Indian Tales by Rudyard Kipling
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Rudyard Kipling >> Indian Tales
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"'Good mornin', Peg,' I sez, whin he dhrew breath afther cursin' the
Adj'tint Gen'ral; 'I've put on my best coat to see you, Peg Barney,' sez
I.
"'Thin take ut off again,' sez Peg Barney, latherin' away wid the boot;
'take ut off an' dance, ye lousy civilian!'
"Wid that he begins cursin' ould Dhrumshticks, being so full he clean
disremimbers the Brigade-Major an' the Judge Advokit Gen'ral.
"'Do you not know me, Peg?' sez I, though me blood was hot in me wid being
called a civilian."
"An' him a decent married man!" wailed Dinah Shadd.
"'I do not,' sez Peg, 'but dhrunk or sober I'll tear the hide off your
back wid a shovel whin I've stopped singin'.'
"'Say you so, Peg Barney?' sez I. 'Tis clear as mud you've forgotten me.
I'll assist your autobiography.' Wid that I stretched Peg Barney, boot an'
all, an' wint into the camp. An awful sight ut was!
"'Where's the orf'cer in charge av the detachment?' sez I to Scrub
Greene--the manest little worm that ever walked.
"'There's no orf'cer, ye ould cook,' sez Scrub; 'we're a bloomin'
Republic.'
"'Are you that?' sez I; 'thin I'm O'Connell the Dictator, an' by this you
will larn to kape a civil tongue in your rag-box.'
"Wid that I stretched Scrub Greene an' wint to the orf'cer's tent. 'Twas a
new little bhoy--not wan I'd iver seen before. He was sittin' in his tent,
purtendin' not to 'ave ear av the racket.
"I saluted--but for the life av me! mint to shake hands whin I went in.
Twas the sword hangin' on the tent-pole changed my will.
"'Can't I help, sorr?' sez I; ''tis a strong man's job they've given you,
an' you'll be wantin' help by sundown.' He was a bhoy wid bowils, that
child, an' a rale gintleman.
"'Sit down,' sez he.
"'Not before my orf'cer,' sez I; an' I tould him fwhat my service was.
"'I've heard av you,' sez he. 'You tuk the town av Lungtungpen nakid.'
"'Faith,' thinks I, 'that's Honor an' Glory, for 'twas Lift'nint Brazenose
did that job. 'I'm wid ye, sorr,' sez I, 'if I'm av use. They shud niver
ha' sent you down wid the draf'. Savin' your presince, sorr,' I sez, 'tis
only Lift'nint Hackerston in the Ould Rig'mint can manage a Home draf'.'
"'I've niver had charge of men like this before,' sez he, playin' wid the
pens on the table; 'an' I see by the Rig'lations'--
"'Shut your oi to the Rig'lations, sorr,' I sez, 'till the throoper's into
blue wather. By the Rig'lations you've got to tuck thim up for the night,
or they'll be runnin' foul av my coolies an' makin' a shiverarium half
through the country. Can you trust your noncoms, sorr?'
"'Yes,' sez he.
"'Good,' sez I; 'there'll be throuble before the night. Are you marchin',
sorr?'
"'To the next station,' sez he.
"'Better still,' sez I; 'there'll be big throuble.'
"'Can't be too hard on a Home draf',' sez he; 'the great thing is to get
thim in-ship.'
"'Faith you've larnt the half av your lesson, sorr,' sez I, 'but av you
shtick to the Rig'lations you'll niver get thim in-ship at all, at all. Or
there won't be a rag av kit betune thim whin you do.'
"'Twas a dear little orf'cer bhoy, an' by way av kapin' his heart up, I
tould him fwhat I saw wanst in a draf' in Egypt."
"What was that, Mulvaney?" said I.
"Sivin an' fifty men sittin' on the bank av a canal, laughin' at a poor
little squidgereen av an orf'cer that they'd made wade into the slush an'
pitch the things out av the boats for their Lord High Mightinesses. That
made me orf'cer bhoy woild wid indignation.
"'Soft an' aisy, sorr,' sez I; 'you've niver had your draf' in hand since
you left cantonmints. Wait till the night, an' your work will be ready to
you. Wid your permission, sorr, I will investigate the camp, an' talk to
my ould friends. Tis no manner av use thryin' to shtop the divilmint
_now_.'
"Wid that I wint out into the camp an' inthrojuced mysilf to ivry man
sober enough to remimber me. I was some wan in the ould days, an' the
bhoys was glad to see me--all excipt Peg Barney wid a eye like a tomata
five days in the bazar, an' a nose to match. They come round me an' shuk
me, an' I tould thim I was in privit employ wid an income av me own, an' a
drrrawin'-room fit to bate the Quane's; an' wid me lies an' me shtories
an' nonsinse gin'rally, I kept 'em quiet in wan way an' another, knockin'
roun' the camp. Twas _bad_ even thin whin I was the Angil av Peace.
"I talked to me ould non-coms--_they_ was sober--an' betune me an' thim we
wore the draf' over into their tents at the proper time. The little
orf'cer bhoy he comes round, decint an' civil-spoken as might be.
"'Rough quarters, men,' sez he, 'but you can't look to be as comfortable
as in barricks. We must make the best av things. I've shut my eyes to a
dale av dog's tricks to-day, an' now there must be no more av ut.'
"'No more we will. Come an' have a dhrink, me son,' sez Peg Barney,
staggerin' where he stud. Me little orf'cer bhoy kep' his timper.
"'You're a sulky swine, you are,' sez Peg Barney, an' at that the men in
the tent began to laugh.
"I tould you me orf'cer bhoy had bowils. He cut Peg Barney as near as
might be on the oi that I'd squshed whin we first met. Peg wint spinnin'
acrost the tent.
"'Peg him out, sorr,' sez I, in a whishper.
"'Peg him out!' sez me orf'cer bhoy, up loud, just as if 'twas
battalion-p'rade an' he pickin' his wurrds from the Sargint.
"The non-coms tuk Peg Barney--a howlin' handful he was--an' in three
minuts he was pegged out--chin down, tight-dhrawn--on his stummick, a
tent-peg to each arm an' leg, swearin' fit to turn a naygur white.
"I tuk a peg an' jammed ut into his ugly jaw.--'Bite on that, Peg Barney,'
I sez; 'the night is settin' frosty, an' you'll be wantin' divarsion
before the mornin'. But for the Rig'lations you'd be bitin' on a bullet
now at the thriangles, Peg Barney,' sez I.
"All the draf' was out av their tents watchin' Barney bein' pegged.
"''Tis agin the Rig'lations! He strook him!' screeches out Scrub Greene,
who was always a lawyer; an' some of the men tuk up the shoutin'.
"'Peg out that man!' sez my orf'cer bhoy, niver losin' his timper; an' the
non-coms wint in and pegged out Scrub Greene by the side av Peg Barney.
"I cud see that the draf' was comin' roun'. The men stud not knowin' fwhat
to do.
"'Get to your tents!' sez me orf'cer bhoy. 'Sargint, put a sintry over
these two men.'
"The men wint back into the tents like jackals, an' the rest av the night
there was no noise at all excipt the stip av the sintry over the two, an'
Scrub Greene blubberin' like a child. 'Twas a chilly night, an' faith, ut
sobered Peg Barney.
"Just before Revelly, my orf'cer bhoy comes out an' sez: 'Loose those men
an' send thim to their tents!' Scrub Greene wint away widout a word, but
Peg Barney, stiff wid the cowld, stud like a sheep, thryin' to make his
orf'cer understhand he was sorry for playin' the goat.
"There was no tucker in the draf' whin ut fell in for the march, an' divil
a wurrd about 'illegality' cud I hear.
"I wint to the ould Color Sargint and I sez:--'Let me die in glory,' sez
I. 'I've seen a man this day!'
"'A man he is,' sez ould Hother; 'the draf's as sick as a herrin'. They'll
all go down to the sea like lambs. That bhoy has the bowils av a
cantonmint av Gin'rals.'
"'Amin,' sez I, 'an' good luck go wid him, wheriver he be, by land or by
sea. Let me know how the draf' gets clear.'
"An' do you know how they _did_? That bhoy, so I was tould by letter from
Bombay, bullydamned 'em down to the dock, till they cudn't call their
sowls their own. From the time they left me oi till they was 'tween decks,
not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. An', by the Holy Articles
av War, whin they wint aboard they cheered him till they cudn't spake, an'
_that_, mark you, has not come about wid a draf' in the mim'ry av livin'
man! You look to that little orf'cer bhoy. He has bowils. 'Tis not ivry
child that wud chuck the Rig'lations to Flanders an' stretch Peg Barney on
a wink from a brokin an' dilapidated ould carkiss like mesilf. I'd be
proud to serve"--
"Terrence, you're a civilian," said Dinah Shadd, warningly.
"So I am--so I am. Is ut likely I wud forget ut? But he was a gran' bhoy
all the same, an' I'm only a mudtipper wid a hod on my shoulthers. The
whiskey's in the heel av your hand, sorr. Wid your good lave we'll dhrink
to the Ould Rig'mint--three fingers--standin' up!"
And we drank.
BY WORD OF MOUTH
Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,
A spectre at my door,
Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--
I shall but love you more,
Who, from Death's house returning, give me still
One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
--_Shadow Houses_.
This tale may be explained by those who know how souls are made, and where
the bounds of the Possible are put down. I have lived long enough in this
India to know that it is best to know nothing, and can only write the
story as it happened.
Dumoise was our Civil Surgeon at Meridki, and we called him "Dormouse,"
because he was a round little, sleepy little man. He was a good Doctor and
never quarreled with any one, not even with our Deputy Commissioner who
had the manners of a bargee and the tact of a horse. He married a girl as
round and as sleepy-looking as himself. She was a Miss Hillardyce,
daughter of "Squash" Hillardyce of the Berars, who married his Chief's
daughter by mistake. But that is another story.
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A honeymoon in India is seldom more than a week long; but there is nothing
to hinder a couple from extending it over two or three years. India is a
delightful country for married folk who are wrapped up in one another.
They can live absolutely alone and without interruption--just as the
Dormice did. Those two little people retired from the world after their
marriage, and were very happy. They were forced, of course, to give
occasional dinners, but they made no friends thereby, and the Station went
its own way and forgot them; only saying, occasionally, that Dormouse was
the best of good fellows though dull. A Civil Surgeon who never quarrels
is a rarity, appreciated as such.
Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere--least of all in
India, where we are few in the land and very much dependent on each
other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world
for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid
broke out in the Station in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife
went down. He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted before he
realized that Mrs. Dumoise was burning with something worse than simple
fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call on Mrs.
Shute, the Engineer's wife, and timidly speak about his trouble.
Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very helpless in
typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses minute
by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise's ears for
what she called his "criminal delay," and went off at once to look after
the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that winter
and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt
certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did their best. The
women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the
bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for
fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in
triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a
dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died
in a week and the Station went to the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly
at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away.
After the death, Dumoise crept into his own house and refused to be
comforted. He did his duties perfectly, but we all felt that he should go
on leave, and the other men of his own Service told him so. Dumoise was
very thankful for the suggestion--he was thankful for anything in those
days--and went to Chini on a walking-tour. Chini is some twenty marches
from Simla, in the heart of the Hills, and the scenery is good if you are
in trouble. You pass through big, still deodar-forests, and under big,
still cliffs, and over big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's
breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the deodars
says--"Hush--hush--hush." So little Dumoise was packed off to Chini, to
wear down his grief with a full-plate camera and a rifle. He took also a
useless bearer, because the man had been his wife's favorite servant. He
was idle and a thief, but Dumoise trusted everything to him.
On his way back from Chini, Dumoise turned aside to Bagi, through the
Forest Reserve which is on the spur of Mount Huttoo. Some men who have
traveled more than a little say that the march from Kotegarh to Bagi is
one of the finest in creation. It runs through dark wet forest, and ends
suddenly in bleak, nipped hillside and black rocks. Bagi dak-bungalow is
open to all the winds and is bitterly cold. Few people go to Bagi. Perhaps
that was the reason why Dumoise went there. He halted at seven in the
evening, and his bearer went down the hillside to the village to engage
coolies for the next day's march. The sun had set, and the night-winds
were beginning to croon among the rocks. Dumoise leaned on the railing of
the veranda, waiting for his bearer to return. The man came back almost
immediately after he had disappeared, and at such a rate that Dumoise
fancied he must have crossed a bear. He was running as hard as he could up
the face of the hill.
But there was no bear to account for his terror. He raced to the veranda
and fell down, the blood spurting from his nose and his face iron-grey.
Then he gurgled--"I have seen the _Memsahib_! I have seen the _Memsahib_!"
"Where?" said Dumoise.
"Down there, walking on the road to the village. She was in a blue dress,
and she lifted the veil of her bonnet and said--'Ram Dass, give my
_salaams_ to the _Sahib_, and tell him that I shall meet him next month at
Nuddea.' Then I ran away, because I was afraid."
What Dumoise said or did I do not know. Ram Dass declares that he said
nothing, but walked up and down the veranda all the cold night, waiting
for the _Memsahib_ to come up the hill and stretching out his arms into
the dark like a madman. But no _Memsahib_ came, and, next day, he went on
to Simla cross-questioning the bearer every hour.
Ram Dass could only say that he had met Mrs. Dumoise and that she had
lifted up her veil and given him the message which he had faithfully
repeated to Dumoise. To this statement Ram Dass adhered. He did not know
where Nuddea was, had no friends at Nuddea, and would most certainly never
go to Nuddea; even though his pay were doubled,
Nuddea is in Bengal and has nothing whatever to do with a Doctor serving
in the Punjab. It must be more than twelve hundred miles south of Meridki.
Dumoise went through Simla without halting, and returned to Meridki, there
to take over charge from the man who had been officiating for him during
his tour. There were some Dispensary accounts to be explained, and some
recent orders of the Surgeon-General to be noted, and, altogether, the
taking-over was a full day's work, In the evening, Dumoise told his _locum
tenens_, who was an old friend of his bachelor days, what had happened at
Bagi; and the man said that Ram Dass might as well have chosen Tuticorin
while he was about it.
At that moment, a telegraph-peon came in with a telegram from Simla,
ordering Dumoise not to take over charge at Meridki, but to go at once to
Nuddea on special duty. There was a nasty outbreak of cholera at Nuddea,
and the Bengal Government, being short-handed, as usual, had borrowed a
Surgeon from the Punjab.
Dumoise threw the telegram across the table and said--"Well?"
The other Doctor said nothing. It was all that he could say.
Then he remembered that Dumoise had passed through Simla on his way from
Bagi; and thus might, possibly, have heard first news of the impending
transfer.
He tried to put the question, and the implied suspicion into words, but
Dumoise stopped him with--"If I had desired _that_, I should never have
come back from Chini. I was shooting there. I wish to live, for I have
things to do ... but I shall not be sorry."
The other man bowed his head, and helped, in the twilight, to pack up
Dumoise's just opened trunks. Ram Dass entered with the lamps.
"Where is the _Sahib_ going?" he asked.
"To Nuddea," said Dumoise, softly.
Ram Dass clawed Dumoise's knees and boots and begged him not to go. Ram
Dass wept and howled till he was turned out of the room. Then he wrapped
up all his belongings and came back to ask for a character. He was not
going to Nuddea to see his _Sahib_ die and, perhaps, to die himself.
So Dumoise gave the man his wages and went down to Nuddea alone; the other
Doctor bidding him good-bye as one under sentence of death.
Eleven days later he had joined his _Memsahib_; and the Bengal Government
had to borrow a fresh Doctor to cope with that epidemic at Nuddea, The
first importation lay dead in Chooadanga Dak Bungalow.
THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT
"And a little child shall lead them."
In the Army List they still stand as "The Fore and Fit Princess
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Auspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal
Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A," but the Army through all its
barracks and canteens knows them now as the "Fore and Aft." They may in
time do something that shall make their new title honorable, but at
present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them "Fore and
Aft" does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders.
Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will
bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language;
but a whisper of "Fore and Aft" will bring out this regiment with rifles.
Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the
job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were openly
beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know it; their
officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and when the next war comes
the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments of the Line
that have a black mark against their names which they will then wipe out,
and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops upon whom they do
their wiping.
The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed to be above
proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently
shoveled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshet of unguarded
talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. Then one hears
strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of
orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace
that, but for the standing luck of the British Army, might have ended in
brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the
Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood fires, and
the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself, please God, his men
shall never behave unhandily,
The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional lapses;
but this verdict he should not know. A moderately intelligent General will
waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may
be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the capacity of his
regiment for three months after it has taken the field; and even a Company
Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper and temperament of his
own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day more
particularly, should not be blamed for falling back. He should be shot or
hanged afterward--_pour encourager les autres_; but he should not be
vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste of space.
He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four
years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and
four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to
teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to
enjoy himself--in India he wants to save money--and he does not in the
least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make
him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to
speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. Thus, if
he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he
runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects
that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either
deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break,
according to the discipline under which he has lain for four years.
Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an
imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes, and
unsupported, by any regimental associations, this young man is suddenly
introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall
and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right and the left and
sees old soldiers--men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know what
they are about--taking a charge, rush, or demonstration without
embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the butt of his
rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the greater if he hears a senior,
who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on occasion,
whispering:--"They'll shout and carry on like this for five minutes. Then
they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em by the short hairs!"
But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service,
turning white and playing with their triggers and saying:--"What the
Hell's up now?" while the Company Commanders are sweating into their
sword-hilts and shouting:--"Front-rank, fix bayonets. Steady
there--steady! Sight for three hundred--no, for five! Lie down, all!
Steady! Front-rank, kneel!" and so forth, he becomes unhappy; and grows
acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of
fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If he
can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own
fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind
passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief, controlled by a
chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is not moved about, and
begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in that crisis is badly
mauled and hears orders that were never given, he will break, and he will
break badly; and of all things under the sight of the Sun there is nothing
more terrible than a broken British regiment. When the worst comes to the
worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and
the Company Commanders had better escape to the enemy and stay there for
safety's sake. If they can be made to come again they are not pleasant men
to meet, because they will not break twice.
About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in
half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too
little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer
of to-day it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ
either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by
gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. The ideal
soldier should, of course, think for himself--the _Pocketbook_ says so.
Unfortunately, to attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of
thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A blackguard may be
slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a
little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate
another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, officered by rank
Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a
hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians led by most improper
young unbelievers. But these things prove the rule--which is that the
midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have ideas about the value of
life and an upbringing that has not taught them to go on and take the
chances. They are carefully unprovided with a backing of comrades who have
been shot over, and until that backing is re-introduced, as a great many
Regimental Commanders intend it shall be, they are more liable to disgrace
themselves than the size of the Empire or the dignity of the Army allows.
Their officers are as good as good can be, because their training begins
early, and God has arranged that a clean-run youth of the British middle
classes shall, in the matter of backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all
other youths. For this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing
nothing, with a tin sword in his hand and joy in his heart until he is
dropped. If he dies, he dies like a gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home
that he has been "potted," "sniped," "chipped" or "cut over," and sits
down to besiege Government for a wound-gratuity until the next little war
breaks out, when he perjures himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his
Colonel, burns incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the
Front once more.
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