Chapter II: Preface (2)

Lafe Parmalee; Shwink, the German who could not ride but had a blind affection for cattle from the branding-yard to the butcher's block; Michigan, so called because he said he came from California but spoke not the Californian tongue; Jim from San Diego, to distinguish him from other Jims, and The Corpse, were the outposts of the herd. The Corpse had won his name from a statement, made in the fulness of much McBrayer whisky, that he had once been a graduate of Corpus Christi. He spoke truth, but to the wrong audience. The inhabitants of the Elite Saloon, after several attempts to get the hang of the name, dubbed the speaker The Corpse, and as long as he cinched a broncho or jingled a spur within four hundred miles of Livingston--yea, far in the south, even to the unexplored borders of the sheep-eater Indians--he was known by that unlovely name. How he had passed from college to cattle no man knew, and, according to the etiquette of the West, no man asked. He was not by any means a tenderfoot--had no unmanly weakness for washing, did not in the least object to appearing at the wild and wonderful reunions held nightly in "Miss Minnie's parlour," whose flaring advertisement did not in the least disturb the proprieties of Wachoma Junction, and, in common with his associates, was, when drunk, ready to shoot at anything or anybody. He was not proud. He had condescended to take in hand and educate a young and promising Chicago drummer, who by evil fate had wandered into that wilderness, where all his cunning was of no account; and from that youth's quivering hand--outstretched by command--had shot away the top of a wine-glass. The Corpse was recognised in the freemasonry of the craft as "one of the C.M.R.'s boys, and tough at that."

The C.M.R. controlled much cattle, and their slaughter-houses in Chicago bubbled the blood of beeves all day long. Their salt-beef fed the sailor on the sea, and their iced, best firsts, the housekeeper in the London suburbs. Not even the firm knew how many cowboys they employed, but all the firm knew that on the fourteenth day of July their stockyards at Wachoma Junction were to be filled with two thousand head of cattle, ready for immediate shipment to Chicago while prices yet ruled high, and before the grass had withered utterly. Lafe, Michigan, Jim, The Corpse and the others knew this too, and were heartily glad of it, because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year's work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion. They would get drunk; they would gamble, and would otherwise enjoy themselves till they were broke; and then they would hire out again.

The sun dropped behind the rolling hills; and the cattle halted for the night, cheered and cooled by a little wandering breeze. The red steer's mother had been caught in a hailstorm five years ago. Till she went the way of all cow-flesh she missed no opportunity of telling her son to beware of the hot day and the cold wind that does not know its own mind. "When it blows five ways at once," said she, "and makes your horns feel creepy, get away, my son. Follow the time-honoured instinct of our tribe, and run. I ran"--she looked ruefully at the scars on her side--"but that was in a barb-wire country, and it hurt me. None the less, run." The red steer chewed his cud, and the little wind out of the darkness played round his horns--all five ways at once. The cowboys lifted up their voices in unmelodious song, that the cattle might know where they were, and began slowly walking round the recumbent herd. "Do anybody's horns feel creepy?" queried the red steer of his neighbours. "My mother told me"--and he repeated the tale, to the edification of the yearlings and the three-year-olds breathing heavily at his side.

The song of the cowboys rose higher. The cattle bowed their heads. Their men were at hand. They were safe. Something had happened to the quiet stars. They were dying out one by one, and the wind was freshening. "Bless my hoofs!" muttered a yearling, "my horns are beginning to feel creepy." Softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. "Come away," quoth he to the yearling. "Come away to the outskirts, and we'll move. My mother said...." The innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. Being a woman she naturally bellowed "Timber wolves!" and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. Followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. The little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. The herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. Black fear was behind them, black night in front. They headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. The ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. They knew that an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. Then fell the hail--blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. The herd opened like a fan. The red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. A man with a whip rode at his right flank. Behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. The man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. The herd had surrounded him in the darkness. His salvation lay in the legs of _Whisky Peat_--and _Whisky Peat_ knew it--knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as he strained every nerve--in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. Then, being only over-worked cayuse, _Whisky Peat_ fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground.

* * * * *

It was Michigan, Jim and Lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking, "What's come to The Corpse?" quoth Lafe. Jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: "Onless I'm a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin' up to his durned appellation 'bout fifteen miles back--what there is of him and the cayuse." "Let's go and look," said Lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. "Let's go to--a much hotter place than Texas," responded Jim. "Get the steers to the Junction first. Guess what's left of The Corpse will keep."

And it did. And that was how the fat man in Chicago got his beef. It belonged to the red steer.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.]

THE HISTORY OF A FALL[8]

_Mere English will not do justice to the event. Let us attempt it according to the custom of the French. Thus and so following:_

Listen to a history of the most painful--and of the most true. You others, the Governors, the Lieutenant-Governors, and the Commissionaires of the Oriental Indias.

It is you, foolishly outside of the truth in prey to illusions so blind that I of them remain so stupefied--it is to you that I address myself!

Know you Sir Cyril Wollobie, K.C.S.I., C.M.G., and all the other little things?

He was of the Sacred Order of Yourself--a man responsible enormously--charged of the conservation of millions....

Of people. That is understood. The Indian Government conserves not its rupees.

He was the well-loved of kings. I have seen the Viceroy--which is the Lorr-Maire--embrace him of both arms.

That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla.

Even embraces.

His wife! Mon Dieu, his wife!

The aheuried imagination prostrates itself at the remembrance of the splendours Orientals of the Lady Cyril--the very respectable the Lady Wollobie.

That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla. Even wives. In those days I was--what you call--a Schnobb. I am now a much larger Schnobb. _Voila_ the only difference. Thus it is true that travel expands the mind.

But let us return to our Wollobies.

I admired that man there with the both hands. I crawled before the Lady Wollobie--platonically. The man the most brave would be only platonic towards that lady. And I was also afraid. Subsequently I went to a dance. The wine equalled not the splendour of the Wollobies. Nor the food. But there was upon the floor an open space--large and park-like. It protected the dignity Wollobi-callisme. It was guarded by Aides-de-Camp. With blue silk in their coat-tails--turned up. With pink eyes and white moustaches to ravish. Also turned up.

To me addressed himself an Aide-de-Camp.

That was in Simla. To-day I do not speak to Aides-de-Camp.

I confine myself exclusively to the cab-drivaire. He does not know so much bad language, but he can drive better.

I approached, under the protection of the Aide-de-Camp, the luminosity of Sir Wollobie.

The world entire regarded.

The band stopped. The lights burned blue. A domestic dropped a plate.

It was an inspiring moment.

From the summit of Jakko forty-five monkies looked down upon the crisis.

Sir Wollobie spoke.

To me in that expanse of floor cultured and park-like. He said: "I have long desired to make your acquaintance."

The blood bouilloned in my head. I became pink. I was aneantied under the weight of an embarras insubrimable.

At that moment Sir Wollobie became oblivious of my personality. That was his custom.

Wiping my face upon my coat-tails I refugied myself among the foules.

_I had been spoken to by Sir Wollobie._ That was in Simla. That also is history.

* * * * *

Pass now several years. To the day before yesterday!

This also is history--farcical, immense, tragi-comic, but true.

Know you the Totnam Cortrode?

Here lives Maple, who sells washing appliances and tables of exotic legs.

Here voyages also a Omnibuse Proletariat.

That is to say for One penny.

Two pence is the refined volupte of the Aristocrat.

I am of the people.

_Entre nous_ the connection is not desired by us. The people address to me epithets, entirely unprintable. I reply that they should wash. The situation is strained. Hence the Strike Docks and the Demonstrations Laborious.

Upon the funeste tumbril of the Proletariat I take my seat.

I demand air outside upon the roof.

I will have all my penny.

The tumbril advances.

A man aged loses his equilibrium and deposits himself into my lap.

Following the custom of the Brutal Londoner I demand the Devil where he shoves himself.

He apologises supplicatorically.

I grunt.

Encore the tumbril shakes herself.

I appropriate the desired seat of the old man.

The conductaire cries to loud voice: "Fare, Guvnor."

He produces one penny.

A reminiscence phantasmal provokes itself.

I beat him on the back.

It is Sir Wollobie; the ex-Everything!

Also the ex-Everything else!

Figure you the situation!

He clasps my hand.

As a child clasps the hand of its nurse.

He demands of me particular rensignments of my health. It is to him a matter important.

Other time he regulated the health of forty-five millions.

I riposte. I enquire of his liver--his pancreas, his abdomen.

The sacred internals of Sir Wollobie!

He has them all. And they all make him ill.

He is very lonely. He speaks of his wife. There is no Lady Wollobie, but a woman in a flat in Bayswater who cries in her sleep for more curricles.

He does not say this, but I understand.

He derides the Council of the Indian Office. He imprecates the Government.

He curses the journals.

He has a clob. He curses that clob.

Females with teeth monstrous explain to him the theory of Government.

Men of long hair, the psychologues of the paint-pots, correct him tenderly, but from above.

He has known of the actualities of life--Death, Power, Responsibility, Honour--the Good accomplished, the effacement of Wrong for forty years.

There remains to him a seat in a penny 'bus.

If I do not take him from that.

I rap my heels on the knife-board. I sing "_tra la la_." I am also well disposed to larmes.

He courbes himself underneath an ulstaire and he damns the fog to eternity.

He wills not that I leave him. He desires that I come to dinner.

I am grave. I think upon Lady Wollobie--shorn of chaprassies--at the Clob. Not in Bayswater.

I accept. He will bore me affreusely, but ... I have taken his seat.

He descends from the tumbril of his humiliation, and the street hawker rolls a barrow up his waistcoat.

Then intervenes the fog--dense, impenetrable, hopeless, without end.

It is because of the fog that there is a drop upon the end of my nose so chiselled.

Gentlemen the Governors, the Lieutenant-Governors and the Commissaires, behold the doom prepared.

I am descended to the gates of your Life in Death. Which is Brompton or Bayswater.

You do not believe? You will try the constituencies when you return; is it not so?

You will fail. As others failed.

Your seat waits you on the top of an Omnibuse Proletariat.

I shall be there.

You will embrace me as a shipwrecked man embraces a log. You will be "dam glad t' see me."

I shall grin.

Oh Life! Oh Death! Oh Power! Oh Toil! Oh Hope! Oh Stars! Oh Honour! Oh Lodgings! Oh Fog! Oh Omnibuses! Oh Despair! Oh Skittles!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.]

GRIFFITHS THE SAFE MAN[9]

As the title indicates, this story deals with the safeness of Griffiths the safe man, the secure person, the reliable individual, the sort of man you would bank with. I am proud to write about Griffiths, for I owe him a pleasant day. This story is dedicated to my friend Griffiths, the remarkably trustworthy mortal.

In the beginning there were points about Griffiths. He quoted proverbs. A man who quotes proverbs is confounded by proverbs. He is also confounded by his friends. But I never confounded Griffiths--not even in that supreme moment when the sweat stood on his brow in agony and his teeth were fixed like bayonets and he swore horribly. Even then, I say, I sat on my own trunk, the trunk that opened, and told Griffiths that I had always respected him, but never more than at the present moment. He was so safe, y' know.

Safeness is a matter of no importance to me. If my trunk won't lock when I jump on it thrice, I strap it up and go on to something else. If my carpet-bag is too full, I let the tails of shirts and the ends of ties bubble over and go down the street with the affair. It all comes right in the end, and if it does not, what is a man that he should fight against Fate?

But Griffiths is not constructed in that manner. He says: "Safe bind is safe find." That, rather, is what he used to say. He has seen reason to alter his views. Everything about Griffiths is safe--entirely safe. His trunk is locked by two hermetical gun-metal double-end Chubbs; his bedding-roll opens to a letter padlock capable of two million combinations; his hat-box has a lever patent safety on it; and the grief of his life is that he cannot lock up the ribs of his umbrella safely. If you could get at his soul you would find it ready strapped up and labelled for heaven. That is Griffiths.

When we went to Japan together, Griffiths kept all his money under lock and key. I carried mine in my coat-tail pocket. But all Griffiths' contraptions did not prevent him from spending exactly as much as I did. You see, when he had worried his way through the big strap, and the little strap, and the slide-valve, and the spring lock, and the key that turned twice and a quarter, he felt as though he had earned any money he found, whereas I could get masses of sinful wealth by merely pulling out my handkerchief--dollars and five dollars and ten dollars, all mixed up with the tobacco or flying down the road. They looked much too pretty to spend.

"Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths in the treaty port.

He never really began to lock things up severely till we got our passports to travel up-country. He took charge of mine for me, on the ground that I was an imbecile. As you are asked for your passport at every other shop, all the hotels, most of the places of amusement, and on the top of each hill, I got to appreciate Griffiths' self-sacrifice. He would be biting a strap with his teeth or calculating the combinations of his padlocks among a ring of admiring Japanese while I went for a walk into the interior.

"Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths. That was true, because I was bound to find Griffiths somewhere near his beloved keys and straps. He never seemed to see that half the pleasure of his trip was being strapped and keyed out of him.

We never had any serious difficulty about the passports in the whole course of our wanderings. What I purpose to describe now is merely an incident of travel. It had no effect on myself, but it nearly broke Griffiths' heart.

We were travelling from Kyoto to Otsu along a very dusty road full of pretty girls. Every time I stopped to play with one of them Griffiths grew impatient. He had telegraphed for rooms at the only hotel in Otsu, and was afraid that there would be no accommodation. There were only three rooms in the hotel, and "Safe bind, safe find," said Griffiths. He was telegraphing ahead for something.

Our hotel was three-quarters Japanese and one-quarter European. If you walked across it it shook, and if you laughed the roof fell off. Strange Japanese came in and dined with you, and Jap maidens looked through the windows of the bathroom while you were bathing.

We had hardly put the luggage down before the proprietor asked for our passports. He asked me of all people in the world. "I have the passports," said Griffiths with pride. "They are in the yellow-hide bag. Turn it very carefully on to the right side, my good man. You have no such locks in Japan, I'm quite certain." Then he knelt down and brought out a bunch of keys as big as his fist. You must know that every Japanese carries a little _belaiti_-made handbag with nickel fastenings. They take an interest in handbags.

"Safe bind, safe---- D----n the key! What's wrong with it?" said Griffiths.

The hotel proprietor bowed and smiled very politely for at least five minutes, Griffiths crawling over and under and round and about his bag the while. "It's a percussating compensator," said he, half to himself. "I've never known a percussating compensator do this before." He was getting heated and red in the face.

"Key stuck, eh? I told you those fooling little spring locks are sure to go wrong sooner or later."

"Fooling little devils. It's a percussating comp---- There goes the key. Now it won't move either way. I'll give you the passport to-morrow. Passport _kul demang manana_--catchee in a little time. Won't that do for you?"

Griffiths was getting really angry. The proprietor was more polite than ever. He bowed and left the room. "That's a good little chap," said Griffiths. "Now we'll settle down and see what the mischief's wrong with this bag. You catch one end."

"Not in the least," I said. "'Safe bind, safe find.' You did the binding. How can you expect me to do the finding? I'm an imbecile unfit to be trusted with a passport, and now I'm going for a walk." The Japanese are really the politest nation in the world. When the hotel proprietor returned with a policeman he did not at once thrust the man on Griffiths' notice. He put him in the verandah and let him clank his sword gently once or twice.

"Little chap's brought a blacksmith," said Griffiths, but when he saw the policeman his face became ugly. The policeman came into the room and tried to assist. Have you ever seen a four-foot policeman in white cotton gloves and a stand-up collar lunging percussating compensator look with a five-foot sword? I enjoyed the sight for a few minutes before I went out to look at Otsu, which is a nice town. No one hindered me. Griffiths was so completely the head of the firm that had I set the town on fire he would have been held responsible.

I went to a temple, and a policeman said "passport." I said, "The other gentleman has got." "Where is other gentleman?" said the policeman, syllable by syllable, in the Ollendorfian style. "In the ho-tel," said I; and he waddled off to catch him. It seemed to me that I could do a great deal towards cheering Griffiths all alone in his bedroom with that wicked bad lock, the hotel proprietor, the policeman, the room-boy, and the girl who helped one to bathe. With this idea I stood in front of four policemen, and they all asked for my passport and were all sent to the hotel, syllable by syllable--I mean one by one.

Some soldiers of the 9th N.I. were strolling about the streets, and they were idle. It is unwise to let a soldier be idle. He may get drunk. When the fourth policeman said: "Where is other gentleman?" I said: "In the hotel, and take soldiers--those soldiers."

"How many soldiers?" said the policeman firmly.

"Take all soldiers," I said. There were four files in the street just then. The policeman spoke to them, and they caught up their big sword-bayonets, nearly as long as themselves, and waddled after him.

I followed them, but first I bought some sweets and gave one to a child. That was enough. Long before I had reached the hotel I had a tail of fifty babies. These I seduced into the long passage that ran through the house, and then I slid the grating that answers to the big hall-door. That house was full--pit, boxes and galleries--for Griffiths had created an audience of his own, and I also had not been idle.

The four files of soldiers and the five policemen were marking time on the boards of Griffith's room, while the landlord and the landlord's wife, and the two scullions, and the bath-girl, and the cook-boy, and the boy who spoke English, and the boy who didn't, and the boy who tried to, and the cook, filled all the space that wasn't devoted to babies asking the foreigner for more sweets.

Somewhere in the centre of the mess was Griffiths and a yellow-hide bag. I don't think he had looked up once since I left, for as he raised his eyes at my voice I heard him cry: "Good heavens! are they going to train the guns of the city on me? What's the meaning of the regiment? I'm a British subject."

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"The passports--your passports--the double-dyed passports! Oh, give a man room to use his arms. Get me a hatchet."

"The passports, the passports!" I said. "Have you looked in your great-coat? It's on the bed, and there's a blue envelope in it that looks like a passport. You put it there before you left Kyoto."

Griffiths looked. The landlord looked. The landlord took the passport and bowed. The five policemen bowed and went out one by one; the 9th N.I. formed fours and went out; the household bowed, and there was a long silence. Then the bath-girl began to giggle.

When Griffiths wanted to speak to me I was on the other side of the regiment of children in the passage, and he had time to reflect before he could work his way through them.

They formed his guard-of-honour when he took the bag to the locksmith.

I abode on the mountains of Otsu till dinner-time.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: "Turnovers," Vol. VII.]

IT![10]

There was no talk of it for a fortnight. We spoke of latitude and longitude and the proper manufacture of sherry cobblers, while the steamer cut open a glassy-smooth sea. Then we turned towards China and drank farewell to the nearer East.

"We shall reach Hongkong without being it," said the nervous lady.

"Nobody of ordinary strength of mind ever was it," said the big fat man with the voice. I kept my eye on the big fat man. He boasted too much.

The China seas are governed neither by wind nor calm. Deep down under the sapphire waters sits a green and yellow devil who suffers from indigestion perpetually. When he is unwell he troubles the waters above with his twistings and writhings. Thus it happens that it is never calm in the China seas.

The sun was shining brightly when the big fat man with the voice came up the companion and looked at the horizon.

"Hah!" said he, "calm as ditch water! Now I remember when I was in the _Florida_ in '80, meeting a tidal-wave that turned us upside down for five minutes, and most of the people inside out, by Jove!" He expatiated at length on the heroism displayed by himself when "even the Captain was down, sir!"

I said nothing, but I kept my eyes upon the strong man.

The sun continued to shine brightly, and it also kept an eye in the same direction. I went to the far-off fo'c'sle, where the sheep and the cow and the bo'sun and the second-class passengers dwell together in amity. "Bo'sun," said I, "how's her head?"

"Direckly in front of her, sir," replied that ill-mannered soul, "but we shall be meetin' a head-sea in half an hour that'll put your head atween of your legs. Go aft an' tell that to them first-class passengers."

I went aft, but I said nothing. We went, later, to tiffin, and there was a fine funereal smell of stale curries and tinned meats in the air. Conversation was animated, for most of the passengers had been together for five weeks and had developed two or three promising flirtations. I was a stranger--a minnow among Tritons--a third man in the cabin. Only those who have been a third man in the cabin know what this means. Suddenly and without warning our ship curtsied. It was neither a bob nor a duck nor a lurch, but a long, sweeping, stately old-fashioned curtsy. Followed a lull in the conversation. I was distinctly conscious that I had left my stomach two feet in the air, and waited for the return roll to join it. "Prettily the old hooper rides, doesn't she?" said the strong man. "I hope she won't do it often," said the pretty lady with the changing complexion.

"Wha-hoop! Wha--wha--wha--willy _whoop_!" said the screw, that had managed to come out of the water and was racing wildly.

"Good heavens! is the ship going down?" said the fat lady, clutching her own private claret bottle that she might not die athirst. The ship went down at the word--with a drunken lurch down she went, and a smothered yell from one of the cabins showed that there was water in the sea. The portholes closed with a clash, and we rose and fell on the swell of the bo'sun's head-sea. The conversation died out. Some complained that the saloon was stuffy, and fled upstairs to the deck. The strong man brought up the rear.

"Ooshy--ooshy--wooshy--woggle _wop!_" cried a big wave without a head. "Get up, old girl!" and he smacked the ship most disrespectfully under the counter, and she squirmed as she took the drift of the next sea.

"She--ah--rides very prettily," repeated the strong man as the companion stairs spurned him from them and he wound his arms round the nearest steward.

"Damn prettily," said the necked officer. "I'm going to lie down. Never could stand the China seas."

"Most refreshing thing in the world," said the strong man faintly.

I took counsel purely with myself, which is to say, my stomach, and perceived that the worst would not befall me.

"Come to the fo'c'sle, then, and feel the wind," said I to the strong man. The plover's-egg eyes of three yellowish-green girls were upon him.

"With pleasure," said he, and I bore him away to where the cut-water was pulling up the scared flying-fishes as a spaniel flushes game. In front of us was the illimitable blue, lightly ridged by the procession of the big blind rollers. Up rose the stem till six feet of the red paint stood clear above the blue--from twenty-three feet to eighteen I could count as I leaned over. Then the sapphire crashed into splintered crystal with a musical jar, and the white spray licked the anchor channels as we drove down and down, sucking at the sea. I kept my eye upon the strong man, and I noticed that his mouth was slightly open, the better to inhale the rushing wind. When I looked a second time he was gone. The driven spray was scarcely quicker in its flight. My excellent stomach behaved with temperance and chastity. I enjoyed the fo'c'sle, and my delight was the greater when I reflected on the strong man. Unless I was much mistaken, he would know all about it in half an hour.

I went aft, and a lull between two waves heard the petulant pop of a champagne cork. No one drinks champagne after tiffin except.... _It_.

The strong man had ordered the champagne. There were bottles of it flying about the quarter-deck. The engaged couple were sipping it out of one glass, but their faces were averted like our parents of old. They were ashamed.

"You may go! You may go to Hongkong for me!" shouted half-a-dozen little waves together, pulling the ship several ways at once. She rolled stately, and from that moment settled down to the work of the evening. I cannot blame her, for I am sure she did not know her own strength. It didn't hurt her to be on her side, and play cat-and-mouse, and puss-in-the corner, and hide-and-seek, but it destroyed the passengers. One by one they sank into long chairs and gazed at the sky. But even there the little white moved, and there was not one stable thing in heaven above or the waters beneath. My virtuous and very respectable stomach behaved with integrity and resolution. I treated it to a gin cocktail, which I sucked by the side of the strong man, who told me in confidence that he had been overcome by the sun at the fo'c'sle. Sun fever does not make people cold and clammy and blue. I sat with him and tried to make him talk about the _Florida_ and his voyages in the past. He evaded me and went down below. Three minutes later I followed him with a thick cheroot. Into his bunk I went, for I knew he would be helpless. He was--he was--he was. He wallowed supine, and I stood in the doorway smoking.

"What is it?" said I.

He wrestled with his pride--his wicked pride--but he would not tell a lie.

"It," said he. And it was so.

* * * * *

The rolling continues. The ship is a shambles, and I have six places on each side of me all to myself.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: "Turnovers," Vol. I.]

A FALLEN IDOL[11]

Will the public be good enough to look into this business? It has sent Crewe to bed, and Mottleby is applying for home leave, and I've lost my faith in man altogether, and the Club gives it up. Trivey is the only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says "I told you so." We were all proud of Trivey at the Club, and would have crowned him with wreaths of Bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. But Trivey was an austere man. The utmost that he permitted himself to say was: "I can stretch a little bit when I'm in the humour." We called him the Monumental Liar. Nothing that the Club offered was too good for Trivey. He had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the hot weather, and he made up his own four at whist. When visitors came in--globe-trotters for choice--Trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the Club on tiptoe looking for snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. Whenever a man from a strange Club came in Trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine and rout that man on all points--from horses upward. There was a man whose nickname was "Ananias," who came from the Prince's Plungers to look at Trivey; and, though Trivey was only a civilian, the Plunger man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o'clock. He made it over to Trivey on a card, and Trivey hung up the concession in his quarters. We loved Trivey--all of us; and now we don't love him any more.

A man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales--some very good ones, and some better than good. He was an outsider, but he had a wonderful imagination--for the frontier. He told six stories before Trivey brought up his first line, and three more before Trivey hurled his reserves into the fray.

"When I was at Anungaracharlupillay in Madras," said Trivey quietly, "there was a rogue elephant cutting about the district. And I came upon him asleep." All the Club stopped talking here, until Trivey had finished the story. He told us that he, in the company of another man, had found the rogue asleep, but just as they got up to the brute's head it woke up with a scream. Then Trivey, who was careful to explain that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," caught hold of its ears as it rose, and hung there, kicking the animal in the eyes, which so bewildered it that it stayed screaming and frightened until Trivey's ally shot it behind the shoulder, and the villagers ran in and hamstrung it. It evidently died from loss of blood. Trivey was hanging on the ears and kicking hard for nearly fifteen minutes. When the frontier man heard the story he put his hands in front of his face and sobbed audibly. We gave him all the drinks he wanted, and he recovered sufficiently to carry away eighty rupees at whist later on; but his nerve was irretrievably shattered. He will be no use on the frontier any more. The rest of the Club were very pleased with Trivey, because these frontier men, and especially the guides, want a great deal of keeping in order. Trivey was quite modest. He was a truly great soul, and popular applause never turned his head. As I have said, we loved Trivey, till that fatal day when Crewe announced that he had been transferred for a couple of months to Anungaracharlupillay. "Oh!" said Trivey, "I dare say they'll remember about my rogue elephant down there. You ask 'em, Crewe." Then we felt sorry for Trivey, because we were sure that he was arriving at that stage of mental decay when a man begins to believe in his own fictions. That spoils a man's hand. Crewe wrote up once or twice to Mottleby, saying that he would bring back a story that would make our hair curl. Good stories are scarce in Madras, and we rather scoffed at the announcement. When Crewe returned it was easy to see that he was bursting with importance. He gave a big dinner at the Club and invited nearly everybody but Trivey, who went off after dinner to teach a young subaltern to play "snooker." At coffee and cheroots, Crewe could not restrain himself any longer. "I say, you Johnnies, it's all true--every single word of it--and you can throw the decanter at my head and I'll apologise. The whole village was full of it. There was a rogue elephant, and it slept, and Trivey did catch hold of its ears and kick it in the eyes, and hang on for ten minutes, at least, and all the rest of it. I neglected my regular work to sift that story, and on my honour the tale's an absolute fact. The headsman said so, all the shikaries said so, and all the villagers corroborated it. Now would a whole village volunteer a lie that would do them no good?"

You might have heard a cigar-ash fall after this statement. Then Mottleby said, with deep disgust: "What can you do with a man like that? His best and brightest lie, too!" "'Tisn't!" shrieked Crewe. "It's a fact--a nickel-plated, teak-wood, Tantalus-action, forty-five rupee fact." "That only makes it worse," said Mottleby; and we all felt that was true. We ran into the billiard-room to talk to Trivey, but he said we had put him off his stroke; and that was all the satisfaction we got out of him. Later on he repeated that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," and went to bed. We sat up half the night devising vengeance on Trivey. We were very angry, and there was no hope of hushing up the tale. The man had taken us in completely, and now that we've lost our champion Ananias, all the frontier will laugh at us, and we shall never be able to trust a word that Trivey says.

I ask with Mottleby: "What can you do with a man like that?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: "Turnovers," Vol. I.]

NEW BROOMS[12]

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could sweep it clear?"

Ram Buksh, Aryan, went to bed with his buffalo, five goats, three children and a wife, because the evening mists were chilly. His hut was builded on the mud scooped from a green and smelly tank, and there were microbes in the thin blood of Ram Buksh.

Ram Buksh went to bed on a charpoy stretched across the blue tepid drain, because the nights were hot; and there were more microbes in his blood. Then the rains came, and Ram Buksh paddled, mid-thigh deep, in water for a day or two with his buffaloes till he was aware of a crampsome feeling at the pit of his stomach. "Mother of my children," said Ram Buksh, "this is death." They gave him cardamoms and capsicums, and gingelly-oil and cloves, and they prayed for him. "It is enough," said Ram Buksh, and he twisted himself into a knot and died, and they burned him slightly--for the wood was damp--and the rest of him floated down the river, and was caught in an undercurrent at the bank, and there stayed; and when Imam Din, the Jeweller, drank of the stream five days later, he drank Lethe, and passed away, crying in vain upon his gods.

His family did not report his death to the Municipality, for they desired to keep Imam Din with them. Therefore, they buried him under the flagging in the court-yard, secretly and by night. Twelve days later, Imam Din had made connection with the well of the house, and there was typhus among the women in the zenana, but no one knew anything about it--some died and some did not; and Ari Booj, the Faquir, added to the interest of the proceedings by joining the funeral procession and distributing gratis the more malignant forms of smallpox, from which he was just recovering. He had come all the way from Delhi, and had slept on no less than fifteen different charpoys; and that was how they got the smallpox into Bahadurgarh. But Eshmith Sahib's Dhobi picked it up from Ari Booj when Imam Din's wife was being buried--for he was a merry man, and sent home a beautiful sample among the Sunday shirts. So Eshmith Sahib died.

He was only a link in the chain which crawled from the highest to the lowest. The wonder was not that men died like sheep, but that they did not die like flies; for their lives and their surroundings, their deaths, were part of a huge conspiracy against cleanliness. And the people loved to have it so. They huddled together in frowsy clusters, while Death mowed his way through them till the scythe blunted against the unresisting flesh, and he had to get a new one. They died by fever, tens of thousands in a month; they died by cholera a thousand in a week; they died of smallpox, scores in the mohulla, and by dysentery by tens in a house; and when all other deaths failed they laid them down and died because their hands were too weak to hold on to life.

To and fro stamped the Englishman, who is everlastingly at war with the scheme of things. "You shall not die," he said, and he decreed that there should be no more famines. He poured grain down their throats, and when all failed he went down into the strife and died with them, swearing, and toiling, and working till the last. He fought the famine and put it to flight. Then he wiped his forehead, and attacked the pestilence that walketh in the darkness. Death's scythe swept to and fro, around and about him; but he only planted his feet more firmly in the way of it, and fought off Death with a dog-whip. "Live, you ruffian!" said the Englishman to Ram Buksh as he rode through the reeking village. "_Jenab!_" said Ram Buksh, "it is as it was in the days of our fathers!" "Then stand back while I alter it," said the Englishman; and by force, and cunning, and a brutal disregard of vested interests, he strove to keep Ram Buksh alive. "Clean your mohullas; pay for clean water; keep your streets swept; and see that your food is sound, or I'll make your life a burden to you," said the Englishman. Sometimes he died; but more often Ram Buksh went down, and the Englishman regarded each death as a personal insult.

"Softly, there!" said the Government of India. "You're twisting his tail. You mustn't do that. The spread of education forbids, and Ram Buksh is an intelligent voter. Let him work out his own salvation."

"H'm!" said the Englishman with his head in a midden; "collectively you always were a fool. Here, Ram Buksh, the Sirkar says you are to do all these things for yourself."

"_Jenab!_" says Ram Buksh, and fell to breeding microbes with renewed vigour.

Curiously enough, it was in the centres of enlightenment that he prosecuted his experiments most energetically. The education had been spread, but so thinly that it could not disguise Ram Buksh's natural instincts. He created an African village, and said it was the hub of the universe, and all the dirt of all the roads failed to convince him that he was not the most advanced person in the world. There was a pause, and Ram Buksh got himself fearfully entangled among Boards and Committees, but he valued them as a bower-bird values shells and red rags. "See!" said the Englishman to the Government of India, "he is blind on that side--blind by birth, training, instinct and associations. Five-sixths of him is poor stock raised off poor soil, and he'll die on the least provocation. You've no right to let him kill himself."

"But he's educated," said the Government of India.

"I'll concede everything," said the Englishman. "He's a statesman, author, poet, politician, artist, and all else that you wish him to be, but he isn't a Sanitary Engineer. And while you're training him he is dying. Goodness knows that my share in the Government is very limited nowadays, but I'm willing to do all the work while he gets all the credit if you'll only let me have some authority over him in his mud-pie making."

"But the liberty of the subject is sacred," said the Government of India.

"I haven't any," said the Englishman. "He can trail through my compounds; start shrines in the public roads; poison my family; have me in court for nothing; ruin my character; spend my money, and call me an assassin when all is done. I don't object. Let me look after his sanitation."

"But the days of a paternal Government are over; we must depend on the people. Think of what they would say at home," said the Government of India. "We have issued a resolution--indeed we have!"

The Englishman sat down and groaned. "I believe you'll issue a resolution some day notifying your own abolition," said he. "What are you going to do?"

"Constitute more Boards," said the Government of India. "Boards of Control and Supervision--Fund Boards--all sorts of Boards. Nothing like system. It will be at work in three years or so. We haven't any money, but that's a detail."

The Englishman looked at the resolution and sniffed. "It doesn't touch the weak point of the country."

"What _will_ touch the weak point of the country, then?" said the Government of India.

"I used to," said the Englishman. "I was the District Officer, and I twisted their tails. You have taken away my power, and now----"

"Well," said the Government of India, "you seem to think a good deal of yourself."

"Never mind me," said the Englishman. "I'm an effete relic of the past. But Ram Buksh will die, as he used to do."

And now we all wait to see which is right.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: "Turnovers," Vol. III.]

TIGLATH PILESER[13]

Thank Heaven he is dead! The municipality sent a cart and a man only this morning, and, all the servants aiding with ropes and tackle, the carcase of Tiglath was borne away--a wobbling lump. His head was thrust over the tailboard of the cart. Upon it was stamped an expression of horror and surprise, unutterable and grotesque. I have put away my rifle, I have cheered my heart with wine, and I sit down now to write the story of Tiglath, the Utter Brute. His own kind, alas! will not read it, and thus it will be shorn of instruction; but owners will kindly take notice, and when it pleases Heaven to inflict them with such an animal as Tiglath they will know what to do.

To begin with, I bought him, his vices thick as his barsati, for a hundred and seventy rupees, a five-chambered, muzzle-loading revolver, and a Cawnpore saddle.

"Of course, for that price," said Staveley, "you can't expect everything. He's not what one would call absolutely sound, y' know, but there's no end of work in him, and if you only give him the butt he'll go like a steam-engine."

"Staveley," I answered, "when you admit that he is not perfection I perceive that I am in for a really Good Thing. Don't hurt your conscience, Staveley. Tell me what is his chief vice--weakness, partiality--anything you choose to call it. I shall get to know the minor defects in the course of nature; but what is Tiglath's real shouk?"

Staveley reflected a moment. "Well, really, I can't quite say, old man, straight off the reel, y' know. He's a oner to go when his head's turned to home. He's a regular feeder, and vaseline will cure that little eruption"--with its malignant barsati--"in no time. Oh, I forgot his shouk: I don't know exactly how to describe it, but he yaws a good deal," said Staveley.

"He how muches?" I asked.

"Yaws," said Staveley; "goes a bit wide upon occasions, but a good coachwan will cure that in one drive. My man let him do what he liked. One fifty and a hundred, ten and ten is twenty--one-seventy. Many thanks, indeed. I'll send over his bedding and ropes. He's a powerful upstanding horse, though rather picked up just at present."

Staveley departed, and I was left alone with Tiglath. I called him Tiglath because he resembled a lathy pig. Later on I called him Pileser on account of his shouk; but my coachwan, a strong, masterless man, called him "_haramzada chor, shaitan ke bap_" and "_oont ki beta_." He certainly was a powerful horse, being full fifteen-two at the withers, with the girth of a waler, and at first the docility of an Arab. There was something wrong with his feet--permanently--but he was a considerate beast, and never had more than one leg in hospital at a time. The other three were still movable, and Tiglath never grudged them in my service. I write this in justice to his memory; the creaking of the wheels of the municipal cart being still in my ears.

For a season--some twelve days--Tiglath was beyond reproach. He had not a cheerful disposition, nor did his pendulous underlip add to his personal beauty; but he made no complaints, and moved swiftly to and from office. The hot weather gave place to the cool breezes of October, and with the turn of the year the slumbering devil in the soul of Tiglath spread its wings and crowed aloud. I fed him well, I had aided his barsati, I had lapped his lame legs in thanda putties, and adorned his sinful body with new harness. He rewarded me upon a day with an exhibition so new and strange that I feared for the moment his reason had been unhinged. Slowly, with a malevolent grin, Tiglath, the pampered, turned at right angles to the carriage--a newly-varnished one--and backed the front wheels up the verandah steps, letting them down with a bump. He then wheeled round and round in the portico, and all but brought the carriage over. The show lasted for ten minutes, at the end of which time he trotted peacefully away.

I was pained and grieved--nothing more, upon my honour. I forbade the sais to kick Tiglath in the stomach, for I was persuaded that the harness galled him, and, in this belief, at the end of the day, undressed him tenderly and fitted sheepskin all over the said harness. Tiglath ate the sheepskin next day, and I did not renew it.

A week later I met the Judge. It was a purely accidental interview. I would have avoided it, as the Judge and I did not love each other, but the shafts of my carriage were through the circular front of his brougham, and Tiglath was rubbing the boss of his headstall tenderly against the newly-varnished panels of the same. The Judge complained that he might have been impaled as he sat. My coachwan declared on oath that the horse deliberately ran into the brougham. Tiglath tendered no evidence, and I began to mistrust him.

At the end of a month I perceived that my friends and acquaintances avoided me markedly. The appearance of Tiglath at the band-stand was enough to clear a space of ten yards in my immediate neighbourhood. I had to shout to my friends from afar, and they shouted back the details of the little bills which I had to pay their coach-builders. Tiglath was suffering from carriagecidal mania, and the coachwan had asked for leave. "Stay with me, Ibrahim," I said. "Thou seest how the sahib log do now avoid us. Get a new and a stout chabuq, and instruct Tiglath in the paths of straight walking."

"He will smash the Heaven-born's carriage. He is an old and stale devil, but in this matter extreme wise," answered Ibrahim. "Kitto sahib's filton hath he smashed, and Burkitt sahib's brougham gharri, and another tum-tum, and Staveley sahib's carriage is still being mended. What profit is this horse? He feigns blindness and much fear, and in the guise of innocency works evil. I will stay, sahib, but the blood of this thy new carriage be upon the brute's head and not upon mine own."

I have no space to describe the war of the next few weeks. Foiled in his desire to ruin only neighbours' property, Tiglath fell back literally, upon his own--my carriage. He tried the verandah step trick till he bent the springs, and wheeled round till the turning action grew red-hot; he scraped stealthily by walls; he performed between heavy-laden bullock-trains, but his chief delight was a _pas de fantasie_ on a dark night and a high, level road. Yet what he did he did staidly and without heat, as without remorse. He was vetted thrice, and his eyes were pronounced sound. After this information I laid my bones to the battle, and acquired a desperate facility of leaping from the carriage and kicking Tiglath on the stomach as soon as he wheeled around; leaping back at the risk of my life when he set off at full speed. I pressed the lighted end of a cheroot just behind the collar-buckle; I applied fusees to those flaccid nostrils, and I beat him about the head with a stick continually. It was necessary, but it was also demoralising. A year of Tiglath would have converted me into a cold-blooded vivisectionist, or a native bullock-driver. Each day I took stock of the injuries to my carriage. I had long since given up all hope of keeping it in decent repair; and each day I devised fresh torments for Tiglath.