Part 5

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.

He never meant to injure himself, I am certain, and no one was more astonished than he when he backed on the Balumon road, and dropped the carriage into a nullah on the night of the Jamabundi Moguls' dance. I did not go to the dance. I was bent considerably, and one side of the coachwan's face was flayed. When he had pieced the wreck together, he only said, "Sahib!" and I said only "Bohat acha." But we each knew what the other meant. Next morn Tiglath was stiff and strained. I gave him time to recover and to enjoy life. When I heard him squealing to the grass-cutter's ponies I knew that the hour had come. I ordered the carriage, and myself superintended the funeral toilet of Tiglath. His harness brasses shone like gold, his coat like a bottle, and he lifted his feet daintily. Had he even then, at the eleventh hour, given promise of amendment, I should have held my hand. But as I entered the carriage I saw the hunching of his quarters that presaged trouble. "Go forward, Tiglath, my love, my pride, my delight," I murmured. "For a surety it is a matter of life and death this day." The sais ran to his head with a fragment of chupatti, saved from his all too scanty rations; the man loved him. And Tiglath swung round to the left in the portico; round and round swung he, till the near ear touched the muzzle of the shot-gun that waited its coming. He never flinched; he pressed his fate. The coachwan threw down the reins as, with four ounces of No. 5 shot behind the hollow of the root of the ear, Tiglath fell. In his death he accomplished the desire of his life, for he fell upon the shaft and broke it into three pieces. I looked on him as he lay, and of a sudden the reason of the horror in his eyes was made clear. Tiglath, the breaker of carriages, the strong, the rebellious, had passed into the shadowy spirit land, where there was nought to destroy and no power to destroy it with. The ghastly fore-knowledge of the flitting soul was written on the glazing eyeball.

I repented me, then, that I had slain Tiglath, for I had no intention of punishing him in the hereafter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: "Turnovers," Vol. IV.]

THE LIKES O' US[14]

It was the General Officer Commanding, riding down the Mall, on the Arab with the perky tail, and he condescended to explain some of the mysteries of his profession. But the point on which he dwelt most pompously was the ease with which the Private Thomas Atkins could be "handled," as he called it. "Only feed him and give him a little work to do, and you can do anything with him," said the General Officer Commanding. "There's no refinement about Tommy, you know; and one is very like another. They've all the same ideas and traditions and prejudices. They're all big children. Fancy any man in his senses shooting about these hills." There was the report of a shot-gun in the valley. "I suppose they've hit a dog. Happy as the day is long when they're out shooting dogs. Just like a big child is Tommy." He touched up his horse and cantered away. There was a sound of angry voices down the hillside.

"All right, you _soor_--I won't never forget this--mind you, not as long as I live, and s' 'elp me--I'll----" The sentence finished in what could be represented by a blaze of asterisks.

A deeper voice cut it short: "Oh, no, you won't, neither! Look a-here, you young smitcher. If I was to take yer up now, and knock off your 'ead again' that tree, could ye say anythin'? No, nor yet do anythin'. If I was to----Ah! you would, would you? There!" Some one had evidently sat down with a thud, and was swearing nobly. I slid over the edge of the _khud_, down through the long grass, and fetched up, after the manner of a sledge, with my feet in the broad of the back of Gunner Barnabas in the Mountain Battery, my friend, the very strong man. He was sitting upon a man--a khaki-coloured volcano of blasphemy--and was preparing to smoke. My sudden arrival threw him off his balance for a moment. Then, readjusting his chair, he bade me good-day.

"'Im an' me 'ave bin 'avin' an arg'ment," said Gunner Barnabas placidly. "I was going for to half kill him an' 'eave 'im into the bushes 'ere, but, seein' that you 'ave come, sir, and very welcome when you _do_ come, we will 'ave a court-martial instead. Shacklock, are you willin'?" The volcano, who had been swearing uninterruptedly through this oration, expressed a desire, in general and particular terms, to see Gunner Barnabas in Torment and the "civilian" on the next gridiron.

Private Shacklock was a tow-haired, scrofulous boy of about two-and-twenty. His nose was bleeding profusely, and the live air attested that he had been drinking quite as much as was good for him. He lay, stomach-down, on a little level spot on the hillside; for Gunner Barnabas was sitting between his shoulder-blades, and his was not a weight to wriggle under. Private Shacklock could barely draw breath to swear, but he did the best that in him lay. "Amen," said Gunner Barnabas piously, when an unusually brilliant string of oaths came to an end. "Seein' that this gentleman 'ere has never seen the inside o' the orsepitals you've gotten in, and the clinks you've been chucked into like a hay-bundle, _per_-haps, Privite Shacklock, you will stop. You are a-makin' of 'im sick." Private Shacklock said that he was pleased to hear it, and would have continued his speech, but his breath suddenly went from him, and the unfinished curse died out in a gasp. Gunner Barnabas had put up one of his huge feet. "There's just enough room now for you to breathe, Shacklock," said he, "an' not enough for you to try to interrupt the conversashin I'm a-havin' with this gentleman. _Choop!_" Turning to me, Gunner Barnabas pulled at his pipe, but showed no hurry to open the "conversashin." I felt embarrassed, for, after all, the thus strangely unearthed difference between the Gunner and the Line man was no affair of mine. "Don't you go," said Gunner Barnabas. He had evidently been deeply moved by something. He dropped his head between his fists and looked steadily at me.

"I met this child 'ere," said he, "at Deelally--a fish-back recruity as ever was. I knowed 'im at Deelally, and I give 'im a latherin' at Deelally all for to keep 'im straight, 'e bein' such as wants a latherin' an' knowin' nuthin' o' the ways o' this country. Then I meets 'im up here, a butterfly-huntin' as innercent as you please--convalessin'. I goes out with 'im butterfly-huntin', and, as you see 'ere, a-shootin'. The gun betwixt us." I saw then, what I had overlooked before, a Company fowling-piece lying among some boulders far down the hill. Gunner Barnabas continued: "I should ha' seen where he had a-bin to get that drink inside o' 'im. Presently, 'e misses summat. 'You're a bloomin' fool,' sez I. 'If that had been a Pathan, now!' I sez. 'Damn your Pathans, an' you, too,' sez 'e. 'I strook it.' 'You did not,' I sez, 'I saw the bark fly.' 'Stick to your bloomin' pop-guns,' sez 'e, 'an' don't talk to a better man than you.' I laughed there, knowin' what I was an' what 'e was. 'You laugh?' sez he. 'I laugh,' I sez, 'Shacklock, an' for what should I not laugh?' sez I. 'Then go an' laugh in Hell,' sez 'e, 'for I'll 'ave none of your laughin'.' With that 'e brings up the gun yonder and looses off, and I stretches 'im there, and guv him a little to keep 'im quiet, and puts 'im under, an' while I was thinkin' what nex', you comes down the 'ill, an' finds us as we was."

The Private was the Gunner's prey--I knew that the affair had fallen as the Gunner had said, for my friend is constitutionally incapable of lying--and I recognised that in his hands lay the boy's fate.

"What do _you_ think?" said Gunner Barnabas, after a silence broken only by the convulsive breathing of the boy he was sitting on. "I think nothing," I said. "He didn't go at me. He's your property." Then an idea occurred to me. "Hand him over to his own Company. They'll school him half dead." "Got no Comp'ny," said Gunner Barnabas. "'E's a conv'lessint draft--all sixes an' sevens. Don't matter to them what he did." "Thrash him yourself, then," I said. Gunner Barnabas looked at the man and smiled; then caught up an arm, as a mother takes up the dimpled arm of a child, and ran the sleeve and shirt up to the elbow. "Look at that!" he said. It was a pitiful arm, lean and muscleless. "Can you mill a man with an arm like that--such as I would like to mill him, an' such as he deserves? I tell you, sir, an' I am not smokin' (swaggering), as you see--I could take that man--Sodger 'e is, Lord 'elp 'im!--an' twis' off 'is arms an' 'is legs as if 'e was a naked crab. See here!"

Before I could realise what was going to happen, Gunner Barnabas rose up, stooped, and taking the wretched Private Shacklock by two points of grasp, heaved him up above his head. The boy kicked once or twice, and then was still. He was very white. "I could now," said Gunner Barnabas, "I could now chuck this man where I like. Chuck him like a lump o' beef, an' it would not be too much for him if I chucked. Can I thrash such a man with both 'ands? No, nor yet with my right 'and tied behind my back, an' my lef' in a sling."

He dropped Private Shacklock on the ground and sat upon him as before. The boy groaned as the weight settled, but there was a look in his white-lashed, red eyes that was not pleasant.

"I do not know _what_ I will do," said Gunner Barnabas, rocking himself to and fro. "I know 'is breed, an' the way o' the likes o' them. If I was in 'is Comp'ny, an' this 'ad 'appened, an' I 'ad struck 'im, as I _would_ ha' struck him, 'twould ha' all passed off an' bin forgot till the drink was in 'im again--a month, maybe, or six, maybe. An' when the drink was frizzin' in 'is 'ead he would up and loose off in the night or the day or the evenin'. _All acause of that millin' that 'e would ha forgotten in betweens._ That I would be dead--killed by the likes o' 'im, an' me the next strongest man but three in the British Army!"

Private Shacklock, not so hardly pressed as he had been, found breath to say that if he could only get hold of the fowling-piece again the strongest man but three in the British Army would be seriously crippled for the rest of his days. "Hear that!" said Gunner Barnabas, sitting heavily to silence his chair. "Hear that, you that think things is funny to put into the papers! He would shoot me, 'e would, now; an' so long as he's drunk, or comin' out o' the drink, 'e will want to shoot me. Look a-here!"

He turned the boy's head sideways, his hand round the nape of the neck, his thumb touching the angle of the jaw. "What do you call those marks?" They were the white scars of scrofula, with which Shacklock was eaten up. I told Gunner Barnabas this. "I don't know what that means. I call 'em murder-marks an' signs. If a man 'as these things on 'im, an' drinks, so long as 'e's drunk, 'e's mad--a looney. _But_ that doesn't 'elp if 'e kills you. Look a-here, an' here!" The marks were thick on the jaw and neck. "Stubbs 'ad 'em," said Gunner Barnabas to himself, "an' Lancy 'ad 'em, an' Duggard 'ad 'em, an' wot's come to _them_? _You've_ got 'em," he said, addressing himself to the man he was handling like a roped calf, "an' sooner or later you'll go with the rest of 'em. But this time I will not do anything--exceptin' keep you here till the drink's dead in you."

Gunner Barnabas resettled himself and continued: "Twice this afternoon, Shacklock, you 'ave been so near dyin' that I know no man more so. Once was when I stretched you, an' might ha' wiped off your face with my boot as you was lyin'; an' once was when I lifted you up in my fists. Was you afraid, Shacklock?"

"I were," murmured the half-stifled soldier.

"An' once more I will show you how near you can go to Kingdom Come in my 'ands." He knelt by Shacklock's side, the boy lying still as death. "If I was to hit you here," said he, "I would break your chest, an' you would die. If I was to put my 'and here, an' my other 'and here, I would twis' your neck, an' you would die, Privite Shacklock. If I was to put my knees here an' put your 'ead _so_, I would pull off your 'ead, Privite Shacklock, an' you would die. If you think as how I am a liar, say so, an' I'll show you. _Do_ you think so?"

"No," whispered Private Shacklock, not daring to move a muscle, for Barnabas's hand was on his neck.

"Now, remember," went on Barnabas, "neither you will say nothing nor I will say nothing o' what has happened. I ha' put you to shame before me an' this gentleman here, an' that is enough. But I tell you, an' you give 'eed now, it would be better for you to desert than to go on a-servin' where you are now. If I meets you again--if my Batt'ry lays with your Reg'ment, an' Privite Shacklock is on the rolls, I will first mill you myself till you can't see, and then I will say why I strook you. You must go, an' look bloomin' slippy about it, for if you stay, so sure as God made Paythans an' we've got to wipe 'em out, you'll be loosing off o' unauthorised amminition--in or out o' barricks, an' you'll be 'anged for it. I know your breed, an' I know what these 'ere white marks mean. You're mad, Shacklock, that's all--and here you stay, under me. An' now _choop_, an' lie still."

I waited and smoked, and Gunner Barnabas smoked till the shadows lengthened on the hillside, and a chilly wind began to blow. At dusk Gunner Barnabas rose and looked at his captive. "Drink's out o' 'im now," he said.

"I can't move," whimpered Shacklock. "I've got the fever back again."

"I'll carry you," said Gunner Barnabas, swinging him up and preparing to climb the hill. "Good-night, sir," he said to me. "It looks pretty, doesn't it? But never you forget, an' I won't forget neither, that this 'ere shiverin', shakin', convalescent a-hangin' on to my neck is a ragin', tearin' devil when 'e's lushy--an' 'e a boy!"

He strode up to the hill with his burden, but just before he disappeared he turned round and shouted: "It's the likes o' 'im brings shame on the likes o' us. 'Tain't we ourselves, s'elp me Gawd, 'tain't!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: "Week's News," Feb. 4, 1888.]

HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER[15]

"Whist?"

"Can't make up a four?"

"Poker, then?"

"Never again with you, Robin. 'Tisn't good enough, old man."

"Seeking what he may devour," murmured a third voice from behind a newspaper. "Stop the punkah, and make him go away."

"Don't talk of it on a night like this. It's enough to give a man fits. You've no enterprise. Here I've taken the trouble to come over after dinner----"

"On the off-chance of skinning some one. I don't believe you ever crossed a horse for pleasure."

"That's true, I never did--and there are only two Johnnies in the Club."

"They've all gone off to the Gaff."

"_Wah! Wah!_ They must be pretty hard up for amusement. Help me to a split."

"Split in this weather! Hi, bearer, _do burra--burra_ whiskey-peg _lao_, and just put all the _barf_ into them that you can find."

The newspaper came down with a rustle, as the reader said:

"How the deuce d'you expect a man to improve his mind when you two are _bukking_ about drinks? _Qui hai! Mera wasti bhi._"

"Oh! you're alive, are you? I thought pegs would fetch you out of that. Game for a little poker?"

"Poker--poker--_red-hot_ poker! Saveloy, you're too generous. Can't you let a man die in peace?"

"Who's going to die?"

"I am, please the pigs, if it gets much hotter and that bearer doesn't bring the peg quickly."

"All right. Die away, _mon ami_. Only don't do it in the Club, that's all. Can't have it littered up with dead members. Houligan would object."

"By Jove! I think I can imagine old Houligan doing it. 'Member dead in the ante-room? Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club this way. Call the Babu and see if his last month's bill is paid. Not paid! Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club this way. Babu, attach that body till the bill is paid.' Revel, you might just hurry up your dying once in a way to give us the pleasure of seeing Houligan perform."

"I'll die legitimately," said Revel. "I'm not going to create a fresh scandal in the station. I'll wait for heat-apoplexy, or whatever is going, to come and fetch me."

"This is _pukka_ hot-weather talk," said Saveloy. "I come over for a little honest poker, and find two moderately sensible men, Revel and Dallston, talking tombs. I'm sorry I've thrown away my valuable evening."

"D'you expect us to talk about buttercups and daisies, then?" said Dallston.

"No, but there's some sort of medium between those and Sudden Death."

"There isn't. I haven't seen a daisy for seven years, and now I want to die," said Revel, plunging luxuriously into his peg.

"I knew a Johnnie on the Frontier once who _did_," began Dallston meditatively.

"Half a minute. Bearer, _cherut lao_! Tobacco soothes the nerves when a man is expecting to hear a whacker. We know what your Frontier stories are, Martha."

Dallston had once, in a misguided moment, taken the part of Martha in the burlesque of _Faust_, and the nickname stuck.

"'Tisn't a whacker, it's a fact. He told me so himself."

"They always do, Martha. I've noticed that before. But what did he tell you?"

"He told me that he had died."

"Was _that_ all? Explain him."

"It was this way. The man went down with a bad go of fever and was off his head. About the second day it struck him in the middle of the night."

"Steady the Buffs! Martha, you aren't an Irishman yet."

"Never mind. It's too hot to put it correctly. In the middle of the night he woke up quite calm, and it struck him that it would be a good thing to die--just as it might ha' struck him that it would be a good thing to put ice on his head. He lay on his bed and thought it over, and the more he thought about it, the better sort of _bundobust_ it seemed to be. He was quite calm, you know, and he said that he could have sworn that he had no fever on him."

"Well, what happened?"

"Oh, he got up and loaded his revolver--he remembers all this--and let fly, with the muzzle to his temple. The thing didn't go off, so he turned it up and found he'd forgot to load one chamber."

"Better stop the tale there. We can guess what's coming."

"Hang it! It's a _true_ yarn. Well, he jammed the thing to his head _again_, and it missed fire, and he said that he felt ready to cry with rage, he was so disgusted. So he took it by the muzzle and hit himself on the head with it."

"Good man! Didn't it go off _then_?"

"No, but the blow knocked him silly, and he thought he was dead. He was awfully pleased, for he had been fiddling over the show for nearly half an hour. He dropped down and died. When he got his wits again, he was shaking with the fever worse than ever, but he had sense enough to go and knock up the doctor and give himself into his charge as a lunatic. Then he went clean off his head till the fever wore out."