Stories Three
By R--DY--D K--PL--G
I
FOR SIMLA REASONS
Some people say that improbable things don't necessarily happen in
India--but these people never find improbabilities anywhere. This
sounds clever, but you will at once perceive that it really means
the opposite of what I intended to say. So we'll drop it. What I
am trying to tell you is that after Sparkley had that affair with
Miss Millikens a singular change came over him. He grew abstracted
and solitary,--holding dark seances with himself,--which was odd,
as everybody knew he never cared a rap for the Millikens girl. It
was even said that he was off his head--which is rhyme. But his
reason was undoubtedly affected, for he had been heard to mutter
incoherently at the Club, and, strangest of all, to answer
questions THAT WERE NEVER ASKED! This was so awkward in that
Branch of the Civil Department of which he was a high official--
where the rule was exactly the reverse--that he was presently
invalided on full pay! Then he disappeared. Clever people said it
was because the Department was afraid he had still much to answer
for; stupid people simply envied him.
Mrs. Awksby, whom everybody knew had been the cause of breaking off
the match, was now wild to know the reason of Sparkley's
retirement. She attacked heaven and earth, and even went a step
higher--to the Viceroy. At the vice-regal ball I saw, behind the
curtains of a window, her rolling violet-blue eyes with a singular
glitter in them. It was the reflection of the Viceroy's star,
although the rest of his Excellency was hidden in the curtain. I
heard him saying, "Come now! really, now, you are--you know you
are!" in reply to her cooing questioning. Then she made a dash at
me and captured me.
"What did you hear?"
"Nothing I should not have heard."
"Don't be like all the other men--you silly boy!" she answered. "I
was only trying to find out something about Sparkley. And I will
find it out too," she said, clinching her thin little hand. "And
what's more," she added, turning on me suddenly, "YOU shall help
me!"
"I?" I said in surprise.
"Don't pretend!" she said poutingly. "You're too clever to believe
he's cut up over the Millikens. No--it's something awful or--
another woman! Now, if I knew as much of India as you do--and
wasn't a woman, and could go where I liked--I'd go to Bungloore and
find him."
"Oh! You have his address?" I said.
"Certainly! What did you expect I was behind the curtain with the
Viceroy for?" she said, opening her violet eyes innocently. "It's
Bungloore--First Turning to the Right--At the End of the passage."
Bungloore--near Ghouli Pass--in the Jungle! I knew the place, a
spot of dank pestilence and mystery. "You never could have gone
there," I said.
"You do not know WHAT I could do for a FRIEND," she said sweetly,
veiling her eyes in demure significance.
"Oh, come off the roof!" I said bluntly.
She could be obedient when it was necessary. She came off. Not
without her revenge. "Try to remember you are not at school with
the Stalkies," she said, and turned away.
I went to Bungloore,--not on her account, but my own. If you don't
know India, you won't know Bungloore. It's all that and more. An
egg dropped by a vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department.
But I knew the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of
one door as I came in at another. We did this two or three times--
and found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as
I passed, and respectfully removed his hood.
I found the poor old boy at the end of the passage. It might have
been the passage between Calais and Dover,--he looked so green, so
limp and dejected. I affected not to notice it, and threw myself
in a chair.
He gazed at me for a moment and then said, "Did you hear what the
chair was saying?"
It was an ordinary bamboo armchair, and had creaked after the usual
fashion of bamboo chairs. I said so.
He cast his eyes to the ceiling. "He calls it 'creaking,'" he
murmured. "No matter," he continued aloud, "its remark was not of
a complimentary nature. It's very difficult to get really polite
furniture."
The man was evidently stark, staring mad. I still affected not to
observe it, and asked him if that was why he left Simla.
"There were Simla reasons, certainly," he replied. "But you think
I came here for solitude! SOLITUDE!" he repeated, with a laugh.
"Why, I hold daily conversations with any blessed thing in this
house, from the veranda to the chimney-stack, with any stick of
furniture, from the footstool to the towel-horse. I get more out
of it than the gabble at the Club. You look surprised. Listen! I
took this thing up in my leisure hours in the Department. I had
read much about the conversation of animals. I argued that if
animals conversed, why shouldn't inanimate things communicate with
each other? You cannot prove that animals don't converse--neither
can you prove that inanimate objects DO NOT. See?"
I was thunderstruck with the force of his logic.
"Of course," he continued, "there are degrees of intelligence, and
that makes it difficult. For instance, a mahogany table would not
talk like a rush-bottomed kitchen chair." He stopped suddenly,
listened, and replied, "I really couldn't say."
"I didn't speak," I said.
"I know YOU didn't. But your chair asked me 'how long that fool
was going to stay.' I replied as you heard. Pray don't move--I
intend to change that chair for one more accustomed to polite
society. To continue: I perfected myself in the language, and it
was awfully jolly at first. Whenever I went by train, I heard not
only all the engines said, but what every blessed carriage thought,
that joined in the conversation. If you chaps only knew what rot
those whistles can get off! And as for the brakes, they can beat
any mule driver in cursing. Then, after a time, it got rather
monotonous, and I took a short sea trip for my health. But, by
Jove, every blessed inch of the whole ship--from the screw to the
bowsprit--had something to say, and the bad language used by the
garboard strake when the ship rolled was something too awful! You
don't happen to know what the garboard strake is, do you?"
"No," I replied.
"No more do I. That's the dreadful thing about it. You've got to
listen to chaps that you don't know. Why, coming home on my
bicycle the other day there was an awful row between some infernal
'sprocket' and the 'ball bearings' of the machine, and I never knew
before there were such things in the whole concern.
I thought I had got at his secret, and said carelessly: "Then I
suppose this was the reason why you broke off your engagement with
Miss Millikens?"
"Not at all," he said coolly. "Nothing to do with it. That is
quite another affair. It's a very queer story; would you like to
hear it?"
"By all means." I took out my notebook.
"You remember that night of the Amateur Theatricals, got up by the
White Hussars, when the lights suddenly went out all over the
house?"
"Yes," I replied, "I heard about it."
"Well, I had gone down there that evening with the determination of
proposing to Mary Millikens the first chance that offered. She sat
just in front of me, her sister Jane next, and her mother, smart
Widow Millikens,--who was a bit larky on her own account, you
remember,--the next on the bench. When the lights went out and the
panic and tittering began, I saw my chance! I leaned forward, and
in a voice that would just reach Mary's ear I said, 'I have long
wished to tell you how my life is bound up with you, dear, and I
never, never can be happy without you'--when just then there was a
mighty big shove down my bench from the fellows beyond me, who were
trying to get out. But I held on like grim death, and struggled
back again into position, and went on: 'You'll forgive my taking a
chance like this, but I felt I could no longer conceal my love for
you,' when I'm blest if there wasn't another shove, and though I'd
got hold of her little hand and had a kind of squeeze in return, I
was drifted away again and had to fight my way back. But I managed
to finish, and said, 'If the devotion of a lifetime will atone for
this hurried avowal of my love for you, let me hope for a
response,' and just then the infernal lights were turned on, and
there I was holding the widow's hand and she nestling on my
shoulder, and the two girls in hysterics on the other side. You
see, I never knew that they were shoved down on their bench every
time, just as I was, and of course when I got back to where I was
I'd just skipped one of them each time! Yes, sir! I had made that
proposal in THREE sections--a part to each girl, winding up with
the mother! No explanation was possible, and I left Simla next
day. Naturally, it wasn't a thing they could talk about, either!"
"Then you think Mrs. Awksby had nothing to do with it?" I said.
"Nothing--absolutely nothing. By the way, if you see that lady,
you might tell her that I have possession of that brocade easy-
chair which used to stand in the corner of her boudoir. You
remember it,--faded white and yellow, with one of the casters off
and a little frayed at the back, but rather soft-spoken and
amiable? But of course you don't understand THAT. I bought it
after she moved into her new bungalow."
"But why should I tell her that?" I asked in wonder.
"Nothing--except that I find it very amusing with its reminiscences
of the company she used to entertain, and her confidences
generally. Good-by--take care of the lion in the hall. He always
couches on the left for a spring. Ta-ta!"
I hurried away. When I returned to Simla I told Mrs. Awksby of my
discoveries, and spoke of the armchair.
I fancied she colored slightly, but quickly recovered.
"Dear old Sparkley," she said sweetly; "he WAS a champion liar!"
II.
A PRIVATE'S HONOR
I had not seen Mulledwiney for several days. Knowing the man--this
looked bad. So I dropped in on the Colonel. I found him in deep
thought. This looked bad, too, for old Cockey Wax--as he was known
to everybody in the Hill districts but himself--wasn't given to
thinking. I guessed the cause and told him so.
"Yes," he said wearily, "you are right! It's the old story.
Mulledwiney, Bleareyed, and Otherwise are at it again,--drink
followed by Clink. Even now two corporals and a private are
sitting on Mulledwiney's head to keep him quiet, and Bleareyed is
chained to an elephant."
"Perhaps," I suggested, "you are unnecessarily severe."
"Do you really think so? Thank you so much! I am always glad to
have a civilian's opinion on military matters--and vice versa--it
broadens one so! And yet--am I severe? I am willing, for
instance, to overlook their raid upon a native village, and the
ransom they demanded for a native inspector! I have overlooked
their taking the horses out of my carriage for their own use. I am
content also to believe that my fowls meekly succumb to jungle
fever and cholera. But there are some things I cannot ignore. The
carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the Sacred Shrine at
Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the priceless opals in its
eyes"--
"But I never heard of THAT," I interrupted eagerly. "Tell me."
"Ah!" said the Colonel playfully, "that--as you so often and so
amusingly say--is 'Another Story'! Yet I would have overlooked the
theft of the opals if they had not substituted two of the Queen's
regimental buttons for the eyes of the god. This, while it did not
deceive the ignorant priests, had a deep political and racial
significance. You are aware, of course, that the great mutiny was
occasioned by the issue of cartridges to the native troops greased
with hog's fat--forbidden by their religion."
"But these three men could themselves alone quell a mutiny," I
replied.
The Colonel grasped my hand warmly. "Thank you. So they could. I
never thought of that." He looked relieved. For all that, he
presently passed his hand over his forehead and nervously chewed
his cheroot.
"There is something else," I said.
"You are right. There is. It is a secret. Promise me it shall go
no further--than the Press? Nay, swear that you will KEEP it for
the Press!"
"I promise."
"Thank you SO much. It is a matter of my own and Mulledwiney's.
The fact is, we have had a PERSONAL difficulty." He paused,
glanced around him, and continued in a low, agitated voice:
"Yesterday I came upon him as he was sitting leaning against the
barrack wall. In a spirit of playfulness--mere playfulness, I
assure you, sir--I poked him lightly in the shoulder with my stick,
saying 'Boo!' He turned--and I shall never forget the look he gave
me."
"Good heavens!" I gasped, "you touched--absolutely TOUCHED--
Mulledwiney?"
"Yes," he said hurriedly, "I knew what you would say; it was
against the Queen's Regulations--and--there was his sensitive
nature which shrinks from even a harsh word; but I did it, and of
course he has me in his power."
"And you have touched him?" I repeated,--"touched his private
honor!"
"Yes! But I shall atone for it! I have already arranged with him
that we shall have it out between ourselves alone, in the jungle,
stripped to the buff, with our fists--Queensberry rules! I haven't
fought since I stood up against Spinks Major--you remember old
Spinks, now of the Bombay Offensibles?--at Eton." And the old boy
pluckily bared his skinny arm.
"It may be serious," I said.
"I have thought of that. I have a wife, several children, and an
aged parent in England. If I fall, they must never know. You must
invent a story for them. I have thought of cholera, but that is
played out; you know we have already tried it on The Boy who was
Thrown Away. Invent something quiet, peaceable and respectable--as
far removed from fighting as possible. What do you say to
measles?"
"Not half bad," I returned.
"Measles let it be, then! Say I caught it from Wee Willie Winkie.
You do not think it too incredible?" he added timidly.
"Not more than YOUR story," I said.
He grasped my hand, struggling violently with his emotion. Then he
struggled with me--and I left hurriedly. Poor old boy! The
funeral was well attended, however, and no one knew the truth, not
even myself.
III
JUNGLE FOLK
It was high noon of a warm summer's day when Moo Kow came down to
the watering-place. Miaow, otherwise known as "Puskat"--the
warmth-loving one--was crouching on a limb that overhung the pool,
sunning herself. Brer Rabbit--but that is Another Story by Another
Person.
Three or four Gee Gees, already at the pool, moved away on the
approach of Moo Kow.
"Why do ye stand aside?" said the Moo Kow.
"Why do you say 'ye'?" said the Gee Gees together.
"Because it's more impressive than 'you.' Don't you know that all
animals talk that way in English?" said the Moo Kow.
"And they also say 'thou,' and don't you forget it!" interrupted
Miaow from the tree. "I learnt that from a Man Cub."
The animals were silent. They did not like Miaow's slang, and were
jealous of her occasionally sitting on a Man Cub's lap. Once Dun-
kee, a poor relation of the Gee Gees, had tried it on,
disastrously--but that is also Another and a more Aged Story.
"We are ridden by The English--please to observe the Capital
letters," said Pi Bol, the leader of the Gee Gees, proudly. "They
are a mighty race who ride anything and everybody. D'ye mind that--
I mean, look ye well to it!"
"What should they know of England who only England know?" said
Miaow.
"Is that a conundrum?" asked the Moo Kow.
"No; it's poetry," said the Miaow.
"I know England," said Pi Bol prancingly. "I used to go from the
Bank to Islington three times a day--I mean," he added hurriedly,
"before I became a screw--I should say, a screw-gun horse."
"And I," said the Moo Kow, "am terrible. When the young women and
children in the village see me approach they fly shriekingly. My
presence alone has scattered their sacred festival--The Sundes Kool
Piknik. I strike terror to their inmost souls, and am more feared
by them than even Kreep-mows, the insidious! And yet, behold! I
have taken the place of the mothers of men, and I have nourished
the mighty ones of the earth! But that," said the Moo Kow, turning
her head aside bashfully, "that is Anudder Story."
A dead silence fell on the pool.
"And I," said Miaow, lifting up her voice, "I am the horror and
haunter of the night season. When I pass like the night wind over
the roofs of the houses men shudder in their beds and tremble.
When they hear my voice as I creep stealthily along their balconies
they cry to their gods for succor. They arise, and from their
windows they offer me their priceless household treasures--the
sacred vessels dedicated to their great god Shiv--which they call
'Shivin Mugs'--the Kloes Brosh, the Boo-jak, urging me to fly them!
And yet," said Miaow mournfully, "it is but my love-song! Think ye
what they would do if I were on the war-path."
Another dead silence fell on the pool. Then arose that strange,
mysterious, indefinable Thing, known as "The Scent." The animals
sniffed.
"It heralds the approach of the Stalkies--the most famous of
British Skool Boaz," said the Moo Kow. "They have just placed a
decaying guinea-pig, two white mice in an advanced state of
decomposition, and a single slice of Limburger cheese in the bed of
their tutor. They had previously skillfully diverted the drains so
that they emptied into the drawing-room of the head-master. They
have just burned down his house in an access of noble zeal, and are
fighting among themselves for the spoil. Hark! do ye hear them?"
A wild medley of shrieks and howls had arisen, and an irregular mob
of strange creatures swept out of the distance toward the pool.
Some were like pygmies, some had bloody noses. Their talk
consisted of feverish, breathless ejaculations,--a gibberish in
which the words "rot," "oach," and "giddy" were preeminent. Some
were exciting themselves by chewing a kind of "bhang" made from the
plant called pappahmint; others had their faces streaked with djam.
"But who is this they are ducking in the pool?" asked Pi Bol.
"It is one who has foolishly and wantonly conceived that his
parents have sent him here to study," said the Moo Kow; "but that
is against the rules of the Stalkies, who accept study only as a
punishment."
"Then these be surely the 'Bander Log'--the monkey folk--of whom
the good Rhuddyidd has told us," said a Gee Gee--"the ones who have
no purpose--and forget everything."
"Fool!" said the Moo Kow. "Know ye not that the great Rhuddyidd
has said that the Stalkies become Major-Generals, V. C.'s, and C.
B's of the English? Truly, they are great. Look now; ye shall see
one of the greatest traits of the English Stalky."
One of the pygmy Stalkies was offering a bun to a larger one, who
hesitated, but took it coldly.
"Behold! it is one of the greatest traits of this mighty race not
to show any emotion. He WOULD take the bun--he HAS taken it! He
is pleased--but he may not show it. Observe him eat."
The taller Stalky, after eating the bun, quietly kicked the giver,
knocked off his hat, and turned away with a calm, immovable face.
"Good!" said the Moo Kow. "Ye would not dream that he was
absolutely choking with grateful emotion?"
"We would not," said the animals.
"But why are they all running back the way they came?" asked Pi
Bol.
"They are going back to punishment. Great is its power. Have ye
not heard the gospel of Rhuddyidd the mighty? 'Force is
everything! Gentleness won't wash, courtesy is deceitful.
Politeness is foreign. Be ye beaten that ye may beat. Pass the
kick on.'"
But here he was interrupted by the appearance of three soldiers who
were approaching the watering-place.
"Ye are now," said the Moo Kow, "with the main guard. The first is
Bleareyed, who carries a raven in a cage, which he has stolen from
the wife of a deputy commissioner. He will paint the bird snow
white and sell it as a dove to the same lady. The second is
Otherwise, who is dragging a small garden engine, of which he has
despoiled a native gardener, whom he has felled with a single blow.
The third is Mulledwiney, swinging a cut-glass decanter of sherry
which he has just snatched from the table of his colonel.
Mulledwiney and Otherwise will play the engine upon Bleareyed, who
is suffering from heat apoplexy and djim-djams."
The three soldiers seated themselves in the pool.
"They are going to tell awful war stories now," said the Moo Kow,
"stories that are large and strong! Some people are shocked--
others like 'em."
Then he that was called Mulledwiney told a story. In the middle of
it Miaow got up from the limb of the tree, coughed slightly, and
put her paw delicately over her mouth. "You must excuse me," she
said faintly. "I am taken this way sometimes--and I have left my
salts at home. Thanks! I can get down myself!" The next moment
she had disappeared, but was heard coughing in the distance.
Mulledwiney winked at his companions and continued his story:--
"Wid that we wor in the thick av the foight. Whin I say 'thick' I
mane it, sorr! We wor that jammed together, divil a bit cud we
shoot or cut! At fur-rest, I had lashed two mushkits together wid
the baynits out so, like a hay fork, and getting the haymaker's
lift on thim, I just lifted two Paythians out--one an aych baynit--
and passed 'em, aisy-like, over me head to the rear rank for them
to finish. But what wid the blud gettin' into me ois, I was
blinded, and the pressure kept incraysin' until me arrums was
thrussed like a fowl to me sides, and sorra a bit cud I move but me
jaws!"
"And bloomin' well you knew how to use them," said Otherwise.
"Thrue for you--though ye don't mane it!" said Mulledwiney,
playfully tapping Otherwise on the head with a decanter till the
cut glass slowly shivered. "So, begorra! there wor nothing left
for me to do but to ATE thim! Wirra! but it was the crooel
worruk."
"Excuse me, my lord," interrupted the gasping voice of Pi Bol as he
began to back from the pool, "I am but a horse, I know, and being
built in that way--naturally have the stomach of one--yet, really,
my lord, this--er"-- And his voice was gone.
The next moment he had disappeared. Mulledwiney looked around with
affected concern.
"Save us! But we've cleaned out the Jungle! Sure, there's not a
baste left but ourselves!"
It was true. The watering-place was empty. Moo Kow, Miaow, and
the Gee Gees had disappeared. Presently there was a booming crash
and a long, deep rumbling among the distant hills. Then they knew
they were near the old Moulmein Pagoda, and the dawn had come up
like thunder out of China 'cross the bay. It always came up that
way there. The strain was too great, and day was actually
breaking.
-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: Stories Three
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