Driftwood Spars Part 19

At the entrance, the General, leading, reined in so sharply as to throw his horse on its haunches--his mouth fell open, his mottled face went putty-coloured, and each hair that he possessed appeared to bristle.

He uttered a deep groan, rubbed his eyes, emitted a yell, wheeled round and galloped for dear life, with a cry, nay a scream, of "_I've got 'em at last_," followed by his utterly bewildered but ever-faithful Brigade-Major, who had seen nothing but foliage, scrub, and cactus. To Gungapur the General galloped without drawing rein, took to his bed, sent for surgeon and priest--and became a teetotaller.

And what had he seen?

The affair is wrapped in mystery.

The Brigade-Major says nothing because he knows nothing, as it happens, and the Corps declared it was never inspected. Father Ignatius knows what the General saw, or thinks he saw, and so does the Surgeon-General, but neither is in the habit of repeating confessions and confidences.

What Jobler, at the keyhole, understood him to say he had seen, or thought he had seen, is not to be believed.

Judge of it.

"I rode into the dem place and what did I behold? A dem pandemonium, Sir, a pantomime--a lunatic asylum, Sir--all h.e.l.l out for a Bank Holiday, I tell you. There was a battalion of Red Indians, Negroes, Esquimaux, Ballet Girls, Angels, Sweeps, Romans, Sailors, Pierrots, Savages, Bogeymen, Ancient Britons, Bishops, Zulus, Pantaloons, Beef-eaters, Tramps, Life-Guards, Washerwomen, Ghosts, Clowns and G.o.d-knows-what, armed with jezails, umbrellas, brooms, catapults, pikes, brickbats, _kukeries_,[52] pokers, clubs, axes, horse-pistols, bottles, dead fowls, polo-sticks, a.s.segais and bombs. They were commanded by a Highlander in a b.u.m-bee tartan kilt, top-hat and one sock, with a red nose a foot long, riding on a rocking horse and brandishing a dem great cuc.u.mber and a tea-tray made into a shield. There was a thundering great drain-pipe mounted on a bullock-cart and a naked man, painted blue, in a c.o.c.ked-hat, laying an aim and firing a penny-pistol down the middle of it and yelling 'Pip!'

[52] Ghurka knives.

"There was a chauffeur in smart livery on an elephant, twirling a steering-wheel on its neck for dear life, and tooting a big motor-horn..

There was a fat man in a fireman's helmet and pyjamas, armed with a peashooter, riding a donkey backwards--and the moke wore two pairs of trousers!... As I rubbed my poor old eyes, the devil in command howled 'General salaam. Pre_sent_-legs'--and every fiend there fell flat on his face and raised his right leg up behind--I tell you, Sir, I fled for my life, and--no more liquor for me." ...

When ex-Colonel Dearman heard any reference to this mystery he roared with laughter--but it was the Last Muster of the fine and far-famed Gungapur Fusiliers, as such.

The Corps was disbanded forthwith and re-formed on a different basis (of quality instead of quant.i.ty) with Lieutenant-Colonel John Robin Ross-Ellison, promoted, in command--he having caught the keen eye of that splendid soldier and gentleman Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Barnet, K.C.V.O., K.C.S.I. (G.O.C., XVIth Division), as being the very man for the job of re-organizing the Corps, and making it worth its capitation-grant.

"If I could get Captain Malet-Marsac as Adjutant and a Sergeant-Major of whom I know (used to be at Duri--man named Lawrence-Smith) I'd undertake to show you something, Sir, in a year or two," said Lieutenant-Colonel Ross-Ellison.

"Malet-Marsac you can certainly have," replied Sir Arthur Barnet. "I'll speak to your new Brigadier. If you can find your Lawrence-Smith we'll see what can be done." ...

And Lieutenant-Colonel Ross-Ellison wrote to Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith of the Duri Volunteer Rifles to know if he would like a transfer upon advantageous terms, and got no reply.

As it happened, Lieutenant-Colonel Ross-Ellison, in very different guise, had seen Sergeant Lawrence-Smith extricate and withdraw his officerless company from the tightest of tight places (on the Border) in a manner that moved him to large admiration. It had been a case of "and even the ranks of Tuscany" on the part of Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim Dost Mahommed.... Later he had encountered him and Captain Malet-Marsac at Duri.

-- 3. SERGEANT-MAJOR LAWRENCE-SMITH.

Mrs. Pat Dearman was sceptical.

"Do you mean to tell me that _you_, a man of science, an eminent medical man, and a soldier, believe in the supernatural?"

"Well, you see, I'm 'Oirish' and therefore unaccountable," replied Colonel Jackson (of the Royal Army Medical Corps), fine doctor, fine scholar, and fine gentleman.

"And you believe in haunted houses and ghosts and things, do you?

_Well_!"

The salted-almond dish was empty, and Mrs. Dearman accused her other neighbour, Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison. Having already prepared to meet and rebut the charge of greediness he made pa.s.ses over the vessel and it was replenished.

"Supernatural!" said she.

"Most," said he.

She prudently removed the dish to the far side of her plate--and Colonel Jackson emptied it.

Not having prepared to meet the request to replenish the store a second time, it was useless for Mr. Ross-Ellison to make more pa.s.ses when commanded so to do.

"The usual end of the 'supernatural,'" observed Mrs. Dearman with contempt.

"Most usual," said he.

"More than 'most,'" corrected Mrs. Dearman. "It is the invariable end of it, I believe. Just humbug and rubbish. It is either an invention, pure and simple, or else it is perfectly explicable. Don't you think so, Colonel Jackson?"

"Not always," said her partner. "Now, will you, first, believe my word, and, secondly, find the explanation--if I tell you a perfectly true 'supernatural' story?"

"I'll certainly believe your word, Colonel, if you're serious, and I'll try and suggest an explanation if you like," replied Mrs. Dearman.

"Same to me, Mrs. Dearman?" asked Mr. Ross-Ellison. "I've had 'experiences' too--and can tell you one of them."

"Same to you, Mr. Ross-Ellison," replied Mrs. Dearman, and added: "But why only one of them?"

Mr. Ross-Ellison smiled, glanced round the luxuriously appointed table and the company of fair women and brave men--and thought of a far-distant and little-known place called Mekran Kot and of a phantom cavalry corps that haunted a valley in its vicinity.

"Only one worth telling," said he.

"Well,--first case," began Colonel Jackson, "I was once driving past a cottage on my way home from College (in Ireland), and I saw the old lady who lived in that cottage come out of the door, cross her bit of garden, go through a gate, scuttle over the railway-line and enter a fenced field that had belonged to her husband, and which she (and a good many other people) believed rightly belonged to her.

"'There goes old Biddy Maloney pottering about in that plot of ground again,' thinks I. 'She's got it on the brain since her law-suit.' I knew it was Biddy, of course, not only because of her coming out of Biddy's house, but because it was Biddy's figure, walk, crutch-stick, and patched old cloak. When I got home I happened to say to Mother: 'I saw poor old Biddy Maloney doddering round that wretched field as I came along'.

"'What?' said my mother, 'why, your father was called to her, as she was dying, hours ago, and she's not been out of her bed for weeks.' When my father came in, I learned that Biddy was dead an hour before I saw her--before I left the railway station in fact! What do you make of that? Is there any 'explanation'?"

"Some other old lady," suggested Mrs. Dearman.

"No. There was n.o.body else in those parts mistakable for Biddy Maloney, and no other old woman was in or near the house while my father was there. We sifted the matter carefully. It was Biddy Maloney and no one else."

"Auto-suggestion. Visualization on the retina of an idea in the mind.

Optical illusion," hazarded Mrs. Dearman.

"No good. I hadn't realized I was approaching Biddy Maloney's cottage until I saw her coming out of it and I certainly hadn't thought of Biddy Maloney until my eye fell upon her. And it's a funny optical illusion that deceives one into seeing an old lady opening gates, crossing railways and limping away into fenced fields."

"H'm! What was the other case?" asked Mrs. Dearman, turning to Mr.

Ross-Ellison.

"That happened here in India at a station called Duri, away in the Northern Presidency, where I was then--er--living for a time. On the day after my arrival I went to call on Malet-Marsac to whom I had letters of introduction--political business--and, as he was out, but certain to return in a minute or two from Parade, I sat me down in a comfortable chair in the verandah----"

"And went to sleep?" interrupted Mrs. Dearman.

'"I _nevah_ sleep,'" quoted Mr. Ross-Ellison, "and I had no time, if any inclination. Scarcely indeed had I seated myself, and actually while I was placing my _topi_ on an adjacent stool, a lady emerged from a distant door at the end of the verandah and walked towards me. I can tell you I was mighty surprised, for not only was Captain Malet-Marsac a lone bachelor and a misogynist of blameless life, but the lady looked as though she had stepped straight out of an Early Victorian phonograph-alb.u.m. She had on a crinoline sort of dress, a deep lace collar, spring-sidey sort of boots, mittens, and a huge cameo brooch.

Also she had long ringlets. Her face is stamped on my memory and I could pick her out from a hundred women similarly dressed, or her picture from a hundred others...."

"What did you do?" asked Mrs. Dearman, whose neglected ice-pudding was fast being submerged in a pink lake of its own creation.