Snake and Sword Part 4

Teach him by experience that there's nothing supernatural about a snake--just a nasty reptile that wants exterminating like other dangerous creatures--something to _shikar_ with a gun. Nothing at all supernatural....

But this was "super"-natural, abnormal, a terrible devastating agony of madness, inherited, incurable probably; part of mind and body and soul. Inherited, and integrally of him as were the colour of his eyes, his intelligence, his physique.... Heredity ... pre-natal influence ... breed....

Anyhow, nothing must be attempted yet awhile. Let the poor little chap get older and stronger, in mind and body, first. Brave as a little bull-dog in other directions! Absolutely devoid of fear otherwise, and with a natural bent for fighting and adventure. Climb anywhere, especially up the hind leg of a camel or a horse, fondle any strange dog, clamour to be put on any strange horse, go into any deep water, cheek anybody, bear any ordinary pain with a grin, thrill to any story of desperate deeds--a fine, brave, manly, hardy little chap, and with art extraordinary physique for strength and endurance.

Whatever was to be attempted later, he must be watched, day and night, now. No unattended excursions into the compound, no uncensored picture-books, no juggling snake-charmers.... Yet it _must_ come, sooner or later.

Would it ruin his life?

Anyhow, he must never return to India when he grew up, or go to any snake-producing country, unless he could be cured.

Would it make him that awful thing--a coward?

Would it grow and wax till it dominated his mind--drive him mad?

Would succeeding attacks, following encounters with picture or reality, progressively increase in severity?

_Her_ boy in an asylum?

No. He was exaggerating an almost expected consequence that might never be repeated--especially if the child were most carefully and gradually reintroduced to the present terror. Later though--much later on.

Meanwhile, wait and hope: hope and wait....

CHAPTER III.

THE SNAKE APPEARS.

The European child who grows up in India, if only to the age of six or seven years, grows under a severe moral, physical, and mental handicap.

However wise, devoted, and conscientious its parents may be, the evil is great, and remains one of the many heavy costs (or punishments) of Empire.

When the child has no mother and an indifferent father, life's handicap is even more severe.

By his sixth birthday (the regiment being still in Bimariabad owing to the prevalence of drought, famine, and cholera elsewhere) Damocles de Warrenne, knowing the Urdu language and _argot_ perfectly, knew, in theory also, more of evil, in some directions, than did his own father.

If the child who grows up absolutely straight-forward, honest, above-board and pure in thought, word, and deed, in England, deserves commendation, what does the child deserve who does so in India?

Understanding every word they spoke to one another, the training he got from native servants was one of undiluted evil and a series of object-lessons in deceit, petty villainy, chicanery, oppression, lying, dishonesty, and all immorality. And yet--thanks to his equal understanding of the words and deeds of Nurse Beaton, Major Decies, Lieutenant Ochterlonie, his father, the Officers of the Regiment, and the Europeans of the station--he had a clear, if unconscious, understanding that what was customary for native servants was neither customary nor possible for Sahibs....

But he knew too much....

He knew what percentage of his or her pay each servant had to hand to the "butler-sahib" monthly--or lose his or her place through false accusation.

He knew why the ayah was graciously exempted from financial toll by this autocrat. He knew roughly what proportion of the cook's daily bill represented the actual cost of his daily purchases. He knew what the door-peon got for consenting to take in the card of the Indian aspirant for an interview with Colonel de Warrenne.

He knew the terms of the arrangements between the head-syce and the grain-dealer, the lucerne-gra.s.s seller, the _ghas-wallah_[8] who brought the hay (whereby reduced quant.i.ties were accepted in return for illegal gratifications). He knew of retail re-sales of these reduced supplies.

He knew of the purchase of oil, rice, condiments, fire-wood and other commodities from the cook, of the theft (by arrangement) of the poultry and eggs, of the surrept.i.tious milking of the cow, and of the simple plan of milking her--under Nurse Beaton's eye--into a narrow-necked vessel already half full of water.

He knew that the ayah's husband sold the Colonel's soda-water, paraffin, matches, candles, tobacco, cheroots, fruit, sugar, etc., at a little portable shop round the corner of the road, and of the terms on which the _hamal_ and the butler supplied these commodities to the ayah for transfer to her good man.

He knew too much of the philosophy, manners, habits, and morals of the dog-boy, of concealed cases of the most infectious diseases in the compound, of the sub-letting and over-crowding of the servants'

quarters, of incredible quarrels, intrigues, jealousies, revenges, base villainies and wrongs, superst.i.tions and beliefs.

He would hear the hatching of a plot--an hour's arrangement and wrangle--whereby, through far-sighted activity, perjury, malpractice and infinite ingenuity, the ringleader would gain a _pice_ and the follower a _pie_ (a farthing and a third of a farthing respectively).

Daily he saw the butler steal milk, sugar, and tea, for his own use; the _hamal_ steal oil when he filled the lamps, for sale; the _malli_ steal flowers, for sale; the coachman steal carriage-candles; the cook steal a moiety of everything that pa.s.sed through his hands--every one in that black underworld stealing, lying, back-biting, cheating, intriguing (and all meanwhile strictly and stoutly religious, even the sweeper-descended Goanese cook, the biggest thief of all, purging his Christian soul on Sunday mornings by Confession, and fortifying himself against the temptations of the Evil One at early Ma.s.s).

Between these _nowker log_, the servant-people, and his own _jat_ or cla.s.s, the _Sahib-log_, the master-people, were the troopers, splendid Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Punjabis, men of honour, courage, physique, tradition. Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly understood and properly treated--in other words, while properly officered. (Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to do so much for them.)

These men Damocles admired and loved, though even _they_ were apt to be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang, and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts'-delights, to use unkind measures towards the good _bunnia_ and _sowkar_ who had lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not known in the Officers' Mess.

The boy preferred the Rissaldar-Major even to some Sahibs of his acquaintance--that wonderful old man-at-arms, horseman, _shikarri_, athlete, gentleman. (Yet how strange and sad to see him out of his splendid uniform, in sandals, _dhotie_, untrammelled shirt-tails, dingy old cotton coat and loose _puggri_, undistinguishable from a school-master, clerk, or post-man; so _un_-sahib-like.)

And what a fine riding-master he made for an ambitious, fearless boy--though Ochterlonie Sahib said he was too cruel to be a good _horse_-master.

How _could_ people be civilians and live away from regiments? Live without ever touching swords, lances, carbines, saddles?

What a queer feeling it gave one to see the regiment go past the saluting base on review-days, at the gallop, with lances down. One wanted to shout, to laugh--to _cry_. (It made one's mouth twitch and chin work.)

Oh, to _lead_ the regiment as Father did--horse and man one welded piece of living mechanism.

Father said you couldn't ride till you had taken a hundred tosses, been pipped a hundred times. A hundred falls! Surely Father had _never_ been thrown--it must be impossible for such a rider to come off. See him at polo.

By his sixth birthday Damocles de Warrenne, stout and st.u.r.dy, was an accomplished rider and never so happy (save when fencing) as when flogging his active and spirited little pony along the "rides" or over the dusty _maidans_ and open country of Bimariabad. To receive a quarter-mile start on the race-course and ride a mile race against Khodadad Khan on his troop-horse, or with one of the syces on one of the Colonel's polo-ponies, or with some obliging male or female early morning rider, was the joy of his life. Should he suspect the compet.i.tor of "pulling" as he came alongside, that the tiny pony might win, the boy would lash at both horses impartially.

People who pitied him (and they were many) wondered as to how soon he would break his neck, and remonstrated with his father for allowing him to ride alone, or in charge of an attendant unable to control him.

In the matter of his curious love of fencing Major John Decies was deeply concerned, obtained more and more details of his "dweam,"

taught him systematically and scientifically to fence, bought him foils and got them shortened. He also interested him in a series of muscle-developing exercises which the boy called his "dismounted squad-dwill wiv'out arms," and performed frequently daily, and with gusto.

Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie (Officers' Light-Weight Champion at Aldershot) rigged him up a small swinging sand-bag and taught him to punch with either hand, and drilled him in foot-work for boxing.

Later he brought the very capable ten-year-old son of a boxing Troop-Sergeant and set him to make it worth Dam's while to guard smartly, to learn to keep his temper, and to receive a blow with a grin.

(Possibly a better education than learning declensions, conjugations, and tables from a Eurasian "governess".)

He learnt to read unconsciously and automatically by repeating, after Nurse Beaton, the jingles and other letter-press beneath the pictures in the books obtained for him under Major Decies' censorship.

On his sixth birthday, Major John Decies had Damocles over to his bungalow for the day, gave him a box of lead soldiers and a schooner-rigged ship, helped him to embark them and sail them in the bath to foreign parts, trapped a squirrel and let it go again, allowed him to make havoc of his possessions, fired at bottles with his revolver for the boy's delectation, shot a crow or two with a rook-rifle, played an improvised game of fives with a tennis-ball, told him tales, and generally gave up the day to his amus.e.m.e.nt. What he did _not_ do was to repeat the experiment of a year ago, or make any kind of reference to snakes....

A few days later, on the morning of the New-Year's-Day Review, Colonel Matthew de Warrenne once again strode up and down his verandah, arrayed in full review-order, until it should be time to ride to the regimental parade-ground.

He had coa.r.s.ened perceptibly in the six years since he had lost his wife, and the lines that had grown deepest on his hard, handsome face were those between his eyebrows and beside his mouth--the mouth of an unhappy, dissipated, cynical man....