"'What's the story?' I asked, of course.

"'Mutiny. 1857,' said Malet-Marsac. 'Husband shot on the parade-ground. She got the news and marched straight to the spot. They cut her in pieces as she held his body in her arms. Lots of people have seen her—anywhere between that room and the parade-ground.'

"'Then you have to believe in ghosts—in Duri, or how do you account for it?' I asked.

"'I don't bother my head,' he replied. 'But I have seen that poor lady a good many times. And no one told me a word about her until after I had seen her.'"

And then Mrs. Dearman suddenly rose, as her hostess "caught" the collective female eye of the table.

"Was all that about the 'ghosts' of the old Irishwoman and the Early Victorian Lady true, you fellows?" asked John Bruce, the Professor of Engineering, after coffee, cigars and the second glass of port had reconciled the residue or sediment to the departure of the sterner sex.

"Didn't you hear me say my story was true?" replied Colonel Jackson brusquely. "It was absolutely and perfectly true."

"Same here," added Mr. Ross-Ellison.

"Then on two separate occasions you two have seen what you can only believe to be the ghosts of dead people?"

"On one occasion I have, without any possibility of error or doubt, seen the ghost of a dead person," said Colonel Jackson.

"Have you ever come across any other thoroughly substantiated cases of ghost-seeing—cases which have really convinced you, Colonel?" queried Mr. Ross-Ellison—being deeply interested in the subject by reason of queer powers and experiences of his own.

"Yes. Many in which I fully believe, and one about which I am certain. A very interesting case—and a very cruel tragedy."

"Would you mind telling me about it?" asked Mr. Ross-Ellison.

"Pleasure. More—I'll give you as interesting and convincing a 'human document' about it as ever you read, if you like."

"I shall be eternally grateful," replied the other.

"It was a sad and sordid business. The man, whose last written words I'll give you to read, was a Sergeant-Major in the Volunteer Rifles (also at Duri where I was stationed, as you know) and he was a gentleman born and bred, poor chap." ["Lawrence-Smith," murmured Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison with an involuntary movement of surprise. His eyebrows rose and his jaw fell.] "Yes, he was that rare bird a gentleman-ranker who remained a gentleman and a ranker—and became a fine soldier. He called himself Lawrence-Smith and owned a good old English name that you'd recognize if I mentioned it—and you'd be able to name some of his relatives too. He was kicked out of Sandhurst for striking one of the subordinate staff under extreme provocation. The army was in his blood and bones, and he enlisted."

"Excuse me," interrupted Mr. Ross-Ellison, "you speak of this Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith in the past tense. Is he dead then?"

"He is dead," replied Colonel Jackson. "Did you know him?"

"I believe I saw him at Duri," answered Mr. Ross-Ellison with an excellent assumption of indifference. "What's the story?"

"I'll give you his own tale on paper—let me have it back—and, mind you, every single word of it is Gospel truth. The man was a gentleman, an educated, thoughtful, sober chap, and as sane as you or I. I got to know him well—he was in hospital, with blood-poisoning from panther-bite, for a time—and we became friends. Actual friends, I mean. Used to play golf with him. (You remember the Duri Links.) In mufti, you'd never have dreamed for a moment that he was not a Major or a Colonel. Army life had not coarsened him in the slightest, and he kept some lounge-suits and mess-kit by Poole. Many a good Snob of my acquaintance has left my house under the impression that the Lawrence-Smith he had met there, and with whom he had been hail-fellow-well-met, was his social equal or superior.

"He simply was a refined and educated gentleman and that's all there is about it. Well—you'll read his statement—and, as you read, you may tell yourself that I am as convinced of its truth as I am of anything in this world.... He was dead when I got to him.

"The stains, on the backs of some of the sheets and on the front of the last one, are—blood stains...."

And at this point their host suggested the propriety of joining the ladies....

Colonel Jackson gave Mr. Ross-Ellison a "lift" in his powerful motor as far as his bungalow, entered, and a few minutes later emerged with a long and fat envelope.

"Here you are," said he. "I took it upon myself to annex the papers as I was his friend. Let's have 'em back. No need for me to regard them as 'private and confidential' so far as I can see, poor chap. Good-night."

Having achieved the haven of loose Pathan trousers and a muslin shirt (worn over them) in the privacy of his bed-room, Mr. Ross-Ellison, looking rather un-English, sat on a camp-cot (he never really liked chairs) and read, as follows, from a sheaf of neatly-written (and bloodstained) sheets of foolscap.

* * * * *

I have come to the point at which I decide to stop. I have had enough. But I should like to ask one or two questions.

1. Why has a man no right to quit a world in which he no longer desires to live? 2. Why should Evil be allowed to triumph? 3. Why should people who cannot see spirit forms be so certain that such do not exist, when none but an ignorant fool argues, "I believe in what I can see"?

With regard to the first question I maintain that a man has a perfect right to "take" the life that was "given" him (without his own consent or desire), provided it is not an act of cowardice nor an evasion of just punishment or responsibility. I would add—provided also that he does not, in so doing, basely desert his duty, those who are in any way dependent on him, or those who really love him.

I detest that idiotic phrase "while of unsound mind". I am as sound in mind as any man living, but because I end an unbearable state of affairs, and take the only step I can think of as likely to give me peace—I shall be written down mad. Moreover should I fail—in my attempt to kill myself (which I shall not) I should be prosecuted as a criminal!

To me, albeit I have lived long under strict discipline and regard true discipline as the first essential of moral, physical, mental, and social training, to me it seems a gross and unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the individual—to deny him sufficient captaincy of his soul for him to be free to control it at the dictates of his conscience, and to keep it Here or to send it There as may seem best. Surely the implanted love of life and fear of death are sufficient safeguards without any legislation or insolent arrogant interference between a man and his own ego? Anyhow, such are my views, and in perfect soundness of mind and body, after mature reflection and with full confidence in my right so to do, I am about to end my life here.

As to the second question, "Why should Evil be allowed to triumph?" I confess that my mind cannot argue in a circle and say, "You are born full of Original Sin, and if you sin you are Damned"—a vicious circle drawn for me by the gloomy, haughty, insincere and rather unintelligent young gentleman whom I respectfully salute as Chaplain, and who regards me and every other non-commissioned soldier as a Common, if not Low, person.

He would not even answer my queries by means of the good old loop-hole, "It is useless to appeal to Reason if you cannot to Faith" and so beg the question. He said that things were because the Lord said they were, and that it was impious to doubt it. More impious was it, I gathered, to doubt him, and to allude to Criticisms he had never read.

His infallible "proof" was "It is in the Bible".

Possibly I shall shortly know why an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Impeccable Deity allows this world to be the Hell it is, even if there be no actual Hell for the souls of his errant Creatures (in spite of the statements of the Chaplain who appears to have exclusive information on the subject, inaccessible to laymen, and to rest peacefully assured of a Real Hell for the wicked,—nonconforming, and vulgar).

At present I cannot understand and I do not know—though I am informed and infused with a burning and reverent desire to understand and to know—why Evil should be allowed to triumph, as in my own case, as well as in those of millions of others, it does. And thirdly, why does the man who would never deny beauty in a poem or picture because he failed to see it while others did, deny that immaterial forms of the dead exist, because he has never seen one, though others have?

I know of so many many men who would blush to be called "I-believe-what-I-see men," who yet laugh to scorn the bare idea of the materialization and visualization of visitants from the spirit world, because they have never seen one. I have so often met the argument, "The ghost of a man I might conceive—but I can not conceive the appearance of the ghost of a pair of trousers or of a top-hat," offered as though it were unanswerable. Surely the spirit, aura, shade, ghost, soul, ego—what you will—can permeate and penetrate and pervade clothing and other matter as well as flesh?

Well, once again, I do not know,—and yet I have seen, not once but repeatedly, not by moonlight in a churchyard, but under the Indian sun on a parade-ground, the ghost of a man and of all his accoutrements,—of a rifle, of a horse and all a horse's trappings.

I have been a teetotaller for years, I have never had sunstroke and I am as absolutely sane as ever a man was.

And further I am in no sense remorseful, repentant, or "dogged by the spectre of an evil deed".

I killed Burker intentionally. Were he alive again I would kill him again. I punished him myself because the law could not punish him as he deserved, and I in no way regret or deplore my just and judicial action. There are deeds a gentleman must resent and punish—with the extreme penalty. No, it is in no sense a case of the self-tormented wretch driven mad by the awful hallucinations of his guilty, unhinged mind. I am no haunted murderer pursued by phantoms and illusions, believing himself always in the presence of his victim's ghost.

All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that "murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and terrible hallucination.

My case is in no wise parallel.

I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. Exactly how and why I killed him, and how and why I am about to kill myself, I will now set forth, without the slightest exaggeration, special pleading or any other deviation from the truth....

I am to my certain knowledge the eighth consecutive member of my family, in the direct line, to follow the profession of arms, but am the first to do so without bearing a commission. My father died young in the rank of Captain, my grandfather led his own regiment in the Crimea, my great-grandfather was a Lieutenant-General, and, if I told you my real name, you could probably state something that he did at Waterloo.

I went to Sandhurst and I was expelled from Sandhurst—very rightly and justly—for an offence, or rather the culminating offence of a series of offences, that were everything but mean, dishonest or underhand. I was wild, hasty, undisciplined and I was lost for want of a father to thrash me as a boy, and by possession of a most loving and devoted mother who worshipped, spoiled—and ruined me.

I enlisted under an assumed name in my late father's (and grandfather's) old Regiment of Foot and quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant-Major.

I might have had a commission in South Africa but I decided that I preferred ruling in hell to serving in heaven, and declined to be a grey-haired Lieutenant and a nuisance to the Officers' Mess of the Corps I would not leave until compelled.

In time I was compelled and I became Sergeant-Major of the Volunteer Rifle Corps here and husband of a—well—de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

Why I married I don't know.

The English girl of the class from which soldiers are drawn never attracted me in the very least, and I simply could not have married one, though a paragon of virtue and compendium of housewifely qualities.

Admirable and pretty as Miss Higgs, Miss Bloggs, or Miss Muggins might be, my youthful training prevented my seeing beyond her fringe, finger-nails, figure, and aspirates, to her solid excellences;—and from sergeants'-dances I returned quite heart-whole and still unplighted to the Colonel's cook. But Dolores De Souza was different.

There was absolutely nothing to offend the most fastidious taste in her speech, appearance, or manners. She was convent-bred, accomplished, refined, gentle, worthless and wicked. The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had polished the exterior of the Eurasian orphan very highly—but the polish was a thin veneer on very cheap and unseasoned wood.

It is a strange fact that, while I could respect the solid virtues of the aspirateless Misses Higgs, Bloggs or Muggins, I could never have married one of them; yet, while I knew Dolores to be a heartless flirt, and more than suspected her to be of most unrigid principle, I was infatuated with her dark beauty, her grace, her wiles and witchery—and asked her to become my wife.

The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had taught Dolores to sing beautifully, to play upon the piano and the guitar, to embroider, to paint mauve roses on pink tambourines and many other useful arts, graces and accomplishments—but they had not taught her practical morality nor anything of cooking, marketing, plain sewing, house-cleaning or anything else of house-keeping. However, having been bred as I had been bred, I could take the form and let the substance go, accept the shapely husks and shout not for the grain, and prefer a pretty song, and a rose in black hair over a shell-like ear, to a square meal. I fear the average Sergeant-Major would have beaten Dolores within a week of matrimony, but I strove to make loss, discomfort, and disappointment a discipline,—and music, silk dresses and daintiness an aesthetic re-training to a barrack-blunted mind.

In justice to Dolores I should make it clear that she was not of the slatternly, dirty, lazy, half-breed type that pigs in a peignoir from twelve to twelve and snores again from midnight to midday. She was trim and dainty, used good perfume or none, rose early and went in the garden, loathed cheap and showy trash whether in dress, jewellery, or furniture; and was incapable of wearing fine shoes over holey stockings or a silk gown over dirty linen. No—there was nothing to offend the fastidious about Dolores, but there was everything to offend the good house-keeper and the moralist.

Frequently she would provide no dinner in order that we might be compelled to dine in public at a restaurant or a hotel, a thing she loved to do, and she would often send out for costly sweets and pastry, drink champagne (very moderately, I admit), and generally behave as though she were the wife of a man of means.

And she was an arrant, incorrigible, shameless flirt.

Well—I do not know that a virtuous vulgar dowd is preferable to a wicked winsome witch of refined habits and person, and I should probably have gone quietly on to bankruptcy without any row or rupture, but for Burker. Having been bred in a "gentle" home I naturally took the attitude of "as you please, my dear Dolores" and refrained from bullying when quiet indication of the inevitable end completely failed. Whether she intended to act in a reasonable manner and show some wifely traits when my L250 of legacy and savings was quite dissipated I do not know. Burker came before that consummation.

A number of gentlemen joined the Duri Volunteer Corps and formed a Mounted Infantry troop, and, though I am a good horseman, I was not competent to train the troop, as I had never enjoyed any experience of mounted military work of any kind. So Sergeant Burker, late of the 54th Lancers, was transferred to Duri as Instructor of the Mounted Infantry Troop. Naturally I did what I could to make him comfortable and, till his bungalow was furnished after a fashion, gave him our spare room.

Sergeant Barker was the ideal Cavalryman and the ideal breaker of hearts,—hearts of the Mary-Ann and Eliza-Jane order.

He was a black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman with a heart as black as his hair, and language as blue as his eye—a handsome, plausible, selfish, wicked devil with scarcely a virtue but pride and high courage. I disliked him at first sight, and Dolores fell in love with him equally quickly, I am sure.

I don't think he had a solitary gentlemanly instinct.

Being desirous of learning Mounted Infantry work, I attended all his drills, riding as troop-leader, and, between close attention to him and close study of the drill-book, did not let the gentlemen in the ranks know that, in the beginning, I knew as little about it as they did.

And an uncommonly good troop he soon made of it, too.

Of course it was excellent material, all good riders and good shots, and well horsed.

Burker and I were mounted by the R.H.A. Battery here, and the three drills we held, weekly, were seasons of delight to a horse-lover like myself.

Now the horse I had was a high-spirited, powerful animal, and he possessed the trait, very common among horses, of hating to be pressed behind the saddle. Turning to look behind while "sitting-easy" one day I rested my right hand on his back behind the saddle and he immediately lashed out furiously with both hind legs. I did not realize for the moment what was upsetting him—but quickly discovered that I had only to press his back to send his hoofs out like stones from a sling. I then remembered other similar cases and that I had also read of this curious fact about horses—something to do with pressure on the kidneys I believe.

One day Burker was unexpectedly absent and I took the drill, finding myself quite competent and au fait.

The same evening I went to my wife's wardrobe, she being out, to try and find the keys of the sideboard. I knew they frequently reposed in the pocket of her dressing-gown.

In the said pocket they were—and so was a letter in the crude large handwriting of Sergeant Burker.

I did not read it, but I did not see the necessity of a correspondence between my wife and such a man as I knew Sergeant Burker to be. They met often enough, in all conscience, to say what they might have to say to each other.

At dinner I remarked casually: "I shouldn't enter into a correspondence with Burker if I were you, Dolly. His reputation isn't over savoury and—" but, before I could say more, my wife was literally screaming with rage, calling me "Spy," "Liar," "Coward," and demanding to know what I insinuated and of what I accused her. I replied that I had accused her of nothing at all, and merely offered advice in the matter of correspondence with Burker. I explained how I had come to find the letter and stated that I had not read it.

"Then how do you know that we—" she began, and suddenly stopped.

"That you—what?" I inquired.

"Nothing," she said.

At the next Sergeants' Dance at the Institute I did not like Burker's manner to my wife at all. It was—well, amorous, and tinged with a shade of proprietorship. I distinctly heard him call her "Dolly," and equally distinctly saw an expressively affectionate look in her eyes as he hugged her in the waltzes—whereof they indulged in no less than five.

My position was awkward and unpleasant. I loathe a row or a scene unspeakably—though I delight in fighting when that pastime is legitimate—and I was brought into daily contact with the ruffian and I disliked him intensely.

I was very averse from the course of forbidding him the house and thus insulting my wife by implication—since she obviously enjoyed his society—and descending to pit myself against the greasy cad in a struggle for a woman's favour, and that woman my own wife. Nor could I conscientiously take the line of, "If she desires to go to the Devil let her," for a man has as much responsibility for his wife as for his children, and it is equally his duty to guide and control her and them. Women may vote and may legislate for men—but on men they will ever depend and rely.

No, the position of carping, jealous husband was one that I could not fill, and I determined to say nothing, do nothing and be watchful—watchful, that is, to avoid exposing her to temptation. I did my best, but I was away from home a good deal, visiting the out-station detachments of the Corps.

Then, one day, the wretched creature I called "butler" came to me with an air of great mystery and said: "Sahib, Sergeant Burker Sahib sending Mem Sahib bundle of flowers and chitti[53] inside and diamond ring yesterday. His boy telling me and I seeing. He often coming here too when Sahib out. Both wicked peoples."

[53] Note.

I raised my hand to knock his lies down his throat—and dropped it. They were not lies, I knew, and the fellow had been faithful to me for many years and—the folly of childish human vanity—I felt he knew I was a "gentleman," and I liked him for it.

I paid him his wages then and there, gave him a present and a good testimonial and discharged him. He wept real tears and shook with sobs of grief—easy grief, but very genuine.

When Dolores came home from the Bandstand I said quietly: "Show me the jewellery Burker sent you, Dolly. I am very much in earnest, so don't bluster."

She seemed about to faint and looked very frightened—perhaps my face was more expressive than a gentleman's should be.

"It was only a little thing for my birthday," she whined. "Can't I keep it? Don't be a tyrant or a fool."

"Your next birthday or your last?" I asked. "Please get it at once. We'll settle matters quietly and finally."

I fear the poor girl had visions of the doorstep and a closed door. Two, perhaps, for I am sure Burker would not have taken her in if I had turned her out, and she may have thought the same.

It was a diamond ring, and the scoundrel must have given a couple of months' pay for it—if he had paid for it at all. I thrust aside the sudden conviction that Burker's own taste could not have been responsible for its choice and that it was selected by my wife.

"Why should he give you this, Dolores?" I asked. "Will you tell me or must I go to him?" And then she burst into tears and flung herself at my feet, begging for mercy.

Mercy!

Qui s'excuse s'accuse.

What should I do?

To cast her out was to murder her soul quickly and her body slowly, and I could foresee her career with prophetic eye and painful clearness.

And what could the Law do for me?

Publish our shame and perhaps brand me that wretched thing—the willingly deceived and complaisant husband.

What could I do by challenging Burker?

He was a champion man-at-arms, a fine boxer, and a younger, stronger man, I should merely experience humiliation and defeat. What could I do?

If I said, "Go and live with your Burker," I should be committing a bigger crime than hers, for if he did take her in, it would not be for long.

I sat the night through, pondered the question carefully, looked at it from all points of view and—decided that Burker must die. Also that he must not drag me to jail or the scaffold as he went to his doom. If I shot him and was punished, Dolores would become a—well, as I have said, her soul would die quickly and her body slowly. I had married Dolores and I must do what lay in my power to protect Dolores. But I simply could not kill the hound in some stealthy secret manner and wait for the footsteps of warrant-armed police for the rest of my life.

What could I do? Or rather—for the question had narrowed to that—how could I kill him?

And as the sun struck upon my eyes at dawn, an idea struck upon my mind.

I would leave it to Fate and if Fate willed it so, Burker should die.

If Burker stood behind my charger, Fate sat with down-turned thumb.

I would not seek the opportunity—but, by God, I would take it if it offered.

If it did not, I would go to Burker and say to him quietly: "Burker, you must leave this station at once and never see or communicate with my wife in any way. Otherwise I have to kill you, Burker—to execute you, you understand." ...

A native syce from the Artillery lines led my charger into the little compound of my tiny bungalow.

Having buckled on my belt I went out, patted him, and gave him a lump of sugar. He nuzzled me for more, and, as he did so, I placed my hand on his back, behind the saddle, and pressed. He lashed out wildly.

I then trotted across the maidan[54] to the Volunteer Headquarters and parade-ground.

[54] Plain; level tract of ground.

Several gentlemen of the Mounted Infantry were waiting about, some standing by their horses, some getting bandoliers, belts, and rifles, some cantering their horses round the ground.

Sergeant Burker strode out of the Orderly Boom.

"Morning, Smith," said he. "How's the Missus?"

I looked him in the eye and made no reply.

He laughed, as jeering, evil, and caddish a laugh as I have ever heard. I almost forgot my purpose and had actually turned toward the armoury for a rifle and cartridge when I remembered and controlled my rage.

If I shot him, then and there, I must go to the scaffold or to jail forthwith, and Dolores must inevitably go to a worse fate. Had I been sure that she could have kept straight, Burker would have been shot, then and there.

"Fall in," he shouted, but did not mount his horse.

The gentlemen assembled with their horses and faced him in line, dismounted, I in front of the centre of the troop. How clearly I can see every feature and detail of that morning's scene, and hear every word and sound.

"Tell off by sections," commanded Burker.

"One, two, three, four—one, two, three, four...."

There were exactly six sections.

"Flanks of sections, proof."

"Section leaders, proof."

"Centre man, proof."

"Prepare to mount."

"Mount."

"Sections right."

"Sections left."

The last two words were the last words Burker ever spoke. Passing on foot along the line of mounted men, to inspect saddlery, accoutrements, and the adjustment of rifle-buckets and slings, he halted immediately behind me, where I sat on my charger in front of the centre of the troop.

I could not have placed him more exactly with my own hands. Fate sat with down-pointing thumb.

Turning round, as though to look at the troop, I rested my hand on my horse's back—just behind the saddle—and pressed hard. He lashed out with both hoofs and Sergeant Burker dropped—and never moved again.

The base of his skull was smashed like an egg, and his back was broken like a dry stick....

The terrible accident roused wide sympathy with the unfortunate man, the local reporter used all his adjectives, and a military funeral was given to the soldier who had died in the execution of his duty.

On reaching home, after satisfying myself at the Station Hospital that the man was dead, I said to my poor, pale and red-eyed wife:—

"Dolores, Sergeant Burker met with an accident this morning on parade. He is dead. Let us never refer to him again."

She fainted.

I spent that night also in meditation, questioning myself and examining my soul—with every honest endeavour to be not a self-deceiver.

I came to the conclusion that I had acted rightly and in the only way in which a gentleman could act. I had snatched Dolores from his foul clutches, I had punished him without depriving Dolores of my protection, and I had avenged the stain on my honour.

"You have committed a treacherous cowardly murder," whispered the Fiend in my ear.

"You are a liar," I replied. "I did not fear the man and I took this course solely on account of Dolores. I was strong enough to accept this position—and to risk the accusation of murder, from my conscience, from the Devil, or from man."

Any doubt I might otherwise have had was forestalled and inhibited by the obvious Fate that placed Burker in the one spot favourable to my scheme of punishment.

God had willed it?

God had not prevented it.

Surely God was consenting unto it....

And Dolores? I would forgive her and offer her the choice of remaining with me or leaving me and receiving a half of my income and possessions—both alternatives being contingent upon good conduct.

At dawn I prepared tea for her, and entered our bedroom. Dolores had wound a towel round her neck, twisted the ends tightly—and suffocated herself.

She had been dead for hours....

At the police inquiry, held the same day, I duly lied as to the virtues of the "deceased," and the utter impossibility of assigning any reason for the rash and deplorable act. The usual smug stereotyped verdict was pronounced, and, in addition to expressing their belief that the suicide was committed "while of unsound mind," the officials expressed much sympathy with the bereaved husband.

Dolores was buried that evening and I returned to an empty house.

I believe opinion had been divided as to whether I was callous or "stunned"—but the sight of her little shoes caused pains in my throat and eyes. Had Burker been then alive I would have killed him with my hands—and teeth. Yes, teeth.

I spent that night in packing every possession and trace of Dolores into her boxes, and then in trying to persuade myself that I should have acted differently.

I could not do so. I had acted for the best—so let God who gave me free-will, intelligence, conscience and opportunity, approve the deed or take the blame.

And let God remember how that opportunity came so convincingly—so impellingly—and if He would judge me and ask for my defence I would ask him who sent Burker here, and who placed him on that fatal spot?

Does God sit only in judgment?

Does God calmly watch His creatures walking blindfold to the Pit—struggling to tear away the bandage as they walk? Can He only judge, and can He never help?

"Pray?"

Is God a petty-minded "jealous" God to be propitiated like the gods of the heathen?

Must we continually ask, or, not asking, not receive?

And if we know not to ask aright and to demand the best and highest?

Cannot the well-fed, well-read, well-paid Chaplain give advice?

"God knoweth best. Ask unceasingly. Pray always."

Why?—if. He knows best, is All Merciful, All Powerful?

"Praise?"

Is God a child, a savage, a woman? Shall I offer adulation that would sicken me.

"God is our Father which art in heaven."

Would I have my son praise me to my face continually—or at all. Would I compel him to pester me with demands for what he desired,—good, bad and indifferent?

And would I give him what he asked regardless of what was best for him—or say, "If you ask not, you receive not?" Give me a God finer and greater and juster and nobler than myself—something higher than the Chaplain's jealous, capricious, inconsequent and illogical God. Anthropomorphism!

Is there a God at all?

I shall soon know.

If so—

Oh Thou, who man of baser earth didst make And ev'n with Paradise devised the Snake, For all the Sin the face of wretched man Is black with—Man's forgiveness give—and take!

At dawn I said aloud:—

"This Chapter is closed. The story of Burker and Dolores is written. I may now strive to forget."

I was wrong.

Major Jackson of the R.A.M.C. came to see me soon after daylight. He gave me an opiate and I slept all that day and night. I went on parade next morning, fresh, calm, and cool—and saw Burker riding toward the group of gentlemen who were awaiting the signal to "fall in".

I say I was fresh, calm, and cool.

I was.

And there was Burker—looking exactly as in life, save for a slight nebulosity, a very faint vagueness of outline, and a hint of transparency.

I had been instructed by the Adjutant to assume the post of Instructor (as the end of the Mounted Infantry drill season was near)—and I blew the "rally" on my whistle as many of the gentlemen were riding about, and shouted the command: "Fall in".

Twenty living men and one dead faced me, twenty dismounted and one mounted. I called the corporal in charge of the armoury.

"How many on parade?" I asked.

He looked puzzled, counted, and said:—

"Why—twenty, ain't there?"

I numbered the troop.

Twenty—and Burker.

"Tell off by sections."

Five sections—and Burker.

"Sections right."

A column of five sections—and Burker, in the rear.

I called out the section-leader of Number One section.

"Are the sections correctly proved?" I asked, and added: "Put the troop back in line and tell-off again".

"Five sections, correct," he reported.

I held that drill, with five sections of living men, and a single file of dead, who manoeuvred to my word.

When I gave the order "With Numbers Three for action dismount," or "Right-hand men, for action dismount," Burker remained mounted. When I dismounted the whole troop, Burker remained mounted. Otherwise he drilled precisely as Number Twenty-one would have drilled in a troop of twenty-one men.

Was I frightened? I do not know.

At first my heart certainly pounded as though it would leap from my body, and I felt dazed, lost, and shocked.

I think I was frightened—not of Burker so much as of the unfamiliar, the unknown, the impossible.

How would you feel if your piano suddenly began to play of itself? You would be alarmed and afraid probably, not frightened of the piano, but of the fact.

A door could not frighten you—but you would surely be alarmed at its persistently opening, each time you shut, locked, and bolted it, if it acted thus.

Of Burker I had no fear—but I was perturbed by the fact that the dead could ride with the living.

When I gave the order "Dismiss" at the end of the parade Burker rode away, as he had always done, in the direction of his bungalow.

Returning to my lonely house, I sat me down and pondered this appalling event that had come like a torrent, sweeping away familiar landmarks of experience, idea, and belief. I was conscious of a dull anger against Burker and then against God.

Why should He allow Burker to haunt me?...

Why should Evil triumph?...

Was I haunted? Or was it, after all, but a hallucination—due to grief, trouble, and the drug of the opiate?

I sat and brooded until I thought I could hear the voices of Burker and Dolores in converse.

This I knew to be hallucination, pure and simple, and I went to see my friend (if he will let me call him what he is in the truest and highest sense) Major Jackson of the R.A.M.C.

He took me for a long ride, kept me to dinner, and manufactured a job for me—a piece of work that would occupy and tire me.

He assured me that the Burker affair was pure hallucination and staked his professional reputation that the image of Burker came upon my retina from within and not from without. "The shock of the deaths of your wife and your friend on consecutive days has unhinged you, and very naturally so," he said.

Of course I did not tell him that I had killed Burker, though I should have liked to do so. I felt I had no right to put him in the position of having to choose between denouncing me and condoning a murder—compounding a felony.

Nor did I see any reason for confessing to the Police what I had done (even though Dolores was dead) and finishing my career on the scaffold.

One owes something to one's ancestors as well as to oneself. Well, perhaps it was a hallucination. I would wait.

At the next drill Burker was present and rode as Number Three in Section Six.

As there were twenty-three (living) on parade I ordered Number Twenty-three to ride as Number Four of his section and leave a blank file.

Burker rode in that blank file and drilled so, throughout—save that he would not dismount.

Once, as the troop rode in column of sections, I fell to the rear and, coming up behind, struck with all my might at that slightly nebulous figure, with its faint vagueness of outline and hint of transparency.

My heavy cutting-whip whistled—and touched nothing. I was as one who beats the air. Section Six must have thought me mad.... Twice again the dead man drilled with the living, and each time I described what happened to Major Jackson.

"It is a persistent hallucination," said he; "you must go on leave."

"I won't run from Burker, nor from a hallucination," I replied.

Then came the end.

At the next drill, twenty-one gentlemen were present and Number Twenty-one, the Sessions Judge of Duri, a Scot, kept staring with looks of amazement and alarm at Burker, who rode as Number Four on his flank, making an odd file into a skeleton section. I was certain that he saw Burker.

As the gentlemen "dismissed" after parade, the Judge rode up to me and, with a white face, demanded:—

"Who the devil was that rode with me as Number Twenty-four? It was—it was—like—Sergeant Burker."

"It was Sergeant Burker, Sir," said I.

"I knew it was," he replied, and added: "Man, you and I are fey."

"Will you tell Major Jackson of this, Sir?" I begged. "He knows I have seen Burker's ghost here before, and tells me it is a hallucination."

"I'll go and see him now." he replied. "He is an old friend of mine, and—he's a damned good doctor. Man—you and I are fey." He rode to where his trap, with its spirited cob, was awaiting him, dismounted and drove off.

As everybody knows, Mr. Blake of the Indian Civil Service, Sessions Judge of Duri, was thrown from his trap and killed. It happened five minutes after he had said to me, with a queer look in his eyes, and a queer note in his voice, "Man! you and I are fey".... So it is no hallucination and I am haunted by Burker's ghost. Very good. I will fight Burker on his own ground.

My ghost shall haunt Burker's ghost—or I shall be at peace.

Though the religion of the Chaplain has failed me, the religion of my Mother, taught to me at her knee, has implanted in me an ineradicable belief in the ultimate justice of things, and the unquenchable hope of "somehow good".

I am about to go before my Maker or to obliteration and oblivion. If the former, I am prepared to say to Him: "You made me a man. I have played the man. I look to you for justice, and that is—compensation and not 'forgiveness'. Much less is it punishment. You have treated me ill and given me no help. You have bestowed free-will without free-dom. Compensate me or know Yourself unjust."

To a servant or child who spoke so to me and with equal reason, I would reply:—

"Compensation is due to you and not 'forgiveness'—much less punishment," and I would act accordingly.... Why should I cringe to God—and why should He love a cringer more than I do?

God help Men and Women—and such Children as are doomed to grow up to be Men and Women.

As I finish this sentence I shall put my revolver in my mouth and seek Justice or Peace....

* * * * *

"Bad luck," murmured Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, "that was the man of all men for me! A gentleman, wishful to die.... That is the sort that does things when swords are out and bullets fly. Seeks a gory grave and gets a V.C. instead. He and Mike Malet-Marsac and I would have put a polish on the new Gungapur Fusiliers.... Rough luck...."

He was greatly disappointed, for his experiences in the bazaars, market-places, secret-meeting houses, and the bowers of Hearts' Delights,—the Rialtos of Gungapur (he disguised, now as an Afghan horse-dealer, now as a sepoy, now as a Pathan money-lender, again as a gold-braided, velvet waistcoated, swaggering swashbuckler from the Border)—his experiences were disquieting, were such as to make him push on preparations, perfect plans, and work feverishly at the "polishing" of his re-organized Corps.

Also the reports of his familiar, a Somali yclept Moussa Isa, were disquieting, disturbing to a lover of the Empire who foresaw the Empire at war in Europe.

Moussa Isa also knew that there was talk among Pathan horse-dealers and budmashes of the coming of one Ilderim the Weeper, a mullah of great influence and renown, and talk, moreover, among men of other race, of a Great Conspiracy.

Moussa was bidden to take service as a mill-coolie in one of Colonel Dearman's mills, and to report on the views and attitude of the thousands who laboured therein. This he did and there learnt many interesting facts.



Sec. 4. MR. AND MRS. CORNELIUS GOSLING-GREEN.

It was Sunday—and therefore John Bruce, the Engineering College Professor, was exceptionally busy. On a-week-day he only had to deliver his carefully prepared lectures, interview students, read and return essays, take the chair at meetings of college societies, coach one or two "specialists," superintend the games on the college gymkhana ground, interview seekers after truth and perverters of the same, write letters on various matters of college business, visit the hostel, set question papers and correct answers, attend common-room meetings, write articles for the college magazine and papers for the Scientific, Philosophical, Shakespearean, Mathematical, Debating, Literary, Historical, Students', Old Boys', or some other "union" and, if God willed, get a little exercise and private study at his beloved "subject" and invention, before preparing for the morrow.

On Sundays, the thousand and one things crowded out of the programme were to be cleared up, his home mail was to be written, and then arrears of work had to be attacked.

At four o'clock he addressed Roy Pittenweem and Mrs. MacDougall, his dogs, and said:—

"There's a bloomin' bun-snatch somewhere, you fellers, don't it?". Though a Professor and one of the most keen and earnest workmen in India, his own college blazers were not quite worn out, and Life, the great Artist, had not yet done much sketching on the canvas of his face—in spite of his daily contact with the Science Professor, William Greatorex Bonnett, B.A., widely known as the Mad Hatter, the greatest of whose many great achievements is his avoidance of death at the hands of his colleagues and acquaintance.

Receiving no reply beyond a wink and a waggle, he dropped his blue pencil, rose, and went to the table sacred to litter; and from a wild welter of books, pipes, papers, golf-balls, hats, cigar-boxes, dog-collars, switches, cartridges and other sediment, he extracted a large gilt-edged card and studied it without enthusiasm or bias.

"Large coat of arms," he murmured—"patience—no—a pay-sheet on a monument asking for time; item a hand, recently washed; ditto, a dickey bird—possibly pigeon plucked proper or gull argent; guinea-pig regardant and expectant; supporters, two bottliwallahs rampant. Crest, a bum-boat flottant, and motto 'Cinq-cento-percentum'. All done in gold. Likewise in gold and deboshed gothic, the legend 'Sir and Lady Fuggilal Potipharpar, At Home. To meet Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P. Five p.m. C.T.' ... Now what the devil, Roy Pittenweem, is C.T.? Is it 'Curious Time' or 'Cut for Trumps' or a new decoration for gutter plutocrats? It might mean 'Calcutta Time,' mightn't it, as the egregious Phossy and his gang would have it? Well, we'll go and look upon the Cornmealious Gosling-Green, M.P.'s, and chasten our soul from sinful pride—ain't it, Mrs. MacDougall?" and the Professor strolled across to the Sports Club for a cup of tea.

In the midst of cheery converse with a non-moral and unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a fat youth of the name of Augustus Grobble whose life was one long picturesque pose, he sprang to his feet, remarking: "I go, Augustus, I am bidden to behold some prize Gosling-Greens or something, at 5 p.m., D.V. or D.T. or C.T. or L.S.D. or otherwise. Perhaps it was S.T. which means 'Standard Time,' and as I said, I go, Augustus."

Augustus Grobble was understood to return thanks piously....

"Taxi, Sahib?" inquired the messenger-boy at the door.

"Go to," said the Professor. "Also go call me a tikka-gharri[55] and select a very senior horse, blind, angular, withered, wilted, and answering to the name, most obviously, of Skin-and-Grief—lest I be taken by the Grizzly-Goslings for a down-trodden plutocrat and a brother—and not seen for the fierce and 'aughty oppressor that I am."

[55] Public conveyance.

"Sahib?"

"Tikka-gharri lao,[56] you lazy little 'ound! Don't I speak plain English?" The Professor made it a practice to "rot" when not working—hoping thus even in India to retain sanity and the broad and wholesome outlook, for he was a very short-tempered person, easily roused to dangerous wrath.

[56] Bring.

A carriage, upholding a pony who, in return, spasmodically moved the carriage which gave evidence of having been where moths break through and steal, lumbered into the Club garden, and the Professor, imploring the jehu not to let the pony "die on him" in the Hibernian sense of the expression, gingerly entered.

"Convey me to the gilded Potipharparian 'alls, Arthur," said he.

"Sahib?"

"Why don't you listen? Palangur Hill ki pas[57] And don't forget you've to get me there at 5 p.m. C.T. or S.T.—I leave it to you, partner."

[57] To.

On arrival, the Professor concluded that if he had arrived at 5 p.m. C.T. he ought to have come at 5 p.m. S.T., or vice versa; as what he termed 'the show' was evidently about over. Fortune favours all sorts of people.

His hostess, who looked as though she had come straight out of the Bible via Bond Street, and his host, who looked as though he had never come out of Petticoat Lane at all, both accused him of being unable to work out the problem of "Find Calcutta Time given the Standard Time," and he professed to be proud to be able to acknowledge the truth of the compliment.

"Come and be presented to Meester and Meesers Carneelius Garsling-Green, M.P.," said the lady, waddling before him; and her husband echoed:—

"Oah, yess. Come and be presented to Meester and Meesers Garsling-Green," waddling after him.

Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., proved to be a tall, drooping, melancholy creature, with "Dundreary" whiskers, reach-me-down suit of thick cloth, wrong kind of tie, thickish boots, and no presence. Without "form" and void.

Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green was a Severe Person, tiny, hard-featured and even more garrulous than her husband, who watched her anxiously and nervously as he answered any question put in her presence....

"And, oh, why, why are not you Mohammedans loyal?" said Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green, to a magnificent-looking specimen of the Mussulman of the old school—stately, venerable, courteous and honourable—who stood near, looking as though he wondered what the devil he was doing in that galley.

Turning from his friend, Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan, a fine Pathan, "Loyal, Madam! Loyal! Believe me we Mohammedans are most intensely and devotedly loyal," he replied. "You have indeed been misled. Though you are only spending a month in India for collecting the materials for your book or pamphlet, you must really learn that much. We Mohammedans are as loyal as the English themselves.—More loyal than some in fact," he added, with intent. The Pathan smiled meaningly.

"Ah, that's just it. I mean 'Why aren't you Mohammedans loyal to poor India?'"

The man turned and left the marquee and the garden without another word.

"Poor bleeding India," corrected the Professor.

"And are you a friend and worker for India?" continued the lady, turning to him and eyeing him with severity.

"I am. I do my humble possible in my obscure capacity, Mrs. Grisly-Gosling," he replied. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Grossly-Grin——that is—er—Gosling-Green, I should say."

Be sure your sins will find you out. Through wilful perversion of the pleasing name the Professor had rendered himself incapable of enunciating it.

"And what do you do for India,—write, speak, organize, subscribe or what?" asked the lady with increasing severity.

"I work."

"In what capacity?"

"I am a professor at the Government Engineering College, here in Gungapur."

"O-h-h-h-h! You're one of the overpaid idlers who bolster up the Bureaucracy and batten on the....'"

"Allow me to assure you that I neither bolster, batten, nor bureau, Mrs. Grizzling—I mean Gosling Green. Nor do I talk through my hat. I——" the Professor was beginning to get angry and to lose control.

"Perhaps you are one of us in disguise—a Pro-Native?"

"I am intensely Pro-Native."

The tall Pathan stared at the Professor.

"Oh, good! I beg your pardon! Cornelius, this gentleman is a Government professor and is with us!" said this female of the M.P. species.

"That's right," gushed the Gosling. "We want a few in the enemy's camp both to spy out their weakness and to embarrass them. Now about this University business. I am going to take it up. That history affair now! Scandalous! I cannot tell you what a wave of indignation swept over England when that syllabus was drawn up. Nothing truly Liberal about the whole course, much less Radical. I at once said: 'I will see this righted. I will go to India, and I will beard the....'"

"I think it was I who said it, Cornelius," remarked his much better half, coldly.

"Yes, my dear Superiora, yes. Now with your help I think we can do something, Professor. Good. This is providential. We shall be able to embarrass them now! Will you write me——"

"You are going a little too fast, I think," said the Professor. "I am a 'Pro-Native' and a servant of the Pro-Native Government of India. As such, I don't think I can be of any service to twenty-one-day visitors who wish to 'embarrass' the best friends of my friends the Natives, even supposing I were the sort of gentle Judas you compliment me by imagining me. I——"

"You distinctly say you are Pro-Native and then——"

"I repeat I am intensely Pro-Native, and so are the Viceroy, the Governors, the entire Civil Service, the Educational Service, the Forest Service, the P.W.D., the Medical Service, the Army, and every other Service and Department in India as well as every decent man in India. We are all Pro-Native, and all doing our best in our respective spheres, in spite of a deal of ignorant and officious interference and attempted 'embarrassment' at the hands of the self-seeking, the foolish, the busy-body, the idle—not to mention the vicious. What a charming day it is. I have so enjoyed the honour of meeting you."

* * * * *

"Well, my Scroobious Bird! And have they this day roasted in India such a Gosling as shall never be put out?" inquired the non-moral and unphilosophic Professor of Moral Philosophy, a little later.

"No, my Augustus," was the reply. "It's a quacking little gosling, and won't lead to any great commotion m the farm-yard. Nasty little bird—like a sat-bai or whatever they call those appalling things 'seven-sister' birds, aren't they, that chatter and squeak all day."

"Have a long drink and tell us all about it," replied Mr. Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble.

"Oh, same old game on the same old stage. Same old players. Leading lady and gent changed only. Huge great hideous bungalow, like a Goanese wedding-cake, in a vast garden of symmetrically arranged blue and red glazed 'art' flower-pots. Lofty room decorated with ancestral portraits done by Mr. Guzzlebhoy Fustomji Paintwallah; green glass chandeliers and big blue and white tin balls; mauve carpet with purple azure roses; wall-paper, bright pink with red lilies and yellow cabbages; immense mouldy mirrors, and a tin alarm clock. Big crowd of all the fly-blown rich knaves of the place who have got more than they want out of Government or else haven't got enough. Only novelty was a splendid Pathan chap, got-up in English except for the conical cap and puggri. Extraordinarily like Ross-Ellison, except that he had long black Pathan hair on his shoulders. Been to England; barrister probably, and seemed the most viciously seditious of the lot. Silly ignorant Goslings in the middle saying to Brahmins, 'And you are Muscleman, aren't you, or are you a Dhobi?' and to Parsis, 'I suppose you High Caste gentlemen have to bathe every day?' shoving their awful ignorance under the noses of everybody, and inquiring after the healths of the 'chief wives'. Silly fatuous geese!—and then talking the wildest piffle about the 'burning question of the hour' and making the seditious rotters groan at their ineptitude and folly, until they cheer them up sudden-like with a bit of dam' treason and sedition they ought to be jailed for. Jailed. I nearly threw a fit when the old geezer, in a blaze of diamonds and glory, brought up old Phossy and presented him to the Gander, and he murmured:—

"'My deah friend,' as Phossy held on to his paw in transports, 'to think of their casting you into jail,' and old Mother Potiphar squeaked: 'Oh, this is not the forger of that name—but the eminent politeecian'. But poor Gosly had thought he had been a political prisoner! Meant no offence. And then some little squirt of an editor primed him with lies about the University and the new syllabus, and straightway the Gander tried to get me on the 'embarrass the Government' lay, and talked as though he knew all about it. 'I'll get some of the ladies of my committee sent out here as History-lecturers at your University,' says he. 'They'll teach pure Liberal History and inculcate true ideas of liberty and self-government.' I wanted to go outside and be ill. Good old 'Paget M.P.'—takes up a 'Question' and writes a silly pamphlet on it and thinks he's said the last word.—Written thousands.—Don't matter so long as he does it in England.—Just the place for him nowadays.—But when he feels he's shoved out of the lime-light by a longer-haired Johnny, it's rough luck that he should try and get back by spending his blooming committee's money coming here and deludin' the poor seditionist and seducin' your Hatter from his allegiance to his salt.... Awful old fraud really—no ability whatever. Came to my college to spout once, in my time. Lord! Still he was a guest, and we let him go. Run by his missus really, I think. Why can't she stop at home and hammer windows? They say she went and asked the Begum of Bhopal to join her in a 'mission and crusade'. Teach the Zenana Woman and Purdah Lady to Come Forth instead of Bring Forth. Come Forth and smash windows. Probably true. Silly Goslings. Drop 'em.... What did you think of our bowling yesterday? With anything like a wicket your College should be...."

* * * * *

Entering his lonely and sequestered bungalow that evening Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed changed his Pathan dress for European dining-kit, removed his beard and wig, and became Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison. After dinner he wrote to the eminent Cold weather Visitor to India, Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, as follows—

"DEAR SIR,

"As I promised this afternoon, when you graciously condescended to honour me with your illuminating conversation, I enclose the papers which I guaranteed would shed some light on certain aspects of Indian conditions, and which I consider likely to give you food for thought.

"As I was myself educated in India, was brought up to maturity with Indian students, and have lived among them in many different places, I may claim to know something about them. As a class they are gentle, affectionate, industrious, well-meaning and highly intelligent. They are the most malleable of human metal, the finest material for the sculptor of humanity, the most impressionable of wax. In the right hands they can be moulded to anything, by the right leader led to any height. And conversely, of them a devil can make fiends. By the wrong leader they can be led down to any depth.

"The crying need of India is noble men to make noble men of these fine impressionable youths. Read the enclosed and take it that the writer (who wrote this recently in Gungapur Jail) is typical of a large class of misled, much-to-be-pitied youths, wrecked and ruined and destroyed—their undoing begun by an unspeakably false and spurious educational ideal, and completed by the writings, and the spoken words of heartless unscrupulous scoundrels who use them to their own vile ends.

"Read, Sir, and realize how truly noble, useful and beautiful is your great work of endeavouring to embarrass our wicked Government, to weaken its prestige here and in England, to encourage its enemies, to increase discontent and unrest, to turn the thoughts of students to matters political, and, in short, to carry on the good work of the usual Self-advertising Visitation M.P.

"Humbly thanking your Honour, and wishing your Honour precisely the successes and rewards that your Honour deserves,

"I remain,

"The dust of your Honour's feet,

"ILDERIM DOST MAHOMMED."

And Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., read as follows:—

... And so I am to be hanged by the neck till I am dead, am I? And for a murder which I never committed, and in the perpetration of which I had no hands? Is it, my masters? I trow so. But I can afford to spit—for I did commit a murder, nevertheless, a beautiful secret murder that no one could possibly ever bring to my home or cast in my tooth.

"Well, well! Hang me and grin in sleeve—and I will laugh on other side of face while dancing on nothing—for if you think you are doing me in eye, I know I have done you in eye!

"Yes. I murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Chief Secretary of the Nuddee River Commission.

"As the Latin-and-Greeks used to say, 'Solo fesit'!

"You think Mr. Spensonly died of plague? So he did. And who caused him to have plague? In short, who plagued him? (Ha! Ha! An infinite jest!) You shall know all about it and about, as Omar says, for I am going now to write my autobiography of myself, as all great so-called Criminals have done, for the admiration of mankind and the benefit of posterity. And my fellow-brothers and family-members shall proudly publish it with my photo—that of a great Patriot Hero and second Mazzini, Robespierre, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Wallace, Charlotte Corday, Kosciusko, and Mr. Robert Bruce (of spider fame).

"And I shall welcome death and embrace the headsman ere making last speech and dying confession. Having long desired to know what lies Beyond, I shall make virtue of necessity and seize opportunity (of getting to know) to play hero and die gamish.

"Not like the Pathan murderer who walked about in front of condemned cell with Koran balanced on head, crying to his Prophet to save him, and defying Englishes to touch him. Of course they cooked his geese, Koran or not. One warder does more than many Prophets in Gungapur Jail. (He! He! Quite good epigram and nice cynicality of educated man.) The degraded and unpolished fellow decoyed two little girls into empty house to steal their jewellery, and cut off fingers and noses and ears to get rings and nose-jewels and ear-drops, and left to die. Holy Fakir, gentleman of course! Pooh! and Bah! for all holy men. I give spurnings to them all for fools, knaves, or hypocrites. There are no gods any more for educated gentleman, except himself, and that's very good god to worship and make offering to (Ha! Ha! What a wit will be lost to the silly world when it permits itself to lose me.)

"Well, to return to the sheep, as the European proverb has it. I was born here in Gungapur, which will also have honour of being my death-and-cremation place, of poor but honest parent on thirty rupees a mensem. He was very clever fellow and sent five sons to Primary School, Middle School, High School and Gungapur Government College at cost of over hundred rupees a month, all out of his thirty rupees a mensem. He always used proverb 'Politeness lubricates wheels of life and palm also,' and he obliged any man who made it worth his while. But he fell into bad odours at hands of Mr. Spensonly owing to folly of bribing-fellow sending cash to office and the letter getting into Mr. Spensonly's post-bag and opening by mistake.

"But the Sahib took me up into his office to soften blow to progenitor and that shows he was a bad man or his luck would not have been to take me in and give chance to murder him.

"My good old paternal parent made me work many hours each night, and though he knew nothing of the subjects he could read English and would hear all my lessons and other brothers', and we had to say Skagger Rack, Cattegat, Scaw Fell and Helvellyn, and such things to him, and he would abuse us if we mis-arranged the figures and letters in CaH2O2 and H2SO4 and all those things in bottles. Before the Matriculation Examination he made a Graduate, whom he had got under his thumb-nail, teach us all the answers to all the back questions in all subjects till we knew them all by heart, and also made us learn ten long essays by heart so as to make up the required essay out of parts of them. He nearly killed my brother by starvation (saving food as well as punishing miscreant) for failing—the only one of us who ever failed in any examination—which he did by writing out all first chapter of Washington Irving for essay, when the subject was 'Describe a sunrise in the Australian back-blocks'. As parent said, he could have used 'A moonlight stroll by the sea-shore' and change the colour from silver to golden. But the fool was ill—so ill that he tried to kill himself and had not the strength. He said he would rather go to the missionaries' hell, full of Englishes, than go on learning Egbert, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelred, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Ethelred the Unready, and If two triangles have two sides of the one equal to two angles of the other each to each and the sides so subtended equal then shall the bases or fourth sides be equal each to each or be isosceles.

"Well, the progenitor kept our noses in the pie night and day and we all hated the old papa piously and wished he and we and all teachers and text-books were burned alive.

"But we were very much loved by everybody as we were so learned and clever, and whenever the Collector or anybody came to School, the Head Master used to put one of us in each room and call on us to answer questions and recite and say capes and bays without the map, and other clever things; and when my eldest brother left I had to change coat with another boy and do it twice sometimes, in different rooms.

"Sometimes the Educational Inspector himself would come, but then nothing could be done, for he would not ask questions that were always asked and were in the book, like the teachers and Deputy Inspectors did, but questions that no one knew and had to be thought out then and there. That is no test of Learning—and any fool who has not troubled to mug his book by heart might be able to answer such questions, while the man who had learnt every letter sat dumb.

"I hated the school and the books I knew by heart, but I loved Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai. He was a clever cunning man, and could always tweak the leg of pompous Head Master when he came to the room, and had beautiful ways of cheating him when he came to examine—better than those of the other teachers.

"Before we had been with him a month he could tell us things while being examined, and no one else knew he was doing it. The initial letters of each word made up the words he wanted to crib to us, and when he scratched his head with the right hand the answer was 'No,' while with the left hand it was 'Yes'. And the clever way he taught us sedition while teaching us History, and appearing to praise the English!

"He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the Government and Members of Council. We knew all about Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pim, and those crappies, and many a boy who had never heard of Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.

"We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too, and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day. He showed always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed. And he gave weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.

"And all the Indian History was about the Mutiny and how and why it failed, when he was not showing us how the Englishes have ruined and robbed India, and comparing the Golden Age of India (when no cow ever died and there was never famine, plague, police nor taxes) with the miserable condition of poor bleeding India to-day.

"He was a fine fellow and so clever that we were almost his worshippers. But I am not writing his autobiography but my own, so let him lapse herewith into posterity and well-merited oblivious.

"At the College when we could work no longer, we who had never learnt crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing in chokey and do poojah to their photos. But the superior members did no poojah to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have assumed, for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.

"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.

"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the next Instrument?

"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.

"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.

"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British Government does for you—educates you to be passed B.A. and educated gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A. work with hands like maistri?

"Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-class superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory.

"His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they did much—for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it.

"But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing up of the bhangi by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacred cause and have photo in newspapers and be talked about.

"Besides, as I have said, I am not being done brown, as I murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Engineer.

"How I hated him!

"Why should he be big and strong while I am skinny and feeble—owing to night-and-day burning midnight candle at both ends and unable to make them meet?

"Besides did he not bring unmerited dishonour on grey hairs of poor old progenitor by finding him out in bribe-taking? Did he not bring my honoured father's aforesaying grey hairs in sorrow to reduced pension?

"Did he not upbraid and rebuke, nay, reproach me when I made grievous little errors and backslippers?

"A thousand times Yea.

"But I should never have murdered him had I not caught the Plague, so out of evil cometh good once more.

"The Plague came to Gungapur in its millions and we knew not what to do but stood like drowning man splitting at a straw.

"Superstitious Natives said it was the revenge of Goddess Kali for not sacrificing, and superstitious Europeans said it was a microbe created by their God to punish unhygienic way of living.

"Knowing there are no gods of any sort I am in a position to state that it was just written on our foreheads.

"To make confusion worse dumbfounded the Government of course had to seize horns of dilemma and trouble the poor. They had all cases taken to hospital and made segregation and inspection camps. They disinfected houses and burnt rags and even purdah women were not allowed to die in bosom of family. Of course police stole lakhs of rupees worth of clothes and furniture and said it was infected. And many good men who were enemies of Government were falsely accused of being plague-stricken and were dragged to hospital and were never seen again.

"Terrible calamities fell upon our city and at last it nearly lost me myself. I was seized, dragged from my family-bosom, cast into hospital and cured. And in hospital I learned from fellow who was subordinate-medical that rats get plague in sewers and cesspools and when they die of it their fleas must go elsewhere for food, and so hop on to other rat and give that poor chap plague too, by biting him with dirty mouths from dead rat, and then he dies and so in adfinitum, as the poet has it. But suppose no other rat is handy, what is poor hungry flea to do? When you can't get curry, eat rice! When flea can't get rat he eats man—turns to nastier food. (He! He!)

"So when flea from plague-stricken rat jumps on to man and bites him, poor fellow gets plague—bus.[58]

[58] Finale, enough, the end.

"Didn't friends and family-members skeddaddle and bunk when they saw rat after I told them all that! But I didn't care, I had had plague once, and one cannot get it twice. Not one man in thousand recovers when he has got it, but I did. Old uneducated fool maternal parent did lots of thanks-givings and poojah because gods specially attentive to me—but I said 'Go to, old woman. It was written on forehead.'

"And when I returned to work, one day I had an idea—an idea of how to punish Mr. Spensonly for propelling honoured parent head first out of job, and idea for striking blow at British prestige. We had our office in private bungalow in those days before new Secretariat was built, and it was unhealthy bungalow in which no one would live because they died.

"Mr. Spensonly didn't care, and he had office on top floor, but bottom floor was clerks' office who went away at night also. Now it was my painful duty to go every morning up to his office-room and see that peon had put fresh ink and everything ready and that the hamal had dusted properly. So it was not long before I was aware that all the drawers were locked except the top right-hand drawer, and that was not used as there was a biggish hole in the front of it where the edge was broken away from the above, some miscreant having once forced it open with tool.

"And verily it came to pass that one day, entering my humble abode-room, I saw a plague-rat lying suffering from in extremis and about to give up ghost. But having had plague I did not trouble about the fleas that would leave his body when it grew stiff and cold, in search of food. Instead I let it lie there while my food was being prepared, and regretted that it was not beneath the chair of some enemy of mine who had not had plague, instead of beneath my own ... that of Mr. Spensonly for example!...

"It was Saturday night. I returned to the office that evening, knowing that Mr. Spensonly was out; and I went to his office-room with idle excuse to the peon sitting in verandah—and in my pocket was poor old rat kicking bucket fast.

"Who was to say I put deceasing rat in the Sahib's table-drawer just where he would come and sit all day—being in the habit of doing work on Sunday the Christian holy day (being a man of no religion or caste)? What do I know of rats and their properties when at death's front door?

"Cannot rat go into a Sahib's drawer as well as into poor man's? If he did no work on Sunday very likely the fleas would remain until Monday, the rat dying slowly and remaining warm and not in rigour mortuis. Anyhow when they began to seek fresh fields and pastures new, being fed up with old rat—or rather not able to get fed up enough, they would be jolly well on the look out, and glad enough to take nibble even at an Englishman! (He! He!) So I argued, and put good old rat in drawer and did slopes. On Monday, Mr. Spensonly went early from office, feeling feverish; and when I called, as in duty bound, to make humble inquiries on Tuesday, he was reported jolly sickish with Plague—and he died Tuesday night. I never heard of any other Sahib dying of Plague in Gungapur except one missionary fellow who lived in the native city with native fellows.

"So they can hang me for share in bomb-outrage and welcome (though I never threw the bomb nor made it, and only took academic interest in affair as I told the Judge Sahib)—for I maintain with my dying breath that it was I who murdered Mr. Spensonly and put tongue in cheeks when Gungapur Gazette wrote column about the unhealthy bungalow in which he was so foolish as to have his office. When I reflect that by this time to-morrow I shall be Holy Martyr I rejoice and hope photo will be good one, and I send this message to all the world—

"'Oh be....'"

* * * * *

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Gosling-Green, M.P., liked this Pathan gentleman so well after reading his letter and enclosure. Before long they liked him very much less—although they did not know it—which sounds cryptic.



Sec. 5. MR. HORACE FAGGIT.

"Fair cautions, ain't they, these bloomin' niggers," observed Mr. Horace Faggit, as the train rested and refreshed itself at a wayside station on its weary way to distant Gungapur.

Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley, of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry, apparently did not feel called upon to notice the remark of Horace, whom he regarded as a Person.

"Makes you proud to think you are one of the Ruling Rice to look at the silly blighters, don't it?" he persisted.

"No authority on rice," murmured the Colonel, without looking up from his book.

Stuffy old beggar he seemed to the friendly and genial Horace, but Horace was too deeply interested in India and Horace to be affected by trifles.

For Mr. Horace Faggit had only set foot in his Imperial Majesty the King Emperor's Indian Empire that month, and he was dazed with impressions, drunk with sensations, and uplifted with pride. Was he not one of the Conquerors, a member of the Superior Society, one of the Ruling Race, and, in short, a Somebody?

The train started again and Horace sank back upon the long couch of the unwonted first-class carriage, and sighed with contentment and satisfaction.

How different from Peckham and from the offices of the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt! A Somebody at last—after being office-boy, clerk, strap-hanger, gallery-patron, cheap lodger, and paper-collar wearer. A Somebody, a Sahib, an English gent., one of the Ruling and Upper Class after being a fourpenny luncher, a penny-'bus-and-twopenny—tuber, a waverer 'twixt Lockhart and Pearce-and-Plenty.

For him, now, the respectful salaam, precedence, the first-class carriage, the salutes of police and railway officials, hotels, a servant (elderly and called a "Boy"), cabs (more elderly and called "gharries"), first-class refreshment and waiting rooms, a funny but imposing sun-helmet, silk and cotton suits, evening clothes, deference, regard and prompt attention everywhere. Better than Peckham and the City, this! My! What tales he'd have to tell Gwladwys Gwendoline when he had completed his circuit and returned.

For Mr. Horace Faggit, plausible, observant, indefatigably cunning, and in business most capable ("No bloomin' flies on 'Orris F." as he would confidently and truthfully assure you) was the first tentative tentacle advanced to feel its way by the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, in the mazy markets of the gorgeous Orient, and to introduce to the immemorial East their famous jewellery and wine of Birmingham and Whitechapel respectively; also to introduce certain exceeding-private documents to various gentlemen of Teutonic sympathies and activities in various parts of India—documents of the nature of which Horace was entirely ignorant.

And the narrow bosom of Horace swelled with pride, as he realized that, here at least, he was a Gentleman and a Sahib.

Well, he'd let 'em know it too. Those who did him well and pleased him should get tips, and those who didn't should learn what it was to earn the displeasure of the Sahib and to evoke his wrath. And he would endeavour to let all and sundry see the immeasurable distance and impassable gulf that lay between a Sahib and a nigger—of any degree whatsoever.

This was the country to play the gentleman in and no error! You could fling your copper cash about in a land where a one-and-fourpenny piece was worth a hundred and ninety-two copper coins, where you could get a hundred good smokes to stick in your face for about a couple of bob, and where you could give a black cabby sixpence and done with it. Horace had been something of a Radical at home (and, indeed, when an office-boy, a convinced Socialist), especially when an old-age pension took his lazy, drunken old father off his hands, and handsomely rewarded the aged gentleman for an unswervingly regular and unbroken career of post-polishing and pub-pillaring. But now he felt he had been mistaken. Travel widens the horizon and class-hatred is only sensible and satisfactory when you are no class yourself. When you have got a position you must keep it up—and being one of the Ruling Race was a position undoubtedly. Horace Faggit would keep it up too, and let 'em see all about it.

The train entered another station and drew in from the heat and glare to the heat and comparative darkness.

Yes, he would keep up his position as a Sahib haughtily and with jealousy,—and he stared with terrible frown and supercilious hauteur at what he mentally termed a big, fat buck-nigger who dared and presumed to approach the carriage and look in. The man wore an enormous white turban, a khaki Norfolk jacket, white jodhpore riding-breeches that fitted the calf like skin, and red shoes with turned-up pointed toes. His beard was curled, and his hair hung in ringlets from his turban to his shoulders in a way Horace considered absurd. Could the blighter be actually looking to see whether there might be room for him, and meditating entry? If so Horace would show him his mistake. Pretty thing if niggers were to get into First-Class carriages with Sahibs like Horace!

"'Ere! What's the gaime?" he inquired roughly. "Can't yer see this is Firs-Class, and if you got a Firs-Class ticket, can't yer see there's two Sahibs 'ere? Sling yer 'ook, sour.[59] Go on, jao!"[60]

[59] Pig. [60] Go away.

The man gave no evidence of having understood Horace.

"Sahib!" said he softly, addressing Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley.

The Colonel went on reading.

"Jao, I tell yer," repeated Horace, rather proud of his grasp of the vernacular. "Slope, barnshoot."[61]

[61] An insulting epithet.

"Sahib!" said the man again.

The Colonel looked up and then sprang to his feet with outstretched hand.

"Bahut salaam,[62] Subedar Major Saheb," he cried, and wrung the hand of the "big fat buck-nigger" (who possessed the same medal-ribbons that he himself did) as he poured forth a torrent of mingled Pushtu, Urdu, and English while the Native Officer alternately saluted and pressed the Colonel's hand to his forehead in transports of pure and wholly disinterested joy.

[62] Hearty greeting.

"They told me the Colonel Sahib would be passing through this week," he said, "and I have met all the trains that I might look upon his face. I am weary of my furlough and would rejoin but for my law-suit. Praise be to Allah that I have met my Colonel Sahib," and the man who had five war decorations was utterly unashamed of the tear that trickled.

"How does my son, Sahib?" he asked in Urdu.

"Well, Subedar Major Saheb, well. Worthily of his father—whose place in the pultan may he come to occupy."

"Praise be to God, Sahib! Let him no more seek his father's house nor look upon his father's face again, if he please thee not in all things. And is there good news of Malet-Marsac Sahib, O Colonel Sahib?" Then, with a glance at Horace, he asked: "Why does this low-born one dare to enter the carriage of the Colonel Sahib and sit? Truly the relwey terain is a great caste-breaker! Clearly he belongs to the class of the ghora-log, the common soldiers." ...

"'Oo was that,—a Rajah?" inquired the astounded Horace, as the train moved on.

"One of the people who keep India safe for you bagmen," replied the Colonel, who was a trifle indignant on behalf of the insulted Subedar Major Mir Daoud Khan Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan of the 99th Baluch Light Infantry.

"No doubt he thought I was another officer," reflected Horace. "They think you're a gent, if you chivvy 'em."

At Umbalpur Colonel Wilberforce Wriothesley left the train and Mr. Faggit had the carriage to himself—for a time.

And it was only through his own firmness and proper pride that he had it to himself for so long, for at the very next station a beastly little brute of a black man actually tried to get in—in with him, Mr. Horace Faggit of the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, manufacturers of best quality Birmingham jewellery and "importers" of a fine Whitechapel wine.

But Horace settled him all right and taught him to respect Sahibs. It happened thus. Horace lay idly gazing at the ever-shifting scene of the platform in lordly detachment and splendid isolation, when, just as the train was starting, a little fat man, dressed in a little red turban like a cotton bowler, a white coat with a white sash over the shoulder, a white apron tucked up behind, pink silk socks, and patent leather shoes, told his servant to open the door. Ere the stupefied Horace could arise from his seat the man was climbing in! The door opened inwards however, and Horace was in time to give it a sharp thrust with his foot and send the little man, a mere Judge of the High Court, staggering backwards on to the platform where he sprawled at full length, while his turban, which Horace thought most ridiculous for a grown man, rolled in the dust. Slamming the door the "Sahib" leant out and jeered, while the insolent presumptuous "nigger" wiped the blood from his nose with a corner of the dhoti or apron-like garment (which Horace considered idiotic if not improper)....

But Homer nodded, and—Horace went to sleep.

When he awoke he saw by the dim light of the screened roof-lamp that he was not alone, and that on the opposite couch a native had actually made up a bed with sheets, blankets and pillow, undressed himself, put on pyjamas and gone to bed! Gord streuth, he had! He'd attend to him in the morning—though it would serve the brute right if Horace threw him out at the next station—without his kit. But he looked rather large, and Mercy is notoriously a kingly attribute.

In the morning Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed of Mekran Kot, Gungapur, and the world in general, awoke, yawned, stretched himself and arose.

He arose to some six feet and three inches of stature, and his thin pyjamasuit was seen to cover a remarkably fine and robustious figure—provided with large contours where contours are desirable, and level tracts where such are good. As he lay flat back again, Horace noted that his chest rose higher than his head and the more southerly portion of his anatomy, while the action of clasping his hands behind his neck brought into prominence a pair of biceps that strained their sleeves almost to bursting. He was nearly as fair as London-bred Horace, but there were his turbanned conical hat, his curly toed shoes, his long silk coat, his embroidered velvet waistcoat and other wholly Oriental articles of attire. Besides, his vest was of patterned muslin and he had something on a coloured string round his neck.

"What are you doing 'ere?" demanded Horace truculently, as this bold abandoned "native" caught his eye and said "Good-morning".

"At present I am doing nothing," was the reply, "unless passive reclining may count as being something. I trust I do not intrude or annoy?"

"You do intrude and likewise you do annoy also. I ain't accustomed to travel with blacks, and I ain't agoing to have you spitting about 'ere. You got in when I was asleep."

"You were certainly snoring when I got in, and I was careful not to awaken you—but not on account of any great sensation of guilt or fear. I assure you I have no intention of spitting or being in any way rude, unmannerly, or offensive. And since you object to travelling with 'blacks' I suggest—that you leave the carriage."