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines.
They crowded to see him, pointing at him, and
diversely comparing him to a gravid milch-buffalo,
or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of
metaphor prompted. They laughed at his police-
guard, and wished to know how long the burly
Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They
inquired whether he had brought his women with

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THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

him, and advised him explicitly not to tamper
with theirs. It remained for a wrinkled hag by
the roadside to slap her lean breasts as he passed,
crying, * I have suckled six that could have eaten
six thousand of him. The Government shot them,
and made this That a king!' Whereat a blue*
turbaned huge 'boned plough - mender shouted,
4 Have hope, mother o' minel He may yet go
the way of thy wastrels/ And the children, the
little brown puff-balls, regarded curiously. It was
generally a good thing for infancy to stray into
Orde Sahib's tent, where copper coins were to be
won for the mere wishing, and tales of the most
authentic, such as even their mothers knew but
the first half of. No ! This fat black man could
never tell them how Pir Prith hauled the eye-teeth
out of ten devils ; how the big stones came to lie
all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and
what happened if you shouted through the village-
gate to the gray wolf at even * Badl Khas is dead/
Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and
much to Tallantire, after the manner of those who
are ' more English than the English/ — of Oxford
and 'home/ with much curious book-knowledge
of bump - suppers, cricket - matches, hunting - runs,
and other unholy sports of the alien. 4 We must
get these fellows in hand/ he said once or twice
uneasily ; * get them well in hand, and drive them

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

on a tight rein. No use, you know, being slack
with your district/

And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra
Nath De, who brotherliwise had followed his kins*
man's fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, 4 Better
are dried fish at Dacca than drawn swords at
Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils, as
our mother said. And you will always have to
ride upon a horse ! '

That night there was a public audience in a
broken-down little town thirty miles from Jumala,
when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to
the greetings of the subordinate native officials,
delivered a speech. It was a carefully thought-out
speech, which would have been very valuable had
not his third sentence begun with three innocent
words, * Hamara hoohum hai — It is my order/
Then there was a laugh, clear and bell-like, from
the back of the big tent, where a few border land-
holders sat, and the laugh grew and scorn mingled
with it, and the lean, keen face of Debendra Nath
De paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire
spake : * You — you put up this arrangement/
Upon that instant the noise of hoofs rang with-
out, and there entered Curbar, the District
Superintendent of Police, sweating and dusty.
The State had tossed him into a corner of the

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THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

province for seventeen weary years, there to check
smuggling of salt, and to hope for promotion that
never came. He had forgotten how to keep his
white uniform clean, had screwed rusty spurs into
patent-leather shoes, and clothed his head indiffer-
ently with a helmet or a turban. Soured, old,
worn with heat and cold, he waited till he should
be entitled to sufficient pension to keep him from
starving.

4 Tallantire/ said he, disregarding Grish Chunder
De, 'come outside. I want to speak to you/
They withdrew. 'It's this/ continued Curbar.
4 The Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half
a dozen of the coolies on Ferris's new canal-
embankment; killed a couple of men and carried
off a woman. I wouldn't trouble you about that
—Ferris is after them and Hugonin, my assistant,
with ten mounted police. But that's only the
beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the
Hassan Ardeb heights, and unless we're pretty
quick there'll be a flare-up all along our Border.
They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on
our side of the line : there's been bad blood between
them for years ; and you know the Blind Mullah
has been preaching a holy war since Orde went
out. What's your notion ? '

' Damn ! ' said Tallantire thoughtfully. ' Tl
begun quick. Well, it seems to me I'd be,

L. H. Vol. I

LIFE'S HANDICAP

off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can there to
picket among the lowland villages, if it's not too
late. Tommy Dodd commands at Fort Ziar, I
think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach the
canal'thieves a lesson, and — No, we can't have
the Head of the Police ostentatiously guarding the
Treasury. You go back to the canal. I'll wire
Bullows to come in to Jumala with a strong police*
guard, and sit on the Treasury. They won't touch
the place, but it looks well/

4 1 — I — I insist upon knowing what this means,'
said the voice of the Deputy Commissioner, who
had followed the speakers.

'Oh!' said Curbar, who being in the Police
could not understand that fifteen years of education
must, on principle, change the Bengali into a
Briton. 4 There has been a fight on the Border,
and heaps of men are killed. There's going to be
another fight, and heaps more will be killed.'

' What for?'

4 Because the teeming millions of this district
don't exactly approve of you, and think that under
your benign rule they are going to have a good
time. It strikes me that you had better make
arrangements. I act, as you know, by your orders.
What do you advise ? '

* I — I take you all to witness that I have not
yet assumed charge of the district,' stammered the

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THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
* more English/

'Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying,
Tallantire, your plan is sound. Carry it out. Do
you want an escort ? '

4 No; only a decent horse. But how about
wiring to headquarters ? '

'I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that
your superior officer will send some wonderful
telegrams before the night's over. Let him do
that, and we shall have half the troops of the
province coming up to see what's the trouble.
Well, run along, and take care of yourself — the
Khusru Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember.
Ho 1 Mir Khan, give Tallantire Sahib the best of
the horses, and tell five men to ride to Jumala with
the Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There
is a hurry toward/

There was ; and it was not in the least bettered
by Debendra Nath De clinging to a policeman's
bridle and demanding the shortest, the very shortest
way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the
Bengali. Debendra Nath should have stayed with
his brother, who rode steadfastly for Jumala on
the railway'line, thanking gods entirely unknown
to the most catholic of universities that he had not
taken charge of the district, and could still — happy
resource of a fertile race ! — fall sick.

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

And I grieve to say that when he reached his
goal two policemen, not devoid of rude wit, who
had been conferring together as they bumped in
their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his
behoof. It consisted of first one and then the
other entering his room with prodigious details of
war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes,
and the burning of towns. It was almost as good,
said these scamps, as riding with Curbar after
evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer
at work for half an hour on telegrams which the
sack of Delhi would hardly have justified. To
every power that could move a bayonet or transfer
a terrified man, Grish Chunder De appealed
telegraphically. He was alone, his assistants had
fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of
the district. Had the telegrams been despatched
many things would have occurred j but since the
only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and the
station-master, after one look at the tremendous
pile of paper, discovered that railway regulations
forbade the forwarding of imperial messages,
policemen Ram Singh and Nihal Singh were fain
to turn the stuff into a pillow and slept on it very
comfortably.

Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant
skewbald stallion with china^blue eyes, and settled
himself for the forty -mile ride to Fort Ziar.

164

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time
hunting for short cuts, but headed across the
richer grazing-ground to the ford where Orde had
died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened
the noise of his horse's hoofs, the moon threw his
shadow, a restless goblin, before him, and the
heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock,
scrub that brushed against the horse's belly,
unmetalled road where the whip-like foliage of the
tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable levels
of lowland furred with bent and speckled with
drowsing cattle, waste, and hillock anew, dragged
themselves past, and the skewbald was labouring in
the deep sand of the Indus-ford. Tallantire was
conscious of no distinct thought till the nose of the
dawdling ferry-boat grounded on the farther side,
and his horse shied snorting at the white headstone
of Orde's grave. Then he uncovered, and shouted
that the dead might hear, l They're out, old man !
Wish me luck/ In the chill of the dawn he was
hammering with a stirrup-iron at the gate of Fort
Ziar, where fifty sabres of that tattered regiment,
the Belooch Beshaklis, were supposed to guard Her
Majesty's interests along a few hundred miles of
Border. This particular fort was commanded by
a subaltern, who, born of the ancient family of the
Derouletts, naturally answered to the name of
Tommy Dodd. Him Tallantire found robed in a

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like an aspen,
and trying to read the native apothecary's list of
invalids.

'So you've come too/ said he. 'Well, we're
all sick here, and I don't think I can horse thirty
men? but we're bub — bub — bub blessed willing.
Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?'
He tossed a scrap of paper to Tallantire, on which
was written painfully in crabbed Gurmukhi, * We
cannot hold young horses. They will feed after
the moon goes down in the four border villages
issuing from the Jagai pass on the next night.'
Then in English round hand — 'Your sincere
friend.'

* Good man ! ' said Tallantire. * That's Khoda
Dad Khan's work, I know. It's the only piece of
English he could ever keep in his head, and he is
immensely proud of it. He is playing against the
Blind Mullah for his own hand — the treacherous
young ruffian I '

' Don't know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl,
but if you're satisfied, I am. That was pitched in
over the gatehead last night, and I thought we
might pull ourselves together and see what was on.
Oh, but we're sick with fever here and no mistake !
Is this going to be a big business, think you?'
said Tommy Dodd.

Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the

166 '

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

case, and Tommy Dodd whistled and shook with
fever alternately. That day he devoted to strategy,
the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids,
till at dusk there stood ready forty'two troopers,
lean, worn, and dishevelled, whom Tommy Dodd
surveyed with pride, and addressed thus, ' O men I
If you die you will go to Hell. Therefore
endeavour to keep alive. But if you go to Hell
that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we
are not told that we shall there suffer from fever.
Consequently be not afraid of dying. File out
there I ' They grinned, and went.

It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget
their night attack on the lowland villages. The
Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
plunder ; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen
had risen out of the very earth, cutting, slashing,
and riding down under the stars, so that no man
knew where to turn, and all feared that they had
brought an army about their ears, and ran back to
the hills. In the panic of that flight more men
were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an
Afghan knife jabbed upwards, and yet more from
long-range carbine-fire. Then there rose a cry of
treachery, and when they reached their own

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

guarded heights, they had left, with some forty
dead and sixty wounded, all their confidence in
the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires;
the women wailing for the lost, and the Mullah
shrieking curses on the returned.

Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and un-
breathed, for he had taken no part in the fight,
rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out
that the tribe owed every item of its present mis-
fortune to the Blind Mullah, who had lied in every
possible particular and talked them into a trap.
It was undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the
son of a Bengali, should presume to administer the
Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah pre-
tended, herald a general time of license and lifting ;
and the inexplicable madness of the English had
not in the least impaired their power of guarding
their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and
out-generalled tribe would now, just when their
food-stock was lowest, be blockaded from any
trade with Hindustan until they had sent hostages
for good behaviour, paid compensation for dis-
turbance, and blood-money at the rate of thirty-
six English pounds per head for every villager
that they might have slain. 'And ye know that
those lowland dogs will make oath that we have
slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or

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THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

must we sell our guns ? ' A low growl ran round
the fires. * Now, seeing that all this is the Mullah's
work, and that we have gained nothing but
promises of Paradise thereby, it is in my heart
that we of the Khusru Kheyl lack a shrine whereat
to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth how
shall we dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border,
as has been our custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji's
tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us, and
rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He has
helped two score of us into Paradise this night.
Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we
will build over his body a dome of the blue tiles
of Mooltan, and burn lamps at his feet every
Friday night. He shall be a saint : we shall have
a shrine ; and there our women shall pray for fresh
seed to fill the gaps in our fighting'tale. How
think you ? '

A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and
the soft wheep, wheep of unscabbarded knives
followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion,
and met a long'felt want of the tribe. The Mullah
sprang to his feet, glaring with withered eyeballs
at the drawn death he could not see, and calling
down the curses of God and Mahomed on the
tribe. Then began a game of blind man's buff
round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk Shah,
the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.

169

LIFE'S HANDICAP

They tickled him gently under the armpit with
the knife'point. He leaped aside screaming, only
to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back of
his neck, or a rifle^muzzle rubbing his beard. He
called on his adherents to aid him, but most of
these lay dead on the plains, for Khoda Dad Khan
had been at some pains to arrange their decease.
Men described to him the glories of the shrine
they would build, and the little children clapping
their hands cried, * Run, Mullah, run ! There's a
man behind you!' In the end, when the sport
wearied, Khoda Dad Khan's brother sent a knife
home between his ribs. * Wherefore,' said Khoda
Dad Khan with charming simplicity, ' I am now
Chief of the Khusru Kheyl ! ' No man gainsaid
him ; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.

On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing
on the beauties of a cavalry charge by night, and
Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
hysterically because there was a sword dangling
from his wrist flecked with the blood of the Khusru
Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in leash so
well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that
the skewbald's right ear had been taken off at the
root by some blind slash of its unskilled rider,
Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and
sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and
rest.

170

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

4 We must wait about till the morning/ said he.
4 1 wired to the Colonel just before we left, to send
a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He'll be furious
with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those
beggars in the hills won't give us any more
trouble/

' Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what
has happened to Curbar on the canal. We must
patrol the whole line of the Border. You're quite
sure, Tommy, that — that stuff was — was only the
skewbald's ear ? '

'Oh, quite/ said Tommy. 'You just missed
cutting off his head. / saw you when we went
into the mess. Sleep, old man/

Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and
a knot of furious brother officers demanding the
court-martial of Tommy Dodd for 'spoiling the
picnic/ and a gallop across country to the canal-
works where Ferris, Curbar, and Hugonin were
haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
enormity of abandoning good work and high pay,
merely because half a dozen of their fellows had
been cut down. The sight of a troop of the
Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the
police-hunted section of the Khusru Kheyl had the
joy of watching the canal-bank humming with life
as usual, while such of their men as had taken
refuge in the water-courses and ravines were being

171

LIFE'S HANDICAP

driven out by the troopers. By sundown began
the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and
trooper, most like the cow-boys' eternal ride round
restless cattle.

4 Now/ said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows,
pointing out a line of twinkling fires below, * ye
may see how far the old order changes. After
their horse will come the little devil-guns that they
can drag up to the tops of the hills, and, for aught
I know, to the clouds when we crown the hills. If
the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire
Sahib — who loves me — and see if I can stave off at
least the blockade. Do I speak for the tribe ? '

* Ay, speak for the tribe in God's name. How
those accursed fires wink ! Do the English send
their troops on the wire — or is this the work of
the Bengali ? *

As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he
was delayed by an interview with a hard-pressed
tribesman, which caused him to return hastily for
something he had forgotten. Then, handing
himself over to the two troopers who had been
chasing his friend, he claimed escort to Tallantire
Sahib, then with Bullows at Jumala. The Border
was safe, and the time for reasons in writing had
begun.

4 Thank Heaven!' said Bullows, 'that the
trouble came at once. Of course we can never

172

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

put down the reason in black and white, but all
India will understand. And it is better to have a
sharp short outbreak than five years of impotent
administration inside the Border. It costs less.
Grish Chunder De has reported himself sick, and
has been transferred to his own province without
any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not
having taken over the district/

'Of course/ said Tallantire bitterly. 'Well,
what am I supposed to have done that was
wrong ? '

'Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all
your powers, and should have reported, and written,
and advised for three weeks until the Khusru
Kheyl could really come down in force. But I
don't think the authorities will dare to make a
fuss about it. They've had their lesson. Have
you seen Curbar's version of the affair ? He can't
write a report, but he can speak the truth/

'What's the use of the truth? He'd much
better tear up the report. I'm sick and heartbroken
over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary — except
in that it rid us of that Babu/

Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed
forage-net in his hand, and the troopers behind
him.

'May you never be tired!' said he cheerily.
' Well, Sahibs, that was a good fight, and Nairn

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

Shah's mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib.
A clean cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded
coat, and deep into the collarbone. Well done!
But I speak for the tribe. There has been a fault
—a great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine,
Tallantire Sahib, kept the oath we sware to Orde
Sahib on the banks of the Indus/

4 As an Afghan keeps his knife — sharp on one
side, blunt on the other/ said Tallantire.

4 The better swing in the blow, then. But I
speak God's truth. Only the Blind Mullah carried
the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said
that there was no more BordeMaw because a
Bengali had been sent, and we need not fear the
English at all. So they came down to avenge that
insult and get plunder. Ye know what befell, and
how far I helped. Now five score of us are dead
or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry,
and desire no further war. Moreover, that ye may
better listen to us, we have taken off the head of
the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have led us
to folly. I bring it for proof/ — and he heaved on
the floor the head. 4 He will give no more trouble,
for / am chief now, and so I sit in a higher place
at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this
head. That was another fault. One of the men
found that black Bengali beast, through whom this
trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping.

174

THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT

Reflecting that he had caused loss of much good
life, Alia Dad Khan, whom, if you choose, I will
to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and I
bring it to you to cover your shame, that ye may
bury it. See, no man kept the spectacles, though
they were of gold/

Slowly rolled to Tallantire's feet the crop^haired
head of a spectacled Bengali gentleman, open-eyed,
open-mouthed — the head of Terror incarnate.
Bullows bent down. * Yet another bloodline and
a heavy one, Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the
head of Debendra Nath, the man's brother. The
Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the
Khusru Kheyl know that/

* Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for
me. The thing was under our hills asking the
road to Jumala, and Alia Dad Khan showed him
the road to Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a
fool. Remains now what the Government will do
to us. As to the blockade—

* Who art thou, seller of dog's flesh/ thundered
Tallantire, 4 to speak of terms and treaties ? Get
hence to the hills — go, and wait there starving,
till it shall please the Government to call thy
people out for punishment — children and fools
that ye be 1 Count your dead, and be still. Rest
assured that the Government will send you a
manV

175

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 Ay/ returned Khoda Dad Khan, * for we also
be men/

As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he
added, 'And by God, Sahib, may thou be that
man I'

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,

The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay ;
I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,

Who am too wise in that I should not know.

Bitter Waters.

I

BUT if it be a girl?'
4 Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have
prayed for so many nights, and sent gifts
to Sheikh Badl's shrine so often, that I know God
will give us a son — a man-child that shall grow
into a man. Think of this and be glad. My
mother shall be his mother till I can take him
again, and the mullah of the Pattan mosque shall
cast his nativity — God send he be born in an
auspicious hour I — and then, and then thou wilt
never weary of me, thy slave/
L.H. Vol.1 177 N

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen ? '

* Since the beginning — till this mercy came to
me. How could I be sure of thy love when I
knew that I had been bought with silver ? *

'Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy
mother/

4 And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day
long like a hen. What talk is yours of dower I
I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
dancing-girl instead of a child/

4 Art thou sorry for the sale ? r

4 1 have sorrowed ; but to-day I am glad. Thou
wilt never cease to love me now? — answer, my
king/

4 Never — never. No/

4 Not even though the mem 'log — the white
women of thy own blood — love thee? And
remember, I have watched them driving in the
evening ; they are very fair/

4 1 have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I
have seen the moon, and — then I saw no more
fire-balloons/

Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. 4 Very
good talk/ she said. Then with an assumption
of great stateliness, 4 It is enough. Thou hast my
permission to depart, — if thou wilt/

The man did not move. He was sitting on a
low red-lacquered couch in a room furnished only

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and
a very complete collection of native cushions. At
his feet sat a woman of sixteen, and she was all
but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and
law she should have been otherwise, for he was
an Englishman, and she a Mussulman's daughter
bought two years before from her mother, who,
being left without money, would have sold Ameera
shrieking to the Prince of Darkness if the price had
been sufficient.

It was a contract entered into with a light
heart ; but even before the girl had reached her
bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
Holden's life. For her, and the withered hag her
mother, he had taken a little house overlooking
the great red-walled city, and found, — when the
marigolds had sprung up by the well in the court-
yard, and Ameera had established herself according
to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had
ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-
places, the distance from the daily market, and at
matters of house - keeping in general, — that the
house was to him his home. Any one could enter
his bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the
life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the
house in the city his feet only could pass beyond
the outer courtyard to the women's rooms ; and
when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for
queen. And there was going to be added to this
kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden
felt inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect
happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the
house that was his own. But Ameera was wild
with delight at the thought of it, and her mother
not less so. The love of a man, and particularly
a white man, was at the best an inconstant affair,
but it might, both women argued, be held fast
by a baby's hands. 4 And then/ Ameera would
always say, 4 then he will never care for the white
mem'log. I hate them all — I hate them all/

'He will go back to his own people in time/
said the mother ; * but by the blessing of God
that time is yet afar off/

Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the
future, and his thoughts were not pleasant. The
drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The
Government, with singular care, had ordered him
out of the station for a fortnight on special duty
in the place of a man who was watching by the
bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of
the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark
that Holden ought to think himself lucky in being
a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the
news to Ameera.

4 It is not good/ she said slowly, * but it is not

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all bad. There is my mother here, and no harm
will come to me — unless indeed I die of pure joy.
Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome
thoughts. When the days are done I believe . . .
nay, I am sure. And — and then I shall lay him
in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The
train goes to-night, at midnight is it not? Go
now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause
of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning?
Thou wilt not stay on the road to talk to the bold
white meni'log. Come back to me swiftly, my life/
As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that
was tethered to the gate-post, Holden spoke to
the white-haired old watchman who guarded the
house, and bade him under certain contingencies
despatch the filled-up telegraph-form that Holden
gave him. It was all that could be done, and
with the sensations of a man who has attended his
own funeral Holden went away by the night mail
to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded
the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the
night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera.
In consequence his work for the State was not of
first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his
colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight
ended without a sign from his home, and, torn
to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be
swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner

181

LIFE'S HANDICAP

at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears in a
swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had
performed the other man's duties, and how he
had endeared himself to all his associates. Then
he fled on horseback through the night with his
heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first
to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled
his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan
appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.

* Has aught occurred ? ' said Holden.

4 The news does not come from my mouth,

Protector of the Poor, but ' He held out his

shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news
who is entitled to a reward.

Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light
burned in the upper room. His horse neighed in
the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that
sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It
was a new voice, but it did not prove that Ameera
was alive.

4 Who is there ? ' he called up the narrow brick
staircase.

There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and
then the voice of the mother, tremulous with old
age and pride — 'We be two women and — the —
man — thy — son/

On the threshold of the room Holden stepped
on a naked dagger, that was laid there to avert

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ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient
heel.

' God is great I ' cooed Ameera in the half -light,
4 Thou hast taken his misfortunes on thy head/

* Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life ?
Old woman, how is it with her ? '

'She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that
the child is born. There is no harm ; but speak
softly/ said the mother.

4 It only needed thy presence to make me all
well/ said Ameera. 'My king, thou hast been
very long away. What gifts hast thou for me ?
Ah, ah I It is I that bring gifts this time. Look,
my life, look. Was there ever such a babe?
Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from
him/

4 Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari
[little woman]/

'Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope
[peecharee] between us now that nothing can break.
Look — canst thou see in this light ? He is without
spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child.
Ya ittah ! he shall be a pundit — no, a trooper of
the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me as
well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn ?
Answer truly/

4 Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul.
Lie still, pearl, and rest/

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

'Then do not go. Sit by my side here — so.
Mother, the lord of this house needs a cushion.
Bring it/ There was an almost imperceptible
movement on the part of the new life that lay
in the hollow of Ameera's arm. ' Aho ! ' she said,
her voice breaking with love. 'The babe is a
champion from his birth. He is kicking me in
the side with mighty kicks. Was there ever such
a babe ! And he is ours to us — thine and mine.
Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he
is very young, and men are unskilled in such
matters/

Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips
of his fingers the downy head.

4 He is of the Faith/ said Ameera ; ' for lying
here in the night-watches I whispered the call to
prayer and the profession of faith into his ears.
And it is most marvellous that he was born upon
a Friday, as I was born. Be careful of him, my
life ; but he can almost grip with his hands/

Holden found one helpless little hand that
closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran
through his body till it settled about his heart.
Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera.
He began to realise that there was some one else
in the world, but he could not feel that it was a
veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think,
and Ameera dozed lightly.

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'Get hence, sahib? said her mother under her
breath. ' It is not good that she should find you
here on waking. She must be still/

'I go/ said Holden submissively. 'Here be
rupees. See that my baba gets fat and finds all
that he needs/

The chink of the silver roused Ameera. * I am
his mother, and no hireling/ she said weakly.
* Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of
money? Mother, give it back. I have borne my
lord a son/

The deep sleep of weakness came upon her
almost before the sentence was completed. Holden
went down to the courtyard very softly with his
heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was
chuckling with delight. 4 This house is now com'
plete/ he said, and without further comment thrust
into Holden's hands the hilt of a sabre worn many
years ago when he, Pir Khan, served the Queen in
the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came
from the well'kerb.

* There be two/ said Pir Khan, * two goats of
the best. I bought them, and they cost much
money ; and since there is no birth-party assembled
their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib I
'Tis an ill ^balanced sabre at the best. Wait till
they raise their heads from cropping the mari-
golds/

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

* And why ? ' said Holden, bewildered.

'For the birth - sacrifice. What else? Other'
wise the child being unguarded from fate may die.
The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words
to be said/

Holden had learned them once with little
thought that he would ever speak them in earnest.
The touch of the cold sabre^hilt in his palm turned
suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs
— the child that was his own son — and a dread of
loss filled him.

4 StrikeT said Pir Khan. 4 Never life came
into the world but life was paid for it. See, the
goats have raised their heads. Now I With a
drawing cut ! '

Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut
twice as he muttered the Mahomedan prayer that
runs : 4 Almighty I In place of this my son I
offer life for life, blood for blood, head for head,
bone for bone, hair for hair, skin for skin/ The
waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets
at the smell of the raw blood that spirted over
Holden's riding^boots.

'Well smitten!' said Pir Khan, wiping the
sabre. 4 A swordsman was lost in thee. Go with
a light heart, Heaven - born. I am thy servant,
and the servant of thy son. May the Presence
live a thousand years and . . . the flesh of the

186

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

goats is all mine ? * Pir Khan drew back richer
by a month's pay. Holden swung himself into the
saddle and rode off through the low'hanging wood'
smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous
exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness
directed towards no particular object, that made
him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy
horse. 'I never felt like this in my life/ he
thought. Til go to the club and pull myself
together/

A game of pool was beginning, and the room
was full of men. Holden entered, eager to get to
the light and the company of his fellows, singing
at the top of his voice —

' In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet I '

'Did you?' said the club^secretary from his
corner. 'Did she happen to tell you that your
boots were wringing wet ? Great goodness, man,

it's bioodr

'Bosh I' said Holden, picking his cue from
the rack. * May I cut in ? It's dew. I've been
riding through high crops. My faith I my boots
are in a mess though !

' And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
He shall walk the quarter-deck — '

187

LIFE'S HANDICAP

4 Yellow on blue — green next player/ said the
marker monotonously,

4 He shall walk the quarter 'deck, — Am I green,
marker? He shall walk the quarterdeck, — eh I
that's a bad shot, — as his daddy used to do ! '

4\ don't see that you have anything to crow
about/ said a zealous junior civilian acidly, * The
Government is not exactly pleased with your work
when you relieved Sanders/

4 Does that mean a wigging from headquarters ? '
said Holden with an abstracted smile. ' I think I
can stand it/

The talk beat up round the ever^fresh subject
of each man's work, and steadied Holden till it
was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where
his butler received him as one who knew all his
affairs. Holden remained awake for the greater
part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant
ones.

II

* How old is he now ? '

4 Ya illah ! What a man's question 1 He is
all but six weeks old j and on this night I go up
to the house'top with thee, my life, to count the
stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born
on a Friday under the sign of the Sun, and it has
been told to me that he will outlive us both and

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get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, be-
loved?'

4 There is nothing better. Let us go up to the
roof, and thou shalt count the stars — but a few
only, for the sky is heavy with cloud/

'The winter rains are late, and maybe they
come out of season. Come, before all the stars
are hid. I have put on my richest jewels/

* Thou hast forgotten the best of all/

' Ail Ours. He comes also. He has never
yet seen the skies/

Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to
the flat roof. The child, placid and unwinking,
lay in the hollow of her right arm, gorgeous in
silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his
head. Ameera wore all that she valued most.
The diamond nose-stud that takes the place of the
Western patch in drawing attention to the curve
of the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of
the forehead studded with tallow-drop emeralds
and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold
that was fastened round her neck by the softness
of the pure metal, and the chinking curb'patterned
silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-
bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as
befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder
to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver
tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over

189

LIFE'S HANDICAP

the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand,
and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part
in her country's ornaments, but, since they were
Holden's gift and fastened with a cunning European
snap, delighted her immensely.

They sat down by the low white parapet of the
roof, overlooking the city and its lights,

'They are happy down there/ said Ameera.
* But I do not think that they are as happy as we.
Nor do I think the white mem4og are as happy.
And thou ? '

4 1 know they are not/

4 How dost thou know ? '

4 They give their children over to the nurses/

4 1 have never seen that/ said Ameera with a
sigh, ' nor do I wish to see. Ahi 1 ' — she dropped
her head on Holden's shoulder, — 4 1 have counted
forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child,
love of my life, he is counting too/

The baby was staring with round eyes at the
dark of the heavens. Ameera placed him in
Holden's arms, and he lay there without a cry.

4 What shall we call him among ourselves ? '
she said. 4 Look ! Art thou ever tired of
looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the
mouth '

4 Is thine, most dear. Who should know better
than I?'

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

"Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small!
And yet it holds my heart between its lips. Give
him to me now. He has been too long away/

4 Nay, let him lie ; he has not yet begun to cry/

'When he cries thou wilt give him back — eh?
What a man of mankind thou art ! If he cried
he were only the dearer to me. But, my life,
what little name shall we give him ? '

The small body lay close to Holden's heart.
It was utterly helpless and very soft. He scarcely
dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The
caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of
guardian-spirit in most native households moved
on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.

4 There is the answer/ said Holden. 'Mian
Mittu has spoken. He shall be the parrot. When
he is ready he will talk mightily and run about.
Mian Mittu is the parrot in thy — in the Mussul*
man tongue, is it not ? '

4 Why put me so far off ? ' said Ameera f ret*
fully. 4 Let it be like unto some English name —
but not wholly. For he is mine/

4 Then call him Tota, for that is likest English/

'Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. For*
give me, my lord, for a minute ago, but in truth
he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian
Mittu for name. He shall be Tota — our Tota to
us. Hearest thou, oh, small one ? Littlest, thou

191

LIFE'S HANDICAP

art Tota.' She touched the child's cheek, and he
waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him
to his mother, who soothed him with the wonder*
f ul rhyme of Ari koko, ]ari koko I which says—

' Oh crow I Go crow ! Baby's sleeping sound,
And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.'

Reassured many times as to the price of those
plums, Tota cuddled himself down to sleep. The
two sleek, white well-bullocks in the courtyard
were steadily chewing the cud of their evening
meal; old Pir Khan squatted at the head of
Holden's horse, his police sabre across his knees,
pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked
like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat
spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden
gate was shut and barred. The music of a
marriage-procession came to the roof above the
gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-
foxes crossed the face of the low moon.

M have prayed/ said Ameera after a long
pause, 1 1 have prayed for two things. First, that
I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded,
and in the second, that I may die in the place of
the child. I have prayed to the Prophet and to
Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest
thou either will hear ? '

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

* From thy lips who would not hear the lightest
word ? '

4 1 asked for straight talk, and thou hast given
me sweet talk. Will my prayers be heard ? '

1 How can I say ? God is very good/

'Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When
I die, or the child dies, what is thy fate ? Living,
thou wilt return to the bold white mem4ogt for
kind calls to kind/

'Not always/

'With a woman, no; with a man it is other'
wise. Thou wilt in this life, later on, go back to
thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for
I should be dead. But in thy very death thou
wilt be taken away to a strange place and a para*
dise that I do not know/

'Will it be paradise ?'

'Surely, for who would harm thee? But we
two — I and the child — shall be elsewhere, and we
cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us.
In the old days, before the child was born, I did
not think of these things; but now I think of
them always. It is very hard talk/

' It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do
not know, but to-day and love we know well.
Surely we are happy now/

' So happy that it were well to make our happi*
ness assured. And thy Beebee Miriam should

L.H. Vol. I 193 o

LIFE'S HANDICAP

listen to me ; for she is also a woman. But then
she would envy me 1 It is not seemly for men to
worship a woman/

Holden laughed aloud at Ameera's little
spasm of jealousy.

4 Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn
me from worship of thee, then ? '

'Thou a worshipper! And of me? My
king, for all thy sweet words, well I know that I
am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under
thy feet. And I would not have it otherwise. See ! '

Before Holden could prevent her she stooped
forward and touched his feet; recovering herself
with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to her
bosom. Then, almost savagely —

4 Is it true that the bold white mem4og live for
three times the length of my life ? Is it true that
they make their marriages not before they are old
women ? '

'They marry as do others — when they are
women/

'That I know, but they wed when they are
twenty 'five. Is that true ? '

'That is true/

4 Ya illah / At twenty.f ive ! Who would of
his own will take a wife even of eighteen ? She is
a woman — aging every hour. Twenty^five ! I
shall be an old woman at that age, and

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

Those mem'log remain young for ever. How I
hate them ! '

4 What have they to do with us ? '

'I cannot tell. I know only that there may
now be alive on this earth a woman ten years older
than I who may come to thee and take thy love
ten years after I am an old woman, gray-headed,
and the nurse of Tota's son. That is unjust and
evil. They should die too/

'Now, for all thy years thou art a child,
and shalt be picked up and carried down the
staircase/

4 Tota I Have a care for Tota, my lord I
Thou at least art as foolish as any babe 1 ' Ameera
tucked Tota out of harm's way in the hollow of
her neck, and was carried downstairs laughing in
Holden's arms, while Tota opened his eyes and
smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.

He was a silent infant, and, almost before
Holden could realise that he was in the world,
developed into a small gold-coloured little god and
unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the
city. Those were months of absolute happiness to
Holden and Ameera — happiness withdrawn from
the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that
Pir Khan guarded. By day Holden did his work
with an immense pity for such as were not so
fortunate as himself, and a sympathy for small

195

LIFE'S HANDICAP

children that amazed and amused many mothers at
the little station ^gatherings. At nightfall he
returned to Ameera, — Ameera, full of the wondrous
doings of Tota j how he had been seen to clap his
hands together and move his fingers with intention
and purpose — which was manifestly a miracle —
how later, he had of his own initiative crawled out
of his low bedstead on to the floor and swayed on
both feet for the space of three breaths.

'And they were long breaths, for my heart
stood still with delight/ said Ameera.

Then Tota took the beasts into his councils —
the well ' bullocks, the little gray squirrels, the
mongoose that lived in a hole near the well, and
especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he
grievously pulled, and Mian Mittu screamed till
Ameera and Holden arrived.

' Oh villain ! Child of strength 1 This to thy
brother on the housetop! Tobah, tobahl Fie!
Fie ! But I know a charm to make him wise as
Suleiman and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato].
Now look/ said Ameera. She drew from an
embroidered bag a handful of almonds. 4 See ! we
count seven. In the name of God I '

She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled,
on the top of his cage, and seating herself between
the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled an
almond less white than her teeth. * This is a true

196

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

charm, my life, and do not laugh. See! I give
the parrot one^half and Tota the other/ Mian
Mittu with careful beak took his share from between
Ameera's lips, and she kissed the other half into
the mouth of the child, who ate it slowly with
wondering eyes. ' This I will do each day of seven,
and without doubt he who is ours will be a bold
speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be
when thou art a man and I am gray 'headed ? '
Tota tucked his fat legs into adorable creases. He
could crawl, but he was not going to waste the
spring of his youth in idle speech. He wanted
Mian Mittu's tail to tweak.

When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver
belt — which, with a magic square engraved on
silver and hung round his neck, made up the
greater part of his clothing — he staggered on a
perilous journey down the garden to Pir Khan, and
proffered him all his jewels in exchange for one
little ride on Holden's horse, having seen his
mother's mother chaffering with pedlars in the
veranda. Pir Khan wept and set the untried feet
on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought
the bold adventurer to his mother's arms, vowing
that Tota would be a leader of men ere his beard
was grown.

One hot evening, while he sat on the roof
between his father and mother watching the never..

197

LIFE'S HANDICAP

ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew,
he demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to
fly it, because he had a fear of dealing with any*
thing larger than himself, and when Holden called
him a * spark/ he rose to his feet and answered
slowly in defence of his newfound individuality,
' Hum'park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am no
spark, but a man]/

The protest made Holden choke and devote
himself very seriously to a consideration of Totals
future. He need hardly have taken the trouble*
The delight of that life was too perfect to endure*
Therefore it was taken away as many things are
taken away in India — suddenly and without warn*
ing. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan
called him, grew sorrowful and complained of pains
who had never known the meaning of pain.
Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through
the night, and in the dawning of the second day
the life was shaken out of him by fever — the
seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether im*
possible that he could die, and neither Ameera nor
Holden at first believed the evidence of the little
body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her
head against the wall and would have flung herself
down the well in the garden had Holden not
restrained her by main force.

One mercy only was granted to Holden. He

198

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

rode to his office in broad daylight and found wait'
ing him an unusually heavy mail that demanded
concentrated attention and hard work. He was
not, however, alive to this kindness of the gods.

Ill

The first shock of a bullet is no more than a
brisk pinch. The wrecked body does not send in
its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen seconds
later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as
he had realised his happiness, and with the same
imperious necessity for hiding all trace of it. In
the beginning he only felt that there had been a
loss, and that Ameera needed comforting, where
she sat with her head on her knees shivering as
Mian Mittu from the house-top called, Total
Total Total Later all his world and the daily
life of it rose up to hurt him. It was an outrage
that any one of the children at the band-stand in
the evening should be alive and clamorous, when
his own child lay dead. It was more than mere
pain when one of them touched him, and stories
told by over-fond fathers of their children's latest
performances cut him to the quick. He could
not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort,
nor sympathy; and Ameera at the end of each
weary day would lead him through the hell of se

199

LIFE'S HANDICAP

questioning reproach which is reserved for those
who have lost a child, and believe that with a little
— just a little more care — it might have been saved.

' Perhaps/ Ameera would say, * I did not take
sufficient heed. Did I, or did I not ? The sun
on the roof that day when he played so long alone
and I was — ahi ! braiding my hair — it may be that
the sun then bred the fever. If I had warned him
from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
life, say that I am guiltless ! Thou knowest that
I loved him as I love thee. Say that there is no
blame on me, or I shall die — I shall die I *

'There is no blame, — before God, none. It
was written, and how could we do aught to save ?
What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved/

' He was all my heart to me. How can I let
the thought go when my arm tells me every night
that he is not here ? Ahi ! Ahi I Oh, Tota, come
back to me — come back again, and let us be all
together as it was before I '

4 Peace, peace I For thine own sake, and for
mine also, if thou lovest me — rest/

4 By this I know thou dost not care ; and how
shouldst thou? The white men have hearts of
stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married
a man of mine own people — though he beat me —
and had never eaten the bread of an alien I '

4 Am I an alien — mother of my son ? '

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WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

'What else — Sahib? . . . Oh, forgive me—
forgive 1 The death has driven me mad. Thou
art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes,
and the breath of my life, and — and I have put
thee from me, though it was but for a moment.
If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for help ?
Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that
spoke and not thy slave/

4 1 know, I know. We be two who were three.
The greater need therefore that we should be
one/

They were sitting on the roof as of custom.
The night was a warm one in early spring, and
sheet'lightning was dancing on the horizon to a
broken tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera
settled herself in Holden's arms.

'The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the
rain, and I — I am afraid. It was not like this
when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me
as much as before, though a bond is taken away ?
Answer ! '

4 1 love more because a new bond has come out
of the sorrow that we have eaten together, and
that thou knowest/

'Yea, I knew/ said Ameera in a very small
whisper. ' But it is good to hear thee say so, my
life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child
no more, but a woman and an aid to thee.

201

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Listen! Give me my sitar and I will sing
bravely/

She took the light silver-studded sitar and
began a song of the great hero Rajah Rasalu.
The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted,
checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor
little nursery-rhyme about the wicked crow —

'And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a

pound.
Only a penny a pound, bdba — only . . .'

Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion
against fate till she slept, moaning a little in her
sleep, with the right arm thrown clear of the
body as though it protected something that was
not there* It was after this night that life became
a little easier for Holden. The ever-present pain
of loss drove him into his work, and the work
repaid him by filling up his mind for nine or ten
hours a day. Ameera sat alone in the house and
brooded, but grew happier when she understood
that Holden was more at ease, according to the
custom of women. They touched happiness again,
but this time with caution.

4 It was because we loved Tota that he died.
The jealousy of God was upon us/ said Ameera.
4 1 have hung up a large black jar before our
window to turn the evil eye from us, and we must

202

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

make no protestations of delight, but go softly
underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is
that not good talk, worthless one ? '

She had shifted the accent on the word that
means * beloved/ in proof of the sincerity of her
purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
christening was a thing that any deity might have
envied. They went about henceforward saying,
* It is naught, it is naught ' j and hoping that all
the Powers heard.

The Powers were busy on other things. They
had allowed thirty million people four years of
plenty, wherein men fed well and the crops were
certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year j the
districts reported a purely agricultural population
varying from nine hundred to two thousand to the
square mile of the overburdened earth; and the
Member for Lower Tooting, wandering about
India in top-hat and frock'Coat, talked largely of
the benefits of British rule, and suggested as the
one thing needful the establishment of a duly
qualified electoral system and a general bestowal
of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled
and made him welcome, and when he paused to
admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of
the blood-red dhak'tree that had flowered untimely
for a sign of what was coming, they smiled more
than ever.

203

LIFE'S HANDICAP

It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot'
Kumharsen, staying at the club for a day, who
lightly told a tale that made Holden's blood run
cold as he overheard the end.

4 He won't bother any one any more. Never
saw a man so astonished in my life. By Jove, I
thought he meant to ask a question in the House
about it. Fellow'passenger in his ship — dined
next him — bowled over by cholera and died in
eighteen hours. You needn't laugh, you fellows.
The Member for Lower Tooting is awfully
angry about it; but he's more scared. I
think he's going to take his enlightened self out
of India/

4 I'd give a good deal if he were knocked over.
It might keep a few vestrymen of his kidney to
their own parish. But what's this about cholera ?
It's full early for anything of that kind,' said the
warden of an unprofitable salt-lick.

4 Don't know/ said the Deputy Commissioner
reflectively. 4 We've got locusts with us. There's
sporadic cholera all along the north — at least we're
calling it sporadic for decency's sake. The spring
crops are short in five districts, and nobody seems
to know where the rains are. It's nearly March
now. I don't want to scare anybody, but it seems
to me that Nature's going to audit her accounts
with a big red pencil this summer.

204

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

' Just when I wanted to take leave, too ! ' said
a voice across the room.

4 There won't be much leave this year, but there
ought to be a great deal of promotion. I've come
in to persuade the Government to put my pet
canal on the list of famine<-relief works. It's an
ill' wind that blows no good. I shall get that canal
finished at last.'

' Is it the old programme then/ said Holden ;
4 famine, fever, and cholera ? '

4 Oh no. Only local scarcity and an unusual
prevalence of seasonal sickness. You'll find it all
in the reports if you live till next year. You're a
lucky chap. You haven't got a wife to send out
of harm's way. The hill'Stations ought to be full
of women this year/

'I think you're inclined to exaggerate the talk
in the bazars,' said a young civilian in the Secre^
tariat. * Now I have observed —

'I daresay you have/ said the Deputy
missioner, 4 but you've a great deal more to observe,
my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to
you — ' and he drew him aside to discuss the
construction of the canal that was so dear to his
heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began to
understand that he was not alone in the world, and
also that he was afraid for the sake of another, —
which is the most souLsatisfyingfear known to man.

205

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold,
Nature began to audit her accounts with a red pencil.
On the heels of the spring-reapings came a cry
for bread, and the Government, which had decreed
that no man should die of want, sent wheat. Then
came the cholera from all four quarters of the
compass. It struck a pilgrinvgathering of half a
million at a sacred shrine. Many died at the feet
of their god; the others broke and ran over the
face of the land carrying the pestilence with them.
It smote a walled city and killed two hundred a
day. The people crowded the trains, hanging on
to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of
the carriages, and the cholera followed them, for
at each station they dragged out the dead and the
dying. They died by the roadside, and the horses
of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass.
The rains did not come, and the earth turned to
iron lest man should escape death by hiding in her.
The English sent their wives away to the hills
and went about their work, coming forward as
they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting-
line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest
treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade
Ameera to go away with her mother to the
Himalayas.

'Why should I go?' said she one evening on
the roof.

206

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

* There is sickness, and people are dying, and
all the white meni'log have gone/

'All of them?'

'All — unless perhaps there remain some old
scald'head who vexes her husband's heart by
running risk of death/

' Nay ; who stays is my sister, and thou must
not abuse her, for I will be a scald-head too. I
am glad all the bold meni'log are gone/

' Do I speak to a woman or a babe ? Go to
the hills, and I will see to it that thou goest like
a queen's daughter. Think, child. In a red*
lacquered bullock cart, veiled and curtained, with
brass peacocks upon the pole and red cloth hang'
ings. I will send two orderlies for guard and —

'Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus.
What use are those toys to me ? He would have
patted the bullocks and played with the housings.
For his sake, perhaps, — thou hast made me very
English — I might have gone. Now, I will not.
Let the meni'log run/

' Their husbands are sending them, beloved/

'Very good talk. Since when hast thou been
my husband to tell me what to do ? I have but
borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of
my soul to me. How shall I depart when I know
that if evil befall thee by the breadth of so much
as my littlest finger-nail — is that not small? — I

207

LIFE'S HANDICAP

should be aware of it though I were in paradise.
And here, this summer thou mayest die — ai, janeet
die ! and in dying they might call to tend thee a
white woman, and she would rob me in the last of
thy love ! '

'But love is not born in a moment or on a
death'bed I *

* What dost thou know of love, stoneheart ?
She would take thy thanks at least and, by God
and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother
of thy Prophet, that I will never endure. My
lord and my love, let there be no more foolish
talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It
is enough/ She put an arm round his neck and a
hand on his mouth.

There are not many happinesses so complete as
those that are snatched under the shadow of the
sword. They sat together and laughed, calling
each other openly by every pet name that could
move the wrath of the gods. The city below them
was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur fires
blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu
temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were
inattentive in those days. There was a service in
the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer
from the minarets was almost unceasing. They
heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and
once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child

208

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

and was calling for its return. In the gray dawn
they saw the dead borne out through the city
gates, each litter with its own little knot of
mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and
shivered.

It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was
very sick and needed a little breathing-space ere
the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew.
The children of immature fathers and undeveloped
mothers made no resistance. They were cowed
and sat still, waiting till the sword should be
sheathed in November if it were so willed. There
were gaps among the English, but the gaps were
filled. The work of superintending famine-relief,
cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
sanitation was possible, went forward because it
was so ordered.

Holden had been told to keep himself in readi-
ness to move to replace the next man who should
fall. There were twelve hours in each day when
he could not see Ameera, and she might die in
three. He was considering what his pain would
be if he could not see her for three months, or if
she died out of his sight. He was absolutely
certain that her death would be demanded — so
certain, that when he looked up from the telegram
and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he
laughed aloud. * And ? ' said he,—

L.H. Vol. I 209

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'When there is a cry in the night and the
spirit flutters into the throat, who has a charm that
will restore ? Come swiftly, Heaven^born ! It is
the black cholera/

Holden galloped to his home. The sky was
heavy with clouds, for the long'deferred rains were
near and the heat was stifling. Ameera's mother
met him in the courtyard, whimpering, 'She is
dying. She is nursing herself into death. She is
all but dead. What shall I do, sahib ? '

Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota
had been born. She made no sign when Holden
entered, because the human soul is a very lonely
thing and, when it is getting ready to go away,
hides itself in a misty borderland where the living
may not follow. The black cholera does its work
quietly and without explanation. Ameera was
being thrust out of life as though the Angel of
Death had himself put his hand upon her. The
quick breathing seemed to show that she was
either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor mouth
gave any answer to Holden's kisses. There was
nothing to be said or done. Holden could only
wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain began
to fall on the roof and he could hear shouts of joy
in the parched city.

The soul came back a little and the lips moved.
Holden bent down to listen. 'Keep nothing of

210

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

mine/ said Ameera. 'Take no hair from my
head. She would make thee burn it later on.
That flame I should feel. Lower I Stoop lower !
Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a
son. Though thou wed a white woman tO'morrow,
the pleasure of receiving in thy arms thy first son
is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when
thy son is born — the one that shall carry thy name
before all men. His misfortunes be on my head.
I bear witness — I bear witness ' — the lips were
forming the words on his ear — 'that there is no
God but — thee, beloved ! '

Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought
was taken from him, — till he heard Ameera's
mother lift the curtain.

* Is she dead, sahib ? '

4 She is dead.'

'Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an
inventory of the furniture in this house. For
that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to
resume it? It is so little, so very little, sahibt
and I am an old woman. I would like to lie
softly/

4 For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go
out and mourn where I cannot hear/

4 Sahibt she will be buried in four hours/

'I know the custom. I shall go ere she is
taken away. That matter is in thy hands. Look

211

LIFE'S HANDICAP

to it, that the bed on which — on which she
lies—

'Aha! That beautiful red < lacquered bed. I
have long desired

'That the bed is left here untouched for my
disposal. All else in the house is thine. Hire a
cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise
let there be nothing in this house but that which
I have ordered thee to respect.'

'I am an old woman. I would stay at least
for the days of mourning, and the rains have just
broken. Whither shall I go ? '

4 What is that to me ? My order is that there
is a going. The house'gear is worth a thousand
rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred
rupees to-night/

* That is very little. Think of the cart^hire.'

4 It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with
speed. O woman, get hence and leave me with
my dead ! '

The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in
her anxiety to take stock of the house - fittings
forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera's
side and the rain roared on the roof. He could
not think connectedly by reason of the noise,
though he made many attempts to do so. Then
four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room
and stared at him through their veils. They were

212

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

the washers of the dead. Holden left the room
and went out to his horse. He had come in a
dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He
found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with
frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the
gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the
rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir
Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate,
and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water.

'I have been told the sahib's order/ said Pir
Khan. * It is well. This house is now desolate.
I go also, for my monkey-face would be a re-
minder of that which has been. Concerning the
bed, I will bring that to thy house yonder in the
morning ; but remember, sahib, it will be to thee
a knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pil-
grimage, and I will take no money. I have grown
fat in the protection of the Presence whose sorrow is
my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup/

He touched Holden's foot with both hands and
the horse sprang out into the road, where the
creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all
the frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see
for the rain in his face. He put his hands before
his eyes and muttered —

4 Oh you brute I You utter brute ! '

The news of his trouble was already in his
bungalow. He read the knowledge in his butler's

213

LIFE'S HANDICAP

eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for
the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon
his master's shoulder, saying, 'Eat, sahib, eat.
Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known.
Moreover the shadows come and go, sahib; the
shadows come and go. These be curried eggs/

Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The
heavens sent down eight inches of rain in that
night and washed the earth clean. The waters
tore down walls, broke roads, and scoured open
the shallow graves on the Mahomedan burying'
ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat
still in his house considering his sorrow. On the
morning of the third day he received a telegram
which said only, 'Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying.
Holden relieve. Immediate/ Then he thought
that before he departed he would look at the
house wherein he had been master and lord.
There was a break in the weather, and the rank
earth steamed with vapour.

He found that the rains had torn down the
mud pillars of the gateway, and the heavy wooden
gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from
one hinge. There was grass three inches high in the
courtyard ; Pir Khan's lodge was empty, and the
sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
squirrel was in possession of the veranda, as if the
house had been untenanted for thirty years instead

214

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

of three days. Ameera's mother had removed
everything except some mildewed matting. The
tick 'tick of the little scorpions as they hurried
across the floor was the only sound in the house.
Ameera's room and the other one where Tola had
lived were heavy with mildew; and the narrow
staircase leading to the roof was streaked and
stained with rain - borne mud. Holden saw all
these things, and came out again to meet in the
road Durga Dass, his landlord, — portly, affable,
clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee'spring
buggy. He was overlooking his property to see
how the roofs stood the stress of the first rains.

4 1 have heard/ said he, * you will not take this
place any more, sahib ? '

4 What are you going to do with it ? '

4 Perhaps I shall let it again/

* Then I will keep it on while I am away/

Durga Dass was silent for some time. 'You
shall not take it on, sahib,' he said. 'When I

was a young man I also , but tO'day I am

a member of the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No.
When the birds have gone what need to keep the
nest ? I will have it pulled down — the timber will sell
for something always. It shall be pulled down, and
the Municipality shall make a road across, as
they desire, from the burning'ghaut to the city wall,
so that no man may say where this house stood/

215

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

The sky is lead and our faces are red,

And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,

And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,

Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.

And the soul of man is turned from his meat,

Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet,
Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,

As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.

Himalayan.

FOUR men, each entitled to ' life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness/ sat at a table
playing whist. The thermometer marked —
for them — one hundred and one degrees of heat.
The room was darkened till it was only just
possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and
the very white faces of the players. A tattered,
rotten punkah of whitewashed calico was puddling

216

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke.
Outside lay gloom of a November day in London.
There was neither sky, sun, nor horizon, — nothing
but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though
the earth were dying of apoplexy.

From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose
from the ground without wind or warning, flung
themselves tableclotlvwise among the tops of the
parched trees, and came down again. Then a
whirling dust'devil would scutter across the plain
for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward,
though there was nothing to check its flight save a
long low line of piled railway^sleepers white with
the dust, a cluster of huts made of mud, condemned
rails, and canvas, and the one squat four^roomed
bungalow that belonged to the assistant engineer
in charge of a section of the Gaudhari State line
then under construction.

The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping.-
suits, played whist crossly, with wranglings as to
leads and returns. It was not the best kind of
whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at
it. Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden
thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely
post in the desert since the night before ; Lowndes
of the Civil Service, on special duty in the political
department, had come as far to escape for an
instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished

217

LIFE'S HANDICAP

native State whose king alternately fawned and
blustered for more money from the pitiful revenues
contributed by hard-wrung peasants and despairing
camel'breeders ; Spurstow, the doctor of the line,
had left a cholera'Stricken camp of coolies to look
after itself for forty .-eight hours while he associated
with white men once more. Hummil, the assistant
engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received
his friends thus every Sunday if they could come
in. When one of them failed to appear, he would
send a telegram to his last address, in order that
he might know whether the defaulter were dead or
alive. There are very many places in the East
where it is not good or kind to let your ac*
quaintances drop out of sight even for one short
week.

The players were not conscious of any special
regard for each other. They squabbled whenever
they met *f but they ardently desired to meet, as
men without water desire to drink. They were
lonely folk who understood the dread meaning of
loneliness. They were all under thirty years of
age, — which is too soon for any man to possess
that knowledge.

'Pilsener?' said Spurstow, after the second
rubber, mopping his forehead.

4 Beer's out, I'm sorry to say, and there's hardly
enough soda-water for to-night,' said Hummil.

218

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

* What filthy bad management 1 ' Spurstow
snarled.

'Can't help it, I've written and wired; but
the trains don't come through regularly yet. Last
week the ice ran out, — as Lowndes knows.'

'Glad I didn't come. I could ha' sent you
some if I had known, though. Phew I it's too
hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.' This with a
savage scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He
was a hardened offender.

Mottram rose from the table and looked out of
a chink in the shutters.

4 What a sweet day ! ' said he.

The company yawned all together and betook
themselves to an aimless investigation of all
Hummil's possessions, — guns, tattered novels,
saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered
them a score of times before, but there was really
nothing else to do.

4 Got anything fresh ? ' said Lowndes.

'Last week's Gazette of India, and a cutting
from a home paper. My father sent it out It's
rather amusing.'

'One of those vestrymen that call 'emselves
M.P.'s again, is it ? ' said Spurstow, who read his
newspapers when he could get them.

'Yes. Listen to this. It's to your address,
Lowndes. The man was making a speech to his

219

LIFE'S HANDICAP

constituents, and he piled it on. Here's a sample,
44 And I assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service
in India is the preserve — the pet preserve — of the
aristocracy of England. What does the democracy
—what do the masses — get from that country,
which we have step by step fraudulently annexed ?
I answer, nothing whatever. It is farmed with a
single eye to their own interests by the scions of
the aristocracy. They take good care to maintain
their lavish scale of incomes, to avoid or stifle any
inquiries into the nature and conduct of their
administration, while they themselves force the
unhappy peasant to pay with the sweat of his brow
for all the luxuries in which they are lapped/"
Hummil waved the cutting above his head. 4 'Ear !
'ear ! ' said his audience.

Then Lowndes, meditatively, 'I'd give — I'd
give three months' pay to have that gentleman
spend one month with me and see how the free
and independent native prince works things. Old
Timbersides' — this was his flippant title for an
honoured and decorated feudatory prince — 'has
been wearing my life out this week past for money.
By Jove, his latest performance was to send me
one of his women as a bribe ! '

4 Good for you ! Did you accept it ? ' said
Mottram.

'No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a

220

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

pretty little person, and she yarned away to me
about the horrible destitution among the king's
womenfolk. The darlings haven't had any new
clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants
to buy a new drag from Calcutta, — solid silver
railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind.
I've tried [to make him understand that he has
played the deuce with the revenues for the last
twenty years and must go slow. He can't see it/

'But he has the ancestral treasure * vaults to
draw on. There must be three millions at least in
jewels and coin under his palace,' said Hummil.

* Catch a native king disturbing the family
treasure ! The priests forbid it except as the last
resort. Old Timbersides has added something like
a quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign/

4 Where the mischief does it all come from?'
said Mottram.

'The country. The state of the people is
enough to make you sick. I've known the tax-
men wait by a milch'camel till the foal was born
and then hurry off the mother for arrears. And
what can I do? I can't get the court clerks to
give me any accounts ; I can't raise anything more
than a fat smile from the commander * in * chief
when I find out the troops are three months in
arrears ; and old Timbersides begins to weep when
I speak to him. He has taken to the King's Peg

221

LIFE'S HANDICAP

heavily , — liqueur brandy for whisky, and Heidsieck
for soda-water/

4 That's what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even
a native can't last long at that/ said Spurstow.
'He'll go out/

* And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we'll
have a council of regency, and a tutor for the
young prince, and hand him back his kingdom
with ten years' accumulations/

4 Whereupon that young prince, having been
taught all the vices of the English, will play ducks
and drakes with the money and undo ten years'
work in eighteen months. I've seen that business
before/ said Spurstow. 4 1 should tackle the king
with a light hand if I were you, Lowndes. They'll
hate you quite enough under any circumstances/

4 That's all very well. The man who looks on
can talk about the light hand ; but you can't clean
a pig * stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I
know my risks ; but nothing has happened yet.
My servant's an old Pathan, and he cooks for me.
They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don't
accept food from my true friends, as they call
themselves. Oh, but it's weary work ! I'd sooner
be with you, Spurstow. There's shooting near
your camp/

' Would you ? I don't think it. About fifteen
deaths a day don't incite a man to shoot anything

222

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
devils look at you as though you ought to save
them. Lord knows, IVe tried everything. My
last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old
man through. He was brought to me apparently
past hope, and I gave him gin and Worcester sauce
with cayenne. It cured him ; but I don't recon>
mend it.'

4 How do the cases run generally ?'said Hummil.

4 Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill,
chlorodyne, collapse, nitre, bricks to the feet, and
then — the burning'ghaut. The last seems to be
the only thing that stops the trouble. It's black
cholera, you know. Poor devils! But, I will
say, little Bunsee Lai, my apothecary, works like a
demon. I've recommended him for promotion if
he comes through it all alive/

' And what are your chances, old man ? ' said
Mottram.

* Don't know; don't care much; but I've sent
the letter in. What are you doing with yourself
generally ? '

4 Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on
the sextant to keep it cool,' said the man of the
survey. 4 Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia,
which I shall certainly get, and trying to make
a sub'Surveyor understand that an error of five
degrees in an angle isn't quite so small as it looks.

223

LIFE'S HANDICAP

I'm altogether alone, y' know, and shall be till the
end of the hot weather/

4 Hummil's the lucky man/ said Lowndes, fling-
ing himself into a long chair. 4 He has an actual
roof — torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still a roof
— over his head. He sees one train daily. He
can get beer and soda-water and ice 'em when God
is good. He has books, pictures/ — they were
torn from the Graphic, — 'and the society of the
excellent sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure
of receiving us weekly/

Hummil smiled grimly. 'Yes, I'm the lucky
man, I suppose. Jevins is luckier/

'How? Not-

* Yes. Went out. Last Monday/

'By his own hand?' said Spurstow quickly,
hinting the suspicion that was in everybody's
mind. There was no cholera near Hummil's
section. Even fever gives a man at least a week's
grace, and sudden death generally implied self-
slaughter.

' I judge no man this weather/ said Hummil.
'He had a touch of the sun, I fancy; for last
week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
veranda and told me that he was going home to see
his wife, in Market Street, Liverpool, that evening.

' I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we
tried to make him lie down. After an hour or

224

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had
had a fit, — hoped he hadn't said anything rude.
Jevins had a great idea of bettering himself socially.
He was very like Chucks in his language/
'Well?'

* Then he went to his own bungalow and began
cleaning a rifle. He told the servant that he was
going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally
he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself
through the head — accidentally. The apothecary
sent in a report to my chief, and Jevins is buried
somewhere out there. I'd have wired to you,
Spurstow, if you could have done anything/

'You're a queer chap/ said Mottram. Mf
you'd killed the man yourself you couldn't have
been more quiet about the business/

4 Good Lord ! what does it matter ? ' said
Hummil calmly. 4 I've got to do a lot of his over-
seeing work in addition to my own. I'm the only
person that suffers. Jevins is out of it, — by pure
accident, of course, but out of it. The apothecary
was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust
a babu to drivel when he gets the chance/

* Why didn't you let it go in as suicide ? ' said
Lowndes.

4 No direct proof. A man hasn't many privileges
in this country, but he might at least be allowed to
mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day I may

L.H. Vol. I 225 Q

LIFE'S HANDICAP

need a man to smother up an accident to myself.
Live and let live. Die and let die/

4 You take a pill/ said Spurstow, who had been
watching Hummil's white face narrowly. 4 Take
a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is
skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work.
If I were Job ten times over, I should be so
interested in what was going to happen next that
Pd stay on and watch/

4 Ah I I've lost that curiosity/ said Hummil.

4 Liver out of order ? * said Lowndes feelingly.

4 No. Can't sleep. That's worse/

'By Jove, it is!' said Mottram. 'I'm that
way every now and then, and the fit has to wear
itself out. What do you take for it ? '

' Nothing. What's the use ? I haven't had ten
minutes' sleep since Friday morning/

' Poor chap I Spurstow, you ought to attend to
this/ said Mottram. ' Now you mention it, your
eyes are rather gummy and swollen/

Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed
lightly. 'I'll patch him up, later on. Is it too
hot, do you think, to go for a ride ? '

' Where to ? ' said Lowndes wearily. ' We shall
have to go away at eight, and there'll be riding
enough for us then. I hate a horse when I have
to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens I what is
there to do ? '

226

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

' Begin whist again, at chick points [' a chick ' is
supposed to be eight shillings] and a gold mohur
on the rub/ said Spurstow promptly.

* Poker. A month's pay all round for the pool, —
no limit, — and fifty ^rupee raises. Somebody would
be broken before we got up/ said Lowndes.

' Can't say that it would give me any pleasure
to break any man in this company/ said Mottram.
'There isn't enough excitement in it, and it's
foolish.' He crossed over to the worn and
battered little camp*piano, — wreckage of a married
household that had once held the bungalow, — and
opened the case.

'It's used up long ago/ said Hummil. 'The
servants have picked it to pieces.'

The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order,
but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious
notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from
the ragged keyboard something that might once
have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song.
The men in the long chairs turned with evident
interest us Mottram banged the more lustily.

' That's good 1 ' said Lowndes. * By Jove ! the
last time I heard that song was in '79, or there'
abouts, just before I came out.'

* Ah ! ' said Spurstow with pride, * I was home
in '80.' And he mentioned a song of the streets
popular at that date.

227

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criti'
cised and volunteered emendations. Mottram
dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
character, and made as if to rise.

'Sit down/ said Hummil. 'I didn't know
that you had any music in your composition. Go
on playing until you can't think of anything more.
I'll have that piano tuned up before you come
again. Play something festive.'

Very simple indeed were the tunes to which
Mottram's art and the limitations of the piano
could give effect, but the men listened with
pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of
what they had seen or heard when they were last
at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in
the choking darkness of midnight, but Mottram
continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle reached
the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the
tattered ceiling-cloth.

In the silence after the storm he glided from
the more directly personal songs of Scotland, half
humming them as he played, into the Evening
Hymn.

* Sunday,' said he, nodding his head.

4 Go on. Don't apologise for it,' said Spurstow.

Hummil laughed long and riotously. ' Play it,
by all means. You're full of surprises to-day. I

228

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

didn't know you had such a gift of finished sar^
casm. How does that thing go ? '

Mottram took up the tune.

4 Too slow by half. You miss the note of
gratitude/ said Hummil. 'It ought to go to the
44 Grasshopper's Polka," — this way/ And he
chanted, prestissimo, —

' Glory to thee, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light.

That shows we really feel our blessings. How
does it go on ? —

If in the night I sleepless lie,

My soul with sacred thoughts supply;

May no ill dreams disturb my rest, —

Quicker, Mottram I —

Or powers of darkness me molest I '

4 Bah what an old hypocrite you are 1 '
4 Don't be an ass/ said Lowndes. * You are at
full liberty to make fun of anything else you like,
but leave that hymn alone. It's associated in my
mind with the most sacred recollections —

4 Summer evenings in the country, — stained'
glass window, — light going out, and you and she
jamming your heads together over one hymn*
book/ said Mottram.

229

LIFE'S HANDICAP

'Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in
the eye when you walked home. Smell of hay,
and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top
of a haycock; bats, — roses, — milk and midges/
said Lowndes.

* Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother
singing me to sleep with that when I was a little
chap/ said Spurstow.

The darkness had fallen on the room. They
could hear Hummil squirming in his chair.

* Consequently/ said he testily, 'you sing it
when you are seven fathom deep in Helll It's
an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
we're anything but tortured rebels/

'Take two pills/ said Spurstow; 'that's tor*
tured liver/

'The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad
temper. I'm sorry for his coolies to-morrow/
said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the
lights and prepared the table for dinner.

As they were settling into their places about
the miserable goat'chops, and the smoked tapioca
pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
Mottram, ' Well done, David ! '

' Look after Saul, then/ was the reply.

'What are you two whispering about?' said
Hummil suspiciously.

' Only saying that you are a damned poor host.

230

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

This fowl can't be cut/ returned Spurstow with a
sweet smile. * Call this a dinner ? '

4 1 can't help it. You don't expect a banquet,
do you ? '

Throughout that meal Hummil contrived
laboriously to insult directly and pointedly all his
guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow
kicked the aggrieved persons under the table ; but
he dared not exchange a glance of intelligence
with either of them. Hummil's face was white
and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large.
No man dreamed for a moment of resenting his
savage personalities, but as soon as the meal was
over they made haste to get away.

4 Don't go. You're just getting amusing, you
fellows. I hope I haven't said anything that
annoyed you. You're such touchy devils/ Then,
changing the note into one of almost abject en*
treaty, Hummil added, M say, you surely aren't
going ? '

' In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where
I dines I sleeps/ said Spurstow. ' I want to have
a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don't
mind. You can give me a place to lie down in,
I suppose ? '

The others pleaded the urgency of their several
duties next day, and, saddling up, departed to-
gether, Hummil begging them to come next

231

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Sunday, As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed
himself to Mottram —

4 . . . And I never felt so like kicking a man
at his own table . in my life. He said I cheated at
whist, and reminded me I was in debt! Told
you you were as good as a liar to your face ! You
aren't half indignant enough over it/

'Not I/ said Mottram. 'Poor devil! Did
you ever know old Hummy behave like that
before or within a hundred miles of it ? *

* That's no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my
shin all the time, so I kept a hand on myself.
Else I should have '

'No, you wouldn't. You'd have done as
Hummy did about Jevins; judge no man this
weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is
hot in my hand ! Trot out a bit, and 'ware rat'
holes.'

Ten minutes' trotting jerked out of Lowndes
one very sage remark when he pulled up, sweating
from every pore —

* 'Good thing Spurstow's with him to-night.'
'Ye'es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads

turn here. See you again next Sunday, if the sun
doesn't bowl me over.'

'S'pose so, unless old Timbersides' finance
minister manages to dress some of my food.
Goodnight, and — God bless you I '

232

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

4 What's wrong now ? '

4 Oh, nothing/ Lowndes gathered up his whip,
and, as he flicked Mottram's mare on the flank,
added, 4 You're not a bad little chap, — that's all.'
And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand,
on the word.

In the assistant engineer's bungalow Spurstow
and Hummil smoked the pipe of silence together,
each narrowly watching the other. The capacity
of a bachelor's establishment is as elastic as its
arrangements are simple. A servant cleared away
the dining-room table, brought in a couple of
rude native bedsteads made of tape strung on a
light wood frame, flung a square of cool Calcutta
matting over each, set them side by side, pinned
two towels to the punkah so that their fringes
should just sweep clear of the sleeper's nose and
mouth, and announced that the couches were ready.

The men flung themselves down, ordering the
punkah-coolies by all the powers of Hell to pull.
Every door and window was shut, for the outside
air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within
was only 104°, as the thermometer bore witness,
and heavy with the foul smell of badly-trimmed
kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with
that of native tobacco, baked brick, and dried
earth, sends the heart of many a strong man down
to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian

233

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Empire when she turns herself for six months into
a house of torment. Spurstow packed his pillows
craftily so that he reclined rather than lay, his head
at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good
to sleep on a low pillow in the hot weather if you
happen to be of thick-necked build, for you may
pass with lively snores and gugglings from natural
sleep into the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.

4 Pack your pillows/ said the doctor sharply, as
he saw Hummil preparing to lie down at full
length.

The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of
the punkah wavered across the room, and the
4 flick ' of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of
the rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then
the punkah flagged, almost ceased. The sweat
poured from Spurstow's brow. Should he go out
and harangue the coolie? It started forward
again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of
the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in
the coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb
of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered skull.
Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently.
There was no movement on HummiFs part. The
man had composed himself as rigidly as a corpse,
his hands clinched at his sides. The respiration
was too hurried for any suspicion of sleep.
Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws were

234

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

clinched, and there was a pucker round the quiver^
ing eyelids.

4 He's holding himself as tightly as ever he can/
thought Spurstow. 'What in the world is the
matter with him ? — Hummil I '

4 Yes/ in a thick constrained voice.

4 Can't you get to sleep ?'

'No/

' Head hot ? 'Throat f eeling bulgy ? or how ? '

'Neither, thanks. I don't sleep much, you
know/

4 'Feel pretty bad ? '

'Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom out*
side, isn't there? I thought it was my head at
first. . . . Oh, Spurstow, for pity's sake give me
something that will put me asleep, — sound asleep,
— if it's only for six hours !' He sprang up,
trembling from head to foot. 'I haven't been
able to sleep naturally for days, and I can't stand
it !— I can't stand it 1 '

' Poor old chap !'

'That's no use. Give me something to make
me sleep. I tell you I'm nearly mad. I don't
know what I say half my time. For three weeks
I've had to think and spell out every word that
has come through my lips before I dared say it.
Isn't that enough to drive a man mad ? I can't
see things correctly now, and I've lost my sense of

235

LIFE'S HANDICAP

touch. My skin aches — my skin aches ! Make
me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make
me sleep sound. It isn't enough merely to let me
dream. Let me sleep ! '

'All right, old man, all right. Go slowj you
aren't half as bad as you think.'

The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil
was clinging to him like a frightened child.
* You're pinching my arm to pieces.'

4 I'll break your neck if you don't do something
for me. No, I didn't mean that. Don't be angry,
old fellow.' He wiped the sweat off himself as he
fought to regain composure. 4 I'm a bit restless
and off my oats, and perhaps you could recommend
some sort of sleeping mixture, — bromide of
potassium/

' Bromide of skittles ! Why didn't you tell me
this before? Let go of my arm, and I'll see if
there's anything in my cigarette-case to suit your
complaint.' Spurstow hunted among his day*
clothes, turned up the lamp, opened a little silver
cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant
Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.

4 The last appeal of civilisation/ said he, 4 and a
thing I hate to use. Hold out your arm. Well,
your sleeplessness hasn't ruined your muscle ; and
what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a
buffalo subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes

236

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

the morphia will begin working. Lie down and
wait/

A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began
to creep over Hummirs face. 'I think/ he
whispered, — * I think I'm going off now. Gad !
it's positively heavenly ! Spurstow, you must give

me that case to keep ; you ' The voice ceased

as the head fell back.

4 Not for a good deal/ said Spurstow to the un-
conscious form. l And now, my friend, sleepless*
ness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral
fibre in little matters of life and death, I'll just take
the liberty of spiking your guns/

He paddled into Hummil's saddle-room in his
bare feet and uncased a twelve-bore rifle, an express,
and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed the
nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-
case ; of the second he abstracted the lever, kicking
it behind a big wardrobe. The third he merely
opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip
up with the heel of a riding-boot.

' That's settled/ he said, as he shook the sweat
off his hands. 'These little precautions will at
least give you time to turn. You have too much
sympathy with gun-room accidents/

And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled
voice of Hummil cried in the doorway, * You fool ! '

Such tones they use who speak in the lucid

237

LIFE'S HANDICAP

intervals of delirium to their friends a little before
they die.

Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil
stood in the doorway, rocking with helpless
laughter.

4 That was awf 'ly good of you, I'm sure/ he
said, very slowly, feeling for his words. ' I don't
intend to go out by my own hand at present. I
say, Spurstow, that stuff won't work. What shall
I do ? What shall I do ? ' And panic terror stood
in his eyes.

4 Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at
once/

4 1 daren't. It will only take me half - way
again, and I shan't be able to get away this time.
Do you know it was all I could do to come out
just now ? Generally I am as quick as lightning ;
but you had clogged my feet. I was nearly caught/

4 Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down/

4 No, it isn't delirium ; but it was an awfully
mean trick to play on me. Do you know I might
have died ? '

As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power
unknown to Spurstow had wiped out of Hummil's
face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and
he stood at the doorway in the expression of his
lost innocence. He had slept back into terrified
childhood.

238

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

'Is he going to die on the spot?' thought
Spurstow. Then, aloud, 'All right, my son.
Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You
couldn't sleep ; but what was all the rest of the
nonsense ? '

4 A place,— a place down there/ said Hummil,
with simple sincerity. The drug was acting on
him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of
a strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves
gathered sense or were dulled.

4 Good God ! I've been afraid of it for months
past, Spurstow. It has made every night hell to
me; and yet Pm not conscious of having done
anything wrong/

' Be still, and I'll give you another dose. We'll
stop your nightmares, you unutterable idiot ! '

'Yes, but you must give me so much that I
can't get away. You must make me quite sleepy,
—not just a little sleepy. It's so hard to run
then/

' I know it j I know it. I've felt it myself.
The symptoms are exactly as you describe/

4 Oh, don't laugh at me, confound you ! Before
this awful sleeplessness came to me I've tried to
rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to
sting me when I fell back. Look ! '

'By Jove! the man has been rowelled like
a horse! Ridden by the nightmare with a

239

LIFE'S HANDICAP

vengeance! And we all thought him sensible
enough. Heaven send us understanding! You
like to talk, don't you ? '

'Yes, sometimes. Not when Pm frightened.
Then I want to run. Don't you ? '

* Always. Before I give you your second dose
try to tell me exactly what your trouble is/

Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly
ten minutes, whilst Spurstow looked into the pupils
of his eyes and passed his hand before them once
or twice.

At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette*
case was produced, and the last words that Hummil
said as he fell back for the second time were, 4 Put
me quite to sleep; for if I'm caught I die, — I
die!'

'Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later, —
thank Heaven who has set a term to our miseries/
said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the head,
4 It occurs to me that unless I drink something I
shall go out before my time. I've stopped sweat'
ing, and — I wear a seventeen^inch collar/ He
brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an
excellent remedy against heat-apoplexy if you take
three or four cups of it in time. Then he watched
the sleeper.

4 A blind face that cries and can't wipe its eyes,
a blind face that chases him down corridors!

240

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

H'm I Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave
as soon as possible ; and, sane or otherwise, he tin*
doubtedly did rowel himself most cruelly. Well,
Heaven send us understanding I '

At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in
his mouth, but an unclouded eye and a joyful heart.

4 1 was pretty bad last night, wasn't 1 1 ' said he.

* I have seen healthier men. You must have
had a touch of the sun. Look here: if I write
you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply
for leave on the spot ? f

' Why not ? You want it/

4 Yes, but I can hold on till the weather's a little
cooler/

' Why should you, if you can get relieved on
the spot ? '

* Burkett is the only man who could be sent ;
and he's a born fool/

'Oh, never mind about the line. You aren't
so important as all that. Wire for leave, if
necessary/

Hummil looked very uncomfortable.

4 1 can hold on till the Rains/ he said evasively.

'You can't. Wire to headquarters for Bur*
kett/

4 1 wont If you want to know why, partial
larly, Burkett is married, and his wife's just had a

L.H. Vol. I 241 R

LIFE'S HANDICAP

kid, and she's up at Simla, in the cool, and Burkett
has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla
from Saturday to Monday, That little woman
isn't at all well. If Burkett was transferred ^he'd
try to follow him. If she left the baby behind
she'd fret herself to death. If she came, — and
Burkett's one of those selfish little beasts who are
always talking about a wife's place being with her
husband, — she'd die. It's murder to bring a
woman here just now. Burkett hasn't the physique
of a rat. If he came here he'd go out; and I
know she hasn't any money, and I'm pretty sure
she'd go out too. I'm salted in a sort of way, and
I'm not married. Wait till the Rains, and then
Burkett can get thin down here. It'll do him
heaps of good.'

4 Do you mean to say that you intend to face
— what you have faced, till the Rains break ? '

4 Oh, it won't be so bad, now you've shown me
a way out of it. I can always wire to you.
Besides, now I've once got into the way of sleeping,
it'll be all right. Anyhow, I shan't put in for
leave. That's the long and the short of it.'

'My great Scott! I thought all that sort of
thing was dead and done with.'

4 Bosh I You'd do the same yourself. I feel a
new man, thanks to that cigarette'Case. You're
going over to camp now, aren't you ? '

242

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

4 Yes; but I'll try to look you up every other
day, if I can/

'I'm not bad enough for that. I don't
want you to bother. Give the coolies gin and
ketchup/

4 Then you feel all right ? '

'Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out
in the sun talking to you. Go along, old man,
and bless you I '

Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing
desolation of his bungalow, and the first thing he
saw standing in the veranda was the figure of
himself. He had met a similar apparition once
before, when he was suffering from overwork and
the strain of the hot weather.

'This is bad, — already/ he said, rubbing his
eyes. * If the thing slides away from me all in one
piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my eyes
and stomach that are out of order. If it walks —
my head is going/

He approached the figure, which naturally kept
at an unvarying distance from him, as is the use of
all spectres that are born of overwork. It slid
through the house and dissolved into swimming
specks within the eyeball as soon as it reached the
burning light of the garden. Hummil went about
his business till even. When he came in to dinner
he found himself sitting at the table. The vision

243

LIFE'S HANDICAP

rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast
no shadow it was in all respects real.

No living man knows what that week held
for Hummil. An increase of the epidemic kept
Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he
could do was to telegraph to Mottram, bidding
him go to the bungalow and sleep there. But
Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest
telegraph, and knew nothing of anything save the
needs of the survey till he met, early on Sunday
morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards
Hummil's for the weekly gathering.

4 Hope the poor chap's in a better temper/ said
the former, swinging himself off his horse at the
door. * I suppose he isn't up yet/

Til just have a look at him/ said the doctor.
4 If he's asleep there's no need to wake him/

And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow's
voice calling upon them to enter, the men knew
what had happened. There was no need to wake
him.

The punkah was still being pulled over the bed,
but Hummil had departed this life at least three
hours.

The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the
side, as Spurstow had seen it lying seven nights
previously. In the staring eyes was written terror
beyond the expression of any pen.

244

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes,
bent over the dead and touched the forehead
lightly with his lips, 'Oh, you lucky, lucky
devil ! ' he whispered.

But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew
shuddering to the other side of the room.

'Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last
time I met him I was angry. Spurstow, we should
have watched him. Has he ? '

Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations,
ending by a search round the room.

'No, he hasn't/ he snapped. 'There's no trace
of anything. Call the servants/

They came, eight or ten of them, whispering
and peering over each other's shoulders.

'When did your Sahib go to bed?' said
Spurstow.

'At eleven or ten, we think/ said Hummil's
personal servant.

'He was well then? But how should you
know?'

'He was not ill, as far as our comprehension
extended. But he had slept very little for three
nights. This I know, because I saw him walk*
ing much, and specially in the heart of the
night/

As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big
straight - necked hunting * spur tumbled on the

245

LIFE'S HANDICAP

ground. The doctor groaned. The personal
servant peeped at the body.

4 What do you think, Chuma ? ' said Spurstow,
catching the look on the dark face.

4 Heaven - born, in my poor opinion, this that
was my master has descended into the Dark Places,
and there has been caught because he was not able
to escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur
for evidence that he fought with Fear. Thus have
I seen men of my race do with thorns when a spell
was laid upon them to overtake them in their
sleeping hours and they dared not sleep/

4 Chuma, you're a mud - head. Go out and
prepare seals to be set on the Sahib's property.'

'God has made the Heaven-born. God has
made me. Who are we, to inquire into the dis*
pensations of God ? I will bid the other servants
hold aloof while you are reckoning the tale of the
Sahib's property. They are all thieves, and would
steal.'

4 As far as I can make out, he died from — oh,
anything; stoppage of the heart's action, heat'
apoplexy, or some other visitation,' said Spurstow
to his companions. ' We must make an inventory
of his effects, and so on.'

'He was scared to death,' insisted Lowndes.
4 Look at those eyes ! For pity's sake don't let him
be buried with them open ! '

246

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

* Whatever it was, he's clear of all the trouble
now/ said Mottram softly.

Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.

4 Come here/ said he. ' Can you see anything
there ? '

' I can't face it 1 ' whimpered Lowndes. * Cover
up the face I Is there any fear on earth that can
turn a man into that likeness ? It's ghastly. Oh,
Spurstow, cover it up 1 '

4 No fear — on earth/ said Spurstow. Mottram
leaned over his shoulder and looked intently.

'I see nothing except some gray blurs in
the pupil. There can be nothing there, you
know/

'Even so. Well, let's think. It'll take half a
day to knock up any sort of coffin ; and he must
have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go
out and tell the coolies to break ground next
to Jevins's grave. Mottram, go round the house
with Chuma and see that the seals are put on
things. Send a couple of men to me here, and I'll
arrange/

The strong-armed servants when they returned
to their own kind told a strange story of the doctor
Sahib vainly trying to call their master back to life
by magic arts, — to wit, the holding of a little green
box that clicked to each of the dead man's eyes,
and of a bewildered muttering on the part of the

247

LIFE'S HANDICAP

doctor Sahib, who took the little green box away
with him.

The resonant hammering of a coffined is no
pleasant thing to hear, but those who have expert
ence maintain that much more terrible is the soft
swish of the bed'linen, the reeving and unreeving
of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the
roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually
as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape
touches the floor and there is no protest against
the indignity of hasty disposal.

At the last moment Lowndes was seized with
scruples of conscience. * Ought you to read the
service, — from beginning to end?' said he to
Spurstow.

'I intend to. You're my senior as a civilian.
You can take it if you like.'

'I didn't mean that for a moment. I only
thought if we could get a chaplain from some-
where,— I'm willing to ride anywhere, — and give
poor Hummil a better chance. That's all.'

4 Bosh ! ' said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to
the tremendous words that stand at the head of
the burial service.

After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence
to the memory of the dead. Then Spurstow said
absently —

248

AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE

* Tisn't in medical science/
'What?'

' Things in a dead man's eye/

'For goodness' sake leave that horror alone!'
said Lowndes. * I've seen a native die of pure
fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what
killed Hummil/

4 The deuce you do I I'm going to try to see/
And the doctor retreated into the bath-room with
a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was
the sound of something being hammered to pieces,
and he emerged, very white indeed.

4 Have you got a picture ? ' said Mottram.
4 What does the thing look like ? '

'It was impossible, of course. You needn't
look, Mottram. I've torn up the films. There
was nothing there. It was impossible/

4 That/ said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching
the shaking hand striving to relight the pipe, 4 is
a damned lie/

Mottram laughed uneasily. 4 Spurstow's right/
he said. ' We're all in such a state now that we'd
believe anything. For pity's sake let's try to be
rational/

There was no further speech for a long time.
The hot wind whistled without, and the dry trees
sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking brass,
burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up

249

LIFE'S HANDICAP

panting in the intense glare. * We'd better go on
on that/ said Spurstow. ' Go back to work. I've
written my certificate. We can't do any more
good here, and work'll keep our wits together.
Come on.'

No one moved. It is not pleasant to face
railway journeys at mid'day in June. Spurstow
gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the
doorway, said —

' There may be Heaven, — there must be Hell.
Meantime, there is our life here. We*ell ? '

Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer
to the question.

END OF VOL. I

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

THE SERVICE KIPLING.

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Life's Handicap. 2 Vols.
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The Naulahka. 2 Vols.
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Kigl ing, Rudyard,
Life's handicap