Part 3

The Infant turned very red. He was afraid he was being laughed at, and he detested talking before outsiders; but it was the author of _As it was in the Beginning_ who waited.

‘It’s all so new to me,’ pleaded Cleever; ‘and--and you said you liked my book.’

This was a direct appeal that The Infant could understand, and he began rather flurriedly, with much slang bred of nervousness--

‘Pull me up, sir, if I say anything you don’t follow. About six months before I took my leave out of Burma, I was on the Hlinedatalone, up near the Shan States, with sixty Tommies--private soldiers, that is--and another subaltern, a year senior to me. The Burmese business was a subaltern’s war, and our forces were split up into little detachments, all running about the country and trying to keep the dacoits quiet. The dacoits were having a first-class time, y’ know--filling women up with kerosine and setting ’em alight, and burning villages, and crucifying people.’

The wonder in Eustace Cleever’s eyes deepened. He could not quite realise that the cross still existed in any form.

‘Have you ever seen a crucifixion?’ said he.

‘Of course not. ’Shouldn’t have allowed it if I had; but I’ve seen the corpses. The dacoits had a trick of sending a crucified corpse down the river on a raft, just to show they were keeping their tail up and enjoying themselves. Well, that was the kind of people I had to deal with.’

‘Alone?’ said Cleever. Solitude of the soul he could understand--none better--but he had never in the body moved ten miles from his fellows.

‘I had my men, but the rest of it was pretty much alone. The nearest post that could give me orders was fifteen miles away, and we used to heliograph to them, and they used to give us orders same way--too many orders.’

‘Who was your C. O.?’ said Boileau.

‘Bounderby--Major. _Pukka_ Bounderby; more Bounder than _pukka_. He went out up Bhamo way. Shot, or cut down, last year,’ said The Infant.

‘What are these interludes in a strange tongue?’ said Cleever to me.

‘Professional information--like the Mississippi pilots’ talk,’ said I. ‘He did not approve of his major, who died a violent death. Go on, Infant.’

‘Far too many orders. You couldn’t take the Tommies out for a two days’ _daur_--that’s expedition--without being blown up for not asking leave. And the whole country was humming with dacoits. I used to send out spies, and act on their information. As soon as a man came in and told me of a gang in hiding, I’d take thirty men with some grub, and go out and look for them, while the other subaltern lay doggo in camp.’

‘Lay! Pardon me, but _how_ did he lie?’ said Cleever.

‘Lay doggo--lay quiet, with the other thirty men. When I came back, he’d take out his half of the men, and have a good time of his own.’

‘Who was he?’ said Boileau.

‘Carter-Deecey, of the Aurungabadis. Good chap, but too _zubberdusty_, and went _bokhar_ four days out of seven. He’s gone out, too. Don’t interrupt a man.’

Cleever looked helplessly at me.

‘The other subaltern,’ I translated swiftly, ‘came from a native regiment, and was overbearing in his demeanour. He suffered much from the fever of the country, and is now dead. Go on, Infant.’

‘After a bit, we got into trouble for using the men on frivolous occasions, and so I used to put my signaller under arrest to prevent him reading the helio-orders. Then I’d go out and leave a message to be sent an hour after I got clear of the camp, something like this: “Received important information; start in an hour unless countermanded.” If I was ordered back, it didn’t much matter. I swore the C. O.’s watch was wrong, or something, when I came back. The Tommies enjoyed the fun, and--Oh, yes, there was one Tommy who was the bard of the detachment. He used to make up verses on everything that happened.’

‘What sort of verses?’ said Cleever.

‘Lovely verses; and the Tommies used to sing ’em. There was one song with a chorus, and it said something like this.’ The Infant dropped into the true barrack-room twang:

‘Theebaw, the Burma king, did a very foolish thing, When ’e mustered ’ostile forces in ar-rai, ’E little thought that _we_, from far across the sea, Would send our armies up to Mandalai!’

‘O gorgeous!’ said Cleever. ‘And how magnificently direct! The notion of a regimental bard is new to me, but of course it must be so.’

‘He was awf’ly popular with the men,’ said The Infant. ‘He had them all down in rhyme as soon as ever they had done anything. He was a great bard. He was always ready with an elegy when we picked up a Boh--that’s a leader of dacoits.’

‘How did you pick him up?’ said Cleever.

‘Oh! shot him if he wouldn’t surrender.’

‘You! Have you shot a man?’

There was a subdued chuckle from all three boys, and it dawned on the questioner that one experience in life which was denied to himself, and he weighed the souls of men in a balance, had been shared by three very young gentlemen of engaging appearance. He turned round on Nevin, who had climbed to the top of the bookcase, and was sitting cross-legged as before.

‘And have _you_, too?’

‘’Think so,’ said Nevin sweetly. ‘In the Black Mountain. He was rolling cliffs on to my half-company, and spoiling our formation. I took a rifle from a man, and brought him down at the second shot.’

‘Good heavens! And how did you feel afterwards?’

‘Thirsty. I wanted a smoke, too.’

Cleever looked at Boileau--the youngest. Surely his hands were guiltless of blood.

Boileau shook his head and laughed. ‘Go on, Infant,’ said he.

‘And you too?’ said Cleever.

‘Fancy so. It was a case of cut, cut or be cut, with me; so I cut--One. I couldn’t do any more, sir.’

Cleever looked as though he would like to ask many questions, but The Infant swept on, in the full tide of his tale.

‘Well, we were called insubordinate young whelps at last, and strictly forbidden to take the Tommies out any more without orders. I wasn’t sorry, because Tommy is such an exacting sort of creature. He wants to live as though he were in barracks all the time. I was grubbing on fowls and boiled corn, but my Tommies wanted their pound of fresh meat, and their half ounce of this, and their two ounces of t’other thing, and they used to come to me and badger me for plug-tobacco when we were four days in jungle. I said: “I can get you Burma tobacco, but I don’t keep a canteen up my sleeve.” They couldn’t see it. They wanted all the luxuries of the season, confound ’em.’

‘You were alone when you were dealing with these men?’ said Cleever, watching The Infant’s face under the palm of his hand. He was getting new ideas, and they seemed to trouble him.

‘Of course, unless you count the mosquitoes. They were nearly as big as the men. After I had to lie doggo I began to look for something to do; and I was great pals with a man called Hicksey in the Police, the best man that ever stepped on earth; a first-class man.’

Cleever nodded applause. He knew how to appreciate enthusiasm.

‘Hicksey and I were as thick as thieves. He had some Burma mounted police--rummy chaps, armed with sword and snider carbine. They rode punchy Burma ponies, with string stirrups, red cloth saddles, and red bell-rope headstalls. Hicksey used to lend me six or eight of them when I asked him--nippy little devils, keen as mustard. But they told their wives too much, and all my plans got known, till I learned to give false marching orders over-night, and take the men to quite a different village in the morning. Then we used to catch the simple _daku_ before breakfast, and make him very sick. It’s a ghastly country on the Hlinedatalone; all bamboo jungle, with paths about four feet wide winding through it. The _dakus_ knew all the paths, and potted at us as we came round a corner; but the mounted police knew the paths as well as the _dakus_, and we used to go stalking ’em in and out. Once we flushed ’em, the men on the ponies had the advantage of the men on foot. We held all the country absolutely quiet, for ten miles round, in about a month. Then we took Boh Na-ghee, Hicksey and I and the Civil officer. That was a lark!’

‘I think I am beginning to understand a little,’ said Cleever. ‘It was a pleasure to you to administer and fight?’

‘Rather! There’s nothing nicer than a satisfactory little expedition, when you find your plans fit together, and your conformation’s _teek_--correct, you know, and the whole _sub-chiz_--I mean, when everything works out like formulæ on a blackboard. Hicksey had all the information about the Boh. He had been burning villages and murdering people right and left, and cutting up Government convoys and all that. He was lying doggo in a village about fifteen miles off, waiting to get a fresh gang together. So we arranged to take thirty mounted police, and turn him out before he could plunder into our newly-settled villages. At the last minute, the Civil officer in our part of the world thought he’d assist at the performance.’

‘Who was he?’ said Nevin.

‘His name was Dennis,’ said The Infant slowly. ‘And we’ll let it stay so. He’s a better man now than he was then.’

‘But how old was the Civil power?’ said Cleever. ‘The situation is developing itself.’

‘He was about six-and-twenty, and he was awf’ly clever. He knew a lot of things, but I don’t think he was quite steady enough for dacoit-hunting. We started overnight for Boh Na-ghee’s village, and we got there just before morning, without raising an alarm. Dennis had turned out armed to his teeth--two revolvers, a carbine, and all sorts of things. I was talking to Hicksey about posting the men, and Dennis edged his pony in between us, and said, “What shall I do? What shall I do? Tell me what to do, you fellows.” We didn’t take much notice; but his pony tried to bite me in the leg, and I said, “Pull out a bit, old man, till we’ve settled the attack.” He kept edging in, and fiddling with his reins and his revolvers, and saying, “Dear me! Dear me! Oh, dear me! What do you think I’d better do?” The man was in a deadly funk, and his teeth were chattering.’

‘I sympathise with the Civil power,’ said Cleever. ‘Continue, young Clive.’

‘The fun of it was, that he was supposed to be our superior officer. Hicksey took a good look at him, and told him to attach himself to my party. ’Beastly mean of Hicksey, that. The chap kept on edging in and bothering, instead of asking for some men and taking up his own position, till I got angry, and the carbines began popping on the other side of the village. Then I said, “For God’s sake be quiet, and sit down where you are! If you see anybody come out of the village, shoot at him.” I knew he couldn’t hit a hay-rick at a yard. Then I took my men over the garden wall--over the palisades, y’ know--somehow or other, and the fun began. Hicksey had found the Boh in bed under a mosquito-curtain, and he had taken a flying jump on to him.’

‘A flying jump!’ said Cleever. ‘Is _that_ also war?’

‘Yes,’ said The Infant, now thoroughly warmed. ‘Don’t you know how you take a flying jump on to a fellow’s head at school, when he snores in the dormitory? The Boh was sleeping in a bedful of swords and pistols, and Hicksey came down like Zazel through the netting, and the net got mixed up with the pistols and the Boh and Hicksey, and they all rolled on the floor together. I laughed till I couldn’t stand, and Hicksey was cursing me for not helping him; so I left him to fight it out and went into the village. Our men were slashing about and firing, and so were the dacoits, and in the thick of the mess, some ass set fire to a house, and we all had to clear out. I froze on to the nearest _daku_ and ran to the palisade, shoving him in front of me. He wriggled loose, and bounded over the other side. I came after him; but when I had one leg one side and one leg the other of the palisade, I saw that the _daku_ had fallen flat on Dennis’s head. That man had never moved from where I left him. They rolled on the ground together, and Dennis’s carbine went off and nearly shot me. The _daku_ picked himself up and ran, and Dennis buzzed his carbine after him, and it caught him on the back of his head, and knocked him silly. You never saw anything so funny in your life. I doubled up on the top of the palisade and hung there, yelling with laughter. But Dennis began to weep like anything. “Oh, I’ve killed a man,” he said. “I’ve killed a man, and I shall never know another peaceful hour in my life! Is he dead? Oh, _is_ he dead? Good Lord, I’ve killed a man!” I came down and said, “Don’t be a fool;” but he kept on shouting, “Is he dead?” till I could have kicked him. The _daku_ was only knocked out of time with the carbine. He came to after a bit, and I said, “Are you hurt much?” He groaned and said “No.” His chest was all cut with scrambling over the palisade. “The white man’s gun didn’t do that,” he said, “I did that, and _I_ knocked the white man over.” Just like a Burman, wasn’t it? But Dennis wouldn’t be happy at any price. He said: “Tie up his wounds. He’ll bleed to death. Oh, he’ll bleed to death!” “Tie ’em up yourself,” I said, “if you’re so anxious.” “I can’t touch him,” said Dennis, “but here’s my shirt.” He took off his shirt, and fixed the braces again over his bare shoulders. I ripped the shirt up, and bandaged the dacoit quite professionally. He was grinning at Dennis all the time; and Dennis’s haversack was lying on the ground, bursting full of sandwiches. Greedy hog! I took some, and offered some to Dennis. “How can I eat?” he said. “How can you ask me to eat? His very blood is on your hands now, and you’re eating _my_ sandwiches!” “All right,” I said; “I’ll give ’em to the _daku_.” So I did, and the little chap was quite pleased, and wolfed ’em down like one o’clock.’

Cleever brought his hand down on the table with a thump that made the empty glasses dance. ‘That’s Art!’ he said. ‘Flat, flagrant mechanism! Don’t tell me that happened on the spot!’

The pupils of The Infant’s eyes contracted to two pin-points. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, slowly and stiffly, ‘but I am telling this thing _as_ it happened.’

Cleever looked at him a moment. ‘My fault entirely,’ said he; ‘I should have known. Please go on.’

‘Hicksey came out of what was left of the village with his prisoners and captives, all neatly tied up. Boh Na-ghee was first, and one of the villagers, as soon as he found the old ruffian helpless, began kicking him quietly. The Boh stood it as long as he could, and then groaned, and we saw what was going on. Hicksey tied the villager up, and gave him a half-a-dozen, good, with a bamboo, to remind him to leave a prisoner alone. You should have seen the old Boh grin. Oh! but Hicksey was in a furious rage with everybody. He’d got a wipe over the elbow that had tickled up his funny-bone, and he was rabid with me for not having helped him with the Boh and the mosquito-net. I had to explain that I couldn’t do anything. If you’d seen ’em both tangled up together on the floor in one kicking cocoon, you’d have laughed for a week. Hicksey swore that the only decent man of his acquaintance was the Boh, and all the way to camp Hicksey was talking to the Boh, and the Boh was complaining about the soreness of his bones. When we got back, and had had a bath, the Boh wanted to know when he was going to be hanged. Hicksey said he couldn’t oblige him on the spot, but had to send him to Rangoon. The Boh went down on his knees, and reeled off a catalogue of his crimes--he ought to have been hanged seventeen times over, by his own confession--and implored Hicksey to settle the business out of hand. “If I’m sent to Rangoon,” said he, “they’ll keep me in jail all my life, and that is a death every time the sun gets up or the wind blows.” But we had to send him to Rangoon, and, of course, he was let off down there, and given penal servitude for life. When I came to Rangoon I went over the jail--I had helped to fill it, y’ know--and the old Boh was there, and he spotted me at once. He begged for some opium first, and I tried to get him some, but that was against the rules. Then he asked me to have his sentence changed to death, because he was afraid of being sent to the Andamans. I couldn’t do that either, but I tried to cheer him, and told him how things were going up-country, and the last thing he said was--“Give my compliments to the fat white man who jumped on me. If I’d been awake I’d have killed him.” I wrote that to Hicksey next mail, and--and that’s all. I’m ’fraid I’ve been gassing awf’ly, sir.’

Cleever said nothing for a long time. The Infant looked uncomfortable. He feared that, misled by enthusiasm, he had filled up the novelist’s time with unprofitable recital of trivial anecdotes.

Then said Cleever, ‘I can’t understand. Why should you have seen and done all these things before you have cut your wisdom-teeth?’

‘Don’t know,’ said The Infant apologetically. ‘I haven’t seen much--only Burmese jungle.’

‘And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility,’ said Cleever, under his breath. ‘You won’t have any sensations left at thirty, if you go on as you have done. But I want to hear more tales--more tales!’ He seemed to forget that even subalterns might have engagements of their own.

‘We’re thinking of dining out somewhere--the lot of us--and going on to the Empire afterwards,’ said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously near to ‘cheek.’ And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden among boys at large, said nothing on his side.

Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: ‘Won’t you come too, sir?’

Cleever almost shouted ‘Yes,’ and while he was being helped into his coat, continued to murmur ‘Good heavens!’ at intervals in a way that the boys could not understand.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to the Empire in my life,’ said he; ‘but--what _is_ my life after all? Let us go.’

They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they had come to see me but had gone over to the better man; which was humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was he not the author of _As it was in the Beginning_, and a person in whose company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later, he had taken less interest in the performance before him than in their conversations, and they protested with emphasis that he was ‘as good a man as they make. ’Knew what a man was driving at almost before he said it; and yet he’s so damned simple about things any man knows.’ That was one of many comments.

At midnight they returned, announcing that they were ‘highly respectable gondoliers,’ and that oysters and stout were what they chiefly needed. The eminent novelist was still with them, and I think he was calling them by their shorter names. I am certain that he said he had been moving in worlds not realised, and that they had shown him the Empire in a new light.

Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, ‘Thank heaven we have within the land ten thousand as good as they,’ and when he departed, asked him what he thought of things generally.

He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though singing was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure that few lips would be moved to song if they could find a sufficiency of kissing.

Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this in the morning.

MY LORD THE ELEPHANT.

’Less you want your toes trod off you’d better get back at once, For the bullocks are walkin’ two by two, The _byles_ are walkin’ two by two, The bullocks are walkin’ two by two, An’ the elephants bring the guns! Ho! Yuss! Great--big--long--black forty-pounder guns: Jiggery-jolty to and fro, Each as big as a launch in tow-- Blind--dumb--broad-breeched beggars o’ batterin’ guns!

_Barrack-room Ballad._

Touching the truth of this tale there need be no doubt at all, for it was told to me by Mulvaney at the back of the elephant-lines, one warm evening when we were taking the dogs out for exercise. The twelve Government elephants rocked at their pickets outside the big mud-walled stables (one arch, as wide as a bridge-arch, to each restless beast), and the _mahouts_ were preparing the evening meal. Now and again some impatient youngster would smell the cooking flour-cakes and squeal; and the naked little children of the elephant-lines would strut down the row shouting and commanding silence, or, reaching up, would slap at the eager trunks. Then the elephants feigned to be deeply interested in pouring dust upon their heads, but, so soon as the children passed, the rocking, fidgeting, and muttering broke out again.

The sunset was dying, and the elephants heaved and swayed dead black against the one sheet of rose-red low down in the dusty gray sky. It was at the beginning of the hot weather, just after the troops had changed into their white clothes, so Mulvaney and Ortheris looked like ghosts walking through the dusk. Learoyd had gone off to another barrack to buy sulphur ointment for his last dog under suspicion of mange, and with delicacy had put his kennel into quarantine at the back of the furnace where they cremate the anthrax cases.

‘_You_ wouldn’t like mange, little woman?’ said Ortheris, turning my terrier over on her fat white back with his foot. ‘You’re no end bloomin’ partic’lar, you are. ’Oo wouldn’t take no notice o’ me t’other day ’cause she was goin’ ’ome all alone in ’er dorg-cart, eh? Settin’ on the box-seat like a bloomin’ little tart, you was, Vicy. Now you run along an’ make them ’uttees ’oller. Sick ’em, Vicy, loo!’

Elephants loathe little dogs. Vixen barked herself down the pickets, and in a minute all the elephants were kicking and squealing and clucking together.

‘Oh, you soldier-men,’ said a mahout angrily, ‘call off your she-dog. She is frightening our elephant-folk.’

‘Rummy beggars!’ said Ortheris meditatively. ‘’Call ’em people, same as if they was. An’ they are too. Not so bloomin’ rummy when you come to think of it, neither.’

Vixen returned yapping to show that she could do it again if she liked, and established herself between Ortheris’s knees, smiling a large smile at his lawful dogs who dared not fly at her.

‘’Seed the battery this mornin’?’ said Ortheris. He meant the newly-arrived elephant-battery; otherwise he would have said simply ‘guns.’ Three elephants harnessed tandem go to each gun, and those who have not seen the big forty-pounders of position trundling along in the wake of their gigantic team have yet something to behold. The lead-elephant had behaved very badly on parade; had been cut loose, sent back to the lines in disgrace, and was at that hour squealing and lashing out with his trunk at the end of the line; a picture of blind, bound, bad temper. His mahout, standing clear of the flail-like blows, was trying to soothe him.

‘That’s the beggar that cut up on p’rade. ’E’s _must_,’ said Ortheris pointing. ‘There’ll be murder in the lines soon, and then, per’aps, ’e’ll get loose an’ we’ll ’ave to be turned out to shoot ’im, same as when one o’ they native king’s elephants _musted_ last June. ’Ope ’e will.’

‘_Must_ be sugared!’ said Mulvaney contemptuously from his resting-place on a pile of dried bedding. ‘He’s no more than in a powerful bad timper wid bein’ put upon. I’d lay my kit he’s new to the gun-team, an’ by natur’ he hates haulin’. Ask the mahout, sorr.’

I hailed the old white-bearded mahout who was lavishing pet words on his sulky red-eyed charge.