Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (282 page)

They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till death.

The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table — the same table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight long and long ago — the dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost Basset- Holmer four months’ leave that he might have spent in England, instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by ledge, snow- slide, and grassy slope.

The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch’s dull green uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch’s Cossacks his own dark wiry down- countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not speak of these things openly.

The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of obligation, when an officer rising said, ‘Mr. Vice, the Queen,’ and little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, ‘The Queen, God bless her,’ and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with his ‘brothers glorious,’ but he could not understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of: ‘Rung ho, Hira Singh!’ (which being translated means ‘Go in and win’). ‘Did I whack you over the knee, old man?’ ‘Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?’ ‘Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!’ Then the voice of the colonel, ‘The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!’

After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king’s son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular: — ’Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.’ (‘No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y’know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don’t apologise!’) ‘Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.’ (‘Hear! Hear! Hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!’) ‘Then we will play you afresh’ (‘Happy to meet you.’) ‘till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for sport.’ He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. ‘But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side, though THEY,’ again his eye sought Dirkovitch,’though THEY I say have fifty ponies to our one horse.’ And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.

Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy — the terrible brandy aforementioned — did not understand, nor did the expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira Singh’s was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.

‘Carbine-stealing again!’ said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his chair. ‘This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed him.’

The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as though something was being dragged.

‘Why don’t they put him in the cells till the morning?’ said the colonel testily. ‘See if they’ve damaged him, sergeant.’

The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.

‘Caught a man stealin’ carbines, sir,’ said the corporal. ‘Leastways ‘e was crawlin’ towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an’ the sentry ‘e sez, sir — ’

The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of the man’s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of brandy.

‘WHAT does the sentry say?’ said the colonel.

‘Sez ‘e speaks English, sir,’ said the corporal.

‘So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you’ve no business — ’

Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.

‘Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,’ said he to the colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the ragbound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel’s eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.

Hira Singh leapt to his feet. ‘Colonel Sahib,’ said he, ‘that man is no
Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!’

‘Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?’ said the captain of the Lushkar team.

‘Hear him!’ said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that wept as though it would never cease.

‘He said, “My God!”‘ said little Mildred. ‘I heard him say it.’

The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.

‘Poor devil!’ said the colonel, coughing tremendously. ‘We ought to send him to hospital. He’s been man-handled.’

Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted rebelliously: ‘I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he’s built that way. But I can’t understand his crying. That makes it worse.’

The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.

‘Is he going to cry all night?’ said the colonel, ‘or are we supposed to sit up with little Mildred’s guest until he feels better?’

The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. ‘Oh, my God!’ he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the Victoria Cross — distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel’s chair to say, ‘This isn’t OUR affair, you know, sir,’ led them into the verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.

‘White — white all over,’ said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. ‘What a pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?’

The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and ‘Who are you?’ said he.

There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the colonel’s face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man till ‘Boot and saddle’ was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the floor.

No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars’ champagne with the Hussars’ brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.

‘I don’t see why we should entertain lunatics,’ said the colonel. ‘Call a guard and send him off to the cells. We’ll look into the business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.’

Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.

‘What is it — Oh what is it?’ said little Mildred. Then as a mother might speak to a child, ‘That is a horse. Yes, a horse.’

Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural — ’Yes, I — have seen. But — where is THE horse?’

You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question of calling the guard.

Again he spoke — very slowly, ‘Where is OUR horse?’

There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse, the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for seven-and- thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man’s hands. He placed it above the mantel-piece, it clattered on the ledge as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred’s chair. Then all the men spoke to one another something after this fashion, ‘The drum-horse hasn’t hung over the mantelpiece since ‘67.’ ‘How does he know?’ ‘Mildred, go and speak to him again.’ ‘Colonel, what are you going to do?’ ‘Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.’ ‘It isn’t possible anyhow. The man’s a lunatic.’

Little Mildred stood at the colonel’s side talking in his ear. ‘Will you be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!’ he said, and the mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch’s seat, next to little Mildred’s, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh’s place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in deep silence. Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook and the port spilled on the table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred’s chair and said hoarsely, ‘Mr. Vice, the Queen.’ There was a little pause, but the man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, ‘The Queen, God bless her!’ and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank between his fingers.

Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes to drink the Queen’s toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and that has been broken already.

‘That settles it,’ said the colonel, with a gasp. ‘He’s not a sergeant.
What in the world is he?’

The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could only smile and shake his head.

From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.