Soldiers Three [Stories]

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St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

"I'll speak to you after all's over," said Father Dennis
authoritatively in Dan's ear. "What's the use of confessing to me
when you do this foolishness? Dan, you've been playing with fire!
I'll lay you more penance in a week than -"

"Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on
the move; they'll let us go now!"

The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one
man there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half
an inch of bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.

"You've got to do it," said Dan grimly. "Do it decent, anyhow;"
and the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies
thrust forward the first, still singing as they swung down the
slope -

From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough
Shall roll to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the
Afghans, whom it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.

"They came down singing," said the unofficial report of the enemy,
borne from village to village the next day. "They continued to
sing, and it was written that our men could not abide when they
came. It is believed that there was magic in the aforesaid song."

Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of
Mulcahy. Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion.
Twice he was heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the
unpaintable inferno of a hotly contested charge.

At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness
beyond all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth
open and frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went
forward demented, while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked
at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail
and hurled down among the bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred
his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight line of the rabid
dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly unmasked
battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his companions
danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from
that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in
sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt,
and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan,
panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground
by the captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy's charge.

"Mad," said Horse Egan critically. "Mad with fear! He's going
straight to his death, an' shouting's no use."

"Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we'll hit him maybe."

The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of
shod feet behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This,
he saw, was no time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing;
the straight-held blade went home through the defenceless breast,
and the body pitched forward almost before a shot from Dan's rifle
brought down the slayer and still further hurried the Afghan
retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their dead.

"He was given the point, and that was an easy death," said Horse
Egan, viewing the corpse. "But would you ha' shot him, Danny, if
he had lived?"

"He didn't live, so there's no sayin'. But I doubt I wud have
bekaze of the fun he gave us - let alone the beer. Hike up his
legs, Horse, and we'll bring him in. Perhaps 'tis better this
way."

They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when
one of the younger subalterns said, "That was a good man!"

"Phew," said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the
burden. "I'm powerful dhry, and this reminds me there'll be no
more beer at all."

"Fwhy not?" said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched
himself for rest. "Are we not conspirin' all we can, an' while we
conspire are we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother
in New York would not let her son's comrades perish of drouth - if
she can be reached at the end of a letter."

"You're a janius," said Horse Egan. "0' coorse she will not. I
wish this crool war was over, an' we'd get back to canteen. Faith,
the Commander-in-chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-
belt for makin' us work on wather."

The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan's opinion. So they made
haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their
industry was rewarded by unexpected peace. " We can fight the sons
of Adam," said the tribesmen, "but we cannot fight the sons of
Eblis, and this regiment never stays still in one place. Let us
therefore come in." They came in, and "this regiment" withdrew to
conspire under the leadership of Dan Grady.

Excellent as a subordinate, Dan failed altogether as a chief-in-
command - possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice of
the only man in the regiment who could manufacture more than one
kind of handwriting. The same mail that bore to Mulcahy's mother
in New York a letter from the colonel telling her how valiantly
her son had fought for the Queen, and how assuredly he would have
been recommended for the Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a
communication signed, I grieve to say, by that same colonel and
all the officers of the regiment, explaining their willingness to
do "anything which is contrary to the regulations and all kinds of
revolutions" if only a little money could be forwarded to cover
incidental expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would receive funds,
vice Mulcahy, who "was unwell at this present time of writing."

Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San
Francisco, with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter.
The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then the Second
Conspirator - he who believed in "joining hands with the practical
branches" - began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity said,
"Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We're left
again. Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would,
but" - here he laughed afresh - "I'd give considerable to know
what was at the back of it all."

His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady,
discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his
thirsty comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York.

THE MAN WHO WAS

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.

Keep tally - on the gun-butt score
The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
For our dead comrade's sake.

Ballad.

Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful
person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming.
It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly
of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that
he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The
host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up
next.

Dirkovitch was a Russian - a Russian of the Russians - who
appeared to get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a
Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
name that was never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental,
fond of wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he
arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Badakshan,
Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that
he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was to be
seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty's White
Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that
narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of
the Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and
(though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given
up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who
individually and collectively, with hot whiskey and honey, mulled
brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all
hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are
exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a
foreigner - that foreigner is certain to be a superior man.

The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as
in charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some
wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of
Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely - even more than among
the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
Hussars were "My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious,"
and "Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour
on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England
and Russia when their hearts and their territories should run side
by side, and the great mission of civilising Asia should begin.
That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilised
after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is
too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has
been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never
attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for
tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
information about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to
look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be
admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan,
arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed
to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very
neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors
already married, she was not going to content herself with one
hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment,
being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going
to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the
wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable
reproach. She had jilted them all - from Basset-Holmer the senior
captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern, who could have
given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the
White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction
who lived across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan.
They had once met the regiment officially and for something less
than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with
many casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called
the White Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom
it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet
they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts.
The regiment possessed carbines - beautiful Martini-Henry carbines
that would lob a bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand
yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they
were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably
breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for
exactly their weight in coined silver - seven and one half pounds'
weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee
at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who
crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they
disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot
weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they
vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired
them for family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold
nights of the northern Indian winter they were stolen most
extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills
at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards were
first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if he
loses a weapon - Government must make it good - but he deeply
resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and
one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to
this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and
the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted
itself to polo with unexpected results; for it beat by two goals
to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight,
as well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across
the ground.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What does the sentry say?" said the colonel.

"Sez 'e speaks English, sir," said the corporal.

"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you've no
business -"

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

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

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

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

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

"He said, 'My God!" said little Mildred. "I heard him say it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled
in the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a
woman than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the
question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a
geyser. The man only smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the
table slid gently from his chair to the floor. No son of Adam in
this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars' champagne with
the Hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each without
remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.
The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from
the date of their formation have concluded all their functions.
They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a
part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair
and drummed on the table with his fingers.

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

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

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