Driftwood Spars Part 14

"Yes" mused Mr. Ross-Ellison, "and another thing. If you want to get a horse a win or a place in the Ladies' Hack cla.s.s--get a pretty girl to ride it. They go by the riders' faces and figures entirely.... Hullo!

Cla.s.s XIX wanted. That's me and Zuleika. Come and tie the labels on my arms like a good dog."

"Right O. But you haven't the ghost of a little look in," opined the Nut. "Old Murger has got a real corking English hunter in. A General will win as usual--but he'll win with by far the best horse, for once in the history of horse-shows."

Dismounting and handing their reins to the syces, the two young gentlemen strolled over to the table where presided he of the pimples and number-labels.

A burly Sikh was pointing to the name of General Miltiades Murger and asking for the number printed thereagainst.

The youth handed Rissaldar-Major Shere Singh two labels each bearing the number 99. These, the gallant Native Officer proceeded to tie upon his arms--putting them upside down, as is the custom of the native of India when dealing with anything in any wise reversible.

Mr. Ross-Ellison approached the table, showed his name on the programme and asked for his number--66.

"Tie these on," said he returning to his friend. "By Jove--there's old Murger's horse," he added--"what a magnificent animal!"

Looking up, the Nut saw Rissaldar-Major Shere Singh mounting the beautiful English hunter--and also saw that he bore the number 66.

Therefore the labels handed to him were obviously 99, and as 99 he tied on the 66 of Mr. Ross-Ellison--who observed the fact.

"I am afraid I'm all Pathan at this moment," silently remarked he unto his soul, and smiled an ugly smile.

"Not much good my entering Zuleika against _that_ mare," he said aloud.

"It must have cost just about ten times what I paid for her. Never mind though! We'll show up--for the credit of civilians," and he rode into the ring--where a score of horses solemnly walked round and round the Judges and in front of the Grand Stand....

General Murger brought Mrs. Dearman a cup of tea, and, having placed his _topi_[49] in his chair, went, for a brandy-and-soda and cheroot, to the bar behind the rows of seats.

[49] Sun-helmet.

On his return he beheld his superb and expensive hunter behaving superbly and expensively in the expert hands of Rissaldar-Major Shere Singh.

He feasted his eyes upon it.

Suddenly a voice, a voice he disliked intensely, the voice of Mr.

Dearman croaked fiendishly in his ear: "Why, General, they've got your horse numbered wrongly!"

General Miltiades Murger looked again. Upon the arm of Rissaldar-Major Shere Singh was the number 66.

Opening his programme with trembling fingers he found his name, his horse's name, and number 99!

He rose to his feet, stammering and gesticulating. As he did so the words:--

"Take out number 66," were distinctly borne to the ears of the serried ranks of the fashionable in the Grand Stand. Certain military-looking persons at the back abandoned all dignity and fell upon each other's necks, poured great libations, danced, called upon their G.o.ds, or fell prostrate upon settees.

Others, seated among the ladies, looked into their bats as though in church.

"Has Ross-Ellison faked it?" ran from mouth to mouth, and, "He'll be hung for this".

A minute or so later the Secretary approached the Grand Stand and announced in stentorian tones:

"First Prize--General Murger's _Darling_, Number 99".

While behind him upon Zuleika, chosen of the Judges, sat and smiled Mr.

John Robin Ross-Ellison, who lifted his voice and said: "Thanks--No!--This horse is _mine_ and is named _Zuleika_." He looked rather un-English, rather cunning, cruel and unpleasant--quite different somehow, from his ordinary cheery, bright English self.

"Old" Brigadier General Miltiades Murger was unique among British Generals in that he sometimes resorted to alcoholic stimulants beyond reasonable necessity and had a roving and a lifting eye for a pretty woman. In one sense the General had never taken a wife--and, in another, he had taken several. Indeed it was said of him by jealous colleagues that the hottest actions in which he had ever been engaged were actions for divorce or breach of promise, and that this type of imminent deadly breach was the kind with which he was best acquainted. Also that he was better at storming the citadel of a woman's heart than at storming anything else.

No eminent man is without jealous detractors.

As to the stimulants, make no mistake and jump to no hasty conclusions.

General Murger had never been seen drunk in the whole of his distinguished and famous (or as the aforesaid colleagues called it, egregious and notorious) career.

On the other hand, the voice of jealousy said he had never been seen sober either. In the words of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness it declared that he had been born fuddled, had lived fuddled, and would die fuddled. And there were ugly stories.

Also some funny ones--one of which concerns the, Gungapur Fusilier Volunteer Corps and Colonel Dearman, their beloved but shortly retiring (and, as some said, their worthy) Commandant.

Mr. Dearman was a very wealthy (and therefore popular), very red haired and very patriotic mill-owner who tried very hard to be proud of his Corps, and, without trying, was immensely proud of his wife.

As to the Corps--well, it may at least be said that it would have followed its beloved Commandant anywhere (that was neither far nor dangerous), for every one of its Officers, except Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison, and the bulk of its men, were his employees.

They loved him for his wealth and they trusted him absolutely--trusted him not to march them far nor work them much. And they were justified of their faith.

Several of the Officers were almost English--though Greeks and Goa-Portuguese predominated, and there was undeniably a drop or two of English blood in the ranks, well diffused of course. Some folk said that even Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison was not as Scotch as his name.

On guest-nights in the Annual Camp of Exercise (when the Officers' Mess did itself as well as any Mess in India--and only took a few hundred rupees of the Government Grant for the purpose) Colonel Dearman would look upon the wine when it was bubbly, see his Corps through its golden haze, and wax so optimistic, so enthusiastic, so rash, as roundly to state that if he had five hundred of the Gungapur Fusiliers, with magazines charged and bayonets fixed, behind a stout entrenchment or in a fortified building, he would stake his life on their facing any unarmed city mob you could bring against them. But these were but post-prandial vapourings, and Colonel Dearman never talked nor thought any such folly when the Corps was present to the eye of flesh.

On parade he saw it for what it was--a mob of knock-kneed, sniffling lads with just enough strength to suck a cigarette; anaemic clerks, fat cooks, and loafers with just enough wind to last a furlong march; huge beery old mechanics and ex-"Tommies," forced into this coloured galley as a condition of their "job at the works "; and the non-native sc.u.m of the city of Gungapur--which joined for the sake of the ammunition-boots and khaki suit.

There was not one Englishman who was a genuine volunteer and not half a dozen Parsis. Englishmen prefer to join a corps which consists of Englishmen or at least has an English Company. When they have no opportunity of so doing, it is a little unfair to cla.s.s them with the lazy, unpatriotic, degenerate young gentlemen who have the opportunity and do not seize it. Captain Ross-Ellison was doing his utmost to provide the opportunity--with disheartening results.

However--Colonel Dearman tried very hard to be proud of his Corps and never forgave anyone who spoke slightingly of it.

As to his wife, there was, as stated, no necessity for any "trying". He was immensely and justly proud of her as one of the prettiest, most accomplished, and most attractive women in the Bendras Presidency.

Mrs. "Pat" Dearman, _nee_ Cleopatra Diamond Brighte, was, as has been said, consciously and most obviously a Good Woman. Brought up by a country rector and his vilely virtuous sister, her girlhood had been a struggle to combine her two ambitions, that of being a Good Woman with that of having a Good Time. In the village of Bishop's Overley the former had been easier; in India the latter. But even in India, where the Good Time was of the very best, she forgot not the other ambition, went to church with unfailing regularity, read a portion of the Scriptures daily; headed subscription lists for the myriad hospitals, schools, widows'-homes, work-houses, Christian a.s.sociations, churches, charitable societies, shelters, orphanages, rescue-homes and other deserving causes that appeal to the European in India; did her duty by Colonel Dearman, and showed him daily by a hundred little bright kindnesses that she had not married him for his great wealth but for his--er--his--er--not exactly his beauty or cleverness or youthful gaiety or learning or ability--no, for his Goodness, of course, and because she loved him--loved him for the said Goodness, no doubt. No, she never forgot the lessons of the Rectory, that it is the Whole Duty of Man to Save his or her Soul, but remembered to be a Good Woman while having the Good Time. Perhaps the most industriously pursued of all her goodnesses was her unflagging zealous labour in Saving the Souls of Others as well as her own Soul--the "Others" being the young, presentable, gay, and well-placed men of Gungapur Society.

Yes, Mrs. Pat Dearman went beyond the Rectory teachings and was not content with personal salvation. A Good Woman of broad altruistic charity, there was not a young Civilian, not a Subaltern, not a handsome, interesting, smart, well-to-do, well-in-society, young bachelor in whose spiritual welfare she did not take the deepest personal interest. And, perhaps, of all such eligible souls in Gungapur, the one whose Salvation she most deeply desired to work out (after she wearied of the posings and posturings of Augustus Grobble) was that of Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison of her husband's corps--an exceedingly handsome, interesting, smart, well-to-do, well-in-society young bachelor. The owner of this eligible Soul forebore to tell Mrs. Pat Dearman that it was bespoke for Mohammed the Prophet of Allah--inasmuch as _almost_ the most entrancing, thrilling and delightful pursuit of his life was the pursuit of soul-treatment at the hands, the beautiful tiny white hands, of Mrs. Pat Dearman. Had her large soulful eyes penetrated this subterfuge, he would have jettisoned Mohammed forthwith, since, to him, the soul-treatment was of infinitely more interest and value than the soul, and, moreover, strange as it may seem, this Mussulman English gentleman had received real and true Christian teaching at his mother's knee. When Mrs. Pat Dearman took him to Church, as she frequently did, on Sunday evenings, he was filled with great longings--and with a conviction of the eternal Truth and Beauty of Christianity and the essential n.o.bility of its gentle, unselfish, lofty teachings. He would think of his mother, of some splendid men and women he had known, especially missionaries, medical and other, at Bannu and Poona and elsewhere, and feel that he was really a Christian at heart; and then again in Khost and Mekran Kot, when carrying his life in his hand, across the border, in equal danger from the bullet of the Border Police, Guides, or Frontier Force cavalry-outposts and from the bullet of criminal tribesmen, when a devil in his soul surged up screaming for blood and fire and slaughter; during the long stealthy crawl as he stalked the stalker; during the wild, yelling, knife-brandishing rush; as he pressed the steady trigger or guided the slashing, stabbing Khyber knife, or as he instinctively _hallaled_ the victim of his _shikar_, he knew he was a Pathan and a Mussulman as were his fathers.

But whether circ.u.mstances brought his English blood to the surface or his Pathan blood, whether the day were one of his most English days or one of his most Pathan days, whether it were a day of mingled and quickly alternating Englishry and Pathanity he now loved and supported Britain and the British Empire for Mrs. Dearman's sake. Often as he (like most other non-officials) had occasion to detest and desire to kick the Imperial Englishman, championship of England and her Empire was now his creed. And as there was probably not another England-lover in all India who had his knowledge of under-currents, and forces within and without, he was perhaps the most anxiously loving of all her lovers, and the most appalled at the criminal carelessness, blind ignorance, fatuous conceit, and folly of a proportion of her sons in India.

Knowing what he knew of Teutonic intrigue and influence in India, Ceylon, Afghanistan, Aden, Persia, Egypt, East Africa, the Straits Settlements, and China, he was reminded of the men and women of Pompeii who ate, drank, and were merry, danced and sang, pursued pleasure and the nimble denarius, while Vesuvius rumbled.

Constantly the comparison entered his mind.

He had sojourned with Indian "students" in India, England, Germany, Geneva, America and j.a.pan, and had belonged to the most secret of societies. He had himself been a well-paid agent of Germany in both Asia and Africa; and he had been instrumental in supplying thousands of rifles to Border raiders, Persian bandits, and other potential troublers of the _pax Britannica_. He now lived half his double life in Indian dress and moved on many planes; and to many places where even he could not penetrate unsuspected, his staunch and devoted slave, Moussa Isa, went observant. And all that he learnt and knew, within and without the confines of Ind, _by itself_ disturbed him, as an England-lover, not at all. Taken in conjunction with the probabilities of a great European War it disturbed him mightily. As mightily as unselfishly. To him the dripping weapon, the blazing roof, the shrieking woman, the mangled corpse were but incidents, the unavoidable, un.o.bjectionable concomitants of the Great Game, the game he most loved (and played upon every possible occasion)--War.

While, with one half of his soul, John Robin Ross-Ellison might fear internal disruption, mutiny, rebellion and civil war for what it might bring to the woman he loved, with the other half of his soul, Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan dwelt upon the joys of battle, of campaigning, the bivouac, the rattle of rifle-fire, the charge, the circ.u.mventing and slaying of the enemy, as he circ.u.mvents that he may slay. Thus, it was with no selfish thought, no personal dread, that he grew, as said, mightily disturbed at what he knew of India whenever he saw signs of the extra imminence of the Great European Armageddon that looms upon the horizon, now near, now nearer still, now less near, but inevitably there, plain to the eyes of all observant, informed and thoughtful men.[50]

[50] Written in 1912.--AUTHOR.