Soldiers Three Volume I Part 38

M. Hwhatt?

G. Don't shout. I'm going to send in my papers.

M. You! Are you mad?

G. No--only married.

M. Look here! What's the meaning of it all? You never intend to leave _us_. You _can't_. Isn't the best squadron of the best regiment of the best cavalry in all the world good enough for you?

G. (_Jerking his head over his shoulder_.) She doesn't seem to thrive in this G.o.d-forsaken country, and there's The _Butcha_ to be considered and all that, you know.

M. Does she say that she doesn't like India?

G. That's the worst of it. She won't for fear of leaving me.

M. What are the Hills made for?

G. Not for _my_ wife at any rate.

M. You know too much, Gaddy, and--I don't like you any the better for it!

G. Never mind that. She wants England, and The _Butcha_ would be all the better for it. I'm going to chuck. You don't understand.

M. (_Hotly._) I understand _this_. One hundred and thirty-seven new horses to be licked into shape somehow before Luck comes round again; a hairy-heeled draft who'll give more trouble than the horses; a camp next cold weather for a certainty; ourselves the first on the roster; the Russian shindy ready to come to a head at five minutes' notice, and you, the best of us all, backing out of it all! Think a little, Gaddy. You _won't_ do it.

G. Hang it, a man has some duties towards his family, I suppose.

M. I remember a man, though, who told me, the night after Amdheran, when we were picketed under Jagai, and he'd left his sword--by the way, did you ever pay Ranken for that sword?--in an Utmanzai's head--that man told me that he'd stick by me and the Pinks as long as he lived. I don't blame him for not sticking by me--I'm not much of a man--but I _do_ blame him for not sticking by the Pink Hussars.

G. (_Uneasily_.) We were little more than boys then. Can't you see, Jack, how things stand? 'Tisn't as if we were serving for our bread.

We've all of us, more or less, got the filthy lucre. I'm luckier than some, perhaps. There's no _call_ for me to serve on.

M. None in the world for you or for us, except the Regimental. If you don't choose to answer to _that_, of course--

G. Don't be too hard on a man. You know that a lot of us only take up the thing for a few years and then go back to Town and catch on with the rest.

M. Not lots, and they aren't some of _Us_.

G. And then there are one's affairs at Home to be considered--my place and the rents, and all that. I don't suppose my father can last much longer, and that means the t.i.tle, and so on.

M. 'Fraid you won't be entered in the Stud Book correctly unless you go Home? Take six months, then, and come out in October. If I could slay off a brother or two, I s'pose I should be a Marquis of sorts. Any fool can be that; but it needs _men_, Gaddy--men like you--to lead flanking squadrons properly. Don't you delude yourself into the belief that you're going Home to take your place and prance about among pink-nosed Kabuli dowagers. You aren't built that way. I know better.

G. A man has a right to live his life as happily as he can. _You_ aren't married.

M. No--praise be to Providence and the one or two women who have had the good sense to _jawab_ me.

G. Then you don't know what it is to go into your own room and see your wife's head on the pillow, and when everything else is safe and the house shut up for the night, to wonder whether the roof-beams won't give and kill her.

M. (_Aside_.) Revelations first and second! (_Aloud_.) So-o! I knew a man who got squiffy at our Mess once and confided to me that he never helped his wife on to her horse without praying that she'd break her neck before she came back. All husbands aren't alike, you see.

G. What on earth has that to do with my case? The man must ha' been mad, or his wife as bad as they make 'em.

M. (_Aside_.) 'No fault of yours if either weren't all you say. You've forgotten the tune when you were insane about the Herriott woman. You always were a good hand at forgetting. (_Aloud_.) Not more mad than men who go to the other extreme. Be reasonable, Gaddy. Your roof-beams are sound enough.

G. That was only a way of speaking. I've been uneasy and worried about the Wife ever since that awful business three years ago--when--I nearly lost her. Can you wonder?

M. Oh, a sh.e.l.l never falls twice in the same place. You've paid your toll to misfortune--why should your wife be picked out more than anybody else's?

G. I can _talk_ just as reasonably as you can, but you don't understand--you don't understand. And then there's The _Butcha._ Deuce knows where the Ayah takes him to sit in the evening! He has a bit of a cough. Haven't you noticed it?

M. Bosh! The Brigadier's jumping out of his skin with pure condition.

He's got a muzzle like a rose-leaf and the chest of a two-year-old.

What's demoralised you?

G. Funk. That's the long and the short of it. Funk!

M. But what _is_ there to funk?

G. Everything. It's ghastly.

M. Ah! I see.

You don't want to fight, And by Jingo when we do, You've got the kid, you've got the Wife, You've got the money, too.

That's about the case, eh?

G. I suppose that's it. But it's not for myself. It's because of _them._ At least I think it is.

M. Are you sure? Looking at the matter in a cold-blooded light, the Wife is provided for even if you were wiped out to-night. She has an ancestral home to go to, money, and the Brigadier to carry on the ill.u.s.trious name.

G. Then it is for myself or because they are part of me. You don't see it. My life's so good, so pleasant, as it is, that I want to make it quite safe. Can't you understand?

M. Perfectly. 'Shelter-pit for the Orf'cer's charger,' as they say in the Line.

G. And I have everything to my hand to make it so. I'm sick of the strain and the worry for their sakes out here; and there isn't a single real difficulty to prevent my dropping it altogether. It'll only cost me--Jack, I hope you'll never know the shame that I've been going through for the past six months.

M. Hold on there! I don't wish to be told. Every man has his moods and tenses sometimes.

G. (_Laughing bitterly_.) Has he? What do you call craning over to see where your near-fore lands?

M. In my case it means that I have been on the Considerable Bend, and have come to parade with a Head and a Hand. It pa.s.ses in three strides.

G. (_Lowering voice_.) It _never_ pa.s.ses with me, Jack. I'm always thinking about it. Phil Gadsby funking a fall on parade! Sweet picture, isn't it! Draw it for me.

M. (_Gravely_.) Heaven forbid! A man like you can't be as bad as that. A fall is no nice thing, but one never gives it a thought.

G. Doesn't one? Wait till you've got a wife and a youngster of your own, and then you'll know how the roar of the squadron behind you turns you cold all up the back.

M. (_Aside._) And this man led at Amdheran after Bagal-Deasin went under, and we were all mixed up together, and he came out of the show dripping like a butcher. (_Aloud._) Skittles! The men can always open out, and you can always pick your way more or less. _We_ haven't the dust to bother us, as the men have, and whoever heard of a horse stepping on a man?